The Real Reason Customers Get Frustrated and Stop Doing Business With You with David Avrin
David Avrin explains why hidden friction loses customers silently. Eighty-six percent of frustrated customers churn, reduce spending, or complain publicly. Companies need to walk their customer journey, empower staff with guidelines instead of rigid policies, and measure effort, not just satisfaction.
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There's a silent killer in your business. And it's not your competition. It's not the economy. It's not even your pricing. It's friction. Tiny frustrations, confusing processes, and policies designed for your business's convenience, not your customers'. And here's the really scary part. Your customers won't always tell you that they're unhappy. They'll just leave. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.
Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.
Welcome to this episode of Experience Leadership, the small business podcast. I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine. And I'm glad you're here with me today because my guest is David Averin, one of the world's leading customer experience experts. And today, we're going to be unpacking why customer frustration is your biggest hidden business risk and what you can do about it. My one request is to please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast and make sure that you share this episode with your circle because I know that people are dying for information like this to get clarity on what works and what doesn't work. And besides which, I'd really love to see the business community rally around the work I've been doing for Well, 290 episodes. So, let me paint you a picture. You run surveys. The scores look fine. Complaints are manageable. Your team feels confident. But revenues feel really, really fragile. Customers are quicker to disappear now. Loyalty feels like a thin line. And your best clients aren't as patient as they used to be. Does that sound familiar? So, here's what we're learning in today's marketplace. Customers don't measure you against your competitors anymore. They measure you against their last great experience anywhere. And if you make it hard, even slightly hard to do business with, they're gone. And that brings me to our Question of the Day. So, if one of your best customers experienced friction with you today, How confident are you that they would give you another chance instead of quietly just going off into the ether? I'd love to know what your experience is. Why don't you go ahead, share this episode on your favorite social media platform, hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put your comments down and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is one of the most in-demand customer experience speakers and consultants in the world. David Avrin, who is a CSP Global Speaking Fellow, has delivered high-impact, content-rich presentations across North America and in more than 30 countries worldwide. He helps organizations understand how customer expectations have changed and what leaders must do to future-proof their business. David is the author of 7 books including It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You, Why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back, and his latest book, Ridiculously easy to do business with. His work has been featured in thousands of media outlets across the globe, and today he's here to give us a little bit of a wake-up call that we, I think, all need. David, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you could make time for us today.
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. What a classy intro. I mean, you and I are both on, on CAST and others as well, but I think you take it to another level, so I appreciate it.
Thank you very much. Hey, so David, let's start off first. by digging a little bit deeper into who your clients are and how you serve them.
Sure. I'm primarily, I'm a keynote speaker and I'm a consultant. I'm in organizations around the world. Of course, people have meetings everywhere around the world, every industry. Here's a good way to put it. Anybody who's in a competitive marketplace. So for your viewers, your listeners, look around the room where you are right now. Like literally look around the room. Everything you see in that room, Somebody makes that. They make the light fixture and the floor coverings and the desk and the metal fittings. Well, they have industries, they have suppliers, and they have conferences. And so, I'm the person that comes in to— certainly not a motivational speaker, but to help them recognize where they are causing frustration and friction with their customers. For so long, we talked about customer service. We've probably been talking about it for 70, 80 years. I think we know how to be nice to people, right? I think we know we're supposed to beat them with a smile. We're supposed to pick up a piece of trash. I mean, it's pretty pedestrian.
Yeah.
But how we engage with companies today is very, very different. And so that experience is judged from their perspective. Was it simple? Was it frustrating? Was it maddening? Was it expedited? My work and our research is around customer sentiment, friction, behavior. What is it they like? What they don't? My model is, is speaking and consulting. I'm really fortunate that I've spoken in over 30 countries in the world, as you said. But I love getting deep with organizations. And of course, we tailor it to the industry. The message for healthcare is gonna be different than manufacturing or restaurant or retail or financial services. But it's all about changing customer expectations. Right.
So, David, this idea of friction within businesses has been around, it seems to me, forever. I mean, we've always talked about it, and sometimes You know, you know, we see it time and time again that, you know, we have policies and procedures which, you know, we, we think is good for us, causes frictions for us. But why does this idea of friction, why does that matter now? What's going on in our marketplace that now this is a big red flag?
It matters for a couple of reasons. Number one is that the mechanisms for how we connect with our, our customers and how our customers connect with businesses is different, right? It's online, it's digital, it's It's brick and mortar, it's everything. So that has expanded tremendously. So even how we connect, right? A phone used to be a static thing. You could get angry and, and slam down the phone. You can't do that anymore. So the mechanisms for how we connect and pay and complain and purchase and follow up, all of that's different than it was even 10, 15 years ago. And the second thing is, as you had said before, that we're sort of measuring against other industries, is that The mechanisms that we have to complain and to share insights has changed dramatically as well, right? We all grew up in business. We all did. We used to call this guest relations philosophy, and it went like this, and everybody's heard this before. The average person with a positive experience tells 2 or 3 people, but somebody with a negative experience will tell 10, right? We heard that for years. None of it's true anymore. Today we tell thousands. Today we tell millions. Today, the ramifications of underperformance, them being frustrated, them feeling not heard, or whatever that might be, being delayed, the ramifications are profound because everybody has a bullhorn that reaches around the world.
Mm-hmm.
It's Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and Glassdoor and social media. So that's why it's probably more important today than it's ever been. We've always had to treat our customers well, but their expectations are changing. The mechanisms for how we communicate and engage is changing. And then of course we tell everyone.
Yeah.
So, so even the criteria for who we do business with has changed. It, it was for so many years, it was marketing, right? Good marketing, great storytelling, great slogans. The early part of my career, my books behind me, I wrote books on marketing. The drivers have changed today. It's, it's much less about what we say about ourselves, certainly important, and so much more about what other people say about us.
Right.
And so that's what drives my work.
And people are just so much freer now to just get onto that keyboard and just punch out anything.
We're all, we're all critical. Yeah, absolutely.
I actually found that, especially with telecom communications companies, when I have a complaint, I found it just so much easier just to go onto Twitter and just bellyache about something. And it was almost instantaneous. Somebody would send me a DM from the thing, how can we help you? And it's like, well, why couldn't you do that when I filed it online or when I tried to call the help desk?
One of the things I talk about all the time is that organizations have to become ridiculously easy to complain to.
Yes.
Because we spend a lot of time and money on the, on the customer acquisition side, right?
Sales.
And once they become customers, it's the lowest paid, lowest trained. And the reality is, if you can— well, first of all, move upstream and, and fix some of the problems, make it easier to do business. But if you can address those issues, they have nothing to complain about, right? Right. Because as I tell my kids, who are no longer kids, I say the internet is forever and ever And those complaints, they don't go anywhere. And so, of course, we're much better off moving upstream, correcting the problems, addressing them quickly. Yeah, because everybody has, has that bullhorn.
So let's talk about the dreaded, I'm so sorry, that's our policy mindset. Let's shake the tree on this demon.
Yeah, um, it's a challenge, and there's a reason for it. Like, I was on a podcast and somebody asked me, said, how could How could this possibly be getting worse, right? We've been talking about it forever. I said, well, it is getting worse, but it's getting worse for— not for the reason that you think. Service is getting worse because organizations are becoming more rigid, because they want some measure of predictability in their customers' behavior and process and customer journey, and they can anticipate revenue and hire for that and plan for that. The problem is that our customers haven't read our employee manuals, you know? And so what we're doing is we're hiring people, We're asking them all these questions. You know, give us an example where something didn't go well. What did you do differently? We're looking at their background. And then we neuter them as soon as we hire them. Just quote our policy, right? John DeJulius talks about this, that he's a much bigger fan of guidelines rather than policies, right? People, it's so easy to say no because it's easy, but it doesn't create that sense of connection that you want. Guidelines are great. I had a story that really illustrated for me. So I was flying into Johannesburg in South I get in at 5 o'clock in the morning. I've got a 1 o'clock keynote. I get to the hotel about 7 AM. There are no rooms. Of course, there's no rooms. It's 7 o'clock in the morning. And so, I've been traveling all night. I'm wrinkled. I have digestive issues. I need to get some sleep. And the gentleman at the front desk at the hotel said, I'm so sorry, sir, in his South African accent. He says, we don't have any rooms because checkout isn't even until noon. And he says, but let me tell you what I can do. And just that. Opened up everything. He says, I can give you a pass to the spa if you need to take a shower. We've got a hospitality suite if you want to rest. We can bring you an iron and an ironing board so you could be ready for your presentation. The easy answer was we have no rooms, and it would've been perfectly on policy. But that being of service and that phrase— and I teach audiences and organizations all the time— sometimes the answer's no, right? If you have a vegan restaurant, somebody wants a buffalo burger, sorry dude, that's a hard no. But the best response is, let me tell you what I can do.
Yeah.
And then anything that's of service, it might be a referral to a trusted partner, it might be a different product or service that might even be a better choice than what they were asking for. But that just shows that you're actually listening. And so back to your question about policy, yeah, we have policies, but we don't wanna hire robots either. And customers don't like feeling dismissed.
Yeah.
Right? It was part of our— we have a research report called The Frequency of Friction, just came out a couple of weeks ago. I know this will probably live on evergreen. But one of the insights that was really interesting was we measured sort of the behavior, not just the sentiment, not just how people feel, but what are they likely to do when they're frustrated? And what we found was this inflection point when people go from feeling frustrated to feeling disrespected, crossing that chasm, a whole level of detrimental behaviors. When they feel like they're being dismissed, when they get policy, they're talking to a brick wall.
Mm-hmm.
And especially people in the higher income. So we kind of slice and dice it demographically. People higher income are the ones who are like, you have no idea who you're dealing with here, right? And they go online, they complain, they want to try and hurt the brand.
Yep.
Take their revenue elsewhere. They tell everyone. And so recognizing that from a company perspective, what are those points that really get people frustrated? What are those, those points of contact where we can not only make it easier, but we can, as in your work and your messaging, Be more sensitive, be more accommodating, be more, uh, have a greater recognition of the humanity of the person across from them and be of service.
Would it be fair to say that people fall back on the, I'm terribly sorry, this is policy, because they're not given a wider berth to be able to make decisions to make sure that they're satisfied?
Yeah, well, 2 things. One, one is laziness generally on the part of leadership to tell everybody, sorry, no late checkouts today.
Yep.
Terrible. Horrible, right? Sorry, no menu substitutions. That's organizational policy just because it makes life easier for them, but it pisses off their customers. I mean, it's easy accommodations that they could do. And then the other one is what you had said, which is exactly that. It's just you're not given the leeway. Now, we're not everybody's Nordstrom in that you can make decisions up to $1,000. But come on, let people be human. I was— one of the stories I tell is I was leaving a hotel one morning about 7:00 AM. I was going to speak to a CEO roundtable And I stop at the front desk and I say, hi, I'm in room 227 or whatever. I need to do a late checkout. I start walking out and she goes, I'm so sorry, sir. I am so sorry. We're not doing any late checkouts today. And I said, ah, like I'm leaving right now. And she goes, yeah, we have a conference coming in. Our manager said we can't do any late checkouts. I'm really sorry. And I said, I literally can't be outta my room, but I'm done on stage at noon, so I'll probably be back by 12:20. And she goes, well, you have to be out by noon. I said, well, I can't. And honest to God, true story. I said, This lovely young woman says, I'm so sorry, sir. If you can't be out by noon, we're going to have to charge you for a second day. Now, understand, I teach this. And so I paused and I said, okay, I understand. Your manager told you. If you charge me for a second day, you're welcome to, but I'm just not going to check out then. Because I mean, if I pay for the room, then I get to legally keep the room. So I'll keep the room. Now you don't have a room for that conference attendee who's flying in. Is that the outcome you were looking for? And she's like, uh, goes in the back room. She comes out, 1 o'clock would be fine.
Yeah.
And I'm like, But let's be fair. Did she want to say yes to me? Of course she did.
Yeah.
She had a lazy manager who just said, treat everybody the same. It's just, there are so many micro opportunities for competitive advantage to thrill your customers. But the easy thing to do, the predictable thing to do, the easy thing to plan is just, let's create these policies. Let's create this customer journey. Everybody's supposed to do it this way. And at the same time, Marc, this is where this dichotomy is really profound. Expectations are changing. Wants and needs and preferences are changing rapidly. At the same time, organizations are getting more rigid.
Yes.
And it doesn't— which is why you and I make a living.
Well, yeah, you know, it's so interesting because, you know, again, a blanket policy for everybody doesn't work inside our organization from a leadership perspective. So, how would it work with customers? And, you know, the ability to stop for a second, be intentional in the moment, to be able to turn around and say, well, wait a second. Each of our housekeepers have 15 rooms to do. They can't do all 15 at noon. So, you know what? We could defer your particular room. We can defer for another hour. You know what? 1 o'clock should be perfect.
Yeah, but Marc, that's hard.
Yeah.
It's hard.
It takes thinking and intentionality.
Yeah. But you know what? But there are some wonderful leaders out there who recognize this. I was on a different podcast and somebody asked me, And they said, if we've been talking, like, how— why is it that businesses just don't get this? And I said, of course they get it. Of course they do. I'm a big fan of business. It's hard. It's hard balancing predictability. It's hard balancing staffing and training. And what do we do with technology? But I don't think for a minute that people are naive. I think they're just prioritizing different things.
Yeah.
And we've seen a pendulum shift, swing towards making life great for our employees. And that's— and absolutely should do so, right? Retention, recruitment and retention is really hard.
Yes.
If by making life easier for your employees means shifting tasks from your employees to your customers, I think we need to rethink.
Yeah.
Right? We walk into a doctor's office now and there's some new technology that we weren't trained on and do this and fill this out and everything. And I'm like, so that the front desk person at whatever medical level, so they don't have to do the work, let's give it to the guy who's bleeding from his head. Let's give the work to him.
Yeah.
And it's creep. It's that effort creep, right? There was that scene, it was that famous scene in Back to the Future. Where Marty McFly first goes back to the past and he's in the town square and he's marveling at 1950s and this car pulls into the gas station.
And like 4 attendants come running out.
And like 4 people and they're checking the oil and they're washing the windshield and they're pumping the gas and the guy's sitting and thinking, and we're just laughing. And I remember my son looked at me, goes, what? I said, that was, that was, I remember that. Yeah. I remember that level of service. It doesn't mean that it's coming back. But I think there's real great opportunities to be a little more aware. You know, my work is all around friction and effort.
Yes.
There's certainly service things, and there's a lot of really smart people doing good things. But for me, and some of our research and my speaking is around finding those places where it's just a little harder to do business than it should be.
Yes.
And certainly from what the customer thinks that it should be. And one of the things that are in our research that we found was something kind of startling, which was that the greatest predictor of customer loyalty isn't satisfaction, it's effort. People aren't leaving cus— they aren't leaving companies because something went wrong. They're leaving because it took too much work to fix it, right? We're shouting into our phone, real person, real person, agent. I think you said no. It's like, ah, right?
Yeah.
And we all laugh because we all experience it, but that's also where the opportunities are.
In your research as well, I read that only 14% of customers do nothing when they're frustrated. But then there's the other 86%. What are they doing?
Yeah, it's stunning. And I'll sort of elaborate on that a little bit. Sure. Is that when something goes wrong and things go wrong all the time, I mean, that's sort of the nature of business. Yeah. Only 14% did nothing. And most of those were millennials and they just let it wash over them. And certainly loyalty and having a longevity with the company forgives some of those sins. But what we found was 86% of people, when confronted with some kind of friction, some kind of frustration, Did something negative that affected the brand, the revenue, the reputation. Some of them certainly very active detractors, which is very different than what we would've seen 10 years ago. People feel disrespected very quickly, and then they're gonna go online and complain or whatever that might be. But some of them took their business elsewhere. Some of them reduced the amount of spending that they did. You know, even when you recover, you know, it, you, they'll forgive, but they won't forget. So that was one of the alarming findings from this, was that the vast majority, when something doesn't go well or they feel frustrated, even if it's legitimate, they do something that, that hurts your brand, that hurts your business, that hurts your revenue. Yeah.
Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, I fall back to the 1990 book from Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when he talks about the trust bank account. I think that plays just as well today as it did back 30 years ago. I can't believe the 1990s were 30 years ago. But having said that, you know, this idea of understanding that, you know, we can— we're human beings in a human world. We are going to make mistakes, and that's, that's okay to make mistakes. But it's, it's this whole idea of putting things in place that basically forces your customers to start thinking there's got to be an easier way.
Yeah, well, I mean, let's, let's go to the basics of business. When I travel the world, and of course most of my work is, is in America, North America, Now, I do a lot of work with CEO roundtable groups, and I'll talk to leaders and I'll say, what do you think your competitive advantage is? And universally, it's our quality, commitment, caring, trust. It's about the people. And it's all very true. Here's what the research shows. Your customers are assuming quality. You wouldn't be in business if you weren't good.
Mm-hmm.
You'd be outed pretty quickly. But they're prioritizing instead, no surprise, speed. Speed of answers, speed of access, speed of information, speed of issue resolution. Don't make us wait. Speed equates to time.
Yeah.
And time equates to respect. So, they're prioritizing speed, choices, options, simplicity of process, and convenience, right? But that flips on its head what we've traditionally thought. Quality is very important. Don't take your eye off the ball. But your quality isn't your differentiator. It isn't.
No.
And I'll shout it from the rooftops. Quality is the entry fee. You better be damn good at this or the marketplace is gonna figure it out. And that'll put you on a par with everybody else who's good. And everybody's good. And those competitors that you're working against or fighting against or competing against, they're very, very, very good people. And we're all trying to feed our families.
Mm-hmm.
So, when we look for legitimate competitive advantage opportunities, look at the process itself. Quality, button it up. Speed, choices, simplicity, don't frustrate your customers. And the opposite of convenient, of course, is inconvenient. And when you become inconvenient, we look for other resources. And in most industries, there's a lot of other choices.
Plenty of choices. You know, I'd love to dig into some strategies. Like, you've mentioned some things now. I'd like to get into concrete strategies on how we can kind of turn this ship around. And we'll get to that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other How is your business performing? Make your business a star with a new book, Lights, Camera, Action! Business Operational Excellence Through the Lens of Live Theater by Mark Hain. Mark uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show, so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights, Camera, Action today at your favorite online retailer or directly at markhain.com. Welcome back. I'm. Speaking with David Avrin. David, I've just shamelessly plugged my book.
I did not know you had a theater background.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
As I do as well. I actually went to, went to college, went to university on a full theater scholarship.
Wow. I did not know that.
Way back in the day, I did theater and music and realized pretty quickly I didn't wanna be doing community theater in God's Wrath, Iowa. When I was— I switched to broadcast journalism. There you go. I'm a big theater nut. Sorry, I know we took us off course, but—
Since I flogged my book, why don't you flog your book? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your newest book? Sure.
The newest book is called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. There it is on the screen. It is a practical guide to giving customers what they want, how, and when they want it. Just identifying about 24 points of frustration and friction in your business. A clear rationale as to why you do it. It makes business sense, but here's why your customers don't like it. Alternatives for that. A lot of stories, a lot of case studies. And some research to bolster it. It's available everywhere. Kindle, audiobook, audiobook, and Amazon. We just launched in Australia. We just launched in India. We just signed a deal in Dubai, which is awesome. And so it's all about just spreading.
I would just get the audiobook just to listen to your voice because you have such a comic—
Right now, so I preach. I've got a lozenge in my mouth fighting this, this convulsive cough. But I'm all in on this, this whole idea of being ridiculously easy. How do we look at our processes? How do we look at our customer journey and say, okay, that's the way we do it. Maybe that's the way our industry works and we have for a long time. Could we make it easier? Could we make it faster? Could we break it down, a 14-step process, and find a way to help people skip to what they want?
Yeah.
Right? I use this analogy. Nobody wants to stand in line at the buffet. If they just need to refill their drink.
Right.
So when you call an organization and say, please listen closely as our menu options have changed, you're gonna hear 9 things that, that have nothing to do with you. Yeah.
Are there any customer behaviors that leaders should be tracking? Like we, I know that people do NPR ratings and this sort of thing, but typically the people who respond to surveys are either extremely happy or extremely pissed, but it doesn't give us a true sense of kind of where our business is. So what are the behaviors we should be recognizing that would give us kind of almost like a lead metric to a problem rather than the lag metric of where are all our customers? Our store is empty.
Yeah. Well, and, and there's a lot of ways to do this. Um, Net Promoter Score, of course, is, is pretty standard. I think everybody should be doing some measure of that as well, but there's some effort. We're actually working on a new certification as well. We have our new Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With Certified Whereas I think a lot of people are familiar with Great Place to Work, right? They measure company culture. Better Business Bureau measures adherence to ethical business standards. We're launching across a variety of verticals, being ridiculously easy to bank with, ridiculously easy to travel with, ridiculously easy to earn with or learn with or heal with. And the whole idea is measuring, do you have policies and behaviors and language in place To help people get what they want easily and quickly. There are certainly standards of customer effort score and some of those things as well. But I think that the broader question is, what are the behaviors, as you said, that you're looking for? And you can notice it in churn, you can notice it in reduced spending. There is a whole new growing discipline of behavioral analytics. There's a company I actually serve on advisory board Called Anthrolytics out of the UK. What they do is they look at every, like, they'll look at an industry and look at every interaction that they have had recently with a particular customer real time. Did they get notices? Did they get a price increase? Did they get a recent bill? Whatever those might be. And this through AI, some predictive analysis of what are they like, who's at risk for losing them as a customer. And of course, this works on the employee as well.
Right. Call centers.
are doing this kind of work? Who's had a particularly high level of difficult conversations? Is that something we should rotate them off? So some of these analytics right now are being able to put the pieces together to create a much clearer picture of customer sentiment, customer frustration, who's really open to marketing messages. Of course, there's some real financial incentives for that as well. So depending on the organizational side, you should be doing something. But this retroactive, were you satisfied? I don't think it's going to cut it, not only in the long term, but, but even in the near future.
So we get a sense— like, I used to train— when I used to train hospitality workers, like food and beverage workers, it was interesting when they would go and do the check-in with the customer. They'd do a quality check. How is everything? And customer's like, it's fine. And they'd walk away and they go— and they afterwards, they come back and go, I don't know why the customer complained. They told me everything was fine. And it's like, you know, what I used to train was if they gave you the fine, that's kind of like going up to your wife and saying, honey, is everything okay?
Fine.
Everything's fine. Well, you know, it's not. So, so we have to dig a little bit deeper. And so training people how to get curious so that we could actually go and say, if it's just fine, what, what would make this amazing for you? And just stopping for a second.
There are certain questions, like when I rent from Enterprise Rental Car, for example, when I turn it in, they, it's the same script every time. Welcome back, Mr. Averin. How was the Camry? It was fine. Did you have a chance to fill it up? And they'll go ahead and charge me. And then they ask me the same question every time. Is there anything we could have done to have made this a more outstanding experience? And what they're really saying is, if there's anything that went wrong, please God, tell us now.
Yeah.
Before you go on TripAdvisor, right, and fix it. But there's industry-specific examples, Marc, that I think you're exactly right. It's the training. So if you're a restaurant worker, for example, and you show up to a table saying, is everything okay? Look down. If there's one person who hasn't eaten their food, Right? That gives you a clue that something's happened. They didn't like that. Was that, was that meal okay? I mean, if you say, is everything fine? They'll say fine. Specific questions.
Yeah.
You know, was that, is there anything, was that, did it, was it not something that you liked? Let me, can I bring you, let me bring you something else. Right? Because you want them to come back. So every industry has sort of certain signs. The danger for a lot of companies is when they have long-term customers with very little interaction because they delude themselves into thinking, well, they're, we're not getting any complaints. And they think that loyalty is there. And at the same time, there are some very aggressive or innovative companies who would love to take your long-term customer and convert them into their first-time customer. And they're gonna start wooing. And those people are vulnerable if we aren't checking in. And I think some measure of specificity in the questions, I think, goes really far.
Yeah. So, as we're talking about this idea of reducing frictions, For people tuning in, what's the very first step leaders should take to start looking at and reducing friction from, from the customer standpoint?
First, first step is, is honestly to take a step back and walk your customer's journey. We know what frustrates us. The problem is sometimes we're too close to it. I mean, there were, there's a whole category of secret shoppers and everything for so long. Well, now everybody's a secret shopper because there's Yelp and everything else.
Right.
Literally do an, do an audit. Is take a step, look at every, look at a particular purchase. Or pretend you're a customer looking for the first time. How easy is it to find information?
Yes.
To reach out? I hear people saying, I couldn't find it on the website. And they go, go to the very top. It's the 3rd button over. Do the dropdown menu. 2nd from the bottom. Are you kidding me? But we created it. And here's the other part that makes it difficult, because this is hard, is the process that most businesses have in place works because they've already tweaked it. They've already refined it. We create some level of predictability and we're serving our— they love us, right? We're doing great products and services, but then we stop looking because it works. And at the same time, we're going like this and our customers are going like this because they're changing. There's a new mechanism. Now somebody else is doing drone stuff and somebody else is, is doing it with one click or biometrically. And so customers are, are getting impatient faster.
Uh-huh.
Their expectations are changing. But organizations tend to be a little bit static. So to answer your question is to literally do an audit and find out where there's unnecessary delay.
Yeah.
See how, if you can benchmark it against others in the industry, how long do they take, you know, to respond? And when today, when people think it's still reasonable to get back within 1 business day, they're gone.
Yeah. It's too late.
Because they can't. Because they can't. It doesn't mean they're— it doesn't even mean they're angry.
Nope.
It just means, I don't want to wait. It's when I go to an organization, You go, you know, when you go to the website and you just have a simple question and there's, there's no phone number, like no phone number, like nowhere.
Yeah, I know. It's, uh, it's, uh, uh, it's almost like it's the biggest kept secret on the planet is like to find this phone number.
I saw, and I'm trying to find the statistics. I heard somebody say it on stage that 86% of people will never fill out a contact form. 86%. And I hear people say, well, they fill out mine all the time. And I say, and you have no idea who didn't.
Yeah.
You have no idea who had simple question. You have, you have them right there. They're on your site.
Yep.
And then you pissed them off and then you frustrated because you were hard to get ahold of. I tell my speaker colleagues, I go to your websites and there's no phone number. Like, well, we're on airplanes. I'm like, well, thank you. I appreciate it because you put my kids through college because I'm getting your gigs because I'm responding faster.
Yeah.
Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review said there's a 100 times better chance of winning the client Or customer 100 times better with a response within 5 minutes. Not 100%, 100 times. Because what it says is whoever answers first oftentimes gets the gig.
Yeah.
So why would you build a wonderful business and then be hard to get ahold of? It's those kinds of points of friction. So walk that customer's journey, look at every point and say, could we do it faster? Could we make it simpler?
Yeah.
And of course, organizations are doing this all the time. Can we, can we shave an 8th of a second off? Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because, you know, so doing, you know, I find that the biggest challenge I think business operators and employees within organizations have is to look at the journey through the eyes of the customer. That's why on my website, I actually have a customer journey assessment where you can— people can print it up and they can actually walk through their business, but they can also take it and walk through their competitor's business and see what the differences are. I mean, it doesn't go through the whole service delivery side, but it does show you all the different touchpoints.
Right.
Where we can influence behavior and influence the whole experience expectation, right?
So—
Super important. But it goes back to that line that says, um, when I was asked, it's like, why they don't get it. I think everybody gets it, but I don't think they're looking through the right lenses.
Maybe.
And of course, everybody's trying to say, what would— it's less about what our customers want to buy. We want to button that up. But the process is so important. It's so important to them, right? Did they— did they— was it frustrating? Was it easy? Was it super simple? What I hear from organizations and their leaders all the time is, it's about the relationship. We want to create a relationship. Not every customer wants a relationship. Sometimes they just want their stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Let's do the basics first.
And then we really engage them. And how do we get them? It's the same thing like car buying for so many years. It's changing. But they want to keep you there for a day, you know, and really get— because it serves them. Yes. There's a certain level of your customers that don't want a relationship.
Yeah.
But their money spent just as well.
Yeah. For the people who are tuning in who want to get in touch with you, because this is really resonating, how can people get in touch with you, David?
Sure. The website is— I'm all in on the brand— it's ridiculouslyeasy.com.
Okay.
And you can see my speaker reel and my books and my certification and the things that we do as a team.
Yeah.
And then online, follow me. It's David Avrin everywhere. On Instagram, it's The Real David Avrin. That's a Catfish for a whole other day. But no, I have a lot of content out there. And of course, the books are all on Amazon. But everything's just ridiculously easy.
Okay, I did put, I did put the link in the show notes. So it's there. But I have to say, David, you know, one of my biggest frustrations with businesses is how they refer to customer support as, and customer support initiatives as expenses on their financials. It's labor expenses, housekeeping expenses, training expense. And of course, that becomes the first thing that operators cut when things slow down, when things are terrible. As opposed to looking at it like these are investments, which is, I guess, by its very nature is the ROI, return on investment. In your experience, how can companies shift from seeing customer support and customer interaction as an expense and move it to being investment?
It's all about who's in the room when the decisions are being made. Honestly, you see the big shift, self-checkout, all those kinds of things. I understand there's an economic reality to that. But those decisions are largely made by operations and finance.
Right.
The bean counters, the operations people, and then it's handed to marketing and customer experience to implement. And my assertion, and I'll die on this rooftop, is they have to be in the room when the decisions are being made because there are behavioral ramifications of those policies. At some point, people get to a level of frustration. You can cut and cut and cut the people. And at some point, your financial models break down because the customers just leave.
Yeah.
Because they can, right? A static economic model says a penny saved is a penny earned. You save a dollar, you can add that dollar to your balance sheet. But a dynamic economic model says when you do things that people— that frustrate people, and I talk about this in the book, there are ramifications. Some of them will put up with it and some of them will say, you can't even count that dollar anymore because I'm taking it somewhere else.
Yes.
And striking that balance is hard. I don't think I'm smarter than the people at Walmart. I don't, but I'm an external voice. And so, to answer your question, here's how you do it, is you make sure that customer experience, which is oftentimes and more so a new discipline within organizations, and marketing are both in the room when these operational decisions are being made.
Would you say with an equal voice?
Everybody's got— they can't. I mean, they never will because they also don't have the P&L responsibility. that finance does in operations. They're being evaluated on organizational success. But making sure— what do they say? If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
Yeah, there you go.
You know, but that's the frustration that we get with professionals who do what you and I do, is that we see them in organizations being tasked with— sometimes they get to design programs, but they're oftentimes implementing or creating talking points for significant shifts. And we saw this, the big debacle when very recently when Southwest got changed to standard seating, right? Operations did that. Finance said, we're going to make this much more money because now we can charge for these seats. Look how much more money. Now there's a whole category of people who used to fly Southwest. They're not going to get the revenue from them just because now they're just like everybody else. Yeah. So those, those economic models break down.
We had the exact same situation here in WestJet, uh, north of the border, that they put in an extra row. They shrunk all the seats down, and all of a sudden people couldn't even sit. They had to sit with their legs kind of splayed and try to figure it because there was not enough distance. And everybody was bitching and bellyaching over it on social media. It hit the news and then WestJet had to roll back and say, terribly sorry, we thought this would work.
Yeah. But you look at it from an economic perspective and the bean counters, I lovingly refer, it made sense.
Yes. 6 more seats on a plane.
6 more seats. But you're not, you're not going to fill all those seats now.
Yeah.
Because other people— and so that was— that's the nature of our research, the frequency of friction, which is not just how people feel when confronted with these things, but what are they likely to do as a result? And I think it's a wake-up call for people in businesses. It's hard. I have great respect for people who have to put these programs in place, but it's not optional because we all have competitors.
Right, right. And there's always going to be an option somewhere. I'd love to get into some cautionaries and pitfalls as people are kind of tuning into what we're talking about today. And they're looking now. They're hopefully intentionally looking at their business. I'd like to talk about cautionaries and pitfalls. And we'll get to that right after this.
Attention meeting and event planners! Is your company or association planning a live or virtual conference, seminar, or staff retreat? Are you looking for a fresh, energetic perspective on what it takes to put on a jaw-dropping experience for your customers or staff? Book customer experience expert Mark Hain for your next group event. Past participants have said, "Mark kept us in stitches while teaching us how important and powerful actually designing our customer experience can be." Read more testimonials and find out how Mark can serve you and your group at markhain.com. That's M-A-R-C-H-A-I-N.
Welcome back! I hope you're getting tons of value from today's episode. As you can tell, David and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you know somebody who might be planning a leadership retreat, a franchise conference, or even an industry conference, drop us a line. We'd love to explore how we can be of service to you and your people. David, can we talk a little bit about the role that training plays? I know we hinted a little bit on it, but how important is this in the scheme of frictionless service?
Well, it certainly depends on organizational size. I mean, smaller ones, it's training, it's onboarding, it's reinforcement. But nobody should have to deal with fairly easily anticipated scenarios for the first time without having gone through some kind of training. Because what you get a couple of things is one is people aren't trying to figure it out in the moment, right? Because that's sort of that moment of truth. And then the second thing is you get some measure of consensus as an organization. Here's how we're going to respond to this. And that's why things like having a morning huddle is really important, even if it's just a once a week.
Yeah.
Maybe you have a staff meeting and maybe you have one section. It's not a bitch session. It's tell me about a situation that came up this week. How did you handle it? Let's all talk about it. So then, then if it happens again, because there's some pretty predictable things that are happening and that the expectations, questions, uh, requests— because of what we're seeing from other industries, there's some new amenities and people are asking for things, or they're, they're wondering why they have to wait for extra wide. Why? How? You don't know where that part is? Uber knows. It's right here. They're turning on the street. It's going to be here in 6 minutes. Here's their rating. Why can't you do that, right?
Mm-hmm.
So training, I think, is important to help them understand, here's who we are and here's how we do what we do. But it has to be an ongoing thing because new scenarios pop up all the time. It's a wonderful opportunity to reinforce and to create consensus.
It's interesting, as you were saying that, I kept falling back on kind of this new philosophy I've adopted over the last 8 months, which is I think we give leaders way too much operational work to do and we're not empowering them to be really effective coaches. And I think if we move people from being managers to coaches, Would we see that switch? Would we see that change? Kind of sort of like watching a hockey game, right? The coach is out on the sidelines. You come back in, he'll tell you what to do. He's not going to jump on the ice and do it for you.
Right, right. Well, the biggest challenge with that has come from COVID and the remote working. And so, what we've lost in that is the proximity mentoring, the serendipity of unexpected conversations in the break room.
Yes.
My— I had a kid coming out of college right during COVID And that whole first year, I mean, she would call me at night literally in tears just saying, Dad, I'm so lonely, because they were working remotely.
Yeah.
She didn't have coworkers. You didn't have a chance. I mean, just think about like the teacher's lounge at the middle school or the high school.
Yeah.
Right? They're sharing their war stories. You know, did you hear about this? And how do you handle this? And I got a situation here and I think there might be problems at this home. Proximity is so important. And I know people wanna work home and we do Zoom meetings, but I think there's something that's been lost in terms of mentoring. And that group conversation.
Yeah. For those tuning in, they're listening to our philosophies today, David. They— what are the cautionary pitfalls they should be aware of so they're just not making this kind of the policy of the month thing that they're going to change? What are some of the things they should be aware of as they want to try to make a change into this idea of frictionless customer service?
Yeah, well, I think it's an ongoing effort. I think that's the most important thing. Not because— well, for 2 reasons. One is we have Rotation of staff, right? We have people coming in. And the other one is everything's changing. And from a customer's perspective, it's pretty awesome. It's a great time to be a customer. It's a tough time to be in business. The level of conveniences and amenities and options for paying and communicating and delivery— I live just south of Denver, Colorado. We have 3 Amazon warehouses. 80% of what we order, we get same day.
It's Unbelievable.
But it's tough to be in business. So I think moving forward, I think we have to revisit it all the time. Yeah. Is what works today isn't necessarily— and the good news is in most cases it's not a wholesale change. It's constant refinement. It's constant tweak. It's new amenities. And of course it gives you a new opportunity to talk about something great, to reach out to your customers if there's something new, but fix those things that cause friction.
Yeah. I like the whole idea of the— you mentioned talk to your customers. I find all too often businesses run on assumptions. Like the people in leadership roles and stuff is like, I know who my customers are, but they're not actually talking to their customers. And so this, this idea of actually walking the floor, touching base, talking to the customers can be the key to be able to turn the ship around relatively easily.
Well, you're going to hear things that you wouldn't have heard otherwise, right? I mean, all of us, they do, they do know their customers. They know what they're likely to buy. They understand the demographics and psychographics. But, but going deeper, And one of the exercises we do is we, I call it day in the life of your customer. What's changed in their world?
Mm-hmm.
What's important to them? What do they dislike about your industry? And how many of those things are you guilty of? Here's one of my favorite questions. Probably the most, this question's probably elicited more profitable answers than anything I've asked in 25 years, is if your customer could wave a magic wand, what would they have you do differently? What do they wish you would do or provide or offer that you don't? Because that might be the next profit center. That might be the next revenue stream. What is it that people are asking for that we say no to? At what point do we step back and say, I don't know, maybe we could, right? Are we tracking those requests on the frontline so leadership can at least say, is there a critical mass of volume sufficient to consider? That's where industries are going.
Yeah.
And the customers are telling them what they want, and oftentimes it gets shut down at the frontline. Not necessarily nasty, but do you guys offer that? Yeah, we don't. Okay, that's the end of it. Is that being passed up the chain of command?
Right.
So looking at what's next, and what's next isn't 10 years from now, it's 18 months from now. Right. And so 6 months— I have had clients who say, yeah, but if we do that, our competitors are just going to copy us.
Yeah.
And then you look for what's next. That's how things get better.
I mean, being worried that your competitors might copy you is no reason to keep yourself stagnant and not move forward.
Right.
It's, it's, it's a funny mindset. It's just, no, it's the same thing. Like I've, I've talked to people who say, talk to your customers, they'll tell you what they want. Oh, they'll just tell me they want everything for free. And it's like, you know, you, you gotta check your ego a little bit here.
Yeah. Well, and one of the hardest questions, I talked to the larger organizational leaders and I said, when was the last time you went to your top 10 long-term, very loyal customers and asked them the question, why do you still do business with us? Because they're afraid of the answer. They're afraid of rocking the boat. They're afraid of like, why are we sold? Murphy, put that out to bid.
Right?
No, but those conversations are important. It's not 1960, it's not 1950 where dependability and reliability, everything's changing. I think it's awesome. It's exciting. It's the work that we do. And once again, for customers, choices are unbelievable.
Mm-hmm.
Not just what to buy, but how to buy and how to get it delivered. It's a challenge for organizational leaders because they've created something that works and it works well for them, but that gap is widening.
David, this has been such a fabulous conversation. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get ahold of you?
Sure. And once again, it's David Avrin, A-V-R-I-N. You can find me on LinkedIn and everything else. The website is ridiculouslyeasy.com, and you can watch a little video and learn about our books and certifications as well. But yeah, look me up and I respond to all emails.
I love that. Hey, as we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?
Just praise for you. I think this is one of the better shows that I have been on. I'm not just sucking up just a little bit. Even for your audience, look at this compared to the other shows or podcasts and the structure and the intentionality. I think there's a great analogy for your business as well, is we're not just putting our head down and working. We're not just trying to get through the day. Be really intentional. About how you present yourself to the marketplace.
Yeah.
And, and this is excellent. Thanks for having me on.
David, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, your passion, your expertise. Everything is in the show notes. So folks, if you want to get David's book, because I think this would be a great checklist for you to be able to find out and get awareness in your business, get the book. It's not a hard read. David, thank you again. I really appreciate you being here. It's been a blessing. Hey, if you have any questions about today's episode, or maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Marc or even with David. Well, good news. You can snag a spot on my calendar. Just hit the link below. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. Feel free to check David Averin's link as well. Make sure that you reach out if you need help. Keep in mind, we're not in a bubble anymore, folks. We can There's resources out there that can help you succeed. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please, why don't you make sure you subscribe to this feed? Follow me on social media. I'm here. I post all the time. And then, if you subscribe to the feed, you'll get notifications when I bring you fresh new content with great experts like David each and every week. I'm here live Wednesday, 2 o'clock Eastern Time. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. Thank you, Marc. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I please, I dare you to be the exception.
Bye for now.
Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership. Make sure you visit marchaine.com for a full directory of available While you're at it, if you found today's content valuable, please share it and tell your friends about the show. As Marc says, knowledge is power, but only if you share it. Be sure to tune in each week for the newest episode. Please stay safe, stay healthy, and dare to be the exception.
Thank you.
