Shep Hyken interviews Martha Brooke. They discuss common rating systems implemented by many companies, the faults and flaws of these systems, and ways to improve the feedback process overall. In Shep’s Opening Monologue... He talks about the best ways to handle negative online reviews. The Interview with Martha Brooke:The way many ratings systems are designed makes it easy to skew results. Customers don’t give honest feedback out of fear of potential repercussions.One reason customers give positive ratings after negative experiences is because they don’t want to feel like they’re punishing someone. However, being honest is more helpful because it improves the community. That is the benefit of deep altruism versus superficial altruism.There is little tangible proof that reviews and ratings are anonymous, so customers may also fear repercussions from rated individuals or that it will be harder to do business with that company in the future.People are inundated daily with requests for feedback. It becomes easier to leave a simple 5-star review rather than a negative one or no review at all.Companies need to define what a 5-star rating means so that their customers are on the same page. People tend to look think of extremes when giving feedback, but what 5 stars means to one person may not be the same for another.The ultimate goal is to get the feedback to accurately reflect the customer experience.Quote: “Want great customer feedback? It starts with having really authentic conversations. Open ended questions are where the gold lies.” - Martha Brooke About: Martha Brooke founded Interaction Metrics in 2004 with the mission of dramatically improving the customer experience. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and holds a Blackbelt in Six Sigma. 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

Shep Hyken interviews Jon Ferrara. They discuss his company Nimble, the history of CRMs, customer service philosophies, and life. In Shep’s Opening Monologue... He considers the balance between the digital and the human experience in customer service. The Interview with Jon Ferrara:Jon Ferrara created GoldMine, the pioneer CRM program, by synthesizing existing technologies at the time. His goal was to make it easy for companies to manage not only their customers, but their team collaboration and relationships.Previously, less than 1% of companies used CRMs because they focused more on reporting data rather than the relationships between employees and customers.Good customer service begins from the inside; employees need to be unified in their mission to enhance the customer’s journey.CRM’s help you create positive personal connections, which can only have a positive affect your business.Ask yourself how you can add value to every interaction you have with a customer or an employee, even if it’s as simple as a smile. That attention and focus will help grow your business and fulfill you personally.About: Jon Ferrara is the founder and CEO of Nimble and a CRM expert, having created and co-founded GoldMine. He is also a technology entrepreneur and noted speaker about Social Sales and Marketing. 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. Quotes:  “Service is the new sales.” – Jon Ferrara  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews Brian Sprinkle. They discuss his company, Big Ass Fans, and their approach to providing high quality customer service to support their industry-leading products.  In Shep’s Opening Monologue… He compares the profitability of customer acquisition versus customer retention. The Interview with Brian Sprinkle:It costs 5 to 7 times more (on average) to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer. You can grow your business, in part, by creating repeat customers.If you focus on making the customer want to come back next time every time, that will turn into a lifetime of business.The company makes great use of surveys to assess its customer service. Short surveys are sent out after the initial sale, 90 days after the sale, and after a support ticket is closed.There is a Customer Advocate position at Big Ass Fans whose sole job is to be the voice of the customer within the company. They go through and read every survey and communicate with other departments and employees to make changes and reinforce behavior.Companies need to train and support their customer service agents for those agents to provide exceptional service to their customers.About: Brian Sprinkle is the Global Customer Service Manager at Big Ass Fans, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-volume, low-speed fans. 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. Quote: “If you can keep your employees happy, they’re extremely likely to make customers happy.” – Brian Sprinkle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews Ryan Minton. They discuss his new book, “Thanks for Coming in Today,” the hospitality industry, employee and customer appreciation, and the concept of aggressive hospitality. In Shep’s Opening Monologue... He discusses current trends in the digital customer service world. The Interview with Ryan Minton:Having employees with a mentality of hospitality is always preferable to having employees with technical know-how.A successful business comes not only from having happy customers, but from having happy employees.Make a habit of showing appreciation to everyone in your business—employees, colleagues, and customers. Appreciation goes a long way.Operate with “aggressive hospitality.” Good customer service isn’t passive; it’s active, and you need to pursue it.Look forward to opportunities where you get to be someone’s first boss and use those opportunities to mentor your employees in the ways of good customer service. You get to establish what it means to be great manager or leader.Eliminate the phrase, “let me check with my manager” by giving your employees the tools and trust to handle issues.Empathy is crucial in delivering a positive customer experience. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and allow that to drive your customer service.About: Charles Ryan Minton is a customer service and employee experience expert, keynote speaker, author of, Thanks for Coming in Today: Creating a Culture Where Employees Thrive & Customer Service is Alive, and the president of CRM Hospitality & Consulting, LLC. 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. Quote:  “Take care of the employees, and they’ll take care of the customer.” – Ryan Minton  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews Mark Samuel. They discuss Mark’s new book, which outlines how to achieve success by breaking down silos, creating a vision of success, and emphasizing behaviors over outcomes.  In Shep’s Opening Monologue... He addresses the age-old assertion that “the customer is always right” and argues that “the customer is NOT always right. The Interview with Mark Samuel:Mark’s book, B STATE: A New Roadmap for Bold Leadership, Brave Culture, and Breakthrough Results, details a paradigm shift that will lead individuals and companies to success. It’s about getting from point A to point B of success. To get to point B, you must first create a vision of what that B state is for you, then allow that to pull you along rather than trying to push yourself from the A state.By focusing on middle management, cultural changes will trickle down to other areas of company, promoting growth and success.There needs to be a level of human connection and concern in every interaction, and this begins internally in all organizations. More often than not, companies that are rated as good places to work will also be rated positively for their customer service.The customer service industry is changing rapidly. To manage these changes, organizations need to not only handle problems in the present but forecast and strategize for future problems that may arise. The company needs to support the customer through these changes to ensure loyalty.Maintain your own “service consciousness.” When you operate from a mindset of being in service to those around you, it will build positive service habits and ultimately help you deliver exceptional customer service. Find the joy in giving service and making genuine human connections.About: Mark Samuel is the founder and CEO of IMPAQ and has over 30 years of experience working with major companies around the world. His most recent book is B STATE: A New Roadmap for Bold Leadership, Brave Culture, and Breakthrough Results. 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. Quote:  “Are you of service consciousness, or are you just doing a customer service job?” - Mark Samuel  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Striking a Balance Between Technology and Human Connection Shep Hyken interviews Rebecca Martin. They discuss the role of technology in customer service, how emotion can drive customer loyalty, and how marketers and contact center workers can help each other in building the ideal customer journey. In Shep’s Opening Monologue... He gives advice on how to create an amazing customer experience. His number one suggestion (right now) is to start with the culture of the company and the employee experience. The Interview with Rebecca Martin:Companies want to insert emotion into the customer experience. Emotion, or human connection, is what drives customer loyalty.There needs to be a balance between technology and human connection. Too much reliance on technology can make customers feel displaced.Chatbots and similar technologies are not replacing call center agents. By handling first-level calls, they are elevating the role of agents. This creates more of a career path within contact centers.There is a higher call volume with more difficult problems reaching contact center agents. Companies need to reflect this change with improved training for their agents, so they can effectively and efficiently handle more difficult calls.The phone is not dead in the support/contact center; it is simply used for different purposes.The top three things that drive customer loyalty are quality products, action from the company in response to a complaint, and ease and efficiency of contacting the company. However, if the last two aren’t in place, customers will take their business elsewhere – even if the product is good.About: Rebecca Martin is the Chief Marketing Officer at Calabrio, a customer engagement analytics software company. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the emerging technology industry. 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. Quote: “There’s a time and a place for digital interaction. There is always a place for human interaction.” - Rebecca Martin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews Claire Boscq-Scott. They discuss the importance of a workplace culture of caring and how it can positively impact the customer experience. Shep’s Opening Monologue In Shep’s opening monologue, he elaborates upon the idea of amazing your employees so that they, in turn, can amaze your customers. The Interview with Claire Boscq-Scott:Every employee needs to understand their role as it applies to the customer experience, even if they have no direct contact with the customer.What is felt on the inside of a company by its employees will be felt on the outside by its customers--that’s why it is crucial to create and foster a culture of caring.Claire starts the relationship with her clients with a company audit that addresses three important issues:          1. The first thing to examine is the work environment. Claire audits the environment and implements changes to make it more pleasant to both workers and customers. If the environment is pleasing and inviting, then employees will want to come to work and customers will want to spend money.           2. The second area of focus is your employees. They need to understand the entire map of the customer journey and how they fit into the bigger picture of the customer experience. If they feel that their company cares about them, they will be more loyal and their performance will be better.           3. The third thing is, of course, the customers themselves. The goal is to create a positive, unforgettable customer experience every single time. Being too focused on results can sacrifice the caring aspect of your business. This will ultimately prove detrimental to the customer experience and to your business. About: Claire Boscq Scott is a speaker, trainer, “coachsultant,” self-described “busy queen bee,” and author of the recent book Thriving by Caring. 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. Quote:  “If there are no customers, there’s no business!” - Claire Boscq-Scott Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews Skip Prichard. They discuss Skip’s new book, The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future, which details the most common mistakes people make in their professional and personal lives. Shep’s Opening Monologue Shep’s opening monologue addresses the question of how new technologies have changed--and haven’t changed--customer service. The Interview with Skip Prichard:Skip wrote The Book of Mistakes for people who are in transition and/or seeking success in their lives.Skip wrote the book as a novel rather than a nonfiction piece, because stories are remembered 22 times more than facts. When backed up by story, facts are more engaging to a reader or audience.Skip shared several of the nine mistakes: The first mistake is “working on someone else’s dream.” It is crucial to find your own unique purpose in life and think about your identity. If you pursue this, you will find more fulfillment in your work.The second mistake is “allowing someone else to define your value.” The nickel analogy helps explain this: nickels cost ten cents to make, but they are worth only five cents because they are stamped with that value.The third mistake people make is “accepting excuses.” Not only do we have a habit of accepting the excuses of others, we create and accept excuses for ourselves. The only excuses that are valid come from things we have no control over.Skip’s team went from being last in the country to first when he asked them what they liked doing best and then incorporated their answers into their jobs. When people pursue things they are passionate about, their work performance drastically improves.Be aware of how you define yourself and how you define your competition. It is crucial to bypass limitations that are placed upon you by others if you want to succeed.About: Skip Prichard is an accomplished CEO, growth-oriented business leader, and keynote speaker. He is also the author of The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future. 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. Quote: “Your purpose is completely unique to you. How do you design your life to fulfill that purpose?” - Skip Prichard  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken interviews contact center expert Chrissy Cowell. They discuss the concept of the “gig economy,” the utilization of contact centers for freelance employee management, and how on-demand agents can provide cost-effective support and solutions for your customers and your business. Top Takeaways:The workforce industry is migrating to the gig economy (also known as the freelance economy), which describes the increasing preference in society for convenience and instant gratification. Businesses have an increased tendency to hire independent contractors and short-term workers, while workers have an increased availability for these types of contracts.In a gig-type model, the need to fully understand your business and forecast its needs is crucial. Third-party contact centers can help large companies navigate freelance workforce management.Resources for freelance workers include Fiverr and Upwork. Freelancers can post their skills and services on these websites, and employers can search the database to find an worker that will fulfill their needs.Gig workers can be a less expensive option to fill gaps in the workforce, allowing organizations to avoid things like payroll taxes and benefits for part-timers.There is difference in impact between the gig worker and the full-time employee. If you’re not forecasting and scheduling gig workers appropriately, it could become a cost for your business. However, when done right, gig workers can prove a very cost-effective way to provide customer support.The gig economy appeals to young workers because it gives them more control over their careers, great experience, more exposure, and faster networking. This allows for better work-life balance, which is a priority for many millennials and Gen Z workers. About: Chrissy Cowell is the Director for Work Force Optimization Product Management at Aspect. Across her 18 year career in the contact center industry, she has worked with various WFOs and BPOs in addition to assuming other roles such as account director, consultant, marketing manager, and quality manager. 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. Quote: “It’s important to make on-demand gig employees feel engaged and provide motivation to keep them involved and engaged in your business.” – Chrissy Cowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken sits down with his longtime friend, Dr. Willie Jolley and discuss the strategies he used to help Ford avoid bankruptcy, why you and your organization should be constantly improving, and the 10 Commandments of Superior Service. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •Dr. Jolley shared five key points great CEO’s focus on in their organizations: Always develop leaders at every level of your organization.Help people understand change is not the enemy, it’s an ally.Don’t have good customer service, have wild customer service.Think like a team and work as a team so you can win like a team.Always grow your attitude and constantly get better.•In his book, Make Love, Make Money, Make It Last!, he talks about keeping the romance alive in your marriage. You should treat your customers the same way by always wooing them and keeping the romance alive by going the extra mile. •Dr. Jolley has 10 commandments of superior service: Thou shalt serve with a smileThou shalt go the extra mileThou shalt greet, speak and be real sweetThou shalt say thank you and please a lot - A LOTThou shalt be willing to apologize quicklyThou shalt anticipate the needs of your customers and clientsDo what is necessary, not what is comfortableThou shalt take responsibilityThou shalt lighten the linesThou shalt constantly improve and practice the CANEI principle.•The CANEI principle stands for Constant And Never Ending Improvement. Everyone in an organization must adopt an attitude in which they strive to be better today than yesterday. •In his book, Dr. Jolley shares his philosophy of Up-Thinking, which means: Think up, show up, stand up, step up, and make up your mind to win. ABOUT: Dr. Willie Jolley is an award-winning speaker, singer, best-selling author, and media personality. He’s spoken for companies like Ford, Wal-Mart, GM, Comcast, Verizon, and Marriott. He latest book is An Attitude of Excellence: Get The Best From Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization. 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. QUOTE: “Great people give great service, good people give good service, mediocre people give mediocre service, and negative people will kill your organization.” - Dr. Willie Jolley  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken sits down with Ty Collins. They discussed how to raise your prices without losing customers, why you should be transparent, and how to give customers the best experience possible. TOP TAKEAWAYS:  Shep’s Opening Monologue:In Shep’s opening monologue he answers the question, what is the difference between a loyalty program and a marketing program?The Interview with Ty Collins:In July 2018, a 25% import tariff forced Rad Power Bikes to increase their prices. Because they created a unique experience and were transparent with their customers about the price increase, this did not affect sales.Rad Power Bikes decided to share their opinion about the trade tariffs publicly. This didn’t make every customer happy, but because they expressed their situation diplomatically, they were able to set the narrative and jump ahead of the issue.Because their customer experience and tech support teams are so passionate and fired up about their industry, it wasn’t difficult for Rad Power Bikes to convey the correct message to their customers.Ty likes to sit in with his customer experience team, answer customer emails, and listen to phone calls. No matter what your position is, everybody needs to spend a little time on the front line to hear the real voice of the customer.Most of Rad Power Bike customers never see the bikes in person before making a purchase. It’s the CX team’s job to ease the customer's concerns, build trust, and give them a memorable experience.Providing good CX doesn’t mean always saying yes. There will be times when you have to make hard decisions and say things the customer isn’t going to want to hear at the moment.ABOUT: Ty Collins is the Co-founder and CMO of Rad Power Bikes. He helped increase the company’s revenue to over $40M in just four years despite trade tariffs that forced him to raise his prices. 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. QUOTE: “Some of our greatest customer advocates are customers who’ve had issues that have been resolved. ” - Ty Collins  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shep Hyken sits down with Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. They discuss why you should be proactive instead of reactive, how the subscription model is shaping customer loyalty, and why making your customers happy is no longer enough.  Shep Hyken’s opening monologue is about consistency. Three important points:Your product has to meet the customer s needs every time.Your omni-channel presence must have a consistent experience.The attitude of the employees must be consistent.Top Takeaways:You have to proactively ensure that you’re delivering success to your customers. If you wait until they call you to voice their complaints, it may be too late.Because of the subscription model and the numerous options available to consumers, they don’t have to be loyal to any one company. If you can’t deliver your customer’s desired outcome, they will find someone else who can.Keeping your customers happy isn’t enough anymore. Today, they have to get more value from you than they can get anywhere else. This is why Jeff Bezos says he isn’t scared of his competitors. He’s scared of his customers, because they have the choice to leave every day.Companies are realizing that they need somebody whose job is to ensure customers are getting maximum value. According to LinkedIn, the third fastest growing job title in 2018 is Customer Success Manager.You have to proactively ensure your customers are achieving their desired outcome. Three ways to do that are:Start at the beginning of the process by on-boarding the customer and getting them up to speed on how to use your product/service.Ask them what it will take for them to continue doing business with you in the future.Reach out to them over time to make sure they’re getting value and reaching their desired outcomes.About: Nick Mehta is the CEO of Gainsight. In his six years as CEO, he’s secured over $156 million in funding, expanded the employee base to over 500 employees, and been recognized as the third best SAAS CEO out of 5,000 nominees. He also co-authored the book Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn And Growing Recurring Revenue. 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

Annette Franz returns to Amazing Business Radio to discuss becoming more customer-centric, how to understand your ideal customer, and journey mapping. Top Takeaways:The only way you’re going to design a product or service that customers will want and need is to understand their pain points, what problems they’re trying to solve, and what they’re trying to do.Creating a product is grounded in data, insight and customer understanding. Customer understanding can be achieved in three ways:            Listen: Listening to the channels your customers are on and “listen” to existing customer data.Characterize: Developing personas instead of target demographics or segments.Empathize: Walk in your customers' shoes and create a journey map Instead of always ending the customer experience with the survey, you can take an extra step by listening to your customers on places like social media. The goal is to be where your customers are when they want to provide feedback.A Persona is a researched-based representation of your ideal customer. Organizations can have multiple personas for customers that have similar preferences, likes, needs, and pain points.Five reasons why every organization should journey map:                                                         1. There’s no better way to understand the experience, what’s going right and what’s going wrong.                  2. Journey mapping helps you design new and better experiences.                  3. They are great communication and training tools for employees. You can use journey maps to train employees on what the experience should look like and align your organization around the customer.                  4. Journey maps allow you to show instead of tell, which increases your chance of getting an executive commitment towards CX transformation.                  5. Journey maps give employees who don’t usually interact with customers a clear line of sight to the customer. About: Annette Franz is the CEO of CX Journey. For the last 25 years, she’s helped companies understand their employees, customers, and what drives engagement and retention. 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

Shep Hyken sat down with Tien Tzuo to talk about the subscription model and how companies like Salesforce, Uber, and Caterpiller are helping to make it the future of business.  Top Takeaways:The subscription economy is a phrase coined to describe the idea that people don’t have to buy products anymore to meet their everyday needs or to get from Point A to Point B. It allows companies to switch from selling products to selling a service that consumers can use while transforming an industry for the better.The subscription model is a win-win for customers and businesses. For businesses: It scales better, is easier to run, and guarantees recurring revenue. For the customer, it’s less expensive and more convenient.To jump into the subscription economy, start with a view of what your customers are doing with you and track all of the usage and interactions. This allows you to understand how you can broaden your footprint with the customer and create a more meaningful relationship.Anybody can take your product, reverse engineer it, and offer a clone to their customers. If your competitive advantage isn’t based on your product but instead your knowledge of what your customers are doing and the relationships you have with them, that is a much stronger position to be in.About: Tien Tzuo is the CEO and founder of Zuora. Previously, he was the 11th employee of Salesforce working as the Chief Strategy Officer and CMO for eight years. He’s also the bestselling author of Subscribe: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future and What to do About It. 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Dan Schawbel to discuss how to use technology as a bridge to a strong customer and employee connection. Top Takeaways:We are addicted and reliant on technology, so much that it gets in the way of building real human connections. Human connections matter.Use technology to remove tedious tasks you don’t want to do, and let it lead you to places you can connect in a human way.If you’re in a business meeting or networking event, put your technology away and be present with the people you’re with.Customer service operations are increasingly reliant on technology to scale, save money and remove human error. This is a big mistake because the human touch will always be important, regardless of what technology does.85% of the global workforce is disengaged. To engage your employees, create an experience where they do meaningful work with people who are supportive of them.Consumers want options to connect with you and flexibility with how they interact with your company. You have to meet them where they are and how they want to interact with you. It’s less about you and more about them, their choices and how they want to do business.You must be empathetic towards what customers and employees are going through. People are suffering and are challenged in many ways that you may not physically see.About: Dan Schawbel is the research director of Future Workplace and managing partner of Millennial Branding. He’s also a keynote speaker and NYT bestselling author. His new book is Back To Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection In The Age Of Isolation. 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Christa Heibel to discuss the role the c-suite level plays in creating a CX strategy, how to keep track of your omnichannel presence, and how to measure and improve your customer experience strategy. Top Takeaways:Christa says she has yet to find a successful customer service initiative that didn’t involve the C-suite level. It starts with the leadership defining and driving the customer experience initiative and permeates through the entire organization.Christa defines customer experience as any touchpoint between a brand, message, or logo and the consumer all the way through the sales, service, and support process.One of the biggest consumer demands is turn around time. How quickly you respond to emails, answer phone calls, and ship products are all part of the customer experience.You’ll see significant improvement and change to your customer experience initiative when the C-Suite gets involved from the beginning by creating priority, strategy, communication, expectations, and budget.Your customer experience initiative is an ongoing process that must be measured and refined over time.Omnichannel means offering the consumer their preferred channels and methods to communicate with your company. Customers expect companies they do business with to support communication through multiple channels.About: Christa Heibel is the founder of CH Consulting Group, a firm that helps organizations execute and implement contact center and customer experience strategies. For the last 25 years, Christa has dominated the contact center as an influencer and C-suite business growth and strategy expert. 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Sam Stern. They discussed Sam’s research on why giving employees monetary incentives for providing good customer experiences is a bad idea. Top Takeaways: Two years of Sam’s research shows monetary incentives for providing good customer experiences distracts your employees from improving their experience delivery. Instead, they focus on themselves instead of the customer.Sam recommends moving incentives into your employees base pay. If you hire someone to deliver a good customer experience, it should be part of their job description and be reflected in their salary.How a customer remembers an experience will be guided by two factors:The peak moment in that experience, whether it was good or bad.How the experience ended. If you end an experience with a long drawn out survey or an unauthentic pitch to leave a good review, that last experience will be the most salient in the customer’s mind.Sam shared five myths about monetary customer experience incentives and why they’re a bad idea.Signal Myth: A monetary incentive for good CX doesn’t say, “We value great customer experience and our loyal customers above all else. It says, “We value it as much as everything else we have a monetary incentive for.”Control Myth: Companies create boring workplaces with too many rules and restrictions. They then blame employees for being bored and “lazy”.Effectiveness Myth: Even if money influences good behaviors, it’ll only work in the short term and for discreet tasks that rarely make a great customer experience.Motivation Myth: People love to make money, but they aren’t motivated by it beyond their needs being met. Making progress on important work, getting things done that matter, and connecting with peers matter is also important.Retooling Myth: Employees are creative and will always find a way to game any incentive system. You will constantly have to refine and update it to get rid of the bad behaviors the incentives create.About: Sam Stern is a principal analyst at Forrester’s customer experience research practice. His research focuses on customer-centric culture, employee engagement, and deploying different research techniques to create better experiences. Sam is also the host of CX Cast, Forrester’s weekly customer experience podcast. 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

 Shep Hyken sits down with Jason Bradshaw to talk about his new book, It’s All About CEX: The Essential Guide to Customer and Employee Experience. They also discuss the compounding effect of being 1% better, how customers and employees measure success, and how to build a community of champions.  Top Takeaways:If you focus on improving the customer and employee experience just 1% every day, it’s going to compound into an amazing experience for your employees and customers.Every company focuses on the lifetime value of a customer, but Jason says you should also think about the lifetime value of an employee.What costs more, training your employees, only for them to leave, or risking customers interacting with untrained employees?Customers and employees measure their experience across three key pillars:Success: Could they achieve what they wanted toEase: Could they achieve it with the amount of effort or less than what they expectedConnection: The emotional connection an employee feelsYou don’t have to spend 12 months mapping out the customer journey before you start improving the CX. If you just focus on the feedback you already have from customers and employees, you’ll know where you need to start.A leaders job isn't to do everything. It’s to build a community of people who are committed to the common cause. You can’t improve the employee and customer experience by yourself. About: Jason Bradshaw is the Chief Customer Officer at Volkswagon Group Australia. He created his first business at fourteen, selling telecommunications and computer equipment. Jason’s tested and implemented strategies can be found in his new book It’s All About CEX. He reveals how to generate positive experiences for your customers and employees, win their loyalty, and maximize your profits in the process. 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Keith Alper to talk about his new book, From Like to Love. They discuss how to create a loving employee culture, the five basic needs of employees, and what millennials want in the workplace.  Top Takeaways: Keith says that employees have five basic needs. Successful organizations with great employee engagement and culture share a lot of these five basic needs.As an employer, you genuinely care about me.I trust you and you trust me.You listen to me.You appreciate me for who I am and you tell me so.We share a meaningful purpose.Meeting your employees’ basic needs and creating a loving employee culture is a 24/7 commitment from the top all the way down through the organization.Millennials are collaborative and think in groups and tribes. Being able to view their peers in the workplace as a family is important and will move them from like to love.Since people spend most of their time at work, it’s not all about the money. They also care about sharing a meaningful purpose and making the world a better place.Ask your employees what they love and what they don’t love. Two of Keith’s employees at CPG (Keith’s company) said the maternity policy was outdated. Because of their great culture, they were comfortable enough to voice their concerns and a change was made in less than 48 hours.When someone comes to CPG’s office in St. Louis, Missouri, Keith wants them to be in love with what they experience on their visit. CPG puts their names up in lights, music plays, and there’s great food and gifts. Keith wants their clients to love CPG because they love them. About: Keith Alper is the CEO of CPG Agency, which specializes in corporate and employee engagement. Keith has over 30 years of expertise in marketing, communications, event production, entertainment, and strategic leadership. His book From Like To Love draws on real-life examples to present his proven process for turning any organization from appreciated to adored. 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Sean McDade. They discussed how to create a consistent customer experience, why you should listen to your customers (and what to do with what they tell you), and how you can create a customer-centric organization. Top Takeaways: Sean defines being customer-centric as, “Consistently listening to customers and empowering your organization to take what customers are saying and do something about it.”Simply listening to your customers isn’t enough. You have to align your organization to enable people to take action towards putting the customer at the center of your company.Great companies who get great ROI out of listening to customers follow up on every bad customer experience. They find out what went wrong and they make it right with that customer. Then they fix the common reasons that caused those bad experiences so that they might not happen again.The customer experience is everything the customer experiences with your company. This includes people, employees, products/services, and websites. A good customer experience has consistency across all touchpoints that a customer has with an organization.If a customer has a positive experience with your organization, ask them who provided that good experience and what they did. This will allow you to recognize good people within your organization and duplicate their positive actions.About: Sean McDade Ph.D. is the CEO and founder of PeopleMetrics. For over 20 years, he’s helped companies get closer to their customers by systematically listening and improving the experience. He wrote the book Listen Or Die: 40 Lessons That Turn Customer Feedback Into Gold. 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

Shep Hyken shares Six Convenience Principles from his latest book, The Convenience Revolution that will either disrupt the market or be disrupted. You don’t have to compete with all six convenience principles but if you can’t find one or two areas where your organization can raise its game, prepare to be disrupted! Top Takeaways:6 Convenience PrinciplesReduce Friction – Make doing business with you as easy as possible.Self-service – Let your customers control the transaction/interaction.Technology – Create new processes, tools and ways of interacting that make life easier for customers.Subscription – Establish automated, scheduled delivery of products and services that people use on a regular basis.Delivery – Bring the product to the customer, rather than making the customer go to the product.Access – Be available to your customers by location and/or hours of operation.About: 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. To learn more about the latest book visit www.BeConvenient.com. This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more: What is the most convenient company to do business with?How can I use convenience to create better customer experiences?How can I be more convenient to create a better customer experience?How can I disrupt my competition?How can I take my customer service to the next level? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top Takeaways: Doug shared five traits that can improve your customer service skills in 30 days or less. He calls them the Nice Guy 30:Return Every Phone CallReturn Every E-MailDeliver Every PromiseBe on Time, Every TimeConnect Twice a DayA Journey Map is the representation of the entire customer experience, from their first interaction with your organization to becoming a customer or referrer and every interaction in between.Journey mapping allows you to visually represent the experience the customer has throughout the entire process of doing business with you. It can help your management, the people working for your organization and even your customers.Journey mapping allows you to see where your customers are having friction points and where you're having internal friction caused by employee overlap. Once you’ve identified a potential problem, it becomes easier to fix.Consider including your customers in the journey mapping process, because they can look at things from a different perspective. It’s important you speak with happy customers as well as angry “ex” customers.Doug shared a “risk-quadrant” that allows organizations to determine the risk and value of specific steps along the customer journey. Do your best to add low-risk, high-value opportunities and eliminate high-risk, low-value opportunities.High-risk, low-value A high-risk, low-value opportunity is a place where your customer is likely to get stuck in your system and not be satisfied with the end result.Low-risk, high-value A low-risk, high-value opportunity is easy for you to do and it enhances the customer experience. About: Doug Sandler is a nationally recognized speaker and writer. In 2015, he published the award-winning book Nice Guys Finish First. Currently, Doug is the CEO of Turnkey Podcast Productions. Because of his expertise, he also helps organizations create effective journey maps that improve the customer experience. 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. Quote:  “Never ignore the comments that your frontline is making. They are a critical component to improving your customer experience.” - Doug Sandler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Take Time to Properly Motivate Your Team Shep Hyken sits down with Gregg Lederman to talk about his new book, Crave: You Can Enhance Employee Motivation in 10 Minutes by Friday (https://www.amazon.com/Crave-Enhance-Employee-Motivation-Minutes/dp/0979587514). They discussed how to replicate your best people and give them the happiness and motivation they crave and deserve. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •Your employees' attitudes and actions are affected by the three things they crave the most: 1. Respect: Respect them for who they are and what they do. 2. Purpose: Give them purpose, help them see that there’s meaning in their work and show them that what they do has an impact. 3. Relationship: Build a trusting and happy relationship with their leadership. •In less than 10 minutes a week, you can replicate what your best people are thinking, saying and doing by recognizing what you want to see more of and spotting the moments where your core values are in action. •There are three chemicals that Gregg calls the happy threesome of brain chemicals; dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. They can increase employee happiness and motivation. •Recognition accelerates results. The first result is employee engagement. Employee engagement drives the work culture, and the work culture drives the customer experience. •Gregg shared a five-step process for building any habit, specifically the habit of recognizing employees: 1. Decide why it’s important to you. 2. Create the routines and schedule it in your calendar. 3. Determine any obstacles that may get in the way (time). 4. Focus on the personal and business benefits of forming this habit. 5. Track your effort daily. ABOUT: Gregg Lederman is an author, speaker, and the president of employee engagement for Reward Gateway. Gregg’s valuable insights are documented in his books Achieve Brand Integrity, Engaged, and his upcoming book, Crave. 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

National Customer Service Week Is About Customers AND Employees Shep Hyken sits down with Bill Gessert to talk about National Customer Service Week (October 1-5, 2018). They discussed 10 ways to celebrate the week-long event, how to create an employee-centric culture, and how to get C-suite executives involved in the everyday culture. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •The International Customer Service Association started National Customer Service Week (NCSW) in 1984 because they wanted to create a meaningful way to recognize the work people do and the impact it has on the customer experience. •In 2018, NCSW will be held on the first week of October. The theme this year is Exceeding Expectations, Every Customer, Every Time. •The people that provide customer service need to get recognized in order to re-energize their customer-centric focus. National Customer Service Week is a great way to have a positive impact on employee engagement. •There are employees that your customers never meet who have a profound impact on your customers’ overall experience. •Organizations that focus on creating a sustainable culture that is employee-centric will eventually become customer-centric. •Bill shared ten ways to recognize and celebrate the value employees bring to the customer experience during NCSW. A few of them included hosting a kickoff breakfast, having C-suite executives trade places with employees, and writing handwritten thank you notes to employees. ABOUT: Bill Gessert is the VP of business growth at Premiere Response and the President of the International Customer Service Association (ICSA). 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 adopt a hospitality mentality within your organization. Shep Hyken sits down with his friend and restaurateur Kim Tucci. They discussed “the hospitality mentality”, how to hire good people and ways to reduce employee turnover. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •You won’t always exceed the customer’s expectations, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try at every opportunity. •Kim defines the hospitality mentality in three words, “Anything, most friendly.” This means that you are going to do anything for your guest in the most friendly atmosphere, all of the time. •90% of a good customer experience is about your attitude. If you have a quality product, a fair price, and good service, the only missing piece is a good attitude. •Not everything goes well all the time, but how you handle that situation greatly affects the customer experience and their desire to come back. •When hiring new employees, Kim looks at the way people carry themselves, their mindset, and their trainability. Experience doesn’t matter as much, because they’re going to train people the way they want to, regardless. •Your mission statement should only be three words. For The Pasta House, Kim created the mission statement, “Bend Over Backward”, or B.O.B. Every year, Kim creates B.O.B goals around this mission and rewards employees for a job well done. ABOUT: Kim Tucci, a local legend in St. Louis, Missouri, has been in the restaurant business for 45 years. Before moving into the restaurant industry, he was a teacher for 13 years. His experiences as a waiter and Maitre d’ at a five-star Italian restaurant paved the way for his current occupation. Today, Kim owns a well-known restaurant chain in St. Louis called The Pasta House. 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

Why (and How) to Put Your Customers at the Center of Your Decisions Shep Hyken sits down with his close friend, colleague and customer service expert Buddy Rice. They discussed how he helped Delta Airlines with their customer service culture, what customers are really looking for, and the RATER service quality model. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •Customers aren’t always looking for money or a “yes” to fix their problems. They want a professional that can give them options and solutions to their specific issues. •In certain industires, especially in the airline industry, people are willing to pay extra to be guaranteed better levels of comfort. •Empowered companies have employees with the ability to make a decision that’s right for the customer. If you put the customer at the center of your decision, you cannot go wrong. •RATER is an acronym and model that can help you measure and improve service quality. It stands for: •Reliability: Getting it right the first time •Assurance: Keeping your word •Tangibles: Giving your products/services the best look and feel •Empathy: Understanding and caring about people •Responsiveness: Having a sense of urgency •Creating an organizational mission statement starts at the top with the leadership. The six-step process of creating a vision can be described by The Six D’s, which are: •Define: Leadership defines it •Disseminate: Tell everybody •Deploy: Train people on that vision, and constantly train them over them over and over again. •Demonstrate: The leadership is the role model •Defend it: If somebody or a group is out of alignment •Delight: Celebrate it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Techniques from the stage to optimize the patient/customer experience Shep Hyken sits down with Dr. Bob Baker. They discussed his new book The Performance Of Medicine, how Bob relates his experiences as a magician and doctor to customer service, and how to optimize the customer/patient experience. There is a lot that anyone and any business can learn from Dr. Bob! TOP TAKEAWAYS: • Bob shared four basic techniques that all performers use to create connections with customers. They are: 1. Listening and observing - Listen to what the other person is saying and respond with your full attention. At that moment, be the best version of yourself that you can be. 2. Being in the moment - You want your customer to think that you’re only there for them at that moment. Being present in the moment is the only part of the interaction that you have complete control over. The way you maintain that is by… 3. Staying in character - The character you have to play is the best version of yourself. That character is different than who you are at home or in social settings. 4. Act as if - If you act in a certain way, you will feel it, then you will become it. Act like there is no place that you’d rather be than with that customer. • As a doctor, thinking of people as just patients isn’t enough. It’s the experience that they get that will cause them to come back and refer friends to you. • Bad things are going to happen, the lesson is to own them. Hospitals (and businesses) can decrease malpractice suits (and lost customers) by taking the following steps: 1. Owning their mistake 2. Explaining the mistake to the victim family 3. Explaining what steps the hospital will take to prevent it from happening again 4. Offering some form of compensation ABOUT: Dr. Bob Baker is a retired gastroenterologist. Before medicine, he performed as a professional magician and ventriloquist. He even was a contestant on America’s Got Talent. His experiences in both medicine and performance gave him the knowledge and wisdom that he shared in his book, The Performance Of Medicine. (https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Medicine-Techniques-Experience-Practicing/dp/0999616900) 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

Get smarter about building your company’s future. Shep Hyken sits down with Tiffani Bova, the global growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. They discussed her new book Growth IQ, what the carnival can teach you about business, and the 10 simple paths of business growth. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •While growing up in Hawaii, Tiffani worked in a roaming carnival. She learned many valuable lessons about business such as hiring, firing, employee motivation, and customer experience. •According to Tiffani, you can boil down business growth to ten paths. Successful companies are able to maximize at least one of these ten growth paths. •Growth comes down to three things: 1. The context of the market in which someone chose a particular path. 2. The combination of what they did around multiple growth paths. 3. The sequence of how they actually did those things. Context, combination, and sequence make or break the decisions companies make. •By making decisions that lean towards customer experience and radical hospitality, companies like Shake Shack are able to differentiate themselves from the competition. •Starbucks suffered a brand crisis when they overwhelmed their customers by expanding too fast and adding many items to their menu that weren’t congruent with their main offering. They brought back CEO Howard Schultz to course-correct by returning to the customer experience path. •Businesses play a huge role in society. They should choose to do well by doing good, putting  purpose over profit, and becoming better stewards of the people in the world. ABOUT: Tiffani Bova is the global growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. She spent ten years at Gartner, where she helped companies like Cisco, IBM, and Oracle capture new growth opportunities, win the eyes of customers, and improve the way they take their products to market. Her new book Growth IQ helps companies get smarter about the choices that will make or break their businesses. (For more info on the book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078G2Z994/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) 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

Putting your customer first by putting your employees first. Shep Hyken sits down with James Dodkins to discuss James’s new book, 136 Ideas For Rockstar Employee Engagement,having an employee mission, and the real definition of customer experience. TOP TAKEAWAYS: • James previous experience as a rockstar in a heavy metal band helped him discover that companies can be customer service rockstars, too. • What happens on the inside of a company will be felt on the outside by the customers. That’s why it’s important that you put your employees first. • Your part of the customer's experience is typically a tiny little piece of a much larger puzzle. There’s a lot more that happens across the whole customer journey. • Giving employees an inspiring, empowering, and memorable mission is one of the best gifts you can give them. Employees want to see that they’re making a positive change in customers lives. • Of the 136 ideas for rockstar employee engagement, a few of James’s favorites include having employees meet their customers, writing personal letters to employee family members, and holding fun employee events, such as a a class on how to make cocktails (named after emplyees and departments). • James shares a heart touching story about how Southwest Airlines truly embodies their mission, “Connecting people to what matters most.” • Rockstars don’t have customers. They have fans. Likewise, rockstar companies don’t just have customers, they have evangelists who are willing to share their experiences. ABOUT: James Dodkins is an author and customer experience rockstar. Before he transitioned into his current occupation, he played guitar in a heavy-metal band. Today, James helps companies like Nike, Disney, and Mercedes improve their employee and customer experiences. 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

Focusing on Business Intelligence and Customer Experience Shep Hyken sits down with Scott Walker, the CEO of ethosIQ,and discuss three levels of customer optimization, finding the correct customer service metrics to focus on, and why companies should give back to their communities. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •Customers don’t mind staying on the phone longer if it means getting their problem solved on the first interaction. This means that metrics like “average handle time” or “time to resolution” can be misleading. •There are three levels where a company may be at in their roadmap to customer optimization. 1. Intermediate/Operations focused 2. Optimized 3. Strategic •You can’t guarantee you’re going to keep your best people forever. However, by doing your best to take care of them, and giving them the opportunity to do what they love to do, they will do what it takes to engage with the customer on a higher level. •When call centers capture and share customer data across their organization in real time, they can leverage this data for the greater good of the company, which can help drive higher profits. ABOUT: Scott Walker is the CEO of ethosIQ. His company uses disparate data to drive the customer journey down to the detail from the cradle to the grave. Before founding ethosIQ in 2009, he worked with companies like Apple, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and Nike. He also started the non-profit Orphans To Executives, which provides much-needed mentor-ship to orphans. 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 any sized business can create customer experience and loyalty. Shep Hyken sits down with Craig McVoy, founder and Chief Experience Officer at Beyond Brand. They discussed Craig’s new book Beyond Brand, the seven customer experience principles every business must follow and the questions you must ask if you want your brand to compete in 2018 and beyond. TOP TAKEAWAYS: •McVoy shares his proven methodology that can help any business, regardless of size, improve their profitability and audience happiness. Not being a big conglomerate or brand shouldn’t stop you from delivering a great experience. •In the omni-channel world we live in, great customer experience is more than just great service on the phone or in store. The experience is an end-to-end feeling the customer has across all touchpoints and channels across the journey. •McVoy states that you cannot deliver a sub-par employee experience and expect your staff to deliver your customers a great experience. 86% of customers say they want to have a meaningful relationship with brands they use. However, 74% of those people said they couldn’t care less if those brands fell of the face of the earth tomorrow. •There are three audiences that brands must be aware of if they want to improve brand loyalty. •Employees - People who work for your brand. •Customers - People who’ve spent money on your product or service. •Community - People who know about your brand, but aren’t an employee or a customer (and have an opinion about you). ABOUT: Craig McVoy is the co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at Beyond Brand. Before Beyond Brand, he spent 25 years helping brands like BMW and Mercedes deliver a better experience to both customers and employees. Currently, while consulting with dozens of brands, he is writing a book titled, Beyond Brand - Why it's the experience that causes people to fall in love with the brand. 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 can you do to create a smoother effortless customer experience? Shep Hyken sits down with Jim Iyoob, the Chief Customer Officer at E-Tech Global Services, to discuss the balance between AI and human interaction and how to deliver a convenient and effortless customer experience. TOP TAKEAWAYS: • In the past, companies owned the narrative and customers had little control. With social media and various omni-channels, the control has transferred to the consumer. Companies like Apple, GoDaddy, and Amazon understand this simple fact and use it to their advantage to gain market share and win customer loyalty. • 89% of customers will stop doing business with you if they have a poor customer service experience. 86% of buyers will pay for a better customer experience. • Throughout history, nothing has changed in customer service from the standpoint that the goal has always been for the customer to walk away saying, “That was a good experience, I’m going to come back.” What has changed is the technology that allows us to offer a different level of service that is faster, more convenient, effortless, and easy. • Jim warns companies against buying technology that makes things easier for themselves without taking into consideration the effect it will have on customers and the agents delivering the experience. ABOUT:Jim Iyoob is Chief Customer Officer at E-Tech Global Services and the author of Delivering Customer Service That Matters. 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 create a customer service culture that solves customers problems, increases revenue, and drives loyalty. Shep Hyken discusses frontline leadership, conflict resolution, and customer loyalty with Jim Rembach, the president of Call Center Coach. TOP TAKEAWAYS: • There are six core reasons why frontline supervisors fail. 1. Lack of interpersonal skills 2. Lack of strategic skills 3. Lack of conflict avoidance skills 4. Lack of trust building skills 5. Poor decision-making skills 6. Poor training • Over 80% of people leave jobs because of their relationship with their frontline supervisor. • In today's business world, frontline supervisors are just as important as senior leadership. They interact with customers and employees day in and day out. • Companies who retain their customers the longest establish an emotional connection with them. This includes (but isn’t limited to) being friendly, knowledgeable, trustworthy, and credible. • When a customer has a complaint, find ways to get alongside the customer instead of butting heads and creating conflict. Ask them questions so that they realize you’re on their side and want to help them solve their problems. • According to research, customers who’ve never had a negative experience with you are not as loyal as customers who’ve had a negative experience that was quickly resolved. ABOUT: Jim Rembach is the president of Call Center Coach. He previously helped AutoZone open their call center, which revolutionized the way stores, customers, and customer service agents interact. He is a founding member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and currently hosts his podcast, the Fast Leader Show. 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 will chat and chatbots transform customer service in the near future? Shep Hyken discusses turning customers into viral promoters, a new customer-focused growth model, and the next phase of automated customer service with Michael Redbord, GM of the Service Hub at Hubspot. TOP TAKEAWAYS: -Redbord shares the five rules of a customer-centric 1) Knowledge of your customer 2) Applying the knowledge 3) Listening and prioritizing 4) Execution 5) Communicating -How to use NPS (Net Promoter Score) to target your best customers, a.k.a. promoters, who are most likely to take the extra time to advocate for you. Then, create a win-win situation for your customers so you can go on the journey of mutual growth together. -Hyken and Redbord both see a trend in customer service becoming more self-service as customers become less patient and want faster access to the answers to their questions. -Redbord urges that making customers more successful is the key to business growth. -The Flywheel model, which takes the traditional business growth model and uses customers to create virality, brand amplification, and scalability. Your customers can be your best marketers and growth engines. -There are three customer-service trends that will likely happen in the future (and already are). 1) Face-to-face communication - As trust diminishes and people feel more disconnected, showing your face is going to be a big deal. 2) Chatbots - People are less patient today, they want answers now, and they expect a 24-hour presence. 3) Self-service - Is an absolute necessity, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How does participation create a customer experience culture? Shep Hyken sits down with Doug Bell, a customer experience consultant and founder and CEO of The Experience Manager, to discuss the benefits of creating a customer experience movement. TOP TAKEAWAYS: -A company customer experience movement starts by giving everyone in the company a way to communicate with leadership. -Customer service must start with a dialogue, giving employees a voice that allows them to share how they want to interact with customers. This process gets everyone engaged, ultimately creating a better customer experience. From the top to bottom everyone has an impact on the customer Someone behind the scenes in the warehouse may never see the customer. But, if they don’t package the product properly and it is damaged when it ships, the customer will have a bad experience when the package is received. Even people that have no contact with the customer can have big impact on the customer -To ensure that employees have a forum to speak to executives about ideas, two things must happen: -Communication must be transparent throughout the entire organization. -Employees should have the ability to share their thoughts anonymously. This allows executives to get the truth to make necessary changes. -There are many ways to begin a customer service initiative. In the beginning, someone must take ownership of the internal customer experience and open up the channels of communication. Employers are tasked with sharing ideas to improve how the company currently operates. Consider using a business social platform that allows employees to share their ideas with the entire company. It creates an open environment ideas are shared in one place. Employees can expand on ideas, share feedback and offer suggestions while executives are able to watch the conversation and learn what employees are thinking. ABOUT: Doug Bell is a customer experience consultant. He is the founder of The Experience Manager, an experience management platform for experience leaders, designers, and producers. 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 can you create strong customer loyalty while staying inspired? Shep Hyken is joined by Marilyn Suttle, conference speaker, bestselling author, and coach, to discuss her new book, Color Their World - The Art of Creating Strong Customer Loyalty. TOP TAKEAWAYS: ● The more automated things become, the more important it is to have strong customer service. Automated features can always go wrong, and when they do, someone has to speak to the customers. ● Reinforcement is just as important as training. If an employee does not have the right attitude or behavior, a leader needs to step in and provide feedback. This reinforcement ensures expectations are met. ● In a team, if you see someone who is excited about customer service, that excitement becomes infectious. This makes a greater impression than a manager approaching a team with tips or encouragement. Hearing from a peer, even if it is constructive feedback, has a better impact on employees. Finding a top performer to train their peers improves the employee experience, which in turn improves the customer experience. ● Suttle’s new book, Color Their World - The Art of Creating Strong Customer Loyalty is not your typical book. It’s actually a coloring book that features a sentence starter on each page. For example, “If my best customers described me, they would likely say _____.” The combination of the two activities, filling in the blank and coloring, creates a unique situation that can improve focus and reduce stress, which helps retention of the answers to these powerful sentence starters. Transparency is key. You must be transparent, honest, and upfront with your customers to build trust. Without that trust, there will be no loyalty. Customers will find someone else if they do not have confidence in your business. ABOUT: Marilyn Suttle is a leading authority in service excellence, business and personal relationships, and content marketing. Her latest book, Color Their World - The Art of Creating Strong Customer Loyalty is available now. 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

Discover the best tools and software to provide a great customer experience. Shep Hyken sits downwith Jackie Gonzalez, Vice President of Operations at PATLive to discuss the best tools and methods for a customer support organization. TOP TAKEAWAYS: • First, some background on PATLive. Some third-party support centers employ thousands of agents, many of whom are overseas. PATLive agents, however, are all located in Tallahassee, Florida. These agents are trained to be like employees of the companies they represent. They provide their clients’ customers with a personalized experience. • Before choosing a tool or software for a support service, an organization must evaluate it for functionality, cost, difficulty, security standards, and other objective factors. With how much tools have changed, however, there are more higher-level factors to consider, including a balance between a tool’s functionality and the message and brand of an organization. • Evaluating the internal tools in addition to the external tools is very important. If the internal tools being used are outdated or difficult to use, it creates a negative in-house operation and frustrates employees. These frustrations can, in turn, lead to a negative customer experience. • Gonzalez shared eight tools PATLive uses that have improved their support center operation: 1. KnowledgeOwl: a knowledge management tool that keeps internal information organized in one place 2. Articulate 360: lets trainers quickly create online courses that are used to train employees 3. Slack: allows for easy communication and collaboration between team members 4. Trello: a project management tool allowing team members to organize and prioritize information 5. LiveChat Inc.: a live chat software tool allowing agents to chat with customers 6. Formstack: allows anybody to create an online web form to collect information and convert into workflows 7. Sprout Social: a social media management tool 8. Tresta: a phone system that records calls for quality assurance purposes • Though tools are necessary for customer support, you cannot let tools get in the way of creating a good employee and customer experience. To engage another person on a personal level, the tool should just be in the background for additional support. Traditional customer service principles must be the priority. ABOUT: Jackie Gonzalez is the Vice President of Operations at PATLive, the number one rated answering service since 1990. PATLive has a team of live receptionists who ensure great customer service. 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

Are you ready for a customer service or brand crisis? Shep Hyken discusses handling and preparing for a customer service or brand crisis with Melissa Agnes, the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World. TOP TAKEAWAYS • Melissa explains that ever since she was a kid in Montreal, she’s had the ability to spot and mitigate potential risk. This skill came into play ten years ago when social media first began to rise. While everyone was talking about how great social media was, her mind immediately thought of the risks it presented. She calls this her “a-ha” moment. • Being “crisis ready” means: o The entire organization knows what risk looks like and how to detect it. o They understand how to assess the impact of risks on their brand: is it a crisis or is it an issue? o They can manage the crisis in a manner that still builds stakeholder trust and credibility. • A crisis is a negative event stopping business-as-usual because it extends to the top of the organization and has potential long-term negative impact on people, the environment, business operations, the organization’s reputation, and/or the organization’s bottom line. An issue, however, does not have the risk of a long-term impact. While an issue can go viral, it does not necessarily become a crisis. • Crisis Response Penalty (CRP), a term coined by Melissa, looks at the short-term and long-term monetary and reputation impact a crisis has on a brand due to that brand’s poor and ineffective response. The longer it takes for a business to provide an effective response, the more credibility and trust you lose, the more control of the narrative you lose, and the higher CRP you have. • In order to become crisis ready for something that has not occurred before, Melissa says though we cannot predict exactly how a situation will happen, we can consider the possibilities of a high-risk scenario where an employee goes rogue or does something wrong that can potentially go viral. For example, an employee may be involved with a sexual harassment issue or make an inappropriate response to a social media post. Additionally, taking societal trends into consideration, including the staggering amount of racial discrimination occurring in retail, coffee shops, etc., allows business to know the likelihood that something will go wrong or against the brand’s values. • To respond to a crisis in a way that is emotionally intelligent, a business must put people first. • There is no circumstance when “no comment” is an acceptable response. It goes completely against putting the customer first. A “no comment” response can lead to mistrust and cause customers to choose another brand. If you are crisis-prepared, you already have a comment ready. ABOUT: Melissa Agnes is a leading authority on crisis management and preparedness. Her book, Crisis Ready, published in March 2018, details how organizations can implement a crisis ready culture. 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 can you separate yourself from the competition? Shep Hyken is joined by Gigi Butler, the founder of Gigi’s Cupcakes, the largest cupcake franchise in the world, to discuss how she differentiated herself from the competition. TOP TAKEAWAYS: • Branding is the experience a company offers, and to get people on board with a brand, a strong, passionate leader is necessary, along with a product people can connect with. In Butler’s case, she wants people to see, smell, and taste the passion she has for her cupcakes, whose recipes were passed down from generation to generation. • For Gigi’s Cupcakes, Butler wanted each cupcake to have its own personality, so her customers receive an immediate feeling, producing a memory. This is what differentiates one business from another. Companies must create products and experiences that connect with customers. • Butler’s book The Secret Ingredient, which is available for preorder now, describes her journey from aspiring country music singer to cupcake entrepreneur. When music didn’t work out and she found herself cleaning other people’s homes (including Taylor Swift’s), she realized she should turn her passion—baking—into a business. Thus, Gigi’s Cupcakes was born. • If you want loyal customers, you need to remember that “one size does not fit all.” You need to provide options for everyone, even if it means allowing a customizable experience. This will ensure customers keep coming back. Butler does this by offering a wide variety - 278 flavors in Gigi’s Cupcakes’ catalog! • Something as simple as packaging plays an important role in the customer’s experience. Seeing recognizable packaging immediately makes you want that product. Your subconscious tells you there is something special inside it. For example, there is excitement and anticipation in opening the box that reveals your new iPhone – or, a delicious Gigi’s Cupcake. • Butler believes passion is a vital part of creating an excellent experience for customers. Without a purpose, it is nearly impossible to draw customers in and encourage them to come back. ABOUT: Gigi Butler is the founder of Gigi’s Cupcakes, the largest cupcake franchise in the world with over 100 locations. Her book, The Secret Ingredient: Recipes for Success in Business and Life, is available for preorder now (https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1501173529?tag=simonsayscom). 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 (https://www.hyken.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can you create a better online support experience for your customers? Shep Hyken is joined by Jamie Edwards, Kayako’s co-founder and chief operating officer, all the way from London, to discuss the importance of live chat, and how it can improve the customer service experience. TOP TAKEAWAYS • Live chat can boost customer loyalty - customers are more likely to stay with or become a repeat customer if a company offers live chat support. • Chatbots are with computers and live chats are with people. When using a chatbot, customers can get a response instantly, yet chatbots are not good enough to replace actual people for anything complex. • With Kayako, the live chat conversation is always ongoing – you can start a conversation, step away from it, and you’ll be able to pick up the conversation right where you left off. • For some businesses, around-the-clock live chat staffing may not be practical – or even expected. For “off hours,” include a message providing business hours, frequently asked questions, and assuring a representative will get back to the customer soon. ABOUT Jamie Edwards is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Kayako, a service helping companies improve their customer service. 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 will AI and bots transform customer service in the near future? Shep Hyken discusses the next phase of customer service, automated messaging, with Joshua March, Co-founder and CEO of Conversocial. (https://www.conversocial.com/) Top Takeaways: - March shares his Six Pillars of Customer Service: 1) be prepared for crises in social era; 2) lean into the power of messaging; 3) make effective use of bot technology; 4) deploy AI effectively; 5) adopt a messaging approach to all digital channels; and 6) use social agents as the model of future customer service teams - March gives the history of clients using Twitter or Facebook pages as customer service platforms despite other channels; recent trend is private messaging, which significantly reduces email and chat volumes. - The next evolution in social customer service is artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation, which enable humans and bots to exist in the same conversation in a way that isn't really possible on other service channels. - According to March, private messaging is the first service channel to potentially replace phone-based customer service. Although phone AI misunderstandings can lead to awkward transitions to human representatives, messaging AI can make seamless transitions. - Hyken and March both see a trend in consumers very rapidly starting to expect a messaging option. - March urges entrepreneurs to take baby steps – don’t build a massive chat-bot; instead use machine learning to recognize and respond to the most common questions you currently receive. Automating just 25% creates a huge efficiency gain, speeds up resolution for your customers, and saves your agents a lot of hassle. Small changes can yield big returns. - March sees a future in which AI will handle routine questions, while humans will be top-tier agents who can handle complex issues that require greater access and ability to resolve them, so make sure your human messaging agents have good typing skills. About: Joshua March is Co-founder and CEO at Conversocial, provider of social customer service software for Fortune 500 companies. Marsh is also author of the forthcoming book, “Message Me, The Future of Customer Service in the Era of Social Messaging.” 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

Shep Hyken sits down with Jeanne Bliss, author of Would You Do That to Your Mother? The “Make Mom Proud” Standard for How to Treat Your Customers, and discusses her book and the art of making customers happy. Top Takeaways: • “Make Mom Proud” businesses are companies that are deliberate regarding how they will and will not make revenue, how they will enable employees to do the right thing, how they charge customers, and how they make it easy or hard to do business. • Jeanne encourages listeners to go to make-mom-proud.com to join the #MakeMomProud movement by posting a picture of their mother and writing something they’ve done to make her proud. • Because customers first interact and communicate with a company’s employees, businesses must first have happy employees. • Would You Do That to Your Mother?, which includes 32 case studies, is split into five parts: 1. Be the Person I Raised You to Be  This chapter discusses enabling your employees to thrive. Bliss emphasizes that hiring is the most important decision for businesses. 2. Don’t Make Me Feed You Soap  This part of the book describes the importance of honoring your customers’ time. 3. Put Others Before Yourself  For businesses to achieve their own goals, they must first make it possible for customers to achieve their goals. 4. Take the High Road  Bliss discusses the need to be fair and not take advantage of customers. Instead, businesses and customers become partners. 5. Stop the Shenanigans  This section of the book summarizes the “mom” lens with questions and includes a “Make-Mom-Proud-ometer” to help evaluate your organization and find out how close you are to being having a “Make Mom Proud” business. About: Jeanne Bliss is the Founder and President of CustomerBliss, and the Co-Founder of The Customer Experience Professionals Association. She is one of the foremost experts on customer-centric leadership and the role of the Chief Customer Officer. 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. Find the book here: (https://www.amazon.com/Would-You-That-Your-Mother/dp/0735217815/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1525198239&sr=8-1) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can you provide a better experience for the customer and an even better one for the agents? Shep Hyken sits down with Brad Birnbaum, CEO and Co-Founder of Kustomer, to talk about how to understand and know everything about your customer. Top Takeaways: • A common problem is when the customer knows that the company has information about them, yet the customer support rep solving the problem doesn’t know anything about the customer. Every support agent should have all the information about the customer in front of them. By having knowledgeable agents, you can increase productivity by 20%. • When you create friction, you end up creating a complaint. To eliminate friction, agents must have the relevant data about the customer at their fingertips, reducing the time of the phone call and the number of emails exchanged. • Consider using a “sentiment rank” to gauge how happy or angry the customer is. Then find all the unhappy customers and reach out to them to try and get them to re-engage. • Chatbots are best used for simple requests and less effective for personal service. Combining a chatbot with a Conversational Form is an effective way to use the chatbot to collect data or conduct a survey. It may feel like a chatbot but is really collecting data along the way. This makes customers feel like they’re immediately in the chat instead of having to make selections to get to the right place. About: Brad Birnbaum is the CEO and Co-founder of Kustomer (https://www.kustomer.com/) and is a 20-plus veteran of the customer service industry. 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 would you like to provide a better survey experience for your customers? Shep Hyken speaks with Martin Powton, Marketing Manager at Wizu. They discuss the importance of receiving feedback and how to overcome some potential issues with creating the wrong survey for your business and your customers. Top Takeaways: Seven Secrets of Successful Surveys 1. Personalization – Personalize your surveys, including the customer’s name, for example. Make sure you make it relevant to their experience, following up with relevant questions and avoid asking the unnecessary ones. Creating a more personal experience will make your customers feel as if you value their answers. 2. Timing – Send surveys in a timely manner – at the right time. For example, if a customer is placing an order for merchandise, you would want to wait until their order was received before you sent out a survey. Sometimes the right time is more immediate. Take Uber, for instance. You receive the survey immediately after the ride. That’s the right time, while the ride is fresh in the customer’s mind. 3. Close the Loop – You need to engage your customers, so try acknowledging the issues during the survey. 4. Be Concise – Don’t waste anyone’s time by asking them to repeat information. Make sure every question is important and that you will gain insight from it. 5. Make the Survey Engaging ¬– Create an engaging experience that speaks to the voice of your brand. You can use creativity to add things to the surveys, such as gifs to make them more entertaining and enjoyable, which in turn will help boost your completion rates. 6. Measure Emotion – Emotion is a key component of the customer experience. Through your survey, you should try to track the sentiment of the customer. Go above just collecting metrics, and discover how your customers feel about you and your organization. 7. Utilize A.I. to Improve Surveys – Use A.I. to help analyze your results, group emotions and touchpoints. Discover your gaps, areas to improve and more. About: Martin Powton is the Marketing Manager at Wizu (https://www.wizu.com/), a company that creates engaging, entertaining and conversational surveys. Martin has worked in marketing for over 10 years and is passionate about customer centricity and the importance of measuring and improving the customer experience. Shep Hyken(https://hyken.com/) is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Questions this episode will answer: 1. Why do we need customer feedback? 2. What is the best method of getting customer feedback? 3. What are important factors of surveys? 4. How do I increase survey completion rates? 5. How do I create the best customer survey? And much more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does the future of brand loyalty look like? Shep Hyken sits down with Patrick Reynolds, Chief Marketing Officer for SessionM (https://www.sessionm.com/), to discuss how technology is transforming traditional customer loyalty programs into a dynamic and personalized customer experience. Top Takeaways: - In the past, it was enough for loyalty programs to offer a “punch card” with a buy-nine-get-one-free approach. Now, the quid pro quo is that in exchange for personal data, the customer receives experiences they might not otherwise. You can't get keyless hotel entry or automated coffee pickups if you aren't willing to share your “data,” which many times is just basic information such as an email or phone number. - If you are part of the Nike loyalty program, you won’t get a discount coupon, you get access to content and materials that others don't. That's what makes brands so “sticky” and so compelling for so many years. With Nike, if you buy a pair of tennis sneakers, you may receive content that shows how Roger Federer works out on the off season to achieve greatness, which fuses product and content into an experience that you can only get through their loyalty program. It makes customers feel like they’re getting a peek under the tent that they can't get any other way and makes for extremely compelling content. Another example is the ability to purchase new sneakers in advance of anyone else. - You're looking to drive incremental behavior, transforming a single purchase into a second and third purchase. If you’re coming into my coffeehouse every day, why would I you a free coffee every other Friday? Don’t give a discount to someone who would otherwise pay full price. Instead, give an offer that rewards that customer for coming in later in the same day when they don't normally go. - The future of brand loyalty is going to look like everybody interacting with the same brand, but very differently based off their ambitions, purchase behavior, how they want to interact, and so on. It’s like how there is one Netflix, but we all have our own personalized Netflix. - Any loyalty program is a defining opportunity for a business to demonstrate its loyalty to its customers by delivering amazing experiences, not the other way around. About: Patrick Reynolds is Chief Marketing Officer at SessionM, and has over two decades of experience in various businesses, media, and creative leadership positions at multiple top-tier advertising agencies. 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 can you get happy customers to become your greatest marketing tool? Shep Hyken sits down with Lars Kristensen, founder of NiceJob, to discuss the importance of customer reviews and making them effective marketing tools. TALKING POINTS: - Lars explains how marketing is often based a company’s budget, not the kind of work or product they delivered. With NiceJob, the marketing hub isn’t an overpriced agency, but the individual customer who becomes a vocal fan of the company. This approach increases trust and reach for a fraction of an agency’s cost. - Customers who have a special experience will want to give a glowing review online or share with family friends. After a customer referred a friend, a NiceJob employee found their favorite NFL team on their FB page and ordered them a team jersey. That customer made multiple recommendations since then. Shep emphasizes there’s no need to send branded merchandise, as customers will never forget where a sincere gift came from. - Only 13% of companies ask for feedback. Compared to a referral, Google or Facebook reviews reach every one of the customer’s friends on social media, plus people they’ve never met before. Reviews can refer thousands of people through one awesome review. - Lars explains the best way to ask for a referral is to start by making it personal, not a form email, and to use the customer’s name. Then frame the request to emphasize how a referral will both help the company and their friends and neighbors. - When asked about the best way to ask for a request, Lars explains that customers rarely follow up on a verbal request. Give a verbal head’s up, then contact the customer preferably through mobile since it’s in the customer’s pocket at the point of peak excitement. - Lars says to include specific instructions and the link for leaving a review. The easier you make it, the more likely the customer will follow through. Shep asked if a company should do something with the written review. Lars suggests choosing a powerful review and using it on social media and website along with photo of the customer service experience, which creates social proof. Posts with photos get triple the engagement. - A bad review is an opportunity to show the kind of company you truly are. How you deal with a bad review creates a story you can use over and over. You can transform any negative to really positive review. to win the argument, it's to win the customer. Instead of making it good again, make it exceptional, and make it public, so others will see what you're willing to do to make it right. - For his final thought, Lars emphasizes the importance of turning your customers into fans. It's not enough that you do that great service – you've got to take those customers and get them talking. ABOUT: Lars Kristensen is the Founder of NiceJob, a marketing service that helps companies improve their public reviews and use them to reach a broader customer base. Kristensen used his marketing agency experience to create a low-budget marketing app that yields big returns. 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 could virtual power teams do for you? Shep Hyken sits down with Peter Ivanov, author of Virtual Power Teams, and discusses the benefits of teams that are spread across the globe but joined by one central focus. Top Takeaways: • A virtual power team is a team that has a strong gravity, a group of people bound by one central purpose, working together toward one central goal. • There are three groups of people who can benefit from virtual power teams: 1. The team members – This option allows employees to not have to relocate because of a project. They can work from wherever they like. 2. The manager – He or she is given access to the best experts in his or her given field. The manager is not bound by one location to find the best team members. 3. The organization – The organization can get outstanding results because it is able to have a hand in every market worldwide, because of team members working from all over the globe. • 10 key success factors for retaining the gravity in a virtual power team: 1. Personality and focus 2. Strength metrics 3. Interdependent goals 4. Structured communications 5. Knowledge management 6. Regular feedback 7. Recognition 8. Diversity 9. Winning spirit 10. Next generation leaders About: Peter Ivanov is an internationally sought-after keynote speaker, business consultant, executive coach, and author. He has led virtual teams of 100+ people spread across Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. His teams have won multiple prestigious corporate awards. 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 do you never lose another customer? Shep Hyken sits down with Joey Coleman to discuss how to “Never Lose a Customer,” which happens to be the title of his amazing book. Transform a single sale into a lifetime of loyalty. Top Takeaways: • Joey’s greatest insight is that regardless of the industry, somewhere between 20% and 70% of new customers will quit doing business with you before reaching the 100-day anniversary of becoming a customer • Brain science tells us when we make a purchase, our brain floods with dopamine because we've made a decision that we believe is going to solve our problems, answer our prayers, be the product of our dreams, and be the service we've always hoped for. When the dopamine recedes, those feelings of joy and euphoria and excitement are replaced with feelings of fear, doubt and uncertainty. This is what we call buyer's remorse. • Joey Coleman’s eight phases of the customer journey: 1. Assess – When customer decides whether to do business with you or not. Your job is to preview the experience of being a customer. 2. Admit – When customer raises hand and admits they have a problem or need your business can solve. This is when the clock starts ticking. 3. Affirm – There's a gap between purchase and when they experience your product or service. The gap is so great between the euphoria or purchase and the creeping doubt immediately following that you must immediately address it. 4. Activate – Energize the interaction with the customer to let the customer know that doing business with you is unlike any business experience they've had before, whether an amazing unboxing experience or a kickoff meeting. Sets the tone going forward. 5. Acclimate – Hold the customer's hand and get them used to doing business with your company. Directions in the box don't count. Do you read the directions before you use a new product? Do you read every contract? Statistically you don't. 6. Accomplish – When customer achieves the goal they had when they originally decided to do business with you. Most businesses don't take the time to ask what the actual goal is. Don't sell a shirt without asking what it's for? If you know the intention, you can track whether the customer achieves that and remind them that's their goal. 7. Adopt – When customer says "I'm loyal to you and I'm taking responsibility for the relationship. I achieved my goal, I want to give you more of my business." These are the loyal fans every customer is hoping for. 8. Advocate – When your fans become raving fans and referral sources, telling everyone they know to do business with you. Quotes: “All the research shows, somewhere between 20% and 70% of your new customers will decide to quit doing business with you before the 100-day anniversary.” “Most businesses don't even know what their defection rate is and when they lift up the hood they realize they're hemorrhaging customers.” “You spend all this time, money, and effort driving people to your door and they're running out the back door as quickly as you get them in the front.” (steph) “Don't ask for feedback too soon. It's like going on a first date and asking to meet the parents.” About: Joey Coleman is an award-winning speaker at both national and international conferences, and author of “Never Lose a Customer.” A former criminal defense attorney, Joey has offered counsel and advice to small start-ups and Fortune 500 companies alike, and he’s an expert on developing customer retention strategies. 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. For more information on Joey's book please go to: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Lose-Customer-Again-Lifelong/dp/0735220034/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521576268&sr=8-1&keywords=Joey+Coleman&dpID=41OT94NCxmL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices