The Post-Covid Customer

Your business has been in an unprecedented 2-year flux. And as restrictions start to lift in many jurisdictions, some customers are still vying to order online and maintain COVID-like processes. We are in a new era. A new era of business. A new era of customer demands. We are in the almost post-COVID era. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, keynote speaker, and customer experience designer Marc Haine. And today, I am really excited to welcome a colleague, customer experience expert Marc Gordon. We will be chatting about what you need to do to attract and engage the post-COVID customer. Specifically, we will be talking about expectations and how to communicate to your customers in a way that builds trust and loyalty. But we'll get to that in just a moment. First off, I hope that you and your team will get extraordinary value from today's content. It is definitely worth watching all the way through. And if you do find the information here valuable, why don't you go ahead and share it on social media? And of course, if you haven't done so, go ahead and subscribe to this program. That'll give you first dibs whenever I bring you fresh new content and new topics each and every week. You know, there is no doubt that mask bans, mask and vaccine mandates have been divisive. Even still, there is probably some yahoo going off on a grocery clerk somewhere, or going off on a customer in a store somewhere because they chose to wear their mask. But I believe that we are turning The bend into a new era of operations. A new era where the onus is on us as suppliers and vendors to do things differently and to be sensitive to the needs of our individual clients. All our individual clients, which brings me to our Question of the Day. First off, are you seeing different behaviors in your current clients than before the pandemic? Like different from when we were in lockdowns and when we were in the middle of the mask and vaccine mandates. Are you seeing different behaviors now? And are you doing anything differently today than you did back in 2019? Go ahead and share your experience on social media and make sure please hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership so we can track your conversation. Love to be able to go back and forth with you on this and see what you have to say. As I mentioned, my guest today is Customer Experience Expert Marc Gordon. Marc is an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience. I'm sure that he walks down the street and somebody goes, oh my God! You're an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of customer experience. He's got over 25 years of marketing and sales experience in a number of diverse industries. He has built a reputation for providing insightful concepts that are both innovative and effective. As an award-winning keynote speaker, Marc has spoken for some of the world's respected companies including the companies like Bosch and Lomb, Hilton Hotels, and Mondelez International. Marc is the only speaker in his field to have keynoted at the World Management Forum in Tehran, Iran. And I can tell you, the only one in the field because I'm in his field and I've never spoken there. Regularly featured on television and radio for his opinions, Marc has shared his thoughts on topics that includes the boycotting of brands, customer service in the airline industry, and companies such as Facebook and Starbucks. Marc has been referred to as Canada's marketing superstar by the Oprah Winfrey Network. Marc, welcome to the show! It is so nice to have you here.

Thanks, Marc. It is great to be here. And what's really cool is this is live. It's a real treat for me to do a podcast and a show like this live. It's so cool. I'm looking forward to it.

It is. It's always fun to do these because things happen all the time. And this just shows what we're all about, right?

Absolutely.

Before we get started, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients.

In a nutshell, companies call me when they have an awareness that they are probably not delivering the kinds of experiences that they would like or believe that they're capable of but want to. They want to really get the most out of every point of contact they have with their customers. They want to create an environment that not only increases sales but inspires loyalty as well. So, the companies that reach out to me are the ones that are doing A pretty good job already. Not a great job, but they know they can do better. Interestingly enough, the companies that don't call me are the ones that are doing terrible jobs. Why? Well, as you can probably guess, they either don't care or they're pretty confident they're doing a bang-up job because somebody on the inside feels that way and they've never actually asked their customers. So, my favorite customer to deal with is companies that are doing a pretty good job but know they're capable of doing more.

It is rather surprising, right? Because the people who I think need us the most are the ones who can't admit to themselves that they have a problem or are afraid to tell people they have a problem. I'm not quite sure which one it is. Do you find that there's some tool or something that people need to do in order to be able to look at their thing and say, geez, now I need the help?

Oh boy, that's a great question. You know, I find in so many businesses, depending on the size of the business, whether it's family-owned or corporate-owned or a public company, there are so many variables at play. A lot of times, it comes down to ego. For example, management just feels they're doing a good job. And what they've been able to do is find proof of that in whatever metrics they want to examine. Uh, and then other times they think everything's fine, and then all of a sudden business starts to taper off, or they see something trending on social media where everybody's saying this place is awful, the quality is awful, the service is awful, you know, stay away from this place, it's bad news. And then all of a sudden the light bulb goes off and they're like, well, maybe we need to do something about it. But what I have learned, and early in my career I would do this, I would approach a company that maybe I had a negative experience And say, hey, this is who I am and what I do. And I think you might be underselling yourself or perhaps even hurting your business with the experiences you're providing. And I'd love to work with you. And in every case, they would just flat out turn me down and say, we're doing just fine. Our customers love us. I don't know how they would know that. But for whatever reason, they're pretty confident that I'm not the guy who could help them because they're doing amazing already. It's the companies that call out of the blue, right? Those are the ones, right? It's like a personal trainer going up to somebody who's really obese on the street and saying, I can help you. You know they're gonna get turned down, right? It's when their phone rings and that person says, I need some help getting my life together, or losing weight, or whatever it is. Same thing in business.

It's amazing. And for me as well, part of the challenge that I see is where you talk to a business operator and they actually turn around and blame their customers.

Yes, right.

It's so easy to do that too. It's like, they don't understand what I need to do. They don't understand this business. They don't understand. And it's like, it's not their role to understand what you're going through.

Yeah. It would be so much easier to make a sale if these customers weren't so difficult.

I always said, I used to tease people about hospitality. Hospitality would be so simple if it didn't include people.

Yes. Very true. And it really amazes me how many instances I've experienced, and I'm sure you have as well, where businesses tend to flip it around on the customer. The customer's being difficult, or one of my favorite is they expect some form of empathy on the part of the customer regarding internal issues. So they'll say, oh, you know what, we're short-staffed today, or we got someone new that we're training, or Or our suppliers, you know, the product hasn't come in on time. Or any number of internal issues that the customer is supposed to be like, oh, okay, I'm cool with the really lousy service because you're short-staffed.

Or because you're unhappy.

Exactly.

I'm so sorry you're sad. I'll try to be a better customer, I promise. Exactly.

Yes, we should all be empathetic to miserable business owners.

There you go. Yeah, we should start a new thing. I'm gonna get a t-shirt that says, support bad business operators because at some point, they'll turn around.

They're people too. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I'm gonna get that. That's a great shirt to have. Support miserable business owners. They're people too.

Yeah, they're people too. There you go. We're in an unprecedented time now. I mean, we have faced so much uncertainty and change in the last 2 years. From your perspective, how has business operators and leaders fare, do you think, in this journey that they're on?

Well, I mean, to use a very commonly used word, pivot, which has been I think used extensively, probably more so than it should over the last couple of years. You have seen so many businesses that have really tried to change their offerings, whether it be how that product or service is delivered, or even the kind of product or service is delivered. And myself, case in point, outside of Spika, I also own a marketing company. And there weren't, you know, we do a lot of work with trade shows and booths and promotional products and things like that. And in 2020, there were no trade shows, but an opportunity came along for me to start providing branded cloth reusable masks. And that turned into something really, really huge. We started supplying masks to professional sports teams and universities and large corporations, and it really took off.

I—

it was a pivot? No, I would say it was an opportunity. But a lot of companies, you know, they've been able to do essentially the same thing. They've been able to see those opportunities to not only reach new markets or have new offerings, but really show that they're an organization that can be trusted. They're a reliable source for whatever it is, whether it be curbside pickup, whether it be, uh, selling products in, in different packaging or whatever, and, and And some of it's, I think, legitimate, and some of it I think is just optics, but people feel comfortable. One of my favorite examples that I've seen, and I'm sure you have as well, if you order a pizza during the pandemic, if you've ordered a pizza, as many people have, sometimes you'd see a decal on the box that let us know that the pizza had not been tampered with. And my first thought was, who's tampering with my pizza? Was this a worldwide phenomenon? Was this a common occurrence that people were tampering, rearranging the toppings? in the car before they brought it in. I'm not really sure. But there were stickers on the box that said, has not been tampered with. And people loved that. They ate it up, literally. They really liked knowing that. But the reality is that it made no difference to anything. Nobody was tampering with pizza. The pizza still had to be handled by a human being to take it out of the oven and slice it and put it in the box. So really, nothing had changed. It was purely optics. But We live in a world now where optics are everything. And people want that level of comfort, whether it's perceived or whether it's legitimate. They want to know that they're being taken care of, that they're in a safe environment.

And it's true. I mean, that sticker was there to give a perception of trust. But where do you think now that we're coming out of these mandates in jurisdictions and the mask mandates are being lifted all over the place, Where do you think the biggest challenges are now for business operators?

The biggest challenge I would say is having to deal with customers who now have the ability to make decisions. And it's been really interesting because if you look back 2 years ago, almost to the day, 2 years ago, back in, let's say, let's rewind it a little bit, even February of 2020, and you wanted to get together with friends. You wanted to go shopping. You wanted to go to the theater. The decisions you made were essentially very superficial. What time should you go to the theater? What friends should you get together with? Should you get together at your house or go to a restaurant? And what restaurant?

Right.

These were all very, very superficial things. They were easy decisions to make. They were comfortable decisions to make. In fact, in many cases, they were fun decisions to make. And then, all of a sudden in a very, very short time, the ability to make those decisions got taken away. So, all of us from every walk of life, we could not make those decisions at all because the ability to do so got taken away. It no longer became, can we get together with friends? Right? It now became, do we see nobody or do we communicate through Zoom?

Right.

Instead of going out for dinner, it became, do we do curbside pickup or do we have it delivered? Things like going to the mall, going to the theater, going to a concert, all of these things off the list. There were so many things in our daily lives that we could and couldn't do. Either we couldn't do them or we could do them but had to do them in a very, very specific way. And at the beginning, We just did it because there was confusion, there was fear, there was the unknown, and we didn't know. So we, we kind of toed the line and went along with it. And then over time, over the next year or year and a half, you know, we slowly started to find ourselves questioning things, be it right or wrong. And that's when you started to see splinter groups, those that felt they were sort of, uh, had their freedoms were being taken away, so to speak, and other people who felt, no, no, you know what, we're not ready yet to break out of this. We like where we are. We're comfortable in this routine. Well, now across many jurisdictions around the world, a lot of these mandates, these barriers to us being able to make our own decisions are coming down. And now in a very, very short time, relatively speaking, in the span of even just weeks, people are now being given all this power back. We're now able to say, do we want to get together with friends? Do we want to go to a show? What times? We're able to make all these fun decisions. But what's interesting is that the landscape hasn't changed as quickly as our ability or our desire to want to make these kinds of decisions. So for many businesses, those decisions are impacting How customers are going to communicate or transact or have any kind of interaction with them. And the problem is that a lot of businesses don't know how to react to this. So, for example, many businesses are saying, you know what? Our doors are open. Come on in. You don't need a mask. You don't need proof of vaccination. We're not limiting a certain number of people per table. We're not limiting our hours. It's a free-for-all. Like it's 2019 again. Other restaurants, perhaps on the same— in the same city, maybe even on the same street, are saying, we're not quite there yet. We still want proof of vaccination. We're still limiting the number of people we have in our restaurant. Well, if you're a customer, regardless of which side you're on, regardless of your views, your ideas, your beliefs, one of those restaurants will be more appealing than the other. And If you go into the one by chance that doesn't really align with your values and beliefs, there's going to be stress not only for the customer but for the business owner as well. There's going to be people walking out or there's going to be conflict. There's going to be a stressful situation potentially. So, it's very, very difficult for businesses to really be able to respond to everybody because there's no commonality anymore. But those businesses that can kind of work on a common denominator, that, that lowest common denominator, those are the ones that really have the ability to, to succeed in a way that makes everybody feel welcome while still creating some, some limitations. And there's always going to be limitations again, right? There, there, there has to be either because it's law. It's been mandated. Or because you know that you can't appeal to the very top and you can't appeal to the very bottom. You kind of have to hit that sweet spot in the middle.

Yeah.

So, that's really I think what's key is saying, this is our ideal customer and this is who we want to service. This is who we want to take care of.

And you stay very tight to your values.

Of course.

I think that makes all the difference. It reminds me of 2005 when the smoking bans started happening. Right? And then, you had some operations that were, you know, this is a smoking environment. This is a non-smoking environment. And if you were a non-smoker that went into a smoking environment, too bad. If you went into a non-smoking and you wanted to go for smoke, you had to go outside. Well, that lasted for only a small period of time. Right now, we still have this divisiveness though. Now that the mandates are being lifted, We still have this divisiveness inside as I mentioned earlier on. Like I couldn't believe that I was in the grocery store and some guy's going off on a lady who's wearing a mask. And it's like, you're going off on her. You don't know what her health condition is. You don't know anything about her. And yet, you decide that you're going to go off because she's wearing a— what do they call it? Face diaper, right? Going off. And it's like, this is really challenging now because in most businesses, we have an onus to provide a safe environment for our customers and our employees. Do you think that business operators are handling this well? Are you seeing any kind of shift in the way that operators are behaving in order to cater to some of this?

Well, it's interesting what you mentioned with the smoking because that was influenced in large part by government laws and regulations. So, the onus was not on the business. If the government in that state or province or territory, whatever it might have been, said no indoor smoking, you couldn't argue with anyone. It didn't, it didn't work. The restaurant didn't even have a say in it. But now we're in, we're in an interesting situation where even though the government says you don't have to— so usually what's, what's interesting about these situations is usually the government puts on limitations, right? But again, with your smoking example, the government creates limitations. But what's going on now is the government's removing limitations. And this has really never happened before. Governments aren't known for giving people more freedom and greater ability to make their own decisions. Usually, it's the opposite. So, what happens is the onus starts to fall on not only the business but the individual customers as well. So, you've got businesses who have to make decisions based on their own values, the safety of or what they believe to be the good of the safety of their employees and management and team, whatever. And what they can do to not only protect their customers but attract their customers as well. So, you end up with this, we'll call it a mishmash of possibly conflicting ideas. And when they come together and there's not a synergy, you can end up with a stressful situation. Now, for most businesses, I think really what it comes down to is understanding what motivates your customer. And one of the things I talk about are internal and external influencers when it comes to how we perceive the world. And external influencers are pretty straightforward. It's essentially marketing, advertising, the world around us. But internal influencers, which I break down as fact, fiction, and imagination. In fact, is anything that's happened to you. Fiction is things that have happened to other people and they're sharing their stories with you. But the biggest one is imagination. And imagination, some people will call it cognitive disorder, any number of psychological terms that are a cognitive bias. Really, it impacts us from the day we're born, how we perceive the world. And things can impact it such as our religion, the language we speak, the color of our skin, where we grew up. Our income level, our educational level, our friends, our family. All of these things compound together to impact how we see the world, which is why some people view mandates as, as a safety blanket, as the government saying, yes, you know, we want you to be safe. And other people look at it as you're taking away my freedom. What's interesting is it's the exact same thing happening to everybody. At the same time, the exact same experience, but it's perceived differently. So, it's important for a business to understand that when a customer comes in through their door, whether there be a pandemic or not, they're bringing with them a lifetime of beliefs and ideas and values which are morphing and changing almost daily. And as a business, you have to be able to to respond to those and deal with those. And in many cases, some simple dialogue can really smooth things over. And what's important to know on the part of the customer, the customer needs to understand that it's not about freedom. It's not about we're right and you're wrong. It's not about we want to control you. In many cases, they need to understand really that it's no different than no shoes, no shirt, no service.

It's a policy that the store set in order to be safe. Yeah, it's interesting because I told you just before we got started, I'm working on a community play, a live production coming up this weekend. And when we planned it, there were still the vaccine mandates were in place. The people had to be masked. They had to be vaccinated. They had to show a QR code. And then, that got dropped. And now the masks have got dropped and we're constantly getting people contacting us saying, you know, your site said that we need the QR code, but the government doesn't say we need it anymore. And you're, you know, what about masks? And so then we politely told people that, yes, we dropped the QR code requirement, but we will be asking people to wear masks because we do have a sensitive senior population coming to the shows and we want to be respectful of their needs as well. So we're asking people, as you walk around, please put the mask on. Thankfully, we haven't had anybody push back at this point. It sounds perfectly reasonable. But again, we have to be prepared that people might be pushing back to that. And again, going back to that perception of freedom and that sort of thing, you can't tell me what to do. Okay, well then, sir, come on in in your underwear and we'll be okay with that too.

Exactly. And I think you presented it really well, by the way, the theater group, in the fact that you said, look, we totally get it. And one thing that I like You know, encourage a lot of companies to say, or a lot of business owners to say, look, I don't like it either. Okay? If someone says, I don't like to wear masks, and you say, I get it. I don't like to wear masks either. As soon as you show that, make that kind of statement, you no longer become an adversary. All right? And that's the problem is so many people will walk into any kind of business. And if things aren't in alignment with their own values, it becomes adversarial.

Right.

And if you can say, look, I get it, I don't like it either, or I wish I could do it differently, but, you know, either local laws say I have to, and if I don't do it, they'll shut me down. Or like you said, you know, I'm not a big fan of masks either. If I had it my way, masks would be history. But we have a large elderly population who attend our events, and we got to look out for them. They're hypersensitive to this kind of stuff. A lot of them have health issues. We all got to kind of— we all got to, you know, Do our part to make sure they're safe. And how can you really argue with that, right? Because in saying that, the customer would say, okay, well, clearly, you're in agreement with me that the masks suck. So, how can I argue with you? We agree. And then, what you've done is you've taken it away from them and you've turned it into really it becomes a caring thing about somebody else. So now, if you disagree, what you're saying is— I don't care about other people. I only care about myself, which nobody wants to say. Deep down, they might feel that way, but really, you know, they're not going to be like, well, I don't care about that lady who's, you know, going through, you know, some kind of health treatment and her immune system is compromised. I don't care. I just, you know, and again, you know, if it comes down to that, which in most cases it won't, you can say, you know what, I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. I understand you're frustrated. And and I would love to to take care of you, but I'm you know I I can't, and you can see why. And I've been transparent with you, and I hope you understand. And and this is the kind of dialogue that really works. Really works. One thing you should never say is those those words I tell every business they should never share four words three words that's our policy. There we go. That's it's three words. Sometimes it's four depending on how they word it, but but they should never ever respond with that's our policy.

Never.

Never. Because when someone comes in, they have a mask issue and you say, that's our policy. What they're saying is, I don't care what your issues are. I am not going to listen to you. I'm not going to relate to you in any way. I'm going to shut this down. And nobody likes to be shut down.

Right.

Love it, love it, love it. I'd like to jump into 3 traits of the perfect customer experience. And we'll get to that right after this.

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We are speaking with customer experience expert Marc Gordon. Marc, from what you are seeing, even with the lifting of the restrictions, some businesses are choosing to keep those mandates. You mentioned it. Do you think that's an important thing for them to do? Are they on the wrong track?

Boy, that's a loaded question, Marc.

It is a loaded question.

Are they on the right track?

Are they on the right track for them to insist upon maybe these restrictions and so on like I just mentioned with our senior group?

Right. Well, I would say, as with any policy or rule that a business implements, it really comes down to the response get. Right. Uh, we— it's that simple. And, and again, you know, you don't want to break the law, you don't want to do things you're not supposed to, uh, but if the government says, for example, you don't need any masks in your place of business and you— people don't need to show that they're vaccinated and there's, you know, no other limitations, and you are cool with that but your customer base is not, well then I would say that wasn't a very good decision. But then on the flip side, You know, if they are cool with that and, and business skyrockets for you. Um, you know, I, I was at a, a Mexican restaurant this past weekend and it was packed. And we didn't— you know, no one had to show mandates. Uh, you, you walked in with a mask, but you took it off as soon as you were seated and didn't put it on again until you were ready to leave. And, um, the place was packed. And they had told me that as soon as the, the mandates went down or were reduced They were filling right up. So I would say they were doing the same thing. With your theater group, for example, if half the group in there are elderly or people who are concerned about, you know, their health in some form, and you were to totally lift any kind of mask restrictions, you might lose, you know, half your customer base. So I don't think it's really a right or wrong track. I would say it really depends on your market and your industry and everything else.

How do you think now with everything going on, how do you think the actual customer experience has changed? Wow!

That's a great question. I think people's expectations have changed. And what's tough to read right now, even for me, I've been reading so many studies about this is people are not going back to what was, uh, when they're walking into a business. To, to an extent they are, but there's been other issues coming up. And then, you know, as your listeners know, there's a war going on in Europe right now. Uh, there are supply chain issues caused by, by shortages and production issues during the pandemic. There's a lot at play here. And the restrictions set by COVID are obviously changing in ways that potentially benefit the customer experience. But on the flip side, there's a lot of other economic factors and logistical factors that are coming into play that negatively impact the customer experience. So we're hearing stories of, of, you know, cars, a shortage of new vehicles. People order a car and they have to wait 6 months or longer for it, or don't even know when they'll get it. They walk into a grocery store and, and all of a sudden there's no Or there's no cereal, or the price of something that was $1.50 last week is now $3.50 this week. So, the whole customer experience concept I think has really gone out the window to an extent that people have a set list of expectations. Everything is really just kind of gone out the window. But I think what hasn't changed is that us as human beings, we still have some key, a key checklist, if you will, of things that we want. And if we get those things, we can work around everything else. And I think in large part of that, everybody wants to feel recognized, valued, and appreciated. And if a business can do that, right then and there, you've created an environment and a situation where people will be more understanding, more flexible. Sure, they, you know, who's happy that the price of bread went up or that there's no milk in the dairy aisle? But you know, it'll come back in a day or so. There'll be more. Or they have to wait 6 months for their car. Yeah, it sucks. But if you feel that you are recognized, valued, and appreciated, that you are welcome there, they want you to come back, they'll do the best they can under the circumstances. You'd be amazed how flexible people will be, how understanding they'll be in those kinds of situations. So, that's what I'd say. That's key right there. Just those 3 points.

And it's so amazing because isn't it what all of us want. It doesn't matter where you go, whether you're going into Walmart, an optometrist, to see your lawyer. We all want those 3 things.

Because at the end of the day, it's really not about business, is it? It's about human beings.

Yeah.

At the end of the day, right? No matter what industry you're in or what it is you're selling or buying, at the end of the day, it's dealing with one person making a decision regarding another person.

Yeah.

And people like to deal with those that they know and trust.

Yep.

And a big part of that, right? I can't expect a business to have my back if they won't even acknowledge me. If they won't, if I don't even feel valued by them, can I really trust them?

Right.

No. Right. No, it's absolutely on point. Marc, this is fantastic. Could you just let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if this is resonating with them that they can reach out and connect?

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. So, anyone out there who wants some ideas or some information about either me or some of what I talk about, whether it be for your organization or just for your business, all you have to do is visit MarcGordon.ca. That's Marc with a C, just like you, Marc, right? We spell it the right way. There's only the proper way to spell it. So, Marc Gordon. It's Marc with a C. MarcGordon.ca. Once you're there, I have a lot of information on my site. You don't even need to buy anything. There's lots of videos and everything else that you can learn ideas from and tips to help your business. And if you want to book a free, no-obligation 30-minute idea session where you and I can talk about literally anything you want pertaining to business, marketing, customer experience, customer service, you can set that up as well. So, visit the site, check it out, and reach out to me if you'd like.

Fantastic! That's so great. Marc, the biggest contention that I find right now more than anything else when people turn around and say that they don't want to go out to restaurants yet or they're not ready to go to movie theaters and so on. A recent McKinsey report, actually I got the stats today. McKinsey report saying that just about 50% of the population now are willing to go to mass gathering events, sports, concerts, meetings, and so on. But that leaves the other 50% that is not. What do operators need to do to start bringing up, like addressing the fears and building the trust with their customers?

Wow! That's a great question. Well, I think it depends in large part on the type of event. So, you have to remember here at the end of the day, we're dealing with with emotion. All right. There's this whole COVID thing. As much as science has come into play, a lot of it is still driven by emotion. And I know people, and I'm sure you do as well, who still will not go to a restaurant. They won't. I have clients of mine who say, I have no desire to go to a restaurant and I don't know when I will. And they're still doing takeout. So from a business perspective, hey, they're right. You know, if I owned a restaurant and I had someone who didn't want to come to my restaurant, but they were willing to do takeout, That's fine with me. It's still being bought for me. With regards to things like sporting events and concerts and everything else, I would say there's really not a lot that can be done because you're dealing with such a significant portion of the population, such a cross-demographic with regards to age and gender and income and everything else, that to, to try to make that other 50% feel comfortable I kind of think it's an unrealistic objective by the customer. I think there again, it comes down— I touched on this earlier— that kind of common denominator. So for example, you can say, look, you know what, we've improved ventilation, or we, you know, we wipe everything down. You know, all those, those handlebars that you're going to, you know, hold on to walking to your seat or the seat itself or the floors, everything's been wiped down and clean and everything else. So you kind of make that effort and some people that will resonate with and they'll say, yeah, you know what, I feel more comfortable that everything's kind of been cleaned and stuff. But you're always going to end up with that group who say, I'm just not there yet. And you just have to shrug it off and move on and focus on the ones that do. And on the flip side, by the way, there's people who would come out if you didn't do anything. You know, if you, if you were a restaurant or a business of any type and you said, we're not doing anything, we're not cleaning, there's no hand sanitizer. We don't do masks. We don't do anything. It's as if COVID never happened. You would still get a portion of the population saying, I'm cool with that. And they would show up.

Yeah.

So, you can't bend in directions that everybody are going to be happy with.

Yeah, it's interesting because one of the things that I've done is I created a— and maybe I'll put it in the show notes. I created a risk assessment for for operations that they can go through to see about what are all these different touchpoints that might be affected. And then, in my mind, if an operator goes through these touchpoints assessments, they can actually tell people, this is what we've done. Here's our checklist. Or here's what we made absolutely paramount. We make absolutely sure that we sanitize the debit machine before we take it to another customer and so on. That sort of thing. Being able to build that level of trust. You know what? We have a short time left. However, we're going to get back to Marc Gordon right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope that you are getting lots from today's episode. As you can tell, Marc and I are super passionate about today's topic. We're all about customer experience and customer service. And really, at the end of the day, Making people your loyal ambassador. I'm sure I'll be getting some messages from people who are close to me going, Marc, why are you featuring one of your competitors on your show? But that's really easy. Marc and I bring extraordinary value to our markets and we complement one another. So, if you are planning an event or if you know somebody who could use our services, why don't you go ahead and either reach out to Marc or myself. And do a connection request. Both Marc and I are more than willing to do the complimentary 30-minute discovery call with you to see how we can serve you. Having said that, as I mentioned, Marc, I was reading the McKinsey stats this morning. 73% of diners are willing to dine in restaurants now. 68% are willing to travel. So, businesses have huge opportunities now. What are they missing to not only attract those clients and guests but really appease Those fears. You mentioned about that center thing though. And I just mentioned about this track record. Is there anything like from a marketing perspective, how could they put a messaging out there? How do they communicate with their customers that they are on their customer's side?

Well, that's I think a pretty straightforward thing. And it's a great point to bring up that it's important to do that. Obviously, there's social media. There's the website. There's signage internally. You know, just again, be very open, be very transparent, and be very clear. And I think a big part of this, and I'm going to segue a little bit here because I know before our first break, you had mentioned that we were going to talk about the 3 elements that make up the perfect customer experience. And then we didn't come back to it. So, I want to touch on— the reason I want to touch on it now, not only because you promised it, but also—

Please.

Because it does tie in to what you had asked about how a business can go ahead and make everyone feel comfortable. So this is gold right here. This is the one thing, if your listeners are going to pull one thing out of this, this is what I want them to pull out of it. And it's so easy. I would tell all of them, grab a pen and paper right now and you're going to write down these 3 words: easy, convenient, and stress-free. These are the cornerstones of every positive customer experience. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, what product or service you sell, what kind of business you operate, whether you're B2B or B2C. Every interaction. And when I say that, I mean every interaction. Now, that's not marketing, by the way. That's not seeing an advertising sign. That's not interaction. Interaction, there has to be a two-way thing. So, From the time they phone your business or email your business or use a chatbot or even show up at your door to the time that they've dealt with everyone in your business they would by phone or person or whatever, to the time they leave. Every transaction should be easy, convenient, and stress-free for the customer. And I'm going to break that down very quickly. Can I do that? Do I have enough time?

Please, please.

To break it down very quickly.

Easy.

There should be no effort, no mental or physical effort on the part of the customer to connect with you in any way. So, for example, if you've ever called a business and you hear the voice menu system, press 1 for this and 2 for that, and you, you're going through this level and that level and you're going around and you end up at the wrong department and then you have to hang up and call again and, and then you end up finally connecting to somebody, but it's the wrong person. So, they connect you and you get disconnected. Holy mackerel! That's hard work. Or even trying to find your business. You're like the directions are really poor. You don't have a map on your website, and people just can't find you. There's all kinds of reasons why it's hard work for someone to connect with you. It should be easy, right? You gotta put yourself in the customer's shoes and say, how easy is it for them to accomplish whatever it is they want? Get a question answered. Get technical support, make a purchase, get a question, maybe even return a product if need be, whatever it is. Convenient means the customer being able to do it on their terms. So, for a lot of people, me included, we're kind of old school. I want to come by your business or at the very least, pick up the phone and speak to a real human being. I got a question and I want it answered in real time because there may be a follow-up question and we can get that dialogue going. Can that be done, or am I being forced to use a chatbot or send an email? Can I come to your place of business? What are your hours of operation? How many days a week are you open? Are you only open from 1 to 2 with an hour for lunch, making it impossible for me to come see you? No, that wouldn't be very convenient. And then finally, stress-free. And I'm sure we've dealt with so many businesses, Marc. I'm— I know you've probably dealt with this as well, where You know that there's going to be a problem. You just feel it in your heart. It's like sometimes you've gone to a store and you need to return the item, but you forgot your bill. But you know that you bought it there, and they know you bought it there, and you're just gritting your teeth and you're like, I know they're gonna turn me away.

I know they're gonna give me the policy argument.

Policy argument. That's our policy. We can't give you your money back, right? And you're ner— you're like stressed. You know, what's going to happen, right? Or you go somewhere like the bank and you forgot your license or something, but the teller knows you and she's still going to ask for ID. She knows you. She just called you by your first name. It's like, hey Marc, great to see you. Oh, by the way, can I get some ID so we can— you know, there's all these situations that we're presented with businesses where it's just stressful.

Yeah.

So, any business owner or any frontline worker who can go through all the different transaction points, all the different touch points that they have with the customer and check them off.

Are they easy?

Are they convenient? Are they stress-free for the customer?

Love it.

If they can do that and be able to make adjustments so that everything does check off all 3 boxes, that will put them miles ahead of all of their competitors. And it'll create an experience COVID or otherwise, masks or otherwise, that will make people feel welcome. They'll feel safe. They'll feel comfortable. And you can't ask for much more than that.

I love it. Marc, as we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we're talking about today?

Yeah, you know what? I would just tell any business owner listening right now that they don't have to go above and beyond. They don't have to wow their customers. 99% of the time, customers just want an experience, as I mentioned, that's easy, convenient, and stress-free. Instead of feeling the pressure to under-promise and over-deliver, really at the end of the day, all you have to do is just promise and deliver.

Yeah.

It's that simple. And anyone who's ever gone into a coffee shop to buy a coffee, right, they'll know they don't have to be wowed as long as it's easy, You go in. You give your order. You pay for it. You get your coffee and you leave. And it's so easy. A lot of us don't even lift our heads up from our phones. We're sitting there texting the whole time. That's how easy and convenient the experience is. And if it can be that way in any kind of business, any kind of environment, that is really the goal.

You still have to be— when you're in a highly competitive marketplace, you still have to be memorable.

Absolutely, yes. And being memorable Doesn't mean having to necessarily wow them. It's interesting that you mentioned that because a lot of people like to refer to higher-end hotels. And they'll tell stories about the Hilton or some other high-end hotel.

The Fairmont.

The Four Seasons, yeah, where they say, wow, they wowed me. But what's interesting is the wow part came when the customer had a problem.

Yes.

Right? The customer had a problem. And the business took care of it like that. Well, what did they do? They created an environment that was easy, convenient, and stress-free for the customer.

In spite of the crisis. Yeah.

In spite of the crisis, whatever it was. But they didn't initially try to wow the customers. They promised and they delivered. So, again, it comes down to those 3 simple elements.

Love it! Marc, this has been so great. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, whatever you're doing, open a new window right now on your browser and just go to marcgordon.ca. Again, that's Marc with a C. And check it out. Get some of the free content on there and reach out to me if you'd like. And we can spend some time getting to know your business. And I'd love to answer questions for you. It's a no-holds-barred 30 minutes.

Thank you so much, Marc. I really appreciate you coming out and sharing my passion. Which is— I love that we are born of the same cloth.

We are, yes. And thank you so much for having me. It's actually been a wonderful experience. I love these live events.

Thank you! I hope that you got a lot from today's topic. As I mentioned, Marc and I love this stuff. So, feel free to connect with us or pass our information along to somebody you know who could use it. As always, my offer stands. If you would like A complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with me, please feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is down below. No fuss, no muss. Convenient, easy. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com. As always, I am at your service. Thank you so much for joining me today. And if you haven't done so, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this feed? Go ahead and also follow me on social media. Love having you here. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and you dare to be the exception.