Tim Attinger is Co-founder and President of OvationCXM, with nearly 30 years of executive management experience in financial services, financial technology and digital transformation. Prior to Co-founding OvationCXM, Tim held executive roles in digital transformation and growth with successful exits at Monitise, a global mobile money platform acquired by Fiserv and Blackhawk Network, which went public in 2013.

Before this, Tim had an extensive career with Visa. He managed a $1 Billion plus global portfolio of digital businesses, led product innovation development, and was part of the executive team that took Visa Inc. public in 2008. Preceding roles including building and managing strategic growth initiatives for First Data (now Fiserv) and managing client engagements for a host of Fortune 100 companies with Windermere, a McKinsey-spinoff boutique strategy consultancy.

Questions

• Could share in your own words, even though we did read your formal bio, in terms of your background, a little bit of your journey, how you got to where you are today, in your own words, and why you do what you do?

• Can you share with us a little bit about why it's so important that organizations should have customer experience as a priority for their business. What can businesses do to differentiate themselves and set themselves apart?

• There's a lot of digital or digitization that's happening across different industries, and because of the digitization, and also artificial intelligence, people are losing their jobs. It is as a result of increase artificial intelligence and they're increasing efficiency, but they're also reducing the level of human input that they're utilizing What are your views on that?

• What are some of the key things that we need to think about in the customer journey?

• Could you share with us 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 us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it still has left an indelible mark on your life.

• Could you also share with us what's 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 will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you on track or get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed? Do you have one of those?

Highlights 

Tim’s Journey

When asked about his journey, Tim shared that the funny thing about it is, it wasn't as though what you just read off was something he sat out to do consciously from the outset. And it was a bit of opportunistic starting in a consultancy, then it basically offered a role with a former client to help drive strategy and then recruited from there by some friends to go to yet another company.

So, he’s spent most of his time in a particular industry and a particular kind of role. But it almost feels as though that was a happenstance rather than sort of a conscious thing that he was driving, which he guess means in retrospect, his career is a fascinating thing for him to see, because it's been highly varied, and at the same time, not necessarily overtly managed, if that makes sense.

The Importance of Prioritizing Customer Experience and What Businesses Can do to Set Themselves Apart in the Financial Sector Space

Me: Well, thank you so much for sharing. We're in a very unique environment globally, as it relates to customer experience. And so, I'd like for you to share with us a little bit about why it's so important that organizations should have customer experience as a priority for their business. I know most of your experience is in the financial sector, so it'd be good to hear from your perspective, especially seeing that that space is a competitive space. What can businesses do to differentiate themselves and set themselves apart?

Tim shared that he thinks part of the challenge that enterprises find themselves in today, in particularly with respect to sort of customer experience, and how that intersects with digital transformation is that a lot of organizations are looking at customer experience as a way to optimize sort of touch points or channels of communication with customers, as opposed to sort of the way that we look at it, which is thinking about holistically the customers journey with an enterprise.

So, the customer's journey with a business, which is more than just an interaction, but it's a series of engagements as the customer tries to accomplish something in their lives or in their own business.

And so, he thinks part of the challenge that businesses have seen today is that they're thinking about touchpoints as opposed to customer journeys, which creates a challenge in how you solve for delivering great customer experience. And he thinks the reason why customer experience is increasingly important is, it's a fairly simple thing, but it bears repeating with most enterprises, that all of your revenue as an enterprise comes from paying customers.

So, the most important source of growth for your business is your customer base, frankly, the lowest cost position you can possibly have in any marketplace is to have a satisfied customer base that continues to do business with you.

So, he thinks customer experience is increasingly important in the marketplace because recruiting and then retaining and growing a customer relationship is increasingly challenging in competitive spaces. And those organizations that focus on doing it right, and particularly in orchestrating great customer journeys, which we can talk about in a little more detail. But sort of orchestrating great customer journeys will have a competitive advantage relative to organizations that are looking at the sort of either optimizing touchpoints or trying to re architect their entire sort of back-end business from a technology standpoint, as opposed to focusing from the customer back into their business.

Digitization and Artificial Intelligence – Reducing the Level of Human Input

Me: Brilliant. So, you spoke about customer journey which I do want to talk about. But before we get onto the customer journey, what I wanted to find out also, especially seeing that this space is competitive. And there's a lot of digital or digitization that's happening across different industries, especially in the financial sector, for sure. And so, as a result of the digitization, and also artificial intelligence, people are losing their jobs. I'm here in Kingston, Jamaica, and over the weekend, I read an article in our local newspaper, stating that 100 persons in the BPO sector are going to be laid off. And I imagine that it is as a result of increased artificial intelligence and they're increasing efficiency, but they're also reducing the level of human input that they're utilizing What are your views on that?

Tim shared that it's unfortunate to hear that news, because the best kind of deployment for artificial intelligence, for machine learning, for automation, is not as a replacement for people, but as a compliment to them.

So, a large part of sort of the platform capabilities and again, just taking from context in sort of his company, OvationCXM, and how they think about it, but a large part of the deployment capability that they put in place is, is essentially helping people be better at the live interaction, and the live engagement and the direct engagement with a customer.

And he thinks about the sort of the analogy of the airline industry, when you think about sort of the check in process, if you've got a fairly straightforward, I just need my boarding pass, I don't have any bags to check, and I'm on my way to the gate, right. That's, something that absolutely, because it's always the same, it's never complicated. Automating that stuff is great, because what it does is it frees up the humans who are there to deal with the family of 5 who just had their flight cancelled, they've got a connection, the luggage is already on the way.

So, when you look at sort of AI and digitization, a lot of the initial investment has been in exactly what you're describing sort of these point solutions where I'm just going to try to automate conversations, and digitize a particular channel, but still I'm not looking at what is the overall customer experience of trying to navigate my entire enterprise? And who are the people, the people who are going to help me do that, the Sherpas who helped him sort of climb this hill that is getting himself live with a product or opening a business and having a financial institution helped him do that.

So, he thinks over the long term, the pendulum will swing back to equilibrium and organizations will realize that conversational automation is great for certain things. But having intelligence inside of systems to help deliver the right answers to the right people in the right moment in the context of what the customer is trying to accomplish and then having humans engaged with that customer is really he thinks where the industry is going to go.

Key Points to Think About in the Customer Journey

Me: So, let's go back to the customer journey. So, the journey of the customer, for our listeners that I mean, I've had episodes in the past where we have guests that talk about customer journey. But because I want to get a little bit more granular, let's talk about the customer journey, let's say for example, in a financial institution, if you are, let's say, getting a product, like a credit card, for example, when you look at the journey that the customer will take from application until however long they use that card for, what are some of the key things that we need to think about in the journey? And is a journey just giving the customer the card? Because now we have new business, now we have a new loan that we've booked, or is it more so the maintenance of having that person on board.

Like in Jamaica, for example, one of my greatest pet peeves is, if you pay really well on your credit card, you automatically get an increase annually. I think a telephone call should be given to the customer to find out, “We see that you're a great customer in terms of payments, and we'd like to offer you an additional increase, is this something you'd be open to?” Versus just getting your statement and seeing that you've been given an additional X thousands of dollars on the card.

But what are your views on that?

Tim shared that to back it up into sort of where his firm spends most of their time, which is in sort of business relationships. So, banks to take the analogy Yanique just had, imagine a bank helping a business owner who's opening a new business apply for a line of credit so that they can fund equipment and site improvements and setting up a payroll service so that they can sort of disperse funds to employees. And if you think about sort of journeys in 3 basic increments, they're sort of the discovery and buying journey, where he sort of figure out what it is he need, and who has it, and from whom he'd like to buy it.

And then once you finally committed to buying it from someone, what is one of the most challenging things they’ve seen in financial services is getting a customer from, “Hey, I'd like this solution from you, Mr. Bank, all the way through to it's working for me today and I'm finally live with it.” And in business banking, that process can be fairly complicated with multiple steps. Imagine what it's like as a small business owner applying for a lending relationship, you've got paperwork you fill out, there are forms you have to send in, there are credit checks that the bank does, there's an entire internal process of reviewing your risk and underwriting requirements that you don't even have any visibility into. And then somewhere out the other end of it, you find out whether or not you qualify.

And then on the tail end of the sort of what they call the Go Live journey, there's also the ongoing relationship, which is quite frankly, where most of the experience of a financial institution comes from, which is what's it like every single day for me to use this and solve problems? And what are some of the most important things in sort of thinking about, let's just take that Go Live journey as an example, most businesses are blind to what's happening.

I bought something from you and then it kind of disappears into a black hole, I don't hear from you for 3 or 4 weeks, except every couple of maybe twice you asked me for things completely out of the blue, I have no idea why and then. And then another couple of weeks go by and I get some kind of decision. It's sort of like one of the most opaque things that you can possibly imagine, as opposed to you think about the experience of that business owner, as a consumer when they take advantage of something like a food delivery product, or, God forbid, they just buy something from an online merchant, like an Amazon.

There are really clear steps that are communicated to you, here's where you are, here's where you're going, here's how many steps there are from here to there and step 4, we're going to ask you for something. It's as simple as saying, make it really clear to the customer, what are sort of the stops along the way on the journey that you're about to undertake with them, make them aware of where they are. And even internally in organizations that are trying to deliver to that customer, you quite often have departments that don't talk to each other. So, everybody internally is kind of like, who's got the ball? Who's got next? What am I supposed to be doing now? When does this get done?

And so, he thinks a large part of making experiences go well, it's just connecting all of those humans and systems and teams into a fabric that makes everybody aware of what everyone else is doing. Where are we in this process and communicating that in simple terms to the customer, so they know where they are.

When you think about it a large part of customer experience is just visibility. And, frankly, one of the best ways to disappoint someone is to not meet the expectations that they have. And so, a big part of having a journey go well is just setting expectation upfront, here are the 5 steps that we're going to go through, here's how long it's going to take, here's what we'll need where and when. And here's who you can talk to on this stage, right?

Me: Agreed, agreed, managing expectations and communication is so important.

Tim stated and invisibility, just simply where am I? Who's got this now? And what do they need so that I can make sure it's moving forward, because at the end of the day, the customer is just trying to accomplish something and the journey through your enterprise is just a means to an end, think about that small business owner, I'm just trying to open a business and start selling pizzas. I really don't want to be an expert in underwriting. I just want to know when it is that that process is done, what do you need from me to make it go as quickly as possible?

Me: Indeed. Because at the end of the day, they also have their customers that they're trying to get to serve, but they can't do that if you don't do your part.

Tim agreed that's exactly right. And so, one of the interesting things, you sort of brought up credit cards, one of the most important things that a financial institution can do for a small business owner, is give them a way to accept payment, right?

That sort of what they call accounts receivable, right, which is essentially managing your revenue from your own customers and making that something that's easy to do, that works every time that gets that money from your customers into your bank account on a regular basis. You can make payroll, you can buy supplies, all of that.

The role that banks play in helping small businesses survive and thrive, really is it's critical in those kinds of activities. So, if something goes bump in the night, or there's a hiccup in that process, being on top of it, and giving the customer an expectation when it's going to get solved is super important, particularly for businesses that basically need that cash flow to operate.

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

When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Tim shared that what's super, super, super critical for them, they use their platform and then a combination of that, and then an online tool set called Miro, which is almost like it's a group whiteboard capability. They use that with their bank clients in the way that you do these things today, because everybody's all over the place, you get on an hour, or two Zoom call and they actually facilitate discussions with their clients on what exactly is it like from a customer's point of view to try to accomplish something inside of your bank.

What is it like from a customer’s standpoint, and particularly, not just your bank, but also increasingly, I know, you've seen this, financial institutions are partnering with other companies and external providers and financial technology providers to deliver solutions to businesses. So, increasingly, it's not just, how are you doing things internally, but also, what does it like for the customer to get bounced between you and some other company they've never heard of that you happen to be sourcing a solution from.

So, that capability and the ability to map all of that out in real time with their clients and then so that they can see what that looks like today and then start working to make it better, has become a critical component of sort of how they help those banks improve their business.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Tim

When asked about books that have had an impact, Tim stated that absolutely that's an easy one. In the interest of full disclosure, again, back to he didn't consciously set out in this path to be in financial services. He was originally studying to be a Literature Professor.

Me: You like to read.

Tim stated that he decided he liked it so much, he didn't want to have to do it for a living. So, after he finished his master's degree, as he was thinking about maybe do I or do I not want to go get a doctorate and become a professor. On a lark, moved out to the Bay Area in San Francisco and just backed into a job at a management consulting firm. And the founding partner of that firm encouraged him to read a book by a couple of his McKinsey colleagues called In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies by Thomas J. Peters.

And because he had almost no business education whatsoever, he eagerly dove into it. And the interesting thing about that book is that it's a fairly straightforward analysis of how have companies across a number of different industries been successful. And almost all of the stories come back to a fairly simple premise, that if you build your business from the marketplace back, you start with the customer, you start with a customer group, or a portfolio or a type of customer you want to serve, and then you design everything else about your business around being really great at meeting that need for that customer.

You think about sort of what the typical airline experience was before Southwest came on the scene, or what the typical shopping experience looked like before somebody like an Amazon came on the scene. It's like I'm going to rethink what it is a customer is trying to accomplish, what needs they're trying to fill, and then focus really intently on doing that very well, and strip away everything else that doesn't absolutely serve that need. And so, that was a real revelation for him, sort of as a newbie in the business world.

And that's continued to be a touchstone for every career stop he’s had and particularly in the role that he has now, which is basically helping a host of different enterprise companies of various stripes, mainly in financial services now, but also in a number of other industries, get to that realization, focus intently on what is the experience of the customer in trying to accomplish something in their lives and how does he design what he’s doing around meeting that really well. So, it's kind of come full circle for him from that sort first introduction to how good businesses operate.

What Tim is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something exciting that’s going on right now, Tim shared what's really exciting for him, sort of as he’s gone through his career, he’s made a study of how businesses create ecosystems, sort of how networks of organizations come together around a common delivery to a customer or to a segment or to create a product, or solution and you think about the companies he’s worked in Visa, Blackhawk, sort of which are network business models where you've got sort of, you build a platform, and then you have companies onto that platform and do business with each other through the capability you're delivering.

And they're finding in the business today, OvationCXM, which is their audio sort of customer experience management software platform, that they’re starting to see the same kind of ecosystem dynamics that they have in sort of major enterprise banks and insurance companies and healthcare organizations. Partnered with a host of providers of services and solutions, whether that's financial technology, health tech, what have you and their customer experience management platform is becoming a way for them to collaborate and interact as an ecosystem in delivering great experiences to their customers.

And it's fascinating to see that sort of network effect begin to take off. Even something as simple as their customer experience management delivery platform in this industry, it's just fascinating to see network effects start to materialize in the software business, which is it's really exciting for him because he’s spent a lot of his days helping to manage and grow network effect businesses, and they’re starting to see that in theirs today. So, it's super exciting, at least for him, maybe geeky for most folks, but for him, it's fun to watch.

Me: Okay, it’s like you're forming your own community.

Tim agreed yes, exactly. And that's the funny thing about it is that in the same way that communities are super important to our lives as individuals, right, and families, businesses are actually not that different, the immunities of companies that are delivering capabilities or delivering on something tend to be stronger, more resilient. And, frankly, more adaptive.

Where Can We Find Tim Online 

Website – www.ovationcxm.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Tim Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Tim shared that he does and it's from a longer poem by Rudyard Kipling and the entirety of which he doesn't remember off the top of his head, but one line in particular, which is about sort of one of the most important things you can do in times of duress is “Be the person who's keeping his head while everyone else around you is losing theirs.” And he thinks that has helped in a number of ways, in particular stressful situations, it is just to step outside of the challenge that you're currently in and realize that the only way to respond to and solve the challenges is to not let it cloud your mind. And he thinks that that quote has helped immensely in difficult times professionally.

IF ~ BY RUDYARD KIPLING

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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

Links

·  In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies by Thomas J. Peters

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

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!

Tony Sternberg is the CEO and Co-Founder at ProsperStack, a platform that helps subscription businesses with automated retention. Prior to ProsperStack, Tony was president at CATS software, having joined the company as an early employee and playing key customer facing product and operations roles.

With over a decade of experience in SaaS, Tony is passionate about building customer centric organizations, while applying those same sorts of philosophies to help shape the culture of the company and create an environment where people love to work.

Questions

• Can you share a little bit about your own experience, your own journey, how you got to where you are today? Why it is that you're on this path? Is it your lifelong passion? Did you kind of just stumble on it? Just a little bit about yourself, in your own words?

• So, ProsperStack, could you tell our audience a little bit about what your company does?

• Retention is so important to a business. As you're in the business of retention, you could possibly explain to our audience why it's so important to try and retain the customers that you already have. And from a financial perspective, why is it more expensive for you to attract new customers, versus trying to retain the ones that you have already?

• Now, in exchange for giving customers a frictionless experience at the point of cancellation, what are some things that a company could possibly ask to find out why their customers are leaving? And more importantly, when they get that information, what are they going to do with it to ensure that it doesn't impact future customers to have the same reason?

• What are maybe some retention strategies that organizations can employ to reduce their churn from increasing on a year to year basis, because I imagined the aim of our businesses to ensure that they have less churn year over year.

• What are some of the trends that you're seeing, things that if they exist already, organizations should try and continue to do those things? Or is there anything new that you think organization should be trying to do that they weren't doing before?

• Could you share with our audience, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

• Could you share maybe one or two books that you've read maybe recently or books that you've read a very long time ago, but maybe one or two that have had a really great impact on you? It could be books that would have helped to develop professionally or even personally.

• Could you also share with us what's 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.

• Now, can you share with our listeners where they can find you online?

• Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed or distracted.

Highlights

Tony’s Journey

Me: So, Tony, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their own experience, their own journey, how you got to where you are today? Why it is that you're on this path? Is it your lifelong passion? Did you kind of just stumble on it? Just a little bit about yourself, in your own words?

Tony shared that like Yanique mentioned, he got his start in SaaS in about 2007, at a company called CATS software, he knew coming out of college that he didn't want to join a large organization, he came from an entrepreneurial family. So, the smaller business definitely appealed to him, just having more visibility to ownership.

So, he ended up joining a startup in the HR technology space, at that point in his career, which is very early and had an opportunity to serve a lot of role there, customer support, testing, product management and operations before scaling up and being president of the company.

And it was there where he learned a lot of his life lessons and his professional life lessons, he would say and also there were they encountered some challenges that that really shaped what he’s doing today and why they’re building ProsperStack. And it's been a fun journey so far.

About ProsperStack and What it Does

Me: So, ProsperStack, could you tell our audience a little bit about what your company does?

Tony shared that ProsperStack is a service that helps subscription businesses retain customers. And specifically, they focus on the cancellation experience at the moment. So, their goal is to really provide a platform that's going to inform them, give them the data points why their customers are leaving, and ultimately try to overcome, maybe some objections and retain customers that are still able to be saved through maybe educational means, or even offers incentives to stay subscribers.

Me: What are some of the obstacles you find that customers experience using a subscription service?

Tony shared that he thinks the customer mindset changes along the entire lifecycle, it might be that your product was a very good fit for them at one time, but no longer it either outgrew it or just it's no longer needed. So, he thinks when you start crafting experiences in your product, you have to recognize and expect that their needs will also change.

So, creating, for them, applying that mindset and creating a cancellation experience that is not only beneficial to their customer, which would be the business but also the end user, which would be their customer is extremely important. And they really try to craft a balance between that because they don't like to create friction, just for the sake of creating friction, but it's a good balance between collecting information and being friendly to the customer.

Importance of Retention in a Business – Why Is It Important to Retain Customers That You Already Have | Why is it More Expensive to Attract New Customers?

Me: So, retention is so important to a business. As you're in the business of retention, you could possibly explain to our audience why it's so important to try and retain the customers that you already have. And from a financial perspective, why is it more expensive for you to attract new customers, versus trying to retain the ones that you have already?

Tony shared that that they are both good questions. And he thinks from just from his experience coming into the subscriptions, specifically the SaaS space in about 2007, the landscape was much different, and there wasn't as many SaaS companies obviously, but in the last 10-15 years, it's really exploded. And really, anyone can start a SaaS business.

There's a lot more competition, which means that acquisition costs with AdWords and spending and advertisements on LinkedIn or wherever you're spending are up, which means acquisition costs are up. And it's actually 5 to 7 times more cost effective nowadays to retain your customers versus acquiring new ones to just replace that kind of with the ones dropping at the end of funnel.

So, they're seeing more and more attention especially in tougher economic climates shift to retention strategies, and companies are doubling down and investing in it. Another department that you've really seen take off and thrive in the last 10 years would be customer success. This wasn't a department that existed when he started his career in SaaS.

Giving a Frictionless Experience – Questions Companies Can Ask to Find Out Why Their Customers Are Leaving

Me: That's so true. It's funny, you mentioned that because I did attend a podcast conference in October of last year in Washington. And it was primarily geared towards persons in the Customer Success space. And I was quite impressed to see that there are so many organizations that are giving attention to that area to ensuring that their customers are getting what they've signed up for, if they're having any trouble along that journey, working out those kinks. And, of course, trying to keep them as you mentioned, rather than having them just disappearing, you don't realize until you're checking your balance sheet at the end of the year. And you're like, holy cow, you know, what happened to this percentage of income that we used to get?

Now, in exchange for giving customers a frictionless experience at the point of cancellation, what are some things that a company could possibly ask to find out why their customers are leaving? And more importantly, when they get that information, what are they going to do with it to ensure that it doesn't impact future customers to have the same reason?

Tony shared that they always recommend, it really boils down to asking kind of two core questions with any cancellation experience. And you can, of course, add beyond that. But when it boils down to it, you want your exit survey to ask why? Like, what's the primary motivator for why you're leaving? This would generally be a multiple choice, drop down, or options, select and have about 5 to 7 reasons that are pretty common to why people leave, it might be price, customer service, maybe lack of features and so on.

So, whatever is more pertinent to your business, you'd want to fill in there. And then as time goes on, and you're getting more feedback, you can obviously change those reasons. And then the second one is a lot more open-ended. And this is what he really loves to read responses and help people dig into why their customers are leaving, but just asking open ended questions like, “What, can we do better? Or where did we fall short? Or even asking them, what did you love about us?”

So, asking some sort of open ended question that's going to get maybe more unprompted unsolicited feedback that isn't so fixed, that you can then read through and gain an understanding of and then taking that to another level, you can always run that through whether it's in a spreadsheet and servicing common keywords, or having a software that does that for you so that you can actually learn and have takeaways from that particular feedback. But those would be a couple of quick recommendations he would say, if you were going to put in a cancellation flow today, those are the two things you'd want to have in there.

Me: Excellent, excellent. Very, very good. It's funny, I'm happy that when you gave the example, you indicated that it should be a multiple-choice question for the first option, with a few frequent reasons why people would want to walk away because that was my next question. What type of question should you be positioning?

And how would you even know what the most common reasons why people walk away are in order to know what we would put in a multiple-choice option. So, I'm happy that you addressed that for us.

Retention Strategies That Organizations Can Employ to Reduce Their Churn from Increasing

Me: Now, Tony, churn is one of those things that all organizations go through. And it's hard, it must happen, I believe in all businesses, unfortunately, you cannot avoid it. But what are maybe some retention strategies that organizations can employ to reduce their churn from increasing on a year to year basis, because I imagine the aim of our businesses to ensure that they have less churn year over year.

Tony stated that there's certainly a lot of stages of the customer lifecycle that you have to invest into to ultimately impact churn and retention. What they're just focusing on is really one kind of area of it. And he always tells people that they’re not the end all be all solution to churn either. It's really, from his personal standpoint, it's having a customer centric mindset instilled in your company at the top and being aware and he touched on this earlier, but there's so many SaaS companies and competition out there now and everyone can kind of spin up a technology that has a website and a subscription service, when really the only true way to stand out in his perspective is just providing that ultimate customer experience.

And having just a world class kind of top to bottom experience for your particular customer. So making sure that when you're in your marketing messages that you're really honed in on your ICP, when you're onboarding on your product, making sure that they kind of reach that aha moment and get value out of your product as soon as possible in the mid stage of their lifecycle, what analytics are you looking at and monitoring within your application to know that they're using the product and getting value out of it.

And then at the end, making sure that they're having a quality experience even at the end of their lifecycle because this is something he talked about a lot too. But there's a disproportionate amount of weight, and especially someone's memory, at the end experience with any sort of product, service or experience in their life. So, you want to make sure that the end experience even with your product, if that is the end is positive, so that they can remember you in that good light and want to come back and use your product.

Me: That's a very good point. So, a lot of people, as you mentioned, will probably focus more on the onboarding, but maybe they're not giving as much attention to the off-boarding, for that experience to be a positive memory in the customers mind.

What are some things that an organization needs to take into consideration in the off-boarding process? Outside of the questions that asked, why are you leaving?

Tony shared that he thinks it goes back a bit to having to balance that scale between getting the information that you as a company you want from your customer, but also giving them the self-service and as frictionless of an experience as possible to respect that you don't want them to jump through hoops so that the impression of your brand, and your company in their mind it still remains positive at the end.

And that's really something that is called the peak end rule, which is, again, just making sure that that last experience is great, so that when they look back and think of your brand, they're going to probably remember that experience more so than anything that happened in the middle of the lifecycle or that first onboarding stage. And that can influence what sort of customers and recommendations that you might get as a result of that, or their likeliness to return.

Me: Recommendations, so important, because word of mouth advertising is still the most effective type of advertising.

Tony agreed and stated that potentially the cheapest long term.

Trends if They Are Existing Organizations Should Try and Continue to do

Me: Now, Tony, you're in the customer experience space and we're in a new year, we've just emerged out of a pandemic. What are some key things that you think customers are looking for as we’re emerging out of our first quarter of 2023, as a consumer yourself, what are some of the trends that you're seeing, things that if they exist already, organizations should try and continue to do those things? Or is there anything new that you think organizations should be trying to do that they weren't doing before?

Tony shared that coming into the new year, he definitely noticed, especially when working with potential new customers that budgets and uncertainty in the economic situation are top of mind. So, budgets aren't flowing like they were even last summer or a year ago. So, he thinks being recognized that people are struggling right now in that sense and doing whatever you can to get them on board, even if it's a temporary price concession might be something you want to look into. Just the fact that the budgets are working with it, every department is certainly facing those challenges.

And then he thinks, as far as looking forward and saying, what do I need to get into that's emerging today? He would say that you can't really go anywhere, at least he can't, online without reading something about AI, artificial intelligence and examples of ChatGPT everywhere.

So, he’s not big on saying AI for the sake of saying AI and he thinks you're going to see a lot of regulation around that, as that continues to mature and progress. But he thinks every business needs to take a step back and evaluate what technology is emerging in the AI space and how can I apply this to my business to benefit my customers, not just to say I have it, but to actually benefit my customers, and start planning for that and seeing what you can do on your product roadmap to leverage that sort of feature.

Me: So, amazing ChatGPT, it's phenomenal.

Tony shared that It's really interesting, just to play around with it and ask it questions, and it's kind of amazing actually.

Me: It is. What I personally like about it is the fact that you would normally do a Google search, and you will literally have to do all of the fine tuning and picking what you don't want and what you really want, but with ChatGPT and what I've found is the quality of the question or the prompt that you give ChatGPT determines the quality of the response it gives you back. So, of course, the more specific you are, the more likely you are to get literally on target what you're looking for, which cuts down your research time, astronomically.

Tony totally agreed. And it just feels like one of those technologies. Like when he started his professional career, SaaS was very much in its infancy. But you could tell that this was the future of software, and even all the kind of old school brands that used to buy a license for every year, the Adobe's of the world of all shifted to a subscription model. So, you kind of knew that that was going to be, web-based software was going to be the future. But this also feels like one of those inflection points where AI is getting to a point where like, everything that we're going to interact with and do not only just in software, but in life is probably going to be impacted by that sooner than later some way.

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Tony stated that just a little bit of context, ProsperStack was founded in April of 2020. So, it was right as the COVID pandemic was hitting, and the world was changing very quickly. But it also forced them to be remote first company from the get go. So, they maintain that way and he’s sure a lot of people probably say this as well.

But for him, he would say it’s Slack, really, all of their communication is essentially surrounded around it. And they have employees that are in different time zones, they work different hours. And asynchronous communication is very essential to their way of working and without that he would have to have something to replace it, and he hasn't found anything that would be better.

Me: Very good. I'm happy that you touched on that. Because I've had so many conversations with so many clients, I would say in the last 6 to 8 months that they definitely want their team members to come back face to face. It'll be good to hear from an organization that started remote and you've decided to maintain that remote, you haven't said to yourself, “Well, things are back to normal now, so I think we can set up a main location, everybody needs to come into office.”

What are your views on that as a business owner? Why do you think people are so stuck on wanting to see their employees come back if the work can be done remotely?

Tony shared that he thinks the biggest fear is kind of the maybe unknown of the long-term impacts that it can have on your culture. And he thinks it's just about weighing the pros and cons. So, he came from an office situation that kind of an 8 to 5, Monday to Friday, everyone's in the office every day up until the pandemic, and then having started his own company, and shifted there, they do maintain an office space that is entirely optional for their local employees that come into, but they also look at the pros of being remote first company and opening themselves up to a talent pool that just isn't restricted to their geographic location, giving people the freedom to kind of have a better work life balance, and use it as a perk that are going to make employees want to stay, especially, maybe not so much now with a lot of tech layoffs happening, but coming into the new year, talent was very, very hard to come by. So, you just kind of use it as a tool there.

But he thinks the biggest thing is the cultural impact and the unknown of not having that face to face time. To compensate for that, they do stand ups, everything's on video, just have in their handbook, they say, if you're worried about whether you need to communicate something and you’re not err on the side of over communicating versus just keeping things to yourself, because these are all things that we would probably talk about in person, but you don't want to like make it a point to write it in Slack, they try to encourage over communication in this case.

Me: Brilliant. You're one of the few guests that I've interviewed in the 6 years I've been podcasting that I've actually heard use that term. It's something that I use in customer service all the time. And I encourage people to do it and this is from an external customer perspective, but it's definitely applicable to an internal customer experience as well, that it's better for you to err on the side over communication, because people don't know that you're having delays, they don't know what's going on. And so, it's better for you to over communicate than to under communicate, because, unfortunately, the flip side of under communication is people assume, and they don't normally assume for the positive, they assume for the negative. So, I'm happy that you're of that opinion as well.

Tony stated that he couldn't agree more.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Tony

When asked about books that have a great impact, Tony stated that he would say the one that he keeps coming back to. And this is one that helped him later in the stages of the prior company he worked for and as an entrepreneur having to dive into sales without having a formal sales background was The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge.

And that is a book about how HubSpot scaled their sales process in the early days using more of like an engineering data driven approach. And, again, as someone who didn't really have a lot of professional experience in that side of things, he found that he could relate a lot to the processes there. And he took a lot of inspiration from that book and obviously applied some newer technologies to it. But that was kind of the basis on how they landed their first X amount of customers.

What Tony is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that’s going on that he’s really excited about, Tony stated that from a personal perspective, being someone who's in front of a computer for so long every day, he always finds himself having like an itch to do something like a little bit more tangible with his hands than just producing documents online all the time. So, just for his personal growth, he really likes to take on projects, whether it's just a small building of something or a larger project like remodeling. So, he does have a small cabin that he’s adding on to right now and doing a majority of the work himself and having some help as well. But he just finds that that being able to build something with his hands is very therapeutic to him.

Where Can We Find Tony Online

LinkedIn – ProsperStack

Twitter - @ProsperStack

Instagram - @ProsperStack

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Tony Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Tony shared that he'll preface this by saying he’s not the biggest quote person out there. But in his experience, and especially being an entrepreneur, there's a ton of things that they do, and they try that just don't work out as you'd hoped or succeeded. And he thinks the ability to recognize when those failures happen, and just having the mindset of keep going and trying new things is a really admirable quality and something you need to have quite frankly as an entrepreneur. So, he guesses an old quote that came to mind was, “If at first you don't succeed, try again.”

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

Links

·  The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million by Mark Roberge

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners 

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!

Welcome to Navigating the Customer Experience. Thank you so much for joining us today for another episode. We have been on a little hiatus, our last episode published was the latter part of December 2022. It's been a roller coaster of 2023. And I'm so happy to bring you another episode of Navigating the Customer Experience. This episode is not an episode with a guest, it's a solo episode.

And I just wanted to kind of start off the year with some key reminders that I believe as a business regardless of whether you're a solopreneur, or you're an entrepreneur with a small client base, medium client base, large client base, whether you're service based, or product and service based, that we take some time to look at the importance of being responsive.

And I think it's critical for us to be responsive as business owners or employees in an organization with team members as well as with customers. Now, responsiveness is so important and it's not just about being polite and friendly, it's actually a very key component that can guarantee whether or not you're going to be successful, or you're going to be unsuccessful.

So really, and truly, what does it mean to be responsive, it really means being available and attentive to your customers’ needs. And those two needs are their emotional and their intellectual needs. If you've listened to my podcast before, you will know that emotional speaks to how you make your customer feel. Whether it's your internal or your external customer, and intellectual speaks to on a cognitive level, what do they understand from what you've communicated to them?

Being responsive means that you're quick to respond to any inquiries, complaints or feedback. And it means taking the time to listen to your customers and to make them feel heard and valued. So, you might be thinking to yourself, “Well, of course, I respond to my customers. That's just basic customer service.” But there's some more components as it relates to responding to customers.

There are things that you have to take into account such as when do you respond to customers? How quickly do they actually get a response from you? Now, the global standard for response time pre COVID was 24 hours. And by 24 hours, I mean, at least giving some acknowledgement to the person who sent you a message or gave you a call, or send an email asking for information, it could be a request they're asking to be fulfilled, it could be an issue they have that they need to be resolved, that's highly time sensitive.

Regardless, you take the time to respond, post COVID, the expectation of the average customer is at a level of response within an hour, blows our mind that the time has been reduced. But it just shows you that COVID has definitely brought to the front that we need to pay attention to our customers, we need our customers and we need to ensure that our customers know that we value and appreciate them. So yes, I'm sure as a business you do respond to your customers but if you were to do an audit to identify what is your response time? Is it fair to say that you are responding within the expected times? Or is your communication delayed? And if your communication is delayed, how is that impacting your customer and their business.

So, being responsive means being proactive in addressing your customers concerns. It means anticipating their needs and addressing potential issues before they become problems. It means being available to your customers across all of your different channels, whether that be live chat, telephone, face to face, email, social media, you name it, whatever channel you're available on, can your customers realistically get a response from you?

So, why is being responsive so important? Well, for starters, it's essential for building trust with your customers. Your trust is going to be broken down with the organization or with the employees in that organisation if they don't feel like you are truly valuing them as a person and they can depend on you and they can count on you. So, they're more likely to trust an organization or a person in an organization who is highly responsive. Those are some of the bedrock components of really ensuring that you build a strong bond or strong relationships with your customers, and of course to ensure that you have future business.

But beyond that, being responsive is also crucial for resolving issues quickly and effectively. Now, most customers reach out to a business for primarily two reasons. They either have a request, and it could be a new request or a request adding on to existing services or products that they have with you already. Or they're calling because they're having a problem and they want you to fix the problem. Those are absolutely the only two reasons that customers reach out to a business place.

And so, you want to ensure that depending on the importance of the issue of why the customer is reaching out to you that you get back in touch with them as soon as possible. I recently had an experience with a freight forwarder that I use here in Kingston, Jamaica. I ordered some parts, and it was for a fridge. So, it was very sensitive. The vendor that I did business with overseas, they were really quick, I didn't pay for expedited shipping or anything, but they were able to get the item to my freight forwarder within two days of placing the order. However, it took almost, I would say 15 to 18 days, including weekends for me to actually receive the product here in Jamaica in my hand physically.

I had to send an email to the organization with the invoice asking what is the status, you have received this item from the 13th of February, it's now the 25th of February, what is the status, nobody has responded to my email that I've sent, days have passed, I'm now having to call and request to speak with a supervisor. In speaking with a supervisor, she's giving me information that's not consistent with the information that's on their website, or on their app that's on my phone. And it was just so frustrating, the whole experience was extremely frustrating. But what really floored me in that experience was in the conversation with the supervisor, I asked her for her last name and her response was, “Why do you want to know that?” I was totally floored, I was like, “Is this lady for real?” Is she really in customer service?

So, I took it a step further and I asked her, “May I have your position at this organisation?” And she said, “I'm the supervisor for customer service.” And that was just even more mind blowing, because I'm thinking to myself, you work in an organization, giving your first and last name is not a secret, you should be open to giving information, you should not be hiding or shying away from your customers, they have chosen you over other organizations that are in this space and they're having a genuine issue that is very serious. And they've called you, they've reached out to you, they've sent an email to you, they've reached out to you on multiple channels.

And they're asking for your name as a reference point, and you are being defensive, you're not being cooperative, you're operating as if I've called you at your home and I'm asking for some very personal information that is beyond your ability to give to me. And it just really turned me off completely from the experience. And I'm actually even considering thinking of moving my business from them just because of that one interaction.

Funny enough, at the end of the whole experience, I actually gave her some advice. I told her that I'm a customer service trainer, and I just wanted to give you some feedback on some of the experiences that I had with you through this entire process. And she was quite defensive when I gave her the feedback. She was like, well, the reason why I did it was because of this. And she was giving all sorts of reasons instead of humbly just saying, “I really, truly appreciate your feedback. And we definitely will try and improve going forward.” That to me would have been a more acceptable response than her high level of defensiveness because it's clear based on her response and her tone, she genuinely didn't see anything wrong with her behaviour or what she did.

And it just goes to wonder if that as a Supervisor, “What role model behaviour is she presenting to the team that she's supervising?” And what are they being guided by? And what kinds of interactions are they having with their customers?

So, being responsive is more than just answering a question. It's more than just ensuring that you're providing feedback in real time to your customers, but it's also ensuring that you're giving accurate information. It's ensuring that if you're not sure about something, you verify that information before you relate to the customer on whatever channel it is that you're publishing this information to for your customer.

It's also ensuring that you don't get defensive when you receive feedback because we're not perfect as human beings. We are imperfect, we make mistakes, I make mistakes. Yes, I'm a customer service trainer and I do know best practices. But I'm human, I make mistakes too. And I'm big and bold enough to say, “I'm sorry, I really didn't mean it, that was not my intention, I will try to do better. I apologize.” And you say it from a place of authenticity, that the person that you're apologising to, genuinely realizes that you are being sincere about your behaviour.

So, as we embark on the remainder of 2023, we've just started the third month. I just want to remind you, those of you loyal listeners that have been on this journey with me “Navigating the Customer Experience,” since May 2016, it’s been such a rewarding and amazing journey, that being responsive is one of the key ways that you can ensure that you build strong relationships with your customers, it shows that you value them, it creates a positive experience, it definitely will lead to greater word of mouth advertising and a positive perception of your brand. And persons will be more inclined to intrinsically want to recommend you to their friends and family based on the experiences that they have with you.

So, as we wrap up today's episode, I just want to give you some tips as it relates to being responsive. So, keep in mind that in order to be responsive, you need to ensure that the channels that you have your business or your service, your product out there on that you have someone monitoring those channels, and that you are getting in touch with your customers and keeping them up to date as to any delays or challenges that they may be experiencing.

It's also important that you respond to any inquiries and complaints in a timely manner, and set reasonable and clear expectations so your customers know exactly what to expect and when to expect it. Customers aren't mind readers and as I said to you before, we're not perfect, we're going to make mistakes. But it's important if there are delays, to take that telephone up, give them a call and say, “Hey, we're having a delay” or jump onto your email and send out that email and say, “Hey, we know we had indicated that the product will be delivered by x or that you'd be able to pick up or you'd be able to have this delivery. However, we are experiencing a delay and we do anticipate that the new delivery date or the new time for expectation of this service is x.” So they know.

And if they have to make any changes on their end, there is more than enough time for them to put that in place.

And thirdly, try to be proactive in addressing potential issues. So, you want to keep abreast of what's happening. Ensure that you're aware of all of the things that are going around, make sure that you are communicating with your customers and try to make yourself available. We are in the age of information and customers have so many ways that they can reach out to us.

So, regardless of the channel that you put yourself out there on, try to ensure that you're monitoring those channels, that you're being proactive, that when you receive feedback, you receive it in a very humble and positive way, and look for opportunities to make it better the next time. Because those customers that complain and give you feedback, they genuinely want to continue doing business with you, that's why they've actually taken the time to give you that feedback.

So, those are my recommendations, that's how I kind of want to start off with you for 2023. Just remember that you should treat others the way you would like to be treated and if you genuinely don't appreciate when people don't call you back, when people don't give you accurate information, when people don't respond to your requests or queries in a timely manner, don't practice doing it with others. Try to give what you expect. Try to give what you would like to receive and you'd be surprised to know that life is like a boomerang, whatever you give out, it will roll right back into you.

So, just want to remind our listeners if you'd like to follow us on Twitter, feel free to hop onto Twitter, our handle is @navigatingcx and if you'd like to join our private Facebook group, it's called @NavigatingtheCustomerExperienceCommunity.

And of course, always have to give a plug, if you're interested in purchasing our book, “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” that actually has a chapter on response time. You can head over to Amazon and purchase either a digital copy or a physical copy for you or your team to help enhance all the behaviours and competencies that you want to ensure your team members are continually delivering on it in your customer interactions, whether those be internal or external. So, thank you so much for listening, until next time I'm your host Yanique Grant.

Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners  

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!