Stop Chasing Perfection: Why Consistency Beats Amazement - Shep Hyken - CX Chat 022

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Hello there, my name is Martin Henley and this is episode 22 of the CX Education Leadership Podcast, where we are working to connect, empower and motivate CX leaders to build better businesses. And today we have a guest and we are seriously lucky to have him because he is the best-selling author of eight books, Moments of Magic, The Loyal Customer, The Cult of the Customer, The Amazement Revolution, Amaze Every Customer Every Time, Be Amazing or Go Home, The Convenience Revolution, and I'll Be Back...
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which have appeared on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestseller lists. He has been running his business in the customer experience business since 1983. He is a Hall of Fame speaker in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for a lifetime of achievement in the speaking profession. He is a customer service and customer experience keynote speaker, author, researcher and podcast host. He is the chief amazement officer. Today's guest is Shep Hyken.
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Good morning, Shep. How are you? Wow, that was quite an introduction. Thank you very much. You are very welcome. How are things in your part of the world? It's hot today. Very, very hot.
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Yeah, it seems to be hot in lots of places. It's hot where I am. It's always hot where I am in Indonesia. It seems to be, yes. And the World Cup, is that making things hotter for you in the United States? Are you interested in that? It's making things more exciting. That's for sure. Definitely more exciting. A lot of fun today, or last night, watching the game. It's a good time.
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Fantastic. I was up in New York just a few weeks ago and the World Cup. It was it was great where we are, where we stay is a it's right in the middle of it all.
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Excellent. Hundreds of buses taking people over to the stadium to watch the game. And it was right at the same time the Knicks were playing basketball and won their championship. So for those around the world, basketball, the NBA championships just took place and the New York Knicks won. And my gosh, that was exciting, too. So you put it all together. Boom. It's big.
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It's a great time to be where you are. Fantastic. That's good news. Excellent. Well, we're not here to talk about the weather or the soccer world or the basketball or FIFA. We're definitely not here to talk about FIFA. Let's not talk about that. We are here to talk about customer experience. And as you know, because you were advised three and a half minutes ago, there are only six questions. So we will rattle through the questions if that's OK.
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I'll remind you of the questions now and I'll remind you as we go through. The first question is how are you qualified to talk to us about customer experience? The second question is how do you deliver value around customer experience? The third question is what's your recommendation for people who want to get better at customer experience?
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The fourth question is where should people go in terms of media if they want to know more about customer experience? I'm imagining your eight books might be a good place to start. The fifth question, who can you introduce us to who might be able to add some value for our audience? And the last question is who, in your mind, has done this the best of anyone? Which business in the world has delivered the greatest customer experience?
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So we'll start with question number one. Everyone knows you started in 1983. I didn't think that customer experience was even a thing until the 90s. So you tell me, how are you qualified to talk to us about customer experience? I think there's two questions that need to be answered here. Why in 1983 did I start and how I got started in the qualification, etc.? But also, the word customer experience was not around in 1983.
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First of all, that's a long time ago, 1983. That was right when I got out of college. You can do the math. With less than a year out of college, I started my business. But let's go back to the first job I ever had. Actually, the first job I ever had was working for my grandpa at eight years old in his drugstore three days a week during the summer. I loved working for my grandpa. And I got to work at the cash register and talk to the customers. I got to make the deliveries to the local customers.
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It was a lot of fun. But at age 12, I started a birthday party magic show business where I would entertain birthday parties. And my parents taught me to do the right thing. When I came home, I would write a thank you note. I would follow up a week later, check in.
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Ask them how they like the show. Thank them again. Ask them specifically, were there tricks in my show that they really loved? And my dad said, when you start to ask the right questions, you'll learn about what people like. And if they don't talk about something, it means it's not worth talking about.
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It's not that they didn't like it. It's just it's not it doesn't stand out. He says, so if you ask what were your favorite tricks and they tell you and you ask enough people and you don't hear about certain tricks, get rid of them, replace them with new tricks. I had no idea that that is called getting feedback, activating the feedback and then creating a better process or a better show or a better product.
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based on that feedback. That is what customer experience, part of it, is all about. The fact that I called, sent thank you, sent thank you notes, that's showing appreciation. So I was learning at a pretty young age what to do to make my customers want to call me back and book me again for other kids and their family or recommend me to others. Now,
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Let's jump to a couple of years later. I'm working at a retail gas station convenience store, and it's the coldest day of the year. As hot as it has been around the world, it was so cold that day. And an elderly woman pulls up, and I run outside to pump her gas for her. I recognize her as a regular customer.
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Now, we're a self-serve gas station. We don't pump gas for people. This woman, I didn't want her to get out of the car. I wanted her to be comfortable, and I just took care of it for her. And she loves me for that, right? But my manager, when I walked in, said, what did you just do? And I thought, well, is this a trick question? Yeah.
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I know what I just did. I was out there and I took care of this woman. I pumped her gas and he goes, now she's going to expect it every time she comes in. Well, ironically, my response was, well, at least she'll come here and not the place across the street or the store caddy corner to us, the opposite corner. And he got mad at me and he walked away and I thought, I know I did the right thing and I will do it again if the if the opportunity presents itself.
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So this was kind of the way it worked for me. And in college, I worked in restaurants and worked in some clubs and and I did my comedy and magic. I grew out of birthday parties into working those corporate environments that I would normally do a speech in. I would be hired to be an entertainer. And I'd also work comedy clubs around the country anyway.
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Neither here nor there. 1982, I graduate. What am I going to do? And within less than a year, I said, I am going to do this. Why? I saw a couple of motivational speakers, and they were amazing. And I said, I can do that. Entertainment background, I love what they
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talked about, and I'm not going to talk about goal setting and sales. I don't really know much about that, but let me go to the bookstore and see what's there. So I was drawn to the books on customer service, not customer experience. And they didn't call it customer experience back then, but that's really what it was about. There was a book titled In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters and a gentleman, uh,
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I can't remember what his first name is. Anyway, they wrote that book. Got to know Tom Peters over the years a little bit. Not well, but man, that guy had it down. And it was all about the best companies and what they did to be excellent. And I read this and it resonated with me. I had done a lot of marketing classes and entrepreneurship classes.
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in college. And I said, this is exactly what I believe in. The other two books that I bought were all about customer service. So I read these books and it validated what I'd done. Now, does that make me an expert? Not at all. But what I was good at was writing a speech. And I remember smiling and dialing, picking up the phone, calling companies and saying, hey, do you ever hire speakers for your meetings? And I got booked.
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pretty quickly by a couple of great clients. And that's what started my career. So what it was was simply an entertaining presentation on what I called the basics. Managing. I read this idea of the moment of truth in an article. There was a book that eventually came out a couple of years later titled Moments of Truth.
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And I read this article about the moment of truth in business is when a customer comes into contact with your business and gets to form an impression. Every interaction is that opportunity. And I thought about it. And remember, I did magic shows. So I said, it's either a moment of magic or a moment of misery. That's my theme. And then I came up with the idea. It could also be just okay or average. That's a moment of mediocrity.
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And that's where it started. And back in 1983, in my first speech, I talked about that. Today, if you looked at my speech from like two weeks ago or a week ago that I did, I still talk about moments of misery and moments of magic. Now, once again, does that make me an expert? No, it doesn't. I was just doing an entertaining speech on what companies felt was the right thing to do.
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And what happened is as I booked more and more business, I would dive into these companies and research them and talk to executives and interview them. And I mean, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours eventually of talking to C-suite executives, CX leaders. And that's where I guess really my education came from. Plus all the research I read.
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you know, 30 books a year. I look at probably 20 articles a week minimum that I'm reading and I'm just totally immersed. Now, I want to go back to something I said earlier, and that is the difference between customer service and customer experience. The word customer or the term customer experience had not yet been even thought of. But what happened is customer service. Somebody said, let's make it sexy. Let's call it customer experience. And.
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Essentially, customer service morphed into that term customer experience, not for everybody. But that was that was great because I believe and when I wrote my first book in the 1980s, I wrote that customer service should not be a department. It's a philosophy that needs to be connected with with everybody in the organization.
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And the idea between about customer experience was, well, if we called what normally people, you know, interact with customers as the experience, then we can get the service mentality, not just the service department. And anyway, somebody really smart said, well, customer experience is more than just customer service or customer support. It's every interaction.
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that the customer has with a company. Every interaction from the moment they, well, today you land on a website, you research them, you read reviews, you might inquire, have a question. It could be a chat bot or it could be a live agent, it doesn't matter. And anyway, all of these interactions are managed to create a great experience. And so over time, my business morphed into this understanding
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that every interaction is an opportunity, even if it's not people to people. It's every interaction. I mean, when Amazon shows up and I see the box and it's got the Amazon logo, oh, gosh, what did I order from Amazon? Oh, yeah, I can't wait to open it up. That's an experience. And yet it has nothing to do with the actual customer support.
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So I know I'm kind of giving this broad view, but when it comes to true customer service, the support, the interactions that people have with customers to give them a better experience, and now it's interactions that AI fueled technology has with customers to give them a better experience, that kind of all ties together. But we also need to widen it and understand that every interaction, even the ones that don't seem personal,
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Customers are forming impressions about, you know, the businesses they do, that they like to buy it and do business with. If you think about if you get a package from a company and it's all beat up and it looks dirty and open up and it's not packaged well, that's a bad impression. And you've got to wonder, what's this company like? Are you going to order from them next time? Or are you going to find somebody that might give you a better experience? That particular experience.
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So anyway, I throw all this out. That's the background. Gosh, like I say, years of research, years of interacting with my clients, going deep and understanding who they are, what makes them great. And I get I am so lucky because I get that opportunity to connect with executives as I'm getting ready to work with them that I don't think many people get to do.
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No, for sure. Okay, good. So I've got questions now. So the first question is... Because I hope six questions, it's over in about 20 minutes. I hope you have questions about the answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the thing is, I have six questions and I'm incredibly nosy. So that's what fuels us. Good, good. Okay, so the first question is, you're right. 1983 to 2026 is a long time.
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So I wonder, because I haven't been in customer experience, I've been in the customer business since I started work in the mid-90s, but I haven't been in customer experience all of that time. Has it changed? Because what we all know, if we're in customer experience, is that this is common sense cubed. Do you know what I mean? Just be nice to your customers, give them what they want, and they'll spend more money with you and they'll be around longer. And like you say, your parents taught you the good thing. Write the thank you notes, ask the questions, do the things.
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Has that changed? Are people less like that now, 43 years later? I'll go a step further. When people say what's changed in customer service, I say nothing. Nothing has changed.
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So to your point, this is what people wanted 20, 30 years ago. This is what people wanted 2000 years ago. And this is what people are going to want a thousand years from now. I wrote an article about the oldest complaint letter of all time that is on record. And it's actually on display at the British Museum of History or one of the big museums there. And it's actually not on a piece of paper. It's carved into a piece of stone.
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where a gentleman buying copper ingots was disappointed with his vendor, the merchant, and wrote a nasty tablet, not a letter, and had it delivered to him. And so it's actually on display. If you go to, if you type into Google the oldest complaint letter of all time, you'll find it. But anyway, it's,
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This is what happened. The guy was upset. He made a complaint. He wanted to be taken care of. That is the same today. That's the same as it is a thousand years from now. How we go about it, that's changed a little bit. And I see you're typing and looking. Do you see the... I'm looking at it, yeah. Tablet to Al Nassir on Wikipedia. Al Nassir. 1750 BC. Exactly. That's a long time ago.
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Yeah, that's a long time ago. Okay, so 100%. I don't think customers have changed. I don't think customers have changed. I don't think people have changed. We're just people. I think business has changed, and I think the way that we do business has changed. Yeah, the methods we do today are different than the methods we're using in the...
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Systems are totally different. But the outcome is the same. This is what we want. Now, because it's not just about handling a question or a complaint. Today, as we interact with customers, we're able to, you know, somebody lands on a website, is there anything I can help you with? A little chat box pops up.
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And when it's done right, you go out this there. These guys got it together. Right. And, you know, sending information like, hey, you just placed your order. Your order is on its way. Here's a tracking number. Your order has been received. So and so signed for it. And that's information. Is that really customer service? It's not related to a complaint or a question that a customer has, but it's all part of the interactions that customers have with your business.
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That's customer experience.
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100%. But now you're saying it, like the way I've always conceived it is there's kinds of steps in the journey in terms of them engaging with your business. So they are in the market in the first place. So you do your marketing and then you do your product development. Then you do your marketing and then you do your sales. And then if it goes wrong, then it's customer service. Customer service is like supposedly the reactive part. But then seriously, if...
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Like the service you provide before they buy something is still customer service, you know? Like the reassurance that you give them all of those things. It's still service. Yeah. So maybe that's... Customer service is a reaction. Customer service is just... It's a journey the customer has. Customer support is a reaction. Yes. So...
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And when you start saying there's a department that handles questions and complaints when something goes wrong or it's not every time a customer calls, they're upset. Hey, I don't know how to do something. I have a software. I'm calling to get help. I might be frustrated, but I'm not angry at the company yet until they put me on hold for four hours. And that's an exaggeration, I hope.
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Or they don't respond to my emails or my queries about them. Then I can get upset. But just because I have a question on how to do something, that's that's support. Support is I have a problem. Help me fix it. I'm not happy right now.
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I remember Apple computer and Apple iPhones. I remember converting. I went from a Blackberry to the iPhone, and it was such a different experience. I was struggling really to do a lot of things. And I remember the guy I was talking to said, by the time we get off the phone, I'm going to make you love this iPhone. You're going to love it so much that you will jump in front of a moving bus to save your iPhone.
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And I thought, this is the guy I wanna talk to.
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Yeah. Okay, good. Because the other thing, I mean, the thing that's definitely changed is the technology. Like you've mentioned AI. And I have a thing where businesses are building digital walls to hide behind so that they don't have to front up to the customer. They don't get to hear if the customer's happy or otherwise. And if customers are complaining, then it just becomes very frustrating if you're hitting these digital walls all the time.
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So maybe this is bleeding into the second question. Maybe it is. So maybe we'll leave that for the second question. There was something else that I wanted to ask, which was... Maybe we'll just ask the second question. Oh, no. So, yeah, so this is part of the second question also. Okay, so the second question is, how do you deliver value around customer experience? Has it always been talking? Is it...
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Is it through your keynotes? Have you been involved in implementations or anything like this or consulting? I know you do research and you publish your research every year. Obviously, you've been engaged with all of these different brands. Is that the delivery mechanism, essentially, you presenting? How do I deliver value to my clients? What's my model? Okay. Yeah. So it started out straight up keynote speaking. I was an entertaining speaker on a very important topic.
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And I got better and better at the speech and understanding the topic. And it's just I mean, within a few years, I was working with some of the at the time, IBM was considered one of the greatest customer service companies.
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customer, we'll call it even customer experience if you look back. They wanted to create an experience that was so strong. They listed the top 20 reasons or big issues for customers. It was, you know, we respond faster than anyone else. We, you know, there's all these great features. One of the features was the price. We're really high priced. So the goal was to push price way down on the list of what was important to the customer.
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I mean, I'm working for these companies going, how do I qualify to work for this type of company? I work for Disney, where they hired me to talk to cast members, the employees. That's the happiest place on earth. It's magical. What are they hiring me for? Well, all they wanted was a different perspective. And I gave this fresh, common sense approach to
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to managing every interaction that you had with a customer. So, and I know I'm giving you a long answer. Let me just jump to some of the other things we do. Number one, people hire me for speeches. Number two, we have training. I have live human beings. I also have the interaction with online, but we have my
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colleague, Buddy Rice, has been with me for over 20 years, and he will go out and deliver my content as a training session. So in a sense, we're training and consulting and helping our clients create better experiences. We have a whole process that we take our clients through when they want to create the customer focused culture. Ironically, most of the companies that hire me to do any of the work that I do related to this,
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They're already playing it at the top of their game. They're really, really good at what they do. They just want to stay there or even get a little bit better. About maybe 15%, 20% of my clients, maybe, it's probably a little less than 20%, have real problems they're trying to fix. And yeah.
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That's great, too. We love working with them. We have a lot of fun. So we've got me speaking, live training. We've got interactive online training. Then, of course, I've got my books that we give to everybody or people can buy. And then the research, which we do give to everybody, if you go to my website, hyken.com, it's free. You don't even have to put in your email address.
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If you love me, then you'll say, I want more of Shep. And then you'll sign up for my newsletter. That's free. But you still, in order to get a newsletter, you got to tell me where to send it to. That's the email address. But the research, and it's a pretty good report. I mean, this year's report is like 36 pages. You download it. If you want to print it out and take it to the C-suite or friends around the table that you work with, whatever, this is great to help you make better information.
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customer focused decisions. So those are the main ways that we work. Do I consult where people say he charges by the hour? I really don't do much of that. Every once in a while, a client will say, I just want to pick your brain. And we come up with what a reasonable fee is for that, because I know what they're doing. And, and they, you know, if they were hiring a lawyer, they would pay a lawyer. So, but that's not my typical model.
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And at the end of the day, I just love what I do so much. I mean, obviously I've been doing this a long time. You don't go to college and decide, this is what I want to do right out of college. You know, the speeches and the training, you usually work your way into it through being in a company and then the company notices.
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hey, let's let this guy do the training. This person's pretty good at communicating. Let's put them in front of our customers. So all of a sudden, a lot of people that I know that I'm friendly with that are in this business, they came out of corporate America, having some background speaking and training and understanding customer service experience, and they just make their living with it.
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I actually think those practitioners who move to becoming solo entrepreneurs and helping clients, I think it's a pretty way, a pretty cool way to go. I just had to work my way into it over the years.
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100%. Okay, cool. So here's what I think. This is my second outing on a podcast I did. I had a marketing company and during COVID, I interviewed 100 people on the marketing thing. It astounded me how many marketing people had come from some sort of performative background. They'd been a DJ, they'd been in a band, they'd done comedy, they'd been an actor, all of these things. It's personality.
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I wonder why that is. I think there's certain personalities that when people decide they want to get serious and do regular business. By the way, being an entertainer is very, very serious. If you're a DJ, that's a good business. I have friends that make a really good living who are professional DJs.
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And I'm not talking about the ones that you see on TV. I'm talking about the ones that have created a business where they go out and they DJ at corporate events, weddings and all that. And they have multiple units that are out on any given night. There could be four or five of their, you know, their units out there making making a great living. That's great. What what happens is when you're in that kind of a business, you eat what you kill.
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If that makes sense, a stockbroker, a financial advisor, they may go to school, they may get the licenses, but if they don't make the calls and get a client, they don't make any money. And in the acting business, if you don't go out and do auditions and you're not good at what you do and you don't put yourself out there, you don't create the right resume, the right image. You don't get business when you get into a regular business.
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that we know of, like corporate type of business, there is no difference. It's like I'm a small business. I have five employees. Okay, not a big company. But I do the same thing in a company that has 500 employees or 5,000 employees.
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We all have a marketing department. We all have a sales department. We all sell. We have accounting. Everything's the same. I think when you do it on your own as a solo practitioner or entrepreneur, whether it's an actual job is like a DJ who creates a company or even an actor or a comedian or an entertainer that's got to go out there and position themselves. Nothing that they're doing is any different than what happens in a business. It's a regular business.
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100% good. And the thing I think about customer experience or customer service, whatever we want to call it, is it's not an education thing. It's not like teaching arithmetic or teaching marketing even or teaching someone how to boil an egg. It's transformative. It's like you say, it's a philosophy, it's an attitude. So you can stand up on a stage and change people's minds and say, do you know what, you can invest more in your customers.
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So I get your point, and that's what companies need to do. It's what they need to think. Now, I will tell you the wrong personality in the customer. So CXOs, customer experience officers, when I talk to C-suite leaders who are CXOs,
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There's two types. One is focused on the experience, customer support. They're looking at other things beyond support. They're looking at processes. Another CXO is looking at data. They're really more about IT and understanding how to leverage technology to get information and data that will help them understand what the customer's experience is. And once we understand it, we can make it better.
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And then everything good happens. Both of them are fine. So one is analytical and logical. And the other one is probably more emotional and has a different type of mindset. They both work. And by the way, you need both. If you take that analytical person and you put them on a journey mapping journey,
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exercise where they have to analyze every touch point the customer has and optimize it for the greatest experience
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that personality, the analytical person is going to look at the data and they're going to say, well, based on the data, this is what customers seem to like the most. So let's do that. Where somebody else that's a little bit on the other side of the brain is going to say, yeah, I get that. But common sense dictates this is a friction point. We should eliminate that. We're not just going to look at what customers like more than other in the process. We're going to look at what do we have to change to make it even better outside of the data that we currently have.
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you know, makes sense. So both are good. And I think when they work together, it's amazing. And every once in a while, you find somebody that's got both sides of the brains working at the same time. And that's truly amazing. That's truly amazing. So if you, you need that technical plus kind of creative emotional is what you need. If you're going to be understanding customers. And I think like that's true of marketing as well. That's what you need. Okay, good. Right. So the next question I have then is, what,
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What you call yourself the chief amazement officer or people call you the chief amazement officer is is not amazement setting the bar a little bit too high. Great question. Yeah. Yeah. I have a definite amazement. That's not what you have. That's not what you're thinking right now.
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Amazing. If you walk away. So when people are sitting next to me on an airplane and they go, what do you do for a living? And I asked them, have you ever walked away from a company? I thought, wow, that was an amazing experience. Those people are so friendly. They're so helpful and they're just so nice there. And people, yeah, well, that's what I help my clients deliver. That's what I help them do. And then it gets into more. Well, how do you do that? That's we already answered that question. So this is my definition of amazement. It's only over the top.
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when something falls in your lap and there's an emergency, a problem, an issue that you get to step up and save the day or do something above and beyond, that doesn't happen. By the way, if it does happen all the time, there's something wrong in the company. There shouldn't be these kinds of issues.
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But to me, amazement is this consistency, this predictability where the customer uses the word always in front of something good. They're always so friendly. They're always so helpful. They're always so knowledgeable. They always get back to me quickly. When there's a problem, I know they will always take care of me.
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All we're doing is we're meeting expectations that the customer has, and we're creating this consistent experience that why would somebody wanna go anywhere else? That's what amazement is. I'll go a step further and tell you that I talked with Horst Schultz, who's the, and by the way, one of the questions is, who else can we recommend that you study? His book, and Horst was the first president and co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain.
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a brand known for great service. I'm pretty sure they have a Ritz over there in the area that you live in most likely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So they're known. There's this consistency throughout their brand. And I asked them, what does it take to be the most iconic hotel chain recognized for this great service? And he goes, it's not what you think it is. You just have to be a little bit better than average. Well, how much better?
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And we talked about it. We said maybe 10 percent better. 10 percent better. What does that look like on a scale of one to five? Three is average. So all you got to do is deliver a three point three. He goes, yeah. But if you do it consistently, they give you fives because what's above average? What does that look like at the Ritz-Carlton?
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I pull up, I'm a guest, I get out of the car. The person who's working the door takes my suitcase, looks at my tag on the bag and says, are you Mr. Hyken? Yes, I am. Well, Mr. Hyken, welcome to the Ritz. You used my name. You walk me in, you tell the person at the front desk, this is Mr. Hyken, he's here to check in. You're just using my name. Is that over the top, blow me away, the most amazing service? No, but every little interaction they have is kind of like that.
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where's the restroom? They don't say it's down there in the hall, make a left and, you know, you'll see it. They go, here, let me show you. And they walk me to the door. They don't go in with me. They just walk me to the door and they go, here it is. That's the difference between just a normal answer and an elevated answer. And that's what the Ritz does so well. They found ways to elevate just a little bit.
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I love it when I get a chance to do a speech and we're working in a Ritz-Carlton or a Four Seasons or another iconic brand or well-known brand. I will say, how many of you have noticed as you walk through the halls and you see the housekeeper or you see the door, you know, person working the door? I say doorman, that door person to be politically correct. Or you walk by the front desk that every one of them says, good morning. How are you? Nice to see you.
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They notice that and people go, yeah, no, that is by design. They hire a personality that's going to work that way. And then they train them to make sure that every interaction counts because even the tiniest interactions add up to be big. And so I know I'm kind of going off on a tangent, but I think this is an important one to share.
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No, I don't think you are at all because I think, yeah, I don't live in the United States, but I am so underwhelmed always and quite often upset at the service that I receive, like from lots and lots of different brands. So I think you're right. I think customer expectation is pretty low.
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So actually really standing out and maybe even being described as amazing, you don't have to be that great to be amazing is, is the truth with the state of customer service. I agree and disagree. You don't have to be that great. Not true. You have to be focused on doing the right things. Yeah. That's what makes you great. What I think you're saying is you don't have to just go so extreme to,
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to be considered amazing. The bar is low, so it's easy to step in. And if you do it right, be recognized for doing it right. That doesn't mean you just have to be the best dog in a horse race.
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Okay. No, you don't. Okay, good. So then the last question I have is what's stopping businesses from being amazing? Although you've awoken something in me that I knew already, which is just do business with the businesses that have already decided. So it feels to me a little bit like we might be trying to convince people that they should be customer-friendly.
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centric and deliver great customer experiences when maybe they're not and maybe there's enough businesses out there that just want to do it be better at it but what's preventing businesses to your mind from being amazing being that little bit better than average
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Well, I think when people say, well, I went through a great exercise and that was to define what the problem is. The problem isn't customer service or customer experience. The problem that companies have is one word, churn.
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Churn meaning customers leave and you have to replace them. And ideally you replace more customers than the ones that leave so that you can grow. But churn is the problem. The reason behind the churn, and I'll use another one word, is inconsistency. And it's inconsistency in the experience.
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And so I think what's preventing companies from being seen as amazing is that they aren't consistent yet. They it starts with hiring the right people. Well, I'm going to give you a framework. I'm going to go through it real quick. Six steps. You have to define what your customer experience is. I tell my clients, we work hard. We define it in one sentence. This is what we want our customers to experience.
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For example, the Ritz Carlton were ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. That's the overarching statement. And underneath it, they have lots of bullet points that drive that statement. So once you define what that vision is, you have to communicate it. Number three, you have to train everybody to it.
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And there's a lot like, you know, we, you mentioned this earlier, uh, like right at the top of our conversation, you use the words, you know, you know, nice. You just have to be nice. I've written eight books on how to be nice. There's a lot that goes into being nice. So it's not, it's not as simplistic as you think it is. Uh, but you know, to create that consistent culture. So you train people and you train them again and again, training isn't something you did. It's something you do. It's ongoing. Um,
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Leaders, managers, supervisors, anybody that has somebody reporting to them has to be the role model. So they now so that's step four is recognize as a leader, you're a role model. You are indicating the behavior you want others to exhibit toward themselves, each other in the company and to the customer based on the way you treat your own people and the way you act. Number five is alignment.
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I once asked the CEO, what's your most important job? And it wasn't like finding the best deals and thinking big vision and future of the company. It was I defend the culture of this company. The reason we're successful is our culture. The reason the Ritz Carlton is successful is they've created this culture
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that is really iconic and makes customers go, that's a Ritz-Carlton experience. And then finally, number six, you celebrate it and let people know when they're doing a great job. So define it with a vision, communicate it, train everybody to it, be a role model, keep everyone in alignment, coach them, move them back to where you want them to be. If they get out of alignment and number six is celebrate.
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Good. Fantastic. I think you answered question number three. Question number three is, what is your recommendation? So maybe you can fill this out a little bit more for us. Question number three. Question number one, how are you qualified? Question number two, how do you deliver value? Question number three, what's your recommendation for people who want to be delivering better customer experiences? Like you said, read my books.
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hire me to speak, bring my trainers in. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm gonna share with you free resources because here's the first start. First of all, you have to have the desire to do it. What I want you to do if you're listening to this, if this is really important, I do want you to go to my website, just download the research, it's free. My research is based on what consumers or customers are thinking. It's not what CX leaders are thinking.
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And oftentimes the leaders are thinking something far different than the consumers. That's a big gap. That's not good. But I want you to get that free resource. I want you to go onto YouTube and just type in questions that you have about customer service and experience. I want you to go into ChatGPT or Claude or even just Google and type in questions. And you're going to see incredible resources available.
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Some of them will be articles, there will be videos, there will be books that you can buy, but there's lots that you can do to get yourself in this mindset. Once you find the author or the expert that you like, go deep with that. You know, so we're like all over the place trying to find what we want. But once you find, you know, really what you're you're you're really believing in,
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go deep with that expert or go deep with that author and read more books. This is a great way of doing it. But I want you to practice it. I want you to have meetings with your team. And what I wanna do now is shift into not just, how do you get there in the broad way. I'm gonna share with you the number one tool that we give our clients that changes the culture or maintains their culture
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of a great customer experience. And that is what I call the moments of magic card. And it's just a blank index card. Nothing is on it. And on a weekly basis, on Monday morning, you say, between now and Friday, I want you to write down one example
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of when you created a great experience for a customer or a colleague, if your customers are internal. And you get to change that question on a weekly basis. And it could be, give me an example. There's a communication skill we teach about asking extra questions. Give me an example of when you use the extra question. Give me an example of when a customer came to you with a complaint and what did you do to resolve it. So what we're doing is we're creating these little things
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We're forcing the employee to write down when they do something right. And then on Friday, this gets turned into a manager. And on Monday morning, the team meets and the manager chooses two or three of them and shares and has a discussion. It's a seven minute at the most conversation that keeps customer service front of mind. And this little exercise that we ask employees to do literally takes one to two minutes. The first time it takes a little longer because you're trying to say, gosh, when was I nice to somebody?
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And you're forced to write down something. And eventually you catch yourself doing it in the moment, which is fantastic because that's where the rubber hits the road. That's when they are becoming service aware.
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Okay, good. All right, so you're talking about customer experience leaders. I've got an idea, and I don't know how true it is. You'll know better than I do how true it is. But it seems to me that customer experience leaders, the CXOs, the customer experience departments, are a little bit like step-parents. Yeah.
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They've got all of the responsibility, but none of the authority necessarily. And I think like you, when you deal with executive teams, they're incredibly customer-centric, and they understand that it has to be like this. And it's kind of as it filters down through the hierarchy that maybe the wheels come off a little bit, and it is less...
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um, less effective or less obvious or because I'm with you a hundred percent. This is culture. Like if you have a culture where everyone does their best for their customers, then it works. But I think in lots of businesses, maybe they don't have that culture. I'm not sure what the question was. Two words, you know, hiring and training. That's it.
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You hire right. You train them to do right. And by the way, after that, you have to reinforce the training. Remember I said training is something you do, not something you did. You don't train them one time. You constantly reinforce it.
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You have those weekly meetings with those moments of magic cards, the kind of thing. You don't have to do that exact technique, but you keep it in front of them. It is so important. The Ritz Carlton before every shift starts, the manager talks to the employees about one of the gold standards that they they have 20, 28 gold standards or 24 gold standards.
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And each day they go through one of those gold standards. It's just a reminder. It's not like a deep dive training. It's two minutes, but it's a reminder. And they do that every single day. This is the best restaurants before the doors open. They have a pre-opening meeting with the team.
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talking about what they need to do better, what the specials are, et cetera, et cetera. But part of it is what happened last night that we can improve on. And they're always thinking about it. So I think that it's when you look at the companies that are great and the ones that aren't, the difference is the word I use to describe the problem, it's consistency. You've got churn and churn is a result of inconsistency.
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So if you want to create the experience that gets people to come back, create the consistent experience where people use that word always in front of something positive.
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Yeah, I'm with you 100%. I think it's very often just a case of reminding everyone, this is why we're here. This is what we do to service customers. And then making sure that you're there to see it and celebrate it exactly like you say, when it happens correctly. Okay, good. We're rattling through the questions. Question number four is...
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is what's your recommendation for media? I think you've answered that question already. So we can go to question number five. Who can you introduce us to who might be interested to speak to our audience and deliver them some value? I saw a brilliant conversation you had recently with an experienced designer. Who is that?
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I meant to write down his name before he spoke. I'll tell you what you can do. If you go to type in amazingbusinessradio.com, that's my podcast, and take a look at some of the guests that are there. And there's almost 600 of them. Okay, fantastic. So we won't be short.
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Right, right. But some of my my colleagues that who I love a lot and I and I call up and exchange ideas with them. You've got Brittany Hodak, Dan Gingis. You've got gosh, there's so many of them. Gene Walters, Jeannie Walters. Stephen Van Bellingham, who's over in Europe. Great guy. So these are people that, you know, those just a few names. Scott McCain, another one.
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Take a look at these folks and bring them on the show. Okay, good. Fantastic. I will do exactly that. Okay. Well, the good news then is we've come to the final question. Okay, I'm ready. The final question is this is going to fuel like an alongside content thing that I want to do, and I'm going to call it the greatest business in the world ever. And what I'm asking everyone to do is let me know who they think the greatest business in the world is
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that there's too much of a focus on shareholder value. I think businesses can offer a lot more value than that. They can offer value to their customers, to their employees, to their environments, to their communities, like to all of these things. So that's the question for you is which business do you think is the greatest business in the world ever, i.e. which business is it that has delivered the most value to the world ever?
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Well, if we were to ask every year a thousand consumers who they think the greatest company in the world is, guess what shows up? And by the way, they're U.S. consumers. And I know it's a worldwide company, and that's Amazon.
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I've studied Amazon. It sounds cliche, but they get it. Jeff Bezos, when he was starting the company, said no one should ever have to call us for customer support because we need to be that good. But they also realized that once the product left the warehouse, there could be a problem and, you know, they would have to call. And the problem was in FedEx or DHL or one of the carriers. But who did they call? They called Amazon.
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Amazon has figured it out. They they are great at communicating. They use a digital experience. If there's a problem, you log on, you put in your order number. It asks you a few questions. And if you need to talk to somebody, you put in your phone number and they call you. It's not perfect every time. And there are people that don't like Amazon. I get it. But the brand that's recognized worldwide and at least here in the U.S. for sure, and it's done very well is Amazon.
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Okay, good. And that is your nomination for the best customer-centric business in the world. Okay, fantastic. Well, then, are you ready for some good news? Yeah. We got to the end.
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Oh, I'm already missing you. Fantastic. So, yeah, so that is it. The only question I have now is two questions. Is there anything you didn't say that you feel like you could have said? I mean, you added great value. I got a lot to say.
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I write articles every week. There's so much to say. No, I think if you read everything I write about, it's there's a consistency and a message throughout, regardless of what the topic is. So, OK, I would say, you know, follow me on social media, read my Forbes weekly columns, my blog, my newsletter every week it comes out. I mean.
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you'll see my goal is i give and give and give and give the more you give the more you get it just happens that way it's like the law of reciprocity so 100 but thank you so much for having me on your show you're very welcome there was one other question but you're too professional to have slipped up in this way anyway is there anything you said that you feel like you shouldn't have said no ever in your life oh ever in my life oh gosh
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Oh, man. Let's see. Just last night I was talking to my wife. Oh, we don't need to go there. We don't need to go there. Yeah. I mean, you have those moments. You know, gosh, I wish I had that one back. But no, that's I'm going to stay with the positive side of things.
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Okay, you're an absolute legend. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. We'll say goodbye now for the sake of anyone who's made it all the way through to the end of the conversation. But don't disappear because I'd like to say goodbye to you like a normal human being. If people have made it to this point, they should take a second to like, share, subscribe and comment, get involved. Because obviously that helps us to continue to have these conversations. You're an absolute legend, Shep. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me, man. Really appreciate you. You are very welcome. Good.