Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

The Intersection of Marketing and Customer Experience: A Conversation with Dan Gingiss

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 385

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Unlock the potential of your business as we unveil the secrets to customer experience marketing with insights from expert Dan Gingiss. Imagine transforming dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates through memorable experiences that naturally generate positive buzz. Gain exclusive access to strategies that identify at-risk customers early, incorporating their feedback to enhance their journey and differentiate your brand through exceptional service. Whether you're a small business owner or a seasoned marketing professional, discover how impactful small gestures can rival large-scale projects when it comes to winning over your audience.

Join us as we explore the intersection of marketing and customer experience, and learn how personalized interactions at your favorite coffee shop can translate into powerful word-of-mouth marketing. With over two decades in the marketing industry, we delve into how small businesses can implement cost-effective customer experience tactics while leveraging user-generated content and brand ambassadors. Imagine your employees becoming your most passionate promoters, enriching the customer experience and amplifying brand loyalty without breaking the bank.

As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of customer experience marketing, we delve into data-driven strategies to maximize customer retention. Discover how forward-thinking companies are using artificial intelligence to analyze customer behavior and prevent attrition, alleviating pressure on sales teams. From revolutionary sampling experiences pioneered by brands like Sipsmith Gin to the latest developments in AI, stay informed and inspired to innovate. Our personal reflections on social media trends round out this episode, offering fresh perspectives on creating authentic, shareable customer experiences that lead to organic promotion and sustainable growth.

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Speaker 1:

Customer experience marketing. It's a buzzword that's been thrown around a lot lately, and for some time, but what does it really mean and how can it impact your business? In this episode, we'll dive deep into the world of customer experience marketing with special guest, author, speaker, expert and great guy someone I'm proud to call a friend, dan Gingas. From the importance of designing shareable moments for your customers to calculating the ROI of your efforts, moments for your customers to calculating the ROI of your efforts We'll cover it all. You'll learn how to identify dissatisfied customers early on, listen to their feedback and take action to improve their experience. Dan will also share some real-life examples of companies that have differentiated themselves through exceptional customer experiences. If you want to elevate your marketing game and create loyal, raving fans, you won't want to miss this conversation. So stay tuned. To elevate your marketing game and create loyal, raving fans, you won't want to miss this conversation. So stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach, and this is Neal Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaefer, your digital marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 385 of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. I just came back from teaching my role of social media in marketing and branding course at Rutgers Business School, part of the mini MBA in brand development and marketing communications. Always a pleasure to go back East and I'm actually going to be back East again next week and I will save that information for our next episode On to this week's news. So a few things I'm following that I think you will be definitely interested in. One is Claude, who are another AI model similar to ChatGPT or Google.

Speaker 1:

Gemini Plod, which is put out by a company called Anthropic, have now announced that they are introducing a new feature in their Clod 3.5 AI model, which is called Sonnet S-O-N-N-E-T, and this new model is going to be called Computer Use, which allows the AI to control a PC, automating tasks like moving the mouse, clicking buttons and typing text. So this is what are called autonomous AI systems, the next evolution of AI. I mean AI is really I won't say it's only just started. If you read digital threads, you know that AI has been going on for decades, but it is quickly evolving into something new and exciting and this is another area in which I believe you want to keep your eyes on the ball on the goal on so Microsoft OpenAI also developing these, but I know a lot of you prefer Claude, and good to see that they are moving ahead with this Once again. If you haven't heard me talk about these news on previous episodes, these are all part of my newsletter, which you can subscribe to at neilschafercom slash newsletter, so you are the first to hear this information. Also, interesting article about AI detectors that are mislabeling students work as AI generated when they truly are not. In fact, there are reports that indicate false positive rates as high as 26% to 80%, and this is only dealing with students.

Speaker 1:

But you can imagine in the business world, if you're very sensitive to making sure you are not leveraging AI generated content in your organization, it becomes really really hard to determine how much AI generated content is actually out there. And when you consider that, even if you use, let's say, a tool like Grammarly to edit your content, that will often, if you go to an AI detector, come up as AI generated content. So it's sort of a slippery slope. I used to when working with guest bloggers on my neilshavercom blog, I used to use an AI content detector when accepting their content. I have always used Copyscape, which looks for duplicate content, which I highly recommend you do as well, but I have simply stopped using a AI content detector, as long as it reads like a human, sounds like a human and the advice is spot on, based on the things that Google talks about, you know experience, authority, trustworthiness and expertise E-E-A-T. I know I said them in the wrong order, sorry about that and it's truly helpful content. This is why Google doesn't even care if it's AI generated or not, as long as it's good, it's human and it shares personal experiences. So that's the way that I look at it, and this is a really insightful article in my latest newsletter that I think you'll be interested in looking at as well, but it's just some food for thought for today.

Speaker 1:

And finally, you know Twitter, which I still refuse to call X, is really dwindling to a fraction of what it used to be, and recently I logged in and it said blocked users. So users that I decided to block will still be able to view my content, which to me sounds really bizarre. I mean, that's the whole idea of blocking someone. So there were a lot of people like myself that were outraged. I mean, I continue to spend less time on X. There are some people there that are friends of mine, are collaborators, and we still engage with each other, but the number is definitely on the decline and once X announced this, there were 500,000 people that went to Blue Sky alone, and Blue Sky has these tools to help you sort of migrate your content over from Twitter slash X. I have not gone that far. I just find myself spending more time on LinkedIn and a little bit more time on threads. These days, linkedin is definitely, for me, the place to be, and I just cannot spend enough time there. So that's it for this week's news.

Speaker 1:

I also wanted to give you some quick personal updates on digital threads and maximizing LinkedIn for business growth my two new books, which have not even been out for well. In the case of digital threads, we are still nearing the one month anniversary as it came out on October 1st, so very encouraged by the feedback that I've gotten. If you have yet to purchase digital threads and you are an audio book listener, if you go to neilschafercom, slash digital threads, audible, that's all one word. Digital threads the name of the book immediately following that, audible, you can actually get digital threads in audio book format for free, so long as you are a first time Audible subscriber. So this is the deal that I recommend you all check out Once again. That is neilschafercom slash digital threads, audible all one word.

Speaker 1:

As for Mixamazing LinkedIn for business growth, hope that sounded right. I am still working on expanding that content, fleshing out a little bit more and then creating a paperback, hardback and audio book version of that as well. If you have read Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth and you would like to join my beta reader team for this next iteration and you have ideas of what you think I should include to make it an even better book, I would love to hear from you. Make sure you reach out to me, neil, at neilschafercom or private message me anywhere on social media. Let's talk and, yeah, let me help create something that can help benefit both of us All. Right, so onto today's interview.

Speaker 1:

Dan Gingas is no stranger to this podcast, but, unless you have been a really really long time listener, dan was last on before COVID, when this podcast was called Maximize your Social Influence. This is when I was coming out with the Age of Influence, right before it way back on episode number 138 in March 13th in 2019. At that time, we talked about customer experience marketing as well, but five years have passed. It continues to be top of mind, especially with a lot of CMOs that I engage with, and Dan is just a great educator and offers a lot of really, really great advice that I think you're going to like. Yeah, he's a Chicago Cubs fan. We'll put that beside us, but he is a great guy that I've known for, I think, like a decade, and just such a pleasure and an honor to have him on my show and to see how much he has grown as a speaker, as an author. So, without further ado, here's my interview with Dan Gingas.

Speaker 2:

You're listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, and welcome to another live streaming edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Every now and then I love to invite back old friends who have a lot to deliver to the audience, and today I'm really glad to have my friend, Dan Gingas, back on stage Now. You may not remember I had to go back in my archives but it was actually five and a half years ago before COVID, when Dan was on episode number 138. This is probably going to be episode 280-something, so it's been a while and back then Dan was talking about customer experience marketing. And today Dan is also going to be talking about customer experience marketing.

Speaker 1:

But obviously we've had COVID and we've had generative AI, and these are topics that I talk about in my new book, Digital Threads. But obviously we've had COVID and we've had generative AI, and these are topics that I talk about in my new book, Digital Threads. I can't wait to dig in what Dan has to say about how things have changed. And I think that the customer experience is something five years ago that was maybe a little bit more esoterical, maybe a little bit more enterprise-focused, but I think today I think we all talk about the customer experience in our businesses. So I think it's also a term, a concept, a practice that has very much become democratized over the last five years. So, without further ado, Dan, welcome to the show, my friend.

Speaker 3:

What's up my friend Neil? How are you, sir, doing? Great thanks. How are you doing? I am awesome. I'm so excited to reconnect with you and chat about our favorite topics together.

Speaker 1:

No, it's always a pleasure, and we've had these conversations back and forth for man, I want to say almost a decade. I remember the first time meeting you was when I spoke at that Motorola Solutions Conference back in Chicago or Schaumburg, like many moons ago. So it might be a decade at this point, which is really crazy.

Speaker 3:

That was a long time ago. I was still in corporate America at that time as well. So many moons, yeah, but that's awesome. I'm glad that we've been able to stay friends all this time and supporters of each other, which is such a great thing about this industry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, dan is someone like myself that also began as corporate and then shed the corporate protection and went on his own and has been a really successful author, speaker, consultant, so another great guy to follow. If you haven't been following him, he is a Chicago Cubs fan, but anyway, outside of that, everything he does I fully approve, and we always go back and forth on Cubs versus Dodgers.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we can get into that later, but I'm not sure I'm going to be a Chicago Cubs fan for much longer. So it's just it's too tiring.

Speaker 1:

All right, my friend. So before I get into, you know everything. Obviously you are one of many, I think, over the last few years that has started talking about what we call customer experience marketing, sort of in marketing, I guess, the final frontier of how do you deliver value, how do you create value, how do you differentiate your business from others. So, Dan, can you just give a brief introduction to sort of you know what you do now and your unique perspective on customer experience marketing?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the unique perspective comes from the fact that I was a marketer for 20 years, so that was my career in corporate America. I literally grew up in direct mail. I evolved into all of the digital channels social media, seo, website marketing, mobile marketing and so I love marketing and I like to think that marketing is still up here in my head. But there's a different thing that's taken over my heart, which is customer experience, and I think what I have figured out is that these things are unbelievably related.

Speaker 3:

In fact, I truly believe that the single best form of marketing is customer experience, and the reason is that any marketer will tell you word of mouth marketing is the most powerful because it is the most authentic, it's the most genuine.

Speaker 3:

Any small business owner will tell you we grow through referrals. That's how we need to grow, right? So other people talking about us, and I believe that when you boil it down, the best way to get people talking about you is to give them a great experience. It's like the old Bonnie Raitt song let's give them something to talk about, right. And when we do that successfully, people talk about us, they say nice things about us and we grow our business and so that's really where I've leaned in for the last five years is this intersection between marketing and customer experience head and heart, if you will and how they play with one another together. It doesn't mean you stop marketing, not at all. It just means that customer experience is something that can lift up everything else that you're doing, so that you, on top of all of the marketing success, have your customers doing some of that work for you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I already have a great comment here on LinkedIn. Love the topic. The customer is the heart of any product, amen. And I think that a lot of marketers are guilty of forgetting about the customer or not interacting with the customer, and maybe that customer experience marketing brings it all back into focus, as it should. So I guess you know, for those who are listening, it sounds like it requires a lot of money or a lot of resources to do, and one of the things, dan, that you want to discuss was that all this can be done on a budget, even the smallest of businesses. Obviously, when we talk about the customer journey, the customer experience, it doesn't matter how cheap or expensive your product is. Every customer goes through that, right. But just curious for the smaller business, for those that are budget conscious, what would a customer experience marketing program look like for that small business?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So I think the biggest mistake in customer experience is looking at it as a multi-year, multi-million dollar transformational project, because when you do that, especially in a larger company, it gets put up against other multi-year, multi-million dollar transformational projects and, frankly, it usually loses and also it just feels like a big slog. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to start or take over a massive project that moves so slowly, and so I've really tried to focus customer experience on being what I call a series of little things. Now it is an endless series, so you have to get used to the fact that we got to love the journey, man, because there is no destination.

Speaker 3:

You mentioned just a couple of the things at the start COVID and generative AI that continue to change everything about business, including customer expectations. So that's why there's no destination. As soon as we think we're there, our customers are going to want something else. But if we enjoy the ride, if we enjoy the journey, then we can start looking at customer experience as all of these little things that we do every day. Then we can start getting every one of our employees involved, no matter what their title or their job description is. We can get them believing that they are also in the customer experience business and I think if you start to ask consumers or B2B buyers for some of their most memorable experiences with working with companies, rarely do they say something like oh well, it was when XYZ Company brought in Beyonce for a private concert and then we had a private fireworks show afterwards.

Speaker 3:

That was the most extraordinary thing. And, yes, that would absolutely be extraordinary, but at you know who knows how many millions of dollars it's not something that's practical for most companies. I find, when I talk to people, that oftentimes these little things who knows how many millions of dollars it's not something that's practical for most companies. I find, when I talk to people that oftentimes these little things, things like they remembered my name, they remembered my order. I walked into Starbucks and they were making my drink before I even got to the counter Little things make a huge difference to people and the good thing is, little things can be implemented inexpensively quickly, without all the rigmarole of this massive multimillion dollar project.

Speaker 1:

So I want to touch upon a few things there, dan, this is just a great entryway, a great segue into the conversation about customer experience marketing. So one of the things, as you know and thank you for your endorsement of Digital Threads one of the chapters I have is specifically on the power of user-generated content, and one of the sections within there is how Instagrammable is your customer experience. So I think there's a definite intersection that we're seeing between esoterical compare customer experience marketing with Google Ads versus hey, this is something that we really need to pay attention to, and I think the other one is and I talk about a brand ambassador program is really the employee as brand ambassador right? And that's where definitely this can take part. I'm just curious, though, taking a step back from those intersecting points, I assume, because we're talking about customer experience marketing, that it's the VP of marketing, cmo that's that tend to, on paper, seem to drive ROI right Like a Facebook ad or email marketing, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

So I'm curious, getting into customer experience marketing, when you're talking to business owners, cmos, vps of marketing, about investing money in customer experience marketing. Number one, measuring the ROI and I know it's long-term right, it's, like you know, content marketing as well is very long-term. Seo is very long-term. You don't get the results for several months, if not a few years, in all honesty. So I'm curious as to what that conversation looks like vis-a-vis why they should be investing. You know the ROI and then what are some of the KPIs that you might be looking at in a classic customer experience marketing program? Or is it more anecdotal, which is totally fine, because when those anecdotes add up, they're absolutely powerful. So I'm just curious as to what's the perspective you take as you're speaking, consulting, talking to executives on that whole ROI and KPI picture of customer experience marketing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so great questions. I'll try to take them in order. I want to jump back picture. Or they want to take a video and they want to share it with somebody, and I don't care personally whether they share it with a million followers on Instagram or whether they just share it with their neighbor or their colleague or a friend or family member, because in so many businesses, all it takes is one or two referrals from each customer and you're doubling or tripling the size of your business, right? So it doesn't have to be massive, but you do have to think very strategically about what is the moment that you want people to pull out their phones and take a picture, because if you can't even fathom that yourself, then that moment probably doesn't exist. And so the companies that do this, right, have these moments in mind, where it's not surprising that this is when people grab their phone and take a picture, because the moment is designed for that, even if there's no signage that says please follow us on Instagram, please take a selfie here, which I don't suggest that anyway, because you want it to be natural and genuine, right? So then, when we get into the ROI, and how do we measure this stuff? You know, you and I have been in the social media space for a very long time and I think one of the things that I always disliked about this space is that from the very beginning, social media teams used to claim that you couldn't calculate ROI and I thought that was BS. And I called BS on that because it's a marketing channel like any other marketing channel. If you can't calculate ROI, you shouldn't be in it. So just like that, with customer experience, there are very at your customer retention rate.

Speaker 3:

I have a theory that I talk about in my book that I call the leaky bucket, and what the leaky bucket is almost every company has this is these are customers that are leaving you. They're leaking out of the bucket, they're leaving you for the competition and they're not even telling you why. And these are the most dangerous kinds of customers. Because they're leaving you, that's minus one customer for you. They're going to the competition, that's plus one customer for the competition, and since they're not telling you why, you don't even know how to get better. So I would much rather if somebody leaves me. I would much rather them leave and screaming and yelling, posting on social media, telling me everything I did wrong, because at least I have a chance to fix that for future customers.

Speaker 3:

So looking at your leaky bucket and measuring your leaky bucket is a key way to judge how your customer experience initiatives and your customer experience marketing initiatives are succeeding.

Speaker 3:

If you have a retention rate right now of 95%, and you can up that to 97%, that doesn't sound like a lot, but depending on the number of customers that you have, that could be millions of dollars worth of savings. And also remember that when we lose a customer out of this leaky bucket, we're putting more struggle on the marketing and the sales team, because now not only do they have to hit the sales numbers for the year, but they got to make up for the customers that we've lost as well. And so now our sales teams and our marketing teams are overwhelmed because the goals keep getting higher and higher every year and like, no matter how successful we are, management's just going to give us a higher goal next year. And that starts to create this sense of exhaustion and frustration, which doesn't need to be there, because if we're keeping more customers, we actually don't need to be there, because if we're keeping more customers, we actually don't need to acquire as many new ones.

Speaker 1:

That's really interesting because in marketing and in business school, retaining retention rate is this really critical metric, but no one in the organization is really looking at it, no one owns it right. People in marketing aren't necessarily looking at it Sales are always trying to close new deals but yet it's critical and I think that when you get above VPs and CMOs of marketing or VPs of sales to the CEO and the business owners, they understand that the most. So that's a really compelling argument and I suppose when customers leave, then it's those that are in charge of customer experience marketing to contact them, ask them about their experience right, Instead of just a plain old marketing survey, of really being able to put that data to use.

Speaker 3:

So one more thing just to back up real quick. So there's also things that you can do well before that. So let me give you a quick example from my time at Discover Card. We knew if we were looking at Neil's account and I'm using you just as a fictional example maybe you spend an average of $1,000 a month on your credit card, and then, all of a sudden, july comes around and you only spend $600 on your credit card. That's a data point that says something might be wrong, right, and so we got to talk to you then, because you might be already in the process of moving your card over to a competitor, but you're not there yet. We still have a chance to save you. If we wait till you're down to $0 in September, it's too late. We're not getting you back at that point, and so there are a lot of these breadcrumbs that we can follow to look for hints of customers that are dissatisfied Over time, and especially if we use AI to take all this data and analyze it, we can start to see triggers where we know hey, if a customer doesn't log into our website for a full month, they now have a much higher chance of a triting later, and so if somebody hasn't logged in for a month, we got to call them now because we got to get this before we lose them.

Speaker 3:

And that, to me, is what a lot of the internal customer experience marketing is about. It's looking at the data. I like to call it VOC and AOC. So VOC is voice of the customer, that's, listening to the customer. What are they telling us in social media, in ratings and reviews, when they call us? Call transcripts, chat transcripts, all that stuff. And then AOC with apologies to the representative from New York, I'm not talking about her AOC is actions of the customer. These are the things that we can get from data that our customer is not telling us but they're doing. These are logins. These are how many places are they visiting on the website or opening the mobile app? Visiting our store spend dollars on the website or opening the mobile app visiting our store spend dollars. All of these things are actions of the customer that we can also use to determine who's staying and who might be more susceptible to a great marketing campaign and promotional offer from our competitors.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of those things you've been talking about I think of just an abandoned cart email is an example of a stopgap solution, of trying to get the customer back when they haven't converted. And I know that from a marketing automation perspective there's probably a lot of companies that use a HubSpot or a Salesforce that try to automate some of these things. Social score goes up, goes down, what have you. But I guess the perspective you're bringing is it's not about automating these things to get a better outcome. It's understanding sort of the reasoning behind that and really taking this holistic perspective and seeing what we can do to improve the big picture. Would that be how you look at it, compared to all these other sort of stopgap measures that companies try to do traditionally?

Speaker 3:

Yeah for sure, and I have nothing against automated marketing campaigns. I think there's absolutely a role for them. The thing that surprises me, though, is how companies are so averse to actually communicating with their customers. So think about it If you go to a call center, right, what's their number one goal? Reduce call time, right, and maybe even more than that, reduce calls at all. In other words, we don't want to talk to customers, and I find that to be a very strange strategy, because, if you ask any business owner what their biggest asset is of their company, if they give you any answer other than our customers, they're wrong, because it's the only asset that, if it goes away, you don't have a business. Every other asset that you have, it could go away, and you still have a possibly functioning business, but if you don't have customers, it's over, and so, to me, if a customer wants to talk to us, we have got to be open to talk to them, and I also think we've got to be doing a better job at proactively talking to customers, and so this is literally reaching out and having a phone call or a face-to-face conversation with some customers. You can't do it with every one of your customers, but just like you know, they do polling and politics to get a sense for what the rest of the country is thinking. We can talk to a few people and we can get some ideas and we can ask them how are we doing? What are some things that you like that we do, so that we could do more of it? What are some things that we do that annoy you, so maybe we could stop it, and what are some things that you wish we were doing, that we're not doing? So maybe we could start doing it.

Speaker 3:

And I think too many companies overlook this very, very simple way to get a really good perspective of how you're doing. If you want, if you don't really want, to talk to people directly, then look at social media, look at ratings and reviews. Don't be afraid of complaints, because when people complain generally, it's because they care, it's because they want you to fix their problems so they can keep doing business with you. But too often we just brush off complaints and we say, oh, it's just this one angry guy or what have you. You know, at Discover we figured out that every person that called in with a complaint, we estimated there were a hundred customers that had the same problem that didn't call. Think about that for a second, and how powerful then that could be to just listen to that one customer and try to fix what's going on. You're now fixing it for hundreds of customers at once.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, amen, brother. All that makes so much sense, and I want to give a shout out to Discover, because my daughter, being a college student, got rejected from every credit card company. But Discover's like it's in the mail we get it tomorrow right. So really awesome for giving a new generation of Gen Z students a chance to increase their credit score.

Speaker 3:

So good job, and Neil this is also customer experience, because I'll tell you that the data behind it says that people are most loyal to the very first card that gives you credit Interesting, and that's been true for many, many years. This is a long-term investment. We know that your kid is going to probably be a Discover fan for a long time because she got you said it was her daughter yeah, okay, because she got her first card was a Discovery card, and the other thing that really impacts is what the parents have, so that often we find can have a big influence. But again, look at that through a customer experience lens. It's, you know, think about, and there's a moment, by the way, please tell your daughter I know you will do this, but way too many Gen Zers get their first credit card and then they take a selfie of it with, like, the number right there for everybody to see. Please do not do that. We used to have to go and screen social media posts all the time and get people to delete them because that's a bad idea.

Speaker 1:

That's funny. I want to get into something before we hit the record button, about how good customer experience marketing can actually help both marketing and sales. But before we get there, one question that arises is well, it sounds like it's a sales role, it sounds like it's a marketing role, it sounds like it is a customer service role, and I'm assuming you see this as sort of a almost department agnostic role, in that you really are becoming the voice, looking at the voice and the action of the customer. So in companies that are implementing a customer experience marketing program, is it normally? You know, social media used to sit in PR and then it went to marketing and it's still in some organizations? Is corporate communications right? So I'm just curious is there one organization or one department, was it an organization, that this sits in? Is it like a special role, like in the early days we had social media leads? Is there like a customer experience lead or how?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think the companies that really get it are doing both. So they are creating a department, usually led by a chief experience officer, a CXO, or a chief customer officer, a CCO and, by the way, a chief experience officer may also be in charge of in the culture, so that everybody feels like it's part of their job. Otherwise, the problem you have is it's like you know, if you remember back when you were in corporate, who's the one guy you didn't want to see coming down the hallway at you? The auditors, Right, because you knew that was going to be a whole bunch of work and bad news for you, right. And some companies. That's how people feel about the customer experience team. They're like, uh-oh, here comes the CX team. They're going to tell us everything we're doing wrong, right, and we don't want that to be the case. What we want is every employee to feel empowered that if they're doing right by the customer, then that's part of our value system and you're never going to get in trouble for doing right by the customer.

Speaker 3:

I had a boss that once told me that he observed about me that every meeting I was in I was wearing the customer hat, so I was like looking at business problems through the lens of the customer. He was right. I didn't even realize it about myself, but we want every employee to do that. You could be buried in the finance department. You know in some office that you never actually talk to customers, but chances are you're making decisions that impact customers, you know. Think about the guy that decided it would be a great idea to start charging people to check bags at the airlines after 50 years when checking bags were free right. That kind of a decision is not just a pricing decision, it's not just a marketing decision, it's an experience decision and it clearly affects how people think about your brand and the overall experience. So we've got to get more people going through that filter when they make any sort of decision that might be customer impacting.

Speaker 1:

And we can only hope that Southwest Airlines' decision to stop their random boarding was based on some customer data. Who knows? I guess we'll find out.

Speaker 3:

I think that's a good idea and I will tell you, I stopped flying them when my ex-wife and I our very first trip after having kids, very first vacation. She got put in a middle seat, about 17 rows apart from my middle seat, and I was like, yeah, this is not happening, we're not doing this again.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, having to explain to my family the first time because we're used to flying, you know United as our main airline and the first time we flew Southwest that was I had to. Basically it's almost like a religion, like it's done a little bit differently, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

But, hey, we talk about that unique customer experience and I'm sure there's goods and bads, but getting back to that point that you know, good CX marketing can help marketing and sales. I think you've already hinted at it, but I just want to give you a little bit more dedicated time to for those that are listening like well, you know, okay, we understand the long-term play, we understand, you know, voice of the customer, action of the customer. How does this ease, or how does this improve our marketing and sales? I wanted to give you a chance to talk a little about that.

Speaker 3:

Sure, so let's peel back on them separately. So I worked for a B2B company it was my last job, a late stage startup, before I went off on my own and this sales team every year would get sales targets. And it did feel like the sales targets went up every year, but maybe it was a small percentage. But then when we started figuring out that we were losing customers on the back end, all of a sudden all of the pressure goes to the sales team, because how are you going to get back a lost customer? Well, you're going to have to bring on two new customers now the one that you were going to bring on anyway and the one to account for the lost customer. And so I watched the sales team continue to shoulder this burden and their job gets, gets harder and their job gets more stressful and they're more likely to not meet their quotas. And so if you think, if you sort of play that out in an employee experience perspective and other types of things, you start to get burnout, you start to get. This is why at least my observation for many years has been that folks that are in a sales capacity at B2B software companies, it's like every two years they're just rotating to another company, and so I have a number of friends that have called on me from you know, four or five companies at this point, and I think that is because this burden keeps getting heavier.

Speaker 3:

From a marketing perspective, I think that you know, number one marketers are always pursuing word of mouth. The problem is they tend to pursue it based on, you know, trying to create a viral video. I mean the number of CMOs I worked for they said can't you just create a viral video? I'm like, yes, if I could do that, I would not be working here. Right and so sure, some companies are able to create a viral moment, and that is, you know, and that does it. Most companies aren't. And so if we want word of mouth marketing, which every company, I believe, does, we've got to turn to experiences in order to create that. And when we get other people talking about us, we can take some of those marketing dollars and literally move them to some of the things we were talking about before, to retention dollars, to focusing on existing customers, the ones that are actually paying our salaries and keeping the lights on, and so we're able to maneuver a little bit more freely.

Speaker 3:

And, like I said at the top. This is not about taking away the sales people's job or marketing people's job at all. It's actually about, I think, easing the burden on both of them. And then one last thing I'll say is that when we get customers talking about us, that creates great fodder for marketing. You know I'm sure that you've done this too you get a wonderful testimonial about one of your keynote speeches and, like you want to put that out there and tell you see, look, look, what Joe says about me, right, because that's way better than me saying that I'm great or you saying that you're great. And so when we get more people talking about it, we've now got content that we can turn around and use in different places as well, in a way that doesn't feel quite as self-serving as us saying we love us, we're so great, go us. It's other people saying it, and again, that adds to the authenticity.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that, to me, is the number one, whether it's from a customer or from an employee, right. And you know, yeah, and that to me is the number one, whether it's from a customer or from an employee, right, and I'm assuming customer experience marketing, employee experience are two different things. Yet there's obviously a lot of intersection, but to me that is the greatest ROI. And when you can now pool those people that are talking about you, that are enjoying your customer experience and talking about it, when you can pool them together into some sort of organized group and this is where I launch into the brand ambassador programs and digital threads, you can then exponentially scale that and all the good that comes from it.

Speaker 1:

So, amen, I mean, that's in my book and every time I speak word of mouth marketing is the most effective, and just posting on social or, from a company perspective, posting a link or doing a Facebook ad, is not going to incite that word of mouth. So really good reminders, dan. So I'm curious are there any examples, real life examples from different industries, that you think the listener or viewer can adapt in their business? They're sold on what you're saying, dan. They want to take it one step further.

Speaker 3:

So anything that they can sort of mimic or emulate or be inspired by, to put your words into their action so broadly speaking, what I think companies need to do is look for opportunities to be different from the competition and to be different from what you've always done. I can tell you, the one answer that my employees knew never to give me was because we've always done it that way. That's the worst answer you can give anybody, and the second worst answer is because everybody does it that way. So those should be signals that we're not standing out from the crowd. So one of my favorite examples that I share in my keynotes is from Sipsmith Gin, which is a UK-based spirits company, and they figured out that they wanted to change how potential customers sampled their product. And if anybody's ever gone into a liquor store or a grocery store, depending on the state you live in, you see that person behind a table and they want to give you a sample of something and they hand you this little Robitussin cup and I guess the idea is you're supposed to do a shot of gin or a shot of whiskey or whatever, and then take your shopping cart and go finish your groceries. And so it's a bizarre moment, it's not a great, it's not the right time, it's not the right place. So Sipsmith said what if we could change how people sample our products.

Speaker 3:

So instead of going to grocery stores and liquor stores, they went to community festivals, to local festivals in neighborhoods, and I attended one in Chicago. They had this pop-up tent. You walk into this and the first thing you see is a bartender who is there, absolutely, you know, dressed to the nines in his Sipsmith outfit, everything's perfectly branded, he looks like a postcard and he asks me what kind of tonic would you like with your gin and tonic, with your Sipsmith gin and tonic? Now, I used to be a bartender and I didn't even know that there were different kinds of tonics, and so he educated me and he taught me about citrus tonic, indian tonic, mediterranean tonic, and I'm already thinking, wow, this is really cool, I learned something.

Speaker 3:

So I pick my tonic and I expect him to put a lime in it, because any bartender will tell you this is the easiest drink to make at the bar. And instead he sends me to the Sipsmith garnish bar, and the garnish bar has limes and lemons and cherries and dried strawberries and herbs and spices and peppercorns and even dried rose petals, and I did some math. There are over a billion combinations of gin and tonics that you can make with all of these choices. So I call this an immersive experience, which is that the customer is deeply involved. I'm making, I'm getting to make my own drink, but the moment that it becomes shareable and word of mouth is when they hand you a little card. And I'm actually going to grab it because I have a prop here.

Speaker 3:

I didn't know that we were going to talk about this, but this is what the little card looks like. It's a little Sipsmith card and it comes with an absolutely adorable little clothespin like the tiniest little clothespin that you've ever seen and they give you a marker and they want you to name the drink that you just made. And so people take out the marker and they write the name and they put it on their cup. And then I watched everybody, and nowhere does it ask people to do this, but every single person in this tent took their cup, put it down, made sure that the background was just perfect, took a picture of their drink that they just created and got to name, shared it and then, for the first time, picked up the drink and tasted it.

Speaker 3:

And so what I love about this is that Sipsmith said look, the way that people sample is not working very well, and it doesn't, and even though it's the way we've been doing it forever, let's try something different. Let's try something that's both immersive and where there's a moment I talked to you about before, about how you have to create this moment where you know people are going to pull out their phones. The moment in there is this. It was when I got to name my drink, because now it's personalized, it's my drink and I just did what came naturally, which is what came naturally to everyone in this tent. Take a picture of it.

Speaker 3:

And so now, sipsmith, not only is getting lots of sampling, they're getting people to sample it in a better environment, where they're more likely to like it versus just a little Robitussin shot, and they're getting people to talk about it, which is even better because they're getting lots of social exchanges around this. And so that's the kind of thing. You know, that might feel a little big to some of your viewers, but it's the way that they're thinking about it and they're starting with the way we've always done. It is old and boring. We got to do something different.

Speaker 1:

And I'm thinking that you know, what's even better than word of mouth marketing is including your customer as part of your product, and that's exactly what they did, because now they have a billion ideas for different products that now they can recommend to bartenders. They could put out recipe books and what have you. So, yeah, it just opens a whole Pandora's box of various things they can do. So very, very cool, dan. This has been a really inspiring, eye-opening brief 30 minutes of talking with you, and I'm sure it's when you talk. I mean, you are the experience maker name of your book, and I'm assuming that if people want to find out more about how they can implement this in your own organization, they should pick up that book right away. Obviously, they should follow you and contact you as well, dan. So you know, outside of your book and your speaking, I believe when we talked five years ago, you also offer a customer experience audit service. I'm curious if you still offer that or any other services that you can introduce to my audience.

Speaker 3:

Sure. So we're doing something a little bit different from the audit. Although that's an amazing memory, you must have gone back to the transcript of five years ago. We're doing a couple of other things. First of all, I'm super excited about a brand new keynote that's coming out that is all about artificial intelligence and the impact on customer experience. Obviously, ai is a game changer for all businesses, all industries, but the way that I look at almost everything is how does it affect the customer and how do we make sure that it affects the customer in a positive way, not in a negative way? So, super excited about that, and because my brand is the experience maker, like my current talk, this will be very experiential, full of examples, full of demonstrations. I want to show you how it's working, not just tell you how it's working and it should be super inspiring. Two other things that I'm doing that I've been very excited about.

Speaker 3:

We mentioned before this idea of customer experience being a series of little things, so I've started a little sub-brand that I'm calling Little CX Ideas, and this concept is that there are ideas absolutely everywhere, and so if you need to know where to get started or you're a little bit stuck and you just want some inspiration. I've got the library of ideas to share with you and it is, of course, ai-based, but it is taking from every piece of content that I've ever put out into the world, from my books and my podcasts and my videos and my blogs and all of it. And that's the free version that's available right now, and there's going to be a pro version in which we are bringing in literally millions of data points from online ratings and reviews and social media posts of actual customers saying this is what we want or this is what we like, this is what we don't like, et cetera, and turning those into what I'm calling a little CX idea. The little CX idea is basically a sentence that says why don't you try this?

Speaker 3:

It's like super easy, and the reaction should be man, why didn't I think of that right?

Speaker 3:

And I want to encourage everybody to get into this idea of customer experience is my job, no matter what my title or description is, and it's easy enough and inexpensive enough that I can execute it. I can do this, so that's one thing that I'm super excited about. And then the thing that kind of replaced the audit a little bit is I have something that I'm calling a CX inspection. A CX inspection, and this is actually playing off something that I have observed on so many different companies, which is that when we look at customer feedback, there are three steps that we should be taking, but most companies only take two of them, and I refer to these steps as CAT, like meow C-A-T. Number one is collect the data. Most companies don't have a problem with that. We've got more data than we need. Number two is analyze the data. Most companies are pretty good at that, and the problem is they stop there, and so they take this data and they create a report out of it that says you know, here's where our NPS score is, or here's where our customer satisfaction score is. They hand this to the CEO, who does not need another report on their desk, and then that's it, and the T in CAT is take action on this data, and so this is the part where, if we're not taking action on customer feedback, we are missing all of the value of this data, and so I've created a product that helps you get from collect to take action much, much faster.

Speaker 3:

So we do a brief survey of a hundred or so customers, and we take that data and immediately get to here's what you need to do about it, and it's the same set of three things that I mentioned before. It's the three things we want to start doing because our customers are asking for it. It's three things to stop doing because our customers are telling us they don't like it. And it's three things to stop doing because our customers are telling us they don't like it. And it's three things to continue doing because our customers are saying this is what I love about you. You need to do more of it. And then, of course, you go do those nine things. You go do another survey, we'll come up with another nine things for you, right? And that's the whole idea of this is a continuous improvement type thing.

Speaker 1:

Right, very cool, dan. I love hearing the innovations that you're bringing to the space, really moving all those businesses that work with you forward. So thanks for all that. I hope if anyone's listening, interested in those services, you reach out to Dan. And that leads to the final question, dan, is where can people go to reach out to you?

Speaker 3:

Sure thing, dangingascom is the easiest place. If you don't know how to spell it, look down at my name tag right below my name there and go to danginguscom. I'm also very active on LinkedIn and really love engaging with people there. You certainly can find me on Instagram and the other social channels, but I would say I spend most of my time on LinkedIn, or suggest the website.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. We'll make sure we have those links in the show notes. But, dan, the experience maker, thank you so much for joining us, sharing your wisdom, man. I mean, it's been five years, but the landscape has changed, but so have you, and, and you know, continue to innovate and moving things forward. So I can't wait to see what the future brings. I can't wait for us to meet up in person again, ideally Cubs, dodgers, you know, national League Championship Series. But if that doesn't happen, we'll we'll have to meet somewhere.

Speaker 3:

Either that, or let's share a together. That would be fun as well. That'd be ideal, my friend, I really appreciate it. Let's not wait another five years, and I'm super excited to get my hands on a physical copy of digital threads and to scarf it down.

Speaker 1:

Coming soon, my friend. Thank you again. All right, see you. All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview and we are already in Q4. Near the end of the year, and because this is episode number 385, that means I'm on a mission to publish 14 more episodes before the end of the year. Wish me luck.

Speaker 1:

Not that I don't enjoy doing them, but, as you know, when you got a lot going on. You know, recording podcasts does take up a lot of time, not just the recording, but it's really the planning, the production, the post-production. All of this takes time. I truly hope you appreciate the efforts that I'm putting into this podcast and if you enjoy what you listen to, I would be honored if you could go over to Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you listen to this podcast, and write up a real quick review. One or two sentences is really all you need to help expose this podcast to more people. If you don't know how to do it, or if you have written a review, please take a screenshot, reach out to me. I'd like to thank you personally for your efforts. And that is it for another one. I hope you found exciting episode of the your digital marketing coach podcast. This is Neil Schaefer, your digital marketing coach. Signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links. Go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community If you or your business needs a little helping hand.

Speaker 3:

See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.