REALLY Know Your Customer

Lamees Butt joins Betsy and Tony on this episode to delve into the topics of digital transformation and the ever-evolving landscape of commerce.

She shares her insights on the challenges faced during her journey, including the importance of failing fast and adapting, which eventually led her to the corporate world. Now a key player at Zoovu, an AI commerce platform, she focuses on connecting businesses with their customers, making it easier to find products in the vast digital market. Through real-life examples with industry giants like Vodafone, Dyson, and Bosch, she illustrates the complexities of the B2C sector and the inevitable changes coming in B2B transactions.

Lamees sheds light on Zoovu's customer-centric approach, involving partnerships with top customers through Customer Advisory Boards, fostering a community where thought leadership and experiences are shared. This collaborative ecosystem of customers and partners is seen as pivotal to Zoovu's growth, proving that in the ever-changing world of digital commerce, strong partnerships and customer-centric strategies are the keys to success.

Tune in and hear more from Lamees, Betsy and Tony on this episode. 

Meet Jay Meyer. Jay is an accomplished business owner and entrepreneur who shares his personal journey of addiction and recovery on this insightful episode with Betsy and Tony.

With decades of business and leadership under his belt, Jay has seen a lot change over the years, but one thing has remained: his desire to get to know his customers. Jay started his career by building authentic relationships with his customers, being curious, taking them to lunch, and caring for his customers’ families. He has taken these practices along his journey because of the impact he wants to make in others’ lives.

Jay shares the ways he consistently maintains his positive spirit and how he is driven to live out his personal mission to “inspire others, dream more, be more, and live in the light more.”

Meet Mark Ross-Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of StatusMatch.com. Mark joins Betsy and Tony on the podcast from Malaysia. As a self-proclaimed professional frequent flyer, Mark racked up more airline points than you can imagine as he built his former businesses. After he decided to move across the world, he asked the area’s major airline for a status match in their frequent flyer program. He was denied, but it led the way for his idea to create StatusMatch.com.

Tony, Betsy, and Mark dive into emotional loyalty to big brands and discuss how those micro-moments can be replicated in any size business to get a leg up on the competition.

Join us for a conversation with Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, a working capital platform for small businesses. Did you know that 82% of small business failures are because of a cash flow gap or a working capital challenge? That’s where Fundbox comes in: to create solutions that level the playing field for small businesses and help them succeed.

Although automation and user simplicity is essential to their product development, customer engagement is critical to the Fundbox mission to provide relevant solutions that help their customers focus on growing their business. It’s clear that Prashant is passionate about what he does and making a difference for his customers. Listen in to learn more! 

Meet Tony Sternberg, Co-Founder & CEO of ProsperStack, an automated retention platform for subscription businesses. Consider this: You’ve had it up to “here” with your streaming service and you call to cancel your subscription. ProsperStack partners with said streaming service to create a unique retention strategy for what happens next after you live chat or call the provider.

It’s unique because the next subscriber will encounter a different experience based on their individual attributes, such as how long they’ve been a customer or how frequently they utilize the service. ProsperStack integrates this data to give the providers deeper insights around customer retention.

Tony Sternberg is leading the charge for this fast-growing company and bringing a new light to how to really know your customer.

Meet Gail and Bruce Montgomery. They are the high-energy co-founders of ExperienceYes, a truly one-of-a-kind business, set out to bring fun into organizations that want to improve trust, relationship-building, and EQ to make higher-performing teams. With similar backgrounds in professional acting, singing, and dancing in New York City, they both made their way into the corporate world. Gail and Bruce found a way to bring these two very different worlds together in 2013 when they launched ExperienceYes. 

In this episode, Gail and Bruce generously share their 4 rules for improving the customer experience using Improv. 

4 Rules for Improving Customer Experience (using Improv)

1. Say “yes, and” more.

2. Listen with the intent to learn and serve. 

3. Support teammates at all costs. 

4. Trust your instincts.

The goal of their sessions is to use applied Improv to make you uncomfortable (in a safe space), so you can start getting comfortable during ambiguity. And laughter. A lot of laughter.

Meet the man known as Fro, CEO of Beam Benefits.

In 2012, Fro and his co-founders of Beam, a digital employee benefits company, developed and built the first-ever connected toothbrush. In a time when connective devices came to the forefront (think IoT products: Nest, FitBit), Beam quickly came to a fork in the road: take the path of least resistance and narrow their ambition, or lean into the storm and wildy expand their ambition. We’re sure that you can guess which path they chose.

Fro shares how Beam Benefits evolved into a mainstream player in the insurance industry, where their competition has big budgets and, in some cases, over 100 years of experience. So, how does Beam compete? Their customer-centric culture.

With such rapid growth, Fro generously shares his experience scaling the culture at Beam and how they’ve attracted the right people to “work on the work.” It’s an intentional blend of industry insiders and outsiders followed by a simple 3-step process: Listen, prioritize, and then vet. It’s a continuous cycle that’s applied to their internal and external customers and is now spearheaded by their Customer (Broker) Advisory Board.

One thing is clear in this episode: Fro and Beam REALLY know their customers.

Meet Jochem van der Veer, Co-Founder and CEO of TheyDo. His business is based on a simple yet sometimes impossible task for large organizations: breaking down processes to make it easier for C-level executives to connect with their customers. 

Traditionally, small and large organizations have focused on customer journey mapping. TheyDo has a strategic focus on customer journey management, an innovative strategy that creates alignment to what the company designs versus what the customer actually experiences. This allows the organizations that Jochem and TheyDo partner with to make data-driven decisions with qualitative inputs. 

Betsy and Tony dive deep into this conversation with Jochem and explore what the future of the customer experience could be in the next 5-10 years: intertwining individual emotions with transactions and journeys to predict future behavior.

Fun fact: 30% of the population learns by listening.

Not-so-fun fact: If your website only offers written content, you could be leaving behind a big chunk of your target market simply because you’re not speaking the same language.

Meet David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices, a fast-growing online platform that connects buyers and sellers of one creative service: the human voice. He joins Betsy and Tony to share how he thinks a little differently about the customer journey and generously shares ideas for ways to improve your standing with prospects. Start by taking down the gates to your website content and determining which written content can be translated to audio. Be their guide (not the hero) in helping them achieve their goals.

Thanks for your insights, David!

It all starts with a story and believe it or not, Doug Brown has a lot of them. Starting with his first job at the young age of 3 when he was sweeping floors. Many years down the road, Doug is now helping companies achieve their top 1% of sales.

Join us as Betsy and Tony get Doug’s unique perspective on the state of sales today. Sure, sales people used to push back on marketing and how they didn’t need it to sell. Now, they’re pushing back on really getting to know their customers. Some of them have told Doug there’s not enough information out there to learn about their customers. Listen in to hear Doug’s response to this objection with an incredible story involving his grandfather.