MBA1113 Guest Teacher: Shep Hyken- How to Deliver a Customer Service Experience That Disrupts the Competition & Creates Fierce Loyalty

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA show business worth spreading every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Shep Hyken. And Shep's going to be teaching you how to deliver a customer service experience that disrupts the competition and creates fierce loyalty. Who doesn't want that? He's going to share some critical strategies on how to wow your customers so they can say, wow, that was an incredible experience. I want to shop there again. I want to do business with this company. I want to make it happen. He's going to explain exactly what are the elements that creates that experience. Why do we keep going back to companies like Amazon and Uber and Netflix? There's something about the experience the customer has that makes it irresistible. Well, he dissects that and breaks it down for you so you can do the same in your business. So get ready for a value packed lesson. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Shep Haikin is a customer service expert, and I mean expert. He's written seven bestselling books, including his latest, the Convenience Revolution. Hint, convenience is one of those strategies he's going to be talking about that creates this incredible experience. He's also a keynote speaker and trainer. To check out more about Shep Hyken, check out hyken. Com. But today you have them all to yourself. In his guest teacher lesson. This may be one of the most important podcast episodes to kind of flip the switch in your brain to create a better experience for your customers, for your business, which will allow you to retain more customers. He's going to share with you some staggering statistics about how bad customer service is and how you can be a disruptor and wow your customers with some simple little tweaks and changes in your business. I'll be back with my takeaways and to wrap this all up. But for now, take it away, Shep.

Hello, everybody. My name is Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert. Very excited to be a part of this program. And basically I'm a customer service and experience guy that travels around the world and helps people deliver amazing experiences. If you've ever walked away from a company, from hung up the phone from talking to customer support, and even walked out of a store or restaurant and you thought, wow, those people were amazing, or that was such an amazing experience, well, that's what I help my clients achieve. And they hire me to speak about it at their meetings, to come into industry association conferences. And in addition to that, we have a training program. Some of our clients look for a deep dive into this, and I have several trainers that go out and deliver amazing training to help these people, as well as our online training. But today, what I'm most excited about is that I'm going to share some ideas from my latest book, the Convenience how to Deliver a Customer Service Experience that Disrupts the Competition and Creates Fierce Loyalty. And who doesn't want that? So let's jump into some background before we get into the content of the book because some great takeaways. But before we get there, I want to talk about where the state of customer service is. Just last year, it was announced by New Voice Media who did a study that $75 billion was lost due to poor customer service. In other words, somebody went into a store, didn't like the way they were treated, left, and went to a different one. Somebody hung up on the phone talking to their customer service rep at a customer support center and decided, I'm not doing business with them again. Or maybe it was a much bigger, bigger project, a much bigger purchase in a B2B situation where some purchasing department felt like, well, the company we're trying to do business with is not being easy. Let's go ahead and move on and do business with someone else. Anyway, the point is that customers switch. And a more important point is that two years before that, $75 billion, the number was $62 billion. And the number two years prior to that was $32 billion. Which looks like as you look at the numbers, they', better, they're getting worse. And what does that mean? Is customer service really getting that worse. Almost twice as bad as just actually more than twice as bad than just a few years ago. And my take on this is it looks that way, but the reality of it, it is not that way. Because what's happening is customers are smarter than ever before. They know what good customer service looks like because the great companies out there are teaching them what it looks like. And now they expect it from everybody they do business with. And that might an amazing company that they do business with, like Amazon. And then they expect the same type of experience when they go to another online company, or maybe it was that guy that sold them a $25 pair of shoes at the department store that's just so darn friendly and knowledgeable and helpful. Why can't people be as nice as them? And the point is, they can. And it's not just about being nice and friendly today. It's better than that because I believe nice and friendly, knowledgeable, good service, that's table stakes. You show up to the game with a good product and a good customer service experience, and all that does is it puts you onto an opportunity to win over that customer. But you want to know what's going to take it to the next level, and that is to be more convenient, to be easier to do business with than the competitor. Because when you're easier and more convenient and there's less friction and people walk away saying, I love doing business with them, they're friendly, they're knowledgeable, they've got a great product, and you know what? They're so darn easy to do business with. Those are the companies that win. So I studied hundreds of companies and their businesses and their processes, and I identified six major areas that these companies accelerated in to create a more convenient customer experience. And some of these companies just practice one of these and some two or three, and in some cases, all six. But in all cases, they created a level of value and that disrupted their competition and in some cases, an entire industry. So let's break these down. But before we get into the six individually, in the book the Convenience Revolution, I use one company as a role model. And I decided to go out and ask a bunch of people, probably well over 100, and I said, what's the most convenient company to do business with? People would think about it. Nine out of 10 people, actually probably more like 95 out of 100 or 99 out of 100, would say, Amazon, Amazon.com Now think about it. Amazon years ago started off selling books online. Now let's talk about the Convenience factor of what they offered up years ago online, which means they're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An inventory that's not limited to a brick and mortar space that a typical bookstore might have. So they could have thousands and thousands of titles. Okay, pricing, yeah, they were more competitive with their price, but price, to me, that's insignificant today. If you go on Amazon, Amazon gives you competitive pricing, sometimes better than regular pricing. But what they offer to make it really valuable is convenience. As a matter of fact, on an Amazon item, you might see it listed for a price, and then right underneath it, it'll say, available at one of our. And they have their marketplace members, other, another vendor for a less price. And you now have a choice. You want to buy from Amazon or you want the less price. But guess what? People still, for whatever reason, are buying from Amazon. They love Amazon because they're more convenient, they're reliable, they're dependent. Anyway, Amazon is the rock star because they cover themselves in all six categories. The biggest thing they've done is reduce friction. And by doing what they did back in the early days, they started to disrupt the competitors, which were brick and mortar bookstores, and they started moving into other items. But they used technology. They had delivery. Well, the bookstores didn't deliver. You had to go and get your book. They had access again, 24 hour a day, seven days a week. They are open all of the time in the middle of the night. If you think, gosh, I want to buy this book, you can do it. And with the advent of ebooks, you can do it immediately and get the book that you want. So they are amazing at every level. And you talk about using technology. I don't know if you're familiar with the dash button, but this is a button that goes on the side of a piece of equipment in your home, like a washing machine, and it's linked to your WI fi. And if you run out of washing detergent, washing machine detergent, and let's say it's, you know, whatever brand you have, they have a dash button for that brand. You push the button and it will amazingly, like I use the word automagically, like a day or two later, your dishwashing detergent or your washing machine detergent shows up, and all you did was push a button. You didn't have to go on the website to order it. Why? Because you're in the system and they make it easy. All right, so let's break down the six areas. In the short time that we have remaining and here's area number one, reducing friction, which is what every one of these six principles is about. But some companies have made it their total value proposition. Think about Uber. Uber disrupted an entire industry because they were more convenient. It's the app that lets you know where the car is, how long the car is going to get to you. Think about it. Where I live, I have to pick up a phone and call a taxicab and order a cab to come to me. And they say, cab will be there in 10 minutes. Well, maybe it will be, maybe it won't. But 15 minutes later, if it's not, I'm picking up the phone, I'm calling the cab company again, going, where's my cab? Cab finally shows up. I have to tell the driver where I'm going. The driver has to think about it, maybe put it in the map and then get me there. And then they tell me how much it's going to be when I get there. And then I fumble around in my pocket looking for money, looking for a credit card to pay. With Uber, you know what you do? You open the app, you can see where the cars are, it's five minutes away. You put in your address where you're going, you hit enter, it tells you how much the price is, and then you agree. And then you can watch the little screen as the driver pulls up. And the driver knows your name. You open the door. Is this Shep? Yes, it's Shep. Come on in, Shep. Oh, I see you're going to the airport. Let's go. I already know how much it's going to be, but I don't even have to pay. When I get out, I just leave and it automatically charges to my credit card. That's reducing friction at the highest level. Uber disrupted the entire industry. And then there's self service. That's number two. And this isn't about putting the onus on the customer to do things themselves. You know, if you have a self service checkout at the grocery store, it's an option. You see a long line with a lot of people and you have just a few items, you go through the self service, it's more convenient. You don't have to wait at Panera Bread, which is one of the lead examples in the book, in the self service area, instead of going and waiting in line to go up to the counter, you can now go to a kiosk. And rather than them calling your name like they used to do, your food's ready, they give you a pager, you sit down. You put the pager on the table, there's a sensor in the table, and eventually somebody who runs the food brings it out to you. And now it's another engagement opportunity for that employee of Panera to engage with the customer. It's win win all the way around. As I watch this take place, I asked the manager, why do you do this? And the manager said, because it's more convenient for our guests. That easy? Convenient for our guests. Number three is technology. Some companies use technology to create a convenience advantage. Like PayPal makes it easier to transfer money from one bank account to to another. The no Wait app, which isn't available in every city, but it is available here in St. Louis, where I live, which allows you to put your name on a restaurant's list remotely using an app. And you can watch your name move up the list. There's an hour wait. You can watch your name go up and you can time your arrival to the restaurant so you don't have to wait. And then how about subscription? By the way, that's number four, subscription. Many people think of subscription like a magazine or a newspaper. But companies have figured out how to work in subscription models into their business. Like the hardware store that will send your air conditioning filters every six months. All you have to do is give them a credit card and the address and it just automatically happens. Dollar Shave Club, a great subscription model. And the lead case study for the book is Netflix. And Netflix, boy, you just pay your fee and you get access to all these movies month after month. By the way, talk about a disruptor. They disrupted Blockbuster and every other type of business. In video rental, number five is delivery. You take it to the customer. My car dealer, every time I need service, brings me a new car, picks up mine brings my car back. I don't have to go in to the car dealership other than to buy another car. And that's what made me want to do business with them. They give me amazing service and they deliver. Whether it's food that you're delivering, whether it's items that you deliver, you can ship it. Delivery is a great convenience factor. And finally, number six, and access. Access comes in three forms of convenience, Hours of operation, communication, like when customer support is available, and location. So websites operate 24, 7. Customers can log in at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon. If you need to contact customer support, are your hours friendly? Where it's after work, it's in the evening and that's when people will call you. Or do you give yourselves banker hours which are when people are working. And speaking of banker hours, I want to get to that in just a moment. But the customer support center that sells to consumers that's open from 8 to 5 is open because those are normal business hours. Will consumers buy outside of the normal work hours that they have? Which is why you need to think about extending those hours. And that's what Huntington bank did to disrupt some of their competitors. Which means that they extended their hours beyond the typical 9 to 5 that a bank has opened. They even have weekend hours. And that's how they win their customers, by being accessible. Starbucks seems to be everywhere. Walmart. Do you know that 90% of Americans are within 10 minutes of a Walmart? Talk about convenience. So it's really quite simple. Customers will pay more for convenience and they'll choose to do more business with the people and the companies that make their lives more convenient. Think about it. The Convenience Revolution. You can go to beconvenient.com to learn more about the convenience revolution. And here's the idea. Just be more convenient and customers will want to do more business with you. Thanks for listening. This is Shep Hyken reminding you to be amazing and be convenient.

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What an awesome listen by Shep Hyken. Shep is both a Wall Street Journal and a New York Times best selling author. I highly encourage you to check out his books, especially his latest book, the Convenience Revolution. I'm going to check it out for sure. I took a quick look at it recently and thought wow, I got to dive deep into this topic. Into this book. Also, if you go to today's episode's show Notes, you can download A free gift from Shep. Title Proof convenience is your competitive disruptor. You can go to 100- MBA-NET MBA 1113 to download that PDF. So I'm going to just tie it up into the boat and repeat the six convenience principles. Number one, Reducing friction. Number two, Self service. Number three, technology. Number four, Subscription. Number five, Delivery and number six, Access. Thanks again Shep for that great lesson. That's it from us today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Whether you are selling a product, a service, a course, a T shirt, a software, you are in the service industry. You are serving your customers. You're in the experience industry. That's your market. Really? That's what you're selling. A great experience. The more you can think of your business that way, the better. How can you make an incredible total experience for your customers? When they give you their hard earned dollars, what will they experience in exchange? Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.