Improving Customer Retention with Customer Journey Mapping

Kathy (host):
Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of “Help! My Business Is Growing,” a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina, a fractional CFO and founder of NewCastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything that you do in your business is eventually going to end up in your finances. And to get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. Well, the question is, how in the world do you get there? Well, this is where this podcast comes in to help. And today we are going to be focusing on customer retention. Because the question is, why do some businesses have customers that keep coming back? But for others, it is so hard to achieve this, and customer retention for those is a major challenge. When many businesses are focusing on attracting new customers and neglecting the ones they already have, that is a problem, and it’s not only a problem in terms of customer service, but also a revenue issue as well, because if you are not focusing on customer retention, you are ultimately risking losing revenue. So the question is, how do you fix this in your business? The answer to that is by customer journey mapping and creating exceptional customer experience. Well, it’s kind of easy to say, but hard to do. So we’re going to be diving into what does that really mean, and how do you keep your current customers engaged and satisfied and provide that exceptional customer experience? And also, what are some of these exceptional customer experience things that you can provide to your customers? What are some of the ideas? These are the things we’re going to be talking about in this podcast episode. And as a reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast have blogs and detailed timestamps, and we link all of those in the episode show notes. So if you’re interested in seeing the blog post, or if you want to just scan through this particular episode, go and take a look at those detailed timestamps. It’s there as a resource for you should you need it. My guest today is Samantha Irwin. She is a small business coach and consultant and creator of Power of People Academy and Creating a Culture Deck. She inspires and educates teams to create exceptional customer experiences that foster loyalty and advocacy, driving both financial success and heartfelt service for brick-and-mortar businesses. She equips businesses to provide consistently exceptional customer experiences, fostering thriving enterprises and fulfilled staff. Samantha’s commitment extends to teaching business owners how to make their establishment preferred workplaces and favorite customer destinations. Join us.

Kathy (host):
Samantha, welcome to the podcast.

Samantha (guest):
Thank you for having me. I’m pretty dang excited to be here.

Kathy (host):
Super excited you’re here for this topic because you are an expert in customer experiences and customer journey mapping, and you have an interesting background because you have actually had a boutique hotel that you started, and then it became a really fabulous place that people love going to. So when it comes to customer experiences, I love talking to you about this, because you have all these little tidbits and things that people can do in their business, whether a product business or service-based business, that they can use in their business to make their customer experience better. But first, let’s start with the customer journey and the customer journey mapping, what is it and why is it so important that the business understands the customer journey?

Samantha (guest):
So that’s a great question to start off. We are diving in the deep end. I like it. When I just did a workshop this morning, and whenever I speak or do workshops, most of the people, a vast majority of the people, are not familiar with customer journey maps. There are few, but it’s very few, so there’s no shame if you’ve never heard of it. Hopefully, you’re going to go, “Oh my gosh, it’s like sliced bread. Like, what is the greatest thing?” I wasn’t aware of it when I had the boutique hotel. As I’ve moved into speaking coaching and consulting, this is where I’ve discovered customer journey maps, what I like about them, and then there’s something I don’t like about them. So I created my own to solve that problem. So in a nutshell, business life, whatever can be a hot mess. There’s so many things vying for the owner’s attention. There’s always things to do. A customer journey map – what it does is it takes this hot mess of business and it creates compartments, or what we call touchpoints, that outline the journey that our customer, our member, our guest, whatever you call them, that they take with us during the lifetime that they are with us. So it compartmentalizes the steps. And when we compartmentalize those steps into touchpoints, we are then able to, like, eat the elephant. We can take the step, analyze it, see if they’re having the experience that we want them to have, and curate it so that our customers are having the experience during their entire journey, the whole entire journey cycle, that they’re having with our business. So hopefully that’s in a nutshell.

Kathy (host):
And what are those steps? And I know that you have a fabulous graphic out there, and I’m actually just looking at it on my computer right here, but I would like for you to walk us through these six steps that you have on the customer journey map. And how do they relate to each other? Can you walk us through those?

Samantha (guest):
Yeah, I absolutely can. And with your permission, I’ll back up a little bit to give people an idea who are just listening the difference between traditional maps and this map. So traditional maps are linear in nature, so like, if you just think of a line and at the beginning is what they call consideration phase. In mine, it’s called “out there” just because I’m a little cheeky. So the consideration phase, and that’s when we’re considering whether or not we want to do business with this, let’s say a coffee shop, because lots of people can relate. And as the person moves through the line, right, they’re considering, and then they decide, and then they come in, they buy, and they have an experience with the product they’re moving along that line, and then there’s the advocacy stage at the end. Traditional customer journey maps are linear in nature. It’s like a funnel, like, if you’re familiar with people are familiar with marketing funnels, lots of that kind of same stuff applies. What I don’t like about traditional customer journey mapping is that they are linear in nature, and by their very shape, it implies a treadmill. Now, yes, we are always marketing and trying to acquire new business however, especially and particularly for small business owners, the money is in retention. It’s in retaining. It’s attracting the right fit customer, first of all, and then it’s retaining that right fit customer. We can bless and release the people who will be better fit elsewhere. So my customer journey map, for those who are just listening, is in a Ferris wheel shape, and it’s that way on purpose. So the first step is what I call the “out there” stage. That’s where you and I, we’re going to a new place in Chicago and we’re not familiar, and so we are going to Google what coffee shop we want to go to on our phone. That’s the consideration phase where we’re evaluating – that’s a step or a touch point in our journey. Now, I just recently had to look for a dry cleaner. And what did I do? I googled it in the “out there” stage. This stage matters, because, from my experience, what happened is there were two dry cleaners. One had loads of reviews and had been in business longer. The other one had, you know, not as many reviews and was newer. I read the reviews, I chose the one that didn’t have as many reviews specifically because of the way they answered a negative review. So that’s the first step. People are looking all the time. It’s one of the ways that they evaluate whether or not they want to choose to do business with you.

Samantha (guest):
So let’s say you and I in Chicago, we decide, okay, we’re going to go to – I don’t know what’s a coffee shop? I’ll use one here. I know a name of a place here, one’s called Grounds. It’s just right down the road. So we find this coffee shop called Grounds. And so the next step is what I call “on the way.” So especially, and particularly, if you have a brick-and-mortar, signage works for you 24/7, it’s really important. Yes, Google’s in my ear. However, we are auditory and visual learners, and signage is a way to get advertising that works for you. You know, never calls in sick, right? And there’s an important thing to put your signage perpendicular on your building, rather than just in the window, because as I’m driving down the road, I don’t rubber neck and look in the window, right? You’ve got to catch my peripheral vision. So that’s the second step – out there, on the way.

Samantha (guest):
The third step I call entrance or lot. So at the hotel, when we had the hotel, at the very front you walk up the front steps. This is three-story brick building, and there’s this old, beautiful, old light that’s out front and, you know, because of nature of a hotel, we often would leave that light on and it would get cobwebby and stuff. The last thing I wanted to do was to have a customer or guest come up and be afraid of some creepy spider gonna drop on their head or give them the impression that “ew, is that what it’s like inside, in my room, or they’re not taking care of things?” It’s subconscious, but it matters, right? So that entrance, or lot – I’m having an experience. Is it the experience that the business wants me to have? So that’s the next step, you know, and that can be, you know, is the door sticky? Does it say push? Does it say pull? Are the hours on there, like, is it cluttered with a bunch of tape and crap or whatever? All there’s tons of fun things to look at.

Samantha (guest):
The next step, step four, so we’ve done out there, on the way is number two, three is entrance or lot. Four is with the people. Now this four and six are the most powerful parts of the customer journey – with the people. Kathy and I were just talking about this before that many business owners, and don’t hate me if you say when you hear it, but I know people – I’m gonna do it anyway – are excited about the product or the service that they’re offering. That’s why they’re in business, and it should be, however, taking our coffee shop example, if I want to impress you, Kathy, and I go to a coffee store and I have a mediocre mocha but a great experience, I’ll probably send you. If I go and I have the best mocha, but I feel like an interruption to their work rather than the reason for their work, or they’re rude, or they’re dismissive, or whatnot – I would not send someone whom I wanted to impress to that coffee shop. With the people, training people how to interact with and make their customers, members, guests feel welcome, is a specific skill that is of vital importance, that if it’s not in the owners or the leaders wheelhouse, you’ll Google, do whatever YouTube, learn how to teach those people skills. Learn how to teach some basic customer service skills. So that’s step four.

Kathy (host):
And I will say that I will definitely want you to finish this journey map, but this is definitely a place where I will have a bunch of questions, because especially as you say, teach the people skills. My question is also how much is teachable and how much is not, but I will let you continue the rest of the customer journey, please.

Samantha (guest):
I cannot wait for that question. I’m excited for your question, and I didn’t plant that question, so I’m super excited that you asked it. So the next one is with the products. And of course, we want consistent product experiences. Customers, they want two things. They want consistency in the product or the service they’re receiving. Right? If I go in and I get a 12-ounce one-shot mocha, I don’t want it sickeningly sweet the first time and then nothing the next time, right? So consistency with the products is very important, and most businesses have that down. That’s why people are excited. That’s what they got in business for – they got the SOPs and the training manual. They got it. Customers also want a consistent experience, like with our mediocre mocha experience, I want, yes, if I love coming in for this great product all the time, I also need a consistent person-to-person experience, customer experience, because it’s no fun. We’ve all been on the receiving end of being excited going into our favorite store one day, and it’s great. We leave in a better mood, and then we go in another day and we leave in a bad mood, because the person was kind of a jerk. So it’s really important – consistency with products and the experience.

Samantha (guest):
And then the last step, Step six is what I call the dating game. This is where the real money is, and that’s in retention. If we can increase – well, I should have you guess. Let me ask this question, and I’ll have the readers guess, or listeners guess in their mind. So you can increase profits between 25 and 95% – and I know that’s a range, but it depends on the industry. So increasing profits by 25 to 95% when you increase retention by blank percent, just throw this out there. So think what would that number be? Well, the answer is 5% – increasing retention by just 5% increases profits from 25 to 95% and there’s, I mean, we could do an entire another podcast about that. It’s specifically with the right fit client. That’s whom we’re talking about. We give everybody great service, bless and release the ones that fit somewhere else. But when we find that person who loves us and we love them, that retention is key. It’s so key, providing excellent, consistently excellent customer service experiences creates amazing retention. Empowering staff to deliver consistently excellent customer service experiences not only releases the owner from that responsibility, but it increases customer retention, and it also increases staff retention, because staff then understand how valuable they are and how important they are.

Kathy (host):
Really thank you for walking us through this customer journey map, and I’m hoping that Sam will actually share that with us in a graphical format, that we can put it in the blog, in the show notes, and that you can actually see this because it is an interesting visual to see that. So I will put that out for Sam to make that decision, share it with us or not.

Samantha (guest):
You betcha, I’d be happy to. I’d be happy to.

Kathy (host):
So let’s go back in with the people, which is part four of this map. And you mentioned that you should actually be training your people to give great experience for your customers. And my question is, how much of that is actually trainable, and how much of that is really just personality-based?

Samantha (guest):
Such a beautiful question. I think it was Michael Hyatt that I owe this quote to, and I learned it years ago, and then I solidified it by doing the wrong thing: “Hire for personality, train the skills they need.” And that is specifically when we’re talking about a front-facing customer service position. If I’m hiring for a bookkeeper that’s in the back room that is interacting with no one, they don’t need to have some people skills. It’s okay. But when we’re hiring for front-facing customer service positions, hire for personality. Now, hospitality is a gift, much like being a gifted musician or an artist or gifted at mathematics. It isn’t something that is traditionally valued or even people are aware of it in school. However, in business, it behooves us to know and understand about it as business owners, because it moves the needle in a huge way for our business. So you asked, is it an innate personality trait? And yes, it is. And no, you can’t really train it. People kind of have it or not. Just because they have it doesn’t mean they don’t need to add skills, right? If I’m gifted at mathematics, I still work to develop my mathematics skills. Or if I’m gifted at the violin. Same thing with hospitality and the way that we start to recognize those people. We can start lifting the little weight to get our muscles bigger. You can think about it like raising your awareness. So when you go grocery shopping, are there numerous lines? Is there somebody’s line that you look for and you go to that line? When you go into a coffee shop, is there a certain barista that you want to have help you? When you go into a restaurant, is there a certain waiter or waitress that you ask for? In your family, is there an aunt or an uncle that you just love going to their home because you feel so welcomed? Those people most likely have the gift of hospitality.

Kathy (host):
And how do you – like when you’re interviewing people, are there any specific questions that you would ask? And I will also say this here, one of my favorite places to shop at is a grocery store. It’s Trader Joe’s here in the US. It’s like everyone there is like in a magical land. Everyone’s happy – I always have – I’m an introvert, but I always have conversations with these people. It’s like, it’s like the best place. I just love my Trader Joe’s shopping, I really do. But it feels like it’s just their personality. So if someone comes to you and they want to work in your business, are there any specific questions that we’d ask them to figure out whether they have this, you know, Trader Joe ‘s-ness of hospitality?

Samantha (guest):
That’s a great question. And they’ve created – what they’ve done is they’ve created a culture. Now, people – I just worked with a business owner, and I still don’t get it right – we can do things that help to refine our hiring and what we are using to attract the right kind of person, the right kind of hire. We refine those and refine them and get better and better and better so that we’re attracting the right fit staff member. Just like we want to attract the right fit client, also we want to attract the right fit staff member. So I would back up, first of all and say, what kinds of things in our hiring application process are we putting out there that communicate that this is important to us, right? Are we putting reviews on our website? Are we answering reviews during the hiring process? Are we making those people or asking those people to go and read the reviews from our staff? Are we having our staff put our reviews on there? What are the things that we can do that communicate to people who are checking us out about our internal culture and our values? Now that’s a huge smorgasbord table of lots of different things. But we don’t have, you know, five days to go over all those things. But that’s where I would start at the beginning – making sure that those values are basically out there, front and center. For example, when we had the hotel, I had some requirements that were on the job description, so they knew straight away what things were expected. There was an online training, a hospitality training that they had to take. It was part of it. There was a book read that we’d need to do. And then there were some questions in the application processes that had them go look at our reviews. So all of those things are communicating to whoever might be looking at this place for a job, that these are our values. Hospitality is a cultural value of who we are as a business. So yeah, hopefully, that gives a little bit of help for that answer. It’s kind of complex. There’s not really a magic bean to take that you can – I don’t know, you eat enough beans, and you kind of figure out which are the good ones.

Kathy (host):
And you talk about hospitality. And I want to make it clear that when we talk about hospitality, we’re not talking about hospitality-type businesses – it’s a hospitality skill that you need to have in the business. And this would be across all businesses, whether you are brick and mortar or where you are a service-based business that’s in an online space. So let’s talk a little bit about this. How would this customer journey map relate to a business that is strictly online or strictly service-based business, that they don’t have a front like a brick-and-mortar type of location?

Samantha (guest):
Okay, you would apply it just the same. You’re still, they’re still interacting with people, even if it’s just online. And what I would do is, I would take the customer journey map – I’ll put it in the show notes. People are welcome to download it. It’s a 16-page guide. And then a person can just take the questions that are on each touch point, so there’s six touch points or six sections, and then they can curate that experience based on their own business. So if it’s not a brick and mortar, you still are of service to people. So when I define customers, it might be your members, it might be your visitors, it might be your guests, but we’re our customers. It might be our students, right? Customers is a blanket word for whom we serve, for who gives us some money, and they’re having an experience with us during all parts of their journey, and it’s to our benefit to curate that experience. And I’m not picking on coffee shops, but it’s something that people can relate to, because many people go in. So for example, if you – let me go back to the coffee shop one so you and I, and then if you remind me, I’ll do a winery one as an example of somebody who does a stellar job. If you and I go to that coffee shop, and the coffee shop gets whatever the star rating is from the health department in their kitchen all the time, that’s fabulous, and that’s very important for the business, right? Do you and I know that? No, are we going in the kitchen? No.

Kathy (host):
No. I mean, I am assuming, I hope, and I have actually been proven wrong with this, unfortunately, that if you have an open kitchen, that the kitchen would be stellar, and that you would get good stars from the state. But that has been the case, and a lot of times where that actually a lot of times the kitchens did close because they didn’t get the stars. But, yeah, I think that was one of the minimum things when it comes to customer experience that they do expect that you’ll have a clean kitchen and, you know, employees are wearing gloves and all that stuff.

Samantha (guest):
That’s a great question. What they’ve done is they’ve created a culture now, where people can do things that help to refine their hiring and what they are using to attract the right kind of person, the right kind of hire. We refine those and refine them and get better and better and better so that we’re attracting the right fit staff member. Just like we want to attract the right fit client, also we want to attract the right fit staff member. So I would back up, first of all and say, what kinds of things in our hiring application process are we putting out there that communicate that this is important to us, right? Are we putting reviews on our website? Are we answering reviews during the hiring process? Are we making those people or asking those people to go and read the reviews from our staff? Are we having our staff put our reviews on there? What are the things that we can do that communicate to people who are checking us out about our internal culture and our values? Now that’s a huge smorgasbord table of lots of different things. But we don’t have, you know, five days to go over all those things. But that’s where I would start at the beginning is, is making sure that those values are basically they’re out there, front and center. For example, when we had the hotel, I had this, some requirements that were on the job description, so they knew straight away what things were expected. There was an online training, a hospitality training that they had to take. It was part of it. There was a book read that we’d need to do. And then there were some questions in the application processes that had them go look at our reviews. So all of those things are communicating to whomever might be looking at this place for a job, that these are our values. Hospitality is a cultural value of who we are as a business.

Kathy (host):
And you talk about, you know, you talk about hospitality. And I want to make it clear that when we talk about hospitality, we’re not talking about hospitality type of business, it’s a hospitality skill that you need to have in the business. And this, this would be across all the businesses, whether you are brick and mortar or where you are a service-based business, that it’s in an online space. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about this. How would this customer journey map relate to a business that is strictly online or strictly service-based business, that they don’t have a front like a brick and mortar type of, you know, location, okay?

Samantha (guest):
You would apply it just the same. You’re still, they’re still interacting with people, even if it’s just online. And what I would do is, I would take the customer journey map – I’ll put it in the show notes. People are welcome to download it. It’s a 16-page guide. And then a person can just take the questions that are on each touch point, so there’s six touch points or six sections, and then they can curate that experience based on their own business. So if it’s not a brick and mortar, you still are of service to people. So when I define customers, it might be your members, it might be your visitors, it might be your guests, but we’re our customers. It might be our students, right? Customers is a blanket word for whom we serve, for who gives us some money, and they’re having an experience with us during all parts of their journey, and it’s to our benefit to curate that experience.
And I’m not picking on coffee shops, but it’s something that people can relate to, because many people go in. So for example, if you – let me go back to the coffee shop one so you and I, and then if you remind me, I’ll do a winery one as an example of somebody who does a stellar job. If you and I go to that coffee shop, and the coffee shop gets whatever the star rating is from the health department in their kitchen all the time, that’s fabulous, and that’s very important for the business, right? Do you and I know that? No, are we going in the kitchen? No.

Kathy (host):
No. I mean, I am assuming, I hope, and I have actually been proven wrong with this, unfortunately, that if you have an open kitchen, that the kitchen would be stellar, and that you would get good stars from the state. But that has been the case, and a lot of times where that actually a lot of times the kitchens did close because they didn’t get the stars. But, yeah, I think that was one of the minimum things when it comes to customer experience that they do expect that you’ll have a clean kitchen and, you know, employees are wearing gloves and all that stuff.

Samantha (guest):
Yeah, and how do they communicate it? Because you and I aren’t going there. So we are getting the impression of what’s coming out of the kitchen in all the other steps of our journey, right, from the sticky front door or not sticky front door, from the clean tables or not clean tables, from the bathroom that we go into. Right? All of these things affect our perception of the quality of what’s coming out of the kitchen, or whatever it is the service that’s happening for us. And oftentimes this is no fault of any, anybody’s. It’s just the way it is. Employees might I work through the restaurant. Employees come in the back door all the time, and when we were going through doing some training. It was so much fun to actually got up and we walked out front. We said, Okay, what do we want people to know and do and feel? Here’s our entry. What do we want them to know and do and feel? And this was completely not the owner did not do this. She was just watching. We walked in the front door and. And and we said, what do we what? What’s natural? What are we looking at? What are we supposed to you know, do I know where to go? And when I was asking these questions, and they were actually physically walking through and critically thinking like their customer and curating the experience, like 20 minutes, they completely redid this front entry area where the people come in and they pay, I mean, they were like hands flying here and there. It was so much fun to watch because it was really empowering for the staff, and it also definitely makes a difference in the customer’s experience. So it’s it’s powerful and fun, but simply taking the time to walk through these steps from your customers point of view, is a very valuable exercise to do for people and for their staff.

Kathy (host):
And would you do that if, if you are trying to go through this exercise, would you do that with your staff, or would you do it yourself? Would everyone do individually and then they compare notes like, what would you suggest that works best?

Samantha (guest):
Yes, to all of the above, it’s there’s no one size fits all, and it very much is dependent on the business, the personality that you have. Some leaders, they would want to go through it first, so they have an idea. I always suggest it’s very fun to do it together with your staff. When I’m teaching, I like to have some ideas already in my mind, so that if when I’m asking for ideas, they’re stuck, I have something that I can throw out there to sort of get the ball rolling. So yeah, I would say yes to all the above. I mean, you’re not going to go wrong if you take any of those strategies and then fold in the next one. You know, do it as a team meeting. Yeah, yeah, it’s very fun. There’s no There’s no wrong way. I don’t think to do it.

Kathy (host):
Yeah. And, you know, I always like to bring in examples from the real world as well as much, as much as we can, because I think giving people ideas on what other businesses have done, at least it sparks something so that they can implement that in their own business. And you talked about this particular restaurant. Are there any other examples that you have with the clients that you work with where they have struggled with a customer experience, and before and after they work with you, they have completely revamped the business, and the customer experience went from to like this top notch thing? Oh,

Samantha (guest):
Now think of some specific examples, but I don’t want to give away who they are.

Kathy (host):
You don’t have to give it. If you can just tell us what type of business it is, and what happened. No names. We want to make this anonymized, sure. Sure, sure.

Samantha (guest):
Okay, so a hotel, and we’ve got staff that typically might be high turnover with, let’s say, the housekeeping department, right? And there’s this perceived hierarchy of importance where housekeeping is not as important and front desk is more important. This is not answering your direct question, but I think this is important for me to share from my experience. Every single person is extremely important to the business and to curating a customer experience. And it doesn’t matter if the person is like in housekeeping and they only see the guest as they’re sort of walking by them, or if it’s a front desk person who’s going to spend a lot more time, each person has a very specific and important job of making that guest feel valued. So first of all, removing this hierarchy or level of importance. Every single person is important, and that’s the first job. Now that is an internal or that can be an internal judgment, where it’s like, you know, maybe the owner feels that way. Well, let’s work on that. Oftentimes, even if the owner doesn’t feel that way, oftentimes the staff feels that way. They’ve put their own things on their own selves. They’re like, “Oh, I’m just a housekeeper,” or “Oh, I’m at the front desk,” or “I’m the manager.” There are three parts – the owner, the team members, and then also you get that from people, from your customers or your guests. So first of all, making sure that the culture in the business understands that every single person is important to curating the experience – that’s foundational. So helping this business understand that at first, I saw this housekeeper that came in at the beginning of the time working together, shoulders slumped, avoided eye contact, didn’t really contribute much to the conversations. Over time, they transformed to somebody who showed up on time, who was proud of their work, who looked guests in the eye and actually greeted them, and who you could tell by their very countenance that they now felt like a valuable part of the team. So that was a beautiful transformation that resulted in longer staff retention for this business. The staff turnover was reduced significantly. When we have employee churn, it creates customer churn, because when, as we talked earlier, people want a consistent experience. Part of that experience is with the people. And when you have staff that have been around, they get to know their customers, and then they can serve them better. They can ask them about their dog or recommend some chocolate, or a side trip or something. So that was a great transformation. One of the things that we did – this is a nugget that people can take away right away – is that when we’re greeting people, and we’ll think with this hotel, they’re greeting their guests. I teach this in my “Power of People Academy” – it’s an online, on-demand, 5-week training program for staff. The second module is called “First Impressions.” And we teach this – it’s eye contact, smile, and a greeting. It is how you make people feel welcomed. If you do not put a smile with the eye contact, you run the risk of becoming the face that your mother, dad, your teacher, your coach, your babysitter, or somebody gave you at one time that stopped you in your tracks, right? It’s that look – the look like, “Oh no, you don’t.” If you don’t smile, just looking at someone can be very confusing or intimidating. So you have to exercise this muscle. And you always look at someone, you smile, and then you greet them. Now housekeeping, the same thing – we taught them specifically to say “good morning,” “good afternoon,” or “good evening,” because they’re in a hurry. They don’t have time to chit chat like the front desk, but the simple acknowledgement walking through the hall, it made the guests feel very, very welcomed, and it’s from the housekeeping staff, and then it made housekeeping understand how important they are to curate that experience. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in hotels where I’m walking down the hall and the housekeepers disappear in the room. They don’t look at me. It’s like I have a, I don’t know, a unicorn horn, and they’re afraid I’m gonna poke them or something. It’s not very fun. I just want to look and smile at somebody – I’m not trying to, you know, steal all the stuff on their cart. But it makes a difference. And I’ve also had an experience where housekeepers showed me how they did this cool fold of their pillows and stuff in their towels, so that was a huge transformation. It took a while, it was extraordinarily fun. Now, while this muscle of eye contact, smile, and greeting, it took practice, because people are oftentimes wanting to finish their tasks, but it takes intentional training to help people understand that this customer is the reason for your work, not an interruption to your work, even if you’re 95% done with the project. The customers are there, they are your full attention, and it makes the customer feel welcomed. Now, the harder push with this training, with this example I’m thinking of, was, yes, we’re creating this great culture where these guests feel very, very welcomed, and their return guest or ROI on their return guests went on a wonderful upward trajectory, because they were getting lots of return guests. They were reducing their staff turnover costs. It was fabulous. The harder, more advanced, if you will, skill, is for staff to do that with other staff. And it may not sound simple, but it is nothing. There’s nothing easy about it. Getting staff to greet one another in the same way creates a culture within a business that is welcoming. It’s just like what we – if it’s good enough for customers, we need to do it for our staff as well.

Kathy (host):
That’s a great example. And thank you so much for doing that. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting, as you said, there’s almost like levels of this. The first level is the customer. Then you have to make sure that you’re treating all the people internally within the organization, just like how you would greet the customer, and it creates this culture of respect and appreciation that it shows in every way and in every moment, versus just, you know, someone’s forcing us to do it. You almost like re-teaching and re-mapping their brains to look for these opportunities and to take hold of those opportunities. Yeah.

Samantha (guest):
And it’s very fun, because it gives people purpose, and it gives people purpose for their work. And when, like the same the same business, when training curiosity, it’s something that we worked with during the whole hiring process to test for curiosity and in the “Power of People Academy,” I train for this. It’s when, if I’m a barista, well, let me just use when we have the hotel or when I’m a barista. It doesn’t matter what you are. You are in a unique position. Whether you feel like this is the job that you want to have for the rest of your life, or whether you feel like this is just a temporary thing to make some money, doesn’t really matter. You have the same amount of powerful influence on the financial success of the business and the trajectory of the customer’s day. Those two things are directly related to you, and you’re interacting with that customer.
The cool thing is, let’s say, for example, that you are, you know, it’s a temporary job. No problem. You’ve got this phenomenal network that comes in every single day to come and get their coffee or eat their thing or do the shopping or, you know, you’re a bag person, boy or girl. You have an opportunity if you’re curious enough to find out a little bit about these people and these people that you’re coming through your door every day, that you’re serving that may wear you out, quite frankly, but being curious about them and asking a few questions makes them feel great, and it also can give you information and also can create connections. That person might be your next job, your next funder for your project, your next angel investor, whatever they’re right there ready for you to find out about them. That’s fine.

Kathy (host):
And you mentioned, and you mentioned something that it’s really interesting. How do you make sure that you have the same level of energy, or at least, you’re portraying the same level of energy throughout the day as you are interacting with customers? Because, let’s say, you know, you just started, your shift just started, or whatever it might be, and you’re full of energy. But then it’s been six hours and you’ve been smiling, like, how do you is there anything that worked well to make sure that people were still able to portray that amount of energy like, what’s, what’s the superpower?

Samantha (guest):
I think you said it right there. It’s a superpower. So it is being a professional and raising the bar and raising the expectations. It is hard. That’s the first thing. Let’s acknowledge that service is selfless. It is one of the hardest things to do consistently well, because people are jerks sometimes, and they’re needy, and it’s all about the other so anytime we’re in this front-facing customer service position, we are giving, constantly giving, constantly giving, and yes, sometimes it’s acting like you’ve you kind of fake it. You’re like, Oh my god. How many times did I fake it when I had a bad headache and I just was like, Okay, let’s put my hair up, put the glasses on so we can’t see the bags under my eyes? And it doesn’t matter, I’m here to serve, and that’s where we move for to professionals with a purpose, right? It is hard. And if I am a leader and I want to help bolster my people throughout the day, then I may ask them, like, when are you lulling? What do you need? Is it we need to go have a party song at 3pm is it that you need to take a walk around the block? Is it that you need to read this inspirational like review you got from a customer, whatever it takes, and that there’s no one size fits all, but there’s lots of different tools we can bring in to bolster and support staff? First of all, it is acknowledging that it’s it can be freaking really hard, because sometimes people are fabulous and sometimes they’re not, but as as leaders, we have to continually fill up our staff and support them because they are the face of our business to our customers. So yeah, it’s hard. And it I had one gal I interviewed and and she pulled on her it was fantastic example. Riley is her name, and she’s one of those gifted hospitality people. And she described it, she said, I pull on my acting background, and I created a monolog. And so it is like, it can be definitely like acting, yeah, yeah. It’s about serving, serving people.

Kathy (host):
And also, the other thing that I heard in there as well is supporting your team so people are not robots. They need a break, a they need to eat, and they need to drink and they need to go to the bathroom. So these are all the things that need to be fulfilled for them to be able to operate at a level that you need them to operate. So keeping that in mind as well, and it’s especially you know, if you’re consistently short-staffed, that will. Become an issue. Yeah,

Samantha (guest):
Yeah, it is. Leadership is challenging. It’s a it’s an interesting puzzle. And whenever I’m speaking, especially to groups of business owners, I’ll often add, well, I’ll pose this, and always get to laugh. And I never have been in a group presenting where anybody said, Oh, I started the XYZ Gidget widget business because I was so excited to work with staff. I just needed an excuse. You’re laughing too, right? It’s ridiculous. No one gets as that just doesn’t happen. People are excited about their thing, and then they find as their thing becomes successful. Oh, my. I need staff that, in itself, is an entirely different skill set, managing, inspiring, and leading people. So, you know, business owners, hopefully, they have a growth mindset and they’ll continue to say, Okay, well, I can fold in this new skill now into my purpose and passion of growing this widget gives it business that I have

Kathy (host):
So Samantha, if someone is listening to this podcast and they say, Yes, I want, I definitely want to provide exceptional customer experience to my customers, but I have no idea where to even begin. What will be the next actionable thing that they can do in the next week or so to get them closer to that goal?

Samantha (guest):
Ah, the first next actionable thing is make it so easy you can trip over it. You do not have to eat the elephant in the room. Just start with the next thing. So I would say, to start providing excellent customer experiences. The easiest next step would be to, I would say, download the customer journey map, and you can start going through it. There’s six steps in it. If you take one every two months, you’ll have it done in a year. And then you can start over the next year and analyze it again. That’s pretty easy, if you just want a leadership tool, another easy one. I didn’t tell you this before, but I created a leadership it’s called Creating a culture deck, and to solve the problem of leaders not knowing how to continually inspire and educate and lead their people. And it’s over a year’s content of weekly quotes or statistics on the front of the card and on the back is the question that you ask for discussion. You don’t even have to think about it or come up with it. And all of them are designed to it’s like drip irrigation for your people. It slowly raises their awareness about how important they are. We’re ruining them for great customer services experiences. So those are two really easy ones, I’d say for people to just grab. They’re both. One is a free download. The other one’s like $59 so they’re both pretty easy access.

Kathy (host):
And Sam, where can people find you? Where can they find these resources? Please tell us all about it.

Samantha (guest):
Good question, right? Sort of like people are going, Oh, great. Now where do I go? Right? I left off the basic rule, what’s the call to action? My website is probably the best way, and it’s Kaizen dot zone. So that’s www, but dot Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N.Z-O-N-E. and you’ll find them there. You find all sorts of resources, awesome.

Kathy (host):
So we’re going to have all of these in the episode show notes, and if you’re interested, they’re going to be in there. Please go ahead and click on it all right. Thanks so much, Samantha. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Samantha (guest):
Oh, I’ve enjoyed talking to you. We could do it all day. Thank you so much for having me. You