#32 Useful Ways To Think About The Relationship Between Customer and Employee Experience
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Most organizations either have a customer journey map that they've created, or they've at least talked about it. But when I go to most organizations and I say, what's your employee journey map? It's like Q tumbleweed. The core similarity between a customer journey and an employee journey is the person making the journey is a human. We

We spend so much time focusing on, oh, what are the touch points going to be? And where are they in the journey? And what's the timing and the sequencing? And which department on our side is going to be interacting with them? We have such focus on the I, I, I element of it that we're forgetting the element of the person who's actually walking the path, who's going through the journey, who's having the experience. ♪

Hello everyone and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. And today we are going to be exploring the intricate art of building customer loyalty and enhancing the employee experience with renowned author and expert, Joey Coleman, who also goes by the title Chief Experience Composer at Design Symphony.

For nearly two decades, Joey has been energizing and motivating companies around the world to improve CX, customer experience, and EX, employee experience, through speaking, teaching, and consulting. And today we are going to dive deep into the core principles of his bestselling books, Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. And

And we're going to uncover strategies to retain your ever so important employees and customers, which...

If you've listened to the show at all, you've probably gotten the gist that I'm obsessed with this topic. So, Joey, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Oh, Lauren, I am so thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for the kind invitation. And thanks to everybody who's listening in. These are two of my most favorite topics to talk about in the world as well. So I know we're going to have a great conversation. So I'm sure most people who are listening to this show work in the realm of CX. And pretty much anyone I speak to who works in the realm of CX is

knows the importance of how the employee experience impacts the customer experience. And a couple months ago, I was thinking to myself, I know this so deeply and the people who I work with in CX know this so deeply, the connection between EX and CX, but I don't hear us talking about this conversation often enough. And that led me to Google the connection between EX and CX and guess whose name pops up right away? It's Joey Coleman. Yeah.

Which is why we have you on the show. I'm so happy that the organic SEO is working in my favor. Thank you. It's totally working. Search gods. I appreciate it. It's totally working. But Joe, I wanted to kick off by asking you, what do you think most business leaders misunderstand about the connection between the employee experience and the customer experience? I think what's fascinating, Lauren, is that most leaders, if you get them in a quiet moment, will

will tell you that customer experience is really important and they will tell you that employee experience is really important. In my experience, however, they rarely use both of those concepts in the same sentence and rarely are either of those topics in the top three things they're worrying about and paying attention to today. They know they should. It's kind of like eating salad. You

You know you should do it, but sometimes you're like, oh, I'm eating this burger. And then suddenly you think, wait, I should have ordered a salad. It's not that we're telling you anything new that you should care about your customers or your employees. It's that you have so many other intervening forces that are drawing your attention or drawing your focus or seeming like they're bigger priorities that lots of times customer experience and employee experience get pushed further down the to-do list. Mm-hmm.

It's like the long-term versus the short-term thinking, right? We're always obsessed with where's the money coming from right now? What can we do to increase our revenue today? We're not thinking about those longer-term initiatives that ultimately are what grows our business and drives that long-term success, our relationships, which are not things that happen overnight. Absolutely.

No, they aren't. And I would say even further, lots of times when you look, I work with a lot of CEOs and founders who I love dearly, but lots of times they've made a conscious decision that either the customer experience or the employee experience is going to be someone else's responsibility at their organization. And it's usually the employee experience one. Like we usually say, oh, we're going to have a head of HR and they're going to be the one that cares about the employee experience.

The challenge is, especially in the last 20 to 30 years, we've made the human resources department neither about the humans nor about resources. And number two, it has been overly focused on compliance. Now, I'm a recovering attorney. You know, first steps admitting you have a problem. There's 11 steps after that. But I fully recognize and appreciate that there are compliance aspects involved.

of HR or of your people issues or to deal with with your employees. But when we over index on only focusing on the compliance, who is it at your company that is waking up every morning, looking in the mirror while they brush their teeth saying, how can I make this the best place to work?

Not just when we're a week out from sending everybody the best place to work survey so that hopefully we win the award for being the best place to work. Like, how can that be part of the daily requirement and the daily focus? Totally. Bless our HR friends. I always feel so much for them because there is so much on their plate. And I think the reality is, yes, the compliance is important. And yes, compliance.

Creating a great place to work is important. And I think it's something that we all own. I mean, in my experience leading CX teams, I am directly responsible for the experience that my team is having. And yes, HR can help and HR can support. But at the end of the day,

it is my leadership that is ultimately driving that great employee experience and then helping to drive that great customer experience as well. And I'd love to hear in your words, because I think, again, a lot of CX leaders understand this and they have a hard time communicating to the leaders that they work with, their bosses, the CROs, the CEOs, the COOs of the importance of this. And

Can you tell us why is CX important? Why is employee experience important to customer experience? Well, I think they are two sides of the same coin, Lauren. I think as we improve the client experience or the customer experience, necessarily it's a better place for the employees to work. They like dealing with happier clients that have less complaints, less problems. Conversely, if the employee experience is terrible,

We've walked into that restaurant or that retail establishment where the employee is not appreciated, is not valued. As a result, they hate their job. They don't want to be there. And we as the consumer, the customer, feel the ripple effect of that treatment. And so I think at the end of the day, customer experience and employee experience are completely interwoven with each other. They're two sides of the same coin. The other thing that I think often happens is as CX leaders, we're

we're asking our people to create a remarkable experience for our customers. We're working with our customer support teams, our contact center, our salespeople, whoever it is that falls under the purview of customer facing, and we're asking them to deliver this remarkable experience. The problem is you can't ask someone to deliver a remarkable experience for a customer if they have no context for what a remarkable experience is.

regularly when I talk to CEOs, they're like, oh, Joey, we want our people to deliver Ritz Carlton first class, you know, Michelin starred service. And I'm like, that's awesome. I want to do a little survey with your contact center. They're like, okay. And so I ask everybody in the contact center or the call center, how many of you have flown first class?

And cue the tumbleweed. None of them have flown first class. How many of you have stayed at the Ritz Carlton? Again, very few, if any, people have stayed at the Ritz Carlton who are hourly employees in a contact center. How many of you have eaten at a Michelin star restaurant? And it's like, doesn't Michelin make tires? And it's like, well, yes, but...

OK, suddenly we realize the disconnect between what we're asking our people to do and their personal context. I'm not saying that you're not able to be remarkable if you haven't flown first class, stayed at a Ritz Carlton or eaten at a Michelin starred restaurant.

What I am saying is that as leaders, we have a responsibility to contextualize the request that we are making of our team and make sure that they have an understanding of what's really behind what we're asking them to do. And also, I've done the Ritz-Carlton customer service training and the way that they treat their employees, which are not called employees, they're called ladies and gentlemen.

who serve ladies and gentlemen, the experience that they create for those people is incredible. It starts with the employee experience. If we're looking to these

you know, the companies that have been doing an incredible job at customer experience, if we actually look under the hood, there's a typically there's a great employee experience underneath. And I know, I know, you know, this well, because you've surveyed many, many companies for your books on the topics of the customer experience and employee experience. And I'd love to dive into a couple of the key topics or areas of focus. And I want to touch on both the

the customer experience and the employee experience because there are parallels in both these areas across the board. And so the first thing I want to talk about is journeys and customer journeys and employee journeys, just, you know, broad strokes overall.

What would you say are some of the core similarities? The core similarity between a customer journey and an employee journey is the person making the journey is a human. We spend so much time focusing on, oh, what are the touch points going to be? And where are they in the journey? And what's the timing and the sequencing? And which department on our side is going to be interacting with them?

We have such focus on the I, I, I element of it that we're forgetting the element of the person who's actually walking the path, who's going through the journey, who's having the experience. So I would say the core experience on both of those is that it's a human having the experience and human beings as much as in the business world, we like to say, oh, it's business, not personal. No, it's all personal. That that is the human condition.

So I think it's a lot about human experience instead of either customer or employee experience. The other thing that I think is often overlooked

in the customer journey and the employee journey is the difference in emotional state between us, the company, the organization, and the people we're serving, whether those are customers or employees. And the place where that difference or that delta is the greatest is right at the beginning of the relationship. So let's look at the customer side and then we'll come back to the employee side. On the customer side, when we make a purchase, our brain floods with dopamine.

We feel joy, euphoria, excitement. This is the product that's going to be the answer to my prayers. This is the service that's going to help me take my business or my personal life to the next level. And, you know, we as the consumer, as the customer are feeling all of this joy and euphoria and excitement that comes from pressing the purchase button, handing over our hard earned cash, whatever it may do that triggers that. The problem is brain science tells us that after that dopamine floods the brain, it starts to recede.

And those feelings of joy, euphoria, and excitement are replaced by feelings of fear and doubt and uncertainty. What if this product isn't the answer to my prayers? What if this service doesn't deliver the way the salesperson said it would? In common parlance, we call this buyer's remorse. Now, almost everyone who's listening has heard of the phrase buyer's remorse. But if I were to ask most leaders, does your business have a system and process in place

to effectively address the buyer's remorse that we scientifically know every single customer will experience. Oh, and by the way, the higher the price tag of your item, the greater the buyer's remorse. So just file that away for all of you that are looking to have more people top a funnel that are the top of your pyramid, your real high ticket dollar items.

It's like the greater we increase the amount of money and commitment we're asking for from the customer, the greater their buyer's remorse. Now, juxtapose that feeling of buyer's remorse against what's happening back in the organization. We've got salespeople high-fiving. We landed a new client. Somebody just won a trip to Napa for hitting their quarterly goals. Whatever it may be, the emotional delta between our celebration and their fear, doubt, and uncertainty, if we don't close that and close that quickly, we're in big trouble.

Now let's shift slightly to the employee experience. And while employees don't have buyer's remorse, they do have something called new hires remorse. It is the exact same feeling that occurs after they accept the job offer.

Their brain floods with dopamine. They feel joy, euphoria, and excitement. Oh, this is the job that's going to be the answer to my prayers. This is the position that's going to help me take my life to the next level, personally and professionally. But almost immediately after that dopamine floods their brain and it starts to recede, those feelings of joy, euphoria, and excitement about the new job are replaced by feelings of fear and doubt and uncertainty about the new job. What if I don't like my boss? What if their promotion schedule isn't what they claimed it would be in the interview process? What if I don't actually love

I love this new place to work. You know, now that I think about it, I only interviewed with people from HR. I never interviewed with any of my future coworkers. It's like the first day of school. I don't even know what to wear. And we counterbalance that against what we're doing back at our company. High-fiving. Oh, my gosh, we landed the candidate, the one we wanted. This is fabulous. This is amazing. Oh, we got him. And in two weeks when they show up, hopefully we're ready for him. Totally.

But often we're not. And it's like, again, we've got this huge delta between what we're feeling and what the new hire is feeling.

And if you doubt the validity of the two analogies I just gave, friends, this stuff is scientifically proven. These are dopamine releases. This is, you know, fear, doubt and uncertainty as dopamine goes away. It's why so many people love dopamine hits. We are hardwired as human to seek dopamine hits, whether we're a customer, whether we're an employee or whether we're just some random person walking down the street.

I believe if we pay attention to what the human we're dealing with is actually experiencing and what they need, it's a lot easier to create a remarkable interaction for them. So well said. I mean, I think we can all think back on moments where we've purchased something, whether it was something for ourselves or something for a company, which can be even more scary because you're on the line for making this decision or taking a new job. And the feeling of that we've all had before.

these experiences. And we're kidding ourselves to think that other people are not. This is a part of the human condition, just like you said. This is a part of what it means to be human. And so as we think about, and I know a lot of people do customer journey maps. One, not as many should as they do. I know that for sure because I consult with companies to do customer journey mapping.

But we often don't talk about the experience or the emotions that that customer is feeling as they go through each of these stages. Because just as you said, it goes from really high to really low to maybe we can recoup some of it. You know, maybe we can not let it dip so low. And then also thinking about how does our employee experience go along with it? How do we make sure that we get those employees engaged?

to really be advocates of our company as soon as possible so that they're not sitting there being like, oh, shoot, I made a mistake. So true, Lauren. So true. You know, it's interesting when we think about customer journey mapping, most organizations either have a customer journey map that they've created or they've at least talked about it. But when I go to most organizations and I say, what's your employee journey map?

It's like cute tumbleweed. And this is not a criticism of anybody in the HR departments. Again, see earlier comments about you are focused so much on compliance and making sure you're doing everything right. There isn't often as much time to be strategic and think about the feelings and the emotions of the team as opposed to did they fill out the right paperwork and do we have everything we need to process their taxes and payroll?

I think there is an opportunity, though, for folks throughout the organization to acknowledge the importance of knowing the customer journey and the employee journey. Years ago, as a trick, lots of times when I was giving speeches, I would say, OK, who in the room works in customer experience?

And like five or six people would raise their hands out of, you know, 100 people in the audience. And they'd be like, ha ha, just kidding. Everybody should be raising their hand because every one of you creates in some way the experience customers are going to have, even if you're in accounting and you're preparing the invoices. Lots of times that's one of the most frustrating aspects of a customer journey is

is how am I being billed? How am I paying? So it's everybody's involved. Now I do a similar thing with employee experience. I say, who in the room works in employee experience? Like the HR department dutifully raises their hands, but no one else does. And it's like, no, we know for a fact that a significant double digit percentage of employees who quit, quit because they think their manager or their boss is not a good human being.

So it's like all your managers, all your team leads, all of your coworkers and colleagues are all involved in employee experience. We're all part of the journey. But if we don't see where we go on that journey map, if there isn't even a journey map for us to reference,

How can we ever expect to stay in relationship long term? People fall off the map. When they fall off the map, as a general rule, they don't come back. You're reminding me of an earlier episode of our show where I was interviewing Sam Wegman of Univar Solutions, and she created a really amazing CX program. They're a B2B business. They've won a lot of awards for their B2B customer experience. And

And what Sam did when she took this position on was she created a campaign company-wide that was called We Are All CX. And it was about getting everyone in the company to adopt the fact that they create the customer experience. And let's take it one step further here. We are all EX as well. And we're all looking out for each other. And it is in your best interest to make sure that your new colleague has a good onboarding.

Because if they don't, you're going to spend all this time training someone who's going to leave or not be happy, not be engaged in their role. And it is everyone's role to take on the responsibility. And I wouldn't even call it a responsibility. It's like this is creating a great human experience for other humans inside and outside. Right. And that actually is really rewarding. Yeah.

unbelievably rewarding. I mean, here's the thing. Lots of times people who I'm consulting with or I'm speaking to kind of see it as, oh, Joey, you're asking us to do a lot of work.

Yes, I am. However, the return on investment from this work is significant, not only to the bottom line of the organization. You retain more customers. You retain more employees. By default, that means you've increased your profits. The research shows if we can get 5% of customers who are going to leave to stay just 5%, it will increase profits in the typical organization from 25 to 100%. Profits, not revenue.

Because the longer a customer stays, the more profitable they become. We've recouped the marketing costs. We've recouped the onboarding costs. We've gotten them up to speed when they're asking for things down the line. We better understand what they're saying. The communication is clear. Not to mention they're more interested in our higher dollar ticket offerings. The longer they've been in relationship with us, the more trust that has been established, the more credibility that has been established. So these things impact the bottom line, but they also impact

impact how we feel about going to work. If we like going to work with our coworkers, it's not a slog to get up and, you know, be on our way to work at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. If we enjoy our colleagues versus our coworkers. And by the way, the distinction on that is a coworker, when they see you on Monday, says, how was your weekend? A colleague, when they see you on Monday, says, how was your grandma's birthday party?

because they know what you were doing this weekend because they asked you on Friday. So it's not a generic ask. They actually have the type of personal and emotional connection that they understand what is going on in your life. It's very easy to quit a company. It's not easy to quit a friendship. And if you're friends with the people you work with, if they are colleagues instead of coworkers, that automatically increases retention as well. Oh my gosh, completely. I had a colleague once say to me, we don't need to be friends. We're just coworkers. And here's the thing.

I try to approach life with as much empathy for my fellow human as possible. I can understand that there are some people that think I don't want to be friends with everyone I work with. And that's fair. And frankly, I can appreciate that. And I probably resemble that remark myself. However, the research shows if you have a friend at work,

You are more productive. You are more efficient. You are more effective. You have a greater joy in your life. You see the connection between the work you do to the impact that is having as being much more solid, much less tenuous. And so I can appreciate to a degree a colleague saying, I'm not really interested in being friends with everyone, but you better be friends with someone. And if you've missed the chance to be friends with Lauren, I question your sanity. No.

Thanks for saying that. And I will say also, I also understand like we have social lives outside of work. We don't need to have social lives inside of work. And just the context of this conversation was we weren't being as productive as we could have been because we were lacking that personal relationship. And I was trying to lean in to be like, let's make more of a personal relationship so that, you know, things flow smoother. And, you

This was someone who wanted to just go to work, get their work done and leave. And I get it. And also, I think for leaders, it's just important to understand that as you create opportunities for your teams to get to know each other personally, that you create those chances. This is why in a remote world, it's really difficult. And we actually have to be bringing people together in person so that they can develop those personal relationships.

And like I've worked on a fully remote team. I've led fully remote teams and we got to get crafty, but we need to spend effort on it. It's really important to bring our people together. So true. I mean, two things immediately come to mind in this increasingly remote world that we work in and operate in. Number one, the typical leader has never changed.

by the way, never received training on how to manage people remotely. Never. Like I get that COVID threw a loop for many, many organizations when they were forced to go remote that had never been remote before. What's fascinating is we're recording this years later.

And there still hasn't been any backfill training of how to do things over Zoom. You know, I get that the in the room is better than on the Zoom. I get it. However, if we're going to be on the Zoom, we better have some training in that capacity or in that context. And I think the other piece of this is.

While we don't have to be friends with everybody we work with, when we're thinking about a remote context and only digital interactions, we've got to get the team together in an analog real world environment.

Where I think the missed opportunity is for many organizations is they're like, great, twice a year, we're going to get the whole team together for two days. And we're going to pick this beautiful location. And we're going to sit in a conference room and have everybody listen to 20-minute presentations from all the division heads.

That is not how you should do it if you are gathering your team to meet in person. The meeting in person should be about building the personal bonds between everyone. Go on a hike together. Go on the beach and have a prize for who finds the most shells and who finds the prettiest shell.

and do these things that are all about people hanging out with people, talking to each other, getting to know each other, that will be exponentially more effective to your business than having everybody listen to a division head read through an 18-bullet point slide of things that could have been presented in a PDF while everyone was still at home.

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I've left those two day meetups full of presentations and felt, oh, I didn't get to connect with this person. I didn't get to really like meet this person, understand who they are in their like core essence, because I can only really do that in person. And I'm sad about it.

I want to take it back to the customer experience here on this topic of in-person. What do you think about the importance of in-person interactions? Because that's something that we've definitely cut out a lot in the post-COVID world. It's much more efficient to support clients virtually. But in some cases, do you feel like it's still important to meet with customers in person? And in what cases do you think it's essential? I

I think it's hugely important to try to have some personal interaction with your customer if you can. Because what we know for a fact, again, going to the research, is the interaction when two humans are in physical proximity of each other, when they're having a real-time, real-world interaction, energy is being exchanged.

And ideally, that's positive, optimistic energy that is strengthening the personal and emotional connection bond between the two parties. When we do that remotely, it's much more difficult. Let me give a real world example that may resonate with some of the listeners. So in our family,

I sometimes play the role of grocery picker upper and delivery picker upper, right? My wife is amazing. She'll put everything in the app. She'll place the order. And then I go to the grocery store or the Target or wherever to kind of pull into the aisle. And when you pull into the aisle, I'm sure many folks have had this experience. There's a little sign that says, like, type in your number. And then the person is going to come out of the store and deliver your delivery to your car.

I got asked to do one of these about two weeks ago. My wife was like, is there any way while you're out you can stop? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So I pull into the Target and I live in Minnesota. I'm a fan of the Minnesota brand of Target. I pull into the aisle and I'm in slot number seven and there are people in the other slots to the left of my car and the right of my car.

And I haven't done this at Target before. So I don't know what the rules are. My wife just told me, you're going to have to hold up this barcode and show them that it's yours. I'm like, okay. But again, I'm a personal and emotional connection guy.

So the person from Target comes up to the side of the car and has a scanner. And I open the door and I say, I think you're supposed to sign this. And I can tell this has caught the person off guard. They're like, you're opening the door. You were supposed to just press the phone up against the window and let me scan it. And I was like, sorry, first time, you know, pick her up. Her didn't really know what the rules are. Here you go. And she scans the QR code.

And suddenly I feel the energetic shift where she realizes, oh, this is going to be an in-person interaction, not a distanced interaction. And I said, yeah, let me let me come around back and I'll open the trunk for you. Now, mind you, I can open the trunk automatically from within the vehicle. But I come around and I open the trunk and this person starts loading the groceries and the items into the back of the car. And I said, is it cool if I help?

And again, they have another moment where they stop and they're like, no one ever asked if we can help. But I wasn't going to like jump into the cart and, you know, make her feel uncomfortable that I'm reaching into the cart to grab stuff, even though it's my stuff. And so we load the cart together and I can tell that this is the first personal interaction with a pickup delivery that she's had that day. Mind you, it's about two thirty in the afternoon.

And in that moment, what I realized is every single business is racing towards convenience. How can we be more convenient? The problem is when we over index on convenience, lots of times we underserve on personal and emotional connection. And I like to think, and this could be my ego, so I'm fully well aware of it, that that employee is

felt a little bit better about filling a trunk with groceries and items that were ordered because we had a personal interaction, because I acknowledge this person as a human. I treated them as a human. I had a little conversation. It wasn't a big conversation. I said things like, oh, how's the day going? And I'm always curious. I'm like, are there a lot of deliveries doing pickup today? Aren't there many? How does this order compared to the size of the typical order? I'm always I'm

I'm weird that way. I just want to understand how things work and how things go together. But I think every business, the reason I share this story is not to say that you should start delivering your product to customers' trunks. What I am saying, though, is anytime you have the chance for an in-person interaction, don't miss that opportunity to let your humanity show. Let's not try to avoid...

those interactions. And I think also phone conversations too. Like we, there's a fine balance, right? Between spending a lot of time on the phone and, you know, trying to get as much done as possible. We know that efficiency is top of mind for so many people, but those in-person interactions, whether they are IRL or even just like talking on the phone, um,

I really believe that helps you long-term, makes things go faster. You have trust, trust equals speed. So invest in building that trust. Just invest in it. It's essential. Yeah. And it also leaves you feeling that you're not a number. Yeah. As a customer, you're not a number. So for example, I fly Delta Airlines exclusively and I spend a lot of time on the road. Let me define a lot. I'm on the road about two and a half weeks out of every month.

I log about 150,000 miles to 200,000 miles a year just for context, four and a half months into the year. I'm just crossing into the highest level of status on Delta Airlines that normally you can take the year to do it. Right. Like I spend a lot of time traveling. But here's what's interesting. When I call in.

I love that the first interactions I have are personal. I love that the first interactions are, oh, Mr. Coleman, how are you doing today? That is so much better than can I have your account number, please? Like, what is that first interaction? And it doesn't have to be this demonstrative, crazy script that you follow. It can just be, how's your day going? Where are you calling from today?

How can I help you today? What are you trying to accomplish? And before you tell me, just know that I'm excited to see how I can work with you to accomplish that. Those little phrases, those little interactions make me excited to use the phone, make me excited to do business with this company that I give credit.

great amounts of money to every year to fly on their airline. It's like I like having them think of me as a human and vice versa, me think of them as humans instead of a customer on an airline or a passenger on a flight. I always say that we've really fallen into the trap of looking at people as KPIs.

The numbers, right? And the reality is, is like, yes, that helps us simplify things and make decisions and whatnot. But it's not the only way to think about it because at the end of the day, we are humans. Our customers are humans, our employees are humans, and we are humans. And it's not just about the numbers as important as the numbers are.

So I could talk to you about, I mean, kind of everything all day, but I wanted to come back to a concept that you talk about in both of your books, which is the first hundred days. And we've talked a little bit about that buyer's remorse moment, but tell me a little bit about why that first hundred days is so critical for fostering long-term success.

loyalty both internally and externally. So the idea of paying attention to the first 100 days finds its origins in research around when do customers quit and when do employees quit. So when I was writing my first book, Never Lose a Customer Again, we were looking at customers in all industries globally. And what we found is that somewhere between 20 and 70% of new customers

will quit doing business with an organization before they reach the 100-day anniversary. 20% to 70%. These numbers were staggering, right? Auto mechanics, 68%. Restaurants, 40% to 70%, depending on the type of cuisine you serve. Banks, 32%. Cell phone companies, 23%. These numbers were just insanely large. And yet the typical business owner had no idea what their percentage was.

They had no idea how many customers they were losing, nor more importantly, the speed at which they were losing customers. When I sat down to write Never Lose an Employee Again, I thought, gosh, I wonder if this first 100 days thing applies over on the employee side as well. Logically, it feels like it would. But what does the data show? Well, the data shows that 40% of new hires quit before the one-year anniversary, and over half of those quit in the first 100 days.

Now, they have a tendency as a new hire historically to stay a little bit longer, but that has changed dramatically in the last four years. What the data is now showing is that give or take 20 to 70 percent of new hires are going to quit in the first 100 days. It's shocking to me that the numbers are exactly the same. Right. But it's not shocking to me when we come back to the premise of the beginning of our conversation, whether you're a customer or your employee, it kind of doesn't matter. You're a human.

And what we see is that organizations are not making the deposits in the Karmic Bank account early enough into the relationship to weather the test of time. Organizations are not laying a foundation that is designed to ladder up an employee or ladder up a customer over time. Instead, they're fire hosing them with info.

The typical new hire comes in and on their first two days has two days of back-to-back binder-driven training. What I mean by that is you get a ridiculous three-ring binder and you're going to sit in a room with a bunch of other new hires going through page after page of paperwork. No one.

No one on the planet is excited about paperwork. I'm not opposed to you having to have some paperwork in your business. I am opposed to you thinking that you're going to create a remarkable onboarding experience when it is driven by a binder filled with paper. We can do better. Right. So what can we do to make those interactions more personal? What can we do to make those interactions more palatable? Right.

Right. We don't have to explain everything a new hire or a new customer needs to know their first day doing business with us.

It's too much. We're flooding them. And I understand where leaders say, oh, I want to create a great experience. I want to make sure they know everything they need to know. I get it. But what you're doing is you're taking a fire hose, you're jamming it in their mouth and you're cranking it to full blow and wondering why people are saying, oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I can't handle this. It's like you created the environment that is leading to your people to quit. Often.

In these cases, and I have fully been there myself, I've hired...

you know, 20 people in three months and been like, okay, we need to get them up and running as quickly as possible. And when that happens, my perspective is I need them to be effective immediately. So I'm going to do whatever it takes to get as much information in their brain. The reality is, is on the flip side, they also want to be effective immediately, but one people learn differently. People have different processes and, um,

Just because you read something once on a slide or in a binder doesn't mean you get it. And we need to really ease people into their new work life, this whole new environment. I always say a new job is like a marriage. Like you literally signed a piece of paper that you are now committed to this company and you are going to spend most of your waking hours dedicated to this company. It's a really big decision. And we need to ease people into it so that like slow down to speed up.

Is what I always say. And I always like to give them the option. We can always do more faster, but let's just like see your pacing and let you like absorb in the way that you want to absorb. That's, that's what I've now come to after, um,

Putting people in a very overwhelmed state way too many times and redesigning our onboarding way too many times. Lauren, I love the honesty of both that observation and revelation. And I think the reality is, as humans, our default is to presume that everybody sees the world the way we do.

Our default is to presume that everybody learns the way we do, that everybody teaches the way we do, that everybody shares the way we do, that everyone hides the way we do. The reality is no two humans are the same. Every human approaches things slightly different, which is why in terms of an onboarding context, I like to think of each day of new hire onboarding as having a 3-2-1 model.

When I hire someone new into my organization, the first thing I do is I look at the month ahead and I decide what are the three things I want to teach them each day. I can teach them no more than three things per day. So three things per day. So now I take two weeks of training. And when I extrapolate that out to only three a day, I've actually just turned two weeks into 100 days of training. Right. Great. So we have three things. So three things for them to learn, two things for them to feel.

What do we mean by that? I mean, intentionally saying, what do I want you to feel at the end of day one? What do I want you to feel at the end of day four? What do I want you to feel at the end of week two? And last but not least, do, one do. So three things to learn, two things to feel, one thing to do. I want every new hire to do a part of the job each day. So if I'm hiring somebody who's going to be answering phones, I want them on the phone on the first day.

Now, some people may be saying, Joey, they're not trained enough to be on the phone. Well, you shouldn't have hired a person that you're uncomfortable putting on the phone on the first day. Sorry, this speaks to your hiring process, not their capabilities. If you don't trust them being on the phone on day one, why did you hire them?

So what can we do to get them doing the thing, whether that's pushing code as an engineer, answering a call as a receptionist, you know, coming to a client meeting? Now, granted, maybe you're not going to hire a salesperson and ask them to go to a sales pitch to the biggest company in their territory on the first day. Yes, that would be foolish. We don't want to do that. But you should be willing to bring them along to a client meeting or a prospect meeting on the first day.

Because they're going to feel so much more appreciated, valued, seen, heard if they're getting to do the real stuff instead of kind of the kindergarten stuff for the first few weeks. Like get them involved, immerse. They will feel very differently about the relationship. A hundred percent. I wanted to come back to the customer side of this first hundred days and just validate the data because.

Because in my last full-time role, I'm now a CX consultant and leadership coach. But in my last full-time role, when I got hired, we had a big retention problem. Don't know what's happening, but there's a really big retention problem ahead of customer success, which was me. Get in there, figure it out. And...

We started looking at what was happening and looking at a lot of data. And it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that we were seeing that first 90 days. We were looking in months. We probably could have gone an extra 10 days. But the first 90 days, that was the biggest drop-off point. People were not sticking. And so what do we need to do? Go back to the first moment that they were introduced to this business.

How are we presenting that? How is the sales team presenting that? Where they're not just looking at how do we get them to sign on the dotted line, but how do we get them to stay? And we have to change that conversation to be a long-term conversation, not a short-term conversation. We have to look at the onboarding. We have to look at what happens after onboarding. How do we celebrate them for their commitment? How do we make a splash so that that buyer's remorse, they get distracted and they just think like, oh no, I did make the right decision.

Right. And then on and on and on. So true. Yeah. And I think when we get intentional about what we're doing from the beginning, lots of times the answer to what we should be doing reveals itself.

You know, as a fellow consultant, I'm sure here's the thing. And sorry if this is a giant reveal and an unmasking in the consulting world. So I apologize in advance. But nine times out of 10, my job when I consult with another company is to shine the flashlight or hold the mirror in a way that they can see what was already happening.

That's my job. I'm a mirror holder. I just have to reposition it so they can see their own reflection and go, oh, my gosh, we're doing that. That's a terrible idea. Years ago, I was working with a company and here was the company's offering. Join our membership.

And we will teach you to be more effective and efficient as a organization, as a leader. And we imagine you're completely overwhelmed right now. You've got a ton of things you're trying to do. We will help you create systems. We will help you create processes. We will help you run your organization in a much more efficient and effective way.

Okay, there's a lot of business owners that would see that marketing messaging and say, oh my gosh, yes, that's what I want. I want it more effective. I want it more efficient. I want more systems. Great. So they signed up for this program. The day after they signed up, they got access to the library, the library of content that had been created. This is a content creation company that's selling this with recommended homework for them to do before their first in-person call two weeks later with their new coach.

When we dissected all the homework, it was going to require the review of 78 separate pieces of content, PDFs, worksheets, videos, recorded webinars, et cetera, et cetera. They were going to have to do 78 things over the course of the next two weeks to show up for their first in-person coaching call with the company that was there to make their lives less overwhelming. Right.

I was stunned. I was stunned. I'm like, wait a second. Let me get this right. We're targeting overwhelmed people. And the first thing we're going to do is have them watch 78 videos, read those PDFs, do the checklist. Like, oh, my gosh, what are we doing? But here's the thing. When I said that, I looked at the team's faces and what I realized is they were finding their identity and their value.

as they were defining it in a way and finding it in a way that it was about how much content they produced. We have a video for everything you'll ever have to deal with. Great. You don't have to show me all of them.

Show me the one that's most relevant to where I'm at now. Maybe two, but probably better if you can show me one. And let's just stair step this up instead of fire hosing it up. When we look at the other side, the other perspective, our customer's perspective in this case,

we can see that they're overwhelmed by that. And, but in the best interest, the company has the best, the customer's best interest at heart. They're like, we want to give you all the information. It's just a matter of looking at both sides of the coin to see, okay, what do we want to do? And what did they want to do? And how do we find the meeting in the middle? This is why customer journey maps is one of my favorite things to do. Um,

And why I think it's such a valuable exercise for any company. I know we're coming up on time and I wanted to touch on something that we kind of spoke about before, but I know this is really important for our listeners. And this is the ROI of investing. And we can start with customer experience, but really the ROI of investing in a customer experience strategy that brings everyone together. As we've said, it's a long-term play. It's not a short-term play.

It's something that I find a lot of senior leadership tends to have a difficult time understanding, and it's really the CX leader's job to articulate the importance of it. And I know I'm putting you on the spot here a little bit, but I know that you have some stats in your pocket, and I'm just wondering if you have some statistics

that you can share with our audience that they can pull and bring to their senior leadership or at least start to think about as they're positioning, here's my CX strategy and why I need everyone on board, why this isn't just my job, this is everyone's job and we need everyone to be on this mission with me.

What are some of the reasons why it is important to invest in CX? Two statistics and then one kind of philosophical thought process on this topic. Statistic number one, we go back to the one I already shared. The research shows that across all organizations globally in every industry, 20 to 70 percent of new customers will stop doing business with you, will quit,

before the 100-day anniversary. So the first thing to do to ask a leader is to run the numbers for your organization. Now, what you may find is that you're not even tracking these KPIs, okay? That's what we're probably going to find. But when we start to actually dive deep into this, we're going to realize that in a typical organization, we are hemorrhaging a double-digit percentage. Double-digit percentage of new hires are leaving. So,

Now we've identified that there's a problem. Well, what's the solution? Well, the solution is to create a great experience over the 100 days. Well, Joey, how do we know if that works? Well, on the back end, two statistics. Number one, that if we keep 5%, it increases profits 25% to 100% that I shared earlier. But number two, the research shows if on day 101, a customer is feeling ecstatic about the relationship, they feel seen, they feel valued, they feel heard, the typical customer will stay for five years.

Five years. So if you measure lifetime value of a customer or annual value of a customer, you can effectively project out five years of additional revenue if you have gotten those first 100 days right. Now, philosophically, the piece I would say about this is how big would your organization be today if everyone who had ever done business with you came back and bought another widget or signed up for another service?

Now, in the typical audience, when I talk about this, it's five times bigger, 10 times bigger, 20 times bigger. If everyone who'd ever been a customer came back and was a customer again. These are people you already know. You know their names, their addresses, their emails, their phone numbers. You know what they like, what they don't like. They were in the fold once, but because you probably weren't paying as close attention to them as you should have, they left the fold and quit being a customer.

As we pull these folks back in, as we focus on taking care of the people that are already there instead of worrying about the next set of people, our business increases, not only in terms of its profitability, but in terms of its revenue, in terms of its longevity and its sustainability. Last thing I'll say, because you asked for some stats.

We looked at companies globally. And what we did is we said, what does it take if you're going to try to sell something to a prospect? And what we found is we, again, looked across all industries, product and service alike, domestic and international. We found that the likelihood of a cold sale or a cold pitch closing into a sale was somewhere between 5% and 10%.

Depending on your industry, depending on what you were selling, 5% to 7% was kind of an average close rate. We then looked at the data of what happens if you're trying to sell to an existing customer. If you're trying to sell a brand new cold product, unprompted, but to somebody that you're already in relationship with. The close rate averaged between 60% and 70%. Folks, it's in the math.

This is not a touchy feely. Oh, because it'll be nicer to treat our people better. Yes, it will be nicer to treat people better, but it will impact your bottom line as well. Well, that's it, folks. It's pretty clear. And I know that most people listening to this know this, but it is our job to articulate this to the folks who may not be thinking about customer experience all day and also who may not be thinking about the impact that the employee experience has on

on that customer experience. And the one thing I'll add to everything that Joey just shared is that, yes, those are the numbers when it comes to customer experience. And in order to do that, in order to create that great experience, it's important that we empower the people who are

taking all the actions to make that happen. And we need to make sure that those people feel that they have a great experience in doing this, that they can pass that on. I really think of it as a baton. It comes from the leader in the company to the team and from the team to the customer. And so it's so important that we also think about how do we enable our people to then create that great experience that ultimately increases our bottom line.

So thank you so much, Joey, for all of these incredible insights. I have two last questions for you. I could seriously go on all day, but I'm going to stop here and ask you my two questions to close it out. The first is we ask this to all of our guests.

What is a great experience that you've recently had with a brand? Oh, goodness. You know, Lauren, what's so funny about this is as somebody who has worked in the customer experience space for 20 plus years, I'm always on the lookout for great experiences and I'm always on the lookout for experiences that could be improved and enhanced, right? Not so great experiences.

Let me share a story about one. So anyone who knows me and knows me well knows that I am a big fan of Lego. I love Lego. I love building Lego. I love doing it with my boys, building Lego with my wife. I build Lego sets on my own, right? It's just I'm a big fan of the brand and everything they stand for and everything they do. As a result, I give a lot of Lego as gifts.

So not too long ago, I decided to gift my nieces and nephews some Lego. Now, while they certainly have Lego in their house, they are not Lego fanatics like their aunt and uncle are, right? So we sent these gifts. And this weekend, I was hanging out with my family. And one of my brothers said, you know, it was interesting when we were building that Lego set. Thanks again. There were a lot of pieces. I was like, I know, but the kids were loving it, right? Right.

He said, we got to the end and we realized that we had lost a piece and it was really frustrating. And he said, but did you know if you go on the Lego website, you can order any missing pieces, any missing stickers, anything like that, and they'll send them to you for free? And I said, I actually did know that. And I watched as my brother said, you know, name another toy company that's like that.

I said, exactly. And that's why I'm a big fan of this brand. So what was beautiful is my gift. There was a positive brand experience, not directly via me, but through the experience my brother had and my nieces and nephews that he then reached out to the company and they treated him remarkably well, the same way I've been treated for years and years of being a Lego fan and

And now they're building a new fan because in every business, there are things that you can anticipate. Lego has anticipated that people will lose some of the pieces like that. This is just the nature of play and toys and kids and teeny tiny pieces of a pencil eraser. Right. They teeny tiny pieces. They understand this.

And what they have done is they have put in place the money, the resources, the support team to make it easy to say, hey, I love this toy, but I lost a piece. And instead of send us your receipt, tell us what day, tell us what you were wearing the day you purchased it and what the weather was like and all this craziness. They realize we can just send a couple pieces in the mail and trust that we're going to allow them to complete the set.

And that's what I'll close on. Every customer is trying to accomplish a goal when they buy your product, when they buy your service. If you have Lego, you have multiple goals. You want to have fun building it. You want to create a moment of play. But if you're going to follow the directions and build something, you want it to look like the picture on the box. And in order to do that, you need all the pieces.

So help your customers to achieve the thing that you've promised them. Help them to achieve the goal they had, to accomplish the goal they had when they originally decided to do business with you. And that's how you create long-term advocates. My brother's telling this story in a room of parents about how great Lego is. And it's because there was a mistake.

That was rectified in a way that was remarkable. The key there, there is a mistake that they rectified in a remarkable way. And look at that, how you can go from decreasing trust to increasing trust exponentially through these types of actions that really think about the customer's experience. I love that example. And I'm also a huge Lego fan. I like, I don't have children yet, but I

It's one of the reasons to have kids, to be honest, is to just have more Lego around. I love it. And so my one last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? Well, let's build on the Lego story I just shared. No matter how hard you try,

you are going to make mistakes as a brand, as a business. There are going to be times when you drop the baton, drop the ball, fail to deliver, say the thing that you shouldn't have said, send the email at the wrong time when you should have sent it, miss the deadline, go over budget, fill in the blanks. Every business is going to have moments where they fail to meet their own standards of what they were trying to do. Use that opportunity to turn your mistakes into your marketing.

Take the mistake and respond in such a beautiful, remarkable way that people want to tell the story

of how you fix the mistake. Consumers don't want or expect perfectly seamless, everything great, never miss a beat, mistake-free interactions. Customers are human. They know that mistakes happen, but it's how we respond to those errors, those mistakes, those missed opportunities that creates the stuff of legend, the stories that people talk about for years to come. That word of mouth marketing, you can't buy that.

but you can create the environments where it will happen if you respond to a mistake in a remarkable way. Such great advice. Joey, thank you so much for coming on the show. You shared such incredible knowledge on such important topics. So we really appreciate you coming and sharing it with us. I hope you-

Have a beautiful day. Lauren, thank you so much. And thanks to everybody for listening in. I hope you enjoyed the conversation that Lauren and I had as much as I enjoyed having the conversation. And I wish you all the best in the first hundred days and beyond, whether that's focusing on the experience you create for your customers, the experiences you create for your employees, or the experiences you create for every human you interact with. Exactly. Thank you so much, Joey. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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