The CX Leader Podcast: "Can You Relate?": Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The CX Leader Podcast: "Can You Relate?": this wav audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Steve:
Your company can have the best technology and strong executive support for your customer experience efforts, but it could be all for naught if employees can't build relationships with customers.

John:
There is no greater skill than any of us could work on on a daily basis that will have a bigger impact in our lives personally and professionally than the ability to build an instant rapport with someone else. The problem with it is it's not taught in school. It's not taught at home anymore. The only place it's taught is that the few great businesses.

Steve:
The importance of building relationships to improve your customer experience on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve:
Hello, everyone, I'm Steve Walker hosted The CX Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. As we like to say on this show, it's never been a better time to be a CX leader and this podcast helps explore topics and themes to help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. Relationships are an essential and important part of our lives. We humans are social creatures, and it's important to understand that fact when leading a CX program. But companies sometimes miss the mark on ensuring employees and leaders throughout the organization understand how to build and maintain relationships with customers and each other. Well, I'm very excited about my guest on the show today. John DiJulius is Chief Revolution Officer and president of The DiJulius Group. And he's an author, speaker and also a fellow podcaster on customer service. John, thanks so much for being a guest on the CX Leader podcast.

John:
Thanks, Steve. I'm pumped to be on it. I love what you're doing here.

Steve:
Just getting to know you hear a little bit off the air and doing a little prep work for this. I know you have a lot of really interesting background and stuff to share with our listeners, but for those of my listeners who are not familiar with you, just give me a little bit of background on you and your company and kind of how you got to this point and you know what your journey and the customer service customer experience world's been?

John:
Yeah. All by accident surprise. About 30 years ago opened a little hair salon in Cleveland, Ohio, and we were growing and making a lot of noise. Mostly because of our customer experience and people started asking me to speak on that. And I did it locally because I thought it would be a good marketing tool for the salons and… and then every time I spoke, this is in the early mid nineties, people would start asking me if I could do it for their businesses and one thing led to another. And then 2002, my first book on customer service came out and it pretty much took me out of the salon and spa industry and have been speaking and consulting ever since. And I've been fortunate to work with some amazing companies like Starbucks and The Ritz-Carlton and Chick-Fil-A's and, you know, everyone all over the world. So now that's all I do is we consult with companies on both the customer and employee experience.

Steve:
Well, I got to tell you, John, it's fun to me to always hear how people get into this line of work. And but you may have the most unique route yet because I've never heard of anybody that came out of the hair salon industry. But obviously you were providing a great customer experience, so it just goes to show you it transcends, you know, lots and lots of different industries. And and there are some things that you can just transfer from one line of business to the other. But congratulations on that.

John:
Thank you. Thank you. It's been a great journey.

Steve:
Actually, you know, when you think about it and I've said this for a lot of years is the more personal the product or service, the more important the experience is. And you know, I think people that are spending, you know, I don't really have a great head of hair, so I just go to the barber and tell him to do a number three, you know,

John:
But right, right.

Steve:
But you know, people that have really great heads of hair and they spend a lot of money on it, it's a very, very intimate purchase. So it ought to be a good experience, right?

John:
It better be, you know, or you better be the cheapest right. You might be the best or the cheapest. And you know, people ask me what kind of customers I want, and I always say, I want a Tesla driving Peloton riding, Lululemon wearing, Starbucks drinking, Apple using customer. And then, you know, the next question is, how do you get them? Well, not by discounts, right? That type of clientele is not looking for discounts or looking for a an emotional affirmation that you know what they're buying, you know, is a signature and it tells a lot about them. And you know, and so you know, you've got to go after it and they want experiences and and if you create that, you can attract that and we don't want to compete in price wars, we want to compete and experience wars.

Steve:
No, I love that the way you start to phrase that with all those basically bastions of outstanding customer experience and it, you know, kind of reminds me of my early days in business. You know, they I think it was Michael Tracy who wrote about in any industry there was only room for one low cost provider.

John:
Right, right.

Steve:
But if you can segment the market in a way that your experience is so unique, you basically create your own market, right?

John:
Well, you know, and Steve, that's kind of what our tagline is at The DiJulius Group, is we help companies become the brand customers can't live without and make price irrelevant. And and we're real serious about that. And people, you know, sometimes that could be a little controversial. They'll say, you know, it's impossible to make price irrelevant. Well, what we mean… well, first, what we don't mean by making price irrelevant is that you can double your fees or raise your rates 50 percent, not lose existing or potential customers. What we do being by making price irrelevant is based on the experience your brand consistently delivers – and when I say consistently delivers, it can't be about employee roulette. Employee roulette is if I get Steve. Yeah, great. But I don't get Steve. Well, you know, no, that's employee roulette. Has to be based on it every touchpoint your brand consistently delivers. Your customers have no idea what your competition's charging and we're all price sensitive. If you've been like me, I've driven three extra miles and say 50 cents on something not realizing I just lost in that exchange. But I also have a few businesses I deal with personally or professionally that I am so loyal because of the peace of mind, the relationship, the expertize, all those things that when I recommend them to people, sometimes the people say, Well, how much do they charge? And I'm embarrassed to say, you know, I don't know that because I can't afford anything. I know because if I went cheaper, it would cost me more.

Steve:
Yeah, I just getting to know you here. I really like your philosophy and I know that, you know, early on in the days I come at it more from kind of the pure market research side of the business. But, you know, people would sometimes they'd say, well, you know, the best way to make a customer happy is just cut the price. And that's not really the objective number one. And number two, in my opinion, and in my experience, the profitability of the organization tends to relate to how good the experience that they're providing is. You know, if you think about it, if you're going to be a commodity and be a low price, low margin business, then you're probably not going to be adding a lot of value to that equation, right? But if you really are, if you're solving a bigger problem for the customer, they're willing to spend more and it's probably going to be a good experience and you probably then have more ability to continue to make that experience better and better for the customer, so.

John:
Yeah, I totally agree with you.

Steve:
Well, hey, let's give it into your the things we talked about a little bit in prepping for this or some of the things that I've picked up from you. But so what do you think are the greatest skills when we talk about relationships that leaders and other employees can have when it comes to having a great service experience?

John:
You know, I did a TED talk called Meet As Strangers, Leave as friends. And it's also kind of the whole premise of my most recent book, The Relationship Economy, and I say exactly that. There is no greater skill than any of us could work on on a daily basis that will have a bigger impact in our lives personally and professionally than the ability to build an instant rapport with someone else. And that could be a total stranger that could be an acquaintance, friend, coworker, client, you know, vendor, you name it. The problem with that, and I don't think too many people would disagree with that. You know how critical that that skill set is. The problem with it is is not taught in school. It's not taught at home anymore. I mean, you know, we're all guilty of handing in our children or our grandchildren an iPad to keep them occupied while we want to, you know, get through our day. And so the only place that's taught is that the few great businesses. And so we have to understand why we love to diss on our generation, Steve. Love the diss on millennials and babies, our Generation Zs. Yeah, their relationship disadvantage that no fault of their own. We raise them right. Which makes no sense why we diss on them. And you know, they've grown up in a digital only, you know, generation. And but I have found that they're incredible once they're taught this. But every generation is it has has a loss of people skills as a result that we're all on the touch screen era. We're all using technology more than ever, and technology is not the enemy using it to replace the human and customer experience one hundred percent is the enemy.

Steve:
So the most important business skill, in your opinion, is the ability to build rapport and to and to make good relationships. And I would agree with that. I would just tell you in my own experience, I love people, for example, that have worked in a restaurant before.

John:
I say that all the time. I said to my son on the way to school, I think everyone should have two jobs, restaurants and sales, regardless of wherever they're going to end up. You know, those are the two best jobs because it replicates life in such a way of the craziness, you know, demands overwhelming and still being able to be, you know, happy smiling. I call it being that duck. What we all see is a duck gliding across the water smooth. But no one knows is it's paddling like hell underneath. Right?

Steve:
That's right. Well, yeah, I mean, any anybody that's worked in a restaurant knows the most important thing about business, and that's how to service and take care of customers. And you know, I've seen so many people come out of like the top business school and, you know, they might be brilliant or be really, really well educated, but they've never actually had to service a customer. And that really is the essence of business. But so I I think you make a great case for why that's important in business. Well, how can you train people who maybe it doesn't come naturally or who have not had any kind of formal training in that area? How can you train them to build that rapport to to build good relationships?

John:
Yeah. And again, I don't want to just isolate it on the younger generations because I think we all all have a decline in people skills. But you know, the first thing is, remember, everyone you come in contact with has an invisible sign above their head. It says, Make me feel important, right? Everyone. You, I, our coworker, the UPS man coming in the stranger in the elevator and really focusing on that. Stephen Covey said People don't listen with the intent of understanding. They listen with the intent of replying, right? And I think everyone agrees with that quote. And scientists study the human brain, and they found that it takes a human brain point six seconds, a minimum of zero point six seconds to formulate a response to something that's set to it. Ok, but then they studied hundreds of thousands of conversations about the average gap between people talking was zero point two seconds. So we're answering each other in one third the time our brain will allow it. Well, how? Because you know, most of the time we have our answer ready minutes ago, we're just waiting for the other person to come up for air so we can say what we've been dying to say. Meanwhile, I didn't hear the last, you know, several things you might have been saying to me. So, you know, I love to always ask, you know, who's great, who feels are great at building rapport? And, you know, whatever size my audience is, I usually have to count the hands that don't go up. Everyone's pretty confident. I said, Well, I don't believe you. You've got to prove it to me because just because you and I connected at Starbucks or at a networking event last night or whatever environment we met with for 15 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes doesn't necessarily mean I built a rapport, a relationship with you because I'm able to talk about myself for for that amount of time. And, you know, we are all genetically coded to be preoccupied and consumed with what's going on in our life. It's my flight that got delayed last night. It's my salesman that's threatening to quit, whatever that may be. So how anyone, how I prove it to myself, how my employees prove it to me. If you meet my three sons and I see them having a conversation with you, they know I'm going to ask them this how you prove it, that you focused on the other person is you have to know two or more things of their FORD: F.O.R.D. If you know two or more things in the other person's FORD, you not only built a relationship, you own the relationship because to each and every one of us, our own FORD is what we geek out about. Ok, so FORD: F, family. Are they married? Do they have kids? How old are their kids? What activities are their kids in? O: occupation, what do they do for a living? How long they've been doing? What's their job title? What's their company name? R: recreation. You know, what is Steve like to do on the evenings and weekends with his free time? Maybe he's a triathlete. Maybe he coaches Little League, maybe he does hot yoga, whatever that. Be a charity. And then the D is dreams. You know, what's what is his his encore career that he's working towards? What's his bucket list of vacation? And so you don't have to ask these questions every time you speak to someone, even in a short interaction in business. A lot of times they just come up a lot of times clients over share with us, but sometimes we're too focused on the transaction that we're not paying attention to the client, you know, said he just got back from vacation last week or, you know, he had to cancel, reschedule a Zoom call with us because his son's football team made it to states. Right? And that's great FORD information that if we're paying attention, we could be collecting and building even a stronger relationship.

Steve:
You know, John, you just said a bunch of stuff in there that I just want to kind of unpack a little bit for our listeners because I always learn stuff on this podcast. But I'm definitely learning stuff today, and I'm pretty old guy in the business world. And I, you know, I would say that I have had some success in building relationships over the course of my career. But FORD is a brilliant concept. And the other thing he said that that I've taken note of here is that people reply in point two seconds and it takes zero point six to comprehend. And I think that everything I've ever heard about training and all that is sometimes you just need to slow down, just just take a breath, you know, let it come to you. You don't have to be the smartest guy in the room. Just take that little extra time and let that settle in and make sure that you're finishing, letting them finish their thoughts before you get back in. And I bet you that makes a tremendous impact on the other person.

John:
It really does. You know, and part of my research for my book, I saw that one of the things that doctors interrupt their patients on average with 18 seconds. And so you read why and you know what of it is that, you know, you come into your doctor's office and you tell them, what's wrong, your knees swelling because you're running every day and he eruption and he knows, you know, and and it's not that he wants to be rude. He just knows where you're going and he wants to help you.

Steve:
Yep.

John:
And then start thinking about it. I do that in my profession. I think an accountant, lawyer, everyone, because we are experts at what we do and rarely do we hear a client bring us a problem that we've never heard before. So sometimes we jump in because we know the answer, but that's not really polite. It's also, you know, clients don't want to think that you've heard this. They want to feel that their problem is unique. And so, you know, let them speak, you know, share it, think about it and say, You know what, Steve, you know that I can understand why that's a challenge and here for my experience, but cut you off 18 seconds into it. I don't think that's doing anyone any favors.

Steve:
Well, I really like this and this this kind of this whole topic, and you mentioned the employee experience as part of this too, is, you know. And actually, in the intro, we talked about just the essence of humanity in terms of how important relationships are to us. But you know, one of the things I think we're trying to do today in this, particularly as we're battling to keep and retain our talent, is, you know, trying to help take care of all the needs of our employees. So, you know, you've given some really good tips here of how we can make our employees better relationship builders. How can leaders in the organization foster an organization where the people really they're allowed the the opportunity to take the time to build those relationships?

John:
Yeah. So a couple of things. One, I don't believe there's a labor shortage. I believe there's a turnover crisis, right? There's there's plenty of people out there, but we're not keeping them. So we've got to build cultures that employees love. And the number one answer that is we got to love them first. And it starts with knowing, therefore. So any time we do leadership workshops, what we'll do is we'll give everyone a list of their direct reports. And there might be, you know, there might be eight people that report to 12 people and then we have them fill out FORD and people struggle. And this is someone you work with every day, right? This could be your assistant. This could be, you know, who, whoever and you're struggling with their FORD. And I've been guilty of it, too. And if we want our employees to go out there and build relationships, we have to demonstrate what relationship building is and know their significant others name and know that they have two kids, and if they're a boy or girl and their ages and know what really matters to them and there is nothing that will teach them, one of my favorite quotes is for a leader, as you know, go show the proper way and when necessary, use words. Right? So just by acting it, just by building a relationship and demonstrating that, you know you're important is is the number one way to get your employees to want to do that for their clientele.

Steve:
Actually, it reminds me of some of the kind of work in terms of culture change and stuff like that and what you know, what leaders can do. But I think you have to set the expectations you have to role model the behavior. And then you also have to, you know, reinforce it with, you know, the rewards and the consequences of of what that kind of that expected behavior is. But you're right. You know, if you if you can't role model it as the leader, it probably isn't going to work very long. So.

Steve:
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Steve:
Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is John DiJulius. He's the chief revolution officer and president of The DiJulius Group and John's a fellow podcaster. He's been an excellent guest and I hope you guys have been enjoying this. Hey, I can't wait to hear your take on it because I've heard the term before, but tattoo worthy brands? So, yeah, so everybody thinks at least I think a Harley Davidson. But are there some others out there?

John:
Yeah, one of my clients, Anytime Fitness over 5000, I'm sure this number is just gone up since them, over five thousand members and employees have Anytime Fitness tattoos. I mean, it's crazy, right? And you know, and that's just someone who just loves their brand and what their brand stands for, right? You know what their brand is behind the values of their brand and all those things. So it is building, you know, tying people's roles and responsibility, the overall purpose. People underestimate that. But I will tell you, the currency for employees today is purpose and people forget about that. And sometimes the only time employees will hear about their mission, core value customer experience action statement, whatever it may be, is on orientation. But the best companies bring it up daily. And say, let me tell you how Steve, you know, lived our customer experience action statement yesterday. Let me tell you about, you know, and it's just becomes this positive burden that we all have to keep up.

Steve:
Yeah, very well put and well said. And I guess the tattoo is somewhat of a euphemism. You know, it's but you know, we do that. I mean, people, you know, they supported on their in their clothes and their, you know, the fan, the teams that they're fans of. And you know, some of these things that you know, are not just a product or a service, but they're they're more of a life cycle. I mean, you've mentioned them Tesla and Starbucks and Ritz-Carlton and Peloton.

John:
So yeah, yeah,

Steve:
John, we've reached that point of the show where I ask every guest to give us what they consider to be their best tip or take home value that our listeners could actually take back to the office later today or tomorrow or next week and actually change some of what they're doing that would have a positive impact on their organization's customer experience. So John DiJulius time for take home value.

John:
Yeah, it's hard to encapsulate it just to one thing, but I'm going to probably go to one of them is is employees, how good any employee is, how good any company is at customer experience comes down to one thing and one thing only their service aptitude. And now a service aptitude that that's the easy thing to understand. The hard thing is where it comes from service after it comes from. Three primary places. One, your previous life experiences. So I don't know about you, but most of I didn't. And most people I know didn't grow up staying at five star resorts flying first class. But as soon as we got our jobs, first jobs, temp jobs, we were expected to give that type of experience to those type of clients, guests, patience, tenants, whatever they were. And it's not fair because people don't know what world class is when they initially get out of school. The second place, it gets shaped his previous work experience. And, you know, unless you've got a direct pipeline to former Chick fil A and Ritz-Carlton employees, which none of us do, that means you're your existing and future generation of employees have worked somewhere else that probably was not world class, that their leader was more paranoid and suspicious and, you know, told them all not to let their customers take advantage of them. And so, you know, we can't control that either. The third place is the only thing we can control is what we do with them after we hire them. And you know, I always love to ask this question if you had to hire my son today to work in a front line customer facing position, how much training would you give them before you before he was allowed to interact with your customer? And you know, some people say two days, two weeks, whatever it is, that's not the answer. I'm looking for. The answer I'm looking for is of those 40 hours or four hundred hours, how much of that is operational, technical versus soft skill, relationship building, service, recovery, compassion and empathy. And a lot of cases it's like ninety eight percent operational and one to two percent soft skill. And that has to shift to a significantly, you know, 30 to 70 percent instead of two to ninety eight percent. So it's not your employees responsibility and have high service aptitude, it's the company and leadership to give it to them.

Steve:
That's an awesome tip. And again, just to reinforce for our listeners, you know, I think that, you know, if you're really trying to move to world class experiences in your organization, you know, it's going to be a journey and it's going to be something that you're going to have to build and build through training. And I think the emphasis on soft skills is excellent tip, so, John, DiJulius, thank you for being a guest on the podcast this week. We really enjoyed having you.

John:
Thank you, Steve. It's my pleasure.

Steve:
And if any of our listeners want to continue the conversation, I assume they can find you somehow on the Internet or LinkedIn or something.

John:
Yes, it's under John DiJulius on all those and thedijuliusgroup.com.

Steve:
Great. Well, I hope our listeners will take advantage of this if they weren't familiar with before, they ought to be now. John DiJulius is the Chief Revolution Officer and President of The DiJulius Group, and we were really fortunate to have him as a guest this week. And if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business's customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information. You can drop us a note to let us know how we're doing or suggest a future podcast subject. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps your companies accelerate their experience management success. You can read more about us at walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening, and remember, it is truly a great time to be a CX leader. We will see you again next time.

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