Latest / Exit Algorithms / How to Use Disney's Customer Experience Secrets to Boost Retention with Vance Morris (#83)
Transcript
- Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high-value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, and today I'm joined by Vance Morris. He spent a decade as a senior leader at Walt Disney World and is now one of the most sought-after customer experience and retention strategists in the country, as president and chief experience officer. at the Delivery Deliver ServiceNow Institute. Vance, excited to have you here today. Welcome to the podcast. Vance Morris: I appreciate it, Pete. hopefully we'll drop some gold nuggets for everybody today. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Absolutely. I I'm sure we will. yeah, I always do a good amount of research on my guests. I really, really love your background, a very unique entrepreneurial journey. Do you mind sharing maybe some of the highs and lows and you know, how you ended up doing the your work today? Vance Morris: sure. Yeah, there's pl plenty of highs and lows. I'm I'm hoping the highs have outnumbered the lows, but you know, it's it's hard to keep track sometimes. so I I I worked for the Disney company for a little over a decade. had a couple of corporate jobs after that. along the way I realized I make a lousy employee. I just don't like to be told what to do. so managed to get myself fired a couple of times. and I said, you know I should probably be doing something on my own. I really wanted to open a restaurant. That's but I didn't have two million dollars liquid cash laying around to really finance it the right way. so I did what every small boy dreams of doing and I opened a carpet cleaning business here in Maryland. And but I I opened it with a direction that it was going to be a premium service. So we're not one of those go look on the telephone pole, we'll clean your whole house for forty-nine dollars. We we've got a lot of pockets of affluence where I am. So really targeted the affluent communities with a experience that you generally don't get with carpet cleaners. so I grew that and added a oriental rug washing facility to it, added a mold remediation company to it. that was nineteen years ago. And about seven years ago I was able to put a general manager in place to pretty much run all three businesses. So now I spend about ninety minutes a week on those three businesses. One of one hour of that is just meeting with the general manager. The other thirty minutes is accounting and bookkeeping and credit cards and bank account, because I'll never take my fingers off of that. and yeah, so it was all about putting processes and systems in place. And when I hired the GM, I told them, don't screw with anything, just manage the systems, right? Yeah. So we had the marketing system, customer attention system, operation system, etc. and you know, so the systems really gave me the freedom to go out and do what I really enjoy, which is working with small businesses on their customer experience. and I always say if you can't deliver a great customer experience, you You don't really have a prayer of retaining a customer. so once we have the experience down, then we really look at all of the strategies and tactics we need for customer retention. because it's not the customer, everybody thinks, I'll do a good job, and people should remember me. And sadly, that's very far from the truth. so it's not the customer's job to remember you, it's your job as the business owner to remind the customer that you exist. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Mm. Vance Morris: So I work a lot in those two those two realms. primarily with professional service firms or larger home service firms like H V A C and plumbing and things like that. and here I am. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. that's awesome. I love your love your story. I I'm curious, you know, from coming from Walt Disney World, Was there anything that you you learned that you, you know, continue to take with you with your businesses today? Vance Morris: Yeah, I kind of alluded to it. It it was systems. when I got hired at Disney, my first job was on the opening team of the Yacht and Beach Club resort, which is over by Epcot Center. And I remember walking through this remember this was nineteen ninety. so we didn't have computers or phones or anything yet. and so we were walking into the training room and there's just stacks and stacks of three inch binders. I mean just hundreds of them. And I asked my my boss, I said, What's all this? And he goes, Well, these are all of the OJTs and SOPs for how to open and operate a Disney resort. And they had one for the bus boys, one for the valets, one for house I mean, every position had this binder. And so what I learned was that Disney runs on systems. They got a system for everything. You want to carry a tray in a restaurant, they got a system for it. You want to change a bus tire, they got a process for it. And I realized that systems give you freedom. so as I mentioned, you know, in my my home service businesses, I implemented all these systems. I only gotta work 90 minutes a week on them. The for the employees, though, if what we found was that if you had a system, you essentially learned it and it was like muscle memory. You did it by rote. and that gave your brain excess capacity. To do all of the nice things that Disney's known for. So you're not constantly having to think about doing your job, you just doing it. and so, you know, the other that brain capacity allows you to do the pictures and the autographs and give directions and be nice to people and you know, that kind of thing. that that was really the the biggest aha that I had literally from day one and then have carried it through the last 30 some odd years. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, excellent way to to model your business and and build it. especially as you add new employees, they can easily follow a a playbook. Right. yeah. Vance Morris: Right. Well, you know, the other thing with the systems, and is that it adds to that to your bus your business's value when you're getting ready to sell. you know, especi if you have a operations system in place, I mean documented, not just like up in your head, but like a documented system, all your employees know what it is. You're adding like a one to one point five multiple. you know, to the value of your business. And then you throw in your marketing system, your customer retention system. All of those things just continue to add to the multiple and the value of the business. so you're not just looking at, you know, EBITDA or SDE or whatever method you're using. You're looking at, you know, the systems that continuously drive Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Vance Morris: repeat business, you know, lower your customer acquisition cost. all these things play into it. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hundred percent. Yeah, I couldn't couldn't agree more. You know, buyers are looking for a an asset that will continue to generate revenue and and have a potential for growth. And the systems are, you know, the core core part of that. Absolutely agree. does your process around customer experience change with a small company versus you know as it grows and scales and you hire more people? Management. Vance Morris: the customer experience system that they put in place naturally grows with the company. but the core principles are essentially the same. you know, a lot of people always ask me, you know, okay, well you know, why are we trying to copy Disney? I mean, I don't own a roller coaster, I don't have a cast of characters, I don't have a castle, you know, what why? You know. And so it's not about copying, it's about adapting what Disney does into our businesses. So, you know, and it's down to the minutia answering the telephone. You know, how do you answer the phone in your business? and that is its own little process, its own little system. because Disney's just figured out a way to make it fun and exciting and kind of a wow moment. So we try to do the same thing. So I had a do you have time for a quick story on this? Okay. So I was working with a group of insurance agents and one of them became my client. he's an all state guy, and he had about seven or eight other All-state agents in his area, plus all of the other guys, he's like fifty or sixty insurance agents, and he was having a tough time standing out. And we figured when we mapped out his customer journey, answering the phone was like his number one. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, definitely. Vance Morris: thing when it came to getting new customers. But it was taking up a lot of his time because people were just calling with the question of how much? You know, how much are you going to save me? How much is the policy? Et cetera. So we also wanted a way to separate him from everybody else out there because, you know, insurance guys, they're a commodity. And so how do we do that? So we're doing a brainstorming session and his receptionists actually came up with the way to answer the phone. You know, you call most businesses and it's thank you for calling Dave's insurance. How can I help you? you get some version of that. well, my guy was a rock and roll fanatic. I mean, you go into his office, he had autograph, you know, posters on the wall, guitars, gold records. I mean, just rock and roll nut. So the receptionist said, I think we should lean into that personality. And so now the way they answer the phone is, thank you for calling Dave's Allstate, the agency that rocks. And they kind of channel their their inner wolf man Jack. And yeah, the first, you know, 16 times you say it, it sounds a little corny. But answering the phone that way did a whole bunch of stuff. one, it separated him from everybody else out there. So there's that little experience part. And you you know that the relationship is gonna be kind of like that, always little surprises. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Wow. Vance Morris: And then two, it, you know, it does what your marketing is supposed to do, which is either attract the people you want to do business with or repel the people you don't. And by answering the phone that way, they sift sorted and screened out anybody who'd be a bad client for them. so it's you know, finding those little moments, those those interactions on the customer journey and figuring out how do we make an experience out of that? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hmm. Yeah, I love that story. Yeah, that's a good a good mindset and mentality to have. yeah, especially customer service I feel like in general has gone down a lot. these days. Have you seen have you seen that personally? Vance Morris: Not kidding. Yeah, you know, especially in the home services realm, you know, just because I'm in that world. so many businesses have gone to either AI answering the telephone or a bot or just plain voicemail. And I refuse. so like you call any one of my businesses, you get a real person, they're alive, heartbeating, all that. because you can't One, the AI and the bot thing just drives people nuts. You know, press one for this, press two for that. it doesn't understand you half the time, you know, and then you end up yelling at it, representative, I want to talk to somebody. so I think our competitive advantage right now is having a live person answering the phone. You know, they have empathy, they can understand, you know, little t touches of frustration that might be in your voice. and Yeah, I think that that's, you know, that's really where a lot of people fall down is just in that answering the phone part. you know, and then of course there's the, you know, show up when you say you're gonna show up. You know, I had a a guy fixing our deck, said, Yep, we'll we'll we'll be out there on Monday. And I'm like, All right, you know, it's it wasn't a big job, so he'll be there at some point. Well, Monday came and went and didn't show up. And so I called him up. I dude. You know, you're supposed to be here. He goes, Yeah, I'm coming on Monday. I said, Well, today's Monday. No, next Monday. So it's just they'll show up. They don't they say they're coming Monday, they just don't tell you which Monday they're coming. And it was like three Mondays later that he actually showed up. I had already forgotten about it. And he's like, Yeah, here to fix your deck. Like, dude, where been? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. No, that that goes a long way. Are there any other tactics you see effective in in cultivating that kind of customer first culture in in your business? That's answering the phone, showing up on time. Yeah. Vance Morris: Yeah. You know, you you've gotta make as much as you can. You've you've I coined the term Disnify. So it's creating experiences out of all of the mundane things we do. So we all have boring mundane things that we do day in and day out to keep the business up and running. as I said earlier, Disney's just figured out a way to make experiences out of so I'll give you an example from my carpet cleaning business. One of the boring, mundane things we have to do is get into the house. If we can't get in the house, we can't do the carpet cleaning. So we created an experience out of that. And it starts actually out in the street, because that's where we park. We don't park in the driveway. God forbid I got an oil leak. Now I got something else I gotta clean up. Technician gets out, he's in a clean uniform because he carries extra ones with him in case he gets dirty on the one beforehand. he doesn't smell, because I forbid smoking and I forbid cologne. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: Nothing worse than the Marlborough man who just took a shower and axe standing in your living room. so he'll go up to the front door. he's got his special mat with him, a little gift, his tool bag. He lays down the special mat at the front door, he knocks on the door, he doesn't ring the bell. You know, Mrs. McGillicuddy answers the door, says, Hi, my name's Josh. I'm here to create your healthy home. May I come in? We don't just barge in. And then when, you know, we're invited in, we do an exaggeration of wiping our feet on the mat. So that's our little theatrical thing. we want to make sure that she sees it. And then we put little booties on our clean shoes. And as we're going into the home, we give Mrs. McGillicuddy a gift. Now, when was the last time you had a home service person show up at your house, you know, pest control, plumber, carpet cleaner? And they gave you a gift before they did any work. I mean, just here it is. Probably never. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Hm. Never. Yeah. Vance Morris: and the gift isn't huge. I mean it's it's it's under five bucks, but it's a little custom blue box, a bottle of our spot remover, a little bag of Entoman's cookies, and a note from me saying, Thanks so much for allowing us into your home. And when we implemented that gift, one, people talked about us. You know, you know, when at the end of any interaction with your company, you want people saying, my god, you'll never guess what happened, when Insert your profession. So my God, you'll never guess what happened when the carpet cleaner came today. They gave me a gift. and so you you get that. So that's where you know your word of mouth comes from, because you gotta give people stuff to talk about. and two, it starts a process called reciprocity. I give something to you, you feel compelled to give something back to me. So when we implemented the gift, we saw a 26% increase in our mid-tier package. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: Or about an additional sixty-five, seventy thousand dollars a year in sales, just by implementing that little five dollar gift. so it's those figuring out ways to, you know, create an experience out of something boring that you already gotta do. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Love it. Yeah, that focus on the process and yeah, each step has a significance. a lot of business owners don't necessarily go above and beyond like that or think like that. Vance Morris: Well, you know, and you've gotta do it in iterations, you know. So I mean, it took us six or seven months to come up with that complete process, and have it laid out. Like I mean, I always forbid smoking in our vans and or actually smoking while you're on the clock, and then, you know, cologne. So th I mean that was always part of it. And then we're like, well, you know, once some guy had, you know, got something on his shirt one day and you know, and then he goes to the next house and I'm like, Well, that looks like hell so You know, let's carry extra shirt with you in the van in case you get dirty. my one of my employees had the gift idea. He goes, you know, I was I went to a friend's house and you know, for dinner and so I brought a bottle of wine and some more derbs. So like when you go to friends' houses, you you bring a little gift. And I'm like, Yeah, you're right. We're going to g houses every day. We should probably bring a little something. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. I know you focus a lot on retention also, retention strategies. do you find that it goes hand in hand with with with customer experience or or why why do you think business owners should focus on on retention also you know, rather than just driving top line Vance Morris: a whole bunch of reasons. you know, first and foremost, if you don't have a great experience, you don't really have a prayer for the retention side. So you got to get your experience right first. but I'll ask business owners, I said, Do you have a budget for your marketing? And most of them will say, Yeah. And then I ask them, Okay, well, how much do you have budgeted for customer retention? And they all look at me like I got three heads. You know, what do you mean? I said, Well Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: It's really expensive to get a new customer in the front door, right? And it's relatively inexpensive to keep one. So in my in my carpet business, it cost me $136 to get a new customer in the front door. That's the pay-per-click ad and my web guy and the guy who answers the phone. You roll all that up, it's $136. It only costs me $23 a year to keep a customer. So the minute we service an existing customer, Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Wow. Vance Morris: I'm already a hundred some odd dollars more profitable. and once people hear that, you know, especially if you're a financial advisor, you know, and you're spending two thousand dollars to acquire a customer or a client, you know, and then real literally spending twenty-five to keep them, you know, the I mean there's a definite financial benefit to to doing this. and then Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Vance Morris: You have to look at it also, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it's not the customer's job to remember you. It's your job to remind them that you exist. And also, people hate it when the only time you ever hear from a business is when they want money. Right? You know, here's our coupon for the month. Here's our promotion for the month. well, how come you didn't send me something nice, you know, two months ago just saying hi? so you have to you're Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: retention system has to be a mix of non-salesy relationship building, emotional connection stuff, and then a and you do probably one-third promotion. and it's that emotional connection stuff that really drives the customer retention. and I'm not talking lovey dovey hug or anything like that. I'm talking, okay, when you When they first bought your product or used your service, there was some kind of emotional high. I just spent money, you know, you got the dopamine and everything going. you want to continue that feeling, after the purchase. and so you you need to maintain that through, you know, newsletters or postcards, get offline as much as you can. I mean, mailboxes are empty these days. I mean, I get a catalog once in a while, but that's that's about it. so yeah, really focusing on how are you gonna communicate with the customer once you got them and remind them, you know, you you need an existing system. You need to remind the customers that you exist and you're still there. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: too. I'm sure we'll make some great clips. yeah, I'm curious, you know, what on businesses you consult with, what are maybe some of the first things you look at? Or are there some, you know, high leverage retention strategies you you see common among a lot of businesses? Vance Morris: I aim please. well, I I see a lack thereof retention strategies. you know, 'cause they just think that, you know, if I send them an email every other week, you know, telling them about our spring offer, you know, where's that going? It's either it it's either not getting there, it's going to spam or your promotions folder, you're never gonna see it. And if it does manage to get up into your inbox, it's deleted. Well, that's what I do. You know, you see the obvious ones and delete, delete, delete. So you have to have a a mix of media, both online and offline. and as I said, you have to have that mix of moving the relationship forward and salesy stuff. So one of the key things I I get my clients to do is a printed monthly newsletter. In print, not through email. I mean a real hold'em newsletter. And Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: you want to activate as many senses as possible when you're communicating or marketing. So with a print newsletter, you know, one, it's visual, two, it's tactile, you can feel it, you open it up, maybe it's even got a little smell of ink in it or you know, whatever. and and it crinkles, so now it's auditory. and it's designed to really it really to entertain and maintain that emotional connection. It's kinda like readers digest light. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm, mm-hmm. Vance Morris: You know, I've we have one section in there called stupid criminal stories. so we go out and we look and find, you know, the idiots that, left their business card on the counter at the bank when they robbed the bank and you know, stupid stuff like that. And we ran it for about three years and I said, Okay, I'm tired of this. I got I put like a recipe in the newsletter or something. We got angry phone calls. Where's the stupid criminal stories? So I'm like, All right, well, so I've not Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Wow. Vance Morris: Not done that since then, but it told me a couple of things. One, you know, one, people are really reading the newsletter, so there's that. And two, it told me that they want to be entertained. You know, I mean, I could send them, you know, an article on my new succomatic 3000 that'll, you know, with the 10,000 watts of amps that'll, you know, clean your carpet in three set. They don't care. They won't read that. But the stupid criminal story? They love it. You know, it's a little break from life kind of thing. and then the other thing I I mean, now f this is what I do. others you don't have to, is I shamelessly use my children in my marketing. They're all grown now, so it's g it was it's gotten a little more difficult. my daughter's actually graduating high school this weekend. And when she was like five years old, she was doing ballet and you know, so I take a picture of her in her tutu at the recital. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Vance Morris: And so I put that in the newsletter. And I probably did that, I don't know, six or seven years. She's, I think she was like 12 when she stopped. So every year there was a picture of my daughter in her tutu at the recital. And we were in the grocery store one day, and this lady came running up to my daughter. She goes, my god, Emma, how was your recital? Who's this nutty lady? You know, we're ready to go hide in the frozen food section. And then I had to think, wait, she's gotta be one of my customers, right? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Wow. Mm. Vance Morris: She has watched my daughter grow up. She even knew my daughter's name. And, you know, of course, my daughter's mortified, but she'll get over it. but that woman is not going anywhere, right? She's either gonna have to move or die before she stops using my company. So that's that emotional connection I'm talking about. So you don't have to use your kids. Maybe you like knitting or fishing or whatever, but something that's gonna resonate with your clients. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Yeah. love it. Yeah, so a another theme I I can't miss on this show is AI and how you're you're implementing it. you know, I I know you mentioned earlier one of your differentiators is is your customer experience. how does that now, you know, been impacted in the in this new age of AI we're in? Vance Morris: boy. it's a tool, right? just like anything else. And, you know, we use it to better support the humans that we have working with us. Not replace, but support. I don't use it hardly ever, but I did create a what it does is it gives me every morning six AM gives me a summary of my day. And it goes and it looks so like my whole calendar. Here's what I got going on. And there was even a paragraph for this for this podcast that we're recording. And it went back and looked at all of the emails that went back and forth to create the calendar invite or the calendar entry. So I've got a the entire history of our email, you know, back and forth. So I g I know exactly what the the the podcast is about. I know who you are. I know that we've been talking for a couple of months, you know, we to get this on the So that's the kind of thing I think, you know, for business owners is okay, you know, what can I do to help my pro productivity? but ha you know, just taking your hands off and letting it run, I'm not not my thing. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: that's a great tip there. That's a g interesting use case. I I might start in looking into that too. Vance Morris: If I can do it, Pete, you can do it. Trust me. I am like I I speak three languages. Tech is not one of so yeah. So anyway. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Ho Yeah. Vance Morris: it's definitely helped us on on our marketing efforts, where like we collect a lot of information about our clients, Do they have pets? Okay, they have pets, great. Is it a cat or a dog or a ferret? and we feed all of this into our CRM and then some combination of AI. So when it's time to send out a promotional postcard, We can actually send a the same message goes out, but the front of the postcard has got a dog for the dog people and a cat for the cat people. of our customer base. I just gotta upload the, you know, their list and all of the notes that we've got on them. And, you know, I can tell you, 72% of our customers are dog people. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. Awesome. it's not replacing people, it's enhancing them, making them able to do more, accomplish more. Vance Morris: One hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the answers now instead of them having to say, I'll call you back, you know, the answer's right at their fingertips. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah. that's great. Awesome, Vance. I have one final question for you. If you had to pick one practical tip for business owners who want to start building a customer experience that drives retention and referrals, what would it be? Vance Morris: yeah, sure. Well, it I hopefully I don't disappoint anybody, but it has nothing to do with experience or retention. It has to do with implementation, right? We all have a ton of information, right? But we don't have a lot of implementation. So if you want to move the needle, take something you heard on this podcast or something you read today or whatever, take that one idea and go and implement it. And then see the impact. And then next week take another nugget and implement it. You're not gonna profit unless you implement. And that's pretty much what I live by. so yeah, pick one thing and go do it. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Well said. great great way to end end the show. It it's been an incredible conversation today, Vance. if listeners enjoyed it as much as I have, where can they find you? Vance Morris: sure, they can go to my website, which is Vance Morris dot com. And if they are not feeling overly creative, I have a gift for them. It's 52 Ways to Wow Your Customer. so you get one wow for every week of the year, and you can find that at wow fifty-twoways dot com. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Great. Yeah, I'll leave that in the show notes. Well, great having you today, Vance. I enjoy this conversation. Vance Morris: Great. Thank you, Peter. Appreciate you having me.