Latest / Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders / 244: Customer Experience Leadership Challenges Solved

Transcript

244: Customer Experience Leadership Challenges Solved · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

• 0:49
  Hello listeners, welcome back to the customer service revolution podcast with John DiJulius This is where leaders build organizations that their customers and their
• 0:58
  employees cannot live without.
• 1:00
  Today's episode addresses your burning questions.
• 1:03
  We're digging into the mailbag or email box to find out what you really want to know.
• 1:08
  Welcome John.
• 1:10
  Thank you.
• 1:10
  How are you, Denise?
• 1:12
  I'm fantastic.
• 1:13
  And how are you this week?
• 1:16
  Yay.
• 1:16
  Are you ready to sit in the hot seat and answer all these questions?
• 1:19
  love Q &A.
• 1:22
  So John's not prepared.
• 1:23
  He has no idea what I'm going to be asking him.
• 1:26
  So let's see how he does with all this.
• 1:28
  I feel like we're on a game show.
• 1:31
  And for 20 points.
• 1:33
  All right, you ready?
• 1:34
  We're just going to start firing them at you.
• 1:37
  All right, here's question number one.
• 1:40
  What does customer centricity look like?
• 1:44
  Yeah, to me it's being obsessed with customer service.
• 1:48
  It's not flavor the month program of the year management by best seller.
• 1:52
  It's from the top.
• 1:53
  It has to be from the top that they think of everything from the customer's vantage point.
• 2:00
  What's in the best interest of the customer?
• 2:02
  Hiring a customer experience, action statement, training, keeping it top of mind awareness.
• 2:08
  And everything's always brought back to the customer.
• 2:11
  If we're talking about sales, marketing, know, whatever, we're operations, and it's not just being focused on operational excellence.
• 2:18
  Well, that is really, really important.
• 2:21
  That's what your competitors, your best competitors are pretty good at.
• 2:25
  So to be unique, you know, really building a culture of service, an experience ecosystem.
• 2:33
  from how you take care of your team members, how you take care of the customer, and even how you take care of your vendors.
• 2:41
  And that could even mean having your customers go somewhere else if it's in their best interest and it's not what you can provide them.
• 2:51
  What's the difference between a customer-centric culture, the biggest difference, and just having good customer service?
• 2:57
  it's lip service.
• 2:58
  I think, you know, most companies should go to their website and they probably have something in a vision statement or a purpose statement or a core value that talks about
• 3:10
  great customer service or, you know, putting the customer first.
• 3:14
  But are you really doing that?
• 3:15
  And is that top of mind?
• 3:17
  you know, every employee, the newest employee to the most seasoned employee is that top of their mind.
• 3:23
  I just think there's too much lip service there.
• 3:26
  Have we, I'm sure I have, besides ours conversations and the podcast we do, I'm on other podcasts, so I get confused.
• 3:34
  But have we talked about the compound effect?
• 3:36
  Well, we talked about the book, The Slight Edge.
• 3:41
  Yeah, so there are two different books.
• 3:43
  I think Compound Effect might have bought it because kind of their first couple of days.
• 3:47
  But I think the reason why the vast majority of companies aren't, don't focus on customer service is because it's not a short win.
• 3:57
  It's not a short term plan that you can win if you need to increase sales, increase your bottom line.
• 4:06
  Buying a competitor, laying off people, slashing prices will do that today.
• 4:15
  But if you obsess over customer service and you train your existing employees, you train your new employees on truly what a great customer experience looks like, that's not going
• 4:30
  to have an impact today.
• 4:32
  Whether you do it or you don't isn't going to have an impact today.
• 4:35
  your sales aren't going to be any different, you know, even in a week, month.
• 4:40
  But in six months, if you're doing it right, it should be a freight train where the other, you know, things of buying a fledging competitor, cutting prices, laying off people, that
• 4:52
  will nine times out of 10,
• 4:54
  have a negative impact on your business in six months and you're gonna be chasing price more.
• 5:00
  I don't know.
• 5:01
  I always think of that as, because we all like the quick get rich schemes and there's no ozempic for customer experience.
• 5:14
  Good analogy there.
• 5:15
  Here's our next one.
• 5:16
  Where do you start with building an organization that's obsessed with customer experience?
• 5:21
  Again, it has to start at the top.
• 5:22
  It's easier when the founder, entrepreneur like Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, the founders like that.
• 5:34
  It's not impossible, but it gets more difficult when you're trying to change a company that's mature, that wasn't based around that.
• 5:44
  But it absolutely
• 5:45
  can happen, you know, choose a path.
• 5:48
  We've worked with so many companies that depending on what year you were hired, we were all reading raving fans or fish or secret service or the customer service revolution.
• 6:01
  You know, pick a path and pick a methodology and stick with it.
• 6:06
  And everyone should learn that and, you know, establishing your customer experience culture.
• 6:12
  has to permeate in every part of your business from, it's less about branding that you're good at customer service.
• 6:18
  You'll never see anything about Nordstrom's or Ritz Carlton themselves boasting how good they are, or even Chick-fil-A.
• 6:25
  Customers will, but they don't say it.
• 6:28
  internally, it's about, are you attracting the right type of people?
• 6:32
  Are you filtering out?
• 6:34
  Are you coaching the ones that don't get it immediately?
• 6:38
  Are you constantly revisiting it?
• 6:41
  Annual customer services like trainings like deodorant, if you just do it with a new employee orientation, that won't do it.
• 6:49
  it's just about being obsessed at everything, really looking at it from the customer's vantage point, not looking at it from our vantage point, the business vantage point.
• 6:58
  What's a customer going through?
• 6:59
  are their needs?
• 7:00
  What are their pain points?
• 7:01
  Why do they need us?
• 7:02
  What do we or our industry do that makes it harder or frustrates them?
• 7:08
  Teaching your employees the service aptitude skills and trying to hire for them as well.
• 7:13
  Empathy, curiosity, listening, building a rapport, relationship.
• 7:18
  making a connection, having enthusiasm and really liking people, not being jaded and think customers are trying to take advantage of you, being able to make a brilliant comeback
• 7:29
  when we do drop the ball.
• 7:31
  All right, here's your next one.
• 7:32
  How do you, this is a good one.
• 7:33
  How do you handle team members that are slow to adapt?
• 7:36
  Well, obviously, I guess it's like the divorce rate.
• 7:41
  I think the divorce rate would be lower if we did a better job selecting our mates on the front end and not jumping into stuff.
• 7:48
  so a really good hiring.
• 7:50
  I know for a fact, Chick-fil-A has better quality applicants because of their reputation.
• 7:57
  If you.
• 7:58
  you know, are someone who doesn't like people, who doesn't, you just wants a job, you're not going to go apply at Chick-fil-A, because you know Chick-fil-A's standards are higher.
• 8:07
  So, but I mean, that's down the road when you get there, right?
• 8:12
  But you want to make sure you start creating where your customer experience reputation is a deterrent for people who don't want that.
• 8:21
  And then,
• 8:22
  You know, we always, you know, we believe that.
• 8:24
  Everyone we hire doesn't have the service aptitude that they need.
• 8:29
  And so we're going to train it on them.
• 8:31
  Just like, you know, you're going to make sure your accountant passes the CPA and your lawyer passes the bar exam.
• 8:42
  It doesn't have to be that extent or your chef knows how to prepare the meals up to your standard.
• 8:48
  You would never just hire a chef on a hope and throw him in the kitchen and let him start, you know, preparing meals.
• 8:58
  And that's what the customer service soft skills, service aptitude skills have to be is everyone has to go through that training initially and continuously.
• 9:08
  Again, the empathy, seeing it from the customer's vantage point, building a rapport, making a, you know, all those things and, and
• 9:15
  You know, if you hire people that have them, great.
• 9:18
  They'll just blow through that training, but you have to certify them as much.
• 9:23
  back to, you know, the question is we understand that not everyone's going to get it, you know, right away.
• 9:31
  If they have the aptitude, if they have the heart, we could teach it.
• 9:34
  So we just keep on teaching it.
• 9:36
  We keep on coaching it until they show that this isn't something for them.
• 9:42
  Hopefully we, that's why.
• 9:44
  great companies make it hard to get a job and don't hire you after the first or second interview and have a great screening process.
• 9:54
  But that still isn't 100 % proof.
• 9:56
  There's some that could slip through the cracks.
• 9:58
  But the majority that you hire that don't perform well, the majority that don't perform well, I still think
• 10:08
  you gotta look at yourself and look at yourself in the mirror and say, have we given them enough training and the why behind all this?
• 10:16
  And I think, I know for a fact, you'll move the needle and get them there.
• 10:20
  Not everyone, some don't want that.
• 10:22
  And that's why there's those service aptitude, skills, enthusiasm.
• 10:26
  Do they genuinely like others?
• 10:29
  Those types of things.
• 10:32
  training is not going to do a whole lot so you want to find that in the interview process.
• 10:37
  Compared to empathy, curiosity, listening, building a rapport, those can be taught.
• 10:45
  I would love to know the person that asked this question if they were asking it about new employees starting with them or if it was an anticipatory question.
• 10:55
  Because don't you find that a lot of times leaders assume that there are certain people on their team that won't adapt to new customer experience requirements?
• 11:07
  Yeah, the resistors, the critics and cynics, a lot of times they are your rainmakers and you're not willing to draw a line in the sand and get rid of them because they bring in so
• 11:21
  much in sales or fees or whatever it is that you know your business might provide.
• 11:27
  And so, you know, that's a legitimate concern.
• 11:30
  So what a lot of times is, you know, we'll recommend making them part of the workshops because they're the type that if they're not part of it, they're gonna sabotage it.
• 11:47
  It doesn't always work, but if they're part of it and they feel that, you know, they've helped co-create it, they're more likely to buy in.
• 11:57
  But at a certain point,
• 11:59
  If you're really going in that direction, you really have to consider if they're doing you more damage than good because if they don't love it and they don't live it, other people
• 12:15
  are going to notice.
• 12:16
  And if you're not enforcing Denise to do it, why do I have to do it?
• 12:19
  And that creates a lot of problems.
• 12:22
  And so even though they might be a rainmaker and your number one salesperson, so to speak, you're losing the buy-in from the other people.
• 12:31
  On the flip side, I think we've seen some that end up becoming the biggest cheerleaders of it unexpectedly.
• 12:39
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  I mean, I always think there's three camps in every business.
• 12:44
  The only difference is it's the same three.
• 12:46
  It's just the percentage of them.
• 12:48
  So you have the, you know, believers that, you know, will walk across into a traffic blindfold if you ask them to.
• 12:56
  They believe in your vision.
• 12:58
  They believe, you know, in everything you say.
• 13:00
  They believe it's in the best interest of them.
• 13:03
  and what's in the best interest of the company.
• 13:04
  And then the opposite is the critics and cynics that roll their eyes, think you're just trying to get more out of them.
• 13:11
  And then you have the fence sitters.
• 13:13
  And I think too often leaders go and focus on the critics and cynics.
• 13:18
  And they're neglecting the, you know, the believers and they're not patting them on the back and celebrating them.
• 13:26
  which then doesn't get the fence sitters, that's who we're all fighting for.
• 13:31
  And the fence sitters are, they might be early on in their career, whatever they may be, they're green and they're not sure.
• 13:39
  And it's whoever they sit and have lunch with in the break room or whoever they go out for happy hour with, they're gonna be, yeah, you're right, you're right, this is wrong.
• 13:48
  They're just trying to, you know, they're not paying me to do this stuff.
• 13:51
  Or, you know, or you're right.
• 13:53
  this is in the best interest and it is rewarding and I'm going to have a better career.
• 13:58
  So I think when you celebrate the early adopters and the believers, it creates FOMO and you start attracting those fence sitters.
• 14:12
  Again, as people say, it's like maybe a 20-20 split on the believers and the critics and cynics.
• 14:23
  and then 60 in the middle.
• 14:25
  The variation is, know, great companies will be a lot heavier on the believers and a thin margin on the critics and cynics and, you know, a smaller margin in the middle.
• 14:35
  You got to fight, you know, you got to really celebrate the ones that are doing it well to attract the middle one.
• 14:42
  And then when you have leverage, you can have a come to Jesus meeting with the
• 14:46
  the ones that are not buying in.
• 14:48
  This one sounds like someone's been doing some analyzing.
• 14:51
  How do I know if my customer experience problems are a leadership issue or an operations issue?
• 14:59
  Well, I think everything's a leadership issue.
• 15:01
  mean, I don't know anything that goes wrong in a business.
• 15:06
  I believe it's a leadership issue.
• 15:09
  We didn't train them.
• 15:10
  We didn't teach them the why.
• 15:11
  We assumed.
• 15:12
  But even if it's an operation issue, are you journey mapping every touch point?
• 15:17
  Are you figuring out what can be absorbed?
• 15:20
  Tasks for technology?
• 15:23
  and emotional connection for humans.
• 15:26
  But what are the things here that frustrate, doesn't make it easier to do business?
• 15:31
  It makes it easier for us, but it doesn't make it easier for the customer asking you to give your account number and all your information, verification and then transferring and
• 15:41
  asking again and then all those things.
• 15:43
  So reducing that, having your signature experience that
• 15:48
  both addresses operational and experiential that no one else is doing, and then training your employees to look for the above and beyond opportunities, if that's what they mean by
• 15:57
  operational.
• 15:58
  Another thing that while we really are forte at the Jewish group is helping people create experiential standards, it is not at the detriment of operational.
• 16:12
  You got to be brilliant at the basics.
• 16:14
  And the other thing, operational.
• 16:16
  A lack of operational training, which I still know today, that is, know, the 90 % of training is operational, which is a mistake, okay?
• 16:28
  But if I don't train you operational, and I throw you out there too fast, because someone called in sick, and we just need somebody answering the phones, checking people in,
• 16:38
  checking people out, whatever the business model is.
• 16:41
  A lack of operation, I've seen this, causes RBF.
• 16:45
  Yeah, so maybe instead of resting bitch face, it's resting grumpy face, it's intense face, and it's not the employees' fault, but they don't know what buttons to push.
• 16:59
  I've seen it at our salons.
• 17:01
  where they don't know how to ring someone out, schedule an appointment, and you're standing there and they're just staring and they're so trying to figure out, but they look
• 17:11
  like they're miserable.
• 17:13
  And it's just because they're concentrating, they're intense.
• 17:16
  But perception is reality and this person won't look up from the computer, or he is slower because they don't know and they're getting hot flashes because
• 17:27
  They know they have a lack of credibility because they're slow.
• 17:31
  You're not setting that employee up for success.
• 17:34
  So you can't fast track employees unless you're gonna give discounts that if you're dealing with someone new today, we're gonna make it cheaper.
• 17:42
  But if we're charging the same price for our signature experience, they better get the signature experience.
• 17:48
  And one of the leading reasons is because they're not is because you're just throwing someone out there.
• 17:54
  untrained or not fully trained.
• 17:56
  And then you got the soft skill service aptitude training of all the things you want them to do as well.
• 18:02
  Okay, let's see this one.
• 18:04
  How do I get my executive team aligned on customer experience when everyone has different priorities?
• 18:11
  So it depends on who's asking this, if it's a CEO.
• 18:14
  That's a lot easier, because what you obsess over, everyone else is gonna obsess over, unless you obsess over everything, and again, it goes back to the new shiny object, and
• 18:26
  this week we're gonna be the greatest sales company ever, and next week we're gonna be the most efficient, and the next week after that, we're gonna be customer experience, right?
• 18:34
  The easy part is if you're the top top,
• 18:38
  and it's like exercise, right?
• 18:44
  You got a run in this morning, you're good till tomorrow.
• 18:49
  And you gotta get back after it, right?
• 18:52
  It's top of mind awareness, it's visiting it every day, it's creating a plan, having a leader, having a steering committee, all those things.
• 18:59
  I'm afraid, because I get this all the time, this is not someone at the top asking.
• 19:06
  And if you're beneath the executive team, or part of the executive team, but you're not the person, you're screwed.
• 19:14
  I mean, if it's not a value of the CEO and C-suite, it's never going to be a value of the company.
• 19:21
  If it's not a value of the parent, it'll probably never be a value of the kids, unless you're the one that
• 19:30
  you know, wants to buck the system because it was so bad, right?
• 19:33
  And you know, you want to be, you quit, you know, you're going to be a different parent than your parents were, or you're going to be, you know, you're going to go start your own
• 19:41
  company because, you know, they didn't believe in the customer service.
• 19:46
  But I find it's virtually impossible.
• 19:48
  I guess it's not impossible.
• 19:50
  You have to speak numbers, KPIs, return on experience.
• 19:54
  And the
• 19:55
  Companies and senior leaders that don't invest in customer experience don't understand the return on investment that comes from it.
• 20:03
  And so if you can demonstrate the money you're losing and the money you could be.
• 20:10
  Profiting by being a world-class customer experience company.
• 20:14
  That's the only thing that talks to senior leadership.
• 20:18
  Let's see, one more here.
• 20:20
  You say employee experience drives customer experience, but how do I measure that connection?
• 20:26
  That's a good question.
• 20:27
  you so I think it's, you know, the employee engagement and you got to measure employee engagement.
• 20:32
  There's a ton of different ways.
• 20:34
  There's E, NPS, which is employee net promoter score.
• 20:40
  It's measuring it.
• 20:41
  Obviously the top thing is turnover, right?
• 20:44
  That's a big indicator.
• 20:46
  Now you could work in an industry, fast food.
• 20:50
  That's always gonna have high turnover, right?
• 20:53
  But are you at the leading, are you the best in your industry?
• 20:57
  mean, restaurant industry could have 100 to 300 % turnover.
• 21:02
  Well, if you're the best, you shouldn't be there.
• 21:05
  The other thing is, we've worked with companies that say, we don't have employees that are gonna work here 30 years.
• 21:10
  These are temporary transitional jobs for the most part.
• 21:14
  I agree with that.
• 21:16
  to a certain degree, but if your average frontline employee lasts seven months and you can get that to 12, 13, or 14 months, that's huge.
• 21:31
  I mean, that is huge.
• 21:33
  So it's not that we expect everyone in every environment to retire from that company and wait for their gold watch, but yeah, so it's tracking it and
• 21:43
  you know, the best place to compare is you look at the, you your return on experience dashboard, your KPIs for employee engagement, and it might be your surveys, internal
• 21:54
  surveys, employee net promoter score, turnover rates, all those things.
• 21:59
  And the ones that are leading, the locations, departments, are probably the ones that are also leading in customer experience.
• 22:08
  Not probably, you usually are.
• 22:10
  So you can just see the correlation between that.
• 22:13
  Anyone that's getting, you doesn't have a great boss, doesn't have a great culture, is not recognized, or is only recognized when, you know, bad things happen, they're not gonna
• 22:25
  ever have great customer experience scores, retention, know, re-sign referrals.
• 22:32
  This one's this one's sort of related there.
• 22:34
  We have high employee engagement scores, but mediocre customer satisfaction What gives?
• 22:42
  Yeah, that I would think if you're doing everything right with and you got to make sure you're what you're measuring and employee engagement scores are are what you should be
• 22:50
  measuring.
• 22:51
  that, know, you know, it's like NPS today is not accurate anymore because people have survey fatigue and if you have a low.
• 23:01
  Response rate, so if you have 100 employees and only.
• 23:06
  15 to 20 are really filling these out.
• 23:10
  Maybe they're your 15 to 20 believers.
• 23:13
  Those numbers can be skewed.
• 23:15
  What are the 80 to 85 % of your staff who aren't filling those out?
• 23:20
  They don't care.
• 23:21
  They don't care to tell you.
• 23:23
  They don't think you're gonna listen.
• 23:24
  So first you have to make sure your employee engagement tracking is accurate.
• 23:29
  And so let's say it is.
• 23:30
  Then I believe it's an operational training thing.
• 23:33
  Then I think, yeah, we care about our employees, but just caring about him isn't gonna produce outstanding customer experience results.
• 23:42
  Are we raising their service aptitude?
• 23:44
  Are we teaching them what non-negotiable standards are?
• 23:46
  What our signature experience is?
• 23:49
  How to go above and beyond?
• 23:50
  How to recover when a customer's unhappy?
• 23:53
  That's, if you're not teaching that, you could be,
• 23:56
  paying your employees 10 times what they're worth and loving on them.
• 24:02
  But if they don't know how to create a customer experience, you know, if their experience, you know, is their typical experience of their own is the, you know, Chili's restaurant
• 24:13
  and, you know, Taco Bell and a Holiday Inn, they don't know what world class is.
• 24:19
  And just because you treat them really, really well doesn't mean that's
• 24:23
  by itself going to translate.
• 24:25
  It's not.
• 24:26
  What it does do, you don't treat them well, you definitely won't get great customer experience.
• 24:31
  If you treat them well, that isn't a guarantee.
• 24:34
  You then have to have the training behind it to teach them all the things.
• 24:39
  You know, I think we should do a live episode one time, Stump John, and have people call in with questions to see if anybody can stump you.
• 24:48
  love that.
• 24:50
  All right, so, you're coming up on, we're celebrating your 30th anniversary, working with me and my different brands.
• 24:58
  Thank you and congratulations.
• 25:00
  You answer this.
• 25:01
  What have you seen as being a leader in a company that's obsessed, or all of our brands are obsessed with the customer experience, and that's what, you know, is our biggest point
• 25:12
  of difference?
• 25:13
  You know, what have you seen?
• 25:14
  in answering some of these questions.
• 25:16
  Well, you know, the question is, because you're probably more in the weeds than I have been in a long time with what if someone doesn't get it?
• 25:27
  How do you get them to get it?
• 25:29
  know, how have you tackled that in the past?
• 25:32
  I think the best thing you can do is surround them with good people.
• 25:36
  Good breeds good.
• 25:37
  I think the more people that you have that are customer experience focused, those other people get it by, you know, just being around them or they weed themselves out too.
• 25:47
  Yeah, think that's the most effective is just never compromising, like you said.
• 25:53
  When you're hiring, not to compromise.
• 25:55
  Start them off on a good foot and put them around other people that have that same service aptitude that you want them to have.
• 26:03
  I have a, I guess it's an acid test, I don't know if that's the right term for if I think it's time to part ways with an employee.
• 26:12
  And that's if we hire someone new that I'm really excited about, but I wanna make sure they stay away from that employee, because that employee will poison them.
• 26:22
  That's when, you know, it's probably time to part ways.
• 26:28
  But again, I always think you gotta look in the mirror first.
• 26:32
  I don't think anybody came to work at a company hoping to be an under performer.
• 26:36
  And I think, you know, we should be exhausting everything we did first, retraining, revisiting the why and all that.
• 26:47
  And then if you've exhausted that and there's certain things you can't tolerate, lateness, apathy.
• 26:53
  anniversary coming up as well.
• 26:57
  33 years in business.
• 27:00
  Yes, our first business, John Robert Spa.
• 27:05
  Yeah.
• 27:05
  wow.
• 27:06
  What would you tell your younger self?
• 27:09
  If you could go back, what would you tell him to do differently or congratulate him on?
• 27:15
  Ha!
• 27:15
  lucky and congratulate and that it's about that we
• 27:22
  We didn't have any money to outspend, out advertise, out hire our competition when we started.
• 27:29
  So I don't know if this is state of times back in the early 90s, but customer service was just bad everywhere in the industry.
• 27:39
  We were starting off in, but at everywhere.
• 27:41
  So we saw an opportunity that we felt was free is provide an exceptional experience and, and
• 27:51
  the best experience someone could get anywhere they went.
• 27:54
  So I don't know if that was smart or that was the only thing we knew we could differentiate ourselves on.
• 28:01
  And then the, would I do differently is all the things of looking the other way on poor performers, the rainmakers.
• 28:12
  the people that were helping you bring in a lot of money but weren't buying into the culture were negative, had bad attitudes, and we'd make excuses really because we didn't
• 28:22
  want to lose their sales, right, their productivity.
• 28:25
  But what we found out later is we were losing it with higher turnover with employees that didn't like working with them or employees that were gravitating to their attitude.
• 28:38
  and their demeanor.
• 28:39
  And, you know, it's always easy to say, you know, but when you're trying to, you know, make payroll and sales and keep the doors open, you know, you tend to make excuses.
• 28:54
  Yeah.
• 28:56
  So how are you celebrating 33?
• 28:58
  Uh, thanking employees like you, who, uh, my direct impact ended probably more than 25 years ago as we started getting bigger and we started, you're we went from just John
• 29:15
  Robert Spa to opening the DiJulius Group to starting Believe in Dreams.
• 29:20
  Uh, and I haven't been involved in John Robert Spa day to day.
• 29:27
  probably since early 2000s.
• 29:29
  And I believe it's as good as it's ever been, which shows you, you know, it's not about my impact, but having people like you and Eric and Sandy and Kristen and, you know, so many
• 29:40
  people, Dave and Claudia and Lindsay and just so many that have just ran and bought into the vision and made the vision their own, you know,
• 29:52
  purpose of their careers.
• 29:54
  Yeah, mean, surround yourself with great people and you'll be guilty by association.
• 30:01
  Who is the longest tenured person?
• 30:03
  I'm trying to think like Mary Del Balso has been there for Kathy?
• 30:08
  Kathy Chafetz?
• 30:09
  day.
• 30:10
  The only reason why, uh her and her work in there.
• 30:18
  Yeah.
• 30:19
  Yeah.
• 30:19
  Yeah.
• 30:20
  So Kathy probably, so, so, John Robert's spa opened February 15th, 1993.
• 30:27
  and Kathy might have an April start date.
• 30:31
  She was hired, she really shouldn't, but she was hired from day one, but she either took vacation, you know, planned before, or she gave her two weeks or whatever, and made
• 30:44
  company Fur Salon.
• 30:45
  She used to sell furs for the longest time.
• 30:48
  So technically she should have the same
• 30:51
  start date is me and Stacey.
• 30:53
  yeah, Kathy is the second longest.
• 30:56
  And then I think probably Mary or Patty.
• 30:59
  way I remember when we worked at John Roberts, we had numbers.
• 31:04
  yeah, Patty was 16.
• 31:05
  I don't know why that sticks in my head.
• 31:09
  That's so weird.
• 31:09
  Well, because you probably had to book her appointments and you had to know her thing.
• 31:15
  really?
• 31:15
  Okay, okay, so...
• 31:16
  I could be wrong, but oh my gosh, it's so funny when you said numbers.
• 31:20
  I'm like, I think I was 20.
• 31:21
  I was 27.
• 31:24
  were 27.
• 31:25
  So you were probably the 27th employee hired.
• 31:29
  I was nine only because that's my number.
• 31:34
  But technically I should have been two.
• 31:36
  Stacey should have been one.
• 31:37
  I'm sure Stacey was one.
• 31:40
  And then I want to say, Kathy.
• 31:45
  been there.
• 31:45
  Monica, Colagiavani
• 31:47
  yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:48
  She's coming up on Patty.
• 31:50
  I don't know if Patty's, was Patty, Patty, before you after you?
• 31:54
  Oh, so she's in her 30s.
• 31:55
  Mary's in her 30s.
• 31:58
  We have a ton of people coming up on that, but yeah, yeah.
• 32:03
  That's great.
• 32:03
  Congratulations.
• 32:04
  What a milestone.
• 32:08
  That says so much about everything that you put in place.
• 32:12
  It created great experiences for your employees.
• 32:16
  There's a reason people stick around for that long.
• 32:19
  That doesn't happen very often.
• 32:20
  Well, more importantly, know, hopefully great opportunities and quality of life and that that's more important that I hope we created.
• 32:29
  wonder how many, and I'm sure you have this somewhere, customers.
• 32:32
  How many customers have been there from, like what the longest customer is?
• 32:40
  Yeah.
• 32:41
  oh
• 32:42
  know of people that I've bumped into when I go get my haircut and they're in the thing.
• 32:47
  And they actually were with Stacey, my wife, at her previous salon before we opened.
• 32:53
  They followed her.
• 32:54
  And then I see them today and I always make a point to tell them I know.
• 33:01
  that they've been with us since day one.
• 33:05
  Yeah, it's been a great ride.
• 33:12
  Hopefully 33 more to go.
• 33:15
  why not?
• 33:16
  Is that a commitment?
• 33:19
  Yeah.
• 33:19
  I'll be the one sitting in the chair then.
• 33:21
  You can wave when you go by.
• 33:23
  Hahaha!
• 33:24
  congratulations, though, John, really that I'm so proud of you and what you've created.
• 33:30
  Thank you.
• 33:30
  Thank you for, like I said, your fingerprints all over it.
• 33:34
  Both, all three prints.
• 33:36
  How long were you, eh how long did you work with John Roberts?
• 33:39
  96 to Did you make it 10 years before you switched over?
• 33:46
  10 or close to I think 10 years I feel like I celebrated 10 years there before there was that muddy period in the middle when yeah yeah but
• 34:00
  Well, good.
• 34:00
  Thank you.
• 34:00
  stuff.
• 34:01
  Thank you listeners for joining us on another episode of the Customer Service Revolution podcast and we'll see you next week.