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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!
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Now displaying: May, 2020
May 26, 2020

Matt DiMaria is the president and CEO of VHT, vendors of the callback software category, serving 280 of the largest brands in the world. Last year, VHT served over 225 million callbacks to consumers from brands such as Bank of America, AT&T, United Healthcare, Comcast and many others. Matt specializes in developing high performance teams in consumer and enterprise software - having contributed to creation of over $2 billion in value to shareholders, employees and investors.

 

Questions

 

  • Could you share with us a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got into this callback service, a little history, and also why it is that it led you on this particular path?
  • Could you share with us some of the other things that VHT offers? I know we spoke about a callback service. Is there any other part of the technology that allows companies to really delve into satisfying their customers in a better way?
  • You've been in the customer experience arena for many, many years. How do you see customer experience changing over the next 5 years, especially in light of the fact that we've all been forced to have to make adjustments to how we deliver service to our customers because of this pandemic that we're experiencing globally. Do you see that transitioning the landscape of customer experience as we move forward?
  • Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
  • What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
  • Could you share with us some of the books, maybe one or two that have had the biggest impact on you, whether it was a recent read or maybe something you read a very long time ago that stays with you to this day?
  • Could you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can listeners find you online?
  • Could you share with us one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote because it kind of helps to refocus you and kind of just get you back on that path.

 

Highlights

 

Matt shared that the journey to be VHT for me started in 2017, partnered with a wonderful group of investors in the San Francisco Bay Area, a firm called Alpina Investors and they partnered with the goal of looking for businesses that really capitalized on two trends that they thought were important. One is the increasingly critical role that artificial intelligence automation would play for delivering customer success information.

 

So, whether that would be for, let's say, product level requests, people are gathering information and making a purchase decision or break fix type of requests where individuals are calling in because they're having difficulty working with a product or service and need the help from a brand to accomplish that. And our sort of underlying assumption was in this increasingly complex, multi-device world, consumers will have greater need for services but there's a finite capacity of skills and knowledge to service that demand.

 

And it turned out VHT really capitalized on both of those trends. What callback software ultimately is all about, particularly for these very, very large brands like Bank of America, or a big airline or consumer brand is they deal with a tremendously high volume of calls that are coming into a contact centre, but they have finite agent capacity to serve those requests.

 

And anytime there's a gap or a breakdown in that, we all experience that as hold time and probably one of the very few universal negative experiences that we have when we're trying to get help from a brand is more waiting on hold.

 

So what VHT does is takes that time and transfers it to when the consumer is available and an agent is ready to talk to that customer and because they do that at such a large scale, it ends up being something that creates a lot of brand loyalty. So, it drives up net promoter scores and customer engagement, but it also saves the brand an awful lot of money, because instead of having staff for situations where they have peak demand at all times, what they can do is staff to a more sustained level and then make that capacity available to meet the customers when they're available to serve them.

 

So, they saw that as a wonderful opportunity. And about a year and a half ago, about 18 months ago, they acquired a virtual hold and since that time, they've been investing to advance that into a similarity that he’s I'm happy to talk about.

 

I asked what does VHT stand for? As it wasn’t on the website. Is it Virtual Hold Technology?

 

Matt stated that that's exactly right. The company was founded 25 years ago by a brilliant entrepreneur named Mark Williams, the original name of the company was Virtual Hold Technology and as the name implies, it's really all about callback.

 

Me:Great, so this software, I think, is brilliant. I don't know if you service organizations in Jamaica but if you don't, I think there is a great opportunity here. So, I host my website with GoDaddy and I've been having a lot of challenges upgrading my website in the last few weeks in relation to my developer and having it migrated and there's just a lot of issues and so I have to be calling GoDaddy quite often, of course, with Coronavirus, they've had an exceedingly large volume of calls and they have the option.

 

First of all, they advise you of how long the wait time will be and they’ll say like 20 or 25 minutes. And then they say, “If you'd like for us to call you back in 20 or 25 minutes, we can give you back a call.”

 

And of course, because they have my number in their system already, it's just a matter of me stating my name after they've put on a beep and it's been brilliant, it works wonderfully, I don't need to sit on hold and they call me back and when they do call me back, I'm not waiting for more than about maybe 20 seconds before the call actually is transferred to a live human being. So, I must commend you. I think it's a brilliant software, and I think every business should implement it, especially if they're experiencing, as you said, a large volume of calls.

 

Matt agreed and stated that there's no question and the experience that you're having, of course, is something that's familiar to us all at the moment because of the COVID-19 virus and they've (VHT) been very active in adjusting their business model and their offerings to support companies that are experiencing a lot of strain as a result of COVID-19.

 

They launched a program several weeks ago now, about a little over a month ago called the Virtual Hold COVID Assistance Program and the goal is to make not just their callback capabilities, but their automation capabilities, their messaging capabilities that are newer, coming from the company available to businesses or even local government organizations that are suddenly finding themselves, for example, not being able to be in their office and consumers or tax holders or people seeking information about the virus and so forth, calling into their local offices trying to get answers to questions and they're just not equipped to operate.

 

And so, they've been delighted to work with some local governments, some healthcare providers and others to provide their capabilities at no cost for 30 days, which, as we all know in the early stages of the virus outbreak, was quite critical. And now what they're finding with their customer base businesses that they've been doing business with for quite a long time, they're also helping them make longer term plans because, thankfully, the virus will not last forever and as they begin to normalize their businesses, they're able to help them deliver consistent service levels even as the staffing is a little bit uncertain, unfortunately.

 

Matt shared that their vision for their company is to enable people to get the help they need for brands they love on terms that they choose. And callback is, of course, very illustrative of that. But as they thought about that vision, they also looked at not just where the market has been, but where the future is. And they arrived at a focus on the mobile device as the primary device in which almost all of us now are using to make inquiries to brands, to make phone calls, but also, of course, it's our primary communication tool to interact with each other.

 

And in the context of a person to person interaction, we're messaging with friends or communicating with friends, that's not just a voice experience anymore. In fact, overwhelmingly, people are preferring even for the initial contact with a friend to be through an SMS perhaps interaction or through a mobile messaging application of some sort.

 

And then, maybe you ask, “Hey, are you available to talk on the phone right now or would you be available later?” So, the ability to move from a messaging interaction to a voice interaction is something that we all just take for granted because we're all equipped with a smartphone.

 

So, what they see going forward is that's how every major brand is going to have to interact with their customers.

 

So, they developed a new platform that they call Mindful and what Mindful does is delivers as a SAAS offering, a way for large brands to interact with their customers in the manner in which they prefer so they could start, for example, with a SMS interaction asking for information about a product or service or how particular solution needs to be implemented or checking on a reservation, checking in on a bank balance, could be anything. And to enable that to be initiated in either a voice call or through a messaging interaction and then for the brand to interact with them as though they were a friend, so be able to maintain the session information over time, because as we all know, you bring up your friends messaging session and you can see the whole conversation history, the consumer can see the whole conversation history.

 

So, they want to do the exact same thing for large brands to enable them to interact with their customers and preserve all that conversation history so there's always context on the history of the relationship, perhaps the evolution of a problem and things of that sort. And that's what they're delivering on the Mindful platform, is a complete toolset, if you will, to make interacting with a large brand, just like interacting with your best friend.

 

Me: So it's almost like the WhatsApp version of a company experience?

 

Matt agreed. He shared what’s difficult of course, is to do that at scale. So, as he mentioned, if you're a large airline or a large bank where you have bag of millions and millions of consumers that you're interacting with, you end up with a very unique set of challenges, hopefully, as he mentioned, we're back to more normal situations where maybe there's a power outage in a particular area or perhaps, a hurricane if you're in Jamaica, you're familiar with the weather being very disruptive. And the airlines need to be able to adjust to changing conditions, but yet deliver consistent service and if you're operating multiple contact centers or things of that sort.

 

Sometimes the contact center is going off line and you need to shift some of that demand to a contact center that's currently available. So, that's where they feel like they can bring just a lot of value is when these problems are really on a large scale, spanning millions of consumers and make sure it's a great experience for the company and also a very significant financial benefit, because, as he mentioned earlier, they're able to maintain a more steady staffing level, even though demand might be very dynamic.

 

Me: Mindful platform and we can access that through your website, www.vhtcx.com allows for this seamless transition across talk and text. Does it provide analytics as well?

 

Matt shared that the other real key pieces, there's really two other real key elements. First is automation's, because as you move between different channels and different sessions and so forth, there's an opportunity to gain efficiencies by applying bots and artificial intelligence and automation really weaves together the transitions between a voice interaction that could be with a live agent to a bot, to an A.I. service.

 

And so, automation is one piece of it but as you mentioned, all of this needs to make sense from a business standpoint in terms of ensuring that service levels are being monitored and maintained, being able to look at what the different queue conditions are and the relative performance of how the cues are responding to what customer demand is. Obviously, there's cost associated with that. So, the analytics gives them the ability to work with their customers to ensure that they're not just delivering a great consumer experience, but that also it's making financial sense and business sense as well.

 

Matt shared that he thinks that we are all being conditioned into a new set of expectations as a result of mobile devices. And we take it now as second nature that we have this very powerful supercomputer we carry with us. And it's connected up to a global network that is able to provide services and data on demand.

 

And what we believe is that the sort of traditional contact center that was really designed around when telephones were something that were attached to a wall with a cable and that the customer's experience expectations are dramatically different.

 

And the technology to service them, therefore, must also reflect that evolution. So, first and foremost is authentication and really that speaks to in order for a brand to be able to meet the customer's needs, they need to know who you are and so there's tremendous work going on to dramatically simplify authentication, whether that's an app or through a messaging interaction or voice interaction. And the challenge there, of course, is it needs to be as frictionless as possible but at the same time, protect the private information, enable sensitive information such as, if it's health care data or financial data to be exchanged in it as frictionless a manner as possible.

 

The second piece is, as he mentioned, how the customer wishes to be served. So, once he knows who you are, then he can start understanding how best to serve you. So, for a younger demographic, let's say they may never want to talk on the phone at all, they may want to conduct all their business through a digital interaction, whether that's an SMS, an in app experience or a digital experience on the company's website. So, being able to have that preference understood as early in the experience with the customer as possible so that it can be delivered appropriately.

 

And then, of course, it extends out into multiple devices and especially as we look at Alexa and other smart devices that are increasingly capable of native voice interactions with no human involvement. That's going to be a very important area of evolution and how we expect to be served. We want to be able to ask questions and get answers pretty instantaneously and so that is going to involve the voice assistant technology, again, complemented with A.I. and automation to really make that a seamless and delightful experience for their consumers.

 

But in the end, they also believe that agents will continue to play a vital role because just the nature of complex interactions with customers or particular, it may be that the customer prefers ultimately to talk to a human being, if that involves, let's say, retirement planning or vacation plan and things of that sort where you might need human expertise or human judgment on how to resolve a particular issue or answer a particular question. So, they see that the agent continuing to play a vitally important role or maybe more a general is a subject matter expert to continue to play a very vital role in delivering great customer experiences for the foreseeable future.

 

I agreed and stated, I think technology is awesome, it really has made things simpler and I love that word that you use frictionless or effortless. Less effort we customers have to invest in anything that we're doing makes our life that much easier. But I still do believe that people still crave at some point some human interaction because the reality is, when you call a company or you're trying to reach out to them, you're really only reaching out for two reasons, to make a request or to make a complaint.

 

And so, if it's a complaining issue or even if it's a request, I'm thinking you want some form of immediate feedback. I mean, one of my pain points, since Coronavirus is, a lot of local organizations in Jamaica have taken up WhatsApp as a method of communication with their channels but they're not responsive. You’ll send a WhatsApp message at 9:00 am in the morning and nobody responds to you until 3:00 pm in the afternoon, had I wanted to wait 6 hours for response, I probably wouldn't have contacted you.

 

Matt mentioned that that's wonderful example of when we think about customer experience. Ultimately, we are emotional beings. And so, something that makes him happy and feel good when he interact with a brand is really what the brands need to aspire to deliver to their customers. And so, if he’s disappointing the customer and the callback world, if they say that your phone is going to ring in 20 minutes and there's going to be an agent on the phone, you expect as a consumer for your phone to ring in 20 minutes and there to be an agent on the phone. And so, that's an example in the callback domain.

 

In the WhatsApp example or other digital examples, he thinks we all have experienced automations that fall well short of what his expectations are, because they're very task specific, they're perhaps very repetitive or the information that he’s providing them never makes it to a human agent that by the time he’s talking to an agent, he has to reintroduce himself, re-explain the problem and all these sorts of things. So, the ability to apply the appropriate amount of automation to make it very easy to onboard, very easy to initiate contact with the brand but ultimately, as you experienced it, you need to think it all the way through to, “Why did this individual contact me and am I resolving that in a timely and delightful manner?”

 

And so that's not easy for brands to do because you're experiencing it right now. Obviously, those organizations would love to deliver a great experience but it does involve really thinking through completely what the end to end experience is going to be that you serve to the customer and that's really where they focus a lot of their energy is delivering a great customer outcome. So, that's the key to the whole thing, it’s not the technology, it's that ultimately that emotional, you smile at the end of the interaction and all too often we don't experience that very often in interacting with brands.

 

When asked how does he stay motivated, Matt shared that in a very direct sense, he thinks every day is a gift and he heard a quote a long time ago that really stayed with him, which is that, “Each moment and each breath is a new beginning.” And he thinks it's very easy for people to get distracted by maybe what happened yesterday or what might happen in the future but he's certainly really taken a lot of motivation from just looking at the opportunities that you have. Even solving problems today is delivering a lot of value and one of the real things they're privileged with at VHT is they get to do their job still, even though their company is remote, unlike so many people that are suffering and being dislocated and so forth. So, getting motivated is not a challenge at all. They're getting up every day and they know they're helping millions of people get answers to questions and he finds that personally to be very motivating.

 

Matt shared that for operating their business right now, they're heavy users of the Zoom platform for video and collaboration but a close second behind that is Slack. And so, those are the two tools they've been leveraging very heavily internally for their internal communications and for the customer communications, because most of their customers are large companies, those tend to be whatever the tools are that the customer prefers for them to use to interact with them and their brands. But within their business, they're leaning very heavily these days on both Zoom and Slack.

 

When asked about books that have has the biggest impact, Matt shared that the one that was from a long time ago that made a big impression on him is called The Executive in Action : Three Drucker Management Books on What To Do and How To Do It by Peter Drucker. It's actually three books in one. If you study management thinking for any period of time, ultimately, whether it's somebody that just published a book last week or somebody published a book 10 years ago, they all go back to Peter Drucker and it's a common point of origin. He's a very forward thinking man and did an incredible volume of work so that is the first one from long ago. More recently, his wife gave him as a present at Christmas time, turned out to be very timely that's Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was one of the Roman emperors, first part of the new millennium and he was a philosopher and stoic philosophy and that really focuses on being in the moment. And that's the short version of he’s new to stoic philosophy so he will not attempt to over explain what it is, but it really is all about making sure that you're staying in the moment and trying to serve good always. If you're in the moment and you're trying to serve a good purpose, then generally speaking, you’re on the right track.

 

I mentioned that it's funny you said that because it dovetails nicely into this new principle that many organizations and their leaders are embracing, which is mindfulness. And it also matches back with the name of your new platform, mindful. So, what I'm getting is it's being present in all of those moments that you are sharing with each and every one of those customers in order to build stronger relationships.

 

Matt agreed and stated that it is coincidental that the Marcus Aurelius practice and stoicism really is about mindfulness. And he thinks their brand, they thought very deeply about it that wasn't something that they came up with because they thought it was a catchy name.

 

They wanted to convey what their intent is, and they felt that mindful really conveyed their intent; the reason why they get up every day is, as he mentioned earlier, to service that vision of enabling people to get the help they need from brands they love on terms they choose. And for them, that really meant that you approach people in a thoughtful way, in a sensitive way as to what their preferences are. And, of course, there's the connotation around artificial intelligence and some of the other things that ultimately can be brought to bear on delivering great customer experience.

And so, when they first came upon the idea of branding their new offering, Mindful, they got really excited about it very quickly. So, it's Mindful by VHT.

 

Matt shared that one of the things they adopted after the Coronavirus hit is they do a call every single day, they call it coffee tea time and it's completely voluntary for their employees to come to that. And it was intended to be, as the name implies, just a place to come and relax. When people are working from home, it's easy to get lonely. We're all human beings and social animals.

 

So they thought it’s a nice place to gather but what's sort of come out of that for them is they also saw that as a place to bring motivation and light and encouragement to people. And one of the things that they hold as one of their core values is that they are pursuing things with a sense of passion and purpose, that's an individual expression. And so, what they're doing now is something he has gotten directly involved with is they are reaching out to people to join them during their coffee time that they'd be motivating to hear from. That would bring light and sort of insight, of course, things that are relevant in the world that we work in, but also relevant in terms of people that have really lived their passion in life.

 

So they're actively inviting people to come in. It's similar to what they're doing right now, have a 10 or 15 minute conversation and then invite the employees to ask questions and just have a discussion. So, they're bringing people from across the industry and people that they've met over the years that they think would be of interest to the team, to commence on. He’s very excited about that and he doesn't think they'll do it five days a week, but he thinks they will do it one or two days a week. They'll have an outside guest come in and join them. So he’s very excited about that.

 

I asked, so have you started as yet or is it something that's ongoing?

 

Matt shared that he just confirmed his first 2 guests. So, now they're getting more nominations from some employees on people that would be fun to have come. And so he’s excited about inviting them.

 

  • Matt shared listeners can find him at –

Facebook – @vhtcx

LinkedIn – VHT

Twitter - @vhtcx

YouTube - VHT

Website – www.vhtcx.com

 

Matt mentioned that first and foremost, he would love you to follow their company, he monitors that quite closely. So, if you have questions or areas of interest, please like them on those platforms or join them on those forums. And he'd love to talk with you there.

 

  • When asked about a quote or saying that helps him refocus, Matt shared that he’s going to quote that ancient philosopher Yoda, “There is no try. There is only do or do not.”

Links

 

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Listen to past episodes of Navigating the Customer Experience | Join Our Mailing List for future articles, podcasts and videos on Customer Experience

 

May 19, 2020

Dr. Nima Rahmany, DC, CCWP is both a Chiropractor and an educator, specializing in helping individuals and professionals get to the ROOT CAUSE of their physical and emotional challenges, from stressed, depressed,  and anxious to living powerfully aligned and on purpose.

After building a successful Chiropractic practice in Maple Ridge, BC, Dr. Nima sold his clinic in June 2016 to pursue his passion for teaching and coaching professionals who are stressed, depressed, and anxious to transform and have their best year ever – in both a private and corporate setting.

Questions

  • Could you share with us a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got to where you are today?
  • For those of our listeners that are listening, whether they're business owners or they are employees of an organization, could you give them maybe two or three tips that will help them to become more grounded and present in those types of conversations?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • What are some books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • Can you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • If our listeners listen to you today and there is one takeaway that you could advise them to take from this interview, this engagement, this conversation that we're having to make them stronger individually or to make them stronger as a leader or even as an employee in their organization. What would that one thing be?
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • Could you share with us maybe a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you would rely on this quote or you would say it to yourself or you would remind yourself of this to kind of be refocused and just get back on track.

Highlights

  • Nima shared that he is a chiropractor. He was 13 years old when he had his first chiropractic adjustment and he got up off the table and he was like, “This is it. This is it. The end all and be all of healing.”

He knew he wanted to be a doctor helping people. He thought that by adjusting the spine, getting to the root cause of the problem rather than just masking the problem with pills was the way to go.

And what he didn't realize was that 10 years, 15 years into the process of being in practice, realizing that people were coming in really with stress related disorders, and if you really get to know them, they're usually on the wake of some sort of a identity crisis, relationship crisis. Those are real stress related issues, are crises, these spiritual work-related relationship crises, limbo, infidelity, breakdowns, divorce, old traumas that we've been holding on to based on relationship crises.

When he started to understand that these were the patterns that were bringing people in to see him, his ego was not satisfied. He wanted to go deeper.

So he started creating these three hour workshops called Life Skills for a Stressful World for his patients, they are on Saturday mornings and he would notice that the patients that would come in to those events would have better outcomes because they took responsibility, they understood how to listen to the messages of their body.

And slowly but surely, it became more fun for him to teach those classes than it was to come and deal with the end stages of stress. So, fast forward 10 years, now he leads a global community of self healers, teaching them tools and skills to heal themselves from their old conditioning patterns and heal their attachment wounds.

Yanique asked, can you tell me how you think that connects on an individual level, if it is that you are healed and you are functioning at your fullest capacity,if it is that you're feeling pain or discomfort and you're not healed, how does that translate into someone's customer experience?

Dr. Nima shared that creating an amazing customer experience is all about Empathy. It's all about being able to get yourself out of your own victim's story and empathize 100% with the customer.

And so, if you have chronically self abandoned, if you have a pattern in your life where you've had trauma and when you have trauma, you self abandon.

What happens when you have a customer experience that's not a fulfilling one and you have someone that's really having a difficult time and you are working with somebody who's triggered in front of you.

You will go into the pattern of self abandonment again and create an exorbitant amount of stress rather than being able to contain your own emotions and hold your own ground internally, set your own boundaries internally, you'll become enmeshed with that other person.

Their emotions will become your emotions if you haven't done the inner work, that's it a very subtle but key component of creating a great customer experience is not enmeshing yourself with the other person's emotions.

Yanique mentioned emotional management, managing your emotions. It's funny you mentioned emotions, because in our customer service training, our definition of a quality experience is meeting and exceeding the emotional and intellectual needs of the customer. And over the years, we found that the emotional is actually even greater than the intellectual.

Dr. Nima agreed. The thing is that the rarest experience for a human being is to feel seen and heard. The rarest experience. So if he’s talking with Yanique, and he’s able to see and hear and empathize with himself first, he knows exactly who he is and he’s grounded in his roots.

Then he’s able to then come from a place of overflow and now meet what your needs are. Because he’s already so firmly grounded in himself that he can then empathize with you. He can see you and hear you. He can see the commitment behind the words you're using. He’s paying attention. He’s present with you.

He’s listening to the non-verbal cues that you're giving him, the tone of your voice. He can listen from a place of genuine curiosity rather than from a place of I hope this person likes me. So there's a difference. It's a felt sense difference. If he’s speaking to you and he’s genuinely looking after you versus, “Okay, so I hope I don't get into trouble. I hope you don't report me.” There's a completely different feel that he’s on a call with you, it's a presence, that's different, that's palpable.

  • Nima shared that the first thing is being grounded and connected with your breath and your body and sensation is the first thing, because what's going to happen is when you are on a call and there's a customer who is irate, who's going to have a bad day or maybe just yelling and screaming or whatever that's going on. If you haven't really properly healed from your traumas, what you're probably going to hear is your mother screaming at you or it's going to sound like your father, your body is going to go into this state of alarm and you're going go into story and you're going to turn into that five year old, you're going to turn into that 10 year old who is getting screamed at by mom or dad. And so the first step is to get into the awareness, getting into breath and getting into body right away, because what happens is you dissociate and you go back. It's as though you're experiencing that trauma all over again. It's not back then anymore, it's happening in the now in your nervous system. It's a felt sense. So, you have to really be aware of that. The first thing you want to do is to get right into breath, get into body and just feel the sensations coming up, touching your hand over your chest and really just repeating the words, “Those are their feelings, these are my feelings.” really separating your own self from that other person to prevent enmeshment. That's really the first thing that you want to do. You want to start and realize that their frustration is coming from a wound. So the best thing that you can do for yourself is to see through their wounding is to see through it because that'll help you not taking it personally and be able to be responsible rather than reactive.

Number two is to listen to them through their wounding, see a child inside of them that doesn't feel seen and heard. If you look at them through the lens of a wound, then it's not as threatening.

You’re looking at them as a child having a tantrum instead of a real threat to you. So if you see through them, see through whatever, if it's a difficult conversation, see through their challenge, see through their words as a wounded child that doesn't feel seen and heard.

You can help them tremendously, feel, seen and heard, repeating back, empathizing with them, repeating the sensations, repeating like it's tactical empathy. “Well, it sounds to me like you're feeling so-and-so. It seems like you're feeling so-and-so.”Seeing them through the lens of their wound is the assure fire way to drop the whole personal-ness of the interaction and feel like it's a lot more, it's less personal and you can actually be of service to that person.

First, you have resourced yourself, you put the oxygen mask on yourself first and you take care of you and once you've done that and you acknowledge yourself and you've done that you then turn in and acknowledge them and realize the rarest experience for a human is to feel seen and heard. So, if you're able to just see them and hear them and empathize with them that is the greatest regulation for your nervous system that you can do.

Number three basically is after you've done that, you then approach it with curiosity. The third step is with curiosity. “So I'm curious, what would work out best for you? Let's see how we can make this work.” Once you've empathize with them, you've now helped regulate their nervous system, you turn to curiosity. I wonder what would happen if, I wonder if, just approaching it with a playful curiosity, guaranteed you'll come up with a solution.

So there you have it, folks. If you are struggling and you want these three tips, these you can implement with immediate effect heard and live on direct here on Navigating the Customer Experience from Dr. Nima, getting into breath and body, feeling the sensations. Listening to the other person through their woundings, seeing their words, tactical empathy, and then approaching with playful curiosity. What would work best for you?

  • When asked how he stays motivated, Dr. Nima shared that he has a mission statement that every client that he works with, they create a personal and business mission statement thathelps you stand for something greater than yourself. So, if you're connected to a Why that's big enough and connect with it every day, then you don't need motivation, you're actually inspired. So, the best way to stay motivated is to listen to content that's inspiring and be connected to a mission that's greater than yourself.

Dr. Nima shared that his biggest Why really is he stands for healed families. The work that he does help breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. We grow up in environments with families where our parents didn't really have understanding of the nervous system and the importance of emotional attunement.

So, often our primary caregivers didn't really know how to meet our emotional needs for feeling seen and heard. So we then start to replay these attachment wounds from our primary caregivers in our relationships, and we get married with these unhealed attachment wounds, replaying all of the same kind of cycles and complexes that we lived in childhood, you marry your mother, you marry your father, and you don't really realize it.

And that creates this toxic environment which then creates intergenerational trauma that children experience the exact same thing. And it just gets passed down from one generation to another. And families get divided and broken down and then that destroys people's health and well-being. And then we have a health care system that's in crisis but if we just go upstream and start to do our healing work of healing our attachment wounds and then healing those open loops in family dynamics, huge shifts can happen. So, he stands for healed families.

When asked about an online tool that he can’t live without in his business, Dr. Nima shared that in his business, it would be Audible. He listens to audio books every single day. Your business is going to only grow to the degree that you grow, it's a personal development benchmark and so the more you develop yourself, the more your business will develop.

Nima shared that the biggest impact for sure has been the book The Miracle Morning: The 6 Habits That Will Transform Your Life Before 8 AM by Hal Elrod and it just how to really structure your day and make sure that you do all of your morning and evening rituals to structure your day, it's been a hugely impactful book.

 

Nima shared that it’s both; it's kind of going through him. He just got married a month ago and they're about to have a baby in October. And so, making sure that there's that feeling of safety and connection and secure attachment at home so that the baby feels safe in an environment where there's love and presence and attunement. And he’s just really delighted to be able to share that and start helping others create secure attachments at home as well.

 

Nima shared that that one thing would be to heal your attachment wounds. Just go and take whatever that you have been resenting, your greatest resentment that you feel wounded by and find a completion with it, get complete with that. That's really the greatest gift that you can give. The greatest gift that you can give your child is a fully healed parent. Imagine growing up in an environment where if your parents did the healing work themselves, their inner work. How would that have changed your experience if your parents had that opportunity to heal their attachment wounds?

Yanique agreed that they would definitely make a great improvement because we are parents and unfortunately, there is no book that you're given when you become a parent that pretty much gives you a play by play of what to do and when to do it. And of course, yes, every child is different. And I'm sure you’ll come to realize that when you become a parent yourself. I struggle daily. I have a 14 year old and Lord knows there are times when I have to myself find a book that kind of helps me to navigate as to what do I do when she's at this troublesome teenage time in her life when she's clearly trying to find herself. But then maybe I'm not the one that she really wants to talk to. How do I make myself more accessible to that?

Dr. Nima mentioned that he has an answer for that one. What you do in those situations, is whatever's coming up for you instead of trying to help her, what you do is you go inside. You’ve got to understand, is she's here to teach you just as much as you're here to teach her. So, whatever she's bringing up for you, a disconnection that she's experiencing is a mirror for your own disconnection. And if you go back, there's a tool that he has come up with called the overview method, which helps you go back to your wounding that her issue is bringing up in you and you get complete with that. He puts that in his workshop, it's called How to Connect to a Disconnected Child or Teen and it helps you connect with the 14 year old inside of you and empathize with that part of you and once you've done that, the answer basically takes care of itself, it's pretty magical.

  • Nima shared listeners can find him at –

Facebook Group - Triggerproof (Join Dr. Nima’s Facebook Group as he covers content on how to regulate stress and strengthen immunity during this global crisis – he posts daily)

Website –www.drnima.com

Dr. Nima is offering his virtual workshop for FREE to all listeners of this podcast –www.drnima.com/vw1 PROMO CODE: triggerproof (all one word lower case no spaces) Complimentary 90 minute workshop on how to become trigger proof

  • Nima shared that his saying/quote that he relies on during times of adversity, it is from his friend, Dr. Russell Kennedy, “Am I safe in this moment?” It's kind of introspection. It's a really good one and then you just acknowledge because it's only in your mind that you're not safe usually.

Links

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Join Our Mailing List for future articles, podcasts and videos on Customer Experience

 

May 15, 2020

Welcome to Navigating the Customer Experience Podcast, in today’s episode I will share some great thoughts that I have been having. It’s so unfortunate that all across the globe, we are all having to deal with this pandemic but what is interesting is I have been doing a lot of reading and doing a lot of research and I have really been seeing a lot of organizations pivoting their business in the whole thrust of trying to survive and thrive during this pandemic. I would like to share some thoughts I have put together regarding how it is that you can navigate your online customer experience.

With the advent of COVID-19, the online customer experience is fast becoming the new benchmark for which customers measure the level of service a company offers. In a practical way, the online customer experience may in some instances replace the face to face customer interaction especially for those business places that officially had to be closed. Companies, entrepreneurs or solopreneurs must revisit their avenues of customer interactions including their website, social media pages and other platforms and ensure the user experience isone which creates a favourable response for their customers.

The customer online engagement has skyrocketed in every part of the world as we continue to experience quarantine and restrictions in our movement. This means ensuring that every channel available for customer engagement must be functional. Now is a great time for businesses to do an audit of all of their service channels including online solutions and make sure everything is working well. The audit process may reveal functional or integration issues on your website. Websites along with social media platforms that are not optimized will require the necessary adjustments to be made.

Your customers want to receive fast, reliable, efficient service even though they are under quarantine. I have seen a few local companies here in Jamaica adding WhatsApp as a channel for placing orders, however, the most important step to apply is to ensure the channel is monitored. I sent a WhatsApp a few weeks ago for a prescription to be filled at around 10:35 am for a close friend of mine and the message was received and read, however, no one responded to the message to confirm receipt or even to advise if we’ll be able to pick up until 2:30 pm! Ensuring that you assign a dedicated person to monitor these channels if they are to be included as part of the online sales channel and customer experience is critical. The best category of WhatsApp that you should be using as a business is WhatsApp for Business and there are some features that this particular platform facilitates:

 

  • It allows you to broadcast messages for up to 256 contacts
  • It’s automated communications allows you to provide greeting messages, away messages or even quick repliesfor example: If the customer sends you a message, they could get an automated response that says, “We’ll get back in touch with you within 24 hours” or “We’re closed and will open back at x time” | Quick Replies allows you to respond with a pre-written message to the customer
  • WhatsApp Business App can also act as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Basically, WhatsApp can provide that as a tool for your business. The ‘labels’ feature in WhatsApp for Business allows you to tag contacts just like in a CRM application. You can add ‘labels’ to the customers that are frequently contacted or add the label during the messaging process. Once you tag the customer with a label, you will be able to create groups and create broadcasts based on labels you have assigned.

WhatsApp for Business is a great tool to employ in your business if that’s something you’re not currently using but most importantly, you must have a designated person who is going to monitor that channel.

Another big thing that you should think about is, Is your website customer friendly and easy to use? If not, now is the time to revisit and review the content being shown. Think about your website as your physical store. The customer must have the ability to not only window shop, but should also be able to make a purchase through your website. The information and content provided must be clear about what you offer and how they can access it. A customer will visit your site and see many things happening all at once. Your website page layouts, font choice, images, the content, and the purchase power (where applicable) influences whether customers will decide to make a purchase.

Recently, I had to insure my motor vehicle because the insurance expired and I visited the website of my insurance company. It seemed that they allowed third party bank transfers, however, the participating banks were only three (3). Their option for credit card payment was only available via a third party payment agency which would mean that I would have to sign up for an account with them. After exhausting all research online for my options for payment, I decided to visit the location in person. After completing the payment, I asked the Customer Service Representative why their company wasn't listed on the platform for all banks and of course she was unable to answer. You need to be aware of how accessible your services are to your customers especially during this time when we all have to reduce our face to face interactions with each other.

Another not so great example I had was with my bank. I visited their website to see what options they had available for credit card payments during this time. I wanted to get immediate feedback and so I opted to click on their button for Live Chat. However, after sending my question and being assigned a representative and their name was even provided, no one responded after thirteen (13) minutes of waiting. So, I’ve signed on onto this Live Chat, I’ve seen that Colleen is the representative that’s assigned to the conversation, sitting, waiting, waiting, waiting, 13 minutes elapsed and I’m just like this is clearly not working. Businesses must ensure that features including Live Chat are being actively managed by someone to respond quickly to any customers’ query or concern. An automated estimated response time should also be given to customers who are using your Live Chat communication. This ensures that expectation in terms of wait time is provided up front. Additionally, functionality in the form of clickable buttons on your website should be tested to ensure that they are actually working.

Another great area for improvement that you should look to improve is doing an audit of your Social Media brand. Review the platforms that you are present on - Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest. According to Statista there are 2.4 Billion active users on Facebook as at December 2019, YouTube has 2 Billion active users, Instagram has 1 Billion active users, Twitter has 330 Million active users, LinkedIn has 303 Million active users. Your customers are hanging out now more than ever on these platforms either for recreation, entertainment, browsing or for their own businesses. If your opening hours have been adjusted or you now offer delivery or curbside pickup or you have a Sales Offer, this type of information needs to be updated on your social media platforms because this is where the customers are spending most of their time.

Recently, I noticed that it is easier to visit a business’ Instagram page to confirm whether their restaurant or business is open and their adjusted opening hours. Google shows their opening hours as normal as if there were no changes to the opening hours which is rather misleading. Let’s say for example the business is normally open from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm but because of COVID-19, their business hours have been adjusted to 8:30 am to 1:00 pm, because they haven’t updated their Google business account then Google is still demonstrating their regular opening hours as if business is still operating as usual. So basically you need to visit your Google Business account and ensure that whatever adjustments you’ve made base on information that you’ve put out to the public it is consistent across all platforms. So if I type in your name in Google and it comes up, your adjusted opening hours should be there clear and visible. There are applications that can also provide a seamless integration to make the update a one time process.

Since this pandemic, I have seen customers really being more expressive on social media platforms about their shortcomings, issues and challenges with various companies. I urge you to ensure that when your customer makes a negative post on any of your social profiles, please do not delete it. Deleting the comment does not remove their experience, it does not help the situation. Every device has the brilliant capability of taking a screenshot and yes you have deleted it but it does not mean it is gone. Please prepare acommunication response plan that you can use to respond to these comments, you must show some form of empathy in the form of an apology, kind words and of course some action as to what are the next steps the customers can actually take. You should also try to migrate the conversation off of the public platform and re-direct the customer to a direct message (DM) or telephone call them to have the issue resolved or explained. You can say something like “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused, we will be sending you a direct message to see how best we can resolve the matter.”“What does this show?”It shows your customers who view the comments that you are human and you are willing to fix an issue rather than just delete it.

Another grave mistake many companies make is remaining silent when negative comments are being hurled all over their page/profile. Please note that remaining silent does not help either because it sends a message that you don’t care. If the customer was standing directly in front of you, would you ignore them, would you remain silent while they’re complaining? So why would you choose that approach online? Be compassionate and show your customers that you value them and their business. When this pandemic is over, the companies that will thrive are the ones who showed compassion, empathy and care when their customers needed it the most.

Take Aways from this conversation:

  • Audit all your online platforms and ensure they are functioning at full capacity
  • Be responsive on all platforms. This can be done by yourself or having a dedicated set of persons who have direct responsibility for responding. Remember when you are online the general expectation from a customer is an instant response
  • Create a communication response plan for when things go wrong with the service experience because they will go wrong at some point. Life isn’t perfect and things will go wrong. You must know what you are going to say and do and so should the members of your team
  • Ensure your online experience is effortless and your customer is not confused by how to navigate your website in order to get the delivery or the request processed
  • Focus more on your social media engagement and build your community - engaging on social media is a fantastic way to keep your brand top of mind all while delivering value to your customers
  • Reassure and Inform Your Customers - the most important part of navigating the online customer experience is keeping your customers informed of adjusted opening hours, updates to any delivery policies or a new way to reach Customer Service. It is important that your customer feels connected and they know exactly what is going on

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”

The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty.

This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately!

This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others.

Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Listen to past episodes of Navigating the Customer Experience | Join Our Mailing List for future articles, podcasts and videos on Customer Experience

Please share any steps, practices or ways that you have pivoted and enhanced your customer experience since COVID-19

 

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