Enjoy the full Transcript of the Podcast
Chuck Moxley, Michael Hinshaw
Michael Hinshaw 00:00
One of the things we talk about in customer experience is used broadly to describe the industry that I'm in the discipline of customer experience, improvement, digital, human in person, etc. And the customer experience actually lives between the ears of our customers. You can't box you can't package it, you can't sell it. It's perceptual. And if our customers believe the experience is horrible, by definition it is. If they think it's great by definition it is. So the challenge that companies have is not actually customer experience. It's managing customer experience, what are the things that companies need to do to systematize, operationalize, etc, their ability to change how customers feel as a result of their experiences.
00:54
It's time to triple charge your online presence and unlock the true potential of your website's digital journey with their frictionless experience. This podcast delves deep into the world of user experience to help you eradicate costly friction. Join us as we dive into website and mobile app optimization to explore how refining your digital playground can become a game changer for your business. This is the frictionless experience brought to you by blue triangle.
01:24
Hello, and welcome to the frictionless experience the podcast where we lay waste digital friction. I'm Chuck Moxley, and I'm Nick Palladino. Now on today's episode, we're going to be talking about customer experience, what it is, what it isn't, and the confusion that persists about driving better customer experiences by removing friction from the purchase process. Joining us for this topic is a man recognized as one of the top 20 Customer Experience leaders in the world. Michael Hinshaw. Early in his career, Michael started a company and grew it to $300 million in just three years before selling it. He took the learnings from that and specifically how to drive better customer experiences, and now consults with a number of leading companies including Intel, Cisco, Microsoft Best Buy Lululemon, Pfizer, and others to help them drive better customer experiences. He is also co author of the best selling book smart customers stupid companies, why only intelligent companies will thrive and how to be one of them. Michael is a pioneer in the customer experience world and spent his first 10 years explaining what it is and why it's important. Now everyone knows what it is. But many people describe it differently. Well, Michael is here to help us set the record straight. And we're excited to have Michael, welcome to the frictionless experience.
Michael Hinshaw 02:45
That's great, Chuck, thanks for having me, Nick as well. Looking forward to our conversation.
02:50
Absolutely. I love the name of your book, though. It's such a fun name. I mean, you're you're targeting businesses, you're calling them stupid. I love it. It's my favorite.
Michael Hinshaw 03:01
Alright, ironically, that books, over 10 years old, and I wrote it thinking I've got to get it out there quickly, because companies are going to figure this stuff out. Oh, good news, bad news. They haven't.
03:12
That's true. And actually, you're you've got a new book coming out, which we will talk about. So I guess I guess they didn't figure it out. So you told us a funny story in a prep call about a parking lot you encountered a few years ago? Do you want to share that story and how it paid off this idea that confusion around what customer experiences?
Michael Hinshaw 03:30
Yeah, I was actually visiting a technology client here in the Bay Area that I will not name, but pulled up into their parking lot. And a bunch of spaces were open, near the entrance of the building I was going into, and there's some signs in front of me usually only look at the signs and say, I'm gonna park here, if it's a handicapped spot, or maybe this is Employee of the Month or right, you don't want to get the wrong spot. And all these reserved spots were reserved as had customer experience parking. And I had to ask myself, what is customer experience parking. And I mean, that's where I parked, obviously, because I figured I do customer experience. This is obviously for me, although I don't think that's what it meant. But it's just an illustration of how different organizations look at customer experience, how they define it, I'm sure you've run into this, I was getting my tires changed a year or so ago, and the manager of the tire shop gave me his card. I looked at it and said Customer Experience Manager and because he's the manager of the experience in the tire store. So he's absolutely 100% Correct. That's what it is. But that being said,
04:37
that's very, very interesting when you really think about it, because it's basically who individually is defining customer experience on their own interpretation. Like what is customer experience because what is the customer in the first place? And then what is the experience that you're targeting in the second place? So you need to actually be able to define these these concepts and to just begin In with in a meaningful way. And if you don't, then then you're going to either miss the mark or you're going to, I guess, get it wrong. Yeah,
Michael Hinshaw 05:07
I mean, one of the things we talked about in customer experience is use broadly to describe the industry that I'm in the discipline of customer experience, improvement, digital, human, in person, etc. And the customer experience actually lives between the ears of our customers, you can't box you can't package it, you can't sell it, it's perceptual. And if our customers believe the experience is horrible, by definition it is. If they think it's great, by definition it is. So the challenge that companies have is not actually customer experience. It's managing customer experience, what are the things that companies need to do to systematize, operationalize, etc, their ability to change how customers feel as a result of their experiences.
05:50
That's also very interesting. It's almost like you're battling the subconscious of the customer.
Michael Hinshaw 05:55
Yeah, that's actually really interesting way of looking at it. And you can affect it.
06:00
I just want to go back to customer experience, parking actually sounds like a sentence. Customers experience parking every day. So So Michael,
Michael Hinshaw 06:12
luxury hyphenated.
06:14
That's true. Exactly. Yeah. Or maybe a comma. Yeah. So Michael, tell us about your journey to starting your consulting practice how you got here, what experiences led you to champion customer experience, especially that that founding story, which is very interesting,
Michael Hinshaw 06:29
yeah. So I'll, I won't spend much time on that. But my background is in design and marketing. And in the late 90s, I built and sold the small ish brand strategy firm, about 3035 employees at the time, I sold it and decided to take a year off. And about halfway through that time, one of our clients that I had private equity firm, gave me a call and said, We're interested in starting something in this internet space. Are you interested in joining us? Do you want to run a company? And I said, Sure. And they said, well, we don't know what that means. So let's talk about right. What is the internet? What should an internet company look like that we could invest in? And long story short, we decided to start a grain trading business in Alberta, Canada, and just I live in San Francisco, did not spend much time in Canada, I went to art school for my masters know nothing about grain. I do now, though. I mean, I did that. But that but the way that I learned about that marketplace was to go in and essentially talk to everyone in the grain trading ecosystem, talk to farmers, talk to agronomists talk to inputs, Salesforce, like seed fertilizer, things like that. The buyers Sapporo, for example, one of the buyers and mapped it all out, so that I can see where the friction points were that were common across these various audiences. Now, we designed a technology platform to eliminate those friction points, right frictionless experience. And even though it had been done a certain way, for many, many years, it wasn't, there were things that we could do that were more efficient, that would solve more problems, and that we can have an exponential effect on the issues that our potential customers are having, by digitizing. Long story short, worked out really well, we became the largest independent grain trader in Canada. At that time, we had about 130,000 acres under management, where our agronomists managed farms to create differentiated wheat essentially. And when the internet crashed, if you will, the market did and early 2000s, I took another year off, we sold the technology took a year off, and then started at Mcorp. CX. And that is a consulting business that I run on the president founder and small, smaller organization 3035 people about the same size as my last one, but only focused on customer employee experience since we started and and do that for organizations of all sizes, types of times. But it's really, for me, it's a fascinating and interesting field because not only do I help make customers lives better, I also help companies make more money. So and I make a living to win win win.
09:04
A triple win like it. So as we talked about in the introduction, the term customer experience is kind of confusing, defined by different people different ways. What do you believe is the correct definition of customer experience? What would you how would you define it?
Michael Hinshaw 09:20
I mean, that kind of goes back to the comment that I made earlier about experience living our customers minds. So the customer experience is the customer's perceptions and feelings and expectations built up as a result of all the interactions they have with a with a brand, right those those interactions can be direct, that can be proactive, they be reactive, they can be in conversations they have with with friends, it can be things they read, you know, online ratings, or stories or etc. So that definition they experienced that it's the sum total of the feelings customers have as a result of the experience is saying can be managed by companies. So a customer experience management is probably a better one. In my opinion to look at it from the company perspective, gotcha.
10:03
It's so interesting, because we've talked about in branding for years, I've given that I've given this speech two or three times, or multiple times about brand isn't a logo, it's not a color, it's how you make customers feel. And it's the sum total of all of their interactions with the positive, negative, well, how they buy, you know, what they hear on the internet, or they see on TV, etc. All of that makes up a brand experience. So brand experience, customer experience, kind of two, two sides of the same coin, in a way,
10:32
I think something that's really interesting to hear here. And going back to kind of my comment about subconscious, if you're in a conversation with somebody about a brand, and that gives you a negative feeling about that brand. And then you need to go have an experience with that brand later, that subconscious of that conversation is going to kick right in. And you're going to inherently have a bad experience. should anything go wrong whatsoever, because you've already been set up to say, Hey, this is going to be a bad experience. It's kind
10:59
of like the company can set a different expectation. We, we our favorite sushi restaurant that we go to is one of those revolving sushis on the conveyor belt. And the service is god awful. It's the worst service you'll ever have in a restaurant, but we go all the time, and we go in with the expectation is going to be bad service. We just, in fact, we're surprised if they ever have give us good service, because we've they've set an expectation that's consistent at least.
11:24
So do you think your customer experiences good or bad there? Chuck?
11:27
That's a good question. The experience is can be Oh, man, that one's a tough one. Because we love the conveyor belt. We love the convenience of the conveyor belt, we don't have to order and all that. So there are aspects of the experience that are superior to others and aspects that are inferior to others. I guess net net, it's enough to keep us bringing coming back.
Michael Hinshaw 11:51
And your expectations are met. And when they were exceeded it's a win. Right.
11:56
Right, right, because we go in with low expectations. Exactly. Exactly. super interesting. So I know you that you trademarked the term touch point mapping more than two decades ago, tell us about this idea of touchpoint mapping, and how the process has evolved over the last decade or so. Yeah,
Michael Hinshaw 12:14
it's, it's interesting. So touch points and have them. So mapping. touchpoints is essentially a subset or an aspect of journey mapping. It's finding ways to identify all the interactions that customers have across channels, and lay them out in a sequence, a journey map essentially, that allows you to see as customers move from one stage of their relationship to another, what are their interactions that either accelerate or impede that movement. So we talked about kind of velocity, and touch points can get customers to move through the cycle more quickly, can also get them to drop out of the cycle or prop out with the journey drop out of the relationship. But touch points don't occur by themselves individual touch points delivered exceptionally well don't always equate to a great customer experience. Because customers interact with a company with a goal of accomplishing something, they want to buy something they want to learn something, they have some objective a job to be done, so to speak, they want to figure out the answer to is interact. And the touch points need to be arrayed in ways that seamlessly move your customer from one stage of their journey to the next in pursuit of their goal. So touchpoints live in Journey stages, and journey stages roll up to a full customer journey that customers traverse as they try and accomplish something. And it can be you know, journeys can be by channel just by a digital more often they're Omni channels across multiple, multiple types of interactions. And, and you can also look at the customer journey from the end and perspective, the entire lifecycle of the customer over time. So they roll up a lot of different ways. And how
13:51
do you use that in a consulting assignment? The touch points piece of it. So it's at the very lowest level, how do you how do you use those to remove friction, for example, in the experience,
Michael Hinshaw 14:01
so essentially, it's finding finding the spots where touch points create, you know, again, your podcast and frictionless experience. There are interactions that I'll give you a simple example that we all I think run into I know that I do you ever called like a major service providers like cell phone company or cable? And what's the first thing when you get that automated voice response system? What's the first thing you run into? It's like,
14:30
I press zero every single time.
14:33
They're just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
14:37
Yeah, and they fight you on it, they fight you and don't want you to get an agent.
Michael Hinshaw 14:43
They do. Because they want you to put in your to get even get to the point where you can press the zeros. You got to put in your account information or your phone number or some kind of personal, personal data that in theory would allow them should be better than the other end. But you get into the voice tree, you put your identifying information in there, you hit a bunch of buttons, you press zero half dozen times. Finally you get to a person. And what's the first thing that person asks you?
15:12
Who are you? Your account name, your name, your account number? Yeah.
Michael Hinshaw 15:15
What Yeah, it's like, wait a minute, I just, I just gave you that. What is wrong with you? Right. So that's a perfect example of a touch point that that we all encounter. And makes me nuts. Because I know that either the company is willfully ignorant, they don't care about me, because obviously, they're wasting my time and my energy, when in reality, they probably just have backend systems that aren't connected, and they really haven't had the time or the budget priority to fix that kind of stuff. But you know, to your point, Chuck, we identify specific instances like that, where touch points exist, that either are doing a great job, so you don't do anything to it that need to be modified, like the example I just gave needs to be changed in a way that makes it more more effective, more efficient, like, don't make people put their number in, if you got to get the voice treat, great, but don't do that upfront. Or sometimes there's places where customers get stuck, they might, you know, skirt across a series of interactions with a company. And the next step is an obvious, so you need to include a new touch point. So you can modify touch points, eliminate touch points, or, or create new touch points. And then from a consulting perspective, you look at the degree to which those interactions positively and negatively affect customers perceptions. And essentially, you change the ones you need to put new ones over there messing and eliminate those that are redundant have another example org for large telecom, and they're working on small businesses and in the installation process. So it was for high speed cable for small business. So went through this entire process. And after the installation was done, the installer wrote down like a special code on a piece of paper and gave it to the business owner and said, this is the this is important, don't lose it. And this is your identifiable information. Somebody could get into your system with this. So just right, here it is. deal done, signed, sealed. Two weeks later, the phone company sends out a mailing, right, and this mailing was sent out. They're doing 1000s and 1000s of these all over the country, hundreds of 1000s. And in that mailing, the intent was to provide a backup for the code, the password that the installer give no. And so marketing cycle, we're sending this thing anyhow, why don't we send them you know, this flyer, that flyer this other information. And we're doing our research and found out that the business owners when they got this, they were so upset, they're angry, they they're like, I can't believe that this company is putting my personal password in the mail as an excuse to someone else marketing crap,
17:48
I feel that that that is something that that bothered the heck out of me with anything dealing with like your mortgage, right? As soon as you get a statement with your mortgage, that when you first get one, you're getting loaded up with all these like mortgage insurance, and we can insure your home. It's all just advertisements loaded into what should have just been the end of the transaction. Yep.
Michael Hinshaw 18:11
And that's the kind of thing it actually doesn't accomplish the goal. And so in this instance, we said, okay, that's an eliminate. And they said, I would save something like 5 million bucks a year eliminating that one touch point and then improve customer satisfaction.
18:24
Right? Win win. That's amazing. I, I had experience with Amazon of all companies that Amazon does everything great until you have a problem. That's been my experience. And when you have a problem, you can't get to a person you have to chat. And they and I had a problem. And the chat kept timing out. They would have to go research it they go well, this problem. I know you guys have tried that. That's not the problem. Oh, blah, and they go Okay, one moment, it would timeout and it would hand me over to another chat agent because I timed up. So then I'd have to start the whole thing over again. And it was like three or four times in a row in a single chat that he kept getting handed to another agent because they get stumped at one point. They'd go try to research and then they'd lose the thing. And it would start over never did get a result
19:11
that's at least better than a timeout resulting in a severed call. And then you have to call back in and start again. Then you're just getting pissed off every time.
Michael Hinshaw 19:22
My wife was on the phone with someone the other day, I forget who she who she was calling, but I heard her saying all right, just up front. So you know, I've been cut off three times. I'm really pissed. Sorry, you got me. I know it's not your fault, but I need help. No, just just upfront full disclosure. I am unhappy.
19:50
I'm not starting at a good point here. That's funny. So one of the topics that we've talked about a mole couple times on the podcast is this concept of phygital, how digital experiences often become physical experiences, for example, in the last mile of the transaction, like, you order an appliance online, but you have to have to deliver it. You have any stories from any of the companies you've worked with that, where they had physical experiences and how that touchpoint map kind of a worked into that improving that experience and uncovered revenue opportunities? Yeah,
Michael Hinshaw 20:25
it's, so I can give part of a story. Working with a large retailer in the appliance space, specifically, there's the in store experience was great, this organization, and I'm not going to name names unless it's not a company I do work with. But in this instance, there was a role, the great a great install, experience, a great digital experience. So on the front end of the process, tightly linked, great connection, a lot of clarity around, you know, being able to find and research a product online, come into the store, and then have conversations with intelligent agents internally who are able to, you know, help this person solve the problems that needed to solve. So great, you know, using your taxonomy phygital experience on the front end, but the back end of that last mile, like you'd like to think that once you buy the appliance in the store, that you're done, but appliances, in particular, you need to have those appliances delivered. In many cases, you have to have those appliances installed. And oftentimes, things come up as you're going through installation. So in this particular instance, they had a really high dissatisfaction rate and a significant return rate, because there wasn't clarity or connection between the customers in home situation like stove, for example, you know, will it fit? What are the things that you have to get from the customer upfront to make that delivery experience seamless and installation experience seamless? And there is missing a set of interactions upfront that allow the delivery team to more effectively get that product into the house? Does it get through the door? Right? I mean, and make sure that once installed, that it actually fit into place? The customer out of mind? So again, relatively simple fix, what are the questions that we need to ask our customers for different products, to help them understand what it is that they need to tell us so we can make sure the product works for them. It's not just something that the customer likes, and has all the right features. It has to actually fit into the space and it has to be fit for purpose, so to speak, and satisfaction went up installation rate installations improved, returns reduced, again, relatively small thing we've been able identify where the problem existed, instead of just saying, oh, man, this customer, right? It didn't. Why didn't they tell us how big their door was? I mean, why would they know? So expect expectations, right? The delivery folks had expectations that weren't met because they, the customer, we ask the right questions upfront, the delivery guys weren't getting the information, I
23:00
had a very relevant experience. But I'm pretty sure I was actually told to measure the door to get into the house. But what I wasn't told to measure was the past to get to the kitchen. And so I bought this refrigerator, and the refrigerator was just too wide to get through anything. And there was it could get into the house easily because the the front door was big enough, but it couldn't get into the kitchen door. And I just I didn't consider it. I didn't think about it. So it's very interesting to hear you talk him through that, that process and how how do you take it to the next level to be able to say like, all the way through into the kitchen without just coming across as being whiny or redundant.
Michael Hinshaw 23:43
There's, I mean it as customers, we see things all the time and go what is this company thinking? Right? Like, I'll give you an example. You know, always my my wife is an example again, we wanted to buy new chairs for a dining room. We got eight chairs around the dining room table. And she went online and tried to purchase individual chairs, right she says I'm going to I want to buy one of these chairs. I want to see it in my house first but they only sold them in sets. So she bought six sets of chair success eight chairs, right 48 chairs, the delivery guy the delivery guy pulls up in our driveway. And he says where do you want all the chairs my wife said hold on, give me that one. That one that one that one that one brought them all in the house and said Oh this one's really nice bring the other seven that match this and take the rest back and the guy's like taken aback by the entire delivery. I was like that was brilliant.
24:48
I was thinking the same thing your wife is brilliant. What a great idea. Although it cost him a fortune. But
Michael Hinshaw 24:56
I mean, but what what kind of what kind of back end system would Like we we have no ability to, and we're selling digitally, right? This is online environment, you can't go into the store and you couldn't go into a store, you can't tell what it's going to look like in your environment. So you'd think that would be a common use case, right? I thought people must do this stuff all the time, or people just get upset because they can't do it. They didn't think to order 48 chairs, and they just went someplace else and did it. So there's got to be a lost business.
25:25
Well, Apple thinks they solved this problem with the vision Pro, right? Because you'll throw that thing on, and then you'll be able to look and see the chair sitting in your house, they think they solved it.
Michael Hinshaw 25:33
Yeah, you probably run into the wall while you're doing it. So
25:38
you know, it seems to me that they could have put some logic in their software to go hmm, somebody's ordering 48 chairs very similar. I bet they don't actually need 40 Ha. To prevent that, because that had to be very costly to deliver and return 42 or whatever the you know,
Michael Hinshaw 25:59
it was, and she's never she's never shopped at that store. Again. She said, You know what, that was just so stupid. I'm just not, I'm not gonna go there. Yeah, that's,
26:08
that's interesting. Back in the case of the refrigerator, where you said they had to collect that information upfront. Did you add that into the digital process when they were placing the order? Did you do it? Was there a phone call from the service team? prior to delivery?
Michael Hinshaw 26:23
No, it was it was a digital process, and validation of the digital process prior to delivery. Right? Do we have all the information we need? So the US had a double A double check in there?
26:34
Gotcha. And you talked about the cost impact on the company or the the benefit? We did that actually get quantified? Like what that that change saved them in terms of loyalty in terms of fewer canceled orders? So
Michael Hinshaw 26:49
a lot of times, so the short answer is, yes. But the business case for making those changes is pretty clear. And we're able to essentially build out. And we actually call them, you know, business cases or cost rationalization, where you say, Okay, if we're spending this much money, we're able to deflect this many returns. And we're able to reduce the amount of trips that, like, if somebody buys something, it doesn't fit, they have to make the changes, and they have to, to just back and forth, the customer has to do something. So if you look at all the deliveries, the number of issues that you have, you can actually quantify it upfront. But what most organizations don't do is after the fact take the time, the energy to actually validate that and prove it out over time. So typically, it's a break fix, rather than we're going to track how much money they saved us over x period of time. So you, you build it out, project it upfront. That being said, to the value question, one of the biggest challenges in customer experience that most companies have, is actually tracking value over time. So that's a huge gap and an important one, from our perspective for companies to try and fix. It doesn't
27:55
give them the ability then to quantify when there's a problem when there's friction, what that cost to them is because they haven't quantified the positive side of it. Is that what you're saying? Yep.
Michael Hinshaw 28:06
I mean, there's a way to track. So I sent my jokingly say that, you know, improving customer experience isn't simple, but it is straightforward. And value modeling of any kind is kind of the same way. It's not simple, because it requires data. But it's pretty simple to try and figure out what you need to do. You need to, you know, have data that tells you what you're doing to your customers, what emails you're sending, what phone calls you're having, what digital channels are they interacting with, when, why and how, and then you bump that up against the touch points, right. So your channels, your your infrastructure is delivering experiences at touch points, those touch points, roll up journeys, those journeys roll up to customer feelings, those feelings caused customers to behave in certain ways. They feel good, they buy more, they feel bad, they leave, simplistically, and those are business objectives. So you can directly link what you do digitally and physical any other way all the way up to business result, positive or negative. And you can automate that. But it requires the ability to bring data in consistently and have a listening system that flags those positive, or sorry, the flags, negative experiences, both at an individual level. So if you piss one customer off, you got to fix it for that individual customer. But what's really interesting is that when companies track this, they realize they're doing things, they're fixing things individually for customers hundreds of times the same thing. It's like, oh, well actually, if we if we're able to look at the 100 things 100 times we're fixing it for 100 customers, if we actually fix the process, we're gonna eliminate that problem. And we're gonna save ourselves a ton of energy because we got our customer service reps or whoever is going through heroic efforts every day to solve the same problem for different customers. So
29:47
interesting. Yeah, takes that ability to roll all that up the macro and the micro into a macro picture. So I know you often say digital first but not digital only He tell us more about your beliefs here and why you strongly encouraged this thought process within the companies you work with.
Michael Hinshaw 30:07
Chuck, I'm gonna go to your Amazon example. Right? So you're digital first. But when there's a problem, you needed to talk to somebody. So digital first non digital only essentially means that none of us want to talk to a person until we do not want to talk to someone right away. And a lot of organizations, like even go back to the example of putting the code in, right, and trying to make it hard for you to actually connect with somebody. If you're able to deliver digital experiences that solve most of your customers problems and deliver against their expectations, you're going to reduce your cost of service delivery. But if you make it too hard for your customers to solve their problems, then you're going to not only increase your cost of service, you're going to upset your customers. So
30:47
So what companies do you take inspiration from the consistently create frictionless experiences that you either observed as a consumer or with consulting with your consulting practice? Well,
Michael Hinshaw 30:57
it's interesting, and this is going to be a standard standard answer. Like I haven't had that particular experience with Amazon, Amazon, for me does a pretty good job delivering frictionless experience. Right? And, and they're, they're brought up a lot as examples inside organizations. And one of the reasons I think that they're in general, better than most companies that doing that is because they have been built around the customer from day one. And I don't know if you've ever read their first shareholder letter letter shareholders from Jeff Bezos think it was 97. It's a really interesting read. It basically talks about the fact that customers are more important to them than anything, and that they're going to continue improving to deliver great experiences to their customers. And every shareholder letter since that time, basically says and reread, reread the first shareholder letter, because that's still really important to us. And there's an apocryphal tale they that there's an empty chair purposely in in meetings at Amazon, where decisions are made that could affect customers. And the theory is that that empty chair is there to visualize a customer, they're in the room, if there's a customer here listening to us have this conversation make this decision, what would they say? No company gets it right all the time, I'll just say that upfront, I've never dealt with a company that never gets it wrong. But the ability to recover, when you do get it wrong, has a huge difference. Right? You can have a relationship with a customer. And if you blow it, and you pick it up and fix it, which obviously Amazon didn't in your case, the resulting loyalty is typically stronger than if you'd never created a problem. Especially it was one I teach at UC Berkeley, which is a university here in California, their business school. And I was in a conversation with students a week before last and one of them is called the peak and theory right, there's a point in the journey was a really important you get it right a moment of truth or was one of the ways to describe it. And how you feel at the end of that journey is also critical. So you got to get the key points, right. And you got to get the end of the journey, right, and the goal is accomplished. And we're talking about that recovery factor, one of the students said, well, couldn't we just plan to screw a customer over in one spot in the experience, and then have a system in place to recover incredibly well, and when that give us relationships. And, you know, it's one of the reasons I love teaching, because I was like, that's kind of brilliant. Maybe we could make a package.
33:23
That's funny, I think there was a study done by Harvard business school years ago on that of how that that a customer with a bad experience has an even better, better perception. I'd never thought about creating problems. But that's an interesting take on it. So you have a new book coming out. Tell us about that, and what you'll be talking about in the book. So
Michael Hinshaw 33:42
the book is called experience rules. And it's experienced rules. It's the experience operating system xls and apki. To enable it, my co author, Diane majors, and I've been working on this for a year or so. Diane is a former head of customer experience at AT and T and Cisco foods, and has been in customer experience consultant for many years since then. And she's a former CEO and chair of the customer experience Professionals Association. And so she and I separately, really recognize that a lot of things that companies do to improve experiences, but what they don't have is typically is clear line of sight to how all these things fit together across an organization. And we kind of make we make the case for the difference between an operating model operating models and companies tend to put barriers in place or boxes. If nothing else, like here's the marketing box, here's the sales box. And here's how they kind of fit together. But a system is more seamless is more about ways of thinking and working. It's about ways of connecting all parts of the organization like sales, marketing, legal, etc. around customer journeys around customer experiences. So the goal is to create great experiences for your customers as a company, not just great experiences within your channel. So this book essentially lines out the things that you can do as organization, the kinds of questions that you need to ask to put that system in place.
35:04
And that system is what you call a customer experience operating system. xls.
Michael Hinshaw 35:10
Yeah, that's the XLS experience operating system. And it's things that companies do already, you know, that's not like news, you need to have strategy and a vision or where you're going for customers, it's not news that you have to listen to and understand your customers, or you have to measure the experiences they have. But how they all fit together is something that a lot of organizations have a hard time doing. Yeah,
35:29
EX O S, sounds. Sounds very, very, I'd be very curious what the system is in place that it looks like when you actually start to instrument a healthy xls. Because, to me, I'm not quite yet visualizing exactly what that means to create that good system.
Michael Hinshaw 35:47
Yeah, that's back to the it's not simple. Right, and it isn't gonna be your data, right? You need, you need to have free access or access to the right data, to help you make decisions. If you can't measure the experiences you have with your customers, you can't improve them. If you don't understand your customers, you can't design new innovative experiences, product services that are going to meet their needs. And all those things have to fit together, you can't have a measurement in one part of the company, you know, innovation and another part of the company, customer research and other part of the company. And we see this all the time in big organizations, you know, there's silos built up, that are difficult for the organization to traverse, because each silo has its own set of, we call weapons like what's in it for me, in marketing, right, the weapons are pretty clear, we need to get more more people their eyes on brand engagement brand upfront. So they'll buy something sales is like, well, we need to close it, right? That's our job is to is to close this thing services to depending on who you talk to, is to catch all the you know what the rolls downhill from the sales and marketing promises that are unmet when someone becomes a customer. But if you, if you look at it across all of those things with the goal of how do we wind all this stuff up in ways that benefit our customers specifically, then those silos start to knock down. And a big part of the operating system is, is finding ways to knock those silos down. And it takes time, because it's a cultural shift is changing ways of thinking and working is not just saying, Okay, we're going to be customer centric. Now, let's flip the switch and go in this direction. It's moving everyone the organization from point A to point B. And doing so over time.
37:24
Yeah. And if if you aren't doing this with a good system, then you're inherently going to be developing and building in a direction that is not necessarily aligned with your customers. Which gets to another concept that, that Chuck loves to make fun of me for bringing up all the time called product bias, which is basically to say that you're building with your own bias. And you are understanding your own systems and your own your own opinions. But if you can elevate that message, and you can start talking about it in your customers direction, and make sure that you're doing it with a data driven approach, then, in theory that your SOS is working to your advantage to make sure you're in that line.
Michael Hinshaw 38:02
Yeah, I mean, it's a hard, it's a hard shift for you know, because when you're working on a company, you you have goals and companies sets all down. It doesn't matter if you're a early stage startup, or you're, you know, multinational global behemoth systems are in place to make it easier for your new business and easier for you to make money. But oftentimes, those systems aren't designed with a customer's needs in mind. And that mindset shift is thinking about instead of thinking about what do I need to do in my business, and making that mental shift that says, what do our customers need to do when they enter when they interact with our business? What are they trying to accomplish? How can I make it easier for them? That mental shift, essentially, that takes that product by talking about and moves it aside? Because it's not you're not doing it based on your perspective and your opinion, you're doing it based on your customer? I heard a stat as number of years old now, but I think it was that 7070 some odd percent of and this is another HBR article from, you know, a ways back, but 70 some odd percent of decisions that are decisions that are made in companies that affect customers are done without any data about customers. exactly your point. Right. So it's like what I've read that I was like, wait, what, but it's unsurprising. Because like, well, you know, I've been selling this stuff for years. So I know what's going on. We need to do this. So your your gut instead of data, it's your perception versus customers need. It's a it's a big mindset shift. And that's the part that's straightforward. You change people's minds. Oh, that's not simple.
39:40
Well, and that same lack of data can cause people not to act, right because they have this belief, it's not a problem. And they don't have data necessarily supported. If I'm curious if you've had that where you've gone in identified some sort of friction point, but you couldn't build a case for it to get executive level. Buy in. To spend whatever is going to cost to fix it. Yeah.
Michael Hinshaw 40:04
Okay, I got a great story for that. I was talking to the CEO of a large regional bank, I think it was. And it was part of a discovery around a consulting engagement, truly understand what we're leadership's had was that what leadership was thinking? And I asked him, you know, do you have a customer experience vision? Or do you have clarity on what it is you want to offer your customers and what that means your customers? He said, absolutely, completely? I said, Can you describe it to me? He said, Yeah, it's all about making the experience better for our customers. And, and, and making the experiences valuable for them. And some other unclear nonspecific feedback, there's a poster on the wall behind him behind his desk, right? This is the CEOs office corner suite, you know, big shot guy would walls, nicely framed poster that had, you know, this is our customer experience, promise, this is our promise to customers, something like that. And it listed him out. And I was looking at it said, is that it? And he goes, Yeah, we all will buy into that completely. It's like, okay. I have no idea what it is. But I'm, I'm behind it. Yeah, so they're a perfect example. Right? They didn't think there was a problem. But it was pretty easy to come in and say, well, actually, you know, so that's
41:26
a lot like core values in a company sometimes.
Michael Hinshaw 41:31
Now, not mean, they're related, right? Because if your core values aren't around, you're based around your customer. If your customers aren't even mentioned in your core values, which we've also seen, you know, or in your mission or your vision or your strategy, then it's pretty hard to get the organization to pivot towards your customers, because it's not something that your people think is important. Your people got to come with you. Yep.
41:51
The your mention of the department silos too. It reminds me and I, Nick, I can't remember it was a guest recently who made the comment. The problem is, nobody owns delivering a frictionless experience. And yet, everybody owns it, right? Everybody owns a piece of it. But there's no one overall owner of that process. Yeah,
42:13
I remember making the comment. I even remember the short but I'm, I'm drawing a blank on the on the guest as well. But that's, that's definitely something that's really important, because everybody, everybody has their own part of creating the good customer experience. And you need to you need to own it. But what's more important than owning your own part is making sure where you are intertwined with other other organizations, other other teams within the larger organization, I'd say, you need to make sure that those those gears are moving together. Because so often, you'll see that you'll work in a silo. And we could use a very overt example, where you have the homepage team that functionally is a different team than the product team than the checkout team. And if that happens in the transition is not going to feel quite as concise in that that digital journey. And so by by owning that customer experience, even if my parts that product part, I need to make sure that that transition from home to product is very seamless, and organic and makes sense for my customers. Now, that's a very digital focused experience. But you know, Michael, I'm sure you have a good analogy,
Michael Hinshaw 43:15
because the concept applies to the content applies to any type of appearance or any combination of channels. I mean, you know, digital experiences, that's how most of us experience brands initially, anyhow, unless it's working with retail, of course, things things like that very consumer focused brands. But in general, we do research online, we buy online, organizations deliver messages to us online and digitally. Digital is by far the, the biggest channel by by volume I a number of interactions. But to your to your point around ownership, we flip that with say when everyone's in charge, no one's in charge, right? It's this but it's the same exact message is as your guest. And it is in the chief executive ultimately, as has the ultimate responsibility for making sure the organization's focused. But one of the things that we've seen be highly effective, is essentially we call it alignment and accountability. It used to be called governance, but that's kind of the G word right? Now let's talk about governance. Because, you know, everyone likes rules as long as they apply to somebody else. I don't need rules, but the you guys should do. So, but that aligned, the alignment and accountability piece of it is actually where an organization, they set that top level vision, they say these are things we're going to promise our customers are always going to deliver relevant, personalized, frictionless experiences. It's like okay, well, what does that mean? In every part of organization? How do we know an experience is relevant or not? We need to understand our customers and measure it. What is personalized me know personalized doesn't mean an email that says Dear Bob, right and there's a lot more to it than that. But so you define that in every single part of the organization and you make it clear you're articulate, this is what it means the top of the house and Chuck use the example of brand is very much like brand architecture. Right? You start at the top, what is what is our experience at the high level? And then how does that translate to different parts of the organization and how different parts of organization communicate and work with each other to accomplish that, and also needs to go down to every single part of the company, so that it's not just people who are not just customer service or sales or digital, that it's folks in the warehouse or legal or accounting? I mean, have you ever gotten a bill from a company? You look at the bill, you go, what are they charging me for? That? We're contractors? And what am I signing up for? I have no idea what this means. And you talk to, you know, lawyers or, or accountants or, you know, finance folks and organizations, they're like, We don't deal with customers. It's like nobody is sure affect them. So you need to think about that as you're working through these processes.
45:54
So Michael, what is something that people get wrong about driving frictionless digital experiences a widely held belief about the digital experience that you fundamentally disagree with? Oh,
Michael Hinshaw 46:03
that's. So tech doesn't solve everything. In my mind, I have seen time and time again, companies say, we know this is an issue. But we're solving it by contracting with pick your major global digital experience provider, and that's going to fix it. And it's like, well, actually, what that's going to do is make your poor experiences faster. And it's going to pick your customers off more, because you're going to run them through the process that you did ineffectively over here, and the new digital or they bring a digital platform in and expect the vendor partner, to set it all up property, the digital part of the sales guys, their job is to sell the software, right? Once the contract signed, they're out. I don't mean that in a negative way, because they're incentive to sell the software. And typically a software set up with a bunch of standardized systems and standardized information in it. But organizations need to work with their technology partners, to make sure that technology is customized for them, because aligning it to their processes in the best interest of customers is as important. And I'd argue even more work than getting that digital tech in the first place.
47:14
Yeah, that sounds so familiar for me. I mean, we even talked about it, you know, speeding up a site isn't always good for your customers. It's good for your customers when the experience was good in the first place, just like you're saying this. This is something that came up in our Kenya episode, which released a few months back now,
47:33
Michael, what are two to three final recommendations for listeners, they can apply in their own roles to drive more frictionless digital experiences?
Michael Hinshaw 47:41
Yeah, that's the, at the individual level, or the first thing is, think about what your experience what your customers want, or need, as they're interacting with you or with your company in the area that you're responsible for. It's just that mental pivot thinking about what do they want? What can I do that's going to affect them positively, rather than just doing your job? And the second thing is, while you're doing that, think about when I mentioned their needs, is their needs an emotional perspective, it's, it's the empathy question, what's going on with them? Right? What are they trying to do? How do they feel in that moment, whatever that moment is, like, for example, you know, organization has warehouses there's warehouseman, they put stuff in boxes, and they ship the boxes out if their job is if their, their mental model for the job is I gotta put stuff in boxes and ship it out. That's, that's great. You measure that as good throughput. But if your job is to ensure that the thing that you're shipping to your customers delights them, when they open it, and it's the right thing, that's just a mindset shift. And it's something that anybody in any company can do. And and the other thing I suggest is, work across channels like your customers do. Not everyone, every company can do this. But you can actually interact with and connect with folks who are in your organization and might be adjacent to you. Or maybe it's part of that journey where they're the step ahead. Get to know the folks who are affecting your customers experience. And we see this kind of grassroots conversations take place all the time and end up driving big change, where people kind of create ad hoc, you know, your teams, if you will, around serving customers better. It doesn't take much at that grassroots level.
49:23
That's awesome. Great conversation like where can listeners find you?
Michael Hinshaw 49:27
I'm at m corporate.cx. That's M corp.cx. On LinkedIn, Michael Hinshaw, and in our book, experience rules is on Amazon. So there's experience rules, exclamation point, Hinshaw, or majors, that's ma GE ers. And I also just want to say, if any of your listeners have a question or want to connect with me, I love chatting about this stuff. Obviously, it's a passion of mine has been for quite a long time. So just happy to connect. Please reach out. I'd love to be on Awesome.
50:00
All right. Well, thank you, Michael. And thanks for tuning into this episode of the frictionless experience. Remember to follow us on your favorite podcast player app, so you automatically receive a notification when we upload new episodes. And be sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts. And also let us know what topics you'd like us to cover. We're happy to cover anything that might be causing you friction. And of course, you can always find and connect with me and Nick on LinkedIn. Today, Michael shared his perspective on redefining customer experience in the digital age, emphasizing the critical role of touchpoint mapping, and the importance of a digital first strategy and creating seamless customer journeys. To recap, here are three frictionless ideas to take the smooth path to trust and loyalty.
50:45
Number one, focus on touch point mapping and optimization. touch point mapping allows businesses to identify and optimize every customer interaction point. This process helps eliminate friction and uncovers hidden opportunities for enhancing satisfaction and driving revenue. Michael advocates for a digital first approach but not digital only. It's important not to rely solely on technology to drive customer satisfaction, human interaction and a personal touch is still necessary. Number two leverage data for continuous improvement. collecting and analyzing data on customer interactions across all touch points is essential. This data helps identify areas of friction and inform strategies for improving the overall customer experience. For example, by continuously focusing on customer needs, and relentlessly working to improve those experiences. Amazon has set a high standard for what it means to offer a frictionless experience. Number three, adopt an experience operating system or EX O S. Michael introduces the concept of EX o s a framework for aligning organizational efforts and breaking down silos to deliver consistent and seamless customer experiences. Implementing an SOS ensures that every department works towards a unified customer experience goal.
52:05
And on a final thought, businesses must adopt a customer first mindset to drive truly frictionless experiences. This involves deeply understanding customer needs and emotions, and designing experiences for them across all channels and touchpoints to ensure that each interaction is as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
52:28
Thanks for joining us on the frictionless experience. We hope you've gained valuable insights to fuel your digital success. Your frictionless journey is just beginning. For more episodes filled with expert strategies and a sprinkle of digital magic. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, keep optimizing, keep slaying friction, and keep embracing their frictionless revolution.
