The Modern Customer Podcast

A company that rose out of tragedy is now a leader in experiential retail. Painting with a Twist was started 10 years ago after Hurricane Katrina to give people a safe haven and fun escape during a difficult time. Customers flocked to the chance to enjoy an evening painting and drinking with friends to escape from their cares and worries, and one of the first experiential retail businesses was born. Today, Painting with a Twist has more than 300 locations across the country and has created the sip and paint industry. The company encourages groups and friends to come together to paint a picture and enjoy drinks and snacks. Everything about the night, from the painting itself to the easy-going attitude of the artist instructors, encourages guests to let loose and have a great time. Aside from simply teaching guests to paint, the artists tell jokes and play games with the class. The goal isn’t to teach people to become world-class painters but rather to inspire them to have fun with the people around them and try something new. One of the main target demographics are groups of women looking for a unique way to spend time together without going to a bar or restaurant. Painting with a Twist quickly learned that everyone can enjoy a carefree escape, even if they aren’t going through a tragedy. CMO Katherine LeBlanc says that focusing on why the company exists and delivering on a great, unique experience keeps people coming back because they feel relaxed and free to enjoy a great night with friends. The company competes against other entertainment brands, including movie theaters, restaurants and even escape rooms, but has built loyal customers by offering personal connections and a truly unique experience. Painting with a Twist continues to expand its carefree experience with new offerings, including pop culture paintings of favorite movies and nostalgic TV shows. It also hosts birthday parties, family days for younger children and trivia programs. Franchises are encouraged to build partnerships with local businesses to make each store unique and reflect the local area. LeBlanc says the company is also developing partnerships to create new experiences, such as adding music with local bands or other pop culture painting options. All experiential retail brands can learn the power of creating an immersive experience from Painting with a Twist. No matter if the group is a ladies’ book club, kids’ birthday party or corporate retreat, Painting with a Twist aims to deliver a unique and consistent experience and create an environment where people know they can relax and enjoy a carefree escape with their loved ones. Delivering on that promise creates an experiential retail brand with loyal customers.

Some companies let customer experience come together on its own, while others take a more intentional approach. At Slack, the thoughtful, intentional approach has made it leader in customer experience as it constantly evaluates and updates its experience to meet customer needs. The thoughtful approach starts internally. Ali Rayl, VP Customer Experience, has been with the company from the beginning. As Slack experienced rapid growth, Ali and other leaders realized it was too big for one person to know everything. Slack customer service representatives now specialize in certain areas of the program and become specialized experts. Employees benefit from taking ownership over certain areas, and customers can be served more quickly by automatically sending their question to a specialist in that area instead of moving aimlessly through the service department. Rayl encourages her team to start conversations with customers and facilitate seamless transactions. Because Slack is a workplace communication tool, customers contacting the brand offer the company a unique opportunity to showcase what the product can do and to highlight how easy and smooth it can be talk to someone at work. The thoughtful approach is driven by data and analytics. Customer service agents track the type of questions and calls they get to understand who is asking for help and what questions they have. From there, the service department works closely with the product and engineering teams to look for ways to change the product. Rayl sees two ways to look at customer problems: to either manage them through the support team or to solve them through engineering. The key to a quality experience is to find balance. Some common issues can be changed through engineering, while it’s easier to simply manage other issues. No matter how their issue is solved, Slack wants all customers to feel valued and heard. A thoughtful customer experience comes from more than just solving problems. At Slack, it involves listening to customer feedback and looping it back to make the product better. Involving the entire company and building strong relationships with customers turns customer experience into an issue that impacts everyone and that everyone can contribute to. A thoughtful approach to customer experience changes with customer needs but always puts making the customer’s life easier at the center of everything.  

Is your company operating in chaos or clarity? The difference often comes down to creating a knowledge-rich culture. Modern customers and employees want information on their own terms. In order to best educate employees and provide answers and tools to customers, many customer-focused brands create knowledge-rich cultures. These cultures pride themselves on offering learning and growth opportunities for employees while empowering them to solve customer issues. However, Dave Hare, principal consultant at ServiceXRG, says too many companies have knowledge-rich cultures in silos, which creates chaos and lost opportunities. When knowledge is kept within departments and not shared with the rest of the company, it creates more escalations of customer issues. A customer could call the contact center with an issue that could be easily fixed by someone in the engineering department, but without that information being shared across the entire organization, the customer’s call is escalated and takes longer to answer. Hare says that companies that build cultures of knowledge sharing solve more calls on the first contact and do it faster with fewer escalations. When silos are broken down and information is shared across the entire company, employees and customers benefit. Employees have the tools to help customers right away or know where to send customers to answer more technical questions quickly. That knowledge creates job satisfaction for employees and instills confidence in customers that the company knows what it is talking about. For customers, a knowledge-sharing culture creates less frustration as issues can be taken care of accurately and much more quickly. Hare says one of the biggest aspects of customer experience is making the customer successful without regression or pain. That can only be done by instilling confidence in the customer that the employee is their advocate into the company. Employees, no matter if they are in the contact center, finance, engineering or anywhere else in the company, need to use every resource to resolve customer issues. That comes from building a strong culture of sharing knowledge. Customer experience is the most powerful tool companies have. When customers sense chaos at a company, they will quickly take their business elsewhere. To turn that chaos into clarity, brands of all sizes need to build a knowledge-rich culture that breaks down silos and shares information across borders with employees and customers. Sharing knowledge and instilling confidence benefits everyone in the organization. This episode of The Modern Customer Podcast is sponsored by Squelch.

In a world where more customers want to stay at home and have products and services delivered to them, a company in the pet industry is mixing things up with experiential retail. Zoom Room Dog Training is an indoor training gym for dogs that is turning the traditional training model on its head. Instead of focusing solely on each dog’s experience like many pet companies do, Zoom Room focuses on the experience of each human. The company’s motto is “We don’t train dogs, we train the people who love them.” Instead of customers dropping off their dogs for a one-time training session to fix a specific issue, Zoom Room builds relationships between dogs and dog owners to encourage socialization and improve skills and agility. At Zoom Room, clients are always with their dogs and have the responsibility to look after them. The company creates a secure setting and screens dogs for sociability before allowing them to join the group setting so that everyone feels confident about their dog’s surroundings and safety. Millennials are the largest pet spenders of any other group and a demographic that loves experiences. CEO Mark Van Wye and his team designed the company and its programs to pay attention to every aspect of the human experience to change the dog training model. The results are incredibly impressive, and Van Wye reports that many dogs and their owners make Zoom Room training sessions a part of their weekly routines. Zoom Room has a very impressive Net Promoter Score of 90 and retention rates in the high 80s. In experiential retail of any kind, data and personalization are key. Zoom Room is data driven to provide the best experience to each person. Each client is tracked and their preferences and history are recorded so they only receive specific communications that apply to their needs. Zoom Room also appeals to millennials by taking photos and videos of dogs during their training sessions, which it then shares with the owners on a platform that integrates into social media. Dog owners share the impressive pictures to showcase their dogs, and it also adds to the Zoom Room brand and experience. By embracing experiential retail and creating an environment where dogs and owners can bond with each other and others like them, Zoom Room is turning the dog training space upside down. The company shows that great experiences can come in all industries and that providing a data-driven, personalized experience resonates with customers.    

For years, Australia has had with a well-established culture of customer experience. In general, companies seem to connect with customers better and offer more personalized solutions than they do in other parts of the world, including the U.S. However, many Australians have hit experience roadblocks with big companies lately, especially when it comes to the contact center. Having trouble waiting on hold or not being able to talk to a human isn’t new, but it can have a serious impact on the overall experience. In the 1980s, many companies started using IVR, or interactive voice recognition systems, to corral people through their phone systems. These are the phone trees that have customers push buttons for certain types of calls, but that really just end up pushing customers’ buttons with a frustrating experience. Over the years, many companies have continued with the IVR mindset by becoming abusive to customers and mismanaging relationships. Instead of looking for innovative solutions, they hold on to decades-old technology that is frustrating and ineffective. Many companies, in Australia and all over the world, have the idea that customers will keep coming back no matter how they are treated. That’s not the case. As more companies put humans back in customer experience, they separate themselves from the companies that cut costs and rely on impersonal technology. Research has shown that customers want more human interactions and less technology in their brand interactions. Companies that don’t offer personalized interactions with real humans are losing customers to brands that offer quality service and connections. Customer experience in Australia will continue to evolve in coming years. As companies turn back to humans in our data-centered world, there will be a greater focus on personalized experiences and real relationships. Data and customization will help brands create one-to-one experiences instead of interactions that appeal to the masses. More companies will also turn to self-service tools to give customers power to solve their own problems and answer their own questions without contacting a bot or contact center. Although customer experience in Australia may have hit some bumps, many companies still focus on what matters most: customers. By turning back to humans and offering convenient and personal interactions, those companies will build great experiences and lead the way to the future.  

It may seem glamourous to fly around the world, deliver speeches to adoring fans, and bring in a big paycheck. In reality, the life of a professional speaker is much less glamorous and much more demanding. But even with the long flights and rejection, it can still be incredibly rewarding. My husband Jacob Morgan worked his last full-time job more than a decade ago. When the boss who had promised him great career opportunities out of college had Jacob running to get him coffee, Jacob left and didn’t look back. He didn’t set out to become a speaker, but instead focused on consulting and working for himself. As he built a personal brand focusing on the future of work, he started getting invited to conferences and his speaking career took off. Today, Jacob is a best-selling author who travels the world to speak at conferences and to top executives. But he says for every one speaking gig, there are 10 that didn’t work out. Jacob responds to speaking requests and negotiates his own contracts, which requires a huge amount of work and time for every speech. From his years of speaking experience, Jacob offers three pieces of advice to aspiring professional speakers:     Build credibility. Before you get asked to speak anywhere, you have to build your personal brand. Jacob has a blog, podcast, books, online courses and much more to establish himself as a thought leader. No one will want to hire you to speak if they don’t know who you are and what your message is.     Deliver an engaging speech. Jacob thinks of speaking as a performance. Aside from delivering useful content, he also wants to connect with the audience, make them laugh and surprise them. There’s a huge difference between someone who just reads their speech and someone who is genuinely interested in the topic and engages the audience.     Know your worth. One of the biggest mistakes speakers make is not charging what they’re worth and accepting everything that comes their way. When Jacob was starting he took nearly every speaking request, but now he charges what he’s worth and isn’t afraid to walk away from a deal if a group isn’t willing to pay his rate. Know the value you bring and don’t compromise. Starting a professional speaking career can be full of long flights in coach, uncomfortable hotel beds and paltry paychecks. But building your brand, delivery and experience can create a strong speaking career that opens doors across the globe.  

Buying a car can be stressful and time-consuming. It’s not a task that most consumers look forward to. But Carvana is changing the experience by giving power back to customers and letting them find their perfect car from the comfort of their own home without having to haggle with salespeople. Co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Ryan Keeton points out that the car-buying process hasn’t changed in more than 70 years. Carvana set out to create “Amazon for cars” to provide an amazing experience for customers to find their perfect used car. Using a wide array of technology, customers can peruse Carvana’s 15,000 cars (a much larger inventory than the typical dealership) and get a complete and accurate view of the inside and outside of each car. Once they choose a car, it is either delivered to their home as soon as the next day or available to pick up at a car vending machine around the country. In perhaps the biggest innovation over the traditional car buying experience, customers have a seven-day window to return the car with no questions asked. Everything about Carvana is designed around the customer experience. Keeton and the other founders wanted to save people money and use technology to reduce friction. By removing many of the extra people and layers of the dealership buying experience, customers have more control and transparency into the process. Instead of salespeople, Carvana has customer advocates who answer questions about the process and specific cars. Customer advocates don’t fight the customer to haggle for a deal, but are on the same team and work with customers to find the perfect car. In order to create an amazing experience, Carvana relies heavily on technology and data. The company invested heavily in photo and video technology, as well as logistics to be able to deliver cars to people around the country as soon as the next day. Technology also auto-populates many of the contracts, which turns a multi-hour car-buying experience into a 10-minute transaction. Data helps Carvana measure its progress and target its approach to potential customers. Disrupting such a large industry hasn’t come without its ups and downs. Keeton says many customers, especially those in new markets, think Carvana is too good to be true. One customer even had 20 co-workers waiting with him when his car was delivered. They had a bet on if Carvana was real and if the car would even show up. To combat skepticism, Carvana works to surprise and delight customers with amazing experiences. Continually delivering on its promises helps Carvana stay close to its brand and customers as it continues to spread its message. Carvana shows that even well-established industries can be disrupted with a renewed focus on customers.

The telecom world faces constant change and evolution. A decade ago, smart phones didn’t exist, and now they’re the core of every company. Through the change, one company has seen incredible growth of 20-30% year over year to become a $1 billion-dollar company. Its secret? Focusing on customer service. John Marick started Consumer Cellular with a goal of bringing cell phones to people all over the world. As the industry changed and his company grew, it honed in on an often-overlooked market: seniors. The company’s simple approach to creating happy employees and exceptional customer service has led it to earning the top spot in customer service for non-contract providers six times in a row by J.D. Power. Seniors need phones for communication and safety just like everyone else, but providing an exceptional customer experience to seniors is different than serving any other demographic. Instead of measuring how fast contact center agents can resolve customer issues, Consumer Cellular encourages its employees to take their time with each customer. Employees want each customer to get the most value from their cell phone, so they are willing to spend time helping them learn to use their phone and work through any issues as they transition to a cell phone. Instead of trying to beat a time resolution goal, agents instead are focused on helping customers feel comfortable with their phones and service. That extra effort makes a huge difference as customers feel valued instead of just being pushed through the line. Personalization and data play a huge role in customer service. Customers should be engaged and feel happy they contacted the company, even if it was for an issue with their cell phone. Consumer Cellular tracks formal and informal metrics, including surveys, attrition levels and outside recognition, to measure its progress. Its flat internal structure also means that executives are involved in day-to-day operations and customer service. Marick says Consumer Cellular aims to be there when customers need it. The company is working towards being more proactive and using customer data and feedback to find new ways to help and provide an amazing experience. Even as the industry continues to change, Consumer Cellular can hold strong to the customer focus that is ingrained in its culture. By staying engaged with its partners and the industry, Consumer Cellular feels confident that it can continue to evolve and serve future customers. In the last year, the company has expanded into other services related to caregiving to better serve its target market. By building strong relationships with seniors and their families and taking the time to provide personalized service, Consumer Cellular can continue to grow and build its legacy of customer service.

In a company as large as AT&T, most customers will only ever interact with field operations technicians. That means that creating a strong experience in the field is vital for both employees and customers. Jennifer Robertson, AT&T’s President of Field Operations, mixes technology with human decisions to create an efficient experience with a strong human touch. AT&T has thousands of technicians in the field every day. Robertson and her team recently introduced the CODE initiative to help field employees make good judgements about customer care. CODE is an acronym for Care about the customer, Own the experience, Deliver, Exceed expectations. Instead of detailing how to handle every situation, AT&T provides its employees with the framework to make their own decisions to best serve the customer. The four driving principles allow technicians to do what they think is best for each customer. CODE has become a rallying cry for employees, who appreciate being empowered to meet each customer’s unique needs. Empowering employees and building human interactions is powerful, but the field experience still needs to be efficient. AT&T’s daily field work is a feat of logistics. Customers want to know when technicians will arrive, and technicians need to maximize the number of customers they see every day while limiting drive time and gas consumption. Last year, AT&T launched its Dispatch Learning Engine, an AI-powered platform that considers real-time information like traffic, fuel, technician skills and customer history to identify the best routes and schedules for each technician each day. With all of the factors, Robertson says there are 2.3 trillion options for every 300 jobs to assign—no human could match the machine’s ability to create the best routes for employees, customers, the company and the environment. The Dispatch Learning Engine has earned rave reviews from technicians and dispatchers, and customers have shared positive experiences of knowing who will service their issue and when they will arrive. AT&T has also reduced its miles traveled by more than 20% and saved 51 million pounds of CO2 emissions by creating more efficient routes. Field operations is a crucial part of customer experience. It’s where the rubber meets the road. By properly training employees and giving them freedom to use their best judgment, AT&T has built a global team of empowered technicians. Combined with innovative uses for AI, the company streamlines its operations to be as efficient and sustainable as possible.

In 2020, ecommerce logistics company Pitney Bowes will celebrate its 100th anniversary. It’s safe to say the company has seen tremendous change in its 100 years as it evolved from a postage company to a global technology leader. But instead of just reflecting on the past, the company is looking towards the future of ecommerce and preparing for what comes next with a digital transformation. Over the past five years, Pitney Bowes has undergone a massive digital transformation, both internally in how it operates and externally in its products and how it interacts with customers. The company broke down silos and developed company-wide analytics. Client data is now stored in a central system that all employees can access to make faster and more strategic decisions that meet customers’ needs. Pitney Bowes also created a common cloud, as well as targeted clouds for each department, that send tailored, automated messages to clients at just the right times. According to CMO Bill Borrelle, the digital transformation set the foundation for a client experience transformation. By streamlining internal systems and uniting the company with machine learning and data, employees are empowered to better serve customers and deliver a consistent, forward-thinking experience. Borrelle believes transformation is all about culture. Pitney Bowes’ culture created the transformation because employees understand that the client is at the center of everything. That mindset led to a need for new technology and common tools to best serve customers. The digital transformation allows Pitney Bowes to continue to evolve as client needs and technology change. Borrelle encourages employees throughout the company to practice data hygiene, or keeping data clean and accurate. The better the data, the better the client experience. Data also plays a large role in the future of ecommerce. Pitney Bowes is at the forefront of the changing ecommerce landscape and releases a consumer survey and thought leadership piece every year to measure the changes. Borrelle says changing customer demands will greatly impact ecommerce as the industry continues to grow. The biggest purchaser of online goods is the millennial male, in large part because of subscription boxes. Consumers, especially younger shoppers, want fast delivery and convenient service. The speed of fulfilment and delivery, as well as the popularity of subscriptions, will only continue to grow. The next 100 years could see amazing changes in ecommerce. The fast-paced industry could look dramatically different in even just a few years. Creating digital solutions and focusing on customers will prepare ecommerce companies to deliver amazing, data-driven experiences no matter what the future brings.