Beyond, "Have a Nice Day": Next-Level Customer Service

A seismic shift in customer expectations has created a new reality for service-based, human-facing industries. Since the pandemic, the bar for what constitutes exceptional customer service has not just risen. It has been completely redefined. We now need advanced customer service skills, to be able to compensate for the demands that people have for us. And that, my friends, is what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode! This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that their customers and of course, their employees Deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. I just want to thank you for taking time out today to join me. This, I hope, will be a super valuable episode for you. In this episode, we will dive into the heart of modern customer service, exploring how we can leverage the new landscape and be able to fulfill the customer expectations that has dramatically shifted Since the pandemic, we will uncover why traditional approaches to customer services are really no longer enough in an era where things like personalization, empathy, and digital fluency aren't just appreciated. But now, they are expected. I'll take you through 6 steps that you need to take to get on the same page with your customers Expectations. So please stick with me. I'd love for this to be an open forum. So if you're tuning in live, go ahead and post them. Post any questions or comments in the comment box. I'd love to be able to address them as we go through the show. If not, I will catch you on the replay. As always, if you do find the topic compelling, I do offer 30-minute complimentary coaching sessions for you and your team. Go ahead and book a time that works for you on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. You know, when we were in the pandemic, a lot of businesses folded. But of the ones that didn't, we were able to show how creative and innovative we could be in making sure we served our customers. This has set a new bar. Businesses that once prided themselves on basic courtesies and transactional efficiencies are now finding that these approaches are insufficient in the face of a customer base that demand more. They do demand more personalization, more engagement, and more understanding of their unique needs and circumstances. So, before we jump into the problem, I'd love it if you would take time out to make sure that you subscribe to this podcast. And make sure if you're watching this on YouTube that you ring the bell. That'll give you a notification whenever I bring you fresh new content. You know, the problem that we face is not just about keeping pace with the expectations our clients have. But it's about really figuring out innovative ways of surpassing them to be able to create that new wow. Traditional customer service models now are proving inadequate in creating lasting customer relationships and loyalty. Talk to anybody who is a social media strategist. They will tell you that we've gone now from tweeting out 140 characters to now people are demanding to see videos if you want to build any kind of credibility on the forum. So, when we think about this idea of kind of standard practices of customer service and the new demands for kind of having some sort of a digital presence where you're interacting with people authentically over the internet, what innovative strategies have you implemented not just to attract customers but to create lasting memorable experiences that turn first-time clients into lifelong advocates? And that of course was our Question of the Day. So, I'd love to hear your insights. Could you— what you have to tell us could be the spark that inspires other people to transform their customer service approach and get a new understanding. So, I'd love for us to start a conversation. Drop your thoughts, experiences, and strategies in the comment box here on this podcast. Let's learn, grow, and innovate together. Let's share what we're doing. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform and hashtag the post #ExperienceLeadership. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. The post-pandemic era Really is not being kind to businesses. The customer expectations as to the service that they want has changed. We've opened up a whole Pandora's box of new expectations that you need to have, that they have, that will say ultimately, their big message is, cater to me. Give me what I want and deliver what I need. In my 30-plus years as a customer and employee experience strategist, I've seen the writing on the wall. We were seeing the change long before the pandemic was coming in. However, the pandemic did speed it up. In our time together today, I'd love to uncover some actionable steps that you can use starting today to go from this condition of what I call personalization paradox to what I like to call the harmonized engagement horizon. Lots of big words and I'll explain what they all mean. I guess one of the best ways I can really describe it to illustrate what I mean by all this is to introduce you to a lady named Maureen. Maureen owns a little bakery just outside of Edmonton, a great little place. But she saw that she had some challenges. Coming out of the pandemic, Maureen saw that her customers were not engaging at the same rate they were before the pandemic. This was a cute little shop and it was really her pride point was that she was part of the community. And as much as some of the older clientele maintained kind of their loyalty, the younger clientele started jumping on the services that are out there to do transactions through things like SkipTheDishes and Uber Eats and so on. But her revenues have not yet recovered or had not recovered. I shouldn't say anymore because we worked together and we changed that a little bit. The overall stress affected her operation, obviously her staff. Ultimately, the staff felt disillusioned and unmotivated. In fact, it was really tough to get people who love to serve customers to start engaging in different ways. This was really a different reality and making ends meet was really, really difficult for her. She struggled to maintain the Hallmark personal connections and community charm that defined her business. While transitioning to driving digital customer experiences, she was challenged in being responsive to the evolving market demands. Obviously, these delivery services popped up. All of a sudden, she had to adapt those and be able to keep on running. But ultimately, her customers want more. She was in what I call the personalization paradox. This is when— well, you know that you're in a personalization paradox when you see these things happen. You see reduced customer engagement. Definitely a noticeable decline in customer interaction and engagement, especially online. Regulars who once enjoyed the in-store experience find that the digital interactions lacking the personal touch that they were accustomed to. Another one was negative customer feedback. She saw an increase in customer complaints or negative reviews, particularly focusing on the The impersonal nature of the online services and a feeling of disconnect from the bakery's previous warm and welcoming atmosphere. It wasn't unheard of to hear things like, I don't know what happened but it's just different. And it had nothing to do with the quality of her product. She's seen this huge thing about employee discomfort and inefficiency. Staff members who were previously adept to being in person with clients struggle to adapt to the digital communication platforms. It led to a slew of inefficiencies and a drop in morale as they found it challenging to replicate the bakery's kind of signature personal touch in a virtual fashion. And of course, that represented into and fell into declining sales and customer retention. So, they definitely saw a noticeable downturn in sales figures and a reduction in repeat business indicating that customers are not as engaged or loyal as they were when the bakery primarily operated just only in a physical space prior to COVID-19. So additionally, the other thing that we saw was this inconsistency of service quality across the channels. And so, this is why I called the solution here harmonized because we not only have the in-person but now, we have this digital presence as well that we want to have. And so, there's a discrepancy in the quality of service between the in-person and the digital interaction with the digital experiences failing to match the high standards of the bakery's in-person service. So, we knew that there was a challenge. And she knew perfectly well that the current situation would not go back to what she knew was normal. It's funny that I still run into a lot of business owners who are still waiting to get to that part that, I want to get to what we used to do back in 2019 before COVID hit. And normal, I hate to say it, is a setting on a dryer. And I do talk a lot to a lot of business owners. And I am seeing that there is still a lot of fear in businesses, especially around this idea of the digital platforms. And they are essentially experiencing the exact same thing that Maureen is experiencing. They've lost that personal connection with their clients. They are challenged to embrace technology as a viable solution. And like Maureen, they are losing employee engagement and support as the morale within the team kind of crashes and burns. Maureen knew full well that if she did not want to lose her business and shut the door, she had to do something different. Isn't that the big catalyst, right? when we keep doing what we're doing and then realize at some point, we have to shake the tree and we have to do something entirely different. So, we started defining ultimately what would be the solution here. What would be the ultimate flip of what she was experiencing? We knew with the advent of delivery services and the sharing economy, we needed to leverage the digital age with the in-person close-knit experiences that she gave in-house. We pushed for what I call the Harmonized Engagement Horizon, which was we looked forward and thought, what would it look like to be able to meld in the in-person experiences and design in-person, the feeling that you get from in-person experiences and develop it on the digital platforms? And so, you know that you're in the Harmonized Engagement Horizon when you see a few things happening. For instance, customers actively engaging on the business's platform, especially noting the personal touches. So, people are on social media actually crediting the business for the special touches that the supplier or the business does for them. Staff members obviously display higher morale, efficiencies, and pride in what they're doing because now everybody can pump up their chest. And we see a noticeable increase in both online orders and personal visits indicating that the business has successfully captured the essence of its physical experience in the digital space. And of course, there's a consistent high level of service catered to the customer's preferences and personalized to their wants and their needs. Maureen's initial thoughts were that she doesn't have the budget or the technical skills to incorporate any kind of a digital platform. She feared that her regulars would not understand the change and that their service delivery would lose kind of the charm that they were known for. Add to that, she didn't know if her customers would embrace a different way of doing business even though they were adept at using services like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and SkipTheDishes for their ordering. And I know a lot of small and medium-sized businesses are holding themselves back, scared of what that might mean. Afraid to lose what they have now for the uncertainty that change brings. Constantly, constantly I'm seeing that people are going, I don't want to take a chance. I don't want to cross this line because I might lose what I have. And so, this mindset of scarcity holds a lot of businesses back. And I think that we need to adapt a more positive mindset of abundance. So, I do get it. But Maureen knew things could not keep going the way that they were going. She decided it was time to change. She had to find ways to bring back the connections to her customers. So, when we come back, we will uncover the C.U.S.T.O.M. framework that will help you do the same thing. So, stay tuned.

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Welcome back. We really have a conundrum, don't we? I mean, I truly believe that the pandemic sped up what was already happening. That's why we are challenged today because ultimately, we weren't ready for it. And let's face it, change is never easy. But we have to realize that normal, that going back to what normal is, the only normal that we can ever expect is that change will happen. So, I'd like to put you through my custom framework. I'd like to really put a spotlight on what that represents, what it is, and what it could mean to you. These are the steps you can take today to spot weaknesses in your systems and uncover some opportunities. But keep in mind, you know what was funny was when I was writing it, this thing about using custom as a as an acronym for it. And I realized that custom or customer is built on the foundation of the word custom. So, you can see where we're going with this. This is about this idea of what do we need to do to personalize experiences and understand where people are coming from. And so, the very first step I think that we need to do in the CUSTOM framework, it starts with the C. And that is A comprehensive customer experience evaluation. Now, I realize that for some people, this is going to sound kind of out there. But I really cannot emphasize how important this step is. And I would say regardless of the situation, this is something that we need to do time and time again. In your journey to create deeper connections with your clients, you have to kind of figure out where you are right now. The rhetoric and assumptions that we have while we are trapped inside our bottle, not being able to see the outside of the label, is tainted. We can't turn around and say, oh, you know, I know I keep all my customers happy. It's not until you experience life from the customer side that you'll understand whether or not that happens. Back in the mid-'90s, I had done a study with a local university to kind of figure out where people's perception was. And it was so funny to see managers rated their level of service that they provided at such a high level like 97%. Oh no, it's our policy. It's our procedure. We have the mission statement on the wall. We could see that. And then, we went to the service provider. It dropped a little bit. It went from 97 down to 92. They're like, oh yeah, no, everybody comes in. We love our customers. We serve them really well. But then, when you talk to the customers, only 17% said that they were served in a manner that satisfied them. So, you see, we have the experience that we want to give the customers. We know what that looks like. We know the experience the customer wants. Then, there's the experience that they actually Receive. Doing a comprehensive customer experience evaluation is essential to determining what customers see and feel at every step of their journey with you. So, what is this? Well, this can be in the form of a secret shopper reporting. I can't tell you how many times managers and owners are shocked to discover the perceptions of a first-time visitor with even the service that they themselves provided. When I send in my highly skilled secret shoppers into a business, we go in absolutely blind. We don't talk to— we don't get a definition of what the service should be. What we do is we walk into the business and we just do nothing but observation. Right, wrong, we don't know, right? So, if we see something like I remember one time somebody gave me heck. Why do I care that there's fingerprints on the windows? And it's like, you don't have to care. If having fingerprints on the windows is okay by you, then that's fine. It's your business, right? But we, Marc, and literally go through the business from a customer framing to be able to view everything that we see. The good, the bad, and the ugly. That is the power of these reports. They're not tainted by preconceptions. Even today, there's a huge disparity between the service and experience we think we give and what the clients feel that they actually get. And so, one way you can do this for yourself is you don't have to hire my secret shopper thing. You can go to my website and download a Customer Touchpoint Assessment. It's a free download and the link is going to be in the show notes. It won't detail the customer service aspect that you provide. Because you can't necessarily go into your business and act like a customer. The employees will see right through it. But what it will give you is insights as to all the different touch points and how those touch points affect the guest experience. And it'll give you a lens by which to look at your business that you see every day. It really is true. You can't see the forest for the trees. And it's amazing how many times I go into a new business and they say, oh well, what do you see? What are some of the things you think we should improve on? And when I point them out, they're like, oh, you know what? That's been like that forever. In fact, I was in a local restaurant and my mom and my wife and I were sitting in front of the kitchen door. And every time the kitchen door opened and closed, it squeaked. And it had a very distinct Eeeep! Ooh! Eep! Ooh! Right? Every single time somebody went through the kitchen. And when I pointed it out to the manager and I said, you know, that's kind of really annoying. He looked at me. He goes, oh, it's been like that for months. Then why haven't you done anything about it? It seems so simple. But it's amazing when we're in an environment, we stop seeing the stuff that our customers see because we're so fraught being in our business. So, I invite you to download your free copy. The link is in the show notes. It is called the Customer Touchpoint Assessment. And download it for free, right? It's at the very least, it's a first step for you if you can't afford to hire secret shoppers. It's a first step that you can use to start viewing your business through the eyes of your customers. Okay, so that's the C. The U in the word CUSTOM is Universal Training and Empowerment. And I had to throw them together because I couldn't find E in the word CUSTOM. So, this idea of training, I can't stress this enough. In my book, I talk about what would happen if we hired actors to play roles the way that we hire, let's say, frontline servers, right? In any restaurant, I've seen it time and again where the server applies. They go, yeah, okay, you're hired. And they come in for the first shift. They go, here's your apron. Here's your swipe card. Here's the menu. There's your table. Go! And I can't imagine Doing a live show and having an actor come and go, oh, I see you have 10 years experience acting. Oh, you did Macbeth and you did all these fancy things. We're doing a comedy. This should be a cinch for you. Here's your costume. Here's your script. You go on in 5.

Right?

We would never do this. But yet, in business, we're constantly doing this. So, I can't emphasize The value of training. And I really have to tell you about Steve. When I met Steve in the fall of 2018, he was so frustrated. He couldn't keep his staff. He couldn't relax. And he was always, go, go, go, go from the minute he stepped into his hotel to the time he left 16, 18 hours later. His common complaints were, oh, people are so stupid. Everybody knows what they need to do but nobody does it. And so, as you can imagine, Steve was the poster child of a micromanager. He ran his property with fear, afraid that he may lose a guest at any moment and definitely desperately trying so hard to beat it out and to make sure he wasn't going to lose it. But in the meantime, he was part of the problem in alienating his client base and of course, his employees. When we worked together, I insisted that we put all his staff through training. He balked at that. You know what? What was it? The old adage. What happens if I spend all this time and money training my staff and they leave? And of course, my typical retort is exactly The opposite. What happens if you don't train your staff and they stay? I talked him into putting his staff through 18 man-hours of training. Each person on staff received 18 man-hours on training. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it worth it? No doubt. To get to that level, we had to review and rewrite all his policies and his procedures. As we went through it, we realized how there was such a lack of clarity in standard operating procedures. And this was part of the challenge, right? He'd go in as a micromanager. You go and you micromanage all the little things. But there's no big picture, no big focus on what the deliverables were. So of course, the employees had no clarity. One day, they'd do something, get heck for it. Another time, they wouldn't do it and somebody would come up to— one of the managers would come up and go, no, no, you have to do it this way. So, We created a lot of clarity for expectations across the board. And when we were done, everyone was on the same page. Even though the 18 hours of training, issues still surfaced. But the staff's input just from what they were telling us, we were able to redefine some of the procedures. With the new understanding. Now, we had the staff together having had spent 18 man-hours together with every person. As they got back into their jobs, or as they problem solved, they would come and tell us some more stuff, understanding full well what our mission, what our vision, what our purpose and objectives were each and every day. It was magical to see them come and open up. And what was even more magical was for Steve to be able to relax knowing full well that he had ambassadors in his business that came to him to let him know if something was off-kilter to what the mission and vision objectives that we had defined. So, it's funny though. When it comes down to this question of training, if you had a really important piece of equipment Something that you need in order to make your business work and it would fail. Wouldn't you move heaven and earth to get it back up and running? But yet, when it finally comes to staff training, it's the first thing that we cut. It's like our staff are the machines we need to run because they're the ones right in front of the customers. I can tell you, Steve is much happier today. He credits the work that we did together back then to helping him actually weather the COVID storm. Because before that, I mean, we didn't know back in the day that COVID would be around the corner. But when you have all those people that you invested in who are part of your ambassadorship within your organization, because of that, he was able to weather the storm to get through COVID by doing job sharings, by figuring out different things to do with the food and beverage operation, thereby making sure that people stayed employed. And he just adapted. And he had that capacity because he was able to take the time and the expense to train his staff. So, take the time to develop training programs for employees that cover both digital proficiency and in-person service excellence. Again, if that's something you need help with, book a 30-minute clarity call with me. I'm more than happy to sit down, maybe paint a picture of what that could look like for you. The S in CUSTOM is Seamless Technology Integration. See, I had to make up a word to fit the S in. Seamless Technology Integration means utilizing technology to enhance the customer experience in both the digital and physical realms, ensuring a Seamless transition between the two. You know, one of the things that happened probably 2 years now that Rogers went out. I don't know if you were affected by it. But one of our major cell data suppliers crashed and fell for like 4 days. And it was so funny to see all these signs in the windows that says, our debit machines are down. We're only accepting cash. And yet, every business I go into, the very first thing I do is I go online and I find one of those old credit card processing units. The ones that you put the paper in, you put the credit card, and you swipe the credit card. And then, I have the customer sign. This is my backup. I have it in an orange box in the offices at the different revenue centers so that if the internet ever does go down and we have to continue to process sales, we can take pads and paper. We can add stuff up. We can also process credit cards, have people sign the slips, and then we can either when the internet comes back on manually input them. Or we can submit those slips to the bank and let them do it. It's still a valid contract. So, if you have a customer-facing business and you don't have one of these credit card processing units, that's technology. Granted, it's very analog. It's not the high-tech digital. technology. But it's something that when we think about what is going to fail and what's going to work in our businesses, this is all part of it, right? We all have websites, right? So, how does your website reflect to your clients? Online ordering platforms have already affected our business. They are not going to go away. So instead of crying about it and whining about it, oh, they take 25% of my revenues, you have to figure out how we're going to leverage them. Because when we leverage them, we start leveraging them to our benefit. That means we start making deals and we try to figure out how to do different aspects of our business to leverage kind of almost like a joint venture or a collaborative component of what we do. I just got back from Calgary where I delivered a session on leveraging artificial intelligence to a group of business owners. And I could tell you, when it came down to the topic itself, we are so fearful of change and so fearful of what can happen that we're now taking time to explore— that we use that as an excuse, sorry, that we don't take time to explore how these tools can help us. And it's funny, I was driving back from swimming this morning with my wife. And we're sitting in the car and she goes, well, AI is really scary because people can use it for bad. And I said, well, the cars were invented in the early 19th century. They're a technology. And she goes, yeah, but they're not bad. I said, but how many people use cars for bad? The digital realm, artificial intelligence, are you going to have rip-off artists and con men who are going to try to leverage it?

Absolutely!

We can protect ourselves against that if we're smart enough to do it. But leveraging the tools cannot— not doing it cannot be an excuse. Not knowing something like, one of the excuses I'm constantly getting is, I'm too old to learn this stuff. But it's like, but you're only 35 years old. Of course, you can learn it. We can learn anything that we want to learn, right? But every new change, every new innovation, is faced with either excitement for the new opportunity or fear. And many times, the acronym for fear is TRUE— Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real. We're scared to jump onto something that is the unknown. I keep talking about one of my favorite things in Downton Abbey. In the first episode of Downton Abbey, when the daughter goes to the grandmother's house, And the grandmother still has candles on the desk and stuff. And obviously, they've just got electricity because she's like, Granny, why don't you just turn on the lights? But Granny has in her head, Oh, but if I use the switch, I might have fire in my walls. I promise you, if you decide that you want to explore and leverage some of the tools, you can use those tools to help you create new opportunities. When we come back, I'd like to tackle TOM. That is the last 3 acronym pieces in CUS-TOM to help you create the advanced customer service strategies that you need to help grow your business. And we'll get to that right after this.

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As you can tell, I love this stuff. I love everything about serving business owners and managers just like you. I do understand how scary it is. If you are tuning in and you're thinking, good golly, Marc! I need to train my leaders. If you are planning a leadership retreat or a conference, you think, my goodness! This would be so valuable at my conference. feel free to reach out for a quick discovery call. My contact is in the show notes. So, please do reach out. So far, we have covered comprehensive customer experience evaluation, universal training and empowerment, and seamless technology integration. The T in customer Is or in customer is to create a tailored omnichannel approach. A few episodes back, I did a podcast on the importance of personalizing customer experiences. Feel free to check it out. This idea about personalizing, understanding kind of your different customer avatars and the different personas and what they want. and how you can deliver what they need. We talked a lot about that. You have different customer segments and each one is different. Each one has different needs, different wants. So, I encourage you to craft an omnichannel strategy that respects and adapts to customer preferences, whether they favor the digital communication, in-person interactions, or maybe it's a combination of both. I have a sneaking suspicion that's what it is. My message last Saturday when I was talking about the artificial intelligence was really talking about how we need a balance between using tech and the human touch. And so, when you connect with your clients how and when they want you to connect with them, you are well on your way to being defined as a responsive business. Somebody who caters to them. And again, we've been talking about this for years. We've been talking about it in the Twitterverse when somebody puts a complaint down on Twitter and we have to be responsive. Now, it's gone even further. So, the next step is the O in CUSTOM is really a callback to the first point. The O stands for Optimized Feedback Mechanisms. Regardless of your business, you need feedback. Now, a lot of people just want the good feedback. We love it when we get good things and you pat yourself on the back. And feedback should not be ego-driven. It should not be, look at us, we're so great. Yay! We're delivering. The feedback we want is we want ways to figure out how can we improve. You need a way to score the effectiveness of your processes and your procedures. It is so essential to implement feedback systems that gather insights from both the online and the offline customer experiences. And so, this is why this is a callback to the first one. You can use the customer touchpoint assessments to figure this out. And you can create some sort of survey mechanism to be able to talk to your customers. I realize that you are, well, hopefully looking at your data points. But having a feedback mechanism with defined outcomes and expectations can be your early warning system. Isn't it easier to get an oil change when that oil change light comes on? Isn't it easier to get an oil change then than to blow your engine and get that engine light that says, Your engine is FUBAR. It's going to cost you so much more. Of course, it is. So, proper feedback mechanisms, so an optimized feedback mechanism does that for you. You can keep using your secret shoppers. You can keep using your touchpoint assessments. They will be your early warning system to help you out. And finally, the M is Multi-Dimensional Improvement Culture. I wanted to keep it simple. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we had to look at every facet of our business. We can't just look at the front-level customer service. We have to look at our procedures and our policies and our standard SOPs. We have to look at our KPIs, the key performance indicators and the key people indicators. We have to look at every aspect of our business. So, it's not just a one-dimensional, let's improve culture. It's multi-dimensional improvement culture. The Japanese have a word for this. It's probably a lot easier than the words I made up. But Kaizen is really this idea of fostering a culture of continuous improvement that values innovation in both digital engagement and traditional customer service methods. Just asking, oh, what could we have done better? Even if everything went great, you look for those minor points of improvement every single day. That's where the magic is. So, even when you have a great process and you talk to people and go, how could we improve that by a smidge? If you make a 1% improvement every single day, 1%, how amazing would your business be in 6 months? And you look at every possible interaction. And this can be a real game changer for your business. And here's a secret. The more you support the belief that change will happen and that you embrace those changes, the more your staff will step up and be the beacon for that change. When that happens, they are more engaged. They're more stimulated and they're more a part of your business. Doesn't that sound like a winning combination? What do you think that that would do for your staff retention? Embracing the 6-step custom framework marks a significant shift towards more effectively meeting client expectations across the digital and physical realms. It's the balance of Can I balance technology and authentic human experiences? This comprehensive strategy ensures that companies are well equipped to excel in crafting exceptional customer experiences regardless of the platform. Maureen discovered that a deeper understanding of her diverse customer base enabled her to start tailoring experiences directly To their needs. And by applying these advanced customer service techniques, she was successfully able to reinvigorate the customer engagement that is on their terms, not on her terms. Maureen looks back now and is convinced that if she hadn't driven the 6 steps, she'd be hard-pressed to have a sustainable business today. She'd probably still be struggling with Reduced customer engagement, getting negative customer reviews or complaints focused more on the experience than the product quality or the offering, and staff members struggling to serve at a higher level. There's no telling what condition her business would be in today. But I can tell you, it won't be as good as it is today. So, I have to ask you, if you keep doing what you are doing right now, What will your business look like in 6 months? If you're confident that your 6-month vision is going to be wonderful and great and the growth is going to continue and you're going to have really engaged employees and really engaged customers, then great. But I wonder if the CUSTOM framework would work for you. I mean, can you imagine if your customers are actively engaging on your business platforms, especially noting all the personal touches that you do that are really making a difference in their lives? Can you imagine having staff members display higher morale and efficiencies and pride? And because of that, they love coming to work and they love engaging with your customers. And they see value in what they do. And they're sticking around longer. How about this idea of seeing a noticeable increase in both online orders and personal visits indicating that the business has successfully captured the essence of its physical experience in the digital space. I mean, you'll be delivering a consistent high level of service catered to the customer's preference and personalized to the wants and the needs. And I do know there's some businesses out there says, oh well, I do that already. And if you are, I would ask you talk to your customers. Go back to step 1 and see if you truly, truly do. Don't just assume you do. As I wrap up, I have a challenge for you. In the next 10 days, I challenge you to take the first step and do the comprehensive customer experience evaluation. If you like, please download my Customer Touchpoint Assessment. It is free. And the link is in the show notes. I hope that this has been helpful for you. I thought about this topic and I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to present something that I thought could be helpful and valuable to you. A different way of being able to think about your business. If you have some questions, about our topic today, or you'd like to brainstorm some aspect of your business, do feel free to click the calendar link in the show notes and book a complimentary clarity call with me. It's a 30-minute session. I would love to discuss your business. I live to serve. And please, if you enjoyed this episode, feel free to subscribe to this podcast and share this episode with your network. Knowledge is power. But only if it's shared. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.