Navigating the Customer Experience
Yanique Grant, Customer Experience Strategist, Entrepreneur
Join host Yanique Grant as she takes you on a journey with global entrepreneurs and subject matter experts that can help you to navigate your customer experience. Learn what customers really want and how businesses can understand the psychology of each customer or business that they engage with. We will be looking at technology, leadership, customer service charters and strategies, training and development, complaint management, service recovery and so much more!
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214: Enhancing Customer Experience and Listening Skills: Insights from UserTesting and AI Trends with Lija Hogan
Navigating the Customer Experience
12/19/23 • 20 min
Lija Hogan is a principal on the Experience Research Strategy team at UserTesting. When she's not helping UserTesting customers understand the wide variety of topic areas they can cover using the platform, she teaches user research methods classes at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.
Questions
• Could you share with our listeners just a little bit about your journey?
115: The Winning Ingredients to Dominate Your Customer's Experience for 2021 with Yanique Grant
Navigating the Customer Experience
12/24/20 • 7 min
Welcome to Navigating the Customer Experience Christmas Edition
Thank you so much for supporting our podcast over the past year. We have had so many fantastic guests even in this oh so unconventional year.
Even though the world has been overwhelmed with a pandemic and there have been a bunch of negative things occurring - there have also been lots of wonderful opportunities that many people have benefited from.
According to PWC, 82% of office workers would prefer to continue working remotely, at least part of the time, even after Covid-19 has subsided. And a whopping 73% of executives say working remotely has been a success.
Every business small, medium and large has been forced to transform how they approach business. When I think about all the companies I have been interacting with since the pandemic I believe this new way of wearing a mask, sanitizing our hands and the installations of plexi glass will be something that will never go away.
Many companies have to be putting their employees and customers above profits in order to ensure the safety and protection of all stakeholders. If you have not yet started doubling down on your customer experience - focusing on convenience and how can you can make the life of your customers easier. Now is the time!
eCommerce and touchless customer experiences are what most customers have gotten used to since the pandemic and it is highly likely they will never go back to what it was before. It is also important to note that many trends that have been created since COVID will become standard expectations - such as delivery, curbside pick up, orders being placed by phone.
While it is inevitable that commerce will partially shift back to brick and mortar once things go back to “normal,” there is now a massive new pool of consumers that are comfortable shopping online, and the volume of e-commerce and digital inquiries is expected to continue. Consumers that perhaps would walk into a store to ask a question, or call a customer service number for assistance, now may find it more convenient to click on a chat widget or read an FAQ article while they browse your site online. In fact, according to recent consumer research, live chat continues to grow in popularity with consumers, now ranking as the second most popular channel to get customer service problems solved. Incorporating digital-first support strategies into the overall online customer experience will make a huge difference when it comes to brand equity and loyalty for 2021 and beyond.
Many customers are getting smarter - they are learning about fantastic services from other great companies like the Amazons, Zappos and so many more. Our customers are willing to pay more for a convenient experience
I am sure many of our listeners can remember the comedy “Cheers” and their theme song “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” All customers want to do business with companies that remember them, remember their preferences and take time to understand them.
So as we close the chapter for 2020, let’s think about a few things that we should consider doing consistently for 2021 to ensure that we dominate our customer’s experience
- Exercise Empathy with your employees and your customers - be mindful of the many challenges that your customers have been facing during this pandemic and exercise as much flexibility where possible. According to a Covid-19 research, CX teams reported that customers valued empathetic service above all other customer service attributes during the pandemic. Consumers want to be treated like a valued customer, with real thoughts, emotions, feedback and values
- Have multiple platforms and outlets that your customers can reach you through and ensure these platforms are being monitored consistently. Organizations should look for technology that allows for collaboration between remote team members, providing agents with the freedom to move between channels, and brings all the data about a customer into one place to help deliver a more efficient and personalized experience
- Practice gratitude and appreciation with all your stakeholders - managers, employees, customers and vendors. Always remember that as human beings we still have the ability to choose who we want to do business with. Your customers will remain loyal to companies that make them feel valued and appreciated. Your business will thrive and flourish abundantly in 2021 and beyond if you provide an experience for your customers that makes them feel like they are not just a transaction rather a key partner that you value and appreciate.
Think about all these great insights that I have shared and start 2021 ready to satisfy ...
097: How to Use Video to Accelerate Sales and Build a Fantastic Customer Experience with Ethan Beute
Navigating the Customer Experience
08/04/20 • 51 min
Ethan Beute is Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, coauthor of Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience, and host of The Customer Experience Podcast. Ethan has collected and shared video success stories in a variety of formats for a decade. He's even sent 10,000 videos himself. Prior to joining BombBomb, he spent a dozen years leading marketing teams inside local television stations in Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Colorado Springs. He holds an undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan and UCCS in communication, psychology and marketing.
Questions
- Could you share with us a little bit about your journey of marketing and customer experience and how you landed at BombBomb. And of course, the book that you wrote, what inspired you to write the book and what impacts has it had on your clients and as well as non-clients?
- Could you explain to us by when you say humanize the connection with customers using video through the services that BombBomb provides, what does that look like in reality, if I was to apply that strategy in my business, what would that look like?
- We spoke about video and how video can definitely humanize the experience for our customers. One other thing that I'm really curious about Ethan is in the book, do you speak about how it is that you can build better relationships with your customers?
- Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
- Can you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read recently or maybe something that you read a very long time ago, but it still stays with you to this very day.
- Can you share with us one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about - either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people?
- Where can listeners find you online?
- Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you refocused kind of get you back on track. Do you have one of those?
Highlights
Ethan shared that his story of how he arrived at BombBomb. So, as you read in the bio there, he spent a dozen years in local television and that was kind of by accident. He was at the University of Michigan, he always liked school, he was good at it, he enjoyed learning and growing and he didn't really have any career direction.
And so, he ended up in the communication department there and wound up going back home to his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan for the summer and got an internship in television and then ended up doing that for about a dozen years. But he was bored of it, he was tired of the work, it's highly repetitive. Television news is not a particularly interesting product after a certain amount of time. And so, he was doing all kinds of project work and he hopes some of the listeners can relate to this.
He wasn't quite sure; he had been doing about the same work, obviously with some nuance differences, for a long time. And so he was wondering what else would he be good at? What does he enjoy doing? What skills does he have that would be transferable to someplace else? And in television, you do a lot of writing and producing and editing, so he was very comfortable with video and he had met the two co founders of BombBomb socially when he moved out to Colorado Springs.
And they were building this company from nothing. And so, he did project work with those guys for a couple of years, he wrote some email campaigns, he made a couple of videos for them, he wrote some website copy and he just really liked them, he liked what they were about. He liked the mission that they were on, he liked the purpose behind the company, which is not just to generate revenue and be financially successful. There's a lot of purpose behind the work.
And so, he knew when they could make him a somewhat competitive offer to leave the television station that he would join them. And so he did that almost 9 years ago now. And as for the book, he was just really excited about what they were doing. He thinks he hit his sixth year full time at BombBomb.
And when he started, they maybe had 100 or 200 customers and now they have over 55,000 at the time, he thinks they had over 35,000 or 40,000, he was just really excited about how far they had come as a company and as a team and as a community of people who are being more personal and more human in th...
094: What Does Your Brand Stand For - Understanding Your Why with Amy Austin
Navigating the Customer Experience
07/14/20 • 33 min
Amy Austin, a marketing and branding strategies guide, allows her clients to embrace the power of purpose in all aspects of their business and transform it into the central storyline of their branding and marketing strategies.
Her focus on empathy and building authentic relationships comes from nearly 20 years building successful marketing campaigns and brands in the health care sector.
Questions
- Could you share with us a little bit about your journey? It says here that you have nearly 20 years experience building marketing campaigns and brands in the health care sector. How did you get into that? And tell us a little bit about your journey in the health care sector, working with different brands and building in different campaigns.
- Can you share with us how it is that a company can make branding look like a real business instead of something that they're doing themselves? But more importantly, how can we make sure our values and our brand is reflected in our customer experiences?
- What are three core values that you think across the board that should be translated into the actual experience that the customer or the patient is having?
- Can you share with us what's one online tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business?
- Maybe give us one or two books that you've read either recently or maybe a book that you read a long time ago that has had a really good impact on you.
- Share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about, either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.
- Where can our listeners find you online?
- What is one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, if you need to remind yourself of this quote to kind of help you to refocus or just to get back on that path to achieve what you're trying to achieve?
Highlights
Amy shared that she started right out of college, she got a job at a radio station and it was at a time when that particular station was going through a lot of leadership changes. And so within six months of being there, she was feeling very insecure as a first time professional job. And she was seeing all these people get fired or leave. She was like, “I need to find an exit strategy.” Her exit strategy happened to be a job opening at a large tertiary healthcare system in her home state of South Dakota.
And she started working in their communications department. And it's funny because when she started working there, she had a number of people ask her, “Marketing in a hospital, what are you doing? Promoting people getting sick?” She was like, no, that would not be what we're doing.
What we're doing is trying to make sure that when you do need the service, you're fully aware of where it is you might want to go. So that you don't have that stress in the moment of when you really need it, that you're not having to try and figure out where is the best place for you to go. She always laugh about that because it's like, “No, no, no, no, we don't want people to be sick. We really don't want them to use our services but when they do, we want them to know we're here.”
So, she stayed at that particular hospital for about 5 years and really enjoyed what she was doing. She got to learn a lot about paediatric healthcare, women's healthcare, and helped lead some brand development in both of those areas, as well as the affiliated Wellness Athletic Center that was owned by the health system that she worked for. And then not long after that, she started working at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. And she’s not sure if they've ever been able to prove this point, but they always like to say that they were the largest academic medical center by square footage.
And like she said, she’s not sure that they were ever able to validate that point, but they like to say it on occasion. And she worked there for 12 1⁄2 years. And during that time, she served as the primary liaison with their advertising agency to develop out all of their image campaigns. So, their television, radio, print, sometimes billboard, sometimes the online component fell into that. But that usually was more specific to the actual services as opposed to that bigger umbrella image message that they wanted to get out there.
So, during that time, she worked on 8 or 9 different large campaigns to help build awareness. She also led the effort to change the name of their children's hospital to be more closely aligned with the university name as opposed to what it had been. And really just really got to know a lot about the different aspects of healthcare, how we recruit staff into the facility, because nursing is a high demand job and there's not as many people going into nursing.
And ...
093: Using Automation as a Disruptor to Enhance Customer Experience with Ian Reynolds
Navigating the Customer Experience
07/07/20 • 21 min
Ian Reynolds is a Partner and Chief Solutions Architect at Zibtek, a software development firm focused on helping businesses of all sizes in the United States solve their core problems with software. They empower entrepreneurs, growth companies, enterprises and visionary firms to achieve greater profitability and efficiency, valuation and ultimate success by building the right tools through custom software.
Ian has spent the better part of his career in consulting and has served in diverse industries as Finance, Oil and Gas, Retail Power, Field Services, Midstream Energy, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Transactional Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Restructuring, e-commerce, Retail and software development.
Questions
- Could you share with us a little bit about your journey, which, by the looks of your bio, has been quite an extreme journey? You pretty much have dipped into all industries from private to public sector. So share with us a bit about your journey and how it is that you got to where you are today, being the Chief Solutions Architect and Partner at Zibtek.
- Can you tell us a little bit about what Zibtek offers? What problems is Zibtek solving for their customers?
- What are some things that we could do to make the channels easier for the customers, less effort for them to exert, less friction?
- Could you share with us maybe what you think the future of automation looks like for a business?
- Can you share with us how you think technology has disrupted the business industry and how it will continue to do so?
- Can you share with us how do you stay motivated everyday?
- Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
- Can you share with us one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, either a book that you've read recently or a book that maybe you read a very long time ago, but it still has had a very big impact on you?
- Can share with us what is one thing that's going on in your life that you're really excited about, either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
- Where can they find you online?
- Could you share with us a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you tend to revert to this quote or saying, because it helps to refocus you and just help you to be channeled back on what it is that you're working on?
Highlights
Ian shared that he has had the opportunity to see a lot of industries, and he thinks part of that started very early on. He was at a number of startups right out of college; he has launched 8 different products to market, saw the gambit and then did the MBA route, then jumped into consulting. So, right after the MBA, immediately sort of wanted to go into something that would let him see a lot of industries, a lot of verticals.
And in consulting, he had the opportunity to do that both on the I.T. side and on the finance side. So, really, just one option, he sort of expand his horizons, these sort of things. Ultimately wanted to get back to doing his own thing and found a business Zibtek and acquired 50% of it and that's 3 years now.
Ian shared that they started as a product company 15 years ago and ultimately grew to the point where they wanted to sell the business. And then after 5 years of growing that product, sold it and then for the last 10 years, they have been providing services to the marketplace for folks who maybe don't have an engineering team in-house or don't have the engineering competency in-house, but need expertise to build out software or build out a solution that's either custom fit for their business or adapt the same existing technology for their business. That's primarily what they do.
Me: Could you give me an example of something that you've done to solve your customers’ challenges? Software that maybe you've created that’s solving that issue?
Ian shared that they have a client that is in the healthcare space and they are running around doing prospective studies for people who have had sort of strong medical procedures and they needed a way to capture data that wasn't menial. So, before they're using clipboards and paper and using telephones and dialing out and doing all that stuff manually with a large team of people to get that perspective data. Zibtek built a solution that automates all of the follow ups, keeps it the data hipper compliant.
And then also helps them basically have the patient groups be blocked in effectively, statistically randomized ways. And it did a couple of things. And this is how it ties back to the sort of the customer experience. By automating sort of the manual process and then also removing that human element. It actually made it...
071: Practical Tactics to Implement a Winning Strategy Driven by Customer Lifetime Value with Peter Fader and Sarah E. Toms
Navigating the Customer Experience
03/12/19 • 42 min
Sarah E. Toms is an Executive Director and co-founder of Wharton Interactive where she has built award-winning EdTech teams that develop highly engaging games and simulations, which are played by tens of thousands of students globally. Her drive to modernize, transform, and democratize education led her to co-invent simpl.world, an open-source simulation framework. As an entrepreneur for more than a decade and a demonstrated thought leader in the technology field, Toms has founded companies that build global CRM, product development, productivity management, and financial systems. She is dedicated to supporting women and girls in technology through her work with the Women in Tech Summit and techgirlz.org. Follow her on Twitter at @SarahEToms.
Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2015, Fader co-founded Zodiac, a predictive analytics firm that was acquired by Nike in 2018. More recently, he co-founded Theta Equity Partners, which focuses on customer-based corporate valuation. His expertise centers on topics such as customer relationship management, lifetime value of the customer, and strategies that arise from these data-driven tactics. Fader is also the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and he has been interviewed in The Wall Street Journal, APM’s “Marketplace,” NPR’s “Planet Money,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Forbes, and more. Follow him on Twitter at @FaderP.
Questions
- Could you tell us some of the things that really propelled you to take it a step further especially focusing on the difference between customer centricity and customer lifetime value and how an organization can really identify what that is for them.
- In the book you also focused on the difference between customer centricity versus product centricity. Could you share with us a little bit about that?And do you find that organizations are shifting more towards customer centricity and less in the product realm?
- Could you share with our listeners what are some necessary elements that help to support customer centricity in an organization?
- How is it that you integrate the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and align the customer service strategy with a proper CRM solution?
- Could you share with us a little bit about the loyalty programs in terms of does every organization need a loyalty program in order to have an effective or have a true reflection of what their customer lifetime value is to understand the whole metric process?
- Based on your experience, your research, your exposure, different interactions that you've had with different people. How do you view customer experience today and what do you think it will look like 5 to 10 years from now?
- Could you share with us maybe one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your day to day operations?
- Are there any books that have had really great impacts on you that you'd like to share with our listeners that you think will help them in their own journey?
- Could you share with us, maybe one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people?
- Where can our listeners find you online?
- What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus and to get back on track?
Highlights
- Peter shared that they build a bridge from the first book to the new one and to the simulation that was mentioned that Sarah has developed. So, the first book was about this radical idea that a company can potentially make more money and have more sustainable, defendable success by focusing more on the differences among its customers by celebrating heterogeneity, that if we can figure out who the right customers are and kind of double down on them, enhance their value, find more like them, that that could do better than just obsessing over version 2.0 of the product. But the thing about the first book, it was good, and he hopes that if people haven't read it, they will but it was more definitional, motivational, aspirational, here's this concept, here's what it can do for you, here's the problems with a lot of companies out there that are failing to go in this direction. So, it was trying to get people to kind of wake up, but it didn’t really give them specific guidance how to put one foot in front of another and that's one of the things that he and Sarah have tried to do with their simulations and this new book basically takes a lot of those ideas and kind of crystallizes them, goes beyond just the simulation, makes them very real, talk about real compan...
069: Knowing Your Passion, Plan and Purpose: Adding Value to Other People's Journey with Jon Ferrara
Navigating the Customer Experience
02/12/19 • 49 min
Jon Ferrara is a successful serial entrepreneur, he's top 10 Social Service Salesperson according to Forbes and renown CRM pioneer with a knock for building authentic relationships with customers. Given his shared passion for creating genuine connections and making a positive impact on the lives of others, I believe he would be a very interesting guest for this podcast. And so, he's going to dive in and share with us some of the journeys that he's taken. He's going to share with us some of his core values building products that help others achieve their passion, plan, and purpose and we're going to identify what are those success indicators.
Jon shared that he thinks our purpose on this planet is to help others grow and we do that by giving a little of value to one another. And through this conversation he hopes that we're able to add value to your audience and the people who listen.
Questions
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey
- Could you share with us three things that you think help to really build a strong relationship?
- With things being so technologies, do you still believe that the human experience is still necessary?
- How do you stay motivated everyday?
- What is one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business?
- What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you in that journey of growth for yourself?
- What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
- Where can our listeners find you online?
- What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of helps you refocus and push forward?
Highlights
- Jon stated that these are all great questions and it really starts with him in some respect his childhood. He grew up with his first computer when he was 16 years old in 1976 and through his journey of understanding technology and his passion for people and relationships, he found himself struggling in his first job in sales, trying to build connections and conversations that drive results and there was no contact management, there was no outlook, there was no CRM, there was no salesforce. In fact, there was no tool that integrated email contact and calendar with sales and more coordination. So, at 29 years old in 1989 he quit his job and he started a company called GoldMine and GoldMine was the first programme that integrated email connected calendar and team relationship platform, they were outlook and salesforce before either existed. He started the company on USD $5,000.00 in his apartment in Los Angeles and grew to about USD $100 Million Dollars in revenue. They're at about 10 million customers worldwide and he sold that when he was 40 years old and retired for 10 years and raised three babies and in that journey, in that experience of entrepreneurship but more importantly as a present father and husband, he came to really understand and value the gift he got of being able to be a present father and husband and how it helped him grow because he thinks if you're present with the people around you, they will reflect your weak points back at you and if you're willing to work on those in life you can grow as a human being. And he thinks that's what we're on this planet to do, is to grow our souls by helping other people grow theirs and the process of social media evolving in 2006, 2007, 2008, he started to use it and he saw it was going to change the way we work, buy and sell and he started looking for a relationship manager that integrated social and he couldn't find it. And then he started looking at CRM systems and he saw they really weren't about social media, they were really about or even relationships, they were really about reporting and commanding control and so he set out to build a new platform, a relationship manager that incorporated contact management and CRM and social sales and marketing and it would be different in the way it would be different is that you don't work for it, it works for you by building itself in the data you already have in your business and everybody has contacts and email and calendar as well as contacts and all kinds of business apps like customer service accounting, social media, sales and marketing. And it would derive the contacts by unifying them all together from all the disparate places from the separate departments so that the company would have a unified relationship manager so that no matter who picks up the phone they know who they're talking to, what's happened, who's done it, what's going to happen, who's going to do it, who is this person, what is your business about, so they could provide the optimal experience and mos...
068: Promises and the Impact It Has on Customer Experience
Navigating the Customer Experience
02/05/19 • 14 min
Highlights
In this episode Yanique Grant would like to take a little bit of time and just share with you some key important nuggets that she has gained over the years in the category of commitments. So, we're at the beginning of a new year we're still in the first quarter and in customer experience and customer service when we make promises, or we make commitments to our internal customers or external customers, a lot of time it's because of broken promises, commitments that have not been fulfilled why people tend to have negative feelings towards each other and this may cause them anger, frustration, upset, it may cause a myriad of negative emotions.
So firstly, a commitment or promise is not easy in Jamaican terms, when I do customer service training and people will say, “A promises is a comfort to a fool.”No, that's not any definition of what a promise according to any formalized dictionary globally. A promise or a commitment is your verbal word or written word where you say that you are going to actually do something or carry out a particular task. So, for example, you could tell a customer, “I'm going to call you back.”even though you didn't say, “I promise I'll call you back,” their expectation is you will call them back or you tell a co-worker, “Sure, no problem, I'll take care of it,”it could be to complete a bill for a customer, it could be to give a message regarding a customer's order or delivery, that message is going to impact the customer's delivery or order being on time and you didn't deliver that message. Again, it's your word that you've put into it and so people believe that you're going to complete it. Now, if you don't follow through on a promise there are a lot of negative things that come out of it, people don't trust you, you're deemed as unreliable, you're not dependable and because of that, then less of your co-workers will have faith in the fact that when you say something you're actually going to do it. Now some people in organizations tell you that they are going to do something just because they want to get rid of you or because they really didn't hear what you said, they were not paying attention to when you were asking the question or requesting a particular service or product and so they went ahead and made confirmation with you verbally or in writing that yes they will go ahead and have this done but they didn't really think about whether or not that commitment was realistic. So, one of the things I would like to encourage people in organizations who work as well as business owners, managers, supervisors, everyone from top to bottom, when you make a promise, or a commitment ensure that your promise or your commitment is realistic because if it's not realistic then you are setting yourself up for failure. Let us say with your current responsibilities and your current workload, the person has asked you to do something and it is just humanly impossible for you to complete it, if you have all those other competing activities to do. However, the person doesn't know you have those other competing activities so the responsibility would be on you to ensure that whatever information you are giving to them is realistic. Sometimes it's better we say no and sometimes it's hard to say no but at least when you say no, 1) you're being honest, 2) you’re giving the person that you are making a commitment to or you're telling that you're not able to commit to that you are not able to do it so it willgive them an opportunity to seek someone else who actually can do it because let's say you commit to them that you're going to have the report delivered to them by Monday for example, and they commit to someone else for a meeting they're having on Wednesday that, “Well, I'll have the report by Monday so I'd be able to dial down on those figures by Tuesday and by Wednesday in our meeting I'll have feedback for you.”However, you don't have the report ready for them on Monday, you got caught up over the weekend and you weren't able to complete it and you won't be able to complete it until Thursday but the person who you made a commitment to, their meeting is Wednesday and so your commitment that you made to that individual impacts other people and other decisions and other meetings and other things that have to be happening. So, we have to think carefully about the commitments that we're making, we have to be realistic in managing the expectations of those with whom we make these commitments.
I know a promise seems like a simple thing but when you look at organizations and hear about customer service challenges internally and externally and you do the investigations to find out why it is that this person feels this way or why it is that that person is so anger and is so frustrated, when you really get to the root of it many ...
067: Easing Your Energy Pain Through Technology with Emily Rasowsky
Navigating the Customer Experience
01/29/19 • 43 min
Emily Rasowsky Show Notes
Emily Rasowsky is Customer Experience Lead for Spark Fund and Spark Fund is an organization that helps companies to upgrade energy technology. So, because that's not really an area of expertise for Yanique, she will allow Emily to explain in the very simplest of terms as we welcome her, what it is that her company really does do and how does this really impact a customer's experience regardless of your business type or industry.
Emily shared that Spark Fund and what that actually means, in layman's terms, our job is to make it as easy as humanly possible for energy managers and financial leaders to update their energy technology. So, things like lights, a jack, chillers, boilers, refrigeration, anything that goes into your space and consumes energy. We work with a lot of large organizations that don't have the same sorts of incentives or access to resources to upgrade their technology to be energy efficient. And it's crazy because buildings emit more OCO2 than cars. So, this is a huge problem. And our job, we have an integrated a team of engineers, project managers, and financiers, people who provide everything you would need to do a project. So, we take it off your hands. In essence it really is meant to be a company that makes the experience of owning and operating energy technology no longer an issue because we do this whole process on a subscription. So, we own the technology, people get out of the business of ownership which causes so much heartache and pain and bad experiences. So, we own it and they no longer have to worry about taking care of it.
Questions
- Are you the only type of company that offers this service?
- Could you share with us a little bit of some of the things that your customers have shared in terms of benefits that they've gotten in utilizing the way how your program is set up and structured, both from a financial point of view as well as an emotional point of view, do they feel less stressed, has it improved their productivity?
- In terms of customer experience innovations and new technologies, is there anything on the brink that Spark Fund is looking to tap into for 2019 or even in the next two to three years that you think will help to revolutionize what you're doing even more?
- As a technology company and you are in charge of customer experience do you find that you may hire people who are competent leaders in the technical areas that they've been hired to perform in but for some reason they lack that human side. They're so focused on the technicality of a job, they lack the interpersonal side, and do you find that hinders from that whole framework that you're trying to achieve?
- Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day?
- What's the one online resource tool, website or app that you couldn't absolutely live without in your personal life or your business?
- Could you share with us what are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you?
- What is the one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – either something that you’re working on to develop yourself or people?
- Where can our listeners find you online?
- What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to this quote to kind of help you to push through on those days that are challenging or seems a bit overbearing?
Highlights
- When asked if they are the only type of company that offers this service, Emily stated that right now in the market they're the only one that's integrated in all of the unique ways that they are. So, there are certain types of offerings out there that provide, let's say financing so that you don't have to worry about finding money for it. There are companies out there that provide general contracting so someone to manage the installation of a new piece of technology. But they are the first that does all of these things together. And they are definitely the first that does it on a subscription contract. So, there's also things out there that are similar they look kind of similar, but nothing is quite the setup in the same financial structure that we are.
Yanique agreed and stated that because when you do it on a subscription basis it makes it more affordable for the organizations because they pay on a month to month basis.
Emily agreed. So, the thing that we're really taking away a lot of financial pain with is when you have a piece of aging technology you never quite know. Even think about even yourself in your home when HVAC unit starts to go you don't know how much that's going to cost or what's going to be wrong ...
209: Integrating Hospitality Principles into Healthcare with Peter C. Yesawich
Navigating the Customer Experience
11/15/23 • 23 min
Peter C. Yesawich is Chairman of Hospitable Healthcare Partners, LLC - a marketing consultancy serving hospitality and the healthcare industry clients - and Vice Chairman Emeritus of MMGY Global, one of the country's leading marketing communications companies renowned for its strategic thinking, breakthrough creativity, and innovation in marketing practice.
Yesawich has contributed to the development of marketing programs for some of the industry's most popular brands, destinations and organizations including: Fairmont Hotel & Resorts, Hilton International, Disney Parks & Resorts, Universal Studios, Atlantis, The Broadmoor, Sandals Resorts, Wynn Las Vegas, Marriott Vacation Club International, the Mexico Tourism Board, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, to name a few.
He is co-author of Marketing Leadership in Hospitality and Tourism, and the new book, Hospitable Healthcare: Just What the Patient Ordered!
Questions
• Could you share a little bit about your journey?
• Have you seen any common themes as it relates to customer service delivery on the part of the service provider that you think is universal to both areas?
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FAQ
How many episodes does Navigating the Customer Experience have?
Navigating the Customer Experience currently has 213 episodes available.
What topics does Navigating the Customer Experience cover?
The podcast is about Entrepreneurship, Podcasts, Business and Careers.
What is the most popular episode on Navigating the Customer Experience?
The episode title '134: Learning How to Elevate Your Quality of Life Using Plant Medicine with Jonathan de Potter' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Navigating the Customer Experience?
The average episode length on Navigating the Customer Experience is 28 minutes.
How often are episodes of Navigating the Customer Experience released?
Episodes of Navigating the Customer Experience are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Navigating the Customer Experience?
The first episode of Navigating the Customer Experience was released on Jan 10, 2017.
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