- Positive Polarity Podcast
How Business Owners Can Ignite Their Passion & Enthusiasm For Exceptional Customer Service
Bio:
As a sought-after business consultant, coach, and speaker, Dr. Kelly Henry's purpose is to serve and help business owners ignite their passion and enthusiasm for exceptional customer service. He helps them realize their dreams of ultra-business success and offers a straightforward and practical philosophy and systems to attain them.
From years of ongoing business study and 20 years of trial and error in running his successful clinics, Dr. Henry brings an extraordinary breadth of knowledge for all businesses. His goal is to devise a successful mindset and proven procedures to evolve your business and get it to the top.
Before being devoted full-time to consulting and coaching business owners, Dr. Henry thrived in serving his patients and community while building his personal practice into one of the top 5% of clinics in the country. Currently, Dr. Henry resides in Argyle, TX, with his beautiful wife and three fantastic children.
The key to his business success was his perpetual pursuit of exceptional customer service. He practices what he preaches, and as a result, he now speaks on and coaches the same principles that helped him achieve ultra-success and led him to be one of the premier customer service professionals.
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Shownotes:
Hey, Dave, Melinda here, positive polarity, podcast; I hope things are going awesome for you. I do my best to find the best of the best. And I actually found if you’re going to be super excited about this, I found a customer experience doctor. Now, before you just turn the channel, give us a minute because this will be some really awesome stuff. I have Dr. Henry with us today. How are you?
I have a fantastic day. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.
Yeah, absolutely super excited. It’s rare to find somebody that is actually as passionate about customer service and the customer experience as I am. I was honored to be able to write an Amazon number one bestselling book about the customer experience. I’m so excited. Thanks for jumping on the show. Tell me a little bit about the doctor thing, just so we can kind of get that out there for probably for legal purposes.
No problem. I’m a retired chiropractor, so I practiced for 20 years, mainly in New Mexico. I loved it, loved taking care of patients, was able to grow a couple of practices. I had a satellite clinic and my main practice and grow them to some great levels. I Loved the interaction with patients slowed, treating them still have a passion for chiropractic, but I had some other things on my mind to do. And that’s why I shifted gears, and I’m coaching and consulting now, but that’s my, that’s my backstory.
That’s so cool. And we get a lot of people on, and we have a lot of listeners that are they have this entrepreneur idea, and they just don’t know how to turn it into an actual future for them a career. Do you mind telling us how you transitioned from chiropractic to coaching? I mean, that seems like a pretty big jump. I’m just curious was the family on board with that you think in, well was it a binge-drinking night? I mean, I’m just kidding; what was that impetus that made that jump? Because, as you said, you had a successful chiropractic business, but yet you are now coaching. Fill us in on that.
Absolutely. There’s a couple of different layers to it. I was fortunate to buy out a couple of chiropractors through my career, and they were retiring. And unfortunately, they were tiring when their sixties and really kind of gotten past their prime and really didn’t have much left in their practices for me to buy, which was good for me, but bad for them. And I, I just made a mental note of that, that if I, at some point, I’m going to retire and sell out, I’m going to sell out on top and not wait until I have nothing left to offer. Back in 2017, we just felt like I was led to, Hey, it’s time to time to shift gears, it’s time to do something different. And I was able to sell my practices.
I’ve been coached for years for about 17, 18 years. I’ve seen the impact of it. I’ve seen what it’s done for me personally, what it’s done for my business. And I knew I wanted to move into that arena. And then customer service is something I kind of backed into in my practices, but something that I saw, just the phenomenal benefits of it and how it again helped my businesses grow and sustain and just made me that much more successful. And I saw the impact of that. And I just meshed the two together, and that’s how I got to be a coach in the customer experience, the customer service niche. The transition has been it’s been good, but not without ups and downs and obstacles. Obviously, the thing I would encourage listeners to do is I was fortunate to kind of make a clean cut and move in, but obviously, I had some income to, to sustain and to, to help me along the way, that’s the thing you need to be careful of.
If you have a steady paying job and, as you said, don’t have a night of binge drinking and call up. The boss said I’m out of here. My last paycheck, I’m going to be a coach, get, get your side hustle, going, build it up gradually. And when it replaces your initial income, then you can shift gears and move along that way. I was fortunate in that regard. The other thing that I encourage far as mindsets for anybody starting out to start a new venture, moving into the entrepreneurial space, is to keep focused on moving forward. And one of my favorite sayings, and I use this with my clients, and I use this to myself, is there’s no such thing as failure. There’s only feedback. So just keep trying new things, keep moving forward, keep diving into things. If it works great, keep moving forward and refine it. If it doesn’t work, understand why it didn’t work. Try to gather the information from its course, correct. And move in keep moving in a different direction. But the key is to keep moving. Just because it didn’t work initially doesn’t mean it’s not going to work overall. You just have to have that mindset of not, if I’m going to be successful, it’s when I’m going to be successful and keep moving in that direction.
That’s awesome. And I want to go back on something that you touched on because I think that the importance of coaching is what I wrote down. And it’s interesting because you had a coach, it sounds like for a bunch of years, so you see its value. I get a lot of people, and I’m not sure if you get that as well where people are like, well, what do I need a coach for? And we talk about that a lot on this show. And my two favorite athletes are Michael Jordan and tiger woods, for whatever reason. I just think these guys are awesome. And I agree about the fact that I think about tiger woods. I mean, how many coaches did this guy have? There’s part of the entrepreneur brain that thinks, what are you going to tell me? What are you going to teach me? I get that. I’m sure tigers, like what you’ve never swung, or you’ve never done this in your life. How do you know that? I appreciate the fact that you enjoy that the coaching piece, not only from doing it but also from being coached.
Absolutely. And I’m still being coached. It’s like you mentioned that the best of the best of success, the most successful, I guarantee if you look, they, the bath majority of them, 95, 99% of them have been coaching are still being coached if you really want to look at the breast tax on it.
That’s awesome. And what I mean, I think about Phil Jackson, it’s like, what would Phil Jackson possibly the coach of the bulls be able to tell Michael Jordan? And it was interesting because if you do a little research, you realize that Michael Jordan would sometimes get outside of his skin, so to speak, get a little bit egotistical. And it was Phil Jackson’s job to kind of bring them back down to earth. Whatever the actual reason is for a coach, I highly encourage people to have a coach. If you can’t afford one, find an accountability partner have somebody in your life that holds you accountable. We do a sales advantage, round tables. We do different accountability, round tables around the country because that accountability piece is really important. Whatever your reason for coaching in this case, I appreciate that you took that jump because we really need more authentic coaches out there that are willing to come alongside somebody and help them. So that’s who, so specifically then, so you jump into coaching, and you see this customer service customer experience kind of area what’s your definition of good customer service. When, when those words come into your mind, what, what kind of things do you think about at that point?
The simple definition that I spew and give to my clients and potential clients whenever I’m speaking is that it’s a relentless focus on the customer and making them feel their best anytime they interact with you or your business. It’s basically just making the customers feel valued every time they interact with you. That’s, that’s the bottom line. That’s, that’s the simple explanation. If you can grasp that, you can build off of that and lay a pretty good foundation for having better customer service.
And it sure seems like that’s way too simple. It’s funny because I remember I was doing work for a client, a retail client, and we are actually walked around their area right around the cash register. And four signs were up that were negative like no returns on clearance items, no checks all, they had all this stuff and, it was because I took pictures. I was doing a half-day training there. And during a break, I walked around, took pictures, put it into my PowerPoint presentation in the app whenever we resume. And they’re looking at these, and they’re going, that’s not us, I mean, and it’s so interesting because there’s a lot of people that have a blind spot when it comes to their customer experience. And when you appreciate the simple piece, so focus on the customer, why are we not doing this? I mean, what’s going on
Now there’s a lot of layers to it. And there’s a lot of layers to laying a foundation and making a cultural shift in a business focusing on customer service. So many businesses are customer sales-oriented instead of customer service-oriented. So that’s my goal to help them shift that mindset. But I think you hit the nail on the head where you said there’s a blind spot, and most businesses, if you ask them, Hey, do you, do you provide great customer service? Oh yeah, yeah, we do. We do. But statistics show otherwise, and most businesses have pieces of good customer service. They do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And because they do a little bit and a little bit of that, they think, oh yeah, we provide great customer service.
And they just like anything, if you, if you don’t see a problem, or if you feel like you don’t have an issue with it, you don’t look at a solution, or you don’t look at it, bettering it. If I feel like I’m healthy, I don’t hurt anywhere. I’m pretty healthy. Well, there’s no reason for me to exercise or go to the doctor. I’m, I’m perfectly fine. There’s not necessarily any symptoms. And they’re blinded to, well, this whole, this whole, and we’re doing this wrong, and we’re pushing customers out this way, and we’ve got these negative signs up that are creating a negative Mark in the back of the customer’s mind. And they don’t see where that is causing them to not have the retention of customers. They should have not making the sales they should have. And when that doesn’t happen, obviously they’re not making the profit that they should be or would want as you said, there’s been a blind spot there that we have to, we have to help those businesses understand that, Hey, you do not see everything. Let’s look at this with a little wider frame and then fill in the holes and see the benefits as you do that.
And that’s so cool. That’s, and that’s really why. And I think about it as a reason, and a coach really helps us with the blind spots. And I’m my second book. I’m about 20% done is called what blind spots, because it’s about business blind spots. After all, we don’t know what we don’t know. And I, and I coach people and they just, some people want to challenge me on it, which is fine. I mean, I laugh when I think about Charles Barkley and his golf swing and how awkward it is, and he didn’t know how long it took him to kind of work through. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard. That’s where I think it’s, it’s, it’s fun to be a coach to see the start and then see what they can move into.
But I think that I appreciate the mindset two pieces that you talked about because there is such an importance in that mindset of Oh, it’s easy to get defeated. It’s easy, especially in 2020, to allow all the circumstances of life to pile up. And then they actually way more than the positive things that are going on. for me personally, I make sure that every day and laying out the things that I’m grateful for and, but that’s like from a coach’s perspective when people are going down that negative rabbit hole, that’s kind of my job and your job to kind of pull them out of that Cause again, they might not even know that they’re doing it. So
Exactly. It’s funny you say that because that’s one of the core pieces of my coaching and my programs. It’s the very first piece is, is helping to establish a positive mindset. One to me that that is the basis of success is to get that positive mindset. It doesn’t make everything hunky-dory in your life. That’s not what it is, but it helps you to look at things differently then yeah, I have an issue. Well, that’s I’m going to learn from it. And I’m going to make something positive out of it. I’m going to, and I’m going to learn from it and help it, use it, and make me more successful. And it’s helping to establish that. And then having that positive mindset just goes hand in hand with laying the foundation of customer service. I mean, it’s hard to if you have a negative mindset and you’re, that’s all you look at, and that’s all you focus on. It’s hard to turn around and put a smile on your face and try to treat customers well and value them. So, those go hand in hand with the positive mindset going into better customer service.
And that was the research that was missing. That’s what caused me to write my book because it’s, it talks I found the intersection of an engaged team and you know improving the customer experience. When you have a strong team, you tend to have a strong customer experience. When you have a weak team, you tend to have a weak customer experience. And there’s a ton of work out there and research on how to strengthen your team. And there’s a lot of research on improving the customer experience, but we took it and combined that. And like you said, it’s hard for somebody to be, to show up at work, not engaged in their job. They’re not really interested in the customer. They’re just are punching a clock for them to like to go to this, have such an awesome customer experience.
They’re not focusing on the customer. How often do they focus on getting the customer off the phone, getting them down the road to the next department, or whatever, and we’re consumers? So that’s the cool part about, I think customer experience is we’re able to tell people. When I train people, I’m like, Hey, think about from your perspective as a consumer when’s the last time you had a bad experience, we go for local Mexican. We just love Mexican food. And there’s one place that they just are over the top with how awesome they are. And then we try and go somewhere else, and it might not be bad, but it isn’t over the top. And I look at my wife, and I’m like, why did we do this again? And, especially now, some of them are struggling during the spot where small businesses are. We’re trying to really, you know, cater to the ones that are doing a great job. And I don’t know if it’s just me or are you finding that customer experience is, is becoming more top of mind for people as life progresses,
I believe they are. And especially in this day and time, and what we’re dealing with this year's circumstances that people are holding on to money is a little bit tighter. And typically, when people are holding on to money, they’re going to look a little more stringently at customer experiences and customer service. And they’re not going to have as much discretionary income. And so those two go hand in hand. And I’ve talked to businesses about this. I said, now is the time. It’s more important, really now than ever, to up your customer experience customer service game. For that very reason, because people are looking at it differently, and they’re more stringent. And if you don’t, you don’t match up. If you aren’t top of your game, you’re going to have a wandering eye, and they’re going to be down the street and move into your competitor really quick.
Isn’t it crazy? I mean, the statistics are so blatant, showing that a better experience, people will pay more. They’ll shop more often with you. They’ll tell more people about you. There is no downside to customer experience to improve your customer experience other than the mental attitude. I mean, it’s so funny because I’ve done work with a remodeler, or do I have this remodeler client in the past that I’ve done work with, and I’ve known them for years. I grew up in the construction industry. And it was interesting because they offer, they said in the 20 or 30 years, whatever that they weren’t doing this, they’ve never charged for a warranty issue. Let’s say you have an addition put on your house, and let’s say, and I don’t know, you know something breaks, right?
Well, they don’t come out there and say, oh my gosh, it’s going to be $5,000. They just fix it. And that’s their customer experience, which was awesome. But I’m like, you guys, let’s market this, let’s tell the world about it. They’re like, Oh, we don’t want to tell people about it. They’re going to take advantage of us, and there’s maybe a small percentage, and I don’t want to, I’m guessing 2%, but it could be the war. There’s a small percentage of people that definitely will take advantage of something. It’s crazy, though, that we don’t do something because of the percentage of people going to take advantage of us. And I don’t know if you run into that as well, but that’s kind of been my experience.
And yeah, I deal with that all the time with clients that they make these rules up, they got stiffed once they have the problem was, and then they make this rule up. That affects 99% of their customers because the 1% messed them up or took advantage of them. And to be honest with you, I point the fingers right at me. I had a time in my chiropractic clinics where I heard that my coach had called me on that. Listen, knock it off, quit punishing 90, 95, 90% of your patients because somebody took advantage of you, get rid of that, do your due diligence, make the 99% happy. And don’t worry about the 1%. Right?
Absolutely. And I’ve made that for me and my coaching. I tell people, if you don’t like this, don’t pay for it. I’m going to tell you right up front, if you are not if you don’t leave this session this time, whatever, this exercise better than you came into it. And you’re really authentically didn’t learn anything, didn’t move your, personal, or professional career forward. I don’t even want your money because I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. And I’ve yet to have somebody like, say, yeah, this really didn’t come. You know this didn’t meet my expectations. If you’re listening and you want to boot move your customer experience, think about how some ways that you can really challenge your customer to challenge your team, to move the bar up, which then move that customer experience up. have you what are some things that you come up with strategies that you teach companies to help improve their, their customer service?
One of the key principles is just to get, get and understand that customer perception is everything in the business. And ultimately, every business is in the customer perception business. Yeah, you may do construction. You may be doing sales training or whatever the case may be, but you’re driving a perception, whether good or bad. You have to understand that the customer’s going to leave with one or the other. And even if it’s a neutral perception that is more to the negative, because it was not significant enough or impactful enough for them to continue to do business with you or not have a wandering eye. You have to understand that customer perception is driven by how you make them feel when they’re doing business with you. When you’re saying, Hey, if you don’t like this, don’t pay for it. There, that’s almost going to shock them, but also set them at ease and let them, wow. This guy is serious about what he’s providing here. That makes me feel good. Like, Hey, he wants to give me some information that I can take hold of. Right? Those are the types of things, your customer section, you’re in the customer perception, business, customer perception, business, and customer perception driven by how you make them feel. You really have to have that foundation to move forward with.
That’s really good. That’s good. I love that customer perception. It’s so interesting. When I think about like, I do a lot of conflict resolution work, and it’s so interesting when you have two different perceptions of the same thing. And I love that cartoon that shows a guy standing two guys, one on each side of a six, and one looks at it and sees a nine. The other looks at it and sees a six. That customer the question is the big question everybody asks is the customer, always right? And whatever your answer is, yes, no. Or maybe, or whatever there’s, there’s always another side to this. Thank you for sharing that because the customer’s perception is the ones that have the money at the end of the day. If you don’t appeal to their perception, it’s really hard for us to move forward if you don't allow them to have their perception.
And that’s like you said, they’re too the perception and, and is the customer wrong the rule of can the customer be wrong or rule number one, the customer’s always Rule number two is if they’re wrong, refer to rule number one, now the customers are wrong. They can be wrong, but you’ll have to realize they’re still your customers. Your job is not to belittle them, make them, see the light, make them, see their error of their ways. That’s not what you’re supposed to do as a business, if they’re wrong, okay, they’re wrong. You can, you, you can help them in a way that is still going to make them feel valued and important. Soften the blow here. Here’s, here’s what we got a little off a lot of customers do: let’s take care of this for you and those types of things. So that, to clear that up, the old customer can be right, but it doesn’t matter. They’re still your customer, and you need to handle them and make them feel valued, even if they’re wrong in a certain way.
That’s so true. And I think that I look at it. When I was in sales and I, obviously, as a coach, we still sell, I mean, people don’t like the word sales, They don’t want to think about it. And I don’t, I’m not in sales, and I’m no good at it. And I always tell people, I’m like, think back to your first date, you are selling, like there was no tomorrow, we’re trying to sell whatever it was that you were selling. And they were either buying, or they weren’t. I look at it, and I try for myself, and I try and take the responsibility of rather than, Aw, it was the customer’s fault Cause it’s so easy. And especially in today’s economy, my gosh, it’s so easy to blame the government. It’s so easy to blame everything out there, except take responsibility for yourself, and customer experience starts with us. And I think a couple of things that I love to do, and I want to get your feedback is how do you ask your customer? How are we doing? What are some things that you’ve done, are you suggested to do you like pull them on survey monkey? Do you call them on the phone? I mean, what are some things that you suggest for your clients that will help really understand that customer’s perspective?
That’s a great question. I keep things very simple. That was my whole philosophy through my chiropractic career. It’s still my philosophy now just break things make them very simple. What I like to do, what I recommend to my clients do is to survey the customers. Basically, you can pull them, you can do online surveys, but basically, all you do is, have a question on a scale of one to 10, how is your experience with us? And suppose that customer rates you an eight or below. In that case, the second question is, Hey, can I, can we get ahold of you and talk about your experience and see where we’re doing better, the statement you want to make to a customer too, because we get surveys all the time, right? This, and how do we do and blah, blah, blah. We’re just inundated with that. People are like good grief, not another survey. I don’t want to take that, but if you’ll preface it, as we want to make our business better for our customers, would you please just give us a little feedback, a two-question survey and give us some feedback that way we can, we can make things better for you and make things better to serve you. And that that’s like, okay, we’ll go and fill this out. Especially if it’s only a couple of questions,
I’ll make it like 35 questions. Right?
Exactly. Every that’s part of the business too, is making things more efficient for people. Well, you’re sending them a 35-question survey. Yep. I don’t have time to do that. I don’t want to do that. And so that more than likely they won’t, so you just have to be careful with that.
I got a this is, and this just thought I just popped in my head. This is off the cuff. I have to say, we have a burger King that’s by our house, and we drive by, and for whatever reason, they can make that burger smell. I don’t know what it is if they got fans blowing this burger smell out onto the dry out onto the road or whatever, but it’s like, oh my gosh, I got to stop. I stop, and then I get a burger, and then I eat it. And then I get like, you look on the back of the receipt and it’s like here, fill out this survey. My question is I want to fill out a survey, but it’s like, if I give them my honest feedback, I don’t feel like it’s going to do any good.
I feel like it goes into this big VAT of all other millions of people. And I turn into a number. Just in just thinking outside the box, how do you, like, how could we really work this to where if I’m going to survey your company, number one, you’re going to acknowledge me. Number two, you’re going to say, thank you for that. And really talk about the potential of implementing that stuff. How do we get it from a VAT of millions into like, I really feel like I’m a valued, my input is valued? Do you have any feedback on that?
I do. Like I mentioned a second ago, just having a simple survey, but preface it with the Hey, we want to make our better for you. One that’s going to make them feel like, Hey, you’re going to be a, it’s going to be a value. It’s not just blowing smoke. It doesn’t go along this way, is surveying somebody, but I teach my clients to value complaints, not necessarily from a survey. I mean, certainly in a survey. You want to address that and take care of it. But if it’s a customer, a patient, a client, a consumer who complains to you about something, treat that like gold because that is your opportunity. Not only to make that customer happier and drive them up as far as making them a more loyal customer, but that complaint then voicing that complaint is probably a complaint of countless other customers.
Sure. And so that can be a blind spot. You mentioned that the business isn’t seen that they need to address that they’re potentially losing customers and profits because of that issue. I read a book, and I wish I remember the author’s name, but it was called hug your haters. And that’s what it was about. You get a complaint, and those are gold. That is your opportunity to better your business and make it better about customer service. So that, that really makes a consumer feel like, Hey, they are serious about them. There’s a story in that book about a restaurant. I believe it was in New York that people complained online and said this was a terrible experience. They would invite those consumers back into the restaurant after hours, feed them for free, and better understand why they had a bad experience so that restaurant could take care of those issues. And how powerful is that for those consumers and that would drive, drive up that loyalty factor for that business.
And I tell people the same exact thing and that situation, is that it’s funny when I think about it, now I go, Hey, you know what, online one, there’s a gift for you. And the average sales professionals thinking, Oh, great, there’s an online order one. Right? And you turn, it turns out to be a complaint. If we don’t look at a complaint as a gift, we have really missed the boat. And so often, and we could stereotype and say credit card companies or utilities or cable or whatever the people that we’ve interacted with as consumers and they’ve made a huge shift in the last few years, but think back earlier in the eighties and nineties you were an interruption in their day and the last thing that you really need, they needed was you telling them something about there, your unhappiness,
And I think that there is some, some shift there, but I think asking is really a great way to understand. And when I do my customer service training, it’s interesting because the statistic that we talk about is we, the question got asked a bunch of companies is does, do you think your company offers a superior customer service superior means really like high end, best of the best of your up in the top echelon, the people that got the survey back then, it was an over 80%, I want to say 87, but it was somewhere over 80% of companies said, yes, you know what? We really offer a superior customer service while the people that were doing the survey were kind of like, yeah, that doesn’t seem they go a step further. They ask the customers of these people, all these people that do respond and tell me about your experience.
Do they offer a customer a superior customer experience? The response there was 13%. There’s this huge misconception that, Hey, I’m delivering this outstanding customer service. I, I’m thinking eight out of nine times. And the customer’s like, nah, it’s really one out of 10. I wish that that right there would get people to pick up the phone and call you and call me in and say, Hey, help us with our customer experience. Do you have any understanding or feeling why it’s kind of hard to sell this at times for people?
I’m just laughing because I used that study, that statistic all the time, too. It’s a fantastic statistic study. And it goes back to the fact that that that perception customer perception is everything. It doesn’t matter what your business thinks is great customer service. If your customers don’t, then it does not matter. You’re missing the boat. Now I’ve lost your question. What was your question again?
No, I was just trying to understand why with that disparity, why it’s so hard sometimes for customers to repeat businesses to jump in on this full bore. I mean, it’s, it’s shocking to me. I was hoping that I’d have people lined up outside the door. I mean, for this particular piece. Cause I absolutely love to talk about it and it’s hard to sell a customer service training, isn’t it? Or is it just,
I’ve heard the term and this several times because it’s not sexy enough, but ,it’s just not sexy enough for whatever that means. Again, what I find is that the there’s that blind spot and everybody raises their hand, Customer service is important, and yeah, we already do it. If they think you already have it, then we’ll feel like it’s an issue. That’s for some other, other business. So many businesses get the purpose of a business to get a customer, keep those customers and make a profit, sustain and make a profit so they can continue to grow and stay in business. Many businesses are so focused on just getting new customers, getting new customers we’ll try to keep them, but that’s just not on their radar.
Or they feel like their customer services are going to do that. And that’s where they just don’t see where customers are dropping off and dropping out. And they wonder why the profits have plateaued or even declined, or maybe they have minimal growth because they are keeping a few customers retain them. But if you’ll focus on keeping them, and that’s done by customer service, that will drive growth and profits up exponentially compared to just letting it kind of grow organically. My programs are called the 5% bump program.
Excellent. That was my next question. I wanted to understand that 5% bump program.
And the 5% bump is based on a study out of Harvard business school. And what they found out was if a business simply creates a 5% increase in their customers' retention rates, repeat buyers, repeat business, 5% just increase it by 5% of measly, 5%. It can lead to a 25 to 95% increase in profits. And so that’s my goal in my program. As I work with my clients, we just want to drive up your customer retention by a measly 5%. And we do that by changing culture and improving your customer service. And then let’s see how that plays out in your bottom line and increase profits. That’s the whole focus, let’s, let’s get customers in, but let’s focus on keeping those customers in, and that’s what’s going to make a world of difference.
So awesome. And I, I mean, it’s so funny, it’s seven or eight times easier to sell more, sell more to an existing customer than it is to start a new one. Right?
Exactly. And it’s five to 25 times cheaper to keep that numbers than to get a new one. So
Should we turn this into so this is what we need to do? We need to turn these percentages into real dollars because we’re throwing these numbers out. And I don’t think that the average entrepreneur because even I struggle with turning a percentage into what does that really mean for my business? When you do that 5% bump program, do you are part of that showing what the real dollars turns into for that entrepreneur and the business owner?
Well, it depends on the business and the business owner, but we had a hundred plus thousand dollar increases in less than a year. A business tripled in like a year and a half, right around a year and a half because of it. So it is that powerful, but it just has to, and the reason it took a year and a half for this particular business to triple because the business didn’t quite take hold of it and implement it. It was still kind of skittish. He worked with me, but Oh yeah, that’s good, and I didn’t finally click it in for about six months. So really, it was tripled at about a year. And then finally the wheels were turning, they got a rear-end gear and got things put, put in place and all of a sudden boom, he was like, man, I figured you’re a ride. I just didn’t realize it could be this impact.
Wow. That’s so cool. When I found this formula that I created, it’s S T, which has strengthened the team plus ice, which has improved the customer experience, it equals P or profit. I mean, it’s a given that if you strengthen your team and you improve your customer’s experience, profit, I mean, it’s automatic. So, when you’re in the 5% bump program is that what I really liked about your website was I saw two programs that had the dollar amount, showed that the number of calls, the investing of time on your end and on my end, if I was the con the, the business owner or whatever. I really appreciate that about that. Do you think about how do you explain the ROI, the return on the investment on stuff like this? If I’m going to invest X number of dollars with you, what does that look like? Usually on a, on a return on investment,
My goal is to at least a 20% increase on the return on investment. And it’s more than that. I don’t, I don’t want to guarantee, or anything cause I, as I mentioned with the other, the, one of the owners of the business I work with is he did that did not move forward with the information and implement it as he should have. Yeah, I don’t put guarantees out there because it’s got there’s got to be some blood in the game from that standpoint, but 20%, 25%, 30%. And it can happen very quickly if they’ll take hold and move forward with it. But, the beauty of it is not only are they going to get a return on investment, but they’re going to have a better business as far as the experience for their employees. My pro is fall right along the lines with what you just said, strengthening the team.
That’s, that’s the second foundation principle that my program goes through. You got to have a team that you value and strengthen them for them to provide great service. But you’ll have a better team. You’re going to have fewer complaints. You’re going to have just a happier atmosphere. You’re going to have less stress. You’re going to have more profits. It’s going to enhance sales. I mean, as you mentioned early on, and I say this to my clients all the time, too, you can’t go wrong with improving your customer service. Exactly. There’s no downside to it, so why not move forward with it? It’s the greatest and maybe, maybe not the greatest, but it’s in the top three things you can do for a business that will increase growth and profits the quickest. And it’ll sustain throughout the business because valuing customers is never going away a certain product, a certain service whatever the case may be. Those will change and, and consumers will want different things, but they’re never going to stop wanting to be valued. And it felt to or made to feel and be important in a particular business.
And I think that that’s sort of it know we’re back to the perception thing again because if my, I think three chunks, I think of the, I think of me as like on the team, I work for a team. I work for a company where there’s me, the company and the customer, and three entities. And depending on how you rate those as a matter of importance when, when the company comes before the customer, your, your experience is going to really struggle when you come before the company, or you come before the customer, that’s there’s like, there’s only one successful way for this to work. And it’s the com the customer on top, the company, and then you, well, in this egotistical society and all about me and again, I struggle with some of those things as well.
I’m not pointing at people. There are times where I’m like, Hey, this is my company. I own it. I call the shots I write. And whenever I’m saying, I, the customer is not getting the attention that they need. If you’re listening and that’s you, that’s why guys like and I am here is to help you with that in a kind and jumped away, to be able to just do a little course correcting, like said early on, because we, as consumers, we can tell when we’re on the phone with somebody that wants to be there. And versus when somebody has to be there and I don’t know about you, but it’s still painful being a consumer. And whether you’re at a restaurant where to retail, wherever you are, and those people don’t want to be there. And maybe it’s just my extrasensory perception that I have for customer experience. But boy, I can pick that out in a heartbeat.
I would agree. We both have a little more of a critical eye, but people can still sense it. Where, as you said, they, they could care less you’re there, or they could care less to be there doing their job. And they certainly could care less that you’re there trying to buy from a more to have them provide a service for you, whatever the case may be. And it, it comes, it comes across loud and clear.
Yeah, absolutely. As we start to come in for a landing, oh my gosh, the time flew. Thank you again for hanging out with me. I want to share a story that was interesting because I had a company that we were doing about 10 million in annual sales for construction products when I sold it. And we had a showroom, and we had devised, put a camera where someone walked in, and a camera. You knew who it was. And it also the doorbell, the door rang, like when it opened. And I can remember when someone would come in, you would feel this, like there was like, you’re an interruption. In my days, somebody had to answer the door. Somebody had to go and help this customer. It was just kind of, you kind of got that.
Like, it wasn’t a real healthy thing. It wasn’t positive energy. I saw this, and I remember one day I talked to the people that we’re answering the door, and I said, Hey, you guys come here a second. we talked, and I said, this was back in the day where the Paychex guy would deliver your paychecks. Remember when he would walk in with a stack of paychecks. I said, when you noon, when he walks in, you guys got a big old smile on your face, you love that guy. And I said, and they’re like, yeah, the guy’s bringing us the paychecks. We love that guy. And I’m like, that’s exactly the feeling you need when your customer walks in because they are walking in with your paycheck. And when we were able to bridge that gap, our customer experience shifted. Now, granted, we hit speed bumps, and we struggled at times. But that that mindset that you talked about early on is really, is really key. As we, as we start to wrap it up, what would be a tip of the week for you, for the guy, for the girl listening to that may be struggling with their customer experience, or maybe they don’t even know they’re struggling? What, what tip of the week would you have for them
Kind of piggyback off? What you just said is, am I always making a great first impression? Maybe we need to do that. What I work with my clients on is making a bookend, our impressions with a consumer, whether it’s a brick and mortar or you’re on the phone with them or a zoom call, whatever the case may be. What I mean by that is your initial impression. You want to be focused on that consumer, and you want to make them feel valuable right away. You want to smile. You want to be enthusiastic about the meeting with you, doing business with you coming into your store, whatever the case may be, but you want them to understand very quickly that you are there for them. You are there for them. They are not there for you. So that’s the initial pressure. Now, what I found, though, is businesses don’t make a good last impression.
After they’ve done business with you, then things just kind of lay flat. They just kind of go flat. There’s maybe not a great farewell. There’s not a just, Hey, buy that type of thing. And unfortunately, that’s the impression that the customer leaves with they’ll forget that initial impression they may be remembered a little bit, but then kind of went flat and there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm when I left. You want a book in it. You want to make a positive and enthusiastic first impression, and you want to make a positive last impression; hey, thank you for doing business with you. We appreciate you. We’ll see you next time. Have a Merry Christmas, happy holidays? Whatever the case may be, you take care but do with as much enthusiasm as you did on the front end.
Book in that experience that that is not as incredible to do, and it’s very impactful. And again, they’re going to leave with that last impression being as positive as that first impression; that’s a powerful thing. One other thing, and this is a pet peeve of mine that we do so much communication via email and texts. Sure. And, and I’ll specifically talk to texts. When we text consumers, whether it’s an appointment, a poor appointment reminder, or whatever the case may be, whatever entity or whatever, you’re trying to message. You’re trying to get to them. Put, please. Thank you. You’re welcome. I, I don’t know if I can pull it up right now. I got a couple of yesterdays that they wanted me to do a survey, and it was just, Hey, can you survey me? Let me see if I can find it really quick. Yeah, here it is. Hey, there, this is Vicki with blah, blah, blah. Well, y’all vote for us for the best of blank just to, Hey, no, they really appreciate your business. We thank you for doing business with you. Would you please fill this out? We’d greatly appreciate it. How much more impactful and how much more valued would I feel if that was in the text, right?
Something along those lines. It’s so simple and easy to do. It’s simple and easy not to do, but again, if you’re driving perception, if you want consumers to feel valued, it’s those little things that will make a world of difference.