Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective.

Shark 0:19
I am your host, Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, a keynote speaker, strategist and your Chief Shark Officer.

Shark 0:24
So what does loyalty mean to you and the brand you serve? Are your customers coming back again and again? If it's only by price or convenience, then what happens if your competitor lowers its price or becomes closer to your customer? At that point, how loyal is your customer? And are they still coming back again and again and again, because you built a level of service that stands out in good times and bad?

Shark 0:48
We're welcoming back to the show Shep Hyken, who was originally on episode 261. But if you don't know, Shep Hyken is a customer service expert in NSA Hall of Fame speaker, New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling author, and also the author of "I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again."

Shark 1:05
And on this episode, we'll discuss customer service, keeping customers coming back again and again. Customer Loyalty, repeat business behavior and buying patterns, customer service principles, the crutch of technology with personalization, automation, and so on. NPS scores CSAT, how to communicate, the Terminator, hockey and baseball fried foods and a lot lot more.

Shark 1:27
So let's tune into a Chief Amazement Officer with a Chief Shark Officer on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Shark 1:38
Shep, welcome back to A Shark's Perspective. Congrats on now what is it's been it's been a few months since we did the last episode. But you just published your what 47th book now you've knocked out?

Shep Hyken 1:50
Number eight, number eight.

Shark 1:51
But I'll be back how to get customers to come back again and again. So you were smart. During the pandemic, you actually took the time to write a book? I haven't finished mine yet. But what was the impetus for that?

Shep Hyken 2:02
Sure. And actually, I will admit, I probably started on this book before the pandemic. But regardless, the reason for it is I was doing a presentation for a nice sized audience of about 1000 people hired to be their keynote speaker. They were all owners of salons hair salons, if you can imagine they hired the bald guy to the hair salon industry. So these were 1000 owners of franchises in the Harris Harris on business. And I was talking to the CEO of the company, and we were talking about how you measure success. And we talked about metrics like the Net Promoter Score on a scale of zero to 10. What's the likelihood that you'd recommend us great insight? Are you happy with your haircut? Was the place clean? Did you get great service all numerical, quantitative data to help you understand where you are? And my words was, well, I love those numbers. There's some of my favorite metrics because you need this. But I want you to recognize this as a history lesson. It's not what's going to happen tomorrow. It's what happened yesterday. And the last time they were there. And that's important know that really important. You have to get those numbers to know if you're doing good, what you need to change that type of thing. But then we started talking, he goes, You know what, we also measure what he goes, we measure behavior. And I go, exactly, that's the point. Does the customer come back? And so we've got into a great conversation. And he said, what we take a look at is the cadence of a typical customer. Now, you go somewhere to get your hair cut, you know? Yeah. And how often do you go two weeks, every two weeks? Well, that's quite often. So your cadence is 2026 times a year probably. So if I'm good at what I do, I'm going to notice this is your pattern. And if I see you break that pattern, I need to understand why I also need to understand why you come back every two weeks, not just because you would need a haircut in two weeks. But why do you come back to my store every two weeks. And that why is really important because repeat business should not be confused with customer loyalty. You may be coming to me for two years every other week and then one day you disappear. And you know why? Because you weren't loyal to my store. You were loyal to my price until a competitor came and offered you a better deal. You are loyal to my location until a competitor move closer to you and it was just more convenient. So we must understand the why behind it and ideally the wine needs to be some emotional connection that would negate any of those other competitive issues. Now use that hair salon example it's very retail and Frontline customer consumer focused if you will. But realize that that is nothing more than an example or a case study a metaphor for any type of business to recognize the why behind between the why behind why a customer buys.

Shark 4:55
We You talk a lot about in one of the chapters the most important measurement in business How much of it do you think people rely on an NPS score or CSAT, or something like that, because that's the only thing they really know to measure other than going to look at social posts. I mean, it's, it's sort of that one, Northstar, if you will. And I don't mean, right, from a directional standpoint, but it's the only one that they can quantify that there used to,

Shep Hyken 5:19
I put a lot of stock in those numbers. As I mentioned, I like those, we need to have them. But I, I think we need to take a look at a way to track the buying pattern or the history. And it's actually it becomes history the moment it happens. But we want to know the cadence, we want to know this, if the average spend, we need to be able to, as I mentioned before, categorize these customers take a look at them, and I use the word customer could be client, it could be patient, it could be member, it could be whatever it is, you call somebody that does business with you. But we want to take a look at the actual behavior, not just scores, because I think the two of them are very good. Another thing, I'll give you a great example, NPS, the likelihood that you'll recommend this, if somebody gives us a nine or a 10. For those that aren't familiar with NPS, a nine or a 10 is a promoter, hence they call it the Net Promoter Score. And then you've got detractors. You've got people in the middle who are just like, okay, then it's all right. You don't know if you're leaning toward being a promoter or detractor, and that's your seven or eight. So you've got a nine or a 10, promoter seven or eight, average satisfactory, they're called passives. And then you've got your detractors, anything less than a seven. So if we want to understand why we get these scores, but if somebody says if I, if I'm a salesperson, let's say, I'm gonna make this up, I work for a manufacturing company, we make machines, and you love what we do. And I asked you on a scale of zero to 10, in a formal survey at a scale of zero to 10, what's the likelihood you recommend you give me a 10? I might even ask you an open ended question. Can you tell me why you gave me a 10? Or can you give me? Can you tell me one thing that could make this great experience even better? Now, that's great. But if I'm a good salesperson, I'm going to pick up the phone, I'm going to call that customer that just said on a scale of zero to 1010, they'd recommend me, I'm going to say so can you tell me? Who are the people you would recommend me to? Does that make sense? Yeah, because that then they're actually putting behavior behind the number. And so that's really, to me an extremely important way to think about how to activate numbers and make them come to life. Because otherwise, it's just data. And it's historical, to know, and again, you learn from that you learn, okay, we weren't doing something, right, what can we do to fix it, and we'll watch the numbers rise as we fix whatever the problem was. But I'd really like people to take action on some of the numbers they give us.

Shark 7:46
So chapter five, you talked about nothing has changed in customer service, which I think post pandemic, it's hard for a lot of people to accept that. And it was a very provocative title for considering, you know, what we've experienced with five to 20 hour hold times with airlines and everything else. But what did you mean by that nothing had changed in customer service.

Shep Hyken 8:08
So what you just referred to is, is a problem that companies are having when it comes to customer service. What I'm referring to in the book, is it when you think of what services people say, oh, there's so much going on, there's artificial intelligence, there's chatbots, there's automation, there's digital this and self service. You know what? I know that those are major changes and technological advances. But I want you to think about what the whole thing was about, we can go back to the beginning of time to the first, I actually found an article and I wrote about this years ago, the first complaint letter of all time, was actually a piece of stone that somebody carved into and had delivered to a supplier was back in ancient times. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But it sure made for a good story. From the very beginning, when somebody said, I've got a question or a problem, complaint, whatever, they would contact the company. And at the end of the experience, however it was handled. They were hopefully happy. They satisfied with their result. They got the resolution, they got the question answered. That's that changed, and 100 years from now, 500 years from now, it's going to be the same. What has changed if there is something that's changed sometimes the way we go about it? I remember years ago, probably about 20. Something years ago, I wrote about this briefly in the book. I believe it was Delta Airlines decided, hey, let's allow our passengers to book direct on a website and not have to call reservations. And somebody said, Oh, what a pain that is no, on the opposite. When you try it, you're really gonna like it. And all of a sudden there was this tipping point when enough people started to do it that it became the norm. Now, it's not typical that you would call reservations to make a reservation you call the number because there's a problem but not to actually and by the way, there's still People that do use the reservation number for that purpose. But most people have recognized, it's far easier, quicker, faster, I get to see the choices right in front of me on a website. It's a better experience. And but that doesn't mean anything's really changed. It's just a better way to make a reservation, you still have to make the reservation,

Shark 10:18
do you find that people's attitudes towards service are edging a certain way to generally just accept accepting less? Yeah, it was. So

Shep Hyken 10:27
this is what's happened during the pandemic. And actually, as a most recent, we've experienced something that was referred to and I love the word. It was on an NPR episode, gosh, about a month and a half, two months ago, and the Word was skimp. Inflation. Yes. Get this. Yeah. So I think I'm the only one that heard this, because I'm starting to write about it and use it. I always give credit where credit is

Shark 10:51
due. Oh, you wrote about it in one of your blogs? I remember reading it. Yeah, yeah. So skin inflammation

Shep Hyken 10:55
is a result of companies being forced to not because they want to, but because they've been forced to skimp on the quality service that customers are used to. And it's a result of a the labor shortage and be a supply chain issue of getting product in. So they don't want to do this. But gosh, you know, we have to skip and you may remember the opening line of that blog post was, I had a friend of mine, I don't remember the exact words, but it's close to this. A friend of mine reached out to me and asked me is mediocrity, the new level of customer service? And I thought, Well, it sure does appear to be that way doesn't, because we are experiencing longer lines. We're experiencing delays. Just this happened today. And I know we're at around lunchtime right now. So far, two companies have called me and said, Can you teach our people how to deal with customers, when we got to tell them, their shipments being delayed because of supply chain shortages. One was standard kind of manufacturer, and the other was an automotive manufacturer over in Europe, contacted us about this. So as I think about that, yeah, we need. And we by the way, we've gotten this request a number of times, we need to train people on exactly how to behave, how to act and what to say. And it changes from industry to industry. But the keys are, you've got to be transparent, you've got to be proactive in your communication, you've got to be ongoing with your communication, you do those three things you'll start to satisfy. But it does take one extra step. And that is you need to make this personal connection with the customer to explain exactly what's happening. And then you kick in this, you know, transparency proactiveness, in the cadence of communication, and then you actually stand a chance of that customer who you're providing a bad experience to by being delayed, being more understanding, empathetic, and even appreciate you even more than the problems that never happened.

Shark 12:53
So you talk about personalization. And it reminds me of one other chapter where you're specifically talking about personalization. And then that you touched there in another chapters with technology, which is often a crutch for a lot of businesses, including with friction. So I'm curious where you see brands being able to correct what they've done wrong with using technology as some sort of crutch fix for a lot of their problems.

Shep Hyken 13:19
Wow. So there's like 15 questions, they go

Shark 13:21
on for, like 20 hours? Well, there's there was, I think the overarching theme, when I when I was pulling through those chapters, whether it was personalization, friction, or anything else, when you talked on technology, it just seemed like, again, the same problem a lot of marketers have is they just rely on it heavily. And then it becomes approach each

Shep Hyken 13:40
all three of these showcase acts, I think they can work together. But I think we have to look at them separately, which is why they're in separate chapters. So what is personalization, it's the ability for you as a customer to feel like I understand you. And as a result, as the customer you're willing to accept my promotions want to do more business with me. And he may be even feel connected. And there's different levels of personalization. There's macro personalization, which is really personas. This is a term that's been bantered around in marketing for quite a while. You have like an I'll use Nike is one of my favorite examples because they have what's called a membership program. People say, Oh, it's a great loyalty program. It's not its membership cost, nothing to join. And by the way, there's no incentive to buy from Nike, all but there is an incentive and that they give you this great information and you like getting it but there's no financial incentive. It's not like pay money to Amazon Prime and you get free shipping and movies and that type of thing. No, by joining the Nike program, all you get to do is join the Nike program. But in return, what they do is they start to look at your buying pattern. I buy running shoes, I don't buy basketball court shoes or I don't buy soccer shoes or I don't buy you know golf shoes actually I do buy golf But but imagine that I don't, well, Nikes not gonna send me any information about what I don't buy, they're gonna send me information about what I do buy. And by doing that, they're I'm going to feel like, Hmm, they understand me. And they're not just going to send me promotional items, they're going to send me information, hey, this is a new shoe that's coming out. There's a new technology. And it's like, wow, this is fascinating. And it makes you want to go out and buy what it is. But it's not a specific by this get 10% off type of thing. They drop these different types of members of their program into buckets, I would be the running shoe bucket versus somebody else that might have a specific sport that they do. That's macro. Now, micro is when I can really narrowly define what it is that you buy. And I might be able to truly give you that personalized experience. And I actually call it relationship data, because that's the data that I if I ever got on the phone with you, and you call me I can look at the screen as an agent. And I could say, You know what, I've noticed you've been buying this particular shoe. I know why you're calling we discontinued it. How did you know? I know where I see your history up here. Yeah. Now, tell me what you're doing with this. I can guess your run. But tell me are you a long you run a long way marathon runner? Do you just do short? Do you just walk real fat with tell me what you're doing. And you do that and all of a sudden I'm micro personalizing. You're not the masses, you're the individual, powerful, powerful. The second thing you talked about was convenience. I wrote an entire book about convenience titled The convenience revolution. That happened before the pandemic. And I talked about the what it called this friction site, what I called I called it a cycle of some kind where before, it was like, Oh, this is a great idea that gives us a competitive advantage. And over time, it matured and it became an expectation. Well, thanks to the pandemic. And this happened with many things during the pandemic, it accelerated the adoption of many ideas. Convenience, before was a differentiator. Now, not only do we expect it, we're happy to pay more for it. And if you think about it, when prior to the pandemic, hey, I want to order some food. I call up a restaurant, they're happy to give it to me free delivery. Today, I pay for delivery. And I don't complain about it. I actually don't mind because what a convenience. So and during the pandemic, we started to rely upon delivery because we couldn't go and visit the restaurants or maybe it was in our mind safer to go stay home and go to a grocery store. So delivery became big. I had been talking about delivery for years. Car Dealerships is a great example of this. I talked about in the book, convenience revolution, again, came out before the pandemic, that my car dealership that I currently do business with disrupted a company that I was happy with for 25 years. On one area, they were willing to deliver the car to me at my home. And when I needed service, they would pick my car up, drop them on or off and bring it back. And the comment was, you don't ever have to come in here again, you just tell us what kind of car you're thinking about buying, we'll bring it out, you demo it, we can pick out the color order it for you. And you never have to leave your home. Really, even to get my car. You know, oil change will bring you a loaner. Just give us a couple of days notice. Now if it's an emergency, I mean, I might have to have the car towed in or I have to bring it in. But you get the idea. So I went back to my original dealership and I said, Would you be willing to do this and they thought I was nuts.

Shep Hyken 18:34
And guess what? The new dealership got the business? Guess what happened? In the pandemic, you started to see car dealerships were shut down. And then they came up with a great idea. Why don't we let people know they can go online, choose the kind of car they want. And we'll bring them a demo and they could try it out. And we'll clean it will sanitize it. Oh, wow. Delivery. And guess what many of these dealerships recognize how powerful it was. And even though dealerships are open, many of them are still willing to deliver at that level. Third thing, automation. And what's happened in that world of technology, we must be very careful. Automation is great self service, digital options are great. Think about Amazon, it's 100% self service, you go online, you look for a product you want, you can compare it with other products, they give you all kinds of great information, you make your own decision, you put your own money in credit card, it's probably in there already because you're a member of their program. But you've done it all, no help from a salesperson. And you know, the opposite is exactly the opposite of that. But Amazon is an exception to the rule. Most of the time, you can't automate at that level and maintain a relationship the way Amazon does it is through creating trust they do they because they don't let you down when they do for whatever reason have a problem. It's very efficient for you to start to go through their process, their digital process and at any given time. You can jump out of that by saying I want to talk to somebody you put in your phone number about the time you hit enter the phone rings. And there's your Amazon rep saying, I see you have a problem with whatever it was. Let's talk about how to resolve it. You know, Wow, that's crazy. That's so good. And so, but you as a typical company should look for a balance between digital solutions, and human to human. Because as soon as you start to automate too much, you lose a personal connection, you lose the ability to create trust and confidence. Most companies, they become a commodity. Now, what's happening even with Amazon, take a look at what Target and Walmart and a few other major retailers are doing. They're making inroads into the online world that Amazon has been dominating. Amazon's really smart, not all our cookies are in one basket. Right. So they've managed to diversify. And guess what they're doing now, the Amazon Go store is a brick and mortar store where you can go to get the most common convenience store items are common items that Amazon sells. They're also smart, because we're using that as distribution centers for the delivery service. Same thing with whole foods, it was an Amazon acquisition. They didn't just buy it because it was a good grocery store. They bought it because it would help with their delivery of groceries and that part of their business. So they're recognizing it, but then they have AWS, which is a whole nother conversation, which actually makes more money than the Amazon retail organization as far as sales are concerned. So anyway, we must as businesses create the balance between the digital and the human human experience, and the best companies have figured out how to do it. Amen.

Shark 21:37
Yeah. So chef, as we sort of close out where I know last time I asked you, like, do everybody favorite shark and you said Great White, even though you didn't have a lot, a lot of shark knowledge, which most people don't other than me, but it's a special time of the show you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to again be asked on the show today.

Shep Hyken 21:56
Were you supposed to give these to me ahead of time? No, not actually, I didn't think so. Because I don't want to cheat on my notes. No,

Shark 22:01
no, no, no. So all right, number one. The title of the book is I'll be back I've seen the pictures with you with the glasses. Question one is Terminator one or Terminator two

Shep Hyken 22:13
is a favorite is a favorite? Terminator one. Why sir original? Yes, the rich asked. I mean I love there are no comes back as a nice guy the next time. But where did I'll be back start. And by the way, there have been eight movies without be back is the line. Yeah, and everybody should know when I started this book. I had no intention of ever thinking of anything to do with the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, three lines into my outline. I'm going wait a minute. Yeah, who made this famous? So Arnold, if you are listening, I've been trying to reach you since really publish. Please. I'd love for you to endorse this book. It's not too late.

Shark 22:46
It will the Terminator had the best lines as well, except the CGI was horrible compared to what it is on the rest of the movies. Alright. Number two. Let's talk a little bit about service experience. get to pick your favorite again, UPS or FedEx. Oh, geez, that's less I'm asked you dizzy or Amazon. And that was? That was a tough enough one wit for good reason. But

Shep Hyken 23:07
here's the thing. You know, both of these people are clients. So you know, you're asking me which child I love more. You know what? If they're in the room, I'll tell them. They're my favorite, but don't tell anyone else.

Shark 23:19
Okay. All right. Fair enough. Well, you know, it's easy because one's one day and the others today. So, alright, number three, NPs or CSAT.

Shep Hyken 23:31
I'm NPS if he if it's used the right way.

Shark 23:34
Okay, fair enough. All right, number four. Let's measure a Cardinals question about Lou Holtz and Musial. But if you're taking the family or some friends to a pro game in St. Louis, let's pretend the calendars don't matter. Are you taking them to a Cardinals game or to a blues game?

Shep Hyken 23:53
I'm a blues fan. I am such a blues fan and

Shark 23:56
hockey in person that that's a whole different experience.

Shep Hyken 23:59
And you know, I don't know if you know this. I still play ice hockey four days a week. You think I'd be better than I am. But no,

Shark 24:07
this on Playstation or Xbox?

Shep Hyken 24:09
This is on real ice. Good for you. Yeah,

Shark 24:13
yeah. Good for you. Alright, number five. We did biscuits and cornbread before. But today's question is fried chicken. Or fried catfish. Ooh,

Shep Hyken 24:24
I'm going fried chicken.

Shark 24:26
Good answer. All right. Can't be wrong with that. Alright Shep, where do they get a copy of this book? Follow you see you speaking on a stage and more.

Shep Hyken 24:35
So well, you can obviously go to my website and learn about me. hyken.com H YK. And you can get the book at amazon or you can go to our BE BACK book.com Make sure you put the word book in there because if you do a Google search on I'll be back. You know what comes up Arnold or a past president that keeps saying I'll be back Yeah, By the way, if you do an Amazon search for the book, same thing, you put it back, you'll get, make sure you add the word book in there. That's funny. So that's where you go.

Shark 25:09
Alright Shep, thank you so much for joining us back again on A Shark's Perspective.

Shep Hyken 25:14
Thanks for having me

Shark 25:21
So there's my conversation with Shep Hyken, a customer service expert, NSA Hall of Fame speaker, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, bestselling author, and also the author of "I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again." Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Shark 25:37
First, repeat business should not be confused with customer loyalty. I absolutely love that line. It's especially true when you consider what happens when a competitor comes knocking at your customers door. And I love the reminder too, about technology being a crutch. We look at signing up for a loyalty program, for example of what does it get you? Well? Does it get you what you want, or what they want to send? It's more of a permission based loyalty, membership subscription, without the loyalty or even feeling like a member. It's often just more than a license for a brand to send too many emails, you're giving away some data, but are they giving you real value through that technology? With all things even beyond email, challenge them to earn your loyalty?

Shark 26:16
Second, we look often at NPS, those net promoter scores. They're great. But as he points out, look at other patterns as well that show real behavior. You'll define those with your own customers buying patterns, their journey, lifetime, etc. Put the havior behind the numbers, though, so that it's more than just data.

Shark 26:34
Third, things change technologies change, staffing changes, all the things that affect your business change, but fundamentally have the principles of customer service change. The answer to that should be no. customer expectations haven't slipped just because they expect less of a brand because the bar is so low. Shep reminds us of three things when communicating with them. Be transparent, proactive, and ongoing and communication as well make a personal connection with the customer. And as I often say, deliver on the promise.

Shark 27:05
Got a question, send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Shark 27:09
Thank you again for the privilege of your time. I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Shark 27:13
Please consider writing a review and let me know your thoughts on the show.

Shark 27:17
I'll be back and I sincerely hope that you will subscribe and come back to this show again and again and again.

Shark 27:22
Please join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
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