Exploring AI's Role in Revolutionizing Customer and Employee Experiences in Contact Centers  Shep Hyken interviews Jonathan Rosenberg, Chief Technology Officer and head of AI at Five9. He talks about how contact centers can use generative AI to deliver customer experiences that people love.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How can companies effectively balance customer self-service with personal interactions in high-stakes situations?  How does AI contribute to transforming contact center agents into brand ambassadors?  Why is empathy important in customer service interactions, and how can AI complement this human trait?  How does the implementation of AI tools impact companies' return on investment?  How does generative AI reduce labor costs in contact centers while maintaining human involvement?   Top Takeaways:     AI is changing the way that contact centers operate. AI-driven tools can handle simple queries and support human employees in answering complex questions. It allows businesses to offer quick, precise help that reduces call and hold times while keeping human agents available for tasks requiring empathy and complex problem-solving.    Self-service options are growing more advanced and popular. Although AI can tackle straightforward and repetitive tasks, humans are necessary for high-stakes or complicated situations due to their ability to understand emotions and contexts more deeply.     AI isn't about replacing human employees but empowering them. It provides agents with insights and recommendations in real time so they can focus on building stronger relationships with customers. With AI tools, agents can support customers more effectively, easily handle complex queries, and even seize upsell opportunities.     Great customer experiences can lead to loyal customers. With AI tools, employees can easily access customer's history of interactions with the brand and get information from a broad knowledge base that can help them offer personalized solutions. When customers feel understood and valued, they are more likely to return and tell others about their positive experiences.     AI is quicker and more cost-effective to implement than ever, and the return on investment from AI in customer service is significant. AI can shorten call handling times and make each interaction more efficient, saving money for the business.     Plus, Shep and Jonathan discuss what happens to companies that are laggards when it comes to adopting AI. Tune in!  Quote:   "Setting up and implementing AI has historically been expensive and prohibitive for businesses. Now, with generative AI, it is quick and easy to get started, and the cost of maintaining it is low."    About:    Jonathan Rosenberg is the Chief Technology Officer and head of AI at Five9. He is responsible for the engineering and operational teams building Five9's Genius AI portfolio.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transforming Customer Support with Technology and Empathy  Shep Hyken interviews Derek Allgood, VP of Global Customer Experience (GCX) at eBay. He discusses the importance of nurturing a supportive culture and harnessing innovative tools like AI to enhance employee and customer service.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How does enhancing the employee experience contribute to a better customer service experience?  How can businesses balance automated customer service solutions with human interactions?  What strategies can support remote customer service employees in delivering consistent experiences?  How do self-service solutions impact the overall efficiency of customer service operations?  How essential is a strong company purpose in driving customer satisfaction?  Top Takeaways:    Listening is critical to building strong relationships in business and life. When interacting with customers or clients, it is essential to fully comprehend their needs and concerns before taking action. Active listening involves paying attention, asking clarifying questions, and genuinely showing empathy.     High employee turnover leads to increased costs and decreased customer satisfaction. Focus on creating a fulfilling and supportive work environment for your team members. Employees who feel valued and engaged become more committed to their roles and deliver exceptional service.    Today, more people are working remotely, which requires new ways of maintaining communication and culture. Effectively using technology to communicate improves work efficiency and connectivity. Communication technology helps ensure that employees remain connected and well-informed and can support one another in real time.    Self-service technology helps streamline interactions and solve issues quickly. By implementing self-service options, businesses can empower customers to find the answers they need without waiting to speak with a representative. This reduces wait times and allows customer support teams to focus on more complex issues. It also leads to cost savings for businesses and a more satisfying experience for both customers and employees.    A great business also thinks about how it can contribute positively to the world. This involves supporting causes that align with the company's values and making a meaningful impact on communities. By having a purpose beyond making money, businesses can connect with people on a more personal level. This builds trust and loyalty among consumers and employees alike.    Plus, Derek talks about eBay's innovative AI solutions to support employees and customers. Tune in!  Quotes:   "The first thing that we have to do in any relationship is to listen. As a business with a buyer and seller relationship, listen and try to understand where the customers are in their journey, what's gone wrong, and how you can support the employees helping them."    About:    Derek Allgood is the VP of Global Customer Experience (GCX) at eBay. He has over 20 years of experience leading customer support teams for global companies such as Citiphone, Global Consumer Bank, and Barclays.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Empowering Teams through Embracing AI-Driven Solutions and Customer-Centricity  Shep Hyken interviews Rony Vexelman, Vice President of Marketing at Optimove. He discusses  why broken customer journeys create poor customer experiences and how brands can avoid them by leveraging AI, personalization, and customer-centricity at every step of the journey.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    Why is it essential for brands to understand and orchestrate the customer journey?  What are some common pitfalls that lead to broken customer journeys?  How has technology changed the approach to customer journey mapping?  How can AI tools empower professionals to expand their roles?  Why is it essential for brands to break down silos within their organization?  Top Takeaways:    Broken customer journeys result from multiple departments working in silos without integrated communication. Each department may have its automation system, which may lead to conflicting or uncoordinated customer experiences. By breaking down these silos and working towards a centralized system, your company can ensure a unified and smooth customer journey.    Businesses need to prioritize customer needs and experiences over pushing products or campaigns. When making decisions, even the tough ones, it's important to consider how these changes will impact customers and how to communicate them effectively.     You will not always make decisions that will make your customers happy. For example, raising prices is not an easy topic to discuss with customers, but it is, at times, necessary. Acknowledge how it impacts your customers and communicate it with them.    Traditional journey mapping focuses on creating an ideal journey for most customers, often neglecting outliers. With today’s technology, businesses can personalize the customer experience at scale, catering to individual preferences and needs.    AI can empower “positionless professionals”, encouraging individuals to expand their skills beyond their specializations. With AI tools, employees can take on tasks outside their usual roles, becoming more versatile and adaptable. This adaptability can result in faster execution, better employee experiences, and better customer experiences.    Extending personalized experiences beyond physical interactions, such as at a reception desk, to online platforms can significantly enhance the customer's perception of the brand.    Plus, Shep and Rony discuss why "breaking down silos" is still a hot topic for organizations after decades. Tune in!  Quote:   "Do your marketing from a customer point of view, not from a product point of view. "  About:    Rony Vexelman is the Vice President of Marketing at Optimove. He is a seasoned professional in multichannel marketing and customer engagement platforms.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating Amazing Experiences that Make Customers Come Back (Again and Again)  Shep Hyken interviews Dominic Constandi, client services and customer success leader and Chief Customer Officer at ZoomInfo. He shares what customer service professionals can learn from their own experiences and use to create lasting value at every point of their customer's journey.  Top Takeaways:  The first impression is not necessarily the first time you meet somebody or do business with a company. It's what sets the tone for what's to follow. The last impression is what you remember that hopefully brings you back.    The Moments of Truth concept goes all the way back to the 1980’s when Jan Carlzon, former president of Scandinavian Airlines, came up with the idea to help his employees create a better customer experience. He defined it as whenever a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, they have an opportunity to form an impression. That impression can make or break the experience.    First impressions are Moments of Truth that set the tone for the customer's journey. For example:    Hotels spend a lot of money on their lobbies to create a great first impression. They spend resources to train staff on how to make customers feel welcome the moment they walk in.    How a salesperson answers the first few questions a customer has often determines if they would do business with that company or not.    There is a window of opportunity when customers are ready to purchase a product or invest in a service. It is up to the companies to use data to know the who, what, and when. Who are we talking to? With what message? When is the best time to deliver that message?    Customer experience is more important than ever. Customers are more critical, in this economy, in evaluating what's giving them the most value when making purchases and investments.     You have heard of FOMO or Fear of Missing Out. In this episode, Shep and Dominic discuss FUMU, or Fear of Messing Up, and how it affects customer success. Tune in!  Quote:  "Good decisions made from bad data are just bad decisions you don't know about yet."    About:  Dominic Constandi is the Chief Customer Officer at ZoomInfo, overseeing client service that ensures a seamless experience for his customers.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating Loyalty through Customer-Obsession Shep Hyken interviews Marbue Brown, an accomplished customer experience executive who has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, including JP Morgan Chase, Amazon.com, Microsoft Corporation, and Cisco Systems. He is the author of Blueprint for Customer Obsession. He shares what differentiates customer-obsessed companies from the rest and the amazing business results that come with it. Top Takeaways:   ·      There is a distinction between customer-obsessed companies and others. Customer-obsessed companies go to extremes and may do counterintuitive things from the perspective of their customer-focused peers. For example:   o  Costco is known for its extreme return policy that exceeds what other companies in the industry are willing to do. As a result, customers have total confidence that if they buy something from Costco and encounter an issue with the product, they can return it. Costco has over 100 million paid memberships, and its renewal rates are over 90%.   o  Amazon does not take negative reviews down. They leave it up so the customer can make the decision that is right for them.   o  Zappos has the largest selection of shoes, but if they don't have the pair you are looking for, they will direct you to competitor websites to help you find them. As a result, 75% of Zappos sales come from existing customers, and 40% of their new customers come from recommendations.   ·      Customer-obsession creates customer preference. Customer-obsessed companies’ customers are not just casual customers. They think of these companies and brands first.   ·      Customer-obsessed companies have deeply ingrained, pervasive cultures. Their customer service principles are non-negotiable and lived throughout the entire organization.   ·      And does every employee that works at Amazon know the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles? Tune in to find out! Quote:  "Customer-obsessed companies know how to give customers what they want before they know they need it. They understand what the inherent needs of the customers are even when they don't articulate it."     About:   Marbue Brown is a customer experience executive, sought-after keynote speaker, and author on CX, business strategy, and economic policy. His latest book, Blueprint for Customer Obsession, is available now on Amazon. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Companies Can Provide Outstanding CX From Sign-Up to Cancellation  Shep Hyken interviews Tony Sternberg, CEO and co-founder at ProsperStack, a platform that helps companies reduce customer churn and increase their lifetime value. He shares how companies can differentiate themselves by providing an excellent customer experience from the beginning to the end of their journey.  Top Takeaways:    Companies put a lot of focus into their onboarding process, but the end of the customer's lifecycle tends to get ignored. What looks like the end is actually a point where you can provide a great experience that retains the customers.    We are in a digital world, and there are plenty of automated opportunities to make customers feel they are personally taken care of. Differentiate yourself from others by utilizing your data to create automated yet scalable experiences for your customers that still have a personalized touch.    Big companies like Netflix and Amazon have the resources to provide a world-class automated experience for their customers. The challenge of small to midsize companies is that they do not have the resources to create that same level of automated process on their own.     Data points, such as how long customers have been doing business with you or how frequently they use your services, determine whether customers will be long-term subscribers/customers or are ready to unsubscribe or churn. These data points can be leveraged to escalate offers or provide incentives to keep them as paying customers.    Customers disproportionately judge their experiences based on how they felt at the peak (whether this is the most positive or negative experience) and at the end of their experience.     The best companies can track their customers' cadence to determine whether they're making the most use of your products and services. Using this information correctly can help keep the customer coming back again and again.      No matter what, end strong and positive. The customer doesn't have to be right but let them be wrong with dignity and respect.  Quotes:   "Customers remember the end of their experience with a company to a higher degree. If you leave a bad taste in their mouth, you not only negatively impact the customer's experience, but also impact what that customer tells their friends and their network."  About:    Tony Sternberg is the CEO and co-founder at ProsperStack, a platform that helps subscription businesses optimize their customer cancellation experience through automation. Prior to ProsperStack, Tony was President at CATS Software, playing key customer-facing, product, and operations roles.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Businesses Should Invest in EX (Employee Experience) as Much as CX Shep Hyken interviews Liza Smyth, senior vice president of customer experience at Formstack, a company that helps organizations create workflows that enhance productivity. She shares how to make your internal and external customers feel seen and heard throughout their entire journey with your brand. Top Takeaways:   ·      A defining moment for the employee or the customer is an event that truly matters to them. Even if they started with a bad experience, at the point you turn it around (the defining moment) is what shapes their perception of you.   ·      Every employee in your organization impacts a customer's overall experience. Employees need to understand how they fit into the customer experience, even if they don't directly interact with them.   ·      When you hire brilliant people but ask them to do menial tasks, they will feel like they are not bringing their best selves to work. They become process-driven instead of utilizing their talents effectively.   ·      When an employee interacts with a customer, the employee doesn’t represent themselves or their department. They represent your entire organization. You have to decide what your company's voice is and what you want your customers to experience when they engage with you. This experience needs to be consistent across the board.   ·      Employees are your biggest assets at the company. Create an environment where there is a sense of belonging, their perspective is valued, and they can be their authentic selves.   ·      Determine your company's "true north metric" (your mission, vision, mantra, etc.) and be sure that every employee understands how they influence it. Allow employees to feel like the job they do matters and that they impact the customers, their colleagues, and the organization.   ·      Formstack's State of Digital Maturity report identified that 51% of surveyed workers report spending at least two hours per day on repetitive tasks, and 72% of employees felt that inefficient processes impacted their job.   ·      Plus, Shep and Liza share how to create an environment of belongingness with employees and colleagues who are outliers of the group. Quote:  "A great employee experience delivers a great customer experience."   About:   Liza Smyth is the senior vice president of customer experience at Formstack. She leads customer care for the company's more than 25,000 customers. Before joining Formstack, Smyth worked for top tech companies, including Apple and LinkedIn. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating the Digital Experience That Builds Trust with Your Customers Shep Hyken interviews Tim Hughes, co-Founder and CEO of DLA Ignite, and co-author of Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers. He shares how organizations can establish a strong digital brand identity, share knowledge, and create lasting relationships with their customers through social media platforms. Top Takeaways:   ·      The modern customer is empowered. They now have access to an infinite amount of content at their fingertips. They can look up products and services online before making a purchase. They can look people up on social media before doing business with them.   ·      Like the modern customer, job hunters have changed within the last few years. They are now empowered to evaluate the companies that they want to work for based on what is valuable to them. Through social media, they can see if an organization has the same values as them, whether it is on diversity, inclusion, sustainability, etc.   ·      Social media has become a form of digital theatre for people to see how companies respond to their customers' positive or negative comments.   ·      The three things that brands need to do to excel at social selling and digital CX:   1.    Create a buyer-centric profile that looks good to your customers and positions your organization as the expert that can help them.   2.    Have a wide and varied network that allows you to influence as many people as you can.   3.    Create content that provides your customers with help and advice. Customers respect brands that share knowledge and are helpful to people. Providing informative and easy-to-digest content will get your customers to know, like, and trust you.   ·      Plus, Tim Hughes shares how companies can completely own their brand's narrative through digital dominance. Tune in! Quote:  "Your customers are searching for information and assistance online. Your employees need to be empowered on social because that is where your buyers are"   About:   Tim Hughes is the Co-Founder and CEO of DLA Ignite and co-author of the bestselling books, Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers and Smarketing: How to Achieve Competitive Advantage through Blended Sales and Marketing. He is currently ranked Number 1 by Onalytica as the “Most Influential Social Selling Person in the World.”   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Leverage AI to Reduce Customer Experience Gaps Shep Hyken interviews Gadi Shamia, CEO and co-founder of Replicant, a leader in Contact Center Automation. He shares how contact centers can automate the most common customer service calls and empower human agents to focus on empathy and more complex customer issues. Top Takeaways:   ·      When you design your product, you plan for it to work perfectly. Customer service comes when there is a gap between how your product works and the way it was designed. Effective customer service closes the gap quickly and efficiently.   ·      Not every call can be automated. You don't want to automate calls that are highly emotional and complex. An example of this type of call is when a customer is planning their travels with an agent. The agent is involved in an advisory type of discussion, and the flexibility of the human brain is needed when the customer needs to move around different topics.   ·      The calls that can be easily automated are transactional calls where the goal is clear, like rescheduling appointments or requesting roadside assistance. In these types of calls, we can leverage technology to get to a resolution faster.   ·      Wasting time creates friction for the customer. If we can cut down the time it takes from when a customer calls to having their issues resolved successfully, it would significantly improve their experience.   ·      A company must understand the balance between digital experience and human experience. It's fair to push customers to a digital option first as long as a human agent is ready to take on the call as a backup when needed.   ·      Plus, Gadi shares some highlights from Replicant's first Contact Center Automation Benchmark Report and answers the question, Will AI eventually eliminate contact center calls?  Quote:  "Often leaders in customer service or CMOs think that when a customer calls, they really want the human touch. But most often what people want is for their issue to go away."   About:   Gadi Shamia is the CEO & Co-Founder at Replicant, a leader in AI-powered contact center automation. They offer a platform that automates issue resolution through phone, text, and chat.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Memories, Experiences, and Patterns Impact Leadership Style Shep Hyken interviews Susan Drumm, CEO & Chief Empowerment Officer of Meritage Leadership Development and the author of The Leader's Playlist: Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership and Your Life. She shares how to use music to improve your leadership style and make the changes that no longer serve you. Top Takeaways:   ·      Our childhood “wounds” show up in the way we lead others. Leaders don't just react based on what is happening at the moment. Some reactions are triggered by old patterns and experiences.   ·      Old memories and experiences are deep-seated patterns that trigger different reactions in different leaders, even when they face a similar situation. These patterns become the leader's "internal playlist."   ·      A leader's internal playlist is the “music” playing in the background. It sets up how leaders see themselves and the world. It shows up in their leadership styles and how they work with their employees.   ·      The leader's playlist affects the employee experience. This playlist, based on past experiences, impacts the way a leader acts toward people (employees), which eventually trickles down to the customer experience.   ·      How you retain and engage your employees, how your company is doing, how you show up for your family, and how you feel about yourself are all symptoms of an underlying playlist of how you view the world.   ·      Plus, Susan Drumm reveals the top song on her internal playlist. Tune in! Quotes:  "How music impacts a person is very personal. It is not about the genre of music that you listen to or include in your internal playlist. It is about what emotional state that music puts you in."   About:    Susan Drumm is a keynote speaker, CEO, and Leadership Coach. She is the host of The Enlightened Executive, Chief Empowerment Office of Meritage Leadership Development, and the author of The Leader's Playlist: Unleash the Power of Music and Neuroscience to Transform Your Leadership and Your Life.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Happy Employees Translate Into Happier Customers Shep Hyken interviews Temy Mancusi-Ungaro, Chief Executive Officer of Reachdesk, a global data-driven gifting platform that helps teams send gifts at a large scale and measure their impact. He shares how companies can use gifts to create morale, nurture team connections, and ensure employee retention.   Top Takeaways:   ·      From an employee's onboarding to celebrating work anniversaries, birthdays, and promotions, a meaningful gift is a great way to create morale.   ·      Now that the workplace has undergone a migration where employees have gone partially or fully remote, it has become harder to forge relationships. Personalized and timely gifts are an excellent way for employers to show they care for their employees as humans and that they want to invest in their work experience.   ·      If you are dealing with a hybrid or fully remote workforce, people become disconnected from your company. However, just because they aren't there doesn't mean they want to be disconnected. Something as simple as an inexpensive gift and some company swag can make them feel excited and connected to something bigger.   ·      Personalize gifts… When you receive gifts, the ones you will keep are those that resonate with you. It is all about the meaning behind it that creates a personal connection.   ·      Employees need to feel connected and supported. Gifting is a great way to deliver moments that matter, build a connection, and support your employees.   ·      Plus, Shep shares some of the best corporate gifts that he has received. Tune in! Quote:  "In the same way that we use gifts to build relationships for sales, you can use gifts to build relationships within your employees."   About:    Temy Mancusi-Ungaro is the Chief Executive Officer of Reachdesk, the leading global data-driven gifting platform. He has over 20 years of experience scaling SaaS companies and leading customer and employee success.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Link Between Soccer (Football) and Customer Service Shep Hyken interviews Gregorio Uglioni, a customer experience specialist, host of CX Goalkeeper, and author of Customer Experience 4 (CX4). He shares how customer service teams can implement lessons and best practices that organizations can learn from soccer teams and their fans.  Top Takeaways:   ·      Customer service is a team sport where different experts and teams empower and learn from each other to provide an amazing customer experience.   ·      What can customer service teams learn from soccer teams?   o  Turn customers into fans. Fans are emotionally invested and will defend their teams no matter the game's result. When companies provide great experiences, they will earn "fans" who will continuously choose them over their competitors and become brand ambassadors who recommend them to everyone they know.   o  Customer service teams should have one common goal. Each team member has their own role, but they work towards a common goal - winning the match. In customer service, different teams, such as the customer support team, the social media department, and the sales team, have their individual roles. Still, the goal must be unified to win the customer over with an amazing experience.   o  Players must be trained to improvise. During a soccer game, players don't ask permission from their coach before making a move. They are already empowered by their training, strategy, and team support even before stepping into the field. Customer service representatives must have the tools they need, from knowledge bases, coaching, and training to make empowered decisions on how to best serve the customer.   ·      Plus, Gregorio talks about how organizations can create a customer service architecture that can help teams provide a winning experience. Tune in! Quote:  "The company, like a team, has two additional sources of feedback. The employees who give positive or negative feedback will help the team grow. Then, fans or customers will give feedback through comments, surveys, and brand loyalty."   About:    Gregorio Uglioni is a Business Transformation, Innovation, and Customer Experience specialist. He shares his expertise on his podcast, CX Goalkeeper, and books, including his latest, Customer Experience 4 (CX4). Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Customer Experience Can Save Businesses in the Current Economy Shep Hyken interviews Mita Bedi, CEO and Co-founder of Resonate Solutions, a customer experience management platform. She shares how customers are rethinking every relationship and how leaders can make a business valuable enough to remain profitable. Top Takeaways:   ·      Delighting your customers adds value to your business because it is hard to replicate.   ·      Customer delight is systematic. It is not just driven by one aspect like fast delivery or a good product. It means that a customer can interact in many ways with any employee or branch of the company and walk out with the intangible feeling that they got more than expected.   ·      90% of customer service people want to do a good job and delight their customers. However, most leaders are not providing them with the right tools to make it happen.   ·      Good leaders will shine in an economy that is short on skill and capital. They know how to manage people and create a better employee experience, which in turn creates a better customer experience.   ·      Customers are rethinking every relationship. Businesses can no longer take a customer for granted because customers are evaluating their discretionary spending and deciding what is important to them.   ·      Plus Mita Bedi shares what customers are talking about during "BBQ conversations." Tune in! Quotes:  "Businesses are won and lost at the front line. The customer service person is the one that delights the customer."     About:   Mita Bedi is a customer experience specialist, thought leader, CEO, and Co-founder of Resonate Solutions. With more than 20 years of international experience in business consulting, Mita has been part of leading programs that help drive revenue and competitive advantage using customer strategy. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seamlessly Combining AI, Human Touch, and Data in Customer Experience  Shep Hyken interviews Gaurav Passi, Founder and CEO of Zingly.ai. He talks about seamlessly integrating AI and human interaction to create a collaborative and customer-centric experience.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How can businesses effectively balance AI and human interaction in customer service?  What are the most effective strategies for leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences?  Why is it important to prioritize long-term customer relationships over individual transactions?  How can AI tools provide hyper-personalized service to customers?  How can businesses effectively handle after-hours customer calls using AI tools?  Top Takeaways:    Bringing the human touch, data, and AI together creates a powerful combination that can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and competitive advantage.     When companies understand when to use AI and when to involve human representatives, it benefits everyone, including the customers, the employees, and the business. AI can efficiently answer quick queries, but human interaction is crucial for building long-term, meaningful customer relationships.     Many customers are experiencing FORO or Fear of Reaching Out. When customers are experiencing a problem, the first step is usually going to the company's website to get the contact information. Once they click on "Contact Us," they get some 800 numbers, call the company, the IVR kicks in, and they are put on hold, plus a few other steps. This long process and the time they have to carve out of their day to resolve their problems deter many customers from getting in touch with companies.    The bigger problem is the dissatisfied customers who never call but end up leaving because they never got the answer they were looking for.     While many customers still prefer traditional phone customer service, there's a growing expectation for digital options, especially among younger consumers. Offering a mix of digital and traditional channels can cater to diverse customer preferences.    AI can handle a large percentage of "one shot, one kill" questions and after-hours customer calls, resolving problems efficiently. However, maintaining a balance between AI and human touch is important, as human interaction adds a personalized, empathetic element that AI can't replicate.     By leveraging AI and personalization, you can address scale issues in call centers, allowing a single representative to handle multiple interactions simultaneously. This enhances efficiency in handling customer inquiries and improves overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS).    Plus, Shep and Gaurav discuss why some customers hesitate to use AI. Tune in!  Quote:   "The meshing of human, data, and AI together can significantly elevate customer satisfaction and NPS, offering a competitive advantage in the market."    About:    Gaurav Passi is the founder and CEO of Zingly.ai. He aims to revolutionize customer relationships by leveraging generative AI, human expertise, and data to achieve hyper-personalization at scale.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Use Proactive Communication to Manage Increasing Customer Expectations Shep Hyken interviews Laura Bassett, Vice President of Product Marketing at NICE, a complete platform for delivering an end-to-end customer experience. Bassett shares how customer expectations have changed over the years and how companies can provide amazing customer experiences through proactive communication.  Top Takeaways:   ·      Customers are more demanding than ever because they're learning what excellent service looks like from the best experiences they've had from other companies (not just in your industry). ·      Proactive communication helps both businesses and customers. It will not only help the customers before they ask for help, but it also helps them get more value from the products. It will also help companies retain customers.   ·      How to convert an un-amazing situation into an amazing experience:   o  Walk in your customer's shoes and compare that to what you might expect for your own experience.   o  Make your customer support agents (more) knowledgeable. Help them understand that they don't have to go through a script when it is unnecessary.   o  Empower your agents. Give them the tools, the options, and the information to actually solve the problem.   o  Turn customer support agents into customer service executives who own the experience. Give them their own bot assistants and real-time knowledge bases that they can leverage to solve their customer’s problems.   ·      A NICE survey found that 80% of consumers will start with digital (website, app, Google search, YouTube, etc.) when they have a question, a need, or want to buy something. Quote:  "Companies should understand and predict when they can answer a question before customers even realize they have it."   About:   Laura Bassett is the Vice President of Product Marketing at NICE. She has 20+ years of experience in consulting, development, and delivery. Bassett is an outstanding product marketer, gifted speaker, product ambassador, and strategic thinker.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating a Culture that Gets and Retains the Best Employees Shep Hyken interviews Jon Shanahan, co-founder of Businessolver Inc., a benefits administration solution that combines technology and service to help employees get the most value out of their benefits. He discusses creating a culture that delights and retains loyal customers and the best employees. Top Takeaways:  ·      We need to create a culture that people want to work in. Happy employees will focus on engaging more with customers. ·      Employee retention and client retention can drive business growth. You can't get to client delight unless your employees are delighted. If you want to provide a great customer experience, it starts with a great employee experience.   ·      If employees feel like what they contribute to the organization is not recognized in terms of compensation and benefits, they feel like the organization is not empathetic. They think that their leaders are not listening to them.   ·      How the workforce views the value surrounding benefits is evolving. Five years ago, employees considered a good medical program the most important benefit ("I have a good medical program that meets my needs. I have a good dental program"). Employees may now put more value on flexibility ("I have flexibility around my work hours and where I work").   ·      Jon Shanahan also shares the top "always" factors that ensure employee retention.   o  Employees always need to know that they will receive their paycheck. Compensation and benefits always have to happen because if they don't, that is a significant disruption for employees.   o  Employees must know they will always have leaders they can turn to and have honest conversations with.  o  Employees must always have peers that support the same culture. o  The culture of opportunity. If employees don't believe they always have opportunities within the company, they will stay with you for a while, but when a new opportunity comes along, they will leave.   ·      57% of CEOs believe the most significant benefit of an empathetic workplace is faster business growth. Jon shares more stats from the 2022 State of Workplace Empathy Study. Tune in! Quote: "Empathy is your ability to place yourself in someone else's shoes, understand where they're coming from, and create a space to listen to understand."   About:  Jon Shanahan co-founded Businessolver, Inc. in 1998. He wanted to create a benefits administration solution that combined the best in technology and service with a fierce focus on the end-user. Before founding Businessolver, Jon was vice president of consulting services at Holmes Murphy & Associates, a leading national insurance agency. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Engage the “Whole of Business” to Solve Customer Issues Shep Hyken interviews Bill Price, Amazon’s first global vice president of customer service, founder and president of Driva Solutions, and co-author of The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort. He shares how organizations can engage the “whole of business” to create a frictionless experience. Top Takeaways:   ·      There are now more channels for customers to contact companies, making it easier than ever for them to do so. But, what most companies aren’t asking is: Why do they need to contact us? Who can address these issues in the organization?   ·      Frictionless is something that often goes unnoticed. It means that everything is going so well that customers don’t need to contact the companies they are doing business with. For the business, it means the contact rate goes down, and the Net Promoter Score and customer loyalty go up.   ·      When customers experience a frictionless experience with another company, they may say something to you, like, “Why aren’t you as easy as Amazon?” or, ‘When I had to return something to Nordstrom, that was really easy, and it’s really hard when I try to return something to you.” Recognize these comments as opportunities to improve and meet your customer’s expectations.   ·      Identifying why customers are contacting you makes it easy for anybody on the receiving end to pick it up, whether in sales, customer service, or an AI bot.   ·      By looking at the frequency and reasons customers contact you, you can figure out the issues that frustrate them the most.   ·      If an issue is frustrating for your customers and solving it is time-consuming and expensive, businesses need to do a root cause analysis and eliminate it from happening. Companies need to figure out how to engage all areas and departments of the business to find the solution. By engaging the “whole of business,” an organization can eliminate the most frustrating and frequent issues its customers face. Quote:  “The best service is no service. The best thing to do for our customers is to set up everything so well that they don’t need to contact us for help and support.”   About:   Bill Price was Amazon’s first global vice president of customer service and is the founder and president of Driva Solutions, a consultancy dedicated to creating highly effective customer contact strategies and operations. He is the co-author of The Best Service Is No Service, Your Customer Rules! and The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where Sales and Customer Service Meet Shep Hyken interviews Frank Cespedes, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of six books, including his latest, Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing. He talks about how sales and customer service is changing and how organizations, from the frontlines to the C-suite, can adapt. Top Takeaways:    ·      Service for the majority of companies has been focused on the output of selling. However, those selling efforts are changing; one of the changes is that sales and customer service are increasingly intertwined.   ·      Sales and customer service are very closely combined. Selling with service is all about what we can do to enhance the sales experience and make people say, “I like doing business with this company.”   ·      Customer service people are increasingly involved in selling. Buyers in most industries are now online and offline multiple times throughout the buying journey. They are in contact with the company in numerous ways, not just with the sales team.   ·      The days of the salesperson being an organic, walking, talking version of product and price information are gone. Customers now have access to product information, price, and price comparison in just one or two clicks.   ·      People don’t want to be sold. They want to buy. Once they have decided to buy, they want to make sure they made the right decision. Everything that happens after the sale, which is customer service, is validation that they purchased from the right company, and they have a reason to come back again and again.  Quotes:  “You can’t manage a business from a spreadsheet. While you must consider the data, there is no substitute for the experience of  direct customer contact.”   About:   Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School. He is also the author of six books, including Aligning Strategy and Sales, which was cited as” “the best sales book of the year” by Strategy & Business, “a must-read” by Gartner, and “perhaps the best sales book ever” by Forbes. His newest book is Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don’t Overlook the Value of Emotions Shep Hyken interviews Zhecho Dobrev, leading principal consultant at Beyond Philosophy and author of The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions. He shares how emotions and customer relationships affect buying decisions. Top Takeaways:   ·      Customer loyalty is based on the customer's emotional connection with the company. ·      When you look at typical journey maps, they follow the Customer Infinity Loop. They start with branding, advertising, learning about the organization, getting on board the buying experience, payment, and all the other interactions the customer has with the organization. Nowhere is there a focus on customer relationships.   ·      How much value do relationships have in business? Think about the people you have relationships with in your personal life (your spouse, your kids, your relatives, your close friends). Then, think about what makes those relationships - it's that emotional bond.   ·      How do you get an emotional connection with an eCommerce company or a typical business where you have very little, if any, connection? o  Personalization. Showing that you know customers or personalize things based on the data that you have on them. o  Branding. For example, “Joy” is the core of the BMW branding. They communicate the joy of design, life, progress, and more in their marketing and communications. o  Shared values. Patagonia is all about sustainability in the world, and our customer experience research has shown that consumers are drawn to companies with a cause they're interested in.   ·      Zhecho also shared their findings on the value relationships have in driving business. Tune in!   Quotes:  "When deciding whether to continue doing business with a company, you don't base your decision on that moment. You base your decision on your memory with that organization throughout all the time you’ve done business with them."   About:   Zhecho Dobrev is a customer experience and behavior science consultant & trainer at Beyond Philosophy and the author of The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions. For more than 13 years, he has been helping many of the world's most renowned organizations improve their customer experience, including American Express, FedEx, and Caterpillar. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building Human-Centered AI in Customer Service and Experience Shep Hyken interviews Seth Dobrin, IBM's first Global Chief AI Officer, leading the company's corporate AI strategy. He shares how businesses can take a human-centered approach when utilizing AI to help their customers.  Top Takeaways:    ·      What do we mean when we talk about AI for business? It is a technology that understands the language of your business and automates workflows and processes in a trustworthy manner that complies with regulations.   ·      When organizations build AI, they make it to solve a problem, but they don't often think of the humans that are involved until the end. When building AI solutions, we must start with who will use the AI and why. Then, recognize that the person using the AI technology and the person impacted by it may not be the same person.   ·      AI technology can help us eliminate or reduce the human tendency to have biases when we're driving decisions.   ·      Seth also shares how we can understand the problems that our customers, employees, and contractors face and the value AI create for them. Plus, we take a peek at the AI trends that we can expect in the very near future. Tune in! Quote:  "During the pandemic, we saw a huge acceleration of organizations, companies, governments, and healthcare entities using AI for customer care. Leveraging AI was able to deflect 90% of the conversation so that the 10% who really needed to speak to a human could."   About:   Dr. Seth Dobrin is IBM's first Global Chief AI Officer. He is recognized as AI Innovator of the Year 2021 at the AIconics Awards and named one of Corinium's Top 100 Leaders in Data & Analytics 2022. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building Customer Relationships After the Deal is Closed Shep Hyken interviews Sam Cummings, award-winning Customer Success Manager, Data Scientist, and co-founder of Data Plant. He shares how companies can empower their teams to provide value, create great experiences, and build customer relationships. Top Takeaways:   ·      What is the difference between customer support and customer success? Customer support is transactional. If a customer is having an issue with a product, the customer support department helps them fix it, and that's it. Customer success is relational. It enables the customer to get the most value from the product over a period of time.   ·      The subscription model has been around for a long time. In the last two decades, it has evolved into a mechanism that is a part of every industry. In a subscription business, companies need to have someone in the organization to maintain the relationship after the deal is closed.   ·      The customer success department ensures that customers get the most value out of a product by teaching them to use the product in a way that they are getting the most benefit. The goal is they keep using the product, they buy more, or they renew their subscription.   ·      It is said that the most abused customer is the "sold customer." Customer success ensures that companies don't just close a deal. They start a relationship with their customers that provides value and great experiences.   ·      The ability for customer success teams to have all of the customer's data (marketing data, product usage, support tickets, etc.) in one place can help them understand the customer's experience and uniqueness, empowering them to have more empathy.   ·      Sam Cummings also answers the question - Can customer success be automated? Tune in. Quote:  "Customer success, in a vacuum, is about customer retention. It is about how organizations can motivate customers to keep using their products or services." About:   Samuel Cummings. Co-Founder, Head of Data Science at Data Plant. He has travelled the world, presenting to executives and directors the success stories of applying data science in the customer success domain.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Relationship Between Value, Customer Experience, and Price Shep Hyken interviews Per Sjöfors, aka "The Price Whisperer," Co-founder of Sjöfors & Partners and author of The Price Whisperer - A Holist Approach to Pricing Power. He shares how companies can use pricing to drive higher growth, sales volume, and profits by providing a great customer experience. Top Takeaways:   ·      There is a direct correlation between how much a company can charge a customer and the level of customer experience. ·      How you present your product or service, and your value messages drive customer satisfaction, customer experience, and how much customers are willing to pay.   ·      Any company has profitability based on three variables: total cost, sales volume, and price. Out of the three, price has the highest leverage on profitability.   ·      Pricing drives satisfaction. Often higher prices lead to more satisfied customers than lower prices. Many companies compare themselves to others in their industry and start doing the same. But, if you give a compelling reason why your price is more than theirs, you're going to win customers over.   ·      And Pers talks about the mistakes companies make when pricing affects the customer experience. Check it out! Quote:  "A satisfied customer with good experiences is more likely to be willing to pay higher prices than somebody who is dissatisfied (if that customer ever comes back)."   About:   Per Sjöfors, aka "The Price Whisperer," is the Co-founder of Sjöfors & Partners and author of The Price Whisperer. He is a thought leader and author on everything pricing and how companies can use pricing to drive higher growth, sales volume, and profits. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using AI to Enable and Empower Customer Service Agents Shep Hyken interviews Deon Nicholas, CEO and Co-Founder of Forethought, a company that builds human-centered AI to transform the customer service experience. He shares how companies can use AI and technology to help customer support agents and customers find the best resolution.  Top Takeaways:    ·      A lot of people think that AI is all about deflecting customers away from support agents. However, AI is about solving the customer's problem by providing a self-service option, interacting with a bot, or getting that customer to a human.   ·      Human-centered AI is not just about resolving the issue. It is also about being able to recognize when the best thing to do is to get out of the way. Certain problems require human judgment and empathy. Human-centered AI is all about connecting and getting the customer to an agent in the right channel at the right time. ·      If you can take historical data, such as questions customers have asked in the past and issues they have called about, then you can build a knowledge base around this data that agents can use to help customers.   ·      Customers want speed and an easy experience, but that doesn’t matter if they don’t get the answer to their question or their problem resolved.     ·      Deon Nicholas also talks about the three elements that organizations must have to deliver the ultimate customer experience. Tune in! Quote:  "In amazing businesses, the most important thing to think about is our people. Everything that we have ever done in humanity has been about building technology by people, for people. Double down on your people, and you will see the dividends and the returns."   About:    Deon Nicholas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Before starting Forethought, Deon built products and infrastructure at Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Employing Brand Advocates to Improve Customer Experience  Shep Hyken interviews Megan Neale, Co-founder and COO of Limitless, a Gig CX platform that empowers people to earn money by providing brilliant customer service. She shares how brands can leverage brand advocacy and the knowledge of actual product users (customers) to improve customer experience.  Top Takeaways:    ·      Customers who love using your products can be great resources to answer questions, resolve issues, and share experiences. They have the knowledge and passion for the brand that can be turned into a skill to help other customers.   ·       Some customers answer questions on forums for free just because they enjoy doing it. However, relying solely on forums is not scalable or reliable for delivering consistent customer service.   ·      Almost every company could benefit from tapping into their passionate customers and bringing them into the heart of their business by helping other customers.   ·      How does the GigCX work? Megan Neale outlines how her platform, Limitless, works with companies to use a strong community to help brands meet rising customer expectations and demands.   1. Companies identify customers who demonstrate brand loyalty, knowledge, and skills to help other customers. They are invited to join the platform and be a part of the GigCX program.   2. Once in the program, they must prove their skills, knowledge, and brand passion. They are chosen because of their experience using the products and then, they are provided with the proper training around the processes a brand will need them to follow.   3. When they are ready, they receive inquiries and can choose the questions that are right for them. They get paid for every ticket that they are able to resolve successfully.  Quote:   "The volume of customer support requests coming to organizations is increasing. Utilizing customers to help other customers does not displace traditional contact center workers. It is a way to support the volume of engagement in a cost-effective way."   About:    Megan Neale is Co-founder and COO of Limitless, an AI-powered Gig CX platform. Her passion for "customer & client first" and her constant drive for innovation led her to co-found Limitless in 2016.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building High-Performance Teams through Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity   Shep Hyken interviews Jonathan Stutz, President of Global Diversity Partners, Inc. and author of Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging. He shares daily practices and strategies for inclusive leadership that create a workplace where employees feel seen, heard, and valued.   This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How can internal culture impact the external customer experience?  How can inclusivity and diversity contribute to creating high-performance teams?  What are SMARTIE goals?  In what ways can leaders focus on inclusion first to build a culture of belonging and positively impact the customer experience?  How can leaders manage difficult conversations in the workplace to promote inclusivity and equity?  Top Takeaways:      Internal culture and employee experience are the foundation for enhancing customer experience. When employees feel valued and connected to their managers, coworkers, and the organization they work for, it positively impacts the quality of service and engagement with customers.    Building an organization's strong and welcoming culture is about making employees feel understood and valued. When this happens, trust between employees and leaders, managers, supervisors, and fellow employees dramatically increases. Establishing trust lessens employee churn. If you want to keep your customers coming back, you must ensure that your employees also look forward to returning to work.     Creating an inclusive and diverse workplace is about building high-performing teams that represent the perspectives and backgrounds of employees and customers. It is not about complying with a quota or hiring diverse employees for the sake of appearing diverse. It is about opening up opportunities for everyone and hiring the best people.     The IDE (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) approach emphasizes prioritizing inclusion first, followed by diversity and equity. When employees feel safe, welcome, and comfortable being themselves, they set the stage for attracting and retaining a diverse and engaged workforce.    We all benefit from a diverse, inclusive environment. It's not about one person winning and another losing. Instead, it's about leveraging various perspectives and experiences to benefit the customers, the employees, and the company.    Plus, Jonathan shares practical tips that leaders can start doing today to create a culture of belonging. Tune in!  Quote:   "Employees that feel connected to their managers and coworkers and feel as if they are seen, heard, and understood, give more of themselves to the organizations and their customers."      About:     Jonathan Stutz is the Founder and President of Global Diversity Partners, Inc. He has over 25 years of experience in leadership roles at companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Zulily. His book, Daily Practices of Inclusive Leaders: A Guide to Building a Culture of Belonging, is now available on Amazon.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Empowering Your Team to Deliver a Great Customer Experience Shep Hyken interviews Julius Robinson, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Marriott International. He shares what organizations can learn about customer service from the hospitality industry and how to equip employees to meet and exceed customer expectations. Top Takeaways:    ·      The fundamentals of customer service start with individual customer interactions. First, we must learn how to deal with all the different inquiries at the start of the customer's journey. Then, try to meet them where they are so we can anticipate their needs and find opportunities to enrich their experience.   ·      Technology has allowed customers to take control of their experience. If done right, technology can help provide the great experience they expect from your brand.   ·      Julius Robinson also shares two things organizations can do to create a great customer experience.   1.    Ask the right questions. Customers don't always verbalize what their needs and wants are. Make time to find out what they expect from you.  2.    Empower your employees to deliver a great experience. Find out what the customers’ end goals are. An example from the hospitality industry is if it is a family that hasn't travelled since the pandemic started and is concerned about health, employees need to have the information and tools to give the customers confidence in a safe travel experience.   ·      Marriott International believes that if you take care of your associates, they will take care of the customer. They call it the TakeCare culture. It is a culture that is all about listening, having empathy, responding with clarity, and delivering on the customer's expectations. Quote:  "Enable your teams to overcome problems authentically. Empower them with broad guidelines and proper training, and they will do great things for the customers."   About:   Julius Robinson is the Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Marriott International. He leads the disciplines of Sales, Distribution, Field Marketing, Franchise Sales, Marketing & Revenue Management Support, and Public Relations and Crisis Communications for Marriott International. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Prevent Your Customers from Shopping Your Competition Shep Hyken interviews Matthew Holman, head of growth at QPilot, an eCommerce software company that makes subscriptions more flexible for brands and customers. He shares how subscription models can shape the customer experience to meet the changing needs of their customers. Top Takeaways:    ·      People consume differently and customers’ needs change. Brands should offer flexibility with the frequency of their subscriptions and product options. ·       In the typical subscription experience, customers cancel their subscriptions once their need for the product no longer exists. But what happens when they want to renew their subscription? That can create a huge friction point. ·      Companies that want to offer a subscription service get caught up in how amazing or complex they could make something. Always think of what is available, what you can do now, and scale from there.   ·      Businesses always worry about how to make revenue. If they look at things through the lens of a subscription model, create additional engagement, and nurture relationships, they can earn customers – and revenue – for life.   ·      With subscriptions, around 80% of your customer base will be fairly standard on how they shop. But the difference between a business staying alive and a losing business is that extra 20% of people that are on the margins. Those are the people that need flexibility.   ·      Many people resist the idea of companies having their data, but the goal of any good brand is to create trust, communication, and engagement. Customers will share data with the companies they trust. When the data is used properly, it creates a better experience for the customer.   ·      You need to find out what your customers need and want. Talk to your end-users. Test and survey your customers to understand their actual pain points. If you can develop something within your business model that can service that need, you'll be able to become more profitable and grow revenue. Quote:  "The best model for a subscription service is one that has a product that can be consumed regularly and content that provides value to the customers." About:   Matthew Holman is head of growth at QPilot. He works with brands to scale their subscription programs using data, best practices, and experimentation. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Performance Shep Hyken interviews Adam Alfia, co-founder of Feedback. He has a firmly entrenched background in high-end hospitality and entertainment. He shares how companies can utilize customer feedback to create a great experience.  Top Takeaways:    ·      There is a slow death of customer service. Many younger employees don't come out of high school or college knowing what they want to do for the rest of their lives, so many don't have a vested interest in their jobs. As a result, they don't go above and beyond to build a strong relationship with the customer base in the industry that they work in.   ·      Many companies think that since their employees will leave after a short time, they don't invest in training. This is flawed thinking because anytime you put somebody that's not prepared on the frontline, they become the face of your brand at the moment. You want all employees on the frontline to be properly trained.   ·      A good training program becomes even more important in an economy where it is difficult to hire and keep good employees.   ·      The generation that grew up behind cell phones may be very vocal on social media, but most of them are unwilling to provide face-to-face feedback. Train your employees to be observant of body language and to respond to your customers' non-verbal cues.   ·      There's an antagonistic relationship that Yelp has created between businesses and customers. Sometimes, customers go to Yelp as a form of revenge when they have had a bad experience, attempting to make the company look bad in front of everyone.   ·      Make it easy for customers to give feedback, especially negative feedback. If you make it hard for them to leave a comment, they could go to the next option, which is to broadcast it to everybody and hope to get a response from the business.   ·      Customer service is a team sport. Technology, like Realtime Feedback, can help you work with your customers to create the best experience for them.  Quote:   "When customers go on social media to share their negative experiences, it is because you didn't give them what they wanted when they asked for it the first time, whether in person, by email, or via a phone call to customer support."   About:   Adam Alfia is the co-founder of Feedback, a digital solution for getting real-time feedback from customers. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Impact of Bad Customer Service on Your Customers, Employees, and ROI Shep Hyken interviews Christine Churchill, Founder and CEO of the Customer Service Institute of America (CSIA). She shares how organizations can identify, measure, and address issues to improve customer experience. Top Takeaways:   ·      Customers are smarter than ever before. They don't benchmark you against a direct competitor. They're comparing you to the best service they've had from any company out there.   ·      When customers were asked to define great service, they described a company with people who can resolve problems, know their products, are easy to reach, and don't waste their time.   ·      Investing in your employees' training makes them feel good about themselves. Give them the tools so that when a customer is upset, angry, or yelling, they know exactly how to handle the situation.   ·      Your team members feel the pain points in your business process as much as your customers. Customer surveys are helpful, but asking your team members where these glitches are in the process is the first thing you should do.   ·      Christine also shares these stats and facts about the cost of bad customer service for an organization:   o  89% of consumers have said that they will spend 17% more on a service if they feel that they will receive a better service experience. o  If you can increase your customer retention just by 5%, you can improve your bottom line revenue by 25% to 95%. o  A 1% increase in CSAT results in a 4.6% increase in overall market value. ·      And Christine shares the formula businesses can use to calculate the cost of bad customer service. Tune in!  Quote:  "Everything is digital. Anybody can look up and see the service experiences other people, who are their peers, have had with your company before they buy."   About:     Christine Churchill is a customer experience expert and the Founder and CEO of the Customer Service Institute of America. She has worked with organizations around the globe from a variety of industries, management styles, training approaches, systems, and technologies. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trends That Will Affect Customer Service and Customer Experience Shep Hyken interviews Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer of Arise Virtual Solutions, a customer service outsourcing and consulting firm. He shares insights about the future of customer service and the power of customer experience in driving tremendous value for your business.  Top Takeaways:   ·      To get the C-suite to invest in customer experience, demonstrate ROI. You must understand what indicators drive business growth and compare it to the data that the customers provide based on their experience. Find a correlation between these sets of data and how it affects your revenue.   ·      When you lose a customer because of a negative experience, the new customers you gain will only make up for those who have left. It does nothing to increase your revenue. In comparison, if you take care of those customers the right way, they will stay, creating decade-long customers that will continuously bring in more business. And along the way, new customers will help continue to grow the business, as well.   ·      Shroyer shares the top 3 customer service and experience trends that he can see happening in the next decade.   o  Trend #1 People are changing the way they work. In the old days, companies were at the wheel when it came to work-life harmony. Today, workers are moving towards a more flexible framework because they now have a choice of how they want to work. Employees are now empowered to choose where they want to work and where they want to live. We will be seeing a mega trend where companies will become more competitive with compensation, benefits packages, and remote work options to retain their customer service employees.   o  Trend #2 Hybrid AI. When it comes to solving customer service problems in the future, it’s not a choice between bots or humans that will solve the customer's problems. It will take both. A hybrid approach is where a skilled human being can come in, modify or improve upon what a bot has already done.   o  Trend #3 AI One-on-One Companions. In the next five years, multiple companies will launch products where AI can solve 99% of known issues for a customer and only 1% where the customer needs to call a human customer service agent. This takes the concept of products like Alexa and Siri to a different level where AI one-on-one companions are fully customized and integrated with the customer's passions and interests.  Quote:  "Always be learning. Nobody has a silver bullet, but we all have amazing experiences. We can learn, listen, support, and collaborate with each other."   About:   Jonathan Shroyer is the Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer of Arise Virtual Solutions, a customer service outsourcing and offshoring consulting firm. Recognized as a renowned thought leader in the industry through multiple mentions, Jonathan is a sought-after speaker and writer.  Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Design Experiences that Exceed Your Customer's Expectations Shep Hyken interviews Ian Johnston, Founder of Quinine, a leading strategic retail design consultancy devoted to the power of design that drives innovation and growth. He talks about building trust and loyalty by designing meaningful customer engagement.  Top Takeaways:    ·      A smart shopper is more than a way to describe a segment of your customers. Every customer seeks value whether they are buying luxury goods or everyday items. Smart shoppers take their past experiences and compare them to the experiences they have with you. ·      The Value Gap is when a customer feels that they are getting more than they paid for. When they get more benefits than the price, this is when customer satisfaction is highest. ·      Value is constantly changing. Each customer segment looks at different aspects of value differently. They may value price, quantity, brand virtues, sustainability, or the look and feel of a store. You have to move with your customers as their expectations of value change. To exceed their expectations, you have to meet them first. ·      Customer service, virtues, and values will differentiate your brand. In retail, you can use your store to bring your company's virtues and values to life by promoting and reinforcing the value proposition in your marketing campaigns. ·      The customer's baseline expectations are shaped by society. If you don't meet the expectations of the customer and that of the community, you will get left behind. Quote:  "Our expectations aren't necessarily set by our competitors. They are set by everything that happens in the world." About:   Ian Johnston is the Founder of Quinine, a leading strategic retail design consultancy devoted to the power of design to drive innovation and growth. The consultancy helps brands create world-class social, cultural, and commercial experiences that enrich and delight their customers’ everyday lives. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There Is No Such Thing as Over-communicating With Your Customers Shep Hyken interviews Jeffrey T. Mezger, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at KB Home, one of the most recognized brands in homebuilding. They discuss the goal of being customer-obsessed, how your organization can provide an excellent experience in spite of supply chain issues and other problems, and more.  Top Takeaways:    ·      Jeffrey Mezger’s mantra is to be the most customer-obsessed builder in the world. A lofty goal, but it is their “north star” and keeps everyone in alignment with its vision. If ever in doubt, he wants every employee to ask, “What would the most customer obsessed company in the world do?”   ·      How do you deal with bad news? You have to over-communicate in every step. You can't possibly communicate enough, especially if it involves a life-changing purchase.   ·      Economic conditions and supply chain issues disrupted customer service. When delays due to the supply disruption happen, take it up another level and make sure to communicate even more.   ·      The more you communicate with your customer, even if it's about delays or bad news, they feel like they have control because they have a piece of knowledge.   ·      How do you ensure that you stay on top? You can never stop raising the bar, always aiming for a higher target by listening to what your customers want along the way.   ·      A customer-obsessed organization starts with knowing what the customer wants and then partnering with them to achieve it. That’s a  winning combination.   Quote:  "Giving customers information is much more impactful and beneficial than saying nothing. Even if it's something that is unpleasant, you have to talk to your customers." About:   Jeffrey T. Mezger is the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer at KB Home, one of the most recognized brands in homebuilding. Under his leadership, KB Home established itself as one of the most recognized brands in homebuilding.  Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Investing in Customer Service Shep Hyken interviews Michel Falcon, keynote speaker, owner of Brasa Peruvian Kitchen, and author of People-First Culture: Build a Lasting Company By Shifting Your Focus From Profits to People. He talks about getting leaders to invest in customer service. Top Takeaways:    ·      Why don't all companies deliver a great customer experience? The first reason is that business leaders often focus on the next 30 days instead of long-term investing in their brand. The second reason is some leaders don't treat employees the way they want their customers to be treated.   ·      How do you convince the C-suite to invest in customer service? Show the C-Suite leadership what they are interested in and be specific with the numbers. They are interested in customer churn because when customers leave, the company losses money. They are also interested in customer lifetime value. Assign a dollar value to all the good things that could happen as a result of investing in customer service, and you will capture the attention of the C-Suite.   ·      Your customers don't only compare you to your direct competitors or big brands with recognizable logos and brands. They also compare you to the little shop down the street that treats them so well that they can't wait to come back. The best companies, large or small, set the bar higher for all of us.   ·      Hire the right people and train them well. Utilize what they are already good at and align it to what your organization is doing.  Quote:   "Leadership must walk through their customer's journey. They must ask themselves, ‘Am I proud of this? If I was a customer, would I have friction in doing this customer experience?’" About:    Michel Falcon is a restaurant entrepreneur and keynote speaker. He uses company culture and customer experience management strategies to build his latest restaurant brand, Brasa Peruvian Kitchen. He is the author of People-First Culture: Build a Lasting Company By Shifting Your Focus From Profits to People. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reinforcing Behaviors that Shape Your Organization’s Culture Shep Hyken interviews Dan Cockerell, Walt Disney Company VP for 26 years and owner of Cockerell Consulting Group with his wife, Valerie. He is the author of How's the Culture in Your Kingdom?: Lessons from a Disney Leadership Journey. He shares how a sustainable culture that inspires loyalty from employees and customers. Top Takeaways:   ·      Culture can be defined as "How things are done around here." It is based on your values, it defines what your best practices are, and how you hire people who are going to believe in that culture.   ·      Any organization can decide what its culture is and then start to go after it with intentionality. It is not a matter of cost; you can't buy culture. It is a matter of will.   ·      Dan Cockerell shares how organizations can create the right culture that makes a long-term impact on employees and customers:   1.    Hire the right people. Look at the people in your companies who are superstars and figure out what makes them great. Then, find people who have the same fire and great attitude.   2.    Train them right. Set clear expectations from the beginning, starting from the interview and onboarding process. Your employees should understand why what they do is important in the overall customer experience.   3.    Treat them right. Treat employees with respect. Listen to them, equip them with the right tools, and help them when they need it. Recognize them when they do a great job so you can reinforce the good behaviors that bring a stronger culture. Quote:  "Money is not a long-term differentiator to keeping your employees happy. It is important because it helps you do things in life, but when it comes to human nature, people don't perform for money. What they do every day gives them the purpose that will make them stay in your organization."     About:   Dan Cockerell is a retired 26-year Walt Disney Company VP who now owns Cockerell Consulting Group with his wife Valerie. He is the author of How's the Culture in Your Kingdom?: Lessons from a Disney Leadership Journey.  Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Use TikTok for Marketing and Customer Service Shep Hyken interviews Dennis Yu, CEO BlitzMetrics and author of The Definitive Guide to TikTok Advertising: How to Access 1 Billion People in 10 Minutes! They discuss how businesses can use TikTok to promote their brand and enhance customer experience.  Top Takeaways:   ·      Social Media is an opportunity for a brand to show the world that they are interested in resolving issues for their customer. ·      The fastest-growing content on TikTok right now is catered to B2B. ·      Dennis Yu shared these tips (and more) on how to use TikTok for business: 1.    Keep TikToks at 15-30 seconds long. ByteDance, the parent company that owns TikTok, found that the most viral videos are 22 seconds long. 15 to 30 seconds is the sweet spot because you have to have a high completion rate. Your audience needs to watch until the end of the video. 2.    Advertise on TikTok. The price to advertise TikTok is about 1/4 of what it is on Facebook because the supply is higher than the demand. There are so many users, and there are not that many advertisers. This might change in a year. 3.    Use Spark Ad. It lets you boost another user's content. Brands can boost their customers' content using a code. Spark Ads performs differently than if you were to post from your brand account because everything on TikTok needs to feel human and personal. 4.    Repurpose content. We want to repurpose content that has already worked on YouTube, Facebook, blogs, etc., and turn those into TikToks.  Quote:  “TikTok in 2022 is Facebook in 2007. Now, it has more traffic than Google, a higher average watch time than Facebook or Netflix, and it is now the top downloaded app.” About:   Dennis Yu is a Digital Marketer, Speaker, Agency Builder and the CEO BlitzMetrics. He is the author of The Definitive Guide to TikTok Advertising: How to Access 1 Billion People in 10 Minutes!   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tips for Training Teams with a Hospitality Mentality  Shep Hyken interviews Michelle Pascoe, CEO of Optimum Operating Procedures and Services, also known as OOPS. She talks about the 3 E's of customer experience and the impact of values-based training on creating a lasting impression.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    What does "Hospitality Mentality" mean?  What is the difference between customer service and customer experience?  How can businesses create a memorable last impression for customers?  Why is a values-based education important in shaping employees' customer behaviors and interactions?  How do you equip frontline team members to deliver an exceptional customer experience?  Top Takeaways:    Customer experience is about creating lasting impressions. Just as the first impression sets the tone, the last impression leaves an impact. Every step in the customer's journey, from the moment they walk in to the moment they leave, is an opportunity to amaze.    Embracing a hospitality mentality is about delivering exceptional customer experiences. It means going beyond merely meeting expectations and striving to make customers feel truly valued. This creates a positive and memorable interaction that can turn ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences that keep customers coming back.    Michelle shares the 3 E's of Customer Experience:    Expectation: What does your marketing say about you? What are you creating in your customers' minds?  Experience: What do your customers get when they walk through your doors? Do you at least meet their expectations? How do you exceed their expectations?   Evaluation: What are your customers thinking about your business as they walk out the door?  When we live out our company's values, it sets the tone for our team. When we connect these values with our business operations, we give our employees a chance to shine and do a great job based on those values. And if something doesn't align with our values, we can call it out with clarity and proper discipline.    Training is not just about onboarding, it is an ongoing process. It is necessary to equip team members with the skills to uphold service values and exceed customer expectations. The training process should be multifaceted, cater to different learning styles, and be constantly reinforced.    Nurturing connections is essential, not just with customers but also between leadership and employees. When leaders take the time to understand and connect with their team members, it creates a positive and supportive work environment, leading to a more aligned workforce.    Plus, Shep and Michelle share their own experiences as customers that left a lasting impression. Tune in!  Quote:   "Customer loyalty and creating a memorable experience starts with meeting the expectations. If we don't even meet the expectation, they will certainly not come back."    About:    Michelle Pascoe is the CEO of Optimum Operating Procedures and Services (OOPS). She is a keynote speaker, the host of The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast, and the author of The VIP Principle: Discover How Guest Experiences Drive Long Term Growth.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Empowering Customer Support Agents with Data Shep Hyken interviews Devin Poole, Senior Director of CX Strategy at Dixa, the groundbreaking conversational customer service platform. They discuss connecting with customers using intelligence, empathy, and the right information. Top Takeaways:   ·      Issue Centricity is a focus on a customer's specific situation. It is making sure that support agents have the right data and information about the problem, the issue and resolution history, and the context of where the customer is coming from at their disposal.   ·      When support agents don't understand the full scope of the customer's situation, they can only be reactive. If they have access to the right information, they can solve issues without the customer having to repeat their story again and again. They can feel empowered to guide the customer to the best possible solution or send them to the self-service option if that is more convenient for them. ·      When customers call about a problem and interact with support agents whose goal is to resolve the issue and teach them about the best ways to use the company instead of upselling, they become more valuable to the company's bottom line in the long term.  ·      If you do something internally, whether it is new software, system, or process, that creates more work or difficulty for your employees, it's going to be felt on the outside by customers. ·      We need to get people to recognize that an internal customer support department that focuses on doing nothing but answering questions and resolving complaints is part of the relationship-building that other departments need to drive more sales.  Quote:  "Customers are like water. They will go to the easiest route downhill. They only care about the most convenient resolution to their problem."     About:    Devin Poole is the Senior Director of CX Strategy at Dixa. He is responsible for understanding the needs of customer service & experience leaders, shaping product development initiatives, and advising Dixa clients on best practices in service and experience effectiveness. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Develop Workplace Culture Like a Skill  Shep Hyken interviews Daniel Coyle, New York Times bestselling author of  The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed. They discuss developing your team’s culture as a skill through consistent action, practice, and reflection. Top Takeaways:   ·      Culture is not about words. Culture is about actions and behaviours. ·      We always think that culture is like the personality of a group. That's not true. Culture is performance. It is when people act in such a way that contributes to the team’s performance. ·      Daniel Coyle shares three tips (out of 60!) from his book, The Culture Playbook: The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed. Tip #1. Keep an open face. Our face is like a door. It has two settings, closed and open. Our face is closed when our thoughts are focused inwards. It is open when we communicate energy, interest, excitement, and enthusiasm. Tip #2. The two-line email. Ask your employees to send you a two-line email with these prompts: Tell me one thing you want me to keep doing, and Tell me one thing you want me to stop doing. Tip #3. AAR or After Action Review. AAR is a 5-minute meeting that has a massive impact on strength and performance. After you do something with your team, pause and ask these three questions: What went well? What didn't go well? What are we going to do differently next time? ·      Daniel also shares more ideas about pillars of building culture, the subtraction game, and the benefits of "taking a pause" in this busy world. Tune in! Quote:  "Great cultures operate like a flock of birds in a forest. They stay connected. They self-organize to go past problems and move toward their goal." About:   Daniel Coyle is a New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code, The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race, and Hardball: A Season in the Projects. His latest book is The Culture Playbook: 60 Highly Effective Actions to Help Your Group Succeed.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 5 Core Concepts to Customer Service Shep Hyken interviews Chris Lynam, Customer Service Expert and multi-franchise owner of Arthur Murray Dance Studios. He is the host of the podcast, Off the Floor, and author of the new book, The Choreography of Customer Service: High Touch Service in a Touch-Free World. They discuss how your organization can implement the five core concepts of good customer service. Top Takeaways:  • Chris shares THE 5 CORE CONCEPTS TO CUSTOMER SERVICE from his book, The Choreography of Customer Service. 1. The Backstory: Customer service professionals should discover what steps have led the customer to their business. Instead of asking, "How can I help you right now?" ask, "What has brought you in here today?" If customer service professionals know their customer's backstory, they will be able to put themselves into their customer's shoes. This is how they can provide the level of service that they would want themselves. 2. The Negative: When you genuinely care for your customers, you will give them the "cautionary tale" when necessary. The most appropriate advice may not always be what the customer wants to hear. But, if it will give your customers the best outcome, you have to make sure they get the complete picture. 3. The Secret Mission: There is something unique that differentiates you from others and will help you outperform what might be considered average in your field or industry.  4. Muscle Memory: What attitudes and good habits developed over time come naturally to you as you serve your customers? 5. Return on Investment: How do you measure the return of investment on the frontlines? The return on investment is not necessarily measured by dollars. It can be measured by customer behaviour. It can be a compliment or the customer coming back to do more business with you. • Chris also talks about building your customer team like you are preparing for a bank heist. Tune in to find out what this means and if you should be preparing for your own "bank heist." Quote: "Feedforward instead of feedback. Instead of examining customer interactions after they happen, prepare your customer service team for different scenarios before they go out into the frontlines."   About:   Chris Lynam is a customer service expert and multi-franchise owner of Arthur Murray Dance Studios. He is the host of the podcast, Off the Floor, and the author of the new book, The Choreography of Customer Service: High Touch Service in a Touch-Free World.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Communication Affects the Employee and Customer Experience Shep Hyken interviews Dorian Stone, Head of Organizations Revenue of Grammarly Business. They discuss how communication affects an organization's productivity, experience, and revenue. Top Takeaways:   ·      Communication is part of the experience. If you don't communicate well with your customers and employees, you are giving them a bad experience.   ·      The Harris Poll research estimates that US businesses are losing $1.2 trillion annually due to poor communication.   ·      Dorian Stone shares what organizations can do to improve communication and experience for employees and customers.   1. Do the math on how much time employees spend on written communication. Most knowledge workers, such as chat agents and email support agents, spend about half of their workweek writing into a system (chat, email, CRM, etc.). Reduce the time they spend writing by helping them eliminate errors, reduce rework, and maintain the appropriate tone through a writing assistant. 2. Look at the English as a Second Language (ESL) versus English First Language mix of your business and then understand the dynamics. Examine the makeup of your workforce and see what your employees are working on. Evaluate how natural and consistent that communication flow is across all teams. 3. Look at where you've made your recent investments. Ask yourself how much safety valve investments are there to avoid errors versus how many are really about throughput. Invest in systems that make things efficient and easy for your employees.   Quote:  "Poor communication is a frustrating productivity issue. Tasks have to be done twice when communication is ineffective."   About:   Dorian Stone is Head of Organizations Revenue of Grammarly Business, overseeing all operations for the integrated business solution. Previously, Dorian was VP of customer experience strategy and marketing at Medallia. He was also a co-founder and leader of McKinsey & Company’s Global Customer Experience practice and a program director and volunteer in the Peace Corps.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Link Between the Top Rated Customer-Focused Companies and the Stock Market Shep Hyken interviews Dr. Claes Fornell, founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and the Distinguished Donald C. Cook Emeritus Professor of Business at the University of Michigan. Dr. Fornell is the author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference. Top Takeaways: ·      ACSI, or the American Customer Satisfaction Index, researches and tracks more than 400 of the largest corporations in the U.S. marketplace on their customer satisfaction scores. ·      There's a correlation between top-performing companies in the ACSI and companies who do well in the stock market. The 35 top-performing companies, according to the ACSI, have had a return of… (Dr. Fornell suggests sitting down as you read this number) 1788% in the last 15 years. ·      Customer retention provides exponentially increasing returns for your business. However, some companies can have high retention but low satisfaction. Your customers may come back because your products are affordable until another company that offers lower prices comes along. Make sure that your customers come back for the right reasons.  ·      There are obvious issues that companies need to fix to solve customer dissatisfaction: wait time, ease of use, and segmentation. Wait time - If the search, shopping, and buying experience take longer than expected, it creates a problem for the customers. Ease of use - If it's complicated and the customer often needs help, it affects their experience. Segmentation - Don't just segment on age, gender, or location. Segment your customers according to categories that affect the customer’s sensitivity to higher quality. Know what customers are looking for in your products and design customer experiences that deliver them. Quote:  “Buying loyalty is keeping the price low. Earning loyalty is keeping your customers satisfied.”   About:   Dr. Claes Fornell is the founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a monthly economic indicator of the quality of economic output, and the Distinguished Donald C. Cook Emeritus Professor of Business at the University of Michigan. Dr. Fornell is the author of The Satisfied Customer: Winners and Losers in the Battle for Buyer Preference.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Employee First: How Culture, People, and Service Work Together Donna Cutting is the Founder and CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Systems, Inc., an organization that provides training and tools to transform your customers into loyal fans. She is the author of Employees First!: Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization. They discuss how to create a culture of safety, inclusion, and empowerment.  Top Takeaways:  ·      Think about how you want employees to treat your customers, flip it and say, ”Are we treating our people that way?” ·       Start with the experience you create for your employees. When you support them to grow their skills and knowledge, they can better take care of customers. ·      Leaders have to show up with more empathy and understanding. If you want your people to stick around, you must make them feel appreciated. ·      If every person in a leadership position would make it a point to get to know their employees better, that would be a huge step in keeping your employees. ·      Listen to your people in a way that you never have before. Model what excellent customer service is, give them confidence by creating opportunities to increase their skills, provide them with agency so that they're empowered to help the customer, and create a culture where they feel safe. Quote:  “Focus on the employees first. Their experience is the foundation of what will happen to your customers.”   About:  Donna Cutting is the Founder and CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Systems, Inc., an organization that provides training and tools to transform your customers into loyal fans. She is the author of Employees First!: Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization. They discuss how to create a culture of safety, inclusion, and empowerment.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Winning Organizations are Built Shep Hyken interviews Annette Franz, founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc. and the author of Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture that Drives Value for Your Business. They discuss why customer-centricity needs to be understood and lived by the whole organization. Top Takeaways:   Annette Franz shares the 10 key defining foundational principles that ensure customer-centricity from her latest book: 1. Culture is the foundation. Culture is core values plus behaviors. It needs to be deliberately designed to be customer-centric. 2. Leadership commitment and alignment are critical to success. Customer centricity cannot just be one department or one person. It needs to be organization-wide. 3. Employee experience: employees must be put more first. When employees are happy and engaged, they will be more productive. 4. People come before products. Put the people first and take the time to understand who they are, their needs, pain, and what they are trying to do. Understanding our customers is how we can develop products for them instead of finding customers for our products. 5. People come before profits. Profits and shareholder value are outcomes. Great customer experiences are how we make sure that we get to those outcomes. 6. People come before metrics. If you focus on numbers and metrics, you do things differently than when you focus on improving the experience, which will ultimately move those numbers. 7. Customer understanding is the cornerstone. The voice of the customer is the cornerstone to every discussion, decision, and design of a customer-centric culture. 8. Governance bridges organizational gaps. Governance has two parts to it- the structure and the operating model. The structure is all of the committees that we have to get the organization working together to benefit the customer. The operating model is the people, the tools, the data, and the processes. 9. Outside-in thinking and doing vs. inside-out thinking and doing are core. Thinking outside-in is bringing the customer's voice into everything we do. 10. The Platinum Rule® rules. We’re all familiar with The Golden Rule, which is to treat others the way you want to be treated. Franz shares an important lesson from Dr. Tony Alessandra’s concept he calls The Platinum Rule, which is to treat others the way they want to be treated. Quote:    "A customer-centric culture is a collaborative culture. It's all about bringing the organization together to make sure that the customer has a better experience."   About:   Annette Franz, CCXP, founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc., is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, and keynote speaker. She is the author of Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the "Customer" in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business). Her latest book, Built to Win: Designing a Customer-Centric Culture that Drives Value for Your Business, is now available.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Six Ingredients for Transforming Your Business to Thrive Shep Hyken interviews Joel Bines, managing director and global co-head of the Retail Practice at AlixPartners and the author of The Metail Economy. They discuss how to meet the growing expectations of the smart and savvy Me-centric customer. Top Takeaways:   Joel Bines shares the six ingredients for transforming your business to thrive in this Metail economy: curation, customization, category expertise, cost, convenience, community. 1.    Curation: The art of defining and producing a set of experiences (products, locations, digital, physical, etc.) so that the person thinks that someone picked all of these things just for them. 2.    Customization: Consumers want to have a say in the products they want to spend their money on. Because of technology, it's never been easier to customize some experience component. That doesn't mean it has to be bespoke. You can provide the illusion of customization by finding things that give the consumer the sense that they are customizing something. Add one or two more, and you're fine. You don't have to build one thing at a time. 3.    Category expertise: Expertise means that any question that customers might have is easily answered by the person they are talking to. 4.    Cost: If you are going to use cost as a competitive advantage, then it has to be the lowest cost at all times because consumers are smart and savvy with technology. It’s easy to find a lower cost, if there is one. 5.    Convenience: The question you need to ask when thinking that convenience is an advantage is, “Who is it convenient to?” Too often, company executives start with convenience for the company. If the answer is not “convenient for the customer,” then you’re doing convenience wrong. 6.    Community: If you're going to build a community of people, you have to make sure that every part of your organization is set up to serve that community. It is very difficult to build a community, but losing a community is very easy.   Quote:    "Customers' tolerance and friction level for customer experience is lower than ever. Customers know what they want, and if the companies they do business with cannot give it to them, they go somewhere else."   About:   Joel Bines is a managing director and global co-head of the Retail Practice at the business consulting firm AlixPartners. He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading operational strategists with a 30-year track record of improving performance at retailers, brands, and consumer companies.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CX Is More Important Than Ever! Shep Hyken interviews Simon Harrison, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Avaya. They discuss the importance of creating a personalized and effortless customer experience. Top Takeaways:   ·      Your customers aren't just comparing you to your direct competitors anymore. They are comparing you to the best. For example, customers may ask, Why can't your app be as good as the Peloton app? Why can't your speed be as quick as Amazon's?   ·      If there is a choice between customer experience and the product, CX will usually win. You can have the best product, but if you don't create an experience around it that works for the customer, they will find another provider.   ·      Our experience ambitions have changed in all aspects of how we live our life, how we keep fit, how we eat, how we shop, or how we travel. Companies need to aim for composability, propose solutions to create the right kind of experiences, and make sure that people feel good about what they do.   ·      To realize the benefits of personalization, suggesting what people want and how they want it should be part of how we engage our customers, staff, colleagues, and everyone in our ecosystem.   ·      We must personalize our digital experiences until it rivals the person-to-person experience. Customers need to feel like you are talking to them, even in digital transactions. Quote:   "In this challenging experience economy, we need employees who are connected and empowered. Creating great experiences is enabled by employee experiences. They need to have great experiences themselves."   About:     Simon Harrison is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Avaya, leading the global marketing function to engage with new and existing customers and partners, driving adoption of the company’s software solutions, and supporting Avaya as one of the leading player in a dynamic digital communications market.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gap Between Your Marketing Message and Frontline Teams Shep Hyken interviews Chris Wallace, Co-Founder and President of InnerView, a marketing consulting firm that helps companies align their brand and product stories with their customer-facing teams. They discuss the importance of a two-way dialogue between the marketing department and your frontline teams. Top Takeaways:   ·      Do you know what the people talking to your customers think of you? The employees who talk to your customers, the people who represent you, are the gatekeeper of your brand’s message.   ·      Just because people get a paycheck from the brands that they represent, it doesn't mean that they can deliver every message perfectly, or that their training is going to stick.   ·      The people who live in the trenches have a unique perspective on the customer experience and the brand promise. They get feedback from customers. They see how decisions are made in real-time. They have valuable input that can help leaders make better decisions. Leadership needs to take advantage of their knowledge!   ·      The goal of marketers is to reach the customer, to drive demand, to catch interest, to capture attention, and to set expectations. We encourage marketers to ask themselves - How do we equip our people to understand, align, and confidently deliver on these expectations?   ·      The base level of what customers expect from you continues to go up. They can buy the product that you are selling elsewhere. What customers are looking for are the brands that can deliver that extra layer of value. They are looking for the best company who creates the most amazing service.  Quote:   "There is nothing better than dealing with somebody on the frontlines that truly believes and cares about the brand that they represent" About:    Chris Wallace is the Co-Founder and President of InnerView. Chris and his team have developed the Brand Transfer Study tool which helps companies measure brand message alignment and engage their frontlines in innovative new ways.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Connectivity Impacts Customer Satisfaction, Business Processes, and Public Safety   Shep Hyken interviews Stephen Kowal, Chief Commercial Officer of Nextivity. He talks about how connectivity can impact various aspects of customer experience, from retail experiences to public safety, and seamless experiences.  This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:    How does connectivity boost customer experience?  How does poor cellular connectivity affect the customer experience in commercial and retail buildings?  What role does boosting cellular signals play in ensuring public safety and first responder communication?  How does cellular connectivity impact customer decision-making and purchases in retail environments?  Why is seamless cellular connectivity essential for a positive customer experience in today's digital world?  Top Takeaways:    Ensuring strong and reliable cellular and Wi-Fi signals in buildings is crucial for a seamless customer experience. Connectivity issues can impact everything from emergency calls in elevators to personalized store promotions. It is now important for businesses to invest in infrastructure that supports strong digital connections behind the scenes.    Connectivity empowers customers by enabling them to make informed purchasing decisions in the moment.  The ability to access information in real time can guide customers to choose according to their needs, leading to better satisfaction and potentially higher sales for businesses.    Seamless connectivity is vital for customer satisfaction and public safety. Reliable signals inside buildings ensure that customers can ask for help when they need it and emergency responders can communicate effectively. Good connectivity protects experiences and lives.    Connectivity is no longer a luxury but a necessity for delivering exceptional experiences. Providing strong and reliable connectivity is a requirement to meet the expectations of smart, modern customers.    Plus, Shep and Stephen share their own customer experiences related to connectivity and coverage. Tune in!  Quote:   "Stores used to be afraid of online sales. They used to be afraid that if customers could research it online, they might see that it is cheaper elsewhere. But, they have found if customers can validate their purchase decisions while in the store, that experience instant gratification and end up leaving with the product and sometimes even spending more."    About:    Stephen Kowal is the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of Nextivity, a company that helps businesses boost connectivity, public safety, and seamless experiences.    Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Teaching Employees How to Smile Serving Internal Customers First  Shep Hyken interviews Stephanie Coradin, founder of DEMBO Inc and an advocate of employee empowerment and dynamic leadership. They discuss how leaders can empower your customer service team by serving their internal customers first.  Top Takeaways:   ·      Teaching employees how to "smile" starts with having employees feel comfortable in their skin, having them feel like they are in a place where they can, and allowing them to take ownership. ·      The external customers are important, but the people that are going to serve those customers are also our customers, known as internal customers. We must properly serve our internal customers, even before we send them out to serve others.   ·      We tend to send an experienced employee out to serve customers without allowing them to take a breath and find out what they need from us as leaders. We send them out and they're not able to find out what their guests need from them because they're modeling how their leaders treat them. ·      Every leader needs to understand their leadership style. Understanding their style allows them to adjust to the different personalities and styles of their team members. ·      Have conversations with your team to better understand what they need from you. Ask them, "What can I do to help you move further into your career or into this position?" ·      We have a cultural problem where employees are afraid to speak up. They are afraid they will get punished if they do something wrong or if they say something that may be viewed as negative toward their manager. We have to put them at ease so they know it is okay to speak up. Quote:   "Understanding how you lead first makes it so much simpler for you to go through the steps of leading another, whether it is a team or just one person." About:   Stephanie Coradin is the founder of DEMBO Inc, she has over 18 years of experience in providing leadership and development training, and life coaching to individuals and groups from varied industries. Stephanie is an advocate of employee empowerment and dynamic leadership.  Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What it Takes to Deliver Great Experiences at All Levels  Shep Hyken interviews Adrian Swinscoe, CX thought leader, Forbes contributor, speaker, and best-selling author of Punk CX and Punk XL. They discuss what experience leadership means to the individual, the team, the organization, the customers, and beyond.  Top Takeaways:   ·      It's no longer sufficient just to talk about customer experience in isolation. We have to start thinking about it holistically and ask, “What does it mean for the entire business?” ·      There's a lot of power in a place called the "gemba", meaning the real place. In business, "gemba" is the place where value is created. Figure out where the gemba in your business is and ask yourself, “How can I go there? And, how often do I go there to understand what's going on with my customers and my employees? ·      On feedback… Psychologically, with a blank text box, people don't know where to start or how to start. When you are asking for qualitative feedback, guide your customers by creating a fill-in-the-blank item. Lead with statements like, "Your experience would be better if we..." ·      Some leaders and executives are suffering from the Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome. Even a reasonable person might reach a point where they, without realizing it, would treat customers in a way that they themselves wouldn't find acceptable.  ·      All proceeds of Adrian's book, Punk XL will go to Doctors Without Borders as an acknowledgment of the work that they have done for the last 50 years. How cool is that! Quote:   "When you are sending a customer survey, make it shorter. You are asking your customers to take the time to tell you what they think. Respect their time by keeping it as short as you possibly can."  About:   Adrian Swinscoe has been growing and helping develop customer-focused large and small businesses for over 25 years. He is a CX thought leader, Forbes contributor, speaker, and best-selling author of Punk CX and Punk XL. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building a Reactive and Predictive Customer Experience Shep Hyken interviews Steve Peltzman head of FeedbackNow, Forrester’s AI-powered physical & digital solution. They discuss how companies can sense, analyze, and react to issues that affect customer experience.  Top Takeaways:  ·      Wherever customers go, something is different. COVID has caused customers to feel anxiety and a lack of control. Good companies recognize this and have stepped up and are doing something different.  ·      Throughout the pandemic, new expectations have been created. Companies have made things easier for their customers, who expect this same level of service to continue, even after the pandemic. According to Forrester’s 2022 predictions, consumers will lean on brands that offer a sense of relief and immediate comfort. In 2022, consumers will turn to uplifting, pleasing products and experiences that offer a reprieve from the ongoing uncertainty. ·      Every advancement creates new complexity and awkwardness that every company has to adjust to. For example, in healthcare, practitioners need to master "Zoom-side manner" aside from the traditional bedside manner. ·      Surveys can benefit future customers but they do not help present customers who are experiencing the inconvenience. Per Forrester, more than 60% of customer experience professionals say their businesses lack closed-loop processes for CX feedback. ·      Use feedback and data to understand the breaking point where a customer becomes upset when the issue is not properly addressed. For example, if, on average, your customers are willing to stand in line for 5 minutes but they start to get upset at the 10-minute mark, open up a new line at 9 minutes.  Quote:   "COVID has brought consumers' CX expectations up to unprecedented levels. Even as we recover, those expectations will largely remain. They want and seek control and comfort."   About:   Steve Peltzman is Forrester’s first Chief Business Technology Officer. He now leads FeedbackNow, Forrester’s AI-powered physical & digital solution to measure, analyze, predict, and act on customer feedback in real-time.  Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices