Episode #50:
Getting Customers to Come Back again & again
Guest: Shep Hyken
According to customer experience expert Shep Hyken, there's a big difference between repeat customers and loyal customers. And, to be successful, companies have to know the difference. Join us this week as Shep, an in-demand keynote speaker and best-selling author, sits down with host Shawn Nason for a no-holds-barred conversation about loyalty killers, the importance of leadership and culture, and the launch of his new book, I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again.
About Shawn Nason
shawn@mofi.co | ShawnNason.com | @manonfiresocial
Shawn Nason, founder and CEO of MOFI, best-selling author, and former Walt Disney Imagineer, lives his life with a commitment to create radical relationships with everyone he meets. Armed with the gift of discernment, he has the uncanny ability to walk alongside people and organizations as they struggle to connect with their deepest passions and engage their most debilitating demons. He challenges the world around him to be fully present, get real, and lead with empathy.
Prior to launching MOFI, Shawn was the chief experience & transformation officer for Healthways and served as the chief innovation officer for Xavier University. He also spent six years at The Walt Disney Company in various capacities within Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Cruise Line. He’s an in-demand speaker and coach, the author of two books, Kiss Your Dragons: Radical Relationships, Bold Heartsets, & Changing the World (2021) and The Power of YES! in Innovation (2017), and the host of The Combustion Chronicles podcast.
About mofi
A human-obsessed boutique design firm passionate about reimagining Experience Ecosystems™.
mofi.co | info@mofi.co | @mofisocial
Businesses are more than org charts, strategy documents, and mission statements. They’re living, breathing ecosystems filled with people and people-driven processes that make an impact on the world.
At MOFI, we refuse to look at one piece of the puzzle (customer service, employee experience, vendor relationships, leadership, culture, marketplace awareness, etc.) without engaging your entire Experience Ecosystem as we tackle the biggest and hairiest experience, innovation, and culture challenges that you can send our way. Why? Because we we’re more interested in long-term results than innovation theater.
WHAT WE DO:
Customer & Employee Experience—Increase your revenue and market share by aligning, equipping, and empowering the people in your Experience Ecosystem to create game-changing experiences.
Consumer-Centered Innovation—Move at the speed of your customers by harnessing the mindsets and processes of human-centered design to dream up, test, and launch fresh ideas into your business model.
Organizational Transformation—Position your organization for long-term sustainability by shifting the mindsets and heartsets of the people who represent your brand in the world.
Episode Takeaways
- When we use measurements like Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction scores, we're measuring history. And, though it's great to know whether they're satisfied, it'd be better to know whether they're coming back.
- There's a big difference between repeat customers and loyal customers, especially when loyalty programs are in play. The difference is what's driving them to come back.
- The top three loyalty killers for businesses are: apathy, rudeness, and hard-to-find contact information (a.k.a friction).
- Training is one of the keys to creating better customer service, but the training must be an ongoing initiative that keeps customer experience top of mind for the entire company.
- It's better to hire someone with a hospitality mindset than it is to hire someone with subject matter knowledge. You can train someone on the technical side, but you have to find the right personality to start with.
- Leadership and culture are vital to good customer experience because customer service is not a department, it is a philosophy that's ingrained in the culture. The entire team must understand how their role relates to the customer's experience.
- The most important thing to measure in business is whether customers come back.
- It's better to raise prices (reduce the number of customers) to create a better customer experience than it is to have too many customers when a company loses control over the customer's experience.
- To be competitive on customer experience, companies need to dig into why customers would want to do business with them, explore their competition, and then compare themselves to companies with top-notch customer experience outside their industry.
- An amenity war is when competitors create unique amenities that eventually become industry standards because companies are trying to compete. These amenities start as differentiators, but then eventually are trends that become expectations.
- As recently as three years ago, it's reported that approximately $75 billion was lost due to poor customer service. The good news, though, is that this means that good companies gained $75 billion worth of business.
Shep's New Book
I'll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again
How do you build a business that thrives during good times and bad? Is there a strategy that can set your company up for success, no matter what curveballs the world may throw your way? There is: Turn customers into repeat customers, and turn repeat customers into loyal customers.
In I’ll Be Back you will learn…
- How to design and create an experience that gets customers to return, again and again
- The one trackable trend that leaders must monitor every morning
- The difference between repeat customers and loyal customers
- How to build the I’ll Be Back culture
- How delivering an amazing customer experience is within the reach of every organization
- The two simple words that are the secret to every customer service program
- Why most “loyalty programs” fail to create customer loyalty
- How to personalize the customer experience
- Why setting up or expanding self-service and digital customer service choices is a must, not an option
- Ten loyalty killers that can terminate your relationship with your customers
- And much more!
[Overheard on the Podcast]
"When we use [customer experience] surveys, ...we measure history.... But what I'd like to know is even if they're happy, are they coming back?"
"48% of people would rather have a root canal than have to stay on hold and finally talk to somebody who doesn't have an answer who has to transfer you and then you have to start over again."
[Overheard on the Podcast]
"Training isn't something you did, it's something you do.... You've got to constantly train, keep it front of mind.... If you don't get people constantly thinking about it, they're gonna revert back to processes and basically simply following rules, not necessarily trying to create the experience."
"When you hear the [consumer's] voice, you hear their emotion, you hear their frustration, you hear their anger, their disappointment, and it gets you. To me, it tugs at the heartstrings because no one's intentionally causing pain to their customers, but when it happens, and it's our fault, you wanna fix it. And I think there's nothing better than hearing that from your customer."
"Customer service is not a department, it is a philosophy. It's ingrained in the culture. Everybody needs to understand their role as it applies to customer service."
[Overheard on the Podcast]
"Customers who come back again and again, not only are they less expensive to manage as far as acquisition because you've already acquired them the first time, now you're just in maintenance mode, but number two, they spend more money typically than a one-time or a minimal number of time type of customer would spend."
"Customers love information. Are we giving our customers as much information as they can be getting as they do business with us?"
"Table stakes are that you're friendly and you're knowledgeable. Now, once we get past the table stakes and maybe, you know, a good process, but once we get past that, then what differentiates me? It could be that I'm easier to do business with. It could be that I know you better than the competition. Those become differentiators, but recognize, those differentiators, if you look at the amenity wars, eventually will become trends and then they'll become expectations."
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