194: Current CX and EX Happenings

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Transcription:

John DiJulius (00:46)
Hello, revolutionaries and welcome to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution podcast. I’m John DiJulius your host and chief revolution officer of the DiJulis Group. So what’s been going on? If you’re watching this video on YouTube, you can see by my chapped lips, my blistering lips that I was someplace warm. I got to go to a Caribbean resort, very high-end resort.

It was excellent, great experience, but obviously, because what I do, my antennas are up about the experience. And something that really rang true was the quote that the customers in paying for your experience are paying for their own and yours being the employees. And what got me thinking about that was I was, like I always do, ask employees.

that work at any place how they’re doing. And most said fantastic, which is great. But some small percentage would say, eh, okay, not great. And so I’d always push further because I want to see what the mentality is. the ones that said just okay or not great, some of their answers was, because I’m at work. And I’d say, do you like your job?

some says, depends on the day, and just different things and other personal struggles they may be having. Now, listen, you could say, well, you asked, but I do think it’s the job of leadership to constantly be reminding employees that the customer, the guest is paying for their own experience, not ours, right? And…

You know, a place like that, you know, in many places, it’s about offering your customers, your guests an escape, whether it’s five minutes or a week. And that you got to remember that you’re on stage and, you know, just to, know, what that looks like and not sharing, leaving your problems as an employee or a leader at the door is so important. Remember, you know, the Snow White story.

that people pay a lot of money to come there to see Snow White, not Susie Smith that’s 22, they had a jerk for a boyfriend or a flat tire, whatever’s going on in his or her life. it just made me think about that, to constantly teaching our team members, our employees, our customer facing employees that leave your experience at the door, whatever may have happened on the way last night recently.

When you’re at work, the customer is paying for their experience, not yours. All right, what else is happening in the world of customer experience and employee experience? This one, a company fires employees who admit to being stressed. Yes, yes, madam. A company that offers a tech platform for beauty and wellness had an internal email leaked on LinkedIn that caused quite a controversy. They surveyed their employees.

and they actually fired employees who admitted to being stressed. Here was their internal email that went out. Recently, we conducted a survey to understand your feelings about stress at work. Many of you shared your concerns, which we deeply value and respect. As a company committed to fostering a healthy and supportive work environment,

We have carefully considered the feedback to ensure that no one remains stressed at work. We have made the difficult decision to part ways with employees who indicated significant stress. This decision is effective immediately and impacted employees will receive further details separately. Thank you for your contribution. Can you believe it? They.

Let go of employees that admitted to being stressed at work. With all the hubbub and controversy out there and the leaked memo, Yes Madam issued this statement. Were Yes Madam employees really fired for being stressed? Absolutely not. Notifications, they weren’t fired. They were given a break to reset.

They weren’t let go. They were encouraged to release their stress. They weren’t laid off. They were offered a chance to relax. They weren’t sacked. They were urged to rest and recharge. Not sure their clarification is any better than the original. Another thing that’s been coming up a lot lately in my travels and consulting and working with companies is

leaders got to stop blaming the younger workforce. The most common complaint I get from my audiences and consulting clients is how bad the younger workforce is and how this generation doesn’t want to work hard. I cannot disagree more. I believe that this is a crutch that too many leaders use to avoid building better

employee cultures in a strong recruiting and onboarding experience. Great customer experience like the Ritz Carlton’s, Chick-fil-A’s, my own companies, John Robert’s Spas hire from the exact same labor force that their competition does. If the younger generations are so poor, then how do brands like, you know, those mentioned, you know, consistently produce a

consistent, excellent customer experience with the same generation. I love what Ritz Carlton says about this. Our ladies and gentlemen come from the exact same labor force, background and quality of life as our competitors labor pool. We’re not paying a premium, we pay the same as others in our industry. It’s really about what we do.

when they join our family. We create guidelines for how our people are to perform. Love that. Quit using the younger generations lack of work ethic as a crutch. Don’t allow your leaders to, because when there’s companies out there attracting and recruiting from the same labor force, the same generations, right? That are getting these people to perform at a higher level.

You can’t use that as a crutch anymore. All right, the other thing I really wanna talk about is the number one thing CEOs get wrong about customer experience. And it’s a service aptitude. A service aptitude is a person’s ability to recognize opportunities to meet and exceed a customer’s expectations regardless of the circumstances. Okay, so that’s not the paradigm shift. The paradigm shift

is where service app to do or how service app to get shaped. Too often, too many leaders, too many senior executives, too many CEOs don’t put enough emphasis into the customer experience training. And they think it’s innate. They think it’s, know, common sense. If you think about the dynamics of any great business, it comes down to,

know, four or five key principles, right? Finance, marketing, sales, experience, and recruiting. And when you think about all those key and technology, you think about all those key elements, every one of those except customer experience has a leader.

You have a CFO, a finance department, someone that has a CPA, had a degree in it. Sales and marketing have leaders who have a degree in it. IT, degree in it. HR, degree in it. But there is no degree and for the longest time there is no head of.

customer experience until recently the chief experience officer, but there’s still not, you know, a degree that I know of other than the customer experience executive academy that we offer. So here’s, you know, where everyone’s service aptitude gets shaped. How good any company is at customer experience comes down to one thing and one thing only. The average service aptitude from the CEO to the most recent hire that’s going to start

interacting with your customer next week, right? After they get out of your training. And so there’s three places service aptitude gets shaped for all of us. Okay, yours, mine, and the newest employee. The first one is previous life experiences, right? In most cases, our most recent hired, least trained, lowest paid employee deals with your customer the most. Think about that.

You know, the people that you’re put in education and is usually not your front line customer facing employee, or it’s not enough other than the first couple days or week. Most of us didn’t grow up staying at five star resorts, flying first class, getting a $250 haircut or driving a Mercedes Benz growing up at 16. Yet.

You know, every job I had from the moment I started working at 14, 15, and 16 and on, I was expected to give that type of world-class experience to those types of customers, clients, patients, guests, whatever we may call them. But I didn’t know what world-class looked like, right? The golden rule, treat people the way you want to be treated, and let’s convert it to, you know, in customer, treat the customer the way you want to be treated.

is a horrible compass. You didn’t want my experience. You didn’t want me to treat customers the way I wanted to be treated back then. My three boys, know, Bo, let’s talk about who’s 22 today. He’s still in college. If you hired him to be in any customer facing position, say, Bo, treat customers, our customers, the way you want to be treated, that’d be a big mistake, right? Because he hasn’t had those life experiences yet.

He’d be a great, fantastic employee, but you gotta train him. You gotta train him what that looks like, what your customer experience looks like. You gotta remove personal interpretations. I remember a long time ago, when one of my nieces was, since she was probably 16, I used to bug her, because she was this cute, energetic person.

that you’d love to have in a customer-facing position. So I used to try to get her to go to cosmetology school or come work at the salons and my first business and be a receptionist, because she’s someone that you’d want to, she just had that energy that you’d want in a retail type of atmosphere. So I remember, I used to ask her what she was doing and one time she told me she was working at a restaurant. I said, what are you doing there?

And I think now she’s in college, right? And she told me that she served people, you know, she was a server, but she also said part of her job was to police the restrooms. And, you know, I said, you know, what’s that look like? It’s just, well, it’s my job not to let people use the restroom unless they’ve paid for something. Right. I’m like, what? And she’s so proud to tell me this story. She said she chased someone down the hallway.

blocked him from going in the restroom and threw him out. And I was like, my God, this is my niece with the same last name, right? I hope she gets married and changes her name. And so a lot of you might think, boy, was John wrong about his niece? No, I was right. My niece is, know, was and probably still is a great employee. Listen, she was doing what she was trained. She worked for someone who was very paranoid and suspicious and said, listen, don’t allow people.

to go against our policy. And so she did what she was told, she did what she was trained, but any of us would have hired her because she would have passed on an interview, but she would have been treating our platinum VIP client like they’re trying to get away with something. Which leads to the second place service aptitude. First place is previous life experience. Second place is previous work experience. Like my niece, unless you have a direct pipeline.

to former Disney, Ritz-Carlton, Chick-fil-A Nordstrom employees, which none of us do, that means the people you’re hiring have hired and will hire have worked elsewhere and you’re trusting their service aptitude to someone else’s training, right? Someone else may have brainwashed them. They may have been suspicious, paranoid and taught them not to let policy, policy, policy. Don’t let customers go against policy.

So the first two places service aptitude gets shaped is previous life experiences and previous work experiences. And leaders of companies, we can’t control that, right? The only thing we can control in our own company is the third place service aptitude gets shaped. And that’s current work experiences, right? What do we do with our employees after we hire them? And so I love to ask,

companies and leaders this, if you’re gonna hire my son, right? 22, right out of college. Tomorrow, if you hire him for a customer facing position, phones, whatever that looks like, how much training would you give Bo before you’d allow him to start interacting with your customer? Now, some people say two days, some people say two weeks, some people may say two months. That’s great.

But that’s not the answer I’m looking for. Here’s the answer that I want you to do the math on. Whether it’s 40 hours, 400 hours or 4,000 hours, of those hours of training that you’re gonna give Bo or your newest employee before they’re allowed to go work with the customer, before you let them loose, how much of those hours is operational training, right? Procedures, how to ring up.

an order, how to process credit cards, gift cards, how to book, schedule an appointment, product knowledge, all important. But how much, what percentage of those, hours of training you give them is operational technical processes versus the service aptitude, soft skills, how to build a relationship, how to have compassion and empathy, how to understand a day in the life of the customer, how to make a brilliant comeback.

when we drop the ball. And in most cases, in most, most cases, it’s about 98 % operational technical processes and less than 2 % the soft skill. And typically what that 2 % looks like is that it’s just a platitude. Hey, we’re customer-centric. We’re obsessed with the customer. We go above and beyond for the customer.

If you tell a hundred employees, you know, to go above and beyond or deliver genuine hospitality, guess what? You’re going to get a hundred personal interpretation. And world-class customer service companies remove personal interpretations. So to wrap it up, it’s not your employee’s responsibility to have high service aptitude. It’s yours, the company leadership and training to make sure. So it doesn’t mean that your new employee orientation, you know, onboarding training has to be 50-50.

operational technical processes versus service aptitude soft skill, building a relationship, showing compassion and empathy, listening, all those. But it has to have a stronger representation of training, of testing, of certifying, customer service aptitude tests. And you have to certify them before you let them loose. Okay. And the last thing today I want to share is one of my favorite quotes.

this week’s favorite quote by Joe Rogan. Excuse me, Joe Rogan said, live your life like you’re the hero in your movie. And right now is when the effing movie starts and your life may be a shit bag disaster. Live your life like there’s a documentary crew following you around and you.

are analyzing your own behaviors. Do what you want to do so your kids one day will look back at it and see this documentary and look with pride and say, wow, my dad, my mom was a badass when times were tough. Thank you, revolutionaries. We’ll see you next week on the Customer Service Revolution Podcast.