Podcast appearances and mentions of loyal customers

Episode Description:  “You can over engineer things like a business plan. I think there's no substitute for going out and just trying things— that's the best and fastest way you can learn.” —Ashwin Cheriyan   Modern life often makes it hard to balance convenience, health, and sustainability, leaving many searching for better options.  Ashwin Cheriyan, Thistle's co-founder and CEO, is a former corporate lawyer turned passionate innovator, dedicated to bringing health and sustainability to everyone's table. Ashwin's work focuses on proving that eating delicious, wholesome, and planet-friendly meals can be both effortless and satisfying Tune in as Justine interviews Ash about how about Thistle's remarkable journey from a passion project to a mission-driven food company, exploring how they blend health, sustainability, entrepreneurial resilience, and innovative meal delivery to create positive change for individuals and the planet. Meet Ashwin:  Ashwin Cheriyan is an entrepreneur, recovering corporate lawyer, and a mediocre surfer. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Thistle, a Bay-area-based modern, tech-enabled, organic food and nutrition company. He was also the co-founder of WeGoFair, a social enterprise providing ratings for hotels and restaurants reflecting their performance on social and environmental issues. Prior to Thistle and WeGoFair, he spent 4 years in New York as an M&A associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he worked alongside senior management and cross-functional deal teams in collective transactions valued at over $100 billion. He received his A.B. in Economics from Brown University and his JD from The University of Texas School of Law. Outside of Thistle, he spends his energy working with, advising, and investing in startups, mountain biking throughout Marin County, suiting up in neoprene to surf the waves of Bolinas, and enjoying the abundant culinary delights the Bay Area has to offer.   Website LinkedIn Facebook Instagram X TikTok   Connect with NextGen Purpose: Website Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube   Episode Highlights: 02:05 Building a Heath and Sustainability-Driven Biz 15:44 Challenges and Growth of Thistle  27:46 Thoughts Before Seeking Venture Financing  31:52 The Importance of Passion and Alignment 36:05 The Broader Impact of Collective Action  39:44 From Skeptical Partners to Loyal Customers    

 With host retail coach Wendy Batten   https://wendybatten.com/podcast-intro/   Are you ready to simplify your marketing strategy and boost your retail sales? Join me and a small group of driven retail business owners for my 6-week, hands-on program: The Sales and Marketing Accelerator! Each week, you'll receive a short video with an actionable tip followed by a live, interactive strategy group coaching session. We'll work together to create a simple, repeatable marketing plan tailored to your business. No fluff, no wasted time—just practical strategies you can implement right now. Spots are limited, and we start on April 23rd. Join us!   In This Episode:  Did you know that 76% of shoppers have made a purchase from a brand they discovered on social media? Social selling isn't just a trend—it's a game-changer for independent retailers looking to drive sales and build deeper customer connections. In this episode, we break down how you can turn your likes, comments, and follows into real revenue for your retail business. Key Takeaways: What social selling really means (hint: it's more than just posting products!) How to create engagement-driven content that leads to sales Why live shopping is the future and how to start The power of consistency—how to build an audience that shows up to buy Tools and strategies to make social selling seamless and profitable   Need more? Join me and our supportive community of retailers in my Retailer's Inner Circle! You'll get a monthly marketing and operations playbook, monthly group coaching, countless on-demand masterclasses and access to a vibrant community of retailers like you - and so much more. Check it out HERE.   Not ready to join but want to purchase the stand-alone Foot Traffic Made Simple masterclass? You can purchase it on demand HERE.   Most impactful: Join the small group 6-Week Sales and Marketing Accelerator course. We start in April! More information HERE.   Related podcasts we think you'll like:  Episode 210: What's Working for Social Media and Retail Business Growth with Brooke Riley Episode 230: Takeaways from my Mastermind Retreat: Building Connections and Strong Businesses Episode 246: 5 Minute Marketing Tips: Relationships are Rocket Fuel   About your host, Wendy Batten In case we haven't met yet, I'm Wendy, a small business coach and founder of the Retailer's Inner Circle, where I help other independent shop owners learn how to gain the right business skillsets to see more profits, paychecks, and joy as they navigate running their retail business.  Through online classes, business coaching programs, speaking, and a top-ranked podcast, I've helped hundreds of retailers around the globe reclaim their dreams and see the success they want from their beautiful shops. My signature private coaching community, The Retailer's Inner Circle, has helped retailers around the world build their retail business skill sets and confidence.  I am proud to have been featured in several major publications, including my own business column in What Women Create magazine. I have been privileged to be a guest on top-ranked podcasts and sought-after as a guest speaker and teacher for several brands, associations, and communities that are passionate about the success of independent retailers. When I'm not coaching, you will find me either DIYing and renovating my very imperfect old crooked cottage by the sea in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Lunenburg, NS, or blogging about our travel and RVing adventures and the weird fun things we get up to in our coastal village. I'd love to invite you to check out one of my free resources for real retailers at https://wendybatten.com/free-resources/    For more support from Wendy   Retailer's Inner Circle - Join Wendy inside the best retailer's community Free resources for shop owners   Hang out and connect with Wendy on IG    All of Wendy's programs and services for shop owners can be found HERE.  Subscribe & Review on iTunes Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you're not, I'd love you to consider it. Subscribing means you won't miss an episode! Click here to subscribe to iTunes! If you want to be more of a rockstar, I'd love it if you could leave a review over on iTunes as well.  Those reviews help other retailers find my podcast and they're also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. So grateful to you! Thank you!

Top B2B sales producer Andrew Barbudo shares his secret sauce for sales success. Join Mark as he chats with Andrew about his fascinating journey from journalism to becoming a sales powerhouse. Discover how he leverages his journalism skills to adapt and thrive in the competitive sales landscape, emphasizing the power of listening to clients and adapting to market shifts. We also tackle the inevitable challenges salespeople face, like maintaining persistence during those slow periods, and how focusing on customer feedback can lead to long-term success. We'll also break down the essentials of differentiating between warm leads and cold prospects and unveil the critical role of CRM systems in nurturing these valuable relationships. 

In this episode of the B2B Marketing Excellence Podcast, Donna Peterson, CEO of World Innovators, highlights why in-person meetings remain invaluable in today's fast-paced, digital-first world. Donna shares how face-to-face interactions help industrial brands build trust, foster meaningful relationships, and stand out from the competition.She also provides practical, step-by-step guidance for creating email sequences that not only lead to impactful in-person meetings but also position your brand as a trusted partner. From personalized thank-you emails to value-driven follow-ups, Donna explains how these strategies can nurture long-term client relationships and accelerate business growth.Whether you're looking to improve your email marketing, build stronger client relationships, or learn how to integrate traditional and digital marketing methods, this episode is packed with actionable tips that align with World Innovators' commitment to helping industrial brands succeed.Tune in to learn how to use email marketing and follow-up strategies to build stronger connections and achieve your business goals faster!Episode Breakdown:00:00: Introduction to B2B Marketing Excellence and World Innovators' philosophy.01:02: Why in-person meetings matter for building trust and relationships.06:01: How to craft effective, personalized email sequences that lead to meaningful connections.09:44: Tips for building rapport and showcasing value during in-person meetings.11:37: Post-meeting strategies: Thank-you emails and value-driven follow-ups to keep the conversation going.14:51: Conclusion and actionable next steps.Don't miss this episode! If you want to create deeper client relationships and build a marketing strategy that combines tradition and innovation, this is a must-listen.Please Like this episode and share this with your connections to promote quality marketing.If you would like help with your in person meeting strategy contact me directly, dpeterson@worldinnovators.com.

Unlock the secrets of recurring sales success with our special guest, Guitze Messina, executive director at Hardy the Avocer Trade Association. Discover how businesses can thrive by transforming one-time buyers into loyal customers through a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviors. Guitze shares pivotal insights on the dynamics of recurring sales compared to long-cycle sales like real estate and life insurance, emphasizing the art of maintaining relationships without the pressure to purchase. Explore proactive sales strategies that keep your business ahead, taking cues from Guitze's transformative journey from skepticism to advocacy in the sales domain.If you've ever wondered how some businesses keep clients coming back without slashing prices, you'll find valuable techniques in this episode. We delve into the essence of effective sales techniques, focusing on listening and understanding customer needs to craft tailored solutions. Avoid the common pitfall of competing solely on price, and learn from real-world examples, like the restaurant owner who paid dearly for a cheaper ventilation system. Gidzi guides us through the importance of asking the right questions, making client feedback a cornerstone for strengthening business relationships and growing sales.Close the episode with actionable insights for both budding and seasoned sales professionals, as we explore strategic marketing solutions tailored for self-published authors and businesses alike. From conducting a Pareto analysis to identify key clients, to the power of storytelling in sales literature, we offer strategies that can reshape your marketing efforts. Embrace the transformative power of implementing ideas from nonfiction books with Messina's proven techniques, designed to unlock potential and leave a lasting impact on your personal and professional legacy.Join the What if it Did Work movement on FacebookGet the Book!www.omarmedrano.comwww.calendly.com/omarmedrano/15min

Dr. C. Shanté Cofield, known as the Movement Maestro, is Lauren's guest on this episode of the REAL Personal Branding Podcast. Shanté's journey from physical therapist to sought-after entrepreneur is a masterclass in personal branding. She's the force behind a top-rated podcast and a social media-based company that's changing the game for health and fitness professionals. In this no-nonsense discussion, Shanté shares practical insights on creating content that truly connects with your target audience, navigating the ever-changing social media algorithms, and developing a sustainable content strategy that fits your life and business. If you're ready to take your business's messaging to the next level, this is the conversation you need to hear. Connect with Lauren V. Davis here: https://linktr.ee/ldaviscreative Connect with Dr. Shanté Cofield here: Website Instagram Podcast  

“People are going to talk about you whether you're in the room or not. Why not take a proactive approach and help augment that narrative?” says Gianna Scorsone, COO and co-founder at Champion HQIn this episode of The Content Cocktail Hour, Gianna Scorsone, Co-Founder & COO at Champion HQ, talks about the importance of focusing on customer retention, cross-functional alignment, and leveraging AI to identify your brand advocates. She also talks about her experience scaling businesses from $5M to $100M, the value of customer-led growth, and why SaaS organizations often overcomplicate their approach to growth.In this episode, you'll learn:Why customer marketing is the voice of the customerHow AI-powered tools can identify champions and drive advocacyThe key to aligning teams for sustainable growthResources:Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-gandolf/Check out The Juice HQ: https://www.thejuicehq.com/Connect with Gianna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giannascorsone/Learn more about Champion HQ: https://www.championhq.com/Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(01:05) Gianna's journey from sales leader to co-founder(05:30) Why customer retention is key to growth(08:06) From start up to scale up(09:53) Creating marketing strategies based on your customer base(12:04) Identifying your ‘champion' users(13:29) Leveraging AI to identify and nurture customer champions(16:45) The best customer marketing campaign(20:10) Breaking free from the hamster wheel of traditional growth strategies

Tune in for another exciting episode of Driven Loyalty, sponsored by Podium —your partner in enhancing customer communication and driving business growth.

In this episode, first-generation farmer Vannah Roddy talks about how she keeps her customers coming back.  Get time and labor-saving farm tools and microgreen seeds at shop.modern grower.co Listen to other podcasts on the Modern Grower Podcast Network: Farm Small, Farm Smart Farm Small, Farm Smart Daily The Growing Microgreens Podcast Carrot Cashflow Podcast In Search of Soil Check out Diego's book Sell Everything You Grow on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Everything-You-Grow-Homestead-ebook/dp/B0CJC9NTZF

What's the secret to building a brand that customers and employees adore while capturing the attention of industry insiders? In this episode, Tori Johnston, Brand President of goGLOW, shares her insights on the fast-growing beauty and skincare franchise that's “outsmarting the sun.” From defining unique value propositions to spotting industry trends, Tori reveals how goGLOW innovates with eco-friendly solutions and a holistic approach to skincare. You'll also hear how goGLOW's visionary founder, Melanie Richards, built a best-in-class customer experience by saying “no” to shortcuts and prioritizing quality at every turn. Whether you're a franchisor, franchisee, or entrepreneur, this episode is packed with lessons on brand loyalty, market innovation, and leadership. Get inspired by goGLOW's journey and uncover how to make your brand glow!   “At goGLOW, we like to say that we've outsmarted the sun. I think that unique value proposition is easy to understand." ~ Tori Johnston   In This Episode: - Unique Value Proposition vs. Unique Selling Proposition: What's the difference? - Why Tori joined GoGLOW and the booming sunless tanning industry - Key beauty and wellness trends fueling goGLOW's growth - What makes goGLOW a fit for Tori's background and career aspirations? - Why goGLOW earns consistent five-star customer and employee reviews - Melanie Richards' innovative approach to building goGLOW's brand   Resources: 

“What are the things that I do daily to build and maintain relationships with people I deeply care about. And then I just do that to the people that are the next sphere out from me.”   This is a special episode only available to our podcast subscribers, which we call The Mini Chief. These are short, sharp highlights from our fabulous guests, where you get a 5 to 10 minute snapshot from their full episode. This Mini Chief episode features Mike Smith, Founder and CEO of Zero Co. His full episode is titled How to build a tribe of loyal customers, creating a better world through business, and personal growth. You can find the full audio and show notes here:

In the latest installment of his PMQ-exclusive series, Matt Plapp, CEO of America's Best Restaurants, emphasizes the importance of consistent messaging across all marketing channels to enhance pizzeria loyalty programs. Drawing from personal experience, he illustrates how the right approach can significantly impact customer engagement and long-term sales success. https://www.pmq.com/matt-plapp-the-secrets-to-on-point-messaging-for-pizzeria-marketing-success/ --- Do you need some help driving sales?   I'm the CEO of Restaurant Marketing That Works, and we help restaurants find HUNGRY customers. RMTW owns two companies, America's Best Restaurants and DRYVER, powered by Repeat Returns. Go to www.restaurantmarketingthatworks.com for more information That's Restaurant Marketing That Works Dot Com

to watch this episode, subscribe to my YouTube channel: optYOUmize podcast Youtube optYOUmize is sponsored by: BetterHelp online therapy HelloFresh - America's #1 Meal Kit Amazfit - smartwatches and fitness wearables Summary Brett Ingram discusses the critical importance of building an audience for entrepreneurs and business owners. He emphasizes that generating leads and sales is the primary challenge for businesses, and traditional methods like ads and cold calls are often insufficient. Instead, he advocates for creating a loyal following that resonates with a brand's values and personality. The discussion covers the benefits of audience building, including direct access to potential customers, cost-effective marketing, and the ability to create multiple revenue streams. Ingram also highlights the importance of engagement over sheer numbers and provides strategies for audience growth and monetization. Chapters 00:00 The Importance of Building an Audience 04:51 Engagement Over Numbers: The Key to Success 10:59 Benefits of Building an Audience 17:51 Monetization Strategies for Your Audience 24:06 Platforms and Techniques for Audience Growth 29:51 Engagement Techniques to Foster Community 34:08 Long-Term Business Advantages of an Audience ​​#buildaudience #generateleads #personaldevelopment #optyoumize #brettingram #entrepreneurpodcast

In this episode of Powered By Her, Tiffany sits down with Cigi England, the founder and owner of Cigi's Boutique, to celebrate an incredible milestone—10 years in business! Cigi shares the story of how the last 10 years have flown by, what it takes to run a successful boutique, and how she's built a loyal customer base over the years. She also hits on what it takes to keep your thriving business AND add in employees. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or just love hearing about strong women in business, tune in to learn how Cigi keeps her customers coming back and what's next for her journey.   Thanks to our partners:  Plenty Downtown Bookshop Miss Sallie's Market The Biz Foundry

Boost restaurant sales by $20,000 monthly with a simple but powerful tactic: “The Ask.” Today I explain how engaging customers in meaningful ways goes beyond a friendly “How are you?” By training staff to actively promote loyalty programs and offer incentives, restaurants can turn casual diners into repeat customers. Key steps include training employees to confidently share offers, asking every customer to join loyalty programs, and crafting irresistible deals. With each interaction, you're not just making a sale but building lasting customer loyalty. Listen and transform your in-store engagement! --- Do you need some help driving sales?   I'm the CEO of Restaurant Marketing That Works, and we help restaurants find HUNGRY customers. RMTW owns two companies, America's Best Restaurants and DRYVER, powered by Repeat Returns. Go to www.restaurantmarketingthatworks.com for more information That's Restaurant Marketing That Works Dot Com 

In this episode of the Business Growth Hacks podcast, hosts Andrew Brockenbush and John dive into a powerful framework shared by Ryan Deiss for transforming cold audiences into loyal customers. They walk through key steps to identify customer pain points, develop high-impact content, leverage YouTube ads, and re-engage leads effectively. These strategies are designed to help business owners maximize their marketing impact and drive consistent growth. Tune in for actionable insights that can take your customer conversion to new heights.Key Points:- [0:31] Introduction to Ryan Deiss's Framework - Overview of a step-by-step guide for creating buyers from scratch, addressing issues like low conversions and lead generation.- [1:18] Identifying Customer Pain Points - Start with at least 30 customer pain points to align your messaging with customer needs. They recommend using a targeted ChatGPT prompt for this.- [2:28] Crafting Pillar Content - Create a central, high-value content piece (like a guide or webinar) that addresses multiple problems. This becomes a "binge-worthy" resource for potential customers.- [4:28] Using YouTube Ads to Build Engagement - How YouTube's in-feed discovery ads help reach audiences actively searching for solutions, creating a content "binge factory."- [5:20] The “Ready Now Hand-Raiser” Re-engagement Strategy - Reconnect with existing leads through a straightforward email to determine who's ready to make a purchase.Quotable Moments:- [1:45] “When you fully understand the problems your audience faces, you can position your product as the solution they've been looking for.” – Andrew Brockenbush- [4:09] “Think of pillar content as the piece that every potential customer should see before they ever work with you.” – John- [5:02] “Sometimes all it takes is giving your leads an opportunity to act.” – Andrew BrockenbushLinks Mentioned:Beefy Marketing: http://www.beefymarketing.comBusiness Growth Challenge: https://www.businessgrowthhacks.com/p/business-growth-challenge/This episode is packed with practical, step-by-step advice from Ryan Deiss's framework that every small business can benefit from. Start by identifying customer pain points, then develop high-value content and smartly use ads to grow engagement. If you found these tips helpful please, share this episode with a friend.

“We built this school. And then over the next 12 months, we ended up building two more schools in other, other villages around. And it completely changed my perspective on what meaningful work is.”   In this episode of The Inner Chief podcast, I speak to Mike Smith, Founder and CEO of Zero Co, on how to build a tribe of loyal customers, creating a better world through business, and personal growth.

Natalie Doyle Oldfield joins us this week to explore the crucial role of trust in the workplace, focusing on both team dynamics and customer relationships. She emphasizes that the most trusted companies in their industry have increased revenue and brand loyalty. Natalie also outlines some of the key principles of trust and offers advice on how to build and maintain trust.

Today on the show we have Evgenia Mkrtychian, the Director of Customer Success and Corporate Communication Strategy at LoyaltyPlant, a full-scale customer engagement platform.In this episode, Evgenia shares her decade-long journey in B2B SaaS, emphasizing practical strategies for customer engagement and retention and discussing LoyaltyPlant's 30% revenue growth, process improvements, and the introduction of gamification elements.We then discussed the release of her new book, "Customer Success Playbook: Your Practical Guide to Winning Customer Loyalty in B2B SaaS” and we wrapped up by discussing  simplicity, decision-making, and critical thinking in customer success.Mentioned ResourcesLoyaltyPlantCustomer Success Playbook: Your Practical Guide to Winning Customer Loyalty in B2B SaaS Churn FM is sponsored by Vitally, the all-in-one Customer Success Platform.

Clients don't just want great service. They value and prioritize experiences that stand out, that feel personalized, and that make them superfans of a brand or business.  So how can you create unforgettable experiences that your clients will rave about to their friends? Today, Megan and Gina share some memorable experiences from the consumer side, and they share their tips on how it all relates to wedding pros.----Links Mentioned:Time-Saving Client Questionnaire Bundle: https://www.theplannersvault.com/shop/p/time-saving-questionnaire-bundleThe Planner's Vault Client Experience Bundle: https://www.theplannersvault.com/shop/p/client-experience-bundleWhat to Gift Your Couples and Vendors: https://www.theplannersvault.com/blog/what-should-a-wedding-planner-gift-to-couplesThe Planner's Vault Discovery Call Guide:  https://www.theplannersvault.com/shop/p/effortless-consultations-a-6-step-framework-for-booking-dream-clientsa'Verde Cocina + Tequila Library: https://www.averdecary.com/Midtown Pediatric Dentistry: https://www.midtownkidsdentist.com/Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect: https://www.amazon.com/Unreasonable-Hospitality-Remarkable-Giving-People/dp/0593418573/Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention: https://www.amazon.com/Giftology-Increase-Referrals-Strengthen-Retention/dp/1619614332-----(00:02:23) Elevating Client Experiences for Loyal Customers(00:05:21) First Impressions at the New Vet(00:13:55) Why Megan's daughter cried when she COULDN'T go to the Dentist!(00:23:45)  Flaming Churros, Boomboxes, Orange Juice Spray, and SHOTS!(00:27:58) Personalized Wedding Thank-You - One Easy but Special Gift---Today's episode is brought to you by The Planner's Vault. The doors are currently closed for The Planner's Vault, but join the wait list now so you can be the first to know when the doors re-open.Weddings for Real on Social Media:Instagram: @weddingsforrealFacebook: @weddingsforrealtwitter: @weddingsforrealHosted by Megan Gillikin, Weddings for Real is presented by The Planner's Vault, and is produced by Earfluence. --FREE Lead Magnet Workshop happening on Tuesday, October 22 @ 12:30 PM ET/9:30 AM PST - Replay Available: https://learn.theplannersvault.com/leadmagnet

Are you ready to ditch the marketing overwhelm, attract your dream clients, and join a supportive community of female entrepreneurs? The EmpowerHer Business Accelerator Podcast is your guide to building a thriving business with confidence! Each week, you'll get actionable strategies, mindset shifts, and the inspiration you need to step into your power as a CEO.   In this episode of the Empower Business Accelerator Podcast, host Philippa Channer delves into the crucial decision and retention stages of the customer journey. She offers strategies for converting prospects into loyal clients and maintaining these relationships post-purchase. Key tactics include clear call-to-actions, personalized follow-ups, exceptional customer service, and loyalty programs. Philippa emphasizes the importance of nurturing client relationships for long-term business success. Additionally, she announces the upcoming launch of the Empower program's group sessions in January 2025, inviting listeners to join and connect with fellow entrepreneurs.   Whenever you are ready, here are some ways that we can help you:   Free 30-Hour EmpowerHer Discovery Session: https://channerconsultingllc.hbportal.co/schedule/660da85649ef86002d1790d3 Subscribe for regular content on developing a solid marketing plan, marketing strategy, and marketing tips.   Connect with us: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/channer-consulting-llc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/channerconsulting/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/channerconsulting/ Get in touch: info@channer-consulting.com

Wondering how to turn a brand-new client into your biggest advocate in just 100 days?In this must-listen episode of Beyond Social, Vitaly Veksler and Reggie Azevedo pull back the curtain on the exact playbook agencies need to win clients over and keep them hooked for the long haul.We're diving deep into the critical onboarding phase—the moment where first impressions make or break your success. Learn how to master the art of seamless communication, align goals that actually matter, and nail social media management in ways that build trust from day one. From profile optimization and airtight security to setting KPIs that prove your worth, this episode breaks down every crucial step for transforming client relationships.Plus, we're spilling insider secrets on how to collaborate without overwhelming your clients, using the right tools to elevate their social game while keeping them engaged.It's more than managing accounts—it's about creating die-hard loyalty, boosting confidence, and showing clients you're the one they need in their corner, every step of the way.Tune in and discover how to make onboarding effortless, metrics meaningful, and customer relationships rock solid. Because landing the client is just the start—keeping them? That's the real victory.00:00 - Intro1:20 - How do you make sure you're keeping customers loyal?4:30  - Getting Access to Socials9:00 - Onboarding Considerations11:50 - Collaboration15:00 - Reporting & Metrics18:00 - Word of Mouth19:40 - Confidence Try Vista Social for FREE today Book a Demo Follow us on Instagram Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Youtube

Roma has been with the same electricity provider for 44 years but feels mistreated. Eamonn was surprised at the size of his VRT bill. A defibrillator was stolen from Kenure Park Woods in Rush, Co. Dublin. Neil has painted a mural of Shane MacGowan. Bill uses a rollator but often faces opposition from bus drivers.

Marybeth Alexander has been the Knowledge Goddess and Chief Executive Owl at KnowledgeOwl since she co-founded the company with Pete in 2015. As KnowledgeOwl's CEO, she's responsible for embodying KnowledgeOwl's mission and values, which include using business as a force for good, cultivating a people-first company, giving excellent service to everyone, and creating awesome knowledge based software.   Questions  · We always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey. So, if you could share with our listeners just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today. · Could you share with our audience what exactly is KnowledgeOwl, and what do you do on a daily basis? · What are some of the successes that you've experienced as a CEO of an organization of this nature, and if you were to predict where you see customers experience going in another 3 to 5 years, based on where the technology is currently, what are some of your predictions where that's concerned? · Now, Marybeth, can you share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can't live without in your business? · Can you also share with our listeners, 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 had a great impact on you, and it could be an impact that affected you personally or professionally. · Now, can 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 give our guests an opportunity to share with us a quote. So, do you have a quote that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights Marybeth's Journey Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about their journey. So, if you could share with our listeners just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today.   Marybeth shared that she'll try to do the short version of this. So, she just loves helping people. All of her jobs are her favorite, her favorite jobs have always revolved around people. She loved being a camp counselor, she was a teacher. She also really loved working in hospitality. She loved working at restaurants and bartending and serving folks. And then she transitioned into software support, and she loved helping people there too.  So, she got into software. She was a teacher for a while, and then she transitioned into software, which was actually a pretty good transition, because a lot of the same skills that make you a good teacher for kids also makes you good at doing software support for adults.  So, she grew her leadership in that realm, and she went from being on the support team to being a team lead, to a manager, to a director, and then she got this little opportunity to head up a product, which was a knowledge based product, it was called Help Gizmo at the time.  And she took that opportunity. I was basically like the product owner or manager of that product, and they brought it to market, and then that company didn't want to continue that project, so they ended up giving them the opportunity to buy it, and that is how she accidentally ended up as the CEO of a software company.  She likes to call herself an accidental entrepreneur, because she didn't start out that way, but as luck would have it, she got the opportunity, and now it's been almost 10 years.   What is KnowledgeOwl? Me: Now, Marybeth, could you share with our audience what exactly is KnowledgeOwl, and what do you do on a daily basis?   Marybeth shared that KnowledgeOwl, they call it knowledge based software, but it was essentially, what knowledge based software is, is a specific type of software that allows you to create a website to share information with whoever your audience is, that is often times your customers.  So, a lot of people use them for their help center and documentation for their software products, but they also sometimes use it for their products for their customers, they have airlines who use them for their help and FAQs, for their customers on their website.  They have customer service teams that use them as a knowledge base for their call center agents. They have lots of companies that use them as their internal knowledge base for all of their playbooks and policies and procedures. So, pretty much what they do every day is help people with these knowledge based websites that help them help their customers, whoever they might be.   Me: I think knowledge base is an extremely good thing for customers, because I do find if a customer has an issue, they tend to do their own troubleshooting first before they actually pick up the phone and call a company or even reach out to a representative at a company. So, if you have a strong knowledge base, you're actually empowering the customer to fix the problem themselves.    Marybeth agreed totally yes, most people do not want to contact your support team, there are a small percentages of people that do, but most people want to be able to self-serve. And when we're talking about giving your customers a great experience and giving them great customer service, a big part of that is allowing them to get help the way they want to get help, and most people would prefer to do it themselves.    Me: So, walk me through, let's choose an industry, let's say, for example, an automotive industry. You sell motor vehicles, for example, and you are trying to create a knowledge base for your team members, so this would be internal with let's say product knowledge, or just general information that customers may call and ask about frequently. Is it that they have to document the information and then give it to you, and you feed it into the knowledge based software, or is that something that you provide for them as well, the research and the documentation that is fed into the knowledge based software?   Marybeth shared that they basically provide the software tool for them. So, their customers like, let's say this automotive, this car service company or automotive company, they would purchase KnowledgeOwl and then somebody on their team would be the one that would put all the content in. So, often times this could be a manager of a team, sometimes you have somebody whose job it is to do like documentation or training, but often times it is like the support team itself, like the people doing the work, they will go in there and document the answers to questions, because on many support teams, you know what team leads end up doing, or like the advanced folks on the team that have been there for a while, is they end up being the go to person and having to answer the same questions over and over again for the other teammates.  So, rather than just answering those same questions over and over again, those people will go to the knowledge based software create a document that says, here's information about this automotive vehicle, here's information like a frequent process that we use. And here's how to do this for the customer, and they'll write it down, so that way their teammates can then reference that or look for it in the knowledge base and get the answer without having to ask them.  So, it speeds up the process and the not just internally, but also it helps the customers get answers faster, because the teammates can find the information they need to help the customers faster.    Me: And your knowledge based software facilitates different formats, so, for example, it could be an audio file, it could be a video file, it could be just a document that the customer is reading.   Marybeth stated exactly. So, it's basically a website. She likes to tell people, pretty much anything you can put in a website, you can put it inside KnowledgeOwl.  So, a lot of times it's going to be text. So, a lot of times it's processes, it's procedures, it's information. But in terms of training in like a video format, you could have audio files in there. You could even like host files. So, if you need to have, like a PDF document or a forum that you need to print and give to a customer, you can store those in the knowledge base as well to make it easy for people to find, print, download it and use that information.  So, essentially, a knowledge base can become sort of the single source of truth for your team. So, rather than having to remember where this forum lives, or where that procedure lives, or where the information about like that car lives, it's all in the same place, so that people can search one place and go to one place to find all of the information they need to do their jobs.   Me: And if the organization already has their own website, Mary Beth, is it that knowledge base has some form of feature that integrates into what they have already, so you live on their server that exists? Or do they have to host their website now through your website?   Marybeth shared that it's not their whole website. So, a knowledge base is typically a separate website. So, you might have your website, which is like www.likemyamazingcompany.com and then you might have your knowledge base for your customers, and that might be on help.myamazingcompany.com or support.myamazingcompany.com so it's actually a separate website that people can go to that is either public or it could be behind a login, because sometimes you only want your logged in customers to access it, or especially if it's an internal knowledge base, you probably only want your employees accessing all of your internal company information.  So, it's often times a separate website. But there are ways you can integrate the knowledge base into your main website if you want to. They have an embeddable help widget, some people go a little bit more advanced with that, but generally it's a separate, standalone website that complements the information on your regular website.   Predictions for Customer Experience in the Next 3 to 5 Years Me: Now, since you've been in this operation for about 10 years you mentioned earlier, what are some of the successes that you've experienced as a CEO of an organization of this nature, and if you were to predict where you see customers experience going in another 3 to 5 years, based on where the technology is currently, what are some of your predictions where that's concerned?   Marybeth shared that in terms of successes, her successes are all going to be people based because I think, like you, she was looking at Yanique's website, it's for her, it's all about the people, and giving people a great experience and making sure that not only, like their customers are having a great experience and love working with them and love using their software, but also that the people that work with them, like their staff members are having a great experience working for KnowledgeOwl too and their vendors who are having a great experience working with them as a company.  So, for her, like the biggest success has been building a community of not just customers, but staff members and team members and other vendors and organizations, a really supportive community that cares about each other. But in terms of looking forward in the industry, it's a very interesting time; especially with the word that is on everybody's mind right now is AI. So, everyone is talking about chatbots, right? So, everybody wants to talk about how they can make a ChatGPT for their company and their customers, and they can automate more of your customer service and their customer experience. But for them and who knows what it's going to look like in 3 to 5 years, because the landscape is changing so fast. But what she does strongly feel like is having your company knowledge documented, like having your product, your services, everything in a knowledge base is now more important than ever, because especially with AI, the only way that AI learns is by getting trained.  And one of the best ways to train your AI is to have all of your policies, your procedures, your documentation about your company, your product and your services and your processes written down so that the AI can learn.  So, she thinks what we're going to see over the next 3 to 5 years is even more formal focus on creating and maintaining great documentation, which for many companies, that's always been really important.   So, like most business books you're going to read at the end of the day, the magic secret to like growing your business is to document everything right and to document all your policies and procedures and processes so that you can scale your company, and other people can do what you do.  And that's always sort of been the not very sexy, but honest truth about what great companies look like as they have their policies and procedures and everything well documented. But she thinks what we're going to start to see is that not only are people going to be creating like great documentation for customers and creating great documentation for their teams internally, but they're going to be creating documentation for AI tools as well.   Me: I think that's a very good point that you just brought across the fact that the knowledge base can train the AI, because a lot of times I find that even with chatbots that are attached to organizations, you may start the conversation to resolve an issue, but the bot can answer maybe just the very basic question. And so, a lot of times when I talk to people, they mention that they don't even entertain the bot because they know that they're not going to get the answer they're looking for so they automatically tell the bot they'd like to speak with a live representative, or an agent for the conversation to end with the bot and actually be talking to a live human being in the chat. But maybe that could mitigate the intervention of live agents or representatives if it is that the bot is, as you mentioned, trained fully by the policies that have been documented and simple questions that maybe is embedded in your website, or maybe the customer is not able to quickly identify, the bot can say, “Okay, this is the policy or this is the rate for this,” or whatever the information is as it relates to the organization, again, minimizing the customer having to reach out to someone and speak to them in person or live.   Marybeth agreed and shared that she thinks what's going to be the sort of people of this is we're going to get to a point, probably here in the next 3 to 5 to 10 years, where you might have trouble telling whether you're talking to a real human or a bot. So, think about like the chats on website. So, a lot of bots, you can tell they're a bot because they tell you that they're a bot and it's very simplistic, but the more conversational bots, like, if you've had a chat with ChatGPT, like it's conversational, it can go back and forth with you, you can have an ongoing conversation that builds upon what you were previously talking about.  So, she thinks there is going to be a lot, and it's already starting. There are a lot of AI customer enablement tools, customer service enablement tools that they've been testing, and they've seen other companies using that learn from your knowledge base and your past emails and conversations, what your tone is, how you usually respond, what the correct answer is most likely to be. And there are these tools out there that right now, if they're confident, they can actually reply as an agent would, versus having the agent actually do it. And there's a lot of companies that are very nervous about that with good measure, because we don't want people giving out bad information.  But the agents are suddenly becoming, they're just double checking before the bot sends their answer, but the bots actually writing everything and creating the response and then having that engagement. So, she thinks we might get to a point where sometimes it might be hard to tell whether it's a real person or not.   App, Website or Tool that Marybeth Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she can't live without in her business, Marybeth mentioned if it's cheating to say KnowledgeOwl?  KnowledgeOwl is interesting because that is where they document not just everything about their products. They have their customer facing knowledge base, which they use to understand how their product works and their customers do as well. But they have all of their internal company documentation in KnowledgeOwl as well. But as a team, they're a remote team, so they're 100% remote, they're distribute everywhere.  So, their team relies a lot on Slack to connect with each other and have like an online space where they all can all exist and not just talk about work but talk about life and interact with everybody. And it's that necessarily that Slack is that important, because if Slack wasn't there, they'd probably be using Microsoft Teams or some other tool to do that collaboration. But having collaborative, like a space for your team to collaborate together and help each other out and just sort of be together and care for each other as humans is really important, especially we move into an age where there's like less in person interactions and support teams and customer services teams are often going to be distributed. She thinks having that space is really important.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Marybeth When asked about books that have had a great impact, Marybeth shared that she's actually going to give you three. So, yes, she's got three for you. So, number one, it was Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service, and she probably first read this about 15 years ago, someone gave it to her, and she said, “What does this have to do? I'm running a software company support team. This is a food service book.” And she read it, and it was the first time that she actually saw someone be able to define the steps to actually giving great service and the steps to actually handle a complaint. And it might have seemed really simple at first, but she has been using the same framework for about 15 years now, and it really works. So, it was the first time she was able to take something that was very conceptional, like great service, and actually give someone a process to follow. So that's number one, is Zingerman's Guide to Great Service.   A compliment to that is Zingerman's Guide to Good Leading, it's a series of books. There's one on building a great business, there's one on being a better leader, there's one on managing ourselves, and another one's about the power of beliefs in business. And these books and series of books have really influenced her whole philosophy about the type of company she wants to build, about the types of teams she wants to build and how she wants to treat people. So, those have been really important to me.  And then her third one, which is more for the business owners or the team leaders on here, but it is Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, it came out last year or the year before, but it has been life changing for her, and sort of organizing her life and figuring out how to grow herself as a leader.    What Marybeth is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that she's excited about, Marybeth shared that she thought about this one a little bit, and this might sound a little bit wild, so she's like a customer service person at heart. Like, support is her jam, she loves customer service, but what she's really excited about right now is sales and marketing. The reason she's very excited about sales and marketing is because she's done a complete 180. When she first started KnowledgeOwl, she thought sales and marketing were bad words, she thought they were icky. They did not have anybody doing sales and marketing, a dedicated team, and they grew their company to this point without really focusing on sales and marketing, because they thought it was something sort of gross, like, she's a support person, she likes helping people, and she sort of see sales and marketing, or she used think about sales and marketing as sort of this other thing that businesses had to do, but it was sort of gross.   And what she's realized recently is that sales and marketing can be done good, or it can be done poorly like many things, it's just a tool, and if we think about it through the lens of customer experience and customer service, and how do we add more value for our customers, and how do we give them a better experience in the world?   And how do we do more good, then sales and marketing become a really interesting skill to learn and problem to figure out, because she thinks they can do it in a way that is true to their values. And it's very people centered and is very helpful and is very centered in service. And it's a totally new area for her. So, she's getting to learn, she's getting to apply all of her learnings and feelings about customer service and experiences to the realms of sales and marketing, and she's really excited to figure it all out with her team.   Where can listeners find Marybeth online? LinkedIn - Marybeth Alexander LinkedIn – KnowledgeOwl Website – www.knowledgeowl.com Email – marybeth@knowledgeowl.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Marybeth Uses When asked about a quote that she tends to revert to, Marybeth shared that she has many of those. She loves a good mantra. And she thinks her favorite one that she keeps returning to, and she writes it down a lot is….Enjoy yourself. And to her, it's a quote from a song that she really likes. But in times of adversity, when things seem to her not going well, when she feels like she's unmoored or a little bit lost, remembering that life is short and that it's shorter than we think, and to remember to enjoy ourselves, and it brings her back to her why. It brings her back to her purpose, and it really helps her to refocus things. So, it brings her back to that positive frame of mind. So, enjoy yourself.   Me: So, Marybeth, just want to extend our gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and jumping on our podcast with us today. Conversation was amazing, just learning about Knowledge Owl, and just learning about the impact of a knowledge base and the future of customer experience as it relates to integrating the knowledge base into our different platforms and allowing the customer to be able to self-serve and resolve their issues that much quicker and get information at the tip of their fingers. So, I think it was really insightful, I hope that my listeners gained as much insight from it as I did. I thought it was wonderful, and I just want to thank you so much for sharing with us today.   Please connect with us on X @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links •    Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service by Ari Weinzweig •    Zingerman's Guide to Good Leading, Part 1: A Lasped Anarchist's Approach to Building a Business by Ari Weinzweig •    Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstruck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell   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!

Michael Barbarita has owned retail, manufacturing and service companies over the last 40 years.  He is the Author of the Book "Powerful Business Strategies" and Host of an Iheart Radio show of the same name. What problem do we solve? Michael solves the problem of lead generation and conversion for small business owners. He provides practical advice and strategies to help businesses attract more high-quality leads and effectively convert them into paying customers. Small Business Answer Man Show Notes: Being an entrepreneur can be demanding because there is never enough time to do everything. Despite obstacles, it is possible to achieve balance and success in business. Michael Barbarita talks about how to generate great leads and turn them into paying clients.   Steps of the Conversion Formula: Captivate: Create a headline identifying the customer's problem. Fascinate: Engage with the solution they can't find elsewhere. Educate: Detail how the problem is solved. Offer: Make a compelling offer using: Scarcity and Urgency Risk Reversal Adding Value Packaging and Bundling Indifference to Outcome The conversion formula is essential for business differentiation. "I Hope So Marketing," which makes general statements that don't set the company apart, is a common marketing problem. Emotional factors are the first and rational factors are the second targets of effective marketing. Position of Market Dominance is attained by drawing customers in and holding their interest. It is possible to avoid being merely another price-based decision by using the conversion formula. Differentiation requires a dominant market position. Dominance in the market demands work and an organized 13-week program. begins with comprehending the customer's avatar to determine their issues. A compelling customer avatar makes a company stand out and support higher prices. Putting the 80/20 rule into practice and concentrating on high-impact tasks is essential for both revenue development and time freedom. Owners of businesses should concentrate on developing original tactics rather than copying rivals. In addition to offering free downloads of the book, Next Step CFO does interviews for it. To dominate the market, Michael Barbarita stresses the significance of differentiating your firm. Seven-Step Pathway to Profit Formula: Quality Leads: Generate high-quality leads. Conversions: Focus on conversion rates within the sales process. Closing Rates: Increase the percentage of leads converting to customers. Client Retention: Retain and add value to existing clients. Average Dollar Per Sale: Enhance the average revenue per sale through additional products or services. Frequency of Sale: Increase the frequency of sales to existing customers. Cost Management: Manage both fixed and variable costs efficiently. Michael Barbarita's Advice for Leaders: Steer clear of ambiguous statements like "best service" or "highest quality," as they don't provide any value to your company. Instead, to differentiate yourself from the competition, use a targeted and distinctive marketing strategy. Employ the techniques of enthrallment and amazement to establish a solid position of market supremacy. This lets you stand out from the competition by addressing certain consumer issues and offering customized solutions. Create a thorough customer avatar to pinpoint their particular issues. Instead of trying to outwit rivals, concentrate on what makes you unique. Focus on the 20 percent of your endeavors that provide 80 percent of your outcomes. Customize your solutions to meet the needs of each consumer so that you can provide greater value. A distinctive value proposition will allow you to charge more for your goods or services. Make a name for yourself in your industry by standing out from the competition. Connect with Michael Barbarita: Website LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Clarity Navigator Discovery Session – Sign Up HERE Learn more about Gary's Mastermind group at goascend.biz/the-mastermind-solution

Bob Carrothers has 29 years of experience, he facilitates peer-to-peer boards of CEOs and executives, creating environments conducive to skill enhancement, informed decision-making and superior results. Bob is certified as an Emergenetics advisor and Predictive Index practitioner, equipping him with a profound understanding of human behaviour and cognition.    Questions · So, we always like to ask our guests, in your own words, could you share a little bit about your journey? How you got from where you were to where you are today? · What would you say maybe if you could pick three overarching tenets or competencies that you believe CEOs need to practice or embrace in order to really achieve the three areas that just mentioned. · What are some of the key things that make an organization successful? · Now, Bob, can you also share with our audience, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · Now, 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, whether it be personally or professionally. · Bob, can you share with our audience what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are 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, Bob, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Highlights Bob's Journey Me: So, we always like to ask our guests, in your own words, could you share a little bit about your journey? How you got from where you were to where you are today?   Bob shared that it's been a very interesting journey. He started out as an entrepreneur; he had companies involved in the meat trading business. So, they bought and sold animal parts, lungs, livers, kidneys, everything that was most people would consider waste from an animal, and then they would resell them to people we knew wanted them, mostly to pet food companies, that's where the tonnage went. And then others to went to Mexico. Others went into sausage making, Chorizo making on the West Coast. They just find a buyer and go do it. And they'd go into a packing house and buy their entire production of lungs or livers or whatever, and then resell it into the pet food canning business. So, it's been an interesting ride.  In 1996 he got out of that business. He sold it to his management team, and they took it over, and they're still running it. And then after that, he started another company that failed miserably. He lost a ton of money. He was crushed, and it was hard and then he looked around, and he'd been a Vistage member, and he loved it. And he knew that with all the ups and downs he's had in his life, he could help people from making mistakes and doing what he did and living that life. So, he reached out to his past business chair, and he hired him, and that was in 1996, so he's been doing this ever since, September of 1996, so it's been quite a ride.   Overarching Tenets or Competencies CEO's Need to Embrace to Unlock Their Potential, Enhance Performance and Achieve Their Goals Me: Now, you focus on empowering CEOs to unlock their full potential, enhance their performance and achieve their goals. Based on your many years of experience, Bob in this space, working, I'm sure with CEOs and entrepreneurs across different industries, what would you say maybe if you could pick three overarching tenets or competencies that you believe CEOs need to practice or embrace in order to really achieve the three areas that I just mentioned.   Bob shared that he thinks they need to establish a great culture in their company and mind it. Nurture it and protect it, because culture trumps everything, nothing else matters. Your people won't be happy, you won't keep people, you will make your customers angry, your suppliers angry, and you'll do a really bad job because your employees won't care. And so, that's the first thing he would say, is build a strong culture.  The second thing is to hire correctly, be slow to hire and fast to make them available to industry. So, that's really important. If the employee can't do the job they were hired to do, they need to move on and then hire the right people. Put a lot of effort in your hiring process. And the other one would be, watch the money. You've got to keep track of your cash flow, you got to predict what the cash is going to be down the road. Bigger companies have CFOs to do that, and then they'll report to the CEO. Smaller ones, often the CEO will do it themselves. But you have to do it, because if you run out of cash, you're out of business. It's just really simple, if you can't make payroll, then you're gone.   Key Things for an Organization Success Me: So, Bob, in working with these different organizations, right? We're trying to establish what are some of the key things that make an organization successful? And so, the customer experience is critical in all businesses regardless of whether or not you have a face-to-face type of interaction or you're just digital and people are communicating with you solely through the internet. But leadership is very important for a business, whether you're a solopreneur or you're a fortune 500 company, regardless of the size, it's driven by the leader in the organization. As it relates to customer experience, if you were to maybe give us an example of a use case, a good use case, example that you've observed over the years in working with these CEOs, what do you think are some of the key things that make them be able to have a successful customer experience, one in which their customers are their brand advocates, their evangelists, their word of mouth advertisers. If that company decided not to advertise for the next two, three years, they would still be doing great business because their customers view them as fans. What would you say are key things in that?   Bob shared that there's one company that comes to mind, and that CEO was brilliant, and the culture in the company was extremely strong. He would walk around his plant every day, and he knew everybody's name and met family members, and he'd walk up to him and just say, “Hey, Charlie, how you doing? How's the family? How's your wife? I heard your son Robbie is sick.” He would do that, and the employees felt that they were cared for.  He never stopped setting goals, he never stopped doing things that would make the work fun. He was trying to reduce shrinkage one day, and it kept bugging him, it was going on for months, and he decided he'd just do a little contest, and he went out and bought an old junker car and a whole bunch of sledgehammers, and every day the group, the employees reduced the amount of shrinkage, they could go out and beat up on the car. And it was just amazing how much fun they were having and how just beating a car, they hit their goal for sure, and it cost the CEO, like, what $500 to do that.  He had other contests like dunk the CFO, where he had one of those dunking tubs. Certain goals were reached, that was out in the parking lot. He saw him with his customers. One of their Vistage speakers impacted him so much that he invited his customers from around the country to come to his plant, see the plant, and hear this speaker present, and because it made such an impact on him, he wanted his customers to be better too, so he thought this speaker could really help him.  What else did he do? Whenever he'd walk up to somebody and they promised to do something for him, he recorded it on his phone, so he'd pull it out and before he saw them, pull up their name and say, “Hey, how are you coming on that project we talked about?” And the accountability went through the roof. Just little things like that, simple things. But he had one goal, that if the company reached so much in revenue sales, he knew that if it did, they'd make extra money, if it was over and above the regular goal, it was big….hairy….audacious goal, and he said, “If you guys hit this, I will take the entire company to Las Vegas.” Because he knew if they increased the revenue that much, the profits would go up enough to pay for the trip and then some. And he was legendary with his employees. Just things like that that are special.   Me: I think one of the things I took away from what you said just now that it's not the big things, it's like always the little things, the minor details, and they go very far away with another human being, because it shows them that you value them, you appreciate them, and they're just not there to milk, to get more money, money, money. But you value them as a person, and you recognize the fact that your success is just as important as their success.   Bob agreed, that's exactly right. That's what it takes to build a great company, is the culture you create. You want people waiting in line to go to work for you.   Me: I know right, that's awesome.   App, Website or Tool that Bob Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about an online resource that he cannot live without, Bob shared that he hates it, but he can't live without it, it's called email. Buries him, but it's the communication is so fast, and we can send documents back and forth, and he doesn't think anybody could live without email now. We all curse it, but it's there.    Me: Agreed, because in the absence of email, we have to go back to posting a letter to your customer or to your friend or family member, and we all know the Postal Service takes forever for you to get that response. So, yeah, email is amazing.   Bob shared that he remembers those days and they'd send off a contract and wait and wait and wait to get it back, just because of the mail, or an invoice. It just was crazy. And then came fax machines, and they were huge. He bought one once and his accountant, and said, “Why do you want that thing? Nobody else has them.” And he said they will, even though they will. And that became huge, and then email took over for that.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Bob When asked about books that have had a great impact, Bob shared that Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't was a book that had an effect on him. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant is another one. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.   Me: I'm actually looking at the book right now. It's sitting right in front of me.   Bob shared that that's one of the major ones. And another one he wrote was How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. So, there's several.    What Bob is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Bob shared that he's always excited about cheering, he sees so much, and he loves what he does. As far as he's not in any training right now, but Vistage offers trainings all the time, and he also does stuff outside of Vistage. But right now, he's getting ready to go on a holiday in a sprinter van, it's an RV, and that's kind of got his attention. Plus, he's got two Vistage meetings next week.   Me: So, those are your things that you're working on that you're really excited about. Fantastic.   Where can listeners find Bob online? LinkedIn - Bob Carrothers Website – www.vistage.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Bob Uses When asked about quotes that he tends to revert to, Bob shared he does, he's a big fan of Albert Einstein, and he had a quote that was, “The same level of thinking that caused a problem is not going to fix the problem.” That's not exact, but that's what it means. And that's so true. Another one is, “Everybody's a genius. But if you want to teach a fish to fly, they're going to fail and feel they're a loser from then on.” And some people just can't get it. And sometimes when things go wrong, you got to look at the people involved, or the thinking involved and reapproach it with a different level.   Me: Okay, so that second quote is more to say, maybe you need to take a few steps backward just to move forward, just to reevaluate and do it again.   Bob agreed. Reevaluate if it's an employee and they just can't get it. Maybe they're just not set up for it, and it's better to find another position for them, or another area of responsibility, or perhaps they're just not right for your company, like you got to have the right people on the bus as Jim Collins say.    Me: True. If you have the wrong people on the bus, it makes the journey that much harder.   Bob agreed, they got to be in the right seats.   Me: Well, thank you so much Bob for jumping on our podcast today and sharing all of these awesome insights as it relates to Vistage and your journey and just what are some of the key things that makes a leader successful and makes an organization successful as they navigate their customer experience through the journey of their customers lifetime. So, I think your conversation today was extremely insightful, and I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you for taking time to share with us today.   Bob shared that he's really enjoyed this. Yanique ask great questions and make him think so, thank you.   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 • Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't by Jim Collins • Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim •    How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie •    How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie   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!

Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari run an agency that focuses on geofencing. This embraces a growth hacker mindset that strategically focuses on identifying and amplifying their clients' strengths while pinpointing weaknesses in the competition, utilizing GPS location data. This approach results in a significant and measurable impact on foot traffic and online engagement, making their efforts truly game changing and successful.  Questions · Now, we always like to ask our guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about your journeys, how you got from where you were to where you are today. · Can you share with our listeners in the most simplest layman terms, what exactly is geofencing? · Organizations heavily invest in marketing, but then when the person comes to the organization to do business, case in point, let's say you visited Starbucks, and you had to wait for 20 minutes just to get a cup of coffee. You're extremely frustrated, because it's just a small item, you should be in and out in the shortest possible time. How do you tackle that with your clients? Is that something that you deal with as well? · Do you find that the behavior based on the geographic location or even the culture of the country, impacts how geofencing works? · Now we'd also like to hear from both of you, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · Can you also share with me maybe one or two books that you've read? It could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you, whether personally or professionally. · Now, can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your lives right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, we always like to wrap our episodes up by asking 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 get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Barbara and Ernesto's Journey Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about your journeys, how you got from where you were to where you are today?    Barbara Wardell: Barbara shared that she and Ernesto met during Covid at a Halloween party, believe it or not, before they started their company together, they became friends. And her journey is she's a mom of two, and she was in the medical industry, specialty medicines for a long time, and then Covid hit, and then she and Ernesto met at a Halloween party, became friends, and then they started Cullari & Wardell, a geofencing ad agency, and a little over two years, they've been killing it, so growing small businesses. So, they're really lucky to do that.  Ernesto Cullari: Ernesto stated that as Barbara said, they met during Covid, they both have a medical background. For years, he was a Surgical OR Med Rep, so he would be working in the operating room with physicians utilizing novel technology to do abdominal body wall repair, post breast reconstruction after cancer and things like that. During the day, he moonlit as a professional songwriter, so he had songs on Disney radio, country radio, that he wrote for other artists. And along that journey, he became a songwriter. So, the mystery during his creative time was always wondering how to sort of growth hack, how to break an artist out into the mainstream. And they had a lot of success doing that. Paulie Litt from the show Hope & Faith, ended up having a number one song on Disney radio, which they wrote for him, and then had a top 100 song, and then top 15 country music song that he wrote for an artist named Bailey Grey.  And so, it does lead them up to Covid, because when Covid struck, part of their content, so he got more into advertising and marketing, and a lot of their clients just dropped off. And the problem that needed to be solved was how do you rebuild foot traffic, particularly in a market where the government won't let you open, when they do let you open, people are going to be slow to come back to retail. So, what do we do? So, putting that growth hacker hat back on to when he was a songwriter, he looked into geofencing, and that was about 4 years ago, and then 2 years into his journey of mastering, doing his 10,000 hours of studying geofencing technology, he and Barbara met, and it became a passion of theirs, and throughout their conversation, to help small businesses, to help them bring people back in.  People like the retail experience, people like the in-person experience, and geofencing is a powerful tool that uses satellite technology to draw virtual fences around locations of interest. It could be your competitors, and they use that to capture their devices to send ads to their devices when they come into one of their locations after seeing one of your ads, the satellite pings them and alerts them that a new GPS verified visit has taken place. And he and Barbara do about 5000 satellite verified visits in the US, Canada and Australia every month.    What is Geofencing? Me: Now, for those of our listeners that are tapping into this episode when it's broadcasted and they're getting a chance to listen into this awesome content, can you share with them in the most simplest layman terms, what exactly is geofencing?   Ernesto Cullari: stated that in the simplest terms, it is a form of advertising that uses your phone and when you walk into a location that they've identified with a satellite, he's drinking a cup of coffee at a coffee shop that he bought it at. And then in his surrounding areas, there's about 7 other coffee shops. Well, if he wants to show why he's better, he would use geofencing to draw a virtual fence around his competition. Once someone walks into a competing coffee shop with their mobile device, he can then capture their device and then send ads to their device. And the wonderful part is, is when after seeing his ad, come back to his coffee shop, he could say, “Wow, because of my ads, because I used geofencing to target their devices in my competition stores, I've therefore just measured 50 visits this month.”  So, it's critical because none of us are made of money, and advertising dollars for the small business is scarce, so we want to use our money wisely. And big companies like Chipotle, Chipotle, by the way, the CEO of Chipotle just got hired at Starbucks.   Me: I saw that yesterday.   Chipotle during Covid, utilized, he thinks it was one of their vice presidents came up with this idea, “Hey, let's use geofencing. I heard it works.” Well, during Covid, Chipotle was able to triple their curb side pickup from using geofencing. They saw where other people were picking up food, and then they decided to target those locations and let them know that, “Hey, Chipotle has curb side pickup.” So, Chipotle did so well that Starbucks needs to learn from them. As you know, a lot of Starbucks locations have been closing throughout the country, and they picked off talent from Chipotle, and he has no doubt that that talented team is going to be helping Starbucks turn around, but geofencing is part of that story.   Me: So, now our listeners have a good idea of what geofencing is and also what your organization does.   How Does Using GeoFencing as a Marketing/Advertising Tool Affect CX? Me: Now let's tie all of that back into the customer experience, right? Because we're all about navigating the customer's experience. So, you have marketed and advertised to the organizations to say, hey, you can come to this organization based on the geofencing marketing initiatives that you've put in place. Now, can you share with me how it is that the customer experience is addressed in this for example, like with your clients, because I find, for example, people spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising, not sure what the cost point is for geofencing compared to traditional media like the radio or newspaper, if it's significantly cheaper. But I find that a lot of times, organizations heavily invest in marketing, but then when the person comes to the organization to do business, case in point, let's say you visited Starbucks, and you had to wait for 20 minutes just to get a cup of coffee. You're extremely frustrated, because it's just a small item, you should be in and out in the shortest possible time. How do you tackle that with your clients? Is that something that you deal with as well?  Barbara Wardell: shared that for their end, it's the advertising end, they don't deal with the customers per se. The places that people go with their smartphones is indicative highly of the products that they buy. So, when they go into a geofence, what they see is they're open on an app, because they're on apps or on the wide-open web, they're not on Facebook, Instagram, Google. So, when they actually go into that geofence and they're on an app, they will see an ad for one of their customers, and from that, if they toggle it or click it, they will see a map how to get there. Once they go into that store, whether it's that day or 90 days later, the satellite will ping them. So, that part is their end. What they go into the store is on the customer itself of how they treat their customer. And Ernesto has some insight on that as well.  Ernesto Cullari: shared that when they do a consultation with a client, one of the first things they ask, they're one of the largest advertisers for laundromats in the world, so small business owners have discovered that owning a laundromat is a very good business, you're serving your community, you're providing a great service, but it's very important to set up realistic expectations. So, he and Barbara, when they consult a company, they want to find out even,  “What kind of doors you have?” “Do you have doors that are particularly when moms and dads are coming in with their kids, are the doors automatic? Are they wide doors?” “Are you operating new machines?”  Because they want to set up realistic expectations for the end consumer. So, when they work with one of their clients, they do ask them how their operations run. They've been very fortunate to attract top operators in communities across the US, but when it comes to restaurants and spirits companies and hotels and HVAC and doctors and things like that, service providers, they do want to make sure that the product that they say they're offering is the end user experience that the customer has. But as Barbara said, it's not their responsibility to make sure they do operations well, but they advise them, “Hey, get your operations down, and let's make sure the promise that we give is matched with the in-store experience.” Barbara Wardell: shared that that's something they think that is very important. So, that's why they do a lot of research before they take on a client. They ask them a lot of questions to make sure that they're doing what they're promising in their ads, because you don't want that customer to come in and say, “Okay, this is not what the promise was, right?” Then they won't come back.  Ernesto Cullari: shared that they're concerned about their numbers; in order to do well for you, they need to be telling the truth. There needs to be truth in advertising, and they don't want their numbers as a company to be impacted because they're committed to delivering as much as 5000 visits a month, and if their clients are not on their end, providing the proper customer experience, it does impact him and Barbara. So, they're very competitive, they want to make sure they uphold the things that they say they're going to do, and they tend to advise their clients 100% of the time to do the same to make sure they're matching the experience with their ad promise.   The Impact of Geofencing Me: So, in the feedback that you just provided, it got me thinking to the fact that, do you find geofencing it's most effective or impactful based on your geographical location. So, is it that you primarily operate in the United States, in North America? And do you find that geofencing would be different based on, let's say, a customer who is in Nigeria, in Africa, or a customer who is in Kingston, Jamaica, in the Caribbean? Do you find that the behaviour based on the geographic location or even the culture of the country, impacts how geofencing works? Is that data that you're able to provide as well to the clients?   Barbara Wardell: Yes. So, they're right now in Australia, Canada and the United States, and there is a culture difference when you advertise in a different country, they found that a lot has to do, they do a lot of studies before they break into another country, to make sure that they understand the behaviours and kind of they do a listening device that kind of listens to the area to see, because they track mobile foot traffic, right? So, that's one of the things that they do to work on their geofencing, so they already know when they go into that area, what the culture is like, and also talking to the customer as well to understand the area. And also, they do a listening device or a foot traffic study to understand the area that they're targeting.  Ernesto Cullari: Agreed, Barbara said it perfectly. They do set up listening campaigns, and it's basically a beacon to measure, he'll give you an example, Australia, for listeners that haven't been there, he and Barbara have not been there, but when they look at it via satellite, you have these communities that are densely populated, and then you have hundreds of 1000s of acres of wide open space. So, they really need to do due diligence and measure the amount of devices that are available in an area before they market to them. So now, they haven't tested yet whether this works in Africa or South Africa, but right now, they're for sure it works all throughout Asia and it's a matter of so say, Nigeria, for example, they would have to set up a listening campaign, they would have to measure the amount of devices that are available and then determine what kind of devices are they. Are they iPhones, Samsungs and Androids, or are they flip phones and some other mixture of devices and that will impact what kind of the ads they use.   Me: All right. So, that definitely answers my question, and I think it will help to guide the listeners as well in terms of if they're small business owners, or even working in organizations with small business owners that they can definitely identify if this is something that would benefit them and benefit creating more traffic for their organization, generating more customers and hopefully impacting their customer experience.   App, Website or Tool that Barbara and Ernesto Absolutely Can't Live Without in Their Business Barbara Wardell: When asked about online resource that they cannot live without in their business, Barbara stated that she thinks it's the foot traffic study only because it gives them a lot of information before they even launch a campaign for any one of their customers. It is something that they can see a half hour before and a half hour after the customers, where they go from that that area, or that specific customer, and also for a year, they can go back for a year to look at that traffic and see where those customers go. Ernesto Cullari: He thinks for himself, he has his hand in a lot of working on the creatives for clients. And even though there are wonderful platforms out there, like the whole Adobe Suite, which includes Premier, Photoshop, Lightroom and all that, and Adobe Illustrator, and he thinks they're all great. But he likes the prosumer which are applications that anybody off the street could use. So, if you're a small business owner or even a big business owner, and you want an application where you don't need to go to your team or your assistant, you want to be able to do something yourself, Canva is a wonderful platform that he has actually, when he works in Canva after working in something like Adobe, his turnaround time sometimes in Canva is so much quicker because it's made for dummies. Canva is made for dummies. So, he loves Canva, and also, they manage designers, and those designers, they work in Creatopy, again, so that's a prosumer, anybody off the street could use that website, it makes great looking html5 ads. And again, as someone who manages creatives, if he doesn't like something, can go into Creatopy, and he could fix it himself. So, he thinks no matter where you are in your journey as a business owner, whether you manage a fortune 100 company and you have to deal with your admin, your marketing men and women, or you own a small business and you have to do it yourself, or you're hiring an agency like them, Canva and Creatopy, in addition to the Adobe Creative Suite, are just wonderful platforms.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Barbara and Ernesto Ernesto Cullari: When asked about books that have had an impact, Ernesto shared that he read Confessions of an Advertising Man by Ogilvy, which he thinks is one of the greatest books on advertising you can read. But also, it's not just advertising, it's in general, if you're someone who needs to communicate to the masses or to discrete audiences, small audiences, learning the art of communication is important, and he thinks Confessions of an Advertising Man, he have found invaluable.  In addition to Sun Tzu's Art of War, sometimes you have to crush your competition, and you have to be able to have the stomach for it, and strategy is necessary. And Sun Tzu's The Art of War he would also say. And then the Bible.  Barbara Wardell: She has to say one of her favorite is Wabi Sabi Love, it's about being in the present and appreciating everything that's in your life at that moment, because it could be gone tomorrow, and she's had that experience, she's read a ton of marketing books, but that's one that's close to her heart.  Ernesto Cullari: He shared that Yanique asked earlier about cost effectiveness, and the cost per acquisition and things like that. How does this compare to other forms of advertising? So, he's sure a lot of listeners out there have for various reasons, could be for charity, could be for advertising, could be for marketing. They've engaged in Facebook, Google advertising to promote an event or product. So, he can tell you, doing the engagement using Facebook and then starting with other forms of advertising since then, and he can tell you that geofencing, pound per pound is the Mike Tyson, is the absolute Mike Tyson of advertising. Everyone else is a lightweight. There is no censorship.  So, if you run political ads, you will face no censorship of any sort on the geofencing side, unlike Facebook and Google, who will silence you if they don't agree with your viewpoints. And in terms of reach and measurement, dollar for dollar, there's just nothing as effective as geofencing.  So, on a $500, he doesn't recommend only spending this, but on a $500 budget per month, you can end up with 20 people coming through your door. I do recommend for five-mile radius that you spend at least $1,000 on your market, that way, if you know the cost per customer, meaning how much money your average customer spends, you have the opportunity to 10 to 30x your return on investment depending on what the value of a new customer is for you.  In some of their verticals that they work with, the value of a new customer is $40,000 so on the $1,000 ad spend, if you gain one new client a month, that's a quite impressive return on investment. For other clients they have in the laundry industry, some of their clients are worth 1200 to 2500 a year. So, if they send the 30, 40, 50 customers a month, then that again, is quite a handsome return on investment, agreed.    What Barbara and Ernesto is Really Excited About Now! Barbara Wardell: When asked about something that they are really excited about, Barbara shared that they just launched which they're really excited about, their dashboard for their clients so that they can go in and see the reporting instead of them emailing them their reports, so now that they can go into the system and actually on their time and actually look at and see their results of their campaign.  Ernesto Cullari: He shared that he's excited about he and Barbara just got finished running a fundraiser from his mother's orphanage in the Philippines. She operates what's called Street Kids Philippine Missions, and she's been there for 15 years with her husband, Matt, and they have rescued kids that were in danger of being sex trafficked, that were eating out of garbage cans, that were basically destitute. And it's their 15th year, they just successfully raised $20,000 and that was simply an online campaign where they used their podcasting studio to talk about what his mom does, and Matt does there. And they're pretty proud of being able to use their resources to help kids that face sex trafficking that would otherwise be destitute. And he would say he's most happy and proud about that development.   Where can listeners find you online? Website – www.cullarimedia.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Barbara and Ernesto Uses Ernesto Cullari: When asked about a quote to they tend to revert to, Ernesto shared from The Art of War, “He whose forces are of one mind will be victorious.”  Barabra Wardell: She shared that mainly, she always tells herself to be in the present moment and not get sidetracked by other things that are going on. But she can't think of a quote right now.   Me: Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedules and hopping on our podcast and sharing all of these great insights as it relates to geofencing and the impact that it can have on 10x'ing your business, getting new clients, the advantage that it has over traditional media, advertising and just the opportunity for you to understand your customer base a little bit more, get an idea of where they're coming from and why they're coming to you, so you can continue to build on that and even exceed their expectations. So, I think it was a great conversation, and I just wanted to extend my deepest gratitude to you both.    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 •    Confessions of an Advertising Man by Dave Ogilvy •    The Art of War by Sun Tzu   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!

Syed Ahmed, owner and founder of Platinum Motor Cars and Out of Office Garage, shares his journey of building a successful business and community. He emphasizes the importance of building relationships and providing exceptional customer service. Syed and his team focus on the lifetime value of a client and prioritize their clients' needs and preferences. They aim to create a community of car enthusiasts who trust and support their business. Syed also discusses the challenges and rewards of working with his wife, Erica, and how they navigate their personal and professional lives. In this conversation, Aaron and Syed discuss their experiences with the 75 Hard program and the lessons they learned from it. They talk about the importance of consistency, discipline, and intention in achieving success in various aspects of life. They also touch on the significance of overcoming challenges and maintaining a positive mindset. The conversation concludes with a discussion about their favorite cars and the importance of integrity and intent in business.TakeawaysBuilding relationships and providing exceptional customer service are key to success in the car industry.Focusing on the lifetime value of a client and prioritizing their needs and preferences can lead to long-term success.Creating a community of loyal customers and car enthusiasts can help grow a business.Working with a partner, such as a spouse, requires open communication, trust, and the ability to separate personal and professional lives. Consistency and discipline are key to achieving success in various aspects of life.Overcoming challenges and maintaining a positive mindset are crucial for personal growth.Integrity and intent are important in business and can lead to long-term success.Favorite cars can vary based on personal preferences and experiences.The 75 Hard program teaches valuable lessons about scheduling, discipline, and consistency.Chapters00:00 Introduction and Background01:48 The Story of Platinum Motor Cars04:11 The Importance of Building Relationships08:05 Focus on Lifetime Value and Client Satisfaction11:56 Creating a Community of Loyal Customers18:14 Out of Office: Building a Community of Car Enthusiasts20:59 Navigating Personal and Professional Lives: Working with a Partner29:16 The Power of Consistency and Discipline31:37 Overcoming Challenges and Maintaining a Positive Mindset34:01 Integrity and Intent in Business45:24 Lessons from the 75 Hard Program51:11 Favorite Cars and Personal Preferences

Are you tired of feeling like you're throwing content into the void, hoping it magically turns into clients?

Alan Versteeg, an engineer turned sales management expert, initially approached the sales world with skepticism, but soon turned it into a thriving career by applying the engineering principles of cause and effect to sales and sales management. This success led him to co-founding Growth Matters, where Alan and his team have developed over 2,000 sales managers across 45+ countries and diverse industries.  Known for his candid and light-hearted approach, Alan's passion for the sales profession shines through in his insightful talks, leaving audiences engaged with his wisdom, expertise, and memorable one liners.  Questions · Now, could you start by sharing with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today. · Can you share with us maybe two overarching themes that you try to help sales professionals master in terms of their mindset, to get them to where you need them to be in order to master their sales? · What are some barriers that you believe a lot of salespeople face, why it is you believe they're not successful? · Now, Alan, could you also share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can't live without in your business? · Can you also share with our listeners maybe two books that you've read? It could be a book that you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it still has had a great impact on you. · Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Where can listeners find you online? · Just want to ask you as well, Alan, in your experience, in the journey of your lifetime, if you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, if for any reason, you got derailed. Do you have a quote or a saying that once repeated or just remembered it helps to get you back on track? Highlights Alan's Journey Me: Now, could you start by sharing with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today.   Alan shared that he started as an electronic engineer, it wasn't his fault, he grew up watching Airwolf Night Rider and MacGyver, so he thought that's what he'd be doing. Unfortunately, he lost his dad when he was quite young, he was about 12 years old, but he was an engineer, so he thought that'd be a good thing to do. But he was doing it for about 3 years after graduating, and he read a book called You're Born an Original, Don't Die a Copy by John Mason, and he said, “If you passionately hate what you're doing for more than 2 weeks, you need to stop,” and he'd been doing it for two years. And a friend of his suggested he goes into sales, which he then tried and please if your listeners don't drop off now, but he got asked to leave his first sales jobs, but it was frustrating. As an engineer, he believed in cause and effect. He believes that there's things you do that get you certain outcomes. He was doing everything they told him to do, but he couldn't find a way to get through, he'd be good at his product, he was passionate to what he was doing, but he wasn't able to succeed.  And then he worked under a manager, he said to him, “Alan, is sales a job or a profession?” So, he knew the right answer, the right answer was, it's a profession. And he said, “Well, how hard did you study for this profession?”  And then the penny drops, and from there on out, been a passionate reader, 50 to 60 books a year, generally related to psychology, self-development and sales and over time, realized that the big change in sales is sales management, and that's a short view of his journey to where he was and how he got here.   Mindset Needed for Sales Professionals Me: Now you deal with a lot of sales professionals, and I can imagine it starts with their mindset. Can you share with us maybe two overarching themes that you try to help sales professionals master in terms of their mindset, to get them to where you need them to be in order to master their sales?   Alan stated that it's a great question, and it speaks to the tone of your podcast. So, the first mindset they have to own is that “Selling won't help, but helping will sell.” That the sale is the reward for an intent to create value. And that's the starting point when we realize that we are service orientated, that we're there to drive value into the client's business or life, that there's something specifically we're trying to do, that were truthfully customer centric it's not just a word, and we realize that selling won't help, but helping will sell.  You'll find that salespeople do really well. There's a wonderful book called Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud by Lisa Earle McLeod, and it shows the research behind the top performing sales professionals globally sell with that noble purpose, with an idea to serve. So, it's definitely one of them.  The second one is probably an extension, he said to sales professionals, “If you believe in the product you sell and you believe it can add value to the person you're serving, then it would be borderline negligent to avoid offering them that value.”  Many salespeople, specifically today are fearful of cold calling or proactive sales calling or reaching out or picking up a phone or speaking to someone, and they take on a very much non-human sales approach, as opposed to going, “I believe, with certainty and conviction that what I have to offer will make their lives or their business easier, and I'm here to help, and helping will sell. So, I'm going to depart from that point.”  And what you find is doing that, apart from that point, the skills, the body language, all the risks that start to develop quite naturally, but often we avoid that, we try to train the skill, but we avoid the mindset.   Barriers To Overcome as Salespeople Me: So, once you tackle their mindset, now you have to ensure that what they're selling, as you mentioned before, is actually helping the customer and adding value to the customer's life. What are some barriers that you believe a lot of salespeople face, why it is you believe they're not successful?   Alan shared that he thinks the big barrier specifically in professional selling is conviction of the value proposition, and before that is clarity. And he'll give a couple of examples.   When he speaks to business leaders, they often say to him, “You know what Alan, the challenge with our sales teams are they just don't understand our value proposition.”  And he says, okay, great. What is your value proposition? And they struggle to articulate it. Now, if you think about this, why is it that entrepreneurs can sell quite effectively without ever having been trained in that skill, and the reality is they have clarity and conviction of their value proposition. He thinks with many sales professionals, we're teaching them the product, we're not teaching them the impact it has on the customer's life.  Once we buy into the impact, once we have the conviction, selling is a natural part of how we are as humans and Dan Pink wrote that book To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.  And his (Alan) example is we have a brand over there, it's called Woolworths, it's a high-quality brand, high quality food brand. And if you said to anyone, “But why shopping in Woolworths? They're so expensive.” They dive into a defense, without being paid by this company, they will sell very hard the value of doing that.  The same could be said for someone who's an Apple phone fan. And he can continue, once we have conviction of something, the ability and need to persuade is actually quite natural. So, he thinks what's missing from an individual's perspective is that conviction of the mindset.  From a corporate, it's the fact that we speak about customer centricity, but none of our measurement metrics or meetings actually align to that.   Me: Now, I found that in a lot of organizations, they're heavily sales driven, right? I find it as a customer service trainer when companies hire me to come in and train their team, especially the leadership teams in customer service, or even customer experience design or customer journey mapping, there's a lot of emphasis that I hear them talking that they have these exorbitant sales targets to meet on a month to month basis, and with these targets that they have to meet, they don't have as much time to give to customer centricity or to give to the experience, because it's all about meeting the target. How do you strike that balance as a salesperson? What would be your recommendation?    Alan shared that there'd be two components. The first would be at an organizational lens, speaking to what you're saying. He thinks organizations have forgotten that when you take care of the customers, the number takes care of itself. So, we are so focused on the month, on the quarter, on the year, we're not focused on the value, and that's a shift that needs to happen.  But practically, the way that shift happens is in the account planning process, when we start treating our customers and accounts and saying, what is the value we're delivering. Many companies go, what more can we sell them? What's the white space we can sell into? What does that look like? And that's the big organizational.  From a salesperson's perspective, the only thing you can do is you need to figure out how to allocate your effort. And the way he says that is you have to beat everyone equally but handle them differently. You have to segment your customers, otherwise you can't take care of the ones that need to be taken care of, and your competitor is going to snatch them up. And in any sales business, he's ever worked with, if you lose, and it's generally about 10%, if you lose about 10% of your customers, you lose about 90% of your revenue.  But organizations are just focused what's the next sale, what's the next sale, what's the next sale? And what happens is, we're putting two barrels on the truck, and three barrels are falling off the truck because we're not focused on the customer service.  And we almost see it as something separate, and it's not. The way he articulates this is there's a thing called the value gap, it's the gap between what customers expect and what they experience. And it is everybody's job in the organization to close that gap.   It's not, “Hey, sales go set the expectation. Hey, service go and deliver against that expectation.” It's an organizational mindset that we exist to close the gap between the customers expect and what they experience.  And he thinks their leadership needs to start realizing that taking care of customers, the numbers take care of themselves, and that talking to a spreadsheet or talking to a CRM system or talking to data doesn't change people's behaviour.  So, leadership needs to take a different perspective on this and going, what is it we do now that lays the soil in the seeds for the numbers we need?   App, Website or Tool that Alan Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he can't live without in his business, Alan shared that right now ChatGPT. He thinks that we are negating its value in sales if we're using it incorrectly. So, he'll give you a context.  As salespeople, we need to be creative and optimistic, and we're not fans of admin. So, the good news for sales professionals is a lot of our admin is going to be replaced by technology, but that's going to leave a lot of sales professionals wanting because what do you do with the time that you used to spend putting your data. But he really leverages the tool to shorten his learning curve, understanding a customer, understanding what the challenges are, understanding key things. It's a tool to summarize, it doesn't replace him as it shouldn't, it enhances him.  And he was listening to one of Yanique's earlier podcasts, you talk about the human-to-human connection, and there's this thing now where we talk about human-to-human selling. And he's like, well, if you think human to human selling is new, then you haven't been around for millennia, because that's what it is. It's a human-to-human task enhanced by technology. But right now, if he talks about probably 60% to 70% of his time is given back to him because he knows to leverage ChatGPT.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Alan When asked about books that have had an impact, Alan shared that that's a tough question with all the books he read, but he's going to give one that he always recommends. The first one is called The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson, and the premise of the book is that simple disciplines practiced consistently over time, lead to a life of greatness, and simple errors in judgment made consistently over time, lead to a life of blame. There's no Hollywood moment, there's not one big movement, they're just simple disciplines. Look at any leader, any sports hero, any person who succeeds in their profession, they practice the disciplines. So, there's definitely one that guides his life.  And then the other one is a book called The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller, and it's really about forgetting this construct of work life balance and finding out what's the one thing I can do such that by doing everything else is easier or unnecessary. And it talks about this work life counterbalance, and how you just keep the things that matter, you don't make them extreme fluctuations and the things that don't matter can be extreme. You can be heavily buried in a work project for three months, but during that time, don't forget your health, your family time, the things that matter. Just tone it down a bit, not all the way down. Those are two books, he'd say, personally, really drove him.  As a business professional, recently read that 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan, wonderful resource for anyone that's listening, that is an entrepreneur or business owner, 10x Is Easier Than 2x.   What Alan is Really Excited About Now! Me: Now, Alan, could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.   When asked about something that he's excited about, Alan shared that he's recently moved to a smaller coastal towns that's been really good for him personally, but the big thing happening for him business wise, is there's a very large global brand that they've managed to secure that's 10x'ing our business, which is a plan they had based on that book that he's read, and starting to see how that effort, energy and focus is paying off, is really rewarding. When you read a lot of books, you can get sometimes caught up in the story and not in the action.  And what's really great to see, in a proud moment for their business, is now really starting to take on some recognized global brands who are looking at effectively three guys from South Africa and saying, “We want to partner with you to do this.” So, it's a proud moment that's come, your overnight success is the longest night of your life.  But really what it's been powerful is seeing the practices that they put in place now starting to bear fruit. And when you say, take care of the customers, the number takes care itself, it's actually quite prolific, how?  And you know this, he's preaching to the converted, but when you understand that the only thing that matters is how customers experience you, then everything else becomes a lot easier, because their ability to grow is because they just have a track record where they phone a customer, and they love what they've done with them. And that doesn't mean it's easy to scale, it's still hard to scale. But he thinks that'd be the big thing right now, is seeing how by applying certain principles, you can stretch your own mindset, stretch your own goals, stretch your own vision for your business, and really start to play where you always believed you can.   Where can listeners find Alan online? LinkedIn – Alan Versteeg   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Alan Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Alan shared that he has quite a few, but one of his favourites, because of its depth is, “How you do anything, is how you do everything.” And the reason that's so important is it's easy to be in a good mood when times are good, it's easy to be of a good character when times are good, it's easy to be a pleasant person when times are good, but when things are challenging, that's where your character gets tested.   And how you do anything, is how you do everything. And he says to leaders all the time, Richard Branson said it so well, “The best way to take care of your customers is to take care of your employees.” Because the minute you take care of the employees, the customers feel that. And it's because how you do anything, is how you do everything.  You can't be polite to your customers but rude to the person waiting at you at a restaurant or trying to help you at the airport. Airports are so fascinating because everyone complains to people who are really just trying to get you somewhere safely and within strict guidelines that people, they don't treat people well.  And he believes that how you do anything, is how you do everything. And in challenging times, that tests you, can I remain of good spirit? Can I remain a good demeanor? Can I remain patient as a person when things are difficult? Can I maintain my faith?  Because it's easy to maintain my faith when things are great, it's difficult when you're in the lion's den, and that's for him, a quote that just guides him and says, just remember, they still shape your character, this is a test of your character and a bad day for the ego, is a beautiful day for the soul. It's time to grow.   Me: Well, thank you, Alan, so much for hopping on this podcast and sharing all of these great insights with us. It was very insightful to understand your perspective as it relates to sales and customer service, and to reinforce a lot of what we do talk about on this podcast, Navigating the Customer Experience as it relates to ensuring that the customer experience is not just managed effectively on the outside, but it needs to start on the inside. And you said it beautifully when you gave Richard Branson's quote that if you take care of your people on the inside, and they'll definitely take care of your customers on the outside. So, I think it was a really great conversation and I just really wanted to extend our deepest gratitude for your participation in our conversation today.   Alan shared an extended thanks to Yanique and the work she's doing in this space. One of the things that he definitely picks up in everything Yanique shared, the customer experience is not a thing, it's a culture and when we actually realize this, everything becomes easier, because it seems obvious, it does take a lot of work, as you know, it's a profession. But when companies understand it, the only reason we exist is to create value for customers, then the customer experience is the report card. So, thank you so much for the work you're doing in this space and for having him on the show.   Please connect with us on X @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience.    Links •    You're Born an Original, Don't Die a Copy by John Mason •    Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud by Lisa Earle McLeod •    To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink •    The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson •    The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller •    10x Is Better Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan   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!

In this podcast we examine the growth of TikTok Shop, with Mark Ross of Konsort Social, and ask if social enterprise platforms could allow loyalty programs to turn top customers into a meaningful sales channel.

Neil Leyland is a Chief Contact Center Strategist at InterVision, and he is an exceptional PMP and six Sigma black belt certified senior-level program leader and a proven problem-solver. A highly motivated achiever with a career history in sales and operations management for international multi-unit retail operations.  Possessing excellent interpersonal, presentation, written and verbal communication skills, which are used to solve problems, consult on technology projects and develop long-term collaborative relationships.  Questions · Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. · Could you tell our listeners a little bit about InterVision, what they do and what your role at InterVision is? · When you say holistic approach using AI and machine learning, can you explain to us what that means? Is it that robots are going to replace human beings? Or are you looking more from a support side, just tell us how it is that you actually see it working? · Could you share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can't live without in your business? · Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you've read 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 that has impacted you either professionally or personally. · Can you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are 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, Neil, 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 get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Neil's Journey Me: Neil, could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today.   Neil stated that you can probably tell, he's not from the US, although he's based there now. Finishing up from university, he went straight into working for enterprise, Rent a Car, did probably 20 or so years with them. Worked from the main counter at a rental office all the way through to leading an area. Then he moved countries during that time and started working more on the technology side and being far more strategic as opposed to tactical.   Then settled in St. Louis, got married, had kids, and then moved through several different companies, picking up good and bad practices along the way, and he's ended up at just coming up to 12 months now with InterVision.   About InterVision Me: Now, could you tell our listeners a little bit about InterVision, what they do and what your role at InterVision is?   Neil shared InterVision is an AWS premier tier partner. They specialize in transforming contact centers to their flagship product, Connective CX, powered by Amazon Connect. They also integrate AI to deliver seamless omnichannel engagements. They address common pain points for call centers, like reducing call volume and the costs associated, they do this through improve engaging efficiency and also enhance customer satisfaction. They can be found at www.intervision.com.  His role within InterVision, he would say is a Contact Center Evangelist. So, he works with clients and look at problems that they face, and then help them find what is either the best operational or technological solution to best satisfy customers' needs or solve problems that the companies have been satisfying those needs, so tying together his history working in retail, as well as time and technology, and sort of blending the two, to give what people consider to be a best in class solution for them.   Understanding the Approach in AI and Machine Learning in the Contact Centre Me: So, you are in the contact center space, and your strategy is to ensure that you have a holistic approach using AI and machine learning, two very popular words that are being used very frequently in the CX space. When you say holistic approach using AI and machine learning, can you explain to us what that means? Is it that robots are going to replace human beings? Or are you looking more from a support side, just tell us how it is that you actually see it working?   Neil stated that he thinks it's actually good to approach it from a journey perspective, if you will. So, if you think about somebody that has a transaction, whether that be online or in person, and then they need some level of support. So, they come through to a contact center, and at that point, contact centers have really embraced AI and machine learning to help customers come through and get a better level of experience. So, whether that be at the starting point when they answer the phone, you can have chatbots either on the website or on the IVR that are able to answer and interact with customers and provide them with quick hit answers and potentially resolve problems for them quickly and efficiently. Now that's one use of AI.  People say, well, is that going to replace people?  He doesn't think it does, because it solves the simple problems AI and ML doesn't have the ability to solve.  So, when people do get to an agent or somebody on the phone, or whether a chat or send an email and get a reply, the agents are able to spend that little bit more time to solve a problem, so it elevates the customer experience even though it's not necessarily AI based.  When you think about that side though, you get AI does weave its way in there and provide agents with the ability to serve customers or call us better. So, you get crazy things like, there are AI tools out there now that will listen to the conversation, will understand the context of it, understand the ask and serve up knowledge or information to the agent real time, so they can better solve the problem.  So, it will literally know this customer sounds like they have a question about x, here's the most common answers to x, is this the right thing to say and serve that up to the agent. So, the agents might not have any real experience of the problem, but they've got a proven history of other people being able to solve that question, or a very similar question, quickly and efficiently, and they can copy it. And then that really helps agents appear to be more efficient, more friendly, and for everybody that's listening, and everyone's been put on hold. No one likes to be put on hold, or “I don't know the answer to that, let me transfer you”, that can go away, which is really, really profound and gives a perception of quality well and above the norm.  And then the other side of it that's kind of cool, is you can have sentiment monitoring. So, if somebody's listening to this call, the AI or ML in the background will be monitoring it, and they can flag calls to supervisors or to other people to say, “Hey, Neil's really happy with this call. Neil's unhappy with this call. We might need some help. Somebody may need to join this call because Neil's struggling with it.”  So, it basically not only gives the ability to empower people and have them answer questions well, but it gives them monitoring so that people can actually get involved and engaged and help customers that have got problems and prevent issues, if that makes sense.   Me: Yes, it absolutely does. I attended a conference, I think it was the first and second of May, hosted by a company called CX Outsourcers Mindshare. They brought together, I believe, close to 80 persons from all over the world, from all different continents, that were in the contact center space. And my role at the event was, I sat on a podcast panel with a podcaster from Brazil and one from South Africa talking about the influence of podcasting on customer experience and the impact that it will have in the contact center space.  One of the things that I found fascinating at the conference, and this was predominantly I believe in, I know in the Caribbean for sure, and definitely in Africa, and you can let me know what your feedback is based on your exposure and experience that hiring, in terms of recruitment was a big issue that they were facing in the contact centers and trying to integrate AI and more importantly, as it relates to recruitment, ensuring that as they go forward and AI is more integrated into the whole process of solving customers problems, having AI do the more simplistic activities and tasks, and then having the agents do more complex tasks. Is that a trend that you've seen happening? Or is there anything else that you'd like to add to that conversation?    Neil shared that it definitely is. It's causing an upskilling, or an appearance of upskilling of people that answer the phone or answer the chats. Because when he started in the contact center space, companies would train an agent for 4, 6, 8 weeks, maybe even more to make sure that they have the skill set and the knowledge to be able to answer not just 80%. Neil shared that Yanique is absolutely correct that AI and machine learning is having a profound impact on the agents and upskilling, because the ability for machines to take away the simpler tasks means that agents can do things that are more interesting and rewarding for one. So, that makes the job more fun, that's an important component.   The other side is, years ago, as companies brought people on board, they'd spend weeks and weeks training them, and nowadays that's just not necessary, because most companies have invested, or are looking to invest in a single pain so all of the information is shared to them, and when that's augmented by machine learning to provide sensible text or answers or knowledge that's appropriate, agents appear to be more knowledgeable with less training, faster and that gives a great different for companies that are embracing it. It's a great differentiate. It really helps the agents feel valued, enjoy the job, and therefore more likely to be retained and that skill level is retained.  So, generally, companies that companies that retain the skill gets better over time, and it also the other piece is, he thinks it helps companies attract people, because the job is more fun and more rewarding. So, the benefits not only in the people that work there, it's about getting the better talent in the front door as well.   App, Website or Tool that Neil Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resources that he can't live without in his business, Neil shared that for him personally, and this is going to sound a little bit old school, he absolutely loves using YouTube, and he will go visit YouTube looking for how to build a presentation, looking for information, ways to do things, learnings, classes, he finds a great value with day to day, he's looking at YouTube and watching videos on lots and lots of topics continually, because he thinks it's a quick and easy way to learn how to do something new or refine what he's doing based on somebody else's best practices, whether that be consultants that have classes on how to do PowerPoint presentations, or even people that do public speaking regularly and share tips and trades on how they do it. So, he uses YouTube a lot, and slowly but surely, he thinks that's starting to be replaced a little bit by TikTok, because he likes 60 second bites as opposed to 20-minute videos.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Neil  When asked about books that have had an impact, Neil shared that books that he really enjoyed and got a lot out of is a book called Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't by Jim Collins, it's an older book now, but it's been around for a good few years that definitely influenced his working life, because the ideology is all in the title. So, how can you be better, and how can you differentiate yourself or the company you work for, and make a difference, and then elevate to go from being a good company to a great company or a good employee to a great employee. So, that's one of the books that definitely influenced his career. And he really enjoyed the fact that it had case studies in there that you were able to look at, read and understand, and then it gives you that a little bit more of a practical application when there's case studies that you can look at.   What Neil is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's excited about, Neil shared that he's been with InterVision approximately 12 months, and in that time, they've had a tremendous amount of growth.  They are working a significant amount with Amazon, on Amazon Connect in the contact center space, and watching how that's changing the contact center space is really, really incredible. And with that, they have releases on a weekly or biweekly basis, and you see new technologies and new items come out, and it's actually an interesting challenge making sure that his team is not only at the cutting edge of technology, but what's new and modern today is, for want of a better description, a month old in a month's time.  And making sure that his team are kept current and up to date with all of these technology changes, specifically around AI and ML, that's really an interesting challenge, because the solutions of a year ago aren't solutions for today, and he finds that both interesting challenge from a business perspective, but it's also rewarding because you get the opportunity to have people do training classes and learnings to make sure that they're at the top of their skill game to be able to deliver the best in class products that they like to offer.   Where can listeners find Neil online? LinkedIn – Neil Leyland Website – www.intervision.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Neil Uses Me: Now, before we wrap our episodes up, Neil, 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 get you back on track. Do you have one of those?    When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Neil shared that it's not quite that, but there's a phrase that he often thinks about in challenges when he's working with his colleagues, or they're looking at a project and how to move forward, and it's directly related to customer service and it's, “The tolerance of poor behaviour is worse than the behaviour itself.”   Me: That's such a powerful statement.   Neil shared that he loves it because it's applicable everywhere. In your personal life, you can choose not to go to the gym, or you can go to the gym. In work, you can watch people do things and managers do things or accept things and that they shouldn't and as soon as a behaviour becomes ingrained, it's far more challenging to remove it.  Me: Yeah, agreed. Thank you so much for sharing. So, we just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, Neil, for hopping on our podcast today, sharing about InterVision, about your journey, as well as what you're doing at InterVision, the impact of AI and machine learning, the opportunity that workers have in the centers as agents to upskill their competencies and behaviours so that they can better serve customers and solve problems quicker. It was really a rewarding and engaging conversation, and I want to just extend our deepest gratitude to you. 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 •    Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't by Jim Collins   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!

In this episode of This AnthroLife, host Adam Gamwell dives deep into the concept of "cultural moats" and how tech giants like Apple leverage design, technology, and cultural influence to cultivate an intensely loyal customer base. Adam examines the subtle yet powerful symbols Apple uses. This strategy preserves Apple's unique cultural identity while sparking a competitive race among tech companies to replicate the blue bubble experience on Android. The episode also introduces semiotics—the study of symbols—and its critical role in business and marketing, illustrating how cultural symbols like Apple's evolve and shape consumer behavior.I'm Adam Gamwell as a cultural anthropologist and award-winning media creator, I specialize in storytelling. My diverse background spans startups, nonprofits, cultural organizations, and Fortune 1000 companies, focusing on applied strategy, experience design, and human insights. My approach blends experiential research, like engaging with Peruvian quinoa farmers for climate change initiatives, with cutting-edge tools like AI and trends foresight. By leveraging big data alongside traditional ethnography, I align human needs with business goals, ensuring projects resonate profoundly.Keywords: Cultural Moat, Apple, Android, User Experience, Symbolic Ecosystem, Integrated Technology, Loyal Customers, Brand Loyalty, Psychology of Branding, Tech Innovation, Apple Ecosystem, Rich Communication Services (RCS), Design Choices, Technology and Culture, Apple Messages, Antitrust Investigation, Semiotics, Symbolic Communication.About This Anthro Life This Anthro Life is a thought-provoking podcast that explores the human side of technology, culture, and business. We unravel fascinating narratives and connect them to the wider context of our lives.Tune in to https://thisanthrolife.org and subscribe to our Substack at https://thisanthrolife.substack.com for more captivating episodes and engaging content.

In today's FittBite, we guide you through the process of building a customer avatar, covering everything from demographics to fashion attitudes. By mastering this tool, you'll create products that truly resonate and convert first-time buyers into repeat customers.Watch now to gain valuable insights and turn strangers into loyal customers.Book a 1 on 1 with our host, Shadi for personalized advice on how to create and grow your fashion business: https://www.fittdesign.com/services/consultation Design your own collection with our instantly downloadable factory ready tech pack templates: FittDesign Tech Pack Templates Follow our host on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadiadada/ https://www.instagram.com/fittdesign/ Got any other questions, email us for an instant response at: studio@fittdesign.com Subscribe to our weekly fashion design podcast (New episodes every Thursday at 4pm CST): https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-fittdesign-podcast/id1454410683 Visit our website:https://www.fittdesign.com/ Follow us on:https://www.linkedin.com/company/fittdesign/ https://www.facebook.com/fittdesign https://www.pinterest.com/fittdesign/ https://www.behance....

Daniel Ruby is a VP of Marketing at Nobl9. Ruby is a dynamic marketing executive with a focus on B2B marketing, and has significant experience building teams and driving successful, data-driven programs for a range of startups and mid-sized organizations. As the Director of Online Marketing for Localytics, Ruby was the first marketing hire and scaled his team to a full-fledged marketing department with domain specialists focused on mobile apps.   Ruby also has a background in journalism and spent several years guest lecturing marketing courses at Bentley University, bringing this dynamic skill set to his current role at Nobl9. Ruby holds a BA in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA in International Business from Brandeis University.  Questions ·      We always like to start off by asking our guests if they could share with us a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today. ·      Could you share with our listeners, what is Nobl9 and what exactly are you providing? What service are you providing? How are you adding value to your customers lives using this platform? ·      Could you give us an example, like a use case of an application, you can choose any industry, and kind of just give us an idea of what that looks like so the audience can get a more practical view. ·    Could distinguish or differentiate for our listeners, what's the difference between an SLO and an SLA? ·      Now, Daniel, could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? ·      Where can listeners find you online? ·    Before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track. Highlights Daniel's Journey Me: Now, Daniel, could you share with our listeners, we always like to start off by asking our guests if they could share with us a little bit about their journey, how you got from where you were to where you are today.   Daniel shared that he was a journalist for a while, and kind of realized that there was not much of a market for it, so he kind of went and got an MBA to get a job, and kind of fell backwards into marketing as it is. And over the years, he's been with more than 10, mostly 10 startups, driving marketing, driving the customer experience in terms of from the moment that they're introduced to them as a brand until the moment that they no longer want to be or need to be working with them.  He finds a lot of joy in trying to make that experience pleasant, for lack of a better term. He's self-taught with most of the marketing stuff that he does, and he's kind of over the course of the years he's become very arrogantly convinced about a few core tenets of really communicating to customers and communicating to potential customers that have served him well, and it kind of always comes back to giving value at every step of the journey.   About Nobl9 – Enhancing Software Reliability and Value for Your Business Me: Now, could you share with our listeners, what is Nobl9 and what exactly are you providing? What service are you providing? How are you adding value to your customers lives using this platform?   Daniel shared that Nobl9 is basically a platform for software reliability. So, if we think about how somebody engages with a digital product, or even an in-person product with a digital back end to it. They are the premier, and kind of really only well-established provider of what's called Service Level Objectives, or SLOs. And an SLO was basically taking all of the different data points that make up your product, be it from the software, from the infrastructure, from third party microservices, etc, etc, etc, and rolls it up and actually gives a customer centric view into how reliable is their product.  And the reason that they do this is because most reliability, historically has been around is the product up. Is it up? Is it down? But anybody who's ever used a mobile app or a digital product, or even like a scan to pay service at a cafe knows that it's not just is it up? Is it working, or is everything within it doing what it's supposed to do?  So, he knows marketers like himself have taken the word holistic and kind of beaten it to death. But they do provide a holistic customer centric view. What is the customer experience like when actually using your product?   Me: So, Nobl9 is helping the application to maintain its reliability and have as little or no downtime as possible while the customer is interacting with it correct?   Daniel agreed, correct and kind of beyond downtime, is it, does it load fast enough? Do all of the different features load fast enough? Is there anything blocking my ability as a customer to buy from you or to use your service, or whatever you're trying to do? So, that's effectively what they do.   Practical Use Case – How Nobl9 Enhances Software Reliability Me: Okay, could you give us an example, like a use case of an application, you can choose any industry, and kind of just give us an idea of what that looks like so the audience can get a more practical view.    Daniel shared that it's a little engineering, and he's a marketer so he feels like he's not necessarily smart enough to completely understand the engineering speak of it. But if you think about like an Ecommerce app, if you open up the app and it loads in traditional reliability, that's reliable. But how many times have you gone into an app.   So, let's say your path in using E commerce app is, you're going to load the app, going to search for the product that he wants to buy, he's going to add it to his cart, he's going to go to his cart, he's going to check out. And maybe there's a login to My Account somewhere in the way.   With SLOs, what you can do is you can have all of the different steps of that path viewed as part of this overarching experience with the app. So, if you go to add something to your cart, the app sits there and hangs, that's not good reliability.   If you go to the cart itself, and for whatever reason you go to pay and like the app's connection to PayPal for whatever reason isn't working, and you get this message back that says, hey, we can't complete your payment, try another credit card or something, that's a bad experience. And that's the kind of reliability breakdown that leads people to quit using a product.  So, they make sure that strategically, all of the things that make up that path, you'll have a server dedicated to your shopping cart, you'll have a micro service that is dedicated to completing a purchase. They make sure that all of that you've got visibility into how the experience is for the end user, not just some third-party service that tries to connect and says yes, it can connect, no it can't connect. It's the whole experience of a digital product and they make it easy to understand.   Understanding the Difference – SLOs vs. SLAs Me: Now, at the beginning, you mentioned that it's based on your SLOs or Service Level Objectives. And just wanted to know if you could distinguish or differentiate for our listeners, what's the difference between an SLO and an SLA?   Daniel stated that that's a great question. So, an SLA is typically an agreement that you have with your users. You say you'll be able to use my product or my service xx percent of the time. And that's more of a contractual conversation than it is, a reliability conversation. When you start actually building it, in order to make sure that you're achieving this SLA that you've agreed upon with your clients, you've got to make sure that you know all of these different elements of their experience are operating at a certain efficiency. So, he hates to over complicate things, but there's actually a step in between called an SLI, a Service Level Indicator.  And so, a Service Level Indicator is things like, “I want my website to load in less than 100 milliseconds.” That's a Service Level Indicator. And the SLI is effectively a consistent goal, but then what you do with SLOs is you take that a little bit further.   So, an SLO operates within what's called an error budget, and you get a certain number of errors per month, per week, however, you want to set it up. And an error is when you don't meet that SLI and you say, “I know that it's maybe not impossible, but either improbable or just extremely expensive to make my website load in less than 100 seconds every single time.”  So, what an SLO does is it says, okay, I expect to meet this SLI however often I have decided is actually impactful on the customer experience, and whenever I don't, you get an error, and at that point, you're like, okay, it's an error, but an error is not an outage.  Daniel stated that he doesn't know if he's explaining this really well, but basically if you look at an SLO graph, it's going to be going down into the right and that is your budget. You say, okay, I expect this part of my service will meet my everyday life 95% of the time. And then you see the little graph going down, which, every time it doesn't meet that, it froze an error, and a certain amount of errors, it's just part of digital product development is understanding that you have to accept some errors. 100% perfection, it's impossible.    Me: Does not exist.   Daniel agreed, it does not exist. And a lot of people think about reliability in the number of nines, “My product is available 99.99% of the time.” That would be called four nines. Every nine that you add to that number basically increases your IT costs by an order of magnitude. So, at a certain point, you got to understand with SLOs are really the ideal way to do it.  At what point does this actually impact my customers? At what point does this actually impact my users?  It allows you to be strategic, and it allows you to see things when they begin. So, you mentioned outages earlier, an outage, your whole product crashes, it's unavailable to anybody. Those don't happen in a vacuum, there's something that causes them. And if you've got an SLO or a set of SLOs really, displaying the health of your service, the health of your product, you're suddenly going to see a bunch of errors coming in.  And you may or may not have enough forewarning to say, “Oh, crap, we're about to have an outage. Well, this server in my cloud provider is having massive latency issues, it looks like the server is about to crash, and that's going to take everything down.” You can have a little bit more of a runway to try and identify the actual issue behind a potential outage. And that's where you strategically define how much, how many errors can I tolerate in a month?  And then you basically have a real time view at all times.  Is my product, is my service running the way I expect it to, and the way I expect it to is from the perspective of the customer. Are my customers able to do what they expect to be able to do when they launch my app, or when they use my product.   App, Website or Tool that Daniel Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he can't live without in his business, Daniel shared that personally, it's HubSpot. He spent a few years as a HubSpot consultant, a third-party consultant for HubSpot integrations. And he could say a marketing automation platform, but he got a fanboy a little bit about HubSpot because it takes everything that used to be complicated about sales and marketing and customer support and customer experience, and kind of rolls it up. You've got your CRM, you've got your automation platform, you've got your email platform. He's actually taken to feeding his HubSpot metrics into Nobl9 SLO lately, because there's so much rich data within HubSpot.  And he's been running little things like, they'll change a script for their biz dev team. And then they'll just run a metric on calls connected to calls having a success, either a demo or a follow up request.  And HubSpot's got such great data, and then he can turn that into an SLO where he can say, “Okay, I expect the submission rate on my forms to be X percent. I expect the completion rate of our inside sales calls to be X percent over 80% of the time.”  And he can run that in an SLO, he can see that like if he changes something, but simple little things, if he changes the colour of the submit button on a form, he can see in real time what the view to submission rate is that's changing, and he can act on that. He can put a little note in the SLO with that time stamp and say, “Hey, I changed the color of this button” and see how that's making an impact. Or, if he looks in HubSpot and see, “Oh, crap, my submission rate has been terrible for the past 36 hours, what's happened?” And he can go into his SLO and say, “Oh, there's a little note here, I changed something in the UX. I changed something colour wise. I added a question, I removed a question.” And you see direct historical cause for that.  But going back to HubSpot in general, he really respects HubSpot's approach to they call it the flywheel, which is all about delighting customers and delighting prospects.  And they really do a great job of giving you the tools to actually give value in your marketing and sales and customer service processes. He doesn't know what he's do without HubSpot right now, he'd probably try and hack something together with Salesforce and Marketo and be more complicated and less easy to get adoption internally. But luckily, he doesn't need to.    Where can listeners find Daniel online? LinkedIn – Nobl9inc X – @nobl9inc   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Daniel Uses When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert, Daniel shared, “Nothing is a failure unless you fail to learn from it.” He stated that he's got a great team that he works with at Nobl9. And some are early in their career, some have been working in marketing for several years, some have advanced degrees, some don't.  And so, he's been with Nobl9 since January, and one of the things that he wanted to do quickly was make sure that people were comfortable making mistakes and understanding that an action and its outcome is not the end of that process. If you don't learn from it, why it worked, why it didn't, then you've made a mistake. But failure is as important an element in driving success in any business scenario. So, he likes making sure that people know that, and he likes making sure that they feel comfortable, because without being comfortable with failure, how are you going to try anything revolutionary?   Me: True. Thank you so much for sharing, Daniel.   Now, we just like to thank you so much for hopping on this podcast and sharing all of the great insights about Nobl9, the wonderful work that your team is doing as it relates to ensuring that customers are having a more seamless and frictionless experience across these platforms and increases the reliability. And we really appreciate some of the great nuggets that you shared with us as it relates to what is a Service Level Objective versus a Service Level Agreement and a Service Level Indicator, great information to learn, to understand the whole process, because in order to navigate the customer experience, there is really a lot that you have to take into account to ensure that the customer walks away feeling like, yeah, that was that was fun, it was easy, it wasn't hard, and I was able to do it really quickly. 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   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!

Irina Vatafu has nearly a decade of experience in customer-facing roles, she is deeply passionate about working with people, and dedicated to ensuring every customer feels valued and respected. Currently serving as the Head of Customer Success at Custify, Irina thrives in roles that require effective communication, problem-solving and empathetic engagement.  Her commitment to continuous improvement and staying current with industry trends ensures that her approach remains innovative and impactful. One of her key strengths is creating a collaborative and supportive environment that consistently delivers exceptional experiences and fosters strong customer loyalty. At the heart of her work is a dedication to championing the needs and voices of customers, which continues to inspire and drive her every single day.  Questions ·      Now, could you share with our listeners a little bit about how you got from where you were, to where you are today? ·      You are Head of Customer Success at Custify, could you share with our listeners, what Custify is and what your company does? ·      What would you say are maybe two or three attributes or competencies that you and your team need to have on a daily basis in serving these customer success managers so they can serve their own customers? ·      Now in terms of exercising empathy, could you share with our listeners maybe a use case where your customer had an issue. So, your customer came to you as the problem solver and you were able to exercise as empathetic engagement to basically try and help them to solve the problem quickly. ·      Can you also share with our listeners, what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? ·      Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read recently, or even one you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you professionally, and even personally. ·      Now, Irina, can you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are 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 of we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Highlights Irina's Journey Me: Now, could you share with our listeners a little bit about how you got from where you were, to where you are today?   Irina stated that's a great start. So, where she was, as mentioned in the beginning, she has nearly a decade of working in customer-facing roles. And her first role was as a support engineer, and now she's managing the team of Customer Success Managers and support team members. So, she started in first line there, she learned everything, and she was so passionate about working with customers that she always pushed herself to learn more, to offer better experiences, to progress and to make sure everyone is happy with her work and people that she works with are successful. So, yeah, baby steps, she arrived where she is today, and she's so grateful for that.   About the Custify – What Does Custify Do?  Me: So, you are Head of Customer Success at Custify correct? Could you share with our listeners, what Custify is and what your company does?   Irina shared that they are the CSMs of CSMs, she would say because their platform is a customer success tool. So, their end users, their customer success teams all over the world, they have customers in all countries, and they work with any business that has a SaaS product, so this is what they are doing.  And as mentioned, their users, their customer success managers, so they are dedicated customer success managers that support other customer success managers. So, they have to be a top-notch department in order to help them drive value and be successful with their tool.   Attributes or Competencies Needed Daily to Serve Customer Success Managers Me: What would you say are maybe two or three attributes or competencies that you and your team need to have on a daily basis in serving these customer success managers so they can serve their own customers?   Irina shared that she thinks the first thing that she has on her mind is they need to be perfect active listeners. So, they really need to listen to their customers need and to understand each business case and to be there as consultants and to make sure that they have success in their own departments, so they can prove value, and they can be their loyal customers for a long time.  Other things that matter of course to have that business understanding. So, not only to actively listen, but to also be flexible and creative to give proper advice and to be able to quickly understand the customer use case in order to guide them towards success.  Of course, you also need to be super organized in order to act like a project manager and help your customers achieve their milestones on time and respect all the agreed deadlines that they established with them in the beginning.  And the last but not least, of course, you need to be a naturally empathetic person because if you don't really care, let's say about customers, they will feel that so you really need to be a people person, and to be able to have the empathy to help them.   Exercising Empathy – Using Empathy in Problem Solving Me: Now in terms of exercising empathy, could you share with our listeners maybe a use case, you don't need to mention the customers' name or the company, but maybe a use case where your customer had an issue, because all businesses are created to solve problems. So, your customer came to you as the problem solver, and you were able to exercise as you coin it “Empathetic engagement” to basically try and help them to solve the problem quickly.   Irina shared that she remembers, she has a recent example. It's something that their team really struggled about. They had a situation where one of their customers, the CS lead came to them saying that, “Look, we really need to make it work, because our jobs depend on that. Things are not great for our CS department. So, we really need to move forward and to prove progress to our leadership in order to keep this department working.” And this was the first priority for them because of course, their empathetic triggers were started working, and they were like, “Okay, we have an important role here, we need to help this customer.”  And what they did, they came up with a success plan, they sat together, and they thought about all the top three priorities that the leadership would care about. And they decided that look, these are the main things that they need to focus on in the next weeks. And even if this is not part of their normal flow, they had more meetings, they had more internal brainstorming. So, they did everything they could to help the customer.  And yes, in the end, the customer was really successful. And it's not only that, he would was grateful. But they also have more partnerships and other things that derives from that initiative. So, empathy always matters. And acting like humans when someone needs us and not only looking at the contract value and the service hours included in the subscription, she thinks they could make a difference at some point.   App, Website or Tool that Irina Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she can't live without in her business, Irina shared that she thinks they internally rely a lot on what's happening on LinkedIn, they are connected with a lot of CS influencers, and they are also following their customers on LinkedIn.  So, they stay connected to the market with what's happening there. And they are up to date with all the webinars, with all the podcasts and everything that is happening there. So, she thinks LinkedIn is their main source of learning, and where they also find other opportunities to learn by subscribing to different newsletters and courses and everything.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Irina When asked about books that have had an impact, Irina shared that she has a funny story about the book. So, when she joined Custify, almost four years ago, she joined as a CSM and her manager told her that look, you should read this book, it's called Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It and she thinks it's Chris Voss who wrote it. And it's a negotiation book and when he told her to read that book, she was angry because the job description never included negotiation, let's say so she thought, okay, she was tricked, it's actually a sales role. And her manager now advises her to learn some negotiation skills.  But if you read the book, you will realize that you actually need negotiation skills in your day-to-day life. So, it's not about the selling or not selling something, it's really about what we need to do and negotiate for ourselves as human beings, and it makes an impact also in the professional life.   What Irina is Really Excited About Now! Irina shared that that's a good question. So, she would say that at the beginning of this year, they as a team, they knew that it would be a tough year because of the economical context and everything that is happening in the CS life. So, she and her team decided to keep their minds and hearts open and to be the support that their customers need amid the chaos and instability that is around. So, they sat together and adapted their workflows and prioritized their champions success. So, they had like a redesign all their flows.   And they are amazed to discover that this makes a difference. So, when all the departments work towards the same goals, they empower each other, and they focus primarily on customer success. So, they work closely with product sales, CS support in order to make sure that their customers are happy, this is a great initiative that they started this year. And they observed and they are surprised to see how authenticity and trust, being their team's current focus leads to amazing KPIs and success. So, this is their main focus right now and they are looking forward to see how this year will end.   Where can listeners find Irina online? LinkedIn - Irina Vatafu   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Irina Uses When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Irina shared that yes, she thinks that's something that helps her in those situations. She's always saying to herself, “When you don't know what to do, say the truth.” So, it always helped.   Me: So, be honest.   Well, thank you so much, Irina for jumping on this podcast and sharing all of the great insights that you're doing as a Customer Success Manager at Custify and also what your organization does, and the support that you are providing to teams all throughout the world, ensuring that they are able to solve problems and serve your customers in the best possible way. We really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule and sharing this information with us. 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 •     Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss   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!

You come to our us because you want to learn how to run awesome digital marketing campaigns. But, there are other types of marketing out there that can work really effectively. One that we've used a lot at Exposure Ninja over the last decade is exhibiting at shows. Lots of companies exhibit at shows, but they approach it in a really haphazard way. Today, I talk you through our digital marketing led approach and explain how you can use it to boost your leads and sales at events. Get the show notes: https://exposureninja.com/podcast/325/ Apply for a FREE website and marketing review: https://exposureninja.com/review/ Timestamps 00:00 — Intro 02:32 — Event Prep and Promotion 12:14 — At the Event 17:13 — After the Event What to Listen to Next: How To Get Qualified B2B Leads using PPC: https://exposureninja.com/podcast/323/ How to Bridge the Gap Between Marketing and Sales: https://exposureninja.com/podcast/321/ How to Build a Cult of Loyal Customers: https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-23/

Sarah Williams is the founder of Launch Your Box, a platform dedicated to helping entrepreneurs start, grow, and scale their own subscription box businesses. With a background in retail, Sarah successfully transitioned from a brick-and-mortar gift shop owner to an expert in subscription-based business models. Since launching her own subscription box in 2017, she has worked with thousands of subscription box entrepreneurs through her programs, Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box. Sarah recently published her first book, "One Box at a Time," to share her journey and extend her expertise to a broader audience. Ken "Mr. Biz" Wentworth hosts Sarah Williams, founder of Launch Your Box, to delve into the world of subscription-based businesses. Sarah shares her entrepreneurial journey, revealing how she transitioned from a brick-and-mortar store to successfully launching a thriving subscription box service. She discusses the importance of building a community, getting visible on social media, and having a strong value proposition. Additionally, Sarah highlights key tips on retention and reducing churn to grow a subscription business. They also explore insights from her upcoming book, "One Box at a Time." Key Takeaways: -Sarah stresses the importance of being proactive on social media and other digital platforms to reach a broader audience. -Focus on retaining current customers to reduce churn and enhance recurring revenue. -Ensure your subscription offer is unique and well-defined to stand out in the market. -Cultivate a community around your brand to increase customer loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals. -Don't let the fear of failure hold you back from pursuing your entrepreneur --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mrbiz/support

In This Episode... Welcome to the Dojo, the podcast where we turn marketing news into marketing tasks. Today we talk about: What's going on in the world of Bing's AI search? OpenAI reveals SearchGPT Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:15 – Story 1 – What's going on in the world of Bing's AI search? 13:17 – Story 2 – OpenAI reveals SearchGPT 27:15  – The Tasks   Get a FREE review of your website https://exposureninja.com/rpod/review/ Get the show notes https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-27/ Watch the podcast recording on YouTube: https://exposure.ninja/dojo-27   You May Also Enjoy… Are YouTube Ads a Secret Weapon for SMEs? https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-26/ How to Differentiate Your Brand in an AI World | ft. Max Denning https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-25/ LinkedIn Marketing IS a Must for Healthcare Professionals | ft. Tara Humphrey https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-24/ How to Build a Cult of Loyal Customers | ft. Danielle Nicholls https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-23/ How We 10x'd Leads for a Finance Company https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-22/    

In this Greatest Hits episode, host Lauren DeSouza is joined by Elyssa Verhoogen, the Senior CRM & Lifecycle Marketing Consultant at Dojo. In the episode, Lauren and Elyssa discuss how to build a relationship with the customer, why emails can cause anxiety for your customers, and why personalization is so important to lifecycle marketing.

Richard Weylman was orphaned at age 6 and he lived in 19 foster homes and attended 11 different schools. Rather than becoming the victim of those circumstances, he overcame them and he has had remarkable business success, including as an award-winning General Sales Manager of Rolls Royce to Head Sales and Marketing for the Robb Report, a Magazine for the Luxury Lifestyle from its inception until its record liquidity event.  A Hall of Fame inducted Keynote Speaker, Richard has also been inducted into the Customer Experience Hall of Fame for his legendary work helping brands engage with their customers and retain them.   He is the author of two international bestsellers, the latest of which, The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace is in seven languages and is also a CEO Reads best seller.  His next book 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life was released on March 12th, and is available for pre-order on Amazon, or your favorite bookstore. Finally, he is a Horatio-Alger nominee for his philanthropic work on behalf of orphans and widows.    Questions  ·      Could you share with us in your own words a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today? ·      This new book that was released almost 3 months now it's been out the book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life. Could you share with our listeners maybe 3 overarching themes that the book covers? And who is the book really geared towards? ·     In your research, when you were talking to your different clients about the different ways that you can acquire and keep clients, did you find that there were some industries that were thriving with these four things that you've mentioned, based on the research and others? ·      Now Richard, could you share with our audience 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, but it had a great impact on you. ·      Now, Richard, could you share with our audience what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. ·       Where can listeners find you online? Highlights  Richard's Journey Me: Now, we always like to give our guests a little opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. Could you share with us in your own words a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?    Richard shared that the key thing is when all of this stuff, he was an orphan, as mentioned in his introduction, and that was very kind. But he was orphaned, and he lived in 18 foster homes, went to 11 different schools. So, you learn just from life experiences, how to understand, how to adapt, how to connect, in his case with the people with whom he was living. But he thinks we all go through this similar journey in life, you learn how to connect or not with individuals. So, that really became the premise for all of his speaking and consulting.  And they are a research-based consulting firm, they do a great deal of research about what the consumers' looking for, why they're looking for it. And most importantly, how salespeople, marketing people, business people can connect with the expectations, let's use that word, expectations of the consumer. So, that's what prompted his first book, Opening Closed Doors, Keys to Reaching Hard to Reach People then The Power of Why: Breaking Out in a Competitive Marketplace, which was mentioned. And those are in seven languages.  And now his recent book, which really manifested itself after about October he would say in 2019, in the fall of 2019, it occurred to him that people were no longer talking about service anymore. They talked to people in their consulting projects, how would you rate the service of this company, and people didn't want to talk, they would say, “Well, the service is good. But let me tell you about the experience I had.” And it dawned on him that what people are really focused on good service is a minimum expectation today, what people really want, really want is an elevated experience, somebody who's thoughtful and kind and caring, and empathetic. So, that became the premise for the current book that's just come out, which is number one on Amazon hot new release. So, is that helpful?   About the Book – Who the Book is Geared Towards and it's Overarching Themes – 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life Me: So, you have this new book that was released almost 3 months now it's been out. And you said it's number one on the hot new list for Amazon. Could you share with our listeners maybe 3 overarching themes that the book covers? And who is the book really geared towards?   Richard stated that that's it's a great question. The book itself is really geared, we'll start there, who reads this book? Anybody in sales, marketing, service, leadership, he's had over 2000 individuals that he knows of that are in either leadership roles or top advisors, top salespeople who have sent him emails because of the epiphany moments they've had in it and the reason he thinks that so many different types of people, it doesn't matter what industry, he's got people in real estate, he got a bunch of emails this morning, people in real estate, attorney, doctors, he had a dentist sent him an email, hairdresser.  So, it really doesn't matter what industry you're in. What really matters is do you want to acquire and keep your clients for life? And he guesses the obvious question is, “Why wouldn't you want to keep your clients for life, given the cost of acquisition?”  So, when he wrote the book, he didn't write it for any industry, he wrote it for individuals that really did want to, shall we say, connect with their customers or their clients in such a way that those individuals would never buy from anyone else in their space. And it really is the premise is to understand the lifetime value of a customer or a client.   And a lot of business owners, and certainly salespeople, we don't often think about the lifetime value, we sell somebody something and we see it as a transaction. When you sell someone, it's not the end of something, it's the beginning of what could very well become a lifetime relationship with that individual every single time they need something that you may offer, they can reach out to you, and they become a customer for life. So, the question is, how do you do it? So, that's where the premise of the book came from and who he wrote it for.   So, one of the overarching themes in interviewing literally hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of consumers. And the number really reaches over 1000 in all of their consulting work over the years from 2019 until now when he wrote the book, he would ask people, “What is something someone can do, or a company can do to get your attention and keep you as a client for life?”   And they would tell him that, and they began to write those down. And that's how he came up with the 100 Proven Ways. He didn't set out to do 100 proven ways, but what they found out is today, there are four things people look for, these are the overarching themes. They want an individual and company that is thoughtful. In other words, they'll go the extra mile, do the extra thing, take the extra moment.   Secondly, someone that's kind, will think about things from their perspective and do things that demonstrate kindness to them as an individual.  Thirdly, someone that cares, cares enough to find out what they really want, what they really need, and what is the right, shall we say, item for them? The right haircut, the right prescription, the right legal advice, the right advisory advice, whatever, they want somebody that cares about them.  And last but not least, they want someone in a company that's empathetic, someone that shall we say, demonstrates that even though I'm saying it's unique to me, my problem, and you've heard it 100 times as a salesperson, you know it's not unique. For me, it is unique. So, I appreciate your willingness to be empathetic. So, four things, thoughtful, caring, kind, empathetic, those are the overarching things.   Industry Insights and Best Practices Based on Research from Book Me: So, they need to be thoughtful, they need to be kind, they need to be caring, and they need to be empathetic. In your research, when you were talking to your different clients about the different ways that you can acquire and keep clients, did you find that there were some industries that were thriving with these four things that you've mentioned, based on the research and others?   Richard stated that it's really interesting Yanique mentioned that, and it's not so much industries, it's companies within that are doing well. Most industries are still in the transaction mode. Go to a restaurant, it's a transaction. If you order something online, it becomes a transaction. And as a result of that, people are looking for other options.   So, what's happened is a few companies have really jumped to the front. And he'll just give you a couple of example, in the United States; they have a company called Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is a chicken sandwich is basically what it is. He knew the founder, his name is Truett Cathy and they did a lot of traveling together, meetings together. And he would often say him, “Richard, now remember, we got to remind the crew here that we're not in a chicken business, we're in a people business.”  So, they're closed every Sunday. So, that means if you want to put a characterize that differently, they're closed 52 days a year, that would mean they closed November 10 and re-open January 1, that's 52 days.  They have the highest revenue per store than any other food franchise in the world. And they're closed from November 10 to January 1, and they're not open 24/7.  So, the question is, why is that happening?  Yes, it's a great chicken sandwich granted, but you get a chicken sandwich pretty much anywhere. What they really are known for is please, thank you, and my pleasure. And people sit in long lines at their drive thru, which are two and three lanes wide because people there say please, thank you, my pleasure. That's one brilliant example of how they do it.  Give me another example, in the food industry, this company, for pets, and that company is called Chewy.  Now, how has Chewy done, this young kid had started he said, when manufacturers and sellers of food products and other products for pets, they need to realize pets are part of the family.  So, they need to take a family orientation and be kind, thoughtful, caring and empathetic with their customers about their pets.  Well, they've done that, and just a quick, he (Richard) was speaking, he speaks all over the world. He's spoken at the Pegasus Hotel there in Jamaica many times for various conferences, and he will tell you that he was speaking at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, he told the story of a woman who had posted on LinkedIn.  She posted that she had a standing order with Chewy, this was in November when he was speaking, and her order for the cat food had just arrived.  She posted on LinkedIn, “The cat food came, I called Chewy and said my cat has died. And I want to return the cat food. They said absolutely not; donate it to the local shelter. And we'll give you 100% credit on the bill.” The audience goes wow. And he said but that's only half the story. The other half that she wrote about was 3 days later, she got a bouquet of flowers, and a condolence card from the Customer Service Rep at Chewy. At that instant, this woman stood up in the middle of this ballroom of about 1000 people and scream, “That was my cat.” and held up her phone. She said, “I posted that this morning. I've already got 147 likes.” And at that moment, he just stopped and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, what does this tell us about Chewy?”  And the whole room starts chanting, “We're switching to Chewy.”  So, there's a message here. And it's the undercurrent of what's going on in business around the world. And it's not just in the US. He'll be in France again in October speaking in a large conference there; he goes to Asia a lot. And everywhere you go, people are really interested in doing business with individuals that are kind, thoughtful, caring, and empathetic and once he realized that, and then people began to share these ideas, if you would do this, I would be a loyal customer, he just thought it'd be helpful to put that out in the marketplace for anybody, regardless the kind of business you're in. Because it makes a big difference in your life. He heard from a guy that sells hot water heaters to hotels, and he said this book changed his business completely. So, that's the difference.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Richard When asked about books that have had a great impact, Richard shared that one particularly, there's a series, his name is Bob Burg. And he's written a book, the original book, he was a co-author of a book called The Go-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea that is international bestseller, sold a couple million copies, what a fabulous book for anybody to read. And that would be one he'd recommend.  And another one that he has co-authored with a guy named Jeff West is called Streetwise to Saleswise: Become ObjectionProofÔ and Beat the Sales Blues, it's really a great book, it just came out he would say a few months ago. And it's really a story, they write it in a story format and what he means by that is that it's like you're reading a novel, well, it is a novel. But as you're reading the novel, it's written in a way that allows you to understand various things you can do in shall we say in business to expand your influence, to make a significant impact and to really make a difference.  Now, The Go-Giver book that he wrote, he's done a series Go-Giver Leader, The Go-Giver Sell More, and those are really dynamite books. But The Go-Giver, the original book is just oh my God, what a great book and they've sold millions of copies all over the world.  And then the other one is Streetwise to Saleswise, another great book by he and a guy named Jeff West. That book has been out maybe a couple of months, but it's called Streetwise to Saleswise, and it's really written around the city of New Orleans and sales individual that went out there to shall we say, be in the sales business, it's a fabulous read, particularly people like novels that have read really great nuggets on how to be a better salesperson.   What Richard is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Richard shared that the book is doing extraordinarily well, he's been very grateful for that. It's been selected as the lead book for the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, which is a blessing. But what he's most excited about is he's getting in front of more and more audiences, he's in the Keynote Speaker Hall of Fame, and the Customer Experience Hall of Fame, and all of that is wonderful recognition. But what is really wonderful is when he has the privilege of being on the platform, and being able to share with audiences' ways in which they can elevate their client or customer experience, and stand apart from the competition, and that's what he's most excited about. He's got a lot of speaking engagements coming up this fall, and in places all over the world. And just to be a blessing to those people and to bring them some thoughts that perhaps they've never had, or to have reinforced that which is that they're doing so they really feel as though, “You know what, I'm on the right track, and we're going to continue to win more business.” So, those are the things that excites him.    Where can listeners find Richard online? LinkedIn - Richard Weylman Website - http://www.richardweylman.com/ Richard shared that on the website, there you can download a chapter of his book free, you can read it, you can also order the book there of course. There's also, he does a great deal of media, he guesses there's probably 25 or 30, ABC, CBS, NBC and, Fox, both TV and radio segments there, you just click on media and you can listen and watch those on various topics.   And then also under videos, you'll see a link there, you can go to learn services. And he puts up about he's going to guess 25 little video vignettes are a couple of minutes long that you can enjoy, they're all free, just wanted to plant those in your life. You can sign up for his performance tip that's the down at the bottom of every page but every 10 days he sends out researcher tips to about 20,000 people or subscribers, so it'd be wonderful if you subscribed.  So, you want to go to www.richardweylman.com if you want him to speak at your conference, or at your upcoming meeting, whatever the case might be, there's a form there, fill it out, he responds to those. He actually gets those himself, he'd be happy to partner with you, and find a way that they can bring some additional learning to your organization, to your people so that they can elevate their business performance as well.   Me: All right. Thank you so much for sharing, Richard. We just want to extend our deepest gratitude to for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast. You shared some great insights and nuggets as it relates to some of the keys that you need to focus on in order to acquire and keep your clients for life especially based on the research that you did. And we love the examples that you gave, they were definitely relevant and something that I believe will motivate the audience to definitely go out and get a copy of your book, whether it be in soft or hard copy so they can try and elevate their own client experiences. So, thank you again.    Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest    Links •     The G0-Giver: A Little Story about a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg •     Streetwise to Saleswise: Become ObjectionProofÔ and Beat the Sales Blues by Jeff West   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!

Podcast Episode 209 of the Make Each Click Count Podcast features Max Bidna, a serial entrepreneur and seasoned marketing strategist who has directly contributed to the growth of over 200 companies. Max founded his advertising agency in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, in early 2017. He has an impressive track record, boasting an average client revenue of $4.22 for every dollar spent on advertising.Join Andy as he dives deep with Max into key strategies and principles critical to achieving consistent business success. Learn about the importance of marketing messages that align with everyday desires, creative approaches to growth advertising, and effective tactics for turning casual website visitors into loyal customers through targeted email newsletters.Max also shares the secret behind bootstrapping his newsletter from zero to 100,000 readers and generating $500,000 in revenue within a year. Whether you're a startup or an established business looking to refine your marketing approach, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice you won't want to miss.Learn more:LinkedInABOUT THE HOST:Andy Splichal is the World's Foremost Expert on Ecommerce Growth Strategies. He is the acclaimed author of the Make Each Click Count Book Series, the Founder & Managing Partner of True Online Presence, and the Founder of Make Each Click Count University. Andy was named to The Best of Los Angeles Award's Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021.New episodes of the Make Each Click Count Podcast, are released each Friday and can be found on Apple Podcast, iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts and www.makeeachclickcount.com.

In This Episode... Welcome to the Dojo, the podcast where we turn marketing news into marketing tasks. This week we talk about: Google updates: AI Overviews, Ads, YouTube Dyson's success in more than just vacuums Cookies are here to stay in Chrome! For now… Google connects with smaller publishers Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 01:59 – Story 1 – Google updates: AI Overviews, Ads, YouTube 22:40 – Story 2 – Dyson's success in more than just vacuums 31:43 – Story 3 – Cookies are here to stay in Chrome! For now… 40:42 – Story 4 – Google connects with smaller publishers 50:39 – The Tasks Get a FREE review of your website https://exposureninja.com/rpod/review/ Get the show notes https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-26/ Watch the podcast recording on YouTube: https://exposure.ninja/dojo-26 You May Also Enjoy… How to Differentiate Your Brand in an AI World | ft. Max Denning https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-25/ LinkedIn Marketing IS a Must for Healthcare Professionals | ft. Tara Humphrey https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-24/ How to Build a Cult of Loyal Customers | ft. Danielle Nicholls https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-23/ How We 10x'd Leads for a Finance Company https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-22/ Email Marketing Just Got a Whole Lot More Competitive https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-21/ Google's AI Overviews Fiasco | ft. Joe Glendinning https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-20/ HUGE Google Leak Confirms SEO Theories | ft. Lucy King  https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-19/

Debbie Miglaw is Head of Digital Solutioning & Business Development at Broadridge. She and her team of digital sales specialists, solutions architects and business analysts are responsible for consulting with clients to define the digital solutions that support their digital transformation and customer experience goals.  The team of experts work with clients' business and technology stakeholders to map the solution from ideation to implementation. Debbie has extensive experience in helping clients with their print-to-digital transformations. Prior to her current role, Debbie was responsible for designing and executing the product vision and strategy of Broadridge Customer Communications omni-channel solutions.   Questions · Now, could you start off by sharing with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today? · Could you share with us a little bit about the results from that survey, maybe some key things that came out of that survey? · In the customer experience space, what do you think are some trends that will continue? And maybe even some new ones that you're hoping to see evolve? Or even get more prominent? · 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 one or two books that you've read, could be a book that you read recently, or even one you read a very long time ago. But it has had a profound impact on you whether personally or professionally. · Now, could you also share with our listeners what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · What would you say as a leader is maybe two or three things that you believe is critical to kind of raise a team members competencies up, especially as it relates to their behaviors in developing leadership skills? · 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 saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derail or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Debbie's Journey Me: Now, could you start off by sharing with our listeners a little bit about your journey, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?   Debbie shared that she's been here quite a while; it started believe it or not 26 years ago, within the Broadridge space. She started with the company it was considered USCS International, which was acquired by DST Systems. And in 2016, Broadridge acquired the DST output business. And as part of that, they really brought together the best of the customer communications business across all vertical markets. And along that journey, she spent the majority of her time heading up and leading the product organization to deliver solutions across print and digital services and she continue on in that in the last 3 years, really help focus on as you said in the intro the solutioning and helping their clients find the right solution to solve for their business objectives.   Key Insights from the Recent Survey: Understanding Trends and Findings Me: Perfect. Now, one of the reasons why we were very intrigued to interview I believe, when we started this conversation, it would have been Matt Swain was about the report that was shared with me when the interview request was presented on your 6th Annual CX and Communications Consumer Insight survey. I understand the survey covers the overall consumer sentiment around CX within different industries. So, could you share with us a little bit about the results from that survey, maybe some key things that came out of that survey?   Debbie shared that they're very excited with the 2024 results that they've published out in the market. And one of the most prominent things that they found in the data is really that in the last 5 years, you could say 6, as most people know, 2020, they didn't do the survey. But over that time span, the number of consumers, the percentage that are dissatisfied with customer experience and believe companies need to improve that experience has doubled.  So, it's gone from 35%, having a sentiment that is saying needs to be better to 70%. So, it's pretty significant in terms of the fact that the expectations continue to grow, but the companies aren't necessarily achieving it at the same rate. So, that's probably the first one that she would say stands out a lot.   They also still see some things around personalization. So, when they look at the information, they find that 90% of consumers think that it's important for companies to honour their preferred communication method and a personalized communication. But only 31% think the companies are doing a good job of honouring those preferences and making it a personal experience. And then the other third point, she would say is really around data security. That's continued to be there, she's not sure that will ever change in her personal opinion, however, that consumers continue to crave that better experience but more than half, 54% are willing to share personal data if it's going to improve experience, so, that's really telling.   And then she'll say the last point, she would say is that they did ask this year about AI because it's definitely out there in market. And one of the things that they found is varying feedback, of course, but Gen Z out of all the groups are particularly optimistic about the use of AI and 76% are actually saying that they have used it in some fashion and 46% say it's actually improved their experience. So, it's just a little tidbit maybe not the top three kernels that she previously mentioned, but something for us to keep an eye on.    Me: Very fascinating. So, the study was done across different industries, right? Could you share with our listeners, like maybe the sample size? And what specific industries were covered when the survey was done?   Debbie shared that this was a North American survey, it's about 75% in the US and 25% in Canada, there were 4010 residents that were 18 years and older that was doing this study, it was executed in November of 2023. So, that's the high-level background.  And then they do actually ask about the types of industries that are providing the best experience and around the communications, and so, those industries vary from banking, credit card, utilities, health care, health insurance, telecommunications, investments, retirement, insurance loans, and then you could say, like, maybe an other for those that don't have answers, but they typically hit those. She thinks it's 10 particular industry standouts in their report.                                                                                                 Me: Perfect. So very, very good insights, especially for those of our listeners that are in the United States and Canada, we do have a lot of listeners that are outside of that region. But it's still fascinating information to keep into consideration, because probably the same execution could be done for your region if you're listening to this, and you're not in North America, you could possibly do something similar to what Broadridge did. Because the industries exist in these regions, they just probably don't have the data to support it. So, thank you so much for sharing, Debbie.   Emerging Trends in Customer Experience Me: Now, Debbie, based on your own experience in the whole customer experience space, because you have a lot of background in that, especially working with Broadridge and your previous experience. And of course, seeing that were basically halfway through 2024. What do you think are some trends that will continue? And maybe even some new ones that you're hoping to see evolve? Or even get more prominent?    Debbie stated that that's a good question. She would say that trends that they see is really a combination of how do we accelerate that digital transformation and improve the customer experience, and also lower costs and so especially more so probably in the US than some of the other areas like Canada and such, the postal rates increased dramatically. So, top of mind for companies, is to actually reduce that paper and try to get to digital quickly. But also, how do you do that? So, paperless adoption strategies is going to continue to be one of the top initiatives and trends that we see that will not change she doesn't think anytime soon.  But she thinks really what's happening is companies out there in the industries, they're really looking to figure out how do they best do it? We sometimes talk about especially you've talked to Matt Swain in the past, and it's the carrot versus the stick often comes up. And they're seeing a mixture of trial and error in there, especially with the stick.  They're really looking at how do people actually accelerate that customer experience in a way that potentially doesn't have that heavy IT cost to do it. So, she thinks they're starting to also see a trend around the make, buy, build kind of conversation. Do you build, do buy, do you partner? And so, seeing a lot of that in order to actually accelerate that transformation.   App, Website or Tool that Debbie Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about online resource that she can't live without in her business, Debbie stated that that's interesting, for her, she uses so many, their company probably from a perspective of she'll say, their research uses a variety of different tools. They all use LinkedIn as one source. But more than anything, when they're looking at customer experience, they look at things like UserTesting, as a way to gauge what the consumer sentiment is against the communication experience. So, that's definitely one, especially in the customer experience, and communications and consulting area. So, they definitely rely on that. And believe it or not, they like to just go out and essentially see and experience the experiences for themselves. So, meaning they might actually go to a lot of companies that they're either talking to as prospective clients or existing clients to get a sense of competitive landscape of what the best customer experiences are. So, a lot of times that personal research is the best tool that we have.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Debbie When asked about books that have had a great impact, Debbie stated that that's a good question and shared that she now can't remember the name of the book, unfortunately. But it was quite some time ago, there was a book that was really around innovation and the way we think, and what innovation means. And a lot of it had to do with the small startup business and it really made her think how you can actually have that startup mentality and how you apply it into a larger corporation. And she thinks that's one thing she has the privilege of working with the team that does a lot of that innovation for Broadridge in terms of the innovation lab and R & D. And so, their Chief Digital Officer, Rob Krugman spends a lot of time going out and exploring these different opportunities. And so, she thinks the creation of that particular unit within their company in the last couple of years has really helped kind of expand the opportunities that they might be able to bring to market.    What Debbie is Really Excited About Now! Debbie stated that that's good question. She thinks right now, their focus short term happens to be the end of their fiscal year. So, they have a very aggressive sales goals from that perspective, it's there. Ironically, when she talks about end of year, the personal side of that is it's the end of the school year going on right now so they're in the week of things like her daughter's 8th grade graduation, kind of those activities. So, it's kind of interesting that the timing of their fiscal is also the end of school year activities. And so, they're really aligned on staying focused, getting through all the activities that are there. So, very much a streamlined set of activities, both personally and professionally.   Fostering Leadership Competencies: Strategies for Elevating Team Members' Skills and Behaviors Me: Now, you do a lot of work as a leader, Debbie in your organization. And I imagine, as a leader, you have to kind of hone and develop other people's skills so that they can become truly functional in their role, but not necessarily from a technical perspective, but also from a development perspective, meaning they have the ability to motivate and inspire others. What would you say as a leader is maybe two or three things that you believe is critical to kind of raise a team members competencies up, especially as it relates to their behaviors in developing leadership skills?    Debbie shared that for me, a lot of it is empowering the employees to essentially try and do and a lot of times, that's what creates the growth. So, a lot of the approach that she's taken as a leader over the years is, after we've done sort of, like you said that a technical type education and product knowledge, some of those kinds of things the company is then they do a lot of, say, ride along. So, ride along with a meeting to listen, hear how it's actually executed, especially if it's like a sales or product related meeting. And then giving the opportunity for that person to actually lead where you sort of follow on. So, you're there as a safety net to help. And she thinks that really empowers people to let them be the experts when a leader or someone that might have more experiences on the phone. Because a lot of times what happens is people naturally defer to the person with more knowledge. So, she's found that that's a really good way to raise that confidence, and give them experience.   And again, a little bit of a safety net to get there and typically, those folks that have the aptitude, really just run with it. And before you know it, basically they're running it on their own, and they don't necessarily need you there. So, that's a great thing to see as a leader.  And she thinks the other is really kind of coaching around the communication aspect, and that really varies. She knows for like in her product role a lot of times in the past it was very technical you could say right, the accuracy what you're saying, and then trying to balance that when the right opportunity is there.  Do you need to be a little bit more optimistic and sales oriented? Do you need to be more practical, here's what's real?  And guiding people through that process of understanding the situation that you're in, in order to convey the right message right? And it's not about accuracy of the information, it's just more about that influential speak when it's appropriate, when it's not type situation. So, those are a couple of things that really stand out for her.   Where can listeners find Debbie online? LinkedIn – Debbie Miglaw Website – www.broadridge.com LinkedIn – Matt Swain 2023 CX and Communications Consumer Insights Survey   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Debbie Uses  When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Debbie shared that she does, her quote is “The best is yet to come.”   Me: Do you like to elaborate a little bit on it for our listeners?   Debbie shared that for her view, it's tough when you're in it, and a lot of times we forget to look ahead and how we're going to get past a difficult situation. And so, she thinks if we just have that little bit more optimistic view that on the other side, things will get better. And so, it's kind of funny, it comes up in other panels that she's spoken on in person. And she always say it's also a song, so it's kind of you can have it as a motto, a song, a saying, but the best is yet to come. So, whether it is in your personal life or in work, she could say the best customer experience is yet to come, right. The best for her daughter's future is yet to come. So, kind of looking at it from that angle.    Me: Very nice. Alright. Well, Debbie, thank you so much for jumping on this podcast and sharing the great insights that you did about the report that Broadridge did, as well as in your own function and capacity in terms of leading your team and some recommended trends that you believe will continue as well as evolve in the space of customer experience. The conversation was extremely insightful, and I'm sure our listeners gleaned quite a lot of information from our conversation, so that 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   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!

Welcome to the Dojo, the podcast where we turn marketing news into marketing tasks. This week we're joined by Max Denning, Senior Web Content Executive at Bidfood, and we talk about: Dark green rebrands everywhere?! Pre-testing ads is not divisive, it's a no-brainer Growing LinkedIn to build your healthcare consultancy Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:58– Story 1 – Dark green rebrands everywhere?! 13:52 – Story 2 – Pre-testing ads is not divisive, it's a no-brainer 29:45 – Story 3 –  Growing LinkedIn to build your healthcare consultancy 47:27 – The Tasks Get a FREE review of your website https://exposureninja.com/rpod/review/ Get the show notes https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-25/ Watch the podcast recording on YouTube: https://exposure.ninja/dojo-25 You May Also Enjoy… LinkedIn Marketing IS a Must for Healthcare Professionals | ft. Tara Humphrey https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-24/ How to Build a Cult of Loyal Customers | ft. Danielle Nicholls https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-23/ How We 10x'd Leads for a Finance Company https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-22/ Email Marketing Just Got a Whole Lot More Competitive https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-21/ Google's AI Overviews Fiasco | ft. Joe Glendinning https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-20/ HUGE Google Leak Confirms SEO Theories | ft. Lucy King  https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-19/ The Future of SEO Changed AGAIN | ft. Annabelle Baugh https://exposureninja.com/podcast/dojo-18/  

Joel Passen is a proven technology entrepreneur and leader with 20+ years of success creating value and driving measurable results at the intersections of sales, business development, product strategy, operations and customer experience.   Before co-founding Sturdy, a next-gen customer experience solution that helps companies improve customer satisfaction. Joel co-founded Newton Software, a B2B SaaS company headquartered in San Francisco that was acquired by Paycor (2016). Prior to that, Joel co-founded Gravity Technologies, Inc., a company that owned and operated businesses in the talent acquisition industry, including the first recruitment processing outsourcing company focused on technical talent.    Questions · So, could you share with our listeners, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today? · Could you share maybe 1 to 3 top I would say areas that you believe as an organization, especially in your industry that you believe it's important for you to focus on or it drives your success in the space of ensuring that you're delivering a great or a fantastic customer experience. · If you want to maybe debunk maybe one of the biggest customer service myths that you see organizations still using as a driver in their business, when really and truly that shouldn't be anything that they should be guided by, what would you say that is based on your observation and experience? · Now, Joel, can you also share with us what's the one online tool, resource, website or application 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 recently, or even one that you've read a very long time ago, but it still has had a great and profound impact on you. And that can be either professional or even a personal impact. · Now, Joel, can you also share with our listeners, what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · Could you tell us a little bit about your organization Sturdy, exactly what it does. And if they wanted to connect with you, or Sturdy, how they could find you online? · Now, Joel, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to give our guests a chance to share with our listeners, 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 get derail or you get off track or you get knock down and the quote kind of helps to just motivate you to get back up and to push forward and to complete whatever would have knocked you down. Do you have one those?   Highlights Joel's Journey Me: So, we like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words, a little bit about your journey. So, could you share with our listeners, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?   Joel shared that he appreciates this question. So, he's always a commercial leader, meaning he's always had responsibility not only for net new growth, but also for responsibility for customers. And where he is today, in terms of having started a company that focuses on using AI to ultimately improve the customer experience by deeper listening to customers, he thinks for him, the journey was more of like, and this may sound a little off putting to some, but he was kind of like a frustrated engineer to a certain extent. He was a frustrated commercial person in many ways. So, he thinks the desire to sort of solve a problem that he had as an operator, a commercial operator for two decades, has led him to where he is today, which is trying to solve that problem at scale.   Areas Organizations Needs to Focus On to Ensure the Delivery of a Fantastic Customer Experience Me: So, could you share maybe 1 to 3 top I would say areas that you believe as an organization, especially in your industry that you believe it's important for you to focus on or it drives your success in the space of ensuring that you're delivering a great or a fantastic customer experience.    Joel shared that he likes everything in 3, so absolutely. But the first thing is, in many ways he thinks that removing the abstraction layers between our customers, and the level of leadership within organizations that can actually do something about the issues that we're hearing is really important. And what he means by that is, he thinks for the last 10 or 15 years, we've created not only technology driven abstraction layers like chatbots, and automated knowledge base stuff and it's all sort of addressing what he would think of as a symptom, but not necessarily is the root cause of perhaps customer frustrations in terms of customer experience.  So, an example would be like if we have to continue to build these really acute knowledge bases and what we're addressing is constant customer confusion, for example, wouldn't it make more sense to take the data that we're deriving about what's confusing the customer, take it back to our product teams or services organizations, and address the root cause. So, number one is, he thinks we've got too many abstraction layers between us and our customers.  Like number two is, the people that are responsible for customer experience, and ultimately, you're holding the bag and oftentimes, perhaps even the number for the board can only solve about 30% of the problems that we face around customer experience or challenges we face about customer experience within the organization. So, for example, going back to like a product or service, which ultimately, we deliver to an end user. If he's the customer experience person, and he's holding the bag for that number, whether it's some sort of arbitrary number like not arbitrary, but he guesses arbitrary, like NPS or CSAT, like something that we're being measured on, but even more importantly, a revenue number. He has to rely on his other teammates to ultimately contribute to the success of that experience. And that's a big challenge.  And he thinks the third one is kind of an expansion on that topic, which is, he thinks that we've lost sight as organizations at large that everybody's job is customer experience, providing the best customer experiences we can, whether it's the billing team that designs processes around auto renewing, and billing customers, to the product teams that are delivering product to the services teams that are delivering services, to the sales teams that are an account management teams that are being truthful and ethical and honest about what we actually can provide in terms of value.   Debunking Customer Service Myths Me: Now, in listening to you, I also wanted to know if you could share with us, you've been in the whole customer experience space, and you're noted as a top customer experience voice on LinkedIn. If you want to maybe debunk maybe one of the biggest customer service myths that you see organizations still using as a driver in their business, when really and truly that shouldn't be anything that they should be guided by, what would you say that is based on your observation and experience?    Joel stated that it's going make me unpopular. He's going to lose the popularity contest on this answer, and he's going to treat this less like a cable news show, so, he's not going to swear. But if you do follow him on LinkedIn, it's not just to be incendiary. But he really thinks health scores of customers are one of the most overused, underpowered abstraction layers that people use, he thinks they're garbage. And he's speaking from experience, not because he has something against them, or the companies that help us build them or anything like that. It's because too many times, he's been in executive leadership team meetings, and he takes the board slides in, and he's got all these green lights on maybe with their top revenue accounts, for example. And he goes back to team meetings two weeks later to go back through the account reviews, and so many times he's gone from green to gone with no leading indicators along the way that has ever given him any kind of indication that they were in trouble. So, that's his answer. And some people are in love with health scores, and they spent a lot of time building them, and quite frankly, he thinks they're full of telemetry data and opinions that just don't yield anything that he can use as an executive leader.   App, Website or Tool that Joel Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Joel shared GPT 4. As an early-stage entrepreneur, he feels like he spends a lot of time sifting through data, and crafting messaging. But to make a finer point, like, for example, he has a client, they're called Hawke Media, they're one of the largest independent ad agencies in the United States. And his outbound sales team, let's say, wants to find more companies that are similar to these folks. And there are hundreds of these types of agencies in the United States, not of the same magnitude of Hawke Media, but similar. And when you go into LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and all these other Apollo or ZoomInfo. With all the metadata tags that are in the systems, it's really hard to get a filtered list, for example.  So, last night, he was watching a hockey game, and he typed a simple query into GPT 4 and said, “Give me 300 companies that look and feel like this particular company that are based in the United States and then put their name in column A of a CSV and send it to me,” and it did it and it's super accurate. And it's that kind of stuff that it's just mind blowing. Some of the things you can do with it. So, GPT 4, probably for him, can't live without it.    Me: Amazing. It's fascinating when I heard the prompt that you just gave it now. It's very important that what you put in is what you get out almost like the quality of the question you asked determines the quality of the response that you get back. So, the fact that you are so specific in terms of what you were looking for, the teams, the column that you wanted it in, the fact that you wanted it to be for a specific geographic location, and not just to the world, and the fact that it gave you back that information, so specifically, the prompt that you put into it is so critical to the output that it gives you.   Joel stated that that's a good point, not to scratch his back at all. But he would tell people start with being ultra specific, if you haven't leaned into GPT.  First of all, it's worth the 20 bucks a month for GPT 4. It's really powerful and it can produce graphs and charts and statistical things you can enter, for example, he was working on some like a VC deck the other day for a friend of his, not for his company. But he was having a trouble with like, processing the information from his total addressable market into like a graphical form. Like he's not a designer, he's a spreadsheet person.  And so, he took his spreadsheet, uploaded it to his version of GPT 4 in Azure, so it's privatized without any kind of PII in it, he paid 20 bucks a month for it. And it spit out a graphical representation that with a little bit of tweaking and the coloring could be used in a deck, it's really great. So, there's just some really crazy things you can do with it. But start with being more specific and dial it back, rather than starting with broad requests and commands, because then you're going to get frustrated.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Joel When asked about books that have had a great impact, Joel stated that he's going to reveal that his dad is an Industrial Psychologist, PhD in Industrial Psychology. And he's written a bunch of papers on emotional intelligence, EQ and EI. And so, he's kind of a big fan of Dan Pink, or Daniel Pink. They are business books, so they might be a little cliche for some people. But in 2005, he wrote a book called A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Right Brain. It's kind of like the why right brain thinkers are the future. And he thinks there's a lot of interesting things in there that are pretty applicable today. Despite his little claim of using GPT, which might be more of a left brained example, he's probably a stronger right brained person with communication skills, specifically, rather than somebody that's going to put their head in a spreadsheet all day. And he thinks there's some really telling things and some really interesting things that people could use, both earlier in their career and even later in their career with the Daniel Pink book.  And then he thought one of the other books that he read recently, when he thought about this was “The Billion Dollar Loser : The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork”, written by Reeves Wiedeman, it's the Adam Neumann story about work, he doesn't know, if Yanique have read that. It's actually kind of a fiery read, like, it's a cool book. But he thinks for him, the story was really interesting, if you're interested in business, but it also is a really stark reminder that humility is really important in business, being honest, and being humble is a marathon play, but it's also the right play, it'll get you to the finish line. So, he thought that was a good reminder for him and anyone else that is in business and thinking about their own sort of virtue.   What Joel is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something that he's really excited about, Joel shared that he's really excited about for me, he works at a company that builds applied AI products and essentially helping businesses listen to their customers more carefully, and actively for that matter.  And he thinks what he's most excited about is sort of the evolution of AI in an ethical way. So, one of the things if you read any of the business reports from the industry analysts and in the industry consulting firms, the Beans, you read any of the stuff from the Harvard Business Review, fairly objective sources, people are really scared about using AI in their businesses specifically, let alone personally, but he's thinking about it in a business light.  And he thinks what's starting to happen is that the hype is dying down a little bit and we're starting to see a more practical light in the application of AI where it's not so risky, and that it is truly not going to replace everybody's jobs, it's going to help us sift through larger and larger datasets together, so we can get to the root of very specific problems and solve for the root, going back to him at the top of the show when he talked about abstraction layer. So, for him, he's really excited about that, more and more companies are adopting AI and doing so in an ethical, responsible, privacy conscious way. And the wild, wild west is starting to fade into the background as quickly as it grew, and he thinks that's exciting to him, and he knows that sounds kind of nerdy, but that for him is progress.    About Joel's Organization Sturdy and How Can Listeners Find Joel Online Joel shared that Sturdy is very easy to find, he'll start there, but it's sturdy.ai. And he thinks for the relevancy of your listeners and our listeners today is, their our thesis was that ultimately, the customer experiences is really the responsibility of every team. Again, he mentioned operations services, product sales, marketing, leadership, everybody's responsible for customer satisfaction and customer experience. And ultimately, that leads to everybody being in charge of revenue and retention. And what they've realized over the years as being operators of businesses is that 75% of customers expect businesses to use some sort of technology to better their experiences, like the time is now yet we have all these silos in our business.  So, what their business does, what Sturdy does is plugs into all of your data hubs where you're collecting communications from your customers, those day-to-day interactions, those really rich meaningful, those emails, the tickets, the calls transcripts, even unstructured tests like text like surveys, they take all of that information in, privatize it. And they run language models on it to help find topics and trends to help improve the customer experience. And then make agents to deliver this data to the teams and the people and the systems that need it the most. So, that's basically what they do. And they find that the outcomes are their customers are improving their NPS and CSAT scores almost immediately, because they're more actively listening to their customers. But they're also seeing pretty strong lifts in customer retention and revenue as well. So, both expansion and retention revenue.  And he's easy to find, personally, Joel Passen as mentioned, he talks a lot about customer experience and satisfaction on LinkedIn. And you can find him on LinkedIn, he's pretty active there. And otherwise, he just joel@sturdy.ai.   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Joel Uses When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Joel shared that he's going to disappoint people, because this isn't like super profound. But he tells his kids this too and his dad used to tell him this like, “Every day is like the first day of school, you can reinvent yourself.” The ability for humans to reinvent themselves is surreal, it's crazy. And if he's having a bad day, or he's down or he's stuck, he literally thinks about the next day and say, tomorrow's my day, I can be whoever I want, I can solve whatever I want. He shared that he sounds like that guy on Saturday Night Live, Stuart Smalley. But reinventing, every day is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. And he thinks that's what keeps him going and he truly believes that even if you had a bad day or a bad interaction with your family or your team or what have you, tomorrow's a new day.    Me: Great. Thank you so much for sharing, Joel.   Thank you so much for hopping on our podcast and sharing all of these great insights as it relates to customer experience and debunking the myths in customer experience that a lot of organizations are still driven by. Also talking about your organization Sturdy and just where you see artificial intelligence going and how the adaptation is being taken more in a practical role now as all the fanfare and excitement is dying down and people are really seeing how they can integrate it in a very practical and useful way not just to eliminate human interaction but to add to the value that they are using the technology to enhance the quality of the experience that the customer is having. 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 •     A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink   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!

Alan Williams is the founder of SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL and advises business leaders internationally to deliver value driven service.    Dave Stubberfield is the director of Carter Consultancy and specializes in enabling cultural transformation to help businesses achieve greatness. They are the authors of Supercharging the Customer Experience: How Organizational Alignment Drives Performance.   Questions · We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today. · Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards? · What are maybe two or three behaviors that you believe is critical for customer success in a business both from an employee perspective and from the leadership perspective. · So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction? · So, can you also share, and each of you can give me your answer to this particular question. What's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? · If you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity. · Now, can you also share with us what's the one thing that is 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 close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those? Highlights Alan and Dave's Journey Me: We always like to ask our guests if they could share in their own words a little bit about their journey. So basically, how it is that you got from where you were to where you are today.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he started off in commercial hospitality management. So, he remembered being at school thinking, he wants to go to university, but he wants to do a degree that's going to help him get a job.  And he really didn't like the idea of what he at that time considered to be really boring businesses like banking, where you're sat in an office all day. And he was lucky enough to get a holiday job in a hotel, and he thought that's it, exciting, looking after people, fun.  So, that was the beginning. And then he moved somewhat later in his career into workplace management. So you might know it as facilities management, so all of the services in workplaces offices, and he referred to them those offices actually, as they're really hotels with desks instead of beds, that's the only difference. And then he set up SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL in 2005, and he's been helping progressive leaders in organizations around the world since then, using what he learned in the hospitality sector.  Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he guesses similar to a degree. So, he was just about leaving school and the careers advisor said, you've got the potential to go to university, but he didn't really know what for. So, he decided against it and tried the apprenticeship route in the corporate space, which he loved, and a lot of customer facing roles. Then there was an initiative called Lean, where he became kind of a Six Sigma qualified individual. And then it just kind of spiraled into attaching customer experience to the continuous improvement framework, really. And how changes adapt in organizations. And then, 2020 set up Carter Consultancy, and he hasn't looked back since. So yeah, he loves what he does.   About Alan and Dave's Book – Supercharging the Customer Experience and Three Overarching Themes the Book Focuses On Me: All right, thank you so much, gentleman. Now, the both of you teamed up together and wrote this awesome book Supercharging the Customer Experience. Can you share with our listeners and either of you can answer this question, a little bit about the book, maybe two or three overarching themes that the book focuses on and who is the book geared towards?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he's known Alan for a few years now. But it just so happens that they were interested in creating a customer experience development programme for the BQF, The British Quality Foundation. And the President kind of joined them together and said, “Look, you're both trying to achieve the same things.” So very, very quickly, during their initial meeting, they realized that they are very aligned in how they think and what they wanted to achieve. And through the development of that programme, and Alan out of the blue turns and he said to Dave, “This has got the makings of a great book. Do you want to write one?” And like a rabbit in the headlights, he just kind of froze, and then said, “Yes, let's do that.”  And so, through Alan's guidance from his previous experience of being an author, he's brought him on that journey with him and he's really, really enjoyed it. And the foundation to the book really stemmed from the training, the development programme they put together, which is really all about putting CX into context. They believe there's a lot of content out there. He's going to leave Alan to drop the question in a second, but they believe there's a lot of content out there. But they believe that the actual application of customer experience doesn't happen as frequently as it should, which led us to the question, Alan?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that's right. When they were thinking about the book, they were thinking, well, how is this book going to be any different to all of the others out there on the topic of customer experience? Because don't know if you've checked, but there's just like so many books on the topic. And they just found themselves with this question, which is, “With all the content on the topic that's out there, why is great customer experience so rare?” It doesn't make sense if there's all that resource out there to guide people.  And that was what Dave's just touched on there that the problem, and the challenge is that so much of the time people are focused on content, and knowledge, rather than the practical application of that knowledge on a day in day out basis. And that's why the great customer experience is so rare. And in the book, they provide a framework that helps you whatever sector you're in, wherever you are in the world, whatever the size of your organization provides you with a framework that can help to guide you create your own customer experience strategy that suits your own particular individual circumstances.   Me: All right, so let's use a use example, a use case, I like the fact that you gentleman said that you want to focus on the practical because you are very correct. There are many, many books out there on CX and EX. And you read the content, and it's focused on knowledge, the definitions, the theory, but how does that really work with an organization, with people, with their behaviour, we getting them motivated with having them intrinsically applying that in every single interaction regardless of the channel that they're serving the customer on. So, you can choose a business, I will leave it up to you in terms of the use case, just give us an example of based on the framework that you have in the book, how does this really apply to a business?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he's not even going to choose a particular business. He thinks that sometimes when you do that, you're kind of dragged into generalization. So, he's just going to tell you a story. And it was a business that he was working in and they focused really hard on everybody that was in the organization understanding that they were part of delivering a great customer service and their job was to make their customers and clients feel important, that was the reason that they were all there.  And he remembered on reception, they were expecting a guy attending a very important meeting. And so obviously, they knew in advance that he was arriving, and they have pre-prepared a name badge, they also aimed to greet people before they introduce themselves in this particular environment. And so that happened, the receptionist greeted the gentleman by name, but they had not expected one thing, and that is that he brought with him a small terrier dog. Now, the receptionist actually said to him, complimented him on the dog, and then said, “And now Sir, if you could just lift him up in front of the camera.” and produce a name badge for the dog. And the guy went into the meeting room and announced to the people from the client organization, “That is the best welcome I've ever had anywhere in the world.” And then the meeting was a great success, down to that receptionist. So, the reason he loves that story is because it really emphasizes the importance of people understanding the big why they're there, rather than getting consumed and distracted with the small tasks that they might have to do in order to satisfy them.   Behaviours that are Critical for Customer Success in a Business from an Employee Perspective and from the Leadership Perspective Me: Now, based on your research, and your experience, both of you in the CX space, if you were to choose maybe two or three behaviours that you believe is critical for customer success in a business, and I'm not just talking from the employee perspective, but also from the leadership perspective, like what are the three key behaviours that will more than likely lead to a culture where people have that customer centric mindset, regardless of the type of customer, how complex the problem or issue might be, but they're always driven by that because of those core behaviours. Would you be able to identify what those if you were to pick three, what those would be?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he can start with one for sure. And the one that leaps out with him is Empathy. And that runs from a kind of a customer facing team into the customer, but like you said, it's the leadership into to the rest of the teams and the organization. He thinks having that empathetic understanding of what people might be trying to do, or what they're going through, is so powerful.  And we're stepping into the realms of emotional intelligence here. And to the point that Alan's just made in that in that story, which is fantastic. People have to buy into that, right. So, they have to buy into that culture of trying to achieve and deliver that experience, not once but every single time. And he thinks that starts with a lot of empathy. He knows some leaders that are not very empathetic, shall we say, and don't understand why they can't achieve the results they want to achieve, not only in the business, but in the customer experience space as well. So, he would lead with empathy being one of the most powerful ones because it unlocks so much. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all?   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he'll go with number two, though, which he thinks is about positivity. So, when a customer asks you for something, the answer is yes. And it might not be exactly what they were expecting or had asked for. But how often do you hear, no, can't do that. And that's really not a good start to a conversation. So, he'd follow empathy with Positivity.   Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated that he would go number three is probably Communication. And that he guesses all ties everything up together nicely. He thinks sometimes, again, starting at the top with leadership, they might send a message once, whether it's via email, or it could be in person, it could be a presentation, and some people think that they can just deliver that message once and everyone gets it and understand it, it needs to be reinforced, it needs to become part of the embedded as part of the DNA of the organization. And that message needs to be repeated so it's understood and lived every single day. And he thinks having a great deal of empathy, and positivity, it just needs to be reinforced through communication, he personally believes.   Alan Williams: Alan asked can they give you just one extra one as a bit of added value. So, he'd go with Obsessive Attention to Detail. And this is kind of every person, every day, every minute, because consistency is what makes the great businesses set apart from those that are good some of the time. And that's because everybody in the organization knows the fine detail of what's required, and is then committed to delivering that every single time.   Me: All right, so Empathy, Positivity, Vommunication and Obsessive Attention to detail. Okay, thank you so much, gentlemen.    Insight on the Future of AI and How it Will Impact Human Interaction Me: Now, I liked the fact that most of what you talked about focuses on people, focuses on behaviour, focuses on relationships, practical things that we can see, things that we do every day. I found, and I'm sure you've seen it as well, that in the last, I would say, maybe two or three years or even before but definitely in the last two or three years, there has been a lot of emergence in the space of technology with artificial intelligence. And I find that organizations sometimes may not necessarily be integrating it or using it in the best way possible to ensure that it's not replacing humans, but more so helping humans that can really help the overall experience.  And I'll give you an example. Over the weekend, I had a friend that has a mobile modem and we were having some issues adding some data to it and we called our local telecommunication company, reached out to them through their website. Actually no, we did it through their app that was on the phone, but the app has a Bot at the top and the bots name was Ruby. But Ruby can't answer any questions, Ruby doesn't remember what you told her before. And so, you tell Ruby, I'd like to speak with a representative, Ruby starts a conversation again, “Please provide me with your name and account number. Please tell me exactly what your query is about.” And I told Ruby that before and I felt like I was going in circles, it was just crazy. So, could you share maybe just some insight for us on what you believe is the future of AI as best as you can, because AI does cover a lot of stuff. But what do you believe is the future of AI? And how will that impact human interaction?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that it's really interesting. And they cover a lot of this in the book. And honestly, you could spend hours upon hours doing research. And he kind of immersed himself into this. You're spot on, AI is kind of forefront of technology at the minute, everyone seems to be dipping into it. You've also got augmented reality that people are looking at as well and they are fantastic things, and it's just incredible what some of these things can do. The problem that organizations have today is they see something shiny, something sparkly and go, right, we need that. And they try and integrate it and it's just kind of a lift and shift, kind of slot it into a place, and it fits in just or they've squeezed things around, and they go perfect. We can take our AI integration box off, we've done that.  But like you've just said there, there's not been any kind of sort of thinking or thought process around how we actually integrate that to the all of the other services and ways of communication that we have as an organization, that omni channel element hasn't been considered, we just see AI as a way potentially to do something with generative text, for example. And we go yep, okay, we can we can get that in, we can do that there, and boom, it's done. It's thinking about the entire process.  And he thinks another element to that is, let's say one organization in a certain industry does something that's quite revolutionary. Other companies in the same industry or even outside the industry might try and replicate that and they haven't considered how they operate as an organization, the value they deliver to their customers, and if it actually works. He thinks a lot of people feel like they might miss the boat if they don't sort of get on board with the technology bus, because it's just constantly changing. So, there's a lot of risk when it comes to technology, you need to do your research, your homework and what fits for the business.  And for him, it's thinking about it from a people point of view, technology's forefront of the minute AI, you name it, there's lots it can do. But it needs to work for people. And that's the thing, really, he thinks sometimes isn't considered. So, that would be his thought. Alan, I don't know if you've got anything to add to that at all.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he thinks that the issue is that people consider technology to be an alternative solution, whereas in fact, it should just be a support to people. So, when you've got predictability and high volume, then sure, he thinks technology can be a massive help in that sort of situation. But where you've got unpredictability, and perhaps volume that is up and down, then it's much less helpful. And it might be that a human being could deal with that much, much better. So, the big thing, though, is this thing about technology being a tool, rather than the be all and end all and he liken it to a scalpel, a scalpel in the hands of a really experienced surgeon can save people's lives. But in the hands of somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can be really dangerous. And it's the same with tech and customer experience.   App, Website or Tool that Alan and Dave Absolutely Can't Live Without in Their Businesses When asked about an online resource that they can't live without in their business:  Dave Stubberfield: Dave stated what a question. He's going to be totally contradictory to what he just said, he going to go ChatGPT. So, he uses that as a bit of a sounding board, really. So, in his organization, it's just him. So, sometimes when he has a bit of an idea, he thinks, “Oh, okay, maybe I should post it on social media or I should do this and have a bit of an idea.” He will often ask Alan because they are very alike, but sometimes he will just put a bit of a question into ChatGPT and asked for maybe what's relevant or how he should do a certain thing. And knowing that it's not always 100% accurate, he uses that as kind of as a gauge really to see if he's on the right track.  It's funny, he will put something into ChatGPT, for example. Let's say he wanted to do a LinkedIn post this week and he might say, “Give me five myths about customer experience that we can debunk.” And he might find one of them, he goes, “Well, that's not a myth at all. That's the complete truth.” So, he might swing it in a way that he thinks is his own personal view and opinion. And he uses that as kind of a something to generate a bit of a conversation with himself rather than just talking to the brick wall. So for him, he quite often uses ChatGPT, he would say he's using it daily, which is, it's mad really how it's become so prominent in people's lives.   Alan Williams: Alan shared that he's going to add to his CV that Dave asked him before ChatGPT that'd go down really well. His, is his Outlook Calendar. He's a bit too reliant on this. Basically, if it's not on the calendar, he's not there. And occasionally, he was telling somebody just the other day how he was just about to go into a lunch meeting and he got a message from somebody saying, “Really looking forward to seeing you for lunch today.” And he had to have a very quick lunch meeting and then get to the other one and not tell the person. But his calendar is his.   Me: So, Calendar and ChatGPT. Excellent.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Alan and Dave Me: Now, I usually ask the question, what book or books have had the biggest impact on you? I noticed in your book, which I love about how the layout of the book was done, that at the end of each chapter, you have a little box that says, “Want to know more” with resources in the form of articles and books that the reader can access if they want to gain additional information. I think that's brilliant. But I will still ask it. So, if you could share with me maybe a book that you read recently, or even a very long time ago, but it has still had a very great impact on you, whether from a professional capacity or even a personal development capacity.   Alan Williams: When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Alan shared that his is a long time ago, actually. So, The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. So, basically, this is about making sure that your business is balanced and looking after all of the different stakeholder groups, rather than being just focused on generating profit. And over the years, that kind of sentiment he thinks has grown into triple quadruple bottom line ESG, all of the terms that are given to it, but basically a very, very similar message in that you're managing your business holistically, rather than just to generate profits. So, that's his.    Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he's got a few that springs to mind. And the one he's going to talk about most prominently is the one he's listened to recently is the One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard. This was a recommendation to him, he's heard it and seen the sites all around, but he's never actually taken the time to listen to it. So, that for him was really, really interesting because it talks about trying to do things in a minute, setting goals that people can read in a minute. Having reviews whether it's positive or negative in a minute, so you can redirect people or praise people. And he thinks a lot of us get bogged down in just day to day life, that everything becomes much more intense than it needs to be. So, that One Minute Manager for him, it was talking specifically about managing a team in an organization. But he thinks you can apply it to absolutely anything. So, that's the one he's listened to most recently that has been phenomenal and eye opening for me.   One that he would like to call out that he's previously listened to is The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler. So, coaching is a part of what he does and t that was something that really helped him and kind of confirmed to him and validate that he can do what he's doing, which was amazing, because he had a lot of doubt at the time when he started if he's a massive suffer of the imposter syndrome. So, that was really good for him personally.  And the other one he was considering? It was, Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And In Your Life by Spencer Johnson, which is just he thinks it's a staple, if you haven't read or listened to that, then go and listen to that. That's phenomenal.   What Alan and Dave are Really Excited About Now! Alan Williams: When asked about something that they are excited about Alan shared that this is going to be boring to some people, because the CX in context development programme, he's thrilled about this, because they've started to deliver to clients, and the feedback has just been fantastic. And people are just saying, this is a real eye opener, because CX cannot just be treated in isolation, it is inextricably connected to other parts of the business. And this framework helps them to do that in a really simple to understand way and a very practical way. When he gets that sort of feedback, it makes him feel that it's been worth putting together what they've put together because it's good to be able to help so many people out there.   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that for him, he could quite easily say the same thing. But he's going to be different. So, he would say in the past 18 months, he's been developing an online tool that's called Nova. And Nova is a way and means of teams, organizations to measure how well they are implementing continuous improvement in their business, or in their team or in their organization. And that is something he's done for a long time and he used to do it by an Excel spreadsheet. And talking to a friend of his, he said, “Dave, why on earth are you using a spreadsheet in this day and age?” And he kind of sat back and thought, “Okay, I should practice what I preach here and change what I do.” And it's led to this tool, which he personally believes is cutting edge.  So, basically, it's an assessment that each team would do in an organization, it will give them a score, it will give them actions to do, it will give industry insights as well, based on the information that's been provided, just so that it can help the team progress. That then creates an aggregated score up to the leadership, and that can be viewed across the leadership peers and the group. So, if you've got an entire organization, you've got a continuous improvement score, essentially, for the entire organization with industry insights that help drive the improvement of that organization and with Alan's help, they're going to look at introducing customer experience to that later in the year.  They've also got plans to introduce change management as well, as well as vision values, employee engagement, they see this as a potential game changer tool that can disrupt organizations for the better. So, a lot of positive to come from that. And that's not long been launched really, the start of this year and they've seen some really, really interesting returns on investment as well. So, fingers crossed that's one for the future.   Me: That sounds amazing, Dave. Is that available to anyone in the public? Or it's still in beta?   Dave shared that it's available to absolutely everyone and anyone that might be a little bit unsure, a little bit reluctant to get involved or have a look, there's a free business health check at the very beginning that you can take, an initial assessment that sort of points you in the right direction, ask some leading questions to get you thinking, “Are you doing the right thing?” And at the end of it, it will tell you how you're performing based on that information and their suggestions moving forward. So, there's a bit of a freebie at the front as well.   Me: Now, my next question would be where can our listeners find that resource online?   Dave shared that they can find that at www.thinknova.uk    Where Can We Find Alan and Dave Online Alan Williams - Company website – www.servicebrand.global.com LinkedIn – Alan Williams   Dave Stubberfield - LinkedIn – Dave Stubberfield Dave's company website – www.carter-consultancy.com   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Alan and Dave Uses  Me: Now, before we close off the episode, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that in times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?   Alan Williams: When asked about a quote or saying that they tent to revert to, Alan shared that this relates to the book, actually. So, he created this the end of last year (2023) and that is, “Content without context is toast.”   Me: I saw that in the book, I thought it was kind of cute. So, can you tell our listeners a little bit about how that quote brings you back on track?   Alan shared that it originated really from culture eats strategy for breakfast, it's like that kind of ring and tone to it. And he was just thinking about how so much, especially with social media, it's all about pumping stuff out there. But he thinks it really helps you to recollect yourself if you remember that your particular situation is unique. And you just need to focus on that. Don't get worried with all of the possibilities of all of the content, just think about what situation you're in right now and that will help you deal with it.   Me: All right. Thank you so much, Alan. Dave, do you have one of those quotes?   Dave Stubberfield: Dave shared that he does, his is a bit cheesy, people might hear and go, oh, no. But his one is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” And he thinks, for him, to put that into context, again, he's spoken that he's solo in the business. But he thinks realizing that collaboration is king, really. So, let's take the book as an example. There would have been days, he's sure, that he would have been not really 100%, and not firing on all cylinders. But he knew that he would have to present something to Alan later in that day to say, “This is what I've done or what I've produced.” So, that would be that factor.  But there would also be helping Alan out. If Alan said, Ok, we've got 10 actions to do, but I'm in meetings for the rest of the week, he would go leave that with me. I'll pick that up. he'll take the strain. And he thinks that's part of that teamwork. And he thinks, again, that's part of why they work so well, because they do have the ability to understand when someone hasn't got the time or the space. The other person just seems to pick it up from somewhere. He doesn't understand how or why, it's a bit of a dark art, but it seems to be working well for them. But that for him is the one, knowing that collaborating with people is often going to be so more advantageous to absolutely everyone. That's the one for him that pulls him out of that pit sometimes where he might not be feeling great.   Me: All right, thank you so much. So, Alan's quote, “Content without context is toast.” And Dave's quote is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” Now, both quotes are phenomenal. And just to kind of piggyback on what Dave said just now, I say it all the time in customer service trainings, no man is an island, and the reason why an organization has more than one person working in it is we all have to work together. Everyone's role is important. You gentlemen wrote this book and I'm sure that it required a lot of sweat, tears, hard work, focus, just a lot of energy and engagement that you both had to put into it. And it wouldn't be the success that it is today if it is that you didn't put that effort into it. So, I fully, fully, fully endorse both the quotes that you've given to us.  And just want to remind our listeners that customer experience is a journey, it's not something you're going to get to overnight or in an hour. It's not something that you're going to just get from one book. And it's something that we continually work to improve every single day that we get the opportunity to work on it. So, thank you so much for sharing your great insights about your book, about all the different things that you're doing in your organizations, with your own clients. It was really a great interview and I hope you had as much fun as I did.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Links • The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton •  The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard •  The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients by Steve Chandler •  Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And Life by Spencer Johnson   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!

Vaishali Dialani is a multi-award-winning Customer Experience professional in the Middle East, has been recognized as a CXPA Emerging Leader, a finalist for CX Leader of the Year 2023, and has been ranked among the top CXMStars worldwide in both 2023 and 2024. She is a firm believer in the power of knowledge sharing to foster growth and awareness within the CX community.  With over eight years of experience as a data-savvy experienced designer, research specialists, and strategic change-maker, Vaishali passionately advocates for the integration of emotions and efficiency through customer experience research, product insights and communication. She currently serves as a Senior CX Strategist at Konabos, a consulting firm specializing in digital transformation.   Her commitment to knowledge sharing is evident through her involvement in podcasts, blogs, guest lectures, speaking engagements, and training programs. Additionally, she conducts leadership training workshops for professionals with low literacy levels, making a positive impact through collaborative efforts across diverse spheres.    Questions · Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you are were to where you are today. · Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners. · What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery? ·How have employees across different industries adapted to the integration of technologies, specifically in artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, to enhance customer service experiences? What future trends do you predict for technology's role in CX, and do you believe human interaction will remain vital in this space? · Can 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 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 has had a great impact on you. · Can you also share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you are really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. · What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months? · Where can listeners find you online? · Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   Highlights  Vaishali's Journey Me: Now, we always like to start off by giving our guests an opportunity as I mentioned before to share a little bit about your journey from where you were to where you are today.   Vaishali shared that she started her career back in 2015, right after she graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Dubai, and just like any other graduate, she was like, “I don't know what I want to do with my life. I think I'll start with marketing.” Right quickly as she dived into marketing in the advertising world, it was chaotic, busy, a great learning curve, she learned what she liked. But most importantly, she learned what she didn't like. And that's where her analytical journey began from, she understood that it's important to know and work on your skills that you like. She paved her way to get her MBA done, and learn more about research and analytics, and then dived into a CRM officer where she picked up different aspects of what experience means, how you're helping small businesses grow, what is innovation and research, it's a very cool experience.  And then she moved back to Dubai where she joined her FinTech company as the head of customer engagement. Now, this was a whole new world for her while she already knew marketing and analytics, but now running campaigns and media was super interesting. And just like in any other startup, you have to wear many other hats was very interesting, because normally she would play so many different roles, she had different opportunities where you would design experiences for low income migrant workers in the UAE.  It was almost like her postgraduate degree or a PhD, she would say, at no money, where she learned a lot of things. And that's where her curiosity for CX began, when she was designing experiences and working with the ideal. One thing paved to another and then she dived into CX, and she's been in the industry for almost four to five years now.   Me: All right, that is a wonderful journey.   Vaishali's Views on Customer Experience in Her Culture  Me: Now, throughout your journey, Vaishali, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned the different industries that you've worked in, but seeing that you've been in the CX space for a while, and our show is about navigating the customer experience, maybe you could share with our listeners a little bit about what your views are on customer experience. And I know you are in a different part of the world. And I know culture and behaviour varies depending on where you are. Can you share with us just a little bit about your culture, how customer experience is. If you were to give it a score, maybe on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the best, what score would you give it and just any insights that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.   Vaishali shared that for the listeners, she comes from the Middle East from they say the light of gold, which is Dubai, and it's very interesting because it feels like you're always served in a platter. So, over the last few years, she's been travelling a lot, and especially to the West and the East port. And she thinks there's major cultural shock that she almost have is why somebody not serving her enough. Being in Dubai hospitality is huge; services at its peak, people come for the luxury and lifestyle in Dubai. And so, she's never had even if she goes to a restaurant, if she's in Dubai, if she asks anyone to please can you pack this, I need a take away, they'd be like, “Yeah, sure madam”, and all of that. But when she comes to the West, they give her a box, and she's like, “Oh, so am I supposed to pack myself?” So many different experiences that are such culturally different, yet you're working on designing those right kind of experiences is very interesting. Being in the space that she worked across education, FinTech, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit organizations, and one thing that she finds, despite no matter where you are, in which part of the world across which culture you have been raised, is that we all are humans, and we all want to feel heard. And we want to all feel listened and feel the emotion that we're feeling whether it's with another person or a brand. So, despite many, many differences, being from the Middle East, one common thing is what kind of human experiences are we really designing?   Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Customer Experience Design and Delivery Me: What would you say have been as a leader in the different organizations that you've worked in, maybe one or two things that you believe has made or contributed to your success in driving CX design and CX delivery?   Vaishali stated that's a difficult one. But she thinks something that's really helped her, and she truly believes in this is the power of love languages, and how you can mold that and use that in designing experiences, especially customer experiences, whether it is quality time and actually speaking to your customers, making them feel heard, and understanding where they come from, to just simple words of affirmations. And this can be digital affirmations, she's not saying everything has to be in person, it's more about how you make someone feel like, “oh, this person hears me and understands me.” Do simple acts of service you do for them digitally, again, reward them that make them feel loyal to you.  So, when it comes to leadership, every different project is so different from one another despite being in the CX space, because they are spread across different verticals, from governance, to analytics to design, she's had the experience of learning that we need to understand what kind of emotions we want to create, and then create those journeys. So, for her, that's been one of the key things is, drive and understand what emotion you want to create.   AI Integration in Customer Service; Employee Adaptation, Future Trends, and the Human Touch Me: Now, a big part of CX is technology, right? Technology is here to help us and support us in delivering a more seamless and a less friction kind of experience with customers. In your part of the world, how have you seen your employees across different industries and verticals, as you had mentioned, adapting to the technologies, specifically in the area of artificial intelligence, there is ChatGPT and different things that organizations may integrate to enhance the service experience with their customers and cut down the more route type of activities that are very mundane and monotonous, they're investing in a technology to kind of reduce. How have you seen the adoption of that take place? And if you were to be a fortune teller, if you were to look into the future, where do you see this going? And do you believe human interaction will still play a very integral role in CX?   Vaishali stated, wow, what a question. It's very interesting. So, to answer the first part of the question, which is adoption levels. She thinks adoption levels are at its peak right now. We have no option but to keep up because a lot of the CX experiences and designs that they choose to design for their customers is technology driven. You can have the best of the best designs on Figma or Canva, or Miro, but to really bring them to life, you need the right tools in place. And to be able to do that, you will be able to understand which technology or business is actually using at the moment, what kind of architecture do they have in their back end systems, and what is really possible.   And in the ever evolving space, also, she thinks, today, all kinds of businesses, especially in the tech industry, they are coming up with niche tools and technologies across diverse industries specific to different features that allow them to give the best of the best services to their end users. But most importantly, they are very open to saying we'll integrate with another tool, whether it is in the healthcare industry, and you're looking at billing and medical insurance, they're creating their own tools to integrating with personalization tools to understanding when a patient needs to have their next checkup and reminding the patient about it to actually having analytical tool. There's so much that is happening in today's space and the adoption is at its absolute peak to keep up with the industry at the moment. That's the first part of the question.   And then the second part of the question is, there's so much that you can do with today's technology, no matter what you do human intervention can never be impacted directly she feels, they will always coexist in her space, she doesn't think it's going to be one or the other and completely replaceable. They will always need human beings because human beings evolve. And technology is made by humans.   Me: Very true. Alright. I love that.   App, Website or Tool that Vaishali Absolutely Can't Live Without in Her Business When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Vaishali shared that she's a very tech person, she loves using her app, she has apps for almost everything. But at work, she uses a lot of Canva; she's creative as a person. So, whether it's the whiteboard or whether it's just designing something that she needs to just throw it out. She loves using Canva.   Me: Amazing. I like when I hear guests talk about using Canva. Recently, I did a presentation skills workshop for a client and they wanted to basically teach the team how to use Canva. And I remember, it was so fascinating, especially for persons who have never been exposed to the platform before, when they looked at the user interface of Canva versus a Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is just like, it's like the Apple of design. Like in terms of how easy it is, you just drag and drop it, in PowerPoint, you take three steps, in Canva, you take one. And I just I find it so amazing, it really has brought design to the average person; even if you weren't creative Canva would find some way to stimulate your creativity.   Vaishali agreed, and more than anything, even like the guided templates too, they have everything, you can just create a design system in place to be able to do anything with it. Previously, developers used to use draw.io a lot to create the map and the technology flows. And like, guys no, we need to use Canva make it more colourful. And it's so easy to use.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Vaishali When asked about books that have had a great impact. Vaishali shared that she just finished two books recently, but they are more spiritual, but she thinks one of the books that she's still continuing to read, and she's amazed by it is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. That the book is taking her longer to complete in all honesty is because you really need to retrospect and think, is this the way I think.  And it's just the way she would want to think like from growth mindset or fixed mindset and how our childhood, the way we just appreciate it really impacts on the way we work and our personality, or our character. So, there's a lot of retrospective to do. And she thinks she'll have to read the book 2, 3 times. But for now, this has been the biggest impact on the way she's started evolving and thinking, so she'd highly recommend this book.   What Vaishali is Really Excited About Now! When asked about something she's excited about, Vaishali stated that she'll give two things. So, the first one is she's very excited because she's travelling on a personal level. She's travelling to Vancouver tonight to for her brother's graduation. And it's been a journey for their family. So, they're very, very excited for his graduation.  And professionally, what she's very excited about is at the moment, she's working on three different projects across manufacturing, healthcare, and education. And the best part about all of it is, is that all of them are across different verticals of CX, and that really shows the power of a) customer experience, but b) also how vast our growing industry is. And we all have some stuff to do and make an impact across different verticals of CX, so she feels super blessed.   Me: Alright, well, congratulations to you, brother and his graduation. That's awesome.   Emerging Trends Shaping the Near Future   Me: Now, can you tell our listeners, if you were to just think about maybe two or three trends that you believe will continue to grow and emerge as we wrap up on the second and embark on the third quarter of 2024, what would you say those are just based on working with clients, in your own business, listening to podcasts, being on podcasts, writing blogs, interfacing with other CX experts across different industries. What would you say are maybe two or three emerging trends that you believe will continue? Or will emerge over the next couple of months?   Vaishali stated, great question. And we all have been talking about this, start of the year, we were like, what's 2024 going to hold for CX and is AI going to replace but she thinks now conversations have shifted, and everyone agrees, and a lot of the conversations she's hearing about is, we are going to coexist together. So, that trend is kind of going to continue and only emerge, people are not going to lose their jobs because of AI, but they're just going to be supported better and to design better experience. So, that's definitely one.  The second one is what she sees as a shift, based on discussing with clients and having these daily one on one conversations, being the centre front of the industry is that there's a grey area that was first there was digital experience and customer experience, but she sees that becoming a grey area now to becoming actually digital customer experience, and people finding out and learning more about it. And that's a very interesting space, because it makes room for everyone to grow together and learn and share experiences, which she thinks is phenomenal. So, there are no more silos within even the experience design space anymore. And the third one she would say is, she sees extremely authenticating orthodox industries, especially such as manufacturing, or education, which had a certain way of doing certain things digitally, are now ready to evolve and embark on a transformation journey. Because they think it's extremely important to kind of keep up to the industry and the world and the customer needs. And those are massive projects that they're working on internally. So, she thinks it's very, very interesting to see that shift in the industry right now.    Me: Alright, exciting times ahead.   Where Can We Find Vaishali Online LinkedIn – Vaishali Dialani X – Vaishali Dialani    Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Vaishali Uses Me: Now, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap our episodes up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adverted adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get the real or you get off track, a quote kind of helps to get you back on track.   When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert, Vaishali shared that she does. And it's one of her favourite quotes that she's actually tattooed and it's called, “Fly with full faith.” So, it's always do your hard work and have faith in whatever you do. Because most of the times, it feels like we're doing so much and we still not able to get to the next place, we're stuck in a circle or a rod. And it's important to have faith and while you have faith, always, always do your hard work.   Me: All right, thank you so very much. So, Vaishali, I just wanted to extend our deepest gratitude to you again, for taking time out of your busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us and sharing all these great insights, especially as it relates to your culture and what's happening over there. Because the world is very small, even though we are in different continents or different places, human behaviour is still pretty much the same I believe throughout, we are through and through emotional beings. And I liked the fact that that came out in your message in terms of what we should be focused on in CX and ensuring that we're connecting with people on an emotional level, and what kind of feelings do we want them to have after they've interacted with us. So, I thought it was great that you brought that across in a message. So, thank you 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 •     Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck    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!

In this Greatest Hits episode, Lauren is joined by New York Times best-selling author, Dave Kerpen. In the episode, the pair discuss the power of listening in both marketing and life, how social media can be used as part of a customer retention strategy, and why social media is the great equalizer.