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242: The Customer Experience Blueprint Used by CFA, Ritz pt2 · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:50
  Hello, revolutionaries.
• 0:51
  Welcome back to the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
• 0:54
  Last episode, we dug into the first half of The DiJulius Group's 10 Commandments, everything that transforms your customer experience from average to unforgettable.
• 1:04
  Today, we're looking inside because the truth is simple.
• 1:08
  You need to provide an exceptional employee experience in order to excel at your customer experience.
• 1:14
  This episode is all about the internal engine.
• 1:17
  the part most companies overlook, underfund, or just flat out misunderstand.
• 1:23
  We're talking about how hiring for character, not just competence, changes everything.
• 1:29
  Why world-class onboarding has nothing to do with that thick packet of HR paperwork, what's really fueling the retention crisis, the danger of accidental managers and how to
• 1:41
  build leaders on purpose, and why training must be treated like a product.
• 1:46
  designed, delivered, and certified with the same rigor as anything you'd sell to a customer.
• 1:52
  By the end, you're going to see why the training and implementation part of the 10 Commandments is what makes the entire system stick sustainably, consistently, and at
• 2:01
  scale.
• 2:02
  So if you're ready to eliminate silos, build leaders who actually lead, and create a workplace people never want to leave, let's jump into part two of The DiJulius Group's
• 2:11
  methodology.
• 2:11
  Are you ready to go, John?
• 2:13
  I am.
• 2:13
  How are you, Denise?
• 2:15
  I'm doing fantastic and yourself you've been traveling a lot again.
• 2:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:20
  Good.
• 2:20
  Feeling good.
• 2:21
  Shoulders dramatically improved.
• 2:24
  Are you enjoying the holiday season?
• 2:27
  I am, I am.
• 2:28
  How about you?
• 2:29
  I love this time of year.
• 2:31
  Yeah, yeah, when everything slows down and you finally get to be with some family, it's good.
• 2:38
  It's wonderful.
• 2:40
  It really is.
• 2:40
  You have a lot of family plans coming up.
• 2:43
  Yeah, yeah, and a nice little reset before we get back after it at the 2026.
• 2:49
  Yay.
• 2:49
  Looking forward to 2026 though too.
• 2:51
  All right, John, let's start today with the internal part.
• 2:55
  And we're going to talk about the commandments that involve recruitment, onboarding, and retention.
• 3:01
  So many companies are hiring for technical skills instead of character.
• 3:07
  Why is that a mistake?
• 3:09
  cause almost anything could be taught.
• 3:11
  you know, love the quote hire for the heart, train for the part.
• 3:15
  Obviously there are industries that need licensings and degrees specific and that, you know, is the price of admission.
• 3:25
  But, you know, I, I'd much, know, it, you, technical skills can be taught.
• 3:31
  Behavior is a lot harder.
• 3:32
  it's a lot rooted in where you came from and.
• 3:35
  your background.
• 3:37
  And that's why the first commandment of the employee experience revolution is about creating a recruitment experience.
• 3:46
  And that has a lot of layers to it.
• 3:48
  And that recruiting starts before we actually sit down with an individual.
• 3:53
  It's how you're branding your company as an employer choice.
• 3:59
  I think the best companies scare more out of wanting to work there than they attract by design.
• 4:05
  And so I don't even want to get to an interview.
• 4:09
  I think there's so much can be done on your website.
• 4:11
  Click here before you fill out an application.
• 4:14
  Just the whole branding of what you stand for and not just going to a typical career page opportunities.
• 4:22
  where it says we're wonderful and everyone makes a lot of money and fulfills every life promise, but a part that says why we might not be a fit for you.
• 4:33
  So eliminating wrong fits, finding out who the customer experience rock stars are, and making those customer experience rock stars now be nervous that they're not gonna get a
• 4:44
  job with you.
• 4:45
  Because I think when people interview today, they're interviewing at multiple places, maybe multiple industries, and they're looking for the best deal.
• 4:54
  And the best deal is flexibility, work from home, more pay, whatever it is to them.
• 5:00
  And I think it's important that they don't even want to go on the next interview they have.
• 5:05
  after they met with you or the interview they just went on, pales in comparison.
• 5:10
  So there's so much to just the recruitment side.
• 5:13
  And then the next part is making your interview process un-gameable because we can all, I think anyone can fake it for 30, 45 minutes and have the canned answers and right
• 5:26
  responses, but that doesn't mean that that's gonna be who they are when they show up.
• 5:32
  That's a great point because right now people are using AI to help them train for an interview.
• 5:39
  So they're well-practiced before they come in.
• 5:41
  They know what questions that company typically asks, and they're practicing that with their AI chat agent.
• 5:48
  So how do you make it un-gamable?
• 5:51
  Well, so we have a lot of best practices in there and one that we've used.
• 5:56
  You might have invented it, you know, back in the 90s when you were our people development director after I had gone to the Disney Institute.
• 6:04
  I remember we've been doing this, you know, seems like almost since we opened group interviews, you know, and instead of interviewing six people independently, which could
• 6:13
  take six hours, you have a group interview with those six people.
• 6:16
  And
• 6:17
  you kind of go over the job, non-negotiable.
• 6:19
  This is what it pays.
• 6:20
  This is what we're looking for.
• 6:21
  And then you ask questions and you go around the room and correct me.
• 6:25
  Again, I haven't done this.
• 6:27
  You've done this, but tell me a time when you went above and beyond for a customer, scenario-based.
• 6:32
  And the candidates think what they're being judged on is who has the best answer.
• 6:37
  But what we're looking at is what is the candidate doing when they're not answering?
• 6:41
  Are they checked out or they're peeking at their Apple Watch?
• 6:44
  Are they just trying to, maybe they're going next and they're just thinking about how they can crush that story that the person's telling now, or are they smiling, listening,
• 6:52
  nodding to the person talking?
• 6:55
  So, you know, there's a ton of things like that, you know, built into this commandment that the candidates don't know what they're looking for.
• 7:04
  And we're not trying to trick them, but we're trying to get to, you know, the more authentic,
• 7:08
  authenticity.
• 7:08
  I say I like when you guys don't let me interview too often, but when I do, I always say I like to interview like Columbo, know, the detective Columbo who is the bumbling idiot for
• 7:18
  those of you who are old enough to remember.
• 7:21
  He'd always let you let your guard down because he was so clueless and he would just just go down rabbit holes that appeared to have nothing to do with the investigation.
• 7:31
  And I do that, you know, I'd say, know, Denise, before we
• 7:35
  talk about this interview, I see that you went to, you know, mentor high school or, know, and that you played, you know, soccer and, you know, what was that like?
• 7:43
  And, you know, I only played soccer one year because the coach played favorites and, you know, they literally don't think the interview has started in, but I think you find out a
• 7:54
  lot in the rabbit holes.
• 7:55
  Absolutely.
• 7:56
  Following up from recruiting, then is the onboarding, which is just as important once they decide to accept the position, and that we decide to offer them the position.
• 8:09
  What makes a world class onboarding experience stand out from the typical HR paperwork marathon?
• 8:16
  So we just did a live stream on this, a workshop in the December quarterly.
• 8:23
  And we have live streams every quarter, two hour workshops.
• 8:26
  And so this is really fresh in my mind.
• 8:29
  Onboarding has four phases, hopefully I remember them.
• 8:35
  Yeah, when we were writing this book that just came out last year, the employee experience revolution, Dave Murray, vice president of consulting in me, I was excited and thought we
• 8:46
  really had a lot of content.
• 8:48
  But then I read something in another book, actually, Joey Coleman's book, Never Lose an Employee Again, where he brought up something that I don't think maybe you did this, but I
• 8:59
  don't remember ever having a system for.
• 9:01
  So
• 9:02
  let me back up.
• 9:03
  There's four parts of onboarding.
• 9:06
  There's the job offer acceptance, which is, you know, usually you don't start tomorrow.
• 9:12
  You know, that could be two weeks, two months.
• 9:14
  And that's what we didn't have down there.
• 9:16
  Yeah.
• 9:16
  We'd offer you the job, but then we just say, we'll see you on January 2nd show up here.
• 9:22
  And, you know, and that's what he calls the hires remorse of you start second guessing.
• 9:28
  you know, maybe you got other job offers, that come in after ours.
• 9:31
  Maybe you're telling people, I got this job at, you know, and people like, you want to work there?
• 9:37
  I heard that, you know, you know, whatever you might hear.
• 9:40
  So that's a whole experience in itself that we were definitely under utilizing.
• 9:46
  Then you have literally the first few days where someone comes on site and, you know,
• 9:53
  does what they do.
• 9:55
  The third part, and sometimes this is one and the same, but usually it isn't, is new employee orientation.
• 10:01
  I think in most cases, most companies can't, unless you're massive and you're hiring 50 people at a time, they can't justify that one or two day new employee orientation just for
• 10:13
  you.
• 10:13
  There'll be things done.
• 10:15
  So you got the job offer, the literal physical,
• 10:20
  first couple days at the job, your new employee orientation, and then what I call the rest of the 90 days.
• 10:28
  And each of those are pivotal.
• 10:30
  And if you go into just even new employee orientation, it should be renamed how not to get fired class, right?
• 10:36
  Because they go over all the ways you could lose your job if you no show, no call, get caught chewing gum, written up, blah, blah.
• 10:44
  And those things are important.
• 10:45
  they don't have to be done the way they're done.
• 10:48
  That's true.
• 10:49
  I think storytelling within that is always helpful as well.
• 10:53
  And we did, with your help, the scavenger hunt.
• 10:57
  So now that's a game that they go to different departments or different locations to find out the answer.
• 11:03
  And it's trivia, who holds the record for to tell us why you should never chew gum.
• 11:11
  And there's so many benefits of that.
• 11:14
  And it's an aha story that...
• 11:16
  You you used to tell very well, but you know, it's fun.
• 11:18
  And all these things get you meeting existing employees, cool kids that, you know, you're going to, you know, maybe we'll go out your way next week to make you feel more
• 11:28
  comfortable because you're interacting with them.
• 11:31
  Do you have any best practices from our consulting clients, perhaps, about the, I love what you said, that waiting period before they start, the offer has been accepted and
• 11:46
  before they start that two week, three week, however long waiting period that's in between, what do they do to keep them engaged?
• 11:54
  So they celebrate it, you accept the job and something goes out.
• 12:00
  But maybe a couple of days later you get something from your future boss that maybe you didn't meet, depending on the interview, how that was structured.
• 12:08
  In a perfect world, you get a welcome video from the big person, the CEO, whoever the biggest person is, depending on how big your company is.
• 12:17
  Just talking about how excited they are and they're personalized.
• 12:20
  They say Denise.
• 12:21
  It's not a Just a random a message.
• 12:24
  They say, you know, we're excited.
• 12:25
  They say something that they learned about you You know in the interview process And then they you know, you know just constant communication You know being in the certainty
• 12:34
  business, it's still you know, January 2nd, you're gonna meet so-and-so at this location
• 12:39
  And then, you know, upon arrival, they call it the interview.
• 12:44
  And, you know, there's some great stories of our clients that they'll tell you to show up at 10 a.m.
• 12:51
  for your first day and while everyone else shows up at nine.
• 12:56
  And in the interview process, you didn't realize they ask you questions like, you know, what's a, you know, a $20 indulgence that you like or, you know, if you were a major
• 13:06
  league baseball player, what would be your walk up song?
• 13:09
  just trivial banter.
• 13:11
  And then when you walk in, the song's blaring, your team is in the, whatever, the tunnel for you, and you have your little luxury waiting at your table.
• 13:22
  All these are huge.
• 13:24
  New jobs are huge in people's lives.
• 13:26
  to capture it and to keep it going and to make them
• 13:30
  feel like they made the right decision, because they had options.
• 13:33
  They definitely had options.
• 13:35
  I love it.
• 13:36
  I love it.
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  What a great first day.
• 13:40
  All right.
• 13:40
  So yeah, they have options.
• 13:42
  Now they're there.
• 13:43
  How do we keep them?
• 13:44
  So retention is a major crisis right now.
• 13:47
  What's the biggest reason employees leave?
• 13:50
  And how do these best practices that come from the Ten Commandments help solve it?
• 13:57
  Yeah, so retaining, we look at that as 91 days and out and figuring out what it is.
• 14:06
  there's a lot of good statistics in the book that say that close to 80 % of an employee's professional development at a company comes in within their first three months.
• 14:20
  So if you're going to work here for the next five or 10 years,
• 14:24
  you're only going get 20 % of your professional development after those 90 days.
• 14:29
  so, investing in you, making you smarter, making your resume stronger, actually keeps people working for you.
• 14:36
  Once your resume gets dusty and you feel like you're not adding value to the resume, I believe as leaders, we need to be in the surplus value business and constantly helping our
• 14:47
  employees get smarter and
• 14:49
  which should mostly benefit us.
• 14:51
  If it doesn't, then that's okay too, it benefits them, but I mean, they're gonna go further.
• 14:58
  Constant communication, I can't stress enough about the professional development, but also what the best companies do is they train the whole person.
• 15:06
  And so the compliments, my favorite compliments I've got when I meet my staff's parents or significant other,
• 15:14
  But it's more come from their parents because in our first business salons, our entry level employees could be in their young to mid 20s.
• 15:22
  And I'll meet their parents sometime in the first year and they'll say, I don't know what you did to my daughter, but she's a different person.
• 15:28
  And that's really rewarding.
• 15:30
  investing in them in things that just don't make them more profitable for you.
• 15:35
  So I call it the five F's.
• 15:36
  And the five F's are typically, or they are the top New Year's resolutions every year, right?
• 15:44
  So it's fitness, finance, fun, faith, and family.
• 15:49
  And we aren't experts in those areas, but we bring in experts.
• 15:54
  in those areas and it's open.
• 15:56
  If we're having a big company meeting, we're gonna say, we're gonna have a mortgage lender.
• 16:00
  Anyone wants to consider buying a house, fill out this application, this mortgage lender can tell you what you need, how much down payment, what your house payment, boom, boom,
• 16:09
  boom, boom, or a money management class.
• 16:11
  You don't have to do it as volunteer.
• 16:13
  Or we have a book reading club on being better parenting or fitness.
• 16:19
  And the cool thing is,
• 16:20
  you know, helping them be stronger in those critical areas or those areas they want to be.
• 16:27
  As well as.
• 16:29
  We never have to pay anyone.
• 16:31
  Now, sometimes someone on our team might be a resident expert, but most of the time we're bringing in mortgage lenders, know, finance, know, finance, fitness, health, eating, you
• 16:43
  know, all those.
• 16:44
  But these, you know.
• 16:47
  Local experts love the opportunity to get in front of our hundred plus employees.
• 16:52
  And guess what?
• 16:52
  They turn some of them into clients.
• 16:56
  So it's a win-win for everyone.
• 16:58
  But it also shows our employees that we care about, again, building the entire person, not just the professional side of it.
• 17:06
  I love that.
• 17:06
  Yeah.
• 17:07
  And you can see the loyalty in the teams that you've built because of that.
• 17:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:13
  And recognition.
• 17:14
  I mean, you just, you can't, you gotta be in the recognition business that caught you doing something right business, the celebrating.
• 17:21
  Another best practice that I learned and try to incorporate is making family, their family part of the experience.
• 17:31
  I always felt and still do that the biggest competitor to losing an employee is not
• 17:40
  the business that they might hire.
• 17:42
  It's the family member, your spouse, your significant other complaining that you're gone too much and they met someone that said they would hire you and pay you more.
• 17:55
  that's fair.
• 17:56
  I that's always going to be a case during anyone's career and peak seasons.
• 18:02
  And I think it's really important to engage their family, reward their family, thank their family.
• 18:08
  because the family had to make a sacrifice in order for Denise or Dave or Claudia to be working like they've been the past two months during our peak season.
• 18:17
  Giving a reward to the family as a result, acknowledging that you know that they've had to pick up place.
• 18:24
  One of my favorite things back in the salon is when a co-designer, hairdresser assistant,
• 18:30
  We hire them and they have to train for a year.
• 18:32
  And when they get promoted, it's a big deal in their life.
• 18:36
  And they don't know it when it's going to happen.
• 18:39
  This just happened last week.
• 18:40
  But they'll send the co-designer to the, you know, go get something.
• 18:43
  And when the co-designer returns, her whole family's there, her dad, her boyfriend, her mom, her cousin, her best friend.
• 18:50
  And to get that emotional connection and buy-in of what a great company this is.
• 18:56
  and how well they take care of their family member can go long ways.
• 19:02
  I love that.
• 19:02
  You mentioned caught you doing something right.
• 19:05
  You want to explain what that is?
• 19:08
  Well, I think you mastered this.
• 19:09
  You tell us.
• 19:10
  You were very good at it.
• 19:12
  You took it and ran with it and made it into something I never thought it would be.
• 19:15
  Well, caught you doing something right, think is contagious.
• 19:19
  It's people save those cards.
• 19:21
  So I don't remember where you brought that back from, or if it was something that you came up with on your own, but caught you doing something right, was a way to acknowledge team
• 19:31
  members.
• 19:31
  And we turned it into a system to make sure it happened.
• 19:34
  especially, me, especially at the leadership level.
• 19:37
  So you would look at all of the team members in your department, and who had you not acknowledged in some time to look for things that they were doing right.
• 19:48
  And then we would send a card out, caught you doing something right, saying what we saw them do well and how appreciative we were for that.
• 19:56
  And we would mail that to them.
• 19:58
  And there were times we did it at meetings, I think even.
• 20:01
  where you would fill it out for another team member and pass them around and just create such wonderful, not just the acknowledgement, but gosh, the way that you feel about each
• 20:11
  other and your team and it makes you want to do more.
• 20:14
  get it that you didn't realize someone noticed that.
• 20:18
  This is about someone else, but the story could be like, was leaving, needed to get out, be somewhere, but I saw that you were in over your head and hung up my jacket and stayed
• 20:33
  with you, right?
• 20:34
  And didn't leave you flailing.
• 20:36
  Maybe you were a rookie with less experience or whatever it was.
• 20:40
  And then for someone to write that and recognize you is huge.
• 20:43
  And then you start looking for that more, like you wanna do that again.
• 20:47
  Yeah, it was a really nice, or is a really nice thing.
• 20:52
  Yeah, and it does, creates a culture of that.
• 20:56
  And it's a low, no cost type of thing that any organization can build in.
• 21:02
  And we track it, and so the managers will turn in a report of the last quarter, who they caught doing something right.
• 21:10
  And we can look at that and say, know, Denise, you haven't caught Lindsay doing anything right in 90 days.
• 21:15
  It doesn't have to be heroic.
• 21:16
  It needs to be genuine.
• 21:18
  But I Lindsay shows up every day to work and crushes it, right?
• 21:23
  So it doesn't.
• 21:24
  kind like the above and beyond stories.
• 21:26
  It doesn't have to be the crazy saving the baby in a burning building, just that she's professional, just that she has to take some tough calls and the next person she's dealing
• 21:36
  with doesn't realize what the last call was like.
• 21:38
  And really like that about you, Lindsay.
• 21:40
  That's something I want to get better at the way you are so poised under pressure, things like that.
• 21:46
  Yeah, I should always make a point to catch them doing more right than wrong or acknowledging more right than wrong.
• 21:53
  Let's get into another big one.
• 21:56
  This ties to communication too.
• 21:58
  Tearing down silos in developing leaders.
• 22:02
  Cross-departmental collaboration is often a blind spot.
• 22:06
  How do you help organizations eliminate those?
• 22:10
  Yeah, so I mean, this is the number one thing we get with consulting is, and this isn't top-down, right?
• 22:18
  This isn't the employee experience as much as it's the team member department experience with each other.
• 22:25
  And, you know, back office and front office, back of house, home office, you who don't deal necessarily with the external customer, but they support operations, you know.
• 22:37
  every business has it.
• 22:39
  you know, it's making sure that they understand who their customer is.
• 22:45
  And it might, you know, again, it's probably not the external customer.
• 22:48
  And they both have to, you know, both meaning both departments, but there's multiple departments have to understand a day in the life of each other.
• 22:58
  Because, you know, I don't know what you're doing all day.
• 23:01
  All I know is I've asked you for
• 23:03
  a lot of things and you're not getting them to me.
• 23:05
  And I'm like, you know, what is she doing?
• 23:08
  You know, and so you might get critical, might, you know, whatever.
• 23:12
  And then, you know, if I understood better, you you're not only getting, you know, asked by me these 10 things, where you're getting asked by all the consultants, these 10 things
• 23:21
  besides your day job.
• 23:24
  And so understanding, so the example I always, people really like is I used when I worked at UPS in the middle of the night.
• 23:31
  as a preloader and I loaded trucks that, you boxes went on the trucks and then the truck driver came in at eight in the morning and delivered it.
• 23:41
  If you had asked me back then who is in the 80s, who my customer was, I would have looked at you like two heads.
• 23:50
  What do mean who my customer is?
• 23:51
  I work in a warehouse in the middle of the night putting packages on trucks.
• 23:55
  You know, the box, I guess, is my customer.
• 23:57
  And, you know,
• 23:59
  Long story short, eventually went driving and it wasn't until then I realized when I was a preloader, driver was my, UPS failed to teach me the driver was my customer and how good
• 24:14
  or not good I did loading those trucks in the order they needed to go impacted him and the customers he was delivering to.
• 24:22
  And it might sound silly, but that never crossed my mind.
• 24:26
  And that's, people love that story.
• 24:28
  so, know, teaching people what the other role is, how hard their role is, and then the impact we make on that role by, you know, how easy or difficult we are.
• 24:40
  Something that you talk about a lot and you've written some blogs on is accidental managers.
• 24:47
  What's, you know, and the importance of avoiding accidental managers.
• 24:51
  What is that?
• 24:52
  And what leadership skills matter most today?
• 24:56
  You know, it's in our book, there's some big, you know, Forbes or Fortune 100, but they said something to the effect that like 85 % of bosses are accidental managers.
• 25:11
  Try and think of you are an accidental manager back in the day.
• 25:14
  don't think so.
• 25:17
  But it's one of those things where it's like, hey, Denise, congratulations.
• 25:22
  are the head of the spa.
• 25:25
  because we really like you, also because we lost the head of the spa and we need a body, right?
• 25:30
  And you may or may not be the best candidate to be the head of the spa.
• 25:36
  Chances are you are, but we didn't set you up.
• 25:39
  We haven't been training you.
• 25:40
  We haven't been putting, but now Monday you're leading people that Friday you were going out for happy hour with.
• 25:48
  you we didn't put you in a position to be successful and give you the credibility and, you know, show that you've gone through all these courses and, you you're in a management
• 25:57
  tracking.
• 25:58
  And so, you know, that's not a diss on the accidental manager.
• 26:01
  That's a diss on the higher-ups that are just pulling people and putting them in there.
• 26:06
  And obviously it's worse when they're not a good candidate.
• 26:10
  I don't know if it's worse.
• 26:11
  It's both bad.
• 26:12
  But if they're not a leadership candidate, that looks really bad.
• 26:16
  Now you have egg on your face, know, no one who ever wants that position because it didn't last, you get fired.
• 26:22
  Or the good example of you, you had high morale, doing really well.
• 26:27
  Now we threw you in a position with no training, no proper, and you're going to fail.
• 26:31
  And then we're going to, know, know, Denise, what are you doing?
• 26:35
  You know, and now you're not doing well.
• 26:37
  and it just, it's all bad.
• 26:39
  So just making sure that, you know, we have a bench, you have a minor league system.
• 26:44
  It's never too early.
• 26:45
  If someone shows, doesn't mean they're going to get promoted next week, next month.
• 26:48
  It might be, you know, a two-year course.
• 26:50
  might be, you know, having, you know, a leadership development program of courses of people skills of, you know, how to lead people, obviously the technical parts of the job.
• 27:04
  Listeners, if this conversation is resonating with you and has you thinking, hey, we need to build this into our culture, not just talk about it.
• 27:11
  There is an easy high impact way to start.
• 27:14
  And that is our experience revolution membership.
• 27:17
  John mentioned that we just did a workshop on, we did one on recruiting and onboarding recently.
• 27:24
  It's an annual membership designed for companies that want consistent, relevant CX and employee experience training.
• 27:32
  delivered without the heavy lift.
• 27:34
  So every year, members get four live virtual workshops led by John himself and Dave Murray, our VP of consulting, plus on-demand access to every replay we've ever released.
• 27:46
  So you would get the recruiting and onboarding that we're just done, too.
• 27:52
  It's a perfect way to bring your leadership team together, keep customer and employee experience top of mind, and give your managers real tools that they can apply.
• 28:00
  Instead of one-off events, you get a steady cadence of high quality workshops that build on each other.
• 28:06
  So it helps your organization stay aligned, engaged, and moving forward.
• 28:10
  If you're ready to sign up or learn more, join the membership.
• 28:15
  Just go to tdg.click forward slash membership.
• 28:20
  Again, it's tdg.click forward slash membership.
• 28:25
  Okay, let's get on to the next one.
• 28:28
  what the 26 workshops are.
• 28:32
  yes, please.
• 28:34
  March 9th, Q1, Breakdown Silos, what we just talked about, Foster, Cross-Departmental Collaboration, Clarifying Handouts and Promote Empathy and Teamwork.
• 28:44
  June 8th, Q2, Creating a Day in the Life of Your Customer to Build Empathy and Improve Service by Truly Understanding Your Customer's Lives and Challenges.
• 28:53
  Fall Quarter, September 14th, How to Create a Customer Experience Action Statement.
• 29:00
  Learn how to create and implement a customer experience action statement, which is your North Star, what every employee should be intentionally doing every time they interact
• 29:08
  with another human being, not just the external customer.
• 29:11
  And then December, 2026, Q4 is building and developing future leaders.
• 29:19
  Yay, thank you for that.
• 29:21
  It's a big lineup, plus all the past ones you get too in the library.
• 29:26
  Done.
• 29:26
  Speaking of training, training and implementation.
• 29:30
  So this is, I know this is one part that companies can't skip.
• 29:35
  Why is that?
• 29:37
  Well, I'm just, you I don't think there's a shortage of ideas.
• 29:41
  And we've all been to seminars and read books and highlighted to death, but it's taking less ideas, creating a system and executing them.
• 29:53
  And that's where it falls off.
• 29:55
  You have to be able to...
• 29:57
  You know, the easy part is sit in a room with a bunch of people and create some, you know, statements and never's and always and service recovery.
• 30:06
  But then what?
• 30:08
  Now we got to create the system for it.
• 30:10
  How do you train it?
• 30:11
  There's five or six steps.
• 30:13
  I hope I remember them off the top of my head to launch anything.
• 30:17
  Create it.
• 30:18
  Launch it.
• 30:20
  You know, that's training everyone on it.
• 30:23
  Certify it.
• 30:24
  that just because you had to sit through the seminar video doesn't mean you retained it.
• 30:31
  So there has to be a certification element of, right, Denise, what is our never's and always?
• 30:36
  If the never's this, the always that.
• 30:38
  What is our service recovery training that we do when a customer's upset?
• 30:42
  What do we do at this stage?
• 30:44
  What's the service defect we want to avoid?
• 30:45
  All those.
• 30:46
  Certify it, hold accountable.
• 30:49
  Celebrate and coach.
• 30:50
  And then you kind of do it all over again.
• 30:53
  There's not a ribbon cutting ceremony where you just stop and say, we're there.
• 30:58
  Top of mind awareness.
• 30:59
  Constantly be celebrating, recalibrating that this is who we are and the type of culture we're building and it's working.
• 31:07
  And then obviously coaching to the ones that need more recertification.
• 31:11
  Okay, certification.
• 31:13
  Talk about why that's so critical for consistency, especially organization.
• 31:19
  yeah, you could, you know, we all could watch a video.
• 31:25
  Did we listen to it?
• 31:26
  Did we retain it?
• 31:28
  Or sit through a seminar or a one-day training or whatever it is.
• 31:34
  But there could be two things that are happening.
• 31:38
  One, you're not buying into it.
• 31:40
  You don't agree with it.
• 31:41
  Or two, you're just not paying attention, right?
• 31:45
  Both are horrible.
• 31:46
  So we have to have a certification element that after you take this, you're going to get a test right away or within 48 hours.
• 31:54
  And you have to be certified to work in that position.
• 31:58
  Just like the technical certification of an accountant, of a pilot, of a hairdresser, of a chef.
• 32:04
  I don't think we would ever hire anyone randomly and trust that because they have a paper, a degree that they could
• 32:12
  Cook the food the way we have the food prepared.
• 32:15
  Cut the hair the way we, be a consultant on our 10 commandments.
• 32:20
  So whether it's soft skill or technical skills, they have to pass out of that.
• 32:26
  And most companies are pretty good at the technical certification, but they're not good at the soft skills.
• 32:32
  it's, do you know what Ford is?
• 32:35
  Do you know what it stands for?
• 32:36
  Do you know how to collect it?
• 32:37
  Do you know how to retrieve it?
• 32:38
  Do you know how to utilize it?
• 32:39
  Do know the never's and always?
• 32:41
  Do you know how to build a rapport?
• 32:42
  Do you know how to make a brilliant comeback?
• 32:45
  It's a signature experience at this touch point.
• 32:48
  What are your things you have to do when you interact with a client that is part of our promise?
• 32:54
  So it's all that.
• 32:56
  And so it's not only the first time, but then it's top of mind awareness.
• 33:00
  Now you've certified, now we just, know, micro learning, sending out, you know, a 90 second video once a week on your
• 33:09
  phone app, something that everyone has to watch.
• 33:11
  It's more of a reminder of something you already learned.
• 33:15
  It's not new material, but it's different every week.
• 33:18
  I you can get easily 52 weeks out of Shennick, but it's just Toma, top of mind awareness.
• 33:24
  That's what the best companies are doing.
• 33:26
  There's no ribbon cutting ceremony to be in world-class.
• 33:29
  You never arrive.
• 33:30
  It's a journey.
• 33:32
  It's a journey.
• 33:32
  All right, so thinking about what we talked about last week in the first part of the 10 Commandments and what we talked about today, if an organization could only start with one
• 33:42
  commandment, which creates the fastest and biggest impact?
• 33:46
  So I may answer it two ways because obviously there's there's.
• 33:50
  My answer is always the first commandment, which is creating the customer experience revolution.
• 33:56
  Is that it?
• 33:57
  action, customer experience, action statement, or igniting the revolution.
• 34:04
  So, but in that is creating the action statement.
• 34:08
  the customer experience action statement, your North star that every employee has to do every time this is transformational.
• 34:13
  When you do this and everyone's on the same page, every world-class company has a customer experience actions.
• 34:19
  The frontline employee knows that they have to do it's a burden with the three pillars.
• 34:23
  That's the how and the never's and always it's
• 34:27
  It's transformational, it's drawing a line in the sand.
• 34:30
  It's saying we are going to be customer obsessed.
• 34:33
  We're not going to be good at customer service.
• 34:35
  We are going to be customer obsessed.
• 34:37
  That's always, always, most of the time, the first place we start.
• 34:42
  The only caveat to that is sometimes as consultants, if we find out that you're hemorrhaging somewhere else, sometimes we have to jump in that area.
• 34:51
  So a common one, you know, is
• 34:54
  In a perfect world, we'd like to start with the action statement pillars and never's and always, but some people call us and say they are.
• 35:00
  having a lot of service defects right now and really upsetting their customers and making it worse by how they handle it, which is our zero risk commandment of, right, we gotta
• 35:14
  come in, we gotta find out where you're dropping the ball the most, why, what systems can we put into place to reduce that significantly and we'll never eliminate it, but if we can
• 35:27
  get it from
• 35:28
  6 % of the time to 3.5 % of the time.
• 35:32
  The last part is what do we do when it still happens 3.5 % of the time?
• 35:36
  Like we know what's gonna happen.
• 35:37
  Why do we act like a deer in headlights when it happens?
• 35:41
  and then, you know, and then we actually maybe are more impressive when we drop the ball, but how we made it right.
• 35:48
  So yeah, there's one-offs sometimes.
• 35:52
  So I just don't want a broad stroke, you know, that.
• 35:57
  you know, if there's a triage of something that needs, it might be hiring, it might be retaining.
• 36:03
  It doesn't matter how good your customer experience systems are.
• 36:07
  If you're not hiring the right people that are going to do it, and you can't keep people long enough to do it, then a lot of times the internal experience will be the number one
• 36:19
  priority.
• 36:20
  John, you built all your companies on customer experience.
• 36:27
  I just did what you told me to.
• 36:29
  uh You built your companies on customer experience and did it very well.
• 36:36
  And you started a revolution in doing this.
• 36:40
  So, and part of the goal is always to change the world by creating a customer service revolution.
• 36:47
  What do you see this customer experience revolution looking like in the next five to 10 years?
• 36:53
  You know, it's cool.
• 36:54
  think it's, it's, you know, really picked up steam outside of the de Julius group.
• 36:59
  think it's finally something an imperative, in the past.
• 37:04
  was a nice to have customer service was more thought of as defense.
• 37:08
  So let's have some people answering the phones for support, put out fires, you know, whatever.
• 37:13
  And, and, the marketing was the offense.
• 37:15
  And now I believe, you know, more and more companies have found that.
• 37:19
  you know, your customer experience is your offense.
• 37:22
  And that's going to make more customers come back more often, pay higher prices and send more people earn sales growth.
• 37:31
  And, you know, with AI, I think AI is, is going to help.
• 37:35
  one thing I don't agree with is I hear a lot of speakers and webinars say that the customer is
• 37:41
  more demanding than they've ever been.
• 37:43
  I don't think so.
• 37:44
  I think they're less tolerant of bad experience.
• 37:48
  And I know I am.
• 37:50
  And there's just no point that something like this had to happen.
• 37:54
  That was laziness from management, even though it's being done to me by the frontline person.
• 38:01
  Didn't train them well, didn't hire them well, whatever, or having them hide behind policy.
• 38:08
  But
• 38:09
  I think the human experience, it's so rare today that when we get it, it better be on.
• 38:16
  In the past, I was just talking to a CEO of a bank and he said, 20 years ago, we'd see customers literally weekly, the same customers.
• 38:25
  Now with digital and online, they may talk to us once a year, but when they do,
• 38:33
  We better know who they are, better make them feel like it, better be courteous, better make it easy to do business with us.
• 38:40
  such a great point.
• 38:41
  It's true.
• 38:42
  I used to go to the bank every week.
• 38:44
  And now I couldn't tell you last time I walked in the bank.
• 38:47
  couldn't imagine.
• 38:47
  I went last week, but it was as a consultant, not as a consumer.
• 38:52
  Well, listeners, this wraps up part two of the 10 Commandments, where customer experience only becomes more powerful because the employee experience is intentionally designed to
• 39:01
  support it.
• 39:02
  If there's one theme that we've discussed today that really comes across, it's that companies don't rise to the level of their goals, they rise to the level of their systems.
• 39:11
  And the systems that you put in place are so important.
• 39:14
  Hiring for character, onboarding with purpose, tearing down silos, building real leaders.
• 39:21
  certifying employees, these aren't just initiatives, they're infrastructure.
• 39:25
  And when you get the infrastructure right, everything else performs better.
• 39:29
  Customer satisfaction, retention, employee engagement, profitability, every metric that matters.
• 39:36
  If you missed part one of the methodology, go back and listen to last week's episode.
• 39:41
  The two halves complete each other.
• 39:43
  And if you're ready to take action, not just inspiration, schedule a call to explore.
• 39:48
  the Customer Experience Executive Academy, or our consulting services.
• 39:52
  Get in touch with Claudia at tdg.click forward slash Claudia.
• 39:57
  You can schedule a call with her right there.
• 40:00
  That's tdg dash tdg.click forward slash Claudia.
• 40:07
  Thanks for joining us on the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
• 40:11
  We'll see you next time.
• 40:12
  Thanks, John.
• 40:13
  Thanks everyone.