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216: Exploring Service Industry Challenges and Innovations: Insights from a Global Perspective with Michelle Pascoe

\\u2022 Could you maybe just put in context for us just how it is that services in your country currently are in your part of the world? And what are some of the main service issues, maybe across different industries, if there is like maybe a two or three overarching themes that you\'ve identified since you work with different organisations that you\'ve found that companies tend to struggle with in terms of delivering that excellent service?

\\u2022 One of the things I wanted to find out from you, as it relates to that specific point, do you believe that the customer becoming rude is a behavioural issue that is maybe cultural in terms of just their mannerism? Or do you think it is a catalyst as a result of how they\'re being treated?

\\u2022 And as listeners of this podcast, if there was like a business owner, or maybe a senior person in a customer success or customer experience department that would be listening to this episode, and they themselves are considering doing such an activity (mystery shop) for 2024, what would be your advice? What are some of the benefits that you think will be derived?

\\u2022 Now, can you also share with our listeners, what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can\'t live without in your business?

\\u2022 Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you\'ve read? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you, or even one that you\'ve read recently.

\\u2022 Now, Michelle, can you also share with our listeners what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed or you went off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Michelle\\u2019s Journey

Me: Now, before we start getting into the core of the conversation, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about their own journey. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about how you got to where you are today?

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Michelle shared that she started her business back in 1994. So, it only seems like yesterday, even though it\'s nearly 30 years, 3 decades. And how she got into the industry was she\\u2019s been an employee for a number of years in the hospitality and marketing fields and she had a horrific interview and she thought back to herself then, this is not a way to run a business.\\xa0

So, after a very short period of time, she did some various courses, business courses, and she started her own business. Now the development over the years from back then, which was offering more piping services because that was one thing she was good at, she slowly moved into training. And then within a few short years, got into the hospitality industry and absolutely love it, because to her, the connection with the customer, both the internal and the external customer, just gives her so much joy and passion.\\xa0

And over that time, some of those young boys and girls she trained nearly 30 years ago are now CEOs of their own businesses, and she has had the honour and privilege of seeing their own personal journey. But they have also taken her on the journey through the various companies that they have been with. So yes, it\'s been a wonderful 3 decades and she looks forward to more years ahead of her.

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In Terms of Delivering Excellent Service, What Are Some Main Service Issues or Overarching Themes Identified Working with Different Organizations

Me: So, you are in the service industry for many, many years now. And I know services pretty much standard across most countries across the world. I\'ve interviewed persons from Australia before on this podcast, but I always like to get a perspective from people that are from different parts of the world. So, could you maybe just put in context for us just how it is that services in your country currently or in your part of the world? And what are some of the main service issues, maybe across different industries, if there is like maybe a two or three overarching themes that you\'ve identified since you work with different organizations that you\'ve found that companies tend to struggle with in terms of delivering that excellent service?

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Michelle stated yes, you are correct in the sense that service is an expectation no matter what country we are in, in the world. However, in Australia, and she says it\'s very similar, she\\u2019s not long back from the US herself, is that they are still struggling to have people apply for positions. Now, Australia is a very large country, they have a lot of regional areas that their city people and their overseas tourists love to come to, to travel and enjoy the outback areas, however, their expectation is that the restaurants will be open, the hotels will be open, the service will be impeccable, and it should be and the owners of those businesses really try. But it\\u2019s very, very, very hard to get staff at the moment.\\xa0\\xa0

They are finding when they closed their borders, a lot of their overseas backpackers who work predominantly in the hospitality industry have not returned, it\'s very slow. And they\'re also finding even in their city venues, and this is across all industries, not just hospitality, that it\'s a longer process now for people to actually come in to businesses and wish to apply. Before 2020, they were finding that they have a number of applicants they could choose from, but now it is trying to even get people to apply and then retain them. The world has changed in that not that everybody just comes to work at home, because that\'s just not serviceable, particularly in the hospitality. But it\'s understanding that we are now working with four key generations.\\xa0

And so, what are we offering them in the workplace that is going to provide not just that simple analogy of lifework balance, but actually what are we actually asking them questions, finding out what they\'re needing? And she thinks we\'re finding the businesses that are doing that and changing the rostering system to perhaps what it was always been for many, many years, is attracting the right applicants slowly, but it is getting better. So, she thinks that\'s probably one of the key areas.\\xa0

When it comes to service is understanding what customer\'s needs are. There\'s a lot of intolerance, there\'s a lot of entitlement from customers, she\'ll put her hand up and openly say that they see that so often, the rudeness of customers and this idea that they think that provider of that service is a servant, and not just providing a service. And that\'s what they\'re doing. People are providing a service, they are serving them, but they are not a servant.\\xa0

So, they do find that a lot of people that are new in the industry when it comes to customer service, whether it\'s retail, hospitality, real estate, that they leave pretty quickly, because they get hurt, the resilience is low, it\'s hard, some customers are quite rude. So, how can handle that? Certainly an area that she\\u2019s finding they work on a lot with the training now is how do we handle those customers? What can we do proactively before they become that intolerable customer, so to speak?

And the other is consistency, and they\'ll talk about that a little bit later on is that companies do clearly need to define what the vision is, what their values are, and what their expectations, because they find that when they\'re not, businesses that they\'ll be highly recommended one way, and then social media will destroy them the following way. And it may well be due to something that it could be easily fixed if they had a clear vision and expectations were set beforehand. So, they\'re probably the three areas that they\'re finding that\'s impacting the businesses across in Australia.

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Customer Behaviour\\xa0

Me: I found it interesting when you mentioned that the customer becomes rude and as a result of that you find that a lot of people are leaving from the customer experience professions because their tolerance becomes very low because of how they\'re treated. I don\'t think I\'ve ever heard anyone put it in that perspective before but one of the things I wanted to find out from you, as it relates to that specific point, do you believe that the customer becoming rude is a behavioural issue that is maybe cultural in terms of just their mannerism? Or do you think it is a catalyst as a result of how they\'re being treated, their needs not being met, communication not being consistent and clear and that propels them into that state of being very intolerable and aggravated and rude to the customer service providers. What has your experience been there?

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Michelle stated that that\'s a really good question. People\'s expectations have changed, we now have a world that everything is instant and we see so often that they now believe it\'s all about me, we see that on the roads, when people are driving the road, they won\'t let you in or they believe that they should be at the front of the queue, because they\'ve got a busy day. And it\'s all this self-entitlement, now, this certainly is not all our customers and unfortunately, they are the minority, but they make the most noise and they impact the most on our beautiful people that are providing the service.\\xa0

So, it is this feeling of self-entitlement. We\'ve found with those couple of years of shutdown, in particular, that the people that were coming out of that they are still learning that they have to wait for service, that they have to understand things are a little bit slower. And she thinks that\'s what\'s really key is when that is shared with them, it\'s communicating, it\'s not making excuses from the company, but the company sharing with them, she\\u2019s seen them in the USA, small signs that we\'re short on staff, sorry, for the delays, we are wanting to provide you the best customer service. Now, she knows not everybody reads signs, but just that little bit of a pre warning may assist with some customers, but those ones that are totally intolerable, we\'re going to handle them because that\'s just part of what service is, but it doesn\'t mean we have to accept rude behaviour.\\xa0

And she thinks that\'s where it has to be very clearly communicated to the frontline team that management or the owner of the business won\'t accept that and will intervene when a customer has overstepped the comments perhaps, or their interactions with that service provider or is impacting with other customers, there\\u2019s not a lot, there\'s only a few, but they do find, and what they\'re finding there more and more is that these people just believe that they\'re entitled to have this service right now and don\'t worry about anybody else, which is disappointing.

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What are Some of the Benefits that Derived from Market Research (Mystery Shopping)\\xa0

Me: Now, a big part of what you do, based on what we read in your bio was also mystery shopping. And I\'m sure you do mystery shopping across many different industries, have you found that the mystery shopping helps to identify to organisations what their key pain points are? And as listeners of this podcast, if there was like a business owner, or maybe a senior person in a customer success or customer experience department that would be listening to this episode, and they themselves are considering doing such an activity for 2024, what would be your advice? What are some of the benefits that you think will be derived?

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Because the intervention itself of mystery shopping can be a very expensive venture, why would you recommend to a CEO or someone who is in customer success or customer experience, to recommend to their organization to invest in something like this? Because I find a lot of organizations tend to, they may want to do it, they hear about it, but then they\'re not able to connect the dots in terms of the financial gain that they\'re going to get from a report like that, or data submitted from that and how does that translate into transforming the experience that it will increase the dollar value in their organization, when they look at their bottom line at the end of the year, there\'s more money, not less money.

Michelle stated another great question, and she loves mystery shopping. When she first created their own proprietary software, which is over two decades now, she never wanted it to be defined or catch people out in it. A lot of frontline team members, as well as owners of businesses think mystery shopping is all about finding the faults in your business. She\\u2019s always changed the narrative around that, that they\'re looking for the shining lights in your business, as well as where there are opportunities.\\xa0

So, if she can just give a quick analogy of the reports that they do is both objective and subjective. Now, you have to have those both areas in mystery shopping. There is no point in just having a score, because a number means absolutely nothing unless it has got qualitative research behind it.\\xa0

Now, quantitative research which gives you those stats, it\'s important because you\'ve got that number then to go, \\u201cAlright, we\'ve got 85 this month, and what can we put in place now to rise that number.\\u201d But you want to understand, how did you get that number of 85, so for the listeners, she would say first off, break up the report, what they\'re going to look up into four key areas, the service, image, marketing, and compliance or regulations that they may have in their particular industry, or even their own personal regulations or compliance in their own business.\\xa0

And then when looking at those questions, it\'s both looking at them that purely objective questioning where, are they wearing their name badge? Yes or no. But then it could be, you\'d have a number of questions about that actual service, did they take an audit? Did they use your name? Did they offer you an option there all those objective questions, which are fantastic for those scores, that you can measure that data every month, or how often you do it. But then it\'s about that qualitative information. Because, at times, we could have an experience where the register doesn\'t work, or there could be an issue with the actual process of delivering a particular product, but it is how it\'s handled by that frontline person, or that owner of that business that brings in that subjective experience. And that\'s what\'s absolutely key.\\xa0

So, having those questions in there, and that ability to make a comment on those questions. And it could be, the register was not able to be used, it was broken down, so instead of the staff member just shrugging their shoulders and saying, \\u201cOh, can\'t serve you it doesn\'t work.\\u201d\\xa0

What did they do? Did they do they offer for you to take a little bit longer to walk around the store? Do they ask you to come in and having a sit down, we can serve you the coffee, and then payment can be a little bit less? What was those ways that you and your team connected with that person who\'s coming to your business, to ensure that they have this amazing experience, even when things aren\'t working the 100%.\\xa0

So, yes, mystery shopping can be expensive, it doesn\'t always have to be but a couple of tips, is you\'re investing in your team, this is not about catching people out, it is about those shining lights that show to others how wonderful, what happens when the service is provided, the impact that it has, and also gives you the opportunity to get some very important and information back from your customers. It also shows you where there are friction points, those pain points where the length of time is too long. She does a lot of research in multi generations, as you may well be aware in particularly Gen Z, they\'re looking for that frictionless point, they don\'t want to be held up in queues, they want to be able to just order and the foods delivered, for example.\\xa0\\xa0

So, mystery shopping identifies where those friction points are, and also identify those areas that are working really well. Or perhaps there\'s an area that it\'s working, but what can we do to step it up. So, she\\u2019s going to say mystery shopping as an investment.\\xa0

And she\\u2019s had same clients for over two decades, and the data that she has on them, particularly one client, they started off with one business, they have now gone into seven different businesses, they\'ve reached out into other areas of business and different forms of industry. And all because they\'ve always measured what they\'ve done the month before with the mystery shopping. So, she can understand that some businesses may feel it\'s an expense, but it is truly an investment in their business, as well as in their team.

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App, Website or Tool that Michelle Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about an online resource that she can\\u2019t live without in her business, Michelle shared that\\xa0 it\'s funny the technology you always think it\'s great when it\'s working, but when it doesn\\u2019t, it can be frustrating. One of the beautiful tools that has really come out is Canva. And it\'s an Australian girl who started and it is now worldwide where you can create anything, it is absolutely beautiful. You can create posters, you can just create words and everything just looks wonderful. She suggest to the listeners to have a look at that Canva is really good.\\xa0

The online platform she uses for all her online training is Kajabi and she found that out through coming to the US, she comes quite often throughout the years. And she loves that for an online platform, and she suppose, as an app, and what we\'re all getting into now many of us is this Chat GPT, how to use it wisely. But she\\u2019s found it\'s good, you can put the information in there, ask it to give you some ideas, you don\'t take them all but it\'s certainly a way of well, \\u201cHow do we make this perhaps what I said a bit more compelling in the written word.\\u201d But yes, they\'d be her three Canva, Kajabi and Chat GPT.

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Michelle

When asked about books that has had an impact, Michelle shared that she\\u2019s an avid reader. She loves reading and self-development in business she thinks is absolutely key. But most recently, when she says most recently, it was the start of last year, she was given the book, The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers\\u2019 Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, phenomenal book, have you read that book?\\xa0

Me: I have not.\\xa0

Michelle stated that she just got it here in front of her. It\'s got the High Achievers\\u2019 Guide to Happiness, Competence and Success. And when you go through the book, the both of them speak about and many of us know that Dan Sullivan is the founder of some strategic coaches. Too often in life, we look at that gap, instead of looking at what we\'ve gained. She always say to her clients, those wanting to build their membership and they start off at zero. And they say, \\u201cOh, you know, we wanted to achieve 100 new members by the end of the week.\\u201d And when they get to 50, when she sees them, they go, \\u201cOh, we only got 50.\\u201d And all they\'re worried about is the 50 that they didn\'t get, but she said, and this is what comes from the sport is, but look at the gain, you started off with zero, and now you\'ve got 50, that\'s fantastic.\\xa0

And honestly, it is a book that changed her whole course and her business. And she\\u2019s saying that with hand on heart, it is a book that not only has changed her business, but also her life and her thoughts in too often we spend in that gap and not enough time again and how to do that. And they\'ve written some further books both of them together.\\xa0

The other was Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork, which is fantastic. And of course, there\'s another book, it\'s just come out about 10xing and how to 10x instead of 2x. So, her absolute favourite is The Gap and The Gain. So, whether it\'s book four, which she loves on Audible, is just as interesting and informative.

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What Michelle is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she\\u2019s excited about right now, Michelle shared that she was thinking about this question. And as she said a moment ago, she truly believes in self-development in business. She has ensured that she has spent a lot of time in the US doing multiple courses, also in Australia, in Europe and Asia, bringing that information back to her team and to her clients.

So, at the moment, what they\'re very excited about is planning well in advance for 2024 in how they can deliver their programs even further outreach to their regional areas in Australia, and also globally. So, that\'s exciting for them because when they develop the business, it develops and rises their whole team, I\'ve got her beautiful researcher, she also has another who does a lot of the researching so by developing new niches, new areas globally, it will certainly provide them more work.

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Where Can We Find Michelle Online

LinkedIn \\u2013 www.linkedin.com/in/michellepascoe

Facebook \\u2013 https://www.facebook.com/MichellePascoeVIP

Instagram \\u2013 https://www.instagram.com/michelle.pascoe/

Website \\u2013 www.michellepascoe.com

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Michelle Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Michelle stated that she does and it was one that she actually created herself, many years ago after doing a course about choice theory and meeting different people from very diverse backgrounds over the years, is that \\u201cWe choose the life that we truly deserve, not the life that others choose for us.\\u201d And she lives by that. And she shares that with every client that she comes in contact with because not everybody sees the potential that they have inside them. And there are so many people that impact others on their thoughts and the decisions in their life. But yes, choose the life that you truly deserve, not the one that others choose for you.

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Me: Brilliant. Alright, Michelle. Well, thank you so much for coming on our podcast today and taking time out of your schedule to kind of share about customer experience and what are some of the key things that organizations can gain from really focusing on this aspect of their business. Also tapping into the key things that market research, specifically mystery shopping can do for a business regardless of the industry. And of course, to turn the perspective of how organizations may look at mystery shopping more from who are the shining persons that will be identified from the research and any opportunities for improvement\\u2026.I thought that was really cool. So, thank you so much again, and we wish you all the very best. And thank you for joining us.

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Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

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Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers\\u2019 Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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Listed in: Business

215: Maximizing Customer Success and Navigating the Future of Insurance: Insights from Joanna with Joanna Hagelberger

\\u2022 Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Rhoads Online? What is Rhoads Online? And what value do they bring to their customer base?

\\u2022 Could you tell us maybe three things you\'ve seen as recurring themes that come across being more proactive than reactive in the space that you operate in to ensure that you\'re able to maximize on customer success?

\\u2022 What are maybe one or two things that you believe as an organisation, especially in the insurance industry, specifically, you would need to be focusing on to ensure that you\'re setting yourself apart and truly giving the customer more than they expect, and kind of living to what you were saying, trying to predict their needs before they know they even need it.

\\u2022 Could you share with our listeners, what\'s the one online tool, app or website that you absolutely can\'t live without in your business?

\\u2022 Could you also share with our listeners, any books that you\'ve read, it could be a book that you\'ve read recently, or even one you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.

\\u2022 Now Joanna, can you also share with us what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022 Before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track? This quote kind of helps you to get back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Joanna\\u2019s Journey

Me: Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?

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Joanna shared that she can tell you that no one as a little girl dreams or as a kid dreams someday I\'m going to be working in insurance. So, most people decided, stumble into it somewhere along the way. And hers was a work study position when she was in college as a part of her financial aid, she was given a job working in the Employee Benefits Office at Florida State. And that ended up taking her into their insurance office where they administered their insurance, how their employees got insurance.

So, when she got out of grad school, and was looking for a job, she had this insurance knowledge of how the insurance space worked and that landed her with a position of a company that is today known as Willis Towers Watson. It was well as Willis at the time and became just Willis last year, and Madonna. And now has added new names again. So, that has taken her down a path, she\\u2019s worked for insurance brokers, insurance agencies, insurance companies, third party administrators, she\\u2019s been on all different sides of the business.\\xa0

And about 20 years ago, she had the opportunity to jump to the other side of the business, and work in insurance technology, where insurance historically has been a very paper based, manual, difficult industry where everything is delivered by paper, every form is completed with pen and paper. And this company was working to build automation with insurance producers, the people that actually sell the insurance, the insurance agencies and the insurance companies, and how they communicate with the State Departments of Insurance. And that\'s pretty much how she ended up where she is today, just have grown over time.

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What is Rhoads Online?

Me: Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Rhoads Online? What is Rhoads Online? And what value do they bring to their customer base?

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Joanna shared that just as she said that that insurtech that she went to 20 years ago, Rhoads is in that same space. So, what they do is help insurance companies and agencies predominantly connect those insurance producers, the people that are selling insurance, get them contracted, and make sure that they are appropriately licensed and credentialed to sell the insurance that they\'re selling before they do. Because if an individual sells a policy and they are not properly credentialed, they don\'t have all of the licenses contracts, and the insurance company hasn\'t told the state that that person is selling for them, then the insurance company gets in trouble. So, making that all of those ducks are in a row and everything is in order, it keeps the insurance company off the front page of the Wall Street Journal and allows them to sell compliantly and make sure that the consumer is protected when they do it.

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Being Proactive Than Reactive to Ensure You Maximize on Customer Success\\xa0

Me: Now, a big part of what you do is customer success. And of course, that\'s typically ensuring that the client is getting exactly what they want and desire. Not sure if this is a call that you made, or it\'s just something that you live by as a mantra, but it states, \\u201cYou can\'t just be reactive, you have to be proactive, predicting their needs before they even realize it.\\u201d So, could you tell us maybe three things you\'ve seen as recurring themes that come across being more proactive than reactive in the space that you operate in to ensure that you\'re able to maximize on customer success?

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Joanna shared that she thinks this is in any industry, it\'s not specific to what she does. But customer service to her is something that is tactical and reactive. If you think about customer service, and customer service is something we all interact with, probably with a little bit of dread and we hope that it\'s a good experience that we\'re opening a Chatbot or we\'re sending in an email or opening a ticket, or calling an 800 number. And we hope that for whatever reason we\'re calling that number that whatever the issue is, is resolved. We want it to be resolved quickly and painlessly and to whatever satisfaction we hoped it would be.\\xa0\\xa0

And again, it\'s very reactive, it is in response to whatever I as the consumer is bringing forward to that company, or as the customer, if it\'s B2B or B2C, it doesn\'t matter, customer service is about fixing that one little thing that the person calling in has announced needs fixing.

Where customers success to her is, is the opposite of that. It isn\'t reactive, and it isn\'t tactical. The important thing is that we\'re being proactive, that we\'re getting in front of the customer, and being intentional about having strategic conversations. Because as the company is moving forward, and as they\'re growing, they want to make sure that that path forward and that growth is aligned with the path forward and the growth of their customers.\\xa0

If their development team builds a brand new piece of functionality, and no one uses it, then that has been a waste of time of their development team number one, but also the opportunity costs that\'s lost, because they didn\'t build something that their customers would have really liked, what they would have used and what they would have needed. So, it is all about being proactive, and being strategic. And what she means by strategic is simply looking further ahead. It\'s not what\'s happening in the moment right now, it\'s where are we going together and making sure that those things stay aligned as they continue to move forward.\\xa0

Because what her goals are and what she\\u2019s trying to accomplish in six months, a year, three years, five years, those are going to keep changing as time moves forward. So, making sure that they keep having those conversations, leaving those lines of communication open, sharing what\'s going on in the industry, and what\'s going on in their customers\\u2019 business, as well as what\'s going on in her business, that\'s how they all move forward and stay aligned.

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Organization Setting Themselves Apart and Giving Customers More Than They Expect

Me: Now, you\'ve been an insurance for over two decades, Joanna, and I\'m sure you\'ve seen lots of ups and downs, hills and gullies kind of thing. But in your own experience, especially as we\'re moving forward embarking on a new calendar year, what are maybe one or two things that you believe as an organization, especially in the insurance industry, specifically, you would need to be focusing on to ensure that you\'re setting yourself apart and truly giving the customer more than they expect, and kind of living to what you were saying, trying to predict their needs before they know they even need it.

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Joanna stated that she really thinks the big thing, especially in the insurance industry, is that the Googles and Amazons of the world have set an expectation for across all industries, that technology is easy to use that \\u201cI should be able to get the answers to my questions with the click of a button and with the phone that\'s in my hand, I shouldn\'t have to go to the horror, a real computer, I should be able to from a mobile device, be able to do anything that I should need to be able to do with any business partner of mine from my phone.\\u201d So, she really thinks that that expectation is where the insurance industry needs to focus.\\xa0

There\'s so much talk about AI and Blockchain and Chatbots and all of the magical technology that\'s out there. But if we can\'t meet the basic table stakes of being able to get a quote for insurance from her phone, then that insurance company will not be able to succeed. If she is standing on the side of the road and I live in Michigan in certain times of the year and they hit deer, it happens and if she\\u2019s on the side of the road because she\\u2019s just hit a deer or had any kind of an accident. If she can\\u2019t pull out her phone and initiate that claim from her phone, she\\u2019s not going to stay with that insurance company because they haven\'t met her need when she needed them. So, being able to meet those basic needs from core technology is where the insurance industry needs to focus right now.

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App, Website or Tool that Joanna Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Joanna shared that she has a couple. Because of what she does, the CRM that they use, that\'s how she keeps her pulse on what\'s going on in their business. So, they happen to use Salesforce. But she\\u2019s used HubSpot in the past, and there are other great CRMs out there. But the most important thing is having one central repository to be able to see everything that\'s going on to the lifecycle of your customer. If you\'re working in customer experience and you can\'t see what\'s going on with your customers, and you\'re trying to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other form of technology, there\'s just no way to get that 360 degree view.

But personally, within customer success, there is an amazing website called kapta.com. And kapta.com is a technology that integrates with your CRM, not what she\\u2019s endorsing here, she\\u2019s sure it\'s great, but she\\u2019s not actually used that technology, but the number of resources that Kapta has on their website to help people that work in key account management, whatever form of that that is you work in, they have so many resources available to help account managers be successful with their customers, and to help organisations and leaders know how to help their account managers be successful. So, Kapta is amazing.\\xa0

And then specifically in her industry, insurtech Connect, ITC has a six things newsletter that is just incredible. It keeps you informed of everything that could be going on in the insurance industry that has anything to do with technology. And it\'s an interesting read for anyone.

\\xa0

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Joanna

When asked about books that have had a great impact her, Joanna shared that there are two that she finds herself going back to over and over and over again. And the first one is Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, it helps from an organizational perspective, as well as on an individual perspective. Whether you\'re working with customers, with employees, \\u201cKnowing the Why of why you do what you do.\\u201d\\xa0

And a common theme in her world is, it\'s not about you. It\'s not about her, it\'s not about what she\\u2019s doing. It\'s about the customer, and it\'s about the employee and why they do what they do. And if we can be other focus and know why people are motivated to do the things that they do. And to know what our Why is and why we get up each morning and why we\'re helping our customers and why these things matter. She\\u2019s listened to Simon\'s podcast, and it\'s just brilliant. And that all started with Start with Why for her.

The second one is a book called Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader\\u2019s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, it\'s by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei. And it\'s all about empowerment, and when you\'re working in account management or customer success or customer service, this is a tough job, it\'s a tough job where the people in this space spend a lot of time getting yelled at oftentimes, and they\'re trying to make the customer\'s world a better place. And when you can come from a perspective of empowering those people to be successful, to have the ability to make the decisions that makes the customer\'s world a better place, it\'s better for the customer, it\'s better for the company, and it\'s better for the human that gets to make those decisions. If they sit there all day every day saying, \\u201cI\'m sorry, I don\'t know. But I\'ll check on that and get back to you.\\u201d That\'s a very difficult space to be in. So, being able to empower people is their greatest version of themselves, it\'s really powerful and it\'s really a game changer.

\\xa0

What Joanna is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something she\\u2019s really excited about, Joanna shared that this year, she got the opportunity to spend some time really diving into the Enneagram. And if the listeners aren\'t familiar with the Enneagram, it\'s a personality assessment type of profile that looks at why people behave the way that they do. So, Enneagram have types, you do an assessment, it gives you a direction on what your type may be. And then you do some more homework and you confirm that that is your type.\\xa0

And Beatrice Chestnut, wrote a book called The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge. And she\\u2019s really had the opportunity to pour into that and what she loves about it is it doesn\'t matter what part of your life you\'re looking at, whether it\'s about your employees, your boss, your co-worker, any other co-workers, your spouse, your kids, family members, customers, it doesn\'t matter, being able to get insight into what charges people up, what gets them to behave the way that they do.

And then when they\'re doing well, why you might see some other characteristics where when they\'re feeling stressed, or things are difficult, you can look for other traits that might come in. It has been incredibly insightful, and she feels like reading Beatrice\'s book has been a college level course on this. But the amount of insight that it\'s given into people.

And then the other thing that is maybe a little bit more approachable to people rather than reading a giant textbook is Ian Cron has a podcast called Typology that is just fascinating, where he talks to people with different Enneagram types, and about how they interact with the world. And it\'s just fascinating and it\'s been so much fun to learn this year.

\\xa0

Where Can We Find Joanna Online

LinkedIn \\u2013 Joanna-Hagelberger

Website \\u2013 www.rhoadsonline.com

\\xa0

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Joanna Uses\\xa0

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Joanna shared that she does have, Maya Angelou, which she\\u2019s sure many of our guests have quoted, because she\'s very quotable. This is how she hears it in her head is that, \\u201cPeople will forget what you said and did but people will never forget how you made them feel.\\u201d And she feels like when we\'re dealing, this is all about customer experience. And if we can just remember that how we make our customers feel and how they experience us makes all the difference in the world.\\xa0

\\xa0

Me: Amazing. Thank you so much, Joanna, for taking time out of your very busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us today and sharing all of the great insights that you\'ve learned and just best practices that you\'ve taken on as an individual as a customer service practitioner in your own right, especially in your industry. And just looking at some opportunities that we can strengthen, building out our customer success teams and actually giving customers as you had stated earlier, giving them what they need before they even know that they need it and I thought that was really brilliant. So, thank you so much again.

\\xa0\\xa0

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader\\u2019s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut

\\xa0\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

\\xa0

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

214: Enhancing Customer Experience and Listening Skills: Insights from UserTesting and AI Trends with Lija Hogan

\\u2022 Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what UserTesting is? And what do you do?

\\u2022 A survey was done that your company pioneered with 2000 adults. And I\'d like you to just kind of talk to us a little bit about that survey and some of the key findings that came out of that survey that you believe can help organisations to have a better understanding of why AI is so important.

\\u2022 \\xa0\\xa0\\xa0Where do you see the technology going for 2024? If you were to pick like a single theme that you believe Chat GPT could help an organisation to tap into delivering a better customer experience, what theme would you say they would need to be focusing on if they were going to use Chat GPT as an integration or even any form of AI that your organisation has been exposed to and work with your clients on that you think is critical for 2024 and beyond?

\\u2022 Now, could you also share with our listeners, what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022 Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you\'ve read, could be a book that you read very recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago, but it has had a very big impact on you.

\\u2022 Can you also share with our listeners what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you\'ll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, the quote can helps to just to get you back on track.

\\xa0

Highlights

Lija\\u2019s Journey

Me: Could you share with our listeners just a little bit about your journey? In your own words, how you got to where you are today from where you\'re coming from?

\\xa0

Lija shared that it was a very roundabout journey. So, she started with the goal of becoming an academic librarian in Slavic and Eastern European studies. So, most people are very amused when they hear that because it\'s a very, very focused and targeted discipline that requires a lot of education.\\xa0

And she started that path, actually, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with a Master\'s Degree Programme in what she thought was going to be academic librarianship, but got bitten by the Human Computer Interaction bug really early there. And so, that was many years ago now. But that was really kind of the entry point to being focused on the user experience and the customer experience and just making really substantive connections between people to help them to transact together more effectively and efficiently.

\\xa0

About UserTesting

Me: Now, you are at UserTesting, that\'s what we read in your bio. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what UserTesting is? And what do you do?

\\xa0

Lija stated that that\'s a great question. So, she tends to think of UserTesting as being an enabling technology. So, essentially, it\'s a platform that enables their customers to connect with their own customers, their users, their employees, their potential users. And what it does is provide recording mechanisms across mobile and desktop, to enable people to have either self-guided, or live conversations with people who are looking for insights.\\xa0

And they capture videos and audio and screen share, to really get into the perspectives of people around the world. And so, once you\'ve gathered all the information, the platform also provides you with some strategies around sharing that information with your colleagues. And so, you can share videos, you can share quotes, and all sorts of other data to really understand where the gaps are in your experience, and also just to understand what you can do to optimize and de risk the solutions that you\'re building.

\\xa0

Survey Key Findings to Help Organizations Better Understand the Importance of AI

Me: When you were originally presented to me as a guest for our podcast, a survey was shared with us that your company pioneered with 2000 adults. And I\'d like you to just kind of talk to us a little bit about that survey and some of the key findings that came out of that survey that you believe can help organizations to have a better understanding of why AI is so important.

\\xa0

Lija shared that they\'ve actually done a few surveys around AI. And this one, really, some of the significant findings were really around just the fact that people don\'t understand where AI is manifesting in their lives right now. So, to a certain extent, if you ask them directly, they are answering yes and no without a clear sense for what AI really is.\\xa0

And she thinks one of the major findings that she had in working through that was just really leaning into the knowledge that AI is manifesting in all our lives in many ways, kind of in the background and behind the scenes. And it\'s already enabling us to, sometimes make better decisions, have access to more information, enrich the work that we\'re doing, the conversations that we\'re having. And that is an important benefit that we\'re all looking for in artificial intelligence.

\\xa0

Organizations Using Chat GPT to Deliver a Better Customer Experience

Me: So, AI exists in many different forms, because it\'s a broad topic. But I think the one that people most connect with and use is probably Chat GPT. It\'s been a year since Chat GPT was launched, I can\'t believe it\'s a year already. Where do you see the technology going for 2024?\\xa0

If you were to pick like a single theme that you believe Chat GPT could help an organization to tap into delivering a better customer experience, what theme would you say they would need to be focusing on if they were going to use Chat GPT as an integration or even any form of AI that your organization has been exposed to and work with your clients on that you think is critical for 2024 and beyond?

\\xa0

Lija stated that that\'s a great question, because she think it\'s really hard to say that there\'s a single thing, but there are probably multiple ones that she sees as being really important. The first is, we\'re still trying to figure out what\'s in and out of bounds with regard to how people are using large language models. So, she finds the examples that we\'re seeing coming out of the legal profession, right, or lawyers are asking a Chat GPT to write briefs and the platform is hallucinating and making up case law, which doesn\'t exist. And that\'s a problem.\\xa0

So, we haven\'t yet caught up with creating guardrails and it\'s not necessarily about the technology so much as about how we reach practical consensus around what is allowable, given the constraints of the technology as it currently exists. And actually, not just as it currently exists, but with an eye towards the fact is probably going to become a lot more matured much more quickly. So, she thinks that\'s one.\\xa0\\xa0

The second is really a more recent development that she\\u2019s seeing around DIY, Chat GPT and so essentially, people will be able to essentially create their own version of what a large language model can do given a certain use case that they\'ve got in mind. So, she sees the proliferation of a lot of potential technologies use cases strategies that can be leveraged by people who are both technologically seasoned and who are not, who are learning as they go. And she thinks that will be very interesting.\\xa0

The other main trend that she sees is the enterprise trying to make artificial intelligence safe for practical applications and business operations. And she says that because even just a few months after the launch of 3.5, back in November of last year, she was talking to UserTesting customers, a lot of their innovation teams were essentially doing tests to essentially say, within the context of our own, say, customers experience or customer support teams, how can we create an experience that is robust and safe and private and secure, and gives us confidence that we can triage some.\\xa0

So, essentially enrich the in person interactions that we\'re having with people, but also ensure that we\'re providing good consistent information to those customers that we might be handling using some of those more automated chatbot style experiences that are powered by artificial intelligence.

\\xa0

App, Website or Tool that Lija Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Lija stated that this probably is going to sound self-serving, but actually, it\'s UserTesting, believe it or not. UserTesting is really important because it\'s really a very open platform that lets you have both a highly structured as well as an unstructured conversation with the people that you want to work with or learn more from. And she thinks what\'s so valuable about it is you can test ideas, you can hear what\'s top of mind for people. And in this world where we\'ve got access to so much data, just hearing stories brings you back down to earth and makes things very tangible and real and we need that now more than ever.

\\xa0

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Lija

When asked about books that have had an impact, Lija shared that one that she thinks has been most powerful and it\'s because she\\u2019s an optimist. And she thinks that it really gave her a research based foundation to be able to say, this is why she\\u2019s an optimist, is a great book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, they\'re actually brothers, they\'re psychologists, called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.\\xa0

And the concept that she found really fascinating is their focus on not just problem solving, but actually finding those bright spots and going after those, like, where are things going right? And how can we essentially create more experience that look like those bright spots? So, she loves that idea because rather than being focused on all the negatives, it\'s basically saying how can we make whatever it is that we\'re doing look like the most positive experiences that we\'re providing?

So, the other one, it\'s a really short book, it\'s probably less than 100 pages. But she loves it so much, it\'s called the The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick. And even though it\'s kind of like a flip book title, what she loves about it is, it\'s a very approachable set of strategies around having conversations with people when you\'re trying to figure out what to build and whether or not it\'s going to work for people.

\\xa0\\xa0

What Lija is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she\\u2019s really excited about, Lija stated that that is a really great question. Because there\'s so much, but she\\u2019s actually, to the point of the books that they were talking about, the biggest area of focus that she has right now is how to listen better to all the partners that she\\u2019s working with. And so, she\\u2019s actually spending a lot of time reading books. So, the two that she talked about are two of them, but a number of books that are all about how does she listen better? And sometimes it\'s about asking better questions, that\'s what the Mom Test is about.\\xa0

But sometimes it\'s actually saying like, \\u201cHow do I recognize that people are in a special place right now and need to be acknowledged as having been heard?\\u201d But then also, how does she change how it is that she shows up in every way, in the writing that she does, in the talking with folks that she does, in the teaching that she does, in all the interactions to help to move things forward. So, she thinks that there are so many great examples that come from working with children, and psychology, and just even business best practice, to really help to listen and to come to consensus, and just make better decisions together. So, that\'s really given her a lot of joy right now.\\xa0

\\xa0

Me: Are there any activities that you do with your team that kind of helps to strengthen their listening skills? Is there anything that you would like to share where that is concerned since that\'s an area that you\'ll be working on?

\\xa0

Lija shared that she thinks a couple of things. One is she actually thinks it\'s kind of twofold. One is she\\u2019s been spending a lot more time doing one on ones that are very unstructured. And that has given her the platform across the team that she works with, the people that she works with to really say, \\u201cWhat\'s top of mind for you, and let\'s talk about it.\\u201d And sometimes they start talking about their dogs and cats. But a lot of the time, what that conversation changes into is, \\u201cI\'m working on this, can I get your perspective on it?\\u201d or \\u201cI\'m having this challenge, can we work through it together.\\u201d\\xa0

And it\'s a great way to just stay close to what\'s happening in their world and their part of the organization, but then also take what it is that they\'re sharing, and see how she can help to pull in other people across the organization, other teams, and talk to other leaders in the organization about what they can do to address some of the themes and trends that she\\u2019s seeing. And so, she thinks spending a little bit more time one on one with people has been probably providing a lot of the value that she\\u2019s seeing driving those aha moments.

\\xa0\\xa0

Me: That\'s brilliant, that kind of reinforces one of the things that Stephen Covey talks about in his book that the most important role of a leader is to grow and develop people. So, the fact that you are actually seeing the results, because of the one on one intervention that you\'re doing, the time you\'re investing with each person, and you\'re seeing it twofold in terms of the benefit with the customers, then it really does prove that that is a strategy that works.

\\xa0\\xa0

Where Can We Find Lija Online

LinkedIn \\u2013 Lija Hogan

\\xa0

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Lija Uses\\xa0

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Lija stated that that\'s a great question. So actually, this is totally nerdy, but there\'s a quote, it\'s at the beginning of one of the chapters of this is where it gets nerdy, Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. And so, the Dune series, there\'s a movie, a remake of a couple of movies that are out right now.\\xa0\\xa0

And the quote, and she\\u2019s not going to remember it exactly, but it\'s really about fear and pain and kind of letting it wash through you. And understanding that it\'s there, but also understanding that it doesn\'t define you and it doesn\'t have to have long lasting negative implications. And so, it\'s basically, go with the flow, but in a way that leans into acknowledging that sometimes things are really hard and you just have to live through them and understand that it\'s hard, and figure out how you\'re going to come out on the other side. Change, but change in a way that acknowledges what\'s happened to you.

\\xa0\\xa0

Me: Thank you so much, Lija, just want to thank you again for coming on our podcast today and sharing a little bit about your organisation and user testing, and all the value and brilliance that you\'re bringing to the customer experience space. As well as some of the research findings that came out of one of the surveys that you had done recently. And just the impact of AI, specifically Chat GPT even though we spoke about that in the episode and other different forms of AI as well. But just taking time out of your busy schedule and coming on here with us and sharing all of the great insights and experiences that you\'ve had. I do believe our listeners will gain a great amount of value from this episode. So, thank you so much.

\\xa0\\xa0

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The Mom Test: How to talk to customer & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

\\xa0

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

213: Empowering Customer and Employee Experiences: Insights with Jason on Transforming Business Culture and Strategy with Jason S. Bradshaw

\\u2022 Could you tell us about the book that you had before It\\u2019s All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, some of the key tenants or themes that came out across that book?

\\u2022 As it relates to how to start improving the experience for your customers and your employees without needing to invest in additional money, what\'s one thing that we can start with?

\\u2022 As it relates to the employee experience versus the external customer experience, which one would you give more attention to?

\\u2022 You spoke a little bit earlier about two books you\'re currently working on but they haven\'t been published as yet. Could you share with us what those books are going to be about?

\\u2022 Are there any trends as it relates to customer experience that you\'re seeing currently that you believe will continue to be big things for 2024? And two things that you believe organisations should be looking to focus on for their organisation as it relates to strengthening their customer experience or growing your customer experience? What would those be?

\\u2022 What\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022 Can you also share with our listeners, what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you\'ll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed or you got off track, the quote kind of gets you back there. Do you have one of those?

Highlights\\xa0

What\\u2019s Happening with Jason Now!

Me: Now, I know that you were on our show, I think it was back in 2021. Talk to me about what\'s happened since then, how have things been for you?

\\xa0

Jason shared that things have been busy. He\\u2019s finalizing the manuscript on not one but two new books which will come out early in the new year. He\\u2019s also been working with some really unique organizations, in various ways as interim Chief Growth Officer as a pure consultant. And of course, continuing to do keynote presentations and his work supporting leaders and boards across the globe, transform the experiences they deliver. It\'s been a really unique time watching organizations of all shapes and sizes, navigate this post pandemic world, and what they\'ve considered a priority and what they haven\'t.

\\xa0

About the Book \\u2013 All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience \\u2013 Key Tenets from the Book

Me: So, for those of our listeners that would not have tapped into your previous episode with us. Could you tell us about the book that you had before It\\u2019s All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, which is one of the top reasons we had brought it on. That book was so amazing, could you tell us about some of the key tenets or themes that came out across that book?

\\xa0

Jason shared that It\'s All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience, that was his first walk. And it was a bit of a passion project to start with, because he\'d always wanted to write a book. And he finally put the theory into action and wrote a book that was designed to help any individual in an organization understand a couple of key things.\\xa0

Firstly, the key link between customer and employee experience, you can do some tactical things to improve the customer experience for a short period of time, but if you really want to maintain and differentiate the experience that you deliver to your competitors, then you also need to focus on the employee experience. So, they tackle that in the book.\\xa0

They also tackle in the book how customer experience is not a soft measure, it\'s quite often seen as hugging your customers, or something that\'s rather soft. But actually, in the book, you\'ll discover that there\'s some really strong commercial ties and commercial impacts to the work of a true customer experience professional.\\xa0

And then the third area that they explore in the book is how to actually go about getting started. It always frustrates him, throughout his career where he\\u2019s worked in 7 different industries, banking, finance, government, automotive, retail, etc.\\xa0

It\'s always frustrated him when he\\u2019s turned up to an organisation and the first thing that he hears is, \\u201cWe haven\'t been able to do anything because we don\'t have the money to start.\\u201d\\xa0

And he\\u2019s like you can start today, you do not need to throw millions of dollars at a problem to start improving it. And in the book, he gives a really practical step by step guide on how to start improving the experience for your customers and your employees without needing to invest in additional cent or build out a new system. Of course, he talked about some of that stuff as well in the book, but the key message is just get started and here\'s the way on how to do it.

\\xa0

Improving the Customer and Employee Experience

Me: So, I like the train of thought as it relates to so you don\'t need millions of dollars to start, but let\'s say you have a CEO in front of you that says, but Jason, it takes money, it costs money to make money and to train the staff, to get them to be customer oriented, to bring in a consultant, we don\'t have the resources, we don\'t have an HR department, we don\'t have a resource person internally that we can use. What\'s one thing that we can start with then since you\'re suggesting we can do this without millions of dollars invested?

\\xa0

Jason shared that the first thing is to define what great looks like and measure yourself against that. So, if a CEO came out today and said, \\u201cI think the company is successful if all of our phones are pink and I\'m going to measure how many of our phones in the company are pink.\\u201d Well, all of a sudden without training anybody, without spending a cent on banners or education programmes, or retreats to get people inspired, the sheer fact that you\'ve stated that it\'s a key goal, this sheer fact that you\'re measuring, it means that someone in procurement is going to start buying pink phones. And it\'s the same with customer experience and employee experience, define what great looks like and define how you\'re going to measure it, and start doing that even in the most rudimentary ways. But the moment you start talking about it, the moment you start putting focus on it, people will start to move towards it.\\xa0

Now the problem is, most organizations say we want to be known for delivering great customer service or delivering great customer experiences and they stop there.\\xa0\\xa0

And then 6 months down the track they say, \\u201cWell, we said we wanted to be famous for this. But nothing\'s improved.\\u201d\\xa0

Well, you\'ve missed the key point. The key point is you\'ve got to define what great looks like. So, what do you mean when you say, we want to be great at customer experience, what defines or represents great in our terms, and then you have to say, and I\'m going to measure it this way and this will be the marker of success. When you combine that clarity, you don\'t need to instantly spend money on new systems or new profiles or training because people will start gravitating towards it. But if you don\'t have the clarity, people will just fumble around and they won\'t deliver any improvements. In fact, in many instances, without clarity, you\'ll go backwards.

\\xa0

Employee Experience Versus External Customer Experience

Me: Now, you talk a lot about great customer experiences, and defining what that looks like what great looks like, what are your views, since this is an area that you were practising, and you have a lot of experience in it as it relates to the employee experience versus the external customer experience? Do you believe there\'s a direct correlation between the two? And if you were to let\'s say for example, focus on one more than the other, which one would you give more attention to?

\\xa0

Jason shared that that\'s the million dollar question always. If you have to choose one, the area to start out on is the employee experience. And he says that because try to get a happy employee to deliver a bad experience, it\'s less likely. Try to get a disgruntled employee to deliver a great experience, almost impossible because they\'re so caught up in their own drama and their own challenges that they\'re faced every day.\\xa0

An organization that gets a specialist to come in, they wrote a 300 step process to deliver a great customer experience. But they don\'t train their team members, and they don\'t align their systems to the processes. The team member can\'t deliver that great customer experience that the process was designed to deliver, because everything is getting in the way. But if you say to an employee, I\'m going to invest in you, I\'m going to make this a great place to work, and you are going to want to see the company succeed, then they will find a way to deliver a better experience for customers.\\xa0

Because intrinsically, they\'re being motivated by the great experience that they have. So, if you have to choose, absolutely go with employee experience first. The caveat he\'ll put on that though, is yes, you can start with employee experience, but you still have to define what great looks like for the customer.

\\xa0

Books Jason is Currently Working On

Me: Now, you spoke a little bit earlier about two books, I think you mentioned that you\'re currently working on but they haven\'t been published as yet. Could you share with us what those books are going to be about?

\\xa0\\xa0

Jason shared that one book is a really practical application book. And what he means by that is you can turn to almost any page in the book, and read just that page, and go and do work that will improve the experience of your customers, of your products, of your employees. It\'s designed in a way to encourage action, and take away some of the fear of not knowing what to do. So, think of it as a bit of an Experience Management Handbook.\\xa0

The other book is very similar to his first one in the sense that it\'s more traditionally, a more traditional business book. And it explores this concept of moving beyond the singular transaction with a customer or with an employee and focuses on what\'s next. What does a customer really need to see to be fiercely loyal, for example, to your organisation, and again, it will provide some practical guides to how you go about implementing some of the concepts he talked about in the book.\\xa0

And importantly, it\'s written in a way that it doesn\'t matter if you\'re the team leader of an organization or the CEO, you can see yourself having success and delivering success and growing your business through it.

\\xa0\\xa0

Me: All right, and when are those books expected to hit the newsstands?

\\xa0\\xa0

Jason stated that the year\\u2019s getting away on us. So, both books will come out early next year, towards the back end of January.

\\xa0

Focus for 2024

Me: Now, we\'re embarking on a new year, as you just mentioned before, we\\u2019re less than less than 60 days. Are there any trends as it relates to customer experience that you\'re seeing currently that you believe will continue to be big things for 2024? And if you are to, let\'s say two things that you believe organizations should be looking to focus on for their organization as it relates to strengthening their customer experience or growing your customer experience? What would those be?

\\xa0

Jason shared that he\\u2019s going to give three if that\'s okay. The first one is specifically aimed at the CX professionals in organizations, you have to tie your work to the return on investment, you have to deliver a return on the investment. He\\u2019s seeing companies all around the world, disinvest in customer experience programmes because the CX leaders in those organizations have been unsuccessful in creating a really robust link between their work and the commercial results of that work. And it\'s not surprising that CFOs then start to question it, but this work has a commercial element to it, and don\'t forget it.\\xa0

Number two, how can you be the most convenient for your customers?\\xa0

How can you meet your customers where they are, so that you are integrated into the way that they live versus being a transaction?

How can you go from being a commodity to be a convenient resource that is part of their life?

So, what he means by this is, beyond the sales channels that your customers wanted to be on, offer your customers the communication channels that they want to be on.\\xa0

If you have customers that are 80 years old, and you have customers that are 20 years old, then yes, you need to have a landline phone number and you also probably need to be able to service them on Tik Tok, to think that you can only do one or the other means that you\'re going to have disgruntled customers at some spectrum. And of course, he\'s using some broad strokes here with those ages. But you understand his point.\\xa0\\xa0

And the third area is think beyond the purchase, beyond the transaction. If you think of Coca Cola, many people could argue that Coca Cola is a pure transaction product, you go in, you pick up the can of soda at the shop, you pay for it, you walk out, you drink it, and the transaction is over, the experience is done, and you move on.\\xa0

You have fiercely loyal customers that will only drink Coke, they won\'t drink Pepsi or any other Cola products, and vice versa for those brands as well. And that\'s because they create an environment that associates with the consumers lifestyle choices, they have so much money that they spend on marketing to make you believe that drinking Coke is a lifestyle choice, that talks about you.\\xa0

Now, he mentioned Coke as an example, because quite often the point that he\\u2019s about to share with people, they say, \\u201cOh, well, we just have a product like Coke and they just buy it and consume it and, there\'s nothing post the purchase that we can do.\\u201d His argument is that post the purchase transaction, you need to find a way to continue to be in the customers conversation, you need to continue to deliver value.\\xa0

Now, in the sake of a soda, it\'s about being seen as a lifestyle choice, a successful lifestyle choice potential. But if you\'re selling someone a fridge or a washing machine or a course or a camping tent, whatever you\'re selling, how can you help that customer actually leverage the benefits of that product?\\xa0

Get the most out of that product, so that in six months\\u2019 time when they are at their barbecue talking about stuff with their friends, they can say, \\u201cYou know, I bought this mobile phone or I bought this item or I did this course. And they genuinely wanted me to enjoy it, they genuinely wanted me to be able to use every feature to get the most out of it, to get the most value out of it.\\u201d And so, to sum up point three, deliver value to your customer, even after the purchase has concluded.

\\xa0

App, Website or Tool that Jason Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resources that he cannot live without in his business, Jason stated that that would be his survey tool. Now, for him, it doesn\'t matter what tool you use, there\'s lots out there. There\'s no secret of the fact that he\\u2019s a big advocate of Qualtrics Technology. But Qualtrics is an enterprise grade product is delighted for small businesses. There\'s a whole range of products out there. But the reason he says his survey tool, is because if you don\'t invite your customers and your employees and the marketplace in general to provide you with feedback, if you don\'t make it easy for them to give you unsolicited feedback, well, then, are you really listening? Are you really trying to get a pulse of what\'s working and what\'s not working in your business?\\xa0

And so, for him, it\'s from a pure tactical perspective. For him, it\'s that tool and he\'d encourage everyone to have that tool that lets them get structured and unstructured feedback from customers, employees and the marketplace at general. And so, he always go to that survey tool. But outside of that, at a personal level, it\\u2019s not really a tool but he\\u2019s a big believer in continued personal learning. And so, he read 30 odd books a year, so, you could imagine that audible sits on his mobile phone and always has a book ready for him to listen to when he\\u2019s in the car or sitting on the plane.

\\xa0

What Jason is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that\\u2019s he\\u2019s really excited about, Jason shared that these two new books that are coming out, they are absolutely one of the passions that he\\u2019s working on at the moment. And he\\u2019s not just saying that because he wants people to buy it, of course, he does want people to buy it. But they\'ve taken on a life of their own. One book is actually technically two years overdue, but that\'s okay. And the reason he says it\'s okay is because he listened to what was happening in the marketplace and to what his customers were experiencing, and said, \\u201cNo, the book I was writing is not the book people need.\\u201d\\xa0

And so, he hopes and trust that when people get the actual version that the final manuscript that he\\u2019s written, that they will see that customer experience isn\'t an option, focusing on it isn\'t an option, it is essential to driving your business forward and the book has the tools to help them deliver it. It really is something that\'s just taken on a life of its own and as he said, it\'s definitely two years overdue, his publisher, they\'d like to have published it quite a while ago.\\xa0

But it is so important to him that he gets this book right because he wants to really leave a dent in the world and improve the lives of customers, employees, through his work.\\xa0

And then at a more personal level, he\\u2019s working on a couple of new projects that he\'ll be launching in early December, which are online programmes designed to help businesses, specifically small to midsize businesses break through and have business success.

\\xa0\\xa0

Where Can We Find Jason Online

Website \\u2013 www.jasonsbradshaw.com\\xa0

Twitter \\u2013 Jason S. Bradshaw

Linkedin \\u2013 Jason S Bradshaw

Facebook \\u2013 Jason S. Bradshaw

\\xa0

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jason Uses

When asked about a quote that he tends to revert, Jason stated that he absolutely does. And the quote is, \\u201cNo matter what, you\'ve got this.\\u201d And it\\u2019s so simple, but it was something a colleague said to him once and it\\u2019s just is a reminder that whatever the challenge is, it doesn\'t matter, because you\'ve had challenges before and you\'ve got over them, you\'ve succeeded and you can do it again. So, no matter what, you\'ve got this.\\xa0

Me: Thank you so much for sharing Jason.\\xa0

So, Jason just wanted to extend our deepest appreciation and gratitude for you coming back on our podcast as a returning guest, that\'s an awesome milestone, so grateful that you made the time to come back again, especially seeing that you\'re literally on the other side of the world. But all of the great insights that you shared with us today, reminding us about the things that were in your previous book, CEX, so those of our listeners that would like to tap into that we\'ll definitely have the link in the show notes of this episode for our awesome resource. And of course, to keep in touch with you for your new books that are coming out to the latter part of January 2024. So, we are extremely grateful that you decided to come and join us again for a quick conversation on mastering customer experience. It was great, thank you, Jason.

\\xa0

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 It\\u2019s All about CEX!: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience by Jason S. Bradshaw

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Episode 145: Understanding The Power of Delivering An Amazing Employee and Customer Experience \\u2013 Released \\u2013 October 05, 2021

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

\\xa0

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

212: Strategies for Achieving Exceptional Customer Retention and Service in Healthcare Technology with Maggie Pena

\\u2022 Can you tell our listeners maybe three key things that you\'ve done consistently that you believe has contributed to the success of achieving a 97.4% customer retention rate?

\\u2022 Can you tell us maybe some of the criteria that you use to select those customers? What type of customer do you look for to ensure that they are the ones that you\'re joining your counsel?

\\u2022 Now, could you also share with our listeners what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can\'t live without in your business?

\\u2022 Now we\'d also like for you to share with us maybe one or two books that you\'ve read. It could be a book that you read a very long time ago or even one that you read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

\\u2022 As a customer, what are maybe three things that are critical for you to actually say, yes, this was a great customer experience.

\\u2022 Can you also share with our listeners, what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022 Are there are some key behaviours or competencies that you look for when you\'re hiring persons for those roles as customer support?

\\u2022 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track? This quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Highlights

Maggie\\u2019s Journey

Me: So, just wanted to take some time before we jump into the meat of our conversation for you to share with our listeners a little bit about your journey. I know we would have read your bio, but we always like to ask the guests in their own words, if you could share a little bit about how you got to where you are today.

\\xa0

Maggie shared that it has been an interesting journey. When she started college, she wanted to be an accountant. But after her first accounting course, she quickly realized that was not her calling. So, the path that really paved her way to where she is today started in the financial industry during her junior year working part time for a local bank and the IT department, processing operations for almost 30 banks throughout the state, working with a Unisys mainframe and green screen terminals for the very first time. And she thinks she just might have dated herself, but that\'s okay.\\xa0

So, all kidding aside, it was a great learning experience nonetheless. By then, she had switched majors and was now pursuing a degree in Computer Information Systems. And her time at the bank confirmed and validated her interest in technology and how we can use technology to automate processes to increase efficiencies and customer service as we knew it back then, now that customer experiences tends to be a newer word, back in the day, we were thinking at it as customer service.\\xa0

She was lucky enough to stay at the bank for almost 7 years until the bank was acquired by an international bank with plans to move their IT operations someplace else. At that point, she knew that it was time to move on and look for something else. So, she joined a local health care system, also working in their IT department supporting the business and financial side of the hospital. After about a year, Interlace Health, formerly FormFast as said came into her life when the hospital purchased a forms automation solution. So, fast forward a couple of years, she had the opportunity to join the NRA Health team and have now been there for almost 13 years.

\\xa0

Key Strategies that Contributed to the Success of Achieving a 97.4% Customer Retention Rate

Me: So, in your bio, it says that you\'ve managed to achieve a 97.4% customer retention rate. Can you tell our listeners maybe three key things that you\'ve done consistently that you believe has contributed to that success?

\\xa0\\xa0

Maggie shared that at Interlace Health, they believe in putting people first, so that is their mission. They put people over paperwork, and it has reflected on the solutions that they provide their customers and the solution is that they innovate and so on, so forth. But even in the services, she has a belief that software alone doesn\'t cut it anymore, it just doesn\'t. Anyone can have a similar product or a similar solution as you, it really comes down to the level of service that you provide your customers and the experience that they encounter throughout the entire journey.\\xa0

So, first and foremost, they put people first, always there for their customers, they have also built a dedicated team within the services department at Interlace Health, always to be their specialized in what they do, enabled to deliver personalized and attentive support to their customers, they are there with them, they understand their business, they understand their needs, and they\'re always available.\\xa0

Again, to address it, regardless of what the need may be, the COVID pandemic was huge, it was terrible, but it was an opportunity for them to be there for their customers and continue providing the service, and not just the service, but continue providing the same level of service to enable them to continue providing the care that they needed to provide even more so during those difficult times.\\xa0\\xa0

And then three, they embrace feedback from their customers, the good, the bad, and the Ugly, like the saying. They\'re always there, they have established a Customer Success Council and it\'s composed of their most engaged, knowledgeable customers who advises on their products or solutions, they share the best practices. And quite frankly, they give candid feedback. It\'s not always what they want to hear, but at the end of the day is what they want to hear, because their feedback and their insights have helped make informed decisions as they improve their products and services. And they are pretty much the ones helping them guide their path forward as it comes to their products and services.

\\xa0

Criteria for Selecting Customers to Join Your Customer Success Council\\xa0

Me: Now, in addition to those three things that has contributed to your customer retention rate being at 97.4%. And I know you mentioned a customer council that you say you use to guide you. Can you tell us maybe some of the criteria that you use to select those customers? What type of customer do you look for to ensure that they are the ones that you\'re joining your council?

\\xa0\\xa0

Maggie shared that they offer various solutions. So, they try to get customers that are using different types of solutions, right? Because obviously, there\'s different needs that each solution addresses. First, they started with their internal team, and they asked them who are your champions? Who are your stellar contacts that are customers who know their products, they know it well, they\'re using it consistently and that\'s the criteria. It\'s also customers that are using their solutions successfully and consistently.\\xa0

But they try to get customers who weren\'t using it as much or adopting it as they would like them to, to get involved, to tell them why, what are your challenges? What are your staff or your patients telling you about your solutions or their solutions in this case, that is keeping you from using it to its fullest potential?\\xa0

So, it was really customers that were mostly engaged and customers that they have communication with, but not to the extent like the fully engaged ones, if that makes sense so that we could get both sides of the house, those that are using it a lot and those that are struggling for various reasons, they wanted to hear from them as well.

\\xa0

App, Website or Tool that Maggie Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Maggie shared that she would say internally, Microsoft Teams. Prior to pandemic, Interlace Health, they\'ve always been a remote company. So, mostly everyone was remote, she\\u2019s been remote almost 13 years there. But since pandemic, she thinks Microsoft Teams have kept them very well connected not just internally but with their customers in the hospital setting, that is what they\'ve seen use the most is Microsoft Teams. And then internally to keep track of their customers and their data and their metrics and so on, so forth. Everything that they need to know about their customers, they use Salesforce platform.

\\xa0

Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Maggie

When asked about books that have had a great impact, Maggie shared that The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen Covey. She loves that book and it\'s been a while, she\\u2019s probably going to read it again. And the question got her thinking she needs to reread it again. But it\'s been a few years since she\\u2019s read it. And she loves how it gives clarity into how trusted leaders do things differently, faster and at a lower cost. She\\u2019s a true believer that trust drives everything, and how it produces better results. So, that\'s one.\\xa0

And then the second one not so much a book, because he\'s got plenty of books, but John Maxwell, anything, everything John Maxwell, he\'s amazing. She first heard him 5 years ago at a Global Leadership Summit. The one thing that struck the most from that Summit was when he was talking about looking for ways to add value to people, he called it be an added value liver. Where he was talking about throughout the day, going from knowing to doing, from thinking and looking to making sure it\'s an action. And at the end of the day, ask yourself, \\u201cDid I add value to people today?\\u201d\\xa0

Again, John Maxwell, he is someone who she constantly sees his videos, she\\u2019s purchased some training, she even purchases trainings there at work for her direct reports as well to see and to encounter and to read and learn from his teachings. So, those are the two that she can think of.

\\xa0\\xa0

As a Customer, Three Critical Things to Have a Great Customer Experience

Me: Now I know as your role as a Chief Experience Officer at Interlace Health, you are focused on providing the service to your clients. But I\'d like to flip the script a little and put you in the in the hotbox where you are the customer. So, when you think about your own interactions with organizations that you do business with, what are maybe three things that are critical for you to actually say, yes, this was a great customer experience.

\\xa0

Maggie stated that the sense of trust. She talked about trust, the book. So, she would say trust, transparency, and personalization, if she had to put it into just three words. This would be her top three that comes to mind right away.

\\xa0\\xa0

Me: So, trust, transparency, and personalization.

\\xa0

Maggie stated that personal life experience, she\\u2019s huge on that. Just, for example, even when she goes to restaurants, the first thing she looks at when the waiter approaches her is their name badge, because she wants to address them by their name. And she always does, it\'s just that personal touch and everything that we do, to her, that\'s very important.

\\xa0\\xa0

Me: It\\u2019s always the little things.

\\xa0

What Maggie is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she\\u2019s excited about, Maggie shared that just with the new CXO role, she\\u2019s excited about it because it\'s going to allow her to work with the entire organization on the customer journey from the initial awareness to implementation support and beyond. So, she\\u2019s excited to continue creating a more holistic customer centric culture at Interlace Health, while developing and implementing a comprehensive customer experience strategy. And Yanique did the bragging, she (Maggie) was going to brag a little bit about their customer retention rate. So, that\'s also exciting for them at Interlace Health at the moment, which is that customer retention rate of 97.4%.

\\xa0

Key Behaviours or Competence for Hiring Customer Support\\xa0

Me: Could you also share with us with, your customer support team that you had built out, how many persons are on that team?

\\xa0

Maggie shared that they have the team, they\'re thinking about everyone that\'s doing support, a good 10 people.

\\xa0

Me: So, you got 10 people on that support team. And so, I just wanted to know if there are some key behaviours or competencies that you look for when you\'re hiring persons for those roles.

\\xa0

Maggie shared that yes, they need competency, they need people that know what they know, that they\'re intelligent, and they know what\'s expected of them. But she looks more on attitude, because you can teach the skills that they need to know in order to support the customers. You\'ll teach them the product and the solutions and all the intricacies right of what they do. But the attitude, that is not something they can teach. So, she hires for attitude. And so, that\'s a big one for her.\\xa0

At Interlace Health, they look for people who are motivated and you have to, in this remote world, you have to be self-motivated. We\'re no longer in front of other people to help us get through the day. So, you need self-motivated individuals, absolutely intelligent, competent people, but people that have the attitude, who are going to be there for their customers, because not every single call is a good call, and that\'s life. Some calls aren\'t always the best calls, but they want people who are going to have the attitude and turn a not so good call into a positive call at the end of the day while we\'re helping their customers resolve their problems.

\\xa0\\xa0

Where Can We Find Maggie Online

Website \\u2013 https://interlacehealth.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggiepe\\xf1a/

\\xa0

Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Maggie Uses

When asked about quote that she tends to revert to, Maggie shared that there\'s one that she has that she\\u2019s used personally since a very young age. And that is simple, \\u201cIf anyone else can do it, so can I.\\u201d and like she said, that since she can remember going through school, college, you name it, she\\u2019s always had that in her mind if anyone else can do it, so can I.\\xa0

Then she has a second one too as it relates to her professional setting at work and with her team as they\'re looking to do something new, whether it\'s a new process, a new approach to something, anything new that they\'re talking about doing, she always tells them, \\u201cLet\'s try it, what\'s the worst that can happen?\\u201d So, those are the two quotes that you\'ll hear her say quite a bit depending on the situation.

\\xa0

Me: Perfect. I love the second one, \\u201cLet\'s do it, what\'s the worst that can happen?\\u201d

\\xa0

Maggie stated, what\'s the worst that can happen? If it doesn\'t work, it wasn\'t working anyway.

\\xa0

Me: There\'s one that goes, \\u201cYou miss all of the shots that you never take.\\u201d That quote kind of reminds me of that one.

\\xa0

Maggie, I just wanted to express our deepest gratitude to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today. And sharing about your journey as well as what your organization is doing and just how it is that you\'ve been able to really make customer experience shine in your organization and achieve the high level of retention rate, how it is that you focus on ensuring that your customers are getting what they need, and not necessarily what organization wants to give them but you have something in place where you really use the voice of the customer on a regular basis. And you can see it manifest into your customer satisfaction and retention scores. So, thank you again for joining us today.

\\xa0

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything by Stephen Covey

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

211: Scaling Up Success: Insights and Strategies for Business Growth with Herb Cogliano

\\u2022\\xa0 Now Scaling Up, can you tell our listeners, what Scaling Up is, maybe three or four critical things that if as a business you want to scale up you need to have in place.

\\u2022\\xa0 What has been your experience in scaling a business, let\'s say you were an organisation with let\'s say, 10 employees, and you\'ve finished in the course of 12 months, you\'ve now grown to an organisation with 100 employees.

\\u2022\\xa0 In terms of customer experience, you as a customer, what are three things that you look for to ensure that you\'re being satisfied as a customer, that your needs are being met?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, Herb, could you also share with us what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with our listeners if you read any books recently, actually, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, but a book that has had or books that have had a great impact on you? Do you have any of those?

\\u2022\\xa0 And so, could you share with us in terms of the recruitment process from a HR perspective, what are some key, would it be a question that you need to ask them that would align you in that phase?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with us what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up herb, we always like to ask our guests do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you felt derailed or rundown, this quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

Highlights

Herb\\u2019s Journey

Herb shared that he was very fortunate to be raised in a family business where his mother and father incorporated not only raising a family on good values but incorporated what were the challenges in running and growing a business. And as he grew up, and then ultimately went into the business, their business had years of success. And then the industry became more competitive, more commoditized and their growth started to stagnate. As a result of that, they wanted to grow further. They worked hard, they were smart people, but they got stuck.\\xa0

And they came across the book called Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It\\u2026and Why the Rest Don\\u2019t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harnish. And it\'s really a playbook for small mid-market companies that don\'t have a team of MBAs working on their staff, but still need to navigate a very fast changing marketplace. And that book really changed his life about knowing how to grow a company by asking the right questions and working with the right tools to do it.\\xa0

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

\\xa0\\xa0

What is Scaling Up?

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

Herb shared that one of the challenges in growing your business is that you don\'t know what you don\'t know. So, if you\'re a $2 Million Dollar company, you don\'t know what it\'s like to be a $10 Million Dollar company.\\xa0

And things change because you\'re hiring more people, you\'re onboarding more customers, you\'re offering more in different products, you may have different or multiple locations and the complexity compounds, and then makes it very hard for the original owner to command and make decisions as your workforce grows from 2 to 20, to 2000 people.\\xa0\\xa0

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

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Experience in Scaling a Business \\u2013 Keeping a Culture That is Customer Focused

Me: So, a big part of Scaling Up has to do with people and culture and customer experience starts from within. What has been your experience in scaling a business, let\'s say you were an organization with let\'s say, 10 employees, and in the course of 12 months, you\'ve now grown to an organization with 100 employees. How do you keep that culture that is still customer focused, customer obsessed, even though you have so many more persons that you\'re managing? What has your experience been in scaling from that perspective?\\xa0

Herb stated that hat\'s a wonderful question. The first part of his experience was \\u201cWere they hiring the right type of people that shared their similar values and purpose?\\u201d\\xa0

And in the beginning, they were just looking at resumes, you have experience, you\'ve done customer support or business development, you\'re a good fit, you\'re hired. But what they learned was they needed to hire people that not only had skill and experience, but shared their similar values and their purpose, because they work together in the way we behave around those values is what allows them to work well together. And that translates into the customer experience.\\xa0

The second part of that, that he learned is that they cannot be all things to all customers. And they were trying to be that in the beginning and that hurt their customer experience. So, they finally profiled who was their ideal customer, they were easy to work with, they had high referred ability to others like them, they were profitable, that had to be economically good for the company and they valued them paid their bills on time.\\xa0\\xa0

And then they ultimately asked them\\u2026.

\\xb7\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 \\u201cWhat is it about our company?\\u201d

\\xb7\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 \\u201cWhy do you value us?\\u201d

\\xb7\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 \\u201cAnd importantly, How are we distinctive from the competition?\\u201d\\xa0

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

Me: Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing.\\xa0

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In Terms of Customer Experience, Things to Look Out for to Ensure That You\\u2019re Being Satisfied as a Customer\\xa0

Me: Now, you\'ve worked with quite a few businesses, Herb and you have a wealth of experience. In terms of customer experience, you as a customer, because I\'m sure you do business with many different organisations as a customer yourself. What are three things that you look for to ensure that you\'re being satisfied as a customer, that your needs are being met?\\xa0

Herb shared that he thinks the first important thing is, \\u201cAre they listening to him?\\u201d \\u201cDo they understand really what his requirements or wants and needs are?\\u201d\\xa0\\xa0

Secondly, \\u201cAre they responsive to him?\\u201d If he feels like he needs help, or an answer, are they responsive? And are they available as needed?\\xa0

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

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App, Website or Tool that Herb Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Herb shared that with AI right now there are so many. So, he\\u2019d like to say Chat GPT. But there\'s so many happening every day. But recently, in the last 6 months, he\\u2019s really been leaning in to Chat GPT and trying to create prompts in Chat GPT that will make their customer insights and experiences that much that much better.

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Herb

When asked about books that he\\u2019s read that have had a great impact, Herb shared that Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It\\u2026and Why the Rest Don\\u2019t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harish, the book was given to him early 2003. He thinks he\\u2019s read it close to 30 times now. And as recently as this weekend when he was travelling home on a plane, he was making notes to the author, and sent him a note over the weekend about an insight or something that he thinks they can do even better as part of the scaling up network. He is with a group of other like-minded coaches that use the methodology to help entrepreneurs and their senior teams grow. And they are constantly improving the IP that goes into the Scaling Up book. So, he\\u2019s read a lot of books, but Scaling Up is one of the only books he ever wanted to reread and master.

\\xa0

In Terms of Recruitment, What are Some Key Questions to Ask That Would Align\\xa0

Me: You mentioned earlier in our conversation, as it related to Scaling Up that you want to have persons that you hire, that are in alignment with your values, your value system, your vision, and your mission. And so, could you share with us in terms of the recruitment process from a HR perspective, what are some key, would it be a question that you need to ask them that would align you in that phase? Or is it something you\'re looking for maybe in terms of giving them a scenario and then you\'re looking for them to give you a particular response to ensure that the person you are selecting it\'s not just based, as you said on their resume, their experience, their academia, but more so what values they\'re bringing to the table? What are they going to do if they\'re faced with a particular scenario? And is that going to be in alignment with the core value of the organization?\\xa0

Herb shared that they begin in the recruitment phase. So, imagine that you need to hire an individual, his four core values for his coaching practice are wisdom, humility, integrity, and grit. So, if he was going to look for someone to join his coaching practice, his job recruitment ads would have messaging around, \\u201cDo you value wisdom, learning and sharing?\\u201d \\u201cDo you have the humility to let others shine?\\u201d \\u201cDo you have the integrity to always do the right thing?\\u201d \\u201cAnd do you have the grit to deal with adversity and be resilient?\\u201d If that sounds like you, they\'d like to talk.\\xa0

The second part of that goes into the interview, when they actually are asking questions all around. Do you have those core values? Can you tell me about a time where somebody challenged your integrity? And how did you deal with it? What would you do different now? What were the lessons learned?\\xa0

The third part of it is in the onboarding. So, every new hire orientation should have members or members of leadership or owners coming in, talking to the new employees about the values, the purpose and the mission of the organization.\\xa0\\xa0

So, they\'re kind of inoculated in the beginning that these things are important and top of mind as you work in the company. They then do newsletters that are also echoing this messaging, it\'s part of their performance review where part of your evaluation is how well you\'re living in aligning to the values.\\xa0

They do recognition programmes throughout the year where you\'re recognized for living certain values and purpose. And then their leadership is trained that when they\'re working with you day in and day out, to reference recognition and constructive feedback in relation to the core value and purpose embodiment.\\xa0

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

Herb shared one other point, this is so powerful for him, you talked about going from 10 people to like a couple of 100 people. When they first were looking at their workforce in one of their small groups, they had about 25 employees. And somebody had him doing \\u201cA\\u201d player assessment, what that simply means is out of 25 people, how many of them did they rate as \\u201cA\\u201d players, people that embodied their values, and people that were hitting the productivity requirements for their job? He has to tell you\\u2026..his first score was only a 38% out of 100.\\xa0

Now, can you imagine early on in his scaling up journey, the drama a company would have with only 38% being A players? Can you imagine what the customer experience would have been dealing with that team? Here was the eye opener for him. What if he scaled to 200 employees, but didn\'t change the 38% A player result? Imagine scaling drama 25 people at 38% A player. Now 200 people at only 38% A player? It would be awful.\\xa0

Me: Yep, that would definitely shoot your customer experience into the garbage.\\xa0

Herb stated that one of the big epiphanies that he had, and what he loves to do with his clients is they need to get your people right as a foundational part, before you just scale.\\xa0

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

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What Herb is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he\\u2019s really excited about, Herb shared that he\\u2019s really leaning into AI. He\\u2019s looking at all the tools and techniques in their practice and they\'re trying to really make it easier for their clients to use the tools leveraging AI elements within it.\\xa0

The second part is he just came back, his son who\'s 30 years old, completed his first Ironman Triathlon last weekend, a 140-mile race. And he\\u2019s (Herb) just committed to his son that he is going to train him, his first Ironman, so you asked what\'s going on in his head right now, that\'s what\'s going on in his head.

\\xa0

Where Can We Find Herb Online

Website \\u2013 www.aspiregrowthadvisors.com\\xa0

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Herb Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Herb shared that he\\u2019s found many business owners that when they get frustrated and burnt out, but think about it, a lot of entrepreneurs start their company and it\'s a love story. They\'ve always wanted to be their own boss, they have a certain gift or skill, and they want to bring that to the world and make a difference. But next thing you know, tough employees happen, bad clients happen, payroll, money, frustration happens. And what turned into a dream becomes a nightmare for the owner and they feel like the business is running them.\\xa0\\xa0

His quote to you is, \\u201cYou deserve a business where you\'re running the business, the business is not running you.\\u201d And what he\\u2019s learned in his journey with Scaling Up is that you can have that dream, it\'s not easy. But they can make it easier for you to build a business to make more money, to give you more freedom, and less drama. And that is the wish that I have for all of your listeners that they find that for them in their company.\\xa0

Me: Brilliant, quote. Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing Herb. We just want to extend our deepest level of gratitude and appreciation to you for taking time out of your very busy schedule and hopping on this podcast with us today. And sharing all of these great insights and learnings that you have experienced in your journey as it relates to scaling up your business, ensuring they are the right people, doing the right thing, aligned in the right values so that you can achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction and even life satisfaction and to ensure that you\'re doing something that\'s fulfilling to your soul. So, thank you so much, we really, really appreciate it.\\xa0\\xa0

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

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Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

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Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It\\u2026and Why the Rest Don\\u2019t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0 Revised Edition) by Verne Harnish

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!\\xa0

Listed in: Business

210: Integrating Hospitality Principles into Healthcare with Peter C. Yesawich Part II

\\u2022\\xa0 Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, could you also share with us what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you\'ve read recently, but it had a great impact on you.

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 What\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

\\xa0

Highlights

Impact on Online Sources

But on that point, one of the things that they looked at in writing the book and their survey of 1200 adults is how they use online sources to help them think about healthcare and whether it\'s evaluating healthcare providers, or self-diagnosis, we all joke about Dr. Google, something happens and we quickly want to do a web search, whether it\'s Google or WebMD, or any of a number of site specific providers, specific sites, like Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic and so forth, to get that kind of information.\\xa0

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

Me: It\'s amazing you said that, we take it for granted when you think about how we used to do research prior to Google, Encyclopaedia Britannica, go to the library, it takes you so long to kind of get information. And I always tell my daughter, and even my mom, I tell her, there\'s nothing that you can type into Google that I\'m sure someone else in the world has not asked that same exact question. No matter how stupid you think it is, somebody in the world has asked the question and there is an answer there for you, so it really is knowledge base.\\xa0

Peter shared that what\'s interesting about that though is, in hospitality, online people go online to look at reviews. So, you look at reviews of restaurants, or hotels or destinations or what it may be. In their companies that have really built incredible databases like TripAdvisor and Expedia and so forth. And then you think about, \\u201cWell, why doesn\'t that exist in healthcare?\\u201d

\\xa0So, if you wanted to learn a little bit more about, let\'s say, a particular hospital, where you might be thinking about scheduling some kind of elective procedure, or a specific clinician, a doctor or a practice, one of the things you discover very quickly is it\'s very difficult to get that kind of information online about healthcare providers, and people ask why and he\'ll share with the listeners that kind of interesting that came out of their research.\\xa0

There are two reasons for that. Number one, most of these healthcare rating sites will not publish any ratings on providers unless they have a minimum number of what they consider to be objective ratings, typically, that\'s 3. So, for example, if you go into health grades, or any of the doctor sites, you\'ll notice a lot of the physicians don\'t have any rating or if they do have a rating, it might be one or two ratings.\\xa0

And obviously, people are generally very, very suspect about that if they don\'t have a broader base of patient reviews. Now, the question is, why is that? And here\'s the interesting part of the answer. We discovered that most of us are very reluctant to criticize medical professionals. For example, the example you just gave about the paediatrician. Now, you\'re quick to maybe share that story with other friends but his suspicion is you probably didn\'t go online and write a review. Now, maybe you did.\\xa0

Me: I did not. But I don\'t think it\'s because I was reluctant to share it online, I think at the time, that would have been like 2006, I don\'t think it was that popular at the time.\\xa0\\xa0

Peter stated that for most people today, they\'re reluctant to do that online publicly. And we think that there\'s a really good psychological reason for that and that is that we are all raised correctly, by the way, to respect the amount of training and the motivation of medical professionals that even if we find that their style to be a little abrupt, and so forth, the fact of the matter is, we absolutely respect their expertise.\\xa0

And the other aspect of that is, we don\'t have the same vocabulary. So, it\'s very difficult for us to interpret many times their comments, or their assessment of our medical problem. So, it\'s just not possible for us to rate them because we don\'t know, we don\'t know if it\'s good or bad advice. And as a result of that, what happens, these ratings are few and far between, anyway, to your point is we like to say, if you have an anniversary dinner in a restaurant, where the restaurant blew it, well, you may go home that night and the internet will be blazing in terms of your negative response.\\xa0

But if you had a bad experience at your physician\'s office, you just kind of shrug your shoulders and kind of move on. But more and more to your point, people are exercising choice and say, \\u201cI\'m not going back to that office, or I\'m not going back to that hospital, the experience was really bad.\\u201d And generally, most insurance programs provide some options for you to use other providers.

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Peter

When asked about books that have an impact, Peter stated that he\'ll give you just one. And it\'s a book that he thinks resides in the same space as their book, their most recent book. It\'s called Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caring Makes a Difference by Stephen Trzeciak and was authored by two medical doctors from the University of Pittsburgh. And it\'s fascinating examination of an idea similar to theirs about hospitality and healthcare. And the book, it really addresses the question, critical question that most people in healthcare ask and they say, well, we believe, we get the idea that compassion is important for patients as part of the customer experience and so forth. But it doesn\'t make financial sense. So, that\'s the point of view.\\xa0

He\\u2019ll give the best example. Most physicians today are under tremendous time pressure to see as many patients as quickly as possible, and that\'s a recurring theme of dissatisfaction for people in healthcare, where they say, \\u201cWell, I only saw the doctor for 10 minutes, and half the time he or she was looking at a computer screen. They didn\\u2019t look at me.\\u201d\\xa0

Well, the problem is that many of these practices, literally, they have performance criteria that says, you should not spend more than 15 or 20 minutes with a patient and you need to move on because the volume needs to be at, anyway.\\xa0

So, the whole idea of being compassionate, and a big part of that is just listening, and that is listening until the patient has expressed everything he or she would like to express and also making sure they understand what the clinician has concluded and is recommending, that takes time.\\xa0

And it\'s a big issue of this demonstrating compassion. And he lives through that because as he says, 10 years in cancer care business. And you talk about the importance of compassion in medical facilities, there\'s nothing more challenging and potentially difficult than fighting cancer, it\'s the worst disease that anyone can be diagnosed with. And it happens to be the most expensive disease.\\xa0

And therefore, compassion is essential in terms of getting people through the process. But anyway, that\'s a long answer to a great question. But he would recommend that to anybody who is interested in the healthcare customer experience because, as it turns out, they make a case, very compelling case, this is compassion, the delivery of compassion, the demonstration of that makes great financial sense for a whole bunch of reasons. And they build the case for that.\\xa0

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

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Is Healthcare a Need or a Want Service?

Peter agreed and shared that it\'s funny, because they talk to medical professionals about their book. Some of them say, well, all this is wonderful. But healthcare is what they call a need service. And hospitality is a want service, and they stopped them and say, wait a minute, think about what you just said.\\xa0

The point they make is that, yes, many people pursue healthcare out of need, they\'re ill, they had an accident, whatever it might be. And they come to that experience with all kinds of anxiety, and all of a sudden, they have issues related to difficulty making an appointment, checking in, the time that it takes, understanding the cost of the service, all the things he just talked about.\\xa0

And the point he makes is that, yes, it is a need service for many patients who seek emergency care. But that amplifies the importance of the hospitality elements in delivering the care, because the hospitality elements help manage down some of that anxiety.\\xa0

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

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What Peter is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something he\\u2019s excited about, Peter shared that it is this book, took them 2 years to write this. And he said, they did a major piece of national research. And the reaction they\'ve gotten to this book has been terrific from not just consumers because they know consumers, they say \\u201cWell, wouldn\'t you like a more hospitable experience?\\u201d Everybody says, absolutely. But from healthcare practitioners, they say, \\u201cOkay, that sounds really good. Tell me how.\\u201d\\xa0

So, in this book, what they\'ve done is in their model, the fact that PAEER model for each chapter, they\'ve identified very specific action items like how to prepare, how to anticipate, how to engage for healthcare providers, it\'s almost like a checklist. And it\'s amazing how healthcare providers react. He\\u2019ll give one example and it happens to be addressing that number one deficit, which is not knowing the cost of the healthcare service before it\'s provided.\\xa0

He was sharing this with a CEO of a large healthcare system in New York couple of weeks ago. And he said, \\u201cOkay, smart guy, well tell me how we\'re supposed to address that.\\u201d So, we\'ll try this on for size. So, when he books, he\\u2019s talking about non-emergency procedures. Now, emergency procedures are unique, but non-emergency and by the way, that represents a very substantial percentage of the procedures that any hospital system would do. So, you have to schedule the surgery, whatever it might be.\\xa0

So, he said, \\u201cWhen I confirm my appointment for that particular service or procedure, I don\'t know the cost, but why don\'t you give me a pro forma estimate of the cost of that when you confirm my appointment?\\u201d It\'s the same that happens in most industry. So, next week, if you take your car to a car repair service or for service, they\'re going to give you an estimate, you have to approve that before they do the work, you want to book a hotel room or a vacation, you\'re going to know the cost of that before you take the trip.\\xa0

So, why wouldn\'t the healthcare provider send me an estimate of the expected cost of annual physical, any surgical procedure, whatever it might be. And the reason he says that is the hospital, and the healthcare provider knows the cost of the service before they confirm your appointment. Now, most patients don\'t know that. But they know the cost because all of those services are already contracted with these insurance companies.\\xa0

So, they have a very specific dollar amount, they\'re going to get reimbursed for that, even though that dollar amount as you know is substantially less than what you see in the bill. But his point is that they could give you a pro forma estimate that says, \\u201cOkay, this is likely to be between $600 and $800.\\u201d And they disclaim that by saying, \\u201cWe may discover when we do your examination that more tests are required, and therefore, it\'s going to be a little more expensive.\\u201d And they disclose that at the time the appointment is confirmed.\\xa0

But the point is that that gives people, patients then a general sense of what the cost might be, allows them to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to certain to pursue treatment there or someplace else. He\\u2019s sure you (Yanique) read all the stories about people that say, \\u201cWell, I looked at the cost of an MRI at hospital A, and it was $2500. And I look at an MRI at hospital B and it was $3800. How could it be different? It\\u2019s the same procedure?\\u201d\\xa0

Well, the idea is that their margins are different, their reimbursement rates are different with insurance companies. They know that, you don\'t know that, but you could actually as a provider, begin to minimize a lot of that anxiety by simply giving a pro forma estimate.\\xa0

So, the CEO said, \\u201cYou know what, that\'s kind of interesting idea.\\u201d He said, you have all that information, but you just don\'t provide it. So, they\'re going to begin to explore the possibility of doing that.\\xa0

By the way, just this week, he saw Amazon health. Amazon is now getting into the primary care business and one of the things, they just released a press from two days ago, press release on this, Amazon health will give you the cost of the service at the time you book the appointment. And he thought to himself, \\u201cWow, somebody\'s paying attention here.\\u201d\\xa0

Me: Yeah, they saw the need, they did their work. They did their research.\\xa0

Peter agreed and stated there\'s an example of what he\\u2019s talking about.

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Where Can We Find Peter Online

Website: www.hospitablehealthcare.com

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Peter Uses\\xa0

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Peter shared that he\\u2019s not sure it\'s a quote, but it\'s more of a mantra and that is, \\u201cTomorrow will be a better day.\\u201d And that is if you get consumed by negativity, by certainly today, all the things going on in the world. It\'s easy to get very dark, very quickly. But you have to awaken with the belief that things will get better and generally they do. And you as an individual will have to be a major catalyst to that, you have to pursue it and you have to be relentless. But yeah, if you ever lose hope in that then you\'re probably headed to a very dark place. But that would be tomorrow\'s always going to be a better day.

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

\\xa0

Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered! By Peter Yesawich Ph. D and Stowe Shoemaker Ph.D

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence That Caaring Makes a Difference by Stephen Trzeciak

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

\\xa0Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

209: Integrating Hospitality Principles into Healthcare with Peter C. Yesawich

\\u2022\\xa0 Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, could you also share with us what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Can you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that you have read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you\'ve read recently, but it had a great impact on you.

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 What\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to just get you back on track. Do you have one of those?\\xa0

\\xa0

Highlights

Peter\\u2019s Journey

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

\\xa0

Peter shared that most of his career has been spent in the hospitality field, as you mentioned in your introduction there. Actually, when he finished school, he has a PhD in Psychology, and he never practised clinically, but he always wanted to use the education to understand the influence of marketing communication. So, that\'s what he did for a period of roughly 35 years. And then, for a 10-year period, he took a sabbatical and he went into the healthcare business. And he did that for a bunch of reasons. But he joined a national oncology company by the name of Cancer Treatment Centres of America. They had 5 destination hospitals, 10 clinics served about 15,000 patients annually.\\xa0

So, he had a unique perspective in hospitality, having worked with a number of the brands you mentioned, and in healthcare, and when I got to healthcare, it was very obvious to him that the health care experience for patients could be improved significantly if healthcare providers simply adopted many of the principles that have essentially led to the success of hospitality brands. So, that\'s the short version.\\xa0

And then a couple of years ago, he was in Las Vegas making a speech and he was in the greenroom. And he bumped into a gentleman by the name Stowe Shoemaker and he\'s a gentleman he\\u2019s known for probably 20-25 plus years. He\'s a gentleman who has a very distinguished career in academia.\\xa0

And he at the time, was the Dean of the Hospitality Management Programme at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And prior to that, he was in Houston at the University of Houston, where he also had a joint appointment with the MD Anderson Cancer Centre. So, they\'re trading notes and he said, \\u201cSo, it\'s amazing, your background is very similar to mine, because we both have experience in hospitality and healthcare. And we had the same kind of perspective, and that is that the healthcare experience could really be improved.\\u201d And that\'s what ultimately lead to them writing this book.

\\xa0

Universal Themes Across Hospitality and Healthcare

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

\\xa0

Peter stated that it\\u2019s a great question. And the answer is there are many, in fact. But let him begin by asking the question of your listeners, which is the way he really like to start the conversation, and that is he asked, \\u201cCan you think of a healthcare experience that you\'ve had that was either unsatisfactory or gone wrong?\\u201d\\xa0

And the answer for everyone is absolutely, yes. Everybody has a story about a healthcare experience that went wrong. And then he stopped them. And he says, well think about the primary reason for that. And it\'s interesting to note that very rarely, is the reason is the clinical outcome the reason. Clinical outcome generally is very satisfactory for people in healthcare. But the reason primarily is the way the healthcare service was delivered.\\xa0

So, to Yanique\\u2019s question, they actually began writing this book by doing a survey of 1200 adults in the US. And what they did is they looked at 22 common points of customer engagement, that are unique to both healthcare and hospitality, for example, the very front end, how easy or difficult is to get an appointment? We all hear stories about someone who wants to make an appointment with a certain type of medical specialist, and they\'re disappointed because it takes weeks or months to do that, how does that experience compare with making a reservation, for example.\\xa0

And then all the way through whether or not you know the cost of the service before it\'s provided, in the hospitality industry, you absolutely do, because when you book, at that point, typically the cost of the service is confirmed, unfortunately, in the healthcare business, after you confirm an appointment, it\'s very rare that you know the cost of the service before you receive it. And he\\u2019s sure you\'ve (Yanique) got a story, everybody has a story about a surprise medical bill and how disappointing and unnerving that is. All the way through whether or not the provider asks you for feedback on the experience.\\xa0\\xa0

Last night, for example, he had dinner with some friends, and they booked the reservation on Open Table. And true to form, this morning, 8 o\'clock, he gets an email from Open Table says, \\u201cHow was your experience?\\u201d He will also tell you, a couple of weeks ago, he had an executive physical at a very well-known healthcare provider, and he has yet to hear from them to ask him about his experience as a patient.\\xa0

So, point is that there are 22 of these points of customer engagement that they measured in the survey with 1200 adults. And basically, what they did is they asked them to rate their experience in 5 categories to compare their reaction or their experience on the 22 points of service engagement for hospitals - number 1, for walking clinics - number 2, for doctors\\u2019 offices - number 3, for lodging - number 4, that would be Hotels and Resorts. And the 5th was in dining and restaurants.\\xa0

So, the way to think about this is they have kind of a 5 by 22 matrix. And in each cell, they have 1200 observations, so they have a really, really robust kind of basis analysis, in the punch line and all of that to your question about the common points of customer engagement.\\xa0

What they then calculated is what they call the hospitality deficit and that is how much people felt the experience in healthcare was a deficit in terms of the service experience, versus hospitality. And out of that came 5 specific themes. He\\u2019s happy to talk you through those. But that\'s a lot to kind of process. But the answer was, yeah, there are 22 common points of customer engagement that they identified, and they examined.

\\xa0

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

\\xa0

Peter shared that what they did is they actually collapsed these into 5 themes. So, he\\u2019ll kind of just talk to those specifically. And then they can drill down on any of them that would be of interest.\\xa0

So, the number one source of this deficit in service delivery between healthcare and hospitality is what he mentioned a moment ago, and that is for individuals not knowing or understanding the cost of the service before they receive it. And we\'ve all had that experience in healthcare, whether if the bill is easy to understand or difficult to understand, whether or not if you know how much to pay for the service before you receive it. And then whether or not the cost of the service is consistent with your expectation. So, all of those kind of roll up into that first trend. And that is the primary source of dissatisfaction patients have with the healthcare experience. And you can probably think of an example for you personally, he has them, he\\u2019s sure the listeners have them.

The second theme that came out of this really interesting was the fact that patients and healthcare don\'t feel like their business, so to speak, is appreciated by the providers. Now in hospitality, you get many thank yous, you get a thank you when you check in, and thank you when you checkout, you get a thank you when the waiter takes the order, you get a thank you when the bills presented.\\xa0

And if you think about the expressions of appreciation patients have in healthcare, that\'s very rare. It\'s almost like, in many respects, for some providers, you the patient should be thanking the provider for the provider delivering the service. But that\'s the second kind of source of this deficit.\\xa0

The third is the whole arrival experience and reception. And we all have kind of stories about the clipboard, the dreaded clipboard, you show up at the doctor\'s office, and they hand you the clipboard and say, \\u201cPlease fill this out.\\u201d\\xa0

And the irony is, you may have filled out the same clipboard a couple of weeks prior, either at the same physician\'s office, or a similar, and maybe a referral that has been made. But how about the whole environment, a lot of doctors\\u2019 offices and hospitals have worked hard on that in recent years, but it\'s still nothing like walking into a three or four star hotel or a restaurant where they\'ve really given a lot of thought to things like colours, and textures, and aromas, and all the things that really do impact our sense of arrival and the way we\'re greeted, when we arrive too.\\xa0

The fourth theme is what they call service logistics. And that\'s this ease or difficulty of making an appointment or getting a reservation. And then the other aspect of that is the check in process, is it easy. He suspects many of the listeners are members of frequency programs, like whether it\'s with hotels, or airlines or restaurants. And they\'ve worked very hard to create these customer profiles, right, they understand your preferences, they know that maybe you like a certain type of pillow in a hotel, or a certain type of bedding, or a seat on an aeroplane, it\'s interesting in the healthcare business, that kind of information although it\'s readily available, is very rarely tracked and used.\\xa0

So, what happens is the check in process becomes very cumbersome, go back to the idea of the dreaded clipboard, but it\'s providing the same information over and over again. Or the other thing in hospitality is that\'s been very effective in terms of recognising customers, is giving them a little special attention.\\xa0

So, for example, if you\'re a member of a loyalty program for a hotel company, you might check in at a different location at the front desk, so they might have a little plaque there that says, \\u201cReserved for our loyalty members\\u201d or whatever.\\xa0

In the airline business, people scrambled to get loyalty status, so they can get an overhead bin when they get on the plane, or that maybe they have a chance to pick a seat ahead of time.\\xa0

So, the whole idea is that there\'s some special recognition, doesn\'t happen in healthcare, right? You stand in the same line with everybody else, whether or not you are a repeat patient or first-time patient. And we can talk about that, because there are ways to solve that in healthcare, but they don\'t exist today.\\xa0

And then the last theme here is they call service recovery. You know for example if you\'re off in a restaurant, and the entree comes in and you\'re unhappy and you mentioned that to the waiter or waitress, what happens is, they\'re very quick to remove it and replace it and they might even give you a complimentary dessert. They\'d say the sorry that happened. Or if you\'re really unhappy, they just take it off your bill. Whatever happens when people contest a charge from a healthcare provider, have you ever tried to do that? You know what happens? It goes nowhere. And so, many times you\'re arguing with the insurance company, or you might even be arguing with the provider. But the point is that service recovery is very poor in healthcare, and it\'s very good in hospitality.\\xa0

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

\\xa0

Me: So, to be really honest, of all the themes that you mentioned just know, the one that you mentioned about loyalty from a healthcare perspective, that was like a BFO for me, a blinding flash of the obvious, because you\'re so right, like most industries have some form of reward that you get for being loyal to them. I don\'t have one doctor that I go to my ophthalmologist, my gynaecologist, my GP, none of them and I\'ve been going to them for years. My dermatologist, I\\u2019ve been going to her from I was 16. Wouldn\'t they benefit from making their customers, their patients feel like they valid them? And because the reality is we can switch, I\'ve switched doctors in the years I\'ve been going for various reasons.\\xa0

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

\\xa0

Peter stated that Yanique hit the nail on the head with that, one of the things that they examined in the book is they actually created a service model for healthcare practitioners, that has five elements in it, it\'s called the PAEER Model, that\'s an abbreviation. The P is to Prepare the care for the patients. And that\'s the whole idea of learning more about them before they arrived. The next is A, which is to Anticipate, which gets into this whole issue of the anxiety that people feel when they\'re pursuing healthcare services, particularly if it\'s in kind of an emergency situation, we can come back to that in a second. The first E is the Engagement Process that\'s this check in or the arrival and how easy or difficult it is. The second E is Evaluation, that\'s asking for feedback. And the one the last is R, which is what you just mentioned, which is Reward. So, let\'s just take a second and explore that. And let him digress for a second because this is a little bit of humour. But he thinks it makes the point.\\xa0

They open the book with a story about a fictitious patient. It\'s a guy who is in his mid 40s. And he lives in Ohio, and he\'s pretty concerned about his health, he goes for an annual physical, and his PCP says, \\u201cOkay, time for your first colonoscopy.\\u201d So, they chronicle this guy\'s experience, trying to get a hold of the gastroenterologist making an appointment, how difficult that was, the fact that he shows up, they don\'t really recognize him, have no background information. So, he\'s got to take a half an hour with the clipboard to fill all that out. The fact that he doesn\'t know the physician and the first time he sees the gastroenterologist is when he\'s lying on the gurney, and they roll them in. He has the colonoscopy, and he wakes up and says, \\u201cHow did you do?\\u201d And they said, \\u201cWell, we can\'t tell you. But maybe a couple of days, we\'ll have some results.\\u201d So, the guy worries all the way home, finally gets some good news.\\xa0\\xa0

But a couple of days later, he gets a bill in the mail from the anaesthesiologist that he wasn\'t expecting, it was another $700.00. Nobody told him about that. And a week later, he gets another bill, which is the equivalent of a one month\'s mortgage payment that nobody told him about. So, the guy goes wow. Well, six weeks later, he and his wife decided to go to Vegas for a weekend. So, they go online, and they look at the options, they find a spectacular hotel on the Strip, the guy\\u2019s a member of the hotel\'s loyalty program. So, when they show up, he goes to the Front Desk, they say, \\u201cMr. Smith, we\'re delighted to let you know we\'ve upgraded you to a suite.\\u201d And the guy goes, \\u201cWow, that\'s terrific.\\u201d So, they go to the suite, they have a wonderful time dining and shows and so forth. He\'s ready to check out.\\xa0

So, he looks at the app on his phone, it\'s exactly what he thought it was going to cost. And when he gets to the front to the exit, the doorman says, \\u201cMr. Smith, we hope you had a wonderful time and we can\'t wait to see you again.\\u201d By the way, nobody said that to him when he left the gastro\\u2019s office. And so, two weeks later gets his visa bill and it\'s exactly what he thought it was going to be. And he notices he gets 3000 reward points for his trip to Vegas.\\xa0

And so, they asked the question, \\u201cWhy didn\'t he get reward points for his colonoscopy?\\u201d Now, when he says that most people go, \\u201cWhat? what are you kidding?\\u201d \\u201cNo, we\'re not kidding.\\u201d It\'s to your point, why do healthcare providers not have loyalty programs?

And you think that that would make more sense in healthcare because the older we get the more healthcare we use? So, you\'d think well, there\'ll be reasons to encourage people to come back. Well and the answer to that is, most people in healthcare have never thought about it, they didn\'t think it was appropriate. Now, there are certain legal restrictions if you have like Medicare, and Medicaid, where you can\'t have any kind of financial inducement for people to come for care.\\xa0

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

\\xa0

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

\\xa0

App, Website or Tool that Peter Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Peter shared that that\'s a great question. And he will tell say that he\\u2019s sure like he\\u2019s everybody else in that it\'s got to be Google. It\'s just a wealth of information, which ultimately leads to more specific sites and content that reflect the uniqueness of the search.

\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

208: Insights on Customer Centricity and Key Performance Indicators with Michelle MacCarthy

\\u2022\\xa0 So, Unit4, could you share with our audience a little bit about what Unit4is? What do you guys do?

\\u2022\\xa0 KPIs in terms of like NPS and customer satisfaction score. A lot of organisations also invest into market research, particularly like mystery shopping, and the mystery shopping sometimes will capture the NPS. What are your views on the frequency of doing these types of activities? And do you think it\'s critical to be doing it post transactional? Or should it be more so a conversation that you have with the client, maybe at the end of every quarter? What are some of your best practices that you\'d recommend to clients?

\\u2022\\xa0 If you really want to focus on dominating, navigating that CX space in such a positive way, that your brand has an exceptionally positive reputation, what are some key indicators that you believe organisations need to focus on as we go into 2024? Where do they need to be giving their attention to?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, could you also share with us what is the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can\'t live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you\'ve read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you\'ve read recently that has had a great impact on you?

\\u2022\\xa0 We have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services. But they lack the human capital that has that constant motivation, what\'s the one piece of advice that you\'d give them to have a successful business having that consistent challenge that they\'re experiencing?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with us what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, just reminding yourself about that quote will kind of help to get you back on track, help you to get more focused. Do you have one of those?\\xa0

Highlights\\xa0

Michelle\\u2019s Journey

Michelle stated that she started off her career and kind of more of the traditional marketing, b2c and b2b type roles on the client side. And started in the advertising agency space, worked for a number of different retailers and brands, and eventually had kind of rounded out her experience and wanted to move into more of the tech side of things.\\xa0

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

\\xa0

Tell Us About Unit4

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

Michelle shared that Unit4 is a cloud leader, really in the enterprise software space for midmarket, people centred organisations. And so, their solutions span everything from enterprise resource planning to financial planning and analysis tools, as well as procurement, project management for professional services organizations and so forth, as well as human capital management.\\xa0

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

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

Michelle stated that she really believes that organizations need to always be looking how they stand out from the crowd, right. In order to do that, we have to find better ways to address customer needs, and make sure that we\'re providing value and attainable outcomes. We need business experience that extends past traditional customer touchpoints and make sure that we\'re always looking at ways that we can influence product innovation, we need to look at the employee experience, because employee experience really translates to that of the customer experience. And we need to make sure that also aligns with our customers organization serves their purpose and our values.\\xa0

So, one of the first steps in improving customer experience is really looking for a top down buy in across customer centricity and putting that at the heart of everything that you do in your business. So, whatever role you serve in the organization, that some way touches the end customer.\\xa0

And so, customer companies need to really be making sure that they\'re measuring customer centric KPIs in order to determine how are we doing? And how are our customers feeling about us? So, we always want to look at how well we\'re looking at gaining new customers into the business, how are we growing the existing base of customers that we have? And how are we ultimately retaining the customers that we have to make sure that they\'re becoming long term champions of our business through the success that they\'ve achieved together in partnership with us?\\xa0

To kind of delve a little bit more into some of the KPIs, a couple of the things that we might look at are things like Net Promoter Score. So, looking at that kind of scale of 0 to 10 on how likely a customer is to recommend your company to a peer or colleague, looking at things like Customer Satisfaction Scores and making sure that those are kind of sprinkled all throughout the key listening posts of our customers.\\xa0\\xa0

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

\\xa0

Recommended Frequency of Market Research Activities

\\xa0

Me: So, I\'m glad you talked about KPIs in terms of like NPS and Customer Satisfaction Score. A lot of organisations also invest millions of dollars, sometimes even billions into market research, particularly like mystery shopping, and the mystery shopping sometimes will capture the NPS. What are your views on the frequency of doing these types of activities? And do you think it\'s critical to be doing it post transactional? Or should it be more so a conversation that you have with the client, maybe at the end of every quarter? What are some of your best practices that you\'d recommend to clients?\\xa0

Michelle stated that frequency and cadence is definitely key, depending on the types of engagements, you want to make sure that they\'re throughout the customer\'s journey at the appropriate time. So, if you have a new customer that\'s joined, one of the things she mentioned is post sale, you have a customer that\'s gone through potentially a lengthy sales process with you, how did they find working across the organization, that\'s a great time for you to kind of see how the beginning part of their journey into implementation will go.\\xa0

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

It\'s also key to mention business reviews. We may do quarterly business reviews with some of our customers. And so, making sure to take stock coming out of those meetings, what was the expectation? Did they see, hear, feel everything that they were expecting to have? \\xa0

And so, she thinks it\'s a real combination of both the quantitative surveys, but also those qualitative conversations to probe a bit deeper, where you may not have the opportunity, and just a quick plug in one question or two questions survey that sent via email. Having that face-to-face dialogue, or that phone call or that Zoom video just to meet with a customer and kind of ask some more of those probing questions is definitely key.\\xa0

She thinks that that is just as important during the beginning and middle phases of the journey with a customer as it is when you\'re coming up on renewal, so you may be looking at certain health indicators and want to also probe a bit deeper on some of those with customers, \\u201cHey, you know, I\'ve seen that you\'re expanding in your licences, tell me about how your company is utilizing those?\\u201d\\xa0

Or conversely, you might have a customer that\'s decided to move away from a portion of your product, \\u201cTell me a bit more about why it is that you\'re leaving there, what you weren\'t adopting or finding useful, so that we can learn and bring that back into the business.\\u201d\\xa0\\xa0

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

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Key Indicators that Organizations Need to Focus On for 2024\\xa0

Me: So, many different avenues and strategies that we can employ to ensure that we\'re doing the right kind of measurement. So, we are now in I would say, we\'re at the end of 2023. And we\'re embarking on 2024 and a lot has happened in the last couple of years, especially with a global pandemic and all, what are some key things that you found, trends that you\'ve maybe seen just in your own business, as well as with your clients\\u2019 businesses that you believe if you really want to focus on dominating, navigating that CX space in such a positive way, that your brand has an exceptionally positive reputation and you have so many brand advertisers and evangelists for your business. What are some key indicators that you believe organizations need to focus on as we go into 2024? Where do they need to be giving their attention to?\\xa0

Michelle stated that she thinks that there\'s always a focus around personalization of an experience and how you can help customers throughout their journey to better smooth areas that potentially create bumps for them, can that happen through automation, Chat GPT? Can that help it happen through other self-service capabilities that you can serve up to them?\\xa0

And she also thinks probably goes without being said but ensuring that expectations of customers are properly managed all throughout.\\xa0

Making sure that you\'re always having dialogue with the customers\\u2019 needs in mind, that you\'re addressing pain points and the more and more that you can address those pain points through self-service, automation, ways that they can just make sure that they are able to get a quick path to value is really key, that frictionless experience for customers.

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App, Website or Tool that Michelle Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Michelle stated that for her, obviously Microsoft Teams, they use day in and day out in their business to communicate with their customers, to communicate with their teams internally.\\xa0

But one other, she would say tool that they use heavily within the customer success management space, is Gainsight. And that is a tool that allows them to bring so much knowledge and power into their organisation. It allows their CSMs to know what right move to make next in terms of how to engage both internally and externally with their customers.\\xa0

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

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Michelle

When asked about books that has had an impact, Michelle shared that one book that she did read, it\'s been a very long time ago. But it was Dale Carnegie\'s How to Win Friends and Influence People. She read that during her graduate school programme. And despite that, it\'s been around for ages, she thinks it really does a great job of cutting to the core of how you can set yourself up to best relate with others through the power of being able to build strong relationships, and making sure that those relationships are built on like a mutual trust and credibility. So, she thinks that that is always relevant, no matter what role you\'re in, how do you build relationships? How do you help drive influence? So, that\'s just been a really meaningful book to her throughout the course of her career.\\xa0

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

Me: Two excellent recommendations, Michelle. I totally agree with you about Dale Carnegie\'s book, the book came out in 1933, literally, many, many years ago, almost 100 years old. But the principles and concepts in that book are still relevant today. And I do listen to Mel\'s podcasts, and I follow her on most of her social media platforms, love her content. So, excellent recommendations for audience.\\xa0\\xa0

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Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital\\xa0

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

When asked about advice she would give for the lack motivated human capital, Michelle shared that she thinks one of the most important things for her in terms of motivation is always trying to understand from a customer perspective, what it is that they\'re trying to achieve, because she thinks she gets a lot of motivation out of helping others. And she thinks when you feel like you have a true understanding of the problems that you\'re trying to solve, what tools you have at your disposal, and you feel like you can harness that power to find a way for those customers to excel and to drive outcomes in their business, that\'s extremely motivating to her.\\xa0

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

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What Michelle is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she\\u2019s really excited about, Michelle shared that back over the beginning of the summer, they had a in person leadership seminar that they had done as a leadership team going through kind of the Clifton Strength Finders exercise. And she\\u2019s done all sorts of disc assessments and different things throughout the course of her career, but she really found that particular assessment very valuable. And for those of the listeners that might not be familiar, it\'s basically an online assessment you can take, takes about 20-30 minutes. And when you go through it, it ranks your top 5, top 10 and kind of, they call them all 34 of them strengths.\\xa0

And then you kind of understand where you can lean into a bit more as a leader. And by sharing it with your peers, you can really get a sense of how other people learn, how they like to communicate, how you give and receive feedback. And so, she actually liked that so much within their leadership conversations, she\\u2019s cascaded that down with her direct reports. And they\'ve had some very, very good conversations about that, she thinks she\\u2019s just uncovered ways of working with people that she wouldn\'t have necessarily known.\\xa0

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

Her top strength coming out of that was individualization, which basically is your ability to kind of take a survey across the landscape and understand which individuals that are best suited for which areas and how to best pull out the different strengths of people you work with.\\xa0

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

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Where Can We Find Michelle Online

LinkedIn: Michelle MacCarthy

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

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Michelle Uses\\xa0

When asked about a quote or saying that she tend to revert to during times of adversity or challenge, Michelle stated that she thinks one of the things from Mel Robbins and it\'s not necessarily a quote, but she has The 5 Second Rule and one of the things she has been trying to do whenever she feels like she\\u2019s getting off track, or maybe you start to go down a negative path is just to say yourself, \\u201c5, 4, 3, 2, 1\\u201d and then launch yourself into doing what you next need to do. So, that\'s from her book The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage, Mel Robbins. But she\\u2019s really been trying to use that to break habits and people use it to get themselves out of bed in the morning, from going down a negative path.\\xa0

So, the other one that she would say she really like, and it\'s from John Maxwell is, \\u201cA leader knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.\\u201d And she thinks that\'s so powerful to remember, it\'s not just about kind of saying the vision, but it\'s also about walking the talk. So, she\'ll leave us with that.

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

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Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

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Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage by Mel Robbins

\\xa0\\xa0

The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

Listed in: Business

207: Unearthing the Universals in Leadership with Adam Bryant

\\u2022\\xa0 What would you say the ratio was in terms of gender, and even generation in terms of the number of CEOs that you interviewed? Would you say you got a wide cross section of different generations? And would you say it\'s more of a male to female higher ratio, or vice versa? Or do you think it was balanced? And did you find any differences based on those considerations that I just mentioned?

\\u2022\\xa0 What would you say are three overarching themes that you\'d have picked up or trends that you picked up from those interviews?

\\u2022\\xa0 What are some ways that you believe the leaders can help to reinforce at least to strengthen any doubts that employees may have to ensure that they recognise that the technology, that artificial intelligence is not there to get rid of them, but rather to make their jobs easier.

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with our audience what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with us maybe one or two books that you have read that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you\'ve read recently.

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel sometimes that their products and services, of course, are the best, but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. And so, if you\'re sitting across the table from that person, what\'s the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, could you also share with us what\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about? Either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people.

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you got derailed, or you got off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.

\\xa0

Highlights

Adam\\u2019s Journey\\xa0

Adam shared that he was a journalist for 30 years, 18 years he was at the New York Times, spent a lot of years as a business reporter and interviewed a lot of CEOs. And he just found over time, the more he spent with CEOs, the more he wanted to set aside the usual questions people ask of CEOs about their company strategy and their products and services and things like that. And just ask them kind of how do you do what you do? And how did you learn to do what you do?

So, he rolled that impulse up into this very simple \\u201cWhat if\\u201d in 2009 and it was what if I sat down with CEOs, and never asked them a single question about their companies? And instead just ask them about personal leadership lessons they\'ve learned over the course of their lives and how they think about all the universal challenges of leadership, like hiring and building teams and culture and all those things. So, that was kind of the initial idea, and sort of brought him very much into the leadership space.\\xa0

So, he did that for a decade, interviewed more than 525 CEOs, started writing books and teaching leadership and all that was a side project in addition to his day job managing teams of reporters at The Times. And he left The Times 6 years ago to join his current firm, the ExCo Group. And as said, their core business is kind of one on one mentoring and leadership development and he\\u2019s got 4 interview series on LinkedIn, and continue writing books and interviewing leaders about leadership, not about company strategy. So, that\'s kind of the thumbnail.

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Gender or Generation Influence on Leadership

Me: So, leadership is your thing, Adam, and I heard that you interviewed 500 and odd people, that\'s a lot of people to be talking about. And I can imagine that, what would you say the ratio was in terms of gender, and even generation in terms of the number of CEOs that you interviewed? Would you say you got a wide cross section of different generations? And would you say it\'s more of a male to female higher ratio, or vice versa? Or do you think it was balanced? And did you find any differences based on those considerations that I just mentioned?\\xa0

Adam stated that he appreciates the question. And it was the 500 plus for the New York Times, and with all the interviews that he\\u2019s been doing on LinkedIn since, he\\u2019s now passed the 1000 interview milestone, but to your question. So, he told the story of how he created the Corner Office column based on that simple \\u201cWhat if\\u201d and the other sort of guiding principle he set for himself from the very start was that he was going to embrace diversity in every sense of the word - race, gender, nationality, for profit, not for profit, size of company, really want to get as much of a cross section as he could. Interviewed a couple of leaders from Jamaica as well, a guy named Lloyd Carney, who ran Brocade Communications.\\xa0

And so, his goal was very much to not just go down this sort of fortune 500 list of CEOs, because then it\'s going to be overwhelmingly white males, of course. And he really wanted to get a complete view of leadership.\\xa0

And to your question about patterns that he was looking for, he thinks there are pretty clear patterns, like talking to young CEOs who run tech companies in Silicon Valley is a slightly different conversation than somebody who\'s running at Fortune 20 company, for example.\\xa0

But on the specific question of gender and being in first couple of 100 interviews he did, he\\u2019s always sort of looking for patterns and sometimes when he would give talks, people would say, \\u201cHave you noticed any differences between men and women leadership styles?\\u201d And he has to say, where he comes down is that he doesn\'t, there\'s just too many exceptions to the generalizations and stereotypes that people have about men and female leadership styles. So, to the point is like there\'s so many exceptions that for him, the generalizations and stereotypes do break down at the sort of CEO level.\\xa0\\xa0

People have written a lot about it and talk a lot about how one of the differences between men and women when they\'re coming up in their careers that women will sometimes feel like they need to be 100% qualified for a job before they go for it. Whereas men are much more willing to raise their hand even if they\'re not ready. And that may be true. And there\'s a lot of research around that. But for people in the CEO role and their leadership style, he really didn\'t see the difference, to be clear, not in terms of whether they were the same, they had different leadership styles, but just around EQ or IQ or extrovert, or introvert or different styles, it didn\'t break down along gender lines for him.

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Three Themes/Trends Identified From Leadership Interviews

Me: Now, you said you\'ve way surpassed 1000 mark as it relates to CEO interviews, especially with your LinkedIn profile of interviews added to that. Across the many different interviews you\'ve done, I imagine for CEOs across many different industries, what would you say are, let\'s say three overarching themes that you found that is critical for a leader to be successful, especially if the leader is trying to ensure that customer experience is one of the KPIs that they believe in, not just about operational of the business or making the profits, but having a culture where people value the internal customer experience and of course, there\'s some, I would say, measurement, or some assessment that\'s being done to ensure that it\'s been transcended to the external customers as well. What would you say are three overarching themes that you\'d have picked up or trends that you picked up from those interviews?

Adam stated that it\'s a great question about what are sort of the common themes that through lines from all the interviews. And he\'ll start with the idea of simplifying complexity, which he thinks is an art form, it\'s a skill. And he doesn\'t think you can be a CEO or an effective leader if you\'re not good at simplifying complexity, there\'s a lot going on in the world, in different industries, inside your company and he really feel like it is a leader\\u2019s job to be able to stand in front of their entire team at an all hands meeting or on a zoom call, and just answer those really simple questions that frankly, little kids ask in the backseat of the car, like, \\u201cWhere are we going? How are we going to get there? When are we going to get there? And not everybody does that.\\xa0

We\'ve all encountered people who actually seem to add more complexity to things, but you\'ve got to be able to simplify complexity and boil it down to the 3 or 4 things that are really going to matter at your company. And he just thinks that\'s a really critical skill and depending on the nature of your business, but if you are in a customer service business, and that\'s crucial to your success, then you\'ve got to be really clear about how that is going to drive your success and you can\'t be the leader who says we have 20 priorities and customer service is one of them. If it really is critical to driving your success, it has to be one of a hit handful of key priorities and there\'s got to be a way to measure it, you have to talk about it all the time, you have to role model it, and just keep shining that bright spotlight on why it\'s important. So, he thinks that\'s one.\\xa0

In terms of a couple of other things, because people often wonder, like if I want to be a CEO? Like how do I get to the corner office?\\xa0

And he finds people are often trying to think of like, well, what\'s the right path? And they wonder, you know, am I on the right path if I want to get that job. And based on all the interviews he\\u2019s done, he\\u2019s come down on the idea that there really is no right path per se, directionally, there\'s obvious things if you want to get to a certain place, you have to be moving in the broadly in the direction toward that. But in terms of the specific path, it\'s not about sort of checking boxes and getting certain titles, but the thing that has really struck him about all the leaders that he\\u2019s interviewed is that they make the most of the path that they are on.\\xa0\\xa0

So, it\'s not like they\'re wondering, am I on the right path? It\'s whatever they are doing, they\'ve realized that there are life lessons and leadership lessons everywhere, and you can always be learning. And to him, that\'s one of the skills that really sets people apart that whatever experience they\'re having, and the metaphor he likes to use is that your experience is like this sort of wet towel, like it absorbs all this experience. But then, what do you do with that, and he thinks the best leaders take that talent, they sort of twist it and wring it, and just get every last drop of insight and lesson around it, from it. Because, again, there are lessons everywhere, you can learn from a bad boss, you can learn from a good boss, you can learn from watching teams.\\xa0

And so, the really high performers to him is they\'re always making time to process and reflect and say, \\u201cOkay, what did I experience? What did I see? What are the patterns? What are the lessons that I can learn from that?\\u201d And the final point he\'ll make in terms of how you succeeded, we could talk about this for hours, but just one of them that he thinks really sets people apart is the simple idea of being a good listener. Because he feels like it\'s one of those things it\'s not taught in business schools, he doesn\'t know of any business school that teaches a course on listening, but he feels like it\'s really an underappreciated superpower of good leaders.\\xa0

Because whenever you start thinking, like, I\'ve got all the answers, like, that\'s when you\'re dead in the water. And so, you have to just have a really great skills as listener to get everybody\'s best thinking out on the table so that you really know what\'s going on in your organization, because history is filled with stories of big companies that got into trouble because nobody wanted to tell the boss the bad news.\\xa0

So, you\'ve got to not only be a good listener, one on one and in team settings, but you\'ve almost got to build an infrastructure at your companies so that you know what\'s really happening and so that there\'s not some like, bad news on the front lines or trouble spots that you\'re not hearing about. So, to him, those are the three things that jumped to mind when you asked that question.

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Ways Leaders Can Help Reinforce to Employees the True Role of Artifical Intelligence

Me: So, leadership is very important, as it relates to delivering a strong customer experience. And I always tell my clients that mud flows from the top of the stream, so meaning, if the leadership is poor, and customer service, or customer experience is not important to them, it really flows all the way down to the end user, which is the customer, whether it\'s digital experience or face to face.\\xa0\\xa0

In your experience, especially with so much technology happening out there nowadays, we have Chat GPT, there\'s a lot of artificial intelligence coming on board. And I mean up to last night, I was watching the local news, and they had a question poll that they were posing to Jamaicans stating did they feel that their jobs are in jeopardy as it relates to AI being so evolving and coming about.\\xa0

And so, I wanted your views on as it relates to leadership, what are some ways as I don\'t think that people\'s jobs are going to become obsolete. I believe that human interaction is something that we will always need, regardless of the industry that you are in, and I believe the technology is there to definitely enhance the experience not to replace it.\\xa0\\xa0

But based on your research across the different industries, what are some ways that you believe the leaders can help to reinforce at least to strengthen any doubts that employees may have to ensure that they recognize that the technology, the artificial intelligence is not there to get rid of them, but rather to make their jobs easier?

Adam stated that to him, what Yanique just said is the answer. The point of AI and technology is to take care of much more of the routine things so that we as human beings can add more value and let the machines take care of stuff. So, ideally, it will take care of just those rote aspects of our jobs so that we can figure out better ways to add value, because that\'s ultimately what\'s about, right, like, how are we individually and as teams creating value for the company.\\xa0\\xa0

And in terms of leadership\'s role in all this, he often comes back to the power of stories, which is a big part of communication, because he thinks there are some leaders who are good at saying the right words and phrases, and it\'s easy to stand on a stage and say customer service is really important. But he thinks telling and sharing stories is how you make that real. And whether that story is about how you as a leader, customer service is really important to you and your experience in your life and the success of the company, and then to sort of tell stories to highlight people on the team who have really gone above and beyond and make them the heroes.\\xa0

Because he thinks company culture, maybe everybody talks about values, and a lot of culture is determined by who gets fired and who gets promoted and compensation structures. But he often thinks about culture is determined in large part by the hero narratives that the companies tell because if you think of companies like tribes, they are tribes in a sense, that it\'s really like who does the tribe hold up as a hero? And what did they do? And if customer service is really key to your success, then how do you as a leader tell the hero narratives, tell the stories, highlight the people that went above and beyond.\\xa0

To him, that\'s one of the ways from a leadership point of view, you make people feel like, \\u201cWow, this really is important.\\u201d\\xa0

And it\'s not just the heroes within the company, but also telling the stories about your customers, and how you are helping them and having an impact on their businesses in their lives. So, he often come back to this idea that leaders in many ways are like the storytellers and chief and so they\'ve got to tell those stories and share those narratives.

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App, Website or Tool that Adam Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in His Business

When asked about online resources that he cannot live without in his business, Adam shared that he probably do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. He mentioned that sounds like a really obvious answer, but just in the work that he does, and he\\u2019s got 4 interview series, and he really believes that LinkedIn is emerged as kind of the Facebook for business, and everybody\'s on it.\\xa0

And people have written about this before, but he also thinks it\'s just an important reminder that there\'s a lot of toxic stuff on different social media sites and he just stated the blindingly obvious, but he does find LinkedIn is a pretty positive place. Like people are generally pretty supportive of each other, and then they kind of put their best selves there. So, that\'s where he spends a lot of time.

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Adam

When asked about books that has had a great impact, Adam stated that in terms just in terms of fiction. He recently finished a book called Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver, he thinks it won the Pulitzer Prize. It\\u2019s been a long time since he\\u2019s read a work of fiction that had as much insight about human nature and just packed with wisdom. So, he does recommend that.\\xa0

Non-fiction, he really like adventure books, he has to say. So, stories about whaling adventures in the old days and how people survived, he\\u2019s really drawn to stories about resilience and what people do when they\'re facing a really tough task. So, he\\u2019s often drawn to that.

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Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital\\xa0

Me: Now, we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel sometimes that their products and services, of course, are the best, but sometimes they lack the constantly motivated human capital. And so, if you\'re sitting across the table from that person, what\'s the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business?

Adam shared that to him, it\'s about constantly going back to the why. And people talk a lot about mission and purpose. And he\'ll be honest, he finds that conversation, especially happened after in the last few years, just companies have been talking a lot about their purpose and mission statements. And some of them he will confess does make him a little sceptical, because they are often very broad and general, and at such a high altitude, they feel kind of disconnected from the business. And very often they\'re just some version of make the world a better place.\\xa0\\xa0

But he thinks there is an art form to doing that, right, which is to constantly be communicating people and reminding people about the impact that you\'re having as a business. Because his prediction and not asking you to bet 20 bucks on his prediction, but he feels like this moment we\'re in where purpose discussions are so front and centre, he thinks those are going to be shifting more towards impact over time. And to him, the difference is that when you talk about purpose, that\'s really about your intent. And that\'s the very internal, you\'re basically saying, \\u201cWhen I get up in the morning, this is my purpose. Nobody can question that.\\u201d Because you say this is in my heart.\\xa0

He thinks one of the things that special and unique about business, is that it\'s more about impact, which is how do you show that purpose in action? So, to him, that\'s much more about like almost proof, like we said, this is our purpose, but this is what we\'re doing. We want to show you, we want to be able to document and show you the impact that we\'re having.\\xa0

And he thinks as a leader, we can all get kind of pulled down to just the day to day of the business. But you often have to sort of pick your head up and remind people and just sort of take stock and say, \\u201cLook at the difference we\'re making in people\'s lives.\\u201d And when you say those things, they should be tied directly to the business, it shouldn\'t feel disconnected. And you don\'t have to worry about being so lofty, and everybody\'s making the world a better place, you can be very much like look at the difference we\'re making for our customers and what we\'re doing. Because that helps bring out people\'s like, passion and pride. And then you\'re going to get that extra effort from them.

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What Adam is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that he\\u2019s really excited about, Adam stated that at a personal level be very mundane at the risk of oversharing, but he\\u2019s really focused on ping pong these days.

Me: Really? Are you trying to master it?\\xa0

Adam stated hardly master it, but he\\u2019s sort of living in New Orleans now. And they moved there a few years ago, their two daughters moved there, and so, they joined them. And as he recently passed a birthday with a number six in front of it, he sort of decided he wanted to get back in touch with his inner teenager and start taking up some sports and things. So, he actually has a ping pong coach. He stated that he knows that sounds pretty unusual.

Me: That is brilliant.

Adam stated that he trains with him a couple of days a week. And his metrics scoreboard about whether he\\u2019s getting better or not, is he played his son-in-law once a week for a couple of hours, and what\'s cool is when you\'re 61, and you say, I want to get better at that, and you actually get better at it. That\'s pretty cool. So that\'s his very personal thing he\\u2019s focused on right now.\\xa0

But much more broadly, he\\u2019s been in the leadership field and he\\u2019s pretty passionate about it for a couple of reasons. He will say that if you give him a really big magic wand with three things to do it, he would get rid of racism, inequality and bad bosses because there are still too many bad bosses in the world.\\xa0

And he thinks sometimes we under appreciate what a toxic effect they have on individuals and by extension their families. And that\'s not just to be negative about that but what also gets him out of bed is just trying to help people be better leaders for those who do want to be better managers and leaders. And he thinks there\'s a huge responsibility and privilege that comes with that.\\xa0

His approach to leadership, he doesn\'t wake up in the middle of the night pretending he\\u2019s come up with some new theory, he takes more of a journalistic approach to understanding leadership and interviewing people who are leading and have been leading for a long time. And then what he tries and do is sort of share the insights and the stories and the frameworks and really open up that conversation so that people could say, \\u201cWow, that\'s a great tip, I can take that and use it with my own team.\\u201d So, if at the end of the day he could make a small contribution and help people become better as managers and leaders, that\'s pretty motivating.

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Where Can We Find Adam Online

LinkedIn:\\xa0https://www.linkedin.com/in/adambryantleadership/

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Personal:\\xa0https://adambryantbooks.com/about-adam/

Book:https://www.amazon.com/Leap-Leader-Ambitious-Managers-Leadership/dp/1647824893/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GPHBI3CJH7I1&keywords=leap+to+leader+adam+bryant&qid=1682433550&sprefix=leap+to+leader+adam+bryant%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1

Twitter:\\xa0https://twitter.com/adambbryant

Website: https://www.excoleadership.com/

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Adam Uses

When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Adam shared that there\'s probably a couple that he always falls back on. And he\\u2019s heard this from CEOs he\\u2019s interviewed, but one of them is that \\u201c95% of the worst things that happen to you in your life very often turn out to be the best things that happened to you in your life.\\u201d And that\'s not to say all of them, right. And some things that happened to you there\'s nothing good about them. But when you think back on your life, and sort of those moments of adversity that you\'ve faced, very often they did turn out to be like, really important pivot points that helped you grow and build character. And there\'s a lot of lessons and insights there. So even though when you\'re in the middle of something it feels pretty dark, sort of know that over time, you\'re going to learn a lot from that.\\xa0

And there\'s a couple of other short answers. There\'s that expression, \\u201cYou\'re either winning or learning. It\'s not about winning or losing, but it\'s about winning or learning.\\u201d So, there\'s always lessons that you can and should be taking from whatever adversity you\'re going through. If you feel like you\'ve failed or disappointed yourself, it\'s like that happens to everybody. Right? But the question is, what do you do with it? What is that wet towel of experience that you can then take and ring and say, okay, \\u201cWhat are the insights here and keep squeezing it for that?\\u201d\\xa0

Me: Thank you so much for sharing. We\'ll definitely have those two in the show notes of this episode. Well, Adam, we are at the end of our interview, I can\'t believe it feels like we just started talking but thank you so much for jumping on this podcast today and sharing all of these great insights and nuggets as it relates to leadership, all of the great information and experiences that you\'ve garnered over the years talking to CEOs as you had mentioned from so many different industries from all different walks of life across the world. I am sure that anyone who listens to this episode will pick up at least one thing that they can run with to help them sharpen their leadership skills. So, thank you so much.

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Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

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Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver

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The ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience

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Grab the Freebie on Our Website \\u2013\\xa0TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners\\xa0

Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of\\xa0\\u201cThe ABC\\u2019s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.\\u201d

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!

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Listed in: Business

206: Customer-Centric Evolution: Marrying Marketing with Seamless Service with CJ Stratte

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you share with our audience, maybe two or three, I would say lessons that you\'ve learned along the way that you found has been influential in helping the business to become more customer centric.

\\u2022\\xa0 What are some ways in which the marketing aspect because I know you mentioned in your bio that you focus a lot on marketing, how have you been able to kind of marry what you\'re doing with marketing to kind of infuse that into the experience that the customer has.

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you share with our listeners, maybe two things that are of great importance to you when do business with an organisation.

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, could you also share with our listeners what\'s the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can\'t live without in your business?

\\u2022\\xa0 Could you also share with our listeners, maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you. It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you\'ve read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.

\\u2022\\xa0 We do have a lot of listeners that tap into this podcast who are business owners and managers, who they have great products and services, but sometimes they like to constantly motivated human capital, if one of those persons were sitting across the room from you right now and they asked you, what\'s the one piece of advice that you could give them to kind of turn that human capital motivation around, what would that be?

\\u2022\\xa0 Can you also share with our listeners, what\'s the one thing that\'s going on in your life right now that you\'re really excited about, either something you\'re working on to develop yourself or your people?

\\u2022\\xa0 Where can listeners find you online?

\\u2022\\xa0 Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote? It kind of helps to get you back on track if for any reason you got derailed. Do you have one of those?

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Highlights

CJ\\u2019s Journey

CJ shared that it\'s been an interesting journey, she originally went to college, she wanted to own a hotel. And so, she went to school to do that and she took a marketing class and changed her whole trajectory of her career and plans that she thought she had, how you do when you are 18 going to school, you think you know it all, but she really grasp into marketing and have enjoyed the career that she\\u2019s had with it.\\xa0

She\\u2019s luckily worked for a family business and so, they had a marketing director when she began working there, but she quit, and her family never replaced her. So, she just kind of stepped in and did the work and taught herself how to do all the marketing for their company and have experimented in all. They didn\'t have Facebook marketing classes back when she was in school or social media for marketing purposes. So, it\'s been an interesting change over the years with the technology and all the creepy things we can do in marketing now.

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Lessons Learned Helping Her Business Be Customer Centric

Me: Could you share with our audience, maybe two or three, I would say lessons that you\'ve learned along the way that you found has been influential in helping the business to become more customer centric.

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CJ shared that she is very focused on the customers, we\'re here to make them great, her product is to make their product better, which is very fun, gives her a lot of passion about what she does. But her biggest thing is that she\\u2019s trying to make it easier for their customers to do everything, they have a pretty basic product like truck rental, it\'s not very sexy, there\'s many things you can do to change it but the technology has changed where they can make it easier for her storage facility owners to make it easier for their customers to book it. Even with you just using simple technology that we have like Calendly and like using that as a tool to book trucks and make it easier for their customers to not have to be so involved with looking at calendars and going back and forth with dates. So, that\'s been very cool with their customers are a lot happier with the time that it takes to book a rental makes them look more professional.\\xa0

And so, they provide the whole software for them to be able to do that and she\\u2019s changed it a couple of times over the last couple years or actually over the last 20 years. So, their software now is it was very old school when she first got a hold of it then, it was like you had to drop down every number for like the time, so you\'d have to go scroll down to a one and then go zero and am and all that, it was very time consuming.\\xa0\\xa0

So, they are about to launch their newest software that she\\u2019s been working on for the last year, where they basically just send a link to their customer to rent their truck, and they don\'t have to worry about it. So, really excited about that. They also do a quarterly magazine for their customers, which they feature different tips and tricks that they\'ve heard from other customers, they have their customers write articles for them for the magazine. So, she really liked the ability to share the success stories, and how the best way to use their truck.\\xa0

She loves it when they use it for charity. So, they\'ll donate their truck usage of running their trucks out to maybe the women\'s shelter or other organizations within the community. So, she loves hearing those stories.\\xa0\\xa0

And another way they have really worked with their customers is she actually personally will get on a Zoom, they are a nationwide company, so Zoom has been a whole life changer with getting in front of her customers and being like, \\u201cOkay, why is your truck rental not working? How can you rent your truck out more?\\u201d And seeing what\'s going on, and so, she has Zoom calls with customers and like, \\u201cOkay, if you want to get your truck out more, maybe we should have a sign outside.\\u201d And she\\u2019s created signs and printed them for customers and just the more successful they are with their products that she supplies, then the better off she is too, so she\\u2019s just really working with their customers and their successes is what she believes is important to be successful.

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Infuse Marketing Into the Experience That Customers Have

Me: So, in addition to working with the customers and having that one on one touch point kind of interaction with them, as you mentioned just now, could you share with us, our listeners, what are some ways in which the marketing aspect because I know you mentioned in your bio that you focus a lot on marketing, how have you been able to kind of marry what you\'re doing with marketing to kind of infuse that into the experience that the customer has, you kind of touched on it a little bit when you mentioned the technology, and customer experience in terms of creating that frictionless, seamless experience. But are there any other things that you\'ve been doing that kind of helps to enhance that?

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CJ shared that the fun thing about what they do is they actually help their customers custom design the graphics for their truck, to be able to advertise their business. So, they definitely get asked their advice and make sure that the spelling is correct, that kind of thing. They\'ve come up with helpful marketing phrases to use. And so, that\'s part of it, like just really working with their customers hand in hand to give them the product that they are looking for. But they also have the expertise to know what has been successful with their customers.\\xa0

And so, if they see custom graphics that maybe don\'t look great, she\\u2019s not afraid to say something to her customers and be like, \\u201cMaybe not use so many words, or let\'s use a different colour, you can\'t really see that far away,\\u201d and that kind of thing.

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Aspects of Service Delivery that is Important to CJ as a Customer

Me: So, you do get hands on, which is really great. Now, as a consumer yourself CJ, to kind of take yourself out to the situation where you are actually the service provider, but you are the person that the service is being provided to, could you share with our listeners, maybe two things that are of great importance to you when do business with an organiation.

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CJ shared that she always believes follow up is always great. She gets super busy, but she really wants a product and she just have a couple more questions, but then she gets another product she wants. And then she has more questions about that and so she forgets about product one, so she just thinks having patience with our customers and realising that they\'re busy just as she is. And she really wants to buy something, but she forgets about it.\\xa0

And so, she just thinks follow up is really great with a customer experience, it doesn\'t mean that they don\'t want it, it\'s just they have kids or emergency at work where it just gets put to the backburner. So, she just always like having people being patient with her but keeping in touch about different products that she\\u2019s looking to buy and keeping it in her forefront with just a polite nudge with an email or a call or whatever. But just not to be forgotten just because she didn\'t call back doesn\'t mean she\\u2019s not interested.

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Me: All right, follow up. Very good. So, that\'s one thing you look out for is there another thing you\'d like to share with us that you really look out for when you\'re doing business with an organization?

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CJ shared that she really likes the customer experiences through the website and being able to find the information she needs, being able to check out if she\\u2019s purchasing something online, and just having a great experience online and making sure that your websites up to date, the links are working, that your checkout process is easy to use still.

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App, Website or Tool that CJ Absolutely Can\\u2019t Live Without in Her Business

When asked about online resources that she cannot live without in her business, CJ stated that there\'s a lot. She thinks Canva is one of her favourite things that has been invented in her tenure as a marketing director, she never had the design gene, she\\u2019s always just been like the strategy. And so, having Canva has really made her able to show what she\\u2019s picturing in her head a little bit easier, and help her with her campaigns and really simplify the process, she likes that.\\xa0

And then she\\u2019s just looking through her phone real quick, she\\u2019s like what else does she use, Outlook, having that app and that kind of thing on my phone so she doesn\'t have to wait until the next day to answer a simple request. She feels like there\'s an app for everything, she met her husband on an app. She definitely likes Microsoft Teams and that\'s always great because having the Teams app for Microsoft 365 or whatever it is and being able to quickly answer her employees when they have questions, that\'s been a life changer.

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Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on CJ

When asked about books that have had a great impact, CJ shared that one of her favourite books, she likes to keep things simple and she likes a little bit of cheesiness and that kind of stuff. But she liked Rhinoceros Success: The Secret To Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity by Scott Alexander, but it was a book written by a younger author, and he was just getting into the business world and he was just being like, \\u201cYou got to be a Rhino, you\'ve got to have thick skin.\\u201d And just blast through your career and don\'t take no for an answer type of mentality in that book.\\xa0

And it was just a quick 100 page read, but she made all her sales team read it. And just, she got every little Rhinos, they got their first sale after reading that book. So, she kind of had that in here. And then she couldn\'t do what she does without reading the Bible, that\'s her go to for solving her issues and keeping strong in her career.

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Advice for Business Owners and Managers Who Have Great Products and Services but Lack the Constantly Motivated Human Capital\\xa0

Me: Now, could you also share with our listeners, CJ how many persons do you have in your organization in total?\\xa0

CJ stated just about 20.

Me: So, I would say it could be classified as a small organization. But regardless, we do have a lot of listeners that tap into this podcast who are business owners and managers, who they have great products and services, but sometimes they like to constantly motivated human capital, if one of those persons were sitting across the room from you right now and they asked you, what\'s the one piece of advice that you could give them to kind of turn that human capital motivation around, what would that be?

CJ shared that she just feels like being kind and patient and understanding. There\'s so many things going on in the world and in people\'s lives, she\\u2019s always had strict bosses that are like, \\u201cOkay, be here 9 am to 5 pm.\\u201d And then not getting projects done and that kind of stuff. But she feels like if she helps her teammates get to where they\'re lacking and show them how she would do it. And she gives them the space to do what they need to do. But she tries to be understanding like, \\u201cOkay, I can work from home, but my daughter is sick, so I want to be home.\\u201d And so, she\\u2019s pretty lenient with that kind of stuff because she just feels like when you\'re happy at home, you\'re more productive at work. So, if she\\u2019s worried about her daughter all day being sick, then she\\u2019s not going to get any work done at the office or not.

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Me: All right, so be kind and be patient.

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What CJ is Really Excited About Now!

When asked about something that she\\u2019s excited about, CJ shared that she\\u2019s been really excited about listening to more podcasts and being part of them actually, that\'s been a lot of fun. She\\u2019s learned a lot from different hosts like yourself (Yanique), and it\'s helping get her confidence better, like actually saying out loud what she does is very helpful with her growth, and in leadership, and that kind of thing too. So, she\\u2019s really excited about that.\\xa0

She\\u2019s been really working with having more intimate meetings with her leadership team and going off campus she calls it and really just sit out there, sit together just talking like more in private, but they\'ll be like at a restaurant or something where they\'re not in front of the team. And they can just kind of say how they\'re feeling and what strategies they have. And they come up with great brainstorming sessions. And so, she\\u2019s really enjoyed having some of those meetings and just working closely with her leadership team to nail out some great plans.

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Where Can We Find CJ Online

Linkedin \\u2013 CJ Stratte

Facebook \\u2013 CJ Stratte

Website \\u2013 www.onthemovetrucks.com

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Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity CJ Uses\\xa0

When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, CJ shared that yes, actually, she just texted it to one of her good friends, she\'s going through some personal issues. And she always just remembers, \\u201cEverything\'s temporary.\\u201d Every day goes by and if you survive to the next day, you did great. So, it\'s just like everything\'s temporary, it\'s not always going to be a bad day, it\'s not always going to be a good day. So, it\'s just temporary, and go to the next hurdle or the next success and be grateful for your successes and just don\'t harp too much on your failures.

\\xa0

Me: Thank you so much for sharing that quote, CJ, we will definitely have that in the show notes of this episode.

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So, just want to extend our warmest gratitude and appreciation to you for jumping on this podcast with us today. I know you took time out of your very busy schedule, running a company must take up a lot of your time. And so, we want to thank you for your sharing some of the journeys that you\'ve been on, the impact that you\'ve had on the clients that you have as it relates to your trucking business. And just some of the benefits that customer experience can have to organizations across different industries. I do believe that what you shared today will be of great value to our listeners. So, thank you again.

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Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community \\u2013 Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest

\\xa0

Links

\\u2022\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Rhinoceros Success: The Secret To Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity by Scott Alexander