SIMPLE brand With Matt Lyles

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Bill Price, author of The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort!

Bill and I discuss his lessons around seeking, finding, and eliminating all the friction that can happen in your customer experience.  And more importantly, we discuss how to proactively ensure that friction doesn’t get into the customer experience in the first place.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why the best service is when the customer doesn’t even need to contact you
• Bill’s definition of a frictionless organization
• The value of proactively communicating with your customers
• Educating your customers can curb customer service calls and reduce friction
• The questions to ask before you start to invest in customer service technology
• The need to proactively go upstream and prevent customer service issues from happening in the first place
• How delivering a frictionless experience actually demonstrates respect to your customer 
• The right way to proactively plan on how your customer experience will be frictionless instead of solving customer service issues
• With customer expectations always changing, creating a frictionless experience is not a one-and-done approach
• The habits and values that customer experience leaders should embrace

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Bill's website
• Bill's book - The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort 

Adrian’s one of the leading voices in the Customer Experience industry.  As the host of the CXChronicles podcast, he talks with customer-focused business leaders from around the world to share their perception of Adrian’s Four CX Pillars: Team, Tools, Process, and Feedback.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Focusing on developing and managing the right team is foundational to your Customer Experience operation
• How making “happiness as a habit” is integral to your customer experience and employee experience
• The leading principles on customer experience are the same for employee experience
• Breaking down organizational silos helps executives buy into and invest in a customer experience mindset
• It’s not just customer-facing teams that impact the customer experience
• Adrian’s Four CX Pillars that are the essential building blocks of a winning customer experience operation
• The ideal habits and values needed to thrive as a customer experience leader

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Adrian's LinkedIn profile
• Adrian's website
• Adrian's podcast - CXChronicles
  
  

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Rick DeLisi, author of Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World!

Rick’s an author, a speaker, and a customer-experience expert who helps companies achieve greater customer loyalty. And he’s one of the co-authors of The Effortless Experience.

Today, Rick’s back at it with his latest book - Digital Customer Service.

The importance of crafting your customer experience centers around how you make your customer feel throughout every interaction. But in a digital-first world, you’ve got to make sure you invest in the right technology and the right technology processes. Delivering an outstanding customer experience today isn’t just about the psychology or just about the technology - it’s about having the right marriage of psychology and technology baked into the experience. And Rick’s lessons help you learn just how to do that so that you’re always able to meet your customers where they are.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• In a ME-centric culture, you should treat each individual customer like the unique person they are
• How customers define their effort in a customer experience is ⅓ what they actually do and ⅔ how they feel
• Customers are exponentially more loyal to a company when they feel like the company is an advocate for them
• Why the term “Customer Experience” is a monster noun that has a wide variety of meanings
• The impression that customers are left with following direct contact with a company’s frontline is one of the most important in the customer experience so make it count
• The real definition of “meeting your customer where they are” is not what you think it is
• The more your customer has agency in the customer experience, the higher their positive feelings will be about the experience
• When brands instill a Digital Customer Service model, it creates a Win-Win-Win-Win situation

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Rick's LinkedIn profile
• Rick's book - Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World
• Rick's book - The Effortless Experience

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Melina Palmer, author of What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You!

Melina is CEO of The Brainy Business, where she provides behavioral economics training and consulting to businesses all around the world.

She's the host of The Brainy Business podcast.

 And she's the bestselling author of two books devoted to behavioral economics. In her latest book, What Your Employees Need and Can’t Tell You, she helps readers better understand how the human brain works and how the human brain adapts to change. But, more importantly, Melina explains how your employees adapt to change.

Melina and I talk through her roadmap to help you reduce any friction related to instilling organizational change. We also explore how to ensure that you can get your employees on board with any change in the simplest way possible.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why it’s difficult for leaders to instill and implement change in their organizations
• Leaders need to consider all the little changes their employees make, not just the big ones
• How leaders can find out what drives and motivates their employees
• Instead of eliminating biases, leaders should look for where they can work with existing biases
• Investing time upfront to look at the right problem will help you instill change more easily
• How you present change is just as important as how you develop the change, so you must take time to craft that communication
• Melina’s “It’s Not About the Cookie” framework to help leaders deliver change
• Using simpler language to frame a change helps people more easily buy into change

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Melina's site
• Melina's book - What Your Employees Need But Can't Tell You
• Melina's book - What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You
• Melina's podcast - The Brainy Business

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Sarah Panus, host of the Marketing With Empathy podcast! 

You’ve likely heard about how valuable storytelling is in your content. But too many marketers today throw around the term "storytelling" without really knowing HOW to use storytelling well.

Sarah’s a brand storytelling strategist, and she’s the owner of Kindred Speak consulting where she helps communicators and content marketers create more meaningful connections with their customers - all through the power of empathy-driven brand storytelling.

Sarah and I talk about the common mistakes marketers make when they attempt storytelling. And we talk about the right ways to use storytelling in your content in a way that actually resonates and connects with your customers. Sarah's got a pretty simple framework that helps you do just that.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why brand storytelling is the most ideal way to stand out against all of the clutter your customers see
• How to approach brand storytelling
• Your brand is not the hero of your story
• Sarah’s Focus Empathy Data framework simplifies the storytelling process
• The ideal way to mine the best stories
• How to use empathy filters to instill empathy into your content and storytelling
• How Search Engine Optimization (SEO) insights can inform the stories you should create
• How to use empathy the right way in creating content
• How empathy-driven storytelling can actually help brands save money

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Sarah's site
• Sarah's podcast - Marketing With Empathy

Some of the topics we discuss include: 

• Organizational culture, employee experience, and customer experience must all work together
• If you want your employees to deliver a red-carpet experience to your customers, you need to deliver it to them so they know what it looks and feels like
• Your goal should be for the customer to feel happier than before they interacted with you
• How leaders can instill a sense of purpose in their employees
• Today’s employees are looking for something that is bigger than themselves
• You can tap into your organization’s greater purpose no matter your industry or product
• How you can compensate your employees fairly without breaking the bank
• It’s valuable to listen to and collaborate with your employees to craft the employee experience
• The best ways to listen to your employees are literally getting into a room with them and talking
• The ideal way to attract new employees to come into your organization is by treating them like customers
• Onboarding new employees is a process that’s longer and more important than you think

• Donna's site
• Donna's book - Employees First!
• Red Carpet Culture Club

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Stan Phelps, author of Purple Goldfish 2.0!

Stan’s the founder of Purple Goldfish think tank.

And Stan’s the bestselling author of the Goldfish series of books. That’s 13 books that focus on all the various ways to help brands drive differentiation, increase loyalty, and promote positive word of mouth.

If you want to brand out from the crowd, it's not going to happen through your product or pricing. It's going to happen through the differentiated experience you deliver.

And a differentiated experience isn't just about what you say. It's about WHAT you do and, more importantly, HOW you do it and WHY you do it.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

•  The companies that win don’t put their customer first. They focus on engaged employees to deliver a remarkable customer experience
• The same five reasons that drive a goldfish to grow are the same reasons your business will grow
• How the New Orleans creole concept of lagniappe can help you differentiate your brand
• There’s no such thing as meeting customer expectations
• How to understand our customer’s expectations and how to exceed them
• Improving the customer experience through gaps or opportunities
• Offering free samples to existing customers is more valuable than offering them to potential customers
• Improving the customer experience through gaps or opportunities
• The missed opportunities that too many brands don’t take with referrals and word-of-mouth marketing

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Stan's site
• Stan's book - Purple Goldfish 2.0 
• Stan on LinkedIn

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Alex Demczak, co-author of The Sale: The Number One Strategy to Build Trust and Create Success!

Alex is a former SEC quarterback for the Missouri Tigers. He’s also a top keynote speaker and trainer for the Jon Gordon Companies. 

Alex and I discuss his lessons all around instilling integrity and building trust. Not only do we talk about how to build the right habits to instill integrity into your personal brand as a leader, we also discuss how you can help your employees build those habits too.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why delayed gratification is so valuable for being excellent in the long-term
• How integrity has changed in culture recently
• Your life is more fulfilling when you live your life with integrity in place
• 59% of people that leave their job do so because they dislike their boss
• Gen Z would rather take a job with less money if it’s part of an organization where they truly believe in the mission and values
• Integrity in leadership is a key driver in employee retention
• The misconception that most people have about integrity
• The best leaders lead from the inside-out vs outside-in
• Strategies to instill so that you don’t veer away from integrity as you grow in your career
• Accountability from others is key to staying on a track of integrity
• The steps you can take to build trust back if you’ve lost it

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Alex's site
• Alex's book - The Sale: The Number One Strategy to Build Trust and Create Success 
• Streamline Books

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Mike Michalowicz, author of Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself!

Mike was on the show back in episode 45 where we discussed how to differentiate your brand so you can grab and keep your customer’s attention.

But in this episode, we’re talking about lessons to help you simplify your business in a way that can make the most impact.

Mike's a keynote speaker, a best-selling author, a former Wall Street Journal columnist, and a business makeover specialist for MSNBC. Simon Sinek calls him “the top contender for the patron saint of entrepreneurs.”

Mike and I discuss his simple, counterintuitive approach to creating efficiency that frees you up to pay attention to the things that matter - in life and in your work. So regardless if you’re leading a team of one, a team of one thousand, or somewhere in between, you need to have an organization that gets things done while you do what only you should do - the strategic, needle-moving, drive-the-business-forward type of work. And that’s just what you’ll learn from Mike’s lessons from Clockwork.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The right way to delegate so that you’re truly freed up for the work you need to do
• The importance of defining and focusing on one core function in your business
• The “superhero syndrome” and why it’s so important to be able to remove yourself from the business for the sake of your team
• Why a 4-week vacation is actually valuable to your business and team
• Why the method of “capturing” your team’s processes is more valuable than SOPs
• The 5 dimensions of your team’s work

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Mike's site
• Mike's book - Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself 

In this week’s episode of the SIMPLE brand podcast, I talk with Nate Brown, founder of CX Accelerator!

Nate’s the Senior Director of Customer Experience for Arise Virtual Solutions. But beyond that, he's one of the biggest experts in the Customer Experience industry.

I say he’s an expert, but Nate proclaims himself more of a perpetual student of the world's greatest experiences who simply shares his learnings with the world.

And in line with his nature of sharing his learnings, Nate’s the founder and head of CX Accelerator - an online community of customer experience professionals all sharing their learnings, guidance, and mentorship with each other.

Nate and I discuss having a frictionless, seamless customer experience that helps your brand stand out. And we also discuss how you can instill a customer experience mindset into every team in your organization, even the non-customer-facing teams.

Some of the topics we discuss include:

• The customer service issues your customers bring up help you decide how to shape your customer experience
• The difference between customer experience and customer service
• How friction points in the customer journey are usually created “upstream”
• How leaders can help all teams understand the entire customer journey and be better aligned with other teams
• Brands that focus on short-term success vs long-term customer relationships will fail in the long run
• What The Lord of the Rings teaches us to break down silos and create a “team of one” to be a customer-centric brand
• How to ensure your entire customer journey is a seamless journey
• How to use a Voice of the Customer system to understand your customer
• How creating and managing a customer community can help you gain customer insights.

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Nate's website
• The Ultimate Customer Experience Primer
• Nate's Twitter