#49 Why You Need to Be Easy to Do Business With

It's a great time to be a customer. It is tough to be in business because while we on one hand are trying to have some measure of predictability in our customer's journey and predictability in process and behavior, which gives us predictability in revenue, right? At the same time, we probably have more diverse issues with our customers.
There are different types of users and we need to be able to deliver to those different needs. There is no one size fits all approach and we have to provide options for how people can engage with us.
If they feel frustrated, then you're behind the eight ball. Hello everyone and welcome back to Experts of Experience.
I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today, I'm very excited to have David Averin on the show.
He is the president of the Customer Experience Advantage, a highly sought after keynote speaker, and the author of seven books with his most recent title being Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. And if you're watching, you can see it right there on the screen.
I just conveniently have one in my hand here. Perfect.
You're a true author and I'm so excited to dive into all things about eliminating customer friction and staying ahead in a increasingly competitive market. So David, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I think it's such an important subject to talk about.
I think for so many of us, we're business owners, entrepreneurs, and every market is a competitive marketplace. And so what I really enjoy is the opportunity to travel a country, travel around the world.
I've spoken in 26 countries to help entrepreneurs, people in business find where that true opportunity is for competitive advantage. And today, as we will talk about, I would suggest that that opportunity is in the customer experience.
Thank you so much for teeing that up because, I mean, that's really why we're here. And I'd love to kick it off by starting to talk about your book, Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, because it's such an important topic in CX today.
It's something we talk about a lot on this show. How do we reduce the customer's effort, the work they need to put into actually driving the outcome that they want to drive? And so I'd love to understand from you, what do you think most businesses get wrong when it comes to being easy to do business with? I think probably what they get wrong most often is this assumption that what works well for them works well for their customers as well.
And I was talking on a different podcast and somebody asked, like, why do you think that businesses just don't get it? And I said, I think they do. I mean, I think businesses do get it.
Everybody's working hard. Everybody's trying to, you know, I'll talk to business owners and others and I'll say, what's your competitive advantage? And they'll be like, we really listen to the customer.
And I look at him, I said, that's adorable. You really believe that, don't you? Like, like you're the only one that listens.
I think I have a lot of respect for people in business, but I think what they get wrong is what they feel from the business perspective of what the primary drivers are. So if I ask them a question, where do you think your competitive advantage? And they say, first of all, it's the quality, the commitment, our caring, trust.
It's about the people. Well, here's what the research shows is customers are assuming quality.
You wouldn't be in business if you weren't good. And they're prioritizing, no surprise, speed, right? Speed of access, speed of answers, speed of delivery, whatever that might be.
Simplicity of process. And of course, convenience.
In many ways, a convenient is better than better. So to answer your question, I think what they get wrong is I will still hear people all the time saying, you know, at the end of the day, it's about quality.
And I could not disagree more. At the beginning of the day, it's about quality.
Quality is the entry fee. You better be damn good at this or the world's going to figure it out.
But at the end of the day, it's about competitive advantage. It's not what do you do well? What do you do better than others who do it well? And I think that's the disconnect because I think we drink our own Kool-Aid a little too much.
We think it comes down to quality and it's about the people. It's not.
It's about speed and convenience and reducing friction in the process. I always say it's about how we make people feel.
People will remember how you made them feel. If we can make something easier for them, they will remember that ease.
And I know from my own experience building and leading customer service teams, I've been focused on quality, focused on quality, focused on quality, but we weren't getting back to our customers fast enough and really perplexed by why our CSAT scores were not increasing. And then we just got back to them faster and everyone was happy.
I agree a hundred percent, but I would also caution for those listening, don't misinterpret when we say how they feel. This isn't touchy feeling.
If they feel frustrated, then you're behind the eight ball, right? I've seen companies with phenomenal quality and they're just a pain to work with. Or we have to jump through hoops or we're on the phone screaming, real person, agent, real person.
I think you said no. Wait, no.
Totally. And that feeling is less about, like we have so many colleagues and brilliant colleagues who still talk about creating a wow experience.
I don't think most businesses lend themselves to wow experiences, right? We're not all Apple. I think the wow is, wow, you got back to me very quickly.
Wow, I can't believe how easy it was to resolve that issue. Those are the wows that we care about because I think where we are that's really different than even maybe five, 10 years ago is that everybody's good.
I mean, especially coming under the pandemic, the marketplace weeded out some poor players. The other ones were either bolstered or they were acquired.
We're in a marketplace, arguably, for the first time, everybody is good or good enough, right? And sometimes good enough at a better price point is a better choice. So we're really looking for where those opportunities for real differentiation.
And if everybody's good and everybody cares and everybody's got great people, who can get it to me faster? Who's not making me do their work because they're so worried about their employees being frustrated that let's transfer everything to our customers and not give them a choice. So, you know, I rant and I'm an advocate for all of this, but it's an important message.
Where do you think that the most common sources of friction are in the customer experience? The most common sources is the perception of time wasted, that it should be. If you see people in line and they're throwing up their arms going, unbelievable, right? That's a pretty good sign that somebody's frustrated.
And we've all dealt with this, especially if you've dealt with call centers and others as well. People get very frustrated with scripted empathy without resolution.
Right? Oh, I understand, Mr. Averin, how frustrating that means.
It's like, no, no, don't read the script. So here's the issue.
Yes, Mr. Averin.
I'm like, no, no, don't read the script. We're trying so hard to make sure that people feel heard.
You know what they care less about? Well, let me read, let me put it in a positive way. They care more about issue resolution.
So being able to answer, don't placate us, just resolve the issue. And, and it's really, it's, I'm telling you right now, it's with, with the amount of, of conveniences and options we It's a great time to be a customer.
It is tough to be in business. It's tough because while we, on one hand, are trying to have some measure of predictability in our customer's journey and predictability in process and behavior, which gives us predictability in revenue, right? At the same time, we probably have more diverse issues with our customers and they have unique scenarios.
We don't like unique scenarios. We want predictable scenarios.
And so there's a disconnect because we're trying to predict it. We're trying to script it.
And at the same time, people have very unique scenarios. And that creates opportunities for those of us who teach and share and help them through the problems.
I want to come back to something that you had said around in the beginning about how companies are often kind of focused on themselves. We're like, oh, we have so many things to work through, so many complexities on our own end.
We need to do all these things. It's very easy for companies to focus on themselves versus focusing on what are the pain points of the customer and more specifically, what is going on inside that's then leaking outside? If we have delays that are happening for the customer, it typically comes back to something that's happening internally.
And I'm curious to know how you've approached that with your clients and just folks who you've connected with over the years.

There's a couple of ways of looking at this.

One of them, of course, is that people are less patient with what they feel like is unreasonable delay or unreasonable complexity of process.

Right. We've got challenge of supply chain, but we're getting spoiled by companies who are very good at this.

Right. So if you aren't, when you talk about sort of how that bleeds externally, and we have kind of a pandemic of teams throwing others under the bus, even when there's no reason to.
I mean, the amount of people say, I'm so sorry, shipping screwed that up. Let me take care of that.
Well, what did you just do? You tried to make yourself the hero and you threw your coworker under the bus. And the reality is in most cases, the customer doesn't care whose fault it is.
They just want resolution, right? We, we, we throw each other under the bus all the time. Oh, sorry.
You know, admin screwed up scheduling that. Let me, let me take care of that.
Or of course we aren't empowering our people. And then they, we just get transferred again and again and again and again.
It's very difficult to be in business. And once again, I don't think that companies don't have an understanding or care about what their customers are going through.
I think they create scenarios that seem to work. They're cost efficient and they're somewhat predictable.
The problem is in becoming cost efficient, and we're dealing with a lot of different subjects, companies are very enamored by AI.

They're very enamored with chatbots and voice assistants. And meanwhile, people are getting very frustrated on the other end because it's harder to resolve issues.
And let me delve into another area because I've been pretty vocal about this as well.

I have a real heart for customer center, call center. And let me delve into another area because I've been pretty vocal about this as well.

I have a real heart for customer center call center employees. What a tough job.
And we know the retrition rate is horrible, upwards of 40% or more. But part of that is the fault of the organization itself because it's so difficult to get to a real person.
We have to get through so many levels of chatbot and AI. By the time we get to an actual real person, maybe in a call center, we're already at a 12.
And these four people are only dealing with furious customers. And I've had a lot of calls from some saying, help us because our customer service personnel are taking a level of abuse like they have never in the past.
And it's not because people are more unreasonable. It's just the issues are harder to resolve.
And by the time we get to them, they're just getting abuse all day. So there's a lot of challenges.
Companies are doing their best, but I think we're also in the middle of a bit of an experiment right now. How much are we willing to put up with? How many self-checkout times do we need to be redirected because they don't have enough people working in the checkout? I mean, I think it comes down to the opinion that a call center is a cost center.
And it's just something that has plagued the customer experience industry and especially customer service is that we see, OK, let's try to deflect customers from actually speaking to a person because it costs too much for them to speak to a person. So we're going to send them through all these loopholes in the hopes that they can solve their problem or maybe they'll just get too tired of trying to solve their problem.
But what is that then doing when the customer does get through to speak to the person that they had wanted to speak to in the first place? And I think that's where we have major dangers in AI. I mean, I'll give an example.
I am a loyal customer of a specific airline, and I have upgrade certificates because I fly with them a lot. And I was trying to apply it.
And the system's kind of funky. There was definitely something weird happening.
I love their chat function because I can just chat with someone. I don't always want to get on the phone, but it like wasn't happening.
And I was going through, I kept having to log in and it was just, I'm spending more time doing this. So simultaneously while I'm waiting on the chat line, I call and I wait on hold for an hour.
And during that hour. And you're probably you're probably waiting on the chat as well.
I'm on both. I'm like, I'm doing which one's going to answer first.
Yeah, exactly. And the chat tries to solve my problem, but it failed at solving it.
It was saying things that weren't actually. It was addressing problems that I wasn't bringing up and it just wasn't working.
I finally get someone on the phone. And I mean, obviously I have such a high degree of empathy for the people on the phone and I am not like most people, right? I would have been infuriated if I haven't been in that person's seat before.
And I'm speaking to this wonderful woman who was so incredibly helpful. And she's like, oh my gosh, I hope you get this upgrade.
It's going to be so nice for you to be able to take that long flight in business class. And I was like, thank you.
And I could have pushed her further. I didn't end up getting it just for the record.
I could have pushed her further, but because she was so kind and solved my problem, I was willing to just, okay, cool. I did the bare minimum of what I needed to do.
I'm not going to be a jerk about it. And I feel complete.
But the experience of the dichotomy between the two was so great. Yeah.
But let me ask you a question. Let me challenge you.
How long did it take to get that person on the phone? An hour. An hour.
And when you first said, I loved your line when you said, and I really enjoy the chat feature. You are such a millennial.
And I say that in the best way because you're a technology native. My kids are all, they love this.
I hate it. But what we, you know, the term we use in the industry is the off-ramp, right?

Give us an off-ramp.

And one of the things I tell clients, I tell it from the stage, I tell it in my consulting,

is understand that your AI, your chat feature and others, they're not there so you don't,

they're not to be deployed so you don't have to talk to your customers.

They're there to offload pedestrian issues so you have time to talk to the customers who need it. And we're in a very interesting time that I know you recognize this, that we're dealing with and working with so many different generations at the same time, more than ever in history.
Somebody said the other day, I was at a conference at five generations. I was trying to do the math on that.
I don't know if there's spending power of nine-year-olds, but there might be, right? I mean, they have iPhones now. Right.
But how 21-year-olds want to engage with you and how your 80-year-olds are very, very different and very difficult. So it's options.
It's omni-channel. It's options, options, options.
And I think the options are important. There have been times where I've loved the chat.
It solved exactly the problem. I didn't have to get on the phone.
I would prefer it because I am a millennial. Exactly.
Yeah. I hate.
Kill me. But I recognize I'm not naive.
It's important to have that. Completely.
But it's such an important thing to take note of is that there are different types of users and we need to be able to deliver to those different needs. There is no one size fits all approach and we have to provide options for how people can engage with us.
But it's such an important message. I mean, we get enamored with new technology.
We think the bean counters love it because it's another way to reduce the FTEs in our organization. Let's put them over to chat or the worst, even for small businesses who don't have access to that.
They have they have they got contact forms on their websites. And I just I just put my face in my hands and I'm like, you realize that your contact form is your worst employee in your entire organization.
Because God forbid I ask audiences all the time. I said, you ever go to a website and you have a simple question for, for there is no, there is no freaking phone number like anywhere on the website.
And of course, everybody's nodding, right? Cause they have, they've got their, their contact form. And I just heard somebody say this and I'm trying to find the statistic, but the quote was that 86% of people will never fill out a contact form.
86%. I wouldn't ever.
Not a chance. I'll just call somebody else.
But people will say, well, people fill out my form all the time. And I'm like, you have no idea who didn't.
Yeah, exactly. The greatest source, for everybody listening or watching this, the greatest source of lost revenue for your business is the customer or client that you never knew about.
It was something that was frustrating. There was something that caused delay and they left and they went to your website.
They didn't, they clicked away, right? You had them like right there. And then you frustrated them because you became difficult to work with or difficult to reach.
Oh, completely. I mean, this is the thing.
Even if it's for a bad reason, even if someone is reaching out to you because they had a problem, give them, give yourself the opportunity to solve it. Exactly.
Exactly. So yes, I, yeah.
When I, one of the things I always say is, is make, you need to be ridiculously easy to complain to because when issues are, um, are delayed, when communication is delayed or restricted, problems escalate. They escalate quickly.
Whereas 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we'd write a letter. And now people, I mean, this righteous indignation.
I mean, like the average person now, they're like, they have no idea who they're dealing with. They have no idea who they're messing with.
I'm like, okay, Todd. But the reality is now everybody has a bullhorn that reaches around the world.
It's a huge competitive thing that most companies don't think about. My admonition, be ridiculously easy to complain to.
You can identify problems. You can address them before they go public, right? It's when people feel like they're not heard, they go online and rant.
And there's some very clear things that organizations can do to head off those things. Doesn't mean the customer is always right, but you better address those things pretty quickly.
You're adding fuel to the fire if you don't. Your lack of response is literally doing more harm than good.
So do yourself a favor and get ahead of it. Yeah.
It's why companies are over-serving. I mean, part of it is the first part of it, they just want to find if there was something that didn't go well, they can address it quickly before.
And so it goes back to like United Breaks Guitars, right? When something persists and isn't resolved, it blows up into something bigger and it didn't need to be. So when I'm traveling, because I speak for a living and I'll rent a car from Enterprise or something, when I come back, they always ask me the same question and say, welcome back, Mr.
Averin. How was the Corolla or whatever? It's fine.
Thanks. Did you have a chance to fill it up? No, charge me.
And then they asked me the same question every time. Is there anything we could have done to have made this some more outstanding experience? And you know what they're really saying? Please, God, don't go on TripAdvisor and trash us.
Let me fix it now, right? So if you get a survey and it comes back, you know, one to five stars and you do three, somebody follows up. Like, what was it? Something we can, because it goes online and it never goes away.
It's what I tell my kids who are no longer kids. Five, grown and gone, all in their 20s.
Doesn't mean they're off the payroll, but at least they're out of the house. But I would tell them and I would tell their friends growing up and say, you know the difference between love and the internet? I'd say the internet is forever.
And it's a horribly cynical thing. It's a terrible thing to tell yourself.
But the point is, this stuff doesn't go away. So we have to be, A, we have to eliminate the friction, the points of frustration.
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So flipping the script a little bit from how do we avoid the disasters from happening? How do we get ahead of people being really upset? How can businesses leverage customer experience to actually be a competitive advantage, to actually set themselves apart in the market? Yeah, well, I think part of it is it's recognizing what's driving not only consumer behavior and choice and preference, but also what's driving their communication, right?

We grew up in business and I'm a lot older than you, but we used to call this guest relations philosophy and everybody's heard it before. And it says something along the lines of the average person with a positive experience tells two or three people, but somebody with a negative experience tells 10.
We've all heard that before. None of that's true anymore.
Today, we tell thousands. Today, we tell millions.
So, the importance of that positive experience is crucial because once again, people have a bullhorn that reaches around the world. And I think it's an important distinction between customer service and customer experience.
I think we know how to be nice to people. It's certainly very important.
But what they're experiencing, was it frustrating? Was it intuitive? Was it simple? And so, when we talk about how do we leverage that is one, I think that the drivers for customer choice has changed significantly. There was some study, I don't know, 40 something years ago with a very famous result that says that there's a mistaken belief that everybody's looking to make the best decision possible in purchasing or contracting or hiring.
And the reality is we're looking to avoid making a bad decision, right? So how do we avoid making a bad decision? Well, we do that by we look for social proof. If we're going to a restaurant, what do people think about it? If we're going to a movie, look at Rotten Tomatoes.
It doesn't mean it's the final arbiter of our decision, but it's a huge influence. And so most people will look online before they make a purchase.
They'll look on Amazon who's got the five-star rating or whatever that is. So the experience is real important because it creates this tangible trail of experience that we leverage.
And so I think that's one way that we leverage it in a big way. And I can't remember the other one because I just rambled.
All good. All good.
No, but what you're saying is something that's ringing so true to me. I don't buy a single thing pretty much ever without looking at a rating first, because that's the world that I've grown up in.
I don't go to a coffee shop without looking at the rating. I don't buy a top without looking at the rating or a review or seeing what someone else has said.
Why would I? I don't need to. Yeah.
Well, the message is be the safe choice. I've been talking about this for years.
I call it the foremost dangerous words in business. Foremost dangerous words in business are all things being equal.
All things being equal, who's the cheapest? Who's the closest, right? I guarantee you most people are not aspiring to be the low price leader in their category. And so when all things are equal, who's got better ratings? Who's got better comments? Otherwise, you are going to play the price game.
Then it's going to to be cheapest or closest and I don't want to play that game. And so it's so important that we create that great experience, that we minimize the friction, that we address issues very, very quickly, that we walk our customer's journey with fresh eyes and ask a different question.
Not just, are we really good at what we do, but are we, as I like to say, I think this is a real opportunity, ridiculously easy to do business with. So when did you start writing about customer experience? I'm curious.
You know what? Fairly recently, I think it was about eight years ago, I had spent, this is actually, I think, telling. I'd spent most of my career in marketing and branding.
And my work was with helping organizations better craft the persuasive messaging and the words that better differentiate, that more clearly defined what it is that they did and how they differentiated from others as well. But I recognized that the world was going through a very significant change and not that your own marketing and your messaging was unimportant, but it became less important what you say about yourself than what other people were saying about us.
Because it was a very different world 15 years ago. We didn't have social media.
We didn't have social proof. We had the neighbors we had who had the most clever jingle, who had the most persuasive taglines, right? Head and shoulders saying, you know, that little itch could be telling you something or the Wall Street Journal is the daily diary of the American dream.
It just hits you. Well, now, and your question was about, I made a switch.
I made a significant shift, not because I was chasing what was hot, was I realized as a business consultant, and I've had one-on-one conversations with over 8,000 company CEOs over the years, that the pain points were different. The drivers for customer decisions were different.
And that was the research that led into my book, Why Customers Leave and How to Bring Them Back. And we're in five languages now.
And so my whole message, I think today, customer experience is the new marketing. And once again, not to be conflated with customer service, but I think how, as you had said, how customers feel.
When everybody's good, who's preferable? Why are they preferable? And not because you have better people. If I hear one more person say, you know, it's really about the people.
And I'm like, really, as opposed to the crustaceans that work for your competitors or the mollusks. I mean, your people weren't raised on a special customer service island, you know, special ninja courtyards of training.
21 years old, they were sent into the world and you were lucky. Listen, our people are very important, but our competitors have great people too.
And there is this pandemic of organizations drinking their own Kool-Aid. And I'm like, you're really good at what you do, but you haven't created the cure for cancer that tastes like chocolate.
You're not that good. And the reality is your competitors are really good.
You know, I'll ask leaders sometimes, what's your advantage? And one of the things they'll say is all the time say, you know what, I'm going to be honest. We actually do what we say we're going to do.
There you go. Like it's a mic drop moment.
And I'm like, you really believe that? Like your competitors are consistently underperforming. Like how on God's green earth are they staying in business with all of that and not doing what they say they're going to do? Everybody wake up.
Your competitors are really, really good. And here's the worst part.
Most of them are very, very nice people. We're all just trying to make a living.
Stop thinking that you're, at the end of the day, your quality is so superior. Quality is very important.

Don't misunderstand me.

Everybody's good and everybody's working hard. They'd be your friends if they aren't already.
We have to look for legitimate ways of standing out and standing apart. And one of the things, and I know that we're in alignment on this, is reducing friction in the process.
You know, when you're competing against somebody else, if you're a pain in the butt to work with, if you're hard to get a hold of, if you're not very responsive, your days are numbered. We're just not going to put up with it anymore.
I actually want to come back to something you said, because I think it's so important. The difference between customer experience and customer service, I think a lot of the time CX is considered customer service, which like, yes.
And I'd love to have, I'd love to have your definition of customer experience. Mostly as sort of the baseline.
I think customer service is incredibly important, but we've been talking about it for 60 years. I think we know how to be nice to people.
Granted, we got it. We've got to indoctrinate our new employees.
Here's our culture, here's our expectations, but how we do business as consumers, and we're all consumers, right? We're all customers and clients and patients. How we expect to do business is markedly different than it was 20 years ago.
How we expect to engage and communicate and pay. You go to an organization now and I get asked this all the time.
Do you take Zelle? Do you take Square? Do you take Stripe? Do you take PayPal? I mean, the answer is yes. My God, they're trying to pay me.
No, please don't. You must only do business with me the way I dictate to you.
It's so naive. And the hardest part is really good people in business.
They're just so used to doing business the way they do business and it works. And now I've got to suddenly do it.
Customer experience is so important today because the process and the mechanisms and the reasons why we do business and frequent certain businesses is just so different because the world is different. And so we think about for all of us, how, how our life is different, how we engage and communicate digitally.
And otherwise, why would we think for a minute that the way we've done business for 20 years will, will be the same? Just ask Toys R Us or Bed Bath and Beyond. I mean, we can lament the loss and the nostalgia of a Toys R Us.
I guarantee you not one person is struggling to find toys. My God, again, now that Toys R Us is gone again, Bed Bath & Beyond is gone.
How do I find towels and soap? Gee, I wonder. No, I can actually just press a button on my phone and it'll show up in a couple hours.
It's a tough time to be in business. Totally.
I really see customer experiences every single touch point. Like you said, it's how do you pay? It's how do you find out about them in the first place? It's every single interaction.
And are those interactions, is there continuity between them? Is it easy for the customer to understand what you are, who you are? Is it like the ease is not only how many buttons did I have to click or how long did I have to wait on a phone call? It's also how simple are you communicating information to me? Are you saying it clearly or are you sugarcoating it in a way that makes it difficult for me to know what's happening? Like sometimes I get pieces of mail in the letters in the mail from banks and I'm like, it's four pages and I'm sitting there scratching my head. Like, what is this trying to say? And it's our perception of all of those touch points as well.
And, and it's like, if you get something a week later than you thought you were going to get it, and it wasn't the same quality that you thought that's customer experience, right? I think the best example of sort of the difference between the two, there was a time before your time when we would get a paycheck and we would stand in line at the bank and we would fill out the deposit slip.

And we try and get there because they weren't open on the weekends and we didn't have ATMs.

And we get to the counter and they would ask, so what are your plans for the weekend?

Right.

I haven't been to a bank.

I mean, I'll go.

I'll speak for a client.

Like I said, I've spoken all around the world and they'll give me a nice check and I'll sit in the back of the Uber and I sign it and I to a bank. I mean, I'll speak for a client.
Like I said, I've spoken all around the world. And they'll give me a nice check.
And I'll sit in the back of the Uber. And I sign it.
And I take a picture of it. And I deposit it.
There is no service. You and I both know there's an experience, right? That experience was digital.
Was it simple? Was it complicated? So many people in the banking industry, if you would ask them for years what their competitive advantage is, they'd always say this, it's the relationship. We know our customers by name.
They are scrambling today because with the exception of sort of the private banking, they're not seeing their customers. So they're really trying to redefine what is their advantage.
They're all in a highly regulated environment. Their policies are essentially the same.
Their apps oftentimes are the same. And so I don't know what the answer is right now, but they're asking it a lot because what they traditionally thought was their advantage is different because how we engage, how we experience doing business with them is markedly different than it was half a generation ago.
So talking about leadership for a second, I know you just said you've spoken to 800 CEOs one-on-one. A thousand.
Eight thousand. I have.
What would you say are the qualities that leaders, not only the CEO, but leaders within a company need to embody in order to really inspire a customer-centric culture and ensure that the holistic experience is being thought of? Dear boy, that's a great question. It's a lot of the basic tenets that we've talked about for a long time in terms of leadership, but they also have to have a real finger on the pulse for where things are going beyond their industry.

And this is a challenge because we have historically had to be one of the best within our industry

to be in that upper echelon or to justify a premium price. For the first time, arguably ever,

we are competing against industries that have nothing to do with what we do.

Now, you mentioned before about just being able to have that conversation and find out where things are. Where are things in the supply chain? Do we have visibility and things that other industries are offering that maybe ours does not? So for leaders, not only having that empathy and all the things that we know are important, they have to be very cognizant of what's happening in the broader marketplace.
What are those customer expectations? And then what's reasonable? It doesn't mean everybody has to be Amazon. What's reasonable for our industry? But then also a bit of a crystal ball because we used to be able to look five, 10 years out.
What do we think our industry is going to look like?

Now we're looking 18, 24 months out because change is happening so fast.

We don't want to be in a position where we are scrambling to catch up.

And so to stay on the forefront is a real challenge.

But it's something I'm really optimistic about.

I'm a cheerful advocate and warrior for all of this because I think there's phenomenal opportunities for us to future-proof our business and future-proof our engagement. Sometimes I want a bell to ring when a guest says something that I just deeply agree with.
You'd be ringing it the entire time. That would become very annoying for the audience.
It is true. We're very aligned.
So it would just be a lot of rings. The rules of wisdom are flowing today.
Completely. But I think it's so important what you're saying is that our competitors are not just our industry competitors.
Our competitors are those who have the eyes and ears of our customers. And I think Uber and Amazon have changed the consumer expectations for what speed looks like, for what convenience looks like.
And many companies are doing this. And now in the age of AI, I think, one, it's changing rapidly and there's new innovations happening constantly.
And customer and consumer expectations are just

leveling up. Every day when I'm interacting with different brands, I'm like, oh, that's good.
Why

doesn't this other brand or company that I have to engage with all the time, why don't they do that?

And so we have to be looking for inspiration everywhere. And I think one of the best practices

that I personally enjoy, because I'm a total nerd for this, and I would advise anyone to do this, call the customer service line, get in the chatbot line, actually go through the experience with different brands to see what are people doing that's working well and what are they doing that we need to avoid? Yeah, super smart. I think we have to be very conscious of what's happening.
Now, the other thing is for those who are entrepreneurial, in other words, don't get paralyzed by this. You don't have to do everything, but you have to do some things and you have to be, if you can especially identify what's changed, talk to the millennials on your team.
Make sure when you're doing strategic planning, it's not just a room full of old white guys. Coming from an old white guy.
Trust me, we need that diversity of opinion, of experience, of perspective. One of the members of my team is a young woman who's 26 years old, beyond brilliant.
But God, has she given me a perspective that I would never have had. When I was writing this book, I ran chapters by her because she gave me, here's the millennial perspective.
I talk about it because I'm ranting. There's things that I hate.
She goes, I love that, right? And I'm like, it's important. And my wife is sort of a really good balance for that as well.
Get that diversity of opinion and experience. Just because you feel it, just because you like it or are frustrated by it, doesn't mean that your customers will as well.
This is not a time to be trusting your gut. Trust the marketplace, trust the data because the world's changing.
But once again, you don't have to do everything and it can be overwhelming, especially even looking at marketing. You're like, now there's Twitter and now there's X is this and do I do Snapchat and do Snapchat? Where's your market? You need to be there.
On that note, I know that you speak all over the world. Yeah.
And you're traveling all the time. And I'm curious to know, how do customer experience expectations change depending on the region? Have you found that it's quite different? In some ways, but not really.
But that's a great question because the world is global. The world is flat.
Everyone look at it. Everybody's very aware of what's around and what's available everywhere.
What's Amazon over here is Alibaba over on the other side of the world. There's cultural differences in terms of, how do I put this, kindness.
Some of the rude things that we might get in America, even though most are good, you wouldn't find in Singapore, right? There's just a wonderful culture there. I think the real difference is potentially expectations in terms of speed.
There are certain markets that just aren't as mature from a logistical perspective

and can do the kinds of things. I live just South of Denver, Colorado.
I think we have

three Amazon warehouses. It's ridiculous.
80% of what we order, we get same day, same day.

I mean, I remember when, if you wanted to send flowers to a friend who was sick,

you had to get the order in by 10 AM. If you wanted to deliver it same day.

Now, no matter when you'll get it in 30 minutes, There's things we order at eight o'clock at night and we still get same day. It's ridiculous, right? And others can say, oh, you're spoiled.
No, we're just, we just live in this day. Look what we're doing, right? We're in different parts of the country.
I have a lot of clients all around the world and we're talking real time face to face. For my parents' generation, it's magic, freaking

magic. For us, Lauren, it's Friday, right? So, again, there's this great opportunity for

international to have those conversations real time. But even in terms of being ridiculously easy, like with my, I've got clients all over the world in Mumbai and Johannesburg and Singapore, when they want to have a conversation, I had one yesterday.
I'm the one who talks at two in the morning. I'm the one who talks at four o'clock in the morning, every single time, even if they insist, I want to be true to the brand.
It's my competitive advantage over others who do what I do as well. But I think it's important that we understand those cultural differences.
But I think we've all come to expect just a whole new generation of conveniences.

Yeah, completely. And I think as the internet has brought us closer and closer together, those differences, like I remember 15 years ago in college doing a class on cultural differences and how you should speak differently to people in different markets.
And I've actually traveled to a lot of those markets and lived in a lot of those markets. And it's not really that different anymore.
Not much anymore. No, that's a really good observation.
It was true. It was true.
But now everybody, I mean, we're very spoiled as Americans.

As I travel around the world, I'll hit my 28th country in November.

99% of it is I do in English, right?

English is the international language of business.

Very fortunate.

But because the access to media, everybody's aware of what we're doing.

We can be aware of others as well. But it opens up phenomenal opportunities for us to do work globally.
And I'm very fortunate to work globally. I want to talk to you really quick about AI and the balance of technological efficiency and personalized human interaction.
We touched on it a little bit before, but I'm curious to get your thoughts because it's wild, the different approaches that I'm seeing and there's no right answer. Yet I do think there are definitely some things not to do, but I'd love your thoughts on that.
I think we're in the middle and I think you would agree. We're in the middle of a grand experiment, which is in one way, how effective can it be? And the other one is how much are we willing to put up with before there is that, that the law of diminishing return, right? We cutting the people and switching it to AI.
And at some point people are going to have, have had enough and then they move on to something else. However, next year it'll be better better.
And the year after, it'll be better. But Jay Baer, a colleague, just came out with a great study on AI and it showed that people generally are not happy with having to do it through that.
But we're not naive. We know it's going to get better.
So, the jury is out and we come from different generations. So, So once again, I'm going to reiterate what I said before, which was deploying AI to better predict and handle.
I mean, right now it's just a sort of a glorified FAQ. AI is not to be deployed.
So you don't have to talk to your customers. And so that, that you can talk to the customers who really need you and you've got the bandwidth.
We cannot staff up to handle every issue and answer every call within 60 seconds, right? That's naive. But there's got to be a better point than you having to, as patient as you are, Lauren, wait for an hour on hold for a verbal call after navigating a frustrating chat experience.
That's not acceptable. You are exceptional in your patience and your understanding.
Most people aren't. And so, when we look at the cost of customer acquisition or customer conversion from whoever the current vendor, that we will lose them at a point of contact because they're frustrated that they can't resolve an issue, in my mind, is inexcusable.
We've got them. They're already a customer or they're already on the precipice.
And we spend so much money on customer acquisition and then we relegate the retention to call centers or AI or offshore BPOs. And do I think I'm smarter than the people in the back room at major companies? No, but I think they're missing something.
I think they're missing an opportunity because the bean counters have a little too much. I mean, CX has got to be in the room when these decisions are being made.
There needs to be a CX. There you go.
What a concept. What a concept.
It's actually been really interesting as we've had this show because I have gotten the opportunity to speak to chief customer officers and VPs or senior vice presidents of customer experience that are not just running the call center. They're thinking about the customer experience for the company strategically as almost an internal consultant just focused on CX.

And like, yeah, why doesn't everybody have that?

I feel like it's just an essential role.

And I see.

Jean Bliss has some great content around that.

Who is that person internally?

And I think more and more organizations get it. I think too many people still conflate CX with customer service.
And in many cases, customer service in an organization is nothing but the complaint department. And we know that it's far more important and far more robust a subject to be tackled.
A hundred percent. A couple last questions for you.
One, I'd love to know, do you have any favorite books or resources on this topic for anyone who wants to go and learn more? And of course, you are free to plug your own publication. There's an outstanding new book called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With.
It's a practical guide to giving customers what they want, how and when they wanted by David Averin. But I'll tell you, there's some other ones.
Of course, Ridiculous Hospitality is a classic. I just got done reading Roger Dooley's book, Friction.
That was, and we've become friends since I had him on my podcast. We had a conversation and I told him, in some ways, I really hate him now because I look at the world, I notice more points of friction and frustration than I did before.
And my wife would already say I'm a bit of a curmudgeon, but it's a brilliant book. It's called Friction by Roger Dooley.
That really makes you look at the world, especially when there's points of delay or frustration or overly complex process that are wholly unnecessary. And in many cases, they are just because that's the way it's been and they have yet to be disrupted, but they are ripe for disruption.
So, yeah, I mean, there's so many. And of course, anything by Jay Baer or Shep Hyken is awesome.
And they've done some really great studies of late as well. And we're all competitors, but we're colleagues and we're great friends.
And I have just great respect for the work of my colleagues as well. We're all warriors for this cause to help- I love it.
Organizations reduce the friction, be less of a pain. And I think for those who take it seriously, I think the future is really bright time to be in business for everyone listening.
We are out there for you trying to make your lives easier. Yeah.
And we actually had Shep Hyken on the show a few months ago. So go back and listen to that episode to all of you listening.
It's great. Yeah.
Amazing. That's great.
So I have two last questions for you. And we ask all of our guests this question, these questions.
The first is, I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand or a company that left you impressed. What was it? Oh, my Lord.
It's hard to not just do the obvious. Here's the thing.
I'm going to give you an obvious one, but it's very appropriate and personal for me. I travel extensively and I'm all around the country and around the world.
I cannot not, my double negative, I cannot not be there where I need to be on time. So, predictability, we talked before about being a safe choice, is absolutely crucial for me.
And I've gotten to the point where I used to love So I would, I would always rent a car because I like new cities and everything else. I don't do that anymore.
I can't take the time to get on the train. I am an Uber fanatic because the part that's so attractive for me is that their predictability, their visibility, I choose what car, what price, what time I can see where they are.
I can see where they're turning. There is such a high level of reliability and predictability that helps me and allows me to focus on what I need to do.
The other, of course, is TripIt as an app because everything's there there in one place that just my whole life. But predictability and reliability are absolutely crucial because I may have 5,000 people waiting for me and I can't take a chance.
So there's an obvious choice, but it's a really important one for me as well. Yeah.
I could not agree with you more. And then my second question is, what is one piece of advice that every customer experience leader should hear? What works for you and has historically worked for you isn't necessarily preferable for your customers.
I wouldn't go far as to say what works for you doesn't work for them. I think what works for them for companies works.
They've got experience with it, but today we're in a different place. It's less about competency and much more about preferability.
It's not, does it work? Is it preferable to the other choices that they have? And customers are not making a decision in a vacuum. They're not deciding whether to work from you.
They have a menu of choices and your competency, you're doing what you say you're going to do, your people making the difference doesn't make you preferable among your other competitors. So be very conscious of all of those touch points for all of your competitors.
Shop them. Be very conscious.
So it's not just being competent, very important, quality,

very important. Today, it's about being preferable.
Such great advice. Thank you so much,

David, for coming on the show. Ring the bell, ring the bell.
Thank you so much for coming on

the show. It's been wonderful to have you.
I've absolutely loved this conversation and I'm sure

we'll be in touch soon. I have as well.
Let's check in every six months or so.

I love it.

Thank you much.

Sounds good.

Amazing.