Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:03

I'm your host, Kevin Dieny and today we're going to be talking about

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:06

connecting with your consumers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:08

We have a special guest today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:10

Her name is Carolyn Lowe.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:11

She's the CEO and co-founder of ROI Swift.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:15

Which is a digital marketing agency that excels in growing

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:18

small and medium-sized businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:20

Carolyn is passionate about helping consumer brands grow through

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:23

Facebook, Instagram ads paid Google searches and Amazon marketing, just

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:30

a ton of different different ways.

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Also, Carolyn left a job at Dell to found ROI Swift, and to follow her passion

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of helping emerging businesses grow.

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In addition to helping her clients see larger profits.

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Big plus.

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Carolyn is a mom of two and a licensed pilot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:47

Though, no time to actually fly anymore, she says.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:49

So welcome, Carolyn.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:00:51

Thanks for having me Kevin.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:52

That's really cool that you've had a lot of experience in a lot of

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:54

different companies and a lot of different places and piloting and being a mom.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:59

And a lot of that all comes together possibly to help,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:05

you know, run your business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:06

Is that right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:01:07

That is true.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:01:08

I always say if you need something done, give it to give it to a busy

Carolyn Lowe: 00:01:12

parent, because I felt like parents are just able to balance and get

Carolyn Lowe: 00:01:16

things done, um, quite a bit.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:19

Yeah, yeah, I totally understand that they have to execute.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:24

Especially when there's people, depending on you, a little kid.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:27

So that's, that's fantastic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:29

So we're going to be talking about connecting with your consumers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:31

So, what that means to me is a business staying in touch, having

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:36

touch points, creating interactions and engagements with their consumers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:41

There's a lot of different types of, let's say people that a business may consider

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:45

to be a consumer, could be prospects, people who they haven't worked with.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:49

I think sometimes it's your recurring, ongoing customers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:52

If you're that type of business, it could also be people who've bought

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:54

with you in the past at some point recently or far in a long time ago.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:58

So there's a lot there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:01

A lot of times we think of it as the marketing journey, all the

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:04

different touch points along the way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:05

So I guess just to jump right into it, why should a business invest or

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:10

stay connected with their consumers?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:13

Yeah, great question.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:15

And there's so many businesses over the last 20 years that

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:18

I've seen do such a really.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:21

Really good job with connecting with our customers.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:23

And why is it important?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:25

Because those are your, those are your advocates.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:27

You know, they're not just customers, if really you can turn them into raving fans.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:33

They do a lot of your marketing for you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:35

So I think, yeah, I don't think companies put enough emphasis on.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:40

On connecting with the customer and that can give you, you know, tons of

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:44

examples of great customer service and great customer connection and

Carolyn Lowe: 00:02:49

not so great customer connection.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:51

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:52

So in terms of, uh, a business, I guess, like falling at the starting line.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:58

I think of it as like a business that just doesn't value customer connections.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:02

And so I guess at the starting line, why should a customer, why should a business

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:07

consider that to be of business value or even like a core fundamental, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:12

mission of what it does and how it serves?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:16

Yeah, and especially.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:18

For folks in, you know, emerging businesses, small mid-sized businesses.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:23

I used to do direct mail and we would mail out millions of catalogs every year.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:29

And I'd have to go up to Maine on these press checks and we would.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:35

It'd be two in the morning, up in Freeport, Maine up where LL Bean is,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:39

and I would go, uh, they would have an apartment you could stay in when you are

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:43

going up in the middle of the winter, dead of winter to way up there in Maine.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:48

And they, they had this really cozy two bedroom apartment because they

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:51

know nobody wants to drive up to the middle of Maine in December, right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:55

So, and when you walk in and there was a sign that said, if we don't take care

Carolyn Lowe: 00:03:59

of our customers, someone else will.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:01

And that's always stuck with me that, you know, If you don't take care of

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:06

your customers, someone else will.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:07

And so that's, you know, long-term success of your business, especially

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:11

if you're in a service business or a business with repeatable customers, right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:17

Think about the, the businesses that you constantly refer other people to, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:21

None of those people have bad customer connections or bad customer service.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:26

And when I started the agency, we said the same thing, you know,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:28

there's a lot of agencies out there.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:30

Some are good, some are bad, but we said, we're going to be

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:33

both strategic and responsive.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:36

And so responsive is something that we hang our hat on.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:40

And we ask our customers and clients all the time, like, once a quarter I'll I'll

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:45

interview our clients and ask how the team is doing and are they responsive?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:49

And are you getting what you need and how happy are you on a scale of one to 10?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:53

And we fix what you know needs fixing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:04:56

And I feel like customers don't have that dialogue with a lot

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:01

of brands or a lot of companies.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:04

Yeah, that's really a fascinating.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:06

A customer when they have a lot of options, like you

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:10

mentioned, they can go anywhere.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:11

And so having, or at least considering at the beginning, at the starting

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:16

line, what is my value proposition going to be to the consumer?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:20

Like, I know that to the business, we'd be like, well, we're going to do,

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:22

we're going to be really efficient.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:24

We're going to have the best product, the best service, but ultimately

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:27

is that landing with the consumer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:29

So that's, that's a fascinating point because connecting with the consumer

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:33

also gives you a lot of feedback.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:35

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:35

On how things are working out.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:38

Yeah, and we, we always go back to each business, you

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:41

know, what are your three uniques.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:44

So you go back to Southwest airlines, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:48

Well, they are low fares, while other airlines have low fares, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:52

Allegiant, um, lots of flights.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:54

Well, America has tons of flights and, but they are lots of fun.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:05:58

So that's their three, you know, nobody else can claim those three things.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:02

So think about it in whatever your business is, whether you're

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:05

a service business, whether you're a apparel business, like

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:09

what are your three uniques?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:10

Why, why should people choose you?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:13

Over, over another brand?

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:15

Now is that, do you think that impacts how a brand?

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:19

How branding works for the business?

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:21

Like how it considers itself, positions itself?

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:24

From the outset, from the large overview point of view that, and then how that

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:28

may be trickles down into what the management, the leadership, the people on

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:32

the front lines sort of how they behave?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:35

A hundred percent.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:36

I think it comes down to core values.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:38

Right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:38

So if, if you don't have core values, like I would stop what you're doing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:43

And go figure those out.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:44

And the way that we did ours is we basically took all of our A-players

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:47

were like, who are the very best people?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:49

Well, we've got pretty much all A-players now, but at the time we

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:52

didn't and we said, let's, we put sticky notes all over the wall with all the

Carolyn Lowe: 00:06:57

qualities of the best team, teammates.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:00

And we're like, what do they all have in common?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:02

You know?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:02

And so we started talking about, well, why is this person so great.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:05

And we came up with our four core values.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:08

And for us, you know, caring about what you do, if you don't care about

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:13

what you do, you can't work with us.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:15

If you're not always learning, if you're not open to change.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:18

And, um, if you don't make it better, you know, like we're

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:22

constantly making things better, more efficient, better for our clients.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:28

So, like Amazon is a great example.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:31

Customer trust is their number one objective, and everybody

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:34

rallies around customer trust.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:37

And so I see a lot of people not put the customer as far up in their values.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:45

And so, whatever the values of the company are.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:48

That's what people are going to manage to.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:52

If the value of the company is make money at all costs.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:55

Well, they're going to, you know, decide not to focus on customer

Carolyn Lowe: 00:07:59

service, but I always go back to Costco.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:01

I was lucky enough to work with the CEO of Costco when I was at Dell.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:05

And, um, we really love their core values because.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:10

You know, number one for them is obey the law, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:13

Don't break the law and then take care of our customers and

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:17

take care of our employees.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:19

And then shareholder value will come if we do these three other things.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:24

Right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:25

And so employees are one of their top five values and customers

Carolyn Lowe: 00:08:29

are one of their top five values.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:32

That's fascinating, it brings me to the idea that I think of, that often

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:37

comes up in a business, which is what we really believe in, in customer service.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:42

Um, but the execution, the process, the operational processes, that culture, the

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:47

training, uh, doesn't quite execute there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:52

So how, how might a business who may have, let's say who had gotten off the starting

line and does have the value: 00:08:56

I want to create, as a value prop as a unique value

line and does have the value: 00:09:02

that I deliver to be customer service, to have high quality customer service.

line and does have the value: 00:09:07

But then may not have the processes in place to do that.

line and does have the value: 00:09:10

Do you have any ideas?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:12

I always go back to, talk to other people that are doing it well.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:16

Right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:17

Find someone who's doing it really well and reach out, you know, I live

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:21

in Austin, Texas, and this is probably one of the most, business-friendly

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:26

and networking friendly cities.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:28

You can reach out to anyone, especially as another business owner, and say, Hey,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:34

I'd love to take you out for coffee.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:36

I think you guys have great customer service, you know, would you be willing

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:39

to share some of your experiences?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:40

Right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:41

You'd be surprised how many folks you know, and all those

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:44

different experience shares of what people are doing really well.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:47

We worked with this great footwear company.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:49

They were two guys in a We Work and we help them get to basically 18

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:54

million in revenue in 12 months.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:09:56

And they a year in, they said, oh boy, we did this all wrong.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:02

They said, we should have been really coveting those early customers.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:06

And these guys could have been, you know, our raving fans.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:10

And so they started writing handwritten notes.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:12

To everybody that ordered a pair of boots and it was amazing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:17

People started having a connection with the brand.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:19

They have their own private Facebook Group with thousands and

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:22

thousands of people in it that are just raving fans about the brand.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:26

And, you know, a company like chewy.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:28

Does it really well.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:29

They don't just see you as a customer who buys dog food, they know your

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:33

pet, they know your pet's birthday.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:35

They know how old your pet is.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:36

They know what your pet doesn't like.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:38

I mean, they send you a sympathy card when your pet dies.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:10:41

I mean, that's the kind of customer connections we should strive for.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:46

Now do you think that that can only apply to the larger companies?

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:51

Or do you think smaller local businesses?

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:54

I at least I've always heard and grown up thinking like the mom and pop stores

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:00

have an advantage in that they can really personalize their delivery.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:03

They like, they know everyone in the neighborhood, but at the same time, there

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:06

is that counter to that, that thought that maybe I'm too small to have a customer

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:12

support system embedded in my business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:15

Right, yeah, definitely.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:17

And that's when some people use like a great outsourced customer service.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:23

I mean, that's one of the things that I really don't love outsourcing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:26

I would say get someone part-time 20 hours a week, you know, during

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:31

your peak periods of when, when customers call in, I mean, it is so

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:36

critical and like feedback is a gift.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:38

So if they're giving you feedback on your product or your service

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:41

or your website, that is gold.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:44

And so I used to work with a research company called NPD and their COO had a

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:51

saying that was like, you know, once they stopped talking to you, you've lost them.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:11:55

Like, if they're complaining, you still have a chance.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:58

Yeah, that's really awesome.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:02

I love that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:02

I'll have to use that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:03

We've worked with businesses a lot of times who are looking at their reviews,

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:08

like online reviews and they're like, look, if I, if I want to generate more,

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:12

I'm also going to get some negative ones.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:13

I don't want that!

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:14

And we have kind of a hard time positioning it as like,

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:16

look, all reviews are good.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:18

The negative reviews while not great, are opportunities for you too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:23

And, and that's, that's sometimes a difficult thing to communicate

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:26

as a touch point with the consumer.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:28

Right, and those are an opportunity to improve, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:31

Those are telling you what's working, what's not working in your business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:34

You know, I highly recommend businesses also do like a quick NPS, every do

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:39

an NPS survey on every customer.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:41

And you know, for us, it was really simple.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:43

We did, we do an NPS, usually twice a year.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:47

One of our customers said, oh, I wish you had a slack channel.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:50

I was like, well, we do.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:51

And we use it with a bunch of customers.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:52

Is that, that all it would take to get you to a 10 out of 10 in satisfaction.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:12:57

So I think those opportunities are also like, you may be spending money

Carolyn Lowe: 00:13:02

on things they don't care about.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:13:03

Find out what your customers care about, ask them.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:13:07

And then that's where you put your time and effort.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:10

Gosh, that reminds me of an experience I had where I had a

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:14

service that didn't quite go as well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:16

I think it was with an internet bill or, you know, and so I

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:20

went to the company website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:22

I was like, okay, I'd like to get support.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:24

And I, and I couldn't find, there's no phone number listed.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:27

And I was like, what?

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:28

I couldn't find it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:29

I could find the sales number, but not support.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:30

So I was like, man, this is hard.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:32

So I called them and they're like, oh yeah, that's a separate company now.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:35

And so I called and they gave me the number and I called them

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:37

and then they're like, oh yeah, that's a different department.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:39

Call them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:40

And I had to jump through, it felt like I was at the circus junk and

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:42

jumping through a bunch of flaming hoops to get to the final thing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:46

So I think also like a consideration might be how difficult is this or how difficult,

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:54

or how easy should a business make it for a consumer to connect with them?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:13:58

Yeah, it definitely, you know, it's funny, Amazon makes

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:01

it easy for customers to connect with them, but us on the seller side

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:06

where we represent a lot of brands.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:08

It's really hard to get someone on the phone, you know, so they put all their

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:12

money into support of their customers, because like they said, Hey, if we

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:16

have no customers, we have no business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:19

We know brands will come to the platform, but if we don't have good customer

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:22

service for our, you know, our prime members and everybody ordering, we

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:27

have no customers, we have no business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:28

And so they, Amazon as a consumer, you know, I've, I've had so many times

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:34

where it's so easy to return something or so easy to get a hold of somebody.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:39

They always err on the side of the consumer typically, which is bad for

Carolyn Lowe: 00:14:42

the brand selling because a lot of times they err on the side of the consumer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:47

Yeah, I think sometimes it may seem like my business is doing a

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:51

lot of customer, consumer interaction.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:53

So I'm, you know, I'm meeting them in person when they come to buy

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:56

something or when they come to, or when I go to them to perform a service,

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:00

clean their drains or whatever, but.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:03

There's a lot of other types of touchpoints and interactions that a

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:06

business can have with its consumers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:08

So, uh, what maybe are some of those different types of interactions

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:12

that a business could have?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:14

Some of them, you know, I work mostly in digital, so um a little

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:18

bit less on the, on the retail side.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:21

But I think that there's a couple of good things that I've seen.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:24

So after your, you know, after an order, a lot of times we'll, if

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:30

someone doesn't order, we'll send them an abandoned cart email, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:33

You leave something in your cart, you don't buy anything.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:35

We'll send you an abandoned cart and most companies will send you an abandoned cart.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:39

Oh, Hey, come back and buy.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:41

When I worked for a mom and baby company, the first email

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:44

was a, Hey, come back and buy.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:45

And if they didn't come back and buy, the second email was like a sad emoji face

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:50

and said, oh no, what did we do wrong?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:52

And it was a question and people tend to open question emails, because

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:57

people in general want to be helpful.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:15:58

So if you send someone a question, sometimes you'll get.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:02

Good, good feedback in there.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:04

And we said, oh, did you have a problem with our website?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:06

What prevented you from ordering?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:08

We'd love to hear back to you from you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:10

Hey, just reply to this email.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:12

Unlike other companies, you can hit reply and it'll go to one of our,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:18

team members who's likely a mom too.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:20

Cause we, lot of moms worked.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:22

I think it was like 70 or 80% of the moms worked there.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:25

And we had amazing response to that, you know, and it would come from the

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:28

CEO and it would be a text only email.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:30

And of course it was automated, but it looked like it was

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:32

coming direct from the CEO.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:34

It wasn't this fancy, pretty HTML email and they would write back to

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:38

her and they'd say, oh Lisa, thanks.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:40

You know, I ended up buying it at Target or Hey, my credit card didn't go through.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:44

And so.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:46

When, when we did, then that was great.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:48

That went over to customer service and we would call them and we would say,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:51

oh, Hey, I heard you had a problem.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:53

We'd love to help you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:53

And we get them on the phone and we replaced their order on the phone.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:16:56

In that, you went from somebody who was going to bounce to somebody

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:00

who's now like, oh, the CEO wrote to me and then they got on the

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:04

phone and then they placed my order.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:05

What a great brand.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:06

Right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:06

Think about that experience versus a, you know, canned

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:10

email that you get all the time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:12

Yeah, wow.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:14

And what's really cool too there is, a person or a consumer at the end, went

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:19

from a website, a medium to an email, or went from that to possibly a chat

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:27

like there's moving them or thinking about how a business's touch points

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:31

are reflected across all the different channels, uh, is, is interesting.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:36

Cause like an in-person is just one channel one way to

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:39

interact with the consumer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:40

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:40

There's a lot of others and there's probably some really good ideas for.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:44

Or examples.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:45

I mean, maybe you have some examples for different ways.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:47

Businesses are interacting with consumers in a variety of digital

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:51

and online and offline channels.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:17:54

We do and, you know, email, text surveys, followups, and

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:00

sometimes just the other thing we'll do is create ambassador groups, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:04

So if you have some really good customers, whatever your business

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:07

is, we would use them for product testing, like rolling out new products.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:11

So people who like the brand, we would invite them to be part of our like early

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:16

product tester group and they would get free product and they love that.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:19

And so you sort of have this group of advocates.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:22

And so I think you can do that in any business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:24

Is get a group of advocates.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:26

And then you were talking earlier about Yelp referral or reviews.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:30

And, why not ask for the review?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:33

You know, there's some people that call us up.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:35

We can't help them.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:35

They're not quite at the point where we can help them yet, but I'll, I'll

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:40

basically give them like thousands of dollars of free consulting in 30 minutes.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:43

And they're like, wow, this is great.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:45

And then thanks so much.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:47

And I said, Hey, would you do me a favor?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:49

If you got anything useful out of this - would you leave a Google review

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:53

because we have like zero Google reviews where the cobbler with no shoes.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:56

Right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:57

We build everybody else's business.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:18:59

And so ask them, Hey, would you tell your friends, um, if

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:02

you liked our service, yeah.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:04

Please pass it along.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:05

And you'd be amazed how just saying, oh, would you pass this along?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:10

They'll send an email to their neighborhood board.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:12

Like I had a great, I had a great, great service at a nail salon, you

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:18

know, and I wrote a Google review.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:21

And now their salon is full, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:23

They, they got a couple people to write, you know, they had good experiences

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:27

or even if they had bad, like you said, bad is also a gift to find out

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:31

what people don't like and fix it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:33

So in that vein, how important is empathy

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:38

to the connection point?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:40

Very, there is the saying that if you do something, if it's

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:43

not genuine, it's going to fall flat.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:45

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:46

Yeah, but at the same time, I'd say maybe the counter

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:49

or the opposite to that it'd be is the consumer always right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:52

I've heard that this one spun a little bit, a little bit differently.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:55

Well, I I'm going to turn that back on you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:19:57

Cause I would love to hear your thoughts first, Kevin.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:00

Sure, so I would say the consumer is not always

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:03

right, but here's the thing, uh, feedback is always important.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:09

In aggregate, it's like, okay, it's going to tell you directional things,

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:12

but you know, qualitatively what it, what happened to the consumer?

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:17

Is this something that's going to repeat with other people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:20

That's important, a person being, I don't know, abusive or rude?

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:24

Never okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:25

I mean, that's sometimes how people are trying to communicate, so it's hard to

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:27

sift through the words but at the same time though, uh, It's hard to handle that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:35

Like it's hard to, to sometimes dispatch that appropriately.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:39

So I think as a company, you sort of have to take the side of your employees

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:45

oftentimes potentially a little bit above the client, but that's, that's,

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:52

that's a balancing act because it's like, well, is this even a repeat thing

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:57

that's happening with this employee?

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:58

You know, like, uh, we have the values.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:01

We may, we may have some processes, but are the employees, you know, using them,

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:05

are they using the training or providing them, are we giving them the coaching

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:09

mentoring they need to be successful?

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:12

Uh, are, did we tell them how to handle, you know, an experience like

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:16

this, where a consumer maybe complains?

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:20

Or is it very unhappy and in how that should, should occur?

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:24

I mean, I, one of my first jobs was working in a fast food place.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:28

It's called, it was a fast food place called El Pollo Loco.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:30

I don't know if they're everywhere, but I know that they're on the west coast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:32

And so, my boss at the time, when I first got hired, I came to him.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:38

I was like, this lady wants a refund because her chicken, she

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:40

says her chicken was under cooked.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:42

There was some problem there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:43

And I was like, what do I do about this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:45

And he looked at me and he's like, what do you mean what do you do about this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:48

You give them a refund or you, you give them something else.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:50

And I was like, okay, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:53

So it was like, at that moment, I was like, kind of upset, like.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:56

Well, that's what I want to do, but I don't know what the company's policy is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:21:59

I don't know about this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:00

So there's like a slight to me.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:02

I was like, this is a training problem.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:04

So that's one of those examples where I think it's sort of on the onus of

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:09

the business to have that properly communicated down through the lines

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:14

of communication to the frontline.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:15

Cause the frontline people are, can sometimes be very separated from the top.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:19

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:20

So it's very easy for people at the top to think everything's going fine and dandy.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:23

And the people at the bottom just are slugging through.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:27

Not really following or not necessarily doing what they need to do because

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:30

possibly they don't know, or they're not getting reinforced training.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:33

If I got trained one time at the beginning, it may not be

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:36

enough, five years down the line.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:38

So that's kind of a lot there, but that does that sort of answer it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:42

What are your thoughts?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:45

I think you bring up a great point, which is make it clear

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:48

throughout your organization.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:49

What is your policy?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:51

Right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:51

What is your policy on unhappy customers?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:53

What's your policy on returns?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:55

When do you, when would you make an exception?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:22:58

And I feel like you are spot on with the training so that everyone in the

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:03

organization knows and is trained on that.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:06

And I also think that when, um, when I worked with Costco, they

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:12

said, you know, about 98% of our members are genuinely good people.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:19

And they said, we've got about 2%.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:21

Like, there's the person who returned the Turkey leg from the whole Turkey.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:26

The day after Thanksgiving says, I didn't like it.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:29

And they give them their money back.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:31

You know, I said, it wasn't good.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:32

They come back with like just a Turkey leg left up.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:34

I didn't like it.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:36

And so if they do that a few times, you know, they'll just quietly say,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:41

you know, they'll nicely say, yeah, maybe we're not a good fit for you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:43

There's a Sam's Club down the road.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:45

You may want to check them out.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:46

You know?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:47

So I feel like same thing with us.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:51

We're small enough that we don't have to work with jerks.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:54

So if someone's a jerk.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:23:59

We fired folks for, we've fired clients for not being nice to our

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:04

team and not being good people.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:05

And we think that like, again, you don't want to make their lives miserable

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:11

because your, your team and your, your team members and your employees

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:15

are also critical to your success.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:17

So we always choose team over client.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:20

And if, if someone, it really it's.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:23

Maybe 2%, 3%.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:24:25

I think of the general population that you would need to quote "fire" as a client.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:30

Yeah, that is a big, that is a big topic amongst agencies.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:36

And I know this cause I was at an agency and there were clients like,

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:40

especially the, the closer to whale size.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:43

And by that, I mean the bigger they got the harder it sometimes

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:46

got to like cut them off.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:47

And so sometimes teams were swamped, uh, team members might've been swapped

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:51

in, like maybe they'll have better luck.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:53

They get along with most people, uh, things like this were kind of done

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:57

tactically to see if they could circumvent this problem with like a client that

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:01

was fairly problematic or in other cases, you know, uh, being on the brand

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:05

side, sometimes we're not the best.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:08

And, and it helps to hear that from the agency, like, you know, this this

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:13

relationship would work a lot better.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:14

We could probably do a lot more for you if we had, you know, a

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:17

faster response time on your end.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:20

And we could do our job better if we did, if we had a process, is

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:23

there a way we can facilitate that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:25

And on our side it was like, wow.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:27

Yeah, that is true.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:28

We have making it, like, we have skipped out on a bunch of meetings that we said

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:32

we would go to and didn't go to, or, or we didn't reply back in a timely manner.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:36

We said we would.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:37

So it is helpful for everyone.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:41

I think to, to, to be aware of those things and for agencies, especially,

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:45

it can be a grappling choice cause it's like, man uh firing clients pretty rough.

Kevin Dieny: 00:25:50

It's kind of a big deal.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:25:52

Yeah, normally we'll have a conversation first.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:25:55

So we have a client and he was.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:00

You know, he was frustrated.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:01

And so he was taking it out on the team.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:03

It was a good sized brand, you know, they do about 10

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:05

million a year on Amazon alone.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:07

So when Amazon does something that messes with your $10 million

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:11

in revenue, it's troubling.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:13

And we really just explain that, Hey, we are your partner, we are on your side?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:20

This is Amazon's sandbox.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:22

We can't control what Amazon does.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:24

We wish we could, but we can't.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:26

And so, you know, our team, if you continue treating them this way, they're

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:31

really not going to want to help you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:33

And they're not going to want to go the extra mile for you.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:36

And if your listing gets shut down on a Saturday and you're

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:39

out $50,000 in revenue that day.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:42

They might not be so inclined to want to help you if you're just not kind

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:48

and genuinely a good person to them.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:50

So I had this conversation and I said, you know, we may not be a

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:53

good fit for you because this is how we want you to treat our team.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:26:58

So, um, it's really interesting and he totally turned around like,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:27:03

he's now been with us for a couple of years, but I had to have that

Carolyn Lowe: 00:27:07

conversation early on that, hey, we're not your enemy, we are your partner.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:27:10

And we want the same things you do.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:27:12

And I think having that conversation really helps

Carolyn Lowe: 00:27:14

diffuse any of those situations.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:17

So what about conversations with a potential team member who,

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:22

who is a touch point, a connected point to the consumer who may need

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:27

more guidance or more training?

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:29

How does usually does that conversation go?

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:31

If a business thinks, okay, well, I am doing pretty good job, but I am having,

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:35

I have one let's call it troublesome a person on my team who tends to

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:41

not get along well with everyone.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:43

They do a really good job.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:44

Like it's not a performance consideration necessarily.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:48

It's more like the relationship building side and it could be threatening,

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:53

you know, some potential clients from coming back or something like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:57

So how does, how do you handle that?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:00

Yeah, great question, Kevin.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:02

So we, we use traction tools and so we actually do not just core values, but

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:07

we also do get it, want it, capacity.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:10

So we look at everything that someone's doing in their job.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:14

Here's all the things.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:15

What do you love to do?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:16

And what are you good at?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:17

Right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:18

And let's model your job on that.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:21

We actually reorganized our entire Amazon and Walmart marketplace team

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:25

because some people said, oh, I hate to do the advertising part.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:28

Or I don't like talking to customers, gives me anxiety.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:32

Or I don't like working on that organic and the keyword research and all this.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:36

So we actually reorganized our team and now everybody has a job that

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:39

they like, and they're good at.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:41

So like, if that person is great at their job, but not great with customers.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:46

How do you, how do you engineer or restructure so that everybody

Carolyn Lowe: 00:28:50

is doing a job that they're good at and they liked to do?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:54

Yeah, that's awesome.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:55

That's one of the ways when I was at an agency, they structured everything

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:59

initially like a generalist.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:01

So everyone kind of did everything at first.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:02

They kind of went through everything and it was really cool way to learn how you do

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:05

everything, but you never really got to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:08

You're always kind of doing what someone else said.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:10

You didn't really get to do it yourself.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:12

And then at some point they changed their model to be okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:15

You can be a generalist, but at some point you should, you need to pick like

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:18

a, fairly specialized field or two that you want to go into, but we'll provide

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:23

the training and certifications or the education you need to really dive

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:27

into that niche to see if you like it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:29

So, everyone at first was a little, everyone had been doing something for

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:32

a long time was like, ugh, change.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:34

But other people were like, oh man, I could stop doing just like you

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:38

mentioned, I could stop doing this stuff.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:39

I don't like, and just do more of the stuff I do, like, or I'm going to

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:43

be paired up with someone who does, who loves the stuff I don't like.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:47

And I, and I'll do the stuff that they don't like.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:48

They don't like, and it was really, it was, I, I thought it was a really great

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:52

way to, you know, an HR move technically, but a management and leadership strategic

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:58

move to organize the company in that way.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:02

Yeah, I mean, you could do the same thing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:03

If you're a pool company, you're a plumbing company.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:07

I mean, there's people who are great at repairs, but maybe they don't

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:10

love talking to people or maybe, you know, they're more introverted.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:14

And so you figure out, you know, okay, maybe these people go to the

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:18

jobs where nobody's home, you know, you can access the AC outside and

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:22

they're going to do great work, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:23

Because at the end of the day, especially any business comes

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:27

down to, product and service.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:32

Right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:33

So if you're, uh, if you're my favorite AC, cause I live in

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:38

Austin, so everybody has to have an AC repair guy on speed dial.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:41

And so my favorite one will come out on a Saturday night and because you're,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:47

you never planned for your AC to go out.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:50

So I don't see why more people don't have this model, which

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:52

is they have a 24 hour team.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:55

If your AC goes out at eight o'clock on a Saturday, you call them and someone's

Carolyn Lowe: 00:30:58

at your house within 45 minutes.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:00

And that is a great model.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:02

I don't know why businesses are, okay, we're open nine to

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:04

five, Monday through Friday.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:06

Well, that's highly inconvenient and that's not when your toilet is going to

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:09

back up or your AC is going to go out.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:12

So those are my favorite is, they're they're quick and they're reliable.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:19

And, um, you know, Not the most expensive, not the least expensive, so right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:24

You can always get three good, fast and cheap.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:31:27

And, um, I'll always take good and fast and pay a little bit more.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:32

Yeah, that's really cool.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:33

And I love that, that the three, uh, paradigm model there about,

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:38

okay, what, what, what am I getting?

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:40

Or from the, from the business side, what are we delivering?

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:43

And.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:45

I think it's, uh, I think there, there is another concept here I'd wanted to ask you

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:49

about, which is like coverage or scale.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:53

So, connecting with consumers across the channels does feel

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:59

at least the way it went.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:00

Just saying that out loud, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:02

It does feel like it's a lot, like there's a lot of places, social media.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:05

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:05

There's reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:06

There's reviews where?

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:07

Oh, Yelp and, Google and Facebook.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:09

And there's tons of sites that have reviews and there's

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:12

email there's phone calls.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:13

There might be chats.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:14

There might be texts.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:15

There might be in-person visits.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:16

There might be events I'm going to, there might be, fairs i'm

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:20

attending, local community things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:23

There's a lot of places that I have to have coverage for.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:26

I have to have people at, or I have to go to myself and, and anywhere that you're

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:31

at, I think in some regard you can't really be in other places simultaneously.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:35

There's like that you can only be in one place at a time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:39

And so switching between these can be a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:40

So how does the business handle the overload of having to connect

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:45

with consumers, everywhere?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:32:48

That's a terrific question.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:32:50

I think you, you can't be everything to everyone.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:32:55

So figure out what you're going to be good at, where you're going to be

Carolyn Lowe: 00:32:58

in a hundred percent focus on that.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:33:00

There's a great book called Uncommon Service, and it's all about customer

Carolyn Lowe: 00:33:04

service and you can't provide great customer service without a trade off.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:33:11

So figure out what doesn't matter as much and really put your focus

Carolyn Lowe: 00:33:16

on what does matter as much to your, to your customer base.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:19

Do you have any ideas about figuring that out?

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:22

Haha there you go.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:33:25

Ask them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:26

I mean, one of the reasons that our company measures, calls,

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:30

but also chats or form fills or texts or reviews, we measure all those.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:35

We consider them like consumer touch points.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:38

It's because we serve a lot of businesses, one, but two, some things matter a lot

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:42

more to some businesses than others.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:43

And to a lot of businesses, the phone is the king it's

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:46

like to them, that's awesome.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:47

But having a person pick up the phone, it could be a little costly.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:50

So some businesses it's like, look, I I'd like to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:53

And maybe I, you know, it's not in my cards yet.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:56

Or I actually, I really like our chat or I really like our

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:00

email system or whatever it is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:02

And so businesses have you know, kind of figured that out, or maybe

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:05

they started out and they were like, the email system worked great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:08

But now at some point they're like, you know what, everyone in our consumer is

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:10

telling us, they want to call us, we're going to need people to get on the phone

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:14

now, because now we're at a different level of business where that's expected.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:18

And so that can be a challenge like a transformational point for the

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:21

business to adopt a new value, a new process, which can be a bit, I, I think.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:34:27

Definitely, and I would say the one thing to avoid spending

Carolyn Lowe: 00:34:31

any money on or doing anything with is robo chats, because I have not found

Carolyn Lowe: 00:34:36

anybody who likes the robo-chats.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:41

Yeah, we, we always say like the faster you can get

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:45

someone to a human being, the better.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:47

There is some costs there, obviously the robo chats, you know, saving some

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:50

money like from having to have people at all hours all the time everywhere.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:53

But if you can get someone to it, like you said, with it, with the HVAC example

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:57

of, of this accessibility and availability of them, 24 7, even on a Saturday night,

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:02

there is some value there that you can, that businesses, some businesses may

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:07

might consider that's too costly or not for me, but that means there's a limited

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:11

group that you're competing against.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:13

That could be a huge potential opportunity.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:15

Definitely, definitely...

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:17

And I feel the same way about, um, you know, when you were talking

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:23

about the customer and just now in the customer service, like I called

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:30

Capital One today, cause they were closing down their IRA department.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:33

Right, and it was amazing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:35

I called and I was on hold for two or three minutes, not bad.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:40

And a person picked up and it wasn't a phone tree.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:43

It was amazing.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:44

And then I called TD Ameritrade where I was transferring this IRA too.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:48

And I had to go through their whole phone system and then I got to someone, then

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:52

I go, you gotta transfer you over here.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:53

And I was like, wow, I have a lot of money with TD Ameritrade.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:35:58

And it was really hard to get to a person, so.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:02

We sell, uh, with our service, a phone tracking, we

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:07

have services we call IVR or the integrated, you know, virtual phone.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:11

So you it's a phone tree, press one for sales, press two for support

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:15

or whatever the business wants.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:16

We can set it up right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:17

When we do offer that - there is a question that our advisors, we call

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:22

them advisors on our team for a reason.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:24

They talk about this, are you sure you want this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:26

There is a possibility someone's going to wind up in an infinite

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:30

loop tree or something that if this isn't well executed, there's

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:33

going to be some problems here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:35

People want to talk to someone right away.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:37

Obviously the routing it to the right department saves time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:40

It's efficient, especially in a larger organization.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:42

You know, a department may be completely set up for supporting and another one,

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:47

especially for sales or whatever it is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:49

Uh, or for insurance or, you know, if you're an insurance provider, you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:52

it's sometimes best to have that, or maybe have different numbers altogether

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:56

that go to different departments.

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:58

But that that is a consideration that we, we offer them as,

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:01

you know, think about this.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:37:04

Yeah, I love IVRs, get me to the right department.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:37:07

You know, if I need sales, if I need service, if I need

Carolyn Lowe: 00:37:10

support, I love that option.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:12

Yeah, we do track time on hold.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:15

That's what we call it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:16

So it's like, all right, let's look at how long you were making people wait.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:20

Uh, it could be terrified or it could be, you know, values as the process

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:25

executing the way we want it to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:27

Or do we have, you know, not enough people to take these, uh, is

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:30

this just like a holiday weekend?

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:31

That's going to blow up, you know, great...

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:33

It's expected that this could possibly happen.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:36

There's there's some customer touchpoints in, in things that

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:39

may be more seasonal too, so.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:37:41

A hundred percent.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:43

So let's say we started at the starting line.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:44

That's a business who, they they value customer connection.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:48

And somewhere along the path, we've talked about different ways to connect

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:53

different channels, to connect the reasons to do so, uh, opportunities

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:57

for a business to, you know, charge their sales or to get more support,

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:01

to create advocates, as you mentioned.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:03

One of the more complex, final layers here I was thinking of is personalization.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:07

So should a business treat every consumer the same, or should they talk

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:12

to everyone like they are the same?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:14

I think you have to give the same level of service, meaning.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:23

You don't want to talk poorly to someone, you know, I think there's, there's

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:26

the baseline of customer service, but absolutely there are folks who, spend

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:31

a lot or spend more and they get more service or they get better service

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:37

or they get more response times.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:39

I don't think it's a one size fits all.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:41

Um, and every business is different, but I feel like, you know, if you're

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:46

one of the top customers, you should get something different, right?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:50

I've, I've flown almost like 1.8 million miles with American.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:54

Yeah, it gets about board early.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:56

Cause I've probably over the years giving them, I don't even

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:58

want to know how much money.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:38:59

Right.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:39:00

So I would be sad if I spent 1.8 million and I had to board and I was in the last

Carolyn Lowe: 00:39:06

row, in the middle seat all the time.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:39:08

Like I do feel that you should treat some of your best customers

Carolyn Lowe: 00:39:12

a little bit, little bit differently, a little bit better.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:14

It was a little bit of a loaded question because I know

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:17

it can take different directions and I didn't necessarily want us, I

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:20

didn't want to bias you toward any one way, but I believe the same way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:25

The processes you have are not necessarily like, fences, that a person

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:29

can't deliver better service or, you know, than, than what is trained on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:33

A rep, a frontline person can go out, you know, beyond the length

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:37

to deliver a higher quality service to someone, who may need it more.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:41

Appreciate it more than somebody else, as long as everyone's receiving

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:44

that standard level of service.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:47

And some people, you know, may need a little more, some people may need

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:49

a little bit more time or have more questions and other people it's just

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:53

kind of the nature of the beast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:54

But then the secondary thing, the personalization part,

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:58

I think, is really crucial.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:59

To talk to people not all the same.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:02

In the, in the sense that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:04

You know, there are people who are higher value to you, or maybe people who

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:07

are going to give you better feedback.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:09

Those people, I tend to just naturally gravitate towards, because if I'm getting

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:13

better feedback, I'm going to improve or things are going to work out better.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:17

So like, in some sense, like if I have, you know, if I'm working with a bunch

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:21

of people and one of them is giving me constant great quality feedback.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:24

I tend to just go to them first, you know, it's just the way it is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:28

So I think that creates a better connection with the consumers, especially

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:33

like you, the ones who are, you know, flying a lot, it kind of warrants like

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:39

a loyalty program or different ways, different opportunities to keep them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:44

If they're going to fly a lot, you want them to fly with you,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:40:46

That is true.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:40:47

That is true.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:49

So, is there anything we didn't talk about or maybe it didn't

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:51

cover any, anything outstanding you'd want to mention before we close out?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:40:57

I think you had great dialogue on customer service

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:01

and I would just say, yeah.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:01

Connect with as many people as you can.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:03

Other business owners, see how they do it, see what you can learn from them.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:08

Um, yeah thanks Kevin.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:10

Yeah, thank you for coming on Carolyn.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:12

Now, is there any way that you would like people who are listeners or anyone

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:17

who's interested in your company, or what you do to reach out to you, any

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:20

way that they can connect with you?

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:22

Sure, um, they could go to our lousy little website because

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:25

we spend all our time on everybody else's brand, except for our own.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:29

So you could find at roiswift.com or on LinkedIn, just search for ROI Swift.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:37

Those are probably the two best ways to get ahold of us.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:39

There's a bunch on customer service and why it's important in my book that

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:44

came out in September, it's called Business Do's And Don'ts, lessons from

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:48

everything from fortune 500 to startups.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:51

So, uh, in customer service and customer connection is, is, uh,

Carolyn Lowe: 00:41:56

a big part of that book too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:58

Yeah, I saw that book.

Kevin Dieny: 00:41:59

It looked like a really, when I saw it, I was like, I gotta get this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:02

It looks so the do's and don'ts is like such a simple, cool way to understand,

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:07

okay, well, someone's been through this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:09

What can I learn from it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:10

I think that's really awesome.

Carolyn Lowe: 00:42:13

Awesome!

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:14

All right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:14

Yeah, thank you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:15

Thank you for coming on and we appreciate everyone who's listened.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:18

And we'll catch up with you guys next time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:42:19

Thanks Carolyn.