Ali Cudby, CEO of Alignmint Growth Strategies, which is a dynamic force in business transformation through intentional customer experiences. With a mission to drive growth by architecting superior customer interactions, Ali's expertise aligns strategy and implementation. She is the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers, she offers fresh insights from real-world stories, best practices and CEO-led case studies.
Her MINT Method, outlined in the book, fuels transformational customer loyalty. With 20+ years in corporate planning and strategic marketing, Ali founded Alignmint in 2014, focusing on small to mid-size companies. As a Purdue University entrepreneurship instructor, she shapes the next generation of business leaders. Ali's podcast appearances showcase her wealth of knowledge in customer experience, growth strategies and intentional business success.
Questions
· If you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today?
· You are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on.
· The MINT Methodology.
· Now, Ali, could you also 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 our listeners maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you, 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.
· Now, Ali, could you also share with our listeners 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?
· Before we wrap our episodes up, Ali, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.
Highlights
Ali’s Journey
Me: So, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their journey, even though your bio gives us a formal breakdown of what you've done in the past and who you are, you're an author and the different strategies that you've employed to get to where you are, just in your own words, if you could share a little bit with our listeners, how you got from where you were, to where you are today?
Ali shared that she got into this world of customer loyalty and retention in her first job out of business school. And she was working for The New York Times company in their corporate strategy group, which was kind of like an internal consulting group, and was put on a project in the call centre, which honestly wasn't really considered to be an awesome assignment, it was sort of the call centre was in a warehouse in New Jersey, and not in the very lovely corporate headquarters in Times Square.
And people were coming up to her and saying, “Oh, I'm so sorry that you've got this gig.” And ultimately, it transformed her thinking about the customer experience and created this path for her entire career. Because it showed her this insight, which is that the things that companies do inside their organization are the things that impact the customer experience.
So, you have to be really thoughtful about how do you deliver clear and consistent processes for the customer and make sure that you embed that with your team so that your customers can have this great experience. So, that time at the New York Times company was a really long time ago, and she’s had the opportunity now to see this in action in corporate America and in her own path as an entrepreneur and in a very wide range of companies. And so, that's kind of how she started out in this very corporate role.
Keep Your Customers
Me: Now, in your bio we also read that you are the author of the bestselling book, Keep Your Customers. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about that book? And maybe just two to three overarching themes that the book focuses on.
Ali shared that the book was published, and it came out on April 15, 2020, which as you recall was a little bit of a crazy time. And so, she spent two years putting the book together and making sure that it had everything just perfect and all these speaking engagements lined up and all that stuff. And then the month before the book was published, the world changed.
And it was really interesting, because the book really focuses on exactly what she was just talking about, what are the things that you can do in your company, to set your customers up for success.
And she talked about one of the key themes being the balance of heart and smart. And what she means by that is, in order to make customers want to stay with you longer and spend more, and tell all of their friends and colleagues, you have to make people feel seen, heard and valued.
And we tend to think about that emotional connection to our customers as being a little bit fluffy sometimes and that's a real mistake. The fact of the matter is that humans have a real need to feel like they matter and when you build relationships and when you build trust with your customers, it sets you up for a better business relationship. And that's the heart of the customer experience.
And then the smart of the customer experience is that you still have to have data and metrics and process in order to ensure consistency. If you don't capture information and learn from it and have a great single source of truth about your customer information so that everybody inside your company knows what's going on with your customers. If you don't have clear and consistent processes that everybody follows, then it's going to be really hard to set up processes for growth.
So, you can have just like heart-centred employees who really want to do the right thing all the time, but if everybody's doing their own right thing, then you have a mess and what you need is this consistency. So, it's that balance of heart and smart that really drives success in the customer experience.
The MINT Methodology
Me: All right, so the heart and smart. Now, you also speak about your MINT Methodology and I'm going to take a quick guess here that MINT is actually an acronym, right?
Ali stated that it is sort of an acronym. It is a four step process. She really tried hard to make it a cool acronym, and it never quite gelled. But she can talk through the four steps of the process. And the name of her company is actually as you said, it's Alignmint Growth Strategies. And the mint part of it is really intentional, not just because of the method, but because of what mint represents.
So, when you plant mint, it grows like crazy and when things are awesome, they're in mint condition. And when you make a lot of money, you make a mint. And so, the combination of aligning and mint is exactly what they're looking for in terms of their customers outcomes.
And so, the MINT method is this four step process where first you are articulating what she calls a bullseye, which is a mission statement effectively for the customer experience. So, companies oftentimes create mission and vision and values for their company, but it's really all about their company. And what people need to do and what companies need to do is also articulate who it is that we want to be on behalf of our customers. Because if you have a goal of being fast and easy, that is going to set you up for a very different customer experience than if you have a goal of being white glove and luxurious.
And so, in the same way that you want to articulate who you are for your company, you need to articulate who you are for your customers. And so, that's the first step of the process, that's the creating of the mantra of the bullseye.
Second is understanding who those customers are, really being clear about who it is that you're serving.
· Why are they loyal to you?
· What is it that those best customers want?
So that you are thinking about how you drive more of them. And then she goes into a lot of detail in the book about how do you identify and articulate not just who buys the most from you, but who's the most loyal to you, you can have a really big customer that isn't loyal at all, but they drive a lot of revenue.
And you can have a small customer that would live and die for you and they tell everybody that they know about how awesome you are, you want those people. And then once you know who it is that you're serving and who you want to get more of, then what do you want their journey to look like?
So, being very clear about what that customer journey looks like, what are the key inflection points throughout that journey.
And then finally, the fourth step is identifying clear plays so that everybody inside your company knows exactly what to do whenever a customer gets to that inflection point on the customer journey. So, whether that's the onboarding, kick-off, the business review meeting, or the renewal period, or anything in between, every company has its own unique set of inflection points, some of them follow some level of consistency, onboarding and renewal or repurchase are fairly consistent. But everybody does it a little bit differently, everyone needs to be clear about how they want their company to engage with customers at each of those points along the journey map.
And again, that's how you make sure that you're delivering something that is not just a well-intentioned approach, but a really thoughtful and strategic approach to retention and growth.
App, Website or Tool that Ali Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business
When asked about online resource that she can’t live without in her business, Ali stated that it's probably Zoom. She stated that that's not a very creative answer but she’s on Zoom all the time, every day, she works remotely for the most part. And so, that's her rock.
Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Ali
When asked about books that have had a great impact on her, Ali shared that there's a book called The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor, and he is a professor of positive psychology at Harvard. And the whole science of positive psychology is fascinating, the way that we create new neural pathways, the way that we can define in our brains how to be more positive, and how to cultivate happiness. And so, his book is just fascinating and he also has a TED Talk, if you don't feel like reading the whole book, he has a TED Talk that is fantastic, it's funny, he's a great speaker, and he gives you some very clear actionable steps at the end of the TED Talk that are very helpful in helping people stay focused on the positivity and moving forward. And she just thinks that his whole approach and that TED Talk, that's one of her favourites.
What Ali is Really Excited About Now!
When asked about something that she’s really excited about, Ali shared that she just got a puppy. She stated that she knows that that's not necessarily a business thing. But she will tell you that watching her puppy play and explore and be curious about this new world that she has come into is fascinating.
And it is a great reminder that there's so much that is new and interesting in the world and it's easy sometimes to get into a very fixed mindset about what we do, and the things that we engage with from day to day and moment to moment. You get up and you make your coffee and you sort of go through your rigmarole and sometimes it feels a little bit like, “All right, I’m going to check my boxes, I'm going to do my thing and it's one foot in front of the other” and when you get a puppy who just has this completely new way of engaging with the same old things that you're reacting to every day, whether it's some snow on the ground or a sock on the floor, it reminds you to be open to different ways of seeing the world and she finds that to be helpful in business.
So, she’s been trying to be intentional about using this lesson that her little ball of fluff is teaching her and just be open to the fact or to the notion that maybe she can approach things differently, maybe she can rethink things and come at them with more of a sense of wonder and play and excitement.
Me: That's amazing. You'd be surprised to know the many different life lessons we can learn from animals. So, I think it's awesome that your puppy is teaching you so many different new ways and perspectives of looking at things from a different view.
Where Can We Find Ali Online
Website – www.alignmintforgrowth.com
LinkedIn - Ali Cudby
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Ali Uses
When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Ali shared that there's a quote by Maya Angelou that she thinks about a lot for her personal life, but it's also a real guideposts in her business. And the quote is, “People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but people never forget how you made them feel.” And it's so true, the words that we use don't matter. But when you make someone feel seen, heard and valued, whether it is in your personal life, or whether it is in your business, it is transformative.
Me: All right, thank you so much for sharing. Well, I just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, Ali, for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast today, sharing insights about your book, Keep Your Customers as well as your MINT Methodology and just a little bit about your overall strategy and execution as it relates to delivering that magical and unforgettable customer experience. We really appreciate all the great insights that you shared with us today. So, thank you so much.
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Links
The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience
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