Don Frericks knows the exhilaration of working with a good leader and the unrelenting pain of working for a bad one. In over 30 years of corporate leadership and coaching experience, he has developed the reputation as on outstanding leader, a passionate advocate for personal and corporate change, and a well-loved personal leadership coach for various Fortune 2000 organizations and industries.
Questions
Highlights
Don shared that he loves it because it's not a normal path. He actually had three wonderful experiences working for tremendous leaders, people that just were inspiring that you wanted to follow them because they were so good with people and they helped you be the best that you could be. And what was interesting in each one of those occurrences, they were the one that hired him, but they were gone in his experience six months later. And it was so abrupt and so quick that it was a bit shocking. And the next leader that came in behind them was not as good.
And in fact, in a few cases, they were horrible; the kind of people you would say would be the bad bosses of the world. And it was such a night and day difference. It shocked him to his very core and he noticed his own behaviour, his own performance slipped. He noticed that he didn't like it; he wasn't engaged like he used to be. He worked at a very high level, he puts a lot of energy and heart into his work and he wasn't doing that with these other bosses. So, he really felt like there's something about great leadership and how it has a huge impact on other people.
And after that experience and through those experiences, he started studying tremendous leadership and extraordinary leadership and what the difference is between good and extraordinary and why it makes a huge difference on businesses.
Me: So it's definitely been in your core, in your DNA from very early. Now, I see here on your bio also that you’re the author of the book, Best Boss Ever: The 5 Steps to rapidly develop yourself into the leader everyone wants to follow. And this podcast is called Navigating the Customer Experience as you know. One of the things I've found in the years of being a customer service trainer is that leadership is very critical in customer experience because if the leaders are not on board with delivering a quality experience both internally, because it starts from within, and then of course it flows over into the external, you're going to have a lot of challenges in the organization.
Don agree that Yanique is right on track with thinking how dynamic a situation can be internally as he’s sure you've seen many times where people have talked about the power of serving the employees so that they can serve the customers so well. Great leaders today get that, they understand that their service of their people internally needs to be taken to the next level. And that probably means getting to know your people at a level where you understand their emotional needs and understanding how they're dealing with all the challenges with the pandemic and the other things that are happening in our environment.
So, they're missing the point and they're missing an opportunity to connect heart to heart with their own employees. And that will prevent their employees from reaching out to the customer in such a way that that experience, as you're an expert in is at the highest level. And so we have to take care of our people and that's the leader's job.
Don shares that he thinks one of the most important aspects of extraordinary leadership is the ability to inspire and motivate others to high performance, Zenger, Folkman. John Zenger and Joe Folkman have done a tremendous amount of research in this regard. And they've looked at over a hundred thousand leaders around the world and from their research and their data, they have shown that statistically inspiring and motivating others to high performance is the most important aspect of extraordinary leadership.
So, it's one of those things that you'd say, “Well, that makes sense because when I'm inspired and motivated, I do my best work.” But as a leader, “What is it that I actually do to inspire and motivate others?” He’s sure the listeners have that question like, “How do I do that at a high level?”
And the number one trait that they have uncovered is making the emotional connection, similar to what he was just saying. Leaders today need to sometimes push aside their performance metrics and all of their meetings and the policies and procedures and make the emotional connection with their people, the most important thing.
And one good way that he often coaches his clients to do that is to go down and think about each person that's on their team and to assess how much of a relationship they have with each and every one of them, high, medium, or low, and how much trust is there in that relationship, high, medium, or low, and then to ask themselves, what can they do to invest more in that person emotionally, what can they do to connect with them in a way that maybe they don't have a connection today? It's amazing what comes up when you start to think about it at that level, as if it's one of the most important things you can do as a leader.
Another thing that he thinks listeners might be interested in is that the conversation around what inspires and motivates us doesn't happen very often in business today, we're expected to bring our own inspiration and motivation to our work, and absolutely the best employees are highly motivated.
But it's fascinating how as you go through life, what gets your attention changes as you move from maybe a very young age to mid age, to older age things that are important change. And so, what inspires and motivates you today may be different and good leaders stay in touch with what inspires and motivates their people by connecting with the changes that happen to them throughout their life.
And so, one way to do that is just to have a candid and curious conversation with their employees and team members about what currently inspires and motivates them. He finds a lot of leaders miss this point, because it seems like something that they feel like they don't need to talk about, but that's the problem. It is absolutely an emotional need for people to talk about what inspires and motivates them.
Me: And you want people to also feel very comfortable sharing with you because I may not feel comfortable sharing with you what motivates or inspires me if I don't trust you, which is what you alluded to at the beginning.
A big part of leadership is getting people to connect with you, but also for them to trust you. In terms of what inspires you, it means you're getting very vulnerable about what you like and what you don't like. And you typically feel more comfortable sharing that information with people who you feel you can trust, would that be fair to say?
Don agreed and stated that he loved the way Yanique put that together. Without that foundation of trust that you're speaking of, it is very hard to have a meaningful discussion about anything that's close to our heart, especially the things that inspire and motivate us. Vulnerability is absolutely a key and it's one of those skills that he finds a lot of leaders actually have to work at, it doesn't come natural for some reason, it seems like we've learned that when we get into the business world, we actually become less vulnerable. We become more professional, so to speak. That's not what people are looking for, they're looking for your heart, they're not looking for your professionalism.
Me: Why do you think leaders who are able to pretty much get a high level of productivity from their teams. There are some leaders who are not able to get that level of productivity. So, to give you an example. Yesterday I had a friend that called me and she said that her hairdresser has an employee, the young lady does really, really good in terms of her technical skills is amazing and the business owner cannot imagine this person not being in her business.
However, when I spoke to the owner, she said to me, the lady’s interpersonal skills are extremely poor. She doesn't know how to talk to people; she says things that comes over to be very disrespectful. The clients don't really like dealing with her, but she, the business owner cannot imagine her business without this person in it. And so, she wanted to know if I think training could fix this person. So, from a leader perspective, if you got a call like this, from a person like this, what would you recommend?
Don shared that his gut says that he'd like to have more information about this employee. However, just the way that you posed the case study, it sounds as though the employee has been able to perform their job without meeting some of the expectations of the job around treating the customer with respect and communicating with them at a high level.
And so, if someone's gotten away with underperforming in a certain aspect of their job, it really, to him, it seems to land on the business owner in this particular case. And the question he would have to her is like, “Are you willing to hold her accountable to a higher level, a higher standard of interaction with the customer?” If they're not, he wouldn't even waste the time on doing training or coaching or anything like that.
He thinks it starts with the business owner establishing clear expectations with all employees, not just this employee about how customers will be treated and the customer experience, and then literally holding them accountable. And if people can't do what we expect them to do, and we think they're valuable employees, then yes, training could be helpful, but only after expectations have been set. And after they attempt to hold people accountable to those expectations, what were your comments to her?
Me: So I asked her a series of questions. I asked her how long was she working with her? Before she hired her, did she get a background check to get any recommendations for how it is that she performed in previous employment? To which she said, no, she didn't have that. But then the young lady was working with her already. So to some extent there is really no recovery where that is concerned because you have firsthand how it is she's performing in any case.
Then I said to her, it sounds to me like some of the challenges you're having is not necessarily with her competency to do the job, but her attitude. And if you've spoken to her and you've indicated to her that this type of behaviour is not acceptable, your customers are not in agreement with how she's responding to him.
And she still continues to repeat the same behaviour, I'm not sure if any amount of training is going to help because at the end of the day, she has to make an intentional effort to ensure that her communication is one of the standard that you are expecting her to deliver to customers, even if she's the greatest shampooer or whatever the technical competence is required to ensure that customers walk out feeling that the service they came for was good.
But with that tangible service comes the soft side of it; “Did she pull my hair too hard? When she was speaking over me, was she speaking too roughly to me? Did she ask me questions in a tone that was just not very accommodating?” All of those things contribute to the entire experience, even if when you're washing the hair, you give it a really good wash. If how you're doing it is poor, then it takes away from the whole service experience. So, my concern was that if it's an attitude issue, I'm not sure training can fix it.
Don agreed and he was hoping that Yanique might be going that direction. It's very difficult to train for attitude and if it isn’t attitude, no problem as Yanique suggests it might be. He thinks training can be a waste of time. He did a lot of training and development throughout his career for over 20 years and he was always amazed at how little behaviour change followed training and he thinks a big part of it was what you're saying is that if people don't want to change, if they don't want to do something at a better higher level, they won't no matter how much training we actually give them.
So you're onto something, there is no doubt training does not make people change. People make people change. And he thinks that's the hardest part of leadership. And that's the hardest part of customer service is that our behaviours have to change to do it at a high level. And have you read the book Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear?
He hopes that listeners will get a copy of that. He thinks James Clear does a great job talking about our habits and what you can do to change them. And if you want to be a great leader, if you want to be a great customer service manager or great at customer service, it does require us to get better. And that means to him, changing habits, that book can be very helpful.
Me: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, the reality is our success is based on the habits that we have. So, the habits that you build upon every single day. I recently did a Facebook live and the guest was talking about changing habits and one of the questions he asked me, which was so profound Don. He said to me, you noticed how since coronavirus and the pandemic, everybody has basically had to develop a new habit overnight wearing of masks because I'm sure you were not wearing a mask prior to March 13th.
So, then he says to me, where do you keep your mask? So I said, to be honest with you, I keep it in my car because over the first few weeks I kept on leaving it, I would reach to my destination and I would say, why do I look/feel out of place?
And then I'm like, “Oh, I left my mask at home and I'm not going to turn back to get it.” So in order to ensure that I always have it, I keep it in the car because I'm not wearing it anywhere. As you know, I'm not wearing it at home. So it's clearly when I'm going on the road. And he said, you were able to develop that habit because you built it on top of other habits that you have so that you could ensure that it now became a part of your routine.
And, you know, when I looked at it from that perspective, I said, you know, that's a very good point. Because I had to find a way to incorporate this into my normal activities to ensure that it became, as he said, a part of my routine, where do you keep your mask Don?
Don shared that he keeps his mask in the car as well. He loves Yanique’s comment about habit stacking. And he thinks that's one of the things that James Clear points out. If you stack your habits, it's a much easier way to start a new habit rather than starting at all by itself, because it needs some way to get going. That's why habits are so hard. What's the old saying about old habits are strong and jealous.
Me: If you're accustomed to doing something for a very long time, and the reality is human beings, they put up a lot of resistance to change. When it's new, it's like, why should we do it this way? Even with these virtual experiences that we're all having now, predominantly my business has been operating from home for quite some time. Even before COVID, I decided to get rid of my office space and just operate from home.
And so, even when COVID came in, it wasn't a hard adjustment for me to start working from home. But people who are accustomed to going into an office from 9-5 every day, I've spoken to quite a few of my friends and even colleagues who say they don't necessarily like working from home, they prefer the blended approach, or they want to go back out to work because they miss the interaction.
And the reason I think they're saying that is because it's new, it's different; they're not accustomed to it. It makes them feel uncomfortable. And that change makes it very difficult for us to adjust. But then I've had clients who said that they've actually had a higher level of productivity from their team members since they've been working from home versus when they were physically in the space.
Don stated that he fully understands what Yanique is speaking of. And he thinks we're seeing such a change, a rapid change in the way that we do work, it's amazing. He wants to go back to what Yanique said about attitude. He wants to make sure that listeners really get the power of this. He also had a recent customer service experience where he was going through a fast food line at a restaurant to get some dinner for his grandkids.
And as he was doing that, he recognized right away that the speed of the service was very good. And he was very pleased with how quickly they were able to take his order and get him his food. But he also noticed there was something else that was happening that really delighted him. And it was an experience where the individual who was taking his order was willing to be personable with him and ask him some questions and also allow him to ask them some questions, because there was a little bit of a wait time before he can move on to the next point in the service line.
And he really enjoyed that because they became human with one another. There wasn't just an order being placed and an order being received. It was two people talking and he thought this young person has a great attitude back to your point of service because they wanted to connect with him. And he just thought that was so powerful.
He can't underestimate the power in customer service of people being interested. And he loves the word curious, and that's good, the curiosity word is so good for all of us leaders as well as customer service providers.
When asked how he stays motivated, Don stated that that's a great question. It's very simple for him and maybe it won't even resonate that much with your listeners because he’s going to give you an answer, it's called purpose.
He believes that his purpose in life is to change the world one leader at a time. And what he’s trying to do is bring greater, better leaders into the world because the world right now desperately needs good servant leaders that can bring a higher level of performance in all aspects of our society. We're so desperate for people to be peacemakers and to find ways for the world to live more in harmony, where we can take care of each other.
And so his purpose shows up every time he wakes up in the morning and he’s getting started to begin his day, he lives his life to be on purpose. And even during the difficult periods where maybe there's challenges that he didn't expect or challenges with certain clients or clients situations, he doesn't let it get to him because he recognize that it's one aspect of him being able to fulfill his purpose.
It's not a difficulty that he needs to dread, it's just something he needs to work around so that he can fulfill his purpose. And he thinks every time that he’s on purpose and I can tell you (Yanique) live her life on purpose, he'd like to hear how Yanique frames her purpose. It just makes such a huge difference in terms of the way that you do the work that you do.
Me: It does. It's funny you said that because when I started this business back in 2007, 2008, I started it because I thought about what it is that I really like to do. But I also started it because I also thought about in Jamaica, which is where I live and I was born and I've spent all of my life, customer service is challenging.
So, Jamaican people are extremely warm and friendly, but I find that in a lot of the service businesses, you don't necessarily get that warm and friendliness. It's almost like you feel like you're begging them to serve you. And so I started to think, how could I contribute to improving the quality of service in Jamaica and globally? And I started to think about a cartoon that I used to watch when I was a little girl called Care Bears. I don't know if you know it.
So my vision for the company is “To Create a More Caring World.” And it was inspired through the Care Bears. If I could be the Care Bear with that little beam on my tummy. And I'm beaming this light out to basically, as you said to change one lead at a time, but to change each company or each team member at a time that they are converted to ensuring that in every interaction they have, whether they stay at that company that I train them in, or they leave and start their own business, or they go and work for someone else. They always ensure that they deliver a high quality of service, because I think if our service experiences improved, we'll all have a better quality of life.
You'll go through the day and you will feel like, “Oh my goodness, I had a great day today. I had such good interactions. People were so accommodating. Things ran so smoothly.” And of course, if you have fewer obstacles, then you'll be less stressed. So, that's really my purpose every day to create a more caring world and I'm that Care Bear that's basically trying to beam my little light across on everyone. So yeah, I do get you when you say; it's all about your purpose.
Don agreed that it's all about your purpose and thanked Yanique for having that purpose too. What a beautiful way to live your life and to be a role model for your area. Hopefully the listeners are like, “I get that. I understand exactly why you're doing that.” He sometimes finds people will say, “Well, I'm glad you have that purpose, but that's not my purpose.” He always says, “We'll fine, find your purpose. You don't have to have my purpose.”
Me: Just figure out what it is that really drives you. There are days does, I talk to people many times and they say to me, “How do you get up and do the same thing every day? Don't, you get bored of it? Don't you get frustrated?” But I don't because I understand what my why is and it drives me every single day. Every, every article I read, if I watch something on TV, if I'm talking to someone, it all goes back to service, how we serve each other.
And so, I'm always looking for opportunities. I'm always stimulated, there's not a day that goes by that I'm not excited about doing something new in the customer experience spectrum. So I think at the end of the day, if you're really passionate about what you're doing, then of course it doesn't seem like work and you don't get de-motivated or on days when your energy might not be there, you still have some desire to want to do it because you're really passionate about it.
Don shared that he often will do some self coaching, as you kind of talk to yourself in your own head. And he will always say when he feels like there's a level of frustration or de-motivation, or just the challenge of getting through everyday life, he'll say, “Don, get on your purpose. Get back to your purpose. If you feel like you're frustrated, that means that you're just not paying enough attention to your why.” As you just called it out.
And he’s sure the listeners in Jamaica and around the world are like, “Thank you for what you do.” Without doing what you do, other people would not be telling their story. So this is why what you’re doing is so powerful.
When asked about an online resource that he could not live without in his business, Don shared that it's such a tough question because he uses so many. He was going to recommend to the listeners to go to www.zengerfolkman.com because they have so many resources around leadership.
There are many, many theories about what makes a good leader. And there are many, many books around leadership. It's like a giant ocean and he finds it overwhelming, many of his clients had done, he doesn't know what to do. There are too many things for him to focus on as a leader. And he completely gets that. And so what he often says is like, “Well, why don't we do a 360 and get some feedback from the people that you lead, including your boss and your peers. And let's ask them how you lead today and get their feedback.”
And Zenger Folkman has this wonderful 360 degree assessment that allows leaders to get an accurate perception of how other people see them as a leader, with that, and then you can determine how to put together an action plan to build new skills or to build the strengths that you currently have. And so they've written a lot of great articles and white papers about that, and all of those things reside on their website, he would highly recommend that they do that.
When asked about books that have had a great impact on him, Don shared that he used to read a whole book. He hardly does that anymore. He often read the first chapter, the last chapter, and then he'll skim read around the middle of the book a bit. A book that he cannot seem to put down, he goes back to repeatedly over and over as a very simple book, but it's called Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry.
What a great resource, one, because it gives you that self assessment at the back of it. So you can go online and take a self assessment to kind of determine your emotional intelligence level. But two, because it gives you 66 great suggestions of how you can build your emotional intelligence through new behaviours or changing your behaviour.
And he loves that because it's very application oriented. He love books that can get him to move in a direction that allows him to be a better person, better leader. So, he thinks Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry is one of those resources that the listeners could greatly benefit from.
Don shared that he really has been inspired by their conversation today about purpose. And he’s trying to put together a masterclass on how to discover your purpose because he finds that many people have not. They haven't had the fortunate experience he and Yanique have had where they actually have been able to define what it is. It seems to him that most people say, “I'm not exactly sure what my purpose is, and I don't know how to find it.”
What's the best way to decide that purpose is hard to discover. It is certainly something that is discoverable, but it doesn't just plop into your lap because you say, “I need to know my purpose.” It takes quite a bit of work and effort and reflection and searching and soul searching. And he just would like to help people in the future with a masterclass of some sort, where they could have a methodology to be able to discover what their purpose is.
Me: So how far along is that master class? Cause I'm sure I could recommend it to quite a few people.
Don shared that he has the outline. He’s just trying to figure out and actually testing some of the things that he has put into the outline with some people that are in that stage of discovery and asking them to give him feedback, like, “Was this helpful? What worked, what didn't work for you?” He finds that the discovery process for purpose seems to be pretty highly customized, so he’s having a tough time finalizing the approach because he thinks it has to have enough options to it, a variability to allow people to kind of modify the process to their personality and their style.
Me: Do you have a Facebook group?
Don shared that he doesn’t have a Facebook, he almost do everything through LinkedIn. He doesn’t have a particular LinkedIn group that he has sponsored yet. He shared that may that’s what he needs to do with purpose.
Me: That would be a great idea because then you would definitely be getting people who are specifically aligned with what you are trying to achieve. And then you'd be talking to the right people.
Website – www.donfrericks.com
LinkedIn – @donfrericks
Don: Allow me to offer a gift to your listeners; the first chapter of my new book Best Boss Ever: https://bit.ly/DonFrericks
Don shared that it's interesting that he read this right before they went online together today and it's often called the Serenity Prayer. He thinks it's actually a great quote, but it's about helping reframe the things that we cannot change and the things we can change and helping ourselves stay focused on the things that we can change and trying to find the strength to do that.
It's easy to get spun up today and the way that the entire world is demanding attention and the unrest and the racism that exists and all the frustration that people are experiencing with the pandemic. And many of those items we cannot directly change, but what we can change is our attitude and our emotional attachment and what we get involved with and what we don't get involved with.
And he thinks one way to make the world a better place is to focus on the three things that you stand for is to live, love and laugh. If you bring that out, that's something that we can all control, how we live, how we love, how we laugh. And so he thinks the serenity prayer to him makes all kinds of difference and it's a good reminder to focus on what we can control.
Me: It's actually a prayer that I revert to us from time to time as well. It reminds me of the law of attraction. Whatever you think about comes about. So, if you really put these affirmations and record or repeat these different positive things on a daily basis, you're actually intentionally feeding your mind with positivity and not focusing on all the things that as you said, you don't really have any control over. So you really want to focus on the things that you can control and try to be a positive agent of change in those areas.
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Elise Quevedo is the author of inspirational book “Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude”, keynote speaker, advisor and social/digital media marketing consultant and storyteller. She is ranked among the Top 2% most viewed profiles on LinkedIn.
Known as “The Digital Ghost Queen” for her behind the scenes work, Elise has inspired audiences around the globe and spends most of her time advising and helping businesses and individuals from C-Level executives to Hollywood stars thrive in the cyber space.
Elise often writes for MilliOnAir digital magazine where she shares inspiring interviews, personal thoughts and tech write ups. As a global thought leader, she has collaborated with Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Huawei Technologies, Ebay, and Paypal.
She is always keen to learn about new technologies, brands and getting the extra knowledge that keeps her on top of her game.
Questions
Highlights
Elise shared that a few years ago; she wrote a book on personal development called Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude which is all about being positive in life. And when she wrote it, nobody knew who she was. And she thought, “Now what do you do?” Because she wrote this thing which she thinks is of value. And then she started going to some seminars, getting information on social media, this was back in 2012.
And Elise being Elise, she is someone who she doesn't just do a little bit of research, she tend to go 20 hours a day trying to get as much information as possible. So, she came on to the social platform journey when there was a boom, which happened in between 2012 and 2014. So by the time 2013 came, she started travelling the world and talking about social platforms. And from there people started giving her nicknames like, “Oh, Twitter girl and Twitter queen and then the Digital ghost queen.” Because she is not always in front of the camera.
Sometimes she does a lot behind the scenes for companies or individuals that people don't know about. So, she started doing that and that is also how she got in to the customer service. Before jumping onto the online world, she was working in marketing, normal 9 to 5 job, which is what most people do that are young people.
She worked in an airport, what she got to experience a little of what it was to offer good customer service. So, put that together with the online world, she managed to be able to give value, such as the webinar where we met, which is how she is now able to give new insights. And that's pretty much the short version of her journey.
Me: Where is your book available? Is it available on Amazon?
Elise shared that her book is actually available on Amazon. But for anyone that listens to this and she is actually quite happy to give a PDF version. So, anyone that asks you for it, please, no need to buy it online unless you want, of course to buy the printed version. But the online one for just as a thank you for having her on the show today, she will give you a copy.
Here is the link to be able to get to download the PDF Version:
Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude - https://aw174737.aweb.page/p/18062eb8-8b19-4317-8232-fbed99bb2cda
Elise shared that digital transformation, especially for customer service, now needs more automated processes to be able to scale the business. And she thinks one of the key points that she wanted people to know was about artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence now continues to get more and more intuitive and is a critical part in the customer experience journey and it will continue to increase. So, let’s give some examples, because she thinks many of us or the people who will be listening will understand it.
Think about any cell phone company, whether it is Vodafone or T-Mobile or even an airline, because now we're going to start travelling again very soon. And we’ve all been there where we needed to complain about something or we've had a problem, and then we jumped on an online chat and as a customer service option, instead of calling, you’re being stuck for like 20 minutes on the phone.
In the past, we always had the same two sentences. For example, “You are number X in the queue” or “We apologize for the wait, a customer representative will be with you soon.” Remember when that was the only option. It was always the same. Every minute you will get the same sentence over and over again. And eventually, we would hang up and tried to call again. This was of course was the old school way.
But now, that experience has improved thanks to real time engagement provided by artificial intelligence power services. Think about it, whilst we wait, we now get courage to ask more detailed questions about our challenge and then the virtual assistants or the chatbots are searching their gazillion bits of information in their systems and they provide potential links to the solutions that might help us instead of waiting to talk to a customer service representative.
And this is now being accelerated in many companies because it saves many of us having to talk to an agent because sometimes a lot of our queries can actually be solved by artificial intelligence. This is where digital transformation comes in because they are now creating predictive personalization, because the more we shop online, the more that artificial intelligence can predict our behaviour of how we shop, how we interact, which means that it can help businesses create experiences that make customers feel like their brand experience was tailored for them.
We are talking about a world now where especially what we mentioned during Covid-19, we have become restless, we don't want to wait, people want these fast services like, “Hey, I ask you a question. I expect an answer straight away.” So digital now is playing a huge part. Also, social media.
If we think about customer service now versus 10 year ago, for example, many brands are all flying not just automated tools, but customer service through Twitter or Instagram or through LinkedIn. Because now we are so accustomed to jumping on these platforms versus calling a customer service number or e-mailing your customer service. So, digital transformation, it is a huge part of these customer service and customer experience that we're experiencing now and we will in the future.
Me: You sent me two copies of your bio, your long bio version and your short bio, but long one, there was a particular sentence that really caught my eye, it said, “That's why she created the (SMEQ) Social Media Emotional Quotient, which is the art and influence of creating, attracting and building better business relationships through digital media.” So could you explain to us what this Social Media Emotional Quotient is? Is it connected to like emotional intelligence?
Elise agreed and stated that Yanique is absolutely spot on. She believes that when people go on social media, they seem to forget that there is a human being behind every user, every person. Well, except, of course, all the bots. But most people that are using social media, such as you and me, we are human beings and we want to be treated as such. We don't want to be treated as just another number or just another person online, because the one thing that she has noticed is that when people are face to face, they behave one way and the minute they jump online, they seem to forget about that.
And she always says, “You should treat people online the same way as if you did it face to face." So when she interacts through social channels, she imagine that she’s talking to that person face to face, as if she had just met them at an event, as if she was having a coffee. So creating, attracting and building better relationships means treat people as human beings and interact and treat them as such an individual, because not every person that you talk to is going to be the same.
So although we make generic messaging on our channels, although we may put different things, when we interact, we must treat each person as if we were treating them face to face. And maybe then our customer service changes. But she thinks people we seem to have a different kind of mindset when we are online and we don't give it the same importance when we can actually reach anywhere in the world because of social now a days. And that is what the SMEQ is all about. It's about interacting more as a human and not just another social and robot kind of person.
Me: So if we're interacting like a human being, as you said, treating people as if they were physically in front of us, the same behaviours, attitudes, whatever it is that would have followed through in that face-to-face interaction, should transcend into a digital experience.
Elise shared that one of the most important would be personalization. She'll give you the perfect example. On Twitter, if we are active on Twitter, for example. We are all followed by people and she sees many people who copy a strategy from others, or she is someone that takes the time to check every person that follows her. Of course, sometimes it is people who have nothing to do with her field, “Okay, thank you for following, it’s great.”
But when it's someone that has a full profile, they have a photo and they have a bio, they're acting on social, you can see that they are making an effort themselves to be online. She always say thank you but with a personal message, meaning. Number one, she checks the name of that person, which means she has to click on their profile and see what their name is and based on their location, no matter where she is, then she wishes them either good day, good morning or good evening depending on where they are based on, again, what they say on their bio, if it says America. And she’s, for example, in Europe, that is specific time is morning for them. She will say good morning.
So, that means that she’s actually taking time out of her personal time to check who you are. And it shows that this is not just an automated tool that is saying thank you for following. Like she sees many people, she will say, “Thank you for following me, X name. Have a great morning, have a great evening.” Or sometimes she checks their links, she checks their latest posts. She will have a quick look.
So she makes it personalized and that automatically is what you would do face to face. Oh, hey, you've met someone and somebody introduces you. You call them by their name. And if it is morning, you wish them good morning, if it’s evening; you wish them a good evening. So you can transcend that from face to face to online and interact in the same way. If you were talking to someone over the phone or you were at an event face to face, how do you normally interact with people?
What questions do you ask them when you are meeting somebody new? You can easily do that through your social channels. It is always about putting ourselves in the customer's shoes as well. How do you want to be treated? It’s another thing that she feels we forget, we are all customers first and we're all human beings first. So, how do you talk to people? Don't change just because it's online. Those are two of the most important ones for her.
Me: And it's so important that we bring across the human aspect of our interaction when we're talking to people. Because as you said, yes, we're communicating digitally but there is a human being behind that with feelings and emotions, fears, anxiety, all the things that a human being experiences, worse in this time when things are not so stable, people don't know what to expect, tomorrow's never guaranteed. So, that's why you really need to live in the moment but even so with all of the things that are happening.
Elise agreed and stated that there are everyday solutions, for example, that we can do to improve customer experiences or service, because she thinks, like she mentioned earlier, above all, we are all customers first. So ask yourself, would I be happy with a customer service that I am providing to others? And if the answer is no, then rethink. What are you doing? We could probably talk hours on this so she’ll give you a couple of pointers.
To provide a good customer experience, you must know who your customers are because we mentioned it’s different of course, dealing face to face than online. On face to face we can understand if this person is young, is this person old, we can understand who someone is. So, if you have a team of people, this is something that is done a lot when you train or create a strategist which is, create different personas or create a different type of customers and then train people on how you would deal if you were dealing with someone like that.
For examples, in one hand, you can have Lola, who is like 30 years old and she’s young, she’s savvy, she knows how to click on every link you send her, she knows how to follow a video, a tutorial. But on the other hand, you have Jonas, who is 50 or 60 years old and needs a little bit more clear instructions on what to do on each step of your customer journey.
So, don't assume that every customer has the same knowledge you do and that other customers do. This is where personalization comes in, care about who each of your customers is. Don't give the wrong information to someone that already knows everybody. This is why creating that emotional connection with customers is so important. That's why she created the Social Media Emotional Quotient and she always talks about, remember behind every platform, behind everything we do digitally, there is a human being. Customers become loyal because they're emotionally attached and they remember how they felt or how they feel when they use a product or a service.
So, a business that optimizes for an emotional connection, they can actually outperform competition by 85% in sales growth. If she remembers correctly, there was a Harvard Business Review study called The New Science of Customer Emotions, you can go and Google that and it talks about these things as to how they are at least three times more likely to recommend your product or service. They are three times more likely to repurchase, all because they feel emotionally connected to your product.
So, there are multiple things that we can do to keep our customers engaged. And of course, if you are brand new, please research your competitors and then create goals and objectives for you. Competition is a good thing no matter what product or service we have, we're not unique.
There are many people doing podcasts, there are many people doing social and digital like her. There are many people who have restaurants; there are many people who have every service and that is right, competition is good because it helps us do our best.
So, get inspired by those that are in the same industry as you and then look up back at what you're doing, improving the areas you feel you're lacking. She always think when she was very young somebody told her one thing, on the left, we have people that always look up to us and they go, “Oh, wow, I wish I was like Elise or like Yanique.” And then us too, we're always looking to someone on our right that we go, “Oh, wow. I wish I was like X and Y.” Because no matter where we are in life, she remembers one of her former mentors, Jim Rohn always taught her, “You will never stop learning until the day you die.” If you say you know everything, then that's just too egotistical. Nobody knows everything in life. One of the keys to stay humble, have integrity and keep on learning, because no matter what we do, there was always someone on our left and there's always someone on our right.
Me: Agreed. Since this lock down, I've learned so much Elise and I'm so excited. I've been doing more videos and I've been watching YouTube videos of other people who do videos, what they're doing, how they've done jump cuts to kind of make the videos a little bit more engaging and adding captions and subtitles.
And I mean, I feel like a video star just watching what they do on and actually going into the application I'm using and applying the same methodology and seeing that come to life in my videos. It's just been amazing to me and I feel like I'm learning more now than I learned in my traditional learning platform of going to school like getting my degree or going to high school, because these are actual things, practical activities that you can do and you see the engagement and the impact that it’s having in the lives of other people.
Elise agreed completely because back in the day, nobody taught us any of these. Plus, back in the day, the jobs that we're doing now didn’t even exist and that’s another part of it. And now, there are going to be jobs in 20 years that we don't even know they exist just yet. So, with the power of social and YouTube and Vimeo and all these platforms, you can learn anything, you don't even have to have a mentor if you can’t afford one. Just go on social media, go on YouTube, go on Google and click what you want to learn.
And then you will get excited and the key role is to always keep on doing this stuff for yourself. Back in the day, we used to have this little joke of all these people that will keep on buying personal development books and instead of self development, they were called shelf development because they could buy lots and lots, but they never actioned anything.
And she thinks that’s the difference, it’s okay to watch videos and to get inspired by others as long as you take action on your own goals and dreams, because if you don’t that, you're helping somebody else getting more popular and part of the key either talk, talk, talk or talk, talk and walk the walk, there's a big difference.
When asked how she stays motivated, Elise shared that for her, it's all about having the right attitude. Like she mentioned nearly a decade ago, she wrote that book Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude, and there are still many tips from there that she uses on a daily basis, and it's all around being positive and never letting anything bring you down as an individual.
For example, before she gets out of bed every day, she looks up to the ceiling and she reminds herself of three things that she is thankful for and these three things are not material. So, for example, it could be her health being alive, having a roof over her head, having had a great meal with a friend that week or a great call. Anything that has meaning and reminds her of what life is all about.
And before she goes to bed, no matter how good or a bad day she may have had. She also does a grateful moment for something that has happened to her on that day. She is a very big believer about everything in life is either a blessing or a life lesson. And she now gets to do what she loves. So, for her is staying motivated is easy but it took a while to get there. So she thinks the key is that we should all aim to do something that we're good at and that we're passionate about.
Because when you do that, then you don't really consider it work. If you find it hard to be motivated, for example, she used to do this in the past. You could write your thoughts on a personal journal or just like a big piece of paper, like an A4, and then read it back to yourself the next day and find out what it is that is making you frustrated. Taking a time-out out of the day is so very important for her.
She spends a lot of time on her laptop, on her cell phones, for example, since she’s digital nomad. So she has reminders throughout the day to stop, to close down her technology and to look up to the sky, to go for a little walk or to simply listen to maybe one song that she really likes.
And she also has mantras and some of her favourite quotes lying around so that she always has something positive to look at. And one of the things that many people find silly but is actually to keep hydrated, you'll be surprised that the effect of what not drinking enough water in the day can do to your body and your mind. So, she’s share some of the things that she personally do.
And sleep is very important. She will contradict you there because anyone that knows her, she doesn't know why for the last few years. She is a little bit like Thomas Edison, she sleeps between 3 and 5 hours a night and then she will have a little catnap during the day sometimes. It’s not as the normal person but normally the sleep is good.
Me: Most of the research that I have done says you should be getting between 7 to 9 hours of sleep but if you're getting your 5 at an average per night but then you’re capturing the difference in a day catnap then maybe you should be good.
She (Elise) did research on that because she thought it was weird that she was okay after 3 or 4 hours sometimes. So there are times she will sleep for 8 or 9 and then she came across this little research on how there were people such as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and some of the great minds who didn’t sleep in the average pattern. So, she thinks a lot of people will say, you can't say that Elise because you are meant to sleep 7 to 10 hours. But that is her personal story and she’s not telling anyone to do the same, she’s just sharing.
Me: At the end of the day, you have to know your body. Just like with exercise, sometimes you you’ll exercise when you feel you're doing some form of a workout that is too intense for you. You almost feel like your body's giving out. So, you know when it's your limit and you have to stop. I think with sleep it's the same thing. If you rest and the next morning you wake up, you don't feel like you are fully rested or you have the energy, then you probably need to look into your sleep pattern.
Or maybe it could be dietary requirements, maybe you need to change up what to eat or as you said, maybe we need to be drinking more water because I think all of these things work together to ensure that you feel energetic and you don't feel lethargic and tired. And it's almost like you have to be pulling yourself through the day to get activities done. So, you have to know your body, everybody's different.
Elise agreed and shared that she had stopped asking herself many questions and it comes from the same mentor she had back in the late 90s, which was Jim Rohn and there were many questions that he would say, “Some things are a mystery.” He goes, stop asking and same with the sleep, he goes like, “Your body knows when enough is enough, don’t question it. One day you will need 4 hours, another 7, another 6. If you feel okay and your body and mind feel okay, who is anybody else to tell you to go back to sleep.” And that's what she did for herself and she continues to do that to this day.
She gets fuelled by energy, good conversations fuels her. She has had conversations with friends where they're up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and then she goes, “Oh, no, but I'm supposed to be asleep.” And then an hour later she’s like, “Oh, well, it's already 4:00; you’re not going to sleep tonight.”
And then her body just completely goes on to the next day and people go, “Elise, are you not tired?” And she’s thinking that yesterday sleeps already but she’ll sleep later because that is something that she has trained her body to do because she gets fuelled by energy a lot. And unless you understand how that works, many people think, “Elise, you're just crazy. That’s just not normal.” Who are we to say what's normal and what's not? So again, if it feels right for you, please don't listen to anybody else. We are the best listeners to who we are, and that's all we can do.
When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Elise shared that for her, she cannot name one but she has to say social media platforms, all of them. She would be lost without them because for her, they are the tools that help her express who she is and they allow her to share my thoughts and insights freely and at any time without any constrictions. She gets to be her no matter what anyone else says. And so, if all platforms went down, “Oh, please.”
For her, she would say in the order of preference because she started with Twitter. Twitter will always be very close to her heart. But she is actively on Twitter, on LinkedIn as her main two business platforms. Instagram is more for social, so she will share when she’s travelling and motivational quotes.
And she also uses WeChat and Facebook. Snapchat and TikTok not so much. She didn’t get on to them for business and when it comes to social, she doesn't focus so much on personal sharing because for her, they're both together. Then she focuses on the platforms where she can do both business and personal. So she would say Twitter, LinkedIn equally followed by Instagram, Facebook, WeChat.
When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Elise shared that she loves this question because she thinks there are so many books out there that people get inspired by.
But she would say Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill was one of the first ever books that she read in the late 90s. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, that's an incredible book. The Art of War, for anyone who dares reads the book by Sun Tzu, it's a book that she would recommend to everybody. It has so many teachings from the military, but in an inspirational way.
And one more which is How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. These are books that she doesn't read just once; she will probably read them once a year because they're great and she uses them as references all the time.
Anything that makes you learn. One of her dreams was to have a big library like you see in the movies with a mixture of old books of history. But then all the modern books of inspiration and real business and life stories.
Me: So we will have all of those books that Elise just shared with us in the show notes of this episode and links to them. If it is that you have not had the opportunity to engage in any of these books and as Elise said, now is a time to be filling your mind, your body and your soul with all of the positive, enlightening information that can help you to be more productive, that can help you to be more innovative, and that can definitely help you to grow on a personal and professional level.
Elise shared that she gets excited about pretty much everything that she does, but especially now during this time the world has gone through and we are still going through, she’s excited to be alive. So, she’s very excited to continue sharing her knowledge with new clients and some podcasts like yours.
Because if one person gets a little bit motivated based on something that she has shared, then her job is done. So, she is eager to continue doing this and getting back on a stage face to face, although she has loved doing Zoom videos and Zoom has become her best friend over the last few months.
She is excited to get back on the real face to face kind of events where you can also interact and see people's expressions, which of course is very different. She grew up without technology until she was 19 years old. So, she’s one of those people that can appreciate both the new reality, our new world of digital. But no matter what, there is nothing like a face to face meeting and being able to see someone's excitement or when somebody says thank you, it is not the same face to face as when it is online.
So, that is what she’s really excited about. She has been invited to a few events already in Turkey and in Spain. So those are the first two that she’s looking forward to the most. As long as, of course, COVID-19 allows us to have these events over the next few months. And she is releasing a new edition of Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude this summer, so she is very excited to be doing that.
LinkedIn – @elisequevedo
Twitter – @EliseQuevedo
Facebook – Elise C Quevedo
Instagram - @elisequevedo
When asked about a quote or saying that she reverts to, Elise shared that the most relevant right now is, “Remember that the journey of a 1,000 miles, it starts with a single step.” She believes that we're in a time of uncertainty; people don't know how to continue or how to restart. So remember, everything begins with that one single step, one step at a time. That's all we have to do.
Me: So, we just need to start, just take that one step. And I think sometimes people get crippled by fear, they think about all of the things that they don't have and how are you're going get it done. But as you said, you take one step and it may not be perfect, but then you go again and you take another step.
It's funny. I interviewed a young lady, she's on LinkedIn as well, and her name is Cher Jones. She's a Social Corporate Media Trainer and she was the first Facebook live that I was ever doing in my life. So I've been podcasting for 4 years now, so I think I'm pretty much really good at podcasting.
But video is a little bit different because with the podcast, I can drop it into an editing software and I can add some music and of course, jazz it up, I can cut out stuff like errors that I would have made but with live, that's it. There's no editing, there's no cutting out, it's just live and direct at that moment in time.
And I was very fearful to take that first step and she said something to me that was so powerful. She said, “Yanique, the first thing you need to do is start because you'll realize that by your tenth episode in, you are so much better at episode 10 than you were at episode 1 and all it took was just for you to start.”
And when I think about my first podcast episode, May 24, 2016, how I was then to how I am now. I really feel like I've come a very far way, I'm so much more comfortable doing it. And you're right; you just need to take that first steps. I recommend anybody listening to this podcast. If there's anything out there that you are fearful of doing, as Elise said, just take that first step.
Elise shared a simply start. Remember when we were kids, just because we fell the first time we wanted to walk or tried to ride a bike, we didn't stop, we kept on going. But the older we get, the harder it is to start and the more fear we get. There is a very thin line; she was talking about this with someone the other day.
The same thing that makes us have fear is a similar feeling to the adrenaline of adventure and wanting to do things. So, sometimes the same adrenaline that makes us go, “Yes, let's do this.” is the same that then deviates to us fear that goes, “No, no, no. Let me go back.”
So, all you need to do is just have faith. And remember, it's not about how many times you fail; it's about how many times you get up. So, keep on going, take one step at a time and remember many of the great people out there, any one that passed on something great, everybody started at zero. Nobody ever woke up and became Yanique and had a podcast that was amazing.
Nobody got up and was Tony Robbins from day one or Richard Branson or Warren Buffett, it was a journey. If you believe in your product, if you believe in who you are, then you will always keep going.
There is one more thing that she’s going to share is that she like to talk to people about the magic that we all have. She always says that on one side you have the magic of your product or the idea that you have. And on the other side, you have the magic of you, the magic of what you have inside of your mind. The knowledge that you have, the passion for your product, your idea, the story, how you start it, you know yourself and your idea or product inside and out.
There is no one better to explain it than you. Hence the importance of sharing what you're passionate about. We are all unique human beings and we should focus on what we can do best, not our flaws or our fear, because nobody's perfect. It is always about how we react.
So, if you believe in yourself, then the right people will too. There are about 7.7 billion people on this planet; it is not about being liked by everybody or everybody buying our product, it’s just that the right ones who get who we are, then they will be around us. So that's the magic inside of you. What's your mantra? What is your personal gift? Figure that out and that will always drive you forwards no matter how many times you fall.
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Amy Austin, a marketing and branding strategies guide, allows her clients to embrace the power of purpose in all aspects of their business and transform it into the central storyline of their branding and marketing strategies.
Her focus on empathy and building authentic relationships comes from nearly 20 years building successful marketing campaigns and brands in the health care sector.
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Amy shared that she started right out of college, she got a job at a radio station and it was at a time when that particular station was going through a lot of leadership changes. And so within six months of being there, she was feeling very insecure as a first time professional job. And she was seeing all these people get fired or leave. She was like, “I need to find an exit strategy.” Her exit strategy happened to be a job opening at a large tertiary healthcare system in her home state of South Dakota.
And she started working in their communications department. And it's funny because when she started working there, she had a number of people ask her, “Marketing in a hospital, what are you doing? Promoting people getting sick?” She was like, no, that would not be what we're doing.
What we're doing is trying to make sure that when you do need the service, you're fully aware of where it is you might want to go. So that you don't have that stress in the moment of when you really need it, that you're not having to try and figure out where is the best place for you to go. She always laugh about that because it's like, “No, no, no, no, we don't want people to be sick. We really don't want them to use our services but when they do, we want them to know we're here.”
So, she stayed at that particular hospital for about 5 years and really enjoyed what she was doing. She got to learn a lot about paediatric healthcare, women's healthcare, and helped lead some brand development in both of those areas, as well as the affiliated Wellness Athletic Center that was owned by the health system that she worked for. And then not long after that, she started working at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. And she’s not sure if they've ever been able to prove this point, but they always like to say that they were the largest academic medical center by square footage.
And like she said, she’s not sure that they were ever able to validate that point, but they like to say it on occasion. And she worked there for 12 ½ years. And during that time, she served as the primary liaison with their advertising agency to develop out all of their image campaigns. So, their television, radio, print, sometimes billboard, sometimes the online component fell into that. But that usually was more specific to the actual services as opposed to that bigger umbrella image message that they wanted to get out there.
So, during that time, she worked on 8 or 9 different large campaigns to help build awareness. She also led the effort to change the name of their children's hospital to be more closely aligned with the university name as opposed to what it had been. And really just really got to know a lot about the different aspects of healthcare, how we recruit staff into the facility, because nursing is a high demand job and there's not as many people going into nursing.
And so, it's typically an area that there are a lot of job openings and not enough people applying for them, and so she worked with their nursing leadership to develop a recruitment campaign at one point that helped their facility go from a 18% vacancy rate in terms of positions that needed to be filled down to a 3% vacancy rate. Prior to that, how they were filling those positions was with travelling nurses and so they would come in and work for 6 months and then they'd move on to somewhere else.
And so, what they wanted as an organization at that time was really to get nurses who were fully employed and fully vested with their organization, as opposed to somebody who was just going be there for a period of time and move on.
And so, they were able to do that. And it was an exciting campaign to be on because we really were able to see the benefits quickly of how appreciative the nursing staff was to have somebody next to them that they knew was going to be here for the long term. And there was just a difference in morale across the nursing staff as they started to fill those open positions with employed staff as opposed to travelling staff.
And so that was exciting. Obviously, the roll out of the name change of the children's hospital was also a really exciting project to be part of. Part of that, too, as if you ever need to know where to find a mascot costume, she has those resources as well because they ended up developing a mascot for the children's hospital and she had to find a place to make the costume, which was not anything she ever thought she would do in her career.
But she did found a company in Canada, not sure if they still exist or not, but did find them and rolled out a new mascot for their children's hospital, which was a lot of fun.
Amy shared that she has worked on her own now for 8 years and through the course of that time, what she has realized in working with a variety different clients in different aspects of different stages of their business and in different industries, not just healthcare anymore, is that a lot of times they rush to just get marketing strategies out the door.
They want to see something happening and coming back into their business, and they believe the best way to do that is to get an ad out the door or get something on Facebook or whatever that might be. And oftentimes what ends up happening is that they end up frustrated and feeling like it didn't produce the results that they wanted.
Well, when you peel back that and really look at why, it's usually because they haven't done the work to truly know what their brand stands for. Why did they start their business? What do they stand for? Where's their mission and vision? Where are they hoping to go in the next 5 years? And really understood and developed out a strategy for what their brand and their marketing needs to look like.
So they've gone and thrown out a message that maybe doesn't align with what they're doing or it doesn't attract the right audience. And so then it fails and so when you do that foundational work first. And really get that clarity around who you are, what you're doing, why you do it, how you do it and who you're doing it for. Then you can understand what issues are they facing at the time that they need my service? What problems are they trying to solve that is causing them to get really frustrated and seek out someone or something to be able to help solve that problem? And that's where you come in as that brand to be able to help them.
And they see themselves in that message and they're willing then to take a chance on you or they start building some trust and relationship and work with you. Then you're going to start seeing better success in those marketing strategies that you're putting out the door. And you're going to feel good about them. And what she likes to tell her clients is that by doing this work, by understanding your brand and what elements of story are going to be really important to that target audience that you're looking for and also what experience pillars you want to put in place when you’ve done those things, the end result that you’re going to have. You’re going to have clarity, consistency and confidence in your marketing.
Clarity to understand what it is that you’re talking about and who you’re talking about, what the messages are. Consistency because you’re going to say the same thing over and over, even if it’s not exactly the same thing, your customers are going to know that it came from you because it sounds the same. And confidence in that you're doing the right thing. You're going to feel better about putting those messages out and feel that calming sense of, “Okay, I'm doing the right thing.” instead of that phonetic feeling of “I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do, but I'm going to do it because I feel like I have to.” And when you have that feeling, not only does that make you nervous, it also comes off in what you put out in front of people regardless of what avenue or what tactical measure you're doing.
If it's a video, if you are in front of a camera and you're feeling that uncertainty and anxiety, the person watching your video in the end is going to see it and they're going to hear it in your voice. Whereas if, you know, if you go into producing that video with a certainty of what your messages, of what you want to accomplish with it, of who you're speaking to and what it is they need from you at any given moment.
You're going to have a confidence and an air of calmness that is going to come off as authority and they're going to see empathy from you as well. And they're going to want to come work with you or buy your service, whatever it might be, whatever transaction that you're making with them. They're going to feel confident in doing it.
So, you're not only projecting yourself with confidence, but you're also instilling confidence in your target audience that they are making the right decision.
Me: So those are some things that we can do to ensure that our brand and our values transcend into our customer experience. As it relates to customer experience in the healthcare sector, what are three values that you think should definitely be transcended in all healthcare experiences to show that you are really an organization or a healthcare facility or institution that is driven by your customers experiences, whether you are a medical facility, a blood bank or a hospital regardless of the avenue of healthcare that you offer.
Amy shared that first and foremost, she thinks that you need to treat your patient as a person. If you are not doing that, if you're not thinking about this person who's sitting across the exam table from you or in this room or any exchange that you're having, “This person could be my mother, my brother, my sister, some family member. How do I want them to be treated?” If you are not treating them in the way that you want to be treated, you need to take a step back and think about why not?
“Why am I not doing that?” And what do you need to change in order to be able to get to that position? She can think of times when you go and check in at a clinic appointment and they're rushed because they're also answering phone calls and they're trying to check in the person ahead of you, they've got 7 or 8 different things going on around them that then they get to you and they're frazzled.
Well, fine. But take a deep breath. Give this patient that you're now checking in your full attention and just do the job that you need to do. And don't let all of the other things that are going on around you as the person doing the checking in interfere with that interaction that you have with that person because they maybe don't want to be there either.
You don't really want to have to go to a physician or to a clinic, chances are you're there because you're sick, you're not feeling well, a loved one is sick, not feeling well, and you need help. And so you're dealing with people at the most vulnerable time of their life. And show them some grace and be patient and be willing to help them understand what's going on. Be clear in what you're asking them to do next, where do they need to go, how long will it take.
Just have that transparency, that's another value that she believes you should have in healthcare but in any organization. If you can't be transparent in what's going to happen next in their journey, they've decided to work with you. So what's next? What are we going to do next? How do we get started? Whether it's in healthcare, have a seat here, we'll call you back if you're not called back in the next 10 minutes or whatever your window of time is that is deemed acceptable by your organization. Let them know, “If you're not called back in 10 minutes, please let us know and we'll find out what's going on. And we'll give you an idea of how much longer it's going to be, if it's going to be delayed further.”
But the same is true for any other business. What's the next step in the journey of working with you? When I bring in a new client, it's what happens when we sign the dotted line. Now, what's the next step? So, maybe it's a discovery call, maybe it's a in-depth fact finding mission, whatever that is, let them know what it is, set the clear expectation of how long that's going to take, what the process is going to look like and when it's going to be finished.
Me: So it's almost like you're trying to get clear on what the customer journey is.
Amy shared that she thinks when you are working, it doesn't matter what type of business you have, and it’s all about building a relationship. You can't have a business if you don't have somebody who's willing to use your service. She can say she has a business, but if she has no clients, does she have a business?
No, not really. So, it is about building experiences because those experiences are going to help you know what works and what doesn't work. But it's also going to give that person an opportunity to say, “Wow, I had a great experience working with Amy recently.” or “I had a great experience working with X, Y, Z clinic recently. And I would highly recommend you go back to them.” Then you’re going to start getting that word of mouth.
Think about that. Who do you tend to believe more? Somebody that you know that has had experience with a service that you're considering? Or an ad on Facebook? You're going to take the word of the person who you know because you can ask them questions, you trust them already, you have a relationship. Marketing and branding is about creating relationships.
Me: Good answer, thank you, Amy. So we heard that you need to have empathy, you need to be transparent and you need to work on building relationships that there's a lot of trust equity involved in it so that people can trust you, they know what to expect. They're clear on what is going to happen next in the customer journey and you're not surprised because it's that element of surprise a lot of times that causes customers to really get upset and then you have to run into service recovery.
Amy shared that she recently started using Trello and as she’s getting more into using it and figuring out some of the power behind it, of tracking things like with her own podcast. She has started doing a lot more tracking of when she has talked to somebody to be a potential guest and putting notes in there. And then when she has recorded it and just moving them up the chain within that and really tracking what she’s doing with them and that's been very helpful to keep track of that and she has used it with some of her client work as well. So, she really likes Trello, but she fully knows that she doesn’t know the full extent of what it can do for her.
When asked about books that have had a really good impact, Amy shared that she can give two. The first one, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek. For her, reading that and then really starting to internalize what it all meant has made her see correlations that she didn't see before. Such as, one of the physicians that she used to work with very closely, her very first meeting with him, he said to her, “My ultimate goal is total world domination.” And she looked at him and said, “I don’t have budget for that. I seriously don’t have budget to be able to support you in that but I will do whatever I possibly can to help you do that.”
So, fast forward several years, she ended up having her mom see him as a patient. And then she got to see how he worked on the other side. And as she watched him worked and she saw how his clinic operated and she thought back to different experiences that she had had with him and that phrase, “Total world domination.” She started to see that what was happening was exactly what Simon Sinek talked about in that book.
When you have clear sense of purpose and you surround yourself with other people who are bought into that purpose, but bring different strengths to the table to be able to lift that purpose up. You're going to achieve a greater sense of success. And she was able to see that in a way that she hadn't been able to see when she worked with him because she was internal only. That and the fact, she hadn't read the book yet at that point. So, she didn't know what she didn't know at that timeframe.
But watching how that all came together and knowing some of the things that she knew about the background of how he works and the fact that his staff retention in that particular clinic is very high, that when his physicians that worked in his department would leave our academic medical center and go to another one, they went for positions that were higher up. It was not a lateral move. They went for promotions. His employee retention was high; his patient satisfaction scores were some of the highest in the organization.
All of those things factor in to the fact that he was very clear on his purpose, very clear on his why within the department, the people that he hired and brought in were recruited because he had residents and fellows working through there as well. They were all bought in on that same mission. They understood it, and as a result, the patient was very well taken care of, the family was very well taken care of. And it just all merged and melded together really, really well.
And it was exciting to see and as a result of that, she built that process into branding work that she does with clients. She makes sure that they understand what their purpose is and really understand how it impacts those around them and who they bring onboard. So that's one book that was very influential for her.
The other book is Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days by Joey Coleman. She interviewed him for her show as well. Fabulous book and she has started incorporating his eight pillars of customer experience into the work that she does with clients as well.
But she thinks the quote from him in that book that really stands out to her is his definition of that, “Customer service is reactive and customer experience is proactive.” And she had never really thought of that different definition until she read his book. And now she looks at it and she thinks that all the time, like, how can you proactively run something off at the pass so that you don't get into a position of having to serve them, but that you are creating the experience for them that they didn't know they even wanted.
She loves his book and she heard an interview with him recently that he is working on a book that is geared towards recruitment of employees so that you bring in employees, that you create that experience around recruitment and hiring in the same way, because those hundred days are so critical as a new hire, just as much as what they are critical with a new relationship with a client or a customer.
Me: Very true. And I mean, I think recruitment is very important to business as well. It's just as important as the customers or clients that you're serving, because the people who are serving your customers have to have the right attitude, they have to be aligned with, as you said, a vision and a core values and a cultural beliefs. And it's not just about what you have on paper or what you have on your website in terms of what you believe or what you think you should be doing. But it’s also in the behaviours; the actions that come out, what are they doing? Their response time, how accommodating are they, how solution oriented are they, an issue comes up on and it's a serious problem, do they take it as serious and do they deal with it as critically as how the customer’s perceiving it as critical? All of those I think fall into recruitment, because if you get people who don't really value those things, it's going to be manifested in their behaviour.
Amy agreed and shared that you can't see her, but she was sitting there shaking her head through everything that Yanique said. And the way that you get that is by understanding what as a brand do you stand for? What will you accept? What do you want people to think of you? And the only way that you can create that idea in their mind is to live it as your brand, prescribe it.
She thinks one of the things that businesses tend to fall down on when they hire people is they don't train for their brand. They hire someone and they maybe don't even give them an on boarding, let alone any kind of training, but if you would take a couple hours and just walk through, “Here's what our brand stands for. Here's what's important to us. Here are our expectations as it relates to experience. I expect you to answer the phone this way, I expect these things.”
If you have a brick and mortar store, here's what I want you to do in terms of how you greet somebody, give them the autonomy but in order to give them autonomy, they have to know what the boundaries of that autonomy is.
Amy shared that they went out for supper last Saturday night and went to a place that they go to frequently. First time that they'd been at their restaurant since all of the pandemic and the reopening and they sat on their patio. They ordered food, they waited, they waited, they waited, they waited, which was very uncommon for this restaurant for them to ever wait as long as what they did. Well, come to find out they thought they had wanted it to go. So, they packaged it up as a to go order and had it sitting on a counter ready for them to pick up.
They were eating on their patio, so when they finally realized this, they got them their food right away. They were very apologetic and the onsite manager that came out and talked to them, he said, “We're really sorry. Can we give you a gift card to make this up to you?” Now, somebody had to train him to know that it was okay for him to offer that. That's part of their brand expectations, it's part of the experience that they want, the ideal experience that they want their customers to have did not go as it was supposed to.
So, now how do we go into that service recovery mode? What can we give them? How can we make this right so that they will come back to us? And he did that but you have to train that and you can't just expect somebody to know that on day one, that they have the ability to be able to do that. Or maybe it's certain people have the ability to do that and so they need to escalate it.
Maybe the person who took their order didn't have the authority to be able to give them the gift card but the manager who is working that night did. Fine, escalate it up, make sure that it gets to the manager, he comes and talks to them but it brought the whole experience full circle. It did start off as an experience and ended up having to go into that service or recovery mode and they walked out feeling better about what happened. They understood, they're like, “It's okay, the food is still good. We're not going to hold it against you, we'll still be back.”
Amy shared that one thing that she is working on that she is getting more excited about, as she’s doing a little bit more, she’s kind of in the mode of doing some customer discovery of creating a marketing mastermind that she will start offering. And so she has been reaching out to different people who she thinks would be kind of within the ideal target audience of what she’s looking for and asking them some questions and seeing, “Is this a service that you need? What would it look like for you? What would need to be part of it in order for it to be valuable?”
So she’s doing her own due diligence and doing what she tells her clients to do when they're looking at creating a new service. Talk to the people who you want to offer this to and find out what they really need. Just because you think, you need it. It may not mean that they need it. Their pain point might not be great enough yet for it to be necessary for them. So, that's one thing she’s excited.
The other thing is, just this gradual reopening of back into whatever our normal is going to be is exciting. But it's also been really nice because she has been able to spend more time with her daughter. She has a 13 year old. So, they've been able to spend a little bit more quality time together than what they have had. When she's busy with all kinds of activity, school activities and such. So, that's exciting as well.
Podcast - The Pursuit of Purpose with Amy Austin
Twitter - @AmyMAustinMktg
LinkedIn – @amymaustin
When asked about a quote or saying that helps her to refocus, Amy shared that the one that she come back to the most is Simon Sinek, is that, “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
Me: So, people don't buy what you do, but they buy why you do it. And it really goes back to what you were stating earlier about understanding your purpose, understanding your why. What problem are you actually solving, if you can get clear on all of that and in training staff on that, and recruit according to that, then you would definitely have a business that's geared towards success.
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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!
Ian Reynolds is a Partner and Chief Solutions Architect at Zibtek, a software development firm focused on helping businesses of all sizes in the United States solve their core problems with software. They empower entrepreneurs, growth companies, enterprises and visionary firms to achieve greater profitability and efficiency, valuation and ultimate success by building the right tools through custom software.
Ian has spent the better part of his career in consulting and has served in diverse industries as Finance, Oil and Gas, Retail Power, Field Services, Midstream Energy, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Transactional Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Restructuring, e-commerce, Retail and software development.
Questions
Highlights
Ian shared that he has had the opportunity to see a lot of industries, and he thinks part of that started very early on. He was at a number of startups right out of college; he has launched 8 different products to market, saw the gambit and then did the MBA route, then jumped into consulting. So, right after the MBA, immediately sort of wanted to go into something that would let him see a lot of industries, a lot of verticals.
And in consulting, he had the opportunity to do that both on the I.T. side and on the finance side. So, really, just one option, he sort of expand his horizons, these sort of things. Ultimately wanted to get back to doing his own thing and found a business Zibtek and acquired 50% of it and that's 3 years now.
Ian shared that they started as a product company 15 years ago and ultimately grew to the point where they wanted to sell the business. And then after 5 years of growing that product, sold it and then for the last 10 years, they have been providing services to the marketplace for folks who maybe don't have an engineering team in-house or don't have the engineering competency in-house, but need expertise to build out software or build out a solution that's either custom fit for their business or adapt the same existing technology for their business. That's primarily what they do.
Me: Could you give me an example of something that you've done to solve your customers’ challenges? Software that maybe you've created that’s solving that issue?
Ian shared that they have a client that is in the healthcare space and they are running around doing prospective studies for people who have had sort of strong medical procedures and they needed a way to capture data that wasn't menial. So, before they're using clipboards and paper and using telephones and dialing out and doing all that stuff manually with a large team of people to get that perspective data. Zibtek built a solution that automates all of the follow ups, keeps it the data hipper compliant.
And then also helps them basically have the patient groups be blocked in effectively, statistically randomized ways. And it did a couple of things. And this is how it ties back to the sort of the customer experience. By automating sort of the manual process and then also removing that human element. It actually made it so that the patients who had just gone through these procedures and had opted into these studies were more likely to respond because it was on a medium, on their phone or computer that was much friendlier to their time. Much more intuitive to interact with and can be done in maybe 5 minutes.
Me: So, it's almost like you created like a specialized CRM for them that was really built to fit their business model.
Ian stated that in a certain sense, yes, it did all the communication to manage those individuals. It managed the follow ups and responses. But then it had a statistical engine behind it that allowed them to make sure that these patients sort of came through and randomized blocks.
Me: So, a big part of software development in a business can definitely impact the quality of the customer experience. We are now in a space globally where because of this pandemic, a lot of us have been forced to shift how it is that we're looking at the different channels by which we serve our customers. And so it's important to recognize that if it is that we are doing these things, what are some things that we could do to make the channels easier for the customers, less effort for them to exert, less friction.
What are maybe two to three top things as an engineer yourself, you're a solutions architect. So you are able to look at the big picture and maybe give us some main things that companies need to consider when they're designing this digitized strategy for their business. A lot of them may have been in the digital space, but probably they were not giving it as much priority as they would know because of the fact that their customers have shifted their behaviour and they're interfacing more with those platforms than to face-to-face ones.
Ian shared that he thinks the first and most important thing is take the customer's problems to the engineers as opposed to having a frontline person who is maybe just kind of filtering through that customer feedback to then give it to the engineers. Engineers are by nature, people who want to build tools to solve problems and by having a direct pipeline of those, let's say, customer complaints, customer problems, customer issues, going to the engineers as opposed to maybe filtered by a couple layers, you're going to get results much more quickly.
You're going to get your results and ultimately going to solve those problems and probably much more intuitive ways. And you can present those which suits the client.
The second thing is figure out where you can as a business; automate routine simple tasks for the user and then figure out how at the same time of automating that task, “I can provide better customer service or better customer experiences in serving that client.” Sometimes that’s just through an interface but other times it is making somebody available to pick up the phone and talk with you, walk you through something. Just be available really quickly or provide a quick response to a customer query. So that's the second piece.
The third item that they would recommend is intentionally innovate. They don't think a lot of companies are going to fall behind because they're not spending sort of like the 3M rule of anywhere from 5%-10% of profits intentionally to sort of disrupt their own business and produce a solution that's ultimately better.
Technology is moving in a direction where its growth is accelerating, innovation is accelerating, and it's accelerating past any single company's ability to basically keep pace with those changes. So, an engineer that comes into their organization probably about 4 years, they're going to have to retool a little bit because the technology is changing so quickly.
So, the guys that are coming out right out of college, very valuable because they come with sort of these new skills ingrained. Now they are teaching them, they're training and they’re doing about six months of training. But really, if these guys are not retooling it about 6 years, they become kind of deadweight to certain extent.
Me: Almost like they're obsolete. They're no longer relevant because the technology has far superseded what existed 4 or 5 years ago.
Ian shared that he thinks automation is going to sort of go into that second category of what he described previously, where companies are going to try to as much as possible make it so that you have the equivalent of one click checkout for an experience or for a result.
And it's going to not necessarily remove jobs but he thinks it's going to make certain jobs more efficient. So, if you look at the guys at OnCourse Sales Automation on a mission, they have a bunch of tools combined in one that allows sales teams to be extremely efficient with their time. But it's not that it's eliminating sales jobs, it's actually making them more competitive and making it so that the sales personnel are much more oriented towards quality.
And he thinks that you’re going to see that be true across pretty much every spectrum. Where you’re going to get automation, first you’re going to have a flight to quality second. So, if he can remove the tedious tasks, then he needs to focus on quality and for the companies that don't focus on quality and don't focus on customer service….customer experience, then they're going to sort of fall behind.
Ian shared that we're seeing a trend and still the world is just kind of coming online broadly speaking. You have a trend where folks are moving to these online tools to solve problems. You used to go to the store and buy off-the-shelf software, put it in a CD drive, his computer doesn't have a CD drive anymore and do this that way.
And so, there's still a lot of very prominent, very powerful technologies that have not made their way to the cloud. There are companies in Salt Lake that they're talking to that are still on green screens, basically, where a lot of their stuff isn't networked to manage inventory, manage supplies, track quality, track prices, et cetera, or how long things have been in the warehouse. And so there's still and there's going to be for a long time a continued shift towards cloud first, browser based technologies that are going to facilitate really kind of things that we already did. But in a way that gives us much more data, much more accessibility and makes organizations much more efficient.
When asked about how he stays motivated, Ian shared that he thinks it's more of a process of sort of building habits. So, his day to day is very, very different, every single day is different as they’re solving different problems for clients. But his mornings are pretty routine, his evenings are pretty routine. At least they try to be. And then that sort of natural motivation is that he has a growing family and he wants to make sure that they're happy and taken care of.
And then he’s asking himself regularly, “Am I doing something that I find interesting and fulfilling?” And then he tries to sell himself the first hour of the day to focus on those things or the last hour or the day to focus on those things. And as long as he’s moving towards that direction, he’s very, very satisfied.
When asked about on online tool that he cannot live without in his business, Ian shared that www.tryoncourse.com is just one of those sort of sales automation tools he has been talking about. And they started using it and they think it's pretty exceptional. It basically is, in their view, sort of the future of CRM.
It's all of these tools, dialler SMS, what have you sort of rolled into one. And it's going to give them and it gives their sales team crazy amount of visibility that they didn't have previously with tools like Salesforce. They were using a phone dialler and they were also using MailChimp for drippy campaigns.
It's got all that stuff built in and they're just kind of adding more features to it all the time. And they’ve pretty radically simplified what they're executing in the sales process by moving to one of these sales automation platforms. And basically, they don't really know what they would do without it because everybody's sort of refers to it for the data. Everybody sort of refers to it for activity. So, it's pretty important.
Me: That’s your go to. It's funny you mention that because our episode that we released today for the podcast was with their Chief Customer Experience Officer or Chief Sales Officer, Gessie Schechinger from OnCourse sales platform. So, they're really disrupting the whole sales initiatives for businesses in terms of, as you said, putting everything in one place. So, I think it's really awesome that you mentioned that that's your online resource that you definitely can’t live without in your business.
Ian shared that the first book that had a big impact on him was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations from 1776. Just reading that, the man only wrote two books. He wrote that book and then he wrote basically, sort of a moral treatise on The Wealth of Nations was sort of the prelude to The Wealth of Nations. Both of those books are exceptional. But really, Wealth of Nations is absolutely phenomenal and important to understanding really basic economics.
The second piece is and he thinks that while the books put out actually not books, but letters put out by Warren Buffett are in many respects. So, he put out a book, one of the meetings that had a collection of all 50 letters. He thinks that those books are under read or that those letters are under read and are really instructive, not only sort of for financial matters, for managing a business, but also in managing. There are great lessons in managing and he has continually gone back to those resources, both of those to reread things, take notes, put that online, share his ideas with other people, get their feedback. And so those have been the two most resources for him.
When asked about something that he’s working on to develop himself or his people, Ian shared that he thinks internally they have had a pretty wonderful shift in defining within the organization how they want to continually improve their project management processes.
And going back to the very beginning of the conversation, where you sort of taking that customer feedback, they're being very aggressive, even as a service organization, to take customer feedback and then incorporate that into their engineering process.
They follow sort of a can ban trunk based development type methodology. And by taking the sort of consumer feedback or customer feedback or client feedback and rolling that into the process, they've really been able to deliver some tremendous results.
Now, they're still improving that, they're still making that better. They're still making that well, let's call it user friendly. And there's a lot of runway for them to continue to improve and he thinks that's the most exciting near-term project they're working on.
Me: So could you share with us if our listeners listen to this episode or better yet, when they listen to this episode and they say to themselves, I'd like to learn a little bit more about Zibtek. I'd also probably like to connect with Ian because he could probably offer some good insight. I could follow him and be a part of his community and what he's doing so that I can add better value to my organization and what I am doing.
Ian Reynolds – hello@zibtek.com
They have a bunch of actually free resources up there. And in their blog, they're constantly sort of posting their findings for things, comparing technologies, et cetera. Where they’re posting their development methodology and their development standards in a few months. So check it out and they also have a bunch of presentations that are super valuable, super high value and worth checking out.
When asked about a quote or saying that helps him in times of adversity, Ian shared that it’s maybe not so much a direct quote, but it really is more so that the idea that feeling sorry for yourself or feeling down on yourself isn't helpful.
It's not a helpful characteristic. So, recognize that thought and then figure out what you should be doing and then go do that thing. So, it's kind of like grandma’s rule, grandma’s rule is you have to eat your vegetables before you can eat your dessert. And so, “Do the uncomfortable stuff first and then go to the fun stuff.”
Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest
Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners
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!