Creating a Bullseye for Customer Experience — Ali Cudby

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Yeah, that's exactly right.

We're getting set up, checking in on what we're talking about, the stories. And I'm like, wait, how do I say your name? Ellie Cubby.

Welcome to show. Glad to be here.

Where are you joining us today from?

I'm just outside of Boston.

Oh, groovy, groovy, groovy. Fine city of Boston. I'm just outside of San Francisco, where I bet it's a touch warmer than you are right now in Boston.

That is probably accurate for our listeners.

You should know Allie is. She's got a book. Keep your customers. Which is their. There it is. Keep your customers. If you're watching a video, there it is on video. There's the COVID She's also founder and CEO of Alignment and she'll talk about alignment and you could even throw that link up. Alignment strategies, Alignment for growth. But she has, she's done a lot of stuff in this area. Wharton Business School, New York Times, Purdue University chief customer service officer, our school at Pavilion. So lots of groovy things that gives her some authority on this subject. And this is a great topic. So welcome to show.

Thank you very much. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna say I was teaching at Purdue. I'm a proud alum of University of Pennsylvania. So just, I would just hate for my pen. My pen pals to say, what was that Purdue thing about?

You know, I, I love to just kind of. I like, hate the sort of scripted stiff podcast intro. And so I tend to sort of throw out some things and then it sounds a little sloppy and a little.

It's accurate. Just as a, As a faculty and not a student.

Yeah. So thanks for joining us again. So let's talk about how you got passionate about this, like how your interest grew in taking care of customers.

Yeah. So as you said, I was working at the New York Times Company. That's where I started out of business school. And I got, I was working in their corporate strategy department and I got staffed on a project. We're basically like an internal consulting team. I got staffed on a project with the call centers, and that was considered like the bottom of the barrel in terms of, like, the projects that you could work on. People were literally coming up to me and saying, like, oh, I'm sor. Yeah, Thoughts and prayers. And what was fascinating to me about the project and what ultimately became this huge aha which launched my career was that here we are, New York Times Company, one of the great global brands. We were not, we were paying less than the Burger King up the street, and we had, you know, the call center in sort of a windowless warehouse in New Jersey. We were not doing things to engage our call center employees in a way that sort of aligned with the promise of a global brand. And so people were working in the call center and as soon as a job opening came at Burger King, they were leaving us and going up the street. And, you know, it was this great moment of clarity in which I realized that the way that you engage with your team is going to have a huge impact on the way that your team engages with your customers. We think about the customer experience, we think about the customers. We should. But the vehicle, the avenue from your company to your customers is through your team. You have to do the work internally in order to create a great customer experience. That insight has formed the journey of my career ever since.

It's really powerful. It's really consistent with some of the learnings among our coaches and clients. And one of the Vern's early, I don't know, students is this guy, John Ratliff, who heads up our coaching organization today. And John grew his call center business apple tree answers enormously. And with a huge multiple, he exited relative to the industry on the fundamental breakthrough of, like, the key to profitability and reduced turnover in the call center business is take care of your people. Like, love on your people. Have them feel appreciated. Because it is not what's generally considered a high level job. Crappy chairs, crappy headsets and crowded offices and hours a day dealing with really unhappy people. And like, the first thing is love on them, and then they'll love on people and it'll be profitable and the turnover will be lower. And that, like, everything changes, right? It's, it's absolutely interesting.

And some of the insights, some of the, some of the action steps, it's not about, you know, very sophisticated steps. It's about, you know, make people feel valued, pay, pay more than the Burger King up the street, you know, make people like, we didn't give them copies of the newspaper. We didn't never gave swag to the people that were working in the call center. So if you worked in the main building, you know, you had a tote bag, you had all the stuff, and people like stuff. And so sometimes it's not about the best practice, razzle dazzle. It's really about how do you make people feel seen, heard and valued.

That's really great. You know, here's. I think when you're going to go to work on elevating something, how many. I think there's this fundamental lie of American business, certainly big American business, and we all know it. Maybe you've heard it before. You go to call some company, your bank, your airline, whatever, and you get a phone answering service and it says, your call is important to us. And I'm like, no, it's not. You don't want my call. You'd really rather I stopped calling if my call was important to you, you'd hire some competent people and give them tools that they could do to do the job. You wouldn't hire somebody who doesn't even speak the language as their first language in another place at a dramatically lower price, who has improper tools, who has no authority to fix anything. Like your call is important to Hell, no. You're lying and you're lying to yourself, probably.

And I get that there are these financial tensions, but you know, of course, think from a customer centric perspective. And you know, when you, when you have that customer centric perspective, then it's going to drive different decisions. You're going to think differently. And by the way, think about the cost of losing those customers because you were saving a few pennies, right?

Oh, our customer acquisition cost is this. But then we lose them in nine months or like we, we keep a few of them.

Yeah, maybe. It boggles my mind, you know, that so many companies are, you know, they talk about we need to grow, we need to grow. Growing is important. And then they think only about we need to grow. So let's think about our front end sales and let's just keep trying to get front end sales and throw them into a really leaky bucket. Well, if you get front end sales and all of these new customers are just, you know, filling the seats of the people who just left, you know, you're not growing, you're just filling, refilling and refilling and refilling the seats. And, you know, if you can start plugging some of those holes, then all of a sudden it's really a flywheel for growth.

You know, I, it's really easy to see that your call is important to us. Hypocrisy when you call a major company. But I think it's also useful to look in the mirror and then go, okay, but what am I doing? That's akin to that. Right. Is there something where I'm like putting all my love in the new customer and not taking care of the existing customer? Right. Or like, yeah, I got what I'm going to get out of them, their money and now I'm going to like be as cheap as I can with them. Like not right.

Or you know, I'm going to onboard them and then I'm not going to talk to them again until it's time for renewal.

Yeah, yeah, that's a popular one. You know, some of it happens by accident. I was running a company some years ago and our customer service, email and voicemail would just get filled up every day and certainly over the weekend with what we'd call later, come to call the squeaky wheels who were customers but they weren't necessarily the most valuable customers and some of them were just perpetually going to be unhappy with us no matter what we did. And we weren't prioritizing and giving the love to the biggest customers who just would get irritated and go away that they weren't getting taken care of, expecting us to see and notice. And it's not because we didn't think about them or whatever, but we were so overwhelmed with everybody else that it was definitely a challenge. How do we prioritize?

Yeah, and when you're always in fire drill mode, then it does get harder to think strategically about those things. And a lot of the, a lot of the times when I'm brought into companies it's so that I can help companies get past fire drill mode and have that clear consistency so that everybody inside the company knows what to do. And, and then you get that, that view into like, well, this isn't a good idea, you know, having the voicemail filled up every weekend with, with low value customers when we could provide a higher tier of support for our high value customers. And oh by the way, then that's a selling point and we're making them feel special. That becomes a win win.

Yeah, yeah. Well that's, I mean we didn't stop taking care of people. What we did was just prioritize the other. So we created an active list of our top value customers that was updated by the system on the regular so they're trailing 12 month billings. And then we just prioritize those based on their last contact in the CRM system. And so if you're in that top list and you hadn't been reached out in a while, we would call you and say how are things? What are we doing? How can we help? You know this is remarkable. And then we called back everyone else in the order that we could get to them and that kind of thing. Talk about how your company evolved from doing fit training and certification to being more broadly around customer service.

So not just any fit training and certification bras. So I. So like I said, I started after Wharton at the New York Times Company, started working in this customer loyalty and retention thing, then took a very, very unexpected, weird left turn and created a bra fit training and certification company, and worked with people with companies who are dedicated to the art and science of how a bra fits a woman's body. And it was a fascinating journey to create this. This bra fitting thing that ended up being the global leader in its niche. Very, very, you know, talk about an inch wide and a mile deep. So what ended up happening was I would talk to my clients and I would say, you know, how's it going? And they'd say, ali, this is fantastic. My customers are crying tears of joy in the fitting room. And I would say that that's amazing. You know, now what are you going to do to make sure that those customers come back? You know, how are you going to make sure that those customers come back and buy another bra in six months instead of three years, which is what a lot of women do. How do you make sure that when they come back and they buy that bra that they come to you? And consistently, those companies didn't have an answer. They really thought that if they just kept giving good bra fittings, then they would, you know, earn the loyalty that way. And I knew that that wasn't the case. I mean, that you have to have a good fitting experience. That's the. That's the, you know, table stakes. Yeah, but in order to get people to come back, you really need to have a thoughtful and consistent approach. And so I started working with some of my lingerie clients on this world of customer retention and customer loyalty that I had, you know, sort of built my skill set up from in. In corporate and ultimately evolved out of this sort of, you know, sort of went from lingerie, did a lot of retail stuff, and then evolved. And really what I do now is more focused on B2B and companies that have more complex onboardings and implementations. But that's the evolution. It went from bras and bra fitting and online training to consulting with the lingerie industry to now doing what I do.

The thing that I'm struck by as a customer of anything, there's feelings, strong feelings about it, frustrations, desires, like all that kind of thing. And you go to a thing like a prophet. And I've always been a man, but I have a mom, a wife, a daughter. And I know how beauty and appearance is so much more driving for women. And then to go in and to have something that's so out there in front and then not fit right. And not feel good about yourself and how deeply frustrating it can be to have a different body type and go into a place and be like, nothing makes me look good. Nothing fits right. And the salesperson is just like, here's another thing, try this, you know, and getting impatient with you and not understanding, you know, you try on shoes, you know, like, oh, those tend to run a little narrow and those are a little this and those have good arch and like whatever. You kind of find your jam in the foot shoe department. You kind of know it's what same thing I think there. But now something way, much, way more sensitive around identity and appearance and self esteem get wrapped up. Right? Absolutely.

And every time a woman goes into the fitting room, she's bringing all of the stories that she tells herself about her body and they're not often positive. And the thing that was so important in the training was not just the technicality of fit, but making sure that the people that I was training understood that this may be normal for you, this may be rote. You may look at this woman and say, like, honey, I've seen a thousand women that look like you before. But that woman is walking into the fitting room with all of her self talk and insecurities and stories and you have to be there and present for her. And that lesson may not, it may not be as emotional, it may not be as fraught in the businesses that I work with today, but it's true all the time in business. You know, whenever you're working with a customer, you need to meet them where they are, you know, and you may be an expert and you may be sort of laissez faire about how you see the problem because you've seen it before. Like, you know, you, you've been down this road. It's not your first rodeo. But if it's their first rodeo, then you have to be thoughtful from their perspective about their concerns and everything.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, like I only have to think about that for a minute. Like, what's it like for them? What's that? What could that be? And then I, and I feel something. Now, I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I, but I like have some empathy and Some compassion for what might be going on. And I have some caring and like, oh, I could feel, I could sense something. But I think also about your original point. The customer service rep of whatever form that is, whether it's on the phone or in person or standing at a desk. And they have to deal with deeply unhappy people on the regular, frustrated people who wanted something and their desire is thwarted by your product, your service, your whole way of business. And they have to take and like, what's it like for them to deal with that day after day and to have insufficient authority training tools to do their job well.

Right. Well. And then, and then layer in one of the most unhelpful concepts in business, which is, you know, the customer is always right. I think that the customer is not always right and sometimes the customer is dead wrong. And you get these customers that come in with this tremendous sense of entitlement and you have to give me everything that I want because the customer is always right. And I know that that's true. Not only is that not true, you can't run your business that way. Part of what has to happen is that the company has to be really clear about what the boundaries are for their, on behalf of their reps. And it's not just call centers, it's any kind of customer success, customer support, you know, customer service. The company has to really support their team members in order to say like here are the boundaries and we're not going to, you know, you can do this and you can't do that. One of the worst things that a company can do is, is say this is our return policy or this is the line that we're holding. And then as soon as the customer says I want to speak to a supervisor, then the supervisor immediately negates the authority of the customer support person. That entitlement of the customer is always right. In combination with the bad instincts of some managers to just say yes really undermines the team and doesn't ultimately help develop that customer experience that you want in the long term.

Yeah. I'm struck by the contrasting experiences in different environments. I fly a lot and Southwest is what Southwest is. It's a no frills airline. But they have a little personality, a sense of humor about it. But there's no first class section. And even if you get on first or very early on, you know, somebody, you know, bringing back some oversized object and smelly food is going to sit on next to you at the last minute of flight.

Yeah.

And do that. But I, but I also fly United And American Airlines and their partner, and they're like network partners and I'm just really struck by the dramatic difference between the two. United Airlines, which is far more convenient in San Francisco and that kind of thing, even when I had fairly high level status, would still kind of treat. And I look around, okay, there's a hundred people with high level status about to get on this plane and not like pretend high level, like really like big flyers and I'm just a nobody and there's no way to break out of this thing and whatever. And then they have, and even if you're their 100k flyer, they have these global services flyers. And I found myself stuck overseas where their partner airline wouldn't talk to the other and they couldn't reroute me and they cancel and like I'm going nowhere for hours and hours, they can't make the system. But this other guy with the same exact situation but who's in their global service elite program, he gets handled in five minutes and he's on the next flight and he's already home and I am still in Amsterdam, like just shoot me, right? And then they have these things like plus points that you get as you get, except there's absolutely nowhere you can use them. You're supposed to be able to use them to grab an empty first class seat at last minute and apply your plus points. Except they'll try to sell that first class seat up to like a few minutes before the flight and nobody's getting to use those. Plus like what's the point? It's a broken system and they don't care and they're just too big, right? American Airlines, I am almost always upgrade like more than half the time on automatic upgrade. And now look, I'm flying two to four times a week. So it's a little bit, you know, like, and I'm sure there's people that do a lot more but like the difference is so dramatic. And even when I'm not like I get a little bit better seed and I'm very close to the top of the upgrade list. And you know, that's what I really care about is like I just want to be treated a little bit better. But then I can only bill the clients that travel more of the coach travel, right? They're not paying me first class.

Yeah, airlines are really an interesting example because. And it's actually an example that I talk about in Keep youp Customers because there's always these different approaches to how loyal you are to an organization. And so you know, there's, there's a, you can be sort of so, so loyal or loyal as a matter of convenience. You know, there's a coffee shop down the street from where you live and you're only going to go there when you live there. And if you move across town, you're not going to go back to that coffee shop. And you know, so that's sort of, I call that like lazy loyalty. Like you're loyal for as long as.

It'S convenient to you. Yeah, if it works out, I'll do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Airlines, I think, are the next tier of loyalty. So it's that limited loyalty. And that's exactly what you're talking about. You know, there's gotta be some give to get there. And you know, you're gonna be loyal to an airline. And I'm sure that if you have a choice between, you know, United and American, you're gonna fly American because you feel like you are treated better.

Yeah. So I'm gonna go way out of my way now. Will I spend double to fly American? No. Will I spend a few extra dollars? Yes. Will I take a slightly different time or that kind of thing? I will even do that.

Right, right. And so, so I'm a, I'm a Delta girl and Delta, you're just sorry.

Delta is great. They do a good job.

They do a good job. And they, and you know, depends on your city and whether or not they are good in your city.

Exactly.

And your partners and their partners. But they change their sky miles approach this year. And so I've been, I've been sort of dedicated to Delta and building up my status and they, and they helped me out of a jam. Like I was rerouted last year coming back from Brazil and did not in fact land in Miami and ended up in Fort Myer or something like that. And because I had status, I got helped faster. And so that was like, yeah, I want to, I want that. But now I have to ask myself, okay, is it still worth it for me? Is this still a good deal for me? So I have loyalty to Delta only to a point. And that's sort of what you're talking to. I have loyalty and so it's that limited.

And you could switch. Look, I chose to, to stay at Marriott some years ago simply because they were the biggest. Right. The most properties around the world. So I'm like, well, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do the Marriott brands, the whole family of them. And I do that. And then, you know, I noticed that I'd have points. But if I tried to use the beach points in that time of year at some beach resort, no, those aren't available. If I tried to use the ski mountain resort in that, like, no, it wasn't available during ski season. I'm like, well, if you're not going to let me use my points in the time of year, that I would want to go to that and take my business travel and then get some. Some personal vacation travel, like, what's the point? And then pandemic happened and I didn't get traveling fast enough again and they dropped me down two tiers. I'm like, all right, you guys are jerks. And I accidentally switched to Hyatt. And I'm like, oh, my God. You actually really like the frequency of free nights and the upgrades and the sweet, like, night and day.

There you go. I mean, that's a perfect example. You thought you were loyal until they weren't. They didn't show you the love. And then you're like, all right, well, I'm out.

Yeah.

And then there are probably companies that you are like, ride or die for, you know, brands that you go the extra mile for that you will tell your friends about that.

You.

And that is, those are the companies where, you know, you have that lucrative loyalty. And so, you know, and so from a company perspective, you know, they want to be thinking about who are their, you know, who are their lucrative loyal customers, who are their limited loyal customers, who are their lazy loyal customers. Because, you know, it's. If you can tease out the difference between the person who's coming to you because you're convenient versus the person who's coming to you because they're really invested in the relationship, there's a lot of profitability difference there.

Yeah, it's interesting the degrees of loyalty that are available. Right. Like, I'm really invested and really loyal to all the Apple products now after years and years. And, you know, I built up my reasons for doing it when I once was a little more open to a range of tech solutions. And now I'm like, all in on that family. And I'm not, which doesn't mean that I don't ever have a problem, a thing that doesn't work or whatever, but I bend over backwards to make it work.

Yeah, Apple's a really interesting example. I'm very. I'm very loyal to Apple products. One of my professors from Wharton, Pete Fader, who's amazing, he talks about Apple as being like, they're really not a service to they're not that awesome with customer service.

Oh no, they're often crap. Yeah, yeah.

It is less a customer experience driven company than a product experience driven company and I think that's a fascinating difference.

Yeah, for me it's the way the whole systems work together better and the fact that I came into a Dell centered company years ago and we had all these things and all this special service and like everything was breaking all the time and it was a full time job to keep all the machines running and I just come from an Apple centered company and like we didn't spend the same amount per person so I was like, okay, you're worried about the PC or the laptop being more expensive, but my total cost of ownership is dramatically lower. And so I switched off of the whole Dell centered thing and I'm like, yeah, it doesn't matter. I don't need your special four hour replacement on that power supply if they're going to keep coming out and you don't actually have the part.

My, my husband is a big, he's a, he's a tech guy, he works in tech and I'm very proud of the fact that when we got together he was a, he was a PC guy and I, I sucked him in. I got him to the Apple side. Yeah, like so me as a non tech girl, I, I, I won.

You know we have, we have Windows and Android viewers and listeners as well and no, like that's our choice and, but there are people. Vern is very, very rabid. Like he loves to talk about the success of Apple and, and Steve Jobs, but he's not switching off his Windows machine and his Android phone. Talk to us, let's share some of your other stories. Talk about the Ghost Kitchen cluster truck.

Yeah, so clustertruck. And I always have to be very careful about how I pronounce that name. They're a Ghost Kitchen restaurant. It is a great name in Indianapolis. And so they only do food delivery. There's no sit down. And they, they came up with when they started the restaurant or when they started the Ghost Kitchen. The CEO Chris Baggett went down into the kitchen and he's like, look, here's what I want you to think about. Don't ship maybes. And what he meant by that is if a meal is coming off the line and it's just not up to par for whatever reason or something came off the line sooner than the rest of the meal and now it's been sitting, don't ship maybes. Bin that meal. Start over and what We've seen is that that concept of don't ship maybes has grown beyond the kitchen. And it is really now something that I talk about as being sort of the bullseye for that company. It's a mantra that they use and tap into for every part of the organization. So if you need to hire somebody and you really need to fill the seat and you're interviewing them, you know, the question that you ask yourself is, is this a maybe? Is this candidate? You know, am I, if I hire them, am I shipping a maybe? And it's become this shorthand inside of the company. And, you know, everybody can sort of use it to think about, like, how am I approaching this moment if I get hit with a customer conversation and I'm not quite sure how to handle it, it's my touchstone. I can always go back to don't ship maybes. And conversely, if I am trying to justify why I made a decision that I made, I can always use don't ship maybes as a way to talk about how I thought through the choice that I made. And so, and it's actually, you know, so much embedded into the company, this idea of don't ship maybes that the CEO Chris has don't ship maybes tattooed somewhere on his body. And so that. And it's an example of what I call in the book a bullseye. And, you know, so companies often have a mission and a vision and values, and that's, you know, how they think about themselves as a company. They often don't have a codified statement, a really clear way of thinking about who they want to be for their customers. So this bullseye is this, you know, this mantra, this statement that is a clear enunciation of, like, this is who we are on behalf of our customers. And don't ship maybes is an example of a bullseye.

You know, it's interesting that there. So there's the brand promises, like, what can the customer expect from your company? And then there's the don't ship maybe is the core value that is. Defines how you operate. And then it starts in one area and applies to others. But the core value is how part of how you deliver on that brand promise than the way that you do things differently. But the famous French Laundry and Thomas Keller has, I think it's sense of urgency written on the wall next to a clock, like to bring to his kitchen. You're not just fussing around here actually putting out amazing food, but they have to get in front of people. It's a reasonable Time frame.

Exactly, exactly.

The tolerance for bad food and slow food or late food is very, very low. And if you want to sharpen up your business, hire, get some experience in the restaurant industry or hire people from that background because they have that like, like the charge, the pressure around making people happy with food is pretty high compared to a lot of things.

Yeah. And it goes back to that thinking about how are you making people feel seen, heard and valued? You know, when, when you can, whatever industry you're in, if you can get your team to be thoughtful about that, it's not just about the nuts and bolts of delivery. You know, we, and we, we think so much about, you know, what are our metrics and how are we doing and all of this, you know, quantifiable stuff. And by the way, you have to have that. So there's no, you know, I'm not saying you don't have it, but there I think is almost this orientation that you. Thinking about people's feelings is a little woo, woo and, and it's the, and I, and I think that there's almost like a feminization of feelings that then doesn't feel like business, like business is.

Like there's not a lot of room for feelings, an expression of feelings among men. And, and then of course, because business is more male dominated historically among, in business, in the workplace and we have this North American thing that's highly separated. Like there's no feelings and emotion here. And we're going to look stoic and you know, button up and that kind of thing. But we all have feelings.

Yeah, well, and the, and the, I think that there's like some tech bro culture in there as well that doesn't support, you know, thinking about feelings and thinking about relationships. But the, but the reality is that's how people engage. That's what people respond to. And the, and the studies show that that's true. So McKinsey has a study out there that says 70% of a buying decision is based on how a person feels. They've been treated in the interaction. So you ignore this stuff at your peril. And if you don't think about how to be customer centric, if you don't think about how to build relationships with your customers, if you don't think about how to cultivate long term loyalty, then we're back to what we were talking about before. You're just filling the front end of your funnel and bringing in new customers just to have them churn out on the backside. And that's not good business.

Well, you know, I'm no neuroscientist and I'm not going to quote this right, but I would say that every decision and therefore every action starts with an emotion, with a feeling. And then we build rationalizations, justifications, things in our upper frontal brains and describe them in words and put labels and things around them. But it started with a feeling of, of fear, of frustration, of hope, of like, whatever. And that propels the decision and the action. And so if that's the case, then being able to relate to the feelings of the employee, of the customer, of all that is that dealing then with the structural things. Because Southwest Airlines a little over a year ago had a famous meltdown where their systems and the weather and all that stuff kind of came apart. And the people in the company who normally deal with a lot of little things with a great deal of flair and personality and that kind of thing lost their collective shit and were like, this company's screwed. And the company really had to dig out. Would have undone many companies how far they went down the rabbit hole.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting to see because there are so many people who, even though Southwest is, is a low, you know, low frills airline people are really dedicated to it. There are a lot of people who. And so to see and, and I think that there are people who are really dedicated to the fun they have with things and they're lighthearted.

Yeah. Which is different than Spirit or Ryan or some of the others, like where they just make you really feel bad about yourself in life for the choices that led you to flying on them.

I respect for people that want to save every dollar. Like I have full respect for that. But boy, that is not my choice. I mean that is truly, like, I don't want to have to be charged for breathing air.

Right. We're going to charge you for that boarding pass. We're going to charge you for wearing an extra sweater today, that whole kind of thing. Look, I, I don't go there first, but on Monday and Tuesday I'll fly Southwest because they're one of only two carriers that'll fly non stop. And a non stop flight trumps pretty much everything else in terms of getting somewhere in all my like first class, whatever. If I have to stop and bear the extra risk of delay and cancellation, forget it. So, you know, like, I'm going to fly them again and you know, but they'll be funny about it and they'll, they'll be silly and friendly and human and not bitter and like that kind of Thing and then.

And that makes the difference.

Yeah. So you've been kind of speaking around it a little bit. You talked about it earlier, but there's these sort of levels of loyalty. Could you unpack that a little bit for us?

Sure. So, you know, as we were talking about before, you do have different tiers of loyalty. As a consumer, you think about things differently. You might have, like I said, a coffee shop that you go to and you go to all the time. It might be your everyday coffee shop and, you know, for as long as you're working in that office or living in that house and. And because you might move across town and stop going to that coffee shop, it is a lazy level of loyalty. So the three tiers are lazy loyal, limited loyal, and lucrative loyal. And the thing about lazy loyalty.

Say that again. That was fast for me. Lazy loyal.

Lazy loyal.

Yeah.

Limited loyal.

Limited loyal. Okay.

And lucrative loyal.

Okay.

And so the examples that we were talking about earlier were the lazy loyal is the coffee shop. The limited loyal is, you know, your travel, you know, your hotel points or your airline points. And then lucrative loyalty is the company that you really feel like invested in that you go, you know, you refer people to, you want to build a relationship with them, you want to support them. For me, I have a company that I use for email, the email in my business, it's called ActiveCampaign, and I love ActiveCampaign. Like, they have amazing customer service. They always spend time with me on the phone if I need it or on chat if I need it. I know that I can get email automation services a lot less expensively. Today. I've been a customer of ActiveCampaign for a ridiculous number of years because it's not actually the best idea to stay in one place. The technology is always changing and evolving. But A, I have really great preferential pricing because I've been around with them for a long time, and B, they always support me. And so I talk about activecampaign as a being a good company. I refer people to ActiveCampaign. You know, I feel pretty dedicated to ActiveCampaign. And, you know, I don't ever think about changing who my email automation company is because I have other pressing things going on in my life. That's not a line item that I feel like I have to reevaluate. And so when I'm thinking about what do I want to change in my business, that just never rises to the top because I'm happy. So I'm a lucrative loyal for activecampaign and they do, every so often they do something really cool for me. They once got in touch with me because I said something really nice about them. Not even publicly. I gave good feedback to a customer service rep and they picked my feedback and said we really liked your comment. Here's X number of dollars, please go to our ActiveCampaign store and spend it on whatever item you want. It was all activecampaign branded stuff and we appreciate you. And I thought that's really cool. And so it reinforced my loyalty. I drank out of there water bottle for a while.

Well, maybe you could tell them to show us some love because we use ActiveCampaign too. But I would say a very strong neutral too. Maybe this isn't expensive for how we're using it.

Interesting.

I know Cameron's listening in the background. He has to work with it as well.

And that's why loyalty, being able to unpack it is so important for me. So let's just say, for example, you and I have both been with ActiveCampaign for the same amount of time. And so from a dollar to dollar perspective, we may be equal and we may have both had activecampaign for a while. And so they might look at both of us and say, oh, these are both long term customers, These are both loyal customers. These are both customers that are providing decent revenue to our company. We like them. I like Bill, I like Ali, I like them both. The difference is I'm talking about how happy I am with ActiveCampaign and when my friends say, what do you use for marketing automation? I say, oh, I use ActiveCampaign and they're awesome. And by the way, I never use a referral code. I'm not getting anything out of it. But if they're looking at us as being the same, they are equally loyal because they've been with us the same amount of time. They're going to make some bad decisions. From a marketing standpoint or a business product development standpoint, you have to be able to tease out the bills from the alleys and say Bill might have be paying. Like he may be a lazy, loyal. He's paying us the money because he just can't be bothered to move because it's a pain in the ass. But they want to know what I think they like. Really? They should be trying to tap into my brain and say we want more alleys.

Yeah, 100%. Right. Like how do we, instead of trying to figure out how not to lose other people, figure out how. Who are these kind of People that really love you. How do you get more of those? So we can throw up your alignment for growth link here as well. Here's the takeaways I got. Tell me if I'm missing something. So first of all is you want to hang on to your customers. It's a lot cheaper. Better to keep a customer than it is to try to go sell more. And if you want to do that, you want to care about the customer, then you have to start by caring about your own people. Then I also kind of heard, how are you designed strategically? How are you set up your systems? Did we miss anything?

There's no. I mean, that's really it. It's like, how do you create those playbooks so that your team has a clear and consistent path to success on behalf of your customers so that you can give them a great experience?

Yeah, I think an awful lot of those. The companies that we get frustrated with. You're talking to somebody who wants to give you excellent service today, sir. And they say, like cutesy little things like that, but they have no ability to do anything. They're just reading a script. Their things don't work. They put you on hold. So it doesn't really matter. Love them, do whatever. Hire good ones in state. I mean, in country, out of. But your systems are setting them up for failure.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I. Help companies change.

When you think about. We didn't touch on it, but one of the most remarkable companies for customer service is Ritz Carlton. Right. And their employees have some ridiculous latitude to just do anything to make it right for you. Right. Like, yeah. You comply with.

Yeah. It's one of the things that they're famous for. And. And it's very empowering as an employee. Right. If I feel like anybody in that company can go the extra mile on behalf of a customer, and that is very empowering. And so it goes back to that concept of how are you making people feel seen, heard, and valued both in your organization and on your customer side?

All right, Our guest, Ally Cubby Allie. Thank you for joining us today. Her book, Keep youp Customers the Company Alignment. Keep your customers alignment. Alignment for growth.com. thanks so much for joining us. Big shout outs and thanks to my friend and mentor, Vern Harnish, who created the whole scaling up framework that we use at the core of our business and that the show is all about. To the folks at StoryOn who produce our show and get our guests ready and all that stuff in and out every week. The editing happens at Podfly production. Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. Until next time keep scaling up. Bye bye. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app. You can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.