Info

Navigating the Customer Experience

Join host Yanique Grant as she takes you on a journey with global entrepreneurs and subject matter experts that can help you to navigate your customer experience. Learn what customers really want and how businesses can understand the psychology of each customer or business that they engage with. We will be looking at technology, leadership, customer service charters and strategies, training and development, complaint management, service recovery and so much more!
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Navigating the Customer Experience
2024
March
February
January


2023
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March


2022
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
January


2021
December
November
October
September
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
March
January


2019
December
November
October
August
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
October
September
June
March
February
January


2017
December
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: 2017
Dec 27, 2017

Catherine M. Mattice is President of consulting and training firm, Civility Partners, and she has been successfully providing programs in workplace bullying and building positive workplaces since 2007. Her clients include Chevron, the American Red Cross, the military, several universities and hospitals, government agencies, small businesses and non-profits. She has been published in a variety of trade magazines and has appeared as an expert in major news outlets including NPR, FOX, NBC, ABC, USA Today, Inc Magazine, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, Washington Times, Psychology Today and Bloomberg. Catherine is Past-President of the Association for Talent Development (ATD), San Diego Chapter, and one of the founders (and current president of) the National Workplace Bullying Coalition. In his foreword to her book, Back Off! Your Kick-Ass Guide to Ending Bullying @ Work, Ken Blanchard said it was “The most comprehensive and valuable handbook” on workplace bullying. BACK OFF, and her second book, “Seeking Civility : How Leaders, Managers and HR Can Create a Workplace Free of Bullying”, are both available on Amazon.

 

Questions

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Can you talk with us about some of the things that help to create that positive work environment and is it only up to the employees or does leadership play a big role as well?
  • How do you feel about customer experience on a global level?
  • What are some of the things you encourage organizations to do to create that kind of culture where people are feeling positive, where the energies are consistently up?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Catherine Mattice shared that she was the director of Human Resources for a non-profit organization and found herself working with a bully and this guy and herself were both directors. They both reported directly to the President of the organization, he was not her manager. He was her peer but he was definitely a bully. He was an uber excessive micromanager, he yelled, he made it very clear if he didn't like you, he was very difficult to work with. She personally felt bullied by this person and that was very exhausting, it was like every interaction with him was frustrating. It took a lot of courage to interact with them because you figured you're going to be yelled at, it was just a very emotional experience. And then also as the director of HR she dealt with all of the organizational problems that he created as well so his particular department had a crazy turnover. She spent a lot of time counseling his employees in her office and also spent a lot of time talking to the President about this person's behavior and sort of begging the president to solve it. And the president would always just say, “That's just how he is. I don't know why it bothers you. Be the bigger person.” Which was of course frustrating to hear her pleas for help to just sort of be ignored. And then during all that time she started getting her Master's Degree at San Diego State University and she decided to write a paper for one of her classes on this topic of sort of toxic work environments. And during that paper she came across that phrase, “Workplace Bullying” and she has been obsessed ever since and have continued to scramble to learn everything she possibly can about workplace bullying and she created a business around helping organizations solve that problem.

 

Yanique shared that the issue of bullying seems like something that's not affected by a lot of organizations but it really is a widespread issue.

Catherine agreed and stated that they call it the silent epidemic in the U.S.A lot of other countries actually have laws around workplace bullying but America does not. So, it's just as pervasive if not more so than harassment and discrimination because it's really equal opportunity harassment and so there is a lot of it. A lot of people feel bullied at work, in fact research puts that number at around 30 to 50 percent of people have been bullied at some point in their working life.

Yanique stated that it's interesting that Catherine mentioned that it's such a high percentage and asked if she believe that it filtrates out of the education system because a lot of kids are bullied in schools as well.

Catherine stated that she thinks that we are all mean, the society at large is mean, look at TV, it's all full of mean drama. Reality TV is mean, politics they’re mean, we're mean when we’re on the road, we can be uncivil if someone's going too slow or cut us off. We tend to have this propensity to sort of lash out and we live in a high stress environment because we're always on our phones, we always have someplace to be and so she thinks it's harder to be kind and to take a step back and be nice and take a breath and focus on civility. It's easier to let your frustrations get the best of you. And in school certainly bullying happens and there is some research that's found that if you bully as a child you probably bully as an adult. And also, if you're a target as a child you may be a target as an adult.

  • Catherine Mattice stated that leadership absolutely is the biggest player in the culture so leadership has to decide, “This is the kind of culture we want” and then putting things in motion to create that kind of a culture. Bullying is an organizational problem and culture is an organizational problem and it has to be solved by the leaders so leaders really have to say, “We want a positive work environment because we know it impacts internal and external customer service. We know it impacts innovation and decision making and people's ability to learn.” so when you have a savvy leader who knows that positive relationships and positive feelings about your organization impact the bottom line then you're lucky and you get a positive work environment. But bullying is absolutely an organizational problem not an employee problem.

Yanique asked what if the leader is a bully himself?

Catherine shared that she gets that question a lot. She stated that she honestly hates to give this advice but you have to leave. If the CEO or the leader is a bully, there probably isn't anyway that leaders going to hear anyone out if the leader is told people perceive you as too abrasive. Sometimes an HR professional or maybe someone close to the leader in the C-Suite depending on their relationship can have a conversation with the leader and maybe able to be heard. But in her experience, leaders believe that sort of abrasive aggressive leadership style has worked for them and so they're not going to be interested in changing unless you can really show them the damage they're causing. People can change, she coaches people who are bullies all the time but the CEO or the leader, unless somebody is close enough to that person to have that conversation she would say you may want to consider leaving because the culture is not going to get any better.

Yanique mentioned if the leader is a bully as Catherine said and she recommend that they leave. Do you feel that even though you said you believe people can change but a big part of change means that they have to become self-aware that something needs to change because many of them would be like, “Well the problem isn't me, it’s them.” She has heard that so many times in organizations when employees make complaints and a lot of times that the complaints are being made, they're not willing to accept that sometimes the issue is not necessarily with the other person but sometimes we need to look internally and look at how we could be doing things differently because maybe if we take a different approach you will get a different result.

  • Catherine stated that she recognizes that because of Social Media and the Internet that company is there maybe more focused on customers than they used to be but it's more about the branding than really caring about customers and you see that with all of the negative things that go on. United Airlines being an example, they had this big media problem when they had the police come and remove a customer but that was a culture problem, that's the reason that happened, that the people who worked for United actually thought to themselves, “We are going to call the police and have this customer forcibly removed.” That's a culture problem with United Airlines. She thinks that customer experience and customer service boils down to culture as well and having a positive work environment as they've talked about.

 

  • Catherine stated that she thinks a big thing that she sees with her clients is that when companies call her because their culture is negative, one of the things they're not doing is living their core values. So, she has really come to see the value in core values and she has seen it firsthand that if you can live your core values and make your core values part of everything you're doing day in and day out then that would really affect the culture because then everyone is very clear on how they're supposed to act. Going back to the United Airlines example, United versus Southwest Airlines which always wins customer service awards. Their three core values are servants heart, warrior spirit and something about having fun. If an employee is making decisions in the context of those three core values, they would never ask Police to forcibly remove a customer's not doing anything wrong. So, United Airlines wasn't living their core values and that's how things like that happen. A lot of companies don't see the value in core values until something awful happens and then they realize, “Oh, we've got to get back to our core values.” 

Yanique mentioned that some companies have core values that their employees don't even believe in.

Catherine agreed and stated that that goes back to it though, she sees this all the time, companies have core values and they're on their website and maybe they're on a sign somewhere in the lunchroom and that's the extent of it, so how can employees believe in those core values when they're not part of their day in and day out life. It's up to the organization to say, “Here are our core values. This is how we want everyone to behave.” And then the organization has to find ways to advertise those core values regularly and ensure that employees know them and live them regularly.

Yanique mentioned that it's like you're basically trying to find new and innovative ways to reinforce and basically have lots of repetition. So, now it becomes a part of their DNA. So, if courtesy is one of your core values, in everything you do you try to effect courtesy that way when you're dealing with external customer it's not something that you're trying to put on, it comes so naturally because it's something that you practice every day anyway.

  • Catherine shared that she thinks it's all of the negative stuff that she sees really fuels her fire and makes her work even harder to make a dent in all of the negativity. It really pains her to see employees unhappy and what you do for a living is such a big part of your self-esteem and your self-concept. It's a huge part of who we are as people, what we do for a living and to have that torn down and have somebody like a bully clawing at your identity and your self-esteem and yourself concept day in and day out. It pains me to know that there's people out there who experience that and that's what motivates her. She is driven to touch the lives of as many employees out there in the world as she possibly can. And also, she has been through some things that have made her angry at the right amount of angry where she has submitted proposals to work with a client and the stories they told her were absolutely awful and then she’ll submit a proposal, she work with a charter to try to solve it and then the leader comes back and says, “I don't think this is important enough to spend that money.” That makes her angry and that anger fuels her too. It makes her want to work harder.

Yanique stated that she knows exactly what she means in terms of them not seeing the value in it. And as Catherine said, it really boils down to the value system of the individuals that you're dealing with and what they deem of importance.

  • Catherine mentioned that one of the app is LinkedIn that she uses regularly to make connections. She uses HubSpot to manage her customers and interactions. MailChimp that she’s using for email management. She stated that there's definitely a lot of tools out there that she feels like she couldn't live without that help to keep her basically organized and having everything just flow.

 

  • Catherine mentioned some of the books that have had a big impact on her. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, that was her very first personal development book so that one has had a big impact on her. She has read a lot of books on workplace bullying, one book she mentioned a lot that had an impact on her is a book called Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance by Kim Cameron. He is in the positive psychology space and he talks a lot about essentially how to create a positive work environment too and he has very specific action items in that book that she actually offers up as advice quite a lot and it's a short read, she highly recommend that book. That's probably one of my favorite sort of business books.

 

  • Catherine stated that one piece of advice that she would give business owners and managers is that they should help their employees find meaning in their work. Help them find a profound connection to everything that they’re doing and that the company is trying to accomplish and your company will flourish if you do that.

Yanique reiterate, help them find meaning in what they're doing. Therefore, there must be a direct link between what the company's goals are and what the personal goals of the employee is because if those two things actually have some congruence then both entities actually have a win-win situation. 

Catherine agreed and gave an example of that, she was doing some training for a company that kills mosquitoes, that's their business. She was doing some training and on a break, she just sort of asked the trainee sitting next to her, “Tell me more about your business, what you do?” and she said, “Well, we killed mosquitoes. That's about it.” That's all she got. And this other person sitting next to her says, “Is that all you think we're doing here? We are saving this community from West Nile Virus.” He was offended that she thought all they did was kill mosquitoes and so he believes he's saving the community from this horrible disease by killing mosquitoes and killing mosquitoes was a means to the end goal of saving that community. So that's what she’s talking about, help reminding your employees that there's a bigger picture beyond their tasks.

  • Catherine shared that they just finished up all the quality issues today. She just released an online course that is essentially her consulting methodology. It's a way to help organizations that can't afford expensive consultants but they need to change their culture. This online course takes them through that process and it has a whole bunch of videos and worksheets and checklists and job aides and literally somebody could take her course and change their organizations culture using the tools in the course, so that is the thing she is super-duper excited about right now. She mentioned that the course can be found at civilitypartners.com/makeover 
  • Catherine shared listeners can find her at –

LinkedIn - Catherine Mattice Zundel

    Twitter - @CatMattice

    Facebook – Catherine Mattice Zundel

    Facebook – Civility Partners

    Website – www.civilitypartners.com

  • Catherine shared that there is a quote that she always reverts to and it's by Viktor Frankl who was in the Holocaust and suffered some horrible things and one of his famous quotes is, “The last of any human freedom is the freedom of choice.” We get to choose our attitude in our circumstances and it's really important to keep that in mind. We can't be victims of circumstance, we have to take charge of how we react to the circumstances and only then can you overcome adversity.

Yanique reiterated, basically freedom of choice is something that we all have regardless of the situation that we're in. And that's a great privilege. So, we should definitely try to exercise it as much as possible. 

 

Links

Dec 19, 2017

Alexander Genov but will be affectionately refer to him as Alex for the purpose of this interview. Alex is an experienced Customer Research Professional who applies his Experimental Social Psychology background and his passion for research, design and innovation to solving important customer and business problems. His professional goal is to help teams create remarkable products and services which make people's lives easier and more enjoyable. Currently, Alex is Leading Customer Research for the Zappos Family of Companies. In previous positions, he was responsible for research and usability of the products and services for companies like Turbo Tax also known as Intuit, State Farm Insurance and the Active Network, he has over 15 years of relevant experience, 5 years of academic research and over 10 years of customer research in the software industry. Alex received his Ph.D. in Experimental Social Psychology from Clark University and his areas of research include defining and measuring emotions, individual differences, usability and consumer segmentation.

  

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • What is does Social Psychology mean and how does that connect to customer experience?
  • Talk a little about your research that you have found, what works, what doesn’t as you pointed out individual differences and that customers are the same.
  • Why do you think it’s important to invest in research to help you grow your business and become more customer centric?
  • What is one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

 

  • Alex Genov pointed as it says in his bio that his background is in psychology, that his passion is understanding people. And more specifically his specialization is understanding emotions and how we define emotions, how we measure emotions, how people experience emotions, the area of emotions is not as simple as it sounds. On the face of it we all experience emotions, we all talk about it but what I found through many years of deep research and study of emotions is that it differs not only how we talk about emotions but how we experience them and measuring them is a tricky thing. That's his specialty and also another area of expertise he brought from said psychology was individual differences and that's something he believe deeply in which is that not everybody not all people are different. And by the same token not all customers are different. In his career, he has been trying to help companies understand customers as people and understand the individual differences that are important for each specific industry and in each specific product. He was initially headed to be a Professor but soon gave up the idea because he didn't want to be poor for many many years. He kind of sold out to the software industry but he has no regrets. It's been an interesting challenge and a lot of fun experiences trying to bring rigor to research in the industry but also to make it practical. So, that's been the biggest challenge for him all along is to make it to kind of walk that fine line, keeping that balance and keeping the organization honest in terms of research but also being practical and not being too academic and kind of obstructionist in that way.

 

  • Alex Genov stated that there are many areas of psychology when you start specializing in it. So, one area for example is, Social Psychology and other area is Personality Psychology which is a bit more focused on the individual and other area is Clinical Psychology so these are people who help people with mental problems and so on. He picked Social Psychology because it was the most interesting to him and when he was studying it all the really fun experiments from the 50’s and 60’s that really kind of make jaws drop nowadays but they were all designed to understand people in the sense that how is our behavior determined and motivated by the real or imagined presence of others. That's the definition of social psychology. The methods that he brought with him to the industry or essentially the methods of scientific psychology which are based on the empirical method of research. And the most kind of defining feature of that is the question “How do you know?” When we talk about something and we say, “I believe this and that to be true” some people may be fine by saying, “I feel it in my gut and that's what I believe” or they say. “I know from experience and I know it to be true” but an empiricist will say, “Well how do you know?” “Do you have the data to look at and to measure?” An empiricism is basically this belief that we all have to have some kind of shared experience to be able to determine that something is the case. So, for example, if he asked you what the temperature is and you tell him 72 degrees then you can both look at the thermometer and agree that that's the case. When it comes to emotions you can see how becomes tricky to say ok how do you feel and then you feel happy but many times we don't have direct access to our emotions or we cannot articulate them or we don't want to share them. So that's where it gets tricky how do you measure, how you define emotions. For example, you can define them by the facial expressions which is a behavioral indicator, you can define it by overt behavior, are people jumping with joy literally right or are they running away? Also, you can always ask them how do you feel but again one of the principles of research that brought that led him to the industry was to measure the same thing using different methods and to triangulate the results so that we have a higher degree of confidence that what we're saying when measuring is exactly what we intended to measure. He doesn’t want to get too technical but that's basically the background.

 

Yanique mentioned that we talk about Zappos all the time in workshops and people think about Zappos as the Customer Experience guru in the Retail Market especially in the online space. They basically came in and they transformed how retail business is done online. The fact that they have a 365 day return policy, if you call them somebody is going to answer the phone even when you go on their website, unlike other websites, every single page on their website has their telephone number at the top. So, at the end of the day when somebody has an issue or when a customer has an issue whether it is to make a request or it is to query a product or service that they have already engaged you for a lot of times they want to speak with a live human being and sometimes it's so hard navigating on these organizations websites some of them don’t have a phone number, they have this contact us page where you have to type out your entire request or issue and then wait for somebody from their company to respond to you. So, the fact that Zappos actually makes themselves available by providing a telephone number on all their pages really sets them apart.

 

  • Alex Genov agreed and stated that he joined Zappos about 4 years ago and he can take absolutely no credit in it's incredible success over the years. He has contributed something in the past 4 years but indeed the company was formed early on based on the belief that it will be successful only if they make their customers happy, employees happy and the vendors happy. That was the focus. When Tony Tsheish started investing in the company, basically he was intensely focused on the customer experience and on making this very new behaviour which is buying shoes online as easy as possible. We're talking about 15 - 16 years ago. They realized that in that kind of business things usually will sometimes go wrong and you cannot prevent that but what you can do is to do everything to make it right by the customer. So, one of the initial defining moments was one day something went wrong with an order and a customer was not happy but then they went out of their way to make it right and then that person wrote an e-mail and in the subject matter, she started by using the word, “WOW.” Bear in mind, this is 15 - 16 years ago. Now everybody's talking about wowing customers. But that was so long ago and then at that point they realized this is going to be our defining characteristic, is going to be customer service and at a time when everybody is considering service a cost to be cut. Zappos said, “That's who we are and we're going to invest in that.” That's really counter-intuitive in a way thinking has let it success because the whole belief is that we're selling shoes that are also available in other stores or in other places. And if we do all the same things that other retailers do and if we compete on price and we can be done on cutting costs then we're just going to be another retailer. And you know what's happening with retail nowadays, this was decided so many years ago. Sometimes it's really because he’s a proponent of the online experience. Sometimes there's intense focus on customer service is going to be a point of frustration because he’s thinking can we focus a bit more on the website. But then you'll realize what the roots are and also, we have a saying at Zappos that “Zappos is a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes right now.”

 

Yanique mentioned that if businesses looked at their companies like that, “I'm just an airline” or “I'm a customer service company that just happens to be in the airline business transporting people from one location to the next for all different reasons, weddings, business, vacation.” And they realize that their focus is on service because without these customers we have no business. I think it would really change the mindset and propel, it would be like a paradigm shift in how we as customers experience business.

 

Alex agreed and stated that it will help to have some competition, some industries are more much more like monopolies right. And they have less choice than there is much less pressure to not be customer centric in general. One question in the outline about what business owners can think of and what's going to make them successful - it's very simple, it's just focus on the customer and of course you have to have your business plan and you have to have your operations to be excellent. You cannot be focusing on the customer and giving away free product and you know you're going to be in business for maybe 3 days, you will have very happy customers but very short-lived success. You need to have your financials work but beyond, he loves Zappos because it's a company that's focused on purpose before profit. And it’s a very subtle but very important difference, if you say that you’re in there for the profit then you’ll be making all those decisions that ultimately end up hurting customers. If you are saying that you’re here for that purpose then but also make sure that you are making profit. Ultimately, if you're making customers happy they will be loyal customers and they will be telling others about your business. Alex stated that another thing that sets them apart is that they don't do a traditional advertising. They don't pour billions into TV ads for example, but people know about Zappos from word of mouth, from things that they do that benefit the community. And they have a very strong Social Media Presence. So that's another lesson for entrepreneurs and for business folks. Focus on the customer, focus on the community, do good things for the community and for the customer and then you're going to have those customers that are not only customers but they're going to be your ambassadors they are going to spread the word about you. So, it's going to be saving a lot of money on advertising essentially and marketing.

 

  • Alex stated that if you're a small company you cannot really afford PHD’s and specialist to do this for you but you can do it yourself to a large degree and then why is it important? If you want to make some customers happy, now we talk a lot about personalization, a lot about meeting the customer needs or the jobs supposed to be done then you don't know your customers. You're probably going to be basing decisions on your own experience and if you are lucky to have a lot of customers just like yourself, so be it then you have to do any research. If you want to differentiate yourself you need to understand a little bit of the competition but mostly the customer. There are different types of businesses, for example, we are a corner coffee shop, then you're going to be providing the staples, you may walk around the neighborhood see what the other coffee shops charge and you're going to price your offering accordingly and then there's not much to research about, what people need is coffee, pastries. Alex stated that one of the books he read recently that influence him is one from Harvard professor called Clayton Christiansen and he's been talking about jobs to be done for a long time, customer jobs to be done and it's a variation of user needs or wants but it's much more specific in the sense that he's saying customers are hiring you and your product to do specific jobs and if you do the jobs, they'll continue hiring you, if not they are going to fire you and your product. So, the example he gives is a big breakfast chain here that they wanted to grow their milkshake business. They were getting a hard time selling more milkshakes so they hired this company to really observe people and how they buy milkshakes and then they talk to people and all they found was that the same person stopping by in the morning and stopping by in the afternoon had different needs when it comes to milkshakes. So, in the morning they were on their way to work, pretty long commute and they needed a little bit of nourishment like breakfast but also, they needed something to keep them occupied in the car sitting there bored. And so, they designed these milkshakes with something to do with nutritional value but also with some chunks of stuff in the milkshake so that you know people would just drink the milkshake and have something like some more sensation in their mouth. In the afternoon, when the people stopped by after picking up their kids from daycare and so we had kids in the backseat making noise and shouting, angry and so So, they are buying milkshakes for them and the job to be done was to give them some nutrition but also to keep them quiet back there. They were designed not only the milkshakes but also the straws so that they're thinner so the milkshake last longer. And you understand the whole point of this is that if you didn't observe people in action and didn't talk to them about why are you buying this and what are you trying to achieve with that milkshake, then you will be in the dark. Some things are pretty straightforward like opening a coffee shop with the staples but even then, if you're really customer focused then you'll know your customers and when they come in you know that this person, they have their usual and you offer them that. Or maybe they're upset, talk to them about what’s bothering them, bartenders are great at that. They solve these emotional jobs to be done like a friend for somebody who is a little bit down maybe or doesn't get anybody to talk to at the moment. The point is all of this is based on knowing people understanding people and if you're just focused on your business and your numbers and you don't see your customers as people but just as walking wallets then ultimately, they'll find another place that treats them better. So, you have those basic needs and wants. When he was talking about individual differences is when it gets to be bigger businesses that now start serving millions of people or different types of customers for example, if you are a B2B business and you're selling something to a company, you have different interactions, for example the CEO who is going to be signing the cheque ultimately. And interacting with some procurement person who is responsible for implementing the system. And then you may or may not interact with the end user but they're all different user groups and they all have different mindsets and they're going to have different interactions with the system. So that's a very simple form of segmentation based on role in a company. For Zappos for example, to some extent gender plays a role of course because all men's shoes are different from women's shoes, clothing. They dress somewhat differently. When he was working for Turbo Tax for example and it's a financial, Do-It-Yourself financial product. Gender made no difference in terms of how finances are kept, if anything women are much better at keeping finances than men but when it came to how we understand the product you think about finances there was no different so for each business it's going to be a bit different. Just to finish the coffee shop example and maybe some of the audience have some customers that are vegan now so you have the vegan customers and you have the ones that are not. So that will be kind of a surprise and delight for your customers to say, “Do you want regular milk? or you want soy milk?” But that's another example of maybe your segment based on taste and health preferences and so on.

 

  • Alex shared that in his tools of the trade like analytics programme. He uses SPSS too because everybody at Zappos does hands on work. And there's no more managers there now and it's a different self-organization kind of environment. A lot of his work is hands on work. They have a really powerful survey tool, they do a lot of surveys with our customers and with prospects - general population, US shoppers. They collect information that way and then he uses an analytics tool called SPSS to do the analysis. They also collect a lot of text data and it's very challenging to analyze sentiment and he’s talking about large volume. Like 600,000 reviews on the website or even they do a survey when they get to 2,000/3,000 verbatim comments from customers in text form. It's very difficult to analyze, now they’re starting to explore a tool that is a very powerful text analytics tool developed on technology from the MIT media lab and so you have the best scientists there working to develop this kind of artificial intelligence to extract meaning for example from text. And it's not as simple as just counting the number of times a word appears. That’s extracting meaning what the word is connected to water. He mentioned that Google is amazing, Google is like this really powerful software company if you have to find anything you Google it and find it right away.

 

  • Alex shared that one of the key influences for me is this Italian designer called Roberto Verganti. He wrote several books but one of his key books is called Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean and his main idea is that you need to understand customers as people and that's been his kind of mission in the past couple of years as don’t really just study customers as shoppers in the process of shopping or in the process of calling but understand them holistically as people. He has been advocating for this sort of radical innovation which is that a dual meaning of what things mean for people and that's very hard to do but it's going to guarantee the biggest success. One of his examples is this company that was the leader in candles, a few centuries ago. A couple of centuries ago they were there for a hundred years, they were the best, made candles and then electricity came along. And instead of them changing the meaning of what they were doing they continued to focus on the light, how long does the candle was lasting, how safe it is. And then of course they disappeared, they went out of business. Alex asked – “Can you guess one Candle company that is thriving right now?” Yanique replied – “I cannot…” A candle company that is thriving now is called the Yankee Candle Company, it's very big in the United States but the reason why they're so successful is that because they change the meaning of what a candle means, it's not used for light but it's used for mood and they made it smell good but you see how they changed the meaning because the other company was focused on safety and they didn't want the candle to smell right and then it lost its purpose. That’s all he talks about, understanding what things mean for people. Another example is this kettle for boiling water and they made this kettle that looks pretty cool but also was emitting the sound when it was ready, it kind of whistle and the meaning there was not only was it a tool for boiling water but it’s a signal for the family to gather around the table. You would think it’s a simple object and then people pay US $500.00 for this. It’s the shape, the meaning. A good question for all the listeners is the business they’re in, are they innovating on that level versus just making things better the way they are, keeping the same meaning but making it better. “Are you innovating or are you making things better the way they are?” [Question to ask yourself as a business owner]

 

  • Alex stated that at work he is excited about a couple of big programs they are doing which is the Voice of the Customer, they are enabling their customers that go on their website and don’t call on the phones to give them feedback and for the organization to be able to consume that feedback, so they are working hard on that. Again, exploring text analytics, it’s going to open their eyes, it’s just a ton of data that has been left unexplored. In his personal life, he went back to a passion of his which is Martial Arts after many years of not doing much and in Las Vegas there are Shaolin Monks teaching and that’s super exciting for him. There is one authentic Shaolin Monk visiting to hold a seminar and he’ll be taking some time off work to do that.

 

  • Alex shared listeners can find him at –

LinkedIn - @alexgenov

 

  • Alex shared that what inspires him in times of adversity in his professional life is thinking about the customer and Zappos is a part of Amazon and Jeff Bezos is talking about customer obsession and then in his personal life, is this idea of no hacks, it’s just perseverance and hard work.

Links

Dec 5, 2017

Jeff Toister Show Notes

Jeff Toister helps customer service teams unlock their hidden potential. He is the best-selling author of The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide To Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service. More than 140,000 people on six (6) continents has taken his video base training courses on LinkedIn Learning aka Lynda.com. Jeff’s 15 training videos on LinkedIn Learning include Customer Service Foundations and Leading a Customer Centric Culture.

Jeff was named one of the top 30 customer service professionals in the world by Global Gurus. He was also named one of the top 50 Thought Leaders to Follow on Twitter by the International Customer Management Institute. Feedspot has named his Inside Customer Service Blog one of the Top 50 customer service blogs on the planet.

Jeff holds a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) certification from The Association for Talent Development.

Questions

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Can you tell us about your journey in writing the book – The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service?
  • What is culture? As entrepreneurs, what are some of the things they should be thinking about?
  • What are some advice you would give to an employee or a business owner who is trying to sustain a service culture and with growth they have not been able to manage the culture with the massive growth that they have experienced? How do they scale but at the same time maintain that same service culture and experience?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

Highlights

 

  • Jeff Toister stated that what compelled him the spectrum of customer experience was the very first customer he served. He would love to say that it was a success story but it wasn’t, he didn’t do a good job and that changed things for him. He was 16 years old, he was working in a retail clothing store and he had gotten about 15 minutes of training and the person that was supposed to be training him said, “I’m going on break, good luck, here’s the key to the dressing room. Do the best you can, I’ll be back.” He was nervous as young kids often are and I didn’t know what he was supposed to do. A customer comes up to him and he’s just thinking, “Oh no, I don’t know anything” and that’s obviously the wrong mindset but that’s the mind set he had. The customer asked, “Do you carry Dockers?” it’s a brand of khakis and he knew what they were, he had no idea if they carried them or not and so he’s looking around the store and he’s hoping that there’s a big neon sign that says, “Dockers right here” but there was not. And being 16 years old and being inexperienced, the first words that came out of his mouth were, “I don’t know” and without getting a second chance to recover, he got angry and he said, “Wow, this is terrible service” and he stormed out of the store. He knows that that was the wrong answer, the challenge is when you’re employee in that situation how do you stop yourself from giving that wrong answer, that comes with experience, life experience and training knowledge and so in that moment he knew it wasn’t the right answer, he knew he didn’t do well and he never wanted to feel that way again, that was many years ago but throughout his entire career, he has always gravitated towards 2 things: customer service but in particular, What makes employees tick? How do we help our customer service employees perform their very best? And how do we remove these obstacles where we put them in a position where they are not as able to be successful? He has always been fascinated with customer service, he has always been fascinated with training and all of his jobs have focused on that and for the last 12 years he has been a consultant who helps organizations tackle these types of problems.

 

Yanique stated that she finds it interesting that it was a not so positive experience that propelled you into this because as a consultant that many times when a customer becomes loyal to business, if you track back the root cause, it’s usually a dissatisfied customer who dealt with an employee who was able to turn the situation around and just because of how it was handled, now every time they come back to that business they only want to deal with that particular employee, they’ll even wait sometimes if they’re on vacation to come back from vacation to transact business with that company and it all came out of a negative experience.

 

Jeff mentioned the “Peak-End Rule” (Psychology Term), he stated that it explains what Yanique said is true. It’s about customer perception or perception in general that we tend to not notice things that are normal. We tend to notice things that are different than normal and what really stands out is the thing that is most different and so the bad experience if you kind of think of that as the heartbeat of customer service, the bad experience is kind of like this really bad deviation from our normal experience and then a really good correction, really good fix is a huge difference. So, it stands out because it’s such a leap from a horrible experience to this great experience, it becomes imprinted in our memories and that’s the peak part, if it’s the last experience we had with that organization or that person, that really gets imprinted in our memories. So, the Peak End Rule kind of explains why that big gap, it’s so true when we recover from a bad experience, that’s what really sticks in our customers’ mind.

 

  • Jeff Toister shared that he’s glad that Yanique’s impression of his book was that it’s a practical guide and he really appreciate that because that was the goal in writing it. He found a couple things and one was that he consistently had this theme with his client which was culture, “How do we get our employees obsess with service?” and the other thing he found quite frankly was that companies tend to have money to invest in technology, they often don’t have the budget to invest in people and he thought, “If I could put this into a book and make it a practical step by step guide, maybe they can’t afford to hire me or you to come in, we wish they would. If they don’t have the budget for that, this book will give them everything I’m already sharing with my clients.” That was the starting point to say he’s going to make these ideas available. So where did they come from, they came from work he was doing but then he wanted to profile companies that were successful, and one of his biggest challenges in writing the book was, he didn’t want to include some of the usual suspects - the Zappos, the Southwest Airlines, the Nordstrom, the Disney, the Ritz Carlton, not to take anything away from those organizations, it’s just that we’ve heard their stories so many times, there are other companies out there that are delivering amazing service. So, you ask where did those stories come from? He started researching what other organizations have a strong service culture where they’re known, they have the reputation, maybe it’s service ratings, maybe it’s stories written about them, they’re known for having employees who are obsessed with service and then he started researching, what do they do and it was amazing to him that there was a consistency across all of these companies, in terms of how they approach it and so he was able to pull his own work and in the research he did into these companies and put them into the step by step guide and say, “Hey, there is something here. There’s a process that all of these organizations are following and we can give this recipe to anybody who cares to follow it.”

 

Yanique agreed that he tries to look at a very practical, operational way that any business, even if it’s a small business with just 5 employees would be able to extract that information and run with it in their own company.

 

Jeff stated that even a team because one of the biggest questions he gets is that people say, “I read the book but I’m not the CEO and I don’t even think my CEO cares too much about service, she says it important but I know she really cares about the budget.” And that’s fine, you can still use the book. He has examples in there with specific teams or departments, so whatever the size, whether you’re the CEO or you’re just leading the small team within a bigger company, the goals and the ideas that you can use these tools to create a service culture in whatever you control.

 

  • Jeff stated that he thinks sometimes culture is one of those words that we take for granted, we all say, “Culture is important” but maybe we mean different things. To him, culture when we’re talking about an organizational perspective, it’s a system of behaviors and beliefs, it’s how a group of people act or thinks and understand the world. Sometimes we think culture is a statement that says, “This is our motto or these are our values” and that’s not quite accurate. Culture is what people actually do, so if people are living those values each and every day then those values are accurate and they reflect your culture, if not, then they’re pretty empty. He gave an example, there was a bank in the United States about a year ago, there was this huge scandal because what they were doing was opening accounts for customers that didn’t request them. Millions of accounts were affected and the reason it was happening is because there were a lot of pressure for the individual employees to meet these very aggressive sales targets, so that’s what led to this huge scandal that the CEO resigned, there was a lot of fines, the Federal Government started to look into it. What was interesting though was that the CEO even in the moment when it was announce that the scandal broke and the CEO still had his job and he was announcing this scandal and this big settlement of a lawsuit, he still pointed to their culture as being customer focused and to him, that’s the perfect example of Your words doesn’t really matter if they’re not backed up by your deeds. How did people actually act? In that organization, the culture was about sales pressure and doing anything at all cost to sell a product. That was their actual culture. So, when you think about organizations and one of the organizations he wrote about in the book is a place call REI, if you love the outdoors, that’s the place to go for your camping equipment, your hiking equipment, bicycling, whatever. REI is an example of culture that really matches what they say. For example, if you go in and you’re looking for camping equipment, you’re not going to have somebody just kind of point you to the camping equipment aisle, the person who works there who’s going to help you is an avid camper, they love camping and they can’t wait to share with you what they know so that you can love camping too and that’s by design because they purposely stated that their goal as an organization is to help us all enjoy the outdoors. That to him is when culture matches what we’re saying, that’s pretty healthy but at the end of the day, culture is what we do, it’s how we perceive the world, it’s what we actually believe.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that in her process of dealing with some businesses this week, she called a company that deals with cooking gas and their office is not located in the city, it’s located on the outskirts of the city so it’s a 20-minute drive and she asked them if didn’t have any other mode of payment because she told the sales representative before they came that she will be paying by card and she specifically requested that the gentleman coming brings the card machine. He comes and he didn’t bring the card machine and of course he now informs her that she needs to drive all the way to the location to make the payment. So, she called them and said, “Can the payment be taken over the phone?” “Oh no, we just changed out our card machines and that’s not possible anymore.” Yanique called and ask them, “Do you expect me to drive 20 minutes outside the city just to get to you to make a payment for a service that you provided, I think you really need to talk to your finance department and think about a more customer friendly way to accept payments from your customers.” And it’s interesting because they were voted one of the best customer service organization in their industry and that left a bad experience. Even when the guys came, the service was good but then the payment part is a part of the service as well.

 

Jeff agreed and stated that whenever that happens, he always wonder why does it happen and is it that the person doesn’t want to do their job, sometimes but often it’s that they are put in that position or no one shared with that driver that Yanique had had that communication or that driver was specifically told, “We’re not doing cards so this is what you have to tell people.” Those employees are often put in a bad position where they almost can’t win.

 

  • Jeff stated that maintaining the same service culture and experience is a big challenge for a couple of reasons. One is that keeping culture exactly the same is impossible because culture changes, every time you add a new person to the team, every time you add a new product or a new line of service or a new channel, it changes just a little bit. He doesn’t know if it’s possible to keep culture the same but maybe consistent and have it grow and evolve in the right way, that’s maybe the goal for those businesses. The other challenge is scale, as businesses grow it becomes necessary for the business owner or the business leader to trust more people to do the work and that business owner can’t be in all places at all times, they can’t talk to every single customer and so the process of building a service culture really is about that scale question, “How do I instill in my employees what I believe in my core?” and the way to do that is that you have to make it clear, you have to articulate it. Just like how he was asked, “Let’s define service culture.” In these organization you have to define, “What does our culture look like?” and the tool that he uses is something called The Customer Service Vision, it’s a very simple statement, it could be something that you already have like a Vission or vision statement for your company but it’s very simple statement that says, “This is what outstanding service looks like.” And every employee in the organization has to understand what that vision statement is, what does it mean and most importantly, how do they personally contribute in their role and once you achieve that, then you can scale using that vision as a guide and that’s the first step, you’ve got to have that vision. The second step is employees all have to understand it and the third step is that you have to use that as a way of doing business, one thing he sees that business owners/ business leaders do that really hurt that effort is that they treat culture as a separate project, so people will maybe take time out of their normal job to do some cultural things, maybe on a culture committee or we’re doing culture as the theme for this year strategic planning and then we go back to work and just do our jobs, that’s not how you evolve culture, culture is our behavior so we need to use culture as a guide for making all decisions, it’s how we create strategy, it how we invest in technology and processes, it’s how we hire, it’s how we train people, it’s how as a leader you’re deciding what to put in front of your employees and talk about every single day and if we are not talking about culture and how outstanding service should look like then your employees are not going to believe that it’s important, they’ll focus and what you talk about and that’s the biggest challenge for leaders. Jeff also hear a lot of companies say to him, “We’re just so busy, we’re too busy to deal with culture.” And he would say, “No, you’re not because what you’re really doing is you’re still creating a culture, it’s just not the culture you need.”

 

Yanique agreed that with the point that even though they’re not focusing on culture, every organization has a culture but is it the culture that they really want and so if you don’t have intentionally activities, whether it be meetings, conversations, group outings, strategies built around what you’re trying to achieve, then the culture will emerge on its own. And so, you’d have a culture you don’t want all because there was no intentional act but not because you didn’t put any attention there doesn’t mean it’s not formed.

 

Jeff mentioned that often when you don’t put the intention there, it goes in the direction you really don’t want it to go.

 

Yanique mention that the take away from this interview is culture is not something that just doesn’t happen, it happens even without your intentional behavior behind it, it’s going to manifest and this is why you really have to intentionally work towards the culture you want. It’s like eating because we have to eat every day but if we don’t intentionally make an effort to eat healthy then we’ll eat anything and of course the body will just consume whatever you put inside of it and if you’re consuming negative thing then it will lead to disease and chronic illnesses versus taking an intentional approach towards eating, ensuring you do your meal preps, you exercise 3 to 4 times a week, you’re getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep per night, those are things that are intentional activities you schedule into your life to ensure it’s done every single day.

 

  • Jeff stated that he really likes this question because motivation is a part of something he looks at all the time, not just his own motivation but employee motivation. He thinks we often look at it the wrong way, we look at how we get motivated versus how to not be demotivated and so for him, motivation is easy, he does what he loves. He finds the inner section of what he loves to do and what he can be successful doing and where he has a little bit of skill. Jim Collins’ Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Other’s Don’t’ Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, one of his landmark books. He talked about this head shock concept for companies, it’s an inner section of what you love, what can you do well, what can you get paid to do and he takes that personally. And so, he gets up every day excited because he loves this. The demotivation happens not just for him but for everybody where we perceive that there’s obstacles that stand in the way of doing what we love. In a service environment, referring to his story about his first service encounter, that happens to employees every single day where they want to provide great service, almost every employee wants to provide great service but there’s some obstacle that they perceive is standing in their way and that’s what’s demotivating them. Every day he works on himself but he helps organizations and employees work on finding what are those obstacles and they can remove those obstacles, motivation becomes really natural.

 

Yanique stated that it’s interesting because she does workshops for organizations and a lot of questions that she hears from employees is that sometimes you can’t do what you love because you have bills to pay but then, if you have that kind of mindset which goes back into your attitude. Is it your motivation that affects your attitude or your attitude that affects your motivation?

 

In reference to Yanique’s question if motivation affects attitude or attitude affects motivation. Jeff stated that he is a big sports fan, so the team that’s winning, are they because they are motivator or are they motivated because they are winning. He thinks success breathes that and those two go together. Doing well, we feel good, we’re motivated and if we’re not doing well we feel bad with a bad attitude, we feel demotivated. There’s a concept called, “Learned Helplessness” that a lot of employees’ experience. What it is that over time they feel like they failed trying so they just stop trying. It gets really bad is a lot of times they stay in the same job, not every job is right for every person and so they’ll stay in the job or maybe they have those bills to pay and they don’t feel like they have another good option and so they kind of give up but they keep coming to work everyday and that makes it so much worst because it’s defeating.

 

  • Jeff stated that the tool that he uses every single day is a website called Highrise, it’s a way of keeping track of clients and projects all in one place. One of his core value is accountability and he believes if you say you’re going to do something, you do it. As an entrepreneur, you have a million things going on and trying to meet deadlines and maintain commitments and do what you say you’re going to do is extremely difficult. So, he uses that through every single day to keep track projects, initiatives, people and making sure he maintains all of his commitments but he also uses it to not just look at an individual commitment but how does that connect to all the other commitments he has made so that he’s not overloading his plate. He uses LinkedIn and Twitter every day as well and primarily to connect with other people and learn from other people and see what other people are doing as he thinks we are definitely in a relationship business. As someone whose passionate about training and adult learning, he’s always learning as well and that’s often where he finds “What are people doing that’s interesting?” So those would he his second and third picks.

 

  • Jeff shared that he loves to read and is sometimes reading 2 to 3 books at a time. He thought about and said, “What are the books that stick with me?” and that’s the challenge with the book, that we read a book and say, “Oh it’s good” and then you ask, “What have you used from that book?” Jeff shared that these are some book that he uses a lot. One is called Street Smarts by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham and what he loves about it is that it’s an entrepreneurial perspective on the business side of running a business and he thinks in the world of customer service and customer experience, too many of us are unfamiliar or tentative around the business side, the number side. He had a discussion online with someone the other day where they were upset that executives only care about the budget and the point he tried to make and comes from this book is, the way to get executives to care about customer service is you have to translate customer service into numbers because that’s their language and if we’re not doing that or if we don’t know how, we’re only hurting ourselves. The next one is a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen, it’s a system for managing your time and commitments and it’s a principle based system rather than go out and buy this portfolio and you have to use this specific software, it’s more about principles to use whatever you feel comfortable using. He uses those principles to do things that allow him to keep on top of things. For example, at the end of everyday he has zero messages in his email inbox and for most people that’s unbelievable but it’s because he has these set of principles that David Allen shared with him in his book that he uses every day. The third book is a book that really made an impact on him, it’s called Lincoln on Leadership by Donald T. Phillips and what he did was he studied the United States’ 16th president which some people would say would be one of their most amazing leaders in history and he looked at some of the things that Abraham Lincoln did as a leader that we can pull from today. One of his favorite examples that he uses as a consultant and trainer is Lincoln was really the first president to spend a lot of time going to people rather than expecting people to come to him for a meeting or a conversation and the reason he did that, it’s management by walking around which we know now but the idea was, if you approach people in an environment where they feel comfortable and make them feel like we’re on an even keel and you’re not trying to intimidate them then they’re much more likely to open up to you and have an honest and frank conversation and he learned when he’s working with a client and he meets with their front line staff and ask them about their job, they are always ready to tell him exactly what is working well and exactly what they think is going wrong and he thinks it’s because of that principle of coming to them and making them comfortable.

 

  • Jeff stated he has this thing where he realizes that his audience doesn’t have a lot of budget to spend on customer service maybe technology but not on people. So, one of the things he has been trying to do is transform his own business where he can make resources, tool, concepts available to people at little to no cost and somehow still get paid. A few examples are his book, the investment on the book is USD $14.95 for the paperback or USD $9.99 for the kindle, that’s a pretty low investment yet he puts all the tools he uses as a consultant in that book so you don’t have to hire him because you probably have USD $14.95, you may not have his consultant fee. He has training videos on LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com and he has learned that a lot of his clients and companies that he works with already has a subscription to one of those platforms, so you can get his training without having to pay for him to come in, the video is right there, it’s available to you and if you don’t have a subscription, it’s fairly inexpensive and then things like this podcast, he loved this opportunity and really appreciate it because it’s a chance for them to have a dialogue about service but it doesn’t cost anything to subscribe to the podcast and learn from it and learn from not just himself but from some of the other amazing experts that Yanique interview. Those are free resources that anybody can take advantage of and he’s really excited about the opportunity to help people wherever they are in their journey.

                                                                                        

  • Jeff shared listeners can find him at –

Twitter - @toister (www.twitter.com/toister)

Customer Service Tip of the Week – www.toistersolutions.com/tips

Insider Customer Service Blog – www.toistersolutions.com/blog

 

  • Jeff shared that he’s not a big quote person, the reason he’s not a quote person, the first reason is because he sees quotes and they sound great but then what do we do with them. He’s more of an action person and the second reason is he has done research on some quotes and he has been disappointed to find that that person never said that or that’s not what they meant. He gave an example, the quote, “The customer is always right” no one said that and it bothers him that we have accepted this as some mantra in customer service and he did some research on where did this come from, why do we believe this and there is not really an agreement but it came from a few places. One possible source says Ritz Carlton and he said, “The customer is never wrong” and the context was that even if the customer is wrong, of course they are sometimes, you don’t argue with them, you just find a way for them to help them become right. Marshall Fields who is a famous retailer, he said, “Right or wrong, the customer is always right” and his point was the same thing that the customers will of course make mistakes but we don’t argue with them, our role here is to help them become right, to help them succeed. He wished he had a great quote to share but when he finds those quotes and he found out no one ever said that but the story behind the quote often is much more interesting.

 

Yanique mentioned that in most of her workshops towards the end of the session, she always explains to the participants that the customer is always right literally is not a true statement because there are times when the customer is wrong but what we should be guided by is the principle that as employees, we are not here to prove the customer wrong, we are here to help them, they are wrong but we are not here say, “Hey Mr. Customer, you’re wrong and we are going to punish you.” But more like, “It’s okay, let’s work back to how we can undo what’s happened and find a solution so that you can leave here feeling good, let’s make this right.”

 

Links

The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service by Jeff Toister

Sep 26, 2017

Yanique Grant Show Notes

 

This episode with Yanique Grant will be speaking about customer experience and convenience as it relates to customer experience. Over the last few months I have been doing a lot of workshops locally and I have been advising the participants and the organizations that "CONVENIENCE" is the next big thing in Customer Experience and those organizations that really recognize it are definitely setting themselves apart and making themselves or creating that competitive advantage for themselves.

 

Highlights 

The most valuable commodity in the world is "Time" and if you are in business, competing on price is just not enough; you have to find a way to set yourself apart from the competition. Many will argue that convenience is apart of customer service or the customer experience and I will definitely agree with that but it is becoming so important that I am willing to tell you that it is definitely a sole competitive differentiator.

Let’s think about convenience and what it really means, convenience is the option that you give the customer to get more than one item or to have more than one channel by which they can communicate with you. Let’s take for example Amazon, Amazon has created a market place where you can basically lay in your bed, you can be in the airport using your phone, you can be sitting in a parking lot using your tablet and order anything you could possibly think of, you can place an order for a DVD you can place an order for a phone, you can place an order for a book, Amazon is right there at the tip of your fingers, you can even buy a part for your motor vehicle on Amazon, it’s just that simple, it’s just that easy. They’ve found a way to really set themselves apart as it relates to convenience, they broke out of the low price and big selection game with convenience and they‘ve even made it so much easier, they created the Amazon Prime programme that gets the merchandise shipped to you without shipping charges in 2 days or less and it works! I am an Amazon prime customer and it’s like magic!!! They’ve created the Dash Button that allows you to purchase merchandise with the simple push of a button, they wanted to eliminate steps, as many steps as possible from the time a customer is thinking about purchasing a product until that product is delivered. They are also setting up distributing centers throughout major cities that can get merchandise to you in 2 hours or less, speed and simplicity is exactly what it is about.

To take is a step further there is Uber, Uber managed to create a system where you can just have this app on your phone, you can pay for where you want to be transported to right there through the app and you can see that motor vehicle or driver coming from whatever point to come and pick you up. I was on vacation in Chicago in August of this year with my daughter and we were taking an Uber and my friend purchased the Uber for us from his office, which was maybe 5 or 10 minutes up the road from us and he was able see the car on the road and advise us exactly when to go downstairs to the front desk and the vehicle will be right there. We were able to know that it was a white vehicle, a Toyota Corolla and the guy’s name is Dennis, I was like, “Wow, this is amazing.” So convenience is the next big thing in customer experience, it makes things so much easier.

I was also visiting some friends for my daughter’s friends birthday over the weekend and of course there was no coffee and I am a big coffee drinking and when I went to the supermarket, which is located at the entrance of the complex, upon completing my purchase and leaving the store, the gentleman walked me outside with the cart and preceded to take the things and put them in my vehicle for her which I was very grateful for and I told him thanks. He went further to say, “The next time that time you would like to make a purchase, you could just go online or you could email us your items and we will just deliver it for you and you can pay for it when we come to deliver it, just so easy and convenient you don’t even have to come out of your bed.” Those were his exact words and I was like, “This is amazing.” It doesn’t matter how small your business is, it doesn’t matter how large your business is, look at Amazon, they are serving millions and probably billions of people globally, so you could be serving 10 people, you could be serving a 100 people, you could be serving a billion people, convenience is the next big thing in customer experience and if you con figure out a way in your business to make your services more convenient for your customers, you’re definitely creating a competitive advantage.

Another big organization that I would like to mention here in Jamaica is First Global Bank (FGB) and they have this amazing machine call the Video Teller Machine, it’s the first of its kind in Jamaica as far as I knows, it’s the only bank in Jamaica that offers this service. This Video Teller Machine opens way before the bank opens like at 7:00 am and they close pretty much after the bank closes, you can do a lot of transactions at the Video Teller Machine and it’s not like an ATM machine, you can do cash deposits, you can do can cash withdrawals, you can make cheque deposits, you can do cheque encashment for their (FGB) cheques, you can do denomination exchanges, you can do credit card payments, you can do fund transfers and it’s basically a machine and you’re speaking to the Teller, you pick the phone up, you have the option of seeing the Teller or you have the option of not seeing the Teller and you tell them what you need to do and you insert your payment or whatever transaction you need to do through that slip section and you get your receipt, it’s amazing and you don’t have to join the main line because many times you enter the bank the main line has a good amount of people and you kind of want to do a quick transaction, there’s no need for you to have an extensive interaction with someone and so the Video Teller Machine has really been an amazing convenient experience, so I have to big up First Global Bank for really being the innovator and the trend setter in that department in the banking industry in Jamaica. You have to think in terms of “How can I make life easier for my customers? What do my customers want?” If you start thinking in that frame of mind, she guarantee that you’re going to be at least 5 to 10 steps ahead of the game and in this global competitive marketplace that we’re all operating in, convenience is the one thing that is going to set you apart from your competition.

Thank you so much for joining me by just taking some time to listen on customer experience and innovative convenience. I also want to state basically and quote you some basic statistics just to let you know how important convenience is. There was a survey that was conducted by LPSOS and in that survey they found that 80% of the respondents stated that new payment methods such as prepaid cards, electronic transfers and even mobile devices have made the buying process easier, this is forcing businesses in the B2C (Business to Customer) market and B2B (Business to Business) market sectors to look at their point of sale technology for potential improvements to meet customer expectations especially as ecommerce continues to grow in popularity.

Again, Amazon is a great example of ecommerce, look at Netflix, Netflix is definitely another great innovation in terms of people used to rent DVDs and now with Netflix you just pay this very minimal fee per month and you have at the tip of your fingers....TV shows, you have different genres of movies and all of this you can access through your tablet, you can access through your phone, you can access through your smart TV or your computer. So convenience is really the driving force that customers are looking for, so my challenge to you is to go back into your organizations and maybe do a mini survey and find out what kind of convenience your customers are looking for, better yet you could even ask your customer facing employees to pay attention to things that customers ask for the most and try and find unique ways to embed or to introduce these things as a natural part of doing business with your organization, if you take this mind set and if you take this approach, you’re definitely going to see a difference in your sales because convenience will cause people to do business with you over another organization all because it’s so much easier, because time is the greatest commodity in this life that we are operating in and it’s the most valuable commodity.

If you can figure out a way to save your customers time while ensuring that they’re still being provided with the best quality service in the most easy and convenient way, you’ll be surprised to know how your bottom line would tremendously increase because you’re making things so much easier for them. Customers like to know that they’re doing business with an organization and that the organization has taken the hassle out of doing business with them. If you have to go somewhere and you have to figure out what to do, where to go, how to get this done, why is it so complicated, why is it taking so much time, why do I have to follow up with them much, it’s so frustrating at times, you’re going to look for an alternative that’s going to cause you little or no stress, so the aim of an organization is to find unique ways to reduce the stress and basically improve on the convenience, improve on the hassle free experience, ensure that when the customer has finished completing the transaction they feel like it was so easy they could do it over and over and over again because it literally takes nothing out of them to complete the transaction, that’s the mind set you need to be in, Convenience is the next "BIG" thing in customer service. 

What are you doing in your business to create convenience?

 

Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue Online Course

 

Aug 15, 2017

Sheree Martin, is an experienced Executive with a strong result oriented focus. She has spent the last 15 years driving strategies geared towards increasing business value, known as an inspiring and strategic leader with the proven ability to establish effective teams. She has a track record of achievements in the areas of business strategy, marketing, risk management, organizational transformation and corporate innovation. After a distinguished career at The National Commercial Bank Group, Sheree decided to join The Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd. in January 2014. She was appointed to the Executive team to lead human resources, government and regulatory affairs, revenue management, customer service and communications. The company recorded significant improvements in its survey ratings, employee engagement and customer satisfaction while she headed those portfolios. During her time overseeing HR, Sheree placed an expanded focus on leadership development by spearheading a new high potential programme called JPS iLead, which exposed select employees over a 12 month period to advanced leadership competences, knowledge building, executive mentoring and targeted on the job training. Recognizing the intrinsic value of productive and well-rounded employees, Sheree also introduced the first company wide corporate wellness programme at The Jamaica Public Service. The programme, which started in 2015, has been a contributing factor to improve staff moral and reduce health care cost.

Question

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Can you tell us 3 successful factors you find that have made you successful as a leader to yield the kind of results that you’re looking for, not so much the financial result but more so the inter personal result?
  • Why these dimensions of wellness are so important and how does this relate to customer experience and customer service?
  • Can you share with us 1 or 2 success stories that you’ve really seen the individual transform because of exposure to this kind of strategy?
  • How do you stay motivated everyday?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • We have a lot of managers and business owners who feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business, specifically as it relates to constantly motivated human capital?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

 

  • Sheree Martin shared that she listens a lot to what her heart tells her, in a lot of ways she tries to passion and purpose in what she’s doing and if there is resonance with a particular path or an activity, she finds that she typically pursues it, that started as a very conscious way of living. Around 1997, a year after her first daughter was born, she came up on a book called “The Power of the Subconscious Mind” by Dr. Joseph Murphy and it really led her down to insights that really spoke to her about opening up herself to be more specific about her visions and her goals and being more purposeful about how she creates her future and so she will typically engage in activities or pursue paths or form alliances and partnerships with companies, people, teams that are just consciously put into her space because of what she’s trying to create and what she’s trying to create is just this sense of being able to give back, being able to have others think of themselves as empowered creatures and just being able to manifest their desires and their goals and she brought that over to the corporate world in a very conscious way, JPS has allowed her to do that, NCB was wonderful in a lot of ways, as far as her learning and growing on her own self but at JPS she has been able to extend it to others and so, in a round about way, what has happened over the last 20 years of her career really represents an unfolding of herself and sharing that with others.

 

  • Sheree Martin stated that it’s amazing that what she just shared that Yanique took away was the fact that you start with self and in service and customer experience she feels the same way for companies because a company is an entity and she thinks that one of the elements of successful companies is that they are driven by a service culture internally.
  • What are the processes?
  • What are the policies that are not customer friendly?
  • How are your employees able to be served internally, across departments, across teams, across the visions?
  • Sheree Martin has seen and lived the example of teams and companies and departments where internal service is taken as first pillar towards an ultimate external customer experience that the company can boast about. She also thinks that companies that look at taking feedback from their constituents both internal and external in a structured way and in a sustained way and using that feedback along with other strategies to drive their business actually continues to execute have found success and sustainably so. One of her most favorite TV Shows, she remembers when it was just launched and she was just fascinated and wondered if it was staged but only to learn that it was actually real and that was “Undercover Boss”, she adores that concept of bosses going out into the field, interacting with their own employees, listening to what their issues are on the ground, possibly interacting with customers as well and using that to take back to the board room or to take back to their executive team and talk about how the company is showing up, she believes this is very powerful. Just like self, in terms of your own development as an individual, companies should start internally, looking at how the first line of service which is internal is actually being handled, treated, given focus, what are some of the pain points, how can you address those pain points, how is the flow internally because what you get on the outside is as a result of a lot of internal work and getting feedback constantly and in a structured way from your constituents really does help you to drive better decisions.

 

  • Sheree stated that using the analogy of what we put inside our body is what we see on the outside and typically when we think about wellness, we think about physical wellness or nutrition, so you have to be conscious of how you are feeding your body with energy and the food that you choose obviously impacts your ability to manifest, your ability to perform, your ability to execute on your goals and your ability to show up the way you want to show up. Physical wellness, nutrition, fitness is absolutely critical but typically what you find is that companies or individuals stop there, most cases they think that that’s the extent of wellness, “I just need to make sure I eat properly and I’m exercising.” She finds, however, that we are missing out on other dimensions which has to do also with energy, which we don’t typically hear about or learn about, but are just as important and energy is everything. Even your thoughts can affect how you eventually show up and what you’re seeing around you, what you’re thinking about, so what are you consuming mentally and how are you feeling emotionally as a result of thoughts and perceptions and receptions you’re getting from the various stimuli in your environment, that is an aspect of wellness that at JPS they now have consciously started talking about more and more. She stated that she read something interesting the other day and she re-tweeted it, just talking about What’s App and how it is so popular and how many messages, over 50 Million messages being transmitted everyday between people yet 40% of persons claim that they are lonely. https://twitter.com/SherMart/status/892418979637194752. So we talked about physical, we talked about emotional, we talked about social wellness, how are we integrating internally and how are we making connections that are meaningful and vibrant with each other, those things are important. Intellectual wellness, are we learning, are we mentally stimulating our minds on a constant basis, she is very wary of people who call themselves experts because things are always changing and there are new paradigms and new versions coming out in whatever field that you’re in and so this habit of continuous learning and wanting to consume additional information and not really claiming that you’ve done and that’s it, “I’m now an expert.” There’s layers to that and she loves when people are talking about how they are continually trying to improve their knowledge, so there’s intellectual wellness and there’s a whole business that we don’t talk about in environmental wellness, she’s a big fan of your physical space representing your mental space, so when she goes into areas whether it’s a company or department or a car and it’s cluttered and it’s dirty, she doesn’t want to pass judgment but she immediately get a sense of what could be impacting this persons ability to be able to think clearly or to just perform flawless and clean execution because if their environment is cluttered, invariably 9/10 times their mind is also cluttered and so environmental wellness and just being conscious of how we are integrating with nature, those are things you don’t typically talk about in the corporate but companies that she have found and read about are seeing success when they look at wellness in a more holistic way because now they bring this to their employees, they facilitate programmes that allow the employees to think about all dimensions of wellness not just open a gym or have a salad bar at the cafeteria, that’s not the extent of it, they go further and then that shows obviously on the outside and impacts their service with their customers. Spiritual wellness means whatever your relationship resources, whatever you call source, it is something that you want to consciously cultivate, consciously develop, consciously maintain and use it as a source of power, a source of comfort. She finds that it allows her to refresh, she meditates everyday and she makes sure that she is constantly trying to keep in touch with source and the results are just really astounding.

 

  • Sheree shared that one of the measures of success in terms of the programme is the extent to which a number of these persons get selected for promotions or other leadership roles at a more senior level in the company and to date, they have been very successful to the extent that the persons that they see are performing at a higher level and are showing up and are being given more responsibility have come form the iLead Programme, so that is a measure of success for them. She personally has a team of 6 individuals, not all members of the iLead were selected for the but 4 out of the 6 are and she have watched and have been privileged to be apart of seeing them develop their leadership competence because one of the things she talks about in JPS is they are great technically, there’s no question about their energy expertize and their ability to master the industry from a technical stand point, what she does find that they struggle with is their leadership ability, just the hallmarks of emotional intelligence, how to create teams and how to build teams that can move mountains, they don’t teach that in engineering school, so you come into an environment and you start to talk to people about their responsibility to harness the potential of others once they’re leading a team and people look at you funny but they get it and they start to talk more and more of how can they show up and it has been a pleasure to see how leaders now take responsibility for their teams, some were naturally doing it, others are really seeing the benefits of focusing more on managing their teams with that sense of heart and that sense of purpose and invariably they’re getting that exposure through iLead and the Corporate Wellness Programme and she’s convinced that it has contributed significantly to JPS success in the last couple of years.

 

  • Sheree shared that by staying motivated, her family is her biggest source of motivation, she has an amazing support network, she could not ask for anymore in terms of her husband and her daughters and her parents and just this sense of, “I can do anything, I can go after any dream, I can chase any aspiration.” And every day she thinks about that support network, she feels fearless and she comes into an environment not nothing fazes you to the extent that you know that you’re going home to this sanctuary, once she turns into that drive way, she can breath and that is so important and has been a critical part of her success, her family and that keeps her because she just refreshes….she resets, it’s like a reset. She also finds that she makes a conscious decision to find things to appreciate and to be thankful for, so whenever there are issues and road blocks, anything that might be coming at her that might cause her to put up some negative reaction to or feel negatively towards, she tries to do what she calls this process of pivoting where she tries to understand what is it that she is reacting to in this moment and why? And then she deliberately try and focus on something that makes her feel good, so she will say, “Okay, this is really bad but there is something great about this.” You’re learning, “That person had on a wonderful pair of shoes, I wonder where she got it from?” so even if she’s barking at you, she always try to find something to appreciate and that helps, it gives her a sense of perspective and a context that says, “Listen, this too shall pass.” Nothing is permanent and it keeps her focus.

 

 

  • When Sheree was asked about an online resource, website, tool or app that she cannot live without, she stated that her daughters are Millennials and they are very much driven by their smartphones and what they find. She shared that they went to the country last week and it was amazing how they’re the ones insisting that they stop and play a board game. They were like, “Put down the phone mommy and let’s play Taboo.” She stated that her online resource is Twitter, she finds that Twitter is very effective for her industry because there’s a lot happening in energy right now and even when she was in banking, it was the same, she was in charge of innovation and that was a new part of banking at the time, so she would keep abreast with some of the things that were happening in other banks or the whole concept of innovation and she is just so proud of NCB how they have done an amazing job at transformation and digital investments. So Twitter is a must do tool and a must have, she uses it for a lot and she also keep up on the news, she doesn’t get to read the papers so she usually go to Twitter for news both local and international and she can see how everybody is commenting. So she would say Twitter from both a professional standpoint and a personal.

 

  • Sheree mentioned that how she got on her journey, that she read the book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. She mentioned that there is also Gregg Braden who is a cross over scientist mystic philosopher, he makes that bridge between science and spirituality and she always watches his videos and the book that comes to mind is The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief, he talks about the connection of the heart to the mind and just how powerful the heart is as an electrical and magnetic field for energy and she went down that rabbit hole after Joseph Murphy many years ago and was influenced by those thinkings and those perspectives. Anita Moorjani, Wayne Dwyer, Neale Donald Walsch, John Randolph Price, there are so many authors out there who’ve had personal experiences or who through their own insights have really started to show us a different way of thinking about who we are when we come on to this planet and what we’re here to do and she found herself gravitating towards those considerations and moving away from the typical views of, “You’re here, you must suffer to get everything you want.” It just makes sense to her to think about something else.

 

Yanique stated that you control and at the end of the day you have a choice as to what it is that you’re going to feed your mind with. In any situation, you’re not forced to go according to what’s happening around you, you can choose what it is that you want your mind to be thinking about, what you want to expose yourself to and with the age of technology, it’s right at the finger tips either through your phone or your computer. You can feed your mind with any content you choose to feed it with, whether you want to watch news everyday and hear about people being killed and the world is coming to an end and is just terrible or you want to focus on the fact that there are a lot of opportunities and positive things are still happening despite the crime and violence that exists.

Sheree agreed and stated that we need to shout that from every rooftop in Jamaica and across the world because it is that sense of empowerment that we need people to start embracing. She believes in a collective consciousness and when you have societies, towns and cities caught into a mindset of lack, a mindset of doom and gloom, it does reflect on what that city, town, and country can eventually achieve and how they continue to evolve. So we need to start telling people that they do have a choice.

 

  • Sheree shared that this is really important; she doesn’t believe that the consciousness of an organization can rise above the consciousness of its leadership. She would say, focus on your leaders. At National Commercial Bank (NCB) they had 2500 people and they had possibly 10% of that as leaders, at Jamaica Public Service (JPS) it’s a similar percentage, similar ratio, they have around 200 leaders and one of the things that Kelly Tomlin and her spoke about when she was there was that, “We can’t effect change just cart blanch across the entire workforce, let’s focus on the leaders in the company.” And that would now start to send a different message because your cascading a certain philosophy and you’re even looking and cultivating certain talents and a certain way of being that defines the culture and it comes through the leaders and so she would recommend that companies start first by paying far more attention to persons who are being given responsibility to lead others and even from the head, she’s saying this to the Board, Directors and to Shareholders, you talk about your leaders from the top and how does that cascade down to the front line supervisor because there is a constant thread running throughout leadership around how that culture is built and it’s going to come back to the decisions leaders make on the ground everyday, how they treat their staff, what they prioritize, how they’re measured, what is valued, what is given discretion and autonomy, it really for her starts with leadership.

 

  • Sheree mentioned that energy is very exciting right now, it’s a wonderful time to be in the energy business because there is so much, you’re in an industry of significant disruption and transformation, a very one way model of delivering energy to customers have been around for 100 years and now we’re seeing that being turned on its head and so, alternative energy and what does that mean for energy independence in particular for Jamaica that so blessed with natural resources just as sun and wind. She is part of a team now that’s looking at alternative energy far more strategically and far more intently than even 5 years ago and we’re still struggling just to keep energy prices down and to get Jamaicans to start to conserve and to even think about how they can put the power in their hands, now we’re saying, “What other solutions can we provide them?” and renewable energy, different options of delivering energy in a distributed way has her very excited and has her very hopeful and optimistic for Jamaica’s energy future.

 

  • Sheree shared that listeners can find her at -

Twitter - @SherMart

Instagram - @martinsa876

LinkedIn – sheree-martin

 

  • Sheree shared that the quotes that she always reflect on is by Neale Donald Walsch, “Nothing has meaning except the meaning you give it.”

 

Links

 

The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief by Gregg Braden

Aug 9, 2017

Before Jeffrey became the founder of Select ‘n’ Start on a mission to help make Jamaica, and the world a better place, he was and still is many other things. He is a Businessman, Entrepreneur, Martial Artist, Toastmaster, and Game Changer are just a few of the titles held by Mr. Azan. He possesses over 18 years of experience in the retail industry having been raised in his family’s business, Azan’s. Upon completion of his Bachelors in Business Management at Boston University, he stepped into a top tier management role as a Director for Azan’s and served in that position for 6 years. In his own right he has also been a franchise owner in Organo Gold, and Amway, a café owner under the brand Café Moments, a consultant on the Brand Profit team, General Manager of the brand solution company, It’s Pixel Perfect, and the organizer of the live music show, A Moment of Jazz. Jeffrey currently spends the majority of his time working through his passion for the development of others in an effort to see a better Jamaica and a better world. He does this by providing motivational keynote speeches, group skill training, and one-on-one coaching. He founded the self-development brand, Select ‘n’ Start back in 2013, with a vision of it becoming the number one personal development brand to be birthed out of the Caribbean. The brand has taken to titling its coaches and speakers as “Game Changers” which is a title Jeffrey holds proudly. His motto is a simple one, “Change your game, Change your life.”

 

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • How do you believe customer experience has been for you over the years with so much experience that you have under your belt, what is your definition of customer service/ experience, do you find that it’s different in the Caribbean versus in the first world countries that you’ve been exposed to and if there’s any short comings or limitations that we’re faced with in Jamaica, what do you think they are and how do you think we can overcome them?
  • What are 3 characteristics that you think any human being would need in order to be truly a server?
  • How do you stay motivated everyday?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

 

  • Jeffrey Azan shared that his years in retail was specifically in the housewares industry, as a toastmaster which is one of the other many things he does, he has not just been a toastmaster in terms of speaking but he has also been a competitor and recently he accumulated a win of the Caribbean Championship of Public Speaking in the category of "Impromptu Speaking." As well as competing in Martial Arts he recently went to Curacao and represented Jamaica at the 31st Pan-American Games hosted by the WKF which is the first Olympic qualifier in this region and that was a big honor to represent Jamaica. In all the titles and all the jobs, he can say at the core he tries to be all that he can be in each of those categories and so far putting his all forward, he has reaped many challenges and he manages to turn those challenges into either successes or learning opportunities and if anybody wants to know Jeffrey, that’s one of the key aspects to know is that if you involve with him, he’s going to be full force, he’s going to be full of passion, he’s going to expect you to deliver and there’s not going to be any challenge that isn’t going be for the benefit of himself or for the team. Jeffrey stated that he grew up in a very interesting household, he was a big Ninja Turtles fan as a kid and that led him to look into Renaissance, all the ninja turtles were named after Renaissance Men and it led him to look into what the renaissances was and when he looked into Leonardo da Vinci, he found that he did it all, he was a Sculptor, Painter, Doctor, Scientist, Inventor, Engineer, Martial Artist and covered so many areas and he said to himself, “If one man can do so much, what can’t I do.” So it’s really just discovering each talent that he has and working to bring those talents to full fruition through whatever means necessary.

 

  • Jeffrey Azan stated that it is so interesting to look at customer experience and really analyze it because just in the very sense that we are placing a label on it creates the first problem in his understanding. When he worked in retail he always told his staff that, "The customer is never right", that was the first key, they are coming into the store, they don’t know what they are looking for, they don’t know how to describe it, they don’t know the function of it and it’s this guessing game to kind of figure out what it is that they want and what he tries to push is that base knowledge knowing that the customer isn’t right, what he was trying to do is pre-empt the frustration with the customer and so in getting them in that thinking to know that the customer isn’t going be right, it gives them almost an added bonus to service to a higher level, it’s not that anybody is going to come and say, “Oh, I want a green curtain for a blue bathroom” you’ll have to say, “What shade of blue it is? What type of curtain do you want? How tall is the window? How far from the ground is the window?” and all of these questions would have to come in because the customer isn’t right, you cannot give them a green curtain because that’s what they say they wanted. And from there the idea evolved and he heard it best at a customer service workshop he went to where the speaker there said, “The customer is king” he paused and reflected on that and he had to question it, and he said, “Please explain it.” And he gave him his thought process on the customer is never right and what the speaker said to him is that he agreed with him that the customer is not always right but it doesn’t change the fact that the customer still has the power, the customer is still the final boss, they are the king of the domain, if there are no customers, there is no business, nobody gets paid. What he said is that if you think of the customer as king, then what happens is no matter how wrong they are, you still have a duty to service. He stopped and really reflected on that for a long time and he thought, “Wow, what an amazing little concept that if you always think of the customer as king, you will always be of this higher level of service.” But here’s the problem with that, is that we draw this huge distinction between two (2) humans. In regards to his experience internationally, he did not just go to school overseas in the USA, but he had fortunate opportunities to be apart of programs and summits and conferences that have carried him around the world. He has been to Australia, Western Europe, he has been all over the Caribbean, all over North America and he’s sure that there’s plenty more to come. One of his most eye opening experiences in customer service was when in Australia walking on the pier, somebody soliciting business for their food stall and as he was passing, he didn’t push a sale, he engaged him as a person, he immediately recognized that he was a tourist and began having a conversation with him and they had a big conversation about Jamaica and what he was doing all the way from Jamaica over there in Australia and because he engaged him as a human having a conversation, Jeffrey was quicker to look into what he does and what’s his business and that was the first step. We as both the customer and the one serving the customer needs to remember that we are not dealing with a uniform, we’re not dealing with a title, we are dealing with a person and he hates seeing when he goes to a restaurant and somebody deals with the waiter like garbage because they’re the waiter, they’re supposed to serve, they are human, they have the same trials, same tribulations, they went through the same schooling system that you went through in a many cases. Maybe they have been dealt a hard break, maybe they have not made the best of decisions but at the end of the day, they’re still a human and real customer service starts there in recognizing that the other person is another human and if he’s going to serve that other human as the server, as the person providing the service, that’s step one on an international scale and very often, especially here in Jamaica and the third world countries that he visits is that we don’t serve humans, we serve uniforms, we serve titles and we are treated accordingly. There are some doctors that he met who are probably first class doctors but they are horrible people but the point is that they expect a certain level of service because, “I am doctor so and so”, “I give you all props and credit for being doctor so and so, I’m sure it wasn’t easy to become doctor so and so, however, at the end of the day, I am still Jeffrey, I am not server number 2, I am not in the back credit of a movie as staff number 3, I am Jeffrey.” And the second that we as the customer or we as the server forget that element, the whole interaction and relationship has gone out the window because at the end of the day that’s what it is, a relationship between two people, it just so happens that one is providing service and one is in need of that service.

 

Yanique stated that what she took most away from all of what Jeffrey said was that we’re all emotional beings regardless of where we are from, regardless of our background and at the end of the day, if we all look at each other as people with the same level of feelings and emotions that the customer would have, that the employee would have, that the employer would and employ that level of understanding to really see where the other person is coming from, treat them with the same level of courtesy and respect that you would treat anyone else, the quality of our relationships would improve which by default would improve customer experience.

 

Jeffrey stated that in Select ‘n’ Start, what they tell people they provide is motivation, inspiration and personal development and at the very root of it all, that is what it is. He stated that he cannot serve you if he’s not willing to connect with you and what you’ll recognize as humans is that we’ve grown this very disgusted outlook of a sales person because we feel like a con is coming and yet the greatest sales people in the world are some of the best humans he has ever come across. They take the time to build that relationship and in building a relationship, he has had a customer who bought nothing when they came to buy, they took 3 hours of his time and he genuinely thought it was wasted, the next time they came to the store, they came with their entire community and they only wanted to deal with him and that happened because they had a connection, he asked about the family, he asked about the home, he wasn’t just providing a product but he wanted to really understand what he needed and in understanding what he needed, he could make suggestions, in fact, there was a particular item that they had in the store at the time but based on the situation that he was in and he explained and he told him where he could get it cheaper and he couldn’t believe that he was sending him out of the store and because of that one comment in trying to help another human, he brought the whole community and he said, “What ever the prices are in here, this is where you should shop.”

 

Yanique shared that she did business with a company recently and the sales representative took the same approach. He said, “We don’t have that item at the moment but I know that this particular organization has it.” And he took up the phone and called them and sent her to someone specifically after calling and telling them to expect her and she thought that was really awesome because it wasn’t a branch of their business, it was a completely different company, their competition and he was willing to ensure that she got served, even if it meant her going to the competitor and she really appreciated that and she would go back again because of that experience.

 

Jeffrey shared that some characteristics that a person would need to truly serve. He stated that Select ‘n’ Start provide customer service training and he developed the customer service program when he had the café, so he ran the café with a partner of his for about 1 ½ years and when they got into it he was coming from the retail background and he has never done anything other than retail at the time and his partner said to him, “You’re great with people, you should train the team.” He did have a clue of what he was about to do, he knew how to sell, he knew the intrinsic knowledge but he never taught sales and what came to him through that is that the root of sales is relationships and people. He recognized that if somebody’s going to be a fantastic sales person, a great customer service person, the key of that is just to be a better person. If you’re a better person, if you have done all that you can do to keep your life in check and put it on a path of improvement, naturally you’re going to be more pleasant, naturally you’re going to want to serve more, naturally you’re going to be willing to engage with another person because you have taken care of your own problems you can now help another. You can never help another if at the forefront of your mind you’re thinking, “How is this going to benefit me.” And so what they came up with is what they call, “The Select ‘n’ Start Core” and these are things that anybody can apply and if you can work on these things and fall back on them, some people have taken it as their ethical and moral compass in life as somebody has called and told him that, is that by utilizing these things, it’s not a one size fits all but it’s a guideline to say, “Am I improving, am I getting better?” and if they do that, then everything else starts to fall into place. What those five principles are, the first one is “Real Recognizes Real”, open up yourself, be honest, he’s not telling you to go out and tell everybody your story but don’t put on a show either, people only like a show when they know they’re going to a show. Nobody likes a show spontaneously in a store, so be yourself and what will happen is, in being yourself people naturally open up to you. One of the great ways he does a motivational speech is that he shares his pain and in sharing his pain and his genuine belief, other people come and share theirs. The next logic is that “You Can Learn Anything From Anything at Anytime”, a lot of people think education is only in the book but education is around us in all sorts of interactions and stories and sharing’s and observations and if your going to be a great customer service representative then that’s what you need to do, you need to be a great observer, “What can I learn?”, you’re serving a elderly person and you’re realizing that they can’t keep up with you, get them a chair, if you’re just aware of that observation and that observation comes with the desire to learn, you’ll know that they need a chair because they can’t keep up with the pace you’re moving at. If it’s a mother with a child, he has had mothers handing him their children on a first meet basis because he engaged and he recognized and the child would even reach and the child reaches because that realness, they know it’s not a show, children are way more intuitive than we give them credit for. So by just having the desire to learn, we develop the skill of observation and if we develop the skill of observation, we’ll naturally know what to do in a situation. The third one is, “You Can Never Be Kind Enough to Somebody for Them Not to Hurt You”, so you can give the best customer service to somebody, you can take all day and sell them a $1.00 at the end of the day and anybody who’s in customer service and sales know that that’s the most frustrating sale and that person can still come back and say you gave poor service. No matter how kind you are to somebody you can never be kind enough for them not to hurt you but the flip side of the coin is that it should never stop you from being kind. In that sense, don’t worry about what the other person is going to do, don’t do it to get their reaction, don’t do it for the consequence to come from them, do it because you know you should do it and because it’s right, you don’t need a manager to tell you that but what happens is that you have 2 bad sales experiences for the day and your manager is upset with you so guess what, “I’m not serving anybody else for the day because it’s going to lead to a problem.” But the fact is that those people, no matter how good you are to them they have no reason to be kind to you. If they chose to be kind, they’ll be kind but you have that choice as well and so he always says, “You can never be kind enough for somebody not to hurt you but that shouldn’t stop you from being kind.” The last 2 points is, “Level Up”, always seek ways of improving yourself, people hate being pushed, people love being pulled, so if you stand on top of something as the expert, as the champion, people want you to pull them up, nobody wants you to be underneath them or behind them pushing them forward, so if you’re going to really serve somebody, you need to be a champion in the particular industry, you need to pull that person up to your level of understanding and expertize and anything you say, they’ll follow. Jeffrey shared that the last thing is, “Always Share What Is Uniquely Yours”, all of us have gone through life with particular stories and troubles and challenges but those stories, troubles and challenges have built a certain perspective that only we have, that only each individual has their perspective, you could have a twin and your twin can be totally different from you, same mother, same father, same school, same opportunities, same education and yet you’re 2 totally different people because of one little change, one little biochemistry and those changes create unique perspectives and it’s in unique perspectives we create unique connections, so you must always be ready to share what’s uniquely yours which goes full circle back to "Real Recognizes Real."

 

  • Jeffrey shared that for motivation, they serve inspiration, motivation and personal development and it took him a long time to figure out the difference between the two. Motivation is the target and it’s easy when you have a target, when you say, “I’m going to get fit” and not just say you’re going to get fit but print out an image of what you want to look like, write down the measurements you want to have, see a picture of yourself, put a mirror, buy the gym clothes, get the membership, all of that can help to motivate you but if in your core, if in your soul, your root, your gut, whatever you want to call it, there isn’t a fit person there then no amount of motivation is going to help you. You must believe that you are called to be a fit person. What happens with motivation is that very often motivation is set as a goal and once the goal is achieved...loose sets in, so you have people who are world class athletes, they’re the champions, they’ve won the belt, they’ve won the medal, they’ve won the trophy and so they reach number 1 and very soon after they’ve reached number 1, somebody took it away from them. It’s because they were motivated to be champions, they weren’t inspired to be the best because if you’re inspired to be the best then every challenger, no matter your position, is a challenger that’s stopping you from being the best. And so what he had to find in himself was that inspiration and that inspiration came during that time of all the businesses that he was going through and all the changes he was making, at that time he was looking for motivation, he was looking for gold, he said, “If I get more money, I’ll get the better girlfriend, I’ll take care of the girlfriend, I’ll drive the car I want, I’ll live in the house I want.” All of that was great motivation but it was on bad days it wasn’t enough, on rough days it’s not enough and for a lot of us, we don’t recognize how rough it is sometimes for people. Depression is a real thing and depression is never depression of finances, it’s never depression of lack of food because when you lack in food your not thinking about depression, you’re thinking about lack of food. So what happens is that your soul, your gut, your being, your entity, your spirit is lacking and many people aren’t making the conscious effort to fill, they’re trying to distract, they’re trying to achieve and in achievement they will find happiness but money doesn’t soothe the soul, money can create opportunities, in fact, the bible says, “Money is the solution to all things.” A lot of people like to quote the bible and say; “Oh, money is the root of all evil” but literally couple verses down from that one it says "Money is the solution of all problems." Jeffrey says, "I am not saying don’t go after it because you can take it and create something from it but money won’t soothe the soul" and that was what he was looking for at the time as he said he grew up with a big fascination with the renaissance men and he grew up with this idea that he can and could do anything he wanted to do, if he decided to be doctor, he would be a doctor, he had no question whether he could or couldn’t be a doctor but it doesn’t soothe the soul and what came is on this journey and consistently searching and fight. He had a vision and it was clear as day and he was parked in his car at a red light and he saw himself on stage speaking to an audience, he was so clear, he was wearing a black suit, white pinstripe, it was a night show, open air venue but when he looked out on the crowd, he couldn’t see the end of the people, the people met the horizon. And in that vision he found his inspiration, so on the day when he’s not motivated because a lot of us are trying to use motivation to keep going, what he does is that he has to fall back on that inspiration, he has to fall back on, “Jeffrey, what is your soul calling you to do?” “Oh, I can’t sprint today, I haven’t eaten right, I haven’t slept right, I haven’t train right, I haven’t stretched right, I cannot sprint today but I can walk.” And if he can walk, then he can move into the direction to which his soul is calling him and the funny part about that story is that happened to him at 25 years old, he had that thought when he was 8 years old and many of us have that same thought around the same time as well, when you get asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and many of us throw out these phenomenal ideas like Astronaut, Scientist, Leader, Prime Minister, President, own my company and for one reason or another we give up on it and then we settle, we become employment seekers rather than value creators. What happened to him was that when he was 8 years old, he decided that he wanted to be a teacher and he told his mother and his mother said to him, “That’s great, that’s noble but just remember that teachers don’t make a lot of money.” And he went in his 8 year old brain and said, “Well if I can’t have money, then how am I going to be happy?” and gave up on the dream of teaching, fast forward 17 years, what did he turned around to do again? Teach, what more is a teacher than a single individual standing before an audience sharing knowledge, information and inspiration.

 

Jeffrey stated that once he acknowledged that...that was his calling, he has never not been able to take a step no matter how poorly, demotivated, no matter how much in the hole he is, his finances at some points are abysmal, you look at the books and go, “Jeez, how am I going to get out of this one?” and all it really is, is a challenge to say how bad do you really want it and what happens is a lot of us are pursuing goals and motivation that we don’t really want, we are not answering our true calling and the thing is, if we answer our true calling, we’re happier, we’re going to find other people interesting in it and if we do it long enough, you’ll become experts in it and people will pay for our expertize, it has been proven time and time again as abstract and as cliché as it sounds, it is not easy, if it was easy and Eric Thomas says this all the time, “If it was easy, everybody would do it.” So he’s not going to jump up and say it’s easy but he is going to say, everybody can do it, it’s can you dig into that grit to push through the challenges because life is going to consistently ask you, “How bad do you want it?" And that’s what gets him going in the morning; it’s that inspirational thought that he searched 17 years actively looking for, unfortunately many people haven’t even spent half an hour looking for it.

 

  • Jeffrey shared that Youtube is one of the tools he cannot live without. He stated that a business partner of his, Fred Robertson and Fred asked him one time, “Jeffrey, you put out so much, you’re always willing to share, you’re always willing to contribute, who gives Jeffrey? Who puts into Jeffrey?” He had to pull on other speakers, he had to pull on other motivators, he had to pull on other lines of thought and the best place for that kind of collection is Youtube. There are certain magical qualities about a video, it doesn’t allow the imagination as engaged as reading would because with reading, the brain goes into over drive and does the imagination. He does his best to read a lot but immersing the senses, the hearing, the sight and the colors, you can almost feel certain peoples videos and those boost mean push him in a big way and teaches him a lot. He has learnt so much listening to other speakers just on Youtube alone much less when he goes to actual conferences and workshops, so if he has to jump on one thing off the bat and before the interview he was listening a speech on Youtube.

 

  • Jeffrey shared that one of the books that have had a big impact on him is “Who Move My Cheese by Spencer Johnson” he would recommend that book to everybody, anybody that comes and say, “Jeffrey, what’s a good reading?” that book for sure, you cannot move forward without reading Who Moved My Cheese. It was the book that created the business, it’s the book that took the vision and made the business. He went to a mentor of his at the time and told him about the vision and he told him about the desire, the calling that he had and his mentor said, “Okay, what’s next?” and he told him, “I don’t know” and his mentor gave him his copy of Who Moved My Cheese, he doesn’t know where that copy is, he past it on to the next person who was in his situation and he hopes that it’s still making its rounds. The book is about being resolute and just taking action as you see, if you’ve never read it, he strongly recommend that book. It is about making a decision and taking action which is where the company name got its idea, “Select ‘n’ Start”. It sets such a solid mindset, you can’t do without it. Jeffrey also recommend “Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell” It is about finding wealth where you are, too many times we look at our situation and it’s such abysmal situation that we say we must go somewhere else to find it. Acres of Diamonds go through a number of stories that shows that wealth is right where we are if we have the open mindedness and the creativity in which to extract that value. So making a decision, taking action and doing it where you are, he couldn’t recommend bigger lessons for people starting out and as he said this goes right back to customer service because a lot of the time we blame people for poor customer service or we say they are poor customers so both sides of the coin have the complaint and yet what it is that we are not mining the opportunities that we have right there. Jeffrey shared a story that a elderly woman goes into a outlet store and she looks like she can’t afford and so nobody pays her any attention except for one young man who truthfully, he’s not even a server in the store, he’s more an errand and clean up guy but he takes the time and he serves her, she buys nothing, about 3 months later she comes back and she comes with a long list, they found out that she is actually European royalty and she’s looking to buy for her parcel and the only person who she would allow to sell her was the young man and she insisted, not only does he get full commission but he gets a service fee to come to the castle to make sure it’s properly installed. That’s the kind of opportunity that lay around us and we let them slip because of poor customer service, so if you’re going to serve, go for it full force because you never know that you maybe uncovering a acre of diamonds.

 

  • Jeffrey shared that when he was 13 years old, he spent a lot of time questioning what’s wrong with Jamaica and spoke to many people double, triple, quadruple his age, got a lot of input, got a lot of thoughts and you’ll hear all sorts of answers, corruption, education, poor health facility, poor services, poor government agencies and what he boiled them down to was two major factors that any country in the world having problems, it’s probably these two factors as well. The education system and family unit structure, what happens is no matter how good you make the education system, if you have a poor family unit, the family unit undoes what the education tries to do in many cases. The teacher tells you that you can do anything you want, you go home and your mother tells you that you’re not going to amount to anything. He recognizes those two from a very young age and he still holds that strongly today that those are the two major factors holding back any third world country and so the big project Select ‘n’ Start is working on in summary is to fix those two things. When they started Select ‘n’ Start, the mission is to help people maximize their potential in an infinite number of ways, digitally, mentally, emotionally, physically, unlocking potential and they recognize that they can fix those two systems, they’ll accomplish the mission. Jeffrey stated that if they get other contracts and speaking engagements, establish people, coming up people, entrepreneurs, they’ll going in, they’ll motivate, they’ll share, they’ll develop and for the big part, that may be the bread and butter but the mission is how do they get everybody to unlock their maximum potential and that can’t be done by doing one off corporate gigs, it must be a project bigger than him, it must be a project bigger than Select ‘n’ Start, it must be a project bigger than Jamaica and that’s what they are working towards.

 

  • Jeffrey shared that listeners can find him at –

Select ‘n’ Start Facebook

Select ‘n’ Start Instagram

Jeffrey Azan Instagram - @jj.azan

Select ‘n’ Start Twitter

 

  • Jeffrey shared that he has a lot of his own quotes that he reverts to in times of adversity. He stated that sometime when you do a speech as a speaker and you didn’t intend to say something and it flow together and he has two things that keeps him going and that is, “If I depend on others for my success, I’ll only have myself to blame.” He doesn’t want anyone to misconceptualize that he’s saying that does everything by himself, he knows he not a master of everything, he’s trying to be but he’s not. The point is if he depends on those doing the other jobs, if he makes his success sit in their hands then if they fail, he can’t blame them, he can only blame himself because his success is his responsibility. The second one is, “Your story matters.” It speaks to the knowledge that even your most minuscule action can change somebody’s world, some of us don’t recognize that when we make somebody smile in what was a nonchalant exchange to us but we made that person smile, it might have been the first time they smile for the day and it might be the only smile they get for the day, so we must be very conscious that all of our minuscule actions, from the smallest action, the smallest interaction, the smallest exchange, it matters and those small exchanges bill our story.

 

Links

Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell

Aug 1, 2017

Daniel Edwards is the CEO of Total One-Eighty Image Consulting, a business initiative and service tailored for the motivated, modern male professionals, which Mr. Edwards created to productively combine his three (3) passions - personal development, psychology and fashion. A trained public speaker and presenter, Mr. Edwards recently launched his series of Total One-Eighty workshops, the first being through corporate client Sagicor Life Insurance Jamaica Limited to further his holistic approach to image consultancy and personal development. With over two decades of successful experience in the sales industry, Mr. Edwards is also currently a Senior Sales Executive at Caribbean Assurance Brokers Limited. Prior to this, he was a Financial Advisor at Sagicor Life Jamaica Limited where among other things his achievements included being seated at the international acclaimed, “Million Dollar Round Table." During his time at Sagicor, Mr. Edwards also created, ran and marketed his High Street Clothing brand. An experienced performer and lover of nature, Mr. Edwards is also a proponent and practitioner of meditation and diverse self-improvement practices.  

Question

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • In terms of customer experience, how has that been for you since you started business and what is your view on customer experience as a business owner?
  • What are some of the challenges you believe young men face why it is that you are compelled in this business?
  • Do you think it’s because of our culture why you think the men are challenged in such a way, outside of the parenting aspect predominantly being exposed to female influence, does the Caribbean culture impact that as well?
  • Can you tell us a little bit about why you think image is so important and how does that impact customer service?
  • Getting somebody to attire themselves in a particular way and have a particular image, how long those that take and is it just the physical or is it like a mind set change as well in terms of how they feel about themselves?
  • Who are some of the role models you would use to drive inspiration in the persons you’re trying to transform?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • Do you think it’s important as a businessperson to really be passionate about what you’re doing in order to be successful?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • If you where sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business, specifically as it relates to constantly motivated human capital?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

 

Highlights

 

  • Daniel Edwards shared he is a Financial Advisor, he sells primarily insurance and investment products with Caribbean Assurance Brokers but he’s very passionate about his new venture which is Total One-Eighty Image Consulting and he feels that it is an initiative that is very necessary right now in Jamaica where men are really falling behind in a number of areas, he feels compelled to push this mission to reinvigorate the males.

 

  • Daniel Edwards shared that he always believes in under promising and over delivering, he tries to extend that to his venture and that’s what it is about and focusing more about being of service and adding value than about money because if you do that first, then the money will follow.

.

  • Daniel Edwards stated that a significant percentage of males in Jamaica today are raised without fathers and as a result, there are a lot of men being raised by women so they don’t get those little extra tips and instructions that a man should give another man. The daughters are okay because their mothers can teach them how to dress and how to put themselves together as women but they fall short with the men. Such example include seeing men attending a graduation in sneakers or going to a job interview like they are going to a dance, they don’t have a male figure to show them how to really put themselves together.

 

  • Daniel shared that he doesn’t think that our culture had an impact on the way our Jamaican men dress. He stated that our parents’ generational practices that but it’s a recent departure.

 

  • Daniel Edwards stated that it’s not just about the image, it’s about the image plus communication skills but everything begins with the visual and our impressions are formed within seconds of seeing someone and often times these impressions are set in stones within seconds and barring you doing something exceptional, they don’t change. So the first impression is the only one that matters but beyond that we have to have the communication skills and the service to solidify that reputation and really give the client a great experience. So they have to be all rounders, they have to have the look and the package.

 

  • Daniel shared that his ultimate goal is to have a holistic approach but you have to start somewhere, so he started off by creating a workshop on dressing for success. In this workshop, they look at the psychology of the first impression, the psychology of color, they look at how suits should fit, the power of a suit, the psychology behind wearing a suit, how you think different and feel different wearing one and people treat you differently. They go into accessories, they show you what colors to wear as in suits, what suits to wear and not to wear, accessories because male fashion is all about details. He stated that he wants to get into other areas such as public speaking and all of the components that are required to make you successful and make a bold impact when you step into a room.

 

  • Daniel Edwards stated that for inspiration, Steve Harvey is a good example, also P. Diddy and Michael Lee Chin. He stated that he’s a fan of all of the self made black Millionaires.

 

Yanique added that you want them to connect with someone who looks like them so that they can see that this possibility exists.

 

  • Daniel Edwards shared that by staying motivated, he uses "Operant Conditioning", he stated that we all do things to gain pleasure or avoid pain, so operant conditioning is where you try to avoid pain and pain for him would be living a life of judgery, getting old, getting sick and then dying. Operant conditioning is a type of learning where behavior is controlled by consequences. Key concepts in operant conditioning are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. He wants to live a purpose driven life on his terms and have an amazing life, and he can only do that by running his enterprise and perusing his dreams and his passions.

 

  • Daniel stated that he doesn’t know anybody who is hugely successful whose purpose isn’t aligned with their passion, those are prerequisites. There are millions  of businesses ventures out there that can garner money but every entrepreneurial enterprise requires grit and determination and preservation in the early years to turn a profit, so if it’s just about making money, they are not going to put in those extra hours and deal with all those disappointments and the failures and near misses unless you are passionate about it.

 

  • Daniel stated that he likes Pinterest a lot as well as Instagram but he doesn’t think that there’s anything he could live without, as he’ll find a way regardless. He stated that they are extremely helpful for example if he’s doing a wedding for someone, as he does weddings on what to wear, he can go on Pinterest and get an outfit together, he has an internet platter of ideas he can find.

 

 

  • Daniel shared that the advice he would give another business owner is that you must incentivize your workers, they need to feel like they have a vested interest and they need to know if they put in a little more effort, they can dictate their paycheck. If the guy comes in and he’s getting a flat salary, he’s very aware that he’s building your empire for you, why is he going to stay there for 12 hours or why is he going to go above and beyond, as soon as 5:00 pm comes he wants to go home, that’s it, he’ out. They have to feel that they have a vested interest and that they are apart of the enterprise, they need to know that they put in a little extra, they will get some money.  

 

Yanique asked Daniel if he believes that most or all employees based on his experience are motivated financially, does motivation comes from something else as well?

 

Daniel Edwards shared that it is a combination; feeling like you have a vested interest doesn’t necessarily only translate to more money. Apart of the business, you’re invaluable and that your input will leave an indelible mark in the company. And if you have a system where your staff is rewarded base on merit, then they will work a little harder too, so one person is a superstar and one person is just slumming it and everybody is getting the same paycheck, after awhile the guy who is the superstar is going to take it down a few notches because there is no incentive for working so hard. There’s a motivational speaker called Max Moyan who said, “If you’re doing just enough not to loose your job, your boss is going to pay you just enough to keep it.” Also, empower your employees, put them on a plan immediately, and create a situation where they are aware of this is where they are beginning but 5 years where they should be, you should be empowering them to be on a trajectory towards success and you get a next set, it’s not a static situation.

 

  • Daniel shared that what’s exciting for him right now is the business blossoming, he did the Caribbean Speakers International recently and it was a mind blowing experience because he has never done something like that before. He has done talks before but he has never spoken without a script so he felt like he grew 5 years in one day.

 

  • Daniel shared that listeners can find him at -

totaloneeighty - Instagram

Total One Eighty Image Consulting - Facebook

Total one Eighty - Twitter

 

  • Daniel shared that he had some slumpy years in his career so now that things have turned around for him, when he’s about to make major steps, he resorts to the bad memories and then he starts to have the limiting self talks where he says, “Three years ago this wasn’t working, what makes you think this is going to work now?” Les Brown who is one of has one of favorites quotes, “Operate using your imagination not your memory.” Once you go back to your failures, it’s crippling to you.

 

Links

 

Jul 25, 2017

Carlos Villares was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico; he lives in Miami, Florida since 1994. He is an International University Graduate and has 10 years work experience for The General Electric Company in the area if sales and financials services. He is co-founder of Gustazos.com, Daily Deal site in 5 countries. They represent Global Sales and Business Development Executives and they manage over 50 sales people on these markets with gross sales surpassing USD$26 Million as of 2016.

Questions

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Can you tell us a little about how you manage customer experience and the whole customer service process at Gustazos?
  • Can you share 3 things that you have found that have really contributed to your success, primarily from a customer experience prospective, not just on an external customer prospective but also in terms of employee motivation and development and really getting the right people to perform in the right way. What are some of the things you took away from General Electric that have made Gustazos so successful over the time you’ve been in this leadership position?
  • How do you view customer service yourself for customer experience when you visit locations throughout the world in these markets that you operate in or even when you have to travel independent of Gustazos, what is your view on customer experience on a global level?
  • How do you guarantee that the partnerships you’re forming are with people/organizations who have the same values you have as an organization as it relates to delivering quality experiences?
  • Do you find the different cultures in a country may pose challenges for the businesses you partner with?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

 

 

Highlights

 

  • Carlos Villares shared that what brought him to where he is today was that his father transferred the family significantly when they were kids even though he was born in Puerto Rico, he grew up in New Jersey, Argentina, Brazil so Soccer is very important to him like it is for Jamaicans and he has been in Miami since 1994, he got to work for corporate America and about 7 years ago he was introduced to the "Daily Deal" module from the famous company call Groupon which was the fastest growing business in the history of businesses and they decided to launch a very similar module but in San Juan, Puerto Rico and long story short, here they are.

 

  • Carlos Villares shared with managing the customer experience, you log into Gustazos.com if you’re not registered already, it’s free to register and you can either visit the website and see the types of promotions they have going on. From the consumers stand point, everything you’re going to see on Gustazos, they work very hard, that’s basically what they live, breathe and sleep, it’s giving you a 50 - 90% discount on everything you see on the page, so the promotions you see right now, if you would just call or visit the hotel or call or visit the restaurant you would find it at 50% more expensive, so that’s what they do, they give you amazing places, the best businesses Jamaica has to offer with the best prices those businesses are able to provide in order to win you as a new client in most cases.

 

Carlos mentioned that he worked for General Electric for 10 years and when he was hired into General Electric, Jack Welch was still the CEO. He stated that many people talk about Steve Jobs and Ben Olsen and some other CEOs, his all time favorite CEO is Jack Welch and he loves his philosophy. Carlos is a Six Sigma Green Belt, he should have become a black belt but Gustazos lured him away but he applies a lot of what he learned at General Electric (GE) in Gustazos. He manages the sales teams in Gustazos in the 5 markets they have a presence in and he’s in charge of opening new markets but a lot of what he learned in General Electric with Jack Welch is a lot of what he applies today.

 

  • Carlos shared that Jack Welch would say, “You should always release or let go of your bottom 10%” and that came with a lot of controversy because it takes away from the human factor and even though that’s the reality, your most important asset is Your People and it’s not easy to find the right people so it’s hard on a daily basis, they are consistently looking for good talent and when they find good talent they do everything in their power to bring them on board. Their number 1 asset is people that work in Gustazos and he values them tremendously and he does the best he can to motivate them and to keep them engaged and to love the atmosphere that they create, the culture they have at Gustazos so it’s a great environment for them and they are extremely respectful and flexible with personal issues, if you’re a mother, if you’re a father, if tomorrow you need to work from home, they are very flexible in regards to work, life, balances and they try to really incentivize a culture of having fun at what you do because at the end of the day if you have happy people, that’s contagious and your customers will feel it so it’s a happy go lucky type of atmosphere that they try to invent.

 

  • Carlos shared that customers come first and in order to survive, you need customers and you have to make sure that you’re listening to them, you’re looking at them and you’re getting their feedback so that if you need to change, you can make those changes appropriately. In his personal experience, he is privileged of the fact that he gets to fly to amazing destinations and visit the best hotels in the market and the best restaurants the market has to offer. So immediately when he walks into so many restaurants that he can sense the difference in service, in product, in quality, in attention, so for him customer service is pretty good because he feels internally when one of Gustazos customers’ expectations are not met, for instance if they buy a restaurant deal and they visit the restaurant and they were maybe treated in a different way, they refund their money and they’ll give them a gift for their bad experience so they are really careful in regards to bad experiences and they strive on making sure that people understand that they are doing everything in their power for their experience to be not only memorable but one that can be shared with their family and friends.

 

Yanique mentioned that that’s the most important question every company asks, "Would you recommend this organization to a family member or friend?" and the reality is that if we have a bad experience we are probably not going to want our friends and family to have that same experience so we are going to tell them don’t go there.

 

Carlos stated that bad news travels faster than good news and they have a team in place internally that is constantly monitoring Social Media, their phone lines and he could go out on a limb and say that they address 100% of the cases, they do their best to make everyone happy and they feel like they do a pretty good job because the customer at the end says you know what, things may not have worked out because you’re going to have trouble, when you’re in business, you’re going to meet challenges and there’s going to be moments when clients are going to complain and that’s going to happen regardless of how hard you work, the question is how do you manage that situation, you can make it right, if you make it right, you’re gaining a client for life, so it’s not about the bad things that happen, it’s how you address those bad things and one of the things that he tries to convey to the team is make sure the customer is happy.

 

  • Carlos stated that they have people on the ground in their team, they call them the Marketing Campaign Planners and they are in charge of visiting every single establishment before they are presented on the website, so all the promotions that you see on Gustazos, they have done a pre-screening of that location, whether by visiting the location physically and many times in the case of restaurants, they actually eat and evaluate the service of that restaurant so they don’t allow just any establishment to promote themselves on Gustazos, their commitment with their consumers and with their audiences is that everything thing that you see on Gustazos has been blessed by them and they guarantee that you’re going to have an amazing experience, they guarantee that your expectations are going to be met other wise your money is going to be refunded and they are going to give you something in addition to refunding your monies. They work very hard in talking and meeting and documenting everything with the business owners or the person responsible for that business to make sure that the customer experience is their number one priority. Carlos stated that he was watching an interview with this restaurant expert and he said, “If a person comes into your restaurant and the food and service is good, there’s a 40% chance that they’re going to come back a second time, if they come back a second time and the food and service is good, there’s a 42% chance that they are going to come back. If they come back a third time and the food and service is good, there’s a 75% chance that they are going to come back.” You can’t give up, you have to give them good service and there’s nothing more important than keeping customers happy.

 

  • Carlos agreed that different cultures may pose challenges for the businesses they partner with and that’s why they have their head quarter team that is in charge of presenting these promotions works hand in hand with the local Jamaica team to make sure that they are speaking the correct language because they are headquartered out of San Juan so a lot of the operations is there but they have a team of 10 people in Jamaica right now and some of those folks are in charge that were speaking the way Jamaicans like to be spoken to and the some for Panama, Dominica Republic, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean which are the other markets where they have a presence. His experiences has been in many countries and living in Brazil, he didn’t’ speak the language when he moved there and that really opened his mind and it makes you open-minded. So going to Jamaica when they first started evaluating Jamaica, Jamaica has so much to offer in regards to cuisine, resource, businesses, you name it, spas, salons, adventures, it has so much to offer and they are an amazing vehicle to connect businesses that can use more traffic or new traffic or new clients with consumers  of their niche but they consider themselves local in Jamaica because this stage is run by a local team so they are in charge of what is being published 100%.

 

  • Carlos shared that by staying motivated, you have to find what you’re passionate about, he talks about the pursuit of happiness and you need to work in life because you need to have a purpose in life, so everybody must have a job, you may be a Dentist, you may be Veterinarian, you may be a Talk Show Host or you may be a guy who basically manage sales people, you have to do what’s passionate to you. And because he’s doing what he’s passionate about, it’s very easy for him to wake up in the mornings at 7:30 am and start engaging the website and his people and getting into meetings. So first and foremost, you have to be passionate about what you do and if you’re passionate about what you do, you’re going to be happy. He believes when you’re doing something you’re passionate about, success is destined to happen. He’s a Caribbean guy by nature, he loves our seas, he loves our food and plus he loves the impact they are causing businesses and he loves more the impact they are causing consumers. They get a lot of feedback from consumers for example, Puerto Rico is in an economic crisis and they get notes once in a while for example, “Thank you Gustazos for giving us this particular promotion because I’m getting to do things with my family that I used to do with my father about 30 years ago and if it wasn’t for you guys and your promotions, I wouldn’t be able to do it with my family.” So that touches you, that will bring tears to your eyes, so the impact that they are causing businesses and the impact they are causing on consumers is very powerful and he really values that and it brings a lot of satisfaction to him.

 

Carlos mentioned employees and that sometimes they hire people from college, sometimes they hire people that just moved to that country and you see them grow and you see them improve their financial situation and things get better, they are able to afford better school for their kids, buy a new car, move into a new house, so those 3 components are very important to him and those are what drives him and keeps him motivated and waking up every morning and engaging with everything that they have going on.

 

  • Carlos stated that Whatsapp is one of the tools he cannot live without. He thinks that Whatsapp is going to revolutionize the way we communicate and it’s doing it now. We don’t know how long emails are going to last and how efficient emails are going to but right now the fact that you can creates groups and right now it’s impacting your professional and your personal life because right now what Whatsapp is doing is your creating internal groups, he’s in a group with the Jamaica team, he’s in a group with the Puerto Rico team, he’s in a group with the leadership team, he’s in a group with the programming team and then in his personal life, he’s in a group with Argentina - with his high school friends, he’s in a group with his Brazilian friends. So Whatsapp is becoming an instrumental communication tool for us internally as a company and for him it’s kind of like where Facebook was when it launched when you reconnected with your classmates and people from your childhood, he’s seeing it in a more efficient way through Whatsapp. The other one is the tool that Gmail offers which is the Google Drive, Google Drive right now you can actually update Cloud setting, in business, you would historically have to email an excel file, that person would open it and you can no longer make changes if you’re the person who sent it. So Google Drive today you have excel there and he makes any changes, everybody that’s copied there is able to see that change and he can communicate within that tool whether it’s a comment or it’s an email, he can send emails from that excel file and he can send PDF, so it’s a very efficient and interactive tool, not only that but they also have word files and a number of others. Google Drive and Whatsapp are 2 of the most important assets that they use internally.

 

  • Carlos shared that he’s a martial artist and he does grade 2 Jujitsu - it’s very popular with the ultimate fighting championship and there’s a book called The Gracie Diet by Rorion Gracie, the Gracie’s were a family that created this martial art it’s considered to be the most sufficient martial art today and there’s a diet behind it that consists of a lot of fruits, a lot of vegetables and the combination of these foods, so if he was to recommend to the audience and amazing book if you’re looking for a great diet and not something that you would do temporarily but something that you would do long term and make it part of your life - this is the book for you. The other is Winning by Jack Welch and he’s a big fan of his and anything he says and writes, if you’re in business, he would highly recommend it, two authors that you can’t go wrong.

 

  • Carlos shared that he is really excited about the call he just got, a mega power player in Jamaica who is very interested in taking Gustazos Jamaica to the next level and he thinks it can take Gustazos to the next level. He is also excited about the new partnership that they established in the Dominica Republic because he always say Gustazos.com because of their email data base that they grow on a daily basis, they should be apart of an ad agency because at the end of the day, they are a marketing campaign tool the same way the newspaper is, a magazine is, a radio show is, they are a channel and they partner up with BBDO which is a big ad agency, they are internationally known but their representative in Dominica Republic just purchased 40% of Gustazos in Dominica Republic and now they are offering a platform to their clients, for example, the number 2 bank in the island is going to start using Gustazos services to change their miles into Gustazos dollars and credits. They are also in the automobile industry so there’s going to be some promotions. So now instead of being restaurants and hotels, they are tapping into the ad agency industry and the ad agencies are noticing that, “This is a powerful tool that has a very efficient reach and we might as well try to use it, leverage it with our clients and make it part of our portfolio.” And that’s going to open a lot of doors for the people that work for them and those 2 opportunities are things that he’s very excited about.

 

Carlos stated that he is giving the Navigating the Customer Experience audience a gift, if you go to Guztazos.com/gimme5, they are going to give you USD 5.00 in credit for the purchase of anything you want on Gustazos.

 

  • Carlos shared that listeners can find him at -

Carlos Villares LinkedIn

Email – carlos@gustazos.com

 

 

  • Carlos shared that the quote that he always reflects on during times of adversity is, “Control your destiny.” Sometimes, especially in sales, the client is not calling him back or someone in the office is not doing this for him, you have to control your destiny and if you need to so something yourself in order to achieve your goal, you have to control your destiny, don’t let your destiny fall into other peoples hands.

 

Links

 

Jun 27, 2017

John DiJulius Show Notes

 

John DiJulius is an international consultant and best selling author of 3 customer service books, his latest book; The Customer Service Revolution instantly hit number 1 on Amazon. John works with world-class companies like The Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Nestle¢, Marriott Hotels, PwC, Cheese Cake Factory, Progressive Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Chick-fil-A and many more. John isn’t just talking about it, he lives it. As a very successful entrepreneur of 2 businesses, John Robert’s Spa, a chain of upscale Cleveland locations has been repeatedly named 1 of the top 20 salons in America and The DiJulius Group, a consulting firm focused on changing the world by creating a customer service revolution. John will demonstrate how we can make our customer service our single biggest competitive advantage and make price irrelevant.

Question

 

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • What is your view of customer service and customer experience, why is it so important? What are some everyday solutions that you believe the business owner can do to still set themselves apart?
  • Tell us a little about your book, The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World, what inspired you to write your book and 3 key things our listeners would be able to take away from the book?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

 

  • John DiJulius shared that his first business, he and his wife opened up a small hair salon back in 1993 and it was 900 square feet and they had no money, no employees and they had no customers and they were on a street that had over 100 hair salons up and down within a few miles and they only way that he could think of to make them competitive was to invest in how they treated people because it didn’t cost has much as extensive advertising and all the traditional means back then. They started growing so rapidly that they had to knock down a wall and expand to the next location and then a year later get the next unit next to them and then couple years later they build a much larger facility and then they open another and then another and then another. They found 5-10 years later when they had money, they had customers, they had employees that the best investment was still the customer experience and still they didn’t spend on advertising, they just invested it. Their business grew to be 1 of the top 20 salons in the United States and he started getting asked to speak all the time because of their rapid growth and so he started speaking and then that started snowballing. His first book Secret Service came out in 2003 and from that point on, he went from being a salon owner who spoke a few times to being a speaker that owned a salon and he haven’t been to involved in the salon industry ever since and then the next book, What’s The Secret cam out in 2008 and that was more base now from 2003 to 2008 he started working with these incredible companies, the weird thing is, no one bad hires him, you would think that it’s the other way around but it was only great, exceptional companies and he probably learn has much if not more from them than he was probably teaching them. Now it’s just spiraling into a full pledge customer service consultant company and that’s all they do is just work with clients on their customer experience.

 

  • John DiJulius shared that the reason he wrote his first book because when they were trying to be exceptional, one of his frustrations at customer service is all the books on customer service that he could get his hands on and all the speakers he listened to never gave him the practicality, they always say, “Treat your customers the way you want to be treated.” all those high level platitudes but they didn’t tell him how, so they don’t want to compete in prices wars, they want to compete in experience wars and that’s really important to them so their methodology is all based around making price irrelevant and making price irrelevant is base on the experience you consistently deliver to your customer, they have no idea what your competition charges. He price sensitive and he has made the mistake of driving 3 extra miles to save 50 cents on something, on the flip side, there are some people he do business with as a consumer that if you’re looking, he would say you have to use that, how much do they charge and in a lot of cases, he couldn’t tell you, he doesn’t know, the businesses, the people he is so loyal to, he doesn’t know what they charge, he would have to look at his receipt, pull up an invoice but he doesn’t care, they are so great and he likes to say, discounting is the tax you pay for being average.” They don’t want to be average. The difference between customer service and customer experience is Jim Gilmore, great author of The Experience Economy says it, “Customer service is what you do, customer experience is how you do it.” He stated that customer service no matter what business you’re in is a commodity, everyone does what you do and doubt that you’re any smarter than your top competitors, it’s now, you’ve got to use that expertise and make sure you’re making an emotional connection and knowing something about our customers and knowing what they need and so it’s all about the service aptitude, how good any company is at customer service comes down to the service aptitude of their employees and your service aptitude gets shaped, yours, mine and the newest hire gets shaped by 3 places, previous life experiences, previous work experiences and current work experiences, so most people didn’t grow up staying at 5 star resorts, flying first class and driving Mercedes Benz when they turn 16 years old, yet our first jobs and a lot of times people we hire, we expect them to give that type of experience to our customers and it’s not fair, you just don’t know what world class look like at 19, 21 or 25 because your life experiences didn’t afford it. Same thing with previous work experience, previous work experiences, most businesses are paranoid and they want their employees to screen and not let customers take advantage of them and then we get that employee and they’ve been brainwashed not to treat the customer and trust the customer, it’s not the employee’s fault so we can’t control he first 2 things, it’s about what we do with them after we hire them and you won’t find people with high service DNA, don’t expect to, you have to create the DNA, it’s not you’re employees responsibility to have high service DNA, it’s yours to give it to them, you the company, you the entrepreneur, you have to train it.

 

Yanique agreed and stated that it’s interesting that he said how you can increase on their service DNA and asked if he believes that if the person doesn’t have the right attitude, that training can bring them to the level that you want to bring them to or is it something that comes in terms of their innate abilities that comes naturally in terms of how they relate to other people?

 

John stated that he believes that the vast majority of people out there you can change, he doesn’t believe it’s innate for the reasons he just explain, we were growing up and eating at fast foods restaurants and we didn’t have world class experiences so we don’t know what it is like to deliver and our family life, depending on what we were taught, you’re not going to find people who are taught that it’s just a few. He stated that he loves asking this one question to his audiences when he first started, “If you’re going to build a world class customer experience company, what is more important: a) the training and culture you bring your new employees into? Or b) the hiring?” In a little bit a way, it’s a trick question because the answer is both, you can’t have one without the other but he always say, if you’ve got to give 51% to one or the other, it’s training and culture. Disney did not find 50,000 employees born to serve, there is not 5,000 people walking the earth born to serve but they converted them and one of the quotes that Disney has about their new employees is they say, “We don’t put our new employees in Disney, we put Disney in our new employees.” Every one should put that quote with their company name, put your company in your people and make them proud and make them understand it.

 

  • John shared that the Customer Service Revolution is the last 20 years of working with the best companies in the world and seeing what they have in common and why they have been able to dominate their industry and not have to be sucked in on price and be the brand customers can’t live without. So the definition of a customer service revolution is a radical over throw of conventional business mentality designed to transform what employees and customers experience, the ship produces a culture that permeates into people’s personal lives at home and community which in turn provides your business with higher sales moral and brand loyalty, thus making price irrelevant. Some of the key take away in the book, it just talks about how you increase your employee service aptitude and one of the best ways that their clients do when they help them and listeners can do on their own is the first thing they do with their clients is they create a “Day in the life of a customer”, it’s a video and you don’t have to do a video, you can do a slideshow but the reason is that in most businesses the customer facing employee, your employee that’s dealing with your customer, is not the customer, whether it be a different age, they might be in their 20s dealing with 35 to 55 year old professionals, they might be account executives dealing with CEOs and they can’t relate to one another and so these day in a life of the customer scripts help your customer facing employee understand all the pressures and chaos and demands that your customer may be going through on a given day and how they get hit at home with kids and illness and significant other and financial burdens that we have and then they get to work and the customer demands and their boss and the economy and all these things and when you could really understand all the things that your customer are battling and how what you do for them impacts their success and their relief, it makes you more present when you deal with them and it really helps you to have more compassion and empathy, so scripting out a day in the life of a customer, before they even come in contact with you so everyone on your company can have more empathy and compassion for what your customers are dealing with and how you can come to the rescue. He also mention that some of the things they do is help companies create a customer service vision statement and that’s different from the mission and purpose, a customer service vision statement is the action statement you have to do every time you interact with a customer, be it 10 seconds, it’s about focusing on providing a positive experience on every interaction whether it’s face to face, click to click or ear to ear, it might be 10 seconds, it might be 10 minutes, it could be an hour but it’s about a short statement that is actionable, measureable, trainable and observable that every employee is reminded what their job is to do when they come in contact, so one of the examples of their biggest customer they have had is Starbucks, the next time you go to Starbucks anywhere, in Cleveland, Ohio, Malaysia, they all were the green apron, if you ask them to turn over the top inside of their green apron facing them, is their customer service vision statement that John and his team help them create and it’s cool because it’s not for the customer to see, it’s for each of their employees to see and be reminded of what to deliver to every customer they come in contact with. He always ask people, “What’s going to be your green apron that you can advertise to your employees that they constantly have to be reminded that your branding what your service vision is, what they have to do every time?”

 

  • John shared how he stay motivated, he stated that he is blessed, he loves what he does and that’s very important and he has had bad days and he has had deadlines missed and flights cancelled and principals calling about his kids getting in trouble but he thinks it’s about the attitude, it’s how you look at things and he can’t believe he gets to do what he does and he thinks it’s important that we remain as leaders, passionate, the higher we get in a company, the more responsibility we get which means we can come to work with the weight of the world on our shoulders and we can wear that and try to make payroll and we just lost a big client or we lost a key employee or his family isn’t too happy with him because he hasn’t been in town lately, when he brings that with him to work, he starts to get moral issues, the moment you became a leader you have lost your right to complain and make excuses. There’s a lot of people counting on him, a few hundred employees, tens and thousands of customers that he can’t let down, so it’s his obligation bring his best version of himself otherwise he’ll just hurt all of them and when we look at it that way that we have an obligation to bring our A game and sometimes he has to be an academy award winner and most of the times he truly feels it, when he brings his A game, when he bring the passion that has for what he does around the people he do it with and for, things go really well. So he just understands that there are several things and a lot of them they have in common. The things he has to do on a daily and maybe hourly basis in his life to not allow him to get on that rollercoaster that worries him, “I got the flat tire” he can’t let that happen, we all are going to get the same amount of flat tires but some people might dwell on them and other people may say, “God, was I lucky that I got a flat tire right after I drop my kids off at school and no one is injured and I was still able to get to work within a decent time.” Instead of letting that ruin the rest of their day. It’s what he’s feeding his brain on a daily basis, listening to podcast like this, listening to great experts, listening to people really inspire him and make him think, it’s who he hangs around with and that is the greatest thing. He stated that he hopefully won’t brag about too many things but the one thing he will brag about and he will take credit for is the people he surrounds himself with, he believes if we all are going to be known and judge by the people you surround yourself with and if he is judged by that, he’s a world champ, the people he allow in his circle and spend time with, they are positive, they are great husbands and have been married for 20 to 25 years and great fathers, those are the people he want to have their quality rub off on him versus we all have that friend from high school or college who wants to stay out at the bars until closing time, he has to see him once a year, he doesn’t want that influence on him more than the annual picnic on July 4th.

 

  • John stated that he has many apps that he uses. He stated that he loves where he gets education. There used to be an app called Pulse but it was bought by LinkedIn but it all the magazines and articles and customer service one place, he could scan and see everything he wanted to know from headline news to know if anything bad or good happens to where he can click on and it’s a great story of someone who did something customer experience, it’s a one stop shop where he can look at 60 to 80 different resources in 10 minutes and then send the article to himself or send it to a client, he do that traditional way now like having 10 or 20 different places he would go to find all that stuff. He also mention that he has a cool customer service app called YouMail, it’s free and it is a great customer service app, it replaces your voicemail on your phone, so if you’re in his contact list and you call him it will pick up and say, “Hello Suzanne, John is unavailable right now but he would love to call you right back.” And it personalizes the recording for every single that calls and it just blows peoples mind and they’re like, “how did you get someone to do that?” so that’s a fun app.

 

  • John shared that there are a lot of books that have impacted him, he mention that The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore is a great book. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, anything on Steve Jobs he just loves his business side and how his mind worked and his whole mentality was, “Don’t give the customers what they want, give them something they can’t live without.” Anything on Howard Schultz, Starbucks latest book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, how he overcame, he is the CEO of Starbucks, anything he says just really inspires him and he really likes Biographies and Autobiographies and the great entrepreneurs of our time and their battles, what they overcame and you find out that people have a lot of things in common and no one just fell into anything and their perseverance is really exciting and motivating stories.

 

  • John shared that they have some really good things, the Chief Experience Officer is the fastest growing C Suite position in corporate America today and while that’s great and it’s really helping businesses improve their customer experience, the one thing that’s missing is education for them. At least in the United States, there is not even classes on customer service that you can take courses let alone degrees which is really sad. So as they are trying to find and hire these new Customer Experience Officers or Chief Customer Officers, the problem they have is how do they train them so John and his team roll out The Customer Experience Executive Academy and they have an online course and a physical class that people can take either one and all their methodology so they can be the Customer Experience Office for their company, so that’s the fastest growing thing that they have and he really loves it. They have people has far has Qatar, Israel, Australia and all over the world that they couldn’t have touched before that are getting this information, taking it back, using it in their company and that is really helping them to achieve their mission which is, “To change the world by creating a customer service revolution.”

 

  • John shared that listeners can find him at -

www.cxea.org

www.dijuliusgroup.com

The DiJulius Group Facebook

John DiJulius Twitter

John DiJulius LinkedIn

 

  • John shared that his 4th book came out and it’s a quote book, his favorite quote and it’s in the last chapter of his book, The Customer Service Revolution is “I want to live an extraordinary life so countless others do as well.” And that’s really important to him and that’s his personal mission statement and it’s not just a quote, it’s an obligation. He doesn’t want to live an extraordinary life so that he can have more, more houses, more cars, more vacations, he wants to live an extraordinary life so countless others do and if you think about the greats in our world, from the Nelson Mandela’s to the Walt Disney’s, Steve Jobs’, Oprah Winfrey’s, Richard Branson’s of the world and the impact that have had on our world and changing the world and the way we think, what if they would have said, “I just want to be ordinary, I’m just going to mail it in, I’m just going to be average.” How much different would our life be today and we have that obligation and we all have these seeds of potential that we have inside of us and the seeds that we don’t grow fully, we have cheated others around us, we cheated our family, we cheated our neighborhood, our communities, our employees and our customers, so when he looks at it that way, he looks at what he needs to do live an extraordinary life so that people benefit and it becomes like a burden in a good way like, “I’ve got to eat right, I’ve got to exercise because if I don’t, I’ll be lethargic, I’ll be lazy, I’ll be crabby, when I get home tonight from work today, I want to collapse on the couch instead of play catch with my son.” By looking at it from that lens, he feels responsible and guilty if he doesn’t do that because he’s cheating others that are depending on his success.

Links

 

Jun 7, 2017

Shep Hyken Show Notes 

Shep Hyken is a Customer Service and Experience expert and Cheap Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. He is the New York Times best selling author and has been inducted in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the speaking profession. Shep works with companies and organizations who wants to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. His articles has been read in hundreds of publications and he is the author of 5 books, he is also the creator of The Customer Focus, a customer service training programme which helps clients develop a customer service culture and loyalty mind set.

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • What is your view of customer service and customer experience, what do you think is the number 1 reason why it’s not consistent across all industries both private and public sector?
  • If you could describe the most amazing customer experience that you’ve ever had, what would that be and why?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

 

  • Shepard Hyken stated that his first education on customer service and experience was when he was 12 years old. He was doing magic shows for parties and he came home and his mom said, “Make sure you write a “Thank You” note.” He thought that was a great idea but little did he know that that was customer service. His dad said, “Follow up a week later and thank them again with a phone call and also ask what they liked about the magic show and find out what was their favorite tricks and how they felt about the show.” And that was also a sales tactic because soon as they said, “Hey you were great” and he would ask why and say, “I notice that little Johnny had a sister, does she need a magic show too?” That was all helpful but what he was learning was: 1 – Show appreciation to customers, 2 – Ask for feedback. His dad actually told him that,“When they tell what tricks they like, if they aren’t mentioning certain tricks as you go and do more and more shows, see if the parents aren’t mentioning the same tricks or are mentioning the same tricks and then you’ll know what tricks you might want to pull out and replace to try and make better because nobody is talking about them.” And he goes, that’s great feedback and isn’t that what we do in business today and that’s why he jokingly say but it’s really no joke that his customer service experience started with common sense that was taught to him by his parents and that’s really where a lot of customer service falls in the world of common sense. There he was age 12 doing that and he worked in Gas Stations when he was a kid and he was in a self serving station when he was in college at a gas station where you pump your own gas but it was a cold day and an elderly woman came, jumped out of her car to pump gas and he said, “Mam, get back into the car, I’ll pump your gas, it’s too cold.” And he pumped her gas and the manager at the gas station as he was a low-level employee, got upset with him for pumping her gas and he said, “This is the right thing to do, the woman could slip, she could break a hip.” She had to be 80 may 90 years old and he thought it was the right thing to do, once again common sense. He believes in all of that and he eventually in that retail organization was a region manager for the convenient stores and gas stations that they had and eventually the station’s operations manager and when they sold their company, he didn’t have a job and he decided to get into the world of professional speaking and he had a little entertaining background and he had some business background, plus he had gone to college, got his degree and he felt he could write a speech and within a very short time, all the research that he was doing and his favorite topic was in that world of customer service, so that’s what he gravitated toward right away and that was over 30 years ago. He was hired back in the early 1980’s by companies like IBM and General Motors and Enterprise Rent a Car, these were his first clients and he’ll never forget because to him IBM was one of the greatest companies and is still a great company but back then they were the ones that really bring customer service on the map, “We want to be so good at what we do that price doesn’t matter.” And of course price always matters at some point but when it becomes less and less relevant, it’s because of the value that you offer and many times that value is because we have a reliable product, we have unbelievable response time, that’s customer experience.

 

  • Shepard Hyken stated that what amazes him, he read that customer service they spend about 1/10th of what they spend on marketing and at the end of the day, customer service is the best marketing you can have because if you do a great job, people go out and talk about you. Customer service used to be where the value was and then it slowly shifted to something they call customer experience and experience for a long time was just another word for service. Steve Jobs figured it out and he use him as an example of the Apple products he has, obviously you walk into an Apple store great service, you call their support line, you get great service but really what he figured out is the experience is more important than just the service, although service is a big part of it, when you get your new Iphone or Ipad or your Mac computer, the way it’s packaged alone is a great experience. So all these different touch points the customer has with you and it’s not just people to people touch point, it’s what you experience. He stated that he always quote Jan Carlzon, when he’s doing a speech, he talks about this concept called a “Moments of Truth” and he came up with it and primarily he focus on the people to people experience but he called the “Moments of Truth” in business whenever a customer came into contact with any aspect of the business, they form an impression. Jan Carlzon ran Scandinavian Airlines so his customers were passengers, so there were main impressions that were formed when a customer call to make a reservation, today we go online and do it but back in the early 1980’s when he was running Scandinavian Airlines, you pick up the phone and you made the call, you check your bags at the curb, you make check in at the ticket counter, all of these are major touch points but if you think about it, you sit down in the plane and is the seat comfortable? And he used to joke that if the tray table doesn’t work, the passenger might worry that the landing gear might not work. So it’s like, “They can’t keep the tray table from falling down.” But what is the user experience in addition to the customer service experience, so you combine thoseand that’s the total experience. All of his work for the first three quarters of his career was based on customer service, now a chunk of his work that they do, he is brought in to talk about what is the experience going to be? What can we do to enhance that? Which he emphasize that customer service is a big part of that.

 

  • Shep stated that he talks about a cab driver in many of his speeches and it seem to be like a normal cab but when he got in it was spotlessly clean, it had 2 newspapers to chose from waiting for him, he gave him a soda and this was back before bottled water. He had a dish of candy, he asked if he needed to use his phone, he was great and he send him a thank you note because he asked him for his business card because he said he collected them from people he drove. He sent him a thank you note after a ride; think about that, that’s amazing. Every time he goes to Dallas he calls him but he’s retired now. The interesting thing was that has he got to know Frank, he would tell him things like he used to wait at the airport like every other cab driver 2-3 hours in the long line and now he just goes and parks the car and walks and waits 10 minutes for his next customer and he’s managed to make back in the day more than USD $100,000.00 a year as a cab driver because he figured it out, he figured out the average cab drivers making 3 or 4 decent trips a day that are making them money and he’s making 15 or more because he’s not waiting in line, he’s waiting for his customers and he figured it out because it’s customer service and the lesson is there is a big difference between satisfied customers and loyal customers. There is statistics and facts that will prove that satisfied customers don’t always go back to places that satisfy them because the moment they have a chance to do business with somebody a little bit better, a little more convenient, they will do that and that’s the difference and the loyal customer’s a mind set, it’s an emotion, you feel connected, so he felt truly connected with Frank, when he sent him that thank you note, that was it. It was like in that movie with Tom Cruise where he plays a sports agent, Jerry McGuire, “You had me at with the thank you note, you owned me at that point.” Shep stated that he has a lot of stories like that but he really loved that one because of the ordinariness of the job of being a cab driver and taking it to a whole level of being extraordinary and anybody can do that if a cab driver can figure it out, we can do it virtually in any business.

 

  • Shep shared how he stay motivated, he stated that he is an optimistic guy and sometimes you’re just born with the luck of thinking that way, some of it has to do with the way you are brought up by your parents. He stated that he has this optimistic outlook, at a very young age he surrounded himself with the right people and even as a teenager, he had great mentors and these people drove him to be more successful because maybe they made him feel good, maybe telling him he’s doing a good job like a coach telling you, “Go out there, you can do it, you did it, that’s great” pat you on the back but he over came fears, he did the magic shows and you would think a kid at age 12 doesn’t have fear, he was scared to death of those little kids staring at him. Even in his mid 20s, he started his speaking business and if the audience was under 100 people, he felt comfortable but as soon as it got bigger than that, he was scared, when he got in front of an audience of 1000 or 10,000 so he’s still nervous but he gets over it because mostly anxiousness than, “I’m scared to get out there.” How do you get motivated? You have to over come things and feel really good about what you do so that drives you. He reads a tremendous amount of good things, one of the things he doesn’t do anymore, he doesn’t watch local news and even the national news, national news keeps you inform of many things but local news, they are showing car accidents, crime scenes and other than the weather and sports, he doesn’t need that negativity in his life, he needs to know the big picture things. He also works out quite a bit and he has fun. He shares that he has a really good balance, he works very hard but he has a really good time, he takes advantage of things when they are in front of him, he has a great wife, great kids. If he’s going to a sporting event, he soaks it all in and he just loves having fun. He works a tremendous amount of hours but when it’s time to have fun, he knows how to do it.

 

  • Shep stated that one of the apps that cannot live without in his business is Outlook, he also mention that he loves a good travel app because he travels so much and he’s using TripIt but it feeds into Flight Update Pro and so that way he can track flights coming into his gate, if they are going to be late many times he knows before the gate agent, so because he travels a lot and that’s great. He stated that for email, he just signed up for Sanebox so if you want to check out Sanebox you can put his email address or his name and you can get a free month. What Sanebox is doing is everything that’s coming into his inbox, it recognize when he’s getting a newsletter and puts it in the newsletter box that he can get to it later on. It is actually learning his routine, it is putting his best emails in his inbox and putting everything else in another box and it’s unbelievable accurate, they say it will essentially save you up to 12 hours a month. There is a feature on it called the Saneblack hole, if somebody subscribe you or you start getting on somebody’s promotional email list of a company and you don’t know how you got on the list, you just put it in the black hole and you’ll never see it again. They give you a trail period to play around so that’s a cool app for a reasonable price. He just got a Slingbox at home so now he can watch TV on his phone and where that counts is when he’s traveling on the other side of the world and his favorite sports teams are playing in the USA and he wants to watch them, so that’s a cool app. Another app is BombBomb, if he wants to take a short video that say, “Hey thank you for having me on your show” and then send it to you, he can do it with the phone but what happens is that attaches the video to the email and if the video is too big, it may get block by your email system, so what BombBomb does is allows you to create a cool template that’s custom to you and then you shoot your video and then you send the email and the person just pushes the button and actually plays if they are connected to the internet, it’s a very cool thing and that’s the most basic use. You could have a list of people and you want to send everybody a video message.

 

  • Shep shared that he mentioned Jan Carlzon book, Moments of Truth was written mid 1980’s and the first time he ran across Jan Carlzon was in an article but he eventually went on to write the book about Moments of Truth and it’s a thin little book that would take an hour to read. Shep stated that to him one of the greatest customer service books of all time. However, his favorite book is called The Experience Economy by James Gilmore and Joe Pine, what a great concept and they used Starbucks and that book has been out for maybe 10 or 20 years and for a company like Starbucks to maintain its relevancy in the experience base is really cool. He stated that Thomas Peters co-author a book back in the 1980’s called In Search of Excellence and he believes he had 50 companies that he considered most excellent companies in the world and if you look at it 25 years later he doesn’t know if half of them made that list anymore. For Starbucks to stay relevant and he predicts that Starbucks will stay relevant, their module is all about the customer not just about coffee and that’s why Amazon has been so successful and when Jeff Bezos says, “We are trying to stay a step up ahead of our competition, we’re trying to stay ahead of the customer” meaning what are we giving the customer more than what they thought they were going to get, get them something they didn’t know and that’s what Steve Jobs did too with Apple, give them something they didn’t know they needed and create this need or discover the need the customer didn’t realize they needed then deliver on it. To put another book, in the latter part of the 1980’s a guy name Harvey Mackay wrote a book called Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition, we have anyone out there with entrepreneurial type businesses or anybody that’s in a business to build a relationship with your customer, this book is unbelievable, it’s filled with so much great information, common sense information from a guy that was really doing it at the time.

 

  • Shep shared that there are 2 or 3 things, number 1 is they have an amazing online group of courses based on the work he has put into his books and what they do with their training programmes and speaking programmes in person, so he’s very excited about how over the years it has been revolving into a major part of their business. He is just finishing up a book called Be Amazing or Go Home, so that’s kind of fun, you got a choice in life, if you want to come to work, be amazing otherwise why show up for work. The other book that’s coming out next year is a book all about creating convenience, they talked a little bit about that’s a part of the experience, how convenient and easy can you make it for a customer because today you walk into a business, you expect a certain level of customer service and that’s table stake and for the last 30 years he has been talking about the table stakes and now he thinks it’s becoming common when companies get it and understand it, whether they execute on it is another thing, so what’s the next level of delivering amazing service and that is be more convenient than your competition.

 

  • Shep shared that listeners can find him at -

Shep Hyken Twitter

www.hyken.com

 

  • Shep shared some of the quotes that inspire him in times of adversity. He loves Jiminy Cricket who said, “Let your conscience by your guide.” In business when he’s up against somebody who is upset about pricing or maybe he’s upset that something is a little more expensive than he thought it was going to be and he always remember Aldo Gucci said, “Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.” so when he thinks about business in general, it’s not just the quality product, it’s the quality service and experience and even though he didn’t write it, he thinks it’s a mantra we should all subscribe to, we deliver the best part of the quality, an experience, everything does what it’s supposed to do, great people, people aren’t going to be so concern about the price. 

Links

May 24, 2017

Winning Accounts vs. Winning Relationships with Yanique Grant – Episode 047

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much – this episode is very special episode for me. It is very near and dear to my heart! Approximately one (1) year ago, I started this podcast – Navigating the Customer Experience and one year later – we are at over 5,000 downloads, being listened to in over 70 countries worldwide with 46 episodes and counting. I am so happy to know that this podcast has really done so well that we have persons listening to us from all different parts of the world in over 70 countries worldwide – that is just amazing! We focus primarily on Customer Experience, Leadership, Business Development, How to Win the Customers, Service Recovery, Social Media Customer Care. We have touched on so many topics in the last twelve (12) months and it has just been a wonderful experience and to know that I am here today to proudly report to you that we are being listened to again in over 70 countries by over 5,000 people is just a really proud moment for me! I really wanted to express my deepest gratitude to all our listeners out there and even those future listeners who will be hearing this episode when it is aired.

 Today I would like to focus on Winning Accounts vs. Winning Relationships - Winning an account is a great accomplishment and is usually celebrated by the boss and the team as this means more business and more money. Just as any other accomplishment achieved requires maintenance and consistency so does maintaining a consistent relationship with that account holder.

 Every business works extremely hard to acquire new customers. In order to acquire the business, your first step would be to make initial contact with the customer either through email, phone or face to face. After initial contact you now have the customer’s attention, they may purchase your service or product based on their needs. 

Let’s take a look at a few examples:

 Scenario 1 - a newly opened print supplies business opens and they contact you to tell you about their products and services and also how competitive their prices are. You advise them that you already have someone that supplies you with toners and stationery for your office and you decline their offer. They call back one month later and remind you of their services and products because they would really like to stay front and centre in your mind in order to “win your account.” Six months pass and every month they call you to share the same information. One day they even show up at your office with sample products and a free giveaway bag. After one year of courting you – you eventually start purchasing items from them. However, the difference in behaviour is they no longer call and check up to see if you need supplies and months pass sometimes before you even remember that they still exist.

 

Scenario 2 – an automotive company has sales representatives who prospect at different events and one day while attending a business luncheon you were approached by one and you were intrigued by the cars they sold and also the features and benefits of these vehicles. The sales representative calls you weekly as they know you really want to change your vehicle. They contact the bank and have the relationship manager at the bank call you, they also contact the insurance company and arrange for everything. Over 6 months have passed and you have encountered other automotive sales representatives but the original one that you met stands out in your mind as they always followed up no matter what. Therefore, when you were ready to make the purchase – you automatically called the representative who contacted you consistently. You finally receive your new vehicle and the representative called you a day after the delivery of your car and also a week after. However, one year has passed and you have never heard back from that representative.

 

In all the above scenarios – we must recognize that winning the customers’ account is very important, however, building strong relationships is much more important. Customers do not want to be treated as transactions instead they would like to be treated as people. All customers want value added services.

 

My challenge to you is think of your business offering and look at how you can offer value-added service to your customers…..

 

Statistics have shown that people don’t remember what you did but they do remember how you made them feel. How do your customers feel after doing business with you – are your customers your biggest fans? Do they speak highly of your company? Do your team members feel proud to work at your company? When they wear their branded shirts with your company logo and go in public areas do they feel proud to represent your brand and company?

 

If the answer to any of these questions is NO! Your company specifically your leaders need to look at why the team may feel this way and also why the customers feel this way because as we stated before human beings usually remember how you made them feel!

 

Tips for Building Relationships

 

  1. Give back to your existing and loyal customers even if you are a monopoly. Customers like to know they are saving money or they are getting value like a free item or service for a month such coupons and complimentary gift certificates.
  2. Use the information in your customer records such as birthday, anniversary, upgrades or specials in relation to a previous purchase a customer made.
  3. Courtesy calls for customers just to see how their business is doing and also how they are doing as people. This can be scheduled such as every 6 months.
  4. Do business with the companies that do business with you. We should all support each other especially the people who support you. This will allow you to get to know your customers on another level as well.
  5. Be human. This last tip is quite simple but if not applied can damage your business. A company is not made up of equipment, machinery, products etc. but people are the ones responsible for how your employees feel and how your customers feel! Be connected in your words and actions, be deliberate when working with your team and customers and make sure you show compassion in your interactions because “People won’t show you how much they care, until you show them how much you care.”

 

Links

 

Navigating the Customer Experience Facebook Community

 

Navigating the Customer Experience Twitter

 

First Online Programme – Mastering Customer Experience and Increasing Your Revenue

Apr 25, 2017

Tema Frank is a best-selling author, international speaker, teacher and business consultant. Tema Frank has over three decades’ experience in marketing strategy, usability testing, and customer experience improvement. In 2001 she launched Web Mystery Shoppers Inc., the world’s first company to do “omnichannel” customer experience testing. Using social media techniques before “social media” existed, she recruited a panel of 75,000 mystery shoppers worldwide. In doing all of this, Tema was able to test all of the customer service channels that organizations would experience such as: live chat, telephone, social media and in-store. Tema is also a fellow podcaster and she started podcasting in 2012, she is our podcast senior and her podcast is called Frank Reactions Podcast on Customer Experience, a definitely must listen.

 

Questions

  • Tell us a little about yourself and your journey
  • Can you speak a little bit about your 3P profit formula that you speak about in your book and why do you think the brand is so important and what would be some of your recommendations as it relates to a small business trying to incorporate some of the things that your book recommends into their own business?
  • What are some everyday solutions that you believe that can help change the mindset of some of these business owners so that training their staff and getting them understand how they want them to treat their customers a priority?
  • Tema’s first experience working at a bank where she had team members that were hanging out at a bar with the boss drinking during the working day, while you guys put in all these work, how was that experience?
  • What are your thoughts on Social Customer Care?
  • What is the one website, tool 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 service but they lack the constantly motivated Human Capital. If you were sitting across the table from that person, what’s the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?
  • What’s one thing going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about (What are you working on to develop yourself and your people)?
  • What is one quote or saying that during times of adversity and challenges that you refer to as a reminder to help you get more focused?

 

Highlights

  • Tema stated that she was always customer focused and her very first career was in Business Government Relations and as a known as a Lobbyist and that’s all about understanding public and how the public react things and what’s important to them. She stated that she started to develop it from there, that this focus on understanding customers, understanding users, so it was always an interest of hers and then her first book which came out in the mid 1990’s was about Canada’s best employers for women and what she concluded was that best for women were great for men too because they treated all people well and of course a huge element for great customer experience is great employee experience. The recent book just kind of ties it all that together but she thinks that customer experience is just so important because we all are customers and to have a good society, we need to treat each other with respect.

Yanique stated that it’s one of the things that motivated her to start this podcast because she is a customer experience trainer and she goes into organizations and helps them to work with their leaders, work with all of their team members so that they can all get an understanding that customer experience is everyone’s responsibility not just the customer facing employees because for some reason, IT and Accounts seem to think that because they are not directly interfacing with the customers it’s not their responsibility.

  • Tema stated that the exciting thing is that in some ways it is easier for small businesses because one of the key elements to creating great customer experiences is a leader, a CEO who cares and who thinks that it’s important, so if you have your own business, you’re in a wonderful place to set that tone. The book Peopleshock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, when she talks about the 3 P’s of profit, the 3 P’s are Promise, People and Process and you need to all of these right to create great on going customer experience. The Promise is: why are you doing what you’re doing? And what about it will motivate people to care? And those people include customers and employees and she gives some examples in the book. Even a business as seemingly uninspiring as a janitorial service company, you can find ways to make that inspiring. The Promise is also important because it sets a guideline and a filter for decision making because part of providing great customer service and customer experience involves letting go and giving your front lines more responsibility and more authority, if they’ve all understood and bought into this common vision then they have a filter it helps them make the right decisions when they have to make decisions without you there to say yes or no. People is the second element and we obviously focus a lot on employees which is crucial because you’re not going to have happy customer if you don’t have happy employees but beyond that and beyond the customers and prospects, there is a whole range of other people who will effect whether or not you can deliver consistently great customer experience, so that includes people like your suppliers, your distributors, so if you have been rude to your suppliers and don’t treat them well and there is a shortage of supplies, who think is going to get it? It won’t be you. So all those external relationships with vendors, with all these people can influence ultimately whether or not you can keep on delivering great customer experience through good times and bad. The third P and this is where a lot of organizations slip up is Process, when you are just getting started, you don’t have a lot of processes in place and you can sort of fly by the seat of your pants and just do stuff and get it done and that’s great when you’re getting started. Tema stated that she would really recommend that any small business right from the beginning, start documenting how you’re doing things. There’s a whole bunch of reasons for doing that not just for customer experience, it will also make it easier as you grow but you want to re-evaluate your processes as you grow so every once a year, look back, “how we’re doing things and does this make sense?” there is an example that she gives in the book of a manufacturing company and they complain that there is this one customer for whom they always have to punch a into a piece of metal before they can ship it to them, it was kind of annoying but it was a good customers so they said, “ok, fine, we’ll do it for them” then interviewing the customer, it turned out they were saying, “we love working with this company but it’s really annoying because they ship us these parts with holes in them and we have to fill the hole before we can use it.” Doing some research it turned out that the need for that hole dated back to a decade earlier when they were both using different equipment and at that point it was needed but nobody really had ever reassess the process, here they were doing something that added to the time, added to the cost, added to everybody’s frustration and it wasn’t helping anything, in fact it was hindering. So regularly evaluate that third P.
  • Tema stated that the best thing you can if you can persuade them to do it is for them to go and work on the front lines for awhile, just spend a day or half a day or even a month working on the front lines and find out what’s really going on there because as you become more senior in an organization or even in a small business, if you as the CEO are focused on raising money and doing big deals, once you get the deal you’re not thinking about what’s happening to that customer and it’s really easy to lose touch. So the most important thing is get out there, talk to customers, existing customers not just focusing on getting new ones and if it’s possible, get on the front lines and find out what they are experiencing or go undercover. She stated that there is a show in the US called Undercover Boss and it amazes her with that show how many of the CEO’s and they are always shocked by what they discover and she’s thinking, “What makes you think you need to go on TV to do this?” Throw on a wig, go to your store, you don’t need a TV show to do the undercover thing. So that’s something that is really valuable. If you are not the CEO or the owner of the business and you’re trying to convince them then the next best thing that you can do is bring them the voice of the customers, so whether that’s through an audio recording where they are actually hearing the customer complain, something that makes it real to them, even if you can’t get an audio recording, even if it’s transcribing, writing out the words, these are the exact words our customers are using, that will help make it real to them in a way that reports our statistics or you telling them in your own words just aren’t going to have the same impact. She recommends if you can get them on the front lines or getting yourself on the front lines and if you can’t at least present the voice of the customer to those in charge.
  • Tema shared that one of her first work experiences was depressing and that was what led her into entrepreneurship because she thought that was just ridiculous. It was an interesting experience, basically they apart of a rebel unit that was set up and the guy that was leading the rebel unit, he was great at building a team which did involve hanging out in bars and partying but then once he had the team in place and there was work to be done, he wanted to continue hanging out in bars and partying and her boss came to her said, “Look, you’re not helping your career by staying in the office and doing your job, you should be at the bar with the VP” she was working in marketing at the time. She said, “Sorry, that was not what I signed up for” when the time came for lay offs, all the first people to get let go were those of them that was doing the work and it took 9 months before head office realise that everything was falling apart and then he finally got fired but it was really frustrating and disheartening experience but it gave her the opportunity to start her own business.

Yanique stated that she believes that out of every negative situation there is always something positive that can come from it. So Tema sharing her story and seeing how she has been able to rise above the obstacles and she is able to let people know that at the end of the day you do have some employees who genuinely want to come and do a great job, they are not into slacking off and just sitting around and not doing anything, so that’s important.

Tema shared that the thing is, if employees are just slacking off and not doing anything is usually because you have failed to motivate them with that promise. You’re not treating them right; you’re not inspiring them. Tema stated that money is necessary so that you can survive but paying somebody more won’t get them to be more customer friendly. She stated that one of the biggest solutions that entrepreneurs could use to motivate their employees is involving them into decisions making, instead of imposing decisions from above, try to get decisions to often flow from below, so the people who are closet to your customers in some ways have the best knowledge about what’s going on in your organization and a lot of employee unhappiness is because they feel they are not heard and they do in fact know better than some of their bosses but the bosses won’t listen and don’t care about what they think. So you want to involve people at all levels and from all departments in decision-making and in strategizing about how we can make things better for the customer. Earlier Yanique mentioned that often IT and Accounts don’t think that customers have anything to do with them and one thing to over come that is to get those people on departmental teams and let them start hearing the customer. Her first major business with Web Mystery Shoppers, the reason she created that company which was in the early days of eCommerce and websites and she found that their was a marketing department, sometimes a completely separate eCommerce unit and then the IT people, they all depended on each other but they were set up as completely separate units and weren’t even speaking the same language and what she did with that business is that she would have anywhere from 30 to 300 people from their target market who gave detailed feedback about, “This is what’s frustrating us about your website” and when she was able to go back to all these units and show them that it was a way to bring all these people together and realise that they did have a common objective.

Yanique stated that on Tema’s website is that there is a free book that you offer 85 Tips for User Friendly Website and one of the things she found is that when she is looking for guests for her show and she’ll probably source them through Amazon if they wrote a book that really inspired her and thinks it would be good to hear their message and Amazon probably has their profile with information about the author and it usually should have a link to their website or some of the authors has their email address listed right there, what she found very frustrating as a customer herself is that most websites for some reason have a contact us form where they control how they contact you versus giving her the opportunity for you to provide their email address so that she can reach out to them because when she sends that contact us form and it says send, she is not guaranteed that somebody is going to receive that in an inbox and respond to her in a reasonable time. Tema shared that is part of what is driving people onto Social media to complain as if you provided me with better service in quieter means whether it’s making yourself easily accessible to customers through phone or through email and dealt with that better then people would not go and complain about you so much in public.

 

  • Social Customer Care is something that is rising – many companies have contributed to that happening by underfunding their Call Centers. Therefore, as a customer if you have a choice in sending out a tweet and getting a response versus spending half an hour hold – of course the customer will choose the quickest response and do the tweet! So what has happened is companies have trained customers to go on Social Media, so we can’t turn that clock back and so smart companies are now staffing accordingly and making sure they catch things on Social Media quickly and deal with them well and quickly.
  • Yanique shared that many customers do not share private messages with companies – they post the complaint on their wall. Tema agreed and said as a company – you should respond immediately in a non – defensive way. Tema also made reference to the CEO of United Airlines that companies should start by blaming the customer! Companies should approach the complaint calmly, let’s talk about this sounds complicated, maybe we can discuss this offline – I would be happy to help you. Then you send the message to anyone that saw the public tweet that, “Yes, we care and we want to help.” Tema responded to Yanique’s question by saying deleting posts or complaints that customers make is a very silly approach as this places you at risk for the situation to escalate further. Especially in an era with Screenshots!
  • Tema shared the one website, tool or app that she absolutely cannot live without in her business is Gmail. An enhancement to Gmail called “Active Inbox.” Tema shared Active Inbox is a task manager that is attached to Gmail that allows you to set tasks, set appointments.
  • Tema shared some of the books that have some great impact on her over the years – “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker – so much good advice about how to bring out the best in your people. The one message that has stuck with Tema over the years is instead of trying to fix people’s weaknesses – structure their jobs so they focus on their strengths. Her other book recommendation was “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jnr. and E.B. White, about how to write more clearly and effectively – the main message Tema has taken away is to omit needless words – anytime you have written anything go back and see if you can substitute a 3 syllable word with a one syllable word and have the same meaning – the more you can distill that way – the more powerful your message will be.
  • In response to Yanique’s question on how to motivate your employees in having a successful business - hire carefully and listen to all of your employees, ask them questions, get to know them, involve them in ideas and decision making. If you do that and involve them as a real person – you will get plenty out of them.
  • Tema shared that she is working on an update for her first book that she wrote in the mid 90’s – Best Employer. Tema is also working on how she can make the concepts and principles of Peopleshock: The Path to Profits when Customers Rule more accessible through online courses and workbooks.
  • Tema shared the quote or saying that she uses to re-ignite her spirit during times of adversity is “Remember the movie isn’t over yet” – meaning we are at a low point but something good is coming!
Apr 6, 2017

This episode with Yanique Grant will spend some time speaking about business culture, a little bit about leadership and also customer experience. According to the business dictionary online, business culture is the module or style of business operations within a company, the culture determines how different level of staff communicate with one another as well as how employees deal with clients and customers, culture is very important.

Highlights

As a Customer Experience Strategist and a Coach in customer experience and in the experience that she as garnered over the last 8-10 years, many companies have asked her, “Yanique, how can we improve our customer experience? What do you think is the main reason why customer experience is so poor?” and her number 1 reason is always the leadership, “Are you walking the talk? Are you showing behaviors and attitudes that your employees can emulate? D you have systems in place that reward employees for great behavior, for great interaction with your customers?” Many of the great brands globally believe that customer experience is the backbone of their business and it’s the number one differentiator because no business has a monopoly in what they’re doing in terms of the product or service they offer, it’s guaranteed that somebody else out there that sells a book or somebody else out there that’s a health coach or somebody else out there that is repairing a car but what is going differentiate the experience is the quality of the experience, the things that happing in the experience, when things go wrong how does that individual recover the experience with the customer and that’s why culture is very important to your business growth and your business development.

Yanique stated that she will share some basic things that she believes should be incorporated if you are clearly serious about your business and you want to improve on your culture. Throughout her career as a leader, managers have developed culture management systems around 5 key points and they are:

The right vision and unique ways to constantly reinforce why we do what we do and it goes back to walking the talk. As the leader in the organization, you need to know what kind of culture you want demonstrated in your organization and find unique ways to constantly reinforce it so that people can see it everyday, it’s similar to parenting. You hire all these people and they may have the right attitude and the necessary competencies to complete the job on a daily basis but they all socialize differently, coming from different backgrounds, having different life experiences and now they are all working together towards a common vision and goal but they are not going to be able to miraculously come on day 1 or day 3 or day 10 or day 50 and just know exactly what to do and this is why as a leader it is important to constantly reinforce what it is that they are doing, why they are doing what they are doing and how is it going to benefit them. Yanique stated that she is a big supporter of leaders in an organization who have a vested interest in the development of their employees, so if your business is going to grow and your bottom line has increased immensely and your shareholders are very happy, your employees should actually see an improvement in the quality of their lives as well because if the business grows, the employees should be growing as well not just professionally but they should also be growing in a way that they can advance their life. Point number 2 is simple focus systems like focus scorecards to align key managers, so you need some level of assessment and measurement because people will do as they feel like doing and it’s very important to have a structure in place where people are measured and assessed consistently. Reward systems that drive the right behavior is number 3 because it’s so important for people to know that when they do something right, they are commended for it, they are rewarded for it. Reward doesn’t mean you have to give them money because many people are not driven by money, it could be that the team gets a weekend away or maybe they get a book or a gift certificate so you have to take time a leader to get to know your team members and figure out what it is that they like and what they don’t like because everyone isn’t motivated by money. Effective coaching tools that help associate and live the values and help associate to get the results, so coaching is very important because all of these people are new to this experience of a corporate culture and customer experience and having that mindset where everything that you do is driven by the customer in mind first. Coaching is very important to that process because if that’s not how the individual naturally thinks or naturally processes information, they are going to need help in terms of guiding them coaching them in that direction. Point number 5 is constant process improvement; now quality customer experience is about doing it right the first time, every time and so consistency is key. Customers can be unforgiving at times so you can have a customer who has been your customer for 20 years and the one time you mess up, they just blow the roof and you simply say to yourself, “I’ve been doing business with you for 19 plus years, we’ve done it right the first time, every time and this one time, can’t you just cut us some slack?” Unfortunately, some customers don’t give you that opportunity and that’s why constant process improvement will help to drive consistency of those interactions and behaviors with your team members and customers so it will minimize the errors and risks that may come about in creating problems with your customers. It is so important to ensure that you have a good business culture. Leadership is critical to cultural development and has much as many leaders may want to shy away from the opportunity or responsibility of cultural development; it is very much apart of your daily interactions, most leaders should have a scoring that they are assess on by the board of an organization in terms of whether or not the culture of the organization has improved, because culture is not just the HR department’s responsibility, HR is just one small function of culture in  a business and it’s very important for the leader to recognize that you drive HR processes and the department, you drive the marketing, you drive the accounts, you drive the culture because the culture is the interaction of the people with each other and as a result of that their interaction with your external customers. Yanique stated that one thing that she strongly believes as it relates to culture, culture can often be mistakenly thought of has a vague concept, like the nice to things but it’s not just the nice to things, it’s the things that drive the behavior and interaction and if it’s not driven correctly, it can lead to you having a lot of service issues and service issues can cause a lot of money especially if you’re losing customers. In customer experience no business wants a customer never to come back, they want their customers to repeat their business over and over again so that you have customer lifetime value and you can listen back to many of the previous episodes where they have had guests who came on who are experts in the customer lifetime value calculation and the importance of ensuring that you retain your existing customers because it costs so much to get a new customer. You want to focus on critical que behaviors in your organization so that you can change the existing behaviors, you won’t be able to change everyone but the aim is to try and do as much as possible to get some form of improvement within the organization. If you culture is wrong, it can make or break your organization very easily, so you want to make sure that your leaders in your organization understand the importance of culture. We hope that persons who are listening to this podcast understand that the employee in an organization is really driven by the behavior and attitudes that your leaders demonstrate and they watch you every single day even when you think they are not watching, they are watching, they are forming an impression and they are forming a perception, they observe how you interact with the customers, they observe how you interact with the employees. If you get upset with an employee because they did something to satisfy a customer’s need, it is going to drive fear into other employees who have observe because now they are not going to feel as confident to step out on the limb and satisfy a customer’s need because they observed you reprimanding Bill last week for dealing with a customer’s issue and in Bill’s mind, Bill was able to satisfied that customer’s need and the customer left happy but in the bosses mind, he should have not taken that decision on his own and with that in mind, Tom who observed what happened is not going to take that action on their own next and if you’re no there then that delays the whole service experience. Service recovery is the backbone of customer experience and it’s most effective at the first point of contact, if you customers recognize that you’re not taking their business seriously then they are going to move their business to somewhere that that company values their business and appreciate their business. It is so important as the leader to really recognize what requires improvement and understand your role in that entire process. We are at the beginning of second quarter in 2017, for those of you listening to this podcast; Yanique is going to encourage you to think about your own business, whether you’re the business owner, whether you’re the business leader, whether you’re a manager in the organization and even if you’re an employee, you can contribute as well. If your business is not the type of business that your customers are walking up and down everyday speaking positive things about your business or people are not clambering to become employees of your business because you have such an amazing culture then there is opportunity for improvement within your business. If your answer to any of these questions, made you sit down and think and say, “hmm, maybe we could improve in this area or maybe we could improve in that area.” Yanique is challenging you to make that improvement by the end of this month. It is so important to focus on what needs to be improved and then take the steps to improve them, everything can’t be done overnight and culture is not something that changes within a month or within 3 months, it takes time. We encourage you whether you work with an external consultant and bring them in as a subject expert to help you business grow on a consistent basis or if you chose to do it on your own internally, whatever your strategy is you have to make an effort to do something. Sitting down and doing nothing is not going to achieve the results that you want to get and because your customers are the reason why you are in business, you have to ensure that you empower your employees, equip them with the necessary tools and tools don’t always mean the system that they are using or the procedures they need to follow but tools also mean the interpersonal skills that they require in order to feel confident and empowered to deal with your customers. We challenge you to do something differently than what you’re doing now so that you can improve on your business and improve on business culture. What kind of culture do you want to have, do you want when people call your business name in public the positive thoughts or the positive sayings that come about are, “Yes, that company is really great, their employees are very friendly, they are knowledgeable, they operate with speed, my deliveries or my orders are always on time, they can answer any question that I ask, they are very efficient, they are very responsible, they are reliable.” Those are adjectives that can only come about if your culture is one that has values that support the things that people are saying. We challenge you as a owner, a leader, a manager, as an employee to go back into your organizations and look for opportunities that you can change one thing that can contribute to a positive culture in your business.

 

Links

Mar 21, 2017

As Founder and CEO of Mattson Enterprise, Inc. Glenn oversees an elite team of practice development consultants who provide solutions to agency leaders and salespeople facing the challenges of achieving extraordinary success in highly competitive and overcrowded markets. Glenn is an extremely sought after keynote speaker, a gifted and respected platform trainer, coach, advisor and author. He stated, “My business is helping my clients transform their business into a more efficient, productive and profitable one” Glenn’s background is that he helps his clients build a successful business comes from successfully building and selling his first business while he was still an undergraduate student. Glenn was so effective at generating new revenues for his business that it dominated the marketplace and was later sold for a multiple of annual revenues. After college, Glenn joined the Sandler Training organization. His early career was nothing to brag about. He made mistakes. Some costly. But, using the same systems he uses with his clients today, he became the #1 Sandler associate both nationally and internationally. His personal success was a difficult, deliberate, and demanding journey. One of Glenn’s philosophy is, “I believe once you are crystal clear on WHY you want something, finding HOW to do it won’t be far behind. Being successful isn’t difficult. Thinking and acting successful, IS!”

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • How do you believe that customer experience supports efficiency and productivity, give some examples of why customer experience is important?
  • As a customer, how do you feel about customer experience?
  • As part of Sandler Training, could you share with us a little bit about the customer experience section that focuses on customer service and what that program is about?
  • How do you change the mindset of persons who believe unless you are in customer service, customer service doesn’t apply to them?

 

Highlights

  • Glenn Mattson stated that like most people if you were asked how they are on a personal level, he thinks the great balance is the golden rule which is to do unto others as you want to be done unto you and that usually in the last 40 years has been a really good rule for him among others, so the golden rule is an important one for them and it does help traumatically making sure you’re doing the right ethical thing and instead of thinking what’s right for you, if you’re in their shoe, what’s right them and that always works. He stated that the flip side is that he was asked about what really makes a difference in his life, one of it is among other things is literally having a very clear picture of what you’re trying to build and with that very clear picture is being incredible motivated to the actions not the results but the actions you need to have to achieve those results and unfortunately in this day and age everyone wants everything quickly and time needs to be apart of the success. He stated that one of the greatest things were patience and grit and long-term dedication to doing the daily behaviors.
  • Glenn Mattson stated that if you look at the pure numbers, 80% of the people that don’t go back to rebuy is because of a bad experience, so when we look at it, your experience is what you dictates repeatable sales. Your marketing and selling will get you the first one, your selling and everything will get you the second and third but your client experience is really a true testament on your second, your third, your forth, the ease of the sale afterwards is the direct proportion, so if you look at it, 80% that decide not to go back, decide not to buy again is due to poor experience. Glenn stated that we spend so much time and energy trying to get in front of the right people and then we forget about how to keep them and unfortunately that’s just as important as finding them.
  • Glenn stated that the way he looks at it is depending on what your expectations are because experience is historically for most is that they didn’t get what they expected and for more times than not you have to ask yourself what are you explaining, what are you conveying, what’s the message you’re giving, what kind of experience can they have. There are plenty out there that are very inexpensive products that tell you that you’re going to buy it cheap but you’re not going to get a great customer experience, meaning that you’re saving on all fronts, so others that have more value, they have the ability of heighten level of experience so they feel that the money they are investing is worth it. When people spend a premium or spend a dollar amount and they don’t get the service they are looking for, that is the number one reason people leave, they expected A but they got B.

Glenn stated that we all have experience bad customer service. He stated that most people want attention, we want value, we want to have respect in a lot of ways, we want resolutions when something goes wrong, we want you to fix it but we also want to make sure that you follow up. When he looks at his own experiences with service, everyone makes mistakes and that’s understandable, it how you handle the mistakes that are critical. Glenn shared an experience he had, there was service issue that he had with a client where he was the customer and someone was going through it and instead of just flat out saying, “we made a mistake, I apologize, this was what he can do to fix it” it was more of the questions they were asking was trying to make it seem like he made a mistake and what was happening is that they were reducing his level of respect, so more times than not, that’s usually what gets us is that respect, that integrity, it’s the “I did what you told me to do and it didn’t work” “I got that, I understand it, let’s just fix it, let’s not try to figure out why, I’m the one to blame when it came out this way” that piece was probably the one that left the biggest taste in his mouth which is they didn’t accept responsibility.

  • Glenn stated that when we take a look at efficiency and effectiveness which means that they have some type of process in place and within that process, the sequential steps but also there is competencies and skills in that part of it, once they have that done, how you get better at it, it becomes efficiencies and effectiveness in terms of results, so when they look at what they call their customer care program, it’s not just external customers, it’s also how do you do treating your internal customers, how you do treating your staff because your staff is a direct portion to you, to your client base. He stated that it’s interesting when he has conversations with people and they talk about what a successful mindset is, a successful mindset is someone who takes responsibility or accountability or ownership, people don’t realize that 87% of your staff learns how to deal with clients, how to deal with each other and how to deal with stress based on how their boss does it, they are one person above them. So when they look at customer care, they have a 12 module program that they run people through and a lot of it has to deal with understanding a couple of things, one is what is the backdrop of what’s happening, do you really have the skills, the patience, listen, questioning skills, are you getting emotionally involved, are you getting defensive because if that happens, you cannot be a successful customer service person. They look at what do you need and then they turn around and say, “now let’s take a look at the process itself, how do you create the right attitude, how do you develop trust really quickly, how do you take control, how do you have ownership of the situation and what are the best ways to follow up and if there is, how do you identify opportunities for potential future sales.
  • Glenn agreed that people think that customer service is a title and not necessarily a culture or an attitude. He shared that Harvard University did a study that will tell you that the majority of companies will fail in achieving their goals is because the individuals don’t understand one of two things; one is what is the direction of the company, what are the rules. The other is they don’t know how to tie their personal into the company, so when you talk about sales people, sales people desperately needs customer service and so does IT, that’s usually one of the biggest areas that people have issues with. Once you realize that everyone’s role is to maximize or heighten the client experience. He shared an example, down in Florida, at a resort in Tampa and the person who owns it is well known for his artwork inside and it has to do with the oceans. He is at the resort and is there for 4 days with his daughter, his wife and his son, he’s at an essence lost in looking for where to find the tennis courts, simple easy, piece of cake. Walking down 7:00 am in the morning and he asked a woman who is clearly leaving one building to go to another for something else, she’s kind of moving fast, he said, “I don’t mean to bug you but can you point me in the direction to where to the tennis courts are?” she said, “absolutely, are you running late for a lesson?” and he said, “yes I am” and she said, “follow me then” she walked him right to the tennis courts versus telling him where to go and as they talked, she asked him all about his family, they talked about why he was down there, what is experience was, she has been apart of that hotel for 25 years. The hotel was a nice place but what he’ll remember about it and why he would recommend people to go there is because of the feeling he got from her. That was the home run, the mere fact that a woman who has been there for awhile, who had no interest in helping him find something, could have just pointed in the direction and just said, “it’s over there, keep moving until you find it” but she walked him over and they had a great conversation, he had a connection to the hotel now through a person and it made his experience.

Yanique shared that she had a similar experience when she went to a hotel for an All You Can Eat Pizza Night, it was extremely disorganized because they had a book launch before and they didn’t advice the persons who where coming for the All You Can Eat Pizza Night that they was a launch before and so these events were merged together and so those persons who didn’t know of the launch came famish and completely ready to engage in pizza and the waitress they got, she was extremely courteous, friendly, she really came down to there level, spoke with them candidly. It felt like she was a friend at the end of the evening, she knew her name. She told her if she came back to the hotel, she would definitely come back and deal with her again, it really boils down to the feeling, the connection she gave to them, she’s not sure if everyone at the location had the same experience but she certainly left feeling much better than she when she just arrived.

Glenn stated that most people want to be better but most have never been trained on how to be better.

Yanique agreed and stated that she had an experience in a supermarket and her girlfriend was there with her and she was by the fruits and vegetable section and there was a young man packing out sweet peppers in the fridge, he referred to her in a very informal term, she can’t recall what he said and she said to him, “you really shouldn’t refer to your customers like that, you should say to them excuse me miss or sir or madam” and he said to her, “no one has ever told me that before” what was extremely a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious) to her was that how can you have someone working in your organization, even if they are just packing things in an area in the supermarket and you have not even brief them on how it is that are to interact with your customers because you can’t just hire people and put them to work.

Glenn shared that most unfortunately don’t realize who might touch a customer, one of the first things they do in one of their modules is who is the front line, receptionist, sales, billing, accounting, technical people, installers, drivers, warehouse people, anyone who has any interaction with a client at any level and for most they realize that, why would you train a driver for instance that delivers things on customer care. The reality is that they have some of the best ears and eyes that others don’t have, so who is really that person, how do we effectively communicate, how do we effectively understand our clients or customers and then you get into one the best questioning techniques because customer service is not about information you give, it’s about the information you can obtain, you need to understand what’s going on in the world to provide good customer service. Customer service is not talking; customer service is exceptionally great ears and being very good at asking questions so you can get to the root of the problem. You add the attitude piece to it, which is a lot of time when you deal with customer service issues, people aren’t the happiest all the time, so how do you deal with difficult people, how do you make sure that you don’t get emotionally involved, how do you make sure that we don’t get stuck in the emotional game, meaning that when they do something or say something, we take it personal, we get defensive, our brain shuts down, we panic, we start doing self talk to ourselves, we forget everything they say, for some people they block out and when they hang up the telephone, everything that we’re suppose to say, should have said, could have said pops in their head. So it’s not a problem of not knowing, the problem was in the heat of the battle you panicked so mentally you left the battle and after you have the chance to regain your composure, all the techniques came to you.

  • Glenn shared that what he finds is that most of us is that our goals create motivation, motivation creates a sense of ownership which is responsibility because when we do goals, one of the things that he found for years is that everyone may say that they have a goals program and 80% of the people walking planet earth have no goals whatsoever. Sixteen percent of the people that are walking planet earth have an idea of what they want, less than 4% actually have goals, have them written down and less than 1% look at them but where the numbers get crazy, is the people that are at 16% who just have an idea of what they want in life, they are 10 times more effective than those who don’t have any idea and the people that have the goals written, they are 3 times more effective than those who just have a concept, now they translate it into action now this is the staggering thing about motivation, people who have goals, they look at them every week and they do their plan, they earn 9 times more than those who don’t. When you look at motivation, it is what are you really trying to build, are what are you willing to give up to get it. They are very clear on what they trying to do, they are trying to maximize the client experience, and they are reducing the cost to sale. How do they give their clients what they want the fastest, easiest, most productive, most effective way possible? They are never sitting on their roles, they are never sitting back saying, “we did really good that year” the question always become is how do they get better and they do it more efficiently, more effective. He is and he has to be a pure representation of what they trying to get their clients to do.

 

  • Glenn stated that there are about 3 apps that he couldn’t live without, it’s one of their own, it’s an app that he uses for managing his behavior, it’s called an Arbs a behaviour and Accountability app, once you have your plan and your action steps it tracks it everyday, you can’t hide from it, he finds it fantastic. The two other apps that he uses, one is because he travels, it’s called Flight Tracker and he finds it very effective. The third app that he thinks is phenomenal, it has transformed itself, it use to be a service where they read emails to you way back before we had cellphones, it’s called Copytalk, Copytalk transformed itself into a dictation service, so every time he’s on the phone with someone, it could be a prospecting call, it could be a client call, it could be a service call, it could be a training meeting, anyone. He could do a Copytalk and it transfer his memory from his head to his mouth and they transfer it from his mouth to typed, so at the end of the day he’ll get 10 or 15 or 20 emails from Copytalk on all his summaries of everything he did that day. For instance he says to someone during a quick call, “that sounds like a good idea, let me send you that slide” or “that’s great let me put that book into the mail for you” if he hangs up and jump right into another call, that goes to his to do list and those to do list get big fast, it works best for him for follow ups, for efficiency and effectiveness, it’s not relaying on his memory. When he Copytalk he tells people on his staff, “I need you to do this or can you do that or make sure that gets to so and so”, so now they have a memory jogger too and it gets transferred to the to do list. They have found it to be the best ways to internally communicate within the team on where they are with progress and statues.

 

  • Glenn shared that he has a couple books that has had the biggest impact and one is The Formula for Success by Napoleon Hill, the other one that he found to be quite useful but it’s his background but he’s a big proponent of Eric Berne, he is a psychologist that transformed or created something called Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy and it’s a theory that says all of us have 3 different egos states in us, so child, adult and a parent and we have to speak with them independently. So if someone comes to us very angry in a customer situation, that’s their 4 year old inside of them that is angry, so you need to hear the 4 year old but you need to fix the adult, because it’s the adult one that’s going to tell everyone about it, if you try to fix the adult without talking to the child, you’ll never get to the true emotional bonding part. The book is powerful and understanding human nature. The third book that is fantastic is a Sandler book, You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar: The Sandler Sales Institute’s 7-Steps System for Successful Selling it is basically saying that if you do really want to expand, if you do really want to get great at your profession, you’re not going to figure this thing out at a one day seminar, so it does take time and energy. He had a lot of problems when he just started, a lot of head trash, a lot anxiety, a lot of fears, a lot of issues with people thinking he was a sales person versus an account rep or a service person, but what he found is that once he started working on his beliefs, his fears, his anxiety, his scripts and then understanding how to put plans together, understanding that the majority of people don’t in the world do that and those who do are really more successful than he was so why would he buck the system, so he just became a product of his own process and it worked.

 

  • Glenn shared that one of the things that they are doing right now is spending a lot of time and energy into distant learning. That’s helping individuals all around the world learn versus just having him present face to face, so one of the exciting things is how they can really maximize technology today and how they can help more people around the country versus only helping those he can get face to face or get time to go to conventions.

 

  • Glenn shared that listeners can find him at -

www.mattson.sandler.com

Glenn Mattson LinkedIn

Sandler Training YouTube

 

  • Glenn shared the quote that inspires him in times of adversity is “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can do what others want but can’t.” In other words, do what most won’t do to have a life that most want. Glenn stated that for persons listening or starting a business or thinking about starting a business, one of the beautiful thing about business is that you can start, you just need to do your due diligence, find out about your product, find out about your plan, find out about your finances, do as much diligence as you can and do the best you can to take you and have you number 3, your clients number 1, your staff number 2 and you’re number 3 or 4. If you remember that it makes building a business a little easier.

 

Links

 

 

 

 

Mar 7, 2017

Nicole McLaren Campbell is professional Speaker, Educator and Entrepreneur. Driven by a passion for empowerment, she represented Jamaica at MIT’s Junior Summit and was selected to address then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at just 13 years old. She was subsequently featured in local and International Media including CNN and Nickelodeon and was chosen has one of 20 teens who will change the world by Teen People Magazine. She’s a graduate of the St. Andrew High School for Girls and completed her High School studies at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts before going on to earn an Undergraduate Degree in Economics from Princeton University in 2006. Nicole also studied at the Stanford University Summer Institute and the University of London where she earned a Master’s Degree in Globalization and Development. In late 2016, Nicole started the AIM Higher Foundation with a mandate to indentify, develop and empower promising low income students so that they can too access and unlock their potential through access to tertiary education, her vision is to inspire youth globally to aim higher.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • You can tell us a little bit about your company Aim Educational Services and what it is that you do and why do you think customer experience is important to that whole process?
  • How do you feel about customer service/ customer experience as a customer yourself doing business on a regional level or internationally?
  • Nicole’s book, Making It Count: The Tips on Unlocking Your Vision in 2017 and Beyond, some of the key points are fear, having courage to ask for what you want, procrastination and tuning into your purpose and staying motivated. How do you do all of those things for your team members?
  • What are some important considerations that you would recommend to business owner they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Nicole McLaren-Campbell shared her journey and stated that part of it is making sure and trying to protect your motivation every single day as much as possible and being deliberate about your approach every single day and then wherever possible, try to coach your team in a similar way but also be very cognizant that as a leader/parent, you have to lead by example and that’s something she takes really seriously and so it’s about taking a deliberate approach and understanding yourself and how the brain works and how the human body works and then doing what you can everyday to get the most out of both of them.
  • Nicole McLaren-Campbell shared that at Aim Educational Services, when she just started Aim about 7 years ago, it stood for Aspiration, Inspiration, Motivation, so Aspiration, Inspiration, Motivation is the meaning behind AIM and every single day they aim to empower students to unlock their potential and really chart an education and career path that’s fulfilling for them based on their interest and talent and customer experience is really important at AIM because how people feel about the service you’re delivering and from the minute they make contact with you on the phone or you make contact with them via email or an initial meeting to the very moment the service is actually delivered to even after - their feeling about how they were dealt with and the experience they had with each person that forms apart of AIM is really important. It’s important for them to deliver the endgame which is admission to college or scholarships but it is also important that the journey a family takes with them is one that they feel empowered during and feel great about. They don’t always get it right but the whole point is that as human beings, when we make a mistake we have to own that mistake completely.
  • Nicole stated that she made a pretty large blunder the other day and she is not afraid to talk about it because she thinks what everybody needs to understand as business owners and even as human beings as we try to do our best in life is that sometimes we fall short because we are not perfect, the most important thing in business as well as in one’s daily life is that when you fall short, be very quick to own it and to learn the lesson and ensure you apologize and take responsibility and then put in place what you need to try and ensure that it doesn’t happen again but instead a lot of people hide when they make mistakes or hide when they fall short and that puts a bad taste in the mouth of your customers. It shows your team that instead of taking on something hands on and taking responsibility and dealing with it that it’s okay to make an excuse or give a reason and then that will set the tone. It’s not always perfect and we do fall short but the idea is that when do fall short, own that and take the lesson and move on and apologize and try to make it right with that customer.
  • Nicole shared that as a customer she has a lot going on, so she likes a service that is delivered in an efficient way where the communication is very clear from the get go and where she is really treated as somebody that is important, in other words, not that cavalier attitude but she likes when the service provider makes things easier for her. She doesn’t have an issue paying the bill or whatever it takes but at the end of the day as easy you can make it for her to consume/use your service is the easier it is for her. Make it possible for her to send somebody to collect something or send it to her or give her a reminder when she needs to get something done. The world is moving so fast so she thinks it’s also instructive to challenge business owners to put themselves in shoes of the customer because as a mother, wife, you’re running a business, you’re trying to be a great civic citizen and leader as well, there’s a lot going on and she puts herself in the shoes of her customers. She would say to her team, “I know we sent an email remainder about this but not everybody checks their email day.” Or in the same way she could miss an email, the customer could have missed the email too. They are college advising and helping families to chart the educational path of their child and they are tutoring and that means that the parent plays a significant role but AIM has to be responsible at the end of the day for the deliverable, so you can’t just say, “Well, I emailed the parent and they are supposed to now do this and they haven’t done so it’s their fault.” No, at the end of the day, she has to put herself in the shoe of her clients and say, “The same way I’m busy and I would really appreciate a text message reminder.” or “I would really appreciate if all the information is communicated one time instead of piece by piece.” It’s about continuous improvement.
  • She stated that she was reading a book called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth and it’s talking about how people can be in a job for 20 years but they get the same one (1) year of experience 20 times as oppose to 20 significant years of experience where you’re growing and improving every year and that’s a deliberate thing that you have to keep in mind as a person but also as a business owner, your business shouldn’t be at the same stage this year as it was last year, you shouldn’t be doing things in an identical way. How can you make the experience better? They keep looking, they have management meetings every week with their team and they have strategic meeting every two weeks and she’s really about that because it keeps them focused on the fact that it’s all about constant improvement and really making sure that they are flexible to change because they are dealing with Generation Z kids. They are dealing with parents who are generation X and so they have to communicate with them in different ways because both of them are customers. Whereas the email might work for the parents, maybe it’s a What’s app that’s working for the student or maybe they need to be delivering messages through an app instead, it’s just this constant idea of How can I make this experience better for customer? How can I make the deliverable of this service actually happen and not just say, “Well, I did my part” but how can I constantly try to provide support and empower her customers and understanding how the different users or customers receive and process information and what different things prompts each sector to action. You can’t treat the student the same way or try to communicate with the student the same way you would with the parent, so it’s trying to be sensitive to that and making sure it’s a customer centered business.

Nicole stated that based on her team, how they are structured, they have part-time college consultants, part-time tutors, they have a core full-time team of 7 people and everybody else is part-time. They have 15 part-time tutors and 7 invigilators and then they outsource things like accounts and other administrative; they have 4 part-time college consultants, so the team is just under 30 persons.

  • Nicole McLaren-Campbell stated that key is to grow her team members and the company and part of it is now insistence on a weekly management team meeting, all members of the full-time core will meet every week. It’s leading by example; nobody wants to hear their boss preaching to them every week so she would try not to preach. They have a book club now and every month somebody gets to choose the book and so she is deliberate with her choices because she’s trying to sneak in the coaching and inspirations through the book club even though they don’t know it. Nicole tries to impart a lot of what she learn in the daily day to day, like when she makes an error she tries to own it 150% so that they can get from her no excuses, things like that are important. She arranged a Vision Board Workshop for her team in the past and now they are due another one, she brings in inspirational person to lead their strategic sessions and to work with them in terms of business coaching because that’s really important, so part of it too is that they see her everyday so she not doing all of that coaching work herself but to also introduce external people who can help with that. There’s nothing better than leading by example and then trying to make sure that just from the way they set their vision and the things they talk about every week and different situations that comes up in the office with clients or with students that the idea of it is all possible, removing obstacles, focusing on solutions and not problems, these the things that they really do on an everyday basis in various ways and she tries to be very deliberate about that. The other thing is that she tries to look for opportunities for them to grow just as the same way she seeks opportunities to grow herself.
  • Nicole stated that just the other day she was talking to her assistant about an online course that she wanted to do and she recommended that he also take it because based on what he is interested in that it can be a useful skill set, so that emphasis on continuous growth and improvement where she try to share these opportunities as they come up and be deliberate about the different types of exposure and experience she wants them to have internationally every year, so they are looking all around for those opportunities all the time.
  • Nicole stated that this year 2017 is when AIM really plans on expanding its online presence and to do more work remotely with students all over the world, so far they have had students from almost every Caribbean country, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and St. Lucia as well as United States of America, Canada and United Kingdom but those have come from word of mouth, they are looking to establish more of their presence in some of these countries to do more online work. With students they work online with, the idea is that to make sure that they are kept in the loop and don’t miss out on any opportunities that face to face students have, the challenge for them as with any business owner trying to do more online is to make sure that the experiences are as similar as possible to what a face to face experience would be like, making sure that the software they are using actually works, making sure that when it’s time for their meeting there’s no internet problems and the call dropping and they feel like, “Oh my gosh, if I was there in person then it would be a better experience.” It’s about making sure that they have the same access to group sessions, so looping them in via video conference, making sure that they are getting the same communication and having the same number of meetings as much as possible and that it feels intimate and that might involve them getting 1 or 2 more extra online one to one meetings than you would someone who comes in face to face but whatever it takes to make that happen then you have to do. The beauty of it is that most of their communications are done online so it doesn’t feel that much different from a face to face but it depends on the business you’re in, examine the business you’re in and try to see how you can ensure that the two (2) experiences are similar in terms of the deliverable.
  • Nicole shared that she believes in full disclosure and authenticity as much as possible so she doesn’t maintain motivation every single day. She stated that it is not that she doesn’t try every day but sometimes you sort of don’t get there for whatever reason, what really counts is that sometimes you’re not 100% feeling it, sometimes you feel “pop down” for whatever reason. She stated that at the moment she may have a sinus infection coming on or the flu and it makes her really tired and when she has low energy, then she can’t do anything as well as she normally could and what that means for her is that she has to understand her body at that point and maybe she needs extra sleep for example which she managed to get. Sometimes she doesn’t feel 100% motivated, ready to get the world. Yesterday was very hard for her to even get through what she had to and what she had to end her day early to get some rest and so that would help her for the next day where she is not 100% but she is not where she was the day before. When she is feeling low on energy, she prays about it and does as much as she can, understanding that she is not 100% herself but she will be and not being too hard on herself about it or worry about it too much because sometimes it’s the worry and anxiety that kills us.
  • As business owners you always feel this pressure to lead by example so you don’t want to have a meltdown but at the same time you have to take care of yourself and show your team that it’s okay to care of yourself because if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t bring a 100% to your job, you’ll just be sitting at your desk and you’re not doing anything, productivity all the way down. It’s very important in staying motivated to know your body and know when you need to pull back a little bit but her system is to just develop really good habits around her eating, her exercise and her sleep, those 3 things are very important, the minute any of these 3 start to slip then you know it’s danger zone, disaster, productivity cut down so because they are important, she tries to develop good habits and plans around them. She stated that for her food, she try to make sure that it’s prepared two (2) days in advance so that she knows what she is packing to eat and she doesn’t have to get stuck being hungry wondering what to eat and then possibly making a low energy food choice. What she likes about habit is that it cuts down on the work your brain has to do and she likes that because her brain has to do really important work during the day, for example, she pick out her gym clothes the evening before because at the time she wakes up in the mornings to go the gym, she doesn’t want to be making any decisions and thinking too hard about anything, she just want to go and so she get into the habit of exercising which powers her up, gives her energy, gives her a feeling of discipline that can carry through the day, gives her a feeling of winning she feels like, “Oh my gosh, Nicole you can do it, you have so much will power, you’re such a winner.” She tells herself all these things.
  • She stated that prayer is important to her, every day she is praying and thanking God for things that have happen, things that haven’t happen yet, for opportunities, she’s thanking Him for the people in her life, for her family, for love, thanking Him for a thriving business where all her visions are being realized and for the different opportunities that are coming her way. The food, the exercise and the sleep are the 3 things that she really tries to build a habit around and feeding her spirit with prayer everyday and that’s her routine that she finds is key for helping her to be motivated.
  • The other thing that is important for her is being really clear about her objectives, not just for the year but for the week because when she feels like she doesn’t have clearly established objectives, then there is so much going on that she feels overwhelmed and when she gets overwhelmed, she also gets worried, anxious, depressed and so she try to plan out her days according to her highest objectives and goals for the year overall.

Yanique stated that she loves the fact that Nicole spoke about eating properly, sleeping and also ensuring that you exercise because those are 3 things for you to be optimally productive and in the society that we live in currently, she doesn’t think that 90% of Jamaicans are doing those 3 things in a habitual practice and that’s probably one of the reasons why organizations are not as productive as they could be because the companies are the people, if the people are not healthy, they have all of these diseases that many of them that we contract from poor eating habits like hypertension, high blood pressure and diabetes, then they are going to be affected by the quality of work that they put out in the organization.   

  • Nicole shared that one of the tools she can’t live without is Solid, it is an app that tracks all your meetings and allows you to type the meeting notes in while you’re having the meeting and then you can key it as an action item. As soon as she opens the app, it shows her all her action items out of all the meetings and nothing is as good as the satisfaction she gets from ticking them off as done so she knows three (3) more pieces of research that she has to do, so it’s exciting. Asana is very important for her team at work because it gives them an awesome way to track where all their students are in their different programmes. When you’re advising a student for 3 years in terms of College planning, there are different things you need to do for them and that you need to remind them to do for themselves to create an awesome, winning College Admissions worthy profile, “So I need to remember to research summer programmes for Robert, I need to remember to remind Robert’s mom link her friend that does Environmental Planning because he might need a two week internship.” And things link that. If they don’t have Asana they are basically lost. Asana is really good when you have a team and everybody needs to see what everybody else is working on because sometimes they have students who in their College Placeme programme they might also be doing tutor and those 2 things need to speak to each other. For her home team, she has Wunderlist, it is a great app, and her team at home wouldn’t need Asana as it is a bit much for what they need. They need things that can help them keep track of the grocery list, for example, one of her housekeepers at home is in charge of the putting the things that they need from the supermarket on the app on the tablet that’s in the kitchen and whatever she gets she crosses off so that Nicole will know, “Oh, there’s no more Almond Milk at home.” She wasn’t able to get it from wherever she normally gets it from, so if she has time she can stop and get the almond milk and cross it off the list. She stated that there are small things that lead to a woman being confused, she finds herself responsible for most things having to do with the home and then her husband is responsible for most things having to do with the outside of the home. Making sure to keep the outside intact, he’s in charge of all the building projects and all the decorating. While she’s in charge of making sure that everybody has good things to eat, the Wunderlist also helps her as she has two (2) children in school and a stepdaughter and sometimes all three (3) of them needs things for projects at the same time or they have Valentine’s Day project and things they have to make and do and it becomes overwhelming, small things becomes big things if you have a lot of things going on, so she try to organize down to the very last detail and Wunderlist is wonderful.
  • Nicole shared that the big thing right now is that they are working with a really awesome, amazing, inspiring business coach and she is really excited to see just the results they will have out of this accountability because that’s really important for business owners no matter how inspired and on top of things you are, there is nothing like an external party to keep you accountable and what she like is for the team as she is the one who is keeping everyone accountable in their weekly meetings, so it’s good to have somebody else to keep all of them accountable. She hosted their strategic retreat. She really excited about that because really knowing that this outside accountability visionary influence will really cause them to aim higher this year.
  • Nicole shared that listeners can find her at -

www.nicolemclarencampbell.com

Nicole McLaren Twitter

Nicole McLaren Campbell Facebook

Nicole McLaren Campbell LinkedIn

Instagram @nicolemclarencampell

Snapchat - nicmccampbell

  • Nicole shared a few quotes and stated that one thing that she think is really important and she has really being understanding the value of it recently is that, “You have got to be focused, not only as a person but as an entrepreneur.” She got it from Grit and sometimes the Lord knows what she needs to hear and He keeps sending it in all different ways and she said, “Okay, Lord I get it.” And it’s focus, you might be good at a number of things and you might like a number of things but you can’t pursue them all and be an expert in them all and do all of them to the level of brilliance with the level of impacting the world you might want to have. In the book Grit, Warren Buffett did an exercise with someone and made them write out 25 Career Goals and tick the 5 that are most important to their life where they know what they are and what really drives you and once you tick the 5, cross out the other 20 and focus exclusively on 5 and don’t allow the other 20 to distract you from the 5 core ones that you know are of most importance to you. “Do less with more focus” and really get clear about what your 5 are.
  • The other one is for when she feeling really tired, “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Sometimes it gets hard and you’re tired but at the end of the day, if you manage yourself properly you can get it done and sometimes you need to rest. She stated that she also says this one, “Everything begins and ends in your mind.” You have to really force your mind to go further than your present circumstances if you want to change your present circumstances.

 

Links

Feb 21, 2017

This episode with Yanique Grant, she will be speaking a lot about Customer Experience and one of the brand that she absolutely love and adore. Today is going to be another solo episode; she will start it off a little differently by sharing a quote by one of her favorite people, Maya Angelo. Maya says, “I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.” It so important in every interaction that we have whether it’s face to face, whether it’s over the telephone, whether it’s an internet base connection, that we really aim to ensure that when people finish interacting with us they feel good because sometimes they won’t remember exactly what you said verbatim, they probably will not remember all the specifics of what you did but they are going to remember how the experience or that interaction made them feel, so we should always aim to ensure that our customers feel good after interacting with us.

 

Highlights

You are probably wondering, “What is this brand that Yanique is speaking about?” The brand is Apple, for those of you who knows her personally, who listens to her podcast, you will know that she is an avid Apple user, owner of a MacBook Pro, owner of an Ipad, owner of an Iphone, loves Apple absolutely and you’ll always hear her say, “Once you go Mac, you just don’t go back.” She is going to speak about some of the things that Apple has done to really create that magic formula, what are they doing in their stores and how can you take out some of the things that they are doing and inject into your own business. It is said that Apple makes US$5,000.00 per square foot on their customer experience and that is really amazing, when you compare that to other brands, Apple is performing like the brand Tiffany, the jewelry place, so there is no reason Apple should have all the fun or all the revenue because you can do exactly what they are doing, you just need ensure that you are doing the right things at the right time. Anyone can emulate Apple success in retailing by using the same principles of great customer service and customer experience. The first tip that we are going look at that Apple really emulate in their business is:

They focus on Getting the first moments right with every customer. The first moments a customer spends with a business can disproportionately affect how the customer remembers the entire encounter. Because of the way human memory works, if you get off to a bad start with a customer, it’s hard to recover, while if you do a spectacular job in those first few minutes, it’s a lot easier to coast to the finish line. Apple therefore strives to make sure your first few moments in the store go well. There are two discrete elements to Apple’s success here: Most visibly, they post friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable greeters near the front doors, whom she as experienced herself whether it’s in Florida or Minnesota or New York or Chicago, every time she goes to an Apple Store, regardless of the location, she is greeted by someone who is friendly, they are enthusiastic and they are knowledgeable and they are right there at the first point of contact. The only task for the shepherd is to tell you where you need to go and help you avoid the potential disorientation and stress that could otherwise be induced by the bustling store environment because their store is always packed. To take this a step further (or backward), they encourage you, well before you get to the store, to assist in creating a successful entrance experience by pre-scheduling your visit via the Apple Store App and that is just amazing. If Apple succeeds in getting you to do this, it means that when you get to the Apple Store the greeter can even more easier to interact with to get you to where you want to go. That’s step number one that they are definitely doing differently from their competitors.

Apple also Respects their customers’ time. The Apple Store app and Apple online scheduling options not only help reduce the initial stress of arriving at the Apple Store, they ensure that a customer’s visit makes efficient, productive use of the customer’s time. If a customer wants help with diagnosing a flicker in their MacBook Pro screen and only has 45 minutes to spend on the errand, there’s a good chance they can make it in and out of the store within that time frame. Does your business respect your customers’ time? Customers today are busy people, often working unusual schedules, and they appreciate those businesses that treat their time with consideration.

The next big thing that Apple is doing is they are Hiring employees who have the right personality traits for customer service. In almost any electronics retail store, the people selected for employment are enthusiastic about technology, and the fanboys and fangirls who work at the Apple Store are no different. But Apple doesn’t think this is enough. They strive to hire prospective employees who are also good, empathetic listeners. The reality is that in this age of consumer skepticism, a business is not going to succeed by giving a hard sell. Providing great customer service, in fact, is as close to selling as the Apple Stores get. We are not sure how many of you are listening to this episode are familiar with the book, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, that book is a book that Yanique believes that every business owner, every sales person, every customer service person, every person in life should read that book at least once or twice per year because the book focuses on so much on developing your personality, understanding people, ensuring that you have the right personality traits, ensuring that are being quality human being by listening effectively when you’re conversations with people. When they’re thinking about hiring, you need to think to yourself, “Are you systematically hiring the employees who are most likely to succeed with your customers?” It’s very important for you to really focus on that thought, that’s a question you need to ask yourself each time you hire a new employee for your business.

The next thing that Apple does is they Train and train again. It’s not enough to hire employees with potential. Success with customers requires top-notch customer service training. This should start at orientation and continue at intervals throughout the employee’s career with the company. To take just one Apple example, employees are trained, right at orientation, that a successful customer engagement depends on deploying Apple’s systematic process (APPLE stands for: Approach-Probe-Present-Listen-End), and they are trained in how to tailor this formula to the individual customer. An employee can’t be expected to wing it here; training and re-training are what’s called for. Does your business invest in customer service training annually, semi annually, quarterly, monthly? Are you looking for opportunities to constantly injecting these people with the DNA that they need to succeed in every customer service experience that they have over the phone, through your social media, face to face? Because if that’s not what you’re doing then you’re not going to succeed. It’s essential, from employee onboarding through periodic reinforcement to larger-scale training workshops. As a customer service speaker, trainer, and consultant herself, this is where she risk sounding self-serving, but she would stand behind the importance of methodical, repeated customer service training even if she had no dog in the fight here.

Another big thing that Apple does that sets them apart from their competition is they Streamline. One of the great innovations of the Apple Store is its innovative and unwavering devotion to streamlining: removing everything that could get in the way of a customer’s engagement with Apple’s products and its helpful employees. In an Apple store, there’s a notable absence of cash registers, paper receipts, or anything else to clutter up the experience. This isn’t just an aesthetic choice; it provides clarity of mind for customers and employees about the purpose of the Apple Store customer experience. So, once a purchase decision has been made, or a repair is determined to be required, there’s nothing in the way of making the purchase or repair happen: no forms in duplicate, no waiting in line for a single cash register. These people walk around with devices in their hand that kind of looks like an Ipad and they are able to cash you out exactly where you’re standing, exactly where you’re interacting with them. It is so hassle free, the question you need to ask yourself about your own business is are you streamlining your customer experience? Doing so is almost certain to pay off in improved customer satisfaction–and, if it makes purchases easier, in immediate financial results as well.

Even though the 5 concepts that we have given you here that Apple is using, let’s recap. One is Get the first moments right with every customer, second is to Respect your customers’ time, third is to Hire employees who have the right personality traits for customer service, forth is to Train and train again and fifth is to Streamline. If you follow these steps, even though they are very straightforward, implementing them in a way that works for your business is where your understanding of what makes your business unique must come into play. She is not trying to turn you into a cookie cutter replica of an Apple Store, or of any other successful business. The goal is to keep “you” you, but in a way that gets the non-you out of the way of delighting your customers. Apple actually invented almost none of these concepts; they borrowed them most visibly in fact from the hospitality methods of great 5 star hotels. But by putting them into play in a very Apple way, they now seem to be an organic part of the Apple brand. She encourages you to go forth in your businesses this week, this month, look at your team members, look at your recruitment processes, look at how you’re streamlining, are you training and training, are you being pound foolish and dollar wise? But you really need to ensure that you are making sure that your spend is quality because if you invest in the development of your organization through your people and through your processes and through how you streamline and how the experience goes for your customers, what does that journey look like for them, is it one that is seamless, is it one that is hassle free, is it one that delight them then guarantee that you’re going to see lots of dollar signs at the end of each experience that your customers have with you and the good thing is, they’ll go out and become evangelist of your business, so you can actually use some of that money that your using for marketing advertising and reinvest into making that delight a repeat experience for your customers.

 

Links

Feb 14, 2017

Kenneth Bator is the founder of Bator Training and Consulting Inc; he has more than 15 years of experience in helping organizations create environments where employees actually want to come to work and customers want to keep coming back. As a facilitator for training and strategic planning sessions and an expert in brand concept, culture building and management, Kenneth has helped 100’s of organizations since 2001. In additional to his career working with managers and entrepreneurs, he has also served as an executive of 3 different institutions throughout the United States of America and has assisted many small to medium size businesses to reach new levels of effectiveness. Kenneth is the author of The Formula for Business Success = B+C+S, The Pocket Guide To Strategic Planning: The 90-Day Quick Fix For The Business Owner or Manager and The Strategic Planning Workbook and Guide For Financial Institutions, his articles has appeared in many trade publications including the Credit Union Journal, Lifestyle Entrepreneur, CU Business Magazine and ABA Bank Marketing. Born and raised in Chicago, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from DePaul University as well as a Certificate in Integrated Marketing from The University of Chicago.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • As a management expert, how do you feel about customer service or customer experience on a global level?
  • Your book The Formula for Business Success = B+C+S, B is the brand, C is the culture and S is the strategy. Why do you believe that all of these three things need to be cohesively aligned in order for a business to reap success?
  • In your experience as it relates to the brand, the culture and the strategy, what role do you think leadership plays?
  • What would be 3 characteristics you believe a leader should have in order to be successful in these 3 areas of brand, culture and strategy?
  • What are some important considerations that you would recommend to business owner they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
  • What advice would you give an employee or business owner in a business about sustaining a service culture?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business, specifically as it relates to constantly motivated human capital?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Kenneth Bator shared that his journey started with basically getting let go of an executive job, he was the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for a 4 Billion Dollar Financial Institution in the Chicago area and with a change in executive management came a change in a lot of positions and his was one of the first ones but he decided that instead of going back into corporate life to do what he really loved and enjoyed which is teaching and public speaking and writing and working one on one with a lot of different entrepreneurs and business owners and he loved every minute of it. In a sense, the founding principle that he lives by as well as mentor many college students on is really find out what you love, do what you love and find a way to make a living at that, otherwise, it’s going to be a real uphill climb. He didn’t realize how unhappy he was in the executive job until somebody did him a favor and let him go.
  • Kenneth stated that to him Customer Service and Customer Experience are two different things. Customer service is part of the customer experience, you could have customer service and it can be poor service, which means that you’re providing no experience or a very poor experience. A lot of what he teaches centers on that experience itself and he believes it first starts with creating an experience for your employees, it is very difficult to have a positive interaction with your customers if you don’t have employees that really and truly want to be there.

Yanique agreed that customer experience is different because the experience forms everything that they go through; every channel that they are engaging with your business and also, it is before they come in to work with you, so a lot of customers are very informed before they come to your business, with the onset of the internet, they can do their own research, they can look for information on their own, they are 60%-75% informed about what your business offers before they even have an interaction with you or your employees.

 

Kenneth stated that the example that he usually use, he uses one from his banking day is that customer service is we are going to handle the customer transaction properly and efficiently maybe even wish him/her a nice day and shuffle him/her out of our bank. A customer experience is when we have a line at the teller line, we are going to have somebody come by and offer them water and coffee, we’re going to ask them if there is something we might be able to do for them in an office, we might ask them,”What was your transaction today and what were you trying to accomplish? Maybe there’s another way that we can help you.” That’s an experience, that’s a how do we create a positive environment for our customer rather than just putting them in a line and giving them service and taking care of a transaction.

  • Kenneth shared that around the time he was let go in 2001, he started to really delve into a number of different books and even before he was let go and was an executive, he tried to be a sponge and really understand all the nuances of business to take things to the next level, so he’d read a book on reengineering and he’d go to a seminar on empowerment and he would listen to a tape on Six Sigma and he would always think, “How do we put all of this together? How do you apply this? But not just tactically but apply it where it’s in alignment with everything.” Slowly but surely he came up with this brand culture strategy concept in that, “We need to know what is the image we want to create out in the public, we need to know what experience we need to create both through and for the employees and we need to know how to drive more of the right business to our business, brand, culture and strategy.” What he found that was developing in his mind is that he would do work in one area for a client for instance, one client would call him and ask him to do a strategic plan for them and they would do a very in depth written plan but nothing would get executed because their culture, the people weren’t passionate and wouldn’t support it, so the culture was an issue there or somebody would hire him to help them with marketing and build a brand message and they would do an awesome job of that and they would drive more of the right people to their business with that brand and that strategy but maybe the culture wouldn’t provide the main point that the customer experience that was proper, therefore everything falls apart. The same thing goes when you have a great culture where you have a team that’s really engaged and want to work and you have a strategy that makes sense in terms of having the right profit margins and the right product but if you’re not getting your brand message out there properly, you’re like the best kept secret, you’re not getting the people there to work with your business, so if the B or the C or the S isn’t quite right, then your formula is not going to yield the success that your business should have.
  • Kenneth shared that leadership in management are different things, he’s a big fan of Dr. Stephen Covey’s work and he talked a lot about that whether it was in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change or any of his other books. Management is about moving around things and categorizing items but leadership is truly working with people which is a much tougher job, so from a brand, culture and strategy stand point, it really does start with the leader, somebody that understands that we can’t have a positive customer experience without having a positive employee experience and we can’t gain profit from a positive customer experience unless we have the right brand messaging to drive more of those people to our experience. And also so from a strategy stand point, you need a leader who understands that you need to not only just have goals but to have all the tactics and objectives aligned where people understand and can continue to move the organization forward, so leadership is key, without the right leadership and he has seen it too many times even with a great team and a great passionate staff it’s very difficult to have a successful business.
  • Kenneth shared that the 3 characteristics a leader should have and the first is one is self-awareness and he can speak for himself as he has a very big ego and a type A personality but being able to step back and being able to say, “I screwed that one up.” “I actually do need to back to my staff and have a little egg on my face and say that one is on me guys, I messed up and maybe I took it out on you as my employee or my staff or my right hand person. Number 1, I apologize, number 2, we’re going, number 3, if you see me do that again then call me on it.” Second is engagement which you can also call involvement, he sees a lot of leaders that maybe have good intentions but they want to do everything themselves, take advantage of the resources that you have you’d be surprised at the things your staff can do even if your running a little ma and pa grocery store, talk to the part-time cashier ask him/her, “What do you think we could do to drive more business to our store?” and you’d be surprised, you’d get some great ideas. The last one is being able to take an airplane view, and he’s guilty of this and this is way he has a consultant for his business because he’s close to it even though he can consult with other people’s businesses but take an airplane view and be able to see how everything is working from above. We get so busy in the tactical, we get so busy in the day to day, “Oh, I have to do the books today, I’ve got to do the inventory today, I’ve got to do employees reviews today.” and you’re bouncing around from one task to the other, the ability to take at least 15 minutes a day from an airplane view and look down is not only critical but also provides some really valuable prospective.
  • Kenneth stated that he has a client that wants to take their business online, they are not getting rid of their brick and mortar but they want to engage with their customers online and one of the struggles that they have is that they do have a great culture and they do such a great job of engaging with their customers when they walk through the door, how do we transfer that into online? What they are working on is what does a personal engagement look like online for their customer? Sometimes it’s a matter of asking, “What do you want Mr. Customer?” especially if you have a long time client that you’ve been working with for a long time. What does online business with us look like? What is comfortable to you? For instance, this client is actually looking at ways through their app to actually say, “Hello, Yanique” of “Good morning, Yanique” and to make that online a little more personable. So that’s the big question to ask is, “How can I create a customer experience online that is going to be aligned with how I works with customers today?” It’s not the end all, be all silver bullet but if you start by asking those questions, then you’re automatically on the right track.
  • Kenneth stated that for advice on sustaining a service culture and if you’re going to do one thing, implement service standards and don’t just implement service standards, implement service standards from the ground up and what he suggests is get everybody on your front lines, get everybody that works with customers most often and he sees it when a company does merge with another organization and now all of a sudden they have 5 or 6 people that are brand new coming from a completely different environment and they say, “Okay, what do we do with these folks?” if you already have service standards, then he suggests getting everybody in a room and say, “Alright, we are a new team, we are a new family now, these are the service standards that we have, let’s discuss if we need to make an changes, additions or take some these things off. For instance, if we have a service standard that we are going to answer the phone within 3 rings, if we have an operational reason why we can’t adhere to that, then we better take it off or change it or make it 5 rings because it’s written down, it’s a promise.” And if you don’t have service standards then its even better opportunity is to get everybody involved and simply do an exercise and say, “What does service mean to you? What does service look like here? What should service look like?” Kenneth has done those types of exercises dozens and dozens of times and every time he does that, they always get some amazing feedback. Sometimes they get some goofy stuff which is like, “Get more sleep” but sometimes they get some really interesting things which is, “We should be able to solve most problems within 72 hours and we usually do, why don’t we make that a standard and put it in writing that we will resolve all problems within 72 hours and if we can’t, we will call the customer or client within 72 hours to give them an update, let them know what we’re doing and what’s in line for them.” but when you do that and you create the service standards from the ground up and you get people involved then there is instant buy in, now there are service standards, they are your service standards, they are not just one more thing that’s being pushed down from management saying, “Here are your service standards that you need to adhere to everyday.” They are all involved in this and if you’re bring new people on, that’s a great opportunity to either create them or take a new look at the service standards so that you can create that buy in and get every body involve right from the start.

Yanique agreed that they are good points that you definitely need buy in, it needs to have a level of inclusivity that people feel like they are apart of the process because then they are more willing to adhere and to actually own the issue, they don’t feel like it’s information being handed down to them that they have to comply with and it makes the environment that much easier for you to work with because the team members feel like it’s their business and it really is. You spend 90% of time at work.

Kenneth stated that he has seen in some circumstances where if you’ve done this properly in terms of creating the service standards, that there’s even a self-management among the team where one front line worker will tell the other front line worker, “Hey, that’s not how we do things here.” It actually begins to take some of the onus off the leader to continually be that person that cracks the whip, it actually makes things in the best of circumstances run smoother without your involvement as a leader. When you can leave for days and the place runs just as well or better than when you’re there, then you know you’ve done something right.

  • Kenneth shared that he’s no different from other people; some days motivation comes easy and other days it doesn’t. Motivation for him is that he loves what he does and he’s really passionate about this brand, culture and strategy alignment concept. On the days when he’s not motivated, sometimes you just have to acknowledge it. He thinks that as entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, a lot of times we just want to push through things and that’s not necessarily bad but sometimes we you just have to acknowledge it like, “Hey, I’m a little off today, I’m not as motivated, I’m not as focused, I’m not necessarily doing backflips over what I need to do today.” And just acknowledging that leads you to a question in your mind of, “What do I need? Maybe I need to go out for a run or maybe I need to have one more cup of coffee or maybe I just need to take a walk around the block.” Sometimes what he’ll do if the task is not coming to him, let switch to another task, maybe instead of working on this client’s strategic plan, let’s put that off until this afternoon and let’s work on a video this morning, let’s work on another project because sometimes that gets your mind going to where you’re little bit more motivated in the day.
  • Kenneth shared that the tool he can’t live without in his business is LinkedIn, if they took away Facebook and Instagram and every other app that he has and only left him with one, he would say LinkedIn is his best resource. It’s his best resource for information, he reads a lot of articles from other thought leaders on LinkedIn. He always find really good education on there and he connects with a number of people, there are some clients that he LinkedIn message, they don’t even email because they are on that app. So LinkedIn is number 1.
  • Kenneth stated that the one thing he would say is, “What’s the feedback from your people?” if you truly feel they are not motivated then you have to ask. Sometimes we think it’s rocket science but it isn’t, sometimes it’s just a matter of getting people in the room and asking them really leading questions with the sincerity to listen, “What do you think is going on here? How do you think that we could take our business to the next level?” sometimes that question is a great one because you have some people that have some burning ideas in them but they’re afraid to say it and if you’re not getting the answers by simply asking them face to face then you need to try another way, maybe it’s an anonymous survey or you bring in an expert to do focus groups or something like that because you need to get that feedback, you need to the “Why”. If you’re not seeing the motivated human capital out there amongst your team then you have to get to the “Why”, is it because of the salaries, is it because of the working conditions, is it because of possibly one bad apple on the team that may be a supervisor that is not doing the job properly. You can’t solve the problem until you get the “Why’s” so you have to ask the questions.
  • Kenneth shared that the thing that he’s really excited about right now is in the process of putting together a couple of online classes based on the brand, culture, strategy concept that he put together. He have been wanting to do that for a long time because there are people that enjoy the book and there are people who enjoy seeing and hearing him speak but there are some folks that want to learn but don’t necessarily want to hire him has a consultant and he understands that so he’s excited about giving them an option of an online class where they can take that at their leisure and work the brand, culture strategy concept through their unique business. Kenneth stated that his hope is to have it out summer 2017, that might be a little aggressive but now that he have put it out there, then it would more likely to come out this summer.
  • Kenneth shared that listeners can find him at -

www.btcinc.net

Kenneth Bator LinkedIn

Kenneth Bator Twitter

Kenneth Bator Facebook

  • Kenneth shared that he has a quote that he sometimes revert to and it’s one that many people have heard before, it’s Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity which is, “Doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” That kind of pops into his head, it’s like a cartoon clown jumping out of a clown car sometimes where actually a voice comes in and saying, “Okay, are we just simply doing the same thing and expecting a different result?” or “Do we need to change at least a little what we’re doing today in order to actually move forward?”

 

Links

All In Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything Is on the Line by Diana Kander

Feb 7, 2017

Angie Fisher founded and created Coaching Success Systems in 2011 as a way to provide busy business owners with the full range of resources they need to accomplish their goals. What began as a part-time position became a full-time thriving business by 2012 providing copywriting, graphic design, administrative and marketing assistance and more to several successful coaching entrepreneurs. Over the last 3 years, Angie has continued to grow a thriving business by creating a team of 15 talented support members. Coaching Success Systems provides valuable services to clients all over the world. As a mother of 3 children and an entrepreneur, Angie understands the importance of providing solutions that will help you reduce stress, grow your personal wealth, decrease overwhelm, stabilize your business during hectic times and find more free time to do what you enjoy. Angie’s passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed has led her to author several free reports you can find on her website at www.coachingsuccesssystems.com, each report can provide you with tips that you can implement today to save time, grow your business and spend more time with those that you care about and are close to.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Can you tell us a little about what is it that you do and how is it that you make life simpler for other entrepreneurs?
  • As a small business owner, what are your views on customer experience?
  • What if a leader is not big on automation, what are some of the tips you help to get those entrepreneurs into a mindset that will allow them to transform their business?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What are some important considerations that you would recommend to business owner they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
  • For running a business at home, how do you balance that and what are some of the things you would recommend to an entrepreneur to take into consideration to be successful?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Angie Fisher stated that as an entrepreneur, that definitely had challenges but that’s okay because she feels like that’s why she is where she is today because of the challenges and the wins and all the triumphs. Definitely challenges throughout the 6 years she has been in business. She started the business as a part-time, not so much as a hobby but doing a little bit of extra income after she had her son and it quickly turned into a thriving business and she had to make some tough decisions as not only as an entrepreneur but a parent and still stay grounded to her “WHY”and she continues to develop that and continue to grow her business but to also keep her family in mind at the same time.
  • Angie stated that they help entrepreneurs and even companies and business owners use delegation and use the power of delegation to get more done in their business, they also help them conquer technology and guide them so that they don’t have to know how to do everything in their business, they can stay in their zone of genius and where they are an expert at and do what they love and they take care of all of the rest. Angie and her team create foundational services so that entrepreneurs and companies can stay in that zone of genius and do what they want and they can take care of everything else to keep their business thriving.
  • Angie stated that it is one of the main areas of a business, in any business customer service and customer experience is a part of the bread and butter, it’s what makes your business successful not only short term but long term, it can make or break a business and good word spreads well but bad experiences spread like wild fire, so it’s our obligation as business owners and entrepreneurs to make sure that there are measures in place initially and those measures are being monitored and checked and reviewed by your team or by someone other than yourself often to ensure that the customer experience is there and it’s what you want it to be, it’s not unnecessarily a cookie cutter, it’s you want the feel of and what you want your customers to experience when they are working with you or buying from you.

Yanique shared that as a business owner herself who lives in Jamaica, she finds that customer experience is driven or inspired by the person that’s leading the company, so leadership is very important.

Angie stated that leadership creates the whole moral of the company and that moral trickles down to the customer experience and the results of the business, so leaders need to really follow the 3 C’s, have communication, be consistent and have compassion and they also need to teach their staff or their team the same morals. It’s really important to not forget what it’s like to be on the other side of the desk, or the computer or the monitor or the cash register, wherever your customer is sitting, to not forget what that experience is like, so leaders need to understand and help their staff to know and remember that and that can’t go away it doesn’t matter what size your business is, there has to be someone in charge of remembering what that’s like and ensuring that that’s still powerful. Angie stated that the employees could have those values themselves, they could be a great communicator, they could be a consistent person, they could have compassion but the real power comes from the leader teaching the staff on how to implement that in the business, how to reflect that in the business, the tone, the voice, the service, the product, all of that plays into it and the leader really needs to guide those employees to help them understand that and they will look up to that leader because of how they are acting, they are a role model.

  • Angie shared that she always suggests that when they are in that situation, when an entrepreneur or business owner feels that way, you start small. You always have to start somewhere and starting small and guiding them and letting them know and building trust with them that, “We can handle this and here’s a plan, short term and long term on how we can help and here’s the first step we’re going to take.” They take their hand and walk along the journey with them and start on a project they feel like they could delegate out and it’s not going to have a huge impact on their business or it’s not going to be customer facing. It is something they can be done behind the scenes and in a worst case scenario, if it’s completely messed up or if it doesn’t happen which I haven’t happen but an entrepreneur says, “What’s the worst thing that could happen today?” then their customers, their business is not directly affected by a small task that they are going to start doing for them and then once that task is done, they build more rapport and they continue to do more and more for them and the whole time they are still practicing communication and consistency and compassion. They do that within her team and make sure that their clients feel like they are taken care of and they can trust them to help them get started which sometimes can be difficult but it’s very promising because entrepreneurs are very open to delegation and very accepting once they have experienced it and get a taste in their mouth.
  • Angie shared that there are a few things that keeps her motivated and we all need those motivators to keep some fire within us and she really loves what she does, she’s a leader and a teacher and an organizer at heart so this industry fits her well which gives her motivation. She knows at the end of the day that other entrepreneurs and companies are relying on her to help them with their challenges, challenges she faced on her own and help them work towards their life of success and goals so that’s what keeps her going because she knows she has sat in their chair before, she knows what it’s like to be scared, she knows what it’s like to be tired and to stay up late at night and to get up early in the morning and to sometimes have to tell your family no you can’t do something because you have to work, she knows what that feels like and she wants to take that away from them and tell them have more freedom in their business. That’s the big motivator for her and the last one would be her family and her kids because she wants to teach her kids by action not only by words and she feels like being an entrepreneur and being a role model to them is powerful and it shows them that they too can be entrepreneurs if they wish too later.
  • Angie shared that what they should take into consideration is to remember that you are going to take care of the customers that you have now and be okay if they do not want to transition online as well. You have a different market online, you can have a different market online and you can stay and take care of your customers and have them experience the same service they have in your store, so remember that, not everybody is going to transition and agree with that and that’s okay. Also think of it a little bit differently when you move to online, it is a different space and how can you as a brick and mortar business relay the voice, the tone, the feel that business has, how can you relay that online, how can you have your new customers online experience the same thing they experience when they walk into your store, when they pay for their products, when they are greeted throughout the store, make sure that it is consistent and don’t lose that value.

Angie stated that she truly believes in consistency, if you aren’t consistent then there is lack of trust and lack of trust will get you no where. You will not have customers and you will have trouble growing your business when you don’t have the trust of your clients and so consistency goes a long way.

Yanique Grant shared that consistency is one of the founding characteristics of a business that offers quality customer experiences, if you look at the Zappos of the world and the Amazons of the world, they are consistent in their service delivery and if they are not consistent, their service recovery strategy is extremely successful in winning that customer back over at the first point of contact because they know how important it is to retain their existing customers.

 

Angie stated that a lot of entrepreneurs want to fish the sea, they want to get new leads and new clients but we always have to remember to take care of the clients we currently have and we already have them, they have already raised their hand and said, “I have bought from you or I want more from you” so we should pay attention them and it may be easier and cheaper to sell more to them than to go out and try to get a whole lot more leads of new clients. There is a balance there but be sure that you are paying attention to those that already love you.

 

  • As an entrepreneur running a business from home as she struggled with it for a while, the balance of it was hard, she’s not saying that it’s perfect at this point, life changes, days are different, she is adapting and changing this process as her life, her family and her business grows. The tips that she would give is that you have to take time for yourself to build your business, it is going to take you putting sometime on the calendar or on the refrigerator, taking a highlighter and highlighting some time out and being clear that, “This is my time” and having an office with a door that shuts and not to be inconsiderate or rude to your family but that’s a sign that, “This is my time, this is my business time and I need this time to grow my business because this is important to me” and it won’t grow if you aren’t able to spend time on it. So shutting the door would be one of her big tips, it seems so simple and it kind of seems silly but it’s so important because you have kids coming, “Mom, where is this, mom, what are we having for dinner, what are having for lunch?” and you don’t have that barrier, so when you have that barrier, it really shows them a more serious measure and respect and boundaries. Also planning ahead, you want to be sure you have your to do list and this to do list should not have10 or 15 items on it, it needs to have 3-5 things that are your top priority, ”These are the things I need to get done in this period of time” and it’s not something that you plan right before you start work, when you are ready and kid free or you have your time to work, it’s literally sitting down at your computer and you start working, it’s no planning, it’s doing, implementing at that time. Plan ahead, if it’s the night before, if it’s the Sunday before the week, whatever that looks like, plan ahead and have a system in place and that kind of move her in the other systems and processes are truly going to save you a ton of time and if you’re not wired like that, what she would suggest is as your setting your business up, think about how if someone else was to do this job what would they need, so this might look like a checklist of what you’re doing and what needs to be done in your business and as you move forward and do more and more in your business, the checklists are going to grow and you just create them as you go and set them aside and have a process for yourself and before you know it, you’re going to have an operations manual and when it’s time to delegate, you’re going to be able to easily delegate because you have followed these checklists and someone else can do the same thing.

Yanique stated that this is applicable even if it’s you alone in the business in the first 6 months; you can put that structure in place so that when the opportunity comes for expansion and scaling, delegation is a much smoother process.

Angie agreed and shared that delegating early is the key but she also understands that that’s not possible sometimes, so being ready because when you bring a team into chaos which is most of the time a business that has experienced growth, it is chaos behind the scene because you are working hard to keep everything floating and nothing dropping and so you bring in a team or a virtual assistant or a coach into it to help you, they are coming into a little chaos and it makes it stressful for the business owner, it can make it stressful for the team and it makes it more difficult to move forward, it takes more investment of time. Setting up those things early and especially when you’re growing, you have a little bit of extra time, even if you have a family at home, you still have the time and it’s worth it to take the extra 15-30 minutes while you’re doing the task to make the checklist along the way.

  • Angie shared that a Project Management System. She that it’s the life of her business, it is what helps it keep going, she and her time and her clients work out of it. They have a Project Management System where they communicate, that’s where tasks are set, that’s where passwords are saved because it’s a secure site, that’s where everything happens, it’s kind of the heart and brain of your body, that’s what a Project Management System is to her business. The project management system Angie and her team uses is com.
  • Angie stated that she has 2 books that have impacted her. The Slight Edge: Secret to a Successful Life by Jeff Olson, it’s a book about taking small steps and actions each day to work towards your big goal and at the end of the day we have 2 choices, we can take the positive side and we can take the negative side and regardless of what side you choose, those are going to compound and those are going get you to a bigger goal negative or positive so it’s really important to remember that the small steps that you take each day are going get you somewhere and just to pay attention to where that somewhere is, what are you working towards. Her second book is Thank & Grow Rich: A 30-Day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy by Pam Grout, it is a book about living a life full of gratitude and stepping back to be thankful for what you have now, you can still wish for more and want for more because we are human and we want that but it’s taking a look at being thankful for what you already have in front of you and what you’ve been given or what you have received that got you to where you are today, those are her 2 favorite books that have helped her throughout her life and business.
  • Angie shared that the one thing that is working on right now is that she is building out a new service in her business and it is narrowing on My Zone of Genius. My Zone of Genius is being a leader and delegating and taking care of a lot of balls in the air and keeping everything in motion and setting up a system in process for that. She is beginning to offer a service to businesses, companies and online entrepreneurs to where she is setting up the systems and processes personally, she is guiding them and putting their business under a microscope to see where there are gaps and where things could be fixed, where they could gain more clients or have better client retention, have a better client experience, she is really excited to offer that in the coming weeks, the product will be launched on February 14, 2017 and being one to one with other companies and businesses.
  • Angie shared that listeners can find her at -

www.coachingsuccesssystems.com

Angie Fisher Facebook

Angie Fisher Twitter

Angie Fisher YouTube

Angie Fisher Pinterest

Angie Fisher LinkedIn

Project Management Teamwork App

 

  • Angie shared one of her own quote, which is, Your knowledge and experience is enough.” She stated that a lot time people don’t feel like they are enough or that they know enough or that they have enough but you are enough and she also wants entrepreneurs to remember that because sometimes it can be a very lonely world.

Links

 

 

Listeners of This Episode #40 – Receive a Free Gift from Our Guest Angie Fisher

Jan 31, 2017

This episode with Yanique Grant will be the first solo episode after doing 38 interview based episodes and we will be sharing with you some tips, nuggets that we have collected over the last 38 weeks of releasing 38 amazing interview based episodes. We want to give a shout out to all of our guests locally and internationally that has come on board to support and share the wealth of knowledge that they have shared and we are amazingly inspired by each and every person that we have come in contact with as a result of starting this podcast

 

Highlights

Today Yanique will take about customer experience and are some of the different opportunities that exist for a business going forward in 2017, what are some considerations that they need to take into account. Whether or not a business plans for it, your brand provides a customer experience to your customers; customers collect experiences throughout their journeys with your brands, regardless of your effort investment or intent to deliver cohesive and satisfying experiences. It’s important that your brand and your advertising and your marketing that they are cohesively connected and they are all singing the same song, we’re all on the same page, singing the same verse at the same time, singing the same chorus at the same time because if not, that’s where the disconnect occurs. 

People base their decisions based on what they experience and hear about your brand, every experience you provide to your customer can provide encourage or discourage, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy and for those who are familiar with the book Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know by Jeffery Gitomer, you would know that if a customer leaves satisfied from your business, that does not guarantee that they are going to remain loyal to your business and so because of that, you have to consistently deliver on quality experiences, if you’re not, then it’s quite possible that the customer will switch and customers these days have choices. 

The Internet has given everyone the opportunity to do their research before they come into your business. They go online, they go to your website, they go to your Facebook page, they look at what other customers are saying about your business, if they ask their friends and family about your products, they read reviews, they are fully informed at least by 60%-75% statistics say, before they even interact with a member of your organization, so with all of this in mind, you have to consistently deliver on whatever it is you’re advertising that your company is going to deliver and that is seamlessly what your brand is all about. People like to have simple experiences, that’s the reality. Yanique stated that she loves to go to a business that when she walks in, she doesn’t need to try and figure out what the business is trying to offer, what should she do, where she should go, she knows exactly what to do and where to go. 

They have this index called The Global Brand Simplicity Index and in it, it talks about what simplicity is. Each year this company called Siegel and Gale, they survey thousands of consumers from around the world as it relates to evaluating hundreds of brands and how the brands deliver on their experiences. Simplicity by definition is freedom from complexity, intricacy or division into parts. This is the definition by www.dictionary.com and it is freedom from deceit or guile, sincerity, heartlessness, naturalness. People want to do business with companies that it’s very easy to transact business with them in all the channels that they provide service through whether it’s online, whether it’s face to face, over the telephone; it’s a seamless and a simple process, a simple experience. 

According to the 2017 Global Brand Simplicity Index, simple to the consumer in 2017 means being clear, it means being human and it means being useful. It's is powerful and if those are the 3 things that simplicity means, it means that in everything that a business does, they need to figure out, “Is this process clear, is this product delivery or service delivery human and are my consumers valuing this experience as being useful?” because if you’re not meeting 2 or 3 of those options, then you are loosing out on all of the money you are leaving out on the table for not creating that simple experience for customers, so we cannot implore enough why it’s important. It is so important as well for your brand or people that interact with your brand to recognize that you are real, a lot of companies say in their marketing advertising that, “We are offering quality service, our customer service is the best, we take care of you.” They use all of these endearing terms that when you listen to the advertisement whether it’s on TV or on the radio, you feel a sense of emotional connection, however, when you go to the business and have the interaction - it’s a completely different experience, so your brand is what people feel and say it is, not what your brand believes or says it is, "Perception is reality to the person that perceives it", this is a popular quote that she gives in all of her workshops all the time. A lot of people believe that service delivery or the service that they offer is based on what they feel it is and it’s not what you the company feels it is, it’s what the customers says it is, it is their feedback, it’s their perception that matters, that’s what determines whether or not you’re a great or a good company, so your brand is owned by the customer not you, it is created and fashioned in the minds of your customers and prospects. You are what they think you are or what they hear from others, sometimes people form a perception of a brand just based on what their husband says to them or what their girlfriend says to them or what their co-worker says to them, they have never interacted with the business before but they are basing their thoughts or giving feedback to other people based on what someone else said, with that in mind, you have to remember that your brand is what others say it is. What your brand does is more important than what it says, action speaks louder that words and because body language is 55% of the communication process, it’s so important that your leaders, team members, everyone is walking the talk, your brand will be ultimately evaluated by it’s customers and what it does for them, not what it says in the ads, emails or on its website, so again, if your marketing is not congruent with the actual experiences that your customers are having, then at the end of the day, it’s not what you believe your service experience is but is what your customers are actually experiencing. 

Brands that cannot retain customers, they just won’t win in this world that we are living in, if you are not able to really recognize that the customers that you have currently are your gold mind, those are the ones you need to be nurturing and ensuring that they’re satisfied, ensuring that they want to come back, so that they can go out there and be evangelists of your business, then you lose right there, as said before, it’s money you’re leaving on the table, so your brand, acquiring customers is a costly activity, it requires you to go out there and tell people what you’re about and spend money to woo someone that you really don’t have a relationship with, rather you could be nurturing and building up existing relationships and having those persons woo people you are trying to get because it would be an easier sell because that customer who you’re trying to get would be persuaded by someone who has had an experience with your business and the acquisition of that new customer would be based on what that existing customer shares with them. 

Brands that cannot motivate their customers, to share positive sentiments will ultimately diminish the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. The aim is to ensure that when your customers leave your business, they feel like they’ve just done business with the best company on earth, if you cannot absolutely say that, then it means that there is room for improvement. People trust each other more than they do brands and word of mouth is a powerful force for improving awareness and consideration, that’s why social media is so powerful, there are all these brands out there that basically, you can go online and you can read up about where you’re going and what kind of experience to anticipate, you can even get a rating and so if your customers are not speaking positively about your business, even if you have the most upgraded building, the best uniforms, the mission and visions on the wall, state of the art technology, state of the art equipment, machinery, if the experience is not congruent and people are not leaving feeling like they are valued and appreciated, then you are definitely going to experience a diminishing return in the long term. 

Your brand can’t be all things to all people, customers have different needs, expectations and values so the better your brand can understand and reflect these through focus, segments, personas and personalization, the more powerful the experiences it can deliver, you have to know who your customers are, what’s your marketing segmentation, who represents that 80% of your business, what 20% of your customers gives you 80% of your business and how can you have those 20% become evangelists of your business so that you can continue to increase on that percentage. It’s a work in progress but it’s possible, it’s all about making that experience very simple. 

You listen to your customers to understand them, marketers spend a lot of time and money studying what gets people to buy too often and sometimes they ignore what gets them to be satisfied, loyal and willing to tell others, listening is important in the whole customer experience process and the voice of the customer programs are essential to defining and measuring customer experience performance. When you hire someone like Yanique to train your team members or hire her company to do market research, it’s very hard to see a return on investment the following day and that’ what a lot of businesses fail to realize that customer experience is a very tangible measurement and because of that, it’s so important to continually be engaging and hearing from your customers because if you’re constantly getting positive feedback and recommendations that you get from customers are actually improving on them and customers can see that their feedback is not just being put in a box and no one is taking it into account but they are actually using it to make changes, then that’s when you see repeat business over and over.

 

 

 

Jan 24, 2017

Joseph Michelli is an Internationally sought after Speaker, Author and Organizational Consultant who transfers his knowledge of exceptional business practices in ways that develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on the total customer experience. His insights encourage leaders and front line workers to grow and invest passionately in all aspects of their lives. Dr. Michelli is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Neilsen Book Scan and New York Times number 1 bestselling author. His latest book is Driven to Delight: Delivering World- Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way, some of his other titles include Leading the Starbucks Way: 5 Principles for Connecting with Your Customers, Your Products and Your People, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW, Prescription for Excellence: Leadership Lessons for Creating a World Class Customer Experience from UCLA Health System, The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary and The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, as well as When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market. Joseph holds a certified speaking professional designation from The National Speakers Association and is a member of The Authors Guild; he received his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Southern California and he has won the Asian Brand Excellence Award as an Editorial Board Member for The Beryl Institute Patient Experience Journal (PXJ) and is on the Founder’s Council of Customer Experience One, he is also named one of the top 10 Thought Leaders in Customer Service by global gurus.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • Could you share with us from one of your favorite books, what are these 5 principles that seem to be a constant in most of the books that you’ve authored?
  • What are some of the limitations that leaders may face? Do you think they are more internal or external? Why is it that leadership seems to be a big challenge for a lot of organizations, why are they not getting it right?
  • How do you think a business owner or a leader should approach service recovery?
  • What are some important considerations that you would recommend to a business owner they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Joseph Michelli shared that he has been in this business of customer service which has transformed into customer experience enhancement for so long that he has had many great mentors and guides along the way and if anything, he has been excited to see how many people have started to appreciate that it’s not just the products they have that makes a difference in the market place but it’s really the way those products to marketing, he thinks that changes in the global economy have cost us all to realize that you can get a lot of very similar products very easily today but the service dimension is something that very few have mastered and it is a differentiator.
  • Joseph stated that it starts with leadership, entrepreneur, a small business owner, a large company, having a leader who has the vision to realize that people are the most important aspect of business, that all business are personal, that you have to understand the wants, needs and desires of people in order to create, innovate and to deliver in ways to meet their wants, needs and desires. It’s an overarching commitment to utilizing both technology and the human capital within your organization to create memorable or crave able experience that people will talk about on social media. He thinks that there are dimensions of driving culture, a culture of service excellence as well as operational excellence, getting it right and making it right and obsessing about that and most of these brands are on a journey to decrease the amount of effort that customers have involved in getting their needs met, currently there are all these making sure and understanding that this is a long game, that this is about lasting significance not just short term sales or profitability for the next quarter, it’s really about understanding relationships and multi generations of consumers who are going to support your brand.
  • Joseph shared that he thinks they see excellence within silos, they build organizations that have silos and they are not looking at the journey of the customer across the organization, so instead of looking down from the top of an organization and seeing your marketing silo and your sales silo and seeing your after sale silo, your customers look from a horizontal vantage point and they see the brand and they see it when they encounter it inconsideration of a product, they see it when they walk into a store or when they attempt to purchase something from the online store front, they see it when they make a return, they are seeing the same brand in a horizontal walk. Unfortunately, a lot of organizations reward people for success in each of the verticals silos as they look down on it from the top, so a lot of this gets to helping organizations create opportunities of handing the customer from one point of the journey to the next part of the journey seamlessly instead of just celebrating success within a silo.

Yanique shared that she found that the companies that really understand their journey also recognize that things are not going to go smooth all the time so service recovery is so important.

  • Joseph stated that it’s one of the greatest differentiators, everybody do a good job until they get your money, as soon as they get your money, they treat you differently, some take you for granted and never speak to you again or when it’s time for renewal, try to get you constantly to buy something from them. Those who after the sale respond very ably to the consumer, the better, the first formal part of this is understanding that service recovery is an investment in future marketing so rather than seeing it as a lost leader, it is a part of your advertising strategy and saves you money from having to advertise and recover customers who are soiling or contaminating the market place with their negative reactions to your poor recovery. It’s a mind shift on what recovery is, it’s a fundamental opportunity to decrease future marketing costs and actually leverage that which is so valuable the customer you’ve already acquired in having them be a repeat purchaser, it is so much easier to get them to buy a second time than to get somebody to buy the first time and the cost associated with retaining a customer is so much less even if you have to invest money in a recovery moment than it would be to try to require a replacement customer.

Joseph stated that it is simple as Starbucks has a promise that, “If you don’t like your drink, we will replace it for you no questions asked.” Joseph gave an example, he stated that there was a prankster, a person who pranks corporate America, so he bought a Starbucks drink, he brought it home, it was a milk based drink, he put it in his garage, he left it there for a week and a half, he brought it back extremely rancid inside of a plastic bag and he brought it into a Starbucks and handed it to the Barista and saying, “Look, this drink does not meet my satisfaction.” They have been trained so well by this brand simply said, “Let me take this take this to our back dumpster and in the mean time, what drink might I prepare for you that you might like today?” It was that simple, many people would say, “come on, obviously this is not a freshly made drink that we are in any obligation to replace” In truth, this prankster went on to write a blog about the fact that he had hoped that they would fail their recovery promise and they did not do so and he was the one who got pranked and that advertising and that promotion and the fact that he’s telling the story today has far more value to the brand than the $4.00 they would have saved had they argued with the customer in suggesting that he was not entitled to the recovery.

Yanique stated that she lives in Jamaica and most of the stores already have a sign on the door that says, “No exchanges, no refunds” so you as a customer, once you enter or start to browse that store, you know, “If I purchase this, clearly it’s a final purchase, if I have an issue with it, I can’t take it back.” It’s truly amazing to know that the promise is that they are going to replace it for you no questions asked, that takes real guts, real courage.

Joseph stated that there will be those who abuse it and this would have been a case of abuse, clearly it went well beyond the perimeters but most people will not. There is a speaker in the USA who at the beginning of every presentation hands out a bowl of quarters and he says, “Please take all the quarters” and no one has taken all the quarters in any audience that he has ever put that out to and the message largely is, most people will self regulate, most people are business owners, most people have a sense of fairness, there will be those who abuse it but assuming the entire population is out to get you creates an animosity between yourself and the customer that’s hard to recover from and as a world traveler, he has been to countries in the Caribbean that are open and warm and he has been to ones that are locked down and he knows which ones he doesn’t want to go back to.

  • Joseph stated that online is a very self service oriented deliverable, it’s a lot about speed, and it’s a lot about convenience so you clearly should maximize those dimensions. The more speedy and more automated this becomes, the more you need people around in case something goes wrong because he become lulled into the sense that everything is perfect and so if you’re going to have online, you also need to have some level of Call Centre or human response that can deal with any break downs that happens in the automated space and so you have to be very mindful that you’re going to move in and out of brick and mortar, in and out of call centre, in and out of online app deliverable and so it really is a multi channel mindset that you have to start thinking about and the customer can start in one spot, jump to the next and needs to be able to jump back to the next. If you go purely online and it’s difficult to get people to solve a problem or answer a question that you can’t get answered on a frequently answered questions page online then you end up with a lesser experience and you may end up churning customers so doing online development means you also have some talented human capital that bolts into this multi channel journey.

Speed and Convenience for todays customer - Joseph stated that we have to maximize the speed at every turn and we do have to manage customer expectations because there are certain expectations that have gotten ahead of customers and in order to have everything that fast you also give up some tradeoffs on artisanship and quality so it is an educational on tradeoffs that with speed comes some compromises and we are willing to make them in these regards because we know what’s best and in delivery of this particular product you know you need speed, we know you need speed, we are working to maximize that but you also need quality and if you compromise and buy something very hastily crafted in order to meet the speed, it probably won’t last long, so it’s baiting what is value and speed is a part of the value equation but there are other dimensions that you have to education. Sometimes we can do things while they are waiting for those 5 days for a product, we can educate them, and we can stay in relationship with them. The art of Disney if you go to Walt Disney World, you are in massive lines, it is not speedy at all to go through the experience but they often distract you, entertain you, transform you with other things happening while you’re in line and he thinks that’s the art sometimes, how else can they add value, “The product will be there in 5 days but in the mean time I want to give you 5 days of information about how maximize the use of your product as soon as it arrives so there isn’t such a learning curve.” So maybe there is a not speed to delivery but there’s a speed to use because he has done something in that delivery time that adds value.

Beta Brand – company that did not have a product but they provided their prospects with entertaining stories.

  • Joseph stated that that particular journey with the owner was a co authored book with Johnny Yokoyama who created Pike Place Fish Market, he had the good fortune of working with him and he’s inspirational to him. He stated that Yanique and himself shared many of the same journeys, they go in and help leaders create better experiences to drive loyalty and engagement of their people and of their customers and that’s just a life giving journey that he’s on, to deal with the Johnny Yokoyama’s, to deal with the CEO’s of these corporations to help them lead these initiatives, to watch small business owners change the way they treat their people and the way their people treat the customers, it is so life giving that it’s easy to do what he does in life and because of that, it’s easy for him to stay motivated.
  • Joseph shared that he is on the road all the time so most of the airline apps and almost all the hotel apps have incredible value to him. This morning he walked to his local Starbucks and he used his mobile order app, he was able to have enough time to sit down and enjoy his coffee because the coffee was waiting for him. Anything that makes his life easier is something he tends to continues to give real estate to his phone, otherwise he downloads a lot of apps and then they are gone 72 hours because he doesn’t use them, they look good but they don’t’ give his life ease or pleasure.
  • Joseph shared that the book that has had the biggest impact is Man’s Search for Meaning By Viktor E. Frankl, it is the message of a Psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps in World War II, the beauty for him is that he inspires him to realize how great he can be and his classic section is where he’s talking about people who are near starvation, who gave up the food they have, a small portion of that to someone else who are worst and Frankl says, “there are not many people who did that but the fact that we can is inspiring to all of us” and that’s how he looks at the world, we can all serve better, we can all do more to be in service to one another and that’s the kind of books he tends to like to read.
  • Joseph stated that right now they trying to figure out to create product, he thinks he is at a point in his career where he has written enough books, he has done enough consulting and he has been on the road a lot, so he is trying to figure out how to monetize and create a platform of training courses and things that keep him from having to go on planes so in 10 or 15 years he can spend more time with in the islands enjoying life while still creating value as best he can.

 

  • Joseph stated that it starts with you, we can identify the generation Y and Z and the millennials, reality says, “If you’re not a hundred percent in every single day, why should anyone else in your organization be, you are the owner, you are the leader, you set the standard, what shows up in your business is probably in part a reflection of who you are.” It is harder today to find motivated people so it takes more discipline to select, you should be looking for them everywhere you find them, you should be offering them an opportunity to consider employment with you, stealing the best from the rest but ultimately it is how do you show up every day because that will show up in the life of the customer.

 

  • Joseph shared listeners can find him at –

www.josephmichelli.com

Joseph Michelli Twitter

Joseph Michelli Facebook

Joseph Michelli LinkedIn

 

  • Joseph stated that Peter Drucker once said, “We are not in business to create a profit, we are in business to create a customer, it is through customers that profits come.” So for him, Joseph is less worried about whether or no they are going to be profitable, he’s more worried about customers and if he takes care customers, the profits will follow.

 

Links

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Jan 17, 2017

Isabel Hundt is the author of The Power of Faith-Driven Success: A Journey Toward Living Your Dream by 30 and certified vision and Transformation Coach and International Speaker. She’s a world visionary and an ambassador of Global Presence Leadership. She travels all over to share her enlightening message of tuning in to our true selves by understanding the connection between our heart and our brain. She is also teaching how to use our emotions as a powerful guide for success in all areas of our lives instead of experiencing emotions as a distraction. She’s a proud Christ follower, wife and a mother to son Jonah. Isabel enjoys kick boxing and body combat.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • How do you feel about customer experience in your own life, the things you’ve experience and what role do you think that plays in you being able to help people transform into their best selves?
  • What are some everyday solutions that you believe can help improve customer experience?
  • How do you feel about leadership in a business? What role do you think leadership plays in the whole customer experience process and the emotions around that as well?
  • As a Visionary, as a Coach, what are some important considerations that you would recommend they take into account moving into the online space in order to be successful?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Isabel Hundt shared that she that when she was young, she had a lot of out of body experiences, at some point she had a head trauma and when she had the head trauma, she was out of her body and she could watch herself and there are other times where she felt like she could leave her body which was weird and she always reacted weird to other people that were in pain. For example, she laughed when they were hurting and she know why, she would say, “oh my god, it’s so embarrassing, I shouldn’t be laughing, it’s not funny, they are hurting” and looking back she knows it was a coping mechanism for her to not take on their stuff but when she was 12 years old, she had a vision that she would be moving the United States of America, she is originally from Germany where she grew up and her family is there. She had the vision and that she would be speaking in front of a lot of people and she didn’t quite know how it was going to happen because she didn’t have any connections and she also got into psychology and sociology around the same time, she grew up in the so call DDR, East Germany and they grew up Christian and so her dad wasn’t allowed study because he participated in church activities so when the walls came down he was finally able to get his Degree and that was when she was about 12 years old and that time she studied with him which was fun and when she was 18 years old, she went to the USA for an exchange year which was interesting because she really sucked speaking the language, she didn’t know what, “you’re welcome” meant. She then had to go back and she didn’t feel at home anymore, something didn’t feel right, it was just off and her dad would always say, “one day we’re going to do something together, we’re going to work together” and of course when you’re 19 years old you’re like, “heck no, I’m independent now.” She studied economics and failed, they kicked her out after 2 years and she started to have really bad depressions and she didn’t care if there was a car coming or not, she was just done with the world, everything was noisy and loud. When they kicked her out of university, she had to figure out what she wanted to do next and she finally admitted that she probably should go into the social science field because that’s what she was always been interested in, so she did that and started over and somehow she got into a really bad relationship with an American guy but that’s how she really came over so she is kind of grateful to him but that ended too after she finished her studying and she still came over and worked as a nanny. In that process she got to know her now husband and because he didn’t want to get married right away, she almost got deported and that was interesting. She had to go to Canada which was quite the experience and all that up and down and she didn’t what she wanted to do, she never felt like she really trusted her intuition and that’s when through a friend of a friend she started to get into the coaching world and she participated in a training, “This was exactly what I need to do because I need to understand who I am. I don’t feel German, I don’t feel American, who am I?” and within that journey of becoming a certified coach, she also realize that she is an empath which means that she experience the world more intense, she can see through people, she sees color around people, it’s a lot of stuff that she takes in and never knew how to trust that intuition or to work with it and throughout the journey she got to where she is today.
  • Isabel Hundt stated that she used to do a presentation at Ball State University about customer service and they would look at like she’s crazy because nobody really understands that the customer service starts with you and they believe that customer service is the foundation to success in whatever you offer in your business, customer service is nothing different than creating relationships and being open to the experience with the other person. The problem that she sees often with customer service is that we don’t not have that self awareness, that often we don’t understand is what we focus on we create more of, what is going on inside of us is being reflected on the outside, that’s what’s happening around us. For example, if somebody comes into work and already has a crappy day and you have someone call you and they need help or support, you would react differently to them than if you had a happy or great day and even though the other person’s reaction wasn’t any different, you just experience it differently so if we have that awareness of what’s going on. For example, you can simply acknowledge, “oh shut, I have a crappy day today, I don’t know what’s going on, I feel frustrated, I feel angry, I’m not sure why” but if we just simply acknowledge it, you don’t have to go through the whole process of analyzing but just acknowledge it, we are able to take that apart from what we experience in relationship type of setting and we can say, “okay, I hear them differently, it’s nothing personal what they’re saying, I don’t have to react to it, I can set my stuff aside to be available to them” and that’s why she thinks self awareness is the foundation to great customer service, yet customer service is the foundation to successful life and business.

Isabel stated that emotions aren’t just emotions; they are what we make them, who would determine that anger has a certain chemical reaction in your body, we define it and we can acknowledge, “oh, that’s what’s going on, it’s okay, I am okay, I just don’t have to act on it react to it by pushing it on someone else”

  • Isabel shared that for one, it depends on the setting but if you have a small business and it’s just you, definitely having a ritual every day, if it’s in the morning or before whenever you start working and for her, it’s usually around lunch time because she has a 3 year old when he’s finally asleep. Before she really start getting into work or connecting with people, she sits down and either meditate in her case and sometimes just a reflection yourself is really important just to understand, “okay, what’s going on today, what do I have to work through today that could get in the way for me to create successful connections with people that I really want to be of service to?” that’s the one thing that she really stretch with everyone. When she teach that at universities, the staff always looks at her like, “yeah, can we have a little more business like instead of all the psychology behind it” they don’t really want to take that responsibility, so it’s a little tough. If you can be compassionate with yourself and understanding and acknowledging it, you are more likely to show more compassion to those who you serve, if they have a bad day, you’re not jumping on board, you can just say, “hey, do you having a bad day? I’m sorry if you do, it’s okay and I still see you” so feeling seen creates the connection, the connection again is the foundation of a successful business. So the most important if you remember anything from this conversation, self reflection is the first thing someone should do to have a successful business.
  • Isabel agreed that leaders have their own emotions and depending on your mode, your energy can manifest into the physical space and that can have a positive or negative impact on the staff and then eventually spill over to the customers. She stated that she used to work in corporate America for a year and she didn’t like it because she was the Administrative Assistant and was responsible for all those people and sometimes she would sit there and listen to people talk to customers and would say to herself, “do you actually want to work with that customer or you don’t? Because right now it sounds like you don’t” and even with each other. She thinks that customer service starts with the group itself, if there is tension within the people that work for you, those tensions come across with the customer, so for everyone that is a leader who is leading a group of people needs to stretch on team building and team building is the focus on self that’s why really successful companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook as well as Amazon, they all have life coaches, so their employees, most of them have at least one session a month or they have free access to a life coach and there is more of team building going on as their foundation than the actual growth of the business. If your team feels valued and seen, automatically your business will grow too because they do whatever it takes to grow this business because that means they feel a part of a big team, a mission, something that’s really important and that as a leader of a company if you have employees, for one you need to do the work yourself, that’s something she has realized, they usually send their employees to her workshops and expect that they will change the environment they are working in but they don’t want to do the work and that’s what hurts most companies.

Isabel stated that most of her clients are online. She said that for one, it is more convenient with a child at home that young but it allows her to work with people from all over the world, from France, Sweden, and India and all over the USA and she found and it depends on where you live. She stated that where she lives people are very conservative so it takes a lot to break through that wall and outside of it people are more open to what she’s talking about and what she teach and coach on. She does work mostly online but when she speaks, then she is travelling.

  • Isabel stated that if you want to take everything online, the most important for her is authenticity, if suddenly you come across online differently than in your physical store, that will distract from your brand and people get confuse and when people get confuse, they will not buy from you. Authenticity, really understanding what you want to bring across online, what you want people to understand about who you are and your business that you can also implement or that you have already implemented in your brick and mortar business. Especially if you have a store and you want to take it online she really believes in help from people that have a lot of knowledge like Web Designers, they understand how to use different colors that really reflect your personality and your work because callers also have frequency as well as emotions where they create emotions or support certain emotions so people have to be aware of what they use even there online, what do you want to bring across, how you want people to feel when they look at what you represent. That goes back to personal development, Who are you? What is your message? What do you want to bring across? How do you want to serve people? What do you want other people to take away from it? And you can’t really answer those questions unless you are really aware of who you are and your purpose.

Isabel share that sometimes we take My Why a little bit too easy, it’s not just, “my WHY is to support my family financially” it needs to serve for the greater good. She stated that her WHY is to create a deeper connection inner culturally to understand that even though your background is different or the way you grew up or the traditions are different, it doesn’t make you any different as a human being. Her big Why is to bring people together to really connect on such a deep level that we can understand that without each other we can’t do anything and even if we live a thousand miles away from each other, we still impact each other in the way we think, in the way we operate, it has a ripple effect, that’s her greater purpose, that’s greater vision that she has so if you start with the WHY and only say, “my WHY is supporting my family” that’s not enough, that keeps it too limited and you don’t think outside the box.

  • Isabel stated that what keeps her motivated is one, her Why, the essence of what she do what she do, she can’t just let it go, there’s too much at stake to not to do her work and she would be responsible. She always remind herself that if she doesn’t do the work that she is call to do, she is responsible for the people she could have impacted or that she could have supported and served if she had stuck with it, so the moderation is to keep that vision in mind, “Who am I impacting and what are the consequences if I succeed?” that is her biggest motivation and music helps her too. Music changes your vibration energy which the frequency of your body either increases or decreases depending on what you listen to and when she feels really demotivated, she listens to inspiring music and it feels like she is able to conquer everything, she is a leader and once she gets to that she feels she can move forward and stay motivated.
  • Isabel stated that she was thinking about that question and she couldn’t quite find an answer, she was looking though everything that she is using but what she could not live without is her Virtual Assistant or her Web Designer the two people, she knows that they are not a tool or something that she uses online but those are the two things that if she didn’t have them her business would not be where it’s at or where she wanted it to go. She stated that they take such a load off her shoulders, it’s incredible. She stated that if you have an online business she would recommend that you get a Virtual Assistant and have a Web Designer always on your side. If something happens, within 2 minutes they can check, “okay, I got it” without you having to try and figure it out or make it even worst. Isabel stated that the other online resources that are really helpful like Buffer or Hootsuite are important if you want to save time and one thing that she learnt is focus on a few social platforms, don’t try to get into everything and get on board with everything new. Focus on 2 or 3 things that you are comfortable with and do whatever it takes to get your name out on those social platforms.
  • Isabel shared that the book she read over the last year that really impacted the way she thinks and the way she experience things is The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You by Karla McLaren, it’s more written for empathy so if you’re not really an empathy and don’t want to get too deep into it, don’t read it but if you’re really interested in it then it will definitely help in coping with a lot of things and understanding a lot of things.
  • Isabel stated that the advice that she would give is the advice that she gives herself everyday and that is trust. If you are in alignment, if what you do, what you send out is in alignment with what you have on your heart, that dream that really fires you up every single day, you need to trust. You can’t go out and follow everyone strategy and try to make everything work and sign up for every program that you can find just to make something happen, you need to trust and with every decision you make, ask yourself, “is that in alignment with who I am?, does this really work for me? And is it in alignment with my greater purpose?” If it’s not trust that you don’t need it at this time or ever but really trust. Trust, reflect and listen from within, those are the small advice points that she always give that she always give to herself as well.
  • Isabel stated that the one thing that she is really excited about is doing sessions that are called Releasing Trapped Emotions because those are really important for us to be able to move forward otherwise we will always ending up where we started. Those are the 2 things that she is really excited about but she is also excited about working on a Ted Talk and that’s something she is doing right now and she got a lot of support from people who have done it before, who have the connections so she is super excited and nervous. In the near future she wants to create a more specific course about emotions and how to identify them and work through them with getting all wrapped up in it and that’s something she going to be working on in the spring and those are the few things she is working on right now.

 

  • Isabel shared listeners can find her at –

www.isabelhundt.com

Isabel Hundt Facebook

Isabel Hundt Istagram

Isabel Hundt LinkedIn

Isabel Hundt Twitter

Isabel Hundt YouTube

 

  • Isabel shared that she usually reverts to Matthew 17:20 and usually people say that you can’t bring the Bible into your business but for her it’s faith and science. It says, “So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” And especially when we know the science part about it that we are able to just with the way we think, that we really can move mountains in that sense, just knowing that keeps her going. We are here, we are destined for something greater and we as a human world society, we have a responsibility to do better than what we’ve done so far.

 

Links

 

Jan 10, 2017

Louie La Vella’s clients are entertainment personalities, night clubs, concerts and festivals and he creates brand and marketing strategies to engage and connect with their audience. Working within the shark infested waters of the night life and music industry as a Marketing and Branding consultant, La Vella has been delivering high profit solutions to live entertainment events, musicians and venues for years. With over 20 years in the night life industry, an extensive development and production experience with national television projects, authors, speakers, event producers and coach. La Vella has produced and marketed over 30 live music concerts in the past few years. Winner of the Niagara Music Awards Promoter of the Year in 2012, The Junior Awards Canadian Music, Dance category committee. He has been called a “Mediapreneur”, combining a successful television executive producer and host role with being sought after marketing and branding consultant in the night life and in the music industry. In his television days, he had the opportunity to interview the likes of Lady Gaga, Richard Branson, Backstreet Boys and more.

 

Question

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • What has your customer experience been like in terms of being a service provider as well as being a customer yourself and receiving services from people you may have to interact with at the events?
  • What are some every day solutions that you would recommend to a small business owner to help them improve their customer experience?
  • Can you share one or two things with us that you’ve taken away from interviewing people that have celebrity statues that has really helped to mold your personality and make you a better business leader?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Louie La Vella shared that he start at about 17 or 18 years old as a Night Club Promoter working for other event companies and venues. He stated that everyone has that part time job when they are getting into college whether it’s retail, grocery store or even a bartender and his love was business, of course going out and having fun and parting at the bar and clubs was a huge interest for everybody usually in the college scene. He wanted to put those two together and see if he could make money from it and it was a fantastic start. He got to forge some great relationships with venue owners, managers, bands and deejays and of course learn the trade but he thought being a Night Club Promoter wasn’t exactly his career path, he knew the entertainment industry was going to be something he wanted to be in so he quickly learned to level up and have a long term goal of working on a global scale with festivals and musicians and celebrities; so it has been a 20 year journey to get where he is today but in between, he has seen all these different opportunities to increase his personal brand and always level up and growing from that first start as a night club promoter and very quickly into booking venues and running his own events and then getting on television and radio and now to this day, it has been a fun journey.
  • Louie stated that as an entrepreneur, he has two arms to the business. One of them is B-2-B which is him getting clients and getting to work with musicians or record labels or festival owners and it is really showing them that he can connect and engage their audience to them because now a day’s everybody gets the same feeling of social media being such a big player in marketing, if not the player in marketing depending on your demographic but it’s very noisy and you have to do a lot of hustle, it was a little bit easier back in the day to just either pay radio for events or do print ads or flier or television and you have that marketing there. Now there is so much more involvement, you have to understand the user behavior of your audience and with that said the second arm of what he has to do is connecting them and even himself to the consumer audience, so that’s selling tickets, getting people to download music and that’s really understanding what the consumer wants to see on Social Media for them to engage, no longer that it works for us to just put a nice looking flier on Social Media and boots that post, you really need to come up with a campaign, some with music, you can’t just drop a track on Facebook and get couple of your friends to share it and hopefully your fan base runs with it. You need to create a strategy 4 weeks, 6 weeks and get them engaged, get them listening to the teaser or get them feeling what the event’s going to be about and eventually get to the ticket launch and then they’ve already bought into the message and you have them a little more excited and they are raving fan ready to support you. Now a day’s a lot of people get scared of that and they think, “that’s a lot of work” and it is and you trade a little bit of hustle for maybe writing cheques to traditional media for ad spend because the ad spent on social media is a lot less but it works well and that is the sandbox where everybody is playing so we really need to take that seriously and not just say back in the day it was easier, we don’t have time machines, we can’t go back in the day and go back to where we knew what we were doing and we were successful at it, things change consistently now and very quickly so we have to be on top of that.

Louie stated that talking about events whether its festivals or night club events or smaller concerts, going to the events are always great for him to either wine down and enjoy the event or do a little bit of research on what everybody else is up to and he fine that a lot of the places that either spend too much money to market to fill their room or just not filling their room is because they are stuck back in the day. Louie shared he was on a panel at the International Night Life congress a month ago and everybody was talking about Millennials and how they’re on their phones all the time and it’s ruining the experience going to a club or going to a venue to have their phones out and they just want to be on social media and he sat there and thought about his experience going in and he said, the usual behavior is not just because they are on social media and need to tell their friends or talk, it’s their documenting, they’re documenting everything they do and we do the same things, maybe not as much as the generation because depending on our age demographics but we want to tell our friends what we are up to, we want to share what we are eating, we feel like we are all media companies and we need to document. He told them going back to the experience of him experiencing a night life venue, “What are you guys doing differently than 20 years ago? You have a concert hall or a night club with a nice deejay or a band with some lights and a bartender but that’s the same concept as 20 years ago.” He was trying to poke fun by saying that he doesn’t use VHS tapes anymore, we have all changed, why have you not changed if you think about 20 year old concept of the night club, it’s exactly the same, and we have different sounds and different lights but that’s not a huge step in the experience. When he walks into a club and its dead and the bartender is on their phone and it’s the same old, same old for 20 years, he’s thinking well no wonder nobody’s here or it’s too busy and the promoter and the venue owner thinks, Hey, Louie look how packed it is, look how great it is here, it’s over packed” and he’s thinking, “Go ask 6 girls right now what they think about your club and I bet you 4 or all 6 of them will say it’s too busy here, I can’t get a drink, I wanted in line too long, I Iost my friend when I went to the bathroom” and you think that the over capacity of the club is your success but I bet that you’re even losing money because they want to leave early, they get frustrated to get to the bar to get a drink. He has seen that with his own experience by going to these places and thinking….these are issues that are going to bite them or already bit them.

He stated that it’s the same with Facebook likes, he has 10,000 likes. Likes do not equal sale at all. The amount of time that your organic reaches 1% you still have to target people, you might be targeting specific intricate ways of targeting like somebody that likes your page but also likes these certain items. A lot of people are just going for likes and it’s a visual thing and he understands as a branding play but that’s a small piece of the branding pot, you have 5,000 likes or 10,000 Twitter followers that never equal actual sales, you have to think outside of that, so you spend all of your money trying to get likes but he never do that, he tries to spend the ad budget on your actual target, let’s try to create a funnel, let’s sell tickets, let’s sell music, people will like your page indirectly because they see the ad and they don’t like your page currently and they’ll it like but that’s not the metric we go for so a lot of people are not thinking the new way of doing marketing and still thinking of the old mentality, we want more likes, we want to pack the bar, we want to do the old school way because it’s easier and it just doesn’t work.

  • Louie La Vella stated that one of the mistakes that many business owners and entrepreneurs make is that they forget that they are also a customer, he hears it a lot with musicians or bar owners or club owners on them complaining when they go to another bar or complaining about, “Why do these people want to message me on Facebook or text me, I want to be on phone” they are romanticizing bout the old school days and he sit there and say your audience is 21, they don’t care what you think and they forget about them as a customer sometimes, “Oh, I went to the bar and it was too busy, they couldn’t get a drink” and yet they do the same thing. The first thing that everybody needs to stop and realize is that you are also a customer and think about how you want that experience to be. A lot of people disconnect that, they think “This is how I want to be treated”, but I don’t do this thing to my customer and then they wonder why there is a disconnect there and that’s a massive thing that everyone forgets. Same thing on Social Media “Oh, I’m going to complain about my dinner and I expect somebody to respond right away” but on the flip side “That idiot made a one star review, I think I should delete all my reviews so nobody sees any of them” you are disconnecting yourself as a customer though, you’re not thinking about what you would want, they want to have someone respond right away, they don’t want it to be deleted and you would hate that to happen but now you want to do that to them so that’s massive tip number 1 on returning customer service and just thinking about how you would want to be treated. The second thing is Consistency, a lot of people give up very fast, they try something new and it doesn’t work a couple weeks in and they give up. Have a long term goal, at the beginning of the chat he said he had a 20 year span of cool stuff that happened to get to where he is today but all of it was fun and there were pivots everywhere, he went into radio, he went into TV, it was all to the same goal of music, music show, music television, everything was in the same genre so that he could keep building brand awareness and now he’s on the listening committee for their award show which is like the Grammys up in Canada which is great and is more branding too and it’s exciting to be a part of that community as well and all that is a long term goal and he has those sites. A lot of people create an event like a bar event or new business shiny object syndrome and then they give up fast, if that’s something that’s serious for your business and it’s going to grow your brand, have a realistic goal, nobody is going to pack your club in 3 weeks and nobody’s going to have a brand new division of their entrepreneur business and think in couple Facebook ads “I’m rolling”, you need to have a long term goal but you have to stick with it. You can pivot along the way a little bit because things need to be tweaked and at the end if it’s not working out, fine, you remove it, stop wasting your time but you have to stick to a realistic goal.
  • Louie stated that the celebrities that he interviewed are all down to earth people and he really like the fact that they are normal people and that people resonate with that and especially on Social Media where they can have Snapchat or Instagram stories or just respond as a normal person, it makes a human-to-human connection and that’s a common thread he saw with all of those people. There were a very few celebrities that he met that had that fake persona or were just rude and it may have been the industry that they went through and whatever path they went through just gave them that cold heart but 99.9% of them were all super down to earth and super nice and just appreciative of just being normal people which is amazing. A fun story that he likes to tell, he takes so many flights and sometimes flying on his own, you sit beside somebody it may not be in a first class and you go, “Hey, how are you doing? What do you do?” “I’m the president of this massive company” or “I’m the executive of this” and sometimes they ask him what he does and he would have a cool story and he’s always thinking on the plane everyone is such a normal person, you’re sitting beside who knows who and they are normal people and if you think about that with these celebrities, they really are. That down to earth groundedness is what is making them successful and holding onto their long term goals. You see some of them derail here and there and that’s when they lose sight of being themselves but to be real like that really helps in their personal branding, if you tweet at somebody and they tweet back to you or they do something on Ellen you laugh with them like, they’re just normal funny people, you laugh with them like, “Oh, I find that funny too, I would do something that crazy” and it really helps to be that kind of person and on his side getting those interviews of course being on television a lot of them were organize but Lady Gaga and Richard Branson, those were just last second accidental interviews. Lady Gaga was interviewing other people and she just got signed to Interscope Records like week before and that was years ago. She was a this rooftop party with her managers and all these other deejays were there and his TV crew was interviewing famous deejays and she was nobody and her managers came up to them and said, “Here’s this new girl that just got signed, we are ready to push her, she going to have a great album come this summer and she would like to get some media so would do an interview for her?” and he said, “I don’t know who she is and we have a lot of stuff going on but hold on this could be an opportunity” they listened to the song and it was “Just Dance” and they said, “Yeah, it’s a fantastic song, she has major backing, absolutely we will do the interview, not a problem” not knowing that she was going to be a superstar within a month or 2. These doors open in front of you and sometimes you may not be real person and think, “I don’t have time for this” this would have been a way different story saying the time he could have interview Lady Gaga and that was her first national TV interview as Lady Gaga just getting signed which is cool to have under his belt as well but you would have to try and see those opportunities as they open.
  • Louie stated that he likes what he does and that’s one big thing that keeps him motivated to wake up and know that this is what he likes, so when there is down times whether it’s working with clients that aren’t his favorite and you can decide “I can fire these clients and just move on” there are up times too, it just keeps him motivated to wake up and do something fun. He thinks that everybody needs to do that whether it’s a regular job or whether you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re an entrepreneur don’t create for yourself that you don’t like. Do something you love and that’s a huge factor and of course the idea as an entrepreneur that you can create money out of thin air or anything that’s a failure you don’t count it as a “Oh man, I failed, I suck” you just look at it like, “Find no problem, let’s pave it, let’s tweak, let’s continue, it’s all good, I will create something new, I can adjust” that mindset is really exciting to have.
  • Louie stated that he is fan of the dance genres, that’s what they did with the television network and radio like electronic music, dance music, house music and of course that was the music that was fairly strong in the mid 90’s when he was growing up but hip hop was strong too so that’s another favorite genre of his. He stated that it was funny because if he was asked what his favorite song is, he wouldn’t have had a good answer. There are so many new stuff coming especially that he has to listen to so many music and mix shows that he probably couldn’t give a straight answer on what his favorite song is right now but he would lean towards the club genres, the dance music and hip hop urban music is great and there are some pop rock songs that he loves too but he is not a fan of country or classical there are so many genre room in his brain to follow. Yanique asked him if he likes reggae and he stated that reggae is great.
  • Louie stated that the tool he couldn’t live without is Facebook. He has been able to get clients and return the favor by making them millions of dollars on the platform of Facebook and of course that same Social Media but majority of his business is on Facebook and Instagram very close but those are the two. He stated that within those 2 apps he can message people, he can be in contact, he can get on phone calls, he can do his advertising, those are the BIG monster players in his industry.
  • Louie shared that he is a big fan of audio books; he will listen to audio books like crazy. Especially when you’re driving or traveling. He stated that there are so many that he has gone through that are absolutely amazing and a few off the top of his head: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek was a great one. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk was a fantastic one. Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday was really cool. He was talking about how media manipulation happens and how groups of people can get in, utilize the media and reading that book years ago and being a marketing guy, you can start to understand how things are happening on advertising like self driving cars are going to be coming out stronger as the years go by but you’re seeing ads now like a Kia or Ford commercial. If your brain wonders a bit and you think about your kids and you move into another lane, don’t worry the machine has your back, just slowly getting us used to the idea how we are scared of we are better than the machine, “I don’t want the car to self drive, I’m a better driver” just slowly giving us a tiny step by step of training our brains to think, “No the machine is better than you” you wonder off, that kind of idea without being a hardcore. Have a little strategy, give yourself a 4 week campaign before dropping your track, this is a probably a 4 to 10 year campaign but you can see these little things happening and you can also look at the election. You can see how Donald Trump, how he used the media to his advantage, against his advantage and when you read a book like that and you look at what’s going on in the media and how we are all headline readers and we’ll believe anything on Facebook whether we click on it or not it’s scary and it’s extremely possible to do those kind of things which is scary.
  • Louie stated that he lives to level up what he does ever so often and he started to scale away from night club and bar and doing a lot more festivals which is very exciting and record labels and speaking as well. He has a book that he authored a few years ago and he’s coming out with a second one and he’s starting to do more speaking engagements around North America and that’s a new level of what he’s doing. The entire year (2016) as he called it The Year of Authority for him, he’s going to get on podcasts, spread his message and just shares what he knows and do a lot more of his own podcasts and articles and he’s going utilize Social Media to build authority and brand awareness so that he can bump up the next level and start doing a lot more larger scale things and do speaking. He has done speaking gigs now which has been exciting. So that kind of the new next level for him which he has already hit and he starting to grow that and explore, just in podcasts, he has done over 45 + in last 3 months as a guest host which has been really exciting and a lot of hustle and a lot of fun and he is on pace before the month’s over to hit over 50 podcasts and he’s going to keep on going so that’s going to be a lot of fun for continuing to release and share those again throughout 2017 because he’ll have one a week to share which is great and that’s really cool for authority building and brand building. People can listen; they have a great conversation, and it is a cool tool that he’s picked up.

Louie stated that the night clubs are your basic bar and night club, there can be a 500 person venue, 1000 person venue but through your typical night club every week they have events going on or students nights so it’s a different atmosphere all together where as a Festival your talking 30,000 people showing up a day or more or maybe less and it’s such a massive cool undertaking and you work on marketing for 8 months, right now he’s working on marketing, even in September 2016 he was working on festivals for June 2017 but it’s really cool. You have a tight nit team and they organize everything to do with the festival and when it finally comes to fruition and you’re on stage with 30,000 people in front of you and this massive production and you’re thinking, “I’m the marketing guy, I was a part of bringing in these people in that’s really awesome.” And that a cool feeling and it’s a larger scale and not everybody gets to do that, if you’re a good marketer and you have friends and you know deejays, you might be able to jump in as a promoter at a night club but that’s not something that he does anymore, he consult and train a lot of owners and promoters because he knows marketing but he has a small hand full of bars and clubs now just because he knows them well and they are friends now and he helps them out but for the most part he has expended away from that and there’s different monetary value between a large scale festival and a night club so he can do different business and not work so hard but work on 3 projects instead of 15. 

He stated that in festivals now you’re dealing with million dollar deejays, million dollar bands, some of the biggest of the biggest and you get to discuss with their management things, forge friendships and that’s just a whole other ball game as oppose to the night club which is still fun and great but you’re working with the local club owner or the local deejay and sometimes they bring in acts but not usually not the larger scale because there is no way they can afford someone of that caliber for a 500 person venue so it’s a completely different ball game but it’s a lot of fun. 

 

Louie shared listeners can find him at –

www.louielavella.com

Louie La Vella Facebook

Louie La Vella Twitter

Louie La Vella Instagram

Louie La Vella LinkedIn

 

  • Louie shared a quote that he has two quotes the first one for him especially is “Every day is a Friday” so whether it’s actually Friday or a Monday, if you feel like it’s a Friday it means that you are doing what you love, so if you can find something that feels like a Friday everyday then you’re doing well. The other one especially in the marketing sense he likes to always say, “Make sure you’re playing in the sandbox everybody else is playing in.” So whether your audience is on LinkedIn, whether your audience is on Twitter or Facebook or on radio or on print, wherever they may be, make sure you know where they play because if you’re in the wrong sandbox, no matter what you are doing over there you’re not getting the message across.

 

Links

Jan 3, 2017

Brett Campbell, from journeyman cabinetmaker to fitness entrepreneur having built one of the fastest growing fitness brands in Australia is a man on a mission and he’s living the dream life of a young and successful entrepreneur. Impacted and inspired by the passing of a childhood friend, Brett is now taking his mission to the next level, helping the generations of entrepreneurs and professionals realize their true potential and assume a life of freedom and abundance that is possible for all who dare to take charge of their destiny. Brett’s mission is to help over 100 Million people discover, design, develop and deliver their passion and expertise to the world so that they can make more money, help more people and ultimately live a lifestyle of their design. Brett is also the owner and CEO of Fiit International, a global health and fitness company whose products and services have helped over 45,000 clients and the Authority Academy, an online community for Internet marketers, coaches, speakers and small business owners. He’s also the founder of the Unleash Your Greatness Movement, an international live event series to help others pursue living the life of their dreams. Having grown up in New Zealand, Brett now lives in the gold coast of Australia with his lovely wife Emily and their two pugs, Burt and Pugsley.  

 

Questions

  • Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
  • On a global level, how do you feel about customer service/ customer experience?
  • Health and fitness is important, how do you think it plays a role if your employees are healthier, not just physically but also spiritually and mentally so that they can really be a well-rounded employee in order to perform in your business?
  • What are some important considerations for an entrepreneur or an online business owner to be successful?
  • What is the one online resource, website, tool 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?
  • If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated human capital, what’s the one piece of advice would you give them to have a successful business?
  • What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people?
  • Where can our listeners find your information online?
  • What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?

 

Highlights

  • Brett Campbell stated that he was born in Australia and they were living in a trailer park/caravan park, himself, his sister and his parents. One day he was playing outside and he heard his name yelled out, “Brett, Brett” and he said to himself “Oh my god, what have I done” because he was a rascal type kid. I run into the trailer park and put his head the window and it was his mother calling out his name. She said, “Brett, Brett run across the road right now and get some help”. What he was witnessing was his father has his hands on his mother and was about to throw her through the window. He just came back from the local pub so he was drunk and this was sort of the regular occurrence. He ran across the road and got some help and that was the last moment, last memory he had of his father, shortly after his mother and sister and himself jumped an airplane and moved to New Zealand to start a new life. He shared this story purely because at that age he remembered clearly and vividly, saying to himself that he will do everything he possible can in his power to make sure that his mother and sister never have to worry ever again. He assumed the responsibility of being the man of the family and that’s quite a big responsibility for a young boy to take on but it has been the driving force of every single thing he does in his life. He went through school, got kicked out of school as he was the kid that talked too much, he got a call to the Principal’s office and they say, “Brett, it’s probably better off that you leave school now.” It got to a point where he would walk into English classes and the teacher would point to the hallway and say, “You’re sitting out there today.” It got to the point where he said maybe school isn’t the best for him to harness what he was suppose to being doing on this planet, which at the time he had no clue what that was but he fell into an apprentice cabinetmaker. He became a cabinetmaker and stayed there 5 years too long because he knew from day one that was not he was made to be doing on this planet. He was good at it, became really good at it and he became the best in the factory, he was grooming to take over ownership of the factory but the reality was that something he knew he wasn’t meant to be doing and there are too many people on this planet right now in a job, in a career, doing a course at university, doing something right now that they know that that’s not what they meant to be doing and at the time unfortunate for him, he didn’t recognize that quick enough. He then jumped on an airline, left New Zealand, moved to Australia and started a fitness company. He started as a solo personal trainer, he was training time for money, he was training people and then he uncovered what online Internet marketing was and haven’t looked back since. They built a franchise, they built about 16 different products and services that cater to the health and wellness industry ranging from a franchise to an education school to online products and services and then he found the love for online marketing and building business and the natural transition of people asking him how he did and how he can help them which led into Authority Academy where he helps entrepreneurs and business owners follow what they call The Authority Road Map which is a unique framework that can help anyone out there who has the passion, the skills, the knowledge, how do you take that and turn it into a business so that you can generate a very nice, comfortable lifestyle around that.

Brett agreed that he has had a very excited and adventurous journey thus far and there is a number of things that have happened and reason why these things happen is that he is the that guy, you hear the saying, “Ready, Fire, Aim”, he let off 20 rounds first so he’ll fire, fire, fire, ops he’s ready and then aim, hence the reason why he is able to do so many things because he has had that attitude from day one which is engrained that he just doesn’t give up, he’ll keep moving forward. He just wrote his first book and he shared in it that, “We work on the right things, just at the wrong times” and it’s something for entrepreneurs and business owners to really be aware of and with the opportunity that they have right with the online landscape and how easy it is to get your message in front of people. Too many people right now are working on the right things such as: maybe it is the right thing for you to be learning Social Media and Facebook but if you haven’t got the foundations, you haven’t understand what your business is all about, why you’re doing the business that you are doing, you can certainly be like he was; build a franchise with 35 locations in 6 months then realize that maybe this franchise wasn’t the path he wanted to go down.

  • Brett Campbell stated that the customer experience is imperative, he talked about it in Authority Road Map, it is the second pillar which is Customer and Community and inside of that he talked about a concept call “Your Client Perfect Journey” “What’s the dream come through experience?” Whenever he’s working with anyone, he’ll say, “Let’s outline the first time someone hears or sees anything about you, what does that perfect journey looks like from there on?” Too many entrepreneurs, business owners do this and he admitted that when he heard about this online that you can generate thousands of leads easily online, he started to not look at each lead as a person, he was looking at them as just another number and they have generated 500,000 people on their databases and at the start they were generating 1,000 leads a day and he was just looking at them as a number. It is a very important distinction and he hears it so much now with people complaining about Social Media, “I only got 3 likes on this post that I did” or “I only have 200 people engage in this post and it used to be thousands” what we need to stop and remember is 200 people or 5 likes, that’s 5 people who have engaged with your stuff, people are taking time out of their day and so it ties back to the customer experience. You must first know that each customer is a human being with a soul, with their own issues, once you can really grasp that, it’s super important, any overall journey of a customer because what’ the goal of business is to get repeat customers, is to have people staying, paying and referring into your business.
  • Brett stated that it is imperative and he talked about this concept in his latest book called Right Now: Why Not You and Why Not Now? and it’s all about taking action right now, not tomorrow, not next week or next month and one of the pillars he talked about is the concept of the 4 P’s which comes under the developmental phase. He believes that there are 4 things that we as human beings must develop these key areas, there is the Physiology, there’s our Psychology, our Personal Knowledge and our Productivity, as an employer it’s integral that we are teaching and training our employees in the 4 key areas, so health and fitness is one and it’s imperative. If you have someone eating terrible food and you can see that they are sluggish after lunch, you need to have those conversations and say, “How is this affecting your productivity? How this is affecting your focus and energy moving forward?” because it’s all about team culture as well, you lead from example, you can’t walk into the office with a pie and expect other people to not to follow – not saying any employer should say, “this is what you have to eat if you work here” just talk about the education around it like, “Hey, I notice that at 2:00 pm you get into a bit of a tired patch, I can see that your energy shift and you can see productivity drop” You need to address those things head on. Health and fitness is one component of it, it really comes down to the psychology as well and teaching and training your employees to become aware of what is actually happening when we talk about mind, body connection, when we talk about how they are feeling.
  • Brett stated that every single business is an online business regardless. Do they produce and deliver their product deliverable online? That is probably classifies more as a capital leader online business. He thinks the biggest things once again is the beautiful luxury that we have with online space is that you can get feedback very quickly so we can create whether it’s an opt-in page or a product, you will know fairly quickly, all you need to do is send some traffic to a page and we could know within an hour whether it’s going to work or not. He stated that they just ran an Authority Academy event in the Gold Coast and one of things he was sharing with people is the concept of split testing and the luxury that we have with it is so easy, in 50 seconds you can have a brand new page split testing off each other and let the software that you are using define it but he shared this case study where they were converting, one of their opt-in pages were converting at 48% and it was over 20,000 conversions so it was pretty steady and then something triggered him to split test the page and finally converted at 58% over 10,000 conversions. Think about that number, over 10,000 opt-ins, a 10% difference, we’re talking about a lot of money when you are talking from the money you are investing to generate a client but you’re talking about the missed opportunity as well. What you need to be aware of when you are embarking online is the easability to be able to create and execute on something but also be aware that that can be all Achilles Heel for you as well because this is where working on the right thing at the wrong time really comes into fruition. For example, say you want to go from offline to online and you talk to some marketer out there who is a “coach” and they say, “Yes, you need to build a sales funnel and drive traffic to an opt-in and this is what it’ll look like.” What he sees and when people come to him and say, “We have been trying, we’ve built a funnel, we created this course or program and it’s not working.” It’s because they have lost traction and they have lost connection with the foundational components of their business and that’s really identifying what does your client really want and what does your client really need. So because it’s so easy to create a product or service and get it up online, a lot of people miss the core concept of are you delivering the right thing at the right time, what is the actual product deliverable that you are selling in exchange.
  • In reference to Yanique’s question about the Hardware Store that is now migrating online from a Brick and Mortar set up. Brett suggested that the Hardware Store should take their contact list and upload it into Facebook – have your customers connect with you, post things of value to your customers. Use video and show customers how to do things, re-purposing videos as videos are “hot” Do not be solely focused on selling your products.
  • Brett stated that the tool he couldn’t live without is ClickFunnels and Infusionsoft hands down. One that he likes right now is Trello, they use it as communication through team. It is used from a team communicative perspective.
  • Brett shared that one of the books that have had the biggest impact is the first that he jumped into which he didn’t read a book until he was 25 years old. He taught himself how to speed read but he thought it was him being lazy just skipping through, skimming pages but at the age of 25 he immerse himself in his first book called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber, it was the first book that he started and was like, “this is me, they are talking to me” which is ironic because it is the story about the entrepreneur, the technician and the manager and they used McDonald’s as an example of building a business that can be franchised and duplicated and he finally went on to build a franchise.
  • Brett suggested that you need to connect with your big Why, your big mission, vision of what you truly want to be doing. He shared that he started the online world 8 years ago, all he want to do was make money online, sit on the beach and drink Piña Colada, that was the vision that he wanted but what he really wanted, his biggest vision in life is to stand on stage in front of tens and thousands of people and share the message that life’s too short to not be living to your fullest potential. If he wants to achieve this big vision and mission, there’s no way he can possible do it by himself and that’s where the concept that his friend created a framework called the EPT (Entrepreneurial Personality Type). The first thing as an entrepreneur, the question you ask yourself is “How do I get ahead, how can I help myself move forward?” when you do your first hire it’s purely on the basis of how can they help me move forward, it’s selfish act so to speak. You are giving someone employment, money and all of those things but the reason why people hire is because they need help. The next step moving forward through that is “How do we both get ahead, how do I help you now as an employee start living to your potential?” and that’s where a lot of employers get scared about, they say, “I don’t want to empower my employees too much, they would probably get up and leave.” That was limiting belief that he had and instilled in him as well until he had the conversation with a couple of different friends and one of the comments landed and it was like, “Why wouldn’t you want people to outgrow your business, it’s an amazing thing that means you have done a great job, you have helped them now go to their next level in life.” It is in agreement with his message in life is helping people live their full potential. He has people in his company now that doesn’t want to be there in the next 12 months because they are going to outgrow it. When you are around him, you are inspired to go and live to your true potential and if he has people in his company who is sitting around a computer and going, “This is not really what I want to be doing for the real of my life.” He has to understand and live with the reality that he is going inspire people around in his circle to go out to do something bigger and different. It also comes down to not being afraid that you need to have an employee that’s going to be a 20-year veteran in your company. The Ultimate Goal is Contribution – how do we contribute to someone other than ourselves – how do we get there.
  • Brett stated that the one thing that he is working on right now is definitely his book; it has been over a year in the making. He released it in October 2016 but he wrote it 1 year previously in November. It is what the book’s message actual represents as it’s not a book to him, it’s the message. It’s what’s itched on to the pieces of paper and more so now because it has been out for a couple of weeks, he is getting tons of feedback, people messaging and tagging him in posts on Facebook just sharing how much of a change it has starting to make a change in their life because it’s very practical step by step, it’s not just philosophy, it’s like, “go and try this, go and try that” so you can start seeing momentum. All we need to move forward and start living to our full potential is to start creating momentum, start creating steps right now and that’s what’s really exciting, they have tied also Unleash Your Greatness Bali escape which they run every year, which is an event they run in Bali, it’s a 5 day event, it takes people from all over the world there and it’s amazing. He is just loving being able to now be in that position of contribution. He is still building a business, he is still building businesses but to be able to take that step out and really start to have more profound impact on people’s lives.

Brett shared that the book Right Now!: Why Not You and Why Not Now? by Brett Campbell can be found at www.rightnowacademy.com/book, you can also find it on Amazon and in book stores around the world.

 

  • Brett shared listeners can find him at –

www.brettcampbell.net

Brett Campbell Facebook

Brett Campbell Twitter

Brett Campbell Instagram

Brett Campbell Podcast – Deep Dive Podcast

 

  • Brett shared a quote that he has a couple and one of them is “Done is better than perfect” is critical because too many people get road blocked and stage fright on the sense that “It needs to have this before I do this” or “I have to achieve this before that.” The other one is from Michelangelo is “The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

 

Links

1