Candid Conversation with Host Adrienne Barker, MAS

Many years, since probably 2011 or '12 when I moved.

Yes, I think that's true. It's been way too long.

And I remember— so funny thing, I remember the first meeting. So I was at an event and Sandy was speaking, and you came around and you handed me a pen, and I was like, do I tell her I just sell pens? Like, I don't even know what to do. But your smile, your smile. But I remember that, and I was like, And then one day I think I was sitting in the front 'cause I was just like, and I finally got the nerve to say to you, Sandy, I love your smile. Like it's so, oh, it's so captivating. And then I loved that when you spoke, tell us about that. You were speaking at, you were speaking at the little popcorn place at the World Upside Down building, WonderWorks.

Oh my gosh, WonderWorks. Oh wow. And I remember that was ages ago.

Because your concept, I really don't even wanna waste time. Your concept of what you do is so important, even now more than ever. So tell us, what is the WOW Place International?

OK, well, at WOW Place International, the reason I got that is because we help you turn your workplace into a wow place. I mean, it's just— when you go to work, you don't want to have people who are going to work and just marking time for 8 hours, waiting until they can go home and get back to what they consider their real lives. So it's unbelievable. In fact, I saw a funny cartoon on email one time that had an employee saying, "I don't mind coming to work every day, but that 8-hour wait to go home is just a killer." That's funny. So I said, you know what? I want people to stop embarking on an 8-hour wait to go home every day. Let's just make the workplace so engaging and so valuable for them so that they know that they're making a difference. And that's what it is. When you have a regular workplace, my tagline goes, a workplace is a place where Employees have to go because they make a paycheck. But when you turn your workplace into a wow place, well, a wow place is a place where people, not just nameless faceless employees, but people love to go because they know they make a difference. It's not just about the paycheck. It's, am I doing something good here? Or am I just another number or another cog in a wheel? You know, I want to know I'm making a difference. And the more we get millennials and all the people coming up behind us, They're focusing way more on the experience and making a difference than we ever did back in the old days when it was just like, shut up, put your nose to the grindstone and do your job. You know? Well, really, that old management style ain't gonna work anymore. So I'm out there trying to help leaders figure out how do we work with people better? How do we become more human? You know, how do we let them know that we're like them so that we get rid of that us versus them kind of stuff? And I just love what I do normally. Of course, I've been home now for a month and a half. Not able to speak, but it was so funny because I did a webinar this morning on customer service through COVID-19, which is— holy cow, the things we're learning about how the role of customer service is changing right now. And I just did a whole webinar on that a couple hours ago. I was— yeah, I was so excited to do it because not only do I love the information that we're finding out and able to share, but it's like I told my husband Bruce, I said, Bruce, I'm so happy to be working on a presentation that's actually going to happen.

So, so are there any— first of all, I want to just ask you, what is the number one thing that if you had to name one thing that really makes a business comfortable and a WOW place, what would it be?

It's that the leaders act more human around their people and they start treating them as more than just an employee. You know, I hear so many times deal. You know, why do I need to engage them and do this and do that? I'm paying them. That should be enough. You know, they're getting paid to do their job. Well, yeah, you're paying them, but the paycheck is like far from the top of what the reason is why they're there. And so if you stop focusing on the paycheck and start focusing on the people, show them that you value them. You know, like all human beings want 3 things. They want to be valued, respected, and listened to.

Yes, so true.

Yeah, you hit people all the time. Well, they don't even listen. Why bother? I'm just, you know, they're checking out. I gotta tell you, you know, that there are places, boards that I've been on and places where the whole group starts out so hot, jumping excited to get in and do stuff. And when you have a leader who disengages everybody, 'cause they don't wanna collaborate, they don't wanna value anybody's opinion, the whole board or the whole group just starts marking time. And it's like, well, okay, I'm waiting until my term is over and then I'm outta here. And it's like, oh, it's devastating to see that in an organization, on a board, in a group, anywhere. So that's what I try to do.

It's amazing. And you, you started Central Florida Stars, didn't you? Yes. Oh my God, brilliant.

Central Florida's Next Big Star. Well, and that was when I was on the board of the Children's Advocacy Center and we needed to do a fundraiser.

Yes.

And I was looking at American Idol and how popular that was. And I'm a singer. So I was like, well, I know good singers and Why don't we do this? And they jumped on the idea and we did that, oh, several years. We made almost $100,000 for the Children's Advocacy Center with that one event.

I love joy. And the church, you had that beautiful church, which was really a great— you were actually, I took your idea and I did it for the American Cancer. I did a Western talent show. I was in Tucson, I was working for ACS and they're like, have you ever done a talent show? And I'm like, No, but I was, uh, I, I don't know if I was part of the committee or something. I think I probably was. Yeah, it was even your whole, um, it's weird. I remember, I remember so clearly because you had the auction items and you were one of the first that said let's have a buy now. Do you remember? You had the buy now that before anyone was ever thinking of that, you said we should maybe make an offer, do it. But I was like Yes, it's like I have a really good memory, thank God. But I want to ask you, I want to go into customer service, but when you're working with a company and if the leader is an owner and he— that the owner, he or she knows that they're not obviously doing things right, do they want to have you come in or are you more working for like with the HR department? Like, because if you come into a company, the company has to admit that they have a problem to begin with. Possibly that they need to make it better.

Right. And it's, it's not even that it's a big problem. It could be just they want to pump things up. They're already doing things well. You know, I find that when I go into a company, the time I succeed the most is when they're already doing things well. They know these concepts, they embrace the concepts, and then they just want to pump them up and make them better because they recognize we can always be better no matter what we're doing. The times that we have the worst problem are, for example, I went in to do an administrative professionals program. And it wasn't just about customer service. It was, that one was staff motivation for the admins. And the night before the program, the leader who hired me took me to dinner. And she said to me, "Gee, I hope you can motivate these people because, you know, it's just, it's like pulling teeth trying to get them to do anything." And I was like, "Wow, okay, well, hey, I'm pretty good at motivating people. I'll do my best and, you know, we'll see what happens." So, I go to the program the next day. I'm talking to them. It's an all-day program. So we're brainstorming great ideas and we're talking about things. And about 3/4 of the way through the day, they're like so jumping hot. And they said to me, "Sandy, this is great. But every time we try to do something new, our leader," the woman who had taken me to dinner the night before, "slams us down and says, 'That's not the way we do things here. That's not your job. You don't work. No, we're not gonna.'" And they slammed down every single idea. And it's like, oh, Now, I see why it's like pulling teeth to get— because when you get slapped down enough for trying to submit good ideas to help your organization and you get told your input isn't valued, we don't care what you have to say, that's the way it's always been done and we're not changing now. It's like, wow, does that mean that's always the way it's got to be? That was why they were having a problem. So, I find that when I can work with a leader who has a blind spot but they're open to coaching, And they're open to say, okay, maybe I am part of the problem here. I've got to motivate and inspire my people to speak up, not slam them down every time they open their mouths. That's when we succeed the best. And I'm telling you, I mean, I did a program for a company in the Orlando area that had just lost their biggest client. They were about to lose their second biggest, which was worth $2 million a year. And they brought me in and said, "Please help us figure out what we can do to— we got to save this client and all our others." So we went in. Oh my gosh, this was such a highly customized program. Every single week, I was working with the customer service manager and saying, "Okay, we took care of that. Now, what do we need to address?" And we'd go and we'd plan the next week's program. And we did this for 6 weeks. Only 2 hours per week because you can't take the entire customer service team offline very long, right? So for 2 hours a week times 6 weeks, 6 weeks, that's 12 hours of training. We saved the $2 million client. They actually, it put them into bonus territory to get even more business from that client. And the client loved what they did so well, they brought the customer service manager out to their convention the next summer to tell them what they had done. And it was like, yay! So in 6 weeks, I was able to leave it.

That, you know, you were also influenced on me in 2016. I decided that I needed some training myself. I just didn't know etiquette enough. I always felt uncomfortable, and I went to Protocol School of Washington and became an etiquette speaker. But I think of you and how you smile and just how engaging you are and how you work a room, and you're just perfect. So I want to say thank you because watching you and getting a chance to seeing you and hearing you has been wonderful. So, okay, let's get to the juicy part. Tell us about the COVID-19 customer service because—

Oh my gosh. Well, you know what we're finding now is that a lot of the frontline customer service reps are finding themselves in crazy consultative mode now. So whereas before they were being asked questions, you know, mainly about the company, the services, the products, whatever. Well, now, I mean, people are like, they need to talk, they need to vent, they need to share their personal lives. And so the, what I'm telling, one of the biggest things I told on the Here's a big tip for you that I told on the customer service seminar this morning. It's that if you can, you need to present a human face to the organization. People do not, they're under extreme duress right now. Either they have no jobs, no income, they can't pay their bills. You know, and even if a company is saying, all right, we'll give you some respite, you know, we'll give you a payment plan or we'll whatever. They have to call up and many times they're very emotional. So, the people are starting to have to, they have to be very compassionate, but they also have to not get too embroiled in it so that they're getting depressed throughout the day. So, they have to really kind of distance themselves and focus forward on what can I do to help. And even if it's nothing to do with what the organization provides, maybe they heard of a resource. And I told the company that I was doing it for today, get a resource page on your website. Website, not only just COVID-19 stuff, but I mean, for me, I'm a solo entrepreneur. All my income, because there are no, no live events right now, is zero. They're gone, right? But when the SBA came out with loans, for example, it was always for— at the beginning, you have to have 2 employees, you and 1 W-2 employee. I don't have W-2 employees, but I still have to pay my bills. So it's like, really? Well, all of a sudden, a couple of weeks later, a friend of mine who's a realtor said to me, Sandy, the SBA now has plans for solo entrepreneurs that only have 1099 employees, and you can get some help there. And it's SBA loans and grants. And I was like, oh my gosh, my own association didn't even tell me that. But she belongs to National Association of Realtors because she's a realtor, and they sent out a big thing and she shared. So I said, find resources, find official resources. And they even have a tagline that, you know, you're trusted source of whatever and information. So be that trusted source of information. I can't tell you how grateful I am to her that she gave me information that had nothing to do with anything for her, but everything to do with trying to help me. So I said, you know, put something on your websites. And when it comes to this human connection, I know big companies, you can't always give them your name, your extension, your email. But I'm gonna tell you, if you can find a way to do that and put a human face on your company, you are going to be wowing them. Because, for example, about a year and a half ago, I lost my mom. 6 months later, I lost my dad. Okay, so now they had some investments at E-Trade, and thank you for that, I appreciate it. But they had some investments, so I'm calling E-Trade and I had to get to the beneficiary department. So I'm working with this one particular guy at first, and it's very complicated. And what did he say to me? This is a huge company, E-Trade. He said, Sandy, I know this is very complicated, and now I know your situation. I don't want you to have to talk to a million different people. Here's my name, here's my direct extension, and I'm gonna send you an email so you can directly reply to my email. You have my email, and you can contact just me, and we'll work through this together. Oh my word. The burden that was lifted off my shoulder because I had one person who showed they cared about me from this massive company. I have great feelings toward E-Trade because of this one guy. If you can just put that human face, make the connection. So find a way to let them have one person they can talk to. That way they don't have to repeat their story a million times. They don't have to worry that the last person didn't put the notes in properly and now the next person can't understand it and now you're repeating yourself. Well, oh my gosh, just that human connection alone. So there's several tips. Get something on your website, do things more than just what your organization can help people with, give community links and CDC and all kinds of things, and get a human face to, to your customers.

You're so right. So I am with Halo Branded Solutions and Halo right away, I love Halo, Halo right away had town halls. They had weekly information where they opened it up. They wanted to make sure that that information was coming to us. I think that's great. I'm also with SCORE, SCORE of Volusia. So it's nice. So SCORE too wants to make sure that we have the information so that we can clearly be able to explain it to our clients. But what I also find is, so yesterday my daughter's in this like whole interior decorating and she's really good at it and she doesn't like our coffee table. So she wanted another coffee table. So I thought, well, let me see about going to some of the local discounts, like, well, yeah, like the little home stores that they have, little discount furniture stores that are owned by someone here in town. The first one, she was open, but she really didn't really want business. You could tell. I mean, now she turned me off. I won't even go there again. The other one was nice, but I don't know if people realize that they, and a lot of these restaurants too, that their workers are tired and they're not able to really show and give the kind of care And I remember people, so I'll remember that you were really great. How do you— what do you do with that when you're told that issue?

Well, you know, the big thing is you just need to find— I mean, I know it's very difficult even when we're not in a COVID-19 situation. You know, you just have to— first of all, it probably comes back to not just the people are tired. Okay, people are tired, they're frustrated. But if you're working for someone that you really love, you really appreciate, you really know that you're getting out there and you're making a difference, it doesn't matter how tired you are. So I have to back that up to what's happening with leadership. Are the leaders inspiring their people to be their best, on their best behavior and their best conduct whenever they're there? Sure, if you wanna come and vent in the back room, the break room later on, you can. But when you're out there, you are on stage. Because remember, if we help our people remember, They don't know your name. They don't remember your name. All they know is you worked for Wow Place International and you sucked. So now you don't suck. Wow Place International sucks. And it's like, oh my gosh, if I were a business owner, I would be looking at that. I would be out there with them. I would show them I'm right there in the trenches with them. And I would take every single opportunity to get a suggestion from them. How can we make this better? What can I do to support you better? What do you need from me? I mean, on the webinar this morning, we did a survey and I asked, when it comes to communication, what's your biggest challenge, especially now with communications coming from everywhere? Is it that you don't hear about, you know, so there's a lack of information? It's getting somewhere, but it's not getting to you. So what's wrong? The distribution list's wrong? Do we not have the right name? What's going on? Why is it not getting to you? So it's either lack of information Or maybe it's that I don't, I don't know where the information is located. So I know I saw an email about it, but I can't find it again, because nobody's telling me, you know, where to find it. So you put it in one email. Really, you think that that one email is going to be accessible to your people on the front line when they need to reference that new policy? No. Same thing, there's another one, maybe I can't understand it. Several people said it's too complex. They're not putting it into terms I can describe to the layperson. So, A solution to that is give them an example of where this policy could come into play. Help them apply it. When you help them apply the policy, that's when they understand the policy. And then the final one was, I can't remember it, it's too much coming at me. So again, that comes back to putting it in a place, one repository where they can always go. And the biggest problem with this one organization was the lack of information. They are not getting the in— and this is before COVID-19, during COVID but it's now more important that you get the information to the people you want to wow, your customers. You— they can't wow them if they don't know the right information. So true.

I've always said communication. What I notice now is that there's so many Zoom calls that you get a Zoom invite. And I will say a shout out to my VP, Rick Green with Halo, because when he sends out his Zoom, he also sends out the ability to have a calendar reminder. So when you click RSVP, all of it goes in. So because I cannot tell you how many other groups are not doing that. And so, you know, I don't copy it all into my calendar. So I put it in my calendar and then I say, look in your email, but then I realized, oh my God, Adrian, the emails are getting cluttered. So why not when you send out an invitation for Zoom, put in a calendar request too so that they can accept it and have it all right in their calendar.

Exactly. And that is so true. You just gotta make it easy. Just like, you know, with customer service for your external customers, you gotta make it easy to do business with you. Same thing with your internal customers. You've got to make it easy for them to be able to wow your customers. If you want them to be able to do things right, you've got to make it easy for them. So it's— everything is just way too cluttered. And now there are so many Zoom calls and other kinds of webinars and things going on that, yeah, you're right, the email is just gigantic.

And it's funny, no matter how much we talk about etiquette and doing certain things, there's always someone that will have their their mic on. Like, for me, I make sure when I'm in a Zoom call— and I'm always double-checking if I— if it's a speedo. This morning it was, uh, we had two senators on, or a representative. So I make sure— I don't want them to see me, it's not about me. So I make sure, you know, my video's off. And then usually the host will take the video off. And but I'm always looking at it, I'm always like thinking to myself in the corner where it is, I, I double-check it a few times because sometimes something could happen and you get unmuted. I don't want to be that person. And also, go on time, because people don't understand that the Zoom host has to invite you in. So often, if you just— and I've been late to Zoom meetings. Better to be late than not be there at all. But sometimes, you know, it's important. If you RSVP to a Zoom meeting, the same thing as RSVPing to another meeting, right? You've got to show up. But so many people, like, it's amazing to me how— and I think I'm tougher on customer service because I know what to expect. One more thing I noticed too with customer service. If you ask me a question, if you say, if I say, Sandy, if I think to myself, what color did Sandy want her mug to be? What color did you want your mug to be? Instead of writing to you and say, Sandy, what color? I will scour all my emails to make sure that I didn't miss the message that you said, I want a green mug. Cause I don't want you to have to do the work or have you think that I'm sloppy. But a lot of people don't do that. They'll ask questions and I'm like, I already answered that. Like, and then I go back myself to see where did I make a mistake?

Yeah.

So that's those two.

I think that's great, Adrienne, you know, and that's why you are, you really are such a wow. And I love the halo for your business because you're an angel. You are. I love you. And it's just amazing because when I hear that, that's the way you think and you behave. That's, well, that's why I really connect with you because I think that too many people just take the easy way out and they just say, oh, well, I'll just, you know, I'll ask again, whatever, instead of going back and doing the research themselves. And that's a lot of customer services, you know. I really appreciate it when somebody says, you know, how many calls did it take for you to get this issue resolved? You know, and it's 1, 2, 3. Yeah, because you need to know if your people are having to go through— your customers are coming back 2, 3, 4, 5 times to get one problem resolved, then you need to dig a little further. Because usually it's because— not because the customer service rep came back to them 4 times, it's because they had to keep doing the work of calling in again and again and probably explaining over and over if they don't have that face to work with. And it takes multiple tries. And so yeah, the customer finally gets service, but mostly through their efforts, not the organization's. So you wanna wow them, don't make them do the work.

I'm gonna plug in my mic, hold on for one second. Okay, this in my daughter. We had our dog groomed today. Talking about customer service, the woman came in, did the— I had our dog groomed today. The woman comes in, she was amazing. And I thought I was looking for a van because she was mobile, but she was mobile like she could come in. So anyways, it's a whole other story, my poor dog. But what do you say about the social media? And I don't understand why certain companies Don't address the negative reviews.

Oh, you know, if you're going to have a social media presence, then you need to have somebody monitoring those reviews because if you don't say anything, what— think of it as an in-person conversation. So if somebody came to me and said, Sandy, I had a real problem with something that you wrote the other day or the program that you did the other day. What if I turned around and walked away and didn't say a word to you, acted as if I didn't even hear your comment?

I love that.

Well, that's exactly what you're doing to customers who are writing to you on your social media. You're asking them to connect. You're asking them to give you feedback by putting that out there. I mean, you can't say, well, we're gonna put a Facebook page up, but we don't want anybody to put anything bad out there. No, you can't. So use that feedback to get better, to let your customers know that you care enough about them to even answer them. Think of it as an in-person conversation. If you wouldn't do it in person, don't do it online. If you wouldn't be rotten and nasty and horrible, look at some of the comments out there and what these people say to each other because they think they're anonymous or it's, oh, it's online. Those are people on the other end of that. Vitreolic stuff that you're putting out there. So if you wouldn't say or do it in person, don't say or do it online.

By the way, when I see that happening, I always do #BeKindOnline.

Thank you.

And create climates of respect online. But what's really interesting too is that there's people that really are saying some pretty horrible things, and then They show where they work. So about a year ago, I contacted— one was so bad, I contacted the place that they worked. I said, I just want you to know that your employee— I mean, it's just, it's so bad that like you could— people are, are— people are assuming that you're the company. And turned out that the person, crazy enough, that was so awful, doesn't even work there. They had just put— so, so for employers, they also should try to find a way to find out who is on their page and make sure, like, do an audit. Of who is connected to you as an employee. I don't even know how that works or if it's available, but you see it happen. I would definitely say that that's a problem. What about saying— what about thanking the clients that are the peak customers that are giving you the good reviews? How important is that?

Oh, you can even thank the customers giving you bad reviews. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I can't fix what I don't know. Do you know that, um, only about 3 out of 10 customers will ever come to you and tell you what they didn't like about what you have to offer, what you've done. All they'll do is leave. And you never have a chance to make up for it or keep their business because they just leave. I would thank them profusely for bringing it to my attention because that's how, you know, first of all, that's how you get better. Second of all, it's easy to be nice and to be kind and to be customer service oriented when everything's going fine. But it's how you react when it's not going fine. That's what shows what you're really made of. That's what shows, because there are also statistics out there that say that if a customer has a problem that's resolved successfully, they are 8 times more likely to be loyal to that company than if they'd never had a problem at all. So you don't just thank people for saying good things. You thank them for bringing something to your attention that you can then fix. And now you're showing what you're made of, you know? And if it's a really nasty, horrible thing, Go down to their level. Just say, you know, we've noted your comment. We apologize for your experience. We'll fix this in the future. We'll try to do better, whatever it is that you want to say. But, you know, talking about how I don't know how you find out about that, you can put searches on Google so that you get notified every time, say, your company is mentioned online in social media.

Yes.

Or any other keywords. You can put in a thing to do keyword searches, and then you'll get emails whenever those keywords are mentioned. And then you can have somebody monitoring that and going and seeing, oh, our company was mentioned. Here's another thing you can do. So if somebody mentions your company on a different site, not your website but somewhere else, like, oh, I just went to Olive Garden and I had the greatest meal, blah, blah, blah, thank them over there on that site. Now you're like, holy cow, you know, this restaurant or this company, they're noticing that I, me, little me, and they thanked me for it. So you know what, you can build a tribe by just watching where your name is being mentioned and go to the other sites and thank them for mentioning you. So I love that.

Yeah, I'll share a story. My son Alex— so my dad must have been about 87, so I remember my son was on my dad's bed and my dad was— my dad wasn't afraid of the computer. He had his own iPhone, he had, he had a Facebook page. So he's asking Alex to set him up with a Twitter page. So you're never too old. So Alex started setting up my dad and he said, well, I want to see, I'm going to look and see if there's anything about the gallery. Well, one of the employees didn't realize that my father would have— so Alex, oh my gosh, and it was not very nice what she said, and my dad was so disappointed and hurt. But we, we were like, Dad, don't call so fast. Luckily Alex screenshotted it, um, but my dad was really upset. But that's— you don't think that you have to put a hashtag to find something on Twitter either. So good advice. And before I let you go, one more thing. So It's not like you just say to your employees, okay, here's how customer service looks. It's constant, right? Don't you have to continually remind them of the behaviors and how to act?

Yes, you do. And, and that's another thing that was on my webinar this morning. It's like, it's not, it's not a mindset. I mean, it's not a habit. It's a bunch of habits. It's a bunch of mindsets and it's continual. It's constant. So you can't just say, okay, we did customer service well yesterday. Now we're done. No, it's an every single day thing. It's something that you need to instill in them. So one of the things I put on the webinar was, is there a way for you, either when they log into whatever proprietary software that they use to track their customers and all of that, is there a way you can put a tip, a daily tip or reminder on the front screen? Or maybe you can send them a tip a day.

I love that.

Yeah, or maybe there's a, hey, This text, maybe we can text you. We'll give you a tip every morning to help you do your job better, to help you remember, you know, to be at your best and to make sure that we're supporting you the best that we can. So you can do things like daily tips and reminders and little posters. We did posters at that company that we were, that I was telling you about the $2 million thing. We put posters all over their office building. We designed them for them. We had a whole big initiative. And it was awesome. They started winning awards too. There were 16 branches across the company and they'd never won the top branch. They won it for 4 quarters in a row and won their big trophy cup for the company the next year. So for 2 years that was continuing on because they put a daily focus on it.

So, okay, so who's gonna be the first company in Daytona Beach to bring Sandy in as a paid speaker and wow your place. And then we can actually really actually monitor, like write about it. That's, you know what? And, and even if you are good, as Sandy said, even if you're good, get better. And everyone has to do it now because people feel they have more choices more than ever, even though with COVID-19 now they're going out and they're like, I don't have a lot of money, but I want a night out, food service, all of that. I love Sandy. Thank you for your time. Oh my gosh. It was great. Your smile is just as beautiful as I remember. Sandy's energetic. She's fun. You sing. Okay, I definitely— your website, you are great. I loved it when you would all of a sudden start singing. That's, uh, you are a class act. Love it. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Adrienne.

I love this. Thank you for saying yes and taking a risk with me.