Navigating the Customer Experience

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder, President and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world.

Questions

• Couldyou share with us a background of how did you end up in this arena of diversity and inclusion, what was your journey like?
• As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us some of the issues that have been may be barriers to preventing a fully diversified and inclusive workplace based on your experience?
• As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us maybe one or two strategies that you think small and medium-sized business owners could employ?
• Now in terms of how this impacts the customer experience, could you share with us some of the best practices that you've seen in organizations and how it has translated into retention and better customer experiences overall?
• Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day?
• Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in business?
• Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus?

Highlights

• Jennifer shared, as we like to say in this field not a lot of standard paths towards a career in diversity and inclusion. In fact, if you try to find academic programs that address or degrees that address this topic you probably will come up empty-handed. We all come from different places, for her,she was an activist in nonprofits in her 20s, but she was also always a musician and it was sort of an amateur pursuit in those early days in her life, but it was a huge passion. So, she decided to make it her profession and give it a shot, she moved to New York to become an opera singer and study at a conservatory and get her Masters in voice which was really exciting and heady times for her.But unfortunately, through the course of training she injured her voice and ended up having to get several surgeries on her voice to repair it but ultimately, she realized it wasn't going to work, her voice just would not be an instrument that she could count on for a career where she could make her living.

• It was heartbreaking but it's led her towards where a lot of theater people go because they love the stage and they're so good in front of people, a lot of them become trainers and educators. In fact, we find a home in leadership in the whole kind of field of leadership whether that's as consultant or a learning and development person. So, she ended up getting a second Masters in Organizational Development/ Organizational Change, it goes by a lot of different names but it's basically the HR education realm and she was a corporate learning and development, training and development leader for a while as an employee and then she got laid off and she said, “I think I can have more impact from the outside if I became kind of that third party, that expert.”That really appealed to her, it still appeals to her to this day, it's the best role for her to play which is that agitator, but not the employee which helps give her some authority, gives her some distance, gives her some credibility earned or unearned or deserved but it is what it is. People tend to want to listen to people who've written books on things and people who are external when they don't do a very good job of listening to their employees, which is another maybe we'll talk about that. So she ended up hanging her shingle out about 12 years ago and doing leadership and team development and morphing into DNI because she felt pulled in that direction to specialize because she’s a member of the LGBTQ community and she has been out since she was 22, and yet she had really struggled with being out throughout her life and even in the nonprofit world certainly in the opera music world and then as an entrepreneur where she felt very exposed to bias if she were to be honest and authentic about who she actually is and it's a huge part of our lives to deny and to walk around and do business without talking about it, without kind of leaving that hole and not feeling it's going to be accepted and it's also going to hurt your ability to make a living which is really problematic.

• So, now they do specialize in Diversity and Inclusion, and she’s fully out all the time, you could Google her and it's very plain.It is actually, she considers part of her secret sauce, it's part of where she has cut her teeth on developing her own voice, her bravery, her courage, her resilience has a lot of that has come from that identity and the pain of some of the painful lessons of exclusion that that has allowed her and enabled her to feel, to think about, to empathize with and hopefully made her a more inclusive leader, not just because she’s LGBTQ, but for all communities that needs her voice as an ally. So, it's a very cool place to find herself where she gets to write books and speak about all this stuff and it's particularly timely because the topic is, she would say, there's never been more attention on the topic than there is now.

• Jennifer stated that it has a lot of reasons and a lot of factors, it's rather complex and yet it's kind of simple at the same time because the mandate is simple, the need to reflect your customer base which is diversifying quickly who has the spending power for example that non-white communities are the fastest growing consumer communities with the largest spending power.She thinks the gay community now has a trillion dollars of spending power. So, consumers are getting smarter, they're getting organized, they're finding their voice, they're using it to hold brands accountable which is exciting and make spending choices that reflect their values. And yet companies in terms of their employee mix particularly in the top half or third of organizations really don't reflect that diverse world and companies structures are old school, there is no better way to say it, they have been unchallenged and they haven't challenged themselves in terms of the makeup of their senior leadership in particular and many companies not all but many companies have kind of gone about their merry way trying to make money and really not focused on anything larger than that, whether it's how employees feel, who's succeeding and feels they can thrive in the organization, who may be reaching senior leadership roles and who's not and why they're feeling thwarted in that process up the pipeline. And so, she thinks there's this business as usual, we're here to make money, we’re here to generate shareholder results and there's not been a lot of attention paid to values, the importance of the workforce and what they want and need in order to stay and thrive and there is honestly a lot of bias around, “Well, I worked hard and all you need to do is work hard too and you'll achieve what I've achieved.”So, this belief and meritocracy and it's really easy to believe in meritocracy when people that look like you have benefited from that, it hasn't been a challenge, there haven't been stereotypes that have affected you, you have been pulled forward by others that look like you without even knowing it sometimes, and so there's this willful blindness to the difficulties that are faced by anyone that is not of a certain demographic in workforces, it’s sort of, “I write it off. I don’t take it seriously. I don't listen to it. I don't even know it honestly.”So, there's a lot of education that's needed around micro inequities, unconscious bias, HR processes that are so critical like recruitment, retention, promotion and advancement, all those moments in the employee life cycle where bias occurs, it's in a large part still allowed to kind of continue and so what their job is to interrupt those things and come in as a company and build strategies that help companies wake up, get educated, care about it, honestly have empathy for other people which you shouldn't even need to say but it feels that it's hard, it feels that if I explain something to you and you don't care and then you don't take action, that hurts, there's a ton of research on this it's not even like this is a mystery. It's right there and so the best leaders and the best companies are really forward, they're asking all these great questions, they’re humbling themselves to their own learning, to their own mistakes, they're publishing their data and saying, “Hey, here's our data and I know it sucks and we're working to change it.”That's what courage looks like, that's what leadership looks like these days and she wish she saw more of it.

Yanique shared, I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not something that people are accustomed to and change is hard. Unfortunately, human beings don't adapt to change very readily, and I don't think it's based on the geography in terms of where you're from in the world, I think it's just general human nature. So, it would mean that you have to put yourself in a place of being uncomfortable in order to move from one stage to the next.

Jennifer agreed and stated that nobody wants to be uncomfortable, but the flip side is it makes you so much better of a leader and a better team member, better colleague and by the way better parent, better community leader, all of these. There's a reason that you open a paper today and diversities in every headline, it's everywhere because institutions are really struggling with it of all kinds for profit, nonprofit,community organizations, church leadership, so there is probably, no area of your life where you can afford to not understand and embrace this conversation and do your work, your kid could come home tomorrow and say, “Mom, I think I'm transgender.”You would be completely ill-equipped to deal with that and to be fair most parents are, it's something that is life and does not prepare you for that but at the same time don't you want to be ready? Even if you're interviewing for jobs, even if you're leading teams at a company that values diversity and you don't or you haven't paid attention to it, you've assumed it's somebody else's job to care about it, none of that is going to work for you in the long run, it's a little bit of a scare tactic but she has to use every tool she has to convince people that this is important which is really tiring and honestly kind of depressing sometimes because you're wondering how they don't get it, “Please have empathy for people that haven’t had as easy of a road as you.” It's just that and then she doesn't know why we have to ask and convince and scare, how many different techniques do we need to basically talk about something that's such a human right and is all about the dignity of everyone in this world to do their best work and to feel their sense of purpose every day.

Yanique agreed and stated, and to feel appreciated, a lot of people work in organizations and they just don't feel appreciated and I think they've lost the purpose if there was even a purpose from day one, they've definitely lost it. It comes out in the interactions that they have with customers, it comes out in how they relate to their team members sometimes unconscious of the fact that the customer is observing you in every interaction once they're standing in front of you or you’re on the phone and you ask them to hold but you didn't actually put the phone on hold, so they're hearing everything that's happening in the background.

• Jennifer shared that small companies have a great opportunity, it's actually much easier to shift things than for large organizations, and certainly remembering that if you build it right from the beginning, you will have a much easier time down the road. So, it's very important to think about how you are recruiting and retaining all kinds of talent, how comfortable they feel once they are in your organization and really being open to feedback about when that inclusiveness, the desire for inclusiveness is actually though being interpreted and the impact of an intention is one of exclusion. She thinks that sometimes we don't want to know the answer to that question so we don't ask and so it's very critical, particularly, if you're not a person of a marginalized or underrepresented background yourself, you're going to have some blind spots, your network is going to look a lot like you so you will tend to recruit from that network. You will have blind spots around how people perceive your brand and by even blind spots probably about your desired customers so that to the extent that you can ensure your team that you build reflects the world that you're doing business in, it will allow you to resonate and to see around that corner and to anticipate that audience and that customer and gear your communications accordingly and have kind have a check in balance on how are we coming across in the marketplace and like you said, we're being observed all the time, so your future talent is looking at your current organization and looking at your website and thinking about, “Would I be comfortable there? I don't see anyone that looks like me there.”That's something that's hard to fix in some cases because when you're an entrepreneur you're grabbing warm bodies, you're trying to get work done, it's very fast, you are going to pull from your own network because it's most expedient and that network is going to tend to look like you and so you've got to actively counterbalance that in your outreach, in the talent pools that you're seeking, in the way you talk proactively and very overtly about your commitment to inclusion.Shewould really recommend you have that in all of your marketing materials, it doesn’t matter what business you're in, there's always a way to talk about what inclusion means as a value to you and to what you're trying to build and to the customers you're trying to serve, there are ways to do that and she would recommend you do it because it's a beacon, not only for talent you hope to recruit and to say, “Hey, this is a safe place for you.This is a place that you are wanted and needed not just tolerated or accepted. We need all of you to bring your full self to work, this is a place in which you can do that.”Then we want to best serve the customer and their needs and wants, and companies are at real risk of missing some key….There's just a lot of mistakes that are made because diverse talent is not at the table when creative decisions are made or marketing collateral is designed, we've seen very high level mistakes made by brands like PepsiCo with the ad that they had where there was like a mock black lives matter march and one of the Kardashians was handing a Pepsi across the police line, it’s a nightmare and they pulled it immediately. And it became a kind of a case study that a lot of us talking about where we wonder who was at the table making those decisions, and if they were at the table, were they listened to, were they really considered, was that feedback taken into account?So, she doesn’t know where the error happened in their process because she doesn't have the inside look into them but at a smaller scale this stuff can happen all the time and she thinks you've got to make sure your mentored and coached and you run things by people, you think about the nuances of the diversity conversation because it is really nuanced, languages changing all the time and she gets a lot of complaints about are trans and gender non-conforming friends will say, “Yeah, I identify as they, them.So that's my preferred pronoun.”People will literally say, “Well, I don't feel comfortable referring to you as that, it's grammatically incorrect and I feel uncomfortable.”It's just amazing to her, to the point earlier, it’s a small action on your part that allows somebody to feel seen and heard is that so much work, she thinks it's such a red herring, it's just an excuse to not grow and she doesn't understand it. Jennifer thinks if you're in business, you should want more language, you should want more ways to talk to people in and resonate with them, that's what you should want.

• Jennifer shared that she thinks that companies that are designing products for example for different communities, some of the larger organizations she worked with literally have something called Employee Resource Groups or they're called Business Resource Groups, but they are diversity networks, maybe they're a multicultural talent network, maybe they're a black employee network, maybe there are an LGBTQ network and most companies are trying to reach those diverse demographic so they can sell more to them, but they realize that they don't have the intelligence on the inside to really do this well and effectively, the smart ones realize that so they have these groups or these networks for a lot of reasons, these networks serve a lot of purposes in organizations and these can exist in small companies to by the way. She has worked with 200-person companies that have a full diversity committee, they have several Employee Resource Groups that are literally playing kind of this market intelligence role for the company so you don't have to be big to access this idea and they are at the table informing product design, informing marketing strategies, informing sales, educating the sales team and anyone that's external facing around cultural nuances and behaviors and language.In banks and financial services, a lot of the financial advisors are tend to be white and to be male and yet the biggest growth and wealth is in diverse wealth holders, female heads of households, people of color and yet you have a financial advisor community in all the big banks and insurance companies that doesn't really look like that and they're struggling to diversify those ranks on the inside.So, literally there are certifications you can get for example as a financial advisor, you can get certified in selling to the LGBTQ community, selling financial products to that community and you go somewhere, and you get a designation that you can put after your name and yes, you're an ally, you're a straight ally, you're not in that community but you know and you're investing in how to be culturally competent when you are selling to that community. So, you're listenership probably selling a lot of different kinds of things, we're all in sales all the time, we all have customers and it's all about resonating with them and making sure you're staying up to speed on what their care abouts are and how they talk about themselves and how they kind of getting inside their lives and anticipating what they want and need.It's just that awareness and there's just a lot of examples of brands that have done this really well. Heineken had a great ad that aired a Super Bowl ago that she would encourage everybody to go look at where they introduce people to each other without providing a lot of demographic information about the person and they give them some questions to talk about and they pair somebody who might have very conservative views with somebody who's in the military and who identifies as transgender.But they don't tell them any of these things and then they encourage some conversation and then they kind of reveal later on, “Well, actually this person that you've bonded with, this is who they actually are and how they identify and are you surprised and do you feel your bias is being challenged?”It's really, really neat and there's a lot of interesting ads, Gillette just came out with an incredible ad, she would encourage everyone to go and watch it on masculinity, it was so good and there was a lot of threatened boycotts and she watched it with her partner and they literally cried and it was so moving and to think that something that could move us and touch your soul could make so many people angry is really indicative of the polarized times we live in but by the way, Gillette's sales went up after that ad, by a considerable amount.So, threatened, boycott or not, anger or not and social media, they correctly diagnosed the bump that they would get through putting their values out there and saying, “Here's what we want to be about and we know that as a brand we haven't always been all that hip to the issue, so, we're trying to be.”She thinks it really worked.It definitely burnished the brand for her and a countless other potential customers.

Yanique stated, so this is definitely something that's new and of course it's definitely going to continue into another couple of years as you said people are trying to flesh out what does that mean for them based on their organization, based on where they operate in the world, based on who they are trying to target and as you said, how much sales they're trying to increase in what community and if they can connect with these people because as you stated at the beginning of our conversation, people are now buying from brands that represent the values that they hold near and dear to them and sometimes that's very hard to find and it's amazing that consumers are taking this stance because it just goes to show that the power is really in the hands of the consumer and it's going to be continuing even more, social media has given themso much power in terms of the things that they do, the comments and the feedback that they give and so it's not so much about what the brand says about themselves, but what the consumer has to say based on their experiences with the product or the service.

Jennifer agreed and stated that it goes beyond the four walls of the company, there is no such thing anymore, there's total transparency as you said, there's a lot of accountability and a lot of communities are diverse communities who are questioning - Do we want to work at a place like that? Do we want to patronize a place like that? What do they stand for? People really now want to hear what do you mean and are you walking the talk?And she’s really excited to see this accountability and the visibility that they have, they can peer into how companies do business and employees are finding their voice and really being public about it like the Google walk out of a couple months ago had 20,000 employees all over the world walking out and protesting their whole process that they handle sexual harassment claims and pay equity.They had his whole list of demands and it was really inspiring to seeing Google had to pay attention. They just had to and they've been kind of on a journey of addressing some, not all of the requests/demands that the employees had, so, we're going to see this is not going away, this accountability and it's exciting because brands have gotten away with a lot in the past, they've gotten away with unfair workplace practices, they've protected their data, they haven't been forced to admit where they're board is entirely white and male but it's never been talked about in the news before, those days are over and if you're in a company where you haven't been called out publicly, it will happen.And so, a lot of their work is actually these days about helping brands and companies make sure they're doing their work internally, and so hopefully that day never comes, hopefully they never mess up but that accountability is fierce and swift and she almost feel like we need to start teaching the art of the apology to our customers because they're going to make mistakes, they are absolutely going to and so the question is, how do you come back from a mistake? How do you apologize, own what happened, say you're learning, talk about what you're going to be recommitting to, what are you going to do differently in the future, even that as something you're prepared for, that's a new idea but she thinks it would behoove all business owners and even all managers to think about when I say the wrong word, do people trust me enough and they know that they can come to me and tell me, that's what you really want, you want to ask for that, you want to earn people's trust because by the way, you can't just one day and once only say, “Hey, can you let me know if I ever make you feel uncomfortable?”It's not a one and done. So, you've got to earn that trust that somebody then will trust you enough to be honest with you and say, “Hey, that joke you say or that saying you say or you know that you stole that person's idea in the room or assigned it to, you took it and you attributed it to somebody else or did you realize that men did 90% of the talking in that meeting?”We've got to be sensitive to these things and we just haven't been in the past and we need help to learn and so it's not just something you do need to do a lot on your own, you need to educate yourself, you need to read a lot of books about bias and team dynamics and being an inclusive leader, her book is helpful she has been told by a lot of people, she hopes it's helpful, so read these books, but they commit to making behavior change in yourself and inviting feedback and then act on that feedback, adjust, be humble be resilient, have that growth mindset which is failing forward.You know you're going to fail, it happens to all of us, we're all bias and it's hard to keep up with this, but you just have to try, that's huge points for trying.

Yanique stated, I like the fact that you made a point to the fact that the change starts with you because I find in a lot of organizations, the managers or the leaders are quick to say well they need to do so and so and they're not including themselves in the process because it all starts with them as well and as a leader or a manager, if I'm in an organization, I'm looking to see what you are doing because I'm taking lead from the behaviors that you've demonstrated, the attitudes that you've demonstrated and yes, I may have my own values but in an organization people kind of watch what's happening and they kind of conform to the culture that exists and if they do anything out of the norm, it means that they're going to stand out and because most people don't want to stand out, there kind of just going to go along with whatever is happening there, whether it's good or bad sometimes.

Jennifer agreed and stated that the best example of what Yanique is talking about is watching how many men take paternity leave or parental leave. We don't get a lot in this country, some companies are really trying to become much more generous around leave and actually going as far as requiring some employees to take leave because there's such a stigma around taking leave and particularly for men and male parents in any family configuration, it is particularlyshamed to take. Even the leave that's provided, take all of that leave, it's not viewed as a positive, you get pressure, it's spoken and unspoken pressure and men follow other men and follow what they do and they decide what the norms are based on what they see particularly senior people doing so you're right that we take our cues from everyone we watch above us in a way and we say, “Well, that's acceptable, that's not acceptable, that's a boundary I can cross or that's a boundary that I shouldn't cross.”This is why it particularly would leave and also vacation interestingly, there are some companies that are starting to require vacation because we don't take all the vacation we haveand that’s not because we don't want to take the vacation, it’s because we don’t think it's going to be okay to do. So, the norms that are communicated through behavior of others particularly senior people, we are watching, and we are then deciding, “What should I do that's not going to hurt my career in this particular culture?”So, she wouldn't encourage people to think about, it almost needs to be mandated because until such time as we can change this dynamic of pressure and peer pressure and watching these role modeling behavior happen and kind of employees not taking care of themselves and not really doing what they need to do to have a balanced life, we may need to mandate some things. She just interviewed this woman, Erica Keswin, and she really recommend her book called Bring Your Human to Work  and she has so many examples of what companies are doing in this vein to encourage leave, to encourage parenting and to encourage balance and flex and literally power to the employee to really have that balance that is the theme, the theme of women's month is how do we achieve this?But remember men need balance too, we single parents need balance, people without children need balance who are caregiving, we may be doing none of those things, but we may need just balance for our time off. So, let's not be biased in terms of how we set systems up as well and assume that only one group of people needs to manage their work-life balance, but traditionally was spoken of as a sort of women's challengeand that's really changing, and she hopes it's changing. She hopes men are thinking about what they need and they're advocating for themselves, younger men, she has a lot of hopes for millennial generation to say, this is what I need and want whether that's a sabbatical, whether it's flexible work assignments and arrangements, whether it's different career opportunities and moving around a lot more often and she just hopes that employees are in the driver's seat, it's time to assume our more powerful position as you mentioned earlier.

• When asked about how she stays motivated every day, Jennifer shared that she calls it self-care and when you do diversity work, it has to be radical self-care because it can get kind of depressing to have to have these conversations over and over about why empathy matters. We have not succeeded in building healthy workplace cultures and that is wearing us down, it's tiring us, it's actually making us physically ill from stress-related issues when you can't be yourself, it’s harmful. So, talking about this all the time as is equally inspiring and also kind of depressing and makes her angry and frustrated and she has days when she wants to give up but that's also entrepreneurship. You have this passion, you're trying to raise money, you're trying to hire your team, you're trying to get contracts signed. So, how she fills her cup is gathering with people that care about what she cares about and just being able to let her guard down and be real about the frustrations and how it feels every day and for her, that might be in a room of women entrepreneurs as it fills her up to think about how are you growing your business?Just to see herself in them is a way of finding that space where you can say, “I'm not alone.” As she thinks isolation is really dangerous for us. So, who your community, where can you be real and let your hair down and let your guard down, be honest. Where can you go to feel re-inspired to realize the size of the community that's trying to do similar things or that shares your values.There's a lot of conferences on conscious capitalism and so, it's not just diversity conferences, it's conferences about values at work and culture conference, which is about why workplace cultures matter, there's a lot of great HR conferences that are talking more and more about what she does. So, it's this incredible convergence that she’s seeing in her conversation to many other sort of parallel worlds, which is a really cool thing to see. So, she would just recommend find your community, gather with them, put yourself around people that are having the highs and lows and everything in between, find folks you can be really real and honest with where it's off line and so nobody's watching and people who will hold your confidence. But ultimately, to her that has really sustained her. She has an amazing team as well, she doesn't try to do this alone, she has always wanted to build this beyond herself because she knew she wouldn't be able to touch all the lives that she wanted to without a team of people that could be going out and being in those classrooms and building those strategies for the companies and bringing those practices back to their group, so that they could do more of it. So, she has an incredible consulting team that does client work but also has a great marketing team that feels like they are all very aligned in terms of how much they believe in what they're doing every day and they're all sharing articles all the time, they're sending inspirational stuff to each other, they're sending discouraging new data to each other which just fuels the fight. So, she’d say if you're the kind of person that for maybe a team would feel that it would help you do the work and get up every day for a reason, then you might want to build a different kind of organization.There's a lot of us that just want to do it alone and that takes a certain kind of personality, it was never really her so, it's important to know what kind of leader are you? What do you need around you? Who do you need around you to be able to do your work and really find your sweet spot and your voice in that work and then who needs to surround you to enable that so that you can focus on what you do best.

• When asked about an online resource, tool, website or app, Jennifer stated that it's such a hard choice, there is so many, she has her favorite podcasts, she has her favorite research institutions.She really relies on research by McKenzie and Deloitte are probably her favorite things, her go-to resources for data on the way the workforce is changing. So, there are these amazing think tanks, they very well resourced, they are very cutting edge and a lot of that information fuels their consulting work, they just take that to clients and they hadn't seen it, it's compelling data about the future and they can help kind of flush it out because of their expertise, so it really works well. And then on the personal side, she really loves this woman who runs a daily Facebook live called, Resistance Liveand that's more of a sort of for her personal fuel.It talks about what's happening in our political system, the new generation of democratic leaders and candidates and the whole developing conversation around progressive values is exciting to her and again, kind of feeds her the certainty that she’s going in the right direction and that there is a big community that is asking the same questions that she’s asking so, but there's so many women's podcasts that she listens to, so many where she also gets her education around difference.She listens to code switch which is an NPR Podcastabout race and ethnicity and code-switching which is a critical foundational principle in terms of what we talk about diversity and all of us are code-switching all the time around a variety of aspects. So, that's one of her go to podcasts to learn about how other people experience code-switching and how she can be an ally to lessen some of what people feel that need to code switch every single day, how she can lessen that need and support people to bring their full selves to wherever and not have to put all that energy into hiding and minimizing and shifting and speaking a different language to different people, it's exhausting stuff and we shouldn't have to do it.

• When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Jennifer shared that she has many favorite authors that are difficult to narrow it down as usual, but there's a new book called Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplacesby her friend Karen Catlin and literally she's a woman in Tech.She was a VP in a technology company in a technical role and today she's an author and keynoter and she has a million ideas for how to be a better ally. She's got a hashtag and a handle on Twitter called #betterallies, which she really recommends everybody follows but she has a new book that literally pulls all that together in one place which is so helpful.So, that's one book that she would encourage reading. She doesn’t think there's a lot written on Allyship, so, this is an emerging area. Her new book coming out in August does talk about this a lot as well and sort of the allied journey, how you can get on board, how you can put one foot in front of the other and whether it's adopting one new word and trying to understand what it means and using it all the way to kind of advanced Allyship, which is she’s an advocate in her organization, she’s a big-time voice, she’s challenging the system and everything in between so, Better Allies is great. David Smith wrote a book called Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Womenabout why men should mentor women and she really pays a lot of attention to men and there are not many men who are writing about inclusion and men who speak on it because it's so important in so many ways. The (a) that they're involved but (b) other men are going to listen to them and read them in a different way and she thinks maybe many people are used to people who look like me and you speaking about all these things but for a man to speak about it is powerful.So, those are two amazing books she would point people towards that are great reads and full of practical advice.

• Jennifer shared that they are embarking on a big shift in their business strategy at her company, they've been highly like white glove bespoke consulting has been their bailiwick and then she gave a lot of key notes, which is great, and she loves, and she just plan to do a lot more of them. She thinks it's really her sweet spot honestly, but she thinks they're moving into the online product arena and they've launched their first online program in the last couple of months and have their first cohort of students and thinks their programs could be so many things. They're going to launch a new assessment behind the second book that's coming out in August around how inclusive of a leader are you and actually give people a score and then kind of break down their score within 6 different domains. And so, it’s the first assessment they've ever really had like that as a company. She thinks it has a lot of potential because people want to know where they are and then they want resources and tools whether it's a quickie online program that's really affordable or whether it's much longer, six months multi-course program where they can really do a deep dive. They're starting to build all those things on the back end, to get access to their knowledge, you don't need to hire them to come into your company basically, there's going to be a whole way to access what they do online. So, she’s just really excited to investigate that, it's a great revenue generator for them, a different kind of workstream business unit and who knows what's in store for them with the economy, but it's been a long time since they've had a correction and corrections and recessions are really difficult for consulting companies, a lot of us don't make it through and she thinks they're recession-proof now but it's very important and every entrepreneur that listens to you will know this, that we must diversify your revenue, spread out the ways that you make money in as many ways as you can to protect yourself against downturns particularly if you are a service company, and you're attached to corporate budgets.And diversity has been viewed as a nice to have traditionally and so, she thinks a lot of us, it really would behoove all of us to think about how are you going to weather storms? Because we know storms are going to happen and so that's another aspect that she’s really excited about having these online offerings.They're more affordable, they are something that people can do even with in a recession environment to invest in themselves, continue to learn and grow and prepare for the upswing, not to be morbid but it is something that has crossed her mind and she’s sure has crossed everyone's minds that are listening to you if they run a business.

• Jennifershared listeners can find her at –

[email protected]

Stitcher Radio – The Will to Change: Uncovering True Stories of Diversity & Inclusion

Twitter - @jenniferbrown

Instagram - @jenniferbrownspeaks

Facebook – Jennifer Brown Consulting

LinkedIn – Jennifer Brown Consulting

****Special Note: the book is available for pre-order on Amazon in order to get into the flow that way

• Jennifer shared that she likes to think about the quote that was on President Obama's rug in the Oval Office. It says, “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”You talked about like an idea that keeps you working and getting up in the morning and thinking that what you're doing is making a difference, there's no better quote than that. I think Martin Luther King originated it, but she thinks about it a lot because it is a struggle, because progress can feel slow, sometimes it's a real galvanizing idea for her and many others who do the work that she does.

Links

• Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change by Jennifer Brown
• Bring Your Human to Work: 10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That Is Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World by Erica Keswin
• Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin
• Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women by David Smith

Sarah E. Toms is an Executive Director and co-founder of Wharton Interactive where she has built award-winning EdTech teams that develop highly engaging games and simulations, which are played by tens of thousands of students globally. Her drive to modernize, transform, and democratize education led her to co-invent simpl.world, an open-source simulation framework. As an entrepreneur for more than a decade and a demonstrated thought leader in the technology field, Toms has founded companies that build global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. She is dedicated to supporting women and girls in technology through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahEToms.

Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, Fader co-founded Zodiac, a predictive analytics firm that was acquired by Nike in 2018. More recently, he co-founded Theta Equity Partners, which focuses on customer-based corporate valuation. His expertise centers on topics such as customer relationship management, lifetime value of the customer, and strategies that arise from these data-driven tactics. Fader is also the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and he has been interviewed in The Wall Street Journal, APM’s “Marketplace,” NPR’s “Planet Money,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Forbes, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @FaderP.

Questions

• Could you tell us some of the things that really propelled you to take it a step further especially focusing on the difference between customer centricity and customer lifetime value and how an organization can really identify what that is for them.
• In the book you also focused on the difference between customer centricity versus product centricity. Could you share with us a little bit about that?And do you find that organizations are shifting more towards customer centricity and less in the product realm?
• Could you share with our listeners what are some necessary elements that help to support customer centricity in an organization?
• How is it that you integrate the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and align the customer service strategy with a proper CRM solution?
• Could you share with us a little bit about the loyalty programs in terms of does every organization need a loyalty program in order to have an effective or have a true reflection of what their customer lifetime value is to understand the whole metric process?
• Based on your experience, your research, your exposure, different interactions that you've had with different people. How do you view customer experience today and what do you think it will look like 5 to 10 years from now?
• Could you share with us maybe one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your day to day operations?
• Are there any books that have had really great impacts on you that you'd like to share with our listeners that you think will help them in their own journey?
• Could you share with us, maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus and to get back on track?

Highlights

• Peter shared that they build a bridge from the first book to the new one and to the simulation that was mentioned that Sarah has developed. So, the first book was about this radical idea that a company can potentially make more money and have more sustainable, defendable success by focusing more on the differences among its customers by celebrating heterogeneity, that if we can figure out who the right customers are and kind of double down on them, enhance their value, find more like them, that that could do better than just obsessing over version 2.0 of the product. But the thing about the first book, it was good, and he hopes that if people haven't read it, they will but it was more definitional, motivational, aspirational, here's this concept, here's what it can do for you, here's the problems with a lot of companies out there that are failing to go in this direction. So, it was trying to get people to kind of wake up, but it didn’t really give them specific guidance how to put one foot in front of another and that's one of the things that he and Sarah have tried to do with their simulations and this new book basically takes a lot of those ideas and kind of crystallizes them, goes beyond just the simulation, makes them very real, talk about real companies, real actions.

Sarah shared that what was interesting to them was when they started writing the book they actually started to create sort of this Frankenstein, it was a combination of a simulation manual and some interesting stories and interesting content about customer centricity and how to actually put customer centric thinking into action and they brought it to their publisher and they said, “Get rid of the simulation stuff, flush out more about the book, make it a standalone piece if people want to run the simulation and read the book. That's fantastic.” But they really need something that engages folks who are working in the trenches day in day out and give them a clear guideline for how to become customer centric.

• Peter stated that it goes back to some of the concepts in the first book was taking conventional business practices that they just accept as this is just how you run a business, you put the product first, that's all about what product should we develop, how do we fine tune it to meet the needs of the customer, distribution, promotion all about the old four P’s that we talk about in marketing. And we're saying, “Well no, actually let's build a business around the customers, the more valuable customers and have that.”And sort of say what product features will be most appealing, they say, “Here are the most valuable customers, what is it that they want?” And so, they start looking at product development and product management quite differently. Again, when he wrote the first book it was more about just this provocative kind of let’s do a 180 on the way we think about business. But they still stopped short of actually saying, here's an overall playbook which of course is the name of the new one to begin to not only embrace the metrics and all the “mathy” stuff that he likes to do but the thing more about how to build the right kind of organization, how to send the right kind of message, how to establish the right kinds of principles. Again, tremendous credit to Sarah for taking some of the best practices from the software world and bringing them over.

Sarah stated that at the end of the book they have a manifesto which really comes from her experience in technology and software development, where she experienced something very similar to what she’s learned now with partnering with Pete over the last four years…..five years that's happening in the marketing science world as well. And that is it, they're being inundated with all this data, there's data insights and data collection and it's becoming cheaper and easier and faster to just collect swathes and swathes of information about their customers and how they behave and what makes them buy etc. And the problem is that a lot of it is garbage and so we had something similar happen in the software development realm in the dot.com heydays where they had this tremendous capability with technology and the problem was they were really weighed down by old bureaucratic bloated software processes, she’s talking about waterfall where they had to write reams and reams of documentation and they weren't able to work leanly and be able to keep up with the technological advances in a way that was in line their our customers and their business users and what they actually wanted from the software that was being developed. And so, this sparked an idea as she was having these conversations with Pete and she said, I think what we really need for customer centricity is we need a manifesto as well. We need something that will really focus business people, it will give them just simple clarity around what is important and what they need to double down on with regards to customer centricity.

Yanique mentioned that the book is a playbook, anybody in an organization in a leadership role or non-leadership role can pick up the book and they will be able to have a guideline like step by step as to how they can really master customer centricity in their business, whether they're an organization that has customers that come in or they're an online business.

Sarah stated that the way that they've laid out the book from the playbook perspective is to really think about those different functional areas. Our goal with this to most definitely make sure that this was a cross-functional conversation. This playbook is not just for the sales person or the marketing person, this is for the data person, it's for the finance people, it's for the folks in H.R., the folks who are developing the products are indeed, this is for everybody. And it's really again pivoting and pivoting so that your customers are at the center but understanding that this heterogeneity at play within that customer base and how are you really going to focus in on what you need to do. So, when you're thinking about acquiring those customers, when you're thinking about retaining them and developing them, when you're thinking about having conversations with those in your technology team on how to tag them and track them and understand what information is actually important when it comes to figuring out who's valuable today, who will be valuable tomorrow and when I'm acquiring new customers who's more than likely going to be valuable to the organization and then taking all of those conversations and making sure that folks in your finance team understand what that means from the customer lifetime value standpoint.

• Peter stated just to add one other example to that, he thinks Sarah mentioned that one of those elements being retention and development, they look at the array of new tactics that are available to either make your customers more valuable and have them stay around longer. So, things like a loyalty programme or a premium offering or customer experience or strategic account management and the problem is a lot of these tactics are so new, they just weren't done. They didn't exist a generation ago and so, companies don't really know which one to use when. When should be lean towards the loyalty program versus the premium offering? You really need a playbook to kind of lay out all these tactics and come up with a solid framework to give companies guidance about, don't invest in all of them but think strategically and have a good idea of would it makes sense to start one or pivot to another. So, that's just one example where they're starting to get much more tactical and starting to deal with issues that just aren't in what say your traditional marketing one or one type course.

• Peter shared that for him, a big part of it is all about Customer Lifetime Value. And again, he acknowledged it's a bias because that's the kind of research that he has done, those are the kinds of models and activities that he has commercialized in a couple of different ways but to do customer centricity right, you have to be able to have that CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) magic wand, you have to be able to look at a customer's past interactions with you and say here's my best guess about what they're going to be worth in the future and to line up customers in that future looking way and to use those numbers and those differences across customers to really drive all these tactics. So, a lot of companies are eager to get into the tactics, they want to do that customer experience campaign but they're saying it won't be nearly as effective if you don't have a good quantitative assessment of the value of customers before and after you do that kind of campaign.

Sarah shared that one of the shining examples that they use a couple of times in the book is Electronic Arts. So, Electronic Arts is really one of the most mature organizations that they've seen with regards to customer centricity. Every day as players are playing their games they are collecting data about behaviours about what they know about who's more than likely going to be a high, medium and low value customer and they're feeding that information back to the game studios, they're letting them know, “For our high value customers, did this part of the game work the way we thought it was going to, did we see this as high engagement as we were hoping and if not why not and what do we need to do to pivot in the actual game development.” They're using information about these customers with how they advertise to them. So, not just saying, “All right well, here's our advertising campaign for this game, we'll put it out there, it'll be out there for a month, three months, five months.”They're using that information about their customers to actually fine tune how they target and attract the customers that they're looking to seek.

Yanique mentioned that it is definitely a combination of many different things all in one in terms of an organization looking at how the customer is interfacing with their product or their service, the frequency of them utilizing that product or service and of course to spend.

Sarah agreed and stated that RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) is still key. RFM is a marketing technique used to determine quantitatively which customers are the best ones by examining how recently a customer has purchased (recency), how often they purchase (frequency), and how much the customer spends (monetary). To build on what Peter was saying about customer lifetime value in chapter 1, they spend some time delving into problems with CLV that they see that are common out there and mistakes that are being made with the calculation itself. So, CLV itself can be quite complex and there's lots of open source ways to leverage and create CLV calculations within your organizations. But they do spend some time going through the mistakes which should hopefully shine some light on how to be tracking and calculating CLV correctly in your organization.

• Peter stated that on the CLV side, he learned so much not only from the research that he does and interacting with students and executives but through his first startup company called Zodiac where they were working with a wide variety of companies calculating the CLVs for them. And it was surprising because he really thought he is just bringing you the CLVs, “I am the expert here, take the CLVs and make money rain down from the skies.” But it was a great learning exercise for him to see the kinds of use cases that companies would come up with and actually, Sarah basically gave the list of them a few moments ago and she was talking about all of the different tactics that you need to understand and align and do in an accountable way - customer acquisition, retention development, with that customer experience campaign, it's not enough just to give people glasses of champagne when they walk into your store, you have to do the CLV calculation, you have to say how valuable were they before this campaign started, how much more valuable are they afterwards or better yet, more realistically, how many customers meaningfully increased in value and how many of them are the same as ever before. So, CLV gives us a really good lens not only to make decisions but to evaluate decisions after the fact and so again, just seeing the way that companies have been using it very creatively as far as he’s concerned across a wide variety of functions and by the way that includes getting outside of marketing and maybe in a bit we could talk about the idea of customer based corporate valuation. Let's get the CFO into this party as well so we could talk more about that but to the other part of the question, it also goes to having really good CRM systems which is a big part of Sarah's expertise.

When asked how do you know which one is the right CRM to go with, Sarah mentioned that unfortunately there aren't any great additions to CRM yet that they've seen. In her conversations with a number of the companies that appear in the book, L.A. Dodgers is a great example, they have had to build their insights outside, so they use salesforce and they're then doing the analytics sort of outside, their tracking all of their customers in their CRM but then they're running a different algorithms etc. in other systems which is unfortunate. So, she thinks Peter would agree that a lot of the companies that he has been working with they're having to kind of roll their own if you will because there isn't a good solution out there yet.

Peter agreed and stated that that is unfortunate. They were in the process, they were creating that solution through his company Zodiac, but Nike bought that firm which was of course a wonderful outcome but now it's all under the swoosh. So, he really hopes that companies can learn from those experiences. And again, a lot of that through that they're trying to convey in the book both laying out these frameworks as well as these specific company profiles that Sarah has been referring to.

Sarah stated that just to go back to the original question there was the whole point everybody thinks, “Okay well, customer service, it's to turn ugly ducklings into beautiful swans.”This is another point in the book is really think and this was to Peter's earlier point, we've got all of these sort of ways that we engage with our customers, ways to increase CX quality, ways to increase hopefully customer loyalty but it's very rare that you take somebody from your bottom tier from a customer lifetime value standpoint and boost them all the way up to the very top. And so, rather than think that you can do that and expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to achieve that impossible dream, just look at what you're doing and understand who you're serving from a CLV standpoint. So, customer service is really for your lower value customers and the same with loyalty programs like understand that that's who you're really targeting those types of programs to.

• When asked if all organization needs a loyalty program - Peter stated no and a lot of companies are finding that the hard way because there's this lemming like behavior out there that, “Oh, we've got to have one too. It's a box that we need to check, some of our competitors have one.”So that's why they really try to come up with a framework that says, “Under what circumstances do you really need a loyalty program?” Sarah just said, if you think about it logically, a buy nine get one free just kind of a basic loyalty program, that's not appealing to your top platinum customers, they're going to buy from you all the time anyway.They're looking to deepen the engagement not necessarily just to buy more stuff.Whereas for those middle to lower customers if we could get them just to buy a little bit more often that that's how we can create more value out of them. So, a big part of it is that loyalty programmes are aimed more at the middle to lower tier of your customer value pyramid. And if that's where your main strategic focus is at a given time then great, that's the way to go but too often companies are thinking about the loyalty programme as something that would be appealing to or aimed at the tippy top customers. And again, they're with you not because of points, not because of bonuses, put it this way if that's why they appear to be really valuable customers, if it's all because of the goodies that comes from the loyalty programme, then they're not really loyal, then you're kind of bribing them to be with you. So, you want to find ways to appeal to the high value customers that's just a very different kind of thing, something like a premium offering where it's not a matter of giving them stuff, it's actually a matter of getting them to actually potentially pay a little bit more to kind of show their loyalty, to show that they want to have a different kind of relationship with you, that they want to have that kind of badge of honor to show that they're different than most customers. So, they're trying to bring some logic and discipline to things like loyalty programs and customer experience and customer service that they feel just doesn't exist anywhere out there to date.

• Sarah shared that they actually have a new blog post or article coming out very soon that talks about customer experience and the fact that it is not customer centric.And they outlined this in their upcoming article. There are just a few small steps that organizations could be taking to become more customer centric when it comes to see CX. She alluded to this earlier in the conversation when they're talking about CX, they're looking at different ways to really reduce the friction that their customers feel when they're interacting with them, with their brand etc. And there are many different ways to measure CX and how they're doing with respect to CX, whether it be CX quality which is measured by effectiveness, ease and emotion or customer loyalty which is measured by advocacy otherwise known as a Net Promoter Score, enrichment and retention. And one of the problems that Sarah and Peter have is that these CX measurements, these metrics are one dimensional, they don't really tell them anything else that's happening with respect to their customer and that interplay with the brand. And so, what they've done with this article is they've created another framework where they're looking at the CX metrics, again switching costs and switching costs as they know are a way to measure another form of friction that their customers are experiencing. And so, what they've done in this new framework is they've said okay if they're looking at high switching costs against their CX metric and they're doing really well with customers, they've got caged customers but they're very loyal and they're happy to be with them. What they should be doing with them versus customers who have got a low CX metric and low switching can cost. So, those are their revolving doors if and that's where something like a loyalty program might come in. They don't have a lot of friction from the standpoint of staying with them, they want to try to raise that a little bit so they do stay with them more and they can extract a bit more value from them so a loyalty program would be perfect for them and then for anybody who is kind of stuck with them because of high switching costs but they've got high value, let's look at making them happier while they're kind of stuck with them. They want to keep them engaged and then hopefully once competition comes in or those switching costs may be lower, they still are able to retain them as high value customers.

• When asked about tools and apps, Sarah shared that for her and her team, she’s still a technologist, she has had the absolute pleasure and honor of being able to write this book and really double down on the way she thinks about her customers that she’s designing technology for. Agile is what she lives and breathe by. So, she works with teams that are international, she brings the best of the best to the table and she doesn’t really care where their brain is as long as she gets to leverage their brain and being able to run lean teams is very important to her. And so, Slackis her go to and this is a way that she’s able to communicate very quickly and rapidly with her teams. And then also where she’s actually tracking software changes and her sprints and that kind of things, so they use GET Laband Jirato do a lot of that management. And that kind of approach, that lean approach is something that again they talk about in the playbook and the importance.

Peter shared that he’s addicted to Twitter, but whether it's for news, sports, entertainment but also just a whole bunch of people that he follows who are always looking for the best practices of how companies are using their customer level data. So, just the million anecdotes a day some good, some appalling but it's just a great way to learn a lot of different stuff and then make up your own mind about which is good, and which is not so good but good to have that kind of broad exposure. Peter shared that he doesn’t read books anymore, Twitter is the firehose that really keeps him attached to the world.

• When asked about books that have had great impacts, Peter stated that he has a couple, but he’s actually very interested to see what Sarah has to say because as she was starting to develop this simulation and then write the book, she took a whole bunch of books off his shelf and kept some of them a little too long actually. So, it would be interesting to hear which one she said were the ones that really shaped her thinking the most, but he'll share which one is at the top of his list. It’s an oldie but a goodie and it’s really one that got a lot of these ideas started, it's a book called The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value by Frederick Reichheld. Kind of interesting, he's a Bain Consultant, not an academic and this was a book he wrote back in 1996 which is ‘500 years ago’ for all intents and purposes and basically laid out this idea that not all customers are created equal and if we could figure out who the just right ones are then all of these great things are going to happen, there will be this virtuous cycle once we find those customers because they'll will stay with us longer, they'll buy more often, they'll be cheaper to serve, they'll be strong advocates for us, they'll make a lot of referrals. And so, it was laying out this idea that loyalty manifests in lots of different ways and provides this kind of multiplier source of value, it's just a matter of figuring out who those just right customers are and they kind of stopped short of that, they didn't talk about lifetime value and so on. But he thinks it really was something that started this conversation and a lot of us today especially the younger generation thinks that we've been talking about these ideas forever but really until the mid 90s they were just not part of the conversation.

Sarah agreed with Peter and stated that she did so much wonderful reading and thanked Peter for your amazing library and contribution to that. She mentioned at the beginning of the interview that their guiding goal with this book was to land in that cross functional space and to really try to ignite a conversation about really the organizational and cultural changes that must happen cross functionally in organizations in order for customer centricity to really take root and she stumbled on this book called The Silo effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers by Gillian Tettand it is a fantastic book, it's one case study after another of where breaking down the siloing effect that happens in organizations where that has been good for some organizations and where it's existed, where it's been really perilous and difficult. So that's one book she most certainly recommends. The other book that she recommends is The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon, but this gentleman has it right, you shouldn’t be trying to overdo it with every single customer, and he has written some incredible books in the CX space as well.

Yanique shared, I am familiar with Frederick Reichheld, I read a couple of years ago when I just started this business, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth, I haven’t read The Loyalty Effect but he definitely opened my mind up when I read the Ultimate Question.

Peter stated that he’s glad that Yanique made the connection. He (Fredrick Reichheld) laid out these ideas but in 1996 but it wasn’t until 5, almost 10 years later that he kind of translated them into the Net Promoter Score, this is the metric that’s going to help us identify companies that have been doing a good job at finding those customers and deepen those relationships. So, a lot of people think that Net Promoter Score just sort of appeared in the early 2000s, but it was really decades of work and thinking and just careful consideration by Fredrick and his colleagues at Bain that made that possible. And again, that revolution he thinks sparked a lot of the work that we’re doing and great admiration for the folks over there and enjoy his own collaboration with them.

• Peter shared that he’s super happy to talk about his new startup.He mentioned the idea of customer based corporate valuation, let's get the CFO involved in this customer centricity thing. So, he has a new company called Theta Equity Partners, thetaequity.comand that's exactly what they're doing. It's a finance play, they're actually working with a bunch of private equity firms, Late-Stage Venture Capitalist, talking to some Hedge Funds to basically say, “Let's value your company from the bottom up, let's look at how many customers you are acquiring, how long are they staying, how many purchases are they making, how valuable those purchases, add all that stuff up and say that will give us more visibility and more understanding of the value of a company than the traditional Wall Street approach.”So, they're doing this for real and it's really working and it's actually creating a meaningful dialogue between CFOs and CMOs that has just never existed before, so it's been just a thrill to expand the conversation in a direction that he never thought he’d even be capable of doing but to see how receptive the finance and investment audiences for the stuff.

When asked if there was anything is there anything, she’s working on to develop herself or her people - Sarah shared that she is. About a year ago she launched a new team at the Wharton School called Wharton Interactiveand they are building platforms to transform education. So, when you're looking at creating experiential learning in classrooms, it's expensive, it takes a long time, it's hard to change and fine-tune once you've launched experiences and really what she has discovered over the last six years being in this niche in EdTech is that platforms provide a way that forward where we can start to build truly transformational experiences for less cost and ones that we can then fine tune and learn from and so they're leveraging ultimate reality gaming,they're leveraging even smaller things like text messaging and social media patterns to really create social learning and don't democratizing that educational experience for the learners. So, a lot of the work that she has been doing with Peter in understanding and fine-tuning folks’ eyes to heterogeneity with customers, she has been starting to think about how they bring that into learning space and creating more fine-tuned and tailored experiences for the learners knowing that not everybody learns the same way. So, that she’s very excited about, very proud of you can find out more about what they're doing at www.interactive.wharton.upenn.edu.

I'm especially intrigued by Sarah's approach to education, I do think it's something that will definitely impact customer experience in the long term. When I think about my daughter who is 13 years old and some of the challenges that they have in schools, trying to get through to these children with the information that they're trying to simulate. I find that we're teaching children in 2019, but we're using methods that were applicable in 1975 and it's clearly not reaching the audience that we're trying to reach now, they just need to be stimulated in a higher way. And so, I hope some of the work that you are doing, it materializes that it can stretch to different parts of the world like Jamaica. Because I don't know what it's like in the USA, I'm sure you probably have you greater exposure to better opportunities, but here, I can see that the methodology that they are using is definitely not as impactful and I think based on what you are saying if hopefully that can become more widespread in the long term these children who will become business owners or employees in organizations that we’re all going to have to be customers of it would be great for them to have that experience from early, Yanique mentioned.

Sarah shared that she has a 10-year-old son, she also has 3 teenage daughters and we're not just teaching the same way we did in the 1970s, we're teaching the same way we did in the 1900s, so there is a lot of work to be done in moving the needle and with a lot of pride.They're doing some amazing work at the Wharton School and it's with great partners like Peter Fader who are willing to take the leap and who are also pushing and challenging teams like hers to think outside the box and bring something new to the table for the learners.

• Peter shared listeners can find him at –

www.petefader.com

www.thetaequity.com

www.customercentricitymanifesto.org

Sarah shared listeners can find her at –

Linkedin – Sarah Toms

Twitter – @SarahEToms

www.interactive.wharton.upenn.edu

When asked if there is a possibility for the playbook to be developed into an online course, Peter shared that he has some older online courses that are more about the kind of original aspirational, definitional, motivational stuff. The best thing that they have is the new customer centricity simulation, that really brought them together.

Sarah shared that they've got the existing simulation, it's usually played in teams and usually played with faculty or teachers who are facilitating the experience and so they've got that experience. Her team is also starting to work on a steam-based game, so folks who are interested in learning can just go to steam and they'll be able to download a single player game from that marketplace. And then she also has designs to work with Peter on creating something in the alternate reality gaming space on their arc platform and that will be a massive online offering, hopefully not too far down the road from now.

• Sarah shared that she has a quote, and this is from the founder of the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin. This is a quote she loves, and it is her world, it's “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.”

Links

• The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value by Frederick Reichheld
• The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers by Gillian Tett
• The Effortless Experience: Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty by Matthew Dixon
• The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Frederick Reichheld

Karen Millsap, the CEO (Chief Empathy Officer) of Egency and Founder of The Groflo, began her career in human resources and talent acquisition where she led countless training, new process, and change initiatives. At a young age, she suddenly became a widow when her husband was tragically murdered which completely changed the trajectory of her life. After experiencing a domino effect of other losses, she became acutely aware of the overall lack of support in our society for grieving people. We are all connected through our struggles, from the death of loved ones, to life-altering illnesses, divorce, even job loss. This realization ignited Karen's desire to turn her pain into purpose and pay it forward to help others.

Egency is a leadership development and training firm that helps organizations create a human-centric culture with compassion and empathy. The Groflo is a community that shares mental + emotional growth tips and positive lifestyle inspiration.

Karen's client list includes NBC’s Golf Channel, Hubspot, Universal Studio Resorts, Sprint and many more! Her work has been featured in Forbes, SHRM Magazine, on Good Morning America, MSNBC, and many others! She's also a regular contributor to Arianna Huffington's THRIVE Global community.  Karen is a TEDx keynote speaker who inspires audiences to embrace compassion and empathy to help alleviate other’s suffering by becoming advocates for their own adversaries.

She received her undergraduate degree in Communication from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is also a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist through the Grief Recovery Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey?
• Could you share with us a little bit about empathy?
• Where does compassion come from?
• Does compassion come innately?
• A taboo topic that is found in Jamaica is incest and abuse. When I hear people talk, especially when you're talking to young girls to help them to move from that trauma and that experience because it's something that stays with you for life, how do you respond to them in terms of, you made it through, everything's going to be okay.
• Do you think that traits of empathy and compassion are required more than the traits of technical competencies of doing the job because those things had to build had to build the relationship?
• Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
• What's the one online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your business or life?
• Could you share with us any books that have had the greatest or biggest impact on you?
• What’s one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity you tend to revert to that quote or saying to help you to refocus or recenter so that you can move forward?

Highlights

• Yanique mentioned, I first phoned Karen on Good Morning America when Robin Roberts was interviewing her a couple of weeks back. And I was so impressed that we actually have people out there that are called Grief Consultants. And it was amazing to hear that she was using her pain, she's channeled it into good to go into organizations and train leaders on how to effectively communicate with their team members and build better teams.

Karen shared that unfortunately, this knowledge and this passion came from the tragedy when her husband Richard was killed and at the time she was working in Human Resources and recruiting for a national home building company. So, her background up to that point had been in HR but touched in different pieces of recruiting and training and leadership development and all of that good stuff. So, after her husband passed, when she transitioned back to the workplace, she found that there was just this huge disconnect between the expectations of corporate America and humans, what we are capable of doing and how we process in the midst of such a delicate time. And so, when she experienced this firsthand, her immediate response was, “How can I use this to help other people?”Now, part of it was helping individuals because we definitely need help in navigating grief. It's such a complex journey and it doesn't look the same for everybody, but we also need help interacting with people who are going through their own grief journey. And so, that's where her heart was initially led, although there were one off individuals, who she was helping along the way, she really honed in on creating workshops or training and leadership development tools that would help people to manage grief in the workplace. So, her company, they develop The Four Pillars of Practical Empathy and those are Awareness, Communication, Support, and Productivity. And so, as she started down that journey of talking about grief in the workplace, there was a lot of resistance as you can imagine. First of all, people don't want to admit that there's this elephant in the room, everybody is going through something, grief is a universal human experience. The biggest myth about grief is that we think it only occurs because of a death, but it actually comes from different losses or changes. It could be from becoming a caregiver to an elderly parent or finding out that somebody in your family or even yourself is diagnosed with a terminal illness, there's so many different things. But again, it comes because of a change or a loss when we expect things to be different or better or more and it just doesn't turn out that way. So, as she started to just kind of break down all of these barriers and these myths that are surrounded with grief, again, corporate America was not really receptive because by saying you want grief training would be admitting that you have a problem because brief is kind of looked at it as a problem. And so, she recognized this resistance and most of what she was teaching was really surrounded around compassion and empathy in the workplace. So, she decided to just adjust slightly and instead of leading with the problem, she led now with the solution which is compassion and empathy. And as she was pulling different resources and research articles and studies and all of this that just helps us to create a basic framework for human interaction in the workplace. As she was pulling that, she recognizes, well, it still touches on grief in the workplace because if we are operating with compassion and empathy on a day to day basis, that's mastery preparation for the time of crisis. We're already connecting in this space that's just really vulnerable, we've established trust and respect through kindness, so when somebody does hit a tough life situation, which inevitably happens to all of us, then at least your work family is prepared to walk through those tough times with you and handle that because you guys have already established this kind of workplace. So, it's been a journey to get to this point but she’s super grateful that she learned all that she did throughout this journey because it's helped her to serve her clients at a whole new level, not just the basic leadership development, it really is taking it up a notch.

Yanique shared, I like the fact that you've mentioned that you started to lead with the solution, and you focus on empathy and compassion. And one of the things that we have identified in the whole client or customer experiences, people are driven by how they feel, their emotions play an integral part. I think even more than the intellectual because the emotion drives how the intellectual will respond. 

• Yanique shared, I personally think that it's not something that you're born with, it's a learnt behavior and it's all dependent on how you're socialized, what you're exposed to, the behaviors that you see, both from your environment that you're in as well as maybe even from things that you're exposed to are stimulated by like the television or even social media. But not everybody knows how to be empathetic.

When asked about empathy, Karen shared yes and no to Yanique’s statement. Yes, it is something that can be learned, but no, it's not something that people are only inheriting that ability through a learned environment. That's not the case. People are born with empathy. There are people who are born with a lack of empathy. As a matter of fact, there's a chemical in the front part of our brain, in our amygdala that triggers our emotions and so you could live and be raised in a very compassionate home, but you were born kind of without feelings, you don't get too riled round up but that doesn't mean that you didn't have an environment that included feelings and emotions and conversations around that, it really is how we're born. But even if people are born without or with a lack of, maybe they don't have a lot of empathy, you still can adopt behaviors and skills and habits that bring empathy into conversations and interactions so that way the person who you are interacting with feels valued. And so, empathy is really being able to feel and understand another person's emotions and respond with care. So again, that feeling part may not be natural for some people, but you can try to understand where they're coming from and respond in an empathic way. So that's how it looks and so as it pertains to their customer experience, you may not be able to completely resonate with where this customer is coming from. And she gave you an example, it's a personal example. She bought a new car at the end of last year and the sales team, they weren't that great but she needed to get out of her car, it had 140,000 miles on it, it was just not safe anymore. Karen said she was kind of in a rush to get into the car and didn't do her due diligence on a few things that she noticed within 24 hours of driving off the lot. So, she immediately contacted the sales team, they were not very responsive. So, then she looked online for customer service team, they were not very responsive. So, being the person that she, she’s just saying, well this isn't okay. So, she’s going to do her due diligence. She contacted the corporate office to say, “Listen, there are a couple of defects and this is actually not safe. So, I just purchased this car and we need to figure out a resolution.”Now up the chain of command, the customer service sucked, it was terrible. And she was telling them like the rear-view camera is not working, that is a safety issue. If she runs over a kid, do you think they're going to say, “Oops, that's our bad, we should have responded quickly to that email.”No, she’s going to be the one who is dealing with the legal ramifications. So, she’s pushing forward and say, no, this is not okay. She felt like there was a disconnect between kind of the first level of customer service and then once you get to the executive office, once she got to the executive office and there was an individual who was assigned to work with her, he followed up, he was patient on the phone, he made sure that the service manager they got her in touch with was timely in his response. He kept Karen in the loop, even if there was going to be a waiting period, he communicated that to her and what he did that was different than the first level of customer service was he empathized with the fact that we have a single mom here who has made a very large investment and she’s not saying she got anything fancy, but when you purchase a car, lease a car, that's an investment, you are putting your credit on the line and all of that. So, it's not something to be taken lightly and so because of his understanding of where she was coming from and her position and her worry and concern, he made sure that he saw it all the way through. Where on the front end, that didn't happen. Now what did he do differently than the first people who may be answered a call or answered an email? He didn't do much in the practical sense, except for the fact that he took his time to patiently understand where she was coming from and communicate in a way that made her feel like she was being heard, that her purchase was valued, her position as a customer was valued and he wanted to make sure that we found a resolution, he responded with care. So, it didn't take him much, but just the way that he was on top of it made a world of difference because she was ready to just blast this company, don't ever buy from them and that's not her character. But she felt like they did not care that we had such a major issue and it was only because, and she told him on their last call, she said, “It is only because of you and how you resolved this, that I feel satisfied.”The first three months of this process, which she didn't mention, it took a long time to get to that point, but the first three months was treacherous and because of this one person who showed compassion, who interacted with empathy and who made sure that a resolution was done in a caring way, she felt like, “Okay, I'm okay. I could come back and buy another car from them.”She knows that sounds bad because it was such a crazy, but he did resolve it with empathy.

Yanique stated, so it's more about listening to what the person is saying to you, understanding where they're coming from and why this is a pain point for them. And as you said, responding in a way that, “Oh well, no big deal.”Instead in a way that, “I understand where you're coming from and what can we do to make it better?” Because it would seem from the first level of customer service that they were more concerned about making the sale and less about providing after sales support to you.

Karen agreed and stated that it doesn't take a lot of time, it doesn't even take a lot of effort, you are on the exact same call with the exact same person and literally your tone can change, and your active listening skills can change the trajectory of that outcome. You just have to decide while you were in the midst of that, “How am I going to show up for this person? Am I going to be caring or am I going to be short and curt? Am I going to listen or am I just thinking about the next thing that I need to get done? Or Am I be grudgingly going through the motions?”Either way you have a choice and the energy level is the same.

• Karen shared that she believes that the major difference between empathy and compassion is one word, Action. We are meant to put compassion into action, it's how you are showing up for people, whether you're showing up for a colleague who's going through something that's difficult or the way, for example, this gentleman responded to her. He made sure that he was calling every four days with an update to let her know what was going on because she was really left in the dark and that was frustrating. So, compassion is what you put into action. Empathy really is kind of the starting point, like she said, being able to feel and understand and then choosing to respond in a certain way but that response is your compassion. Now, one thing that she’s done through agencies, they created a Compassion Action Plan. And what it does is it addresses, if you know somebody who has experienced in the organization, who's experienced a major loss, and they just touched on five because this is usually an activity that they do in workshops but for this eBook, what they did was, they just put five in there. And so, divorce, I'm becoming a caregiver, death, we identified those and how can you put compassion into action?So, if you just thought about it for a second and you thought about, okay, I know a colleague lost their spouse, what is a way that I can show up for them? What would be one or two ideas that come to your mind?

Yanique shared, so they've lost a family member and seeing that I experienced at similar situation last year, what I looked for in people who showed compassion were people who came, they were just there, they were there to support me, it’s simple things like just coming over and sitting and talking just to have the companionship at that point in time because you don't want it to be alone because it's an experience of trauma and being alone, your mind wanders all over the place and you feel more lonely. So, you kind of just want somebody to be there and you want them to know that you want them to be there without you having to tell them, I want you to be there.

Karen agreed and stated that she’s going to ask Yanique for another example but pausing there for a second. That is another example of how it does not take much for you to just show up for somebody, does it? She remembered at my husband's funeral, Karen looked, and she saw at least 20 people from her office who were there, and that just made her feel so supported because you're right. When we go through a major loss like that, somebody close to us, somebody within our inner family, our intermediate family, then we usually go to this place of isolation in our minds because you get on this emotional rollercoaster and there's so many complex feelings, it's hard to keep up with those thoughts. So, you really feel emotionally and mentally drained and so when you have people around you, as you mentioned, they help you to stay connected to life, so you're not just completely caught up in your head, you're not isolating yourself and end up on this negative thought cycle and start spiraling downward but you have somebody who's just present. And she had somebody, her name was Jamie, she actually mentioned her in her Ted Talk because she mean this, she would just show up and just lay on the floor with her or lay in her bed or they would like walk around Target, she is one of her closest friends and she told Karen later after hearing Karen’s Ted Talk, so this was four years after this happened, but she said, “I admitted to my husband almost every night when I came home. I don't know if I'm doing enough, I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.”So, for four years as she is relishing this friendship and it anchored in her mind is something to teach other people, just show up. She didn't even realize that it had made an impact on her healing journey, it made a huge impact. So, you're right, she always tells people, we all need a Jamie. So that's good. So, the first thing is show up, be present but what's something else that you can do for a colleague?

Yanique shared that when she lost her dad last year, it was also important, and I guess that would link back to being present. To assist me with anything, low hanging fruits that would distract me or make me feel not supported.

Karen shared that the difference there is, is that what they did was they stepped in to respond to your basic needs because it could have been like handling bills, it could have been like handling other logistics that when you're in that mental fog, you don't really have the capacity to do so. And so, if you have people who you trust, who are near you, this could be different for colleagues. For colleagues showing up and responding to basic needs is like making sure you have food. Creating a food calendar or just saying, “Hey, it's okay if you need to take longer than five days.”because usually that's the bereavement period, it’s like five days for somebody in your intermediate family but they can say, “You know what? I know you have this project going on, I'll help you with that. What's your client's name? Let me step in, just give me a couple of details and I'll go into the system and I'll figure out the rest. But you don't worry about it.”That's responding to a basic need that's helping them to keep their life afloat and that is putting compassion into action.

• When asked if compassion come innately, Karen stated that in our world, in our society, it's just awkward. Grief is just awkward, and some people feel like, “Oh, I don't know if I'll say the right thing. I don't know if I have enough time to be there.”We come up with all of these different barriers in our mind and the difference between holding onto those barriers and acting like Jamie will say as a reference point is she just leaned in without knowing if what she was doing was enough, but her heart just led her to do that. What happens is we stop our heart from responding naturally because then our mind starts to take over to think that we need to say the right thing, we have to be perfect on how we show up, what if it's not enough? Our heart and mind starts to battle. But you're right, it is an innate response. It's just our mind can start to suppress that response because we start to feel awkward and that's her mission is to make grief less awkward, let's talk about it. Let's talk about all of this because again, it is a universal human experience, we are all going to go through it. Karen thinks if we have these conversations, for example, Yanique having her on the podcast again, thank you because it's helping to reach different people and to open up a different mindset so we can respond differently. Because right now, we're perpetuating suppression and isolation and that's what's making our journeys unhealthy. If we just opened our heart up to respond in a natural way, that doesn't look perfect and here's an example. If somebody at work tells you, “I just found out that my spouse has cancer, or I have cancer.”Instead of not knowing what to say and then not saying anything, which is actually worse. If somebody didn't acknowledge or say it’s the first time seeing them that Richard had died, she felt like, “Well wow, that was kind of a big deal. Like we're not going to say anything about it.”We don't have to go down the rabbit hole. But anyhow, if somebody shares some tragic news with you, you can say this, you can say, “I am so sorry that you're going through this. We don't know what is going to happen at the end of the day, but I know you are strong. I know that you have this light inside of you that you can just push through and I'm here with you, like anything that you need work related, if you just need to take a walk, if you need to get out of the office or if he just needed somebody to talk to for a few minutes, just know that you're not alone.”That's not giving false hope, that's not saying everything's going to be great or just pray on it, it's not giving any of that. It's just saying, “I'm meeting you where you are and yeah, this is hard. This suck, but you're not alone.”That is enough.

Yanique asked, what do you think about situations when someone shares with you for example, that they had a tragedy and they’re going through grief like a death for example. And the person responds and says, I know exactly what you're going through because I find that grief is different for everyone and you may lose someone, and you respond in a different way. It impacts you in a different way and I may lose someone, and it may not impact me in that way, or it might impact me worse or less. Do you think it's a safe to say, I know exactly what you're going through? How do you know? 

Karen shared that she thinks that this is another uncomfortable yet common response because it's true, it's a common response only because people feel uncomfortable and they're just kind of like, “Ah, what do I say?”And it just comes out so naturally and that's not really what they mean. They're not saying, I know exactly what you're going through because somebody has said that to her and she’s like, “Oh, your husband's been murdered. I didn't know that that happened to you.” And not to even downplay it, because some people will compare losses, they'll say, “Oh, well I went through a divorce and so I know how that feels.”Again, no, you don't know how it feels, but their heart is in the right place. So, the first thing she would say is if you're on the receiving end of that comment is to give that person a little bit of grace because at least they're trying to be there. Do not take offense to that and kind of see through their words to see their heart and their intentions and their heart and their intentions is to comfort you in the moment. But Karen’s advice to the person who wants to say that and guess what? Karen has said that to people before in a different light. And before all of this happened, before she became more aware of some of the myths that we use to comfort people. But if you are about to say that, hold your tongue real quick and then just think about saying something along these lines.

Again, “I don't know what you're going through, but I went through a situation and I know that pain is real. I know that those hard times can come in waves. I know that sometimes it can just feel really consuming and so if you feel anything that is just so painful and it feels hard for you to manage, you can come talk to me. I don't know what you're going through, but I know what pain feels like and I'm willing to just be here for you.”

 It's authentic in the sense that she can relate to your pain even though she hasn’t experienced the same loss. And here's the thing, two siblings could lose the same parent and feel completely different about it. So, imagine the differences of somebody who says, “Oh, I went through a divorce too.”or “Yeah, I also had a miscarriage.”or “Oh, when my mom was sick.”We compare them but there's so many different factors that make that situation so different and unique, but at least being able to relate through the pain, Karen thinks that's the authentic place to be.

• Karen shared that there are pains like that where, for example, she has a friend and her parents were not kind growing up, they just weren't, and she doesn't have a relationship with them now. Now she doesn’t know that she's experienced any kind of sexual abuse. She knows that has had happened in her family, but it did not happen to her. However, the abandonment of your parents and them not wanting to be with you, it's a pain that stays with you through adulthood. A physical kind of trauma is also something that stays with you through adulthood and sometimes you have to see your abuser. And so, it's like how do you live in that space? So, what she encourages people to do is to create healthy boundaries, they can't always be physical. A lot of times they have to be mental and emotional.So, the person again who is hearing something like that, they're on the receiving end of that comment, you have to create an emotional and mental boundary just knowing that whatever they're saying to me, if it is not resonating with my heart, with pure comfort and peace and, and even empathy, than I'm not going to receive that, you choose if you're going to receive their words are not. Now for the person who is trying to comfort or build them up because a lot of times they're thinking if you've been a victim, what I need to do is pour into you that you are strong, pour into you that you have gotten over it, kind of build up your confidence and resilience but again, sometimes we just fumble over those words and so instead of saying something that is diminishing their past, meet them where they are. Again, the same starting, 

“I can't imagine what you have gone through, but I see who you are today and I see that you are a fighter, I see that you are a survivor and even if those pains are still being held with you, which I'm sure that they are, I can only imagine that they are. There is something in you that is not giving up and I admire that in you.”

That is truth. That is absolute truth. It does not diminish the pain that they have experienced, but it is uplifting them to say, I have seen that you did not give up. And I applaud you for that. But it is okay if you're still feeling and battling all of the wounds, the emotional wounds and mental wounds that you carry with you, but it's still, it uplifts them and it builds them up and that's at the end of the day, what we should be doing for each other is to build one another up so we feel safe, so we feel protected.

• When asked about traits of empathy and compassion that leaders should have in order to build a team. Karen agreed and shared that one of her favorite Richard Branson quotes is, “When you take care of your people, your people will take care of your business.”And that is the absolute truth. A lot of times leaders are driven by the numbers and the data, but you have to remember there are people behind those numbers and that data it didn’t just magically appear, this is coming from somebody’s knowledge capacity, their relationship building, their goal setting. There are people who are driving these numbers and so you have to get to the source of your success, the source of your success is your people and how you treat people is how they produce at work. Now, a lot of times people, Karen kind of hears two things most often. One is, leader say, “I want to be a better leader, I want to connect with my people, I want to help them in a different way. Basically, build up their personal success but I don't know how.”And that's because we have to kind of get past that old adage of leave your personal stuff at the door and so, she thinks that again, leaders want to, but we are shifting society and we're shifting how we show up at work. So, that's why it's such a great time to really live out her passion because people are more receptive to this message and they need just some structure, some framework behind it. That's the first thing, but then the other thing is there are leaders who are naturally showing up with kindness and they are seeing just amazing, powerful results.

An example of this is, uh, one of her clients from Sprint, this gentleman is the general manager of one of their four business units, and they have been the number one team for the last 15 years straight. Fifteen years they have consistently outperformed the rest of the company and when she met him, she asked him to come onto her podcast, Invest Humanand she said, we just need to talk about what this is and he said, one word, “Kindness.”It is all about how you treat your people. Now when she goes into organizations, she breaks this down through like communication, interactions, conflict resolution, like how do we bring it into that. But it really all has to do with kindness because when you treat people well, then employees become more enthusiastic about their work and if they are enthusiastic about their work, what happens to their performance, it improves. What happens to the customer experience because of the person that they're interacting with. It’s like again a no brainer, it should be a no brainer, but she thinks what the shift that's happening is that people just kind of need permission and they need that framework because for so long we've lived in this space of kind of being robotic at work and only expecting or evaluating someone's performance and not opening up the experience, the actual employee experience.

Yanique shared that the interpersonal skills, the soft skills, showing kindness and ensuring that you exercise empathy and compassion, those are definitely characteristics and traits that as a leader will take you much further than any technical competence.

• Karen stated that that is such a good question – how she stays motivated daily. She doesn’t live in a constant state of motivation. She has learned through different personality tests and stuff, she does have a natural personality that is drawn to the silver lining. So, she doesn’t stay in a dark place for too long. However, and when you've experienced this kind of tragedy, you can't help but to be in a dark space for a while. So, what she learned during that time, her most trying times so far in her life, it's absolutely critical for us to build a foundation of healthy habits so that we can navigate any hard time when it comes. Life isn't fair so you're not going to go just through one thing, it's not a one and done. And there are every day stressors that we have to work through, relationships, traffic, personalities that are not meshing. There's just so many different stressors that can make us feel weary and burnt out. So, it's not that you can live in this constant state of up because what goes up must come down, but you have to learn to find that balance when you do come down and how do you take care of yourself. So, for Karen, whenever she’s going through a challenging time, smaller or large, it's just a matter of tapping into those habits that she established when she was in the midst of her darkest hours with grief and she wasn't intentional then, she was very set on her why, her why was her son. She knew that she wanted to be a good mom for him and didn't want to be living in this state of like brokenness and in this victim mindset, like it wouldn't have been healthy for him in the long run. And so, as she focused on him, then she started to create these healthy habits that just made a huge impact on her total wellbeing. So, when you are feeling down, take a break, that's okay. Go for a walk, do a breathing exercise. There’re so many different habits on your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing that once you know what those habits are, then you can tap into them regardless of the low that you're feeling because they are tried and true. They helped you in a dark, dark place or they help you in a, I'm frustrated and burnt out place as well.

• When asked about an online app or tool that she couldn’t live without, Karen stated that she thinks she would have to answer two ways. One is she really strive for strong organizational skills. She has very strong organizational skills, but she does that because she has a bad memory. She’s just going to be vulnerable here for a second, but Karen recognizes that her mind being an entrepreneur, being a single mom, having experienced trauma, she just has a bad memory and so she compensates by having really strong organizational skills. And one of the tools that she loves is Google Keep, it helps her because it just allows her to brain dump and when she is able to brain dump all of the different distractions that come into her mind, she’s creating that space of mental clarity so that she can stay focused on her priorities. So, Google Keep has been really helpful. But there was also an app that helped her early on in my grief with mindfulness and meditation and that was called Headspace, and she just signed up for the free version because she wanted to see what it was about, and it helped her because a lot of times we get into negative thoughts cycles at night before we're going to sleep. Our mind is just racing and then we start feeling like, I don't have enough time. What do I do tomorrow? Did I not do this today? And so that on top of any kind of trauma that you may be working through, Headspace taught a breathing pattern that she was even able to teach to her son, that at night if she can't fall asleep, it works wonders. And so it's really simple, it's just a matter of counting your breaths when you inhale and exhale, when you inhale, you count one when you exhale, two inhale again, three and so on up to 10, you don't change your breathing pattern, you're not, you don't have to take long, deep breaths, but when you get to 10 you start back at one and there's something about that Karen said she could do that three, maybe four times at the most, and then she pass out, she’s knocked out. It's taught her such a powerful breathing technique that she shares that with almost anybody she interacts with because she thinks we're all a victim of those nighttime blues when it's kind of hard to fall asleep. 

Yanique then stated, that seems to be a popular app. I've actually downloaded it on my phone, but I haven't clicked on it because things have been so busy. But I had a guest that was on our podcast and maybe two, three weeks ago and that was one of his recommendations. I find it interesting that shortly after, I'm getting the same recommendation, so that app must be really good. So, I think today I'm going to make sure I click on the app since it's on the phone and I haven't actually used it yet to see what it's all about. I have no problems falling asleep though but sometimes I do get distracted, like I'm doing something, and I start thinking about something else and I jump from one thing to the next. So, if Headspace can help me to refocus at times, that would be wonderful.

Karen stated that she thinks that it definitely, what she liked about it most was in the free version, it teaches you where some people just embark on this meditation journey and you're like, “Ah, how do I do this? I'm falling asleep. No, wait, I can't stop these thoughts.”There are so many barriers and she liked how in the free version it actually teaches you some of the techniques that are helpful.

• Karen was asked about books that have had the biggest impact and she stated that there is a lot. She shared that she was not a reader until she was 30 years old. She hated reading growing up but after her husband died, she became obsessed with reading about heaven because she just needed that confirmation that he was okay, and she would see him again. And that's what kind of got her down this journey. So, she’ll say the two, there really are so many but to that she thinks made such a huge impact one was Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. It teaches you how you can change your mindset from being a victim or living in a fixed mindset to having a growth mindset. And again, it gives applicable takeaways on how you can teach even children, how you can teach, whether you're a teacher, a parent, a coach, it just helps in that state, how you can also use it in the workplace. So, Mindset by Carol Dweck was amazing. And then also it's kind of a tie between these two, Life's Golden Ticket: A Story about Second Chances by Brendon Burchardbecause it's a fiction book, but it gives you this visualization of you having a choice and kind of revisiting different people or moments in your past that have led you up to where you are today and accept where you are today so that you can move forward. And then the other one is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which she knows is a lot of people's favorites, but it's one of hers particularly because it was suggested to her probably almost three years ago now, but she just read it at the end of last year and she believes in just divine timing and at the time it came to her life, she wasn't ready to read it, but when she read it, it was exactly the time that she was supposed to just digest that. So, it's a great book again for people who are just wondering, “Man, does all of this mean something? How do I know I'm headed down the right path.”So, that's why she loves that book so much.

• Karen shared that she’s super excited about launching her new group coaching program. She’s going to be doing a group coaching and it is called, “Soul Care Coaching with Karen”and so she wants to create a network, this specific offer is for women, but she wanted to create a network for women where they are able to just grow, they are able to find healing and just become the best version of their self. And so, just sharing herself and stories but also sharing other coaches along the way. So, she’s really excited about that. But then she also launched her first eCourse, Heal Forwardand that's for anybody who has experienced a major loss or a hardship or they're just feeling depleted in life and they want to heal and move forward. It's a six-week series that just gives a whole bunch of selfcare habits and tips, worksheets, videos, all that good stuff. It loads you up so that you can build that foundation that she talked about of healthy habits. So, she’s excited about those two. The eCourse just launched and the coaching will launch in March 2019.

• Karenshared listeners can find her at –

www.karenmillsap.com 

• Karen shared that regarding quotes or sayings that she tends to revert to, that ironically, it's like a little plaque that she found and it's on her desk as she’s looking at it right now. It is her favorite, it says, “Everything's going to be all right. Yep even that one thing.”Bob Marley said that. But she likes how it says, “Yep”, even that one thing because it's like yeah, you can get really stuck on something, it's like no, no, no, everything is going to be okay. Even that one thing, and she loves her some Bob Marley, so it resonated right away.

Links

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
• Life’s Golden Ticket: A Story about Second Chances by Brendon Burchard
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Jon Ferrara is a successful serial entrepreneur, he's top 10 Social Service Salesperson according to Forbes and renown CRM pioneer with a knock for building authentic relationships with customers. Given his shared passion for creating genuine connections and making a positive impact on the lives of others, I believe he would be a very interesting guest for this podcast. And so, he's going to dive in and share with us some of the journeys that he's taken. He's going to share with us some of his core values building products that help others achieve their passion, plan, and purpose and we're going to identify what are those success indicators.

Jon shared that he thinks our purpose on this planet is to help others grow and we do that by giving a little of value to one another. And through this conversation he hopes that we're able to add value to your audience and the people who listen. 

Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
• Could you share with us three things that you think help to really build a strong relationship?
• With things being so technologies, do you still believe that the human experience is still necessary?
• How do you stay motivated everyday?
• What is one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you in that journey of growth for yourself?
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of helps you refocus and push forward?

Highlights

• Jon stated that these are all great questions and it really starts with him in some respect his childhood. He grew up with his first computer when he was 16 years old in 1976 and through his journey of understanding technology and his passion for people and relationships, he found himself struggling in his first job in sales, trying to build connections and conversations that drive results and there was no contact management, there was no outlook, there was no CRM, there was no salesforce. In fact, there was no tool that integrated email contact and calendar with sales and more coordination. So, at 29 years old in 1989 he quit his job and he started a company called GoldMine and GoldMine was the first programme that integrated email connected calendar and team relationship platform, they were outlook and salesforce before either existed. He started the company on USD $5,000.00 in his apartment in Los Angeles and grew to about USD $100 Million Dollars in revenue. They're at about 10 million customers worldwide and he sold that when he was 40 years old and retired for 10 years and raised three babies and in that journey, in that experience of entrepreneurship but more importantly as a present father and husband, he came to really understand and value the gift he got of being able to be a present father and husband and how it helped him grow because he thinks if you're present with the people around you, they will reflect your weak points back at you and if you're willing to work on those in life you can grow as a human being. And he thinks that's what we're on this planet to do, is to grow our souls by helping other people grow theirs and the process of social media evolving in 2006, 2007, 2008, he started to use it and he saw it was going to change the way we work, buy and sell and he started looking for a relationship manager that integrated social and he couldn't find it. And then he started looking at CRM systems and he saw they really weren't about social media, they were really about or even relationships, they were really about reporting and commanding control and so he set out to build a new platform, a relationship manager that incorporated contact management and CRM and social sales and marketing and it would be different in the way it would be different is that you don't work for it, it works for you by building itself in the data you already have in your business and everybody has contacts and email and calendar as well as contacts and all kinds of business apps like customer service accounting, social media, sales and marketing. And it would derive the contacts by unifying them all together from all the disparate places from the separate departments so that the company would have a unified relationship manager so that no matter who picks up the phone they know who they're talking to, what's happened, who's done it, what's going to happen, who's going to do it, who is this person, what is your business about, so they could provide the optimal experience and most importantly to follow up and follow through and that that contact would be available to them in all the places that they work so that no matter who touches, no matter what you touch in a company in sales, in marketing and customer service, in accounting that everybody's on one page with that customer and in that you can provide the optimal experience. And so, we called it Nimble and so he seems to be back in the saddle in the relationship management game.

Yanique stated, so you're basically able to have everything all under one roof allowing people to pull information from different sites and being able to connect and also it helps with the sales process.

Jon agreed because he really believes that service is the new sales, that your job as a salesperson is to help other people grow and to do that you need to develop intimacy and trust with that person and so you need to build a connection, a relationship before you can ever get them to open up to you about their business issues which as a professional you can then solve. It's always easier to build a connection with somebody when you share some commonalities. So, you don't typically start a phone call with, “Did you sign the contract?”You start it by, “Good morning” “Good afternoon” “Good evening”how about, “How's the weather in Kingston today?”or some areas of commonality, if he was going to talk to you, he'd talk about some common experiences and he'd share that he saw Bob Marley play when he was 18 years old at UCLA Pauley Pavilion and it was the most wonderful experience he had ever had because he grew up listening to his music and he was inspired by his marching to a different drummer and teaching people to seek out truth in life and freedom and the struggles that people were going through around the world not just African-Americans and that it all unites us, this struggle and this desire for peace and freedom and we would connect on some area of commonality and then we'd dive into learning more about each other, finding ways to add value in business is secondary to all that. So business is just something that we do but friendships last a lifetime and they will get you through any business hiccup and in all businesses hiccups happen but if there's a relationship, there's a tendency for more empathy and more forgiveness and more gratitude in the connections and the interactions and that's really the philosophy behind Nimble, is that relationships are critical to your life’s success and that your network and your brand are so important to that success yet most of us don't really manage our golden Rolodex and Nimble is a tool not just for businesses but for every individual because every individual's life success will be through the connections and conversations, relationships that they develop too.

• Jon shared that he thinks that a company's brand is built on the promises that it makes and the experiences that it delivers. And if you can align those two, you could build a goldmine and a lot of that experience is delivered to your customer facing team members and so you need to empower each of them to deliver optimal experience at the point of connection and conversation whenever they're interacting with the constituency and he says constituency because he thinks that most companies think about prospects and customers and they think about sales and marketing people but ultimately, there is a team of people at your company that's interacting with the constituency around your business and you need to unify all of these people into a team and to empower them to make decisions in favor of the customer. How many times have you gone into a business where we the people just say no that's just the way we do it, we can’t do it. So, he’s going to share an example of that. He was trying to send a gift to somebody who did something wonderful for him, it was a Microsoft team member, they did an interview with a Forbes writer and they talked about how Nimble has evolved into the simple CRM for Office 365 where Microsoft has actually recently Nimble with office globally through all their distributors and resellers and she gave this wonderful interview, she didn't have to do it, she's a very busy person and he wanted to do something special for her. So, he looked all over the Seattle area for a particular bottle of champagne, it's the champagne that he took to dinner when he proposed to his wife 30 years ago. And it's a special bottle to him and he only had it twice when he proposed to his wife and when they celebrated their anniversary 30 years later and so he found a store that had it and he spoke to the store manager he said, “Yes, I have it. I can send it, but you need to call our customer service phone number.”So, he called them, and they said, “Well, you could just go to the app and order it.”So, he went to the app and the app said it wasn't available, it wasn't in. So, he called back to customer service and they said, “Well, our systems don't allow us to sell when there's one bottle. We can only sell if there's more than one. The last one we can't sell online.”He spent four hours that day trying to get somebody to override the system and make a decision in his favor to actually ship the bottle. And they finally got somebody to do that after five hours with them and then when they went to send it, they couldn't deliver it, they could only FedEx it and then FedEx the next day wasn't able to deliver it because the door that FedEx went to was a secure door, they couldn't get through. And the whole process was so painful. And that's an example of a customer cutting their hand on the journey through your company and he thinks that to every customer that your business engages with the person they're talking to is the company, they need to empower team members to make decisions in favor of the customer and he thinks the Apple Store is an example of that. At Apple, he has rarely left the store unhappy, they typically take care of whatever he needs and they're empowered to make those decisions and so, from his experience in building two global technology brands, he thinks that you have to instill a desire of care, of empathy, of the team members to the constituency and he’s say that because it’s not just prospects and customers those influencers and resellers and other people at touch are involved the customer but they need to really care about the customer, the product, and the company and to be able to make decisions in the time that they're engaging with that person that leaves that person not only delighted so they come back and buy again but so that they drag their friends with them.

Yanique stated, I have so many experiences myself as you describe, it's such a painful part of the journey that when you're finished you don't even want to have to call the company back again because when you think about the headache that they put you through it just deters you completely. So, as a business as you mentioned in your experience that it's important to map and to empower the employees. Empowerment is a very, very, big word and it can be a simple act if people know exactly what being empowered means. So, as a leader let's say you went to this wonderful leadership workshop and they brought in Jon and Jon spoke about empowerment and so these leaders go back to their organizations now and they're like, “Okay, I'm going to empower my team members.” What are some of the steps that empowerment entails because it's not just about going back and saying you're empowered there's more to it.

Jon agreed and stated that some of it is empowering them to make decisions even when there's a policy in place that is set. So, he doesn’t think any process should be so rigid that the customer is left unhappy or unsatisfied in some way.Jon thinks that the customer may not always be right but they're always the customer, so, if you have to let a customer know that you can't do a particular thing, let them be wrong with dignity and respect. In other words, part of it is the way you communicate and the attitude that you have, and you felt it before, you could feel him on the phone right now and you feel that customer service person when they're communicating with you, that's why they put mirrors in front of customer service cubicles because people can feel your smile, people can feel your heart and soul. There's an energy that interacts between human beings and he thinks that you need to start by hiring people that have a positive energy, good human being, that are good cultural fit and you need to treat them good because if you don't treat the team members good, they're not going to be able to treat the customers constituency good. So, it starts with hiring great people and then building an amazing culture and then making sure that they're empowered to make decisions that leave the customer satisfied and that might even mean them recommending a competitor's product, it might mean making a slight change in a policy to facilitate a customer in that moment, it might mean taking the feedback from where customers are constantly cutting their fingers on their customer journey with you and making recommendations to change it. So, that connected to your customers journey that they're collecting feedback just like his journey with this liquor store that has a policy that says, “We don't sell the last bottle.”Why is that the policy, that doesn't need to be the policy, that policy could change, it changed by human being making the change and actually selling him the bottle but it could change further by changing the system itself. And so, he thinks it really starts with the people, but he also thinks that our world is getting so automated, it's getting so digitized and he thinks that the more digital we get, the more human we need to be, and it really takes a human touch to create that experienceand he’s going to share a human touch story. Jon asked Yanique if she has ever shopped at Nordstrom and if she likes shopping there?

Yanique replied, it's not something that stands out like when I shop with Apple for example. It just seems like another department store they haven't done anything that really wows me. But yes, I've shopped in there before.

Jon mentioned that one of the things that Nordstrom's does when you buy is, they wrap up your package in the bag and they walk around the counter and they hand you the package, what they're doing, and everybody's caught this. What they're doing is they're entering your space and creating a momentary connection and he thinks in this over connected, over communicated world a simple human connection can work magic and it's a simple gesture but it creates a more human experience as opposed to go to Macy's or someplace else May company but they basically literally fill the bag over the counter at you and that's a completely different experience than shopping at Nordstrom and it's the little things that add up to the ultimate experience. Jon thinks that companies that could instill more humanity in the interactions will stand out and he thinks that there's a lot of companies that do stand out in that experience, certainly Apple Store is one of them but even on a digital basis he thinks that there are companies that have created an experience that really wows him and he thinks Netflix is an example of that. They kind of revolutionized the way we get DVDs and it started with mailing them to you in the way that they did but he thinks their software creates an experience, it just makes it easy to find shows you like and to watch them easily and to catch up where you left off almost to the point where he thinks it's too easy to binge watch shows.

Yanique agreed, they do make it easy and I love the fact that you say we should keep the human side of things because we actually did an interview last week with another guest for the podcast and that's one of the questions I had actually asked her which you tapped into before I even got an opportunity to ask is, with things being so technologized do you still believe that the human experience is still necessary and I mean from my perspective for example, let's take for example the IVR system when you call a company, press one for this and two for that and three for this. And I think at the end of the day when somebody calls whether they're making a request or they're making a complaint they really want to speak to a live human being when the phone rings one time without pressing three, four, five, six, seven and then being disconnected and have to do it all over again.

• Jon agreed and stated, how about when they ask you to enter in your account number and you get to somebody and they ask you for your account number. It's little things like that. There's a lady named Maya Angelo who said, “People will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”and he really believes that, another friend of his Shep Hyken. He said, “The greatest technology in the world hasn't replaced the ultimate relationship building tool between a customer and a business, the human touch.”And so, he thinks that customer experience is the differentiator, it is the thing that will set you apart from your competitors and he thinks that the more businesses look at the entire journey that customers have with their business and to find that the more they'll grow, and the experience doesn't just happen when they're buying. He’ll tell you a journey out of him buying a TV set recently. So, he had a TV set that died, it was a Sony TV and it was the second Sony product that died, he had a receiver that died six months before. And so that was the trigger that started his journey and so he went and did a selection set of what he might consider and he didn't do that like going to the websites of the TV companies or even the stores, he started to look online and he read reviews of people that are like him or people that are trusted reviewers or advisers, people that review these things, third party people. He built a selection set and only then to actually go into a store because a TV set needs to be seen and then while looking at the TVs, he saw that Sony actually had the best picture, the best features, the best price and he ended up buying it even though he set out not to do that but after that buying, there was a post purchase experience where he kept looking at reviews because he want to make sure he had the made the right decision and he kept looking and he was using the TV and making sure it was the right thing. Jon then asked, “Have you ever done that after you bought something you continue to read reviews?” So that's the post purchase experience and it wasn't until you get to the point where you have decided that this is something that you really like that you essentially become an advocate and a whole lot of this that he’s talking about is documented in something called, “The McKinsey Customer Journey” and it's a PDF that you can put in this show notes that you can share with your audience. But there is a beautiful diagram that talks about the trigger, the initial consideration set, the active evaluation, the moment of purchase, the post purchase experience and then the loyalty loop. So now he’s in the loyalty loop where he now only tell other people how much he dig the Sony team but he bought two more and he has them in his house and that's what you want to do with your customers is to become a trusted advisor to that entire journey not just in the purchase experience, not just in the post purchase experience but to be involved in the loyalty loop by becoming a trusted advisor to inspire and educate them about how they might become better, smarter and faster because he thinks people don't buy great products, they buy better versions of themselves and that's what you want to be able to do is to communicate your brand story about how you put your customer at the center of that hero story and you can then not only get them to come back and buy from you but to drag their friends with them in the loyalty loop.

• Jon shared that when he was 41 years old, a year after he sold GoldMine and he has been so blessed and successful in selling this large business and his second baby was born the day he sold the business and his life was blessed and he found that he had a head tumor and it was pretty serious, he had to do some very severe treatments and lost a lot of weight. He thinks you don't really value how great it is to be healthy until you're notand it caused him in the process of getting healed to really go on a spiritual journey and in the process of that he really developed a sense of gratitude and empathy towards others that he hadn't had as deeply in the past. And also, a sense of purpose of his life and that purpose is as he shared before that we're on this planet to grow our souls by helping other people theirs, that's it. And so, he does his best on a daily basis to be as present as he can with the people and places around him, to be mindful as much as he can and to try to give something of himself to anyone he’s interacting with even if it's just a smile because the person in front of you deserves your attention even if you're in the grocery line put your phone down and connect with that person for a moment, they're serving you and you need to connect with them. So, whenever he’s interacting with people especially customer service people even salespeople, he tries to connect with them and to just have a moment because we’re all human beings and we're all just doing our best, and so the thing that motivates him every day is that it's another day that he might connect with another human being, to learn enough about them that he might blow a little wind in their sales and when two humans connect there’s an energy that connects and he loves that energy, he loves that connection and he must share another story with you. So, the doctor that saved his life, his ear nose, and throat doctor, the one that found his tumor. He happens to be the ENT to the biggest stars, so he was Whitney's doctor Frank Sinatra’s doctor, Bono's and he also tweets ordinary people like him. He was walking out of his cubicle, the doctors shoving all those little rooms and he bump into this little man and he looked down and said, “Dang, you're Mick Jagger.”He didn't say that to Mick Jagger, but he thought it. And at the same time, he thought, “Gosh, your short and old.” And at the same time, he thought to himself, “Why does this guy get on an airplane 50 times, 100 times a year and go and do a show. He certainly doesn't need the money?.”He does it because he loves to dance with these other human beings, that he loves to give in what he gets is an energy. He gets empowered, he feeds on this. And so, Jon feeds on growing other human beings through the connections with them and he thinks that's all we leave this planet with is the moment we've been truly present with others and places around us and the ripples in the pond that we create through some type of connection and value-adding, so that's what gets him every day.

Yanique stated, I mean it's just like music to my ears. I mean, it's so good to talk to someone who they're deeply connected with connecting with another human being because the reality is many of us go through our days in our businesses, in our personal lives and we are not present like fully present. I mean physically, our body is there but is our mind there, are we fully concentrating on the individual that is standing in front of us whether it's our child or significant other. And I'm guilty of it sometimes, I'm not going to lie, I'm going to stay here and tell you the truth. So, it's good to hear that you're really dedicated to being present, that's a reminder that you tell yourself every day because that's how you get up and push forward.

Jon agreed and told Yanique that it's not her fault, our minds are like little puppies and you know how if you try to teach a puppy to sit and what does a puppy do, you tell to sit on the paper, stay and it goes and runs away, it would skip away and you have to like your mind and your thoughts because you're always thinking about the past or worried about the future instead of being present and that's your little puppy, your mind and it throw these thoughts at you. And so, you can get angry with yourself and say, “Well gosh, why wasn't I present with Yanique, I could have had a better experience. I was thinking about my mortgage or my wife,”whatever it is, you just with kindness say okay, come on back, just come on back and eventually if you learn to put a seat in the room in your mind to observe the thoughts that you have, focus on your breathing and learn to enable those thoughts to go by without getting caught on them because typically thoughts come and you get caught and you get strung away on this thought about the past or the present, if you could just learn how to do that on a daily basis and there is process to do that to meditation, you can learn to be more present and he actually recommend an app called Headspace that does that so you can load that on your phone and it’s free for the first lessons, practice with that, it has this thing where you do 3 minutes a day and he recently got back from a retreat in a place called Big Sur.If you ever come to California, you have to check out Big Sur it’s the coast of northern California and there's a retreat there called Esalen and it's where the native Americans, the Indians used to gathered for this hot spring and it's been there for 10,000 years and you go and he went to this mindfulness meditation retreat for 3 days and it gave him enough tools to get started with this, it's always been something he has been interested in, but he hasn’t made it a daily practice of meditation and mindfulness. So, he’s starting the new year with this to try to make that a daily practice and so he wanted to share that with you and maybe you might find that interesting and practice it yourself.

Yanique then stated, I have heard of the concept of mindfulness, there are people here in Jamaica that I communicate with who actually practice it, but I've never actually engaged in it myself but I'm definitely going to check out Big Sur. I've been to LA once, I used to be a Flight Attendant with Air Jamaica, which was our national airline before I started my company. And I spent a Christmas and New Years in LA and unfortunately because we were laying over for such a short period of time, I didn't really get to enjoy the city that much, but I would definitely return for sure.

Jon shared that if you are interested in exploring mindfulness, that app Headspace is a really easy way to try it out and he highly recommend that you load that on your phone in and give it a whirl.

• When asked about the one online tool that he uses every day, Jon stated that he thinks we all live where we're communicating with other people and that's your inbox but for him, he loves to inspire and educate other people on a daily basis because he thinks that's our purpose in life is to add value to other people's journey. So, he curate content on a daily basis that is in and around the areas of his passion, plan and purpose in life, not just his business stuff, but his personal as well because he thinks that people connect to your heart and soul as much as they connect to your business passions. And then he shares that content on a daily basis. Think of it as dropping fishing lures into the social river around your business to begin connections and conversations that ideally results in relationships. And so, the tool that he uses to queue up content is a tool called Buffer Buffer app enables him to take whatever he’s reading and to share it across his personal and professional identities and he thinks that the biggest struggle that most business people have, whether they're individuals or a business itself, is to be seen because if you aren't seen, then people won’t think of you. And there was an actress who happened to be an entrepreneur, her name was Mae West. She said, “Out of sight is out of mind and out of mine is out of money and honey.” So, you need to be seen to be considered and how many times have you walked by a business and looked in the door and somebody sitting there behind the counter and God forbid on their phone and there's nobody in the shop, you've ever seen that? It breaks his heart because he knows how much it costs to open a store and to pay the rent. What about people? He thinks that your network is your net worth, you branding your network will help you achieve your dreams, yet most people don't really manage the brand in the network effectively.And what he’s talking about is sharing content on a daily basis will help you to build your brand and your network personally or professionally or for your company and so I use buffer to do that but the most important advice he has in regards to content is engagement because imagine if you're dropping fishing lures, which is content, to connections, conversations in the river and somebody bites on it if you don't pull the hook, if you don't wheel it in, then it's just pointless because you're not fully finishing the process and so you need to respond to people responding to you and start conversations and the conversations shouldn't be about your products and services, it should be about how you might add value to that person and if you enter into every connection and conversation with the attempt to serve that other human being, then you can't but help succeed in life because another great that he loves, Zig Ziglar said, “The more people you help achieve their dreams, the more you will achieve your dreams.”He tries to give his knowledge away on a daily basis, so people see him as a trusted advisor, so when they need his products or services, they pick up the phone and call him and drag their friends with them.

• Jon shared that there's one book he read early on which was a book called Siddhartha: A Novel and it's the book of Buddha's journey. It had an impact on him in regard to seeking your own truth. Another one was a book by Thoreau Walden, and it taught him to march to his own drummer and he thinks that if he hadn't marched to his own drummer as a young man that he probably wouldn't have retired at 40 years old. But then beyond that, there's a book called Think and Grow Rich: or Men and Women who Resent Poverty by Napoleon Hill that taught him to figure out what his passion, plan and purpose in life, which is what is your passion? Are you building a plan to achieve it? Are you making it your purpose on a daily basis? And that's what enabled him to build Goldmine. Another book is Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries because ultimately a perception is reality and you need to be able to build a brand and create the perceptions in people's heads, so people see you and your company and your business and then How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, because ultimately relationships are key to life.

• Jon shared with us his journey on mindfulness and meditation, it really helps him to focus. The other thing is his relationship with Microsoft, which is really incredible and if you think about it, Microsoft is a huge company with billions of customers and hundreds of thousands of resellers and to have evolved their platform as the simple CRM for office where Microsoft signed a resell agreement and is selling Nimble globally through their distributors and resellers to the customers as a bundle with office, and how they become strategic to not only help sell office and make it sticky, but also as a gateway to Azureand dynamics was quite a feat that took their team years to build the relationships. And interestingly enough, it parallels the journey of Goldmine, so Goldmine started, they were able to start that without any venture capital or any bank loans because they figured out who is the trusted advisor for their customer and back in the day it was the Novell reseller. Now you may not remember Novell, Novell was the network operating system that businesses use to tie together their PCs and hard drives and printers and to share a network business applications. There was no Microsoft network operating system or even windows back in the day. So, businesses used Novell and we were a network application to ride on top of that when they got the Novell resellers to use Goldmine and then start reselling it, but then Microsoft came out with anti-servers, sequel server, an exchange server and they hate Novell and we basically partnered with Microsoft by requiring a GoldMine license, a license of anti-server, sequel server, exchange server, and thereby becoming strategic to Microsoft as well as solving our customers' needs of a more scalable business solution and that's how they got to USD $100,000,000.00 in. Interestingly enough, history is repeating itself because they started with Gmail, Gsuite which was the Novella, but if you have PCs and you want to tie them together in the cloud. You started with Gmail and Gsuite, office wasn't there, office 365, but Microsoft came out with office 365 and when they saw the writing on the wall, they built integrations with that and have basically replicated becoming strategic with Microsoft's Office 365 with Nimble the way that Goldmine became strategic with anti-server and sequel server and he thinks that if you understand history, you could understand the present and more easily predict the future. And he thinks it's because of his experience in the past that he was able to see the writing on the wall and to be able to leverage Microsoft in this new era.

Yanique stated, we just crossed over ourselves. We hosted with GoDaddy and they now sell their products with office 365 integration and it was actually a very easy migration and I actually prefer the interface, I was a bit hesitant when they said, office 365 because I'm a Mac user but it works brilliantly with my iPhone and it syncs across all devices. And if I send an email from my phone, I'll see the same sent message from my MacBook Pro or the same sent message from my iPad. So, I don't have any issues with it, I'm actually quite pleased, it's operating better than the platform that GoDaddy had before this integration with Office 365.

Jon stated that before GoDaddy sold IMAP email and before IMAP was pop, these are protocols and most of your listeners today have as their email server, pop or imap, or Gmail or Gsuite or iCloud and maybe a combination of all those things, but ultimately you need a cloud based solution that unifies emailed contacting calendar into a thing that can synchronize across phones, iPads and computers and desktops and both Gsuite and office do that. But he thinks Microsoft has the edge because we all grew up with MS Excel and MS Word and we used to that and so it's easy to sort of pick office because it comes with those things and works well with those things. But there's even better reasons for the office in the future, if we think about traditional businesses, they have servers in closets and those servers, have to be updated with the software and firewalls to protect them and he thinks that there isn't a business today that isn't, hasn't been hacked or won't be hacked if they continue to try to manage all their own IT and that most businesses are going to the cloud. It started with moving their exchange and outlook to the cloud with office, but soon all the other servers well in Azure is a great place for your business systems in the future and that's why they're just so excited to partner with them and in fact GoDaddy is a Nimble customer, they use it for their influencer, marketing, outreach and engagement and they're actually talking to them about bundling Nimble with their office solution sales, when they sell you a domain, they sell you office, the next thing they'll sell you on top of that will be Nimble.

Yanique shared, I love GoDaddy, their customer service is amazing, totally amazing and one of the things I love about them from day one, when I started this company was when you call them, you can actually get a live person. I remember a couple of years ago I had redone my website and the web developer, even though I recommended that he use GoDaddy, you chose to use a different company, I think it was Blue Host or something, but I had an issue with the website and when I tried to call Blue Host, apparently they don't have a telephone number, so you have to go into a live chat and one of the most frustrating things that you could ever do to me is send me to a chat room for me to explain to you in words what I could have done if I was talking to you in a voice call. I find it way more stressful to sit down and type out my issue than if I could just explain it to you verbally and I think I spoke with them maybe twice and I just closed the account and I moved everything over to GoDaddy. I don't know why he didn't take my recommendation in the first place, but it was extremely frustrating, that's another issue I have with Magic Jack to this day. I don't understand if they're a telecommunication company and they provide services for people to call people all over the world, why don't they have an actual phone number when you're having an issue with your Magic Jack?

Jon stated that that brings us full circle to customer journey and experience that we need the human touch because it's just so much more effective and personal.

• Jon shared listeners can find him at –

Twitter – @Jon_Ferrara

Website –www.nimble.com

Code: Jon40 for 40% to sign up for Nimble

• Jon shared a quote, “This too shall pass.”He really believes that life is like a Beethoven symphony, that there are high and there's low notes and that you can't really value the high notes without the low notes and that all of those notes will pass, so don't get too connected to the highs in your life because they won't last forever and don't be so worried about the lows in your life because they won’t last forever too. And he thinks you could learn more from struggles than you can from successes. And so, life is like a Beethoven symphony, don't let whatever is happening to you bother you too much. This too shall pass, you could learn so much from those moments in your life and he thinks that the biggest cause of pain or suffering is grasping onto highs or resisting or averting low's, and if you just accepted them both as part of your journey, that you will be more balanced and happier in your life.

Links

• Nimble
• The McKinsey Customer Experience
• Headspace
• Buffer
• Siddhartha: A Novel by Hermann Hesse
• Think and Grow Rich: or Men and Woman who Resent Poverty by Napoleon Hill
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Highlights

In this episode Yanique Grant would like to take a little bit of time and just share with you some key important nuggets that she has gained over the years in the category of commitments. So, we're at the beginning of a new year we're still in the first quarter and in customer experience and customer service when we make promises, or we make commitments to our internal customers or external customers, a lot of time it's because of broken promises, commitments that have not been fulfilled why people tend to have negative feelings towards each other and this may cause them anger, frustration, upset, it may cause a myriad of negative emotions.

So firstly, a commitment or promise is not easy in Jamaican terms, when I do customer service training and people will say, “A promises is a comfort to a fool.”No, that's not any definition of what a promise according to any formalized dictionary globally. A promise or a commitment is your verbal word or written word where you say that you are going to actually do something or carry out a particular task. So, for example, you could tell a customer, “I'm going to call you back.”even though you didn't say, “I promise I'll call you back,” their expectation is you will call them back or you tell a co-worker, “Sure, no problem, I'll take care of it,”it could be to complete a bill for a customer, it could be to give a message regarding a customer's order or delivery, that message is going to impact the customer's delivery or order being on time and you didn't deliver that message. Again, it's your word that you've put into it and so people believe that you're going to complete it. Now, if you don't follow through on a promise there are a lot of negative things that come out of it, people don't  trust you, you're deemed as unreliable, you're not dependable and because of that, then less of your co-workers will have faith in the fact that when you say something you're actually going to do it. Now some people in organizations tell you that they are going to do something just because they want to get rid of you or because they really didn't hear what you said, they were not paying attention to when you were asking the question or requesting a particular service or product and so they went ahead and made confirmation with you verbally or in writing that yes they will go ahead and have this done but they didn't really think about whether or not that commitment was realistic. So, one of the things I would like to encourage people in organizations who work as well as business owners, managers, supervisors, everyone from top to bottom, when you make a promise, or a commitment ensure that your promise or your commitment is realistic because if it's not realistic then you are setting yourself up for failure. Let us say with your current responsibilities and your current workload, the person has asked you to do something and it is just humanly impossible for you to complete it, if you have all those other competing activities to do. However, the person doesn't know you have those other competing activities so the responsibility would be on you to ensure that whatever information you are giving to them is realistic. Sometimes it's better we say no and sometimes it's hard to say no but at least when you say no, 1) you're being honest, 2) you’re giving the person that you are making a commitment to or you're telling that you're not able to commit to that you are not able to do it so it willgive them an opportunity to seek someone else who actually can do it because let's say you commit to them that you're going to have the report delivered to them by Monday for example, and they commit to someone else for a meeting they're having on Wednesday that, “Well, I'll have the report by Monday so I'd be able to dial down on those figures by Tuesday and by Wednesday in our meeting I'll have feedback for you.”However, you don't have the report ready for them on Monday, you got caught up over the weekend and you weren't able to complete it and you won't be able to complete it until Thursday but the person who you made a commitment to, their meeting is Wednesday and so your commitment that you made to that individual impacts other people and other decisions and other meetings and other things that have to be happening. So, we have to think carefully about the commitments that we're making, we have to be realistic in managing the expectations of those with whom we make these commitments.

I know a promise seems like a simple thing but when you look at organizations and hear about customer service challenges internally and externally and you do the investigations to find out why it is that this person feels this way or why it is that that person is so anger and is so frustrated, when you really get to the root of it many times it boils down to communication and many times it boils down to lack of communication because of a broken promise, a commitment that was not fulfilled, a promise that you made that you were not able to keep…..so it's not hard. Commitments are not hard to be fulfilled but when we're making them, we have to be realistic. In my customer service trainings, when I engage with participants from different industries - health, telecommunications, banking and finance, government, really doesn't matter what industry you’re in, one of the key things that I encourage participants to do is if they must break a promise because the reality is we're all human and we make mistakes and sometimes because we're so overwhelmed with personal obligations and we have professional responsibilities and lots of things that are going on in our life all at once, we may genuinely forget that we made a commitment or a promise to someone else. I know for sure that I fall short where that is concerned many times both in my personal life and my professional life. However, the key to ensuring that when we do break the promise, is to ensure that we communicate with the person that we've broken the promise with or we're going to break the promise with whether it's that we won't be able to do it at all or we're delaying the expectation of the delivery of that promise. And so, two rules that I always encourage participants to employ if we must break a promise include the first rule is an acronym and the acronym is K.I.S.Swhich basically stands for, Keep It Short and Simpleand all I mean by that is, if we must break a promise try not to get into too much detail as to why the promise was broken especially if the details that you are revealing to the customer and this is if it's an external customer, because if it's an internal customer then clearly the quality of theinformation that you release to them is confidential because they work within the organization and so you can share the mishaps with them. However, if it's an external customer you want to keep it short and simple, don't give the customer too much information because if the information that you are giving to them is not relevant to the solution, it can actually be detrimental to your organization. Simple thing, an example, let us say a delivery was to be made and the customer came to pick up their delivery, they were told that the item would be available for pickup on Friday, however, unfortunately the truck that was coming to make the delivery was stopped by the police on the road and the police seized the vehicle because the carrier license on the vehicle had expired and you go now to tell the customer that I'm so sorry but the item isn't here because of all of that, now that makes a company look very inefficient and it makes the team in the organization also look very incompetent. So, think carefully, if the reasons for the problem or the promise not being fulfilled is relevant and if it's not relevant, it doesn't need to be mentioned. A simple statement like, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, unfortunately I'm so sorry.” And of course you say it with a level of engagement that shows that you are apologetic for the fact that there is a delay and you're calling ahead to let them know so that they can probably put other things into play to prepare that they're not going to receive this item or if they were travelling from far they wouldn't need to come to pick up the item because that item would not be there for them to pick up. To take it a step further, if it is that clearly in the example the fault it would be on that of the organization not having their internal business in order, in a case like that probably some compensation could be, “Instead of you coming to pick it up from us, we are going to deliver it to you because we messed up, we made a mistake, the circumstances that are beyond our control are things that we could have prevented from occurring but because of the great inconvenience it's causing you and because we're breaking our promise to you, we're going have it delivered to you.” and you give them a new expectation with a new date and a new time for the time that they can expect the delivery. So, the first rule is K.I.S.S, Keep It Short and Simple if you must break a promise.

The second rule is you want to ensure that when you are breaking the promise you are not pointing fingers and casting blame on other members of your team or other departments in your organization. We all work for the same company, if that's X company or Y company or Z company, whichever company you work for, casting blame or pointing fingers and saying, “That's how they are in the accounts department, they're always late, they have no urgency.”or “That's how they are in the sales department, they drag their feet, they take forever.”Whatever the reason is that you believe is the core of the reason, even if you know for sure that your team member messed up, it's not your responsibility to cast blame and it's not right and it doesn't help the solution because the customer when they’re arguing with the company and they're getting upset with the company, many times when they're doing that, they're not casting blame on that one individual or that one department, they're casting blame on the entire organization regardless if that department or that person was even a part of the issue or the problem.

So, a promise is a very important practice, it's a very important part of an organization, everybody has to make commitments and promises to each other in an organization and to your customers. So just remind yourself as you embark on 2019 as you are working to exceed your customer's expectations and you're working to map out your customer journey and you're working to satisfy and exceed the expectations and go above and beyond….that a lot of times the reasons why we're not able to achieve these high goals that we've set for ourselves is because of some of these simple little activities that happen day to day in the interactions between employees and customers is that there is dissatisfaction, why it is that there is discomfort, why it is that there is unrest, why it is that our customers and sometimes our employees do not feel completely at ease in an organization where the culture and everyone is pulling their weight in an organization where people are doing the best to ensure that the quality of the experience that they have with each other as well as with the customers are ones that are of quality, are ones that are of care, are ones that really go above and beyond to make sure that your client or your customer leaves feeling good. They feel like you're working with people who care about them, they feel that they're working with people who are ensuring that whatever they said they're going to do they actually do it and if they can't do it they have the courtesy and the decency to pick up the phone or grab their computer or their phone and communicate with them to let them know that unfortunately we're not able to deliver, we're not able to call, we're not able to do whatever it is that's going to be broken so that you can know how to put things in place on your end.

So, I encourage you as listeners of this podcast to really think about the promises and the commitments that you're making for 2019 and ensure that whatever you put out there that you verbally speak or that you write as said before, you don't have to say I promise for the person to view it as a promise and even if you say, “I'm going to try,” psychologically most people interpret that as it's going to be done. So, think realistically about the promises that you make:

Are they realistic?

Can they be done?

Ensure that you follow through and you communicate, communicate, communicate,because people are not mind readers, they don't know the challenges that you have on your end and if you don't tell them that something has changed in that process, they're not going to know. So really think about what I have shared with you and I hope that you will embrace this whole idea of making realistic promises and I hope that as you go through 2019 in your organization that the quality of your experience is improved because your promises are realistic, your promises have people who communicate, communicate, communicate and your promises are ones where you're not blaming your team members and if it's issues that show the organization up in a negative way, you're ensuring that you manage that information by keeping it short and simple and just releasing the information that is relevant to ensuring that you get to the solution which is to satisfy that customers need. So, I hope that this information will help you in 2019. Again, if you'd like to follow us on Twitter, feel free it's navigating CXand please feel free to join our Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Podcast.

Emily Rasowsky Show Notes

Emily Rasowsky is Customer Experience Lead for Spark Fund and Spark Fund is an organization that helps companies to upgrade energy technology. So, because that's not really an area of expertise for Yanique, she will allow Emily to explain in the very simplest of terms as we welcome her, what it is that her company really does do and how does this really impact a customer's experience regardless of your business type or industry.

Emily shared that Spark Fund and what that actually means, in layman's terms, our job is to make it as easy as humanly possible for energy managers and financial leaders to update their energy technology. So, things like lights, a jack, chillers, boilers, refrigeration, anything that goes into your space and consumes energy. We work with a lot of large organizations that don't have the same sorts of incentives or access to resources to upgrade their technology to be energy efficient. And it's crazy because buildings emit more OCO2 than cars. So, this is a huge problem. And our job, we have an integrated a team of engineers, project managers, and financiers, people who provide everything you would need to do a project. So, we take it off your hands. In essence it really is meant to be a company that makes the experience of owning and operating energy technology no longer an issue because we do this whole process on a subscription. So, we own the technology, people get out of the business of ownership which causes so much heartache and pain and bad experiences. So, we own it and they no longer have to worry about taking care of it.

Questions

• Are you the only type of company that offers this service?
• Could you share with us a little bit of some of the things that your customers have shared in terms of benefits that they've gotten in utilizing the way how your program is set up and structured, both from a financial point of view as well as an emotional point of view, do they feel less stressed, has it improved their productivity?
• In terms of customer experience innovations and new technologies, is there anything on the brink that Spark Fund is looking to tap into for 2019 or even in the next two to three years that you think will help to revolutionize what you're doing even more?
• As a technology company and you are in charge of customer experience do you find that you may hire people who are competent leaders in the technical areas that they've been hired to perform in but for some reason they lack that human side. They're so focused on the technicality of a job, they lack the interpersonal side, and do you find that hinders from that whole framework that you're trying to achieve?
• Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
• What's the one online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your personal life or your business?
• Could you share with us what are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to push through on those days that are challenging or seems a bit overbearing?

Highlights

• When asked if they are the only type of company that offers this service, Emily stated that right now in the market they're the only one that's integrated in all of the unique ways that they are. So, there are certain types of offerings out there that provide, let's say financing so that you don't have to worry about finding money for it. There are companies out there that provide general contracting so someone to manage the installation of a new piece of technology. But they are the first that does all of these things together. And they are definitely the first that does it on a subscription contract. So, there's also things out there that are similar they look kind of similar, but nothing is quite the setup in the same financial structure that we are.

Yanique agreed and stated that because when you do it on a subscription basis it makes it more affordable for the organizations because they pay on a month to month basis.

Emily agreed. So, the thing that we're really taking away a lot of financial pain with is when you have a piece of aging technology you never quite know. Even think about even yourself in your home when HVAC unit starts to go you don't know how much that's going to cost or what's going to be wrong with it. We take care of all of that - complete lack of clarity. For example, we have a customer, they're a school and they had to shut down an entire part of their school district, an entire part of their school facility because the heating wasn't working. So, we obviously work with them, they don't have that problem, but you think about all the pain that comes down later down the line. So yes, you're reducing your maintenance costs, you're getting energy savings but you're also reducing these costs that you can't even forecast for. And some companies that are really sophisticated have a budget for that and some companies don't have any budget and that hits them somewhat by surprise. So yes, in a lot of ways we are we're keeping it much more predictable and lower cost which is behavior science tells us when we know what to expect, it feels less painful.

• Emily stated absolutely. So, the way that we work with our customers is that essentially, they can write this off of their to do list maintaining their equipment, managing their equipment. They don't have to worry about that anymore. So, what we really boil this down to and what we've experienced in the market is our customers are seeing and financially they're seeing three core benefits that are aggregated into these themes. One is they're saving money, in most cases we are not pricing in when we share our proposals with them the energy savings they're going to receive because it's very hard for us to predict those. And in the air of transparency we don't want to force them to be tied to those savings which is how a lot of people do that in the market. So, it's based off a function, they don't have to worry about is it going to work or not. We guarantee its function, so it always gets fixed and it always has something, you have a support team behind you. So, you're saving money which is obviously a huge benefit and you're getting energy savings. But emotionally you're saving time because now you don't have to worry. For example, we had one customer who showed us before working with us these are a lot of kind of pre-customers conversations. He said, “How do you know who to call when you're HVAC unit or your backup generation or your lights they break? Who do you call?”He literally pulled up his phone and goes to his contacts and types in HVAC, eight people who could potentially solve his problem. So, right there you have an overload of information, an overload of choice when all the customer wants, truly, think about getting any renovations on your home, you just want it fixed and you want it fixed well, in a timely manner and in a way where you get clear communication on what's happening in your space. So, that is one just small example of something that we do. We are a single point of contact that aggregates all of those key players, so you don’t have to figure out who you call in that situation, we are your point of contact and then we take care of all of that back and forth in detail. So, they're saving time and they're also reducing the risk because when something breaks that's often on the risk of the company, they're actually tracking that financially which we take all of that risk off of their balance sheets literally. So, with schools for example that have certain debt limits right you can't upgrade a building if you have a debt limit or debt ceiling and how much you can borrow being an institution, we can reduce that risk literally off their balance sheet and we make it because it's in a subscription you pay like you would for Netflix or Uber or any of those. It's coming out of your operational budget not your capital budget, so it provides a lot of little flexibility and ease for customers that they're not getting in other financial models.

Yanique stated that she thinks it's a wonderful idea. And she like the fact that as Emily said it's aggregated all under one roof and as a customer, I don't need to contact that person and this person because you are the point of contact and then you take care of everything from there and when you really think about it that's what people want. They're willing to pay for convenience and ease of mind and just to know that a responsible organization has this covered, and they can take that as a responsibility off of their plate.

• Emily stated that what's interesting she thinks about the ways CX (customer experience) works at Spark Fund is that they are a relatively small startup. They have about 50 people who work for them and when she thinks about what's happening in the market and the types of technologies people are innovating within. She has two ways that she basically will answer this. One is of course they are investing in technology and in particular in the energy side, monitoring technology because for Sparkfund, they can understand absolutely everything that's happening in someone's building without them ever having to pick up the phone. Then they can deploy a maintenance team. They never have to tell them that there's an issue, they tell the customer, “Hey, we noticed that your machine might need a little tune up. We're going to send someone out, tell us which day in time works most effectively for you.” That is a tremendous pain point that we can alleviate. And something that is tremendously challenging if you are a segmented organization. So, you have monitoring with one company, and you have maintenance with another, you still need that human to call them from the maintenance to the vendor to connect to those two. So, we are to get off of our customers plate with things like monitoring technology and we'll only get more and more sophisticated as that technology gets more and more sophisticated. So yes, absolutely we are investing in full structural changes and by the way, that includes creating an entire new platform, a digital platform that our company will maintain and manage that doesn't give you a crazy chart. So, if you look at with monitoring companies and you're an energy manager you will get a log in that shows you all sorts of numbers and charts and so much information that some people enjoy but others it's a lot to take in and when you’re really are just going from one point to another and you're managing let's say 900 locations which is not a typical, you just want to make sure everything is running okay, nothing is a big flag you got to take care of that morning. So, we're literally on top of these technologies building a very seamless, very easy to understand customer platform and portal so those are some tech staff things that we're investing in but the other side of that is we are really investing a lot of time in and have invested a tremendous amount of time in making our company have some baseline understanding of what it means to really be a CX forward organization and I think that alone is what is driving our innovation. I can't be in every single product meeting, I can't be in every single monitoring meeting but we have people on the organization who understand this is where we're going as a company and they can innovate with this framework of understanding the baseline of behavioral science and how we use it here so this human side is so important and to be honest, one of the biggest challenges she has heard and seen in other organizations is when you don't have that organizational alignment that really moves things forward.

Yanique agreed and stated that everybody has to be aligned, everybody has to be singing the same song.

• Emily stated that she thinks that's definitely natural, you have people who their strengths are in different areas of course. But she does feel that one of the things that we truly invest in at Spark Fund is making sure that people we bring on have this vision for where we're going. And one of the biggest reasons that she can say that with confidence is because their product is not just an online product and in fact, it's even more salient than that is an in-person product because you have to go to someone's space and install a piece of really big equipment that requires a huge human element. And so, anyone who is going to come and work for Spark Fund must understand just kind of as a prerequisite that you have to be very aware of what that in-person element is going to do for an online tool. Now, she thinks the benefit of having a very CX forward company is that their hiring structure is one that values obviously people who have specific expertise in particular types of code or particular types of technology build but mirrors that with a product team that understands the customer experience tremendously well and is invested in making sure that that moves forward and a user experience team. So, UI and design team that actually understands how to make these things come to life and they have repeatedly gotten very positive feedback on the experience that we've built because it has a heavy design and UI element. They never build anything that isn't collaborative between both tech and design and experience which she thinks is the benefit of having a small company and you see this in big organizations too. But they have a team that's distinct and aligned and where it needs to go and they wouldn't push something forward if it didn't have that checkbox of thought, “Hey, we did think through the experience and how things are actually going to be taken in by the customer.”

Yanique added, you've taken it on from a recruitment aspect which is very important. One of the things that she has been hearing buzzing around in the last six months or so is that technology is great, and it has advantages and disadvantages and as a business owner herself, she finds that technology does help to ease the process, increases efficiency, frees up your time, it just makes you a little bit more productive in your day because there are so many hours and the reality is you can't be everywhere at every moment but one of the things that she would love push more for 2019 or she'd like to see organizations push more. Technology is important but do you believe that at some point the human element fades or do you think the human element is always going to still be a part of the customer experience because she finds that human beings still want to speak to another human being especially when something goes wrong?

Emily agreed with that sentiment and stated that technology is huge but one of the things that is so clear to her is that as a consumer herself and also someone who really truly cares about customer experience journeys is that she thinks we get too caught up in one singular journey and we don't take a step back and look at all the different journeys that a customer is going through in order to engage with your product. An example with Uber, Uber obviously is a tech platform and they have a tremendous amount of money and resources into building that tech platform. But she thinks the people who are going to win, the customer not just that discrete experience which is one element of technology, but the actual customer are the ones who are going to sit back and think, “Okay, what did the customer have to do to get into the Uber? Where is the customer going when they leave Uber? and how are they going to connect all these experiences together?”And the reality is you do need that human element because she thinks inherently, we are people, we are connected beings, we can't just interact with our phones all day, every day but there is a lot that supports that sentiment that we need this human connection. So, there is this reality that fusing those two worlds together will lead to the winners, what she thinks is most interesting and she have experience with Spark Fund as well and kind of how they've navigated that technology heavy lense. But first start with a bigger picture. So, Amazon obviously has invested a tremendous amount of money in an online platform, but she’s based in DC and they just opened a store, a physical store with actual people who check you out at the front desk and answer your question as you're walking through and reading the titles of these books. So even though they have this amazing online platform they're also investing in in-person experiences and she thinks you're going to see that more and more. She thinks it's dangerous to do too much in tech and not also think about where the human side is and the Spark Fund, they are a small company, she mentioned this a few times and she thinks it is important to note that a lot of CX out there is focused on these big organizations that have processes and lots of resources to make widgets and all that. For Spark Fund, they experienced this very intimately with their proposal process. They were scoping out what platform that would help their customers have better and more seamless experience. And as they were doing the exploration process, the information gathering, customer conversations, one of the things they realized was their goal is to create trust with their customer and also a seamless pretty easy experience where they get the questions they have get answered right away. In talking with financial leaders and the folks that are actually decision makers on these projects, one of the things they realized was that they don't need a tech platform, they have a million of these, what they need is a spreadsheet and she doesn’t hire 6 developers to build a really good spreadsheet that they can toggle and understand how to customize based off of the numbers they want to see in front of them so that has created a lot of trust with their customers and helped them ease a lot of pain in the sales cycle. So, you don't have to always just go to high tech too, she thinks there's a low-tech version that is accessible for companies no matter how big you are, there are two ways to look at it.

Yanique agreed and stated that it's in the conversations that you have, are you really listening to what they're saying, are you just trying to sell them something that's just really out there or are you trying to actually meet that immediate need that they're indicating that they're having to you and soothing that pain that they're feeling.

• When asked how she stays motivated every day, Emily stated that for her, she is constantly inspired by companies and organizations that she interacts with on a day to day basis who gets the experience right. She is a big fan of this one solid place that's nearby in DC. called Sweet Green, she's giving them a them a shout out of course. And she sees that every time, so these small things in her personal life that she seeks out because she genuinely cares about the experience and the companies that she’s going to pay money to, they inspire her. She has an insurance company that she loves, she loves the experience they create, and they have this app that when she opens up the app it shows a picture of her apartment, something so small that inspires her to keep going and keep thinking about how she can apply those things to Spark Fund. Sometimes it’s a challenging industry to be in because people are unpredictable but there are things that are universal and for her it's those moments of delight when she can speak to a customer and hear how they really alleviated their pain. Recently they created a little Spark Bot, it's a little robot. It's this little guy that follows people around and it's fun for her to think through, “What are the cute little ways that we can delight our customers?”and something so small like that and she gets that inspiration from other companies that she admire but also this idea that we really can make a difference in someone's day. She experiences it when she gets a salad, you walk out feeling better and happier. So, for her it's making sure that she is surrounding herself with the right types of companies that she wants to emulate and really have be a part of the whole fabric of this CX program at Spark Fund so it is really external for her and of course she has got an amazing team who is constantly thinking about how we can change stuff and move forward in a more positive direction. It helps to have a very customer forward, customer motivated company.

• Emily stated that at Spark Fund they are a huge, huge, huge Slack company and so she would say to her if she didn't have Slack connected with her all the time, she would have missed so much but she also have to say it's allowed her to have a lot of flexibility in the way that she work because it is something that she can access any point in time and she really loves it. It allows her to be autonomous, work from home if she needs to, work at the office if she needs to and constantly being in contact everybody so she really just like the platform they've injected quite a bit of delight into it which is quite fun. And the other thing she'll say is she knows she has to address some of the personal side as well is Evernote. She is obsessed with Evernote, it is her lifeline, she has everything in there, from her to do list to her grocery shopping to little voice notes that she left to herself and if she did not have Evernote with her all the time she thinks she would be a mess because she would never know where she’s supposed to be or what am she’s supposed to be doing. So, a notes platform, a place where I can jot down ideas and it's searchable so she can pull up those things that she forgot about, that she thought of last week.

Yanique shared that for those of you that are not familiar with Slack, it's a cloud based a proprietary team collaboration tools and services. So, it's where everybody gets to connect in the organization and you're able to track projects and see how things are going throughout the course of the day even if you aren't physically in the office.

Emily agreed and stated that they have a really simple user interface. A lot of community groups that she’s a part of also use Slack.

Yanique also shared that Evernote is a note platform and it's brilliant. And it's grown so much, they've really developed that platform so much that it has way more features than it had 5, 10 years ago. You can take pictures as you said, you can send yourself a voice note, you can do scanning and send it to yourself.

Emily stated that she has had Evernote since maybe 2015 and to be able to go back that far in time, she has old notes from things she'd never thought that she would need to resurface but when you search for something and it comes out to the same, it's been so cool for her to have all that creativeness in one spot.

• Emily shared that the book that really, truly made CX the thing she wanted to go into was hands down The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. This book when she read it revolutionized the way that she thought about her own life but also her background is in marketing and communication, so she came from a digital background and also in-person previously helping companies try to move to Washington, DC. “So how do you make that experience something super seamless?” And as she was reading this book it not only had so many “aha”moments from her personal life and personal experiences but also because they talk about how you set up habits for yourself and how you create a good space and habit in time for your own personal life but also in marketing and they have some amazing examples in there like the Febreze, she’s not sure if you read this book and if this is going to go too into the weeds but they talk about this whole theory of how people are emotionally attached or they use their senses to drive emotions towards certain things which is a good argument for creating multi-sensory experiences for companies that they're not just something online to that point earlier. We've even talked about having a certain scent, like can we have people come with a certain sort of cologne or perfume when they come to install something to have a consistent experience but that they talk about Febreze and this is one of the most interesting stories anecdotes around CX stuck with her for a while that they couldn't quite figure out how to get people to adopt this cleaning product, they tried so many different types of messaging, different images, research groups subjects, all of this. And one of the things that they found after many years of this work was that people weren't necessarily interested or addicted to using a cleaning product but what they were most interested in was that sense of relief and release after they cleaned the space so the smell of Febreze and that “Ha” moment you see it in the commercials now and they were like “mmmm…..Ha”, it was the “Ha” moment that people were looking for.

Yanique shared that's how she feels when she sprays her Febreze.

Emily agreed and stated that they nailed it and it's been a very successful product for them comes in all sorts of scents now. Now you're never going to be able to un-see it when you look at those commercials, they always end with the big inhale and the sigh out through the mouth, so it's a relief.

Yanique shared that one of the things that she teaches because she’s a Customer Service Trainer and that's what inspired her to start this podcast was that customers have two needs and regardless of the industry, you're in or the product or service that you sell or your ethnicity or whatever your background is. Those two needs are their intellectual needs and their emotional needs. And through the research that she has done, books that she has read, people she has spoken to locally and internationally, people she has trained, it really boils down to how you make people feel and if you can find a way to have your product or your service connect to people emotionally, Febreze clearly figured that out as you said the relief and that's the emotional component. It will tie them to your brand, and they become so loyal to your brand that now they become your brand advertisers.

Emily agreed and stated that she thinks we try to figure out ways to do that most creatively and part of that, our structural changes, how do we create ease in the process of course investing in different technologies like monitoring ease is an entire thing. But to your point earlier there is something really important with the human element and something as small as an installation is happening in your space, can we make sure that our vendors show up with a cup of coffee, “Hey, we brought some coffee for you just to make sure that you’re caffeinated and feeling okay throughout this experience.” And obviously we try to use behavioural science any time we can and finishing really strong is something we care a lot about. So once something is over, and it sounds a little old school, but can we send them like a handwritten note and something that's thoughtful that makes them understand that we've been caring about them throughout this process.

Yanique agreed and stated that it's really the little things as you said handwritten note a while ago. There is an activity that I do in my training sessions is called a gratitude letter and it's a framework that we created where the participant has to choose an employee in their organization that they’re writing them a letter to tell them thank you for something that they've done for them. It could be something work related or something personal and it doesn't have to be anything big, I've had participants come and say they did surgery on their co-worker came to their house and washed their clothes for them or their kid was sick and they gave them some very good tips or it was the beginning of the year and your co-worker brought him a copy of a daily bread and the daily bread has really helped them to overcome some of their personal challenges, but the reason why she thinks the letter has been so impactful to the point of tears, the way how the letter is designed it forces you to pull details out of the experience, it forces you to choose adjectives to describe how it is that this person impacted you and to really show gratitude and appreciate because one of the things she has found generally speaking is that people complain a lot in life but they don’t actually take time to show gratitude and nobody writes letters anymore, it’s all about the tech, so I’m texting you to say, “Hey, thanks a mil,” through WhatsApp or whatever messaging app you use or through an email but I’m not actually handwriting you a letter or a note and it makes a very big difference.

Emily agreed and shared that we get more communication feedback responses when we take the time to write something out than we do, when we send out a mass email, so you can't discount those things. Emily truly believes in the offline experience just as much as the in-person and the more you can create a connection with the organization, the more you're going to have loyalty and for them, they measure that, they look at how many people are coming back and using them for more or more subscriptions and more different technologies they want to procure so for them it is something that they have honestly invested a lot of their marketing in because it's very high touch. They are working with big companies and it's no longer enough just to have one casual conversation, you need to really permeate an entire organization and make an impression. So, she loves that Yanique do those gratitude letters, she feels like she needs to make that a monthly sort of practice.

Yanique stated that the gratitude letter is really an amazing activity and every time she does it with an organization over the years, she’s just amazed at how the participants really take it and run with it. She has had one doctor that said the letter meant more to her than her degree as a doctor and she framed it and she put it up in her office because she said nobody has ever done anything like this for her before. So, you'd just be surprised to know, that didn't take anything, it cost nothing just to sit down and write out how you feel about what the person had done for you that you're showing appreciation for.

Emily share that what's interesting about this too is we care so deeply about these sorts of moments that we are finding ways to systematize these things, so it just becomes a no brainer, it's just a part of our process and for her they use tools to track customers and their emails and their names and all of that. But there is a note section that they are actually working on building out that has personal details there like a customer who has a daughter who recently has this particular interest or is on a soccer team, so we know these things that we can really customize small things like maybe over the holidays we send them a little ornament with a soccer ball something that is seemingly small but really does matter.

• Emily shared that there's a lot of different things. She’s very excited because at Spark Fund they are beginning to look very intimately at each of the sales and accounts that they have, their customers intimately. They are really big organizations, they're working with Fortune 100 companies that have a thousand, couple thousand people who work with them and one of her jobs at this point is to look at those companies and try to understand the people pretty intimately. So, they’re doing things like elevate the sort of customer intelligence and customer experience to make it really personalized. They talk a lot about personalization and technology but what she is talking about here is personalization in relationships and those in-person relationships and she really thinks it will transform the way that their customers look and engage with them. So, things like mapping out the customers and where they sit in the organization, taking those notes and doing it on a customer and organization to organization basis. So, that's something that they're working on now and it's a slightly hybrid approach to CX, it's definitely not something that she was able to read anywhere that people were doing. So, she’s really excited to figure that out and the other side that she’s most excited about outside of her work with Spark Fund and she also lead a technology, Women in Technology Organization and they're launching a new set of programming around diversity and inclusion, so how do you get people to feel safe and secure in their environments and they are really tied CX and inclusion. She believes this to her core that if people don't feel like they are safe or that they can speak up or that they are valid, or points are valid in a company, you're not going to get really good ideas and you're certainly not going to be able to connect with different types of customers. You can't relate with somebody on a different level, then you're missing out so there's a huge component of how do you actually internalize safety within a company so that people feel like they are equal and she can connect people who have similar values and similar backgrounds with the customers that they do feel like they have someone who's rooting for them and understands them deeply within an organization. So, she’s really excited about both of those things and a lot of it goes to this idea of getting really connected with not just one person but multiple people so that you can create that surround sound experience that everyone's raving about in a company.

Emily shared that it’s called Women in Tech Campaign but one of the things that they're doing is these events that we're bringing to folks that help people physically reduce their barriers to conversation so people can relate to one another who are different from them and that's a huge skill and customer service, customer experience especially if you're getting someone who's calling and they're not happy how do you break down those barriers and open that up regardless of background and so that's really what they're focused on. And of course, tech is a very broad term, it's not just developers, it's people who are using tech like we're doing now.

Yanique agreed that stated because we're using the podcast to reach out to many different people and share all this amazing information, so yes, technology really does work, it definitely has given her a platform as customer service is something she’s extremely passionate about to reach and connect with people from all different parts of the world. And even though we’re as small as we are here in Jamaica, some of the expectations that our customers have here are no different from the expectations that a customer would have if they were in Paris or if they were in China or if they were in DC., at the at the end of the day we're all human beings at the core with emotions and we do have certain expectations.

Emily agreed and stated that to be fair these big companies Amazon, Google all of them that are international, they are training us all to expect a certain level. And it's the companies that really take that on and you don't have to be big, you don't have to be Amazon to care about it in this way. And like I said we are not an Amazon but we've made some strides and investments in making it from the very beginning work and make the experience valuable for customers and she truly believes that the innovators and the disruptors in the market are the ones that are going to look at these tried and true systems and apply a positive experience because as you said at the very beginning, people are willing to pay for that, they're willing to pay, not a huge premium but a premium for service and it's not a new concept, think about how airlines are priced, people are willing to pay for business class. And the more you can make that accessible, the more you can have those intermediate tiers, you see them get leverage and use so there's truth to all that.

• Emilyshared listeners can find her at –

www.sparkfund .com

LinkedIn – sparkfund

Facebook – @sparkfund

Twitter – @sparkfunder

Instagram – @emilyrasowsky

Twitter - @ERasowsky

LinkedIn – Emily Rasowsky

• Emily shared that one the thing that she constantly repeats to herself or when she’s having a moment, it's not necessarily a quote but it's almost a reminder, it's that, “You've been through challenge and you always will get to the other side, that this too will pass.” You will have a moment and then it'll end and it's a reminder of how she has gotten through things that have been challenging before. So, it's less of a quote and more of a reminder, our grounding. “Okay, you've gone through worse.” And to Yanique’s point about gratitude, she finds in those moments to bring up something that she’s really grateful for even if it's really hard to do because sometimes it's really hard. It can just automatically take you to a different space, it’s like things are kind of going awry but it can't be that bad there are people in this world who don't have the same privileges and luxuries that she has right now and that's enough to be grateful for.

Yanique agreed and stated that we do need to remind ourselves of that sometimes because we do get caught up in everything that's going on and we're complaining, and we're just frustrated, and things didn’t go the way that we planned but sometimes God has a bigger plan for us and when one door closes another one surely opens. So, we just have to be open for that.

Links

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Slack
• Evernote

John Formica, the “Ex-Disney Guy”, is a highly sought after internationally known speaker and author of the top selling book, “Making the Customer Experience Magical Now! - How to Succeed in Business and Beat Out Your Competition Today”.

John has appeared on the NBC Morning Show, ABC, CBS, FOX, Univision, numerous business journals and recently featured in the Virgin Atlantic In-flight Magazine, after completing five successful speaking tours in Australia and being named “Australia’s Best Customer Experience Coach.” John has inspired audiences with over 3,500 keynotes and seminars throughout the United States and all across the globe. 

Today, John is the leading authority in the service industry, small business growth and team culture environments. He has successfully coached hundreds of small businesses, cities, tourism communities, healthcare professionals, universities, schools and teams to build customer loyalty for life, attract and keep more customers and create “Whistle While You Work” Team Environments.

Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
• In your book, you talk about the Disney philosophy of people management. Could you share with us a little bit about the philosophy and purpose.
• Could you share with us what is Disney’s purpose statement?
• What are some online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
• We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. The people are just not motivated. Now, if were sitting across the table from that person, that business owner, manager, that CEO, what's the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business.
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of helps you refocus and keep you on the path?

Highlights

• John stated that he spent his entire career in the service industries. He managed hotels, resort properties and even assisted living communities and truly believed in that service mentality of really taking care of people and in hospitality field, that's what you do, you take care of the guests and treat them just like there’re family. And he did that for many years with some pretty big companies and then he got a call from the Disney Company to help the Disney organization during their huge expansion in the resort division. And it was a dream come true because there's no better company he thinks as far as hospitality and what they offer. And so, when he got to Disney, they had 4 hotels and a campground but there were 16 brand new hotels on the drawing board and his role was to open up each hotel, hire the staff, develop the staff, training staff, and more importantly, create a Disney Resort experience that would differentiate the Disney hotels from everybody else. And he absolutely loved that because with Disney focuses on we all know is they we provide all of us an incredible experience. So, just imagine in any business regardless of what it is, even if it's a nonprofit organization. Could you imagine if you could go beyond just providing service and create an experience that is memorable that people will talk about, that people become loyal to in any manner, how magical could that be and that's what Disney does, and he gets the honor of traveling around the world, sharing Disney strategy is so that any business could create that same Disney like culture and incredible magical customer experience.

Yanique reiterate that he’s doing things that people would want to be doing on a regular basis and having fun while doing it and he’s also creating value in people's lives.

John agreed and stated that he loves helping people, he’s a server. He just wants to serve people in whatever we can help them. In his world, it's really helping them as leaders, help them as tools, help them in their business by the result. Changing people's lives and there’s not a noble cause in that.

• John stated that everybody has a product or service and we all do our best to provide a very good product or service, but Walt Disney was an incredible person, an incredible leader and philosophy. You can build and create the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make that dream come true. We know that in in any business, even in the great high-tech world where technology is really taking the place of many people, we are all in the people business and we will remember customers, consumers, we will remember people over a product or service. And so, we have to make sure we focus on the success in training and developing and motivating people. And one of the things that Disney does, Walt Disney created an incredible purpose statement and a purpose statement is not a mission statement because the mission statement is geared towards the company or organization of what they're trying to accomplish, with this purpose statement it's not what, where, how, when or who you’re going to do it to. It's the big purpose statement of why. Why do it, if you think about it, we all should be doing things because we want to not because we have to and if you can create a culture around an organization where people believe in the purpose and they do it because their heart is in it, we all know that they'll do a better job. And so, Disney focuses on that purpose and he shares in his seminars and in his keynotes that we really have to boil down to and make sure people know why, and once we do, now we have a better understanding and vision to where we want to accomplish.

• When asked about Disney’s purpose statement, John stated that it's really simple. It's to make people happy. And you think about it, when he asked that question during his programs, he’ll ask, “What do you think Disney's purpose is?” a lot of people say create memories, entertainment, provide quality, some people even told him to make money. And all those things are great purposes, but they are the result of making people happy because once Disney stops making people happy, you and I are not going to go there, we're not going to buy their products and services and it will not exist. So, the focus is to make people happy. To give an example, it's not a marketing statement, it's not something that you'd find on a commercial or a sign in a park that says we make people happy. It's for the internal customer, in other words, it's the people that work there. So, they truly understand why, and he gave a great example, before you even fill out an application at Disney to work there no matter whether you are applying for a job as a manager, or bus driver, housekeeper, somebody to operator the rides or sell tickets or work in food and beverage, it doesn't make a difference. You watch a video and, in the video, they talk about that if you are lucky enough to work for the organization, the reason why they're going to hire you is to make people happy and you're going to work when other people play. And then they will talk about that you’re going to work weekends and you're going to work holidays and it's not going to be easy what you're doing. And they talk about the structure and some of the high grooming guidelines that they have, the strict guidelines and they’re not trying to scare anybody to apply, what they're trying to make sure you understand that if you work there you have to believe in it because Disney doesn't hire anybody that needs a job. They hire people that believe in what Disney believes in. And you think about it, if we believe in it, our heart’s in it and we’ll do it because we want to not because we have to. Many organizations don't focus so much on that. And like you said, then the employee does what they're told and nothing more. They do it 9:00 am to 5:00 pm but they won't do it 5 minutes after 5:00 pm because they don't understand the “Why” and all the things that we will do, the extra things we'll just do what we do or what was supposed to do but we won’t go extra, we do the extra when our heart’s in it.

Yanique stated that in the book it also says our purpose is more important than the job and while you're doing your job, you're always having your radar up, looking for ways to make people happy. For example, taking a picture of a family in front of the castle. Now in a regular organization let's say for example, a supermarket, you pack the grocery bags for the customers or you work at an automotive company that sells cars so you're a sales representative, your purpose statement is clearly going to be different from Disney, but will you also apply that same technique with the purpose being more important than the job.

John agreed and gave an example from an auto service repair. Many of them are his clients and many of them are mom and pop establishment so he’s trying to help them to build that culture and if you ask them what their purpose is, their purpose is to fix the car or make sure the car is running properly or make sure all the maintenance is done and make sure they use quality parts and make sure of all those things. And that's not their purpose, that's their job, that's what they do. But in reality, if we boil down to what's the purpose of an auto service repair shop in reality, it's to give him the consumer a peace of mind knowing that the vehicle is safe on the road, it's going to be in working order, it's going to be reliable when he has to get up to go to work in the morning or his kids’ cars are safe, his wife's car is safe. It's that piece of mind he’s getting. So, when you think about it, you have to do the job, you have to mechanically do all those things correctly but when he says to himself, wait a minute, he’s going to make sure that he’s going to double check to make sure those bolts tightened because he know he wants his client to have a peace of mind knowing that they did the right job, they didn't just do it halfway, they didn't just do a quick job, they go in, get this thing turned around, make money and move on to the next one. He wants to give them a peace of mind so when they drive off after getting their car serviced that they feel good, so, every decision is based on did that give someone a peace of mind. And that's the decisions that they make based on that. And it’s the same thing of a grocery store, again, maybe not a piece of mind of course but it's providing a great experience because they can go anywhere in grocery stores but knowing that that person who stacks the groceries in the bag doesn't just throw them in there and says, “Who cares, you need the groceries in a bag, I did it for you,” but takes good care knowing that they provide a great service in the food industry for people, making and sure you continue to think that way. So, everybody believes in it whether you're just a baggar or you're the manager of a grocery store. Everybody's going to do everything they can to make sure that that food is great quality it is not damaged so when they go back they can have that great experience.

Yanique stated following up on their point as it relates to the purpose, in the book it also shares that when you’re creating this magical purpose for your company you should get as many people involved in developing this statement, the owners, the managers, the supervisors, the front team, the back-office team. Don't be afraid to also get feedback from your loyal customers, ask each other why it's important, make it clear, short and easy, make it emotional, make it visible and memorable, reward and recognize people when it's carried out and post those accomplishments everywhere and discuss them at meetings and also celebrate successes and have fun. Why do you think it's important to do all these things just to create the magic in the purpose?

John stated that your purpose statement has to be an emotional connection between staff, managers, and the people that have carry it out and of course the organization. In many companies like he shared, they kind of lose sight of the why and they focus on all the other things on what, where and what he has seen many businesses small or large is that the CEO and the Presidents and executive team and the board of directors and maybe even the H.R. folks, they’re the ones that create the purpose statement and then all of a sudden it gets introduced to the entire organization and says, “By the way, this is what you're going to do now.” And the staff sitting there going, “What was wrong with the other one that we had?” or “I'm so busy, now there's more things you want me to do.” So, if you get everybody involved, you create the buying, you get everybody's opportunity to express their own thoughts of why they do what they do. It doesn't mean everybody is going to have a perfect answer to all of it but at least people have ownership and then a buy in that I'll do it because I had a part of it, when it's just top down, it's just becomes another thing and the interesting thing about a purpose statement, is that you’d never ever going to achieve it. So, it's not something that, “Okay, we did it. Now what else is next?” Your purpose statement has to be something that you're always going to be striving every single day, day in, week in, month out, year out, 10 to 15 years from now. It's not something you change because you're always striving to achieve it. An example of Disney making people happy. Every single cast member at Disney and there are 75,000 of them that work at the Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida alone, every single one of them know that today when they wake up, before they go to work, they got to say to myself, “Man, today I'm going to make someone happy.” And they're always striving to do that, well guess what, “Tomorrow’s another day, I have to make someone happy again.” And there are people that have been at Disney for the first time, got to make them happy. And there are people who have been at Disney 50 times, got to make them happy too and you’ve got to make kids happy, you’ve got to make adults happy, you're going to make seniors happy, you’ve got to make each other happy. So, it never ends, you're always striving to reach that so when you get everybody excited about it, that's what he wants you to post things, he wants you to talk about it, he wants you to reward and recognize people because then becomes a living thing not something that the flavor of the month or we have a new H.R. director or we have a new CEO, that's their idea of what the vision of the company.

• Yanique stated that it really does tie things in together. To ensuring that you're striving to do it every day, it's also important to ensure you have the right people. And so, one of the things that she has found over the years as a customer service trainer is that she thinks a lot of the customer service issues in organizations apart from the fact that it's highly driven by leadership. She thinks that who you recruit and if you're getting the right person to suit that particular role is very important. And one of the things that really struck her in his book was one of your suggestions is to get out of your office to interview and in it he gives mention to the fact that you should walk the person around, see how they interact with fellow employees and customers, do they have eye contact, do they open up doors, are they willing to stick their hand out and say, “Hi, my name is Susie, I'm applying for a job here.” Do they pick up pieces of paper, do they have energy and enthusiasm? So basically, he’s saying on the first job interview this is some of the strategies that you should employ instead of keeping them in an office and asking them the same monotone questions over and over.

John stated that what they’re trying to see if they’re a good fit and the best way to see it is to actually watch it in action rather than when they interview people in an office they say things like, are you energetic? Are you a people person? Do you like working with others? Do you have a lot of enthusiasm and energy? And what are the typical responses, “Yes” So by walking around they actually get to observe them and see are they and he always have this great saying that during an interview that's the best the person is ever going be is during an interview, it goes downhill after that. So, if they're not enthusiastic, if they're not helpful, if they're not friendly, if they're not showing you eye contact, if they're not enthusiastic about the possibility of working for you during that interview, you don’t think it's going to happen once you hire them, do you, of course not. What he tries to do is get people out, some organizations are really small, there's not any place to go, maybe a small office cubicle they’re working in but then get him outside, take them to a coffee shopp or something like that. Now, if you want somebody to punch numbers on the computer and sit in the back office and not talk to anybody, maybe that's not exactly necessary but in the customer service world that we live in where it's all about creating those experiences, you cannot hire somebody to change them into your culture. If you didn’t see it during the hiring process, as you should. He shared a story about his hotels, he used to get his front desk staff involved in the interviewing process. Whenever he was hiring a front desk person or a concierge guest services person, he would walk them around the hotel and do all the things you just suggested seeing how they react and he would take them to the front of the front desk at the hotel on the other side of the desk, not on the guest side but he would take them on the side that the workers are and he would all of a sudden say, “Oh, wait a minute I have to get this question. I'll be right back.” And he would leave them with his front desk clerks and at his front desk clerks would be, “Hey, how are you? You’re looking to work here? What are you doing now?” They would go through a little mini interview, what was interesting about it was he got feedback from them, many of them said, “Oh, this girl Susie, she's awesome. We really like her.” Or other times they would say, “I don't know. George has a personality of a dead fish, I don't think he's going to work.” And he would get feedback from his own team, guess what it created. One, it was great because he got a great perspective but then they had ownership in who we were hiring, and they had ownership of what they felt was a good fit and it was remarkable when you can do those sorts of things because now you're really seeing the person's true colors during that interview.

• When asked about some online resources that he use in his business, John shared that he’s like a sponge so he’s constantly learning, growing from that perspective. He’s a voracious book reader, he’ll listen to podcasts, he’ll explore the internet and webinars, he’s always striving to get better and he may not learn from everything that they say but he’s just looking for one or two great ideas that he can incorporate, that he could share, that he could fine tune to tailor to maybe a client of his that he’s working with or an upcoming speaking engagement. So there have been some great mentors in his life that he says were there physically with me. These are mentors that were his bosses or people that would help him along the way but there were also a lot of authors and people like Stephen Covey is probably one of the most original first person to affect him when he would listen to his C.Ds in a car or he would read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen Covey. He kind of molded him through his career. People like Jack Canfield who wrote all the chicken soup books has a great book, The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be and he would highly recommend that to help you through it. He was a big Zig Ziglar fan and Zig Ziglar was the best motivator because he made him laugh and on the things that he would talk about and John would say, “Gosh, that was so funny but had such great merit.” There is John Maxwell who is another one, but he has always thought that through networking, through masterminds, through attending conferences…..again, you can pick up a lot of gold nuggets from people that you wouldn't think were very knowledgeable or maybe you thought they weren’t at the top, but they would just tell you some really good things and he has a lot of respect for people like Yanique and others who are there sharing their ideas. He’s a big sponge from getting it from a lot of different resources not just one.

• John shared that as it relates to motivating people, the first thing he would tell them is to stop motivating people, stop trying to motivate them. He would look him in the eye and he would say, “Your heart is in the right place, but you cannot. I don't care who you are, you can't motivate anybody.” The key is to help create an environment will then motivate themselves. What he means by that is this, leaders always and he gets people all the time who come up to him, “How do I motivate my staff?” “How do I get my people to be so excited like you? I wish I had 10 people like you in my office.” “How do I get people excited?” The key is that's really hard to do but what we have to look at whether you're a manager or a business owner is instead of trying to figure out ways to motivate people, he wants you to think of the reverse strategy and try to figure out making sure there's nothing going on that is demotivating your people because when you demotivate your staff that's when people start to go in the wrong direction and there are so many things that can demotivate a staff member and everybody is demotivated differently. One person might say, “Well that's not a big deal.” Another person might say, “That was the toughest thing I've ever heard, and I don’t want to work for you anymore.” And you’d go, “What's the big deal?” Everybody is motivated differently, and everybody is demotivated differently. He gives an example, growing up in his career, he was a go getter, he wanted to be the best general manager that Hyatt Hotels ever had, and he was driven by trying to do that. What he meant by that was he didn't want anybody to hand it to him, he wanted to earn it but to earn it he went to every single Hyatt Hotel that he worked at and he would speak to their top managers and say, “What do I need to learn? What can you do to teach me so that I can be better prepared on my journey to become a general manager?” And that's what drove him. So, when he had opportunities to learn, when he had a mentor that would sit down once a week, they would have lunch together and that mentor would share the good, the bad and the ugly about John Formica to make John Formica better, those are the things and sent him to seminars or suggested books to read, to him that manager motivated him because he knew that that's what he wanted. And he also worked for organizations where managers say, “You don't need that, we don't send you to training, we don't send you to seminars.” And those are things that you don't need any of that kind of stuff. That means they didn't give him an opportunity to learn and grow, that was demotivating. You could bring balloons on his birthday, you can give him oatmeal raisin cookies every day, you could send him home early, you can give him Starbucks coupons for free coffee, you could do those things, that's good, the intentions are good but that doesn't motivate him. What motivates his giving him the ability to learn and grow and what demotivated him the most, when he had leaders that didn't care about any of that stuff.

Yanique agreed and stated that especially if you know what specifically you're looking for as an individual. You knew what your personal purpose was which kind of dovetails back into what we know when we started the interview. The purpose statement that should drive the employees but even as an individual you knew what drove you as a person and so you're looking for characteristics and character traits of leaders that would be able to basically mold and drive that purpose for yourself.

John shared that as a manager and a business owner, the best way to find out what’s demotivating your staff is not looking at it as a general statement but it's a one on one. He used to always have one on ones with every single one of his direct reports and they just talked about the good, the bad, the ugly, what is it that they like what he’s doing, what is it that they want him to stop doing and what is it that they want him to continue doing and they talk about it. Sometimes he got some brutal honest input from a co-worker that said, “John you’re try to micromanage us. We can do it, or I can do it.” And he would say, “But you haven't shown me. Every time I've asked you to do it and I let you go, you didn't take it seriously enough or you didn't follow up.” But that was good it made him think, “Okay, am I micromanaging and maybe I shouldn't micromanage.” So then micromanaging was a demotivating thing for this particular staff member or maybe he didn't appreciate them, maybe he thought he said thank you, but he really didn't say thank you one on one, he kind of thanked the whole team. Again, find out one on one what motivates and what demotivates individuals. He loves this statement and knows the familiarity with it, “There's no I in team.” Guess what, teams are made up of a bunch of I’s, individuals, so we have to take care of individuals as well not just looking at the team's perspective.

• John shared that he’s really fired up about a new coaching program that he developed in partner with a writer in Australia. He gets a lot of people where he speaks at events and then people ask him to come in at events and speak, whether it’s training, whether it's leadership or hoping to create a better experience or hiring and all those things. He loves to do that but they know that not everybody has the resources whether it's financially or time to do that, so they put together and it’s not finished yet but we put together their great online coaching program where you will be able to get twelve webinars once a month, you're going to get unlimited access to both himself and his partner to help you not only market, to attract customers that you'll have more customers than you can ever dream of but then he’s going to help you keep the ones you have. It's a great combination because it's going to be able to help the “ma and pa” business owner and those are the ones that we all know need a lot of help, we want them to be successful. They don't have a lot of resources, don’t even have a lot of knowledge, there jumping into their business with good faith hoping that it will work, he wants to do everything he can to help them work. So, he’s really fired up about that but he’s also doing a lot of international work as well. He shared earlier that he just got back from Romania helping their small businesses at an incredible global summit. He thinks his messages can be used in lots of different organizations and he just want to do whatever he can to help.

• John shared listeners can find him at –

www.johnformica.com

John shared that you can sign up and get my new training videos for free. You can download them, it's just his way of giving back. They are only about eight minutes long but it's a good understanding of the philosophy of what they talk about. But the neat thing is you get every week a newsletter which is basically a tip to help you create more magic in your business and it could be a leadership tip, it could be a relationship tip, hiring, it could be the customer experience and it's a great way of staying in touch with him and you will have all the contact information as well but you will also have access to his library of other articles that he has posted over 100 articles that you'll be able to use but that's a great way of becoming part of his membership free, it doesn't cost anything. But then you'll get access when they’re ready to roll that out, they will send everybody that information, so if it's something of interest, it will be extremely affordable, and you'll be able to use that. He suggests that's probably the best way to be in contact, all his contact information is on that so if they want to reach out to him for a speaking event or perhaps helping their team, they can just go to his contact page and start that process. But he does a lot of free discovery calls just to see if he’s a good fit and see what if they can do anything they can to help you out.

• John shared that he has a couple of quotes, there is one, it's a Zig Ziglar quote and he thinks this is just a great quote in life as well as in business and he said, “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” And in leadership, help your staff achieve the success they want and of course as a leader your success that you want in your career or in business. And he thinks if we just treat people like that, we do whatever we can as givers and serve others in and even just making someone smile today that might not be a big deal, but it could be a big deal to them. It will come around, you don't worry about the results, we all want things instantaneously, we want to be successful right now, it's a journey but it's a great journey that he thinks that if you're a giver like, you'll get the reward.

Links

Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue Online Course

• Making the Customer Experience Magical Now! - How to Succeed in Business and Beat Out Your Competition Today by John Formica
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen Covey
• The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield

Lavois Cruickshank, a simple yet ambitious young man Lavois has the incredible dream of positively impacting and inspiring a nation. The Spanish Town native lives by a philosophy posited by Jared Kintz, “Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you've made no difference in the world.” and with this as his motivation. Lavois aims to use his abilities, gifts and skills to make a difference. He is currently serving as a Jamaica House Fellow at the Office of the Prime Minister in Kingston, Jamaica. Lavois prides himself in excellence, committing wholeheartedly to any duty or task. With his deep interest in Finance, Economics and Strategic Planning, Lavois pursued a BSc in Economics and Banking & Finance at the University of the West Indies. He also holds an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of Birmingham. With an immense love for tennis and a passion for nation development, Lavois actively serves as a math tutor at his alma mater, Calabar High School in Kingston, Jamaica; as a volunteer with the Jamaica National Foundation as an ambassador of the Governor General’s I Believe Initiative (I.B.I).

Just to give a little background to our listeners. Yanique was privileged to have the opportunity to hear Lavois speak in front of an audience of 300 plus last week around this time as we celebrate National Customer Service week, he was invited as a special guest on a panel of people who are probably twice his age, but he really commanded great attention and was able to really wow the people who are listening including herself, hence, why extended this wonderful invitation for him to join us on the Podcast

 Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
• What is your view on customer service and customer experience?
• As a customer yourself could you give one to three things that you maybe experience whether it be locally or internationally of a business that really made a difference for you?
• What are some tips that you would recommend to businesses that would help to make experiences effortless for their customers?
• How do you stay motivated everyday?
• What if you have employees in your organization who don't have that natural drive that you have. And there are certain goals that you have set for a company, but they are not pulling their weight. They’re not creating that level of culture where your customers are feeling satisfied and so your internal customer culture is not where you want it to be. What advice would you give to a business owner who had that kind of dynamic?
• What’s the one online resource, tool, websites or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business or your own way of operating daily?
• Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are working on to develop yourself – something that you are really excited about?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to keep centered and to focus on your path or goal?

Highlights

• Lavois stated that he grew up in a family that encouraged excellence, excellence in the sense that going through school you were required to just do well, it was not an option, it was just mandatory. So, he grew up with two teachers as parents and he grew up with church parents as well, so there’s the balance of the academics and the balance of the school and spiritual part of it as well and so, he had to just focus during school. So, he started off in primary school, Calabar for high school and then it was just a natural transition in tertiary education at UWI. He just always had an interest in finance, he grew up watching TV particularly Owen James’ On a Personal Note and he just thought finance is probably something he wants to get into and then it was about money. So, it was just very interesting. He knew from then that he would want to be working at a bank wearing a jacket suit something of the sort and that was what really motivated him at the time but then growing up in Calabar, he was inspired by his economics teacher who just had so much passion in sharing her knowledge with them. And so, he thinks it was because of her why he chose to do economics at UWI and then he did well at UWI surprisingly. He was not the amazing student in interpreting but because he loved economics so much it became just second nature and he just did well at it and now he’s serving as a Fellow at the Office of the Prime Minister. What they do is that they're pushed into different projects to assist wherever they can. And he’s actually assigned to the National Export Import Bank of Jamaica which is the EXIM Bank working in strategic planning just assisting where he can in the bank achieving its goal.

• Lavois stated that when he got the invitation was when he actually knew that there was even a Customer Service Association existed, so much so a Customer Service Week. He thinks that we are transitioning as an economy from just a manufacturing point of view and we have now transition to services, where are in a service led industry, our economy where services are really taking up a large portion of what we do generally. He finds that as well that service has become almost as a sign, it is what differentiates you because everybody offers pretty much the same goods and services and if you're not able to differentiate yourself in this very competitive market it is difficult for you to survive. So, he thinks service excellence and just the service that you offer is key in the longevity of a business is.

• Lavois stated that he’s a little different, he doesn’t like interaction that much which is a sad case in some senses, but he likes being able to just go in and get what he wants and leave. And so, the easier you make that process for him is the better. So, if there is no hassle in getting what he wants, there's no long lines, if there is no long amount of persons to speak to in getting whatever he wants from you as a company, then it makes it easier for him. He actually remembers studying in the UK and it's not particularly one provider of a service, it's just how easy it is to do anything that you want to in that. If there's something that you want, you can always know that the option is online and that is what he found was the difference between the UK and Jamaica. Everything is so much easier to do because it's online and he find as a young person and especially as a tourist somewhat because he was a student. It would be not have been easy for him to find certain places or to know where to look for certain things, he just had to google it and it made sense because he could just purchase it there online and have it shipped to him. So, he thinks that was what made the difference between Jamaican experience in terms of shopping and a UK experience, everything was just there for him to find online. So, that was one major that has caught him with shopping or purchasing anything.

Yanique stated that one of our guests a couple of months ago wrote a book called The Effortless Experience and it's really been something that she has thought about for a very long time in terms of what customers are looking for and a lot of times not just yourself even other people that she has interviewed are just generally having conversation. People are actually looking for as you said an experience that requires them to put as little effort as possible which is why the online is such a remarkable experience for most people because if you can do the transaction literally at your office desk or while you're sitting in a doctor's office with your kid waiting to see a dentist or while you're sitting in an airport waiting to catch a flight. It makes your life that much easier.

• Lavois stated that it's a little bit difficult particularly because in the locust fair we're not necessarily at that place where we could market online things. We are somewhat behind the world in that particular sense, but it wouldn't hurt for us to still push to get there. He thinks if we can market our things online and allow transactions to happen, he thinks the Prime Minister himself is trying to get us to that place where an economy meaning we're just doing everything digitally and for transactions to be easily done, quicker and that transaction cost being safe and that's us being more efficient. Apart from being online you want to be everywhere, your customers are everywhere, you want to be on all social media networks as well and this links back to the presentation that he did at the Customs Service Association. What it speaks to is us as millennials being your major target markets, we are reaching or spending peaking year and so we're going to be in your faces, we are going to be your customers. And so, what you have to do as a strategy to reach us as millennials is to just be everywhere. Twitter, Instagram, social media, anyone where you can possibly be that you know your market will be, you should be. You can provide a self-service service if there is something that you can implement in your organization that allows that customer to just go in and to come out as quickly as possible, to just get what they want from you and leave he thinks that would be very good to implement. Probably just be personal, understand that each customer’s need is probably different. And so, how you interact with each one of us will make a difference as well. And then answer quickly in case we have any queries are not, just be very quick about it because we are very impatient and as customers we want it and we want it now. So those are probably just one, two, three tips that he could probably offer with any organization that wants to just make it effortless for their customers.

When asked about why he thinks people want things now versus 10 or 15 years ago. Lavois stated that’s just how we are. He thinks that's just the general nature. Instant gratification is what we desire or want something that is just very natural. We get that satisfaction from having it now and the impatient is not something that we can work with. He thinks that technology has definitely helped to propel that desire. Technology has allowed us to access things very quickly than, quicker than we thought possible, initially and because we are now used to technology granting what we desire quickly, it has now become second nature that we just want it because it can happen, it has propelled us to that kind of mindset where it needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. Which can also be a bad thing, but it is a good thing in a sense.  

Yanique agreed that stated that the reality as she say to people generally customer experience is constantly evolving so we're here discussing what customers want now, about five years from now it's probably going to be completely different from what we're discussing. The customer is driving that whole change, back in the day when there was no social media you basically had to just probably complain via writing or state any challenge you have by writing, you really didn't have much power because nobody knows that you wrote the letter but a customer has so much power now with social media, they can blast a company whether they're doing well or they're not doing so well, on any of these platforms and it literally reaches millions of people in seconds.

• When asked about staying motivated, Lavois stated that how grew up and he thinks this is how he ended up in strategy planning because he just always had a plan in his head and he doesn’t know what drove that plan but there was always something in the back of his head saying this is what I want to do next. So, he remembers going to high school or going into UWI, he would simple plan out the courses that he wants to do from that first year, he would know what he wants to do in second year, what he wants to do in third year, what’s he’s going to do after the degree and so there's always a one-year, two-year, five-year plan. But there was something in the back of his head where he sees himself. He sees himself being successful, as himself making some impact in Jamaica locally and probably even the world. He just sees himself doing things and because that in the back of his head, he knows he gets up every day knowing that this is just my next step towards getting where to go. He doesn't think he’s satisfied with where he is, so he believes that this satisfaction somewhat is what drives him. At the same time, he grew up with parents who gave everything they had for their kids. He has seen his father work with entities that he did not like, that he did not enjoy, he endured jobs that he probably wouldn't have wanted to do just because he had children to see through life and so this is a contribution for his parents, he could not take that for granted. So, he knows that there is something for him to do to allow his father and mother to enjoy the life they wanted. At the same time there is so much that we can change and there's so much that we can impact. He feels like work in itself is not necessarily what you bring to the table but how you make people feel and so there’s so much that we can do and that keeps him motivated everyday.

• Lavois stated that he thinks he has probably experienced that before where there's some internally or people internally who don't necessarily have the same drive that you have. And he thinks from his own experience, what you need to do is to understand your own employees first of all because it's not that it might be eluding them it's just that you're probably not bringing the same message across very well. And so, what he encourages people to do is to look internally to see if there's something else that you can do to make that difference. So maybe it's that you just need to find out who that person operates and then do something else out of the ordinary that would probably get the reaction that you want and that kind of energy going forward with the business strategy and if that doesn't work. It's how you interact with them as well, it is that your own enthusiasm about it cannot bring out that same enthusiasm in them, he’s not sure what else can be done but he thinks there is an internal approach that needs to take place first to kind of look at who the person is, how they operate and then try your best to get that same enthusiasm out of them. And he thinks everybody has that side to them and it's just how you unveil it.

• Lavois stated that Whatsapp is a very good tool and it's not only for personal social media vibes, it's also his way of finding out information, this is how you keep current and it's surprising, a lot of people would not even realize that a lot of the information that you hear or find comes from social media platforms. He thinks WhatsApp, Facebook, all of these social media platforms allows us as millennials in a sense or even everybody to kind of keep up to date because the news is always there. And so, us as millennials don't necessarily read newspapers. He has to do it and ensure that he does to keep up. But at the same time the same news that would be translated into print is on social media platforms, so it forces us to kind of be up to date with information. So, he thinks any social media platform is definitely necessary for him.

• Lavois shared that he’s not a fan of reading, he’s not surprisingly. One particular book that has had some impact on him is a book that he actually read a long time ago, it’s called The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren and it's a more spiritual side in terms of reading. It was just him trying to find out what is it that he was here to do, what was his purpose here and what impact he could make. Apart from general reading, he loves reading quotes and inspirational messages and the one that he has put before mentioned in the bio was Jared Kintz and what Jared Kintz said was, “Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you've made no difference in the world.” And that has hit him so much because he realized if you are just here on earth and I'm not really making any difference then your life really makes no difference because you’re not impacting anybody's life and he feels like we are here and we're here to make so much of a changing in this world that we should just always attempt and aim at that and so if you're not making a difference then what purpose really does your life serve.

• Lavois stated that for his recent birthday, he decided to create a theme for his birthday which was “No fear, no pride, no compromise” and what the theme tried to do was basically to encourage him to go after everything he wants to do. He grew up with a lot of pride in a sense which kind of hindered him from doing a lot of things because he was afraid of what people would say and how they would see him, at the same time that was the fear component, that was the pride component and there was no compromise meaning he would not give up who he was to achieve anything that he wants. He has so many goals but there are so many roads to get there but he doesn’t want to give up who he really is and he’s not going to compromise who he is to get there. So, he’s very excited about the journey, he has executed a few things that he really wanted to do, and he has gotten over the fear of doing them simply because he thought people would see him in a particular light and feels very good to just go after your dreams. So, for this birthday he created that theme, no fear, no pride, no compromise and he’s just trying to accomplish whoever he wants to be in this life.

• Lavois shared listeners can find him at –

Facebook – www.facebook.com/lavois.cruickshank

• Lavois Lavois stated that it is not necessarily a quote, it’s just something I use to refer to when times get really hard because these things happen. It's probably in a quote somewhere, it says “What man has done before, man can do again.” which pretty much speaks to us being able to overcome any particular situation. What he does in his very difficult times is to think about other people who have overcome the same struggle or the same situation and then draw strength from that and it makes it easier almost because it gives us a certain level of courage to kind of still go through with this particular battle that we're having. So, if you're going through something very difficult, if you’re going through something that is very challenging, he would encourage you to think about people who have gone through the same struggle and how they’ve overcome and draw strength from them as well.   

Links

Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue Online Course

• The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren

Kenneth Burke is the marketing director for text request a B2B text messaging software company in Chattanooga. He runs a boutique marketing agency where he helps many companies of all sizes with their marketing and content strategies. And he's been awarded for work in psychology research and sales.

 Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
• On the website textrequest.com, and it says text messaging for small businesses, start texting with your current business number and you can reach four times more people and get more leads and increase revenue. Could you explain to us how that really works?
• In the 3 to 4 years that you said your startup has been in operation, can you tell us some of the industries that predominantly tend to use your service?
• What are some everyday solutions that you believe can help to improve customer experience in small business?
• As a consumer yourself, what’s one thing you look for when you shop with a business, what’s your number one thing you’re looking for a business to have?
• What’s the one online resource, tool, websites or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business?
• What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services but somehow, they lack the constantly motivated human capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what’s one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business.
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to keep centered and to focus on your path or goal?

Highlights

• Kenneth was asked to share his journey and he started by stating that Text Request is a startup. It's about four years old now, three and a half and he got into it because one of his good friends was one of the people who helped to start it. So, Kenneth was at a sales position somewhere else, he was looking to get out of it, just wanting something new and different. And his friend was super excited about this idea and the concept and starting things off and he thought you know what, I want to be a part of that. So, that's how he got here from his previous job. Before that, he has a degree in psychology with a focus on experimental research. And that's how he got here, and he has done some consulting on the side as well.

• Kenneth explained how “Text Request” basically works as he stated that it starts with a basic concept that these days most people are thinking consumers, most people don't answer their phone calls and don't reply to e-mails like they used to. So, depending on what industry you're in and then even within what company rates for phone calls are anywhere from 5% are answered to up to 20%. Twenty percent is definitely the high bar there. And then according to “Constant Contact” the average e-mail open rate is only about 18%, that's not even including responses or click through’s conversion. So, there's clearly room for engagement there and what we found is that most people in their studies and stats to back this up, most people want to text with a business.

• So, what we do at “Text Request”, we give people a platform or a dashboard where they can text back and forth with customers really easily. But the reason it's so successful or why it works so well is because people actually read their text, so 99% of texts are read, the response rate is about 90 seconds on average, so the reach rates four times that or maybe five times that of e-mail and then you're actually going to get engagement and get responses because it's what people want these days.

Yanique stated that it's interesting the way it’s explained because most businesses are also on Social Media. Social Media also has a platform for texting, so Facebook as Facebook Messenger. Instagram has Instagram messaging where you can directly message the business or the person depending on the type of business they are. So, why would they choose this platform versus those platforms that there's already interface of what the business is about, the products and services they have to offer, maybe even read feedback from other people who've interfaced with that particular product or service.

Kenneth stated that in general mobile messaging, any message you get from any platform is huge these days, it's just what people prefer. Facebook Messenger is kind of its own thing; a lot of people use it and it works really well. Text messaging is the basic communications tool and it works really well or meshes. It can work with your Instagram, it can work with your Google business listing and your search ads. And with your website or anywhere else online where you can control phone number. So, that's a big part of it, from the consumer side, they can go to your website search for you online and if they're on a phone they can just click and send you a text pretty quickly. And all of it comes to the same place which is easy for a business to manage. And then a lot of times too a business they're the ones trying to initiate the conversations. So, for them there might be a few dozen or might be several thousand customers or members or volunteers whoever it is that they're trying to keep up with and communicate with and text which is one place to do that's really nice as opposed to going to all of your individual apps to message someone.

• When asked about the industry that predominantly tend to use his service, Kenneth stated that there are a bunch of them. Everyone texts for 100 reasons, so, every business can find a way to text. Staffing is a big one, so staffing agencies have hundreds if not a few thousand employees on their roster so to speak that they're communicating with and trying to fill positions with clients and things like that. So, texting everyone is a lot easier or sending one message to everyone even is a lot easier than individually calling each person on the list and leaving a voicemail etc. Home service companies is another big one, so you think of maid services, cleaning or plumbing, electricians, companies like that - they are always needing to check that the person is going to be home or at their business for them to come by and make sure the doors are unlocked and even that quick scheduling of an appointment. A lot of times it is easier for them because a consumer a lot of times can't answer phone calls during the day while they're at work but they can send a quick text so that ends up working out really well.

Yanique stated that is sounds like it’s predominantly more service-based businesses rather than product-based business to which Kenneth agreed. Yanique also shared that in Jamaica where she lives, 74% which was the last statistic of GDP comes from service-based businesses. So, a lot of organizations are not necessarily into new products or manufacturing per say but more the core of their business has to do with providing a service to the consumer. Would you say where you are in the in the part of the United States that you are that maybe most of the businesses are also in that same realm or would you say it's the opposite?

Kenneth stated that it's hard to say. He doesn’t know the stats on it. The people he comes into contact with professionally day to day, week to week - most of them provide some sort of service. They might be accountants or a home service industry or something. Their particular area does have a lot of industry manufacturing but most of the small businesses around here are service based.

• Kenneth stated a few of the basics a business owner can utilize as everyday solutions to improve their customer experience, a fast and accurate website. Most people are going online to find out who you are, information what are your business hours, what are your reviews. So, making sure that it’s easy for them to find and that all the information is up to date is really important, particularly if you have specific business hours, there’s a lot of times with holidays or things change where there is something inaccurate on your listing and that turns away business. So that's a big one that a lot of people particularly they work with a marketing agency for their listing that they just overlook. Another one he thinks is just talking to your customers. It's simple, it's even obvious. A lot of times businesses and business owners particularly entrepreneurs, they get started and you have this idea of here's who might our customer is and here's what exactly it is that they need. But then you get into it and you find out that people aren’t flocking to my service or my new product as much as we thought they would. Our marketing must be wrong or something or these people must just be dumb but it's usually that there's just the disconnect between what you're providing and what your customers actually want and so, in their experience, having conversations day in and day out with dozens, hundreds, thousands of people helps you to really internalize what they're trying to accomplish and the way they want to go about it. And then you build those relationships and once you have those relationships you begin to empathize with them, you begin to think the same way that they think. And from there the service you offer, the customer service you offer, specific services and the entire experience starts to really come together.

• Kenneth stated that for him, it’s what's going to be easiest usually. There's always so much going on, there's always going to be someone who has a cheaper option, there’s always going to be someone who has a better option. So, for him it's just what's the quick solution I know he’s not going to regret.

Yanique reiterated that as a consumer, he’s looking for something that requires him to exert as little energy as possible but something that won't cost him too much in terms of that it's quick but it's also efficient. Yanique also mentioned that over the years in interviewing different people in different industries across the world for this podcast, she really has found that most consumers nowadays are seeking an effortless experience, they're looking for that organization that can take the effort out of the experience. Because there are so many other competing activities that you have to do on a daily basis. Take the effort out but at the same time ensure that they are achieving the goal that you've set in terms of achieving. So, whether it's buying a shoe or getting your carpet cleaned at home or getting a room painted or getting your website with a web developer, it's efficient. But you have to exert as little energy as possible because this person is just so able to meet your needs in such a very easy and effortless way.

Kenneth agreed and stated that it's the people who make it effortless are the companies who make it effortless are the ones that stand out.

• Kenneth stated that for the online resource or app that he couldn’t live without in his business, it's hard to say because he uses so many. It's kind of like if one was gone, there would be another one to take its place. He stated that their content management system is the biggest one, so WordPress for a while they just switch to Umbraco. For them that's the biggest thing because they’re always adding pages and changing copy and adding sections to our website and customer profiles, case studies and all these things. So just for him to just be able to jump in and make those changes 18 times a day is really helpful. Aside from that he would say probably the Mozbar Chrome extension. So, that basically it's a browser extension for Chrome where you can click on it while viewing any other website and see what it's domain authority is, how it kind of its backlink profile and some other search engine optimization key metrics which for a lot of what he does is crucial.

• Kenneth shared that it's always hard to pick books because there always so many and whenever you read one thing it tends to build on something else you’ve read. Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich for him was huge. It was it was kind of the first book on entrepreneurship run anything related to life and work that didn't involve just being in a corporate office all day, that he read which for him at the time he read it was really impactful for framing how he wanted to go about his day to day. The book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang was really big for him. In America in particular we have this mindset of like “Oh, you have to hustle, hustle 24/7” if you’re going to give anything, it's kind of, he calls it the “Gary V approach” and so this book is a scientific very well documented account of how the most successful people in history or at least some of them have prioritized rest over the grind. So, some people who are included in it are like Thomas Jefferson and Bill Gates and it talks about whenever you focus on rest and not just like vegging out in front of a TV or getting a lot of sleep although sleep is important, but rest as in doing other activities that stimulate different parts of your brain. So, even in college this was common, people would say, “Every 45 minutes you study, make sure that you spend 15 minutes doing something active.” It's kind of that back and forth of activity switching without trying to multitask. So, that was big and it kind of put some thoughts he had been having and some things he’d experienced before in one book that had all the references, all the resources, all the studies and the big names in it. So, I recommend that to everyone. And then the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson. For listeners they don't know, Erickson is the same one who did the research that Malcolm Gladwell ended up coining into the 10,000 hours. He loves the book because it's like a 30-year history of everything this man's done and everyone else in his field has done in just a few hundred pages. But he loves the concept in it that the brain really never stops growing, that it's incredibly elastic and that counter to the current believed your brain is done developing by the time you’re 25. You can keep pushing and keep growing and keep improving in different areas. You can't really teach an old dog new tricks.

• Kenneth stated that the one thing he would say is you can often do more with a few people who are really invested than with a lot of people who aren't. Jim Collins particularly in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t talks a lot about the concept of getting the right people on the bus. You need to get the right people on your team and you need to get the wrong people off of your team before you really start driving it. So, if you're in a position where you already have a great product, great service, you kind of have the customer experience over the product market fit. Tie it up and the problem is personality, sometimes you might not need to keep that person but on the other hand there's always more you can do as a leader. So, you need to evaluate how are you compensating them, are you giving them the intangibles that any reasonable person would want such as autonomy to do their job well, trust, listening to their ideas and actually acting on them and trying to encourage engagement as opposed to just saying, “Well, you don't know anything. So, we're gonna pass on you.” There's two sides, you can always be a better leader, you can always do more but at the end of the day you can't make somebody want to get up and help your business grow.

Yanique agreed with that point and stated that it's something that we speak about a lot in their customer service workshops, leadership workshops that attitude is something that comes from within and you can bring in the greatest trainers, the most expensive consultants, the best of the best that the world could ever provide. But at the end of the day if that person is just not wanting to do what you want them to do then you aren't going to get much further.

• Kenneth shared that right now they have a pretty small team and they're really tight knit which is convenient if nothing else. But also, practical and great and all those things. As a startup they just a few months ago hit the milestone of a Million Dollars in annual recurring revenue. And so that's very exciting by itself. But they also have what he thinks is a really good plan in place to at least double that in the next 12 months. So, that's exciting, he’s more intrinsically motivated but that helps him wake up in the morning.

• Kenneth shared listeners can find him at –

Facebook – www.facebook.com/textrequest

Twitter – www.twitter.com/text_request

Twitter – www.twitter.com/BurkeWriter

Instagram – @text.request

Instagram - @kennethburkewriter

• Kenneth shared a quote from William Faulkner, he was actually joking with one of his writing buddies and wrote in a letter and said, “I only write when I'm inspired. Fortunately, I'm inspired every morning at 9 am.” Kenneth loves that because a lot of times he finds that the discipline or the habit is more important than motivation or whatever challenge is going on. If you wake up every day and you say, “Okay, I'm up, here’s what I'm going to do towards my work, my goal, my passion.” It becomes a lot easier to just do the work but to see results over time.

   Links

Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue Online Course

• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss
• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
• Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

Joey Coleman helps companies keep their customers. He is an award-winning speaker. He works with organizations around the world ranging from small startups to major brands such as Deloitte, Hyatt Hotels, Zappos and Whirlpool. His first 100 days methodology fuels the remarkable experiences his clients deliver and dramatically improves their profits. His Wall Street Journal number two best-selling book Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days offers strategies and tactics for turning one-time purchasers into lifelong customers. When he's not speaking to audiences around the globe, Joey enjoys spending time with his amazing wife and two young sons in the mountains of Colorado.

Questions

• Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
• Could you shed some light on what you wrote in the book as it relates to the eight phases of customer experience, the assessing, the admitting, the affirming?
• As it relates to your different trips and travels all over and being a subject matter expert as it relates to customer experience, how do you feel about customer experience on a global level?
• How do you stay motivated everyday?
• What are some of the online resources, websites, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business?
• What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
• We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services but somehow, they lack the constantly motivated human capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what’s one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business.
• What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
• Where can our listeners find you online?
• What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to refocus and just get back on track?

Highlights

• Joey stated that he has a really eclectic background which he supposes is the polite way of saying he has done a lot of completely random things that made no sense to the outside world as he was going through it. But now with hindsight looking back there's a common thread. He was a Government International Relations Major in College then went straight to law school where he studied Litigation and National Security Law and International Law. He worked for the CIA, the White House and the Secret Service. He was a Criminal Defense Lawyer. He taught executive education kind of nighttime NBA type courses. He ran a division of a promotional products company. He ran an ad agency for over 15 years and now he’s a full time Professional Speaker. So, he travels around the world giving speeches, leading workshops and consulting with clients to help them keep their customers. The thread that ties all of these crazy different jobs and careers in this life that he has had the blessing of leading together is the fact that in each of the positions he held, the way you excelled was to have a keen understanding of the human condition. Why do people do the things they do and what can we do to make them do the things we'd like them to do? And so that's kind of the common thread and that's really what led him to this world of customer experience. He was running his ad agency and of course they were very focused on helping their clients develop websites and ad campaigns and brand identity kits that were designed to bring customers into the fold. But the more he did this the more he realized that customers were running out the back door as quickly as they brought them in the front door. And he quickly realized that focusing on customer retention was actually a more valuable and more important practice than focusing only on customer acquisition.

Yanique agreed that his background is eclectic as it is sure to form great stories when he’s speaking to these different people throughout the world being able to draw on different experiences from different industries. Because it kind of pulls it together because at the end of the day even though he has worked in so many different areas we're still human beings regardless of where we're from or what we do.

Joey mentioned that he is a big believer that regardless of whether you see yourself in a B to B (Business to Business) or a B to C (Business to Customer) or a B to G (Business to Government) environment, whether you're an entrepreneur or a business owner or an employee no matter where you fall in kind of the different things you do as part of your job or career, you're interacting with other human beings and the better we can understand the journey that our fellow humans are on and meet them where they're at the more we will be able to achieve the goals that we have for our business or for our life or for our growth.

Yanique mentioned that she was lucky enough to be one of the persons that Joey sent an advanced copy of his book to Never Lose A Customer Again and she has been reading it and it's been so amazing because it feeds her soul because this is all that she cares about. She’s passionate about customer experience and customer service and there's some valid points that he has in it.

• Joey stated that in the book he outlined his way of thinking or kind of the way he has developed in coordination with his clients of thinking about the customer journey and he believes there are eight potential phases that your customers have the ability to go through if you're willing to hold their hand and help them navigate them. All eight phases start with the letter A. He spent enough time working in Washington D.C. and Government not to give an acronym that he was expecting people to remember so he made it easy. The goal is to get your customers to give you straight A's on your report card. All of the phases start with the letter A. The first one is Assess, this is Phase 1. This is when a prospect is considering whether or not they want to do business with you. In common parlance we call this marketing and sales. Then we go to Phase 2 Admit, this is day one of the first hundred days of the customer relationship in the admit phase, the prospect acknowledges that they have a problem or a need that they believe you can help. And so, they transition from being a prospect to being a customer almost as quickly as that happens, they enter Phase 3, the Affirm phase. In common parlance this is buyer's remorse. This is where the customer begins to doubt the decision that they just made. And your job as the business is to counteract those negative and doubtful emotions by reinforcing the wisdom and the benefit of their purchase decision. We then come to Phase 4 Activate. This is the first major experience the customer has with your brand after the sale. So, if you sell a product this could be the unboxing experience or when they get the product home. If you sell a service this could be the kickoff meeting or the first time you start to deliver on the service. He calls it Activate because he thinks it's important to energize the relationship when you formally start working together and are really set the tone for what the interactions and the relationship are going to be going forward. So, we're halfway through the eight phases. Then we come to Phase 5, this is where most businesses start to fall off the rails a little bit. See most businesses deliver the product or service and then they're kind of done and they miss the opportunity in phase 5 to Acclimate the customer to doing business with you. Most businesses have sold their product hundreds, thousands maybe even millions of times. But to a new customer it's the first time they've ever had an interaction with you, so you need to hold their hand and get them familiar with your way of doing business. After that we come to Phase 6 Accomplish, this is when the customer achieves the goal that they had when they originally decided to do business with you. Every customer before they make a purchase decision or when they make a purchase decision has a goal in mind of what they're hoping to accomplish. If as the business, we don't track that and measure whether we're making progress towards succeeding at achieving that goal and then celebrate with the customer when they accomplish that goal we miss the opportunity to validate the original purchase decision. And if you don't successfully acknowledge the accomplished phase you can't get to the last two phases. Okay so the last two phases are Phase 7 Adopt, this is when the customer becomes loyal to you and your brand. They're only going to do business with you, they will happily buy whatever you create. They've definitely become a big supporter of yours. And then last but not least we reach Phase 8, the Advocate phase. This is one that adopting customer becomes a raving fan referring their friends and colleagues to you. So, these are the eight phases that a customer as he said has the potential to go through regardless of what business you're in, regardless of whether your product or service - domestic or international, small, medium or large. All human beings have the potential to go through these phases. It's just a question of whether as organizations we want to help them do it.

Yanique mentioned that she liked the fact that Joey noticed this straight A’s theme. She thinks it's so important to recognize that they cannot become evangelists or advocates of our business unless they've gone through some process. She stated that people think that people are going to walk and speak great things about our organization just because we've sold them an item once or we've sold them an item twice. And it's so much more than that, there's a process that goes through that will convert that person from just feeling like, “Okay, I just did business with an okay company” versus “I just did business with a great company and I need to tell everybody else and I want my friends to shop from them and I want my family members to shop from there.”

Joey stated that all too often he thinks we ask for those referrals too early in the process immediately. For a while it was very popular especially in e-commerce settings when you bought something online for after you went through the checkout cart, they would hit you with a pop-up screen that said, “Who else do you know that would be interested in our product or service?” And they wanted you to enter an e-mail and he’s thinking to himself, “I haven't even received the product or service that I signed up for and you already want me to be sharing it with other people.” It's way too soon. It's kind of like being on a date with someone and you go on a first date and before the waiter takes your order for what you want for dinner your date says, “So, I'd like to meet your mom and dad.” It's too fast it's going to make me anxious I don't want to order then. It’s too early in the relationship. He doesn’t think you should be asking for referrals until the customer has accomplished their goal. That phase 6 level where they achieve the goal they originally had when they decided to do business with you. He thinks after that is when you start to ask for referrals and additional business because they have proven that their investment has had a nice return.

• Joey mentioned that one of the things that Yanique probably had learned from some of their exchanges back and forth before scheduling this conversation, he has a tendency to be pretty direct pretty blunt in his feelings and his beliefs which sometimes can get him into trouble but that's the way it goes. He believes it’s a general rule the bar for customer experience on the planet is lying on the ground. He thinks that most businesses do very little to pay attention to customer experience. He’s in this space as well as Yanique and he knows the people that are in this space we work very hard at it. But he thinks globally, it is not nearly given the priority that it needs to be given. He thinks more often than not customer service gets attention, but customer experience doesn't. And he sees a distinction between those two phrases. He defines customer service as something that is more reactive, solving the customers problem, helping them to navigate using your product or service, whereas customer experience he thinks is proactive, it's all the perceptions that your customer has based on all the touch points and interactions they have with you. So, he thinks most companies that are doing anything are just kind of in triage reactionary state. A customer service state as opposed to thinking more holistically, how can we create the most remarkable interaction possible that is going to catch our customers off guard, is going to surprise and delight them and is going to leave them wanting more.

Yanique agreed and stated that it's definitely more of a proactive approach as it relates to customer service and of course customer experiences taking everything into account, more of a holistic approach and not just from a face to face point of view but just every possible touchpoint or channel that the customer could possibly have an interaction with you.

• When asked how he stays motivated, Joey stated that he loves what he does. It's pretty easy. Being on stage is such a pleasure and such a delight. He takes very seriously his role and responsibility to educate an audience, to entertain an audience, to keep them engaged. He just absolutely loves it so every day he’s on stage is fantastic and the days he’s not on stage, he’s preparing for the days that he will be on stage. So, it's just absolutely incredible. He also really connects to the message that he’s trying to promote which is we need to care more about each other as human beings. Our businesses have a responsibility to not only take care of our customers but to take care of our employees and those two things have a tendency to feed upon themselves. The better experience you create for your employees, the better experience they can create for your customers, the better experience you create for your customer, the better experience it creates for your employees. It's just a nice little loop that feeds on itself.

Yanique agreed and stated that internal customer service is very important. The health of your organization not just the health of the employees but how they feel about the business is so critical. One of the things that we say in workshops or she’ll ask the participants if their company sells a particular product or service, I always ask them if they're actually a user, do they actually consume this product or service because that to me is a key indication if they believe in the company that they work for.

Joey agreed and mentioned that it's shocking how rare it is. In his experience he asks a very similar question and he’s always amazed at how few of the employees use the product or service and what he’s even more amazed by is that the businesses don't make it easy for their employees to use the product or service. For example, because he travels a lot, he finds himself in restaurants often and one of the things he always like to ask the waiter or waitress when he’s in a restaurant getting ready to order is, what are the two or three things on the menu that are your favorites, what do you like here, what do you recommend or what are the best things. And it never ceases to amaze him how it's very clear the way they describe things that they haven't actually tasted the dish they're recommending. If he ran a restaurant he would have it set up so that every employee in their first month on the job sampled every single dish we serve. And then they had a context and then about every three or four months he’d run them through that cycle again. And he’d give them the chance to try the specials and to try the regular items and to develop kind of their own palate as it related to the menu. It's not just restaurants, this can apply in every business on the planet, “Are your employees actually users of your product or service and customers of your business?” And if they are, what are you learning from them and creating opportunities for them to speak more intelligently about what you offer.

One of the interesting things is we ask our employees to create remarkable customer experiences but many of our employees have never had a remarkable customer experience. He explained that he was at an event recently doing a workshop for a company and the CEO told him, “I want to have first class service. I want to have Ritz Carlton service. I want to have white glove service and create those type of experiences for our customers.” He said, “Okay.” So they got the whole company together and he said, Here's the deal, how many of you have heard the CEO talk about the importance of a Ritz Carlton first class, white glove experience?” and every hand in the room went up, he said great. Let me ask you a few questions. Number one, “How many of you have ever flown first class?” and the CEO proudly raised his hand and the CFO raised their hand and no one else in the room raised their hand. And I said, “Okay, how many of you have ever spent the night at a Ritz Carlton?” and the CEO proudly raised his hand, the CFO put his hand down and still none of the other people in the room had their hands up and then I said, “Okay, one last question. How many of you have ever eaten a meal that was delivered by waiters wearing white gloves?” And no one put their hand up. And he turned to the CEO and said, “It's really difficult to expect our employees to deliver a world class customer experience when they've never had a world class customer experience.” So, if there were one piece of advice that he would give to business owners listening it would be make sure that your employees have a context and a framework for the type of experience you're asking them to provide for your customers.

• Joey stated that he is probably one of the least online connected individuals that has ever been on Yanique’s podcast. He uses online resources but they're not very complex, he doesn’t have a huge presence on Social Media and he doesn’t use a lot of different tools but one that he does uses, and he finds to be incredibly effective and has helped his business dramatically is a tool and a service called Mixmax. Mixmax is a scheduling tool, it's kind of an add on that you can connect to your Gmail account or your e-mail account that allows you to click on a little link and offer available appointment times when scheduling, that has made my life so much easier because then when people get that email I can say I’m available at these three or four times. When they click on that time link it automatically books it on his calendar and if he gave the same time as a potential slot to two people when they click on it, it will tell them that that slot is no longer available and offer one of the other ones. It just has taken the 17 e-mails back and forth to do scheduling and really reduced it dramatically and I actually like Mixmax better than some of the other calendaring services because some of the other ones it gives you access to the person's calendar and you can see a bunch of things but you kind of have to figure out where to insert yourself. Whereas this one he feels like proactively says I care enough about you, the person he’s sending the e-mail to say, “I've allocated these particular windows of availability, which one works for you?” and they can focus in on it a little bit more than looking through all of the available times on the calendar.

• When asked about the books that have had the biggest impact, Joey mentioned that this is a really challenging but fantastic question because for context, he’s in the process of moving right now and so he just recently packed up their books and they have north of 5000 books in their house. He loves books, he has read a ton of books, he loves being surrounded by books. There are so many books that have had a tremendous impact on him. He thinks back to some of the first business books he read which included Harvey Mackay's Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You the Shirt. Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty by Harvey Mackay, Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Tons of the writings of Tony Robbins Awaken the Giant Within and just lots of books that he read kind of back in the day when he first was starting. Then there's a bunch of business books that he read kind of as my thoughts around customer experience were evolving. His good buddy Shep Hyken has written a number of fantastic books on customer experience as well as Scott McCain and Jay Baer and mutual friend Dan Gingis. A number of folks that are kind of write more specifically in the customer experience space. He also tried to read fiction from with some regularity because he thinks if we're really looking at the human condition reading fiction helps us to understand people as well. So, he reads everything from science fiction to fantasy to kind of pleasure reading, fiction in the kind of espionage and spy novel space so he tries to read across a really wide swath of genres and topics.

• When asked about advice he would give a business owner who lack the constantly motivated human capital. Joey stated that this goes back to that story he told right the best way to motivate your employees is to make sure that they're having an incredible experience. As the business owner, the manager, the executive, your employees are your primary customers. You need to be taking care of them, you need to be holding their hand to navigate them through the 8 phases, you need to be making sure that they're having a remarkable experience when they come to work. And so, he thinks if there was a question around, he thinks there are a lot of business owners that say, “Well our employees just don't get it, they're not motivated, they don't come with the kind of excitement that I need them to come to work.” He usually would ask those type of executives or owners. “Are you excited about the fact that those employees come to work? Do you let them know that, do you show them that in your words and in your actions and in your behaviors?” and usually by the time he gets to that level of questioning they're like, “Well, maybe not as much as I could.” and I'm like great, so there's a huge opportunity for us to improve the employee experience.

Yanique reiterate by saying that the gap that exists why there's constantly motivates human capital is the leadership influence that drives that whole engagement. So, recruitment is critical because you have to hire the right people. But after hiring them, there are things that you need to do to sustain their interest in what they're doing everyday so that they can be motivated.

Joey agreed and stated that you need to sustain your interest. He thinks part of the challenge we have in HR is that it's run like many businesses are run with their external customers. We spend all this time courting, marketing and selling, filling the funnel trying to convince someone to come work for us, trying to get them in the door and then they start, and they show up for their first day on the job and we don't have a desk for them. They don't know what they're supposed to be doing, they don't know anyone to go to lunch with or maybe if we do an onboarding program it's a day or two and then we kind of leave them to fend for themselves. We need to hold our employees’ hands, especially through the first 100 days of the employee relationship. What are we doing to make sure that they're achieving the goal they had when they came to work. Lots of times we don't even ask our employees, “What's your goal? Is your goal to get a cheque? Is your goal to grow a career? Is your goal to explore something new that you haven't thought about before? Is your goal to put to work the things you studied in school and have that be compensated for what you learned?” Every employee has different motivations and by the way those motivations change, they evolve over time. And so, what did motivate them to take the job in the first place six months in might not be the motivation anymore. Employers and managers need to have a finger on the pulse as to what's going on with their employees and that's how you get motivated employees.

• Joey stated that there are two things that he’s really excited about right now. One more professional and one more personal. On the professional side, he’s thankful and appreciative of the tremendous support for the launch of the book, when we’re recording this, the book has been out for about 2 months now. They had great success as not only during the launch but since then. He continued to get wonderful feedbacks and reviews on Amazon from people and people sharing how they have been able to put the principles that are outlined in the book into practice in their own business and they are already seeing huge results, so, that’s been super exciting, the book culminates and kind of represents, he would say 20 years of his professional career but it’s really more 45 years of his entire life/career because it’s all the different things that he has been involved with and all the things that he has learned about human beings and trying to put that down on the paper as a way and hopefully provides some value to other people that helps them understand themselves and their customers and their employees better, so that’s been really exciting. On a personal note, in a few days of recording this episode, he will be moving from his home in Evergreen, Colorado which is high in the Rocky Mountains about an hour west of Denver. I'm moving up the state and down the mountain a little bit to Boulder, Colorado where they’ll be a little bit closer to civilization and the wonderful things. Their neighbors will be humans as opposed to bears and mountain lions. They'll will have the chance to kind of have a new chapter and a new experience for him and his wife and their two young boys, so excited about that. Moves that he thinks are a great opportunity to recommit and rejuvenate and set new habits and new practices and so he’s really excited about what this transition offers for his family and their personal lives but also for him and his professional life.

• Joey shared listeners can find him at –

Twitter - @thejoeycoleman

www.joeycoleman.com  

• Khashf Joey shared that it's both an interesting and a timely question because as you might imagine with the travel schedule he keeps being on the road about two and a half weeks out of the month and just getting back from a trip about a week ago. He was on the road for about three weeks, his family got sick while they were on the road, so he had to reschedule the recording and that's just never fun to have a sick family especially when you're not at home. That makes it even worse and then they get home and they’re moving in two days. So, his quote would be from the incomparable quote master Winston Churchill who said, “When you're going through hell keep going.” That's kind of what he’s been trying to do as of late and he doesn’t want to be overly dramatic, his life is very blessed and he feels very fortunate but there's been a lot of stress lately with the travel and the move and kind of the craziness of the book launch and a number of things and so his goal has been just to keep putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that this will all eventually work out beautifully.

Joey also mentioned that the Nike tagline “Just Do It” is probably if not the best one of the best taglines in the world. He’s not a big fan of taglines because most taglines are watered down platitudes that could easily be given to any company, you could take the tagline and apply it to another company without anyone missing a beat. But he always points to Nike's Just Do it as one of the best out there.

Yanique agreed and stated that it can be applicable to any industry or any area, even in kids going to school who are trying to advance themselves athletically or academically, just let them know that at the end of the day the only thing that's holding you back is your own fear. So “Just Do It.”

Links

Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue Online Course

• Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days by Joey Coleman
• Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny! By Tony Robbins
• Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt: Do What You Love, Love What You Do, and Deliver More Than You Promise by Harvey Mackay
• Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Mixmax