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200: Indicators of Failing Customer Service: Navigating Customer Service Challenges in a Weak Economy · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:57
  Hello, revolutionaries.
• 0:59
  And welcome back to another episode of the customer service revolution podcast.
• 1:04
  I'm Denise Thompson and I am here with your host, John DiJulius, the chief revolutionary officer of the DiJulius group.
• 1:12
  How you doing, John?
• 1:13
  Fantastic.
• 1:14
  How are you?
• 1:15
  I'm good.
• 1:15
  Congratulations.
• 1:16
  This is the 200th episode.
• 1:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool.
• 1:22
  You hear it?
• 1:23
  Is Santa there or what do I hear?
• 1:26
  Oh, Jax, I'm sorry.
• 1:27
  Usually he'll...
• 1:29
  Yeah, come here, Jax.
• 1:30
  This is Jax.
• 1:32
  I'm gonna take off all his collar.
• 1:33
  Aww, he's so cute.
• 1:35
  Yeah.
• 1:36
  Yeah, he is.
• 1:39
  If you bark, if you're a dog, anytime a dog's on TV, he goes crazy.
• 1:44
  It's crazy.
• 1:46
  So, yeah.
• 1:47
  All right.
• 1:48
  So 200, that's quite a feat in podcast land.
• 1:52
  I don't know how many years we've been doing it.
• 1:53
  That's a good question.
• 1:54
  I'm not sure when we started.
• 1:55
  I don't know if we were doing them weekly to start.
• 1:59
  Yeah, a little bit more sporadic at first, but I want to it's a good bit of five years maybe.
• 2:04
  I know it seems long, but yeah.
• 2:06
  Well, it'd have to be, you know, nearly five years.
• 2:09
  So we're here now in 2025, first quarter, coming to an end and.
• 2:15
  priorities for 2025?
• 2:16
  What do you see as big priorities for 2025?
• 2:19
  Well, for businesses, think, you know, if you look at the companies that have filed bankruptcy recently, TGIF, TGIF, Spirit Airlines, Forever 21, Joanne Fabrics, I'm missing
• 2:32
  a slew of others, Big Lots.
• 2:34
  I'm just not even getting a dent in the list.
• 2:37
  The one thing they all have in common is they're not good at customer service.
• 2:40
  And it's hard to see the pains of customer service when the economy is good, but a weak economy definitely exposes companies with bad customer service.
• 2:50
  So now's the time to weaponize it, double down, strengthen it, all those things.
• 2:55
  Because off the top of my head, maybe you can think of one.
• 2:57
  I can't think of a company that was
• 2:59
  you know, known for customer service that has gone down and disappeared.
• 3:04
  A couple have fallen, but it's because they've taken the eye off the ball.
• 3:09
  Starbucks, you know, it has struggled, but they admit that, you know, admittedly, I think we've talked about previous things, you know, you know, went away from the third place,
• 3:20
  smaller dining rooms or whatever that you're called there.
• 3:24
  Stopped writing names and messages on their cups.
• 3:27
  Became obsessed with digital and to-go orders, drive-through.
• 3:32
  Southwest has taken a big hit right now, changing some core things.
• 3:35
  I'm not criticizing them for having to charge for bags, but that was one key difference.
• 3:42
  I can't believe how many people said that's why they flew them for the free bags.
• 3:46
  But they also...
• 3:47
  check the eggs?
• 3:48
  No, not if I can help it.
• 3:50
  I might really have to be going someplace for a while.
• 3:52
  But free check bags and the...
• 3:57
  they did away with open seating.
• 3:59
  Which I don't know if that was an advantage or a disadvantage, but they've just changed some things.
• 4:03
  And they gotta change, they gotta evolve, but I know they just don't seem the same.
• 4:06
  I don't know, since the pandemic.
• 4:09
  They don't seem to be the same friendly airlines that I think that made them so different for the first 40 years and made it more profitable than all other U.S.
• 4:17
  airlines combined.
• 4:19
  So what are indicators that CEOs can look for that their customer service is failing?
• 4:25
  Well, sales is usually a lagging indicator.
• 4:28
  what we talk about at the DiJulius Group is creating an ROX dashboard, a return on experience dashboard.
• 4:34
  And so yeah, it could be net promoter score.
• 4:36
  It could be your customer satisfaction scores.
• 4:41
  It could be the rise in complaints.
• 4:43
  Obviously, the big ones, if you can track it, is repeat, referrals.
• 4:48
  Those are always retention.
• 4:50
  Those are to me are the biggest you know things and then you know where they're progressing and going in and you know finding out what if you know every business can can
• 5:02
  you know typically find this out a five percent increase or decrease swing in You know referrals NPS retention
• 5:10
  know, complaints, all those things have a monetary value.
• 5:14
  And the companies that don't invest in customer experience are the ones that they're, you know, C-suite don't see, you know, the financial impact.
• 5:23
  But, I mean, it's so obvious, like, you know, the companies that are well known for customer service are less affected by third party things, if you want to say that.
• 5:31
  You mentioned ROX Dashboard, Return on Experience Dashboard.
• 5:35
  Is that something we can make available?
• 5:37
  Yeah, yeah, there's blogs and videos and podcasts.
• 5:43
  So if you want to put it in the show notes, we have them in all three things of how to do it.
• 5:49
  And we did a webinar which I think was duplicated as a podcast in the past.
• 5:54
  It's called Stop Surveying Your Customers and Do This.
• 5:59
  Basically that was the title that you'll be able to find and share.
• 6:03
  But my whole thing in that is, NPS is fine, but that's asking how likely you are to refer someone.
• 6:09
  So my biggest thing is I don't care to know what your intent is.
• 6:13
  I want to know if you actually have.
• 6:15
  So if you're in a business that tracks customers and where they came from and you know all that, well instead of asking how likely are you to refer, you should be able to track,
• 6:25
  know, and then hold, you know, your accountants, consultants, hairdressers, GMs, you locations.
• 6:33
  on the referral and repeat.
• 6:35
  Fred Rykel came up with it.
• 6:37
  I might've modified the name, but Earned Growth.
• 6:40
  Earned Growth, so if you do a million dollars last month, last quarter, last year, it comes from two places, bought and earned sales.
• 6:48
  Bought is advertising, and again, you gotta track this, but how did you hear of us?
• 6:52
  SEO, Google.
• 6:53
  you know, the billboard, whatever the new traditional advertising.
• 6:56
  And the other one is, you know, if they're repeat, you know, they're repeat or referral.
• 7:01
  And you want to grow that earned growth.
• 7:03
  That should be the number one KPI of businesses, models that can track more than NPS and anything else, even comp sales.
• 7:10
  That will be your forward looking indicator of earned growth.
• 7:14
  If you can grow that earned growth and hold everyone accountable.
• 7:18
  So what are the things?
• 7:19
  Referrals and repeat is an amazing experience and asking for telling people how important referrals are.
• 7:26
  But we've worked with companies that, a lot of companies do this, will build in the referral ask in certain touch points of their journey map, which is fine, but you have to
• 7:37
  be paying attention.
• 7:39
  One of our clients, their account executives,
• 7:42
  we're doing it no matter what on this touch point.
• 7:44
  But sometimes on this touch point, their client was mad at them.
• 7:48
  They were yelling at them because they hadn't heard from them.
• 7:50
  They failed to update them on something.
• 7:54
  you're not paying attention.
• 7:56
  That's not the time to ask.
• 7:57
  Now on the flip side, the time to ask that maybe it's not in there is if a client's just telling you how much they appreciate you.
• 8:02
  That's when you just say, I appreciate that, Denise.
• 8:05
  The highest compliment is a referral of a family or friend.
• 8:09
  right.
• 8:09
  So John, what are mistakes that CEOs are making that are allowing these things to happen?
• 8:15
  Well, you know, not prioritizing the customer experience training as well as the employee experience, which has so many things to it, recruiting, onboarding, retaining.
• 8:28
  But if we just look at the customer experience, too many CEOs think it's soft skills and, you know, people have it.
• 8:38
  Today we're at a relationship disadvantage epidemic.
• 8:41
  You know, every generation has weaker people, soft skills, but then there's 30 and under that have, you know, relationship disadvantage and no fault to their own.
• 8:52
  In a recent blog, I quoted a study that said majority of men, 18 to 24, have never asked a female, I assume it's female, out in person.
• 9:07
  And you say, so what, what's that do with customer service?
• 9:09
  Well, that's, you know, that was critical people skills, right?
• 9:13
  Now they have their online dating apps and Instagram and texting and out with all the vehicles.
• 9:19
  But I asked my son, Bo, who's 22, about that, and he couldn't think of a time he ever asked a girl out face to face.
• 9:27
  Where back in our day, you know, that was probably, we couldn't text each other, we could call.
• 9:33
  but you first had to meet them to call them.
• 9:34
  So you had to meet them at a bar or at a party or at school.
• 9:37
  And I know for me, I failed miserably a lot of times and had to refine my approach and realize that that wasn't the proper way, which teaches you about people skills and how to
• 9:51
  approach someone and do it in a better authentic way.
• 9:55
  You know, so, and then there's, I think it's called telephobia, that the same age range has anxiety about answering the phone at work.
• 10:05
  Because they don't speak on the phone.
• 10:08
  So there's classes teaching, you know, I guess Gen Z's, how to speak on the phone.
• 10:15
  I'm not criticizing that generation, but...
• 10:18
  I don't even like talking on the phone if I can avoid it, right?
• 10:21
  So it's all of us, but these are critical, what we call service aptitude skills.
• 10:27
  our service aptitude comes from three places.
• 10:32
  Yours, mine, and your newest employee came from previous life experiences.
• 10:38
  And so if we're thinking of a younger generation, you know.
• 10:41
  They didn't grow up staying at five-star resorts and flying first class and getting a Mercedes Benz when they turned 16.
• 10:47
  But every job I ever had from the moment I started in the workforce in high school and beyond, I was expected to give a world-class experience.
• 10:55
  I didn't know what that looked like.
• 10:56
  And then the second place is previous work experiences.
• 11:01
  unless you have a direct pipeline to Disney and Chick-fil-A and Nordstrom and employees, which none of us do, you're...
• 11:07
  the skill set that employees are coming is with a previous manager boss that maybe made them very paranoid and policy, policy, policy driven.
• 11:17
  So the third place is what we do with them, what you do with them after you hire them.
• 11:20
  And that's the only thing you can control.
• 11:22
  You can't control how they were raised and you can't control where they worked previously.
• 11:26
  But what do we do with them after?
• 11:28
  And so is it just technical training?
• 11:30
  Or are you giving them training on the service aptitude skills of showing compassion and empathy, understanding a day in the life of a customer, what could be going on, even
• 11:40
  though there's a disconnect between the kid parking cars valet at the Ritz-Carlton who's never stayed at a Ritz-Carlton.
• 11:47
  He or she can't appreciate what that's like.
• 11:50
  And they might have a chip on their shoulder about the customer staying at the Ritz-Carlton.
• 11:55
  the cleaning person or handyman coming to the half a million dollar house, right, to repair something.
• 12:03
  You might have a chip on your shoulder because, you know, they don't have that.
• 12:07
  But, you know, that's where you gotta understand, you everyone has struggles, everyone has stuff going on.
• 12:13
  And so it's just all those things and making sure that your training represents not only operational technical processes,
• 12:20
  how to ring someone out, take their credit card and get all their information, but the compassion, empathy, making a brilliant comeback when you drop the ball, and building a
• 12:30
  relationship which is really the superpower of people skills that it's not taught at home, it's not taught in school, so if you want to be a business that's successful customer
• 12:40
  experience, you have to make it part of your new employee and ongoing.
• 12:44
  Training, know, so what does that look like?
• 12:47
  It's it's curiosity.
• 12:48
  It's it's focusing on them not us.
• 12:50
  It's it's the great listening skills You know, it's having empathy We've talked about this before but I don't think I think empathy is is learned over time life experiences And so,
• 13:08
  know, you don't have the luxury of just hiring 40 50 and 60 year olds
• 13:13
  So it can be taught before life experiences and teaching people what is going on in people's life.
• 13:21
  But you go to the John Roberts Spa business model, ours, our first business, our hairdressers are in their mid-20s, their clients are 40 to 60 year old professional
• 13:34
  female.
• 13:35
  There's a disconnect there.
• 13:36
  They don't know what it's like to be a 45 year old anything where...
• 13:42
  24 hours and enough time a day, 36 hours, we can get it done.
• 13:45
  And raising kids and aging parents and all those things.
• 13:49
  So it doesn't mean we have to change who we hire, we just have to help them understand and appreciate what their customer's dealing with and how important it is to be present in the
• 14:01
  moment, not treat them as next, our 10-30, our Zoom call, whatever we can transactionalize.
• 14:07
  201B which is in hospital room number in bed.
• 14:11
  You know, we're all guilty of that.
• 14:13
  And how our professional expertise that they're coming to us can, it has an impact in their day.
• 14:24
  Go to a hair salon and it's like, you you want to bounce in your step.
• 14:27
  They might be having a first date since they got divorced two years ago or.
• 14:32
  up for an interview or a college kid that's graduated needs to look more professional to get hired.
• 14:39
  A 50-year-old man who needs to look younger and get rid of the gray so he doesn't get replaced by the digital savvy 30-year-old.
• 14:50
  Or someone popping the question tonight.
• 14:53
  All those things that people see.
• 14:54
  Any business, what is it that
• 14:57
  this customer needs from me from an expertise standpoint that can have a huge impact in their day, career, life, month, whatever that may look
• 15:06
  So Ritz-Carlton does a phenomenal job at training their employees at every level to do that.
• 15:12
  And John Roberts, your staff, does a great job of that at every location.
• 15:17
  So you just finished Employee Experience Executive Academy, one of the sessions.
• 15:23
  Is this something that's taught in there?
• 15:25
  Is it a train the trainer?
• 15:27
  What does it look like from that perspective?
• 15:29
  for people to learn how to train their employees to be Ritz-Carlton like.
• 15:34
  Yeah, you know, that's, we have two academies, the Employee Experience Executive Academy and the Customer Experience Executive Academy, two different, but there's really overlap
• 15:44
  in both because in the Customer Experience Academy, it's teaching how to create a customer experience access in a day in the life of a customer.
• 15:51
  Never is an always, you're non-negotiables in your journey map, you know, service recovery, right?
• 15:57
  And in that, it's taught,
• 15:59
  all that stuff after you create it, how to make it part of your new employee onboarding and continuous training.
• 16:06
  And then in the employee experience, it talks about how to brand your company as, know, to attract the certain type of employees that are more right fit.
• 16:18
  You know, we just don't want 50 people calling us up today for a job unless they're 50 right people.
• 16:23
  I'd rather have
• 16:24
  six really good candidates to interview, then 50 to find the two or three.
• 16:30
  That's a lot of wasting time.
• 16:32
  So branding yourself out there before they even click on the application or however they come in for the interview, because that's not productive.
• 16:40
  Then what's that recruitment experience look like?
• 16:43
  Then what's the onboarding experience look like the first 90 days?
• 16:47
  And that's where there's overlap where we get into what, you know,
• 16:50
  the soft skill versus technical skill.
• 16:53
  So it's kind of lives in both places, but it's constant.
• 16:57
  It just isn't on onboarding because you can only retain, an employee can only retain so much in onboarding and they're so overwhelmed that, know, it has to just, top of mind
• 17:07
  awareness.
• 17:08
  You know, it's exercise, it's anything.
• 17:11
  It can't be done once in a while.
• 17:13
  It has to be visited, but visiting can be for a minute a day in a huddle and something like that reminded, hey, here's an example of how Lindsay, someone raved about Lindsay and
• 17:24
  how she was the, carpe memento, right?
• 17:26
  Our client experience action statement, how she seized the moment when someone called her up and she just blew them away and they said, man, every time I deal with Lindsay for,
• 17:38
  you know, these little things, she always reminds me that I made the right decision in hiring the DeGiulius Group.
• 17:43
  Hasn't even gotten to the consultants yet.
• 17:45
  Hasn't even gotten to, you know, the workshop or the outcomes yet.
• 17:49
  That's what you want.
• 17:50
  not just relationship building, but failing to train employees, service aptitude.
• 17:56
  What other mistakes are CEOs making?
• 17:58
  Well, listen, I don't know if it's, yeah, it starts with CEOs because if you think about every world-class customer service organization that you can think of, locally, in your
• 18:11
  backyard, or nationally or world-wide, Apple, Zappos, at a time, for a long time, Starbucks, Southwest.
• 18:19
  for a long, long time.
• 18:21
  Virgin Airlines, I'm missing a ton.
• 18:23
  Amazon, all these companies, you can tell why.
• 18:27
  Their CEO was obsessed, is obsessed.
• 18:30
  And so it starts there.
• 18:32
  And so you need executive sponsorship.
• 18:34
  Executive sponsorship isn't just about writing a check and saying, we're gonna spend this much money on training.
• 18:40
  It's every time they talk about anything, a product launch.
• 18:44
  Marketing, how does that affect the customer experience?
• 18:47
  So if you go and you watch videos on Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Tony Hsieh, Jeff Bezos, watch videos, read articles when they're interviewed.
• 18:59
  I don't care what the topic is, they always bring it back to how it impacts the customer and the customer experience.
• 19:06
  And so that's what a CEO will always be doing.
• 19:10
  besides just the top and bottom lines.
• 19:13
  And so, you know, not getting away from that, not, you know, not swaying from that.
• 19:17
  They invest in a CFO, they invest in, I think now this salesperson's called Chief Revenue Officer, which is top sales, CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, probably IT today, all
• 19:33
  important, but.
• 19:34
  Up until recently, there was never a chief experience officer.
• 19:40
  HR, which is great.
• 19:41
  But the principles of any business, you got to have a head of customer experience.
• 19:47
  It can't be the CEO, because they have too many things on their plate.
• 19:51
  So the CXO, the Chief Experience Officer, where does that come from?
• 19:55
  Is that someone that's promoted from within?
• 19:58
  What background is that?
• 20:00
  Who makes a good CXO?
• 20:01
  Yeah, so it all depends on the size of the business.
• 20:04
  know, and if you go out and find someone, that's great.
• 20:07
  That has what you're looking for.
• 20:09
  But obviously a perfect world, if it is someone that you're growing and you've been with you, it shouldn't, you now you know that they've modeled the behavior.
• 20:18
  That at every position you've had them in the company, they were a rock star.
• 20:22
  They were the Michael Jordan of, you know,
• 20:25
  what they did.
• 20:26
  so ideally it would be that versus, but if you go out and you find someone that has that skill set, that worked in a type of company with that background, those brands we were
• 20:36
  talking about, that could be it.
• 20:39
  But it's not someone that's ahead of your call center.
• 20:42
  Could have been, they could have been, but that's not what the chief experience officers, they're over everyone in the company.
• 20:48
  you know, making sure everyone understands the part that they play in the customer experience, even if they aren't touching the external customer.
• 20:54
  So say I have a great person who would make a great CXO, very interested, very bought in to everything.
• 21:01
  How do you change the top?
• 21:03
  So if you have people below who are great at service, you have a CXO type person who lives, breathes, eats this stuff, how do they make real change if they have difficulty
• 21:14
  from the top?
• 21:15
  If the CEO isn't a Steve Jobs, isn't Tony Hsieh.
• 21:20
  the only way I see that actually being possible is if it's a new CEO.
• 21:24
  But I don't see how you're gonna have, you know, at every other level, good customer service if the C-suite isn't, you know, that isn't one of their top priorities.
• 21:35
  Now you could get someone that comes in, but it's really hard.
• 21:38
  I mean, you know, to go up and change up.
• 21:41
  If it's not a value of the CEO and C-suite, it's not gonna be a value of anyone.
• 21:45
  If it's not a value of a parent, it's probably not gonna be a value of the kid.
• 21:49
  So that's gonna be hard.
• 21:50
  Now, if the CEO genuinely cares but doesn't know how to do it, that's a little different.
• 21:56
  And that's where having someone on your team, finance and the P &L is critical to every business.
• 22:04
  A lot of CEOs don't have that skill set, so they're smart enough to bring in a CPA, a controller, and have that.
• 22:11
  And that is what a great CXO can do for a company, as long as they have the one, it's not flavor of the month program of the year, or management by best seller.
• 22:21
  That's something that's truly in them.
• 22:22
  That, absolutely.
• 22:24
  But if it's not a priority of the CEO, I don't think it ever will be a priority of the company.
• 22:29
  How do we go about fixing these mistakes?
• 22:32
  So we talked about the service aptitude.
• 22:36
  We talked about the relationship building.
• 22:38
  We talked about investing in the training.
• 22:41
  Also the hiring, right?
• 22:43
  And the service aptitude skills are most important for any customer facing employee to deliver exceptional customer experience, right?
• 22:49
  They've got to be genuine and like others.
• 22:51
  They've got to be happy and positive, optimistic, friendly, kind and caring.
• 22:56
  This is one that I'm kind of on the fence with.
• 22:59
  know, charisma.
• 23:00
  I think that's a nice thing.
• 23:01
  I don't know if, I'm sure they can.
• 23:04
  But if introverts struggle with customer experience, and I know that might not be fair, but they gotta be empathetic, they gotta be a good listener, they gotta have insatiable
• 23:16
  curiosity, strong at making a connection, building rapport, and trust and charitable assumption, which that is something.
• 23:23
  Now all those can be taught.
• 23:24
  But you.
• 23:25
  hire for that?
• 23:25
  What does the interview process look like when you're recruiting, when you're hiring for those types of people?
• 23:32
  right, so the ones, you know, those were nine of those, right?
• 23:35
  The ones that, you know, cannot be taught.
• 23:38
  All the training in the world will not change.
• 23:41
  If you don't genuinely like others, 10,000 hours I don't think is gonna move the needle on that.
• 23:47
  So, of the nine I just rattled off, five of them, you could definitely be taught.
• 23:53
  Four of them cannot be taught.
• 23:54
  Genuinely like others, are they happy, positive, optimistic people, friendly, caring, kind, and the charismatic.
• 24:01
  So those four, you wanna filter out through your interview process.
• 24:06
  And we like to say, hire for the heart, train for the parts.
• 24:09
  And so those things, again, if they're gonna be a customer-facing position, but...
• 24:14
  I don't care what it is, even they're not gonna be a customer-facing position, unless they're working in a cube or from home and they never come in contact with anyone on your
• 24:21
  staff because, you know, I want my staff working with negative people, unfriendly, uncaring, unkind people, right?
• 24:29
  Someone that doesn't genuinely like others, you know, negative person.
• 24:32
  So, we have the like, I don't know, 30 questions, interview questions to measure if someone has the potential.
• 24:39
  for service aptitude.
• 24:40
  And so there's sections in those questions that we can provide as a link.
• 24:45
  know, and this just, you so an example of a question is, know, and you know me, I'm a little crazy with this one.
• 24:53
  I'm probably over the top, but you know, just asking someone in an interview, how are you doing?
• 24:57
  Right?
• 24:57
  I don't want fine so far.
• 25:00
  So, mean there you're on an interview.
• 25:01
  And if that's what you're saying in an interview, it's only gonna get worse.
• 25:05
  It's like,
• 25:06
  If they dress poorly on an interview, what do think is going to be after that?
• 25:10
  That's the first date.
• 25:11
  If the guy hasn't opened the door for you on the first date, the chance of him opening the door for you in five years, right?
• 25:17
  So how are you?
• 25:18
  I'm a crazy fanatic about that answer.
• 25:22
  Good, fine.
• 25:24
  I don't want fine.
• 25:25
  I don't want your coworkers to be...
• 25:27
  Dealing with fine, I certainly don't want my clients, guests, patients, tenants, whatever we may call them, dealing with fine.
• 25:33
  That means something's bugging you going on in your life, but I go off on that.
• 25:39
  But some of these things you have to allow for the nervousness of the candidate, right?
• 25:44
  Another, again, we have 30 questions, but another one is,
• 25:48
  on your free time, days off, weekends, vacations, nights, whatever that, what do you enjoy doing?
• 25:55
  Now, I personally could care less what that is, unless it's illegal, right?
• 26:01
  But, you know, your hobby, you might be a knitter, you might do hot yoga, you might run marathons, you know, I could care less.
• 26:11
  You might be in your basement playing Dungeons and Dragons.
• 26:15
  Don't care!
• 26:16
  The answer is not what I'm looking for.
• 26:18
  The answer is, what I'm looking for is how excited and enthusiastic do you get?
• 26:22
  know, visiting your nephews, you know, going hiking, you know, whatever those things are.
• 26:29
  Riding your bike, I'm trying to think of yours.
• 26:31
  Not Dungeons and Dragons.
• 26:33
  Biking.
• 26:34
  I know you're an outdoorsy person, but if you don't get excited when you're talking about what your most favorite thing, you ask me, like I just got home from Scottsdale with Bo.
• 26:43
  We went to spring training.
• 26:45
  We do it every year.
• 26:46
  I'm gonna tell you about it.
• 26:47
  I'm gonna get really excited, right?
• 26:49
  If you don't get really excited about that, you're not gonna get excited about the things you, you know.
• 26:54
  don't have passion for it might be your job.
• 26:56
  So I can't train enthusiasm, but I want enthusiastic people.
• 27:00
  So those are the things.
• 27:02
  Now of the nine, the five that can be trained is the five other things, if you will, is the empathy, good listener, insatiable curiosity, how to build a rapport or relationship,
• 27:15
  make a connection.
• 27:15
  and how to be trusting.
• 27:17
  And again, I can't penalize the trusting.
• 27:21
  That could be from your former job where they're like, Denise, you do not let people bring something back without a receipt after seven days, right?
• 27:29
  You'll get fired, whatever that may be.
• 27:31
  But maybe that person was out of town or whatever.
• 27:34
  There's always extenuating circumstances.
• 27:36
  So all those things can be taught.
• 27:38
  But not just once.
• 27:39
  They gotta be constantly, constantly be.
• 27:41
  Reminded.
• 27:42
  Employees from being brainwashed will be protective of your company.
• 27:47
  In a good way, but it's not what we want.
• 27:50
  At least it's not what I want.
• 27:51
  I don't want them to be policy, policy, policy and not let people take advantage of us.
• 27:57
  People aren't, but sometimes they're paranoid.
• 27:59
  Again, from their last job or whatever.
• 28:02
  So what we always say is, you'll never get in trouble for something you do.
• 28:05
  You'll get in trouble for something you don't do.
• 28:06
  And we want them to trust.
• 28:08
  Don't punish 98 % of the customers for what you're afraid 2 % are gonna get away with.
• 28:12
  So we wanna create that autonomy that, use your best judgment.
• 28:17
  If you don't think that guideline should apply to them in this situation, don't, don't enforce it.
• 28:23
  But that's also a morale killer, right?
• 28:27
  Someone comes back and brings something back after...
• 28:32
  or tries to use a gift card or whatever it is that expired yesterday.
• 28:37
  Well, I was out town or I was in the hospital or whatever.
• 28:42
  But you can't, because you'll get in trouble.
• 28:44
  Well, you're going to get beaten up by that customer, and you're going to go home having that happen five times a week, maybe a day.
• 28:52
  You're going to hit your job!
• 28:53
  because you're the messenger that has to enforce the policy that someone in a C-suite position created to protect themselves from the masses.
• 29:01
  So, I mean, that employee morale will really go down.
• 29:04
  mean, know, employees get beat up all the time for enforcing policy.
• 29:08
  Alright, that's a lot.
• 29:10
  So you've given a lot of different ideas here.
• 29:13
  Where do you start?
• 29:15
  What's first?
• 29:15
  So, you know, our commandments, our methodology kind of goes in order.
• 29:20
  so, you know, creating, you know, the customer experience action statement, which is what each employee should be intentionally doing every time they come in contact with another
• 29:31
  human being.
• 29:32
  Meaning it's not just for the external customer.
• 29:34
  It should be for the internal.
• 29:36
  It should be for the, you know, UPS man that walks into drop off packages.
• 29:40
  every great brand.
• 29:41
  So without going into details, it's kind of laid out in our methodology, which is our curriculum for our customer experience executive academy.
• 29:50
  It's a curriculum for our employee experience executive academy.
• 29:53
  It's a curriculum for consulting.
• 29:55
  Everything we do, it's in our books.
• 29:58
  So, but if you just go by that in order, you know, creating the day in the life of a customer, creating a customer experience action statement.
• 30:05
  creating your client customer avatars.
• 30:08
  Because not every customer's the same, and we have to better understand the different types of customers that come in.
• 30:15
  they have different expectations and wants and needs.
• 30:19
  Your customer bill of rights, the never's and always, all those things that we also cover in our live streams.
• 30:26
  each quarter that people attend.
• 30:28
  So each one of those was built by my research the past 30 years of what world-class customer service companies do.
• 30:36
  They all have them, the...
• 30:37
  so they're, you know, they don't...
• 30:39
  there was an eight one year and there won't be an 11th.
• 30:41
  The 10 are the 10.
• 30:42
  And the order is really important.
• 30:45
  Doesn't mean you can't go out of order.
• 30:47
  Like, as you know, we have clients that when they hire us, maybe will, you know, hire us for...
• 30:52
  Several of those come in and do those commandments.
• 30:55
  But zero risk, which is the service recovery one, it's a little lower down.
• 31:03
  And sometimes we have to do that first because they're having so many complaints and they're making it worse by how they're handling the complaints.
• 31:11
  So sometimes we have to triage and bring that to first.
• 31:16
  So you're plugging the hole in the boat.
• 31:18
  Yeah, yeah, so to speak.
• 31:20
  All right, so I am going to link the interview questions you talked about, the methodology you mentioned, the live stream, as well as both the customer experience.
• 31:30
  stream is what?
• 31:32
  When is it, Denise?
• 31:33
  June?
• 31:33
  Yeah, and that is on zero risk.
• 31:35
  you know, if our listeners, followers aren't familiar, our live streams are two hour workshops we do every quarter.
• 31:42
  You get your key people on, listen, usually 12 to two Eastern Standard Time, once a quarter.
• 31:50
  so the one in Q1 was...
• 31:52
  creating your non-negotiable customer experience standards.
• 31:55
  The next one in June is zero risk, service recovery.
• 31:59
  And then the one in third quarter is on, I think recruiting and hiring, what we just talked about.
• 32:06
  And then I'm not sure what the fourth quarter is.
• 32:08
  Onboarding?
• 32:09
  Okay, good.
• 32:10
  And so that's our live streams, which are very...
• 32:13
  You can get your teams up and companies get on.
• 32:15
  It's not a lecture.
• 32:18
  You get time to work and come back and ask and share and it gives you the tools to start it.
• 32:23
  Excellent.
• 32:24
  So there will be a link listeners in the show notes for the live stream.
• 32:28
  So you can get more information on that the methodology that we offer that we use within our consulting as well as all of our executive training programs and the customer and
• 32:39
  employee experience executive academies, which are both enrolling now.
• 32:43
  There'll be information in there on those as well.
• 32:45
  We also have presentation skills workshop coming up June 10th and 11th in Cleveland.
• 32:50
  How to be a better presenter, whether it's just in your corporate job or you wanna become a professional speaker.
• 32:57
  It's a two day intense workshop where you're presenting each part of whatever your topic is, there's each part, I think we have a podcast on that that we've done recently.
• 33:10
  but your icebreaker, your opening, your call to action, all those things, you're be presenting that twice over two days, each section.
• 33:19
  that's taught by both you and Dave Murray.
• 33:21
  Yes.
• 33:22
  Great, great.
• 33:22
  Those are two excellent presenters to learn from people.
• 33:26
  So highly suggest that.
• 33:28
  different.
• 33:29
  mean, we could not be more...
• 33:33
  You froze on me, Denise.
• 33:35
  Oh, you're back.
• 33:35
  As you know, you can probably explain it, but people really enjoy the difference because if you only see me, I'm assuming, my style, A is not for everyone, but also lot of people
• 33:49
  can't replicate my style.
• 33:51
  and Dave has the polar opposite style, but so effective, so popular.
• 33:58
  And so when we've done it, with both of those people, really appreciate seeing the both styles.
• 34:03
  How would you compare and contrast the styles?
• 34:06
  Yeah, it is very different.
• 34:07
  You're very high energy, where Dave is very calm and steady in his approach.
• 34:14
  Very practical.
• 34:16
  He's not, you like when you say that, you might think, oh, you know, but he's not, you know, and I'm, am a machine gun, good or bad.
• 34:23
  am like, probably similar to this podcast.
• 34:26
  And that's kind of maybe an innate skillset that if you don't have, and I made that mistake when I first started speaking and I, you know, the first good speaker I saw was
• 34:38
  more along Dave's style.
• 34:39
  And so I thought that's how I had to be and I sucked at it.
• 34:43
  didn't, you know, until I saw someone who had, you know, people that had the high energy running around that gave me the permission, right?
• 34:50
  So it's nice to see different, be trained by different people so you can gravitate to what they do well.
• 34:56
  And you say, oh, I'm more like Dave, but he's so effective and so good at it.
• 35:02
  Dave is also the top facilitator we've ever had at the DiJuillus Group and phenomenal, phenomenal skills.
• 35:09
  outrates me in scores in workshops every time.
• 35:13
  Like not once in a while, every time.
• 35:15
  I mean, he just, our employee experience executive academy, we both teach, we just had it last week, quarter two.
• 35:22
  And he got all tens by every attendee.
• 35:24
  I mean, and that's not a, a, abnormal for Dave.
• 35:28
  You know, I get a 9.2, which I think is a great score.
• 35:31
  I'll have an eight and a couple nines in there.
• 35:34
  But Dave gets tens every time.
• 35:37
  It's awesome.
• 35:38
  Yeah, so great people to learn from, presentation skills.
• 35:41
  That's a great class that's coming up.
• 35:43
  Any closing thoughts for you, John?
• 35:45
  Just that, you know, it's really time to weaponize the experience we deliver both to employees and customers.
• 35:53
  you know, double down on that,
• 35:54
  a weaker economy exposes poor customer service companies and you're going to see that in the next year.
• 36:01
  We've already seen it in the past six months.
• 36:03
  All the companies going under and filing bankruptcy.
• 36:06
  None of them are known for even average customer service.
• 36:09
  You know, one of my favorite quotes to, you know, this rough times.
• 36:14
  is even a turkey can fly in a tornado.
• 36:16
  So when business is going good, man, even the bad companies look good, but when that tornado, which relating to strong economy, stops, lot of turkeys stop flying.
• 36:29
  And I like, I might be one of the few business owners to say this, I like a weaker economy.
• 36:36
  None of my businesses do better in a weaker economy.
• 36:39
  That's not why, and there are some businesses that do better in a weaker economy.
• 36:42
  Mine don't, but it exposes, and to me it's, you know, a recession, if you want to call it that, is a business enema, right?
• 36:51
  I it just does a cleansing of all the competition, and you know, and our competitors are not built for weak economies.
• 36:59
  And so, you know, it just does a cleaning up of the crap.
• 37:04
  in that we compete with that either make customers chase price or question if the integrity of doing business with anyone in the industry is worth it.
• 37:14
  Awesome.
• 37:16
  Thank you, John.
• 37:16
  That's a wrap.