Herb Cogliano leads his own advisory practice leveraging the Scaling of Performance Platform, described in Verne Harnish’s award-winning book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits-Scaling Up. As a Business Coach, experience CEO Scaling Up Practitioner, and Professor of the Scaling Up Masters Business Course, he has learned first-hand what it takes to overcome many business challenges.

Herb is pursuing his passion of working with leaders of growth companies to achieve more freedom by helping them create industry leading strategies, a culture of accountability, flawless execution, along with a healthy cash flow within their organizations.

Herb was formerly CEO of Sullivan and Cogliano Designers, a 53 year privately held family owned Technology Staffing and Workforce Solutions firm who joined a select group of companies that have appeared on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company list multiple times. His firm was a Multiyear recipient of the Boston and South Florida Business Journal Best Places to Work Award. This honour recognizes Sullivan and Cogliano achievements for changing the business landscape in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains employees through a combination of employee satisfaction, working conditions and company culture.

Questions

•  We read quite a bit about your journey in your short bio that I just read. But we always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about your journey, in your words, how you got to where you are today.

•  Now Scaling Up, can you tell our listeners, what Scaling Up is, maybe three or four critical things that if as a business you want to scale up you need to have in place.

•  What has been your experience in scaling a business, let's say you were an organisation with let's say, 10 employees, and you've finished in the course of 12 months, you've now grown to an organisation with 100 employees.

•  In terms of customer experience, you as a customer, what are three things that you look for to ensure that you're being satisfied as a customer, that your needs are being met?

•  Now, Herb, could you also 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 listeners if you read any books recently, actually, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, but a book that has had or books that have had a great impact on you? Do you have any of those?

•  And so, could you share with us in terms of the recruitment process from a HR perspective, what are some key, would it be a question that you need to ask them that would align you in that phase?

•  Could you also share with us 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?

•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up herb, we always like to ask our guests do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you felt derailed or rundown, this quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Herb’s Journey

Herb shared that he was very fortunate to be raised in a family business where his mother and father incorporated not only raising a family on good values but incorporated what were the challenges in running and growing a business. And as he grew up, and then ultimately went into the business, their business had years of success. And then the industry became more competitive, more commoditized and their growth started to stagnate. As a result of that, they wanted to grow further. They worked hard, they were smart people, but they got stuck. 

And they came across the book called Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harnish. And it's really a playbook for small mid-market companies that don't have a team of MBAs working on their staff, but still need to navigate a very fast changing marketplace. And that book really changed his life about knowing how to grow a company by asking the right questions and working with the right tools to do it. 

As a result of that, they scaled, got the accomplishments that you so nicely commented on. And then as a result of that, they exited their companies in 2018. He had an incredible business coach that was so helpful. Him and his father were incredible mentors. And then he knew that he was meant to be a coach and help others using the scaling up methodology to achieve their company's vision and potential.

What is Scaling Up?

Me: Now Scaling Up, can you tell our listeners, what Scaling Up is, maybe three or four critical things that if as a business you want to scale up you need to have in place.

Herb shared that one of the challenges in growing your business is that you don't know what you don't know. So, if you're a $2 Million Dollar company, you don't know what it's like to be a $10 Million Dollar company. 

And things change because you're hiring more people, you're onboarding more customers, you're offering more in different products, you may have different or multiple locations and the complexity compounds, and then makes it very hard for the original owner to command and make decisions as your workforce grows from 2 to 20, to 2000 people.  

And for many of us, we plateau, because we don't know how to handle the next level complexity, Scaling Up was a framework that helped them navigate it. And it's based upon four primary decisions that you need to get right around people, strategy, execution, and cash. And when you understand how to use those techniques in the four areas, it will then help you navigate the next stage of your growth and that's ultimately what they did.

Experience in Scaling a Business – Keeping a Culture That is Customer Focused

Me: So, a big part of Scaling Up has to do with people and culture and customer experience starts from within. What has been your experience in scaling a business, let's say you were an organization with let's say, 10 employees, and in the course of 12 months, you've now grown to an organization with 100 employees. How do you keep that culture that is still customer focused, customer obsessed, even though you have so many more persons that you're managing? What has your experience been in scaling from that perspective? 

Herb stated that hat's a wonderful question. The first part of his experience was “Were they hiring the right type of people that shared their similar values and purpose?” 

And in the beginning, they were just looking at resumes, you have experience, you've done customer support or business development, you're a good fit, you're hired. But what they learned was they needed to hire people that not only had skill and experience, but shared their similar values and their purpose, because they work together in the way we behave around those values is what allows them to work well together. And that translates into the customer experience. 

The second part of that, that he learned is that they cannot be all things to all customers. And they were trying to be that in the beginning and that hurt their customer experience. So, they finally profiled who was their ideal customer, they were easy to work with, they had high referred ability to others like them, they were profitable, that had to be economically good for the company and they valued them paid their bills on time.  

And then they ultimately asked them….

·      “What is it about our company?”

·      “Why do you value us?”

·      “And importantly, How are we distinctive from the competition?” 

They call those their brand promises and they hire and train people to deliver exceptional brand promise results. Because if they get the clients brand promise right, and they can deliver it, they have very high client expectation scores.

Me: Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing. 

In Terms of Customer Experience, Things to Look Out for to Ensure That You’re Being Satisfied as a Customer 

Me: Now, you've worked with quite a few businesses, Herb and you have a wealth of experience. In terms of customer experience, you as a customer, because I'm sure you do business with many different organisations as a customer yourself. What are three things that you look for to ensure that you're being satisfied as a customer, that your needs are being met? 

Herb shared that he thinks the first important thing is, “Are they listening to him?” “Do they understand really what his requirements or wants and needs are?”  

Secondly, “Are they responsive to him?” If he feels like he needs help, or an answer, are they responsive? And are they available as needed? 

And then the third thing is, he understands all companies can make mistakes. To him the mark of a great customer experience is not what they do when things are good, it's how well they react to a mistake or when things don't go good. And those are three things for him that have always been top of mind his entire career.

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Herb shared that with AI right now there are so many. So, he’d like to say Chat GPT. But there's so many happening every day. But recently, in the last 6 months, he’s really been leaning in to Chat GPT and trying to create prompts in Chat GPT that will make their customer insights and experiences that much that much better.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Herb

When asked about books that he’s read that have had a great impact, Herb shared that Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harish, the book was given to him early 2003. He thinks he’s read it close to 30 times now. And as recently as this weekend when he was travelling home on a plane, he was making notes to the author, and sent him a note over the weekend about an insight or something that he thinks they can do even better as part of the scaling up network. He is with a group of other like-minded coaches that use the methodology to help entrepreneurs and their senior teams grow. And they are constantly improving the IP that goes into the Scaling Up book. So, he’s read a lot of books, but Scaling Up is one of the only books he ever wanted to reread and master.

In Terms of Recruitment, What are Some Key Questions to Ask That Would Align 

Me: You mentioned earlier in our conversation, as it related to Scaling Up that you want to have persons that you hire, that are in alignment with your values, your value system, your vision, and your mission. And so, could you share with us in terms of the recruitment process from a HR perspective, what are some key, would it be a question that you need to ask them that would align you in that phase? Or is it something you're looking for maybe in terms of giving them a scenario and then you're looking for them to give you a particular response to ensure that the person you are selecting it's not just based, as you said on their resume, their experience, their academia, but more so what values they're bringing to the table? What are they going to do if they're faced with a particular scenario? And is that going to be in alignment with the core value of the organization? 

Herb shared that they begin in the recruitment phase. So, imagine that you need to hire an individual, his four core values for his coaching practice are wisdom, humility, integrity, and grit. So, if he was going to look for someone to join his coaching practice, his job recruitment ads would have messaging around, “Do you value wisdom, learning and sharing?” “Do you have the humility to let others shine?” “Do you have the integrity to always do the right thing?” “And do you have the grit to deal with adversity and be resilient?” If that sounds like you, they'd like to talk. 

The second part of that goes into the interview, when they actually are asking questions all around. Do you have those core values? Can you tell me about a time where somebody challenged your integrity? And how did you deal with it? What would you do different now? What were the lessons learned? 

The third part of it is in the onboarding. So, every new hire orientation should have members or members of leadership or owners coming in, talking to the new employees about the values, the purpose and the mission of the organization.  

So, they're kind of inoculated in the beginning that these things are important and top of mind as you work in the company. They then do newsletters that are also echoing this messaging, it's part of their performance review where part of your evaluation is how well you're living in aligning to the values. 

They do recognition programmes throughout the year where you're recognized for living certain values and purpose. And then their leadership is trained that when they're working with you day in and day out, to reference recognition and constructive feedback in relation to the core value and purpose embodiment. 

Me: Those are pretty good. Excellent, excellent, excellent. And I like how you gave the examples and the question that you asked as it relates to the recruitment process, even in the advertising and marketing to ensure that you're attracting the right people. So, thank you so much for sharing those strategies on how to achieve that.

Herb shared one other point, this is so powerful for him, you talked about going from 10 people to like a couple of 100 people. When they first were looking at their workforce in one of their small groups, they had about 25 employees. And somebody had him doing “A” player assessment, what that simply means is out of 25 people, how many of them did they rate as “A” players, people that embodied their values, and people that were hitting the productivity requirements for their job? He has to tell you…..his first score was only a 38% out of 100. 

Now, can you imagine early on in his scaling up journey, the drama a company would have with only 38% being A players? Can you imagine what the customer experience would have been dealing with that team? Here was the eye opener for him. What if he scaled to 200 employees, but didn't change the 38% A player result? Imagine scaling drama 25 people at 38% A player. Now 200 people at only 38% A player? It would be awful. 

Me: Yep, that would definitely shoot your customer experience into the garbage. 

Herb stated that one of the big epiphanies that he had, and what he loves to do with his clients is they need to get your people right as a foundational part, before you just scale. 

Let's be smart, because when you scale with a higher A player rating, your drama is so much lower, your clients are so much happier, your employee retention is so much higher, and your employee tenure is so much longer. It was the most incredible epiphany they ever had, and he will never grow a company another way.

What Herb is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Herb shared that he’s really leaning into AI. He’s looking at all the tools and techniques in their practice and they're trying to really make it easier for their clients to use the tools leveraging AI elements within it. 

The second part is he just came back, his son who's 30 years old, completed his first Ironman Triathlon last weekend, a 140-mile race. And he’s (Herb) just committed to his son that he is going to train him, his first Ironman, so you asked what's going on in his head right now, that's what's going on in his head.

Where Can We Find Herb Online

Website – www.aspiregrowthadvisors.com 

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Herb Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Herb shared that he’s found many business owners that when they get frustrated and burnt out, but think about it, a lot of entrepreneurs start their company and it's a love story. They've always wanted to be their own boss, they have a certain gift or skill, and they want to bring that to the world and make a difference. But next thing you know, tough employees happen, bad clients happen, payroll, money, frustration happens. And what turned into a dream becomes a nightmare for the owner and they feel like the business is running them.  

His quote to you is, “You deserve a business where you're running the business, the business is not running you.” And what he’s learned in his journey with Scaling Up is that you can have that dream, it's not easy. But they can make it easier for you to build a business to make more money, to give you more freedom, and less drama. And that is the wish that I have for all of your listeners that they find that for them in their company. 

Me: Brilliant, quote. Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing Herb. We just want to extend our deepest level of gratitude and appreciation to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today. And sharing all of these great insights and learnings that you have experienced in your journey as it relates to scaling up your business, ensuring they are the right people, doing the right thing, aligned in the right values so that you can achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction and even life satisfaction and to ensure that you're doing something that's fulfilling to your soul. So, thank you so much, we really, really appreciate it.  

Herb shared that as a gift for all the listeners, if they go to the website, they have a Scaling Up Business Readiness Assessment. If you want to know where your company is today for their readiness to scale up, that complimentary assessment will give you some insights. And if you're looking to know where you are as a high impact leader, they have a High Impact Leader Assessment that will give you a kind of current state of where you are, and then some insights of where you could potentially go and he just thank you very much for having him today.

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

•     Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harnish

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Peter C. Yesawich is Chairman of Hospitable Healthcare Partners, LLC - a marketing consultancy serving hospitality and the healthcare industry clients - and Vice Chairman Emeritus of MMGY Global, one of the country's leading marketing communications companies renowned for its strategic thinking, breakthrough creativity, and innovation in marketing practice. 

Yesawich has contributed to the development of marketing programs for some of the industry's most popular brands, destinations and organizations including: Fairmont Hotel & Resorts, Hilton International, Disney Parks & Resorts, Universal Studios, Atlantis, The Broadmoor, Sandals Resorts, Wynn Las Vegas, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Mexico Tourism Board, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to name a few. 

He is co-author of Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism, and the new book, Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!  

Questions

•  Could you share a little bit about your journey?

•  Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?

•  Now, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

•  Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it 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?

•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Impact on Online Sources

But on that point, one of the things that they looked at in writing the book and their survey of 1200 adults is how they use online sources to help them think about healthcare and whether it's evaluating healthcare providers, or self-diagnosis, we all joke about Dr. Google, something happens and we quickly want to do a web search, whether it's Google or WebMD, or any of a number of site specific providers, specific sites, like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and so forth, to get that kind of information. 

But that would be his answer. By the way, that is extremely helpful, but also generally very difficult for people to interpret. So, it's essential, they should absolutely do their homework, but they should also consult with a medical professional to make sure they've interpreted it correctly. So, it's a combination of those two, but that wouldn't be his answer, really, it's Google would be the certainly the go to source.

Me: It's amazing you said that, we take it for granted when you think about how we used to do research prior to Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, go to the library, it takes you so long to kind of get information. And I always tell my daughter, and even my mom, I tell her, there's nothing that you can type into Google that I'm sure someone else in the world has not asked that same exact question. No matter how stupid you think it is, somebody in the world has asked the question and there is an answer there for you, so it really is knowledge base. 

Peter shared that what's interesting about that though is, in hospitality, online people go online to look at reviews. So, you look at reviews of restaurants, or hotels or destinations or what it may be. In their companies that have really built incredible databases like TripAdvisor and Expedia and so forth. And then you think about, “Well, why doesn't that exist in healthcare?”

 So, if you wanted to learn a little bit more about, let's say, a particular hospital, where you might be thinking about scheduling some kind of elective procedure, or a specific clinician, a doctor or a practice, one of the things you discover very quickly is it's very difficult to get that kind of information online about healthcare providers, and people ask why and he'll share with the listeners that kind of interesting that came out of their research. 

There are two reasons for that. Number one, most of these healthcare rating sites will not publish any ratings on providers unless they have a minimum number of what they consider to be objective ratings, typically, that's 3. So, for example, if you go into health grades, or any of the doctor sites, you'll notice a lot of the physicians don't have any rating or if they do have a rating, it might be one or two ratings. 

And obviously, people are generally very, very suspect about that if they don't have a broader base of patient reviews. Now, the question is, why is that? And here's the interesting part of the answer. We discovered that most of us are very reluctant to criticize medical professionals. For example, the example you just gave about the paediatrician. Now, you're quick to maybe share that story with other friends but his suspicion is you probably didn't go online and write a review. Now, maybe you did. 

Me: I did not. But I don't think it's because I was reluctant to share it online, I think at the time, that would have been like 2006, I don't think it was that popular at the time.  

Peter stated that for most people today, they're reluctant to do that online publicly. And we think that there's a really good psychological reason for that and that is that we are all raised correctly, by the way, to respect the amount of training and the motivation of medical professionals that even if we find that their style to be a little abrupt, and so forth, the fact of the matter is, we absolutely respect their expertise. 

And the other aspect of that is, we don't have the same vocabulary. So, it's very difficult for us to interpret many times their comments, or their assessment of our medical problem. So, it's just not possible for us to rate them because we don't know, we don't know if it's good or bad advice. And as a result of that, what happens, these ratings are few and far between, anyway, to your point is we like to say, if you have an anniversary dinner in a restaurant, where the restaurant blew it, well, you may go home that night and the internet will be blazing in terms of your negative response. 

But if you had a bad experience at your physician's office, you just kind of shrug your shoulders and kind of move on. But more and more to your point, people are exercising choice and say, “I'm not going back to that office, or I'm not going back to that hospital, the experience was really bad.” And generally, most insurance programs provide some options for you to use other providers.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Peter

When asked about books that have an impact, Peter stated that he'll give you just one. And it's a book that he thinks resides in the same space as their book, their most recent book. It's called Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference by Stephen Trzeciak and was authored by two medical doctors from the University of Pittsburgh. And it's fascinating examination of an idea similar to theirs about hospitality and healthcare. And the book, it really addresses the question, critical question that most people in healthcare ask and they say, well, we believe, we get the idea that compassion is important for patients as part of the customer experience and so forth. But it doesn't make financial sense. So, that's the point of view. 

He’ll give the best example. Most physicians today are under tremendous time pressure to see as many patients as quickly as possible, and that's a recurring theme of dissatisfaction for people in healthcare, where they say, “Well, I only saw the doctor for 10 minutes, and half the time he or she was looking at a computer screen. They didn’t look at me.” 

Well, the problem is that many of these practices, literally, they have performance criteria that says, you should not spend more than 15 or 20 minutes with a patient and you need to move on because the volume needs to be at, anyway. 

So, the whole idea of being compassionate, and a big part of that is just listening, and that is listening until the patient has expressed everything he or she would like to express and also making sure they understand what the clinician has concluded and is recommending, that takes time. 

And it's a big issue of this demonstrating compassion. And he lives through that because as he says, 10 years in cancer care business. And you talk about the importance of compassion in medical facilities, there's nothing more challenging and potentially difficult than fighting cancer, it's the worst disease that anyone can be diagnosed with. And it happens to be the most expensive disease. 

And therefore, compassion is essential in terms of getting people through the process. But anyway, that's a long answer to a great question. But he would recommend that to anybody who is interested in the healthcare customer experience because, as it turns out, they make a case, very compelling case, this is compassion, the delivery of compassion, the demonstration of that makes great financial sense for a whole bunch of reasons. And they build the case for that. 

Me: I can just imagine, because as I said to you at the beginning, the average person that goes to their doctor or hospital or clinic, they're in pain. So, when I do trainings for those persons in that type of industry, I genuinely say to them that listen, if you don't genuinely care about other human beings, and you're not genuinely there to help them, you're just in the profession for the financial gain, this is just not the area for you to be in because as you mentioned, compassion is one of those key skills that you need and sadly, a lot of patients and their relatives, they don't get that. Even COVID saw ot, I heard so many cases where I guess they got immune to the fact that people were dying from COVID, you are just another dead person to them. And that person was somebody's dad, was somebody's mom, was somebody's sister, was somebody's child.

Is Healthcare a Need or a Want Service?

Peter agreed and shared that it's funny, because they talk to medical professionals about their book. Some of them say, well, all this is wonderful. But healthcare is what they call a need service. And hospitality is a want service, and they stopped them and say, wait a minute, think about what you just said. 

The point they make is that, yes, many people pursue healthcare out of need, they're ill, they had an accident, whatever it might be. And they come to that experience with all kinds of anxiety, and all of a sudden, they have issues related to difficulty making an appointment, checking in, the time that it takes, understanding the cost of the service, all the things he just talked about. 

And the point he makes is that, yes, it is a need service for many patients who seek emergency care. But that amplifies the importance of the hospitality elements in delivering the care, because the hospitality elements help manage down some of that anxiety. 

We've all sat in an emergency room way too long and the anxiety is building and something as simple and a lot of hospitals now do this, which published the wait times in the emergency rooms, they say, okay, your wait time is 32 minutes, well, at least you know that you're going to be there for half an hour, if nobody told you it was 32 minutes, you'd be sitting there 20-25 and wondering what's going on anyway, you get the idea. So, even though it is a need service, and we acknowledge that, we think that it actually underscores the importance of hospitable healthcare.

What Peter is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something he’s excited about, Peter shared that it is this book, took them 2 years to write this. And he said, they did a major piece of national research. And the reaction they've gotten to this book has been terrific from not just consumers because they know consumers, they say “Well, wouldn't you like a more hospitable experience?” Everybody says, absolutely. But from healthcare practitioners, they say, “Okay, that sounds really good. Tell me how.” 

So, in this book, what they've done is in their model, the fact that PAEER model for each chapter, they've identified very specific action items like how to prepare, how to anticipate, how to engage for healthcare providers, it's almost like a checklist. And it's amazing how healthcare providers react. He’ll give one example and it happens to be addressing that number one deficit, which is not knowing the cost of the healthcare service before it's provided. 

He was sharing this with a CEO of a large healthcare system in New York couple of weeks ago. And he said, “Okay, smart guy, well tell me how we're supposed to address that.” So, we'll try this on for size. So, when he books, he’s talking about non-emergency procedures. Now, emergency procedures are unique, but non-emergency and by the way, that represents a very substantial percentage of the procedures that any hospital system would do. So, you have to schedule the surgery, whatever it might be. 

So, he said, “When I confirm my appointment for that particular service or procedure, I don't know the cost, but why don't you give me a pro forma estimate of the cost of that when you confirm my appointment?” It's the same that happens in most industry. So, next week, if you take your car to a car repair service or for service, they're going to give you an estimate, you have to approve that before they do the work, you want to book a hotel room or a vacation, you're going to know the cost of that before you take the trip. 

So, why wouldn't the healthcare provider send me an estimate of the expected cost of annual physical, any surgical procedure, whatever it might be. And the reason he says that is the hospital, and the healthcare provider knows the cost of the service before they confirm your appointment. Now, most patients don't know that. But they know the cost because all of those services are already contracted with these insurance companies. 

So, they have a very specific dollar amount, they're going to get reimbursed for that, even though that dollar amount as you know is substantially less than what you see in the bill. But his point is that they could give you a pro forma estimate that says, “Okay, this is likely to be between $600 and $800.” And they disclaim that by saying, “We may discover when we do your examination that more tests are required, and therefore, it's going to be a little more expensive.” And they disclose that at the time the appointment is confirmed. 

But the point is that that gives people, patients then a general sense of what the cost might be, allows them to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to certain to pursue treatment there or someplace else. He’s sure you (Yanique) read all the stories about people that say, “Well, I looked at the cost of an MRI at hospital A, and it was $2500. And I look at an MRI at hospital B and it was $3800. How could it be different? It’s the same procedure?” 

Well, the idea is that their margins are different, their reimbursement rates are different with insurance companies. They know that, you don't know that, but you could actually as a provider, begin to minimize a lot of that anxiety by simply giving a pro forma estimate. 

So, the CEO said, “You know what, that's kind of interesting idea.” He said, you have all that information, but you just don't provide it. So, they're going to begin to explore the possibility of doing that. 

By the way, just this week, he saw Amazon health. Amazon is now getting into the primary care business and one of the things, they just released a press from two days ago, press release on this, Amazon health will give you the cost of the service at the time you book the appointment. And he thought to himself, “Wow, somebody's paying attention here.” 

Me: Yeah, they saw the need, they did their work. They did their research. 

Peter agreed and stated there's an example of what he’s talking about.

Where Can We Find Peter Online

Website: www.hospitablehealthcare.com

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Peter Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Peter shared that he’s not sure it's a quote, but it's more of a mantra and that is, “Tomorrow will be a better day.” And that is if you get consumed by negativity, by certainly today, all the things going on in the world. It's easy to get very dark, very quickly. But you have to awaken with the belief that things will get better and generally they do. And you as an individual will have to be a major catalyst to that, you have to pursue it and you have to be relentless. But yeah, if you ever lose hope in that then you're probably headed to a very dark place. But that would be tomorrow's always going to be a better day.

Me: Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing. Now, Peter, we want to just extend our heartfelt gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule to share about your book, all the research that you did, giving us some real-life, practical examples that our listeners can take back. I think this book that you did is of great value, as you mentioned, not just to patients, but also to persons who are in the healthcare industry, who are service providers, there's clearly a lot of opportunities from a hospitable perspective that healthcare providers could be doing that they're not doing. And I really hope that this book gets to more people, and that they will look on it, not like the person mentioned, it's a need and not a want, but look on it that at the end of the day, in everything we're doing, there's always an opportunity to create that experience that people would want to come back to you, even if it's a need, even if you don't necessarily want to go back and see your GP or your ophthalmologist or your dermatologist, you want to be cured. But at the end of the day, when you walked away from that experience, you will be motivated to want to go back if something should happen to you and not feel demotivated not to go back, because the experience was not good. So, I do think that what you shared with us here today will be of great value, encourage all of the work that you're doing and thank you, thank you so much 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

•     Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered! By Peter Yesawich Ph. D and Stowe Shoemaker Ph.D

•     Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caaring Makes a Difference by Stephen Trzeciak

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

 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!

Peter C. Yesawich is Chairman of Hospitable Healthcare Partners, LLC - a marketing consultancy serving hospitality and the healthcare industry clients - and Vice Chairman Emeritus of MMGY Global, one of the country's leading marketing communications companies renowned for its strategic thinking, breakthrough creativity, and innovation in marketing practice. 

Yesawich has contributed to the development of marketing programs for some of the industry's most popular brands, destinations and organizations including: Fairmont Hotel & Resorts, Hilton International, Disney Parks & Resorts, Universal Studios, Atlantis, The Broadmoor, Sandals Resorts, Wynn Las Vegas, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Mexico Tourism Board, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to name a few. 

He is co-author of Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism, and the new book, Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!

Questions

•  Could you share a little bit about your journey?

•  Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?

•  Now, could you also share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

•  Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently, but it 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?

•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those? 

Highlights

Peter’s Journey

Me: Could you share a little bit about your journey? I know in your bio, it gives us a summary of the clients that you've worked with, some of the impact that you've had. But we always like to hear in the own words of our guests, their words of how their journey has been and how they got to where they are today.

Peter shared that most of his career has been spent in the hospitality field, as you mentioned in your introduction there. Actually, when he finished school, he has a PhD in Psychology, and he never practised clinically, but he always wanted to use the education to understand the influence of marketing communication. So, that's what he did for a period of roughly 35 years. And then, for a 10-year period, he took a sabbatical and he went into the healthcare business. And he did that for a bunch of reasons. But he joined a national oncology company by the name of Cancer Treatment Centres of America. They had 5 destination hospitals, 10 clinics served about 15,000 patients annually. 

So, he had a unique perspective in hospitality, having worked with a number of the brands you mentioned, and in healthcare, and when I got to healthcare, it was very obvious to him that the health care experience for patients could be improved significantly if healthcare providers simply adopted many of the principles that have essentially led to the success of hospitality brands. So, that's the short version. 

And then a couple of years ago, he was in Las Vegas making a speech and he was in the greenroom. And he bumped into a gentleman by the name Stowe Shoemaker and he's a gentleman he’s known for probably 20-25 plus years. He's a gentleman who has a very distinguished career in academia. 

And he at the time, was the Dean of the Hospitality Management Programme at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And prior to that, he was in Houston at the University of Houston, where he also had a joint appointment with the MD Anderson Cancer Centre. So, they're trading notes and he said, “So, it's amazing, your background is very similar to mine, because we both have experience in hospitality and healthcare. And we had the same kind of perspective, and that is that the healthcare experience could really be improved.” And that's what ultimately lead to them writing this book.

Universal Themes Across Hospitality and Healthcare

Me: Awesome. So, hospitality and healthcare, those are two very important industries. Hospitality is more about fun and healthcare, of course, is about just living a healthy lifestyle, but seeing that you have exposure and experience in both industries, would you say there are some common themes in terms of customer service expectations that customers would have, because at the end of the day, if you go into a resort or a hotel you are going on vacation, 9 out of 10 times, people travel for business as well. But pretty much you're not in pain, whereas, 9 out of 10 times, if you're going to healthcare, you go for your check-ups, but most people a lot of times are already in pain why they're visiting their doctor, whether it be a clinic or hospital. So, have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?

Peter stated that it’s a great question. And the answer is there are many, in fact. But let him begin by asking the question of your listeners, which is the way he really like to start the conversation, and that is he asked, “Can you think of a healthcare experience that you've had that was either unsatisfactory or gone wrong?” 

And the answer for everyone is absolutely, yes. Everybody has a story about a healthcare experience that went wrong. And then he stopped them. And he says, well think about the primary reason for that. And it's interesting to note that very rarely, is the reason is the clinical outcome the reason. Clinical outcome generally is very satisfactory for people in healthcare. But the reason primarily is the way the healthcare service was delivered. 

So, to Yanique’s question, they actually began writing this book by doing a survey of 1200 adults in the US. And what they did is they looked at 22 common points of customer engagement, that are unique to both healthcare and hospitality, for example, the very front end, how easy or difficult is to get an appointment? We all hear stories about someone who wants to make an appointment with a certain type of medical specialist, and they're disappointed because it takes weeks or months to do that, how does that experience compare with making a reservation, for example. 

And then all the way through whether or not you know the cost of the service before it's provided, in the hospitality industry, you absolutely do, because when you book, at that point, typically the cost of the service is confirmed, unfortunately, in the healthcare business, after you confirm an appointment, it's very rare that you know the cost of the service before you receive it. And he’s sure you've (Yanique) got a story, everybody has a story about a surprise medical bill and how disappointing and unnerving that is. All the way through whether or not the provider asks you for feedback on the experience.  

Last night, for example, he had dinner with some friends, and they booked the reservation on Open Table. And true to form, this morning, 8 o'clock, he gets an email from Open Table says, “How was your experience?” He will also tell you, a couple of weeks ago, he had an executive physical at a very well-known healthcare provider, and he has yet to hear from them to ask him about his experience as a patient. 

So, point is that there are 22 of these points of customer engagement that they measured in the survey with 1200 adults. And basically, what they did is they asked them to rate their experience in 5 categories to compare their reaction or their experience on the 22 points of service engagement for hospitals - number 1, for walking clinics - number 2, for doctors’ offices - number 3, for lodging - number 4, that would be Hotels and Resorts. And the 5th was in dining and restaurants. 

So, the way to think about this is they have kind of a 5 by 22 matrix. And in each cell, they have 1200 observations, so they have a really, really robust kind of basis analysis, in the punch line and all of that to your question about the common points of customer engagement. 

What they then calculated is what they call the hospitality deficit and that is how much people felt the experience in healthcare was a deficit in terms of the service experience, versus hospitality. And out of that came 5 specific themes. He’s happy to talk you through those. But that's a lot to kind of process. But the answer was, yeah, there are 22 common points of customer engagement that they identified, and they examined.

Me: Perfect. So, 22, that's a lot, you want to kind of just maybe run through, just maybe this list the 22 for us, and then maybe you could talk about some of the ones that are near and dear to your heart?

Peter shared that what they did is they actually collapsed these into 5 themes. So, he’ll kind of just talk to those specifically. And then they can drill down on any of them that would be of interest. 

So, the number one source of this deficit in service delivery between healthcare and hospitality is what he mentioned a moment ago, and that is for individuals not knowing or understanding the cost of the service before they receive it. And we've all had that experience in healthcare, whether if the bill is easy to understand or difficult to understand, whether or not if you know how much to pay for the service before you receive it. And then whether or not the cost of the service is consistent with your expectation. So, all of those kind of roll up into that first trend. And that is the primary source of dissatisfaction patients have with the healthcare experience. And you can probably think of an example for you personally, he has them, he’s sure the listeners have them.

The second theme that came out of this really interesting was the fact that patients and healthcare don't feel like their business, so to speak, is appreciated by the providers. Now in hospitality, you get many thank yous, you get a thank you when you check in, and thank you when you checkout, you get a thank you when the waiter takes the order, you get a thank you when the bills presented. 

And if you think about the expressions of appreciation patients have in healthcare, that's very rare. It's almost like, in many respects, for some providers, you the patient should be thanking the provider for the provider delivering the service. But that's the second kind of source of this deficit. 

The third is the whole arrival experience and reception. And we all have kind of stories about the clipboard, the dreaded clipboard, you show up at the doctor's office, and they hand you the clipboard and say, “Please fill this out.” 

And the irony is, you may have filled out the same clipboard a couple of weeks prior, either at the same physician's office, or a similar, and maybe a referral that has been made. But how about the whole environment, a lot of doctors’ offices and hospitals have worked hard on that in recent years, but it's still nothing like walking into a three or four star hotel or a restaurant where they've really given a lot of thought to things like colours, and textures, and aromas, and all the things that really do impact our sense of arrival and the way we're greeted, when we arrive too. 

The fourth theme is what they call service logistics. And that's this ease or difficulty of making an appointment or getting a reservation. And then the other aspect of that is the check in process, is it easy. He suspects many of the listeners are members of frequency programs, like whether it's with hotels, or airlines or restaurants. And they've worked very hard to create these customer profiles, right, they understand your preferences, they know that maybe you like a certain type of pillow in a hotel, or a certain type of bedding, or a seat on an aeroplane, it's interesting in the healthcare business, that kind of information although it's readily available, is very rarely tracked and used. 

So, what happens is the check in process becomes very cumbersome, go back to the idea of the dreaded clipboard, but it's providing the same information over and over again. Or the other thing in hospitality is that's been very effective in terms of recognising customers, is giving them a little special attention. 

So, for example, if you're a member of a loyalty program for a hotel company, you might check in at a different location at the front desk, so they might have a little plaque there that says, “Reserved for our loyalty members” or whatever. 

In the airline business, people scrambled to get loyalty status, so they can get an overhead bin when they get on the plane, or that maybe they have a chance to pick a seat ahead of time. 

So, the whole idea is that there's some special recognition, doesn't happen in healthcare, right? You stand in the same line with everybody else, whether or not you are a repeat patient or first-time patient. And we can talk about that, because there are ways to solve that in healthcare, but they don't exist today. 

And then the last theme here is they call service recovery. You know for example if you're off in a restaurant, and the entree comes in and you're unhappy and you mentioned that to the waiter or waitress, what happens is, they're very quick to remove it and replace it and they might even give you a complimentary dessert. They'd say the sorry that happened. Or if you're really unhappy, they just take it off your bill. Whatever happens when people contest a charge from a healthcare provider, have you ever tried to do that? You know what happens? It goes nowhere. And so, many times you're arguing with the insurance company, or you might even be arguing with the provider. But the point is that service recovery is very poor in healthcare, and it's very good in hospitality. 

So, those are five themes, it's knowing the cost of the service, being appreciated as a customer, the whole arrival experience, the service logistics that is the check in process, and so forth. And then finally, service recovery. So, the 22, they kind of collapse into those 5.

Me: So, to be really honest, of all the themes that you mentioned just know, the one that you mentioned about loyalty from a healthcare perspective, that was like a BFO for me, a blinding flash of the obvious, because you're so right, like most industries have some form of reward that you get for being loyal to them. I don't have one doctor that I go to my ophthalmologist, my gynaecologist, my GP, none of them and I've been going to them for years. My dermatologist, I’ve been going to her from I was 16. Wouldn't they benefit from making their customers, their patients feel like they valid them? And because the reality is we can switch, I've switched doctors in the years I've been going for various reasons. 

I remember when I just had my daughter, the paediatrician was extremely cold in some feedback he had given me when she was 6 months old, she had this really high temperature, I was a first time mom, I was 24 and I called the office to schedule an appointment, because I was doing all the things at home to get the fever down, and it wasn't working. And their response was, I should just bring her in later in the day. And when I spoke to him, finally, he said he was playing golf and that statement in itself made me switch. I've told that story to so many people, she's 18, she turned 18, two weeks ago, and that was when she was six months old. And I've never forgotten it. And I would never recommend anybody to go to him based on that experience.

Peter stated that Yanique hit the nail on the head with that, one of the things that they examined in the book is they actually created a service model for healthcare practitioners, that has five elements in it, it's called the PAEER Model, that's an abbreviation. The P is to Prepare the care for the patients. And that's the whole idea of learning more about them before they arrived. The next is A, which is to Anticipate, which gets into this whole issue of the anxiety that people feel when they're pursuing healthcare services, particularly if it's in kind of an emergency situation, we can come back to that in a second. The first E is the Engagement Process that's this check in or the arrival and how easy or difficult it is. The second E is Evaluation, that's asking for feedback. And the one the last is R, which is what you just mentioned, which is Reward. So, let's just take a second and explore that. And let him digress for a second because this is a little bit of humour. But he thinks it makes the point. 

They open the book with a story about a fictitious patient. It's a guy who is in his mid 40s. And he lives in Ohio, and he's pretty concerned about his health, he goes for an annual physical, and his PCP says, “Okay, time for your first colonoscopy.” So, they chronicle this guy's experience, trying to get a hold of the gastroenterologist making an appointment, how difficult that was, the fact that he shows up, they don't really recognize him, have no background information. So, he's got to take a half an hour with the clipboard to fill all that out. The fact that he doesn't know the physician and the first time he sees the gastroenterologist is when he's lying on the gurney, and they roll them in. He has the colonoscopy, and he wakes up and says, “How did you do?” And they said, “Well, we can't tell you. But maybe a couple of days, we'll have some results.” So, the guy worries all the way home, finally gets some good news.  

But a couple of days later, he gets a bill in the mail from the anaesthesiologist that he wasn't expecting, it was another $700.00. Nobody told him about that. And a week later, he gets another bill, which is the equivalent of a one month's mortgage payment that nobody told him about. So, the guy goes wow. Well, six weeks later, he and his wife decided to go to Vegas for a weekend. So, they go online, and they look at the options, they find a spectacular hotel on the Strip, the guy’s a member of the hotel's loyalty program. So, when they show up, he goes to the Front Desk, they say, “Mr. Smith, we're delighted to let you know we've upgraded you to a suite.” And the guy goes, “Wow, that's terrific.” So, they go to the suite, they have a wonderful time dining and shows and so forth. He's ready to check out. 

So, he looks at the app on his phone, it's exactly what he thought it was going to cost. And when he gets to the front to the exit, the doorman says, “Mr. Smith, we hope you had a wonderful time and we can't wait to see you again.” By the way, nobody said that to him when he left the gastro’s office. And so, two weeks later gets his visa bill and it's exactly what he thought it was going to be. And he notices he gets 3000 reward points for his trip to Vegas. 

And so, they asked the question, “Why didn't he get reward points for his colonoscopy?” Now, when he says that most people go, “What? what are you kidding?” “No, we're not kidding.” It's to your point, why do healthcare providers not have loyalty programs?

And you think that that would make more sense in healthcare because the older we get the more healthcare we use? So, you'd think well, there'll be reasons to encourage people to come back. Well and the answer to that is, most people in healthcare have never thought about it, they didn't think it was appropriate. Now, there are certain legal restrictions if you have like Medicare, and Medicaid, where you can't have any kind of financial inducement for people to come for care. 

But two thirds of the people in this country with a healthcare insurance, it's a commercial insurance, and that is absolutely appropriate. So anyway, they think that's a horizon that you're going to see a lot more of in healthcare, that more and more healthcare providers are going to start introducing these loyalty programs. Now, it doesn't have to be any kind of financial incentive, it could be maybe it's free cancer screenings, maybe it's free educational programs on nutritional foods, or maybe it's yoga classes, things that get you to live a healthier life. But it's absolutely a wonderful point and they think it's going to be more popular in the future.

Me: That's definitely a gap that they're missing out on, absolutely. Love that we dovetail nicely into that, and you're able to kind of give us a pretty good synopsis of what the book is about. I have started consuming it, I remember that story about the gentleman at the beginning, because I remember reading that at the beginning. I haven't completed the book fully yet, but I'm really enjoying the content and the comparisons, which is why I asked that first question at the beginning. So, I'm really appreciative of how you went into it and gave us some really good examples.

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

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Peter shared that that's a great question. And he will tell say that he’s sure like he’s everybody else in that it's got to be Google. It's just a wealth of information, which ultimately leads to more specific sites and content that reflect the uniqueness of the search.

The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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!

Michelle MacCarthy is Global Vice President of Customer Experience at Unit4. In her role, Michelle leads a talented team of professionals, is responsible for ensuring the maximum adoption of and customer satisfaction with Unit4’s offerings and is accountable for leading the transformation of Unit4’s customer experience strategy that enables the customer success evolution. 

Michelle earned her B.S in Marketing from Miami University in Ohio, and her Executive MBA in Global Management from Fordham University in New York.

Questions

•  We always give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, if you could take a few minutes to kind of just share with our audience a little bit about how you got to where you are today.

•  So, Unit4, could you share with our audience a little bit about what Unit4is? What do you guys do?

•  KPIs in terms of like NPS and customer satisfaction score. A lot of organisations also invest into market research, particularly like mystery shopping, and the mystery shopping sometimes will capture the NPS. What are your views on the frequency of doing these types of activities? And do you think it's critical to be doing it post transactional? Or should it be more so a conversation that you have with the client, maybe at the end of every quarter? What are some of your best practices that you'd recommend to clients?

•  If you really want to focus on dominating, navigating that CX space in such a positive way, that your brand has an exceptionally positive reputation, what are some key indicators that you believe organisations need to focus on as we go into 2024? Where do they need to be giving their attention to?

•  Now, could you also share with us what is 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 you've read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently that has had a great impact on you?

•  We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services. But they lack the human capital that has that constant motivation, what's the one piece of advice that you'd give them to have a successful business having that consistent challenge that they're experiencing?

•  Could you also share with us 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?

•  Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a 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 you got off track, just reminding yourself about that quote will kind of help to get you back on track, help you to get more focused. Do you have one of those? 

Highlights 

Michelle’s Journey

Michelle stated that she started off her career and kind of more of the traditional marketing, b2c and b2b type roles on the client side. And started in the advertising agency space, worked for a number of different retailers and brands, and eventually had kind of rounded out her experience and wanted to move into more of the tech side of things. 

She had some opportunities to go and work on the SaaS side of the business for a company called Vibes, which is a mobile marketing technology company. And through that experience, and kind of rounding out her mobile marketing experience, she was able to kind of continue her career path then into other SaaS organisations. And so, by herself, here today, very excited to be talking with you (Yanique).

Tell Us About Unit4

Me: So, Unit4, could you share with our audience a little bit about what Unit4is? What do you guys do?

Michelle shared that Unit4 is a cloud leader, really in the enterprise software space for midmarket, people centred organisations. And so, their solutions span everything from enterprise resource planning to financial planning and analysis tools, as well as procurement, project management for professional services organizations and so forth, as well as human capital management. 

So, their solutions really bring together all those various capabilities around financials, procurement, project management, HR, into one unified and cloud platform through their ERPX solution. So yeah, that's a little bit about Unit4.

Me: Quite a mouthful. So, at Unit4, a big part of what you focus on, we kind of alluded to it a bit before we started the official recording, how is it that you are able to improve CX by embracing customer centricity as a core value? And of course, there are some KPIs that you need to measure, so that's your area of expertise. So, could you share a little bit about that with our audience?

Michelle stated that she really believes that organizations need to always be looking how they stand out from the crowd, right. In order to do that, we have to find better ways to address customer needs, and make sure that we're providing value and attainable outcomes. We need business experience that extends past traditional customer touchpoints and make sure that we're always looking at ways that we can influence product innovation, we need to look at the employee experience, because employee experience really translates to that of the customer experience. And we need to make sure that also aligns with our customers organization serves their purpose and our values. 

So, one of the first steps in improving customer experience is really looking for a top down buy in across customer centricity and putting that at the heart of everything that you do in your business. So, whatever role you serve in the organization, that some way touches the end customer. 

And so, customer companies need to really be making sure that they're measuring customer centric KPIs in order to determine how are we doing? And how are our customers feeling about us? So, we always want to look at how well we're looking at gaining new customers into the business, how are we growing the existing base of customers that we have? And how are we ultimately retaining the customers that we have to make sure that they're becoming long term champions of our business through the success that they've achieved together in partnership with us? 

To kind of delve a little bit more into some of the KPIs, a couple of the things that we might look at are things like Net Promoter Score. So, looking at that kind of scale of 0 to 10 on how likely a customer is to recommend your company to a peer or colleague, looking at things like Customer Satisfaction Scores and making sure that those are kind of sprinkled all throughout the key listening posts of our customers.  

So, wherever they are engaging with us, whether that's post sales, or that's post implementation, or that's post a business review that we've had with them, we want to make sure that we're always facilitating, and asking for their feedback and making sure that we are taking that, capturing that feedback and looping back to set proper expectations with customers.

Recommended Frequency of Market Research Activities

Me: So, I'm glad you talked about KPIs in terms of like NPS and Customer Satisfaction Score. A lot of organisations also invest millions of dollars, sometimes even billions into market research, particularly like mystery shopping, and the mystery shopping sometimes will capture the NPS. What are your views on the frequency of doing these types of activities? And do you think it's critical to be doing it post transactional? Or should it be more so a conversation that you have with the client, maybe at the end of every quarter? What are some of your best practices that you'd recommend to clients? 

Michelle stated that frequency and cadence is definitely key, depending on the types of engagements, you want to make sure that they're throughout the customer's journey at the appropriate time. So, if you have a new customer that's joined, one of the things she mentioned is post sale, you have a customer that's gone through potentially a lengthy sales process with you, how did they find working across the organization, that's a great time for you to kind of see how the beginning part of their journey into implementation will go. 

Then you may also want to survey a customer as they're coming out of an implementation with you. So, after they've worked with the project management teams and met their CSM, how is that work stream going?

It's also key to mention business reviews. We may do quarterly business reviews with some of our customers. And so, making sure to take stock coming out of those meetings, what was the expectation? Did they see, hear, feel everything that they were expecting to have?  

And so, she thinks it's a real combination of both the quantitative surveys, but also those qualitative conversations to probe a bit deeper, where you may not have the opportunity, and just a quick plug in one question or two questions survey that sent via email. Having that face-to-face dialogue, or that phone call or that Zoom video just to meet with a customer and kind of ask some more of those probing questions is definitely key. 

She thinks that that is just as important during the beginning and middle phases of the journey with a customer as it is when you're coming up on renewal, so you may be looking at certain health indicators and want to also probe a bit deeper on some of those with customers, “Hey, you know, I've seen that you're expanding in your licences, tell me about how your company is utilizing those?” 

Or conversely, you might have a customer that's decided to move away from a portion of your product, “Tell me a bit more about why it is that you're leaving there, what you weren't adopting or finding useful, so that we can learn and bring that back into the business.”  

It also helps us from a churn management perspective, make sure that we are thinking about that and building that back into our way that we look at risk and mitigating risks with our customers.

Key Indicators that Organizations Need to Focus On for 2024 

Me: So, many different avenues and strategies that we can employ to ensure that we're doing the right kind of measurement. So, we are now in I would say, we're at the end of 2023. And we're embarking on 2024 and a lot has happened in the last couple of years, especially with a global pandemic and all, what are some key things that you found, trends that you've maybe seen just in your own business, as well as with your clients’ businesses that you believe if you really want to focus on dominating, navigating that CX space in such a positive way, that your brand has an exceptionally positive reputation and you have so many brand advertisers and evangelists for your business. What are some key indicators that you believe organizations need to focus on as we go into 2024? Where do they need to be giving their attention to? 

Michelle stated that she thinks that there's always a focus around personalization of an experience and how you can help customers throughout their journey to better smooth areas that potentially create bumps for them, can that happen through automation, Chat GPT? Can that help it happen through other self-service capabilities that you can serve up to them? 

And she also thinks probably goes without being said but ensuring that expectations of customers are properly managed all throughout. 

Making sure that you're always having dialogue with the customers’ needs in mind, that you're addressing pain points and the more and more that you can address those pain points through self-service, automation, ways that they can just make sure that they are able to get a quick path to value is really key, that frictionless experience for customers.

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

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Michelle stated that for her, obviously Microsoft Teams, they use day in and day out in their business to communicate with their customers, to communicate with their teams internally. 

But one other, she would say tool that they use heavily within the customer success management space, is Gainsight. And that is a tool that allows them to bring so much knowledge and power into their organisation. It allows their CSMs to know what right move to make next in terms of how to engage both internally and externally with their customers. 

And it's becoming really more and more of a theatre of having a true customer 360 within their organization, so really, that single pane of glass view, if you will, of what their customers are experiencing. And so, if she had to pick one tool, she guesses she'd picked Gainsight because they're using it day in and day out and it's been really paramount to their success.

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Michelle

When asked about books that has had an impact, Michelle shared that one book that she did read, it's been a very long time ago. But it was Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. She read that during her graduate school programme. And despite that, it's been around for ages, she thinks it really does a great job of cutting to the core of how you can set yourself up to best relate with others through the power of being able to build strong relationships, and making sure that those relationships are built on like a mutual trust and credibility. So, she thinks that that is always relevant, no matter what role you're in, how do you build relationships? How do you help drive influence? So, that's just been a really meaningful book to her throughout the course of her career. 

One other thing she was going to add is that she listens to a number of different podcasts, perhaps different than books. But one podcast that she really enjoys is Mel Robbins Podcast, because she thinks she teaches a lot of both professional and personal habits that you can apply to everyday life, how you can really make sure that you're leading a productive and happy lifestyle and that you have that good work life balance. So, if you haven't checked Mel Robbins out, her podcast is great.

Me: Two excellent recommendations, Michelle. I totally agree with you about Dale Carnegie's book, the book came out in 1933, literally, many, many years ago, almost 100 years old. But the principles and concepts in that book are still relevant today. And I do listen to Mel's podcasts, and I follow her on most of her social media platforms, love her content. So, excellent recommendations for audience.  

Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital 

Me: Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services. But sometimes they feel like they have constantly demotivated human capital, they lack the human capital that has that constant motivation. And motivation is one of those behaviours or competencies that comes from within, you can encourage it, but you can't actually evoke it or make it happen. So, if you were sitting across the table from that person, those business owners or managers today, what's the one piece of advice that you'd give them to have a successful business having that consistent challenge that they're experiencing?

When asked about advice she would give for the lack motivated human capital, Michelle shared that she thinks one of the most important things for her in terms of motivation is always trying to understand from a customer perspective, what it is that they're trying to achieve, because she thinks she gets a lot of motivation out of helping others. And she thinks when you feel like you have a true understanding of the problems that you're trying to solve, what tools you have at your disposal, and you feel like you can harness that power to find a way for those customers to excel and to drive outcomes in their business, that's extremely motivating to her. 

Everybody and perhaps new business owners or business owners, she really likes the idea of kind of starting before you're ready, everything has a beginning, right. And it's not going to be perfect, but she thinks the more and more you practice, and the more and more you get into the rhythm, you find that you figure your way through, everything is kind of easy to figureoutable. So, she likes the idea of kind of just starting things before maybe you feel like you've got it completely figured out and reframing things kind of as you work through them. So, that's kind of how she works through times of adversity or new skill sets she needs to kind of build rapidly and that's worked well for her.

What Michelle is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she’s really excited about, Michelle shared that back over the beginning of the summer, they had a in person leadership seminar that they had done as a leadership team going through kind of the Clifton Strength Finders exercise. And she’s done all sorts of disc assessments and different things throughout the course of her career, but she really found that particular assessment very valuable. And for those of the listeners that might not be familiar, it's basically an online assessment you can take, takes about 20-30 minutes. And when you go through it, it ranks your top 5, top 10 and kind of, they call them all 34 of them strengths. 

And then you kind of understand where you can lean into a bit more as a leader. And by sharing it with your peers, you can really get a sense of how other people learn, how they like to communicate, how you give and receive feedback. And so, she actually liked that so much within their leadership conversations, she’s cascaded that down with her direct reports. And they've had some very, very good conversations about that, she thinks she’s just uncovered ways of working with people that she wouldn't have necessarily known. 

And it also helps from a leadership perspective, and she thinks managing perspective, understand more the types of skills that people have, the types of things that are motivation factors for them, so that you can really make the most impact of your team.

Her top strength coming out of that was individualization, which basically is your ability to kind of take a survey across the landscape and understand which individuals that are best suited for which areas and how to best pull out the different strengths of people you work with. 

And so, it was eye opening to see some of the things she might have thought she would have scored higher on versus those that she perhaps has some developmental opportunities with. So, if people haven't taken that, she would highly encourage it, she found it extremely valuable. And she knows her team enjoyed the conversations that they had off the back of the exercise.

Where Can We Find Michelle Online

LinkedIn: Michelle MacCarthy

Website: https://www.unit4.com/

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Michelle Uses 

When asked about a quote or saying that she tend to revert to during times of adversity or challenge, Michelle stated that she thinks one of the things from Mel Robbins and it's not necessarily a quote, but she has The 5 Second Rule and one of the things she has been trying to do whenever she feels like she’s getting off track, or maybe you start to go down a negative path is just to say yourself, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” and then launch yourself into doing what you next need to do. So, that's from her book The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage, Mel Robbins. But she’s really been trying to use that to break habits and people use it to get themselves out of bed in the morning, from going down a negative path. 

So, the other one that she would say she really like, and it's from John Maxwell is, “A leader knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.” And she thinks that's so powerful to remember, it's not just about kind of saying the vision, but it's also about walking the talk. So, she'll leave us with that.

Me: Amazing. Thank you so much, Michelle. Now, Michelle, we just want to express our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule to kind of hop on this podcast and share with our audience a little bit about your journey, how you got to where you are today, why it is important to ensure that you're measuring for the right things as it relates to improving CX in your business and of course embracing customer centricity as a core value. And then looking at also the frequency of how you do those measurements, and what kind of things you really need to be targeting and focused on at different periods of your business to ensure that you're really delivering on the expectations of your customers and of course, aiming to exceed those expectations to create that long lasting relationship. So, your insights today, your knowledge today, all that you shared with us today, we are extremely grateful. So, thank you so much.

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

•     How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

•     The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage by Mel Robbins

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