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Navigating the Customer Experience

Join host Yanique Grant as she takes you on a journey with global entrepreneurs and subject matter experts that can help you to navigate your customer experience. Learn what customers really want and how businesses can understand the psychology of each customer or business that they engage with. We will be looking at technology, leadership, customer service charters and strategies, training and development, complaint management, service recovery and so much more!
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Now displaying: November, 2021
Nov 30, 2021

Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice and the author of five books including The New York Times bestseller, The Ultimate Question 2.0. He is currently a Fellow and Senior Advisory Partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. Fred is a frequent speaker at major business forums and his work on customer loyalty has been widely covered in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Businessweek and The Economist.

 

His upcoming article to be published in November marks his 15th contribution to the Harvard Business Review. In 2012, he became one of the original LinkedIn influencers, an invitation only group of corporate leaders and public figures who are thought leaders in their respective fields. In 2003, Consulting Magazine named Fred as one of the world's 25 Most Influential Consultants.

 

According to The New York Times, he put loyalty economics on the map. The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of loyalty. Reichheld graduated with honors both from Harvard College (B.A., 1974) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1978). He's based in Cape Cod and Miami.

 

Questions

 

  • Could you share a little bit about your own journey? How is it that you got to where you are today?
  • Could you explain to us what the Net Promoter system is and how companies should really be using it to yield the best results?
  • Could you share with us maybe two or three things that you believe are contributing drivers of loyalty?
  • What are some things that companies should look at in trying to enrich the lives of your customers? Do they need to understand what type of customer they're serving and does the generation matter?
  • Could you share with us what is Customer Capitalism exactly? And how does that impact the consumer?
  • Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you?
  • Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
  • Where can our listeners find you online?
  • Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you on track, or at least get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed. Do you have one of those?

 

Highlights

 

Fred’s Journey

 

Fred shared that early in his career at Bain & Company, he noticed companies similar to us all, some brand new, some quite mature, but they were all outperforming all of the things he learned at the Harvard. Some were crushing it and a good example was enterprise Rent-A-Car, who started out as a tiny little rental leasing agency in St. Louis, and has grown now to become the largest car rental company on Earth without ever having to tap public equity markets, it's still a private company. And you think, Gosh, what I learned at Harvard was a capital intensive business, low growth industry, low margins, there's no way that you could grow on internally generated cash.

 

So, when he went to meet with Andy Taylor, their CEO, he said, “Fred, there's no secret, there's only one way to grow a successful business sustainably.” And so, he was listening for this great secret. And he said, “You treat your customers so they come back for more and bring their friends.”

 

And that basic idea changed his world because that's what he now understands is the key to success. If your customers are coming back for more and bringing their friends, your economic flywheel will crush the competition.

 

What is the Net Promoter System and How Companies Can Use it to Yield the Best Results

 

Me: Amazing. So I had an opportunity to get an advanced copy of your book Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customer. I really, really love it. I haven't finished reading it as yet, but I've gotten quite far in it. And so, I just wanted you to share with us.

 

Fred, in the book, especially in the preface and the foreword, you kind of mentioned that you have this net promoter system, but people are not actually using it the way how you created it to be used. Could you explain to us what the Net Promoter system is and how companies should really be using it to yield the best results?

 

Fred shared that he’s long been troubled by the fact that financial accounting is how we run our businesses. And while financial accounting is very good at telling us when we've extracted a million dollars from our customers wallets, it does nothing in helping us understand when we've enriched a million customers lives or when our teams have done work that's meaningful and toward an important purpose.

 

And Net Promoter was his attempt at helping companies measure that important idea of all the lives you touch, how many are enriched? How many diminished? And that evolved into Net Promoter Score is based on one question, how likely you’d recommend us to a friend, 0 through 10.

 

And it turns out that when someone gives you a 9, and especially a 10, you've enriched their life, you've lived up to the golden rule of loving your neighbor.

 

And 0 through 6, you failed, you diminish their life. And so, this notion of Net Promoter Score is just keeping track of all the lives touched, how many enriched, how many diminished, and how many promoters, how many detractors, it's very practical for running a business because your promoters are your assets, who come back for more and bring their friends. But also, it's a little bit inspirational because putting your teams to work, and enriching lives and measuring that outcome and helping them learn how to do better, that's really helping them live the right kind of life.

 

The Contributing Drivers of Loyalty

 

Me: So, at the end of the day, we're all trying to build better relationships with our customers. Now, in your book, you also said that loyalty means investing time and resources in relationships.

 

Do you know maybe could you share with us maybe based on your experience and your research, you've definitely been in the thing way longer than I have; maybe two or three drivers that you think contribute to loyalty.

 

And this is loyalty in general, which I'm sure impacts business relationships, because I mean, loyalty is something that as human beings, we do link it to a person. For example, if you have an animal, your dog is loyal to you as the owner, in a relationship; you're loyal to the other person that you're in the relationship with, whether it's a personal or professional relationship. So could you share with us maybe two or three things that you believe are contributing drivers of loyalty?

 

Fred shared that he thinks it's quite poorly understood in this day and age when people are demanding loyalty and trying to get loyalty through gimmicks and marketing, so called loyalty programs. So, he thinks it does make sense to get back to basics.

 

He thinks loyalty is an investment from you and another person in a relationship. And you think, “Why would I invest in someone else?” Well, it's because they stand for what you believe in you.

 

You believe that they'll reciprocate and treat you reasonably and not abuse your trust and that you're in a position to actually do something to make their life better. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time.

 

A lot of people think about loyalty as, “Oh, I want them to be loyal to me.” He thinks the way to start is, “How can I invest in this relationship and love them, make their lives better?”

 

And that's what great companies’ do, that's what great leaders do, they inspire their troops to find ways to enrich the lives of customers sustainably, of course, profitably. But the whole goal in a business is making your customers lives better. Because when you do that, you’re investing in the right relationships, they come back for more, they bring their friends, they say great things about you, they become your public relations force, that's how great business works.

 

And he thinks we get drawn off center a little bit because the larger our company is, the more it’s run through financial mindset. It's our accounting numbers that we seem to view as the framework of success, when in fact, no, it's this golden rule ideas, it’s love thy neighbor as thyself. And when you do it, you'll see the results because when customers feel the love, they are loyal and that's at the core of loyalty, it's earning loyalty by enriching customers lives. And loyalty from employees, by putting them in a position to earn lives of meaning and purpose, by enriching the lives of customers that they touch.

 

Me: I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not just about loyalty in terms of you getting the person to be loyal to you, but it has to be earned and it's not something that can be bought. So I'm glad that you mentioned at the beginning that a lot of these loyalty programs and marketing initiatives that organizations have that they dub as loyalty programs are not actually programs that will make or even influence your customers to be loyal to you. So it's good that you identified for us that loyalty is something that is earned.

 

What Companies Should Look for to Enrich the Lives of Customers

 

Me: Now, in terms of showing your customers or enriching their lives regardless of the industry that you're in, whether you're a financial company, you sell insurance or you have credit cards, or you're a retail company, what are some things that companies should look at in trying to enrich the lives of your customers? Do they need to understand what type of customer they're serving and does the generation matter?

 

Fred shared that of course it does. And yet, he finds that the most successful businesses, whether dealing with teenagers today or octogenarians, it's understanding how to communicate effectively, how to always act in your customers best interest, to listen very carefully to how you're doing and what they need. Because at the core, a business is trying to solve the customer's problem, it's trying to turn a frown, into a smile, and the human process of understanding that, he doesn't think that's changed in thousands and thousands of years. Of course, the technologies we use, the innovative approaches, those open up wonderful new opportunities, but the basics, they haven't changed.

 

One of his colleagues at Bain, they joined about the same year, Scott Cook, who's the founder of Intuit, who has built TurboTax, and other very successful business, huge, huge success.

 

And he said, “Fred, you want a big business, solve a big problem for your customers.” And that's the right way to think about it, “I am going to be a reliable resource that is going to make a real difference in your life by turning that frown into a smile, and I'm going to measure my success that way.”

 

Obviously, profits are necessary but those who think of profits as the true objective, they're not going to grow a very big business very long because that's very selfish, “How much money can I extract from your wallet, get away from me, I'm not going to tell you anything about myself for what I need.” If he has someone who actually acts in a loving, caring way, they're a mutually beneficial relationship affair. But that's the kind of person he’s willing to actually share his information with and give constructive feedback to because he wants them to succeed, he wants them to succeed in helping him solve problems.

 

What is Customer Capitalism and How it Impacts the Consumer?

 

Me: So, while I was reading part of your book as well, I bucked up on a term, Customer Capitalism. Could you share with us what is that exactly? And how does that impact the consumer?

 

Fred shared that he thinks people have a framework in their heads about capitalism that's just dead wrong, that maximize shareholder value as the underlying concept. Through the years, whether it's Milton Friedman, or Adam Smith, there's an ancient and an out of date framework that people call capitalism, that without giving it this name, it's financial capitalism, because it's based on this idea of profits and shareholder and investor is the king. He thinks that has changed over the last few decades, at least, to where now, there's so much capital in the world; you can raise millions and millions if you have a good idea.

 

What there's not infinite amounts of are good people with good ideas who are willing to work together in a team framework to serve others.

 

And the real capital in that system, our customers, all the cash flow comes out of customers’ wallets.

 

So let's keep track of how many customers you have, how many are coming back for more, how many referrals you're getting, that was the basic, those are the keystone metrics in customer capitalism.

 

And more than anything, it's being clear about the purpose. If the purpose in the old school capitalism was maximizing profits and shareholder value, in customer capitalism, the purpose is to enrich the lives of your customers.

 

Bain did a survey of a couple 100 Senior Executives around the world, C suite executives and they found that only 10% believe that the primary purpose their business existed was to make customers lives better. They thought it was about profits or great place to work or balance duties to shareholders, stakeholders. He just thinks that is dead wrong. A good business, a sustainable business has to have a primary purpose of making their customers lives better.

 

Me: Amazing. One of the companies that you mentioned in your book when I was reading was Chick-fil-A and I absolutely love Chick-fil-A, both me and my daughter. But one of the things that I really love about Chick-fil-A was the fact that I remember I traveled a few years ago and my daughter wanted to get something from them on a Sunday and they're actually closed on Sundays and I thought that was awesome, from what I read that was a principle that their organization had and they've lived it up to this day and they've still been very successful even though they're closed on a day when they could be making more profit, as you mentioned.

 

Fred stated that the purpose of Chick-fil-A is certainly to enrich the lives that it touches. It's interesting, the founder, Truett Cathy was one of his early teachers in his business career, and they're totally different people. He's a Southern, he was a Southern Baptist, very, very conservative point of view. He (Fred) lives up in New England, Unitarian Universalist, you couldn't be more liberal in your religious thinking. And yet they had enormous overlap at the core, he picked a proverb from the Bible, that essentially, it says, “A good name is worth more than silver or gold.” Or in other words, your reputation is everything, which he thinks is so true.

 

And this notion of net lives enrich and Net Promoter Score, you think about when you enrich a life, you're living up to the golden rule, you're loving a neighbor, when you diminish your life, you're failing.

 

And so, the reason Chick-fil-A has been very interested and supportive of Net Promoter is because we're trying to achieve the same mission, this is back to Truett Cathy’s words, he was inspired to turn frowns into smiles on his customers’ faces and that is the purpose of the business.

 

So, then you mentioned Sunday, he asked him why he closed on Sundays and he said, “It's not a religious thing, Fred.” He's a very religious guy but he’s not preachy, their business does not put biblical quotes at the bottom of their cups, and they're not proselytizing in the parking lot. They try to be models; they try to help their people live up to this standard of loving your neighbor. And closing on Sundays, he just knew that you could not run a restaurant and have the manager there 7 days a week, you’ll kill yourself. And he said, “Given that, and I definitely want my store operator there running the place not delegating to an assistant.” He said, “We have to close a day and closing Sundays gives this signal that we care about our people, and we care about golden rule.”

 

As he said, “But you know, Fred, I go to other restaurants on Sunday, it's not like it's wrong to go out and eat at a restaurant on Sunday. It's just wrong for us to try and have our managers running a business 7 days a week.” And he thinks it's brilliant. And it is a signal. He thinks it reminds people that they're different. And you're right, their productivity, they have far higher sales per unit than any of the competitors. And those competitors are open 7 days a week. And it shows you when you get the purpose right; your business can crush the competition.

 

App, Website or Tool that Fred Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

 

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Fred shared that it's a new one for him, he discovered a company through one of his Bain partners, it's called BILT. The reason they were intriguing to him was their goal is to help their customers, their customers tend to be consumer brands, like Weber, who makes grills and place at manufacturers and so on. They try to help them build promoters among their customers, to create more promoters.

 

And what they've done is just taken one of the most painful steps in every customer's journey episode, which is assembly and first use, using paper instructions, which these paper instructions are horrible, let's be serious, they're written by engineers whose English is certainly their second language and they're just totally unintuitive.

 

So, BILT takes the 3D CAD drawing from the manufacturer, and then turns it into great little 3D instructions on how to assemble and use your product effectively and it's free to the consumer. So you go to a Home Depot or Costco and you'll start to see BILT on the packaging, and you know that you're going to get that home and you'll be able to put this thing together quickly and you'll feel great about yourself or Home Depot will have their faucets or ceiling fans, things that are really tricky to install, or garage door openers, and you go to BILT and you put the product in it and it downloads up to date information about how to put it together in a very intuitive way where you can zoom in and pinch out and rotate upside down and voice activated to help you guide you through your journey, it's just brilliant.

 

Me: Nice, very good. They obviously saw a need in the market, as you said, a problem that people were having challenges with and complaining about and created a product that would be applicable to make people's lives easier.

 

Fred stated that try ordering a bicycle online, you get it back to your driveway and then you try to put it together using paper instructions and he thinks you'll see why BILT is so successful.

 

Me: Yes, I can just imagine and my coordination of doing things like that are extremely poor, so I'm sure I'd benefit from using BILT.

 

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Fred

 

Me: Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? I'm sure you have many because you've been around for quite some time and I'm sure you've had to read and engage with a lot of authors over the years that have definitely helped enrich your life and the lives of others. But is there maybe one or two that have definitely had a great impact on you over the years, maybe something you read a long time ago, or even something you read recently?

 

When asked about books that have had biggest impact, Fred shared that he read a lot of books. Actually, he listens to them now; his eyes are so strained from working at his computer and writing a book, he can't read in a relaxed way so he listens to Audible. Probably the most impactful book in the last 10 years was written by a guy who passed away, Clayton Christensen was a business school professor, who he got to know, he worked briefly at Bain and then worked at an entrepreneurial thing and ended up at Harvard.

 

He wrote a book called How Will You Measure Your Life? And he (Fred) thinks he's just absolutely right. And the reason that helped him is, he thinks you do need to measure a life carefully, that's what a Net Promoter Score is, of all the lives he touched, how many enriched, how many diminished?

 

That's how you measure a life. And he thinks Clayton put this in very human terms, and thinking about that, not just in a business sense, but all of your relationships in life, how do you think about investing in those relationships and being loving and loyal in a way that's not just correct in your mind, but you know the other party felt the love, you have to get feedback on how you enrich their life. So, How Will You Measure Your Life is a big one.

 

There's a recent book by Adam Grant called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, that he thinks is quite good. Adam is a guy that they must think along the same lines, because it was an earlier book that he wrote about it’s called Give and Take. And he just makes the case that the world is full of people; there are some people who are givers, there are people who are matchers, they want a relationship to be in balance and then there are takers. And he said, one of the keys to life is avoid those takers, they’re sociopaths, you can try and change them, but good luck.

 

And he thinks this is important and living a golden rule existence. Not all people want to be part of a community where people are treated with love and care, they'll abuse that community and he thinks if they can't be fixed, they have to be excluded. And then Think Again, Grant just says, we have these mindsets that are fixed, and he thinks of financial capitalism as a fixed mindset for 90% of the world and he needs to change the way people think about the purpose of business and how to enrich a life.

  

What Fred is Really Excited About Now!

 

Fred shared that he got the paperback galley of Winning on Purpose just a week ago and he can't take it off on his desk, but very pleased with the way it's come out. And that's going to be every day of his life for the next probably 90 days is how to get people to see the relevance of this book to their personal lives, not just their business lives because the subtitle of Winning on Purpose is “The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers.” And loving customers, it doesn't sound like it's a business book, he doesn't know what it sounds, just a little flaky but it’s not because this notion of loving thy neighbor as thyself is the core, it's the highest standard in human affairs. And what he’s arguing and Winning on Purpose is that, that is how you win.

 

When you enrich lives, you have to do it sustainably, and you have to do it profitably, but that's not the magic, accountants can do the profits for you. The magic is figuring out how using your energy and ingenuity to love your customers and have them come to trust you and come back for more and bring their friends but it goes so far beyond business.

 

So, the great challenge he’s got is getting people to recognize, he wrote this book for his granddaughters, infants who he wants them to see how you live the right life. And it sets out a way of measuring progress that he thinks is consistent with what Truett Cathy had in mind of building a reputation that you'll be proud of, and investing in relationships where you can earn people's loyalty.

 

It's probably a good rule of thumb anywhere to just don't spend time with a person unless you can figure out a way to make their life better. And by the way, the good news, chapter two and five of the book, demonstrate that companies that do this, they're the ones that get rich.

 

It's not clear from reading the Wall Street Journal, but every company, every industry, where they look at the Net Promoter Score, versus the competition, measured carefully, correctly, not just some self reported vanity metric, but real apples to apples.

 

It's the company with the highest Net Promoter Score who is growing faster and delivering better total shareholder value. And that's really good news.

 

But people are the mindset is fixed, they just don't get it. They say, “Oh, that's just some industries.” No, every time they're finding it, how did Andy Taylor grow to be the biggest car rental company on earth? How did Apple become one of the biggest companies on earth? Because they built a set of customers who are Promoters who are out there buying more stuff, and referring their friends and giving good feedback because they trust you, and making your employees feel special and loved, that's the flywheel that's going on. So, he’s trying to convince the world that business works in a very different way than they probably learned in business school, or if they read the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

 

Me: And you know, one of the things that kind of came in my head just now when you're speaking in terms of what we were taught in school versus what is reality, the reality is, a business isn't a static thing, it's made up of people and without people in the business, there is no business and people are human beings with feelings and emotions. And you get more out of people when they feel loved, when they feel listened to, when they feel heard, as you said, when you enrich their lives. So, if you really do live that principle, I'm sure you'll win in all aspects of your life.

 

Fred shared that he’s worked at Bain & Company since 1977. So what is that 43 going on 44 years now. And they've been through good and bad times. For the last 10 or 20 years, it's been good times. If you look on Glassdoor, the place that rates businesses as great places to work, Bain, this year, it's the best in the world according to Glassdoor, it's always been one of the top several since Glassdoor started. And Bain hires lots of different kinds of people. But these are really ambitious, talented people. And even with that slice of ambitious people, when you look at what makes a person happy at work at Bain, they want to feel loved; they want to feel like they're a valued member of a team that wins with its customers. So it's an act of service and if you ask, remember he said the typical business person in the world, 10% of them think the reason their business exists is to enrich customer lives, at Bain, if you just ask everybody through the company, you find 60% to 70% of the people think the reason Bain exists is to make their clients more successful.

 

It's a servant culture where love is at the core, helping people succeed and putting smiles on faces and that's what makes it a great place to work.

 

And the irony is, he knows what makes, at least he thinks he knows what makes Bain a great place to work, it's that they are dedicated to helping their teams make a difference in their clients success, and be recognized and rewarded and part of a team that helps achieve that.

 

And it's financially successful but that's not the purpose, the purpose is making their customers lives better. And he thinks most great places to work lists, completely ignore that. They think it's refrigerators full of beer in the break room, pool tables and ping pong and cool fringe benefits, that's the fringe, the core is being on a team where you're playing a valued role at really making a difference in a customer's life.

 

Where Can We Find Fred Online

 

Website - https://www.netpromotersystem.com/

LinkedIn – Fred Reichheld

 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Fred Uses

 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Fred shared that he wished he did. When he’s preaching to whether it's at the dinner table or elsewhere, he goes back to this idea of how important loyalty is. You got to understand what your life stands for, what is your purpose as an individual and then the way you live that purpose is to invest in relationships with other people who share that purpose. And it's how you can invest and help those people succeed that he thinks helps you achieve your mission. So, “Choose your loyalties wisely, they guide your life and they define your legacy.”

 

Me: Love it, choose your loyalties wisely, they guide your life and define your legacy. Amazing. Love it, absolutely love it. And I'm sure every person on the face of this earth that wants to do good, wants to leave a good legacy behind. So the only way to do that, I believe, as you had said was to try and live by doing those actions on a daily basis, do it consistently because that's the only way when you leave this world you'll be able to leave that legacy.

 

Fred stated that and measure, so many people would say, “Oh, I can't measure love.” And he would say, actually you can, you can get feedback from your customers in a systematic Net Promoter framework and understand how many lives you've enriched and that is your legacy. And then you should be measuring your way toward the kind of life you want to lead.

 

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

 

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Links

 

 

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

 

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Nov 23, 2021

Dan Gingiss is an international keynote speaker and customer experience coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is your best marketing strategy. His 20-year professional career spanned multiple disciplines, including customer experience, marketing, social media and customer service. He held leadership positions at McDonald's, Discover and Humana.

 

Dan is the author of The Experience Maker: How To Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait To Share, which was released in September 2021. And he's also the author of Winning at Social Customer Care: How Top Brands Create Engaging Experiences on Social Media. He also hosts the “Experience This!” show podcast and “The Experience Maker Show.”

 

He earned a B.A. in Psychology and Communications from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

 

Questions

 

  • Could you share a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got to where you are today?
  • Could you share with our listeners, Dan, a little bit about this book, maybe share with us maybe three to four pillars that the book is built on? And why a company would need a tool like this to enhance our customer experience?
  • Could you maybe give us one or two examples of maybe companies that you know, that have demonstrated an immersive experience?
  • You mentioned that word of mouth is the best type of advertising for any business. How can we get our customers to the point where they want to share their experiences with us and it's not just a mere experience?
  • Have you found that customers expectations have changed somewhat, since the pandemic? Do you find that they're more sensitive to customer experiences, their expectations are higher? What has your experience been as a customer experience specialist in this area?
  • In this whole digital transformation space that companies are going through, how do you think we can re humanize the customer experience, even though we're using digital to support that whole transition and make things easier for customers?
  • Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
  • Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you read recently, but it still had a great impact on you.
  • Can you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about? It could be something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
  • Where can listeners find you online?
  • Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote; it kind of helps to keep you on track or get you refocus if for any reason you got derailed.

 

Highlights

 

Dan’s Journey

 

Dan shared that he started out in a marketing role right after college, even though he had never taken a marketing class; he was a psychology and communications, undergraduate major. And he realized once he gets into marketing, that's basically what marketing is, it's psychology plus communication. So, it turned out to work out pretty well. And he held that job for about four years, he really liked it. But he ended up going to business school, where he really formalized the marketing learning. And he learned that everything he had been doing had names and frameworks and all that sort of thing.

 

And then he spent another 15 - 16 years in corporate America, in financial services, healthcare, and eventually McDonald's, learning all sorts of marketing channels, but also evolving into customer experience, and really falling in love with CX and its power to impact the bottom line, to obviously make customers happier. And so, the book is really a summary of everything that he’s learned, put into a simple framework that allows companies to create remarkable experiences for their customers without spending a lot of money.

 

“The Experience Maker, How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can’t Wait to Share” - The Pillars That The Book is Built On

 

Me: Amazing. So the book is really, really an awesome tool. So, for those of our listeners that are not familiar with Dan's book, it's The Experience Maker: How to Create Remarkable Experiences That Your Customers Can't Wait to Share. So, could you share with our listeners, Dan, a little bit about this book, maybe share with us maybe three to four pillars that the book is built on? And why a company would need a tool like this to enhance our customer experience?

 

Dan shared that he’s a believer as a marketer, that the single best way to do marketing today is to get our customers to do it for us. And it's called word of mouth marketing; it's usually been considered the holy grail for marketers, and something that's been on attainable until now.

 

And really, what we're finding is that the companies that create great experiences don't have to work so hard at marketing, because their customers are doing it for them, they're sharing these experiences, because people like sharing positivity. We know that people share both negative experiences and positive experiences, but what they don't share is an average experience. Nobody ever has said; “Let me tell you about the perfectly ordinary restaurant I went to last night.” That's not something we care to share. But man, we will talk about it if it was amazing, and we will talk about it if it was terrible.

 

And so, the idea of the book is to teach companies, how do you create those amazing experiences and how do you create them in such a way that customers can't help themselves, they reach into their pocket and grab their phone and take a picture and share it and say nice things about you.

 

So, the framework that he introduced is called WISER. And it's so that you become wiser than the competition when it comes to customer experience. The first four letters wise stand for Witty, Immersive, Shareable, and Extraordinary, which are four different elements that help to create the kinds of experiences that are remarkable or worthy of remark, worthy of talking about.

 

Now you can use one of them, or you can use more than one of them. And the more that you stack them, the more powerful they are. But even just using one is going to start to change how your customers perceive the experience with you.

 

The R in WISER then becomes about being Responsive. And when people are talking about us, especially on social media, we've got to be part of that conversation. After all, if somebody gives us a compliment, we ignore them in real life, that's pretty rude. They don't think really highly of us and yet brands do that all the time in social media, where customers are complimenting them, but the brand is nowhere to be found.

 

Me: So, one of the things I really liked about the section on Witty, so you kind of explained that a little bit for us, you indicated that it wasn't so much about being humorous, because not many brands can carry off humour, depending on what their brand, reputation or image is. But more so, being very clever and creative in the messaging that you put across. And there was one that really caught my eye in the book when I was reading; the gas station one where it said customer service is priceless and I thought that was really cool. Because at a gas station, typically, rates are not necessarily the best. So, that kind of caught my eye like if I did see two gas stations, as you suggested in the book and said customer service is priceless, I probably would go to the one that said that versus the one that didn't have anything that would have caught my eye. That was really cool.

 

Dan shared that one of the ideas there is that competing on price is a loser's game, and all you got to do is talk to that gas station owner because he's got his competitor right across the street selling a very similar product for the exact same price. So, competing on price isn't going to work for him. Now competing on product is also difficult because they're both selling gas and inside their stores, they're both selling basically the same convenience items. So, what's left is customer experience and if this particular gas station can differentiate based on the service that you're going to get, that is a reason to choose one over the other one across the street.

 

Example of Companies that Have Demonstrated an Immersive Experience

 

Me: So, the next part of your book talks about delivering an experience that is immersive. Could you maybe give us one or two examples of maybe companies that you know, that have demonstrated an immersive experience?

 

Dan shared that immersive is really about the continuity of the experience and creating something that is consistent and fluid in the customer’s eyes. And that's difficult as companies get bigger because they tend to have silos and everyone in each silo is responsible for one part of the experience, but nobody's responsible for connecting those experiences together.

 

So the poor customer ends up with this very choppy experience moving from part to part in your company. So, one of the examples that he shared in the book is about a company called Imperfect Produce. And they're a company that takes strangely shaped and sized fruit and vegetables that don't meet the cosmetic standards of a grocery store. And they box them into a subscription service that you can get a box every week at your doorstep.

 

And what they do is play on this idea that their fruits and vegetables sometimes look funny, they're sometimes too big or too small, or they're dented, or they're just shaped weirdly. And so, they actually lean into that and they have these characters that appear throughout the experience that are these vegetables and they have googly eyes.

 

And you see these characters in their marketing, on the box, really throughout the experience. The other thing that they really lean into is this idea that by buying their fruits and vegetables, which otherwise would have gone into the landfill, you're doing a good thing, you're saving waste from going to the landfill, you're saving water and CO2 because of the farmers not having to replant so often and they track this on the website.

 

So, every time he goes in to pick his fruits and vegetables, he’s reminded of how much he has saved from the landfill and he noticed the other day he just crossed 1200 pounds of produce that he’s gotten since he’s been a customer. And these are the kinds of things that keep people coming back for more because of the immersive nature of them; he’s much more tied into this brand than he would have been if they weren't immersive.

 

Me: It's almost like you feel like you're a part of their journey in whatever they're doing and because of that, it's much more difficult for you to walk away from them. And now it becomes a real relationship, because there's value being given on both ends of the spectrum.

 

How to Get Customers to Share Their Experiences With Us

 

Me: Now, you also mentioned that your experiences must be shareable. And I remember you used this word in the book, where you said customers have like a “Meh” experience, which is, I guess, just a mediocre one. I guess if we were to compare it to NPS, it would be like persons who scored seven and eight, because they're not really wowed, but they're not disappointed either, so they're kind of in the middle. So, what I really wanted to ask was, we have customers who we want to share our experiences and you mentioned that word of mouth is the best type of advertising for any business. “How can we get our customers to the point where they want to share their experiences with us and it's not just a “Meh” experience?”

 

Dan shared that the best example that he thinks really epitomizes this is the story that he tells in the book of taking his son for his birthday to a restaurant called Fleming Steakhouse.

 

And they walk into the restaurant, he had already told them ahead of time that it was his son's birthday, and the Maître d’ hands him a birthday card that is signed by the staff. And he was pretty impressed with that, he had not seen that before.

 

And they're sitting in eating our dinner and the discussion turns to and this may just happen in families where dad is a customer experience guy. But the discussion turns to his daughter actually brought up and said, “Hey, if they brought us a birthday card, I'll bet they're going to do something pretty special at the end of the meal.”

 

In the US, you often get a slice of cake and a candle when it's your birthday, and it's a very nice gesture, it's just that every restaurant does it, so it doesn't necessarily stand out.

 

And sure enough, Fleming's did not disappoint, they came out with a box of handmade chocolates that was sitting on a plate, where Happy Birthday was spelled out in cocoa powder. And instead of a candle, they had a sparkler and the sparkler is so much cooler than a candle.

 

Now, there are four people at the table and without being told to and without coordinating, everybody immediately grabbed for their phones. And they took a picture of this dessert.

 

And the parent shared it to Facebook, and the kids shared it to Snapchat or Instagram, and just like that, Fleming's had four different shares of an experience at their restaurant, all because they decided that a slice of cake and a candle while a nice gesture, is just not going to stand out enough for people to want to share it.

 

Now, he'll bet that box of chocolates and the sparkler doesn't cost them much more, it might even be around the same price. But the idea is that it's so completely different and it stands out in such a way that people can't help themselves, they want to take a picture of it.

 

And so, he uses that as a metaphor for companies to think about, “Where do you have a candle that you could turn into a sparkler?” Because that's the difference, that's what makes it shareable.

 

Me: That's amazing. That was really out of the box thinking that that restaurant did for your son. And you're right; every restaurant does just give a cake and a candle so if you're doing something different then I guess that's where the extraordinary in your wise acronym comes in because that experience was definitely extra ordinary, it was definitely out of the ordinary.

 

Dan stated that extraordinary just means a little bit better than ordinary, it doesn't have to be a private firework show and a Beyonce’ concert, that's extraordinary too.

 

But nobody has that kind of budget to do. And so, it's just about figuring out somewhere in your journey, where let's say you're doing something the same way that your competitors do it, that's a pretty good bet that that's an average experience, because your competitors are not delivering extraordinary experiences most of the time. So if you're doing it like everybody else is doing it, do it differently. And that's a great way to go from ordinary to extraordinary, make it stand out by being a little bit different and that is another element that causes people to want to talk about it.

Since the Pandemic, Do You Find That Customers Are More Sensitive to Customer Experiences?

 

Me: So Dan, a big part of customer experience now, I know it has definitely changed a lot. I know a lot of customers are paying so much more attention to it now since we're all going through this global pandemic. But have you found that customers expectations have changed somewhat, since the pandemic? Do you find that they're more sensitive to customer experiences, their expectations are higher? What has your experience been as a customer experience specialist in this area?

 

Dan stated absolutely. He thinks we as customers really took note, especially early on in the pandemic, of which companies were there for us when we really needed them, and which companies weren't.

 

And the truth is, is that a lot of companies did a very nice job at especially at the beginning of the pandemic, responding, reacting, and innovating. And then other companies really did not a good job of this. And basically checked the box, and didn't particularly do anything different.

 

So, an example of that is when the pandemic first started, most of us got a lot of emails from companies that were telling us about their enhanced cleaning procedures. And he loved that everybody called them enhanced cleaning procedures, they weren't ever better or improved, or anything other than the word enhanced because somebody started using the word enhance, and then everybody else copied that word.

 

And they also sent us, at least in the US, they would send us to the CDC website, which is the Center for Disease Control, he’s sure other countries have a similar organization. And what he found was that all these emails basically said the same thing, they were totally uncreative, unremarkable.

 

And then I got an email from his investment broker Charles Schwab and their email didn't say anything about cleaning procedures, or the CDC website. Instead, their email said, “We understand that you must be very nervous about a volatile stock market. And so, we want to make sure that you know all of these tools and benefits that you have available to you that you can use to help you through this difficult time.”

 

And for him, that was exactly what he needed from his investment firm. He didn't care about their cleaning procedure, that wasn’t important to him. But he certainly cared about a volatile stock market. So that's the difference between companies that cared, and that were really trying to deliver what customers needed at this difficult time, versus what everybody else was doing. And so, that is something that customers remember and they've seen lots and lots of customers switch brands during the pandemic, because they realized that the company they were doing business with just wasn't going to be delivering the experience that they wanted.

 

Re-Humanize The Customer Experience Even Though Using Digital to Support that Whole Transition and Make Things Easier for Customers

 

Me: Amazing. So, that's definitely some other ways that our customers’ expectations have changed. I think also Dan, since the pandemic, I get that digital transformation is super important and it definitely makes life that much easier for the customer and can create that effortless experience for them and seamless experience, especially seeing that you may not want to physically go to the business place. But I get a lot of questions from time to time from companies asking me questions like; “Do you think human beings are going to become obsolete totally in the whole realm of customer experience? And of course, my answer is always no. But in this whole digital transformation space that companies are going through, how do you think we can re humanize the customer experience, even though we're using digital to support that whole transition and make things easier for customers?

 

Dan shared that he totally agrees with Yanique, humans aren't going anywhere, we're not going to be replaced by robots.

And the reality is that customers today crave human interaction and the pandemic actually exacerbated that, especially the time that we were all stuck in our homes for so long, we wanted human interaction.

And so, there's a time and a place for both human engagement and technology engagement within the customer journey. There are times where we just want to self serve, and we just want to go online and see our balance or pay a bill or whatever and we don't want anybody to bother us, we just want to do it ourselves.

And then there are other times where we really need to talk to someone because we have a problem that we don't think we can solve by ourselves or that might have too many layers to it. And so, we don't, at that point, want to talk to a computer, we want to talk to a person.

And he thinks that companies that are getting it right are figuring out when do we deliver self service and when do we deliver human service. But those two things are always going to exist; one is not going to replace another.

 

App, Website or Tool that Dan Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

 

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Dan shared that he would say right now it's actually LinkedIn and the reason for that is just that it is the place where he network, where he share content, where he consume other people's content. And where he meets people that want to do business with him. And he thinks that is the space right now online that he can't do without.

 

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Dan

 

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Dan shared that one of his favorites is They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing and Today’s Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan. It's a marketing book and it teaches you how to create content around the questions that your customers ask you, or that your prospects ask you. And so, although it's a marketing book, it actually takes a lot of customer experience themes into it and he thinks it was one of the most valuable books that he has read, and has used in his own business and actually has used with clients as well.

Another one that he would pick, he’s going to go with one of Jay Baer’s books, because he loves him as well. He really loved Utility, but he’s going to go with Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers. And much like his (Dan) first book, being about social media, customer service, this is really a book that tells you to embrace complaints, and to learn from them and to treat them as gifts, because they can help you not only be responsive to customers, and maybe turn them from detractors to advocates, but also to go back to your business and find what's actually wrong and try to fix it for other people. So, Hug Your Haters is another one that definitely changed how he thinks about things.

 

What Dan is Really Excited About Now!

 

When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Dan stated that you’re asking a guy that just spent nine months launching a book; he’s now kind of just coming off of that. But he'll say that he’s super excited to be back speaking on stages in person. He had two keynotes this week in two different cities, it was so nice to be with people again, yes, everybody's being safe and wearing a mask where appropriate. But there's just something as the speaker to talking to people in real life and seeing their eyes and seeing their reactions and hearing them laugh and clap and what have you that just doesn't happen on Zoom or in digital channels. And so, that's something he’s really excited about is the fact that live events are coming back and are back in some places. And he really looks forward to doing a lot more of those in 2022.

 

Me: That's brilliant, love that. So simple. And pre pandemic, we probably would have taken these very simple things for granted. I'm sure we never would have imagined a time when we were locked up in our homes and everything had to be digital. So now, as you said, we're getting back out there, and we're still being safe. But you really appreciate the very simple things in life that as I would say, we may have taken for granted; we wouldn't have realized how important or how valuable those kinds of experiences are.

 

Where Can We Find Dan Online

 

Website - https://dangingiss.com/

LinkedIn – Dan Gingiss

Twitter - @dgingiss

 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Dan Uses

 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Dan shared that this quote, believe it or not comes from a fortune cookie. He got this fortune that he was so excited about and he taped it up on to his camera right behind his laptop screen.

 

So, since the camera is always facing him, he can always see this. And it says, “Never mind tomorrow. Today is the day.” And he loves that because there are days where we want to procrastinate, or there are days where we just don't have the energy. And he likes reminding himself that today's the day and today is the day that he can move his business forward, he can help a customer out, he can do something nice for somebody, and you never know what tomorrow brings, or even if tomorrow brings and so that's a quote that's definitely stuck with him for a while.

 

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Links

 

 

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

 

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!

Nov 16, 2021

Nathan Foy is founder and CEO of Fortis, nine-time Inc. Magazine honoree as one of America's fastest-growing companies. Fortis provides over 25,000 private, secure trips in 114 countries per year to clientele worth more than half a trillion dollars. These clients routinely ranked Fortis on Gallup surveys as the best in the industry. With offices in Greenville, South Carolina, and Hong Kong, Fortis offers ground transportation to more private jet owners than any other service in the world.

 

Nathan's first book, What Rich Clients Want: (But Won't Tell You), translates the Fortis experience into a replicable, scalable business model any service provider can recreate. Nathan lives in Greenville with his wife, Pam and their four children.

 

Questions

 

  • Could you share with our guests a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got to where you are today?
  • Could you tell us a little bit about that book? Is there a particular strategy or approach that you take to serve rich clients versus clients who are not rich, you want to share with us how it is this book can be applied to everybody in business?
  • Can you share with us maybe what are maybe two or three things that you've seen emerge as needs that customers are looking to be even more fulfilled since the pandemic?
  • What are some of the approaches that organizations need to take maybe leaders, in order to ensure that your team members are practicing these behaviors or competencies, especially if it doesn't come naturally? Let's start maybe with the first two, professionalism and problem solving. How can you build strengths or strengthen the competencies of your team to ensure that they're demonstrating these behaviors with the customers?
  • How do you stay motivated every day?
  • Could you also share with our audience what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
  • Could you also share with our audience, maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, it could be a read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it really has impacted you.
  • Could you share with us what's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can listeners find you online?
  • Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote; it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocused if for any reason you get derailed?

 

Highlights

 

Nathan’s Journey

 

Nathan shared that it was not intentional in its original conception. So, Fortis as a company began as a prepaid taxi cab card for college students. That was his original idea, was to create a card that students could use for transportation, this was in 2000 and this was the era when prepaid phone cards or prepaid meal cards were all the rage.

 

And so, he raised money from friends and family, he went up and down the East Coast, he built a network of taxicab companies. And their launch was for the Fall moving season of 2001, almost exactly 20 years ago. And it was going pretty well and then, unfortunately, 911 happened and everything changed. They ran out of money, people weren't visiting their kids for college anymore. And so, they started to adapt.

 

They sold their cab cards to companies. And then shortly after that, they found their first private jet company and they said they wanted chauffeured cars. And then they adapted into that really in the beginning of 2002. And that's really been their niche ever since.

 

Your Book, What Rich Clients Want - Strategy or Approach That You Take to Serve Rich Clients Versus Clients Who Are Not Rich

 

Me: So, in your bio, I read that you have this amazing book called What Rich Clients Want: (But Won’t Tell You). So, could you tell us a little bit about that book? Is there a particular strategy or approach that you take to serve rich clients versus clients who are not rich, you want to share with us how it is this book can be applied to everybody in business?

 

Nathan shared that it's really the result of 20 years of doing this and understanding that the most discerning clients that spend the most never actually tell you what they want, it's on you as a customer service person to discern that. And he thinks while this is a book that could be used to serve rich clients, he thinks the lessons here could apply to anybody in the service business.

 

So, what the book does is, it outlines basically that there's five steps that one has to proceed two, and two has to precede three. And if those are all there, then you can have a system of service that really leads clients into more than they expected they could get. And he thinks when you have that, then you can really create loyalty that lasts.

 

Me: Alright, you want to share with us what those steps are?

 

Nathan shared that the first step is “Professionalism.” And so, just kind of owning the introduction, owning the beginning of a relationship, the first impression is super important. And they give a lot of practical tips to that.

 

And then the second step is “Problem Solving.” So, actually taking a problem that they have, seizing it and acting as if it was your own and solving it so that they can see that you have competence in what you're doing.

 

The third step is “Concierge.” So, that's actually not just solving the problem, but anticipating even unspoken needs, so that you can see around a corner and make something happen proactively.

 

The fourth step is “Security.” So, having a layer of security that complements all of those things, but not at the expense of all of those things is very, very important. And these days, it's more about information, reputation, security, those kinds of things than it is physical security in most instances.

 

And then the fifth level, the highest level is really “Elite.” And that's when you start to begin to push out the boundaries on what's even possible. You'll know you're at this level when the client starts to refer to your company as a verb, they have clients that call them and say, “Can you just “Fortis” this, whatever that is that you do, can you just do that to this?” And that's a really good sign, they don't know the secret sauce, but they just want you to apply it to what's in front of them.

 

Me: I like that. I like the fact that you gave that analogy just now that they coined it as a verb. It's almost like Google, like before the age of the internet; Google wasn't even a word, let alone a verb. And now, when people want to find anything out there, like just Google it. I mean, it's just so amazing that 10 - 15 years ago, that word, it just didn't exist, it's just not something people would say.

 

Needs of Customers That Have Emerge That Customers Are Looking to be Even More Fulfilled Since the Pandemic

 

Me: Now customer service has been really impacted, customer experiences across different industries, across the entire world, all seven continents have definitely been impacted by the pandemic, can you share with us maybe what are maybe two or three things that you've seen emerge as needs that customers are looking to be even more fulfilled since the pandemic?

 

Nathan stated that the original environment of it, he thinks really led to us creating not just the standard things, masks and things like that, sanitization of surfaces. But we really tried to say, “Okay, what is kind of a level above that that might be unspoken, but that our clients might desire?”

 

And the thing that they arrived at was, particularly in the pre-vaccine environment, having a chauffeur contacted two or three days after the trip, for a principal, just to make sure that in the intervening time the chauffeur hadn't experienced any symptoms.

 

And so, the clients, there are many clients that said, I love that you do that, everybody's got testing, and everything, we've got temperature checks, and all those things. But the one thing is that the person could be asymptomatic and a day or two later get symptoms. And that's kind of next level.

 

And they had a lot of clients that really, really complimented them on doing that. Practically, another thing that they've implemented as partitions are just a much bigger thing in vehicles now than they used to be. And so, they wanted not only to provide that, but they had to kind of stand up, how do we do this so it doesn't look like you just ran to Home Depot and put it together and make that standard across the 1000 cities that they serve. So that was a fun challenge as well.

 

Professionalism and Problem Solving, How Can You Build Strengths or Strengthen the Competencies of Your Team to Ensure That They’re Demonstrating These Behaviours with the Customers

 

Me: Now, Nathan, one of the things that your book mentions as it relates to professionalism, you had mentioned the five tiers that are required for you to really deliver that supreme or extraordinary level of service. What are some of the, I would say approaches that organizations need to take maybe leaders, in order to ensure that your team members are practicing these behaviors or competencies, especially if it doesn't come naturally? Let's start maybe with the first two, professionalism and problem solving. How can you build strengths or strengthen the competencies of your team to ensure that they're demonstrating these behaviors with the customers?

 

Nathan shared that it's a great question. So, he would say before we get into the behaviours, it first begins with mindset. And the mindset has to be that you are honing your craft and not doing a job. And what he means by that is that if you want to make customer service into a career, then you have to make it uniquely yours and be a student of it so that the service Yanique offers is completely one of a kind over time, and only you can be you. But you also have to do that in concert with an overall brand that you're continuing to hone and refine to.

 

So, they have chauffer partners and they have conferences twice a year, they host them and go over kind of just aligning and making their services better. And that's one of the first things he does is just say, “Are you doing a job? Or are you doing a craft?”

 

Because, quite frankly, if someone's just doing the job, and this is just here to pay my school bills or this is just something I'm doing in between gigs, they don't really spend a lot of time with them. They don't really seek them out because they're not really going to want to ascend to elite status. So, he thinks that's a pretty important thing, just to begin with.

 

So, really practically professionalism, there's a lot of basics of how someone presents themselves with posture, appearance, confidence, handshake, eye contact, not just being early to do the job, but actually being early and ready to do the job early. Those are things that he would just say, they don't presume that people know and scold them if they don't know; they kind of assume that they don't know those things, and start training them on it. And that involves extensive use of checklists. And again, they're looking for people that are not offended by checklists, it's not saying you're incompetent, or you don't know what you're doing, it's just if you have the basics completely nailed down, that gives you the freedom to move up to higher levels and a checklists, especially the first level is essentially great for that.

 

If a client, especially a rich client doesn't like you, they're not going to tell you why they don't like you, they're just going to text their assistant and say, “I don't want to use this person again.” And you'll never know why. And so, the idea that you're going to be assessed on professionalism or clients going to give you input on how to be more professional, they don't have the time, they don't have the desire and it's really got to be on you to own that initial bit so that you can kind of get permission to move up to higher steps.

 

On problem solving, a real quick and easy way to begin with that is to just look for the most common problems that your clients encounter, and build systems for that so that you can be really ready when they have that. A quick example of that, they have a five star chauffeur for them in Miami.

 

And over the years, he's noticed people enter the airport, they want to go to a drugstore and then there's a core list of things that they're getting at CVS or Walgreens. And he's created what he calls his magic toolbox, but it's basically in his consoles. So, now when somebody lands and they say, “I just need to go to CVS.” He says, “Well, if you don't mind me asking, what is it that you need because I may just have it here.” And then they asked for one or two items, he has it. And he's immediately established competence with them that goes to a deeper level of trust. And now the whole world of what's open to the client, and what this person's capable of doing has really opened up.

 

Me: That's brilliant. I love that. That's like giving them what they need before they even know they need it.

 

How Nathan Stay Motivated Every Day

 

Me: So, could you share with our audience, how do you stay motivated every day? I can imagine that dealing in a business that is catering to clients who are rich, because of course, rich people clearly, yes, they have choices. But I'm sure their choice of business is a little bit different than a person who is probably on a budget. And so, with that in mind, maybe their demands are higher, their standards are higher and it can be frustrating sometimes I can imagine, especially when you're dealing with somebody who the average person would deem as difficult. So, in managing this business and running it for the many years that you've been in it, how is it that you stay motivated every day and you don't get discouraged by comments or just things that customers may see that makes you even wonder, I don't know if it crosses your mind. But do you ever get to the point where you say, “Why? Why am I doing this? Why am I serving all these spoiled, rich people?”

 

Nathan shared that a mentor of his once told him that if you're hard on yourself, the world is easy. And if you're easy on yourself, the world is hard. So, he would say it begins with the mindset of he’s his own biggest critic. And then they as Fortis are their own biggest critics. And they really lean into those challenges that clients give to them. And then every week they have a company meeting, and they gossip good news about each other, they do recognitions and they're saying not just good things that each of them has done, but really, they're kind of taking the time to go through each thing that's been done that they want to congratulate, and tie it to one of their five core values. And then that just helps to recenter them and “Oh yeah, we do value that. And that's an example of that. And I can learn from that. And if I did something like that, then I'm going to be recognized for that too.”

 

The second bit, he would just say is that he’s a firm believer in making your goals for the year, they actually break them up into six month periods, and making them known because every week or two weeks as a leadership team, they're going over their goals for the semester, it's a great way to just recenter you on, it's not about how he feels, or about this one service issue that they had. Overall, there are these big things that they're gunning for and they're doing that as a team.

 

App, Website or Tool that Nathan Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business

 

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Nathan stated that it's a good question. He would say for them LinkedIn has been extraordinarily valuable to connect with their partner chauffeurs and to their clients.

And so, particularly when there was just recently the COVID outbreak, that was a terrific way to communicate up to date information and then vice versa for them to get up to date information. And one thing they learned through that, which, he kind of already knew, but they found that it was even more true than he thought was their global network of service providers are some of the most important people in each location. So, people were like maybe thinking about travelling to Paris, and a phone call to a chauffeur security person in Paris would tell them way more than you could just get on the internet. So, staying connected through LinkedIn was really helpful for that.

 

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Nathan

 

When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Nathan shared that the summer after 10th, grade, he had knee surgery and he loved to play sports, he played a lot of basketball during the summers. And he had surgery right after school was out. And everybody told him, “Oh, it's going to be three to four weeks, and you'll be back on your feet.” And it more or less put him out for eight weeks or most of the summer. And so, he’s laid up in bed, this is pre internet and he’s getting tired of watching TV and just being lazy and thinking about all the things he’s missing out. And so, he got a book that's called Made in USA and it was by Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart. And he just devoured that book. And he thinks that was the book that kind of sparked in him an interest in being an entrepreneur and actually understanding what that could look like and what that can be. And because he had a lot of time to think, set his mind racing that summer when he had nothing to do.

 

What Nathan is Really Excited About Now!

 

Nathan shared that he’s really excited about the book in the sense that he’s not pretending that any of the foundational things that he has in What Rich Clients Want are novel. In fact, he gave a huge amount of credit to Horst Schulze, who is essentially the founder of a lot of these concepts for Ritz Carlton he would say, especially level one and level two things. They lean a lot on the Ritz Carlton experience to learn from that. But then he thinks the neat thing is, is that over 20 years, having learned and distilled these things, and now being able to talk with them, with audiences like yours, he just find that really rewarding, really gratifying.

 

And in fact, tomorrow night, at their headquarters, they're having their book launch party and he’s got old team members driving in from other locations to come in and celebrate. So, it's fun to share the information and also celebrate the hard work that kind of went into making the book happen.

 

Where Can We Find Nathan Online

 

Website – www.fortis.co

Website – www.nathanfoy.com

LinkedIn – Nathan W. Foy

Twitter - @nfoyal

 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Nathan Uses

 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Nathan shared that there's a famous quote from Teddy Roosevelt that he will try to quote, but it says basically, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who even if he fails, he fails while daring greatly, so that his place is not among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

 

Me: Lovely, I love it. And how does that quote help you?

 

Nathan shared that it tells him it's not about only winning; it's just being in the arena and if you're in the arena, you're going to get bloodied; you're going to have discouragements, you're going to have disappointments, but you are daring greatly. And that's something that he thinks is worth doing in our professional lives and in our lives in general.

 

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The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

 

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!

Nov 2, 2021

Becca Ribbing is the author of The Clarity Journal and has been a coach for over a decade. She's on a mission to help people break out of the cycles of uncertainty and struggle that hold them back. She helps women going back forth and with the big, seemingly endless question of what to do next so they can stop going around in circles and finally figure out what they truly want and create the clarity and momentum they crave.

 

So many people find themselves stuck and unsure of their direction. Using journaling prompts and helping people become more honest with themselves. She moves her readers forward gently and empowers them to embrace their strengths while letting go of any negative self-talk that has held them back in the past. She's been on many podcasts, including “What to Read Next” and “Say Yes.”

 

Questions

 

  • Could you share with our audience a little bit about your journey? How did you get to where you are today?
  • We have a lot of listeners who are business owners or managers in businesses, females, males, how would this book really help them? Could you share with us just how this all comes together?
  • What are maybe one or two things that you would recommend that they could employ in order to just be more confident or have a greater conviction or assertion in whatever they're thinking of doing or not doubting themselves or be so fearful?
  • Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
  • Could you also share with our audience, maybe one or two books that you've read, could be books that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it really has had a great impact on you.
  • What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
  • Where can listeners find you online?
  • Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote or saying, it kind of helps to get you back on track or get you refocused if for any reason you get derailed?

 

Highlights

 

Becca’s Journey

 

Becca shared that about 3 years ago, she was going back and forth about her next career move, she had just had her second son and she had been a coach for a while. And she had also been running a mindfulness website that she had to let go when her son was born, her son had a bunch of medical issues, none of them were huge, but they all were very time consuming.

 

And so, about 3 years ago, she was going back and forth with a friend of hers about what path she wanted to take next. And it was so funny, because she stopped her and finally she said, “Hey, Becca, you are a coach, you've been a coach for a long time, what would you tell your clients in this situation?” And she stopped, she was like, “Oh, what would I tell myself?” And she got off that call and she wrote down all of the questions she asks her clients to help them move forward.

 

And as she was writing these questions down and asking them of herself, she started getting more and more and more clear. And the thing that came up for her is that she really needed to get back into writing, even though it was difficult with the kids, writing was really truly what she loved doing. And so, this ended up becoming her first writing project. It was just so powerful to have the questions asked that she wanted to make sure they got out to the world.

 

Your Book, The Clarity Journal - Find the Clarity and Momentum You’ve Been Searching For! – How This Book Can Help Business Owner or Managers in Business

 

Me: So, your book, as we mentioned prior to the actual recording starting is entitled, The Clarity Journal - Find the Clarity and Momentum You've Been Searching For! So tell us, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners or managers in businesses, females, males, how would this book really help them? Because I know, for example, there are people who are in their 20s and their 30s, sometimes even in their 40s, who still have not figured out if what they're doing is what they really want to do. And so, where do you start? Do you start just by having a conversation with yourself in your head? Or do you find journaling helps more? And is there a scientific proof that supports that? Could you share with us just how this all comes together?

 

Becca shared that the main thing, is to start getting yourself out of the question and moving towards an answer. So, she finds a lot of times when someone comes to her and is really stuck, they are just constantly asking the same question over and over again, “What do I do next?” Or “What is my passion?” And they really just get so fixated on the lack of what they don't know, that they have a really hard time branching out from there.

 

And so, she would say she loves journaling, you can also hire a coach. She thinks that a lot of us get stuck and we don't even realize it though. We get stuck in this single train of thought where we're looping back over and over. And so, she would say that the very first step in her mind is recognizing when you are stuck, being mindful about being stuck and recognizing that you are not going to be able to really move yourself through it, doing what you've been doing up to date.

 

So, she believes journaling helps a lot, she thinks that hiring a coach helps a lot and some of your listeners may not be stuck about what they want to do, so much as like stuck about exactly how they want to do it, or exactly what the career path should look like for them.

 

And she runs into this a lot with entrepreneurs, especially very small business entrepreneurs, where they really aren't as clear as they think they are about their mission and what they are doing, and so it just muddies the water so much because every time they start something new, every time they go to do a blog post, or every time they start working on a new product, because they are not clear, they have a really hard time diving into it without an awful lot of second guessing at the very beginning.

 

And so, she doesn't really have scientific proof that journaling works, she can't off the top of her head think of a study and now after she gets off of this call, she’s going to go look and see what scientific studies there are for journaling. But she thinks the real trick of all of this is to just be honest with yourself about where you are.

 

Because we also oftentimes want to push away that indecision, push away the fear; push away whatever it is that's causing us discomfort. And so, if we don't actually shine a light on it, if we don't really look at it deeply, then we're going to be stuck in that same cycle and she thinks that really comes clear when she’s talking to her clients that are managers and are in this realm, because they aren't clear and they're muddying the waters for their employees. But also, a lot of times, they're not clear about what they want in terms of employees.

 

She runs into a lot where someone's been dealing with a bad employee for a very long time, and speaking of scientific studies, there is a really interesting study a couple of years ago, the statistic she’s going to be a little bit off on because she can't remember what exactly it was. But basically, if a team had a complainer on it, that the entire team's productivity went down by something like 30%. Isn't that shocking?

And so, really getting clear about what you want your management style to be, really getting clear about what it is that you need to be successful can also be extremely powerful.

 

Recommendations Persons Can Employ In Order to Be More Confident

 

Me: So, persons who suffer from like low self esteem, or their confidence is not as high as another person, what are maybe one or two things that you would recommend that they could employ in order to just be more confident or have a greater conviction or assertion in whatever they're thinking of doing or not doubting themselves or be so fearful?

 

Becca stated that that's a great question. She feels like a lot of times people don't really recognize their strengths. When we have a strength, it usually comes really easily to us and so we discount its value, because it's not hard.

 

And she finds especially people with low self confidence, they haven't really embraced the strength that makes them really unique and valuable, and so they're constantly using things that are actually their weakness at work.

 

And so, she would say that her first priority when she gets a new client is actually to help people see their own strengths because if you can't see it, then you're not going to try to design your life and your job around using your strengths.

 

When we're in school, all of our teachers and our parents usually do this thing, if we get a report card and we have an A in writing and a C in math, they don't focus on how great the A in writing is and what they could do with their life with the A in writing. What they do is they focus on that C in math, “Oh, you need to work harder; you need to work harder, like what is going wrong that you don't understand this?” And there's a lot of blame, and the kid feels bad.

 

And so, we have been trained as kids to focus on our weakness, to focus on fixing our weakness, to focus on what our weaknesses are and that she feels like really does not help you in the real world, because in the real world, the more you can bring in your strengths into work, the better off you will be.

 

So, if you were having low self esteem right now, you were actually trying to do this, one of the things that she would do is actually ask, if you have a really close friend who's a co-worker or even just your family or friends, the ones that are really positive and supportive, when you ask them, “Hey, what do you see my strengths as being?” really listen to what they say and try very hard not to discount it. Don't tell yourself, “Oh, well, everyone has that,” because they don't, not everyone has that strength. And the people that don't have that strength, that kind of means that it's a weakness of theirs, it's okay to value it even though it comes easy to you.

 

Me: It's so interesting that you brought that up that they focus on the negative it's so true. Even as a parent myself, I have to kind of retrain myself as an individual in terms of focusing where my daughter is concerned. I remember growing up, ever report that I got from I was in kindergarten come all the way up to university said, “Yanique is our great student, but she just talks too much.” I love to talk to this day, clearly. That's why I have a podcast and interview people. And that's why I'm a Customer Service Trainer and my voice is now how I express myself in so many different areas, like different platforms, and to contact and connect with people. So, I think you are right, you should focus on what your strengths are, and don't negate the fact that you're good at something, even if you're not so good at something else, because we all have strengths and some of them won't be similar. So, we all for example, can't be a lawyer or a doctor.

 

And then that's the next thing too Becca, I find that traditionally, especially here in Jamaica, we're not training our kids to do careers that are not the normal careers, because I'm sure that there are careers that have emerged since the pandemic, that if we were to ask somebody if they would go into that profession 5/10 years ago, they wouldn't, they would have been like, “No, that's probably never going to exist.” But so much has forced people to just do different things differently and technology has increased so much that professions that didn't exist, all of a sudden, because of the pandemic, and we're all forced into the digital so quickly, it just has really emerged. What are your thoughts on that?

 

Becca stated that having a career now versus say in 1950, just requires so much being willing to be flexible. And she thinks that one of the things that goes along with that is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, because you will make better shifts if you can really analyze what it is you want to be using within yourself.

 

And she has to say, she laughed as Yanique was telling the story about everyone saying that you talk too much, because of course, it's actually a beautiful strength, it's just not a strength if they want you to sit still at school for 6 hours a day. She thinks that something that's been really hard for her is also what Yanique was talking about with the kids, because you want them to be persistent, you want them to try their best and you want them to really flourish. And the way that they're going to flourish is to like find their joys, find their strengths.

 

And so, when she’s working with people about, back to the original question about how do you do this going forward, the thing that she has noticed the most, especially with older clients, and we will all eventually be older is that they hit a certain age and they start not wanting to learn new things. And she should back preface for anyone who is like 50 or 60, 70 even, not everyone does this, but she does notice a big trend with older people where they're not going to learn the next app, they're not going to learn the new computer programme and they fall off a bandwagon at some point where they're not going to do anything new because it's not useful to them, it's too complicated, they just don't have the brain space.

 

And she would say that when you do that, you end up limiting yourself because as you start to insulate yourself from the new technology changes, you are inherently going to limit your potential 5 years from now because you didn't keep up with the times.

 

And she thinks that there's a lot to be said for that that happens a lot in business too where you have a slightly older manager and what's working right now is working and so we don't have the bandwidth as a company, especially as a small company to add something new. And then all of a sudden, what you have been doing has been working, and it might work for another year or two but you're going to end up running into a brick wall if you haven't been consistently changing with the times.

 

Me: So, really being adaptable and being flexible, and just being open to learning new things regardless of your age. And you are right, I do notice it myself but I don't think it's everybody. But I do believe that the older persons tend to be a little bit less willing to embrace something that they're not familiar with, or they feel like it's just out of their comfort zone. I remember my dad died about 3 years ago, and he was a business owner for many years. And of course, just to make deposits at the bank for his business or anything, he would still physically drive to the bank and have to stand up in front of a physical person even though the technology exists for online banking, or even just going to an ATM and using a debit card, he never had a debit card. If he needed cash from his account, he would go to the bank physically and stand in front of someone because that's what he was so accustomed to and it's just amazing. Even when you said to him, “It's so much easier, Daddy, you could try it this way.” It was just not something that he was willing to embrace. And then the flipside is I've met persons his age, and they're fully with technology, they probably use social media way more than me, I guess they have more time on their hands. And they really and truly embrace it. So I guess it depends on their headspace on how open they are.

 

Becca stated that also she’s actually run into it with younger people, too. She once had a client who was 24, who was a graphic designer who hated Adobe. And she was just like, you're fighting a losing battle, you're going to have to use Adobe in any job you have, you're a graphic designer. So, she doesn't want to stereotype too much but as we get older, it becomes easier to get into the status quo. And it's almost always going to hold you back.

 

App, Website or Tool that Becca Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business

 

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without, Becca shared that she has been really loving this programme called Ommwriter. And it is this very streamlined writing software that has like this beautiful background and it has music that pipes in that flows, that's very flowy music and it also sounds like a keyboard, like a really nice old fashioned keyboard.

 

And she has found that when she’s using it, her writing speeds up, she probably writes about twice as fast as she normally do because something about it just helps her flow through and write really fast. The picture on it naturally draws your eyes to the bottom and she just feels like the whole UI is so great.

 

It's not great for editing so she usually copy and paste whatever she’s writing into a Word document to actually do the like the spell-check and the grammar check. But it is amazing. She thinks a lot of people have this experience, even if they are not writers, where they have to write an about page or a page for new sales for a new product or just even a really long and complicated email where just even getting it out is hard. And so, she knows a lot of people have actually switched back to pen and paper because of that. So she would say if you ever have a hard time or you're writing long length things and you find yourself getting stuck a lot, then definitely download it, it's only $7 or $8. Her new favorite toy.

 

Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Becca

 

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Becca shared that she is loving Burnout. It's called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD. And it really speaks, she thinks, mostly to women but it is all about why we get overwhelmed, and why we get stressed out and frazzled, and very practical little steps you can take to help combat that. And she thinks that anyone listening to this, especially anyone with kids, or a really intense job can relate to feeling burnt out, and feeling stressed. And so, if you are in that space right now, she highly recommends the book.

  

What Becca is Really Excited About Now!

 

Becca shared that she’s working on her next book. So, she just got started on writing the next book, her kids just went back to school and it's been a little hard in the States, I assume in many other places where people are listening with COVID. So, the kids have been with her for a very long time.

 

Me: And what state are you in?

 

Becca shared that she is in Washington State, she’s in Seattle. And so, she’s working on her next book. And the working title right now is called Mindful Procrastination.

 

Me: When are you expecting and is that book going to be similar to The Clarity Journal, like a working book? Or is it more of a reading book?

 

Becca stated that it's a book, book, and she’s hoping that it'll be out within the next year. But this will be her first book, book so she’s cautiously optimistic that it will take her about a year once everything is said and done and the editing process is all finished.

 

Where Can We Find Becca Online

 

Website – www.beccaribbing.com

Twitter - @beccaribbing

Instagram - @beccaribbing

 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Becca Uses

 

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Becca shared, “Be here now.” Very often times when she’s stressed out, it's because she’s thinking of 100 things and it helps really centre her on the one thing she needs to do right now. Whether that is family or work, it just helps clear out the clutter because yes, we all have 100 things on our to-do list, but you can only do one of them at a time.

 

Me: Very true. You really can only focus on one thing at a time. And I think many years ago, I read an article that said that it's not humanly possible for you to be doing two things at the same time and be doing both of them at 100%. So, it's like driving and talking on the phone or driving and eating, something is going to not be done at its highest level of efficiency because it's just humanly impossible for you to do both of them at 100% capacity.

 

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

 

  

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

 

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!

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