REALLY Know Your Customer

Lamees Butt joins Betsy and Tony on this episode to delve into the topics of digital transformation and the ever-evolving landscape of commerce. She shares her insights on the challenges faced during her journey, including the importance of failing fast and adapting, which eventually led her to the corporate world. Now a key player at Zoovu, an AI commerce platform, she focuses on connecting businesses with their customers, making it easier to find products in the vast digital market. Through real-life examples with industry giants like Vodafone, Dyson, and Bosch, she illustrates the complexities of the B2C sector and the inevitable changes coming in B2B transactions. Lamees sheds light on Zoovu's customer-centric approach, involving partnerships with top customers through Customer Advisory Boards, fostering a community where thought leadership and experiences are shared. This collaborative ecosystem of customers and partners is seen as pivotal to Zoovu's growth, proving that in the ever-changing world of digital commerce, strong partnerships and customer-centric strategies are the keys to success.Tune in and hear more from Lamees, Betsy and Tony on this episode.

Meet Jay Meyer. Jay is an accomplished business owner and entrepreneur who shares his personal journey of addiction and recovery on this insightful episode with Betsy and Tony. With decades of business and leadership under his belt, Jay has seen a lot change over the years, but one thing has remained: his desire to get to know his customers. Jay started his career by building authentic relationships with his customers, being curious, taking them to lunch, and caring for his customers' families. He has taken these practices along his journey because of the impact he wants to make in others' lives. Jay shares the ways he consistently maintains his positive spirit and how he is driven to live out his personal mission to “inspire others, dream more, be more, and live in the light more.”

Meet Mark Ross-Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of StatusMatch.com. Mark joins Betsy and Tony on the podcast from Malaysia. As a self-proclaimed professional frequent flyer, Mark racked up more airline points than you can imagine as he built his former businesses. After he decided to move across the world, he asked the area's major airline for a status match in their frequent flyer program. He was denied, but it led the way for his idea to create StatusMatch.com. Tony, Betsy, and Mark dive into emotional loyalty to big brands and discuss how those micro-moments can be replicated in any size business to get a leg up on the competition.

Join us for a conversation with Prashant Fuloria, CEO of Fundbox, a working capital platform for small businesses. Did you know that 82% of small business failures are because of a cash flow gap or a working capital challenge? That's where Fundbox comes in: to create solutions that level the playing field for small businesses and help them succeed. Although automation and user simplicity is essential to their product development, customer engagement is critical to the Fundbox mission to provide relevant solutions that help their customers focus on growing their business. It's clear that Prashant is passionate about what he does and making a difference for his customers. Listen in to learn more!

Meet Tony Sternberg, Co-Founder & CEO of ProsperStack, an automated retention platform for subscription businesses. Consider this: You've had it up to “here” with your streaming service and you call to cancel your subscription. ProsperStack partners with said streaming service to create a unique retention strategy for what happens next after you live chat or call the provider. It's unique because the next subscriber will encounter a different experience based on their individual attributes, such as how long they've been a customer or how frequently they utilize the service. ProsperStack integrates this data to give the providers deeper insights around customer retention. Tony Sternberg is leading the charge for this fast-growing company and bringing a new light to how to really know your customer.

Meet Gail and Bruce Montgomery. They are the high-energy co-founders of ExperienceYes, a truly one-of-a-kind business, set out to bring fun into organizations that want to improve trust, relationship-building, and EQ to make higher-performing teams. With similar backgrounds in professional acting, singing, and dancing in New York City, they both made their way into the corporate world. Gail and Bruce found a way to bring these two very different worlds together in 2013 when they launched ExperienceYes. In this episode, Gail and Bruce generously share their 4 rules for improving the customer experience using Improv. 4 Rules for Improving Customer Experience (using Improv)1. Say “yes, and” more.2. Listen with the intent to learn and serve. 3. Support teammates at all costs. 4. Trust your instincts.The goal of their sessions is to use applied Improv to make you uncomfortable (in a safe space), so you can start getting comfortable during ambiguity. And laughter. A lot of laughter.

Meet the man known as Fro, CEO of Beam Benefits.In 2012, Fro and his co-founders of Beam, a digital employee benefits company, developed and built the first-ever connected toothbrush. In a time when connective devices came to the forefront (think IoT products: Nest, FitBit), Beam quickly came to a fork in the road: take the path of least resistance and narrow their ambition, or lean into the storm and wildy expand their ambition. We're sure that you can guess which path they chose.Fro shares how Beam Benefits evolved into a mainstream player in the insurance industry, where their competition has big budgets and, in some cases, over 100 years of experience. So, how does Beam compete? Their customer-centric culture.With such rapid growth, Fro generously shares his experience scaling the culture at Beam and how they've attracted the right people to “work on the work.” It's an intentional blend of industry insiders and outsiders followed by a simple 3-step process: Listen, prioritize, and then vet. It's a continuous cycle that's applied to their internal and external customers and is now spearheaded by their Customer (Broker) Advisory Board.One thing is clear in this episode: Fro and Beam REALLY know their customers.

Meet Jochem van der Veer, Co-Founder and CEO of TheyDo. His business is based on a simple yet sometimes impossible task for large organizations: breaking down processes to make it easier for C-level executives to connect with their customers. Traditionally, small and large organizations have focused on customer journey mapping. TheyDo has a strategic focus on customer journey management, an innovative strategy that creates alignment to what the company designs versus what the customer actually experiences. This allows the organizations that Jochem and TheyDo partner with to make data-driven decisions with qualitative inputs. Betsy and Tony dive deep into this conversation with Jochem and explore what the future of the customer experience could be in the next 5-10 years: intertwining individual emotions with transactions and journeys to predict future behavior.

Fun fact: 30% of the population learns by listening. Not-so-fun fact: If your website only offers written content, you could be leaving behind a big chunk of your target market simply because you're not speaking the same language. Meet David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices, a fast-growing online platform that connects buyers and sellers of one creative service: the human voice. He joins Betsy and Tony to share how he thinks a little differently about the customer journey and generously shares ideas for ways to improve your standing with prospects. Start by taking down the gates to your website content and determining which written content can be translated to audio. Be their guide (not the hero) in helping them achieve their goals. Thanks for your insights, David!

It all starts with a story and believe it or not, Doug Brown has a lot of them. Starting with his first job at the young age of 3 when he was sweeping floors. Many years down the road, Doug is now helping companies achieve their top 1% of sales. Join us as Betsy and Tony get Doug's unique perspective on the state of sales today. Sure, sales people used to push back on marketing and how they didn't need it to sell. Now, they're pushing back on really getting to know their customers. Some of them have told Doug there's not enough information out there to learn about their customers. Listen in to hear Doug's response to this objection with an incredible story involving his grandfather.

Meet Denise Freier. After more than 40 years of driving sales and customer relationships at IBM, Denise made her way to the Strategic Account Management Association. At its core, SAMA is focused on sharing best practices for, you guessed it, Strategic Account Managers. Whether it's through conferences, free webinars or training services, SAMA is continually finding new ways to help accelerate the member's business results. So, what's the difference between sales and strategic account management? Denise explores this with Tony and Betsy and views your traditional salesperson as someone who can apply products and services to a customer's problem. Whereas strategic account managers develop long-term trust and commitment with customers, while always leading with the customer's success. Listen in to learn the 5 specific traits that make a SAM. We especially love this episode given Denise also wrote the foreword in Betsy and Tony's next book! The Rarest Advantage: How to Co-Create Strategic Value to Retain and Expand Your Key Customer Accounts will be released in April 2022.

Meet Gal Oron. Gal is a self-described normal person who got to where he is with a lot of hard work and constant improvement. Whether it's on the basketball court or in the office, Gal strives to keep three key things in mind: 1. Have humility 2. Exhibit strong work ethic 3. Be dedicated. At Zoomin, Gal and his team are replicating the successes they've seen in B2C, and bringing them into the B2B world of enterprise companies. Today, every company is a tech company. That means companies need to understand how their end users interact with content and how they can use this data to their benefit. That's where Zoomin comes into play. Zoomin will reveal the blind spots in your customer experience. Listen in as Gal humbly shares his expertise in this can't-miss episode.

Transparency across the organization - it's something every business strives for, but few master. Customer conversations or feedback is often diluted from the point it enters the organization to when (or should we say, IF) it reaches the impacted department. Fathom, a #1-rated Zoom app, is working to change that. The CEO of Fathom, Richard White joins Betsy and Tony to talk about the business value his company is bringing to a remote-first environment. Customer conversations that take place virtually can now be captured and shared across the organization in a way that increases productivity for everyone involved, improves internal alignment and ultimately, yields a better customer experience. Richard gives the REALLY Know Your Customer listeners a special Fathom offer! Tune in for more information.

Darshan Mehta's time and passion for research goes back to the 1990s, when he became interested in case studies and customer focus groups. Today, Darshan is CEO of iResearch, which built an online insights platform that enables companies to quickly, easily, and affordably extract insights from consumers or employees worldwide. In other words, Darshan saw the value extracted from in-person focus groups and created a way to leverage some of that same value using an online methodology.Let's dive into this insightful conversation with Darshan and explore the world of customer focus groups.

Slater Victoroff never thought he would grow up to be an entrepreneur, even though he was exactly that from an early age, selling individual Dum Dums that he had bought in bulk to his friends (with a nice markup). Fast forward to today, and Slater is the former CEO-turned current CTO of Indico Data. With a focus on helping their customers do their job in a more fulfilling way, Indico processes unstructured data such as audio files, contracts, invoices, applications, etc.Join us for a conversation that takes a turn into really deep thinking around humans and data.

Ross Rich was part of an outdated industry running the same playbook from 30 years ago. A move across the country landed him at Stripe where he helped grow the business from a self-serve model of 250 employees to a sales-led organization with over 7,000 employees. He shares how much he learned at Stripe and what became obvious to him: the market was missing a customer-facing collaboration platform for B2B sales. More specifically, one that would build a repeatable sales motion for companies that were rapidly growing. From there, he and his brother got the idea for Accord. They have a keen understanding about a salesperson's point of view (including what they're willing to do and what you'll never get them to do) and they designed the platform accordingly to create transparency between a buyer and sales. Listen in for this episode to hear more, including our favorite quote from the episode: “Buyers don't know how to buy."

Alex joins Betsy and Tony to talk about proper key account management. He shares his entrepreneurial journey and what he refers to as the “classic startup pivot”. About a decade ago, he formed Kapta, originally a Human Resources software business turned key account management platform. The pivot occurred after the Kapta team simply spoke to their customers. They initiated the customer discovery process and learned the customers weren't struggling with HR software as much as visibility into customer accounts. There was nowhere to capture key account strategies, track their goals, and understand if a customer was healthy or at risk. Alex shares insights during this episode about the difference between key account strategy (“We are customer-centric.”) and key account tactics: Knowledge of Customer, Actions based on knowledge, Measure Impact. That brings us to KAMCon. Kapta's annual conference designed for practitioners in the field who want to better understand the art and science of account management. SPECIAL OFFER: Listen to this episode and receive the discount code for KAMCon that Alex so graciously offers our audience - $150 off the April 2022 conference registration!

Howard Tiersky, CEO and Founder of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency has been working on big brands' digital strategies before they were even on the internet. Over the past 30 years, Howard has become an expert in digital transformation and launched his own business 15 years ago, which now employs about 100 people. Howard shares his story about the company culture and the critical role the leadership team plays in setting the tone for the organization.FROM is solely focused on (humbly) helping their clients drive customer behavior. If you can get your customers to do what you want them to do (customer experience), you're going to have a great business. Howard talks through the concept of how experience is what drives thoughts and feelings, and thoughts and feelings are what drive customer behavior (i.e., purchasing your product).Grab your notebook and pen before you listen into this episode that Betsy and Tony are raving about.

During this episode, Jackie talks to Betsy and Tony about her unexpected path to owning a successful Information Technology solutions company. From an entry-level position where she forgot to save her work on her first day (oops), to running a company with 150 employees, Jackie has stayed laser-focused on customers. Listen in to find out three critical things business owners should consider as they launch their business. The other half of the conversation is focused on how employee (and customer) loyalty is a two-way street. JYG chose their employees and her employees chose JYG everyday by showing up to work. In a digital/remote world, face-to-face time with her employees is still an important aspect of maintaining the company culture and taking care of her #1 customers (the employees).

Lesley Bielby is back. She recently returned to creative marketing agency, DiMassimo Goldstein (DiGo), for the third time in her career. This time, she joins the team as Co-CEO and Chief Strategy Officer. Lesley shares her global career journey with Tony and Betsy, which includes major marketing agencies in cities like London, New York and Boston. DiGo recently redesigned their strategy to solely focus on positive behavior change in every part of their business: their clients, their employees and their culture. With this in mind, Lesley talks about having to pass on opportunities that no longer align with their mission of positive behavior change. An admittedly hard thing to do for any business. Dive into this episode as Lesley shares the “3 M's” customer journey strategy where her team looks at every customer using the 3 M's: motivation, momentum, and moments that matter.

Betsy and Tony talk to Eddy Badrina about building his business and making a positive impact. Eddy has humbly worked his way from the George W. Bush administration to starting, selling, and buying back digital marketing agency, BuzzShift. His latest venture is leading Eden Green Technology as CEO. Prior to joining Eden Green Technology, Eddy knew he wanted his next venture to have three key components: 1. A hardware or software component, 2. Exponential impact and 3. Be a redemptive organization. To achieve this, Eddy has clearly articulated what he wants as a leader and then hired people smarter than him. He focused on Eden Green's 10X key differentiator, a concept originally coined by Peter Thiel. What is it that his organization truly does ten times better than his competitors? Listen in to find out more.

On this episode, Chris Kuenne joins Betsy and Tony to share his 30+ year journey that started at Johnson & Johnson as a Franchise Marketing Director. He has since launched and sold a customer marketing business to Publicis for over $600MM. Chris also teaches a High Tech Entrepreneur course at Princeton University. His most recent stop on his entrepreneurial (and philanthropic) journey is at Rosemark, where he and his team are building quantitative personas as a method of measuring relationships between customers and brands.For most big brands, NPS is a good way to start a marketing story, but it's just one chapter. Important decisions should not be made based on over-listening to the results from one customer (who could be unprofitable); instead, Rosemark creates a bigger picture to help tell the full story, and more importantly, predict future purchase behaviors. “This is not customer satisfaction at all costs. It's customer satisfaction among those customers who are aligned with your brand proposition.”

Nicole Glenn joins the podcast to describe her career path from the retail industry to a passionate entrepreneur and owner of Candor Expedite, a top woman-owned business in the transportation industry. Though Nicole shares that she never felt ready to be an entrepreneur, she has truly found her passion creating positive customer experiences and an engaging company culture that includes everything from happy hours to badass thank you cards and messages. Did we mention Candor Expedite has also doubled their growth in 2021? Listen in as Nicole talks about the importance of understanding customer expectations.

Join us for a conversation with Jay Haynes, CEO of thrv, the first and only jobs-to-be-done product management software, which is based upon the foundational work of Clayton Christensen. At the heart of everything Jay and thrv do, is customer centricity. As humans, our goals don't change over time. For example, the need to get from point A to point B. It's how we use technology to accomplish the steps in between that has changed.B2B companies love to chase technology: AI, blockchain, APIs, but from Jay's perspective, customers don't care about the technology. They only care if the technology helps get the job done faster. Think about maps. In a very short time, we've gone from paper maps, to GPS, to a free phone app to get us from point A to point B. If your product takes more than pushing a button to get the job done, you should constantly ask why because you could be delivering a bad customer experience. This simple example demonstrates really knowing your customer and what they are struggling with on a daily basis.Jay also touches on moving away from the model of “shareholders over everything else” in an effort to be more customer centric, allowing customers to develop their product roadmap.

Meet Ed Vincent, founder of festivalPass, the world's first live events subscription service across music, film, food and wine, sports, theater, tech innovation and more. Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh excitedly talk about how this model changes customer experience! For a long time, concert-goers and show-watchers have been trained to be subject to crazy convenience fees and surcharges for each performance. But now, users can enjoy thousands of events locally and globally for one monthly fee.Ed talks about the desire to build a community around the $200B live event industry to make things easy, social and frictionless for his customers. While data is a huge part of their business, his approach is not something we've discussed on the podcast before. Ed covers four fundamentals needed to really make a marketplace successful:Root vs global densityHetero vs. homogeneous inventoryInverse Volume Price (1 high/1 low)Reason to come backHe is also generous enough to share his untraditional methods to raise capital.What does this all mean and how can it help grow your business? Listen to find out more!

We've all been there. The aggravation of calling into a customer service line with a problem that you have to explain over and over again, wasting your time and energy. Even nice humans like Betsy and Tony see red during these interactions. Enter Peter Voss and AIGO. From a garage to a company of over 400 people, Peter has seen it all (and researched it all) over the past 20 years of his career in AI. AIGO is committed to creating chatbots with brains and bringing hyper-personalization into the world of AI. Think about having a dedicated concierge service that actually remembers you and any previous interactions you've had with them. How much time would you save as a customer? What if your organization had technology like this for your customers to deliver a better brand experience? For Peter, the answers to these questions lie in the technology at AIGO. This episode is for tech geeks and customer-focused execs alike - listen now!

Lucas is the Co-Founder and CEO of INFI, a tech company that specializes in mobile apps, point-of-sale kiosks, and marketing services for QSR & Franchises. Lucas joined the hospitality industry in the most unexpected way – through a karaoke bar! Over the next several years, he found a way to combine two of his biggest passions of engineering and restaurants by forming INFI, where he and the INFI team could improve digitalization in the restaurant industry.The customer and the customer's customers are at the heart of everything Lucas works on. Whether it's mom and pop restaurants or larger franchises, most restaurants have similar opportunities and challenges. They need to be busy. They need a website presence. They need favorable reviews. Restaurants should position themselves to be Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) or local influencers if they do everything right.Lucas and INFI believe restaurants should stay focused on human elements, which includes creating great food and drinks and keeping customers coming back. If you're looking for ways to become more than a transactional provider, this episode is a must-listen.

In this episode, Betsy and Tony chat with Kim Moceri, Operating Partner at Francisco Partners. Kim starts off by explaining her career path, which includes taking a tactical support organization to a consultative business focused on the customers' outcomes. In Kim's current role, she is responsible for getting her 50-60 portfolio companies to understand the impact of strategic customer success. To get to the core, each company's focus must be top-down and outside-in. Lastly, Kim focuses on the difference between customer success (i.e., realizing business outcomes) and account management (tactical aspects, such as customer renewals).

Listen into this episode with two brand new guests - Betsy and Tony! As two CEOs, they dive into what has driven their careers and businesses forward. Tony's business focuses on a bottom-up approach and Betsy's business focuses on a top-down approach. They meet somewhere in the middle to discuss how to better engage with customers. They also explore predictions for the next 3-5 years as it relates to CEO behaviors and strategies. Don't miss the last episode of Season 1 on the REALLY Know Your Customer podcast!

Business growth is unattainable if you don’t engage with the very people that drive it: the customers. Kristy Knichel is a 24-year veteran of the transportation and logistics industry who understands that listening to your customers is the number one way to grow your business. She is the CEO of Knichel Logistics, a WBENC-Certified Business Enterprise (national certification for women-owned businesses) with serious growth goals in the next three to five years. In this episode, she joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to share some customer engagement strategies that can drive your business to the next level. Kristy’s ability to roll up her sleeves during times of turmoil (such as the pandemic) has led to stronger engagement in Knichel’s workforce and within her customer base. Join her in this conversation to learn how she did that and more!

In this episode, Tony and Betsy speak with Roger Beadle, CEO and co-founder of Limitless Technology, a customer experience business dedicated to changing the way you view the traditional customer service model. Roger explains the GigCX model and the benefits of this crowd-sourcing technology that will make any CEO rethink their existing customer service roadmap.

Many business leaders have shifted to thinking about their teams as their customers, but that wasn’t always the case in the past. John Boggs ensures that in order to know his customers he knows his team and treats them with love and care. John is the CEO of the Brave Thinking Institute and the Director of its Business and Leadership Division. In this conversation with Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh, he shares how as a leader he models behavior to help his team really embody their company’s values and deliver excellent customer experience. This conversation contains a great deal of essential information that business leaders need to know as a large portion of corporate America has been thrust into the virtual environment.

One of the greatest indicators of a prosperous business is its customer success. How do you bring that into private equity? In this exciting episode, Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh sit down with Sirous Wadia, the Practice Director, Customer Success at K1 Capital, to discuss that answer. Sirous talks about his career path and gives listeners a view into private equity and its relationship with portfolio companies. He also discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted K1 and the overall SaaS industry — how COVID has accelerated it and what kinds of shifts they are making for portfolio companies. Sirous then taps into what separates successful and unsuccessful B2B SaaS companies, especially as the future remains uncertain.

Two powerful trends are disrupting almost every industry – artificial intelligence and the freelance economy. Coming from obscure beginnings some decades ago, they have since evolved and are now braced to change business as we know it for good. Straddling on both these revolutionary trends is Matt Coatney, a C-level technology executive, award-winning author and keynote speaker. In his book, The Human Cloud, he writes about how these two forces are making inroads in changing the world of work forever. Joining Tony Bodoh and Betsy Westhafer in this episode, he gives us a history lesson about the evolution of AI and how it is now being built into industries such as sales and marketing. Apart from being a thought leader in disruptive technologies, Matt is also a visionary who sees wonderful possibilities for AI in enhancing human capabilities, as well as the need for a change in the way we teach our children to prepare them for the beckoning future.

Companies and leaders who really want to listen to their customers put the technologies in place to do so, especially large companies. They listen to millions of people every single day or week and then derive information that will guide them in rapidly innovating and improving how their organization engages with customers or change the product or the services that they provide. In this episode, Sid Banerjee, the Executive Vice Chairman, Founder, and Chief Strategy Officer of Clarabridge, joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to discuss customer experience analytics. By applying data analysis to unstructured information, businesses are more responsive to their customers and can build better relationships with them. Want to discover how you can improve every aspect of your customer’s experience? Stay tuned to this episode.

In this episode, Scott Miller, Head of Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey, joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh as they discuss how FranklinCovey reshaped itself based on the minds of their customers and why it’s important to have an agile mindset when listening to your customer. Scott shares his journey throughout the years and the multiple roles he’s playing aside from his day job at FranklinCovey. They talk about the difficulties companies have viewing themselves accurately versus through the eyes of their customers and the mindset you need to have as part of the leadership team to understand your customer. Learn the importance of having thought leadership to anticipate any disruption and stay ahead of the curve.

Technology has allowed healthcare to make great strides in providing health services to people no matter where they are located. Telehealth is now making that massive shift happen in healthcare in 2020. The person leading the way, in many ways, has been Tanya Mack, the President of Women’s Telehealth. In this episode, she joins hosts Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to share her story and discuss what telehealth and telemedicine are all about. How did the telehealth market change? What were the early mistakes in defining potential customers and a marketing strategy? How do we overcome telehealth limitations that have held the industry back 30 years? How can telehealth experiences determine patient loyalty? Tanya answers these questions and more, taking us into the challenges telehealth still has to overcome, how she is educating patients, providers, and payers about telemedicine, and what keeps her up at night in telehealth.

As consumers themselves, entrepreneurs know the good stuff from the bad. They’ve been in their customers’ shoes and know the struggles they’re going through. For Jason Chan, understanding the customer has always come naturally. He picks up on what’s out there, sees the opportunities, and goes for it. Jason is Rakuten Super Logistics’ VP of Sales and Marketing where he directs the company’s sales & marketing functions to grow its market share and drive revenue. On today’s podcast, he joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to share the top three things he looks for to really know his customer. They also dive into being an extension of a brand, testing the user experience, and much more.

In our careers, in some way or another, we are all serving clients. Unfortunately, far too few develop the necessary skills and strategies to develop and keep those clients for life. Ivy Slater joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh on today’s podcast to share how you can develop clients for life and discusses the importance of listening to your client with more than just your ears. A professionally certified business coach, speaker, bestselling author, podcast host, and entrepreneur, Ivy is an expert at cultivating and facilitating relationships that are the hallmark of any successful business. Don’t miss this episode to discover Ivy’s story of a lifelong client, why asking questions is essential, and what creates real opportunities with clients to grow sales.

Building trust with clients is hard enough in any business, but it can be a little bit tougher when you’re working with a broad spectrum of clients. Few businesses deal with a broader clientele than Tracy Hazzard’s business does. As the co-founder and CEO of Brandcasters, Inc., the largest podcast post-production company in the US, Tracy deals with people from widely varying backgrounds every day. She has honed the skill of getting to know a very diverse set of customers as her company scaled from serving 12 clients to now more than 400 clients. Her Podetize method and platform takes knowing the customer to a whole new level by understanding what they really want and creating a personal touch for them right from the beginning. She joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh in a conversation about building trust, the podcast industry, the transformational economy and more. Learn why she considers trust building a predominant strategy and see how this model might be a good fit for your own business.

The COVID-19 crisis has nudged businesses worldwide to pivot, not only with the pandemic itself but with the changing nature of the economy. As we enter the new decade, we usher in a new economic paradigm – a transformational economy where value creation is most seen in customer transformation. This is an economy where the foundational tenets of client relationships become even more critical to business success. Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh talk at length about these transformations in their book, ProphetAbility. In this episode, they evaluate what they have learned since the book’s publication in terms of the salient topics that entrepreneurs have to consider during this era of change: building client relationships, working with a client advisory board, acting on customer feedback, and closing the loop.

Making sure you’re delivering value to your customer means knowing who your ideal customer is. In this episode, Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh talk to Ross G.D. Fulton about the ideal customer and the increase of blending customer success and customer experience for value creation. Ross is the Founder and CEO of Valuize, a company that helps B2B software companies retain and expand their customers and revenue at scale. Ross discusses the four phases of the customer life cycle and the biggest challenge about understanding value for B2B software companies. He also touches on how tech companies convert from perpetual licensing to the subscription model and the importance of alignment between the customer success and product teams.

Small businesses typically have a family-like dynamic that is often very crucial to their success. As soon as a business starts to scale and increase their workforce, this family feel is often the first to go out of the window. A professional employer organization helps you keep your employee engagement healthy even as your business grows. Jay Hornbuckle is the Founder and CEO of Abatys, a PEO that helps employers with their HR and employee benefit needs. Sitting down with Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh on the show to share what his company does, Jay’s business philosophy revolves around really knowing who his customers are and who they aren’t. He also talks about the human side of customer support, employer-employee relationships, positivity, and employee culture.

Much of our healthcare is built upon the transactional framework – the patient comes to the hospital, gets admitted, and is subjected to medication and medical procedures to cure whatever ails them. At PALM Health, an integrative medicine and wellness center in St. Louis, Missouri, clients get to have a whole new experience with its patient-centered philosophy and personalized care that is based on a deep understanding of what the patient needs. Dr. Lauren Munsch Dal Farra, founder, CEO, and a physician at the center, joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh on the show to talk about the way PALM Health conducts its operations – from its navigator program for patient experience optimization to its varied services that combine the best of boutique medicine and integrative lifestyle medicine. Join in as she shares the center’s approach to healthcare and how it has successfully shifted its services in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Customer support is a big driver of customer success in the B2B sphere. In the B2C space, however, things can be more challenging as you’re dealing with hundreds to thousands of customers daily. How can you design your customer service program so that it translates into customer success as you scale your business? José A. González, the CEO of Infolink-EXP and founder of Zahoree, joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to explain how his company’s customer journey support model works. José has been in the IoT business for more than twenty years, learning along the way that scaling your business is much more about customer relations than product design or marketing. Listen to him share some of the ways his company accompanies customers on their journey towards having the best experience with their IoT products in the middle of a technological revolution.

Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh continue to discuss ways to reduce risk mitigation in Part 2 of their discussion with business growth strategist Mark S A Smith. In this episode, Mark breaks down the eight ways businesses can reduce perceived risk to ensure they are the safest choice. He shows how customers experience purchase risk and helps salespeople understand how they can make the essential pivot in the way they sell. Being safe is the new science of selling. Follow Mark’s eight ways as well as the five Rs of ROI to create wealth for your customers and, consequently, for yourself.

It is natural for business owners to aim at producing the best products in their respective industries. After all, who would want to buy products that are sub-par? Contrary to this, business growth strategist Mark S A Smith believes it is not about being the best choice out there that gets the sale but about being the safest choice, especially in our recent environment. He joins hosts Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh on the show for a two-part series to talk about risk mitigation. In this first episode, Mark defines what risk is, how it impacts sales, and the four fundamental risk mitigation factors. He taps into the mindset of the leaders who are succeeding in crisis, why purchase decision risk matters, and what the two riskiest decisions leaders are making in the massive transition happening in the business environment. Don’t miss out on Mark’s great insights in this jam-packed show so you can make your product the safest choice and close the sale.

How well are you getting to know your customers? Making an active effort to learn more about your customers and improve your customer relationships comes with fantastic opportunities to learn and grow. Ryan Schreiber, CarrierDirect’s Director of Engagement, chats with Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh to discuss why customer relationships should be at the center of your universe. While continuing to work on these customer relationships might be more difficult in the “New Abnormal,” you have to invest in keeping these connections and providing transformation and value to your customers.

Brand experience is what gets customers talking about your business and word of mouth is certainly the best advertising one can ever hope for. Building a brand that gives a consistent experience is something on which all entrepreneurs should be focusing their energy. Joining Tony Bodoh and Betsy Westhafer on the podcast today is Mark DiMassimo, founder and chief executive officer of DiMassimo Goldstein, a marketing, design and advertising agency based in New York City. Mark believes that entrepreneurs should take the time to really know their customers and build a brand that inspires action. Key to this is the concept of identity, which he believes is the most important concept in business. He encourages every entrepreneur to put focus on building their identity and to be a host for creativity during crisis.

The quickest and most efficient way to innovate on a product or service is to know your customers and acquire a genuine understanding of the problems they encounter on a daily basis. Customer-driven innovation is Nick Ripplinger’s guiding principle that drives his success in rapid innovation technology commercialization. Nick is the Founder and President of Battle Sight Technologies, a startup that finds ways to market innovative technologies that cater to the needs of warfighters, first responders, and emergency management professionals. Nick joins Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh in today’s episode to talk about technology commercialization, customer-driven innovation, veteran entrepreneurship, the coronavirus pivot, success through strategic partnerships, and more. To Nick, bringing in customers to the development process is a no-brainer – a point that entrepreneurs from every business sphere should ponder upon.

The shift to remote work is a challenge for most companies, but even more so for those whose company cultures are built on customer centricity and face-to-face communication. Being a trusted partner is the number one concern for Matthew Evetts, even as everyone is going through quarantine. Joining Betsy Westhafer and Tony Bodoh in today’s episode, Matthew is the Group CTO for the Optic Security Group and GM of Optic Digital. Matthew comes from a company culture that is very much influenced by the “big village” culture of New Zealand, characterized by an emphasis on face-to-face dealings with customers. He describes the difficulties in adapting that culture to the quarantine and how the company manages to surmount them. With recent advances in information and communications technology being utilized on an unprecedented scale, Matthew sees the current crisis as a catalyst for the inevitable future of customer experience in the IT world.