You Owe Your Customers an Answer w/ Michael Brandt

Welcome to the Account Experience Podcast. My name is Adam Durrell and as ever, I'm your guide to the challenging but usually rewarding territory of Account Experience. And of course we're focusing on customer experience in the B2B world, which if you think about it is account management plus customer experience. Call it Account Experience or ax. And that's what this podcast is all about. And as we kick off 2022, most businesses I think are going to be more challenged than ever this year with a lot of macroeconomic issues that are out there. I can think of uncertainty over Covid, the rising price of energy. That's a huge challenge, I think for most businesses. And of course raw materials. Finally, labor shortages. We hear about the great Resignation. So more than ever, employee experience is going to be a big thing this year. And I think a lot of businesses are going to be thinking about how are they going to be looking after their customers better in 2022 because if there's not a lot of money to spend on acquiring new customers, you better retain the hell out of the base you've got. So is it the year of cx? I don't know. If you think it is, let us know, but we'll certainly be telling you as we go through this a couple of notes about what's coming up in this season. In March we will be doing the Customer Gauge Account Experience Awards, which I know everyone looks forward to. That's about how we look at the excellence in in Account experience and let's find out if DHL supply chain are going to win again this year because they're a formidable competitor out there. And the other thing we've been looking into Fred Reichelt's new book, Winning on Purpose. I think it's a terrific read and we've got some great feedback from that. And I'm actually looking for listeners who've read the book and have points they'd like to discuss about that, positive or negative. So we'll be doing a few episodes to look at the points in his book and discuss them. So if you've read that and you'd like to contribute, do drop us a line today. I'm delighted to welcome the guest. Michael Brandt is his name. He is a specialist in customer experience but really writ large in the precision world of engineering. Many of you would know him, he is Swiss based, he's part of the CC XP program and he in fact leads the EXCO program in Europe. The European customer experience organizations are a big wheel in that. Amongst some of his other achievements, he's driven customer awareness to 35,000 people in a global program. I think that's some few things we.

Can learn from him.

Also driven net promoter from 16 to 45. Now he's operating as an independent. He's available for hire, but really one of the best people I can think of in customer journey mapping. And really delighted to welcome Michael Brandt with us today to the Account Experience Podcast. Michael, how are you doing? And welcome to the Account Experience Podcast.

Thank you for that great introduction, Adam. I'm delighted to be here talking to you.

It's been really great to look over your career. I think you've got a fantastic career portfolio. And if we just bring you back to the beginning. You were in the airline business, right?

That's right. I started off, I was a flying fanatic. I got a pilot's license while I was very young, and I really loved working on airports. And I started off my career in the airline business, first going through people's suitcases and security. But then I ended up as a station manager for TWA in Munich. And I really adored it. I mean, there was no nicer fix for me than walking across the tarmac at five in the morning getting. Filling my lungs with Jet A1 fumes. It was that, that was something that was havoc at the time.

That probably dates us a bit, but I remember twa. I mean, my dad was in the advertising business and he was, I think he was working on the TWA cam in the 60s. I know.

Yes. No, it was one of those glorious US carriers alongside Pan Am. And it was great. It was, you know, you were working for, really for a family, and everybody knew each other, everybody helped each other out. It was a fantastic experience and a fantastic company to work for.

Were you aware of customer experience in those days? I mean, we'd hear a lot about loyalty programs, but what was your experience with those programs when you were with them?

Well, you know, I mean, we had, we had, at twa, you had the TW Ambassadors program, which was a loyalty program. But, you know, when we were talking about customer experience, you know, it was very much, you know, how you, how you treated passengers. And I was a station manager in Munich shortly after Lockerbie, and that really changed things completely because whereas before the idea was to get passengers from the check in to the aircraft as quickly as possible and without any difficulty at all, after Lockerbie, it really became a little bit of a steeplechase, you know, with obstacles. Every, you know, you have this check that check, passport check, security check. You know, it became a Lot more difficult. And I think that's where we started a little bit to turn the corner from, you know, air travel being something that people really looked forward to to becoming a little bit of a chore.

Yeah, I think that's really, and probably unfair on airlines to some extent because they're only, you know, the, you're, they're keeping people entertained on, on the, on the plane. But of course that check in to and gate experience is really, really beyond their control, so.

No, it is. I mean, you know, a lot of the things they do are down to government regulations, you know, what they have to do and, and it made it a lot more difficult and for the airlines as well, you know, not just for the passengers, but because, you know, passengers became a lot more agitated, you know, they were less relaxed. And I remember having to deal with several customers and, and it was always very difficult. Yes, I got a couple of complaint letters in my time because I've been rude. What I'd actually done was say no. And people equated that with me grudge. It was a tightrope. I enjoyed it. I mean I enjoyed dealing with people and it was always fascinating. I've got lots of stories to tell from that era.

Maybe we can do that another time. But really the focus of this podcast is all about the B2B work. And by the way, what I want to try and get you to talk about because I think you've got this great experience in closing the loop. We're going to talk about how you close the loop later on for promoters, detractors and passive. But I'm going to try and make a link between what you were doing with consumers really in the air travel business to, you know, then you pivoted, you then joined an engineering company. And I'd love to find out, you know, first of all, contrast that B2C work in the airline business to B2B work for ABB as it was. So what are the differences in your mind?

Well, obviously I think, you know, the difference is when you're dealing with sourcing, you know, if people are choosing which airline to fly, it's really quite simple, you know, so you've got a route, which airlines fly that route. Who do I want to fly with? Maybe whose loyalty program am I a member of? When it comes to B2B, it's a lot more difficult because when you're purchasing big ticket items, generally it's not one person that's making a decision, it's a committee or you've got various different people giving their input. You've got finance, you've got purchasing, you have the engineering that people are actually using. So you have to try and cover a whole, whole load of different interests and stakeholders. But I think the one thing that it still both boil down to, the big common denominator is people. And I think that's really important to bear in mind. Whether you're dealing with consumers in the B2C world or in the B2B world, ultimately it's all about people.

That's interesting. You talk about how you were responsible for a global program to take this out to 35,000 people. So what are some of the elements in that communicating to people to talk about the importance of customers. How do you start on that journey?

Well, at abb, we started, we were very fortunate because we had a CEO, Joe Hogan, who'd come from GE Healthcare, who actually said, okay, I want an NPS program. So it came right from the very top. And we introduced this NPS program and the person who actually kicked it off was someone who had a marketing background. And so they were able to do all the explanatory brochures. But it really started off very much as a, okay, let's hear what our customers have to say. But there was no, let's say, back end to it. It was just the asking. And this gentleman went on to another role after a year and a half, and I took over and with my quality background, I said, well, it's all right asking people what they think, then you have to do something with it because people aren't going to keep answering this question if you don't do anything. And then we discovered during the course of this program that not everybody really realized what it was all about, first of all. And some of the feedback that we were getting from customers was also pointing us to very clear deficiencies in the way that we were handling customers. And so we set up a global program to try and bring this whole philosophy to our frontline, frontline staff. And we did this through a half day workshop. It was in teams. So you'd have a group of five or six people working on a workbook, going through exercises and having group discussions. And then in the afternoon there would be basically a summing up and trying to hammer home what had been learned during this program. And the great thing was that most people expected, when they were called up to attend these things, they expected to sit in a room for a day and just watch PowerPoints. And I think the whole idea that they were then in groups of between four and Six colleagues talking amongst themselves. And we made sure that these people were from different departments, so they shared different interests and different viewpoints. People really enjoyed it. And it was rolled out in many countries, and some of the countries were still using it as an onboarding, part of that onboarding process five or six years after we launched it. So that for me was. Was a sign that it had been quite a success.

That's a really good testimony to. To the success of that. Let me. Let me just see if I can recap for that, because I think it's really crucial the program was led from the top. So you had a CEO that said, we're going to do this. Somebody came in, by the way. I think this is fairly typical. Started it up, quit or went on to something, you know, bigger and better things, leaving somebody else to hold the baby. And then you have to figure out what the metrics and the program were. So I think this is. I've actually seen this many times. Congratulations for gripping it and taking it small correction.

Joe was around for a little while, but the guy he'd nominated to launch the program, he was only there for about a year and a half and moved on. But having a CEO who is so clearly in favor of and clearly behind it makes a huge difference because it just gives the whole program that authority and that credibility. And he. Every year, ABB got top 150 managers together. And the first year he talked about the program. The second year we'd noticed there'd been a little bit of resistance here and there. And he said very clearly, he said, look, if you're not on board with this program, you don't belong in this company.

More powerful stuff.

And he made it absolutely crystal clear. So if ever there were any issues with following up, for instance, closing the loop that we're going to talk about a little bit later. If I called a country manager and said, you have a problem with one of your units that's not been closing the loop on time within the guidelines. I need to speak to the country manager that his assistant would put me through straight away. It was like. And they would get on the phone, they said, I'll deal with it. Because the rule was that if anything like that went wrong, it ended up on the CEO's desk and nobody wanted, of course, that kind of attention. So he was really so clearly behind it and made no secret of it that it really was a tremendous asset to the whole project.

We know that from all of our research that the key thing to make a program working is if The CEO backs it.

Absolutely.

And they really have to lay down the law often to do that. But just drilling into this a little bit more, did the CEO believe it was going to be the case because of some immediate financial reward or because it was the right thing to do? I'm just curious as to how he communicated that to his management team.

He said it was the right thing to do. 8B really didn't have any standardized customer feedback program. It was divisions doing their own thing, business units doing their own thing. The results weren't very, very transparent. They certainly weren't open to everyone to see. And Joe had come from a company that had used nps, and he said, no, we have to be a lot more transparent in what we do. We have to set up a program which is very clear. And he said it wasn't about financial reward. It was about listening to customers, showing customers that we were listening because we didn't necessarily have that kind of a reputation. In some cases, customers told us very clearly, you do what you want and you expect us to buy. And so, as Joe said, we have to be prepared to listen to some uncomfortable truths.

Oh, yeah.

And yes, we did. Those uncomfortable truths, indeed, they came to light, and then it was a question of doing something about it.

I think that is a perfect way to pivot into it, the uncomfortable truth. Now, it sounds like you were able to address some of these things out front in the workshops that you were doing.

Yeah.

And you had done effectively. You were training people to close the loop, I'm guessing, with customers.

Absolutely. Because, you know, this is something that wasn't necessarily something that we were very good at. I was also responsible for our complaint management system. And very often I'd get calls from customers saying, well, thank you very much. You've closed the ticket. But nobody's actually told me what's been done about it.

Oh, yeah.

Know what the solution is? And so it was very clear that we. We weren't very good at closing the loop. And in the early years, Closing the loop met too many people going to a customer and saying, okay, you gave us a two. You gave me a two in our survey. My boss has told me, I've got to come and talk to you. But the customer would go, yeah, I'm really sorry that. I'm really sorry you got into trouble. Can I change it to a. Can I change it to a 9? And no. So it was also a question of going back to our front line and saying, what is closing the loop all about? Right. What do we actually want to do, I must say that I stole the concept of five A's from Don Peppers, which was acknowledge, basically. Acknowledge you've got a problem. It was basically, oh, yeah, apologizing, saying, look, I'm sorry, not what's gone wrong, but I'm sorry that you feel this way. I'm sorry we've let you down. You feel we've let you down?

Yeah.

Then amplifying, asking the customer to basically tell you what the problem is, what they're unhappy about, without jumping in and trying to defend yourself, because that's a normal reaction. Customer says something and you want to go in and justify yourself.

Defensiveness, you know, sorry, Defensive, defensive. It's really.

Exactly, exactly. And it was. We were training people. No, don't do that. Ask if something's not clear, then really try and get the customer to get all this off their chest. And then the fourth A was to ask, so, you know, in an ideal world, what could we do to put this right? And then the fifth A was basically to act, do something with what the customer has told you. And we said, these are the guidelines, you know, when you go into a customer to close the loop, follow this framework and it'll serve you well. And so that's what we used, and it's starting to improve. And then we were able to start telling stories of some of our frontline staff who were closing the loop with customers and realized just how delighted the customer was that someone had actually read what they'd written and was prepared to come and talk to them about it. I mean, this was a novelty for many customers. You know, they say, I mean, when we first started, I would get, you know, the survey was sent out by email, and I would get some very, very rude answers. Say, you know, you know, nobody's going to read this anyway. You know, why are you wasting my time? And I made a point of replying to each of those and say, look, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I can assure you at abb, somebody's going to read your feedback. And even that is a 99% of the time I got an apologies, I'm sorry for the language I used. I didn't realize anybody was actually going to read it. And yes, of course, I'll fill out your survey. Right. So it was really a question of being consistent. Absolutely. Making it a rule that every feedback that we got from a customer was read, acknowledged, and if necessary, acted upon. And customers got to. Got to see that very quickly. And our response rate increased. We were running on a response Rate, which was around 27%, which wasn't bad. And we had customers actually coming and asking our country organization, when's the next survey? Wow. And then we had to get customers to understand that if they had something to say, they didn't have to wait for the survey to say it.

You know, I'm going to touch. There's so much to unpack here. But just on that one, I mean I sometimes I hear about, oh, what about customer survey fatigue? You've just answered the question that if you've got a well structured and a closed loop served system, customers love to give feedback and do that. It's not about fatigue. They understand it's an ongoing part.

Absolutely. I mean we started off with an annual relationship survey and so the, you know, the rhythm was, was annually. And we have one country where some of our top customers wrote to us and said this has been a really fantastic experience because it's brought both teams together to discuss issues in a structured way. And in a way it's a pity that it needed the program to get us this far. But these were some of the benefits that it really created opportunities for dialogue with many of our customers because some of the problems were not necessarily issues that we were in a position to resolve by ourselves. We needed the customer's importance. So we'd set up joint task forces. And so it increased the bond also between the two companies as some of these groups got to know each other better.

That's a really good story. I wonder if I can touch on some, perhaps some of the differences that you would see or how you would coach your teams to tackle say a detractor message. So somebody's got giving you a low score. How would you coach somebody who's about to go into a closed loop session with that?

What there was really, really a question of sticking to those 58 and telling them to really make sure that the customer got everything off their chest, really find out what are the issues. Because we said consider the survey the tip of the iceberg. Very often the customer, when he responds to the survey will only give you his top of mind impressions. But there's probably a lot in the background there which he also wants to say. So go in there, go into a customer and really get them to spill their guts if you like and tell you everything that's bugging them. And then that'll be the probably overlaying.

On top of the five A's. You could do the five whys to find out what was behind that and behind that.

Yes, absolutely. You know, and I think it was a fascinating experience for a lot of the people who had to do it. I think they all. Right at the beginning, I think they were all fairly terrified of going into the customer. I think, okay, it's going to be like sitting in a wind tunnel.

Yes.

But actually a lot of them found out that being asked to actually tell us all their problems, you know, all the things that were bothering them. A lot of customers calmed down very quickly and were happy to tell us because they felt that we were actually wanted to listen to them. And I think that's, you know, customers who feel they're being ignored, they tend to get very irate. A customer feels that they're being listened to. They become a lot more understanding. Also, if the problem is complex and it's going to take a while to resolve, they tend to be very patient as long as you keep them updated. And this is another issue that is very important. Keep them updated as you try and resolve the problem. So, you know, you might say, look, I think it's going to take us a couple of months to resolve this, but then it might actually turn out to be more complex than you thought to begin with. And actually it wasn't going to take two months, but it was going to take six months. It was important to go back to the customer and say, look, this is what we've done, but it's more complex than we thought. We're going to need more time. And we found pretty much in 99% of cases, the customer would say, thanks for letting me know. That's fine.

Yeah. I think it really reinforces the fact that we're humans dealing with other humans. And in that B2B context, sometimes it's so easy to sit behind the huge facades of the enterprises that we work in, you know, and then it comes down to, look, we're just people trying to help you. But it is that fear of getting over it which is really important. I love that framework.

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I'm thinking about the other net promoter roles or answers rather, you know, passives and promoters. Did you have that in the program? Did you also use that as a way of closing the loop?

Well, certainly we, we, you know, we, we said to our account managers, certainly with, with the promoters, you know, acknowledge at least that, you know, you got their response, thank them for it and you know, and, and show your appreciation for the fact that they actually like doing business with us. I think, you know, that was, and, and very often that wasn't necessarily something where there was a specified timeframe that they had to do it. And we said, look, you know, we thank you very much for your response on the survey, really appreciated it and certainly if there's anything we can do in future, you have any questions, you don't have to wait till you get the survey. Give me a call to touch base. We found with the passives, it was a lot more difficult because first of all, we had to get people to understand what passives were. A lot of people at the beginning would say, well, my customer's giving me a seven. He's happy. He says he's happy. Right. And of course, there's a lot of cultural issues that play into this. And I think being based in the Netherlands, you probably know this because one of the things that our organization in the Netherlands said is that when it comes to NPS schools, the Dutch are fairly stingy. So I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's what I was being told.

The Dutch view that they always say is happy. Is it the same thing? But on the other hand, every country has got the, oh, no, that doesn't work here, you know.

No, no, exactly. Right. So. So. So the first argument we had with people was, you know, well, just because you think your customer's happy, you still still got to go and talk to them. And of course, you know, cultural bias is something which. Which is very tricky. One of the greatest examples I have of the differences in cultural bias was between Japan and China. Now, Japan is. The scores are generally low. The Japanese, and this is one of the reasons why it's also important to be consistent in the method that you use for the service. If you go to a Japanese customer and talk to them, they'll be very polite and give you a lovely score. If you send them an email when they're not sitting right in front of you, and they'll tell you what they think. And they're very tough. The scores were fairly quite low in Japan. In China, it's the opposite. They were getting fantastic scores. And of course, then we had the Japanese looking at the Chinese score and saying, it can't be that our Chinese colleagues are so much better than we are. We said, look, don't look at other countries. What you have to look at is your year on year progress. Focus on that. Right? And we did. We got together in head office in Zurich. I was part of a group. It was a very informal group of about 15 companies, B2B companies, that got together annually to benchmark using our NPS results. And we had a professor at the University of Paderborn in Germany who collected all the information anonymously from the various organizations and put together an annual report. And so we were able to benchmark in the various countries that we were active in and we could see very clearly how the scores in Japan were so much lower than the scores in China. So it gave us added ammunition or added documentation for our colleagues in these countries, you know, which to say, look, you know, just focus on your year on year progress rather than looking at other countries. Because it's not the same thing. Right. The same thing happened in China and a couple of other countries. They say we've got great schools, we stop now. That's not the way it works. Right.

But you have that unique experience because you worked in Japan for a while. So when you did have a chance to see Japanese service culture close up and what did you notice about it?

I think it was the Japanese service culture and the time that I spent in Japan that actually got me sold on customer experience. Because when I actually, when I went to, when I started off in Japan, my background had been technology, transfer, license agreements. And I was then plunged into this customer facing role where I was meeting customers on a daily basis. And of course also as a consumer, the focus on customer satisfaction, on customer service was absolutely mind boggling. I mean, it was absolutely amazing. You know, you pulled into a gas station, two men jumped out, one of them was filling a tank and the other one was, you know, cleaning all the windows and an ashtray if you were a smoker. And I remember going into a store, like a do it yourself store, Home Depot kind of. With my wife, we bought a foot spa a couple of years earlier. It had never really worked and it was made for Japanese feet. And you know, with my, with my 12 and a half, there was no way I was going to get my feet in there anyway. It had never really worked properly, but it had been in the cupboard. It was out of warranty. But to dispose of electric items in Japan is not that cheap. So we thought, fine, we'll take it back to the store and ask them to dispose of it. So we took it back to the store that we had bought it from and asked them to dispose of it. And the young lady behind the counter, she didn't understand very well, so she got someone who spoke English. It was the manager and he said, have you got the receipt? I said, no, no. I said, it's fine, it's out of warranty, we don't want our money back. Just if you could dispose. And this to him was just not going to happen. We were bringing a product back that we were not satisfied with. He was not going to let us walk out of that store in that Status. And he went to great lengths to look up what the price had been and he refunded us the money.

Wow.

I mean, I mean, my wife and I, we walked out of that store and we just like, did that just happen? You know, we couldn't believe it. But, but this was the attitude. And, and I found also, you know, dealing with customers there, our own customers, because obviously a B2B how focused our sales guys and our service guys were on satisfying the customers. And it was something that really marked me. And that was then when I went back to Switzerland, when I went back to head office. That then was my real passion was customer service quality. Getting it right first time, it was an unforgettable experience.

But that's a great, a great story. I too have been blown away by Japanese service when I've been there. It really is, it is culturally shocking sometimes to see how amazing it is. And I think that's really interesting. That was your light bulb moment.

Absolutely.

Coming back into Europe, though, you were very focused on process and quality. You know, you're at least in the black belt. You got your, you got quality management very much in your background. How do you see that relates to, to customer experience?

Well, I think processes are important because if processes are adhered to, the customers feel everybody knows what they're doing.

Yeah.

One thing that we found annoyed our customers greatly was how processes might have differed from one unit to another. So they said, you know, doing business with ABB is like doing business with 24 different companies. You know, it's a little bit like Forrest Gumpenies box of chocolates. You never know which one you're going to get. Right. Strong processes preclude that from happening.

Yes.

You know, it means, you know, when a customer makes a complaint, they know how it's going to be dealt with. It doesn't matter what kind of product it is. And I think this was important because ABB had various different complaint mechanisms. And one day, and I was responsible for complaint management in Abbas, and sometimes the CEO would come to me and say, okay, what are our issues? And I say, well, if we look at the actual group tool, this is the issue. But that doesn't take into account some 10 different business units that use their own tools or Excel spreadsheets in the worst case. And it was a real challenge to try and get all this together. And we had a project to standardize this and I led this and we got representatives from various divisions and business units together and we did an as is chart. And when we finished, we just Looked at it and most of the comments had four letters. I mean, it was just, it was so incredibly complex and unworkable and different units using different KPIs to measure the success. And same terms, but meaning different things. It was anything but standardized. And so we really had to work very hard to try and standardize that so that everybody in the company was taught in the same language. And it was a big challenge. A big challenge.

I think a telling story. I don't think process is used enough in customer experience and I'm a big fan of that. So that's something. I think we had another opportunity on another podcast, Michael. I'd love to drill more into that one, but I think I'd like to leave the work together today with some reflections on some of the journeys that you had. I mean, you took the NET promoter from 16 to how, what was it, 30?

About 45?

5. So significant number of points of. I mean, could you just give the listeners a sense of, you know, one or two things that were the biggest contributors to, to that increase?

Well, I think the, the biggest contribution was actually, actually listening to customers. Not just saying that we were listening to customers, but actually doing it. Yeah. And making sure that the whole resolution of issues was tracked. As I say, we tracked the loop closing we would track in our complaint management tool. Issues and negative issues from the survey were fed into our complaint management tool where we could track how they were being resolved, what the solutions were, and training people and putting people under pressure to realize that they owed their customers an answer. When we first started, I had some issues where customers were telling me, look, we're not getting answers. We're not being told what the solutions are. And I went to one manager and he said to me, I'm ashamed to go to the customers with the solutions that we're giving them. So I said, well, it's your job to kick back. You're the customer's ambassador. If you're fed a solution for your customer which you're ashamed to go to the customer with, you have to kick back and go back to me and say, look, I'm sorry, I cannot go to the customer with a solution. Yes, we told our frontline people, you are the guardians of ABB's reputation because you're the interface between the factories where the issues are being resolved or the sales units where the issues are being resolved and the customer. And if you're fed at something which is subpar, let's say, for instance, a root cause analysis, and you look at it and you Say, this is absolutely rubbish. Yes. You know, APB has a reputation of being one of the world's leading engineering companies. Our customers, very often they pay a premium to buy our products. They deserve the best, they're paying for it. We cannot afford to fault them off with subpar documentation or answers. They don't deserve it. And so it was also trying to make people conscious of the kind of quality that our customers deserve. As I said, the fact that we were actually being receptive to customer comments. I think this was a change for a lot of our customers. And that hadn't necessarily been something that they'd been used to, but also a lot of focus from the top management. We got all the data together, we figured out what the top three issues were. And each of these issues was then sponsored by one of the members of the C Suite. There was a project manager, and basically he was given the task of resolving these issues with the divisions and the business unit. And there was a quarterly update for that C Suite member on what was going on. And actually, sometimes there was a. Actually you were expected to go to the whole of the executive committee and make a presentation and say, this is what we're doing. So there was a lot of pressure on the organization to resolve these issues. And it bore fruit. I mean, in this respect, Joe Hogan was right on target. And he left after the program had been in place for about four years. And a lot of people say, so is NPS going to stay? And the new CEO said, absolutely, this is now it's part of our DNA. It's not going anywhere. And by that time it had been extended to transactional surveys and also internal surveys. So for instance, one of the first internal groups that used NEDPS survey was our HR department Makes a connection between the style, you know, and. That was perfect.

Michael, I really appreciate how much you've shared with your life on that program. That's a really great insight to B2B net promoter and closing the loop. Thank you so much. You say on your website that you're a cxsherper. And I think that really describes your role in this. If people want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Well, you can go to my website, which is www.cx-experture.com. yeah. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. Michael Brandt, CCXP and I'm always happy to win talk to anybody about customer experience.

I guess that's the animals coming in now probably telling us that we should get out of here. Michael, thank you so much for the insights today and thank you for sharing it. For all the listeners to the Account Experience blog, I would definitely give you a 10 on this.

Thanks a lot.

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