Podcasts about Net Promoter

Do you think about how AI is going to shape our future in business?Victor Cho might have the answer! As a longtime member of the Conscious Capitalist community, he is a CEO/Advisor and Board Member (best known for his work with Emovid) with a deep passion for building online customers experiences that truly delight (Net Promoter 80+) and define markets. Victor's philosophy of considering society as a crucial fourth stakeholder in business, alongside employees, customers, and shareholder is grounded in his emphasis on transperancy, empathy, diversity and integrity.In this episode, he explains his operational framework for maximizing positive societal impacts, minimizing negative ones, and fostering transparency as well as the transformative potential of AI in business.**If you enjoy this podcast, would you consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes only a few seconds and greatly helps us get our podcast out to a wider audience.Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.For transcripts and show notes, please go to: https://www.theconsciouscapitalists.comThis show is presented by Conscious Capitalism, Inc. (https://www.consciouscapitalism.org/) and is produced by Rainbow Creative (https://www.rainbowcreative.co/) with Matthew Jones as Executive Producer, Rithu Jagannath as Lead Producer, and Nathan Wheatley as Editor.Thank you for your support!- Timothy & RajTime Stamps00:00 Welcome to The Conscious Capitalists00:23 Introducing Victor Cho01:44 Victor's Journey to the Fourth Stakeholder Philosophy04:05 Operationalizing Societal Impact06:09 Frameworks for Positive Business Impact14:15 The Role of Data and Collaboration19:29 AI and Social Responsibility22:42 AI's Impact on Business Models23:16 Cost Reduction and Efficiency24:15 Intelligence as a Service25:20 AI in Asynchronous Video Communication27:23 AI's Role in Conscious Capitalism31:15 The Future of Work with AI36:54 Leadership in the Age of AI38:14 The Importance of Suppliers and Authenticity42:03 Conclusion and Further Resources

The Three Dimensions of Customer Value CreationRob Markey ought to know a thing or two about customer loyalty. Rob was a CX expert and thought leader at Bain long before he and his colleague Fred Reichheld introduced Net Promoter to the world. He is a leader in Bain's Customer Customer Strategy and Marketing practice and the co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0 with Fred Reichheld.This episode was originally intended as a deep dive on customer loyalty through the customer lifecycle for my Michigan State University Master's students but it was just too good to not share in an episode.  As usual, Rob brings insights and wisdom to empower anyone interested in creating value for their customers starting with the three dimensions of value according Bain uses in their approach with clients. Also included in this episode:

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.  Show references: David Green | LinkedInhttps://www.blenheimpalace.com/Head of Innovation at Blenheim PalaceDavid Green is responsible for driving innovation at Blenheim to deliver value from the implementation of novel business methods and new concepts. His role involves building a culture of continual improvement and innovation, bringing together and contextualising novel datasets through a data and IoT network infrastructure, and identifying opportunities to enhance customer experiences.David leads the research and development at Blenheim, cultivating university partnerships, that helps fuse specialised knowledge with Blenheim's diverse landscape and practical challenges. Moreover, he initiated the Innovation and Continual Improvement network, fostering collaboration among sector leads to share expertise and address common challenges. Joseph Paul | LinkedInhttps://vennersys.co.uk/Associate Director – Key Account ManagerWith 10 years of experience in SaaS Account Management and 6 years at Vennersys, Joe works closely with visitor attractions to optimise system performance and internal processes. He acts as a conduit between attraction managers and Vennersys, helping facilitate constructive communication to further develop and improve Vennersys' own services based on customer needs or industry trends.In his personal life, Joe can either be found playing hockey for his local club or taking long, refreshing walks in the hills and fields near his home. Transcriptions:  Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. On today's episode I speak with David Green, Head of Innovation at Blenheim Palace and Joseph Paul, Associate Director - Key Account Manager at Vennersys.We're talking about data - but not just the importance of it (we all know that right?). David and Joe share the exciting data and AI reporting systems that Blenheim have created, allowing them to predict, and not just report on past performance. This is a really interesting episode and if you're been a little bit put off or a little bit scared about AI up until this point, this might be the episode that changes your mind.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue. Kelly Molson: David, Joe, it is lovely to have you both on the podcast today. Thank you for joining me on Skip the Queue. David Green: It's great to be here. Joseph Paul: Thanks for having us. Kelly Molson: That sounded very positive, guys. Thanks. Feel the enthusiasm. David Green: Let's see how the first question goes, shall we? Kelly Molson: Listen, everyone worries about these icebreaker questions. It's just we're just in a pub, in a coffee shop having a little chat. That's all it is. Right, I want to know. We'll start with you, Joe. What was the last thing you binge watched on your streaming service of choice? Joseph Paul: Gosh, that's a very good question. The last series we binge watch was a series called Bodies on Netflix, which is about a murder that happens in four different time periods and four detectives are trying to solve the murder. Very good if you haven't watched it.  Kelly Molson: I have seen this and Joe, it hurt my head a little bit.Joseph Paul: Yeah. It is hard to keep track of some of the plots through the different times, but there's a very good ending worth watching if you haven't, David? David Green:  I don't think I have. I didn't get a chance to watch TV. Kelly Molson: So same question to you, David. That's a really good series as well, Joe. I thoroughly enjoyed that, although it did hurt the backwards forwards bit a little bit, was a bit mind blowing. Same question to you, David. What was the last thing that you binge watched? David Green: Well, the last thing I probably binge watched was probably Breaking Bad. That just sort of shows you how long ago it was. I binge watched anything, but I'm desperate to watch it again. It was so good. I was just hooked on the first episode. I just loved every single minute of that. Kelly Molson: Have you seen that, Joe? Joseph Paul: Yes. Very good series. Probably one of the best of all time. And the question back would be, have you watched Better Call Saul? David Green: Yeah, but I didn't find it as good. I say I didn't find as good. It was still great. I'm very fussy in the Greenhouse song. Kelly Molson: I feel like I'm the only person in the whole world who's not watched Breaking Bad, which is this is quite controversial, isn't it? Everybody says that I would love it and I should watch it, but I feel overwhelmed that there's so many series to it and it would take up all of my TV viewing time for months and months. It would be the only thing that I could probably watch for the entire year and that feels too much. Joseph Paul: It's well worth it. Absolutely. You should do it.Kelly Molson: Dedicate 2024 as the year for Breaking Bad. David Green: I'm going to own up. I've not watched a single episode of The Crown either and some of it was filmed at Blenheim. So I'm really embarrassed to admit that on this podcast.Kelly Molson: That is a statement in a half, David. See, this is why I do the icebreakers. You never know what dirt you're going to get out. David, we're going to start with you with this one. What is the one food or drink that you cannot eat and you can't even think about without feeling a little bit queasy? David Green: That's cheese pastry straight away. I remember when I was at school, we had a home economics club. I remember making these cheese straws and I took them home and I was so environmentally ill after these cheese straws ever since, I just can't even look at cheese pastry. All these nibbles that people without for drinks can't bear it. Cheese and pastry together is wrong. Kelly Molson: This is really sad. I love a little cheese straw. I feel sad for you that you can't eat a cheese straw, David. I feel sad for you. Joe, what about you? Joseph Paul: I can pretty much eat anything and I'm not overly put off by much. I think the one thing that turns me away from food is horseradish and any sauce. That's probably my only sort of food that I won't go to and puts me off eating anything that has.Kelly Molson: Just horseradish or sauce in general. Are we talking like, sweet chilli dip? No?Joseph Paul: Just horseradish. So anything that has that in it, I will stay away from. But apart from that, I'll pretty much eat anything anyone puts on my plate. David Green: I think you're missing out, Joe. Kelly Molson: Do you know what's probably really nice as well? Is a cheese straw with horseradish.Joseph Paul: But cheese straws are the best. David Green: I'm going to have to leave the room in a minute. We could talk about cheese straw. Kelly Molson: Sorry. All right, let's move on from that. Right, I want to know I was quite kind to those ones. I want to know what your unpopular opinions are. Joe, let's start with you. Joseph Paul: Not sure this is going to go down too well, but my unpopular opinion is Harry Potter is an overrated film series. Kelly Molson: Books or films or both? Joseph Paul: Films, predominantly. Kelly Molson: Wow. I mean, my husband would absolutely agree with you. So I got him to watch the first one and then we got halfway through the second one and he paused it and looked at me and said, "Kelly, I just can't do this. Sorry." And left the room. That was it. Done. Joseph Paul: I can understand. So in our household, we alternate between Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. So we compromise. We have a Harry Potter, then a Lord of the Rings, then go through. Kelly Molson: Is your partner Harry Potter, then? Joseph Paul: My wife is very much a Harry Potter fan. Kelly Molson: Interesting. That is quite controversial. How do you feel about that, David? David Green: Very disappointing. Joe, actually. Joseph Paul: Sorry to let you down. David Green: We might have to end this now, Joe.Kelly Molson: This beautiful relationship that we're going to talk about. End over Harry Potter.  David Green: Harry Potter and cheese straws. Kelly Molson: David, same question to you. What is your unpopular opinion? David Green: Didn't think I had any unpopular opinions until I started really thinking about it, but I have to say, my original this is really good either, really was dancing, non professional dancing. I mean, I'm not a dancer, I've got a body of a dad. I am a dad and my wife and my daughter are very good dancers and I think it's just years of standing by a bar at a wedding with that person, go, "Come on, get on the dance floor, come on." And they drag you up and then busting moves is probably the wrong description, but it's just looking around the room on the floor with other people sort of bobbing around awkwardly looking, and all the blokes tipped you looking at each other going, "Oh, get me home." It's that awkwardness, I find really difficult and I'm going to be cheeky. And another one, because I just remembered that concerts is another one, so you spend a fortune going to a concert. David Green: I took my daughter once to Ariana Grande and I'd just been dragged to Arctic Monkeys and we drove hours and hours to this place and my wife had got Rose lead, I think, which was I needed binoculars to even see the stage. I was absolutely freezing, completely freezing. I didn't dress appropriately, I was dressed in a shirt and tied, typically, because that was Arctic Monkeys. Kelly Molson: You went through a shirt and tied Arctic Monkeys? God said, "Well".David Green: I remember walking down to the bottom of the stadium, I'm freezing, I have to go and get some clothes, and they let me out and I had to buy Arctic Monkeys merchandise and I came up the steps wearing an Arctic Monkeys hoodie. Number one fan to my wife and daughter, absolutely laughing hilariously.  David Green: And I had to listen to the music for 2 hours and then I got home about three in the morning and my wife had promised me dinner out, went to Wild Bean Cafe at 01:00 A.M. on the way home. Kelly Molson: What a treat.David Green: Dancing and concert. Laura just sneaking next to one in. Kelly Molson: Well, no, I love this. I mean, it's like an elongation of it, isn't it? They go hand in hand.  I would be that person at a wedding, they're trying to get you on the dancefloor. Which made me start laughing and then I lost it. Shirt and tie at an Arctic Monkeys gig. What were you thinking? David Green: I don't know. Kelly Molson: I think that's my favourite unpopular opinion yet. Amazing. Thank you both for sharing. Shall we talk about some serious stuff? David Green: Have you cried on a podcast before?Kelly Molson: Before I've had a cry, I've definitely had a cry on the podcast, but a cry of laughter, I'm not sure that's really got me today. Right, serious stuff. We're going to talk about data today, which is very serious stuff. We all know the importance of data. We've talked about data hundreds and hundreds of times in various different guyses. On this podcast, however, we're going to talk about reporting today, but with a twist. So reporting is often usually about things that have already happened. We're looking at past visitor numbers, we're looking at how many visitors came and how much they spent in the cafe on a particular day, what the weather was like on a past particular day. So we can predict whether it might be like that this year. Kelly Molson: But Blenheim are doing something completely different with reporting, which, when we had a chat about it prior to this episode, it blew my mind a little bit. And it's such a brilliant case study. You need to share this with the world. Firstly, though, I want you to just, both of us, tell us a little bit about your role and your background. So, Joe, can you start first? Tell us a little bit about your role and how you came into it. Joseph Paul: Yeah, of course. So I've been in the industry for six years now within the visitor attraction industry, working at Vennersys, and my role is a Key Account Manager. So I work closely with our clients throughout the lifetime of their contracts, so making sure they are getting the most out of the system and that sort of return on investment they've put into the software they've purchased. So I've worked closely with David and the Blenheim team for about six years now, and prior to that, I was also in account management as well, within a software business. Kelly Molson: Great. David, over to you. David Green: Variable history with Blenheim. I think next year will be the 30th year when I first walked through the doors. So when I was studying at college, it was my first sort of part time weekend Christmas job, and I was a bubble up for the 11th Duke and Duchess, and that was great. If I got I know stuff. Kelly Molson: I feel like there's a podcast episode on its own about that part of your career. David Green: I'm not sure I could speak too much about that, but I remember when I finished college, my mother said, "What are you going to get a proper job?" And the phone rang and I ended up working at Blenheim. Moved into the clock tower at Blenheim. That was my first flat. It was quite incredible, I have to say. But after leaving when I was 21, I just changed direction. So I became a developer, so I learned to programme and I worked for a little agency in Abingdon for two doctors who were both very bright guys. Yeah, I just put the hours in and learned to programme and really, that probably led to where I am today. I learned very quickly to problem solve and learned very quickly how to develop things. David Green: So when I finally joined Blenheim again, full time enabled me to sort of trial new things very quickly, fail fast. And that kind of led to our first real time reporting platform, which I developed myself. Kelly Molson: Amazing. David Green: This was really a combination of seeing that the business had lots of data and seeing that a lot of the data was inputted in manually. So being able to develop something that could contextualise data in a better way, but get people looking at the data in a much faster way, I think that's where it started from. Kelly Molson: And that is what we're going to talk about today. You've got a really interesting job title. So you're Head of Innovation at Blenheim Palace. Are there many other heads of innovation in the sector? Because there's lots of kind of I mean, ALVA, for instance, brilliant organisation, they do lots of kind of individual meetups. So heads of marketing meetups, CEO meetups, head of visitor service meetups. I haven't seen them do a Head of Innovation meetup yet, so I question how many of you are there? David Green: I don't think there's very many at all, but the title is becoming more and more known, I think, across multiple sectors. And it was really the sort of creation I was Head of Digital at Lent for eight or nine years, and it was really the creation of Dominic Hare, our CEO, who saw the need for research development. The role is really about hunting for problems, and as much as we're well known for our visitor business, we have a thriving land business and a thriving real estate business. And I get to work across those three tiers, which is really exciting, hunting for problems. I get to work with universities, so we have a really strong university partnership, both at Oxford Brookes and the Oxford University. David Green: And this really allows us to bring in the latest research academics into a real world environment to solve problems together. So that's really exciting. But then the sort of second thing I work on as Head of Innovation is live data, so I have a data background, so it meant that very quickly I could bring all of our data into one place to drive greater insight. And then the third tier is looking at sort of customer experience changes. So if anyone sees my post on LinkedIn, you'll see we've brought in a new returnable cup scheme of all of our cups are RFID enabled. So looking at eradicating single use cups right the way through to a transformation project around implementing digital wallets and pulses. David Green: So there's lots of different things right the way through to encouraging our visas to come by green transport, which is very much tied into our 2027 pledge to become carbon neutral. Kelly Molson: That's lovely. Yeah. That's really interesting that you sit across so many different facets and it's not just about data and reporting and digital, really. So what we're going to talk about today is a particular project that you've both been involved in, and I'm going to kind of split this into two, because there's two areas that I kind of want to focus on. I want to hear about what the project is and all of the things and benefits that it's brought to Blenheim, which David's going to talk about. Kelly Molson: And then, Joe, I want to then come over to you and talk about how you kind of made this happen from a supplier perspective and the things that you need to work through together with your client and maybe some of the things that you've had to change and implement to be able to support your client, to do the things that they want to do with your system. So, David, I'm going to start with you. Can you give us kind of an overview of what this project is like, the background to it and then what led to that project happening? David Green: Background is like many organisations in this sector, we have lots and lots of data. Often we report out of proprietary systems, we then contextualise our data very well and I wanted to bring all the information to one area so we could really apply context but also look at in that data. So this sort of built off our first real time reporting platform that were able to get data into the hands of the operations teams, other teams, really quickly. But it wasn't really supportable just by me here at Blenheim. So were looking at one, finding a platform that we could utilise to allow us to get data out to feedball in a much more secure way. I was handling all the visualisations and things and there's better tools for that. So that's one of the reasons. David Green: The second thing is looking at data, I wanted to try out using AI to identify patterns. So what's the correlation between certain data sources? There's one, a group of visitors wearing wet coats. Does that have an impact on the environmental conditions? What's the optimal number of people that retail space to maximise their understand all those sorts of things were unanswered questions. So I engaged one of our Oxford Brookes relationships that we already had and we applied for what's called a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. So a KTP, which is match funded, that's Innovate UK match funded, and I highly recommend them as a starting point. And what that does, it brings in an associate who works full time. David Green: This project was, I think, 32 months, but also you get access to different parts of the university and in our case, we had access to the technical faculty as well as the business faculty. So you've got real experts in the field working with an associate that's embedded here, Lennon, that can help us solve that problem. And we're fortunate enough to win the application and the grant money and then we cloud on. So we called it a Smart Visitor Management System. That's the headline and really the two key subsystems of that was the customer insight and prediction. So we wanted to look at how we could predict business numbers. We know all of the knock on impacts of that in terms of better planning, reducing food waste, all those sorts of things. But then we also want to look at the visitor flow. David Green: So that's almost saying, "Well, where are visitors right now and where are they going to go next?" But they're the two sort of component parts. Kelly Molson: Such a brilliant introduction to AI as well, because I think it is such a current topic right now. And I was at a recent ALVA meeting where there was a phenomenal speaker talking about the implications of AI and the opportunities that it could bring. And I think there was a 50 - 50 split of the audience of 50% of them were terrified about this new technology and what it might potentially mean. And then 50% were really inspired by it and see these huge opportunities from it. But I think this is such a brilliant case study to show how it can be used to your advantage in a very non-scary way. David Green: I think with AI can be scary, but actually it's all about governance at the end of the day. And actually what we're doing is using machine learning to identify the patterns in large data sets to help us be better informed. Kelly Molson: What have been the benefits of implementing this kind of level of data reporting? So what have you been able to do that you couldn't previously do? David Green: Well, predictions is one. So ultimately we all budget. The first thing to probably say is that when we do contextual reporting, normally we access our data from a proprietary system and then bring it into some sort of spreadsheet and then try and tie it into a budget. That's sort of the first thing. It's really getting all of your data sets in a early. So we had budget, we had weather, we had advanced bookings, we had ticketing from different sort of platforms. And the starting point, before we talk too much about end benefits, were developing a data strategy in this centralised concept of a DataHub. So all of our data is in one place, and we're using APIs and direct connections and data signature Vennersys to bring data into one place. David Green: We also looked at platforms, environments, so were looking at Azure, we're a Microsoft business. So actually we decided Azure was the right sort of plan for us and we came up with a very broad strategy that said anything else we procure in the future has to best in class or it talks to the DataHub and often if it's best in class as an API. So you can get that information into one place. So that's the first thing. The joy of using something like Microsoft and other platforms are available, I would say, is to access the power platform. And the Power platform sort of answered the problem around how do we visualise our data, how do we automate some of our data and what data is missing and how can we collect it? David Green: So using things like Power BI and PowerApps, I think was really crucial. Once we had all of our sort of data organised, we had the pandemic and of course, one of the sort of big issues around predicting, certainly when you've got lots of data sets, you're trying to look at patterns in data and your data is finely structured, then you get hit by something like this and where are the patterns? What's changed? The business model completely changed. We were a 10% advanced booking business. Suddenly were either zero or 80 or 100 and then sort of now about 65. So that was a bit of a challenge as well. In terms of then looking at the missing data. And we'll talk a little bit maybe about sort of the centre network and how do we measure things in remote places. David Green: But ultimately the core of this project was the DataHub, the ability to bring everything into one place, ability to push that data out. So answering your question in a long winded way is really about getting the data into hands of people, to allow them to plan better, to be prepared for the day, what is likely to happen today, what are the patterns in that day? And this is where we develop things like a concept of similar day. So a similar day might be one that has similar number of pre bookings, has similar weather. We look at weather in terms of temperature, wind and rain. It might have a similarity in terms of an event day or a weekend or similar budget. And that concept allows us to look forward, which is great. The predictions tend to look at other things. David Green: So we have one naive prediction that looks at previous performance in terms of pre booking to predict forward. And then another one, we have what we call an adaptive prediction, which allows us to look at advanced bookings and then see the change in advanced bookings over time against budget, to then alert us to the fact that we might experience more visitors than expected on that particular day. Kelly Molson: Gosh, that's really powerful, isn't it? Does that mean that your team have access to kind of a dashboard that they can look at any given time and be like, “Okay, we can model next week based on these predictions?”David Green: Data is pretty much everywhere, so we have one really nice thing and we have this. When I built search platform was TV screens across all of our staff areas. We have a ten OD voltwim across Blenheim. Everyone has access to that data. And that could be how traffic is flowing on the driveway. We use ADPR to look at how busy traffic is outside of our park walls. We look at car park capacity. We look at how happy our staff are using what we call a mood metric. So we put those smiley buttons in staff areas to determine how well they think the day is going. So we have access to all of this sort of information, but also then sort of more business reporting through Power BI. David Green: So we have a series of what I've called sort of visual representations of activity, but also sort of data that we can export into Excel. So we do a lot of finance reporting as well through Power BI. Again, all reporting from that single source of the truth, which is the DataHub. And if anyone's going down this route, I always describe it, I call it the product hierarchy. I always describe it as the giant coin sorting machine, which means that we're comparing apples with apples. So if you've got a particular product type, let's say annual park or House park and gardens, or park and gardens, you budget against that item, against adult, child, concession, family, young adult, whatever, you create a product hierarchy that matches that to your actual ticketing sales. David Green: And it doesn't matter then who sells your ticket, you're matching to that same product hierarchy. So think of it as a giant column sourcing machine that then every five minutes builds that single source of the truth in a database, then can be report out either through digital screens locations or Power BI. So, lots of tunes. Kelly Molson: It's incredible that level of access that you can give people now that must have improved how the team feel about their working day. It must have really helped with kind of like team culture and team morale. David Green: Absolutely. One, it's about engaging. Our teams are really important. People are the most important commodity we have at Blenheim. So having a series of management accounts, they never see their impact of engaging our businesses and giving our business a really good time, focusing on that Net Promoter Score, giving them access to that information. So, well done, look at the impact is really important. So, yeah, it's been fairly transformational here at Blenheim. Kelly Molson: Wow. What do you think has been the biggest impact? David Green: I think access to the data, better planning, there's more to do. We're embedding these tools, people that trust these tools. It's no mean feat. So getting good. What's nice to see when things aren't coming through quite right or car park speeds and we say it is, it might be data pipeline that's got awry. People very quickly come to us and say, "It's missing." So, seven days a week our team is sort of monitoring and seeing people use it. Moodmetric is great. Our cleaners now, they clean our facilities based on usage because they can see how many people have used the loo's by using our sensor data. So that's again, it all impacts that Net Promoter Score. And I will say on Net Promoter, love it or hate it, Net Promoter Score is all about looking backwards. David Green: Typically what we try to do is to create the equivalent to on the day. What can we do about it right now? How busy is traffic flowing on a drive? Do we need to open another kiosk? How busy will the cafe get? Will we run out sandwiches? So we've got alerting looking at that comparison to similar day and are we trading above or below that? So again, we can send an alert to say, “Make some more sandwiches or do something else. The loos need a clean.” All of these sorts of things are built into the visitor management system to allow us to really optimise not just the visitor experience, but our staff engagement and experience as well. Kelly Molson: So you've got this really proactive approach to it, which actually makes you reactive on the day because you can move quicker, because you can make easier decisions about things. That's phenomenal. I love that the team have taken real ownership of that as well. I think embedding something like this, it can be quite challenging, right. People don't like change and these things feel a bit scary, but it feels like your team have really engaged with them and taken ownership of the system. David Green: Absolutely. It's no mean feat. Two challenges embedding something new like this. Absolutely. That's change management. The second thing is data pipelines, ensuring all of your sensors and everything is online and working. And when you're dealing with such high volume of data sets coming in, you really need to be absolutely on it. Second to the sort of broader and maybe more granular reporting, one other thing we've devised is a series of KPIs, which pretty much any attraction. David Green: Most might already have a series of KPIs, but KPIs to look forward. So actually in this moment in time, are we trading ahead or behind versus this time last year? So if you start comparing apples with apples at this moment in time, what was RMR's booking? We share these KPIs across the whole site and that could be relation to bookings or even spend per head versus budget spend per head for the next 30 days. David Green: Visually, we put these on all of our digital screens very quickly can identify when we need to do something, be driving that by marketing activity or celebrating success. We've got a very clear picture and that means everyone's along for the ride. Everyone gets access to this information. Kelly Molson: That's absolutely phenomenal. Joe, I'm going to come over to you now because I can only imagine what you were thinking when David came to you and said, "Right, we've got this idea, this is what we want to do." And you're one of the platforms. Vennersys is one of the platforms that has been working with him. I think it's quite a long relationship. Is it? It's about 16 years.Joseph Paul: 16, 17 years now, I think. Long relationship.David Green: Yeah. I was five. How old were you? Joseph Paul: Wasn't conceived yet. Kelly Molson: Wowzers. That is a long relationship. Okay, so I kind of want to know from you, Joe, to make this happen, what have you had to do differently as a supplier? So how have you had to interact with your clients' needs and what steps did you have to go to kind of understand what the outcome was going to be? Joseph Paul: Yeah, so I think firstly that the system has an enormous amount of data in it and I think the first step for us was to understand exactly what Blenheim were looking to get out of the system and plug into the sort of the DataHub that David was talking about. So that kind of comprised of some initial conversations of what they were trying to achieve. And then following that it was all about workshopping and making sure were going to present the data in the format that David and the team at Blenheim Palace required. Joseph Paul: Yeah, I think fundamentally it was just working closely with the team there and getting those requirements in detail and making sure weren't missing anything and really understanding everything they were trying to achieve and pushing that in a simple and easy format for the team to then push into their views and into their KPIs that they required. Really the main focus for us was pushing that data out to David and the team into that DataHub in that format that was easily accessible and sort of manipulated for them. Kelly Molson: I guess there's so much it's understanding what are the key know, what are the variables here, what are the key points that we need to do this and how do we go about doing this for you? Joseph Paul: Absolutely. Because there's a number of options and a number of different ways that data can be pushed to clients. So it's understanding what the best is for that client and their resource because that's also important. Not every attraction has unlimited resource or the expertise in house to sort of obtain that data, but also, even if they can obtain that data, they might not have that sort of resource to then create their own dashboards and create their own reporting tools from a repository. So it's really understanding every kind of asset and every level to that sort of client and then working closely with them to achieve their goal. So it might be more resource from our side or working closely with the expertise that they might have in house. Kelly Molson: Or suggesting that they might need to get extra expertise. So this is something that we talk about in terms of API integration all the time, is that it absolutely can be done with any of the systems that you have. If they have an API, yes, you can integrate it into whatever other system that you want. But who takes ownership of that internally? And do they have the capability and do they have the resource and do they have the capacity to do that? And if that's a no, who can be trained to do those things? And how do we facilitate that as well? Joseph Paul: Yeah, absolutely. And in this case, as David highlighted, he's clearly got the expertise himself and others around him to produce all these fantastic sort of views and dashboards that are displayed all around Blenheim Palace. So in this sort of example with Blenheim Palace, it was all about getting the data to them and making sure it was in a format that they could work with easily. Kelly Molson: And you've worked together, Joe, you said about six years. You've been at Vennersys now, but the organisation has worked with Blenheim for over 16 years, which is testament to the relationship and the product that you have. Has this process that you've been through together, has this changed or strengthened the kind of relationship between supplier and client? Joseph Paul: Yes, I think from our point of view, we like to see it as a partnership. I think David would agree, and we want to be a part of their journey, but also Blenheim and want to be a part of our journey. So we're helping one another to achieve our individual goals as a partnership. So that relationship goes from strength to strength and we continue to have those conversations, whether that's myself or others within the business, to Blenheim and pass around things that we're coming up against in the industry, but also vice versa. So if David's got his ear to the ground and has a suggestion around how our platform could be improved, that's fed back to us. Joseph Paul: And we have that back and forth between client and supplier, but we like to see it as a partnership and work closely with them to achieve their goals and also our goals together.David Green: I don't want to make Joe cry, because I've already made you cry, Kelly, but seriously, over that course of 17 years, and I'm sure lots of people listening to this podcast will realise that it's always challenging working with other suppliers. You have your ups and you have your downs, but we've had way more ups than we've had downs and our business has changed massively. We went through a process of becoming a charity, so suddenly gifted all the admissions was really important and Joe and the team really helped us achieve that. David Green: Vanbrugh was not a very good forward planner in terms of he was a great architect, but actually, we have a single point of entry and to try and gift aid so many visitors, we have a million visitors a year coming to them to try and gift aid such a large number on a driveway is really difficult. So actually, working through that gift aid at the gate process, we're looking at that gift aid opportunity was one of the key projects, really, that we work with Vennersys on. Kelly Molson: But that's where the good things come out of client supplier relationships, is that you're both challenging each other on what the objectives are and what the outcomes potentially could be. So you work in partnership together and then everybody gets the better outcome. When we first spoke about this topic, what I thought was brilliant is that you have such a great case study, you have such a great showcase piece here, both of you, for how you've worked together and what you've been able to develop. I've absolutely said that you need to pitch this as a talk at the Museum and Heritage Show because I think it's an absolutely brilliant topic for it. It's so current and something that other organisations can go away and kind of model on. Kelly Molson: I don't know if you saw, we had Nik Wyness on from the Tank Museum last season who came on and basically just he gives away his kind of process as to how they've developed their YouTube following and how they've developed kind of a sales strategy from it. And it's brilliant. He's great at kind of coming on and going, "Yeah, this is what I did, and this is what we did, and this is the process and here you go. Go and do it." And I think you have an opportunity to do that together, which I think is lovely. David Green: Isn't it nice though, that we don't feel in competition and we can work together? We created what we call The Continually Improvement and Innovation Group which we have lots of members who have joined from all different places, from Chatsworth to Be Lee to Hatfield Outs and so on and all that is a slack channel. It's a six monthly meeting where we all come together and we discuss our challenges. You talked about are there many head of innovations? Well, may not be, but actually sharing our insights and sharing our lessons learned is incredibly important and that's not just Blenheim, lots of other attractions are doing lots of brilliant things as well and we can learn from them. So really exciting, I think, to do that. David Green: And again, very open, I will say, and I'm not going to plug a gift aid company, but there's something called Swift Aid that we're just looking at and wow, can we do retrospective gift aiding? Is it worth lots of money for lots of attractions that have gift aid on their admissions? Yes, it is well worth looking that up. Ultimately they have a database of 8 million centralised gift aid declarations that you can utilise there's commission but it's well worth looking at. If anyone wants information, please just LinkedIn with me and we'll discuss them. Kelly Molson: Oh, I love that. Again, this comes back to what we've always said about how collaborative and open to sharing information this sector is. What we'll do is in the show notes listeners, we will link to both David and Joe's LinkedIn profiles. If you want to connect with them, feel free and then actually David, Joe, if there's anything you want to share that we can add into those as well that would be useful for listeners. Then we'll pop them in there as. Kelly Molson: Actually, David, I've got one more question for you on that Slack channel, which I think is really interesting. It's great that you've set that up. I think those kind of platforms are really good at just facilitating conversation and it's really good to understand what people are doing from a supplier perspective. Do you have suppliers as part of that conversation as well, or is it purely attractions? David Green: I've kept it, I'd say non commercial, but we have invited speakers into the group to come and talk about it. But at the moment it's a closed environment. I think most people are more comfortable having sort of open conversations, but what it's really good at doing is it could be a question about compliance or sustainability or returnable cuts is a good one. It could be varying topics and we can just provide access to the right people here at Blenheim and vice versa, and other organisations if we've got questions. So, yeah, it works, it's growing, it's open, it's not ours, it's everyone's. So if anyone wants to join it, then we'll stick a link at LinkedIn maybe on the plot cups at the end of this. Kelly Molson: Oh, Fab, that's brilliant. Yeah, great. I think that's a really nice way of doing it with suppliers as well. It's difficult, I think Joe and I would probably say all of these conversations are really interesting for us because it helps us understand the challenges that the sector has and it helps us understand how we can make the things that we do so much better. So it's hard sometimes when there's closed environments like that, but the sector does so brilliantly at putting on conferences and organisations that we can all be part of as well. And again, platforms like this where we can come on and share the things that we're doing.Kelly Molson: That brings me back to the last question for you, Joe, is about has this process between the two of you and what you've been able to build together, has that helped Vennersys  as a supplier build out other services that you can then offer to kind of the wider sector? Joseph Paul: Yeah, so I think through this journey we've realised that data is really critical, but we also realised, as we kind of mentioned before, that not everyone has the resource to build their own visualisations of data and linking those to their sort of key performance indicators. So we work with Power BI as well on behalf of our clients, so we can also visualise that data that's within our systems. And that's really to help them get the most out of the data that is in our system, but also in that sort of more real time scenario, rather than having to extract a report, put it that into an Excel and get that information out. Joseph Paul: So that's one service that's kind of come out of that relationship, but also expanding on our sort of open API as well. So additional endpoints so that clients can also extract that data in real time and that continues to grow with other clients as well as we sort of go down that journey with some other clients. So, absolutely. It's helped us sort of open up another avenue which has benefited other clients in the past couple of years, but also moving forward as we sort of expand on it.Kelly Molson: Brilliant. And that's the sign of true partnership, isn't it? There's been some incredible wins for both of you involved and it's brought new opportunities to both of the organisations. Thank you both for coming on and sharing this today. So we always end the podcast with book recommendations from our guests. So I wondered if you've both been able to pick a book that you'd like to share with our listeners today. What have you got for us? Joe, we'll start with you. Joseph Paul: Mine's a little bit out there. David Green: We know it's not Harry Potter, Joe. Kelly Molson: Absolutely not. Joseph Paul: Well, that would be a curveball if I started to plug the Harry Potter series. Hey. So recently, I was in Albania in Tirana and I was on a guided tour. And they were talking about the Ottoman period. And I realised I know nothing about the Ottoman history and I was interested about it more. Joseph Paul: So my in laws purchased a book called Lord Of The Horizons, which is all about the history of the Ottoman empire. So that's my current read at the moment. And if you're into your history and into your sort of empires, it's definitely worth a read. So that's my recommendation. The Lord of Horizons. Kelly Molson: Nice. Joe, we just got a little insight into some of your hobbies there and your likes that we didn't know about. Good. Okay. Thank you. David, what about you? David Green: Mine is The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wallaban. It's an incredible book. Now, I read lots of strategy books, data books. My wife thinks I'm really sad. This book is not any of that. This is about how trees communicate and I was absolutely enthralled with it. So this talks about them like arousal networks, how trees communicate through their roots, the noises and the sounds that trees make when they're struggling, when they're thirsty. It led to a lot of laughter on holiday with my daughter drawing pictures of trees with ears, but trees can actually hear. And from that, I was able to come back and look at one of our land projects where we're building a small solar farm at the moment, actually looking at the sort of benefits to soil health while we're putting solar on sort of fed degraded farmland. David Green: So we're using something called soil ecoacoustics that will allow us to listen to the sound of soil. So listen to soil for ultimately to index how healthy that soil is. So this one book has led to me reading a number of different research papers, cooking up with the universities to then test and trial something completely brilliant around identifying health through acoustics. So book is absolutely brilliant. There's a follow on book, but if you look at Peter Wallabin, he's written a number of books. Absolutely fascinating. Kelly Molson: Okay, wow. One, what an incredible book. I had no idea that trees could hear or talk. That's blown my mind a little bit, especially as someone who's a bit of a tree hugger. I'm not going to lie, I made a statement. I was with a client yesterday and were talking about AI. And I said, sometimes the conversations around AI just make me want to go outside and hug the tree in my back garden, take my shoes and socks off and just put my feet on the grass because I just want to connect with nature again and just get out of a tech world. So there's that. So I'm definitely going to buy that book. But two, how your mind works as well, how that book has taken you on a journey of innovation again into something connected but completely different.David Green: Again, it's really data. So you're welcome. We'll happily show you that site and put some headphones on you and we'll make this public as well, so hopefully we can share the secret sound of soil and other things as well. But really fascinating. Kelly Molson: That to me sounds like a David Attenborough show. Maybe we'll make it another podcast episode at some point. I'd love that. Thank you both for coming on and sharing today. As ever, if you want to win a copy of Joe and David's books, go over to our Twitter account, retweet this episode announcement with the words, I want Joe and David's books and you'll be in with a chance of winning them. Wow. Thank you for sharing. It's been an absolutely insightful podcast. There's lots of things that we're going to put in the show notes for you all. And as Joe and David said, please do. If you've got questions around what they've talked about today, feel free to connect and we'll pop a link to that Slack group in the show notes too, so you can join in with these conversations. Thank you both. David Green: Thank you. Joseph Paul: Thanks, Kelly. Kelly Molson:  Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast. The 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the report now for invaluable insights and actionable recommendations!

Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been a crucial part of the business world for nearly two decades. It was initially presented as the ultimate metric, the one to rule them all. Its simplicity and focus on customer satisfaction made it a darling of the industry. However, with the evolution of customer research and feedback analysis, the idea of NPS as the singular, all-encompassing metric is being questioned. Even though two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies still employ NPS, it is no longer considered the only measure of customer satisfaction. In this episode, we are joined by John Dawes, a professor at the Erenburg-Bass Institute, who will share his research on NPS. This episode will likely challenge what you know about NPS and shed light on some of its flaws. Our Guest Webpage: https://johndawes.info/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-dawes-059bab10/ Our Hosts: Follow our updates here: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/⁠⁠ Get in touch with our hosts: Marc Binkley: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/ Vassilis Douros: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/⁠ Links & Research: HBR - The One Number You Need to Grow https://hbr.org/2003/12/the-one-number-you-need-to-grow HBR - Where NPS Goes Wrong https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-net-promoter-score-goes-wrong Qualtrics - THe Ultimate Guide to NPS https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/net-promoter-score/ Int. Journal of Market Research: NPS - What Should Managers Know? https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14707853231195003 A longitudinal Examination of NPS and Firm Revenue Growth https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228660597_A_Longitudinal_Examination_of_Net_Promoter_and_Firm_Revenue_Growth Byron Sharp - NPS does not predict growth https://byronsharp.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/net-promoter-score-nps-does-not-predict-growth-its-fake-science/ Fred Reichheld - The Ultimate Question 2.0 https://www.amazon.ca/Ultimate-Question-Revised-Expanded-Customer-Driven-ebook/dp/B005E8AKVM/ref=sr_1_1 Why NPS is a bad tool and what to use instead https://archive.researchworld.com/why-net-promoter-score-is-actually-a-bad-tool-and-what-to-use-instead/ Brand Growth Potential https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-023-09682-7 How Brands Grow https://www.amazon.ca/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560 Timestamps 0:44 - Intro to John Dawes 2:24 - What NPS is and how it's measured. 3:50 - Why NPS benefits from extreme scoring 5:48 - The downside of the NPS scoring method 8:38 - Why 66% of Fortune 500 companies use NPS 10:40 - The false promise of high NPS scores 13:44 - The trouble with NPS-based incentives 16:46 - The disconnect between NPS scores and business performance 19:30 - The challenges of NPS with growing vs established brands 21:28 - The effectiveness of NPS vs. past sales as a predictor of future growth 26:02 - Are NPS detractors actually bad? 29:50 - Is NPS a superior metric to CSAT scores for predicting growth? 33:17 - What is NPS good for & what to ask instead 37:56 - Can Google Reviews replace NPS? 39:25 - Metrics better than NPS for predicting growth 42:53 - Can we put the NPS genie back into the bottle? 46:47 - If not NPS for growth, then what? 49:32 - 50 years of brand performance disproves loyalty as a growth driver 52:19 - How to find out more about John 54:01 - Post-pod with V and Marc Where to Listen: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-sleeping-barber-a-business-and-marketing-podcast/id1609811324 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF?si=7083317d5afd488b ⁠⁠ Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84MWVjYWJhNC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwji_oSOopP-AhXnlo4IHTZKBgYQ9sEGegQIARAC Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast © 2023 Sleeping Barber

In this episode, we launch our new show name: The Customer Confidential Podcast. We chose it after seeking lots of listener and guest input and believe that the new name better reflects the show's mission—namely, to delve into untold stories of customer and industry transformations, sharing the journeys of both well-known and unsung heroes of customer centricity. We also seek out deep conversations with the thought leaders who inspire the best practitioners.  Also, in this episode, which also marks our 10th anniversary, host Rob Markey welcomes back frequent guest (and Rob's longtime mentor) Fred Reichheld, Bain fellow and founder of Bain's Loyalty practice. Rob and Fred trace the evolution of Fred's earned growth rate concept from its roots in Fred's early work on customer retention at Bain. They unravel the intricacies of customer-centric metrics and how they have changed. They note the impact of genuine referrals vs. those that are bought and differentiate between earned and purchased growth. Importantly, they acknowledge and explore challenges in quantifying earned growth and how some companies have begun to tackle them successfully. Guest: Fred Reichheld, Bain fellow, founder of Bain's Loyalty practice, and author of Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers

Learn how you can fight gender bias so women leaders can succeed  As you know, I do a lot of work around women leadership. The title of my second book is Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business, and I have recently co-written with Edie Fraser and Robyn Freedman Spizman a third book, Women Mean Business: Over 500 Insights from Extraordinary Leaders to Spark Your Success, due out September 26th. So I'm all about helping women in business succeed. My guest today, Jennifer McCollum, is the same, having dedicated the last 20 years of her career to helping leaders and teams and organizations fulfill their potential, particularly women leaders. She helps women find their passion and their purpose, and I'm thrilled to have her on today's podcast. Her mission is to change the face of leadership by accelerating the advancement of women leaders. Mine too. Listen in, learn, and please share. Watch and listen to our conversation here Nine key takeaways from our discussion today 1. Clarity is much more challenging for women than it is for men. It's one of the biggest hurdles that women face. And by clarity, I mean, if I were to ask you, Look ahead one year, three years, five years…what does success look like for you in your life, in your role, in your environment? 2. Women tend to define success through the lens of others: my team's success, my company's success, my family's success. As a woman, you need to develop the skill of creating clarity for you, your own future. 3. Jennifer's new book, In Her Own Voice: A Woman's Rise to CEO: Overcoming Hurdles to Change the Face of Leadership, takes 25 years of Linkage data and research and calculates what it will take to accelerate the advancement of women in terms of the unique challenges that women face on their path to leadership and how we can all support approaching gender equity in the workforce. 4. Gender bias has been internalized, so much so that we women may be preventing our own advancement, consciously or unconsciously. 5. We know that women and men ask for things equally. It could be money or title, but it also could be resources or flexibility or staff. But women tend to retreat when they're told no. And we can learn a lot from our male counterparts who tend to go back in. So how do you make the ask, when do you make the ask? 6. All leaders need to be developed, but women need to understand the unique hurdles they face. We don't need to fix the women. They're fabulous leaders. We need to help them in overcoming the obstacles that exist to their advancement. 7. At the CEO level, we've just crossed the 10% barrier in terms of the number of CEOs who are women. But of those, only 1% are women of color. 8. The numbers still aren't changing quickly enough. We have about 28% women in the executive leadership ranks and 26% in the leadership ranks, the VP level. But as you go down, director all the way to the manager level, we're just not making enough progress at all. 9. All of us can do something. All of us may not be in positions of power and influence to be executive sponsors but all of us are in a position to be allies. How to connect with Jennifer You can reach out to Jennifer on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or the Linkage website, or send her an email at jenniferscherermccollum@gmail.com. For a deeper dive into women and leadership, check out these 3 blogs:  Blog: What Can Women Do To Challenge Gender Stereotypes In The C-Suite? Blog: How Can Women Overcome The Roadblocks To Building Their Businesses? Blog: Best Tips And Tricks For Women To Work In Male-Dominated Industries Additional resources for you My two award-winning books: Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business and On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights Our website: Simon Associates Management Consultants Read the transcript of our podcast here Andi Simon: Hi, welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I'm Andi Simon, I'm your host and your guide. And as you know, my favorite listeners, our job is to help you get off the brink. How do we do that? We want you to see, feel and think in new ways and understand that change is painful. On the other hand, if you begin to get the kinds of tips and tricks to begin to see things in a new way, you go, Oh, that's how it's done. That's how someone else did it. And I can as well. So I have a wonderful guest with us today, Jennifer McCollum. Jennifer and I met through the Women Business Collaborative, and it's a wonderful organization for women of all kinds and all companies to come and participate as we collaborate to propel women forward. But Jennifer is here today because I just love what she's doing to help train and develop women so that they can become the best that they can be. So, Jennifer, thank you for being here today. I appreciate it. Now, let me tell you about Jennifer and then she's going to tell you about herself. And as you know, in our format, she does a much better job than I can. But here's Jennifer. Jennifer grew up in an entrepreneurial home in Germany. And there's a story there, I'm sure. And her unique childhood not only instilled in her grit and resourcefulness and an ironclad work ethic, but she describes herself as a hustler by 15 and a desire to help others, which I think is the important part here, to excel like she has to her full potential. You know, someone in our past offers us an opportunity to do something in our future, and sometimes we're not aware of it, but all of a sudden we go, Oh, I did that. Someone else can do a little bit more. She's on a mission to help talented women rise higher and higher in positions of leadership. And on the other side of that, to help organizations understand how to enable them to do just that, to create the cultures where women can excel, thrive and together, men and women can really do better. The winding road she's traveled led to her current position as CEO of Linkage. Linkage is now part of the SHRM organization (Society for Human Resource Management) and together they have visions for how to take Linkage, quite frankly, to a new place. It's really going to be exciting. She oversees the strategic direction and global operations of the leadership development firm. The mission is to change the face of leadership. It's dedicated more than 35 years to advancing women and accelerating inclusion in leaders and organizations. Jennifer is an acclaimed speaker, a consultant and author, and I love the fact that her book is coming out in November. So we're going to time this so that you can see it. She's going to show you a picture of it in her own voice. It's got a really interesting story to it. And it's a very important time for her to share where she is. And that's what this whole podcast today is about. My last little thought, because I sometimes forget this myself, she's a wonderful mother of three children, all guys. And I say guys because they're sort of grown up children and I have a happy husband and they love to travel. She loves to ski. And Jennifer and I have a lot in common. So today's talk is going to be very collaborative. Jennifer, thank you for coming today. Jennifer McCollum: It's always very humbling to have someone else talk about you and introduce you. So I appreciate you. Andi Simon: Well, you know, sometimes you say, Who is that she's talking about and laugh sometimes because we haven't heard of ourselves. It's hard to get a mirror that looks at you and says, Oh, that's who I am. Jennifer, it's important for the audience to know more about you. That bio is lovely, but at the end of the day, who is Jennifer? Tell us about your journey and then how do we get to the next stage where you're helping women? All kinds of different ways. Please, who's Jennifer? Jennifer McCollum: That's such a big question. I have dedicated the last 20 years of my career to helping leaders and teams and organizations fulfill their potential. And there's been a really special place in my purpose and my passion around helping women leaders. So even back, you know, 30 years ago, I was creating pro bono visioning webinars to help women leaders find their passion and find their purpose and as luck would have it, I ended up five years ago as the CEO of Linkage. And as you said, our mission is to change the face of leadership. A big chunk of our work is focused on accelerating the advancement of women leaders, but also helping all leaders become more inclusive and purposeful. I can take you back a little bit further. I have 20, 22, 23 years in the leadership space. I run leadership businesses at publicly traded companies. Now, at Linkage, which was just sold to a wonderful organization called SHRM. Before that, I grew up at the Coca-Cola Company and traveled around the world working on the Olympics and the World Cups and sports marketing. And then I evolved my career into leadership at the Coca-Cola Company and beyond. Andi Simon: People often ask about our own journeys. You know, I'm an anthropologist, but I'm also an entrepreneur, and I was a corporate executive. How do you know where you're going? Early in those years, are we sampling? Have I found myself? People talk about imposter syndrome. As I said, I've always been an imposter. I was never quite sure I was competent or capable. Others saw me that way and I said, Oh, that's interesting. How about yourself? Was there a plan to your journey or did you just sort of make it happen? Jennifer McCollum: I love your use of the word sampling. I would even expand that into dabbling. So, you know, this was advice that was given to me early on in my career and if it's helpful to others, this was a senior executive at Coca-Cola who said, “In your 20s, try a lot of things. Don't worry about money, don't worry about titles. Try and get a sense of what you're good at and what you're passionate about.” So through my 20s, yes, I started in public relations and sports marketing and evolved into public affairs, but I knew in my 20s, somewhere around 26 or 28, that I was good at it, but it wasn't fueling my passion or my purpose. So then the executive said, “Okay, in your 30s, really double down and take a lot of risks and figure out where you can apply your skills and your passion.” And it was in my 30s that I jumped ship from Coca-Cola to the world of the internet. And it was part of the first internet kind of boom and bust. And that gave me the confidence to then create my own consulting firm. And so I became a consultant in the leadership space. Coca-Cola had trained me to do that, and that's where I really started to find what drove me. And so I was working with leaders and teams all around the world, but really buoyed by Coca-Cola's belief in me, and that was my launchpad to becoming a consultant in the leadership space. And then the executive said, “In your 40s, put your head down and work really hard. Make a lot of money so you can retire in your 50s.” What that meant to me was actually doubling down on what my passion was. So throughout my 40s, I went back to the publicly traded world. I worked for multiple companies, running businesses and the leadership development space, and really then found that it actually wasn't the designing and the delivering of the consulting as much as the management and the growing of the businesses designed to make the world's leaders a better place. And I have to say, now in my 50s, it's a beautiful decade to be. I feel so aligned to that purpose. Andi Simon: Well, and part of what you're sharing is that we can plan, but part of it is knowing ourselves. And I don't think that's inconsequential. It's not the job. It's really getting to know what makes us. You know, the good news is, you were very successful regardless of which of those jobs you were in. But now the question is, what's my purpose? You know, what have I mastered? And how do I have the autonomy to go and do that in a way that gives me great pleasure. And I smile when I wake up every day. It's pretty cool. Jennifer McCollum: And you're hitting something really important, and I'll call that clarity. And sometimes that's the discovery of purpose, discovery of strength, discovery of passion. Some of us are lucky enough to grow up knowing exactly what we want to do, exactly the contribution we want to make in the world. That actually isn't the case for most of us. And there's this process and this is actually much more challenging for women than it is for men. It's one of the biggest hurdles that women face. And by clarity, we mean, if I were to ask you, Look ahead one year, three years, five years…what does success look like for you in your life, in your role, in your environment? Women tend to define that through the lens of others: my team's success, my company's success, my family's success. And so that we call it the kind of the skill, the muscle of creating clarity for you, for your own future is something that I've worked really hard at from my 20s, which gave me the confidence to leave Coca-Cola all the way now into my 50s. And I do it very regularly. Andi Simon: That point of clarity is so interesting because I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I spent 20 years in corporate in a very entrepreneurial fashion, and nobody quite knew what an anthropologist in business was supposed to do so I could play that one out all the time. And you found that people weren't quite sure if I should have a PhD or not. But I began to think that I knew I wanted to be in my own business and after 9/11, I said, good timing. So that's 22 years ago. But like you, I knew who I was. I'm a creator, I'm an entrepreneur now. How do I do that in a way that can be very successful? And I always thought of it for our clients being the beneficiaries of who we are and what we can do. So that's what we do, then what they need. So it's a really interesting story. You share now that you're at a point that your book is very much of a cataclysmic moment. You know, it's important. Books are important. You know, my third book is coming out in September. And every time I write a book, it's less about the book than about what it can do to help others. And I have a hunch this new book is very full of wisdom that you want to share. And I would just love you to tell the story to our listeners about it because they will walk away saying, Oh, I gotta get that book. Tell me what's in the book. Jennifer McCollum: Well, and thank you for asking, and going back to the clarity. If you look back on the vision documents that I created all the way back into the early 2000s, it always says, I am an author, I am a speaker, I am on stages impacting thousands. And it is now finally the result of a lot of hard work and you've done multiple of these. This is my first book. This is the executive summary, In Her Own Voice: A Woman's Rise to CEO: Overcoming Hurdles to Change the Face of Leadership. It's actually coming out in November, so anyone can pre-order it. But what I am so excited about for this book is, it takes 25 years of Linkage data and research and frameworks and experience on what it will take to accelerate the advancement of women. It puts it together with very personal stories, not only my stories, but other CEO and C-suite women, to help all of us, women and men, understand what are the unique challenges that women face on their path to leadership and how we can all support approaching gender equity in the workforce far faster than the World Economic Forum is predicting, somewhere around the 125 year mark. Andi Simon: Well, 125 years is almost impossible to imagine since you and I want it to happen tomorrow. My question is always about why it's so hard to see the opportunities. And it's two sides. Part of it is the way women see themselves in others. And part of it is the way our society and our culture see men and women and their different roles. In the book, though, you've really begun to master to lay this out. Talk to me a little bit without giving away too much about the thinking behind it In Her Own Voice. The title itself is telling you a great deal, right? Jennifer McCollum: So you framed it perfectly. There's really two sides to this. One is what we have more control over as women leaders. So deepening our understanding not of the external bias that exists in the world. And we could talk a lot about that another time. And it's real, but it's really how that bias has been internalized and how we may be preventing our own advancement, consciously or unconsciously. So just to give you a little sneak preview, Linkage has studied and we support it through coaching and assessment and development and our big Women in Leadership Conference. We support the individual woman leader and overcoming some of those hurdles. The top three are clarity, which is what we just talked about. The second one is proving your value, where women tend to give and say yes and volunteer to more and more and more. And we call it putting your head down and overthrowing the boat, hoping that someone will notice and they usually don't. And then the third one is making the ask. So we actually know that women and men ask for things equally. It could be money or title, but it also could be resources or flexibility or staff. But we know that women tend to retreat when they're told no. And we can learn a lot from our male counterparts who tend to go back in. So how do you make the ask, when do you make the ask? So those are three of the seven or eight hurdles that we cover. The other side of this, which I love that you framed it this way, is what can organizations do? We actually call that the organizational surround. And we study these things. We know that there are very specific levers organizations need to pull. The first is around their culture. Do women feel valued? Do they feel like they belong? The second one is around their talent systems. Is there equity in the talent systems, all the way from acquisition to pay to high potential selection to succession? The third one is what we call executive action and commitment. This is one of the lowest scoring ones and this is, are the executives truly committed to advancing women leaders? Are they doing more than saying the right things? Are they actually doing and modeling and sponsoring women or other underrepresented populations? And then the fourth one is the one that Linkage does a lot of work in, and that's leadership development for women. So again, we know that, you know, all leaders need to be developed, but women need to understand the unique hurdles they face and they need some, you know…we don't need to fix the women. They're fabulous leaders. We need to help them in overcoming the obstacles that exist to their advancement. Andi Simon: You know, as an anthropologist and I also have three leadership academies for three different kinds of organizations, the questions are very profound and very important to me in the work that we do, as well as to my emerging leaders who are trying to understand all this. But I often find that people don't know what to do. They say the words, they have good intentions, but then when the time comes for action, they go back to old habits. And we know so much about the neurosciences and the brain and the cognitive sciences, that the habits are very comfortable. And so they go to whatever they learned early, whatever happened to them that seemed to work okay. And the idea of moving out into a foreign place where they're uncomfortable, the amygdala hijacks the whole idea and says, That's dangerous, go away. And so part of the work that we do is almost like theatrical performance. I said, We're going to change. You used to play Macbeth, and I share this with you because the metaphor seems to be comfortable for people to get. And now you're going to play Hamlet. And in Hamlet, the women get promoted and they get advanced. But you don't have a script for it and you haven't had any rehearsal time. And both of you need to play a different role in a different theater. That is life. And I share that with you because what I realized without rehearsal time, they don't practice. They don't know what it is they're going to do. Have you found the same or do you have a different perspective on it? Jennifer McCollum: Well, interestingly, I would actually use that kind of frame on both sides. So first, let's talk about the women themselves. And yes, what is comfortable we can extract you from your workplace. We can develop and coach and assess and send you to very inspirational conferences and you will go back into the workplace if left to your own devices. It's scary. It's uncomfortable. How do you start to flex that new muscle? And so in our very best, you know, clients and the very best scenarios, women are doing this through community, so they're not doing it alone. And we will have, and I'll give a big shout out to Disney as an example. Disney will send 100 to 150 women to our conference across their business units, but they bring them together and then they find ways to keep them together in communities so they're supporting each other. Andi Simon: Before you go on to the second, let me emphasize to the viewer or the listener that we're monkeys. We model ourselves over watching others. And so that community isn't inconsequential. Because if I think, This is what they want me to do and I don't see anyone else doing it, I flee it. But if I watch someone else doing it, I can model it and bond over it. So those communities aren't inconsequential. They're essential. Does that make it consistent with what you're saying? Jennifer McCollum: I'll go to my second point in a minute, but just based on that, I want to give you a really specific example this weekend. So it was the 4th of July weekend. I'm part of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Organization. It means the world to me to be part of this. There were a couple hundred people in the group. About 150 of us gathered in Nashville just a few days ago. And this group is full of authors, thought leaders, academics, CEOs, coaches.  It's an incredibly inspiring group. Three quarters of the group are like you. They have published book after book and they're very confident as authors and thought leaders. So I showed up at this event. I have a box of 200 of these and my literary agent has said, You will ensure that this gets in the hands of every one of that network. I got there and I realized something was going on with me. I'm incredibly confident as a CEO. I'm confident as a team leader and manager and mentor. I'm confident as a mother, a wife and a friend. I took that box. We call these things monographs, and I hid them behind the piano at the Belmont Auditorium in Nashville, this beautiful auditorium. And the monographs are hidden in a box. And I would take one out at a time and would kind of sheepishly show one person at a time. And finally, it took a group. There happened to be this group of women that were surrounding me. And they said, Well, where can I get one of these? And said, Well, they're in a box behind the piano. And they said, What is wrong with you? Here you are a thought leader, an author, and you're hiding your gifts behind the piano. And it hit me that I needed that monkey tribe, right? I needed a community to help build my confidence. And it was such a big lesson for me. I was trying something new. I'm flexing a new muscle. Okay, so that's that story. Well, that's not going to go to the second piece. Andi Simon: Don't lose that story because for the viewer or the listener, those are the kinds of stories that will change the way you think about what you're doing. And when you go to that meeting, you're going to hand out business cards. And I've heard people say, I've left the meeting because I didn't feel comfortable. I said, Push, go in there, hand out those cards. Be real. Next point. Jennifer McCollum: So well, and actually, just to finish that, on that point, when this is a huge problem with women, we call it recognized confidence.  And it's another one of the hurdles. Look, you mentioned imposter syndrome just a little while ago when we were getting ready for this call. We know you can't beat confidence into anyone. You also can't beat imposter syndrome out of someone. But here's what you can do. You can develop the skills to promote yourself like I was trying to do over the last couple of days. But if you don't feel ready to do that, I wasn't ready to self-promote as an author. I phoned a friend and this is what women can do a lot better. Surround yourself with people, women or men who will help hand out that card. What happened was, they started grabbing 10 and 20 and were handing them out for me. And the response I got from people overwhelmingly helped me build that confidence. So that's kind of another tip and trick to phone a friend. You don't have to do it on your own. This was okay. Well, what if, you know, we invest in companies? Do they invest all the time in their women leaders? And those women leaders come back full of hope and confidence and optimism, but their companies don't change. Their manager doesn't understand what they've been through. They don't get access to that stretch assignment. The talent systems don't change. The executives don't really act on what they've learned or what they've invested in. And this is one of the biggest challenges. And I'll tell you another story. And he's one of my favorite ones, Tom Greco, who has up until recently been the CEO of Advanced Auto, a big client of ours. I was on a webinar with him about a year ago when they launched their Women in Leadership program, and he said, “As the CEO, I will tell you, our leadership does not represent our customer base. We need more women. We need more people of color. And I have done this before when I worked for Frito-Lay and Pepsi, and I am going to commit to this and I will become a sponsor. My direct reports, their direct reports. By the way, there are 2025 of us and we are overwhelmingly white men. And that is going to change on my watch.” So that's an example of executive commitment in action, and that's what companies need to do. What do they need to do proactively to change their culture, proactively to change their talent systems. And we help with that as well. Andi Simon: And I'll add one more dimension because I've had to work with boards who are also the white guys. And even if the executives were advocating, they always often rolled their eyes as if this was a sidebar, not the bar. And conversations at board meetings weren't about…I can't tell you how many times I was the only woman on that board and or at a board meeting where there were 49 men and just me. We didn't say very much. And people said to me, That sounds like a joke, depending on what time in our evolution it was. But the point is that there are different barriers along the way to transformation. And to your point, if the leadership really commits to it, now the question is, How do the the men, the women and the leadership begin to see a different reality, almost a different visual of the whole world that we're living in with a whole different interactions and training each other to talk to each other? It's like a foreign language coming together. Jennifer McCollum: And I'm glad you mentioned the board level there. I mean, as you and I both know, being very deeply entrenched in the Women's Business Collaborative where we are making the most progress is that the board level now, it's not as fast as we would like, but we are making more progress there than anywhere else. At the CEO level, we've just crossed the 10% barrier in terms of the number of CEOs who are women. You know, only 1% are women of color. So we can talk about that separately where we tend to focus as we move down in the pipeline. The numbers still aren't changing quickly enough. So we've got about 28% women in what I'll call the executive leadership ranks and 26% in the leadership ranks, kind of the VP level. And then as you go down, director all the way to the manager level, we're just not making enough progress at all. And so it takes a couple of things. One, we can't wait for CEOs or boards to become enlightened all at once. We've got to focus on this from many different lenses. And one thing I love, especially because I know your listeners are a very broad range across gender, across role, across age and across experience. All of us can do something. And I talk a lot about this spectrum, from allyship to mentorship to coaching, all the way up to executive sponsorship. All of us may not be in positions of power and influence to be executive sponsors. All of us are in a position to be allies. In fact, that's what happened to me this weekend. The people who surrounded me said, Look, phone a friend, I'm going to help you. They were all my allies and it was a really beautiful thing. Andi Simon: Well, but your story is a very powerful one as well, because in some ways you weren't sure how to ask for their support, but they saw an opportunity to reach out and help someone who wasn't mentoring, wasn't sponsoring, it was collegiality, in a very sorority-like fashion. But I have a hunch that the guys began to catch on to some of this as well. And I do think that there is a desire to do better. Do you have any of the data to share on why the diverse, inclusive companies do better and why that's so hard to get people to pay attention to? Jennifer McCollum: Even have an anecdote. The data is so clear. Andi, you and I have seen all the various studies around when you have diversity. We can talk about gender diversity. We can talk about racial diversity. Those were where most of the studies sit. But whether it's at the board level, at the C-suite level or at the leadership level, whether it's financial metrics like revenue and margin or whether it's operational metrics like more effective decision making and better innovation, or whether it's internal metrics like engagement and retention. By and large, gender diversity and racial diversity, by every single count, it's better. So here's my favorite story. Dr. Tanya Matthews is the CEO of the International African American Museum. It's just opening now in Charleston. So if you're in the Charleston area, run to that museum. And about two years ago, we were thinking about writing this book. And in all of my presentations, I was leading with a lot of the data. And I finally just got fed up and said, Dr. Tanya, I don't understand why it's just so mind blowing that the data is so clear and any rational leader in a position of power to hire or promote diversity, why don't they just do it? And she said, and I quote, “Girl, if it were all about the numbers, we would have solved this problem a long time ago.” I can hear her saying that. I love her so much. And she said, “The forces for change have to be more powerful than the forces for the status quo.” That is true, that it's not going to be numbers and data. It's going to be appealing to the head and the heart, appealing to the emotion of fathers with daughters saying, I want something different for my daughter. I want to make sure that if she wants to be a CEO, she has a better chance than 10% of the Fortune 500. Or It's the Tom Grecos of the world. “I need my staff to be reflective of my customer base.” And that's not everybody that's ready and aware. But that's where our starting point is at Linkage. We choose the clients who have, that awareness in that readiness. Andi Simon: Well, and that's a good point to try to work with a client who hasn't come to their own aha moment or the realization of it is very difficult because you're going to be pushing this ball up the hill. But your point about the data shouldn't be underestimated because as an anthropologist, we learned early that out of context data do not exist. And I used to teach a course “Is your data talking to you and can you hear it?” And it's the hearing part, because you'll take that data and manipulate it to do anything you like with it, including ignoring it. You know, doctors love to delete the data that don't conform to the way they like to do things. Learned that early on. But to your point, the data is very compelling and whether it's your KPIs or whatever else you're looking to achieve as a leader, make sure that you've got alignment around that with the right people who can get you there, as opposed to pointing fingers, complain and blame and find all kinds of excuses because often the resources are there and the gap is not that you don't have the resources, it's that you're not using them wisely. And to your point, then that requires a different mindset, a different set of values. And my last point before I go back to you is that we decide what the heart and the eyes, and that's extremely important. The data is in the head. I've got to see it. So storytelling with the data is not inconsequential. What does this tell you? Jennifer McCollum: I guess the other thing I'd say is, what are you tracking? We spend a lot of time with our clients who say, We're tracking our talent acquisition. We're tracking our diversity metrics and we're tracking our retention. And, you know, we just say, You know what, that's great. Those are all leading indicators. You've got to get ahead and start tracking the leading indicators. So when McKinsey a year ago reported that there's a huge issue at the director level, so for every one woman who is promoted, two women leave. At Linkage, we weren't surprised by that at all because we've been tracking. We've got about 20,000 women in our database and with our Women in Leadership Institute every year, we're gathering thousands and thousands of women's perceptions around their organization. So we're actually at a macro level looking at what do they feel, what do they think about their culture, their talent systems, their executive action and their leadership development as a woman, But also what is their commitment, their engagement, their values fit and their net promoter score? And by every count, especially the Net Promoter score, that director level was a zero, which basically meant, Don't believe anything. They didn't care at all to promote that their company was a great place to work for women, and their commitment was less than 50% which said, if I'm offered another job that is similar to yours, I'm out of here. McKinsey's The Great Breakup is grounded in, unfortunately good data, bad experiences. “I see what's happening. I'm not stupid. I'm out of here. And I'd rather go, being, you know, a success in my own business.” You were or I am. And not to fuss around with this other system that's evaluating us in a way that I can't get ahead. So I often say, Look, we know, and this is super interesting. I mean, you may remember, many more women lost their jobs during Covid than men. And there was this big concern across 2020 and 2021 that women in the workforce were the lowest that they'd been since the 1980s. And there was this thought that, Oh, my gosh, this is going to not only delay gender equity by a decade, which is what the World Economic Forum came up with, but how long is it going to take us to get back to above where we were with women in the workforce in the 80s? It only took two years. The women all came back to the workforce. But it's not that women are leaving the workforce, it's that they're leaving you. They're leaving your organization. And so, our question to the organization is, Look, if you're having trouble retaining women and attracting women, that's on you. Why is that? Let us help you figure that out. Andi Simon: Oh, I could tell you many stories. I'm not going to share them for now. We are just about ready to wrap up. You and I could talk for much longer about an issue of great importance to both of us, mostly because we both have lived our ways through this, personally and professionally, and we have a bigger purpose, which is to help others and their organizations really understand the richness that comes with diversity of all kinds: cognitive diversity and challenging ideas, beginning to see curiosity, all kinds of things that will open up possibilities for them. I enjoyed this tremendously. Jennifer, one or two things you'd like to end with so that folks can remember the wisdom that you've brought today. Jennifer McCollum: I'm happy to offer a few things. I'm at a really interesting, pivotal point in my career with the book coming out. And as we integrate Linkage into SHRM, it's kind of like landing the plane on a five year journey. And I always think these are really important inflection points in life. So I'll leave with two things that are really helpful for me. If they're helpful for your listeners, I hope so. Number one is, grab the opportunity when you see it. And this takes tremendous courage. And I'll go back to my first leadership role in a publicly traded company when I was running a business unit and my peers left and I saw the opportunity to run a much bigger part of the organization. And just as my boss was saying, we need to get your peer replaced. I went in and said, I don't want him replaced. I want to run it. And so I'm now thinking about what that looked like at this stage in my career? So that's the first thing. And the second thing that goes along with that is, don't move quickly until you have that clarity. And I can tell a lot of stories about how I jumped reactively a little bit earlier, just even five years ago in my career and made a mistake because I wasn't clear about what I wanted. So you're the entrepreneur. I'd worked at multiple publicly traded companies and I landed in that sweet spot of the private equity-backed small to mid-market company. And that was my landing place, but only because I gained clarity. So I will offer up those two things. And finally, if you are a woman who aspires to advance in her career, or a man or woman who aspires to support the women leaders in your life, please, please, please consider In Her Own Voice. It launches November 13th, but it's on pre-order on Amazon now. Andi Simon: And I know Amazon awaits you with joy, as does Jennifer. Jennifer, this has been joyful. If they would like to talk to you further, is there a best place where they can reach you? LinkedIn or someplace else? Jennifer McCollum: Absolutely. So Jennifer McCollum, Linkage CEO, a SHRM company. I am available on LinkedIn. And you can also go to our website at Linkageinc.com. And Simon: And as you can tell, Jennifer is a wonderful mentor, sponsor, colleague, idea person. And sometimes you just want to use her time very wisely. But also the book is full of her thinking that will help you as you begin to pursue your own career. And there is no straight line. The one thing you should understand is that while you may think there's a goal at the end here, there's really a path that takes you there. And the path is as much fun when you look back on it and as it is to be certain. Humans want certainty. It doesn't work that way. So I want to thank all of you who come to our podcasts and who who put us above the 5% globally of all podcasts, which is really an honor. We enjoy sharing with you and our book, Women Mean Business, comes out September 26th. It is a compilation of 102 women who share their wisdom with you. And if you think of the two books as a collage, you're going to have lots of interesting points of insight, and they always say, turn a page and change your life. That's what we're all about. How do we help you become the best that you can be? My other books are available on Amazon: On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights is about anthropology and how it can help your business. And Rethink: Smashing The Myths of Women in Business is about women who smashed the myths of women in business. We keep wanting to help you change. And so today I will say goodbye with great joy. Jennifer, thank you for joining me. It's been fun and I love your conversations. We'll be back. Bye bye now.

  Fred Reichheld really needs no introduction, but here are some highlights. The founder of quantitative loyalty, Fred is best known as the creator of the Net Promoter® system of management used worldwide as THE loyalty predictor in business. According to The New York Times, he put loyalty economics on the map. But while he was trained in economics and is known for his work in quantifying the link between loyalty and profits, in this conversation Fred really wants us to focus on why it makes sense to treat people right. Listen in to hear why making shareholders rich is not the main purpose of companies – it is actually enriching people's lives. And wait until you hear his views on how NPS has been misused by many! About our Guest: Fred Reichheld is a Bain Fellow and founder of our Loyalty practice, which helps companies achieve results through customer and employee loyalty. He is the creator of the Net Promoter® system of management. His work in the area of customer and employee retention has quantified the link between loyalty and profits. Fred's books, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value (HBSP 1996); Loyalty Rules! How Today's Leaders Build Lasting Relationships (HBSP 2001); The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth (HBSP, 2006) and The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer Driven World (HBR Press) have each become best sellers. In his most recent book, Fred reveals how NPS practitioners including Apple Retail, Philips, Schwab, Allianz, American Express, and Intuit, have used the Net Promoter System (NPS) to generate extraordinary results. He explains how NPS helps companies become truly customer-centric, unleashing profitable growth through systematically converting more customers into promoters and fewer into detractors. WVU Marketing Communications Today: Marketing Legends is presented by the West Virginia University Reed College of Media, which offers renowned online master's degree programs in Marketing Communications.  

In this episode, Troy interviews Robert Gauvreau, the Founder, and CEO of Gauvreau Accounting Tax Law Advisory based in Peterborough, Canada. Robert has set up his own professional accounting firm to provide proactive accounting, advisory, and taxation services to businesses, practicing professionals, and individuals to create a public accounting firm focusing on 3 fundamental principles. From working at a global firm as someone who's gone through a public accounting background, now running a professional accounting firm that provides the highest quality proactive accounting, taxation planning, and client services. Gauvreau was established in 2008 and has been in operation for over 15 years. Became an award-winning licensed public accounting firm with over 10 million dollars in annual revenue and has 84 people that are all across Canada.  Robert mentioned that resilience needs to be something that every business owner can deal with and cope with because it's not easy to handle and it can also affect the workflow of business. So he added, “The reason that so many businesses fail, number one is they run out of cash, 82% of businesses that fail. They run out of cash flow, not because they're not the smartest people, but they don't have the best business plan.”  This Cast Covers: Sharing his journey from working at a global firm to starting his own gig by managing a public accounting firm. Specializes in providing proactive accounting, advisory, and taxation services to businesses, practicing professionals, and individuals. Growing from $200k in revenue in the first year up to cracking the $10 million number this year with 84 people that are all across Canada. Offers a MILLIcoaching program that helps business owners grow and scale and earn their first million dollars a year. States how spending time with business owners in the proactive space and connecting with people regularly can enhance the understanding and unity on making the business succeed. Admitted into fellowship with CPA Canada at the young age of 26. A lifetime achievement award for being a professional. Takes ethics, integrity, and professional competence very seriously. Focusing on making relationships that have a huge network of business coaches, and starting to test value add opportunities to contribute to those markets. With a Net Promoter score of 73.2 in his 100% of commitment. Gives practical pieces of advice on how to make a good partnership works. Links:  Bob's Linkedin Bob's Facebook Bob's Instagram Additional Resources: Gauvreau Accounting Tax Law Advisory  The Wealthy Entrepreneur by Robert Gauvreau The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek     Quotes: “Change is hard for people, then merging two cultures together is tenfold harder.” —Robert Gauvreau “You can actually go to your competitors, and tell them exactly what you're going to do. Share with them your best tactics, and none of them will do it.” —Robert Gauvreau   “If you want to grow as a business owner, you've got to be committed to getting yourself uncomfortable.” —Robert Gauvreau  “If you're looking at a partnership and money gets involved, make sure you outline how the partnership works.” —Robert Gauvreau  “When challenging times happen, find a way that works for you to get yourself back to positive momentum.” —Robert Gauvreau

When it comes down to it, there are ultimately two forms of business growth: Earned and Paid. Earned growth comes from doing the best things for your customers so they keep coming back and bring their friends along too. And as paid channels become more expensive with increasingly diminishing returns,  it has never been more important to harness your earned channels.   In this episode  Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promoter®, discusses the concept of Earned Growth and reveals how brands can start to re-balance their marketing efforts by delivering more earned growth alongside their paid channels.  

Fred Reichheld, creator of Net Promoter and author of Winning on Purpose, shares how professional services firms can become truly client-centric and realize the promise of NPS. The post Loving Your Clients with Fred Reichheld, Bain Fellow and Creator of Net Promoter appeared first on Rattle and Pedal.

Fred Reichheld, creator of Net Promoter and author of Winning on Purpose, shares how professional services firms can become truly client-centric and realize the promise of NPS. The post Loving Your Clients with Fred Reichheld, Bain Fellow and Creator of Net Promoter appeared first on Rattle and Pedal.

Exploring the Connection Between Love and Loyalty - Fred Reichheld [NPS]Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter system of management, founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and author of several books.Some people and companies implement NPS the wrong way by treating it as a score rather than a system, focusing on the number rather than the customer relationship.The right way to implement NPS is by treating it as a system, focusing on building customer relationships, and using the score as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.NPS has evolved to include different methods of measuring and acting on customer feedback.Love and loyalty are closely related, as customers who feel loved by a company are more likely to be loyal and to recommend the company to others.Companies that focus on frontline team leaders are more likely to succeed in building customer loyalty.To be remarkable, companies must provide a unique and valuable customer experience.Persistence is key to building customer loyalty over time.Only 10% of executives believe the primary purpose of the business is to enrich customers' lives, highlighting a need for more customer-centric thinking in business.ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my bi-monthly newsletterFind Press 1 For Nick on YouTubeFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedInLISTENER SUPPORTPurchase Nick's books: Reasons NOT to Focus on Employee Experience: A Comprehensive GuideApparel: https://www.teepublic.com/user/press-1-for-nick Support this show through Buy Me A CoffeeBOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/ BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ 

What's the Pioneering Edge for Today's CX Leaders according to NPS Creator, Fred Reichheld?There's so much to unpack in this episode:Fred shares about a personal vulnerabilityWhat's the right way to listen to customers?What is the huge mistake companies make relative to referrals?How do you know if you've won or lost?What is financial capitalism and why should it die?What's on the pioneering edge today for CX leading companies?Will Southwest Airlines recover?And a ton more!Fred Reichheld BioFRED REICHHELD is the creator of the Net Promoter system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books  including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. He is  currently a fellow and senior advisory partner at Bain, where he has worked since  1977. Fred is a frequent speaker at major business forums, and his work on  customer loyalty has been widely covered in the Wall Street Journal, New York  Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Businessweek, and The Economist. He has  made fifteen contributions to the Harvard Business Review and, in 2012, became  one of the original LinkedIn Influencers, an invitation-only group of corporate leaders and public figures who are thought leaders in their respective fields. In  2003, Consulting Magazine named Fred as one of the world's “25 Most  Influential Consultants.” According to the New York Times, Fred “put loyalty  economics on the map.” The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of  loyalty. Reichheld graduated from Harvard College (BA, 1974) and Harvard  Business School (MBA, 1978). He is based in Cape Cod and Miami. Video about Winning on Purpose - https://www.bain.com/our-team/fred-reichheld/Catch Fred's Articles on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-ideas-2023-battling-inflation-companies-cant-just-fred-reichheld/Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Podcast so you don't miss an episode: https://www.empoweredcx.com/podcast Subscribe to The Delighted Customer Newsletter for practical tips and insights: https://www.empoweredcx.com/delightedcustomersnewsletter

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Federico Spagnoli, at the time President and Head of Emerging Markets Ecosystems for Prudential Financial LATAM, now Vice President of International Total Wellness Solutions. Federico is well known for his work launching Vitality in South America and providing health services to over 1.5 million South Americans, who can today download an App from their mobile device to get access to a multitude of health services.  During this podcast, Sabine and Federico evaluate 1) Federico's vision about enhancing people's physical, mental, and financial wellness, 2) where the world of health insurance is going regarding protection and prevention, 3) relevant strategic distribution approaches by augmenting the broker channel, and 3) tips for those interested in monetization models.   KEY TAKEAWAYS I joined Prudential 6 years ago doing an executive program with SAID within Oxford University focusing on disruption and innovation. Part of the theme of my paper was related to disruption in the insurance industry because we haven't seen this in the industry in many years. When I started focusing on the critical driver affecting our customers. I realized there were a lot of opportunities there for us to start thinking very differently about how we approach business today. These past six years have been the first time I've worked in the life insurance industry. I was asked why life and health insurance companies aren't doing more to prevent conditions and situations that eventually will become a claim, like high cholesterol, which – in some instances – include a pill that can reduce mortality rates by 50%. That led me to look at the aging population, which, along with global warming, is one of the biggest challenges we're facing as a society. We need to look at the ability to retire comfortably and the ability to afford rising healthcare costs. This made me think about a lot of new technologies and data capabilities that are coming to market that life insurers could use to start preventing, anticipating, and mitigating bad conditions. Mortality risk is not top of mind for customers because today, we live longer. The problem we face today concerns aging populations and how to reduce the risk of being unhealthy through behavior change. Physical, mental, and financial wellness is the ability to understand your emotions around money and develop healthy feelings and a personal literacy around money and wellness. Physical, mental, and financial wellness topics also encompass the tools and strategies that help you feel secure and in control of your personal life. The insurer can engage directly with the customer through the SuperApp, where behavioral economics and gamification allow for the insurer to influence the customer's behavior by providing annual physical checks and rewards through coins, integrated into a marketplace with choices for rewards, and continuously bringing fresh and exciting content to the viewer.   BEST MOMENTS ‘If you follow a customer-centric approach, you can't view customers with one lens. Not being able to afford healthcare services could result in mental health issues because one has anxieties, which also affect one's physical health -- all generated by limited financial means. We have to look at them all together and provide a single integrated solution.'‘We're now shifting from life insurance protection to lifetime protection.'‘New generations are thinking more about global warming, social impact, financial inclusion, and a more balanced lifestyle. In insurance, we are already connecting with these customer groups over a long period of time because of the nature of the insurance that we sell. We can start introducing several solutions as part of a platform that can address and be much more relevant to our customer's needs and behaviors and influence them.'‘Customers that are using the Prudential platform provide a Net Promoter score that is twice higher than those customers that don't use the platform. The highest level of satisfaction has a direct impact on renewal rates, and platinum customers show higher life expectancy and lower claims ratios.' ABOUT THE GUEST Federico Spagnoli is passionate about Ecosystem/Strategy and Innovation. General and Life Insurance professional with international experience. Expertise in re-underwriting insurance portfolios, strategic planning, M&A, and business development.  Over six years in Prudential Financial. PII Regional President of Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Peru (through the JV with ILC/Habitat AFP). Direct responsibility for Prudential Seguros Argentina and Prudential Seguros México.  Responsible for managing the PII's relationship with AFP Habitat and acting as Europe - Latin America head of strategic business development. Member of the Board of Directors of Prudential Seguros Mexico and AFP Habitat About Prudential Financial:  Prudential Financial (NYSE:PRU) was founded on the belief that financial security should be within reach for everyone. For over 140 years, Prudential has helped our customers reach their potential and tackle life's challenges for now and future generations to come. Today, the group is one of the world's largest financial services institutions, offering individual and institutional clients a wide array of financial products and services. With operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, Prudential Financial is known for delivering on its promises to its customers and is recognized as a trusted brand and one of the world's most admired companies.  ABOUT THE HOST Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew, a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers and accelerating over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor & multi-award winner.  Twitter: SabineVdL LinkedIn: Sabine VanderLinden Instagram: sabinevdLofficial Facebook: SabineVdLOfficial TikTok: sabinevdlofficial Email: podcast@sabinevdl.com Website: www.sabinevdl.comThis show was brought to you by Progressive Media

Rob Markey on the Delighted Customers Podcast Part 1 of 2What would you expect from one of the top CX thought leaders in the world?A powerful, insightful, revealing interview so packed with gems that I had to break it into two parts!Rob Markey is the Co-Inventor of the Net Promoter System and the Co-Author of The Ultimate Question 2.0.In Part 1 (this episode):We discuss:Loyalty levers to pull in a down economyHow loyalty leaders can excel in a recessionWhy Rob initially rejected a single question to measure customer loyalty?This misinterpretation of Net Promoter ScoreWhy that one question was selected as the right question to measure customer loyaltyRob Markey BioHas led dozens of successful customer-centric transformations at large, global companies​Creator of Bain's approach to customer-centricity​ Introduced Earned Growth through Customer Value Management in “Are You Undervaluing Your Customers,” Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2020​ Co-inventor of the Net Promoter System; co-author The Ultimate Question 2.0; Leader of Bain's NPS Loyalty Forum​Founder of Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing practice​30+ years at Bain​MBA, Harvard; BA, Brown​ Ran 7 marathons and aspires to complete all the world majors by 2024And by the way, happens to host his own podcast, The Net Promoter System Podcast

 In this episode I speak with Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promoter system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including The Ultimate Question and the New York Times bestseller "The Ultimate Question 2.0, whose recent book is, WINNING ON PURPOSE The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers," whose wakeup call was how loving customers by treating them well produced loyalty through earned growth that far exceeded profits than taking an accounting approach and bought growth through ads and manipulative enticements. https://www.bain.com/our-team/fred-reichheld/

We are very excited to have Fred Reichheld, the creator of the Net Promoter system of management and the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, as our special guest on The Way Forward podcast series. Fred is known for “putting loyalty economics on the map” and is a trusted expert in customer loyalty. Two thirds of the Fortune 1000 now use Net Promoter Score (NPS), the world's leading customer success and loyalty framework. Companies that achieve the highest NPS in their industry consistently beat the stock market over the past decade, with annual returns of 26%+, and outperform the vast majority of private equity funds. The very best return across the universe of funds and ETFs tracked by Morningstar barely reached 19% over the decade.The issue at hand is that a July 2021 Bain & Co. survey of business executives revealed that only 10% of business leaders believe the primary purpose of their company is to enrich the lives of their customers. 90% of today's executives dismiss the unbeatable advantages of a customer-centered purpose, which is sine qua non of loyalty leadership.In his latest book, Winning on Purpose, Fred Reichheld shows why all businesses should make enriching the lives of customers their primary purpose. It's the best way to ensure sustainable growth, happily fulfilled employees, and robust investor returns. He unveils Net Promoter 3.0 – updated for our current business and social environment and introduces Bain's latest invention, Earned Growth, which provides an accounting-based twin for Net Promoter Score.

Welcome to the What's Next! podcast with Tiffani Bova. With an entertaining and inspiring mix of both personal stories and qualitative business data, our guests Darci Darnell and Maureen Burns show why all businesses should make enriching the lives of customers their primary purpose. Their book “Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers” highlights the Net Promoter 3.0 System (NPS) – which is a metric for predicting company growth and customer lifetime value – and emphasizes how the age-old Golden Rule is what ultimately lies at the heart of customer success. Darci Darnell is the head of Bain's global Sales & Marketing practice and a leader of Bain's gender parity initiatives and sits on their Global Women's Leadership Council. She holds an MBA from The Tuck School at Dartmouth College, as well as a B.S. in Business Administration, with honors, from Washington University in St. Louis. Maureen Burns is a leader in Bain's Sales & Marketing practice and works extensively with clients on topics relating to marketing excellence, the Net Promoter System, customer journey redesign, and digital transformations. Maureen earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor's degree, with honors, from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.   THIS EPISODE IS PERFECT FOR… people who want to understand how to improve their business models via enriching customer experiences and sustainable growth practices.   TODAY'S MAIN MESSAGE… The primary purpose of a business should be to enrich the lives of its customers. If you can take care of your customer base, they will take care of you by providing repeat business, bringing their friends, and generating overall larger profit shares. The NPS can be used as a tool for orienting your company on the right path to align your product design with the needs of your customer base.   WHAT  I  LOVE  MOST… Both Darci and Maureen place humanity at the center of their business models, which ultimately allows them to be even more remarkable no matter what business venture they are exploring.   Running time: 30:02 Subscribe on iTunes   Find Tiffani on social: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram   Find Darci on social: Website Twitter LinkedIn   Find Maureen on social: Website LinkedIn   Darci & Maureen's Book: Winning on Purpose

Victor Cho is a CEO/Advisor/Board member who has a deep passion for building online customers experiences that truly delight (Net Promoter 80+) and define markets. He does that through a leadership ethos grounded in transparency, empathy, diversity, and integrity. The building blocks that he deploys most from his toolkit (other than customer-centricity) are: the use of testing/data, leveraging networked business model dynamics, and creating organizations with recursive leadership engines.

“Love” isn't a word you often hear in business. It seems to run counter to the calculated numbers and tedious plans crafted in many boardrooms. But in his new book Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, Fred Reichheld, a Bain fellow and creator of the Net Promoter system of management, makes it clear: Loving your customers is the key to continued success.

Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. He is currently a fellow and senior advisory partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. According to the New York Times, Fred “put loyalty economics on the map.” The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of loyalty.  What is one thing people might not know about you? How are people/companies implementing NPS the wrong way? What is the right way? How has NPS evolved? What is the relationship between love and loyalty? What happens when customers feel love from a company? What is the power of a recommendation? Why should companies focus on frontline team leaders? What does it take to be remarkable? Which companies do this well? How does persistence provide a foundation for building loyalty? Why is it that only 10% of executives believe the primary purpose of the business is to enrich customers' lives? ***ABOUT NICK GLIMSDAHLSubscribe to my weekly newsletterFind me on TwitterFind me on LinkedIn***Nick's NEW book: Reasons NOT to Focus on CX is now available at Barnes & Noble.***LISTENER SUPPORTSupport this show through Buy Me A Coffee***BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:Learn about all the guests' book recommendations here: https://press1fornick.com/books/  BROUGHT TO YOU BY:VDS: They are a client-first consulting firm focused on strategy, business outcomes, and technology. They provide holistic consulting services to optimize your customer contact center, inspiring and designing transformational change to modernize and prepare your business for the future. Learn more: https://www.govds.com/ This podcast is under the umbrella of CX of M Radio: https://cxofm.org/Podcast-Shows/ SPONSORING OPPORTUNITIES:Interested in partnering with the Press 1 For Nick podcast? Click here: https://press1fornick.com/lets-talk/ 

Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score® (NPS), sees customers recommendations as an act of love. Recommendations are a chance to provide an experience to someone they care about.  Reichheld's new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, shows tracking the actual referrals is the next level, what Reichheld describes as the “gold” in the business—and the future of your customer strategy.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Andy Taylor, Executive Chairman of Enterprise Holdings, once told Reichheld there is only one way to grow.  Taylor told Reichheld, “You've got to make sure your customers are treated so well, they come back for more and bring their friends.” Reichheld says that's the basic flywheel that drives all great business.  Reichheld thinks that the right way to determine growth is to measure that flywheel. He would like accounting teams to know how much of their revenue came from customers they have had for a year and all the business of that customer's referrals, called Earned Growth Rate. Earned Growth Rate separates referral growth from the other growth strategies organizations implement, that can include acquisitions, sales and marketing, or new store locations, among others.  Reichheld sees the Earned Growth Rate concept today as where Net Promoter was 20 years ago. In the next 10 to 20 years, he thinks there won't be a serious business person that doesn't know about Earned Growth Rates. He says his new book shows people how to do that. Here are some key moments in the discussion: 03:05  Reichheld explains why his frustration with NPS inspired his book and what he is trying to accomplish with it.     09:09  Reichheld makes the argument that there is only one class of purposes that work in business, and explains why.    13:18  Reichheld shares the one way to grow a great profitable business, and how it drives his decisions to invest in companies.    20:18   Colin asks Reichheld what advice he would give an organization that doesn't know how to use NPS properly, the way Reichheld intended when he invented it.   21:31  Ryan asserts that culture dictates how NPS plays a role in an organization, and asks Reichheld to give advice on how to focus organizations on culture. 24:44  We learn the difference between good profits and bad profits, per Reichheld, and how to use NPS better moving forward.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score® (NPS), sees customers recommendations as an act of love. Recommendations are a chance to provide an experience to someone they care about.  Reichheld's new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, shows tracking the actual referrals is the next level, what Reichheld describes as the “gold” in the business—and the future of your customer strategy.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience Andy Taylor, Executive Chairman of Enterprise Holdings, once told Reichheld there is only one way to grow.  Taylor told Reichheld, “You've got to make sure your customers are treated so well, they come back for more and bring their friends.” Reichheld says that's the basic flywheel that drives all great business.  Reichheld thinks that the right way to determine growth is to measure that flywheel. He would like accounting teams to know how much of their revenue came from customers they have had for a year and all the business of that customer's referrals, called Earned Growth Rate. Earned Growth Rate separates referral growth from the other growth strategies organizations implement, that can include acquisitions, sales and marketing, or new store locations, among others.  Reichheld sees the Earned Growth Rate concept today as where Net Promoter was 20 years ago. In the next 10 to 20 years, he thinks there won't be a serious business person that doesn't know about Earned Growth Rates. He says his new book shows people how to do that. Here are some key moments in the discussion: 03:05  Reichheld explains why his frustration with NPS inspired his book and what he is trying to accomplish with it.     09:09  Reichheld makes the argument that there is only one class of purposes that work in business, and explains why.    13:18  Reichheld shares the one way to grow a great profitable business, and how it drives his decisions to invest in companies.    20:18   Colin asks Reichheld what advice he would give an organization that doesn't know how to use NPS properly, the way Reichheld intended when he invented it.   21:31  Ryan asserts that culture dictates how NPS plays a role in an organization, and asks Reichheld to give advice on how to focus organizations on culture. 24:44  We learn the difference between good profits and bad profits, per Reichheld, and how to use NPS better moving forward.     Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.  Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter. Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.

#NPS #NetPromoterScore #CustomerLoyaltyBrand loyalty is a key to business growth, and one of the most important metrics for evaluating customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) developed by Fred Reichheld. Unfortunately, many brands use NPS incorrectly without relying on NPS best practices.Today's guest is Mr. Fred Reichheld, who shares with us how to use the Net Promoter System to drive loyalty and increase the amount of money customers spend through the entire customer journey.Read the full transcript: https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/what-net-promoter-score-how-use-it-nps-creatorSubscribe: https://www.cxotalk.com/subscribeThe conversation includes these topics:-- What is the Net Promoter System (NPS)?-- What is the foundation of customer loyalty?-- What is NPS?-- How to use NPS properly?-- What is the Earned Growth metric?-- Can NPS be used with internal stakeholders and internal customers?-- Is transactional NPS a useful metric?-- How to apply NPS results to improve customer loyalty?-- How important are the verbatim comments when using NPS scores?-- What is the future of the Net Promoter System?Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter® system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. He is currently a Fellow and Senior Advisory Partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. According to The New York Times, “[He] put loyalty economics on the map.” The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of loyalty. His latest book is called Winning on Purpose.

Darci Darnell is the head of Bain’s global sales & marketing practice and an active leader in Financial Services and Strategy practices with nearly two decades of management consulting experience. She also has particular expertise in customer retention strategy, NPS®, and employee engagement. Darnell is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Fred Reichheld and Maureen Burns. We talked about the original intent of net promoter system. As Darci described in the book, "NPS implemented correctly reveals how consistently a company lives up to its purpose of loving customers." Loving customers? Not all execs will accept this easily, even though the empirical evidence is overwhelming that loyalty leading companies out-perform the market by numerous multiples. Darci's advice to me, "Be brave."There's a life lesson. More about Darci:The book: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Purpose-Unbeatable-Strategy-Customers/dp/1647821789/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=winning+on+purpose&qid=1638816110&sr=8-3The Harvard Business Review article: Net Promoter 3.0 - https://hbr.org/2021/11/net-promoter-3-0About Darci: https://www.bain.com/our-team/darci-darnell/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Maureen Burns is a senior partner in Bain & Company's Boston office and a leader in Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice. Maureen is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Fred Reichheld and Darci Darnell. I asked how Maureen, who has a background in investment banking and serves financial services company clients, could sign up to co-author a book about loving customers. She told me that at first she was skeptical saying, "Fred, I can't go to my financial services c-suite clients and talk about love." What is most motivating about this exchange is the realization that the evidence is overwhelming that companies that prioritize enriching the lives of customers (loyalty leaders in their categories) outperformance the market by 3X or more. And, it turns out, Burns' financial services clients have been quite receptive to the purpose of enriching customer lives. It's not just good for financial results, it's just plain the right way to treat people. More about Maureen:The book: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Purpose-Unbeatable-Strategy-Customers/dp/1647821789/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=winning+on+purpose&qid=1638816110&sr=8-3The Harvard Business Review article: Net Promoter 3.0 - https://hbr.org/2021/11/net-promoter-3-0About Maureen: https://www.bain.com/our-team/maureen-burns/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Fred Reichheld is the creator of the  Net Promoter® , founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller The Ultimate Question 2.0. Reichheld is out with a new book, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers, with co-authors Darci Darnell and Maureen Burns. The ultimate purpose of any business is to enrich the lives of customers. This statement appears antithetical to the broadly accepted purpose of a business enterprise, which is to maximize profits or otherwise maximize shareholder value. But as the authors point out, when we enrich the lives of customers, we create a multiplier effect of financial results. Why? Customers who we enrich buy more from us. They don’t buy from elsewhere. When they bring their friends with them, they also don’t buy from elsewhere. There is a great story in the book in which Steve Grinshaw, CEO of Caliber Collision (they repair  damaged cars), talks about purpose. “People work hard for a paycheck, they work harder for a good boss, and they work hardest for a meaningful purpose. Our purpose is to help get each customer’s life back in order— to restore the rhythm of their lives.”What could be a higher purpose for a collision repair company than to help their customers, who just got in a crash, get their lives back in order?More about Fred:The book: https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Purpose-Unbeatable-Strategy-Customers/dp/1647821789/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=winning+on+purpose&qid=1638816110&sr=8-3The Harvard Business Review article: Net Promoter 3.0: https://hbr.org/2021/11/net-promoter-3-0About Fred: https://www.bain.com/our-team/fred-reichheld/More about ServiceRocket:Visit ServiceRocket.com: https://www.servicerocket.com/On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servicerocket/On Twitter: https://twitter.com/servicerocketOn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceRocket/On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicerocket/ Subscribe at helpingsells.substack.com

Welcome to the The Voice of Retail , I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada For business leaders and marketers from around the world, author and Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld is a household name - even The Economist named him the “high priest” of customer loyalty. Today, I'm thrilled to sit down with the inventor of the Net Promoter Score to peel back the layers of the NPS v3.0, and the new era of customer loyalty in the post-COVID world. We talk about what 80% of marketers are getting wrong with Big NPS, Earned Growth and delve into his latest book “Winning on Purpose”. Thanks for tuning into today's episode of The Voice of Retail.  Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on the latest episodes, industry news, and insights. If you enjoyed  this episode please consider leaving a rating and review, as it really helps us grow so that we can continue getting amazing guests on the show.I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company, and if you're looking for more content, or want to chat  follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co!About FredExpertiseNet Promoter System℠Sales and MarketingNet Promoter® for PeopleFred Reichheld is a Bain Fellow and founder of our Loyalty practice, which helps companies achieve results through customer and employee loyalty. He is the creator of the Net Promoter® system of management.His work in the area of customer and employee retention has quantified the link between loyalty and profits. Fred's books, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value (HBSP 1996); Loyalty Rules! How Today's Leaders Build Lasting Relationships (HBSP 2001); The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth (HBSP, 2006) and The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer Driven World (HBR Press) have each become best sellers.In his most recent book, Fred reveals how NPS practitioners including Apple Retail, Philips, Schwab, Allianz, American Express, and Intuit, have used the Net Promoter System (NPS) to generate extraordinary results. He explains how NPS helps companies become truly customer-centric, unleashing profitable growth through systematically converting more customers into promoters and fewer into detractors. Fred is a frequent speaker at major business forums and his work on loyalty has been widely covered in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Business Week and The Economist. He is the author of eight Harvard Business Review articles on the subject of loyalty and he is also a LinkedIn Influencer, a member of a group of corporate leaders and public figures who are thought leaders in their respective fields.Consulting Magazine chose Fred as one of the “25 Most Influential Consultants” in its 2003 annual survey. According to The New York Times, "[He] put loyalty economics on the map." The Economist refers to him as the "high priest" of loyalty.Reichheld graduated with Honors both from Harvard College (B.A., 1974) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1978). Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and the all new Conversations with CommerceNext podcast.  Last but not least, check out my new YouTube cooking show, Last Request Barbecue!You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn. 

Great products are not enough. With 24-7 access to the internet, customers expect and demand immediate engagement. Customer service is key to business success. In this Tugboat Institute® podcast, Brad Cleveland, one of the world's foremost experts on customer management and a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, contends that quality customer care is the most powerful differentiator in business. Whether you are a mom-and-pop shop or a global enterprise, technology has leveled the playing field so that any size business can deliver five-star service to their customers when they need it the most. Be an Evergreen® leader. Listen, learn and engage.

How NPS Enriches the Lives of Customers, Employees, and Leaders Shep Hyken interviews Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promoter® system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including his latest, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers. They discuss how companies can use Net Promoter Score to enrich lives and drive sustainable growth.  Top Takeaways:   Net Promoter Score is the metric that millions of companies have used for decades to know if they are doing a good job for their customers and their employees. It aims to measure if you have gained your customer's loyalty enough to earn their repeat business and new business from their friends and family. But, in the age of cookies, click rates, and measurable eyeball hang times, is a company's NPS still relevant? And, is your company using the NPS metric correctly? This week, we interview Fred Reichheld, the developer of the Net Promoter score to talk about how many companies are misusing the Net Promoter Score and missing out on the potential benefit that it can help your business achieve. We also talk about how NPS is still applicable in modern business and how it can be used correctly. To put his money where his mouth is, Fred invested his own money in all of the public companies that are NPS leaders. The return on his investments is almost three times the S&P. In today's episode of Amazing Business Radio, Fred and I discuss how you can use the Net Promoter Score to invest in customer loyalty, which pays big dividends!  Quote:   "Who you hang around with in your life influences everything - how you think about success and what's important to you. This is true with who you want to be a customer of, who do you want to be an employee of, who do you want to invest in."   About:   Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promoter® system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice, and the author of five books including his latest, Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers. He is currently a Fellow and Senior Advisory Partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fred Reichheld is the creator of the Net Promoter system of management, the founder of Bain & Company's Loyalty practice and the author of five books including The New York Times bestseller, The Ultimate Question 2.0. He is currently a Fellow and Senior Advisory Partner at Bain, where he has worked since 1977. Fred is a frequent speaker at major business forums and his work on customer loyalty has been widely covered in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Fortune, Businessweek and The Economist.   His upcoming article to be published in November marks his 15th contribution to the Harvard Business Review. In 2012, he became one of the original LinkedIn influencers, an invitation only group of corporate leaders and public figures who are thought leaders in their respective fields. In 2003, Consulting Magazine named Fred as one of the world's 25 Most Influential Consultants.   According to The New York Times, he put loyalty economics on the map. The Economist refers to him as the “high priest” of loyalty. Reichheld graduated with honors both from Harvard College (B.A., 1974) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., 1978). He's based in Cape Cod and Miami.   Questions   Could you share a little bit about your own journey? How is it that you got to where you are today? Could you explain to us what the Net Promoter system is and how companies should really be using it to yield the best results? Could you share with us maybe two or three things that you believe are contributing drivers of loyalty? What are some things that companies should look at in trying to enrich the lives of your customers? Do they need to understand what type of customer they're serving and does the generation matter? Could you share with us what is Customer Capitalism exactly? And how does that impact the consumer? Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? Could you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can our listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you on track, or at least get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Fred's Journey   Fred shared that early in his career at Bain & Company, he noticed companies similar to us all, some brand new, some quite mature, but they were all outperforming all of the things he learned at the Harvard. Some were crushing it and a good example was enterprise Rent-A-Car, who started out as a tiny little rental leasing agency in St. Louis, and has grown now to become the largest car rental company on Earth without ever having to tap public equity markets, it's still a private company. And you think, Gosh, what I learned at Harvard was a capital intensive business, low growth industry, low margins, there's no way that you could grow on internally generated cash.   So, when he went to meet with Andy Taylor, their CEO, he said, “Fred, there's no secret, there's only one way to grow a successful business sustainably.” And so, he was listening for this great secret. And he said, “You treat your customers so they come back for more and bring their friends.”   And that basic idea changed his world because that's what he now understands is the key to success. If your customers are coming back for more and bringing their friends, your economic flywheel will crush the competition.   What is the Net Promoter System and How Companies Can Use it to Yield the Best Results   Me: Amazing. So I had an opportunity to get an advanced copy of your book Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customer. I really, really love it. I haven't finished reading it as yet, but I've gotten quite far in it. And so, I just wanted you to share with us.   Fred, in the book, especially in the preface and the foreword, you kind of mentioned that you have this net promoter system, but people are not actually using it the way how you created it to be used. Could you explain to us what the Net Promoter system is and how companies should really be using it to yield the best results?   Fred shared that he's long been troubled by the fact that financial accounting is how we run our businesses. And while financial accounting is very good at telling us when we've extracted a million dollars from our customers wallets, it does nothing in helping us understand when we've enriched a million customers lives or when our teams have done work that's meaningful and toward an important purpose.   And Net Promoter was his attempt at helping companies measure that important idea of all the lives you touch, how many are enriched? How many diminished? And that evolved into Net Promoter Score is based on one question, how likely you'd recommend us to a friend, 0 through 10.   And it turns out that when someone gives you a 9, and especially a 10, you've enriched their life, you've lived up to the golden rule of loving your neighbor.   And 0 through 6, you failed, you diminish their life. And so, this notion of Net Promoter Score is just keeping track of all the lives touched, how many enriched, how many diminished, and how many promoters, how many detractors, it's very practical for running a business because your promoters are your assets, who come back for more and bring their friends. But also, it's a little bit inspirational because putting your teams to work, and enriching lives and measuring that outcome and helping them learn how to do better, that's really helping them live the right kind of life.   The Contributing Drivers of Loyalty   Me: So, at the end of the day, we're all trying to build better relationships with our customers. Now, in your book, you also said that loyalty means investing time and resources in relationships.   Do you know maybe could you share with us maybe based on your experience and your research, you've definitely been in the thing way longer than I have; maybe two or three drivers that you think contribute to loyalty.   And this is loyalty in general, which I'm sure impacts business relationships, because I mean, loyalty is something that as human beings, we do link it to a person. For example, if you have an animal, your dog is loyal to you as the owner, in a relationship; you're loyal to the other person that you're in the relationship with, whether it's a personal or professional relationship. So could you share with us maybe two or three things that you believe are contributing drivers of loyalty?   Fred shared that he thinks it's quite poorly understood in this day and age when people are demanding loyalty and trying to get loyalty through gimmicks and marketing, so called loyalty programs. So, he thinks it does make sense to get back to basics.   He thinks loyalty is an investment from you and another person in a relationship. And you think, “Why would I invest in someone else?” Well, it's because they stand for what you believe in you.   You believe that they'll reciprocate and treat you reasonably and not abuse your trust and that you're in a position to actually do something to make their life better. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time.   A lot of people think about loyalty as, “Oh, I want them to be loyal to me.” He thinks the way to start is, “How can I invest in this relationship and love them, make their lives better?”   And that's what great companies' do, that's what great leaders do, they inspire their troops to find ways to enrich the lives of customers sustainably, of course, profitably. But the whole goal in a business is making your customers lives better. Because when you do that, you're investing in the right relationships, they come back for more, they bring their friends, they say great things about you, they become your public relations force, that's how great business works.   And he thinks we get drawn off center a little bit because the larger our company is, the more it's run through financial mindset. It's our accounting numbers that we seem to view as the framework of success, when in fact, no, it's this golden rule ideas, it's love thy neighbor as thyself. And when you do it, you'll see the results because when customers feel the love, they are loyal and that's at the core of loyalty, it's earning loyalty by enriching customers lives. And loyalty from employees, by putting them in a position to earn lives of meaning and purpose, by enriching the lives of customers that they touch.   Me: I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not just about loyalty in terms of you getting the person to be loyal to you, but it has to be earned and it's not something that can be bought. So I'm glad that you mentioned at the beginning that a lot of these loyalty programs and marketing initiatives that organizations have that they dub as loyalty programs are not actually programs that will make or even influence your customers to be loyal to you. So it's good that you identified for us that loyalty is something that is earned.   What Companies Should Look for to Enrich the Lives of Customers   Me: Now, in terms of showing your customers or enriching their lives regardless of the industry that you're in, whether you're a financial company, you sell insurance or you have credit cards, or you're a retail company, what are some things that companies should look at in trying to enrich the lives of your customers? Do they need to understand what type of customer they're serving and does the generation matter?   Fred shared that of course it does. And yet, he finds that the most successful businesses, whether dealing with teenagers today or octogenarians, it's understanding how to communicate effectively, how to always act in your customers best interest, to listen very carefully to how you're doing and what they need. Because at the core, a business is trying to solve the customer's problem, it's trying to turn a frown, into a smile, and the human process of understanding that, he doesn't think that's changed in thousands and thousands of years. Of course, the technologies we use, the innovative approaches, those open up wonderful new opportunities, but the basics, they haven't changed.   One of his colleagues at Bain, they joined about the same year, Scott Cook, who's the founder of Intuit, who has built TurboTax, and other very successful business, huge, huge success.   And he said, “Fred, you want a big business, solve a big problem for your customers.” And that's the right way to think about it, “I am going to be a reliable resource that is going to make a real difference in your life by turning that frown into a smile, and I'm going to measure my success that way.”   Obviously, profits are necessary but those who think of profits as the true objective, they're not going to grow a very big business very long because that's very selfish, “How much money can I extract from your wallet, get away from me, I'm not going to tell you anything about myself for what I need.” If he has someone who actually acts in a loving, caring way, they're a mutually beneficial relationship affair. But that's the kind of person he's willing to actually share his information with and give constructive feedback to because he wants them to succeed, he wants them to succeed in helping him solve problems.   What is Customer Capitalism and How it Impacts the Consumer?   Me: So, while I was reading part of your book as well, I bucked up on a term, Customer Capitalism. Could you share with us what is that exactly? And how does that impact the consumer?   Fred shared that he thinks people have a framework in their heads about capitalism that's just dead wrong, that maximize shareholder value as the underlying concept. Through the years, whether it's Milton Friedman, or Adam Smith, there's an ancient and an out of date framework that people call capitalism, that without giving it this name, it's financial capitalism, because it's based on this idea of profits and shareholder and investor is the king. He thinks that has changed over the last few decades, at least, to where now, there's so much capital in the world; you can raise millions and millions if you have a good idea.   What there's not infinite amounts of are good people with good ideas who are willing to work together in a team framework to serve others.   And the real capital in that system, our customers, all the cash flow comes out of customers' wallets.   So let's keep track of how many customers you have, how many are coming back for more, how many referrals you're getting, that was the basic, those are the keystone metrics in customer capitalism.   And more than anything, it's being clear about the purpose. If the purpose in the old school capitalism was maximizing profits and shareholder value, in customer capitalism, the purpose is to enrich the lives of your customers.   Bain did a survey of a couple 100 Senior Executives around the world, C suite executives and they found that only 10% believe that the primary purpose their business existed was to make customers lives better. They thought it was about profits or great place to work or balance duties to shareholders, stakeholders. He just thinks that is dead wrong. A good business, a sustainable business has to have a primary purpose of making their customers lives better.   Me: Amazing. One of the companies that you mentioned in your book when I was reading was Chick-fil-A and I absolutely love Chick-fil-A, both me and my daughter. But one of the things that I really love about Chick-fil-A was the fact that I remember I traveled a few years ago and my daughter wanted to get something from them on a Sunday and they're actually closed on Sundays and I thought that was awesome, from what I read that was a principle that their organization had and they've lived it up to this day and they've still been very successful even though they're closed on a day when they could be making more profit, as you mentioned.   Fred stated that the purpose of Chick-fil-A is certainly to enrich the lives that it touches. It's interesting, the founder, Truett Cathy was one of his early teachers in his business career, and they're totally different people. He's a Southern, he was a Southern Baptist, very, very conservative point of view. He (Fred) lives up in New England, Unitarian Universalist, you couldn't be more liberal in your religious thinking. And yet they had enormous overlap at the core, he picked a proverb from the Bible, that essentially, it says, “A good name is worth more than silver or gold.” Or in other words, your reputation is everything, which he thinks is so true.   And this notion of net lives enrich and Net Promoter Score, you think about when you enrich a life, you're living up to the golden rule, you're loving a neighbor, when you diminish your life, you're failing.   And so, the reason Chick-fil-A has been very interested and supportive of Net Promoter is because we're trying to achieve the same mission, this is back to Truett Cathy's words, he was inspired to turn frowns into smiles on his customers' faces and that is the purpose of the business.   So, then you mentioned Sunday, he asked him why he closed on Sundays and he said, “It's not a religious thing, Fred.” He's a very religious guy but he's not preachy, their business does not put biblical quotes at the bottom of their cups, and they're not proselytizing in the parking lot. They try to be models; they try to help their people live up to this standard of loving your neighbor. And closing on Sundays, he just knew that you could not run a restaurant and have the manager there 7 days a week, you'll kill yourself. And he said, “Given that, and I definitely want my store operator there running the place not delegating to an assistant.” He said, “We have to close a day and closing Sundays gives this signal that we care about our people, and we care about golden rule.”   As he said, “But you know, Fred, I go to other restaurants on Sunday, it's not like it's wrong to go out and eat at a restaurant on Sunday. It's just wrong for us to try and have our managers running a business 7 days a week.” And he thinks it's brilliant. And it is a signal. He thinks it reminds people that they're different. And you're right, their productivity, they have far higher sales per unit than any of the competitors. And those competitors are open 7 days a week. And it shows you when you get the purpose right; your business can crush the competition.   App, Website or Tool that Fred Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Fred shared that it's a new one for him, he discovered a company through one of his Bain partners, it's called BILT. The reason they were intriguing to him was their goal is to help their customers, their customers tend to be consumer brands, like Weber, who makes grills and place at manufacturers and so on. They try to help them build promoters among their customers, to create more promoters.   And what they've done is just taken one of the most painful steps in every customer's journey episode, which is assembly and first use, using paper instructions, which these paper instructions are horrible, let's be serious, they're written by engineers whose English is certainly their second language and they're just totally unintuitive.   So, BILT takes the 3D CAD drawing from the manufacturer, and then turns it into great little 3D instructions on how to assemble and use your product effectively and it's free to the consumer. So you go to a Home Depot or Costco and you'll start to see BILT on the packaging, and you know that you're going to get that home and you'll be able to put this thing together quickly and you'll feel great about yourself or Home Depot will have their faucets or ceiling fans, things that are really tricky to install, or garage door openers, and you go to BILT and you put the product in it and it downloads up to date information about how to put it together in a very intuitive way where you can zoom in and pinch out and rotate upside down and voice activated to help you guide you through your journey, it's just brilliant.   Me: Nice, very good. They obviously saw a need in the market, as you said, a problem that people were having challenges with and complaining about and created a product that would be applicable to make people's lives easier.   Fred stated that try ordering a bicycle online, you get it back to your driveway and then you try to put it together using paper instructions and he thinks you'll see why BILT is so successful.   Me: Yes, I can just imagine and my coordination of doing things like that are extremely poor, so I'm sure I'd benefit from using BILT.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Fred   Me: Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? I'm sure you have many because you've been around for quite some time and I'm sure you've had to read and engage with a lot of authors over the years that have definitely helped enrich your life and the lives of others. But is there maybe one or two that have definitely had a great impact on you over the years, maybe something you read a long time ago, or even something you read recently?   When asked about books that have had biggest impact, Fred shared that he read a lot of books. Actually, he listens to them now; his eyes are so strained from working at his computer and writing a book, he can't read in a relaxed way so he listens to Audible. Probably the most impactful book in the last 10 years was written by a guy who passed away, Clayton Christensen was a business school professor, who he got to know, he worked briefly at Bain and then worked at an entrepreneurial thing and ended up at Harvard.   He wrote a book called How Will You Measure Your Life? And he (Fred) thinks he's just absolutely right. And the reason that helped him is, he thinks you do need to measure a life carefully, that's what a Net Promoter Score is, of all the lives he touched, how many enriched, how many diminished?   That's how you measure a life. And he thinks Clayton put this in very human terms, and thinking about that, not just in a business sense, but all of your relationships in life, how do you think about investing in those relationships and being loving and loyal in a way that's not just correct in your mind, but you know the other party felt the love, you have to get feedback on how you enrich their life. So, How Will You Measure Your Life is a big one.   There's a recent book by Adam Grant called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, that he thinks is quite good. Adam is a guy that they must think along the same lines, because it was an earlier book that he wrote about it's called Give and Take. And he just makes the case that the world is full of people; there are some people who are givers, there are people who are matchers, they want a relationship to be in balance and then there are takers. And he said, one of the keys to life is avoid those takers, they're sociopaths, you can try and change them, but good luck.   And he thinks this is important and living a golden rule existence. Not all people want to be part of a community where people are treated with love and care, they'll abuse that community and he thinks if they can't be fixed, they have to be excluded. And then Think Again, Grant just says, we have these mindsets that are fixed, and he thinks of financial capitalism as a fixed mindset for 90% of the world and he needs to change the way people think about the purpose of business and how to enrich a life.    What Fred is Really Excited About Now!   Fred shared that he got the paperback galley of Winning on Purpose just a week ago and he can't take it off on his desk, but very pleased with the way it's come out. And that's going to be every day of his life for the next probably 90 days is how to get people to see the relevance of this book to their personal lives, not just their business lives because the subtitle of Winning on Purpose is “The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers.” And loving customers, it doesn't sound like it's a business book, he doesn't know what it sounds, just a little flaky but it's not because this notion of loving thy neighbor as thyself is the core, it's the highest standard in human affairs. And what he's arguing and Winning on Purpose is that, that is how you win.   When you enrich lives, you have to do it sustainably, and you have to do it profitably, but that's not the magic, accountants can do the profits for you. The magic is figuring out how using your energy and ingenuity to love your customers and have them come to trust you and come back for more and bring their friends but it goes so far beyond business.   So, the great challenge he's got is getting people to recognize, he wrote this book for his granddaughters, infants who he wants them to see how you live the right life. And it sets out a way of measuring progress that he thinks is consistent with what Truett Cathy had in mind of building a reputation that you'll be proud of, and investing in relationships where you can earn people's loyalty.   It's probably a good rule of thumb anywhere to just don't spend time with a person unless you can figure out a way to make their life better. And by the way, the good news, chapter two and five of the book, demonstrate that companies that do this, they're the ones that get rich.   It's not clear from reading the Wall Street Journal, but every company, every industry, where they look at the Net Promoter Score, versus the competition, measured carefully, correctly, not just some self reported vanity metric, but real apples to apples.   It's the company with the highest Net Promoter Score who is growing faster and delivering better total shareholder value. And that's really good news.   But people are the mindset is fixed, they just don't get it. They say, “Oh, that's just some industries.” No, every time they're finding it, how did Andy Taylor grow to be the biggest car rental company on earth? How did Apple become one of the biggest companies on earth? Because they built a set of customers who are Promoters who are out there buying more stuff, and referring their friends and giving good feedback because they trust you, and making your employees feel special and loved, that's the flywheel that's going on. So, he's trying to convince the world that business works in a very different way than they probably learned in business school, or if they read the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.   Me: And you know, one of the things that kind of came in my head just now when you're speaking in terms of what we were taught in school versus what is reality, the reality is, a business isn't a static thing, it's made up of people and without people in the business, there is no business and people are human beings with feelings and emotions. And you get more out of people when they feel loved, when they feel listened to, when they feel heard, as you said, when you enrich their lives. So, if you really do live that principle, I'm sure you'll win in all aspects of your life.   Fred shared that he's worked at Bain & Company since 1977. So what is that 43 going on 44 years now. And they've been through good and bad times. For the last 10 or 20 years, it's been good times. If you look on Glassdoor, the place that rates businesses as great places to work, Bain, this year, it's the best in the world according to Glassdoor, it's always been one of the top several since Glassdoor started. And Bain hires lots of different kinds of people. But these are really ambitious, talented people. And even with that slice of ambitious people, when you look at what makes a person happy at work at Bain, they want to feel loved; they want to feel like they're a valued member of a team that wins with its customers. So it's an act of service and if you ask, remember he said the typical business person in the world, 10% of them think the reason their business exists is to enrich customer lives, at Bain, if you just ask everybody through the company, you find 60% to 70% of the people think the reason Bain exists is to make their clients more successful.   It's a servant culture where love is at the core, helping people succeed and putting smiles on faces and that's what makes it a great place to work.   And the irony is, he knows what makes, at least he thinks he knows what makes Bain a great place to work, it's that they are dedicated to helping their teams make a difference in their clients success, and be recognized and rewarded and part of a team that helps achieve that.   And it's financially successful but that's not the purpose, the purpose is making their customers lives better. And he thinks most great places to work lists, completely ignore that. They think it's refrigerators full of beer in the break room, pool tables and ping pong and cool fringe benefits, that's the fringe, the core is being on a team where you're playing a valued role at really making a difference in a customer's life.   Where Can We Find Fred Online   Website - https://www.netpromotersystem.com/ LinkedIn – Fred Reichheld   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Fred Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Fred shared that he wished he did. When he's preaching to whether it's at the dinner table or elsewhere, he goes back to this idea of how important loyalty is. You got to understand what your life stands for, what is your purpose as an individual and then the way you live that purpose is to invest in relationships with other people who share that purpose. And it's how you can invest and help those people succeed that he thinks helps you achieve your mission. So, “Choose your loyalties wisely, they guide your life and they define your legacy.”   Me: Love it, choose your loyalties wisely, they guide your life and define your legacy. Amazing. Love it, absolutely love it. And I'm sure every person on the face of this earth that wants to do good, wants to leave a good legacy behind. So the only way to do that, I believe, as you had said was to try and live by doing those actions on a daily basis, do it consistently because that's the only way when you leave this world you'll be able to leave that legacy.   Fred stated that and measure, so many people would say, “Oh, I can't measure love.” And he would say, actually you can, you can get feedback from your customers in a systematic Net Promoter framework and understand how many lives you've enriched and that is your legacy. And then you should be measuring your way toward the kind of life you want to lead.   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   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links   The Ultimate Question 2.0 (Revised and Expanded Edition): How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World by Fred Reichheld Winning on Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers by Fred Reichheld How Will You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Episode #38 Jeff Epstein, Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and Lecturer at Stanford University, ex-CFO at Oracle, $250bn market cap, ex-CFO at DoubleClick sold to Google for $3.2bn. Talking about key milestones and metrics for VC investors. What VCs want. How many financings rounds a startup should go through on a path to an IPO exit, how much funding a startup should raise at each financing round, what valuations should be, what kind of dilution, how frequently they should raise, how many months of cash runway is healthy, what metrics should the startup show to VCs with regards to revenue, how much of an increase year over year during the life of the startup, other key metrics such as CAC to payback rather than CAC to LTV, churn, # of paying referenceable customers, product market fit survey, % of sales team reaching quota, churn of sales team, annual revenue growth, annual growth of revenue per customer, net renewal rate, gross margin, efficiency score, cash conversion score, customer concentration, Net Promoter score, when to double revenue, when to triple revenue, what it takes to justify a $1bn valuation, comparing metrics for SaaS companies, marketplaces and consumer companies. The changing dynamic of 2021 compared to previous years. Bessemer Venture Partners was founded in 1911, has over $8 billion AUM,135 IPOs, 20 investing partners, 210+ active portfolio companies, offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Bangalore & Beijing. YouTube: https://youtu.be/8LhFSiUG64c andrew@7bc.vc Please use this link to invest in our 7BC VC fund on Angel List: https://angel.co/lead/sevenbc/lp-network/invite. Please use this link to join our 7BC Syndicate on Angel List: https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ.

Arnaud et Anthony parlent du « credo », le petit guide du parfait salarié d'Apple Retail. Anthony se retient très fort de chanter l'autre credo, et c'est mieux pour vos oreilles. Arnaud enregistre depuis une « alcôve », et c'est tant pis pour vos oreilles.RéférencesLe « credo » original (2009) :Apple Retail, une expérience enrichissante.Nos collaborateursChez Apple, nous pensons que nos collaborateurs sont une ressource inestimable.Nous aimons travailler avec des personnes dynamiques, intelligentes et intéressantes, passionnées par l'univers Apple.Nous offrons un cadre de travail stimulant, conçu pour que vous puissiez vivre une expérience professionnelle unique et acquérir des compétences qui vous serviront toute la vie.Nous sommes pour l'innovation et le changement.Nous savons profiter de notre diversité, de nos talents uniques et de notre passion pour renforcer notre image dans le monde entier.Nous sommes une communauté au sein de laquelle les relations intéressantes, la communication ouverte, les découvertes, les progrès et les évolutions enrichissent chaque jour nos vies.Notre clientèleNos magasins ont été imaginés pour susciter l'engouement pour nos produits et fidéliser nos clients.Nous cultivons en toute occasion les relations du public avec Apple : le lancement d'un nouveau produit, l' achat (sic) ou bien les services personnalisés.Nous nous impliquons avec enthousiasme auprès de nos consommateurs, nous leur faisons découvrir les technologies et leur montrons tout ce que nos produits peuvent apporter à leurs vies.Nous faisons au mieux pour inspirer nos clients à chacune de leurs visites, pour que nos magasins soient un endroit convivial où il fait bon acheter, apprendre, créer, obtenir de l'aide et revenir.Nous mettons tout en œuvre pour offrir aux utilisateurs des expériences enrichissantes qui leur permettront de profiter au mieux de nos technologies et de repousser leurs limites.Nos engagements au quotidienNous nous conformons aux « Apple Steps of Service » pour chacun de nos contacts avec la clientèle.Nous impliquons nos consommateurs en facilitant les séances d'essai et la découverte de nos produits.Nous sommes toujours au fait des dernières technologies Apple et les intégrons dans la mesure du possible.Nous gagnons la confiance des clients en leur recommandant des solutions qui répondent à leurs besoins, que ce soit à la maison, à l'école ou en entreprise.Nous allons au-delà des attentes de nos clients en leur proposant des entrevues brèves, personnalisées et efficaces, que ce soit au Genius Bar, pour une Formation personnalisée, une séance de Shopping personnalisé ou un rendez-vous en atelier.Nous considérons notre programme One to One comme la meilleure façon d'aider nos membres à s'équiper, à se former et à se lancer.Nous créons une communauté grâce à des programmes passionnants pour tous les clients, comme des événements spéciaux, des ateliers pratiques et des programmes personnalisés pour les jeunes, les enseignants, les professionnels et les nouveaux venus sur Mac.Nous utilisons Net Promoter pour analyser l'expérience des employés et des clients et identifier les services à améliorer.Nous encourageons un dialogue ouvert avec nos collaborateurs et notre public afin d'échanger des idées qui nous permettront d'améliorer nos magasins, nos procédures et nos performances.Nous considérons chaque problème rencontré par un consommateur comme une occasion de faire valoir nos qualités. Nous écoutons et répondons immédiatement à toutes les remarques des clients en prenant en charge personnelleme Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Are you lifting others up on your way to the leadership table?   Let's talk about how to start embracing the idea that there is room at the top - for all of us!    In today's episode, I invite Stacy Sherman, Certified Customer Experience (CX) pioneer and Founder of DoingCXRight®, to talk all about using the customer experience to humanize business and how we as women can change the nature of leadership and give support to others as we rise to the top! Ready to shift your mindset and inspire others around you as you uplevel? Let's go to the show!  We dive into: What humanizing business means (and how it can help in your career growth!) The challenges that come up for women around supporting other women - and how to be part of the solution! What it means to “be in the room” (and why doing this will help you excel in your career) Some tips to help you find a mentor so you can uplevel your leadership How to become a better ally to underrepresented groups in the workplace One of the few benefits of being the only woman in the room (and how this applies to psychological safety) The IMPORTANT mindset shift you can make to help lift others up (and some tips from Stacy to increase your confidence on your way to the top!) And more!    Certified Customer Experience (CX) pioneer and Founder of DoingCXRight®, helping business leaders apply her ‘Heart & Science' framework to improve customer and employee experiences while maximizing results.    Stacy's been working at companies of all sizes where she increases loyalty, retention, and overall customer satisfaction through engaged employees, resulting in record- breaking Net Promoter scores (NPS), 6% revenue growth & $2B portfolio protection. She's on a mission to ensure everyone is DOING, not talking about CX, so that REAL human connections & happiness exist.   Useful Links: Find out more about Stacy and her work in CX at: https://doingcxright.com/ And connect with her on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacysherman/   If you are ready to uplevel your career, and get a boost (and a salary bump) by shortcutting your way to success, find out more about Toni's Coaching at: https://tonicollis.com/workwithtoni Alternatively, go straight ahead and book a free Discovery Call, to find out more and discuss the type of support you would most benefit from: https://bit.ly/DiscoverToni    Catch the show notes, and more details about today's episode here: http://tonicollis.com/episode53   Join us in the Leading Women in Tech Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/leadingwomenintech/   Join us in the Leading Women in Tech LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12391391/

Welcome to She Invests, where you'll hear from existing female angel investors, venture capitalists and fund managers on their investment thesis. From deal flow to exits, they will share the best practices that contribute to their success. In this episode, Dr. Silvia Mah welcomes to the podcast entrepreneur, Product Coach, author and co-founder, Vidya Dinamani. Vidya has a passion for coaching product leaders and teams. She is one of the founding partners of Ad Astra Ventures. She is also Principal with Product Rebels, a company founded to help product managers, founders and entrepreneurs make customer breakthroughs. Vidya has also recently been focused on investing and mentoring startups and early stage companies. She has over eighteen years of experience specializing in business and technology strategy development and product design, development and management. Vidya has held multiple executive roles at leading companies, including executive positions leading innovation and product management at Mitchell International, Director of Customer Experience for TurboTax Intuit. She also served as Director of Business Operations and Chief IT Architect for the software provider. Prior to Intuit, Vidya was a consultant with Deloitte Consulting, specializing in technology strategy consulting. She holds seven U.S. patents for software technology and is a certified Net Promoter associate. Today, Dr. Sylvia and Vidya talk about Vidya's ‘Why' of investing and her goal to achieve equality among men and women on both sides of the investment table. Vidya expounds on what it means to go from the first meeting with a startup company to actually writing a check and investing. Finally, Dr. Sylvia and Vidya discuss the work Ad Astra Ventures is doing to educate entrepreneurs today. 04:30 – Dr. Silvia Mah introduces today's guest, Vidya Dinamani, who discusses her professional background, her very first investment and her ‘Why' of investing 10:22 – Vidya talks about identifying the right founder and the right product-market fit when she seeks out early stage startup companies to invest in 13:45 – Vidya talks about the origin story of Ad Astra Ventures and the commitment they've made to help more female founders 20:55 – Vidya speaks to the impact Ad Astra Ventures wants to create 29:15 – Vidya talks about her book, Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products and some of the great testimonials she's received as feedback 37:02 – Vidya expounds on her background in product and how it's impacted how she shows up as an investor 38:55 – Vidya talks about the work she's doing at Lash.Live 45:56 – What abundance mindset means to Vidya 47:32 – Dr. Silvia recaps her interview with Vidya Full show notes: https://www.sheinvests.com/41

Script 22Hello and welcome to Your Operations Solved, for Friday, May 21st , 2021I'm your host, Channing Norton, of PC Solutions, and this is the 22nd episode of our show,Listen to us Wednesday and Friday mornings at 9:30 Eastern, or on our bonus shows released on the 2nd Saturday of each month, at 2:30 PM. If you find the show helpful or informative, please do give it a like on your platform of choice, or share it to someone else who might also enjoy it.If you have a problem in your business you want solved, email us at Solutions@youroperationssolved.com, we may just feature your business on our bonus show as we tackle it to help you and others.With that out of the way, let's get started on today's headlinesFirst, an update to an existing story. We've talked a lot about the ongoing global semiconductor shortage on this show. Recent press releases by Cisco have given indication that, once again, the shortage is exceeding expectations, and not in a good way. Cisco confirms that, while they have successfully locked in their own supply and pricing, that capacity of their component manufacturers proves extremely limited. Cisco also cites an increase in demand as a factor worsening their existing issues. Cisco is seen as an important indicator in the computing market, as their hardware typically gets bought in advance of large business rollouts. As such Gartner has updated their predictions on the chip shortage, and now anticipate it stretching to the second quarter of 2022. Quite a few businesses are trying to buy early to get ahead of the anticipated further squeeze in prices. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the industry, AMD has announced a new line of computer processors that, uniquely, rather than focusing improvements on speed or power efficiency like any new release line in normal times, instead focuses on intercompatibility and ease of manufacture. They are betting that the higher yield rate that these chips may be able to offer them will be enough to get consumers to buy them for sake of being available. In short, AMD is betting that the shortage will last long enough for them to fully bring manufacturing of several new products on multi year cycles up to speed for manufacturing, with enough time left over to still make a profit over R&D costs. Regardless of how you look at it, the shortage is going to be going on for a bit.Now, onto our main story, GDPR Fines. This one is a bit more relevant for our European listeners, but any listeners in america or other regions that do any business or have any presence in an EU country are subject as well. For those not familiar, GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, is a broad regulation covering how companies handle personally identifying information for consumers. Among other things, it requires that EU citizens be able to opt out of data collection activities, be notified of them, things like that. The law is too comprehensive to cover in detail here, though if there's interest, I can certainly break down the implications. One snag of GDPR compliance is that it applies to EU citizen data, even when they are not physically located in the EU, so, functionally, if your company does business in the EU, or serves EU customers, even simply via selling products on the internet and shipping them into the EU or delivering them digitally, you have to be GDPR compliant. In practice, of course, if you aren't subject to EU jurisdiction, then, well, there's not a whole lot they can do to you. Next Tuesday marks the third year anniversary of GDPR being enforceable, and we see that, unlike data protection laws in the US, it's far from a slap in the wrist for violators. Collectively, all 28 EU countries, plus the UK have handed out well over 330 Million Euros, or 415 Million US Dollars in fines that we are aware of (not all fines are listed in public databases), with the largest going to google, at 50 Million euro for failures to observe GDPR principles in the design of the Android Mobile operating system, and the smallest fine amusingly ALSO going to google, at $28 for failing to fulfill an individual's request for an inventory of google's collected personal information on themselves in an acceptable timeframe.Regulators have been unafraid to go after entities as small as individual people, and as large as Google in their enforcement efforts, So, what does this mean for your business? Well, if you're subject to GDPR and EU jurisdiction, compliance is key, as the fines for noncompliance are getting more and more frequent (incidentally, if you want to check out the fine listings, Privacyaffairs.com keeps a record of every GDPR fine ever issued that's listed publically), so it's a matter of when, not if, noncompliant companies get fined. Nor is it simply one regulatory body you have to keep track of; GDPR is enforced individually by every individual country subject to it. So, how do we get in compliance? Well, the only way to know that you are in compliance is a thorough compliance audit performed by a firm or expert who has adequate knowledge and experience with GDPR to make that determination, however, let me talk to you about some basic guidelines to live by to not run afoul of GDPR too much.1. When you collect data, notify the person you are collecting data on, and give them an opt out.2. Have a privacy policy on your website, and make sure that privacy policy is within the scope deemed acceptable by GDPR.3. When you let people sign up for contact, like an email list, specify each form of contact (email list, calls, texting), and allow them to opt in and out individually.4. Have a cookie notification on your site, should you use cookies, giving the visitor the ability to opt out.5. Have a means to furnish information requests. If someone wants to know what information you have on them, you do have to provide it in a timely fashion.The theme here is that, ultimately, users have control over their data, not the company. If you are transparent in what data you are collecting, how you are using it, and give customers the option to opt out of that collection, you will have gone a long way to safeguarding your business from costly fines.With that done, let's talk more on the topic we started on wednesday, collecting effective feedback from your customers, and tracking it in a way that allows you to use that data to improve your business.In our discussion Wednesday, we established the fact that WHO you are asking for feedback, WHEN you are asking them, and HOW you are asking them are all really critical in making sure the feedback you get is both useful and representative. You certainly do not want to only collect feedback from some channels, and have areas of your customer base unlikely to use that channel be unsatisified and not know it. Take the example of McDonald's offering free food to those who submit surveys about recent visits. While I don't have access to their data, it seems likely that the submitters of such feedback likely skew poorer than McDonalds' average consumer. Free food is more attractive to a broke person than a millionaire, after all. That's fine, because the feedback is still valuable, but McDonalds now has a hole in their data. They fill this hole by collecting data from secret shoppers, and occasionally running larger feedback driven promotions. How can we apply these principles in your business? Well, it starts by recognizing that there's two types of feedback, detailed feedback and micro feedback. We can see this in the fast food example. In researching this piece, I filled out a half dozen feedback forms for fast food to get an idea of the length and questions, as well as explored their apps. To any customer experience managers at national fast food chains who might be listening, I'm sorry, you got a few garbage results in from me, for science. Every single one of the chains I examined, McDonalds, Wendys, KFC, Subway, Sonic, Jack in the box, had two types of feedback available, In the app, for an order, you can provide microfeedback, that is, a single question satisfaction survey. Was this order good, thumbs up or thumbs down, variations on that. Every single one also offered the free food system... but for that you needed to fill out more questions. The winner was Wendy's here, who gives out a free burger if you complete a, by my count, 28 question survey (though by the look of it, question count changes based on your answers, so its possible you can get greater or fewer). These restaurants assign a higher value to these in depth surveys, but always make sure they cover other parts of their market with other feedback systems. We can learn from this.Standard business activities should include Microfeedback options, a "How did we do?" This way you can identify the customers who were not served properly and fix your mistake before they get unsatisfied. I will say, anecdotally, some of my favorite online sellers were not those with a perfect experience, but those where the product I got required a warranty claim, and it was fixed quickly by the seller. Similarly, if you screw up a customer interaction, and go above and beyond to fix it, you will have turned an unsatisfied customer into a loyal one, as they know they can rely on you to make things right so that they always get what they need. An example of this would be setting up feedback software to include a feedback system in your email signatures. The additional data points here will be used to to plot trends, with this, for business to business customers, you can get a read of what accounts are at risk of being lost and need extra love, and what accounts are prime for testimonials, case studies, and referrals. For Business to Consumer customers, this looks more like the McDonalds example, of providing quick feedback in your ordering system or online for your customers. Without a mobile app and a strong presence, getting feedback from as large a swath of your customers as the fast food companies do is difficult, but you should be able to get a start.You also need longer form feedback, and typically this has to either be directed at a particular person, or incentivized, or both, to collect. People don't like filling out long surveys, but will happily do so for a reward, or if asked directly, person to person, so, for business to business companies this takes the form of regular point of contact meetings.Finally, if possible, we'd like to look at other avenues where our customers talk about our company. Examples of this are online reviews and social media. Good customer experience tools are capable of tracking both of these platforms and putting you in a good position to respond to both. In addition to addressing your public image in cases of failures, and in building a brand. Look at Wendys, for instance. Careful use of these tools can help you get involved in the conversation when you and your industry are discussed, and help direct the conversation to you.So, let's talk now about where to compile all this data and how to use it. Different platforms, both industry specific and generalized, exist. A good tool should allow you to track your general Customer Satisfaction score, a Net Promoter score, which analyzes how likely a customer is to evangelize your product to others, and for account based businesses, customer health score, which is a bit business specific, develop a scoring system based on what accounts leave you based off how long they've used your product, how often they engage with it, their CSAT, number of support issues, etc. Build a model of an account that's about to fail, and make sure that your metrics would flag that account for attention and love. Ideally, in a system, you should be able to drill down into specific concerns and feedback, specific accounts or products, as well as see overview metrics in the moment and over time. The goal here is to allow you to implement initiatives in your business while having fine grained control over your Customer Experience. For instance, you might make a structural change that allows you to fulfill orders faster, and its important to keep track of if your customers feel a quality drop as a result of the change. Customer experience metrics are your way of doing that. On the flip side, you might change your packaging to something that costs a little more per order, and use your Customer Experience metrics to track if the change is worth the additional cost. For account based businesses, the net promoter score can be used to drive referrals. For non account based businesses, high NPSes could be targets for some swag, to encourage them to actually promote you.Next on the wishlist is Automation. While obviously, no Customer Experience Management platform is going to make you send out surveys manually, automated followup is another matter. Say, for instance, you had a customer that ranked you two of ten on a survey, you may want to automatically send an email "we're so sorry you had an issue with your experience. Our team will get back to you shortly to make this right."Also important is integrating with your existing CRM, if they are not the same product, you need to be able to see these stats in your CRM so you know what customers to pay attention to.Finally, Chat inboxes. Many people like using web chat boxes for quick queries, especially with the influx of decent software chatbots beginning to hit the market over the past few years.Do you have ideas on how best to utilize and collect customer feedback? Let us know about Solutions@youroperationssolved.comThat's our show for today, thank you so much for listening. Next time, join us for a conversation on technical debt. In the meantime, check us out on the web at www.YourOperationsSolved.com, where you can join our newsletter, and separately opt to be notified of all our uploads. I will see you next time.

In today’s digital age, even the most traditional enterprises are moving processes online. Unfortunately, though, the shift to online is not as simple as turning on a faucet.  Wolseley Canada is a leading wholesale distributor of plumbing, HVAC/R, and waterworks products and earns more than $1 billion in revenue each year. Today, the company has one of the industry-leading B2B eCommerce sites, but getting to that point in their digital transformation hasn’t been easy. Gail Kaufman, the Vice-President of Marketing & eBusiness at Wolseley Canada, dropped by Up Next in Commerce to walk us through how she has helped lead that movement online, and the speed bumps they encountered along the way.  Gail touched on everything from building the initial backend infrastructure to the replatforming experience that happened as they learned more about their customers and what they needed from an online experience. But what did they need? And how did those needs affect the training of internal employees and the shift toward implementing A.I.? Everything is connected, and you’ll find out how.  Main Takeaways: Bundle Things Up: In the past, customers were often forced to go to one website to buy a certain plumbing part and then another to get their HVAC supplies. In recent years, Wolseley has brought together the many entities of the company in order to start delivering a unified message and a singular experience on the eCommerce site, eliminating a pain point and saving time for customers.  How A.I. Can Be Deployed: When deployed strategically, A.I. has the potential to have a huge impact on the bottom line. Wolseley is already seeing promising results from this through a partnership with a leading A.I. research department at University of Toronto.  The Importance of Training: The journey from analog to digital is not exclusive to the customer. Employees also need to be trained not only in how to use the eCommerce systems, but how to sell this new digital buying experience to the customers. Customer Engagement Leads The Way: When determining the success of your eCommerce site, the only true indicator is engagement. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org. And today, I have Gail Kaufman on the show, the vice president of marketing and eBusiness at Wolseley Canada. Gail, welcome. Gail: Hi, Stephanie. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Stephanie: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. It feels like you're so far away, where are you calling in from? Gail: I am calling you from Burlington, Ontario, which is just about a half an hour Southwest of Toronto. Stephanie: I think you're our first guest on the show it's calling in from that area, what's the weather like? Gail: Perfect, it's beautiful out. We had a little rain last night. It's cooled down a little bit, but we've definitely been experiencing some very what I would call South Florida weather recently. Stephanie: Rain, something I miss here in California. My two-year-old always asks like, "When will it rain?" And he always brings out his umbrella and I'm like, "I don't know. Don't ask me." So Wolseley, I saw that you've worked there for over 14 years and I was really intrigued and I really wanted to kind of hear about what that journey's been like. What is Wolseley to start and then tell me a bit about your role and how it's transformed over the years? Gail: Well, Wolseley Canada is a leading wholesale distributor of plumbing, HVAC/R, and waterworks products. We have about 200 or so locations coast to coast, 2,500 employees. And we are part of Ferguson PLC, which is the world's largest trade distributor, plumbing and heating products. So very large organization in North America, and we are listed on the London stock exchange and on the FTSE 100 Index. So that's a little bit of overview of the company. Yeah, very large company. So yes, I have been with Wolseley for a number of years. And the role has really evolved since then. I started as director of marketing. And since that time, I've taken on a variety of different responsibilities under, still within marketing obviously, but the scope has then flowed and expanded over the years. Gail: In 2009 was when I got involved with the Ecommerce piece at Wolseley. The platform previously sat in business development and then it was moved over to marketing. And at that time, we had had a very long standing relationship with a digital agency who really pretty much drove the development and the day-to-day management. And so when we really started to get serious about eBusiness, it really made sense to transition that over into marketing where we could really sort of wrap it into our value proposition for our customers and give it the right focus. And so obviously that was a really great opportunity for me too. So that was really where my engagement with eBusiness started. Stephanie: Very cool. And was this something that you were starting to get interested in before they were making that switch or was it kind of like you were thrown into it like, "Here you go, you're going to take this whole business and it's coming into marketing, it's all yours"? Gail: I would say it was interesting because the world had started to change. Certainly in our channel, Ecommerce was not prevalent. But certainly sitting in marketing, it was like we need to do something here. So when I was given the opportunity to take that, it was good. It was a nice development for me, and I felt like we could really do something important with it. It was a direction that we needed to move in, and I thought I was in a good position to do something with it. Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. So just to make sure I fully understand, how were customers buying from you all before 2009 and then what did it look like afterwards? Because I haven't bought a HVAC unit recently, so I'm trying to think about how that worked for you guys. Gail: So in a very traditional fashion, our customers would interact with us through an outside sales rep or in a branch, pretty much that was it. I would say before 2009, we did have a presence online, but it wasn't fully transactional. So there was a website, someone could place an order. But in fact, they weren't really placing an order because it wasn't fully transactional on the backend. So 2009 is when we really got serious about having a fully integrated platform. So before then, it was really coming into a branch, calling a sales rep. And that's still very much how many wholesalers continue to operate. Stephanie: Yeah, I was going to say for this industry, I can imagine the people who are in this business getting used to doing things the way they always have like I always buy from this one company, I go into the store and they place a big order for me. How much education was involved when you start introducing online ordering? What did it take behind the scenes to change that consumer behavior to say like, "Hey, we have a platform now, go here instead"? Gail: Well, that's a great question and certainly one that comes up a lot. I can tell you it's been a journey. But invariably when this comes up, talking about engagement of our customers, I always have to say, first and foremost, this is really about engaging our own associates. It's making sure that they really understand the value proposition, that they are comfortable, that they are proactive in talking about Wolseley Express, really understanding how it impacts the customer from a convenience and efficiency standpoint. That is a very large piece of work unto itself. We recently did a survey with our customers and they indicated that the number one reason they tried the platform was because their salesperson recommended it. So that's a very influential relationship. Gail: So it's really important not just for our outside sales reps, but also for our branch associates. They have really strong relationships with our customers, so it's really about how do we start making Ecommerce and promoting Wolseley Express, just part of what we do? We're really great about talking about products, we're really comfortable with talking about pricing and competitive pricing. But it's like, how do we start to expand the conversation around value in other ways? Stephanie: That makes sense. What was the process like trying to retrain your employees who have maybe been used to something a certain way to then start being like, "Hey, make sure you also mentioned this, and this is the way we do business now"? What was that training process like? Gail: It's an ongoing training process, and it's really about giving them a level of comfort with the platform. They certainly don't need to be experts, but they really need to understand the why. So we have to look at different types of customers, there's different features that may resonate with some customers over other customers. There's training, there's coaching on how to have conversations. I think we have a pretty good approach to it actually because it's very holistic. So we're providing you the training, we're providing you the why, we've got a number of different tools that we provide. And we also really dig into our data and help them really understand the different types of customers who we would consider high potential customers, why we consider them high potential customers. And ultimately, it's about, A, identifying the customers and helping them have those conversations. So that's working down through our sales management network and our branch network. So it's a very multifaceted process, it's very hands-on. Gail: The other thing I didn't mention is we've talked about sort of the onsite experience and sort of why Wolseley Express is so helpful to a customer from a convenience standpoint and efficiency standpoint. But there's also, which I should mention is the whole training around the fulfillment piece. So if they have a great experience onsite, that's good. But if something falls down and the fulfillment part of the program where I didn't get the material or I didn't get the material when I was expecting to get it, that's a whole other area that we've spent a lot of time with our operations people to really make sure that we're closing the loop on that. So that's another piece. Stephanie: Yeah, makes sense. What parts of fulfillment did you invest in heavily that you saw the largest improvements from? Gail: It's really about system training, when a web order comes in, this is what it looks like. This is where you look on a sales order to make sure that every step of the way that people were picking up the orders because when an order prints out, it's sort of in with all the other orders. That's the way it works. So we need to make sure that we prioritize these, that someone's looking for them. Because we're not keying in the orders, we want to make sure that they don't get lost along the way. So the fulfillment is not much different other than the order comes in the same way. But in the early days, it was kind of strange because all these orders print out, so the people that are responsible for the customer they'll pick off their own orders. Stephanie: Like someone goes fist, thanks you very much. Gail: Because they're talking to that person either on the phone, maybe talking to them across, so there's this human interaction that's happening. But when you all of a sudden get this order that shows up, it's like these orders were being sort of just left. Well, that's not mine. Well, yeah, it is yours, it's everybody's. That's sort of the foundational stuff that we had to address at that level to make sure that all of these orders were getting processed with excellence. Stephanie: So when I think about wholesalers and industrial wholesalers, I don't really think about typical companies investing a lot in the user experience and making sure ... I mean, you were mentioning like convenience and having a good user experience on the site. Do you think there's an opportunity for disruption in this field, and how are you guys going about that to make sure that your customers are getting the best experience on the site that's also maybe translating to a higher AOV each time? Gail: Well, I think it's about knowing your customers. And so what we've been doing I would say over the past three to four years, we have invested a significant time and effort into our customer experience program. So that gives us a real time pulse on our customers. We use Net Promoter score, that's a very common way for companies to measure customer experience. So we are always constantly looking at NPS, reporting on it. We have a wealth of insights that we derive from that. And then we take all of that feedback, of course some of it's relating to online, some of it's not. But it's really about taking that feedback, closing the loop on it, and then really being aware of sort of those overarching themes that are emerging and then how do we address some of those through operational improvements? Stephanie: Did you see any similar themes that people were giving you feedback on that maybe you weren't expecting or it was kind of like an aha moment where you were like, "Oh, 20% of our customers just said the same feedback, we need to implement this instantly"? Any surprises there when doing this? Gail: I would say not a lot of surprises. But one thing that comes up from time to time, which shouldn't come up from time to time is pricing. We may get customers that will say, "Well, I checked out Wolseley Express, and I can always get a better deal when I go to your branch." That should never happen. And the reason that should never happen is because Wolseley Express, it's fed from the same system. So the price is the price, is the price. So that is an opportunity for us to go back and identify where we be having people doing overrides where they shouldn't be. So that's definitely a coaching opportunity that does come up sometime. And that is a great example of when you're really paying attention to that customer feedback and doing something with it. And so you can really address those issues because if someone's always thinking, well, I'm not going to use it anymore because the pricing is always wrong or it's always higher, that should never happen. Stephanie: Yeah, because it kind of creates a waiting game where the customer's like, well, I see a discount maybe in the app or in the branch or something like that, I might as well wait until that better price when really there shouldn't be any discrepancy to begin with. So it kind of creates a different mindset. Gail: And it erodes trust. And I think that's a key tenant of shopping online. And certainly in the early days when we were talking about how do you get your customers to engage with it? When they engage with it, you better deliver. So your pricing has gotta be right. They have to have the confidence that when I look online and I see that my branch has 100 copper tees. And if I place an order for 50, they actually have them. They actually have them, someone's actually going to pick up the order and they're going to actually send it to me. In the early days when shopping online wasn't that prevalent, there was a lot of, I would say, trepidation. Gail: So it was kind of easy for customers to talk themselves out of it and just think, "Yeah, I don't know. It sounds interesting, but I think I'll just call my guy. That way I know I'll get what I need." Trust and reliability is still really important, but I think through all of the efforts and through really focusing on not only the online experience but the fulfillment piece, it's not really an issue anymore. Stephanie: So what was that replatforming experience like? What drove you to want to replatform in the first place, and what was it like? Gail: There were some core enhancements we want made to address speed. A lot of it was relating to the architecture of the site, so there were some things that we needed to do to improve speed. A responsive design was certainly one of those things. So it was a real large project. And at this point as well, we took the development in-house at that time too. So we have a great working relationship with our IT group here. So how my group operates is we are working with the customers, we've got the infield sort of feedback loop working really well. We really drive the training and the education and the activation efforts. And all of the insights that we get, we have regular engagement with our IT team. Gail: We have a massive development list as everybody who has a site does. We're just working through it taking into consideration the priorities of the business, what's happening with our customers and then working with our IT partners to bring this stuff to life. So that was another major piece of this replatforming, allowed us to bring all of this stuff in-house, which ultimately gives us much more flexibility to manage what's happening. And of course, we go out and we grab all of the cloud based solutions that enable it to do what we need it to do. So how we did this, I don't know, I think it was like 18 months start to finish, which was a pretty good clip for a project of this size. Gail: And then of course came the reeducation process, again, starting internally. So we did a coast to coast road show, and I think we had about eight different markets where we went into and really tried to do some pretty in depth workshops with our own teams to really give them insight into what the changes were, most importantly, why we were doing them and what this meant for our customers, which was all good news. So that's when we went responsive and that's when we eliminated the app.   Stephanie: Okay, very cool. So earlier we were talking about replatforming and all that, is there anything that you changed where you were like, this had the biggest driver of results or conversions or something? Any technologies you implemented or that you built in-house or anything during the replatforming process that you can attribute to having the most impact on the business? Gail: Oh gosh. When we replatformed, we actually changed up the whole user experience. We really spent a lot of time, we engaged some experts in that field to really help us make sure that it became much easier to navigate. When customers hit a site, they don't want to have to try to figure it out. They want it to be easy to navigate, they want it to be intuitive. So I would say how we organize the information, one of the things we did, we created my Wolseley page. So when you come in to the site, my Wolseley page is all there. And it's really well organized, it shows all your quotes, all of your previous orders. There's a little piece there on credit. All of your lists, all your draft orders, everything, it's all in one spot. And I would say that was a major step forward in terms of ease of use for our customers. I would call that out as one major thing. Stephanie: Yeah, that makes sense. I've heard, especially when it comes to the B2B side of Ecommerce, having it so that a customer can log in and just hit reorder or if they put in one piece of pipe. Hey, look at me I sound like I know what I'm talking about. And then it says, you should also order this as well, like add this to your cart too because you definitely need this if you're going to be using this pipe. Just thinking of ways to not only increase the order value but also just help the customer so they don't have a delivery come and then be like, "Oh no, now I don't have the key piece and I have to wait another week for a couple screws to come in," or whatever it may be. So I think that's a really important point about making it easy to use. Gail: Absolutely. You just prompted something. So when you're talking about customers also bought or did you remember, that's a really important part of it. So we have formed a partnership with the University of Toronto who are real leaders in the artificial intelligence space. And so we actually have been working with them for a couple of years and just recently have implemented AI on Wolseley Express. And that is really helping us with the recommendation engine. Stephanie: That's interesting partnering with a university. Tell me a little bit more about that. Did you give them a bunch of your data where they kind of ran it through the models and trained the models for you guys? What was that partnership like? Gail: Well, the partnership is on ongoing. And yes, so we thought who better to engage with than people that are really, really involved in AI to the extent that they are? So we didn't exactly know what we were going to do with it, but we do know there's a lot of different applications for AI. So it was like, "Gosh, how would this apply to our business?" So this was a real obvious one. We have massive amounts of data, so we did share our data with them. And where we landed on the project that we used as a landing off spot was we really want to improve the recommendation engine that we have. So that was a project that was chosen. Like I said, we just unleashed that just recently, a couple of weeks ago. And so we're working on other opportunities with them as well, there's other places that AI can be really helpful to us. Stephanie: Yeah, it sounds like such a fun project to not only partner with someone like that who is probably cutting edge and wants to try a bunch of experiments, but then also maybe starting to see some of the early results coming in where you're like, "I never knew that just showing people these two items instead of this one could result in a 50% increase in order size

Whether we've been deeply, personally affected by this pandemic or are simply trying to get ourselves and our loved ones through it, we're all sharing a version of the same experience. For customer experience professionals, that's been a new challenge. My colleague Maureen Burns and I have seen some companies fumble it badly. But many others have tuned into the experience with empathy. They're creating experiences and offering innovative solutions that are building a deep reservoir of trust and loyalty with customers and employees that will last long after this pandemic is a bad memory. In this episode, Maureen joined me to talk about what it is that customers and employees really need right now, and how the answer varies by company. And I also asked Maureen for her answers to some of the practical questions that Net Promoter practitioners are asking about soliciting customer feedback at a time like this.

Welcome Loyal listeners, in today's episode of the loyalty minute we're going to be looking The Loyalty Economy. In the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review (which you can find the link to the full article at theloyaltyminute.com) you'll find fascinating and interesting insights as to how you can determine tangible value to customer loyalty, particularly in a publicly traded company. But it can also be useful for any company looking to determine the true value of customer loyalty. While is it not recognized GAAP accounting methodology yet, there are some pretty good arguments as to why and how it might become one. Of course since we only have a minute here, I can't get into the nitty gritty details, but I think you'll find it is a good read. While qualitative measures such as Net Promoter and customer satisfaction scores are also of use to investors in assessing customer loyalty, companies would need to source such measures from independent third parties that publish their methodology and present them in consistent formats. One important take away is, Companies earn loyalty when they anticipate and meet fundamental, often unexpressed, customer needs. Doing this depends on two sets of capabilities: design thinking (or better yet, outstanding customer experiences) and careful application of cutting-edge technologies. To learn more about this, and a ton of other customer loyalty insights, please visit theloayltyminute.com Enjoy! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rob-gallo/message

Today's interview is with Amy Downs, the Chief Happiness and Customer Success Officer of Lifesize, a provider of enterprise & business-class video, audio, & web conferencing solutions, software, equipment & support. Amy joins me today to talk about customer obsession, Lifesize's transformation and what it takes to turn an Net Promoter score (NPS) of - 4 into a score of +80 in roughly 730 days.

Luis Angel-Lalanne, vice president of customer listening for American Express, explains how his team goes beyond the mechanics of simply providing Net Promoter scores and the drivers behind them. At American Express, that can mean combining Net Promoter data with other operational data and performing an analysis to uncover previously unrealized links that affect customer experience .

Sandy Rogers's efforts to measure customer experience at Enterprise Rent-A-Car were part of the inspiration for the design of the Net Promoter system. Today, Sandy is the global practice leader for loyalty at Franklin Covey and coauthor of Leading Loyalty, but in this podcast, he also describes how he managed to convince the leaders of Enterprise, a large, successful company, to take chances that would wind up changing their fundamental approach to customer service. It started with figuring out how to measure customer experience. Sandy is someone I've been learning from for many years, and as usual, speaking with him was both inspiring and educational. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.  

Case Study: RICOH Printers (Canada)  I spend a remarkable amount of time complaining about how organizations get things wrong with Customer Experience. However, not every cause is lost. Some companies get their Customer Experience right, and we can all learn a lot from their journey. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have the honor of working with fantastic organizations that are committed to doing the difficult work of improving their Customer Experience from the inside out. One of these companies is RICOH Canada. Years ago, they were facing enormous changes in what can only be described as a declining industry. Moreover, there were few differentiations between the product from the top tier firms from a hardware standpoint. As a result, the printer business was heavily commoditized and highly cutthroat. RICOH Canada decided the only way forward in an aggressive industry with little competitive differentiation was in the Customer Experience. They embarked on a Customer Experience Journey that they are still on today—and with great success. They increased their Net Promoter Score®[i] (NPS) by 34 points over 30 months. Furthermore, in a declining market, they enjoyed a ten percent increase in sales. Since that time, they have climbed another 15 points to an all-time high. A question I always get in my global Customer Experience consultancy is whether business-to-business customers are subject to the same emotional decisions that we have as consumers. The answer is a resounding yes. One thing RICOH Canada understood early was that by enhancing that emotional connection with their business customers, they not only improved their relationship, but they also improved their customer retention and loyalty.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer is the story of how RICOH Canada did it. We spoke with the President and CEO of RICOH Canada, Glenn Laverty to hear how and why they did it. Plus, we will hear about the new challenges they face and what they are doing to address them.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.  To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.   [1] Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

Case Study: RICOH Printers (Canada)  I spend a remarkable amount of time complaining about how organizations get things wrong with Customer Experience. However, not every cause is lost. Some companies get their Customer Experience right, and we can all learn a lot from their journey. In our global Customer Experience consultancy, we have the honor of working with fantastic organizations that are committed to doing the difficult work of improving their Customer Experience from the inside out. One of these companies is RICOH Canada. Years ago, they were facing enormous changes in what can only be described as a declining industry. Moreover, there were few differentiations between the product from the top tier firms from a hardware standpoint. As a result, the printer business was heavily commoditized and highly cutthroat. RICOH Canada decided the only way forward in an aggressive industry with little competitive differentiation was in the Customer Experience. They embarked on a Customer Experience Journey that they are still on today—and with great success. They increased their Net Promoter Score®[i] (NPS) by 34 points over 30 months. Furthermore, in a declining market, they enjoyed a ten percent increase in sales. Since that time, they have climbed another 15 points to an all-time high. A question I always get in my global Customer Experience consultancy is whether business-to-business customers are subject to the same emotional decisions that we have as consumers. The answer is a resounding yes. One thing RICOH Canada understood early was that by enhancing that emotional connection with their business customers, they not only improved their relationship, but they also improved their customer retention and loyalty.  This episode of The Intuitive Customer is the story of how RICOH Canada did it. We spoke with the President and CEO of RICOH Canada, Glenn Laverty to hear how and why they did it. Plus, we will hear about the new challenges they face and what they are doing to address them.   The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.  To find out more about how your organization's marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com. To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.   [1] Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

John talks to Cheryl Clemons (LearnerLab, StoryTagger) and Steve Rayson (Kineo, Buzzsumo, Anders Pink) to get insights about how learning people can use marketing techniques to help engage learners. They also address the thorny question of whether and to what extent it makes sense for learning people to think like marketers.   TOPICS 01:25 Should you think like a marketer? 10:04 User-generated content (UGC) 13:40 Influencer marketing 16:46 Brand 24:50 Product design 28:24 AI 36:58 Evaluation   Steve mentions a tool called Satismeter used for collecting Net Promoter feedback - https://www.satismeter.com

Former GE executive Beth Comstock has a long and successful track record of finding stories within a company and using them to create strategies, build entrepreneurial teams and take imaginative risks. The author of the recent book Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change, Beth spent nearly three decades at GE. As vice chair of business innovation and, before that, chief marketing officer, she led efforts to accelerate new growth, develop digital and clean-energy initiatives, seed new businesses and build brand value. She was also part of GE's pioneering efforts to adopt Net Promoter® and learn how to use it as both a metric and as a vehicle for telling customer stories.

TOPICSWhat do we mean by the ‘Fan Experience’?Why they are obsessed with families and use them as a catalystThe concept of “emotional loyalty” and how it benefits clubs - “We can’t treat away fans well, they are the enemy!”Is football trying a lot harder now?Why women’s football should not follow the example of men’s gameThe problem of getting fans to reconnectThe basis of a fan engagement strategyAnswering the question: what makes your club distinct?The principles: club meaning, fan experience, reaching the communityThe pillars: why, focus and feedbackExplaining the Net Promoter - a standard tool in customer-facing businessesA special social media KPI - what percentage of criticism is defended. Feedback as a catalyst for changeThe importance of visibility from senior staff on matchday- The touchpoints in a fan experience strategy, Finding info/ticket purchases, Social media, The last mile of the journey, Retail/Merchandise, Food&Beverage, Experience inside stadium - stewards/concourses/entrancesTwo things a clubs who no money could put right now for freeWhat is the role of a Supporters Liaison Officer? Having the resilience to deal with the intensity of fansThe ‘first game’ schemes in the English Football LeagueHow to make eSports part of the matchday experienceThe potential split between the top six chasing the Champions League and the need for great sustainability outside itWhy Mansfield Town have removed eSports from their matchday experienceA glaring gap – upcoming and coming ‘growth sports’ are dedicated to building a matchday experience, is football? Will it get left behind?

Chapter eight of the book “Customer Satisfaction” is called “Keeping the Score”, and it’s all about choosing the best rating scale for measuring customer attitudes. Greg and Stephen talk through the issues, explaining why the ten-point numerical scale is the only sensible option for customer research, whether you’re using a Satisfaction Index or Net Promoter… Continue reading Customer Satisfaction Ch.8: Keeping the Score

Chapter eight of the book “Customer Satisfaction” is called “Keeping the Score”, and it’s all about choosing the best rating scale for measuring customer attitudes. Greg and Stephen talk through the issues, explaining why the ten-point numerical scale is the only sensible option for customer research, whether you’re using a Satisfaction Index or Net Promoter… Continue reading Customer Satisfaction Ch.8: Keeping the Score

Structuring Your Company for Maximum Productivity with Danny from BT Academy Series: Scaling your business from ‘$500k to $5 million' Guest: Danny Kerr from BT Academy Part One: Building Your One-Page Strategic Plan – [LINK] It's no surprise that BT Academy is one of Canada's fastest growing companies. As you'll soon find out, Danny is a friggin business guru. Over the last couple of years, Danny and I have spoken on many occasions and every time, I'm blown away by how awesome he and his business is. If you're a tradie or contractor, you simply MUST get in BT Academy's space. …And lucky for you, you have that option at the bottom of this page. Danny has been on The Site Shed before for the series titled, The top 3 mistake growing trade businesses make. Go check them out if you want to hear more episodes with him. Here is the link to episode one – Attracting the right talent. Here's the link to spidoe two – Lack of focus on Gross Profit Margin Here's the link to part three – Wrong Prioritisation of time Here's a bit of a spiel on BT Academy: Based out of British Colombia, Canada, BT Academy exists to teach businesses how to create a sustainable business structure, using the principles of a franchise model. Franchises depend heavily on systems and processes, which serves as the fundamental lynch-pin in a franchises ability to operate out of multiple locations while delivering a consistent product/service. My co-host in this series, Danny Kerr, has a background in franchising. A few years ago, he decided it would be a good idea to educate trade business owners how they can create similar frameworks in their own businesses. As a result, BT Academy was born and they now help hundreds of organisations, right across Canada and the United States take their businesses to a level that is systemised, profitable and independent of any one person (in most cases the business owner). In this series, we'll be talking about how to scale your trade business from $500k to $5 mill. Here are the episodes: TSS195 – Building Your One-Page Strategic Plan TSS196 – Structuring Your Company for Maximum Productivity TSS197 – How to Generate Rockstar Employee Applications TSS198 – Maximizing Gross Profit in Your Business If you're interested in the topic of ‘strategic planning', check these out: 2019 productivity framework Productivity. Be a master of it, not a slave to it Innovative thinking part two Performance. Leverage through effective people power How to systemise your trade business Structuring Your Company for Maximum Productivity, with Danny Kerr Podcast Highlights: 04:54 – Knowing your metrics 07:33 – Active Marketing 08:05 – The GS&R framework (goal setting and review) 10:35 – Systems that help you track 15:46 – Knowing your strengths 17:39 – Retaining staff using structured incentives 22:10 – The ‘Net Promoter' system If you've heard any of Danny's previous podcasts, or if you've taken the time to get hold of the amazing resources/frameworks and templates that he's left behind, you'll already appreciate that when it comes to ‘structure' and ‘maximum productivity', no one does it better. You've probably heard the old cliché saying, “A successful company is a productive company”. In this podcast, we learn about how to achieve maximum productivity in our organisations, by implementing things like tracking, reporting and incentives to keep staff motivated.  Danny's frameworks are genius for retaining staff. Which for the record is the number one issue that businesses have right across the world, according to all of the amazing organisations that I speak with via the podcast. In this podcast, he teaches us how to create frameworks that not only keep people accountable but also keeps them hungry to achieve more and always striving forward. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Glossier once told Fortune that 70% of sales come from word-of-mouth organic connections. While Glossier is shaping the future of beauty by leveraging influencers, there is another company doing the same in education by leveraging teachers & families: meet ClassDojo, the world's most widely used communication app for Pre K-8 schools. ClassDojo’s growth has been 100% organic, fueled entirely by word of mouth from just a handful of teachers in 2011 to 3.5 million users in 2012 to tens of millions of users in 180 countries today. By focusing on what its community of teachers, families and students asked for (and never spending a dollar on advertising), ClassDojo built a platform that actually suits the needs of its target audience. From a teacher toolkit to the ability to translate foreign languages on the fly, The ClassDojo is an app that through building and listening to its community is truly revolutionizing the classroom. The company also recently announced a $35 million Series C round, and the company boasts a Net Promoter score of 76, comparable to the world’s most-loved consumer brands including Glossier, Nike, and Disney. Sam Chaudhary, Co-founder & CEO at ClassDojo joins me on my daily tech podcast to share the inspirational startup story. We also discuss how the ClassDojo community has been the key to their success and how they are using their community to continue growth.

Key Takeaways: Thank you page survey: Find out why this should be a part of every website that processes sales, subscriptions or registrations of any kind. What almost kept you from buying today?: In this episode, learn what’s more effective than Net Promoter scores or pre-sale feedback queries. “Liking” In Action: Learn from Curtis when the best time to ask someone to do something is. Data Tools: Find out which tools to use that allow you to be more creative, all while gathering data to be effective. Resources and Links Discussed: Follow Curtis on Twitter -  @curtis_morris Follow Brian on Twitter - @bmassey Learn more about the tools mentioned - Qualaroo, Zapier, Salesforce, IBM Watson, HotJar, and SessionCam. Learn more about Conversion Sciences

Like fitness or dieting, getting started with the Net Promoter System is easy in some ways. Executives are typically optimistic and excited about their fledgling program, riding the high of their early wins. And then something emerges and threatens that momentum. But like maintaining good health, the companies that stay the course learn to anticipate their customers' needs, allowing them to deepen relationships and deliver bigger financial results in the long term. That's what happened at CA Technologies. In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dayton Semerjian. He guided the enterprise software company through a Net Promoter journey that returned it to growth. In this episode, Dayton discusses the challenges he faced while bringing culture change to CA and how he overcame them.

CA Technologies' Dayton Semerjian joined me on the podcast in 2016 to discuss his approach to managing the enterprise software company's customer experience in a rapidly changing industry. At the time, the business-to-business service provider was deep in a Net Promoter journey that would ultimately rebuild its customer relationships and return it to growth. Fast forward two years and Dayton's efforts as general manager of global customer success and support not only surpassed senior leaders' expectations, they made CA an attractive acquisition target. In light of CA's success, I invited Dayton back on the podcast to reflect on his experience in the first of a two-part interview.

Follow-up calls offer an opportunity to hear real customers describe, in detail, the things that make them love your company, or not. And they can involve senior executives in learning what it's like to be an average customer or an average frontline employee—to get out of the mindset of “corporate” and into the world where customers interact with your company every day. In this episode, Rob Markey continues his conversation with Charlie Herrin, Comcast's chief customer experience officer, who has been leading Comcast's multiyear Net Promoter turnaround. He discusses some of the most important drivers of culture change there. 

Listening to customer feedback is one of the best ways to improve your product (and your marketing). But it can get so overwhelming! Our guest today is the charming Sofia Quintero, founder of NomNom. You'll learn how to deal with massive amounts of customer feedback, get quantitative and qualitative results, document your insights, and apply them in your product development process. Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. Show Notes NomNom — Sofia's company Geckoboard — Sofia's previous place of work Episode 112: Optimizing SaaS Trials with Alli Blum Episode 116: Segmenting Your Users with Val Geisler Airtable, Trello, Google Sheets — tools that can be used for recording customer feedback The Spotlight Framework — a framework by David Cancel of Drift to make customer feedback actionable What is Jobs to be Done (JTBD)? — an article by Alan Klement, creator of JTBD framework What is Net Promoter? — how NPS is calculated Inside Intercom — Intercom's blog Fullstory, Mixpanel, Amplitude — popular analytics tools Hungry for Insight — NomNom's blog The Practical Handbook to Building Better Feedback Loops — a new free book by NomNom Follow Sofia on Twitter: @Sofiaqt Today's Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Userlist.io. This new tool helps SaaS founders get a better understanding of each individual user journey, and send users relevant behavior-based email. To learn more, join the waiting list at userlist.io. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

Cable company executives know they have shaky relationships with many customers. In fact, most have been working to improve their customer experience. And one or two are taking truly radical steps to improve. Comcast, one of the biggest Internet providers in the US, is among those working hardest to earn more trust and loyalty from customers. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Charlie Herrin, Comcast's chief customer experience officer. 

Rob Markey welcomes back Fernando Cadena, director of associate engagement at Elwood Staffing Services, which places 25,000 temporary employees at companies across the country. Fernando has been leading the firm's Net Promoter efforts, which began six years ago when he first sought feedback from the company's associates. He has since expanded the company's feedback efforts to its customers. Net Promoter feedback has helped Elwood Staffing improve its customer experience, increase employee retention and build better relationships with the companies it serves. 

Year Up has helped thousands of young adults leave minimum wage jobs and forge meaningful careers. Its one-year program has served almost 20,000 people since 2000, and the vast majority end up in roles at major companies or in college.   Delivering such strong results requires Year Up to balance the needs of its students, donors and the companies that provide critical support and internships. The organization has been using the Net Promoter System to gauge those relationships to ensure that everyone's needs are met.  Garrett Warfield, senior director of research and evaluation, and Research and Evaluation Manager Jess Britt say that feedback is simply part of Year Up's culture. In this episode, Rob Markey talks to Garrett and Jess about Net Promoter's role in achieving the organization's mission.      

Host Rob Markey talks to Celine Del Genes, vice president, concept to consumer, for Adidas Football. She oversees the sports apparel company's go-to-market strategy for soccer shoes and gear, managing key decisions about pricing, sales channels and marketing approaches. Celine is also a Net Promoter practitioner and uses the method to gauge customer reaction to company initiatives and product design. She recently brought together social marketing, agile decision-making and Net Promoter feedback in an innovative campaign to promote Adidas' Glitch soccer cleat. 

Ray Hoffman introduces Mobile Mini Solutions and its CEO, Erik Olsson. Between 1980 and 2000, the metropolitan population of Phoenix grew by 45%. As amazing as that might seem, consider the growth in the exurban city of Chandler, Arizona — 22 miles from downtown Phoenix — it grew by 460%. Peoria, Arizona — 14 miles out — grew by 740%. This formed perfect conditions for the growth of a company called Mobile Mini to provide contractors and other jobbers with mobile secure space for storing their stuff on-site. Thirty-five years later, Mobile Mini is doing $500 million a year in sales, and not only is it a national brand but under CEO Erik Olsson, it’s also become less dependent on the ups and downs of the real estate cycle. Today, it’s known as Mobile Mini Solutions, offering not only job site storage space but also mobile office rentals and containment systems for water and other fluids. Erik Olsson grew up in Sweden. What brought him to Phoenix? You might say capitalism.     Key Takeaways: [1:28] At the University of Gothenburg, Erik’s impression of American capitalism was of freedom and choice, free markets, private ownership, entrepreneurship and innovation, small government, and robust institutions. Erik compared that to his home country of Sweden, and found Sweden sorely lacking in these concepts. [2:16] After managing businesses on three continents, Erik understands even more about it today. He sees now the value or importance of incentives. Everybody reacts to incentives, whether they’re negative or positive. Erik’s biggest learning since school is that everything governments and companies do impacts people and has consequences. [3:03] Erik agrees that giving people individual freedom, opportunity, choice, and innovation, capitalism shows a better understanding of human nature than socialism, which stifles all of those things. [3:29] In Europe, management is regulated to a higher degree and there are more laws. They are much more unionized. It is more difficult than in the U.S.. In South America, the workers do what the manager tells them to do. Managers have to be careful how they express themselves because what they say is what they will get. [4:10] In the U.S., the incentive is to better themselves and better their lives. Employees generally contribute to a much greater degree to the betterment of the company and the relationship between management and employees. [4:31] The can-do attitude is part of the American dream. It is very hard to find in Europe. [5:08] Erik talks about the metrics of his prior company, RSC Holdings, the number one player in terms of growth rates. The people wanted to show the rest of the world that they can do this; they’re much better than everyone else in this industry. That attitude in large part led to their success. [5:42] Atlas Copco, the Swedish maker of mining equipment, was Erik’s first employer after school. He credits them with his success. He calls them a very decentralized organization with crystallized levels of responsibility. Very early on, you get the accountability of the position you are in. Learning that on a global scale was great. [6:46] Atlas Copco sent Erik to Brazil at age 28 or 29, right in the middle of the hyperinflation. It was very turbulent, trying to manage a P&L in hyperinflation, but he counts all he learned as a blessing. He found much he could take back to the U.S. [8:13] RSC Holdings rented heavy equipment. 2008-2009 was not a good time for renting heavy equipment. At Mobile Mini Storage, they are constantly on the watch for the rate of growth. Their products are less cyclical. Customers will always have to store their stuff somewhere. [9:02] At Mobile Mini Solutions, they focus on national accounts, with a strong team signing them up. This leads to stability regardless of the local economy. Individual offices sign up local accounts. With a national account, there is a single point of contact, wherever the storage is needed. National accounts provide 30% of their revenue. [10:12] On the tank side, national accounts provide over 50% of the revenue stream. [10:26] Mobile Mini’s Net Promoters 2016 customer loyalty and recommendation score was above Costco, Starbucks, Amazon and Apple. [11:00] Erik discusses how the culture of service was created and maintained. They constantly discuss it and measure the Net Promoter score down to a branch level, so they can see who is contributing to the number and who is dilutive to the number. They hold people accountable and provide training. They coach salespeople on calls. [11:44] Erik started at Mobile Mini when there were about 120 locations. Today, there are 150 locations. Erik sees room for 50 more locations in North America over the next years. [12:12] All locations are company-owned. They maintain direct contact with their customers and want to be in charge of their Net Promoter Score. They don’t want to outsource great customer service. [12:27] Mobile Mini is the largest player in their market, so they can afford to invest in technology. They are using a portal where the customer can manage their entire relationship, from placing an order, paying an invoice, looking at their history, seeing on a map where they have mobile units, and creating a report. That technology keeps them in the lead. [13:11] Mobile Mini’s Ideal Client Profile is a builder on a job site, keeping stuff in a storage facility on site, overnight during the construction season. [13:27] Erik has a vision for the ideal growth path for Mobile Mini. As the largest player, Mobile Mini has around a fifth of the market. Going forward, they can get much larger than what they are. [13:49] Erik really enjoys the speed and competitiveness of the business, where things can change in a day. [14:28] Erik started as a finance guy and became a customer service guy. Those were requirements for becoming a CEO: knowing the customers and the people. [14:54] As Erik will tell you, those Net Promoter Scores and good customer service in general, are increasingly important in a free, competitive marketplace. This is capitalism.     Mentioned in This Episode: Mobile Mini Solutions RSC Equipment Rental (Now United Rentals) Atlas Copco Net Promoter Stephens.com This Is Capitalism

Dell has been collecting customer feedback since Michael Dell dropped out of college three decades ago and founded the company. It's part of the company's DNA. The computer maker began its Net Promoter journey a decade ago when it was trying to connect customer satisfaction with economic outcomes. Now the company has a robust Net Promoter System that informs major projects and innovations. In this episode, host Rob Markey catches up with Marc Stein, senior vice president of customer experience at Dell. Marc discusses how the company's comprehensive Net Promoter System has evolved since Dell merged with EMC in 2016.

Rob Markey welcomes Griff and Hunter Jaggard, the brothers behind the FireDisc, a portable propane cooking surface that has become required gear among outdoor enthusiasts. They launched their company in 2010 with a tractor plow disc and an idea inspired by their Texas childhoods, and they have been using Net Promoter to help guide their efforts.

How does a customer's country of origin affect the feedback they provide about service experiences? Are certain countries home to naturally tough critics? Do people in some countries view rating scales differently? Cultural differences play a role in Net Promoter feedback, but to a far lesser degree than many practitioners assume. The challenge is to separate cultural issues from real service problems. In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will take on questions about cultural differences that Net Promoter System practitioners often encounter.  

Despite companies' best efforts to engage their teams, more than half of employees say they are uninspired and dissatisfied in their roles, according to Bain research. Only 19% of employees say they're inspired and satisfied—a huge opportunity for companies that learn to tap their teams' potential. We've spent the last several years studying companies' best engagement methods and distilling them into a simple approach that other companies could adopt to get their employees' best. We call it Net Promoter for People. In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes Darci Darnell, who leads Bain's Customer Strategy and Marketing practice in the Americas and has played a critical role in developing this powerful system.

Building internal support for a fledgling Net Promoter System can be one of the biggest challenges of getting such an effort off the ground. It requires leaders to not only have a strong grasp of loyalty economics and the company's strategy, but the softer skills necessary to inspire and teach employees to do the right thing for customers. In this episode, host Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will discuss how companies can rally their employees around their Net Promoter System efforts.

Begging customers for strong scores. Only seeking feedback from customers who had positive outcomes. Altering contact information to make dissatisfied customers hard to reach. When it comes to gaming the Net Promoter System, we've seen it all and one thing is always clear: When employees intentionally undermine a company's efforts to understand customers and improve service, everyone loses. In this episode, Rob Markey welcome back Maurice FitzGerald, retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implement the System. Together, they discuss ways that companies can discourage employees from sabotaging their feedback efforts.

Lauren Denault is the VP of Customer Success at Skupos and is based in San Francisco where she helps her customers in the convenience retail industry streamline their ordering and operations. Previously Lauren was the Senior Manager of Customer Success at Demandforce where she was responsible for retention, health, and product adoption across 25,000 small business accounts through one-to-many interactions with a CSM as well as automated marketing based on usage and health metrics. Lauren created a team that surged to 65 employees to increase billable retention by 6% and Net Promoter by 22 points and developed a new Customer on-boarding program responsible for a 5% lift in trial retention.

What if a company wants to adopt the Net Promoter System, but lacks the resources and time to fully implement each aspect of the framework? Is something better than nothing? In this episode, Rob Markey welcomes back Maurice FitzGerald, the retired vice president of customer experience at HP Software and author of Net Promoter—Implementing the System. Together, Rob and Maurice will tackle this question and others submitted by members of the Net Promoter System Forum on LinkedIn, a group for Net Promoter practitioners that Maurice manages. The Net Promoter System continues to evolve and improve based on the experience of thousands of companies. Maurice and Rob reverse their roles in this episode, allowing Rob to share the latest thinking on critical Net Promoter issues, such as best practices for questions and tactics for collecting deeper feedback from business-to-business companies.  

How do you use the Net Promoter Score® to retain your customers? How can you sell the C-Suite on the benefits of investing in Customer Retention? Shep Hyken interviews Adam Dorrell, the CEO and co-founder of CustomerGauge. First Up: Shep Hyken’s opening comments focus on the Net Promoter Score®, which is the result of a survey question that asks a customer “How likely would you be to recommend us?” Shep feels that NPS is one of the simplest, yet most powerful feedback measurement tools. However, according to the annual Net Promoter Score® benchmark survey from 2016, it was found that 90 percent of the companies were not clear if, after implementing their Net Promoter Score® program, whether they had increased customer retention. The score is nice to know, but what does it mean to your business? Featured Interview: Shep begins his interview with Adam Dorrell by discussing the Net Promoter Score® Benchmarks, The Annual Survey, (available as a free download at https://npsbenchmarks.com ) which discusses the latest in the Net Promoter® industry, best practices, and recently added company scores. CRM software tools have been around for about 30 years, but these tools are about the acquisition of a customer, not so much about the maintenance or retention of a customer. Adam said that about 40 percent of survey respondents were not sure how much business they retain each year. The average retention number for companies is about 80 percent, so the average American business loses 20 percent of their customers every year. Top Takeaways: • A repeat customer will do more business with you than a new customer. Repeat customers spend more. • The CEO and leadership team must buy in to the power of the NPS measurement and approve a budget for customer experience and retention. Success must be measured with proper KPI’s. • Customer feedback should be responded to in a timely matter. Too often companies push the survey out once a year and then take three months to process the feedback. By then it’s too late to properly respond to the customer. • Low scores require attention in a timely manner. Dorrell recommends focusing on detractors first, typically within 48 hours. Find out why the customer scored the company low and what the company can do to retain the customer. Beyond trying to “save” the customer, use the feedback to eliminate the same issues from happening to other customers. • High scores are also worth responding to. Find out the “why” behind the score. Your promotors are gold and will share information that can help create an even better customer experience. About: Adam Dorrell started CustomerGauge in 2008 to help companies solve the problem of retaining customers. Compatible with the Net Promoter Score®, CustomerGauge allows organizations to improve customer relationships and encourage loyalty, most immediately in e-commerce functions. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 5th episode of the touch•point podcast, Reed Smith and Chris Boyer discuss how hospitals and health systems can begin using Voice of Customer (VoC) to shape their online patient experiences, including some of the unique challenges healthcare organizations face when begin to track VoC. From HCAHPS to Net Promoter scores, the hosts discuss best practices and even face off in a heated debate on whether the customer is right. Featuring an expert interview with Matt Gove from Piedmont Healthcare where he shares tips that hospitals can use to begin crafting an advanced VoC program. Give it a listen!

Rob Markey discusses how he became a Net Promoter convert with Fred Reichheld, inventor of the Net Promoter Score.

How can you make NPS an effective system and not just a score? Learn from Jason Rosser, Head of Customer Experience Operations at JackThreads, on how using NPS can help your company monitor customer trends, unlock growth patterns and transform the overall customer experience.(Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.)

Mark Tomaino is an Operating Partner at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a New York City based private equity firm that invests, principally, in two markets, healthcare and information/business services. Mark's focus is exclusively on healthcare technology investment opportunities, including deal generation, due diligence, execution and portfolio company monitoring.   Mark has served on the board of directors of Matrix Medical Network and GetWellNetwork. Prior to September 2010, Mark served as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and M&A at The TriZetto Group, a leading healthcare information technology company to the healthcare payer industry, where he had responsibility for developing and executing its external growth strategies, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures, investments and capital raising activities. Mark initiated the $1.4 billion go-private transaction with Apax Partners in August 2008 ending TriZetto's tenure as a NASDAQ-listed public company. Prior to joining TriZetto, Mark worked at Bausch & Lomb Incorporated in a variety of legal, strategy and business development capacities. Mark holds an M.B.A. from The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, where he was Valedictorian and a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Society, a J.D. from the Albany Law School of Union University, where he was a member of the Law Review, and an A.B. in English and Economics from the College of the Holy Cross. 0:00 The inside scoop of the J.P. Morgan Conference. 01:30 “What does Trump mean to the Healthcare Markets, and Investment Opportunities?” 02:00 “Where there's uncertainty, there's risk and volatility.” 03:15 Risk-Adjusted Rates of Return. 04:00 The risk-free aspects of Healthcare. 04:20 The High-risk aspects of Healthcare right now. 05:25 “Ultimately more competition means lower pricing.” 08:00 Investments and Episodic Care Claims. 10:20 Relying on the skills of a Venture Capitalist. 11:00 Looking at Demand-Drivers. 13:15 “The reality is we all are going to be paying more for healthcare in the future.” 13:30 Thinking about the actual Value Proposition to the consumer. 15:00 Who Innovation is targeted to. 16:20 Patient Acquisition, Patient Satisfaction, Patient Engagement. 16:50 New Innovations in Patient Engagement that Mark finds intriguing. 20:00 Looking at Care Coordination Technologies. 21:00 Connecting the Mission of Healthcare with the Business of Healthcare. 21: 15 Patient Experience as the Evaluation of Healthcare Business. 22:00 Navigating the many types of Healthcare Innovation Technologies. 22:30 “The first thing you have to look at is - do you understand it?” 24:15 Finding the Net Promoter score for Innovation Companies. 28:40 “In Healthcare today the word is ‘Collaboration'.”

Why does the Net Promoter scale go from zero to 10? Why is passive not the same as neutral? Rob Markey answers these questions and others in this episode.   Recommended reading:  The Benefits of a Competitive Benchmark Net Promoter Score Creating a Reliable Metric

In this short episode of the Net Promoter System Podcast, Rob Markey explains how a customer advocacy office, or CAO, can be a focal point for learning about—and improving—the customer experience. A customer advocacy office can serve as the project management office that coordinates product development, marketing and other functional groups in the organization to focus on the customer experience. Net Promoter provides the methodology and the tools; the CAO is the arm of management that puts the methods and tools to work. Learn more: The Essential Role of the Customer Advocacy Office

  A number rarely tells the whole story. That's why leading Net Promoter companies ask customers to discuss their experiences in their own words.   Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld returns to the podcast to talk about the shortcomings of multiple-choice surveys, the power of verbatim feedback and some common customer service myths.  

Some people have a knack for forming genuine human connections whether it's with customers, colleagues or employees. They have a gift for making people feel special. The ability to speak with authenticity and authority might come natural to some people, but it's a skill that can be learned, says Jordan Harbinger, cofounder of The Art of Charm, a program that teaches people how to improve their social skills. Why should this matter to Net Promoter companies? These skills are critical to delighting customers and engaging employees as Jordan explains in this episode.

Learn all about an awesome software product I want to build for you, the martial arts school owner.

It's a scenario that we routinely face: a company starts off using the Net Promoter System with great enthusiasm, gets a number of quick wins and then hits a wall. They inevitably ask themselves: "What are we doing wrong?" My colleague Aaron Cheris, one of the chief architects of Bain's Net Promoter System, gets this question a lot. So he helped craft an assessment tool that allows companies to measure their efforts in a straightforward and quantitative fashion. His premise was simple: find out what Net Promoter leaders are doing and work backward to understand why their results are so stellar. In this episode, Aaron discusses how companies use the assessment tool and what Net Promoter leaders do differently.

Maurice FitzGerald, the recently retired vice president of customer experience for the software business at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, has been happily married for more than 25 years. But one Valentine's Day, he had an epiphany about why some couples stay together for the long haul and others don't—and why that knowledge is so critical to improving an organization's customer experience. Maurice shares those insights and others from his Net Promoter experience at HP Enterprise in this episode.

The Net Promoter System is simple in concept, but adopting it can be a cataclysmic event for an organization. From asking frontline employees to reach out to customers to asking finance to manage new metrics, turning Net Promoter into tangible results typically requires significant culture change. Bain Partners Andreas Dullweber, Jason Barro and Maureen Burns discuss some of the biggest hurdles they encounter as they help companies build customer-centric cultures.

A few years ago, Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith realized that there were 130,000 different versions of Net Promoter surveys in the survey company's system. The Net Promoter Score had become wildly popular among its customers, yet there was little consistency in its application. Ryan saw an opportunity to make it easier for Qualtrics customers to measure their Net Promoter Score. On the podcast, Ryan talks about Qualtrics' history, its Net Promoter tools and how it uses the Net Promoter System to keep the voice of the customer inside the company as it grows. Learn more about this episode

Innovative restaurant companies such as Patxi's Pizza and Tomatina are putting a range of technologies to work to collect Net Promoter feedback from customers. One tool in particular, Thanx, offers restaurants a prepackaged rewards system and an easy way to gauge diner sentiment through a mobile app. Learn more: The economics of loyalty Closing the loop The infrastructure behind a Net Promoter System Learn more about this episode

The LEGO Group nearly went bankrupt a decade ago. It's hard to imagine. The company's return to profitability came from refocusing on its core: the bricks and the people who love to build with them. Conny Kalcher, vice president of marketing and consumer experiences at the LEGO Group, discusses how the company introduced the Net Promoter System and started collecting regular feedback to learn what Lego customers want. Conny says that Net Promoter gave the company a shared language that it could use to evaluate its products and that the system helped the company bring about broader culture change. Teams became more collaborative in working toward the ultimate goal of delighting customers.

In part two of our conversation with former Telstra CEO David Thodey, he discusses the benefits of regular team huddles (1:48), his approach to evaluating potential investments (10:40) and what he would do differently if he could (16:31).

In the first of a two-part interview, former Telstra CEO David Thodey discusses his decision to put customers first at the Australian telco (2:50), the difference between satisfaction and advocacy (10:50), and his approach to balancing investor expectations (25:50).

Leela Srinivasan of restaurant reservation service OpenTable discusses the challenges of running a restaurant (8:10), shares key lessons from Net Promoter feedback (12:20) and talks about the company's mobile payment app (23:21).

"If there's ever an idea and you realize there is an opportunity there, opportunity has a shelf life. You gotta do it. You gotta do it quick." This week on the podcast, Chris David Garcia of the Houston Astros joins us. Chris has been creative director of the Houston Astros where he has been working for 8+ years. He is also the founder of the upcoming sports design conference, Major Level Creative Connect (MLC Connect). Chris discusses his path to the Houston Astros and how important it is for in-house creatives to make clear business cases to their superiors when it comes to defining a career ladder and advancement within sports organizations. We also touch on the founding of Major Level Creative Connect and discuss why Chris pursued the endeavor to scratch his own itch of talking with other creative professionals working in-house that may be too busy to network outside of their organization. Lastly, Chris tells us where we can register for the conference, gives some insight on who will be speaking this year and discusses the casual, open-source atmosphere of MLC Connect. Mentions include: Chris David Garcia on Twitter Chris David Garcia's website Chris David Garcia on LinkedIn 2012 Houston Astros rebrand Net Promoted Score Circles Conference Ismael Burciaga Episode 4: Todd Radom Episode 6: Jose Lopez James Altucher Episode 10: Ben Jenkins Ross Yoshida, LA Dodgers Mike Zulla, NY Mets Garrett Breunlin, Chicago Whitesox Episode 40: Jon Contino Alex Mount, NFL Our next show will include the founders of Torch Creative, a Texas-based creative agency focused on creating brands for team and corporate clients. Their work includes brands throughout the NCAA, the NHL and they also created the SportsLogos.net logo. Did you enjoy this episode? Then please rate and/or write a review of the show on iTunes. Also, be sure to follow show host, @TAdamMartin and @MakersofSport on twitter and Dribbble.

Ann Goggins Gregory and Mark Andrews of Habitat for Humanity discuss their efforts to pilot the Net Promoter System with volunteers (9:27), the surprising clarity that open-ended questions can provide (16:00) and the complexities that come with running a major nonprofit (30:00).

Alan Balmer and Fernando Cadena of Elwood Staffing discuss how they use Net Promoter to improve conditions for employees in temporary placements (18:34), build lasting relationships (35:28) and improve the staffing experience for clients (42:43).

Dave Gilboa, cofounder of the eyewear company Warby Parker, discusses his mission to change the way consumers buy glasses (5:20), the decision to open physical stores (18:56) and how the company uses Net Promoter to maintain a strong customer experience (32:11).

Bain Fellow Fred Reichheld discusses the risks of tying Net Promoter Scores to compensation (4:00), the consequences of gaming a feedback system (11:33) and what it takes to get to the true root cause of a complaint (17:49).

Delighted CEO Caleb Elston discusses his company's Net Promoter origins (3:29), its minimalist approach to feedback (9:00) and how its clients use its software to understand customers (39:21).

Safelite AutoGlass CEO Tom Feeney discusses what it takes to make car repairs less painful (12:23), teach customer-centric behaviors to staff (18:14) and inspire cultural change (30:23).

Andrew MacPherson of the UK National Health Service talks about the organization's Friends and Family Test (15:12), the challenges of measuring customer service in healthcare (17:36) and what's next for its Net Promoter program (46:34).

Host Rob Markey and Herman Miller's Pam Carpenter talk about the challenges of enacting cultural change (8:31), the benefits of a customer advocacy office (15:56) and the company's process for choosing technology support for its Net Promoter efforts (31:20).

Fred Reichheld talks about the challenges companies face in engaging employees (8:45), the question of linking NPS to compensation (18:05) and how Net Promoter can enhance innovation (30:15).

We are meeting with Steve Baxter – General Manager, Global Mid-Market Solutions of Satmetrix. Satmetrix is the leading provider of cloud-based customer experience software for companies worldwide. As co-developer of the industry-leading Net Promoter® methodology, their applications deliver full process support to help companies reduce customer churn, mobilize loyal promoters, generate more powerful insights, and drive customer obsession through accountability. Steve talks about what the Satmetrix software can do for franchise businesses. In part 2, we hear from two franchisees from the franchise opportunity Cartridge World for our Great Quotes in Franchising Podcast.  We speak with Jeffrey Bier who owns and operates the Franklin Lakes, New Jersey location and Norman Friedman a multi store Cartridge World owner who owns and operates the Brick, New Jersey and the Toms River, New Jersey Cartridge World locations.

Net Promoter is the latest, greatest way to measure the way your customers feel about you. This podcast discusses how NP is calculated and used in Six Sigma.