Jason Friedman 26:53
the only time people talk about it, they really are really crappy. Right? Those are the two extremes. We don’t talk about the messy middle, right? It’s not important enough to actually get us out of our butts off our bots and, and do that. And so when we were talking about that, I was like, Look, you’re either gonna have raving fans, or you’re gonna have raving lunatics, right? Yes. And and the crazier thing is this, and this is where you have to be careful. In today’s age, we win and lose customers in micro moments. Right? Splitting though, let me yeah, let’s let’s, let’s unpack that. Right. So you, it’s your journey, like the whole experience. Like if I were to, like, go to Disney World, and I get there and everything’s magical, right? Everything’s perfect. Everything’s amazing. Everything’s curated there. Everything’s perfect, right? But then let’s say that you meet a disgruntled employee who was wearing the goofy suit. Goofy helmet off and they’re smoking a cigarette inside the park lines. And you come up and he’s like, hey, you know, Could you could you put the thing back on my daughter? And he like, yells at you. He’s like, I’m on frickin Santa Baba, right? You’re like, you know what? The Disney magic is ruined. We’re out of here. Right? The memory you have of Disney at that point is that and you’re not going back again? Right, right now, maybe that’s extreme, maybe it does or doesn’t happen. But think about it in your business. Like there’s these moments that can be make or break moments, and they’re not big things. Right. And so you could have a raving fan that is kind of encumbered with one of those messy moments that turns them into that raving lunatic. So we really do have to figure that out. And what we’ve also found, there’s a great statistic that I share with people inside of our program for every one customer who bothers to complain 26 Others remain silent.
Rolando Rosas 28:49
What does that statistic hold the other way for everyone that says I love it? You know, Rolando and his team were great. Are there 26 others that probably feel that way? But didn’t post?
Jason Friedman 29:01
If you’re doing our process, then yes. We have that stat out there in the world.
Rolando Rosas 29:06
It’s interesting on the negative, right, so you try to do everything possible to avert somebody really becoming a lunatic online and giving you a negative one star if that were possible. But I’m just curious, you know, if you’re if you have that many on the negative side, would you equally have and what is the what is the physics there you have an equal and opposite reaction. When you push on something, it pushes back equally. And we
Jason Friedman 29:31
believe that you do like I don’t have the data for that like, like the, you know, that was like, you know, Small Business Administration statistics and stuff, right? I don’t have the data on that. But I will tell you anecdotally, from what we’ve seen with our customers. That is true. And we rely on that, like we build that momentum. Imagine that you had those 100 people we mentioned earlier, go through your online course. Right? And let’s say instead of 15 people max of the 100 getting results. What if 50 got results, you’re not even getting 100, let’s say you 50, right. And those 50, people got really good results. And of those 5040, or 30 of them, gave you this amazing testimonial that you used as your social media front end to your business to your marketing. What you know is that of the people that went through the course, the 50, that actually did it, because the other people didn’t even start and didn’t finish and whatever, of those 30 people like we we got them results. So if those people’s stories are resonating, they’re bringing people just like them, the likelihood of those new people coming in, they’re gonna get results too, because you’ve got the system figured out, right, you’ve put in the kinetic formula on the inside. And so what happens is, every dollar that you then spend on marketing becomes worth more, because they’re not just going to do one course, and have these kind of results and not want more from you. So then you’re going to buy your next product, while the referring lifetime value goes up exponentially. Right? So I’ll give you an example. I’m in a marketing mastermind, I’ve been in this group, if you don’t know a mastermind, it’s a bunch of like business owners, entrepreneurs that get together kind of like a board of advisors. And we help each other grow. And it’s a peer to peer sharing, and caring and helping and supporting and sharing best practices. And it’s amazing. It’s been one of the highlights of my life being in some amazing groups like this. I joined this one program in 2014. And when I joined, I think I paid $20,000. And then I renewed in the first time I renewed, it went up to I think it was $29,000 $30,000, something like that. And then they grandfathered that price going forward. I have still been in that same program I just renewed again last year, it’s 2024. Right? So I’ve been in for 10 years, paying on average $30,000 Do the math, the lifetime value. Now I’ve referred other people in so that that gets attributed to my lifetime value, right? I’m talking about now somebody’s probably gonna email me be like, dude, what’s that program? It sounds awesome. I’d love to learn more about it right. And so other people are going to ask me about it, I’m going to tell people about it. Because this group is like my family, they’re like, so important to me, like I do everything to show up for them. And they do the same for me. And so this guy built this program. And, and this pro, as name is Jeff Walker, amazing internet marketer, and guru in the online business space. And a great dear friend and mentor to me. And Jeff built this program. And people love it. And they stay for a really long time. And he brings in attracts other awesome people through us, because we love it so much. I’m telling you how much I love it. I tell everybody how much I love it. And then other people want to be part of it. And they asked me like, tell me more about what you love? And why did you join? And what have you gotten? And what are the results been? And I will talk all day about how I love this group. But if people were doing that for your business, right, it’s not that hard.
Rolando Rosas 32:55
And I would imagine your your costs for marketing also will go down. If you have other folks raving about your product or service, right, you
Jason Friedman 33:05
build an entire sales force for free. Now you might have an affiliate program and you compensate them for that awesome, but where people fail miserably in affiliate programs is that they only do the payment part, they only pay them the bounty for all the referrals, which is great. Like, I’m not suggesting that’s not a good idea. But here’s the thing, people do what you pay them to do. So if I give you a commission for bringing people in, you’re going to do that, but love doing what you reward and recognize them for doing. So when you add the level in the layer of recognition
Rolando Rosas 33:42
to that. So what does that look like? Again, let’s paint the picture. You’re the artist. I’m a business person. You know, there’s a bunch of businesses out there that have affiliate programs, I’ve got that going, what should I add to it, that’s going to make it pop off rather than just an incentive for sending a referral. I’ll
Jason Friedman 34:00
give you an example. So I’m going to use I’m going to I’m going to keep keep the name of the people out of this. But so there was a person that was promoting an online course, this person had a tremendous amount of success in the past and had affiliate relationships with some of the top marketers that have the biggest email lists out there. And so their whole business grew that way for years, right? That was what it was. And then all these people that were bigger and bigger started having less than less time and their promotional calendars to promote other people’s businesses because they had their own stuff to promote. They just didn’t have room anymore. And so they had to pick who the best converting offers were for their list based on the few slots they had, and they would only work with those people. And so people started losing their best affiliate partners. And if you’re relying on affiliates to build your business, and they don’t promote for you, your business starts to decline, right? What what they started doing was focusing on building and affiliate army from their own customer base. So think about this, your customer has an amazing result. And so they want to tell everybody about it and are telling everybody about it anyway. And then you recognize them for the success they’ve gotten, you use them as a testimonial, and you showcase them everywhere, which helps their business grow. Because you’re telling their story over and over and over again, to a whole new crop of people. So you’re actually doing marketing for that customer that was actually selling you. And it was a sales pitch that they did for you that’s helping to build their business, but they don’t have to spend any money to do that. And then you beyond beyond that awesomeness, then you actually pay them for the referrals, you make them an affiliate, and in the program, you’re still promoting them or you’re like, hey, they were doing this for us. It’s amazing. We can help their businesses run. You’re recognizing them in your programs in your communities as how they’ve contributed and how they’re helping. Those are the success stories that you keep sharing with your entire community.
Rolando Rosas 36:03
I love that. I love that because you reminded me something that I must do for a past guest that came on. His name is Jason Mandel Jason, I gotta give you big props for that last episode, showed us how to use techniques to enhance your financial pocketbook, and stuff that is under the radar, because a lot of brokers will not provide it because they don’t make money. They’re incentivized to make money on the things that provide recurring revenue. So big props to Jason Mandel back to my conversation with a different, Jason.
Jason Friedman 36:46
I love it, man. That’s awesome. Thanks. Listen, that’s part of experience. Right there. Right? He like he’s helping you no matter what, not just based on you buying something. But based on building that relationship. Perfect example, great segue.
Rolando Rosas 37:00
I’m gonna give a perfect segue. I love it that you reminded me of that. I mean, like, I’ve got it here, my notes. And I was like, Oh, wait, I gotta do that, too. And something that I have that I want to do, too, because I, you mentioned the band. I mentioned that at your intro. That that you are part of the my, my wife absolutely loves. And I would love to, for you to even share a teeny little bit on what you have gleaned from Fleetwood Mac. You know, I went to one of their concerts back in 2014, things like two days ago to me, and at Madison Square Garden, and it was unbelievable, Steven, and I think you told me that maybe Stevie Nicks wasn’t on the tour that you were there, but that my wife’s a huge, like, huge, huge, huge Stevie Nicks. So so if you’re out there, Stevie Nicks. And you hear this, my wife loves you a lot, as well as the rest of the group. But she really likes the verdict. But tell me a little bit about peel back the curtain. Give me some behind the scenes on what it’s like. Touring was such a band.
Jason Friedman 38:01
Yeah, I mean, so it was a fun tour like that one. I remember so fondly like this is this is crazy, right? I actually didn’t know their music when I got put on the tour. Like, like, I wasn’t a Fleetwood Mac fan. Like I didn’t know their music. I like one of my all time favorite groups. What got me into doing lighting in the first place was rush. Right? This really Canadian power trio. Right. And so I was working for a company that did these tours with with rock’n’roll groups. And, yeah, and so like they said, like, look, we have like, it was a small summer tour. I don’t remember how many stops it was 1220, something like that. It wasn’t crazy. And we’re playing like smaller venues, right? It wasn’t like Madison Square Garden or anything like that in New York City. But there was an intimacy in that tour. And like, as like you said, like Stevie wasn’t like leaving the front. It was a woman by the name of Becca, that was leading the band at the time, was, you know, one of the lead singers. And what was interesting is you got to know them on a deeper level, like we had smaller audiences. It was diehard fans of the band. And they’re just like, what you learn. It’s so neat. Like, one of the things that we teach people in customer experience is this idea of creating rituals, right, and the power of rituals in your business. I think one of the things that you learn, and I think I first, the first one of the first words that I went out with was actually Fleetwood Mac. And, and it’s where I first started seeing people had rituals.
Rolando Rosas 39:35
Like people the audience or performance and the band both
Jason Friedman 39:39
both, both of them, right. Like they would have like the pre show ritual. They come out they do their soundcheck, they had certain things that they did every single city like clockwork, and it was how they got themselves in the zone to do their thing. You know, I’ve done a bunch of shows with Tony Robbins, right and backstage Tony Robbins has like a trampoline, and he’s
Rolando Rosas 39:59
cool. I mean, that’s, that’s That’s him, that is him this thing,
Jason Friedman 40:03
but it’s a ritual that he does behind the scenes, right. And it helps him get into state for the presentation. And so, all the Rock and Roll groups do the same thing. All the theater groups do the same thing. You
Rolando Rosas 40:15
know, we do that, by the way. Playing sports, I played sports in high school and football. Every before the games, there is a specific drills and drills, it’s scripted. You get these all the way up to kickoff, you know, at 702, you’re on the field at 707. This is what’s happening. It’s and those are all the same every single time.
Jason Friedman 40:39
Yeah, you just gave me another. You know, I’ve not made this analogy in all the teaching and all the years, which is crazy to me, and you just blew my mind. So So thank you all I’m gonna share what it is. Okay. But so my son is like a big time football player. Right? Okay. Well, my son, Josh, and he’s awesome, matted, he hasn’t been playing for that long. He’s watched it for a long time. But he started playing this past year. He’s been, he’s going into high school next year, he’s in junior high. And he became one of the starters. And he got really good position. He plays the line. So he plays a little line. Windy, right? So he plays both. And, and he learned the whole aspects of playing it, like in the past year and a half, which he was older than most of the other kids had been playing together. since they were little little runs, you know what I mean? And he came in, and I’m just watching all the rituals that they did at practices and stuff, it reminds me it’s really the same as theater, right? And so you think about it, you have plates, you have a playbook. It’s a script, call it what you will write, and we have plays that we use to create results. And we know what scenarios based on who we’re playing what we’re doing, where we’re gonna get those results. And so we practice that. And in theater, we practice all those scene changes, and all those all those things within an inch of its life. Because that’s where success comes from. Right, it’s from knowing the plays, knowing the script, and rehearsing it, and refining it, and smoothing it out and getting it to the place where you have consistent positive results from the work you do. And so going back to the Fleetwood Mac thing, it’s the same thing, right? They had these rituals, the audience, like that’s one of the things you were saying like live events, shared experience, it doesn’t have to be, like, relegated to only live events, right? If you have an offline business, great. How can you do it? If you have an online business? Great, how can you do it, you just got to think differently about it. And so like, when the audience would come in, they would do their tailgating, they were doing things, they’d be playing the music getting into state getting ready to get ready. And they were so buzzed and so excited by the time they got there. Like, I was just like, wow, like this is unbelievable, right? And so in your businesses, like, if you think about it, like, what would it be like if your customers like we’re getting ready for their lesson with you, or their coaching call with you, or their, you know, the software that you created, or whatever it is in your business, or your yoga studio, that they’re coming to you? What would it be like if they were getting into the right frame of mind, because they couldn’t wait to really have an amazing experience. That’s comes with setting expectations for them, of helping them come up with those ideas in scenarios that they’re not used to it. And maybe some of your customers becoming like ambassadors to your brand and, and showing them the ropes and giving them the idea. It’s
Rolando Rosas 43:32
really this, like you were saying, getting back to the confidence thing, this almost really has nothing to do with the product or service, but the result, or the or the thing that you’re helping them solve. But you’re using the product or service as a tool or as a method to get Yes,
Jason Friedman 43:48
yes, exactly. It’s your unique mechanism that gets them the result. Right. And that result, we again, that’s like It’s like feature benefit kind of argument. If we go back to traditional marketing, right? And we got to sell the transformation. And when you sell the transformation, it’s not just like, you’re gonna lose 20 pounds. Awesome. Show me that in a movie. Like if I’m watching a movie, and I see that now. 20 pounds, what does a 20 pound lighter person look
Rolando Rosas 44:15
like? Eventually, reverse aging or something, right? But it’s not
Jason Friedman 44:19
just their body. It’s like, how do they show up in the world? Like, if you were to show them like they’re sitting on a couch like a couch potato with a big bowl of ice cream and like, sand shovel like shoveling it in their mouth, watching you know, you know, eye candy on the TV, whatever. They’re not active, like they’re sloppy, or whatever. And they go upstairs and like, they get a phone call from their friend like, Hey, you want to go out and they’re like, maybe I’ll call you back. They go to their closet. They go through every single thing of clothing in there and they’re like, I’m sorry, I can’t come tonight. Something came up I’m really sorry. And there’s like so depressed and so upset because they just didn’t feel comfortable in their own skin going out. You can see that. The other side when you see them like that go into their closet, they’re throwing clothes on. They’re trying to like, do things I’m like, that’s the one and they go out. And then they call a friend say, Hey, you guys want to go out tonight, like, let’s go, their energy shifts, their their life changes, their calendar is now social outings and doing other things that they most so desperately wanted to do. They’re not isolated sitting on the couch by themselves, feeling bad anymore. I love nation.
Rolando Rosas 45:23
I love I love that this gets into, you’ve almost touched on the other piece I really wanted to kind of pull from your brain, which is the storytelling and the way you just told the story. And you know, there’s great storytellers of our day. You know, there’s I love Judd Apatow, how he puts together movies there, Spielberg did Master at the story. And there’s there’s there’s some there’s this Scorsese, you know, the ET, like, the emotional. I mean, those are these are of just movies that are instantly recognizable. They all have amazing storylines, amazing stories within the story in it. In that part of storytelling, you know, although that’s in an entertainment business, that’s one of the other reasons I wanted to talk to you about is that storytelling? How do businesses tap into that, you know, most of us are still stuck with traditional marketing, or traditional social media. But this side of, of the lens, if I were to borrow it, which is, you know, the storytelling aspect, we can pull that into a business on an infographic, we could tell that on a website, we could tell that story in so many different ways. How do businesses tap into that? But more importantly, what mistakes? Do you see when businesses try to tap into the storytelling mechanism that we should avoid?
Jason Friedman 46:56
Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good question. You know, first and foremost, make your customer the hero. Hmm, you’re not the hero. The business isn’t the hero, you’re the guide. Right. So if you think of like Star Wars, you’ve got like Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan. Right, father, Luke, you know, it’s an and Yoda. And you know, there’s a lot of guides out there, right, like Yoda what I was saying?
Unknown Speaker 47:27
Yeah, it’s like
Rolando Rosas 47:29
you said the customer is the hero like that took
Jason Friedman 47:31
you off with, like, when you start thinking about the hero’s journey, right to go back to, you know, the whole, you know, Joseph Campbell, kind of model if you’re familiar with that, of the hero’s journey, it’s like, that’s who the journey is about. And so when we start to really craft that journey, we know there’s going to be ups and downs, and they need ups and downs, to kind of get to that place. What we often miss, though, is that our customers don’t all come into our world into our ecosystem. At the same point in their story,
Rolando Rosas 48:06
it do avatars matter, so that wanted to ask you about it. So you have a hero? Is it important that you’re talking to the female? That’s a mom who’s 35 years old, may have two kids versus the single guy who’s 21? And is a college student? Yeah,
Jason Friedman 48:22
I mean, they have different wants and needs, right? They have different issues they have, they have a different journey. Right now they may they may coalesce into a journey in your business, right? And you can offer the same like people say to me, Hey, like, can you help online businesses? Yeah, well, can you help offline businesses? Yeah, well, how is it the same? Well, the things that we help them do that the strategies are the same, right? The way you apply that is a little bit different, right. And so when I’m explaining this to different businesses, the avatars of just that basic thing, it’s some different issues, right, that I have to address differently. And then there’s a whole bunch of other things in just the online or just the offline world. And so like, you do have to get really clear on your avatars, the way we like to teach people to do it is a little bit different than most people teach it. So again, going back to my theater background, right? Think about thinking about Matthew McConaughey. Right, famous actor. I think everybody knows him. All right. All right. All right, right. Yes. So So Matthew is going to play a role in a film. And he has to learn who this character really is like, he has to figure out how to get into character. So when he’s on camera, and he’s interacting with everybody, we as the audience, we believe that he’s actually that person. He’s no longer Matthew McConaughey, he is Bob. Right? And so when you do that, you have to go deep, deeper than we would ever do an any avatar exercise. Like I want you to know your customer so deeply, that you’re able to play them on stage. I want you to know what they’re thinking and expecting, we didn’t know, the shooting morning they had before they get to your webinar to then buy your product so that you know where they’re starting to.
Rolando Rosas 50:09
So you can, looking further back at the journey, the journey isn’t just when it started on Amazon, or will just when it started on your website, it’s up for that, who
Jason Friedman 50:18
are they like, what got them to the place where they’re even looking for the solution, you offer the product, or if they’re brand aware of you, too, right? So we have like different levels of awareness about what you do. Also, they may just have a problem, they don’t know if there’s a solution out there, and they’re looking for one, they may know that there’s a solution, but they don’t know your solution, where they may have been told, Oh, go find that. And now, they’re just trying to get some data. All of them are at different stages of their experience and their journey. And they may have tried other things and failed every time. Right? So So depending on where they are like you need to know those avatars so that you can meet them where they are. And in most cases that I found the most, like if you understand their journey, and you can articulate that they will feel understood. There’s a difference in how they then will show up when they feel understood. Like my coach Dan Sullivan used to say like, are you trying to be interesting to your customers? Or are you trying to be interested in your customers? And there’s a big difference in that, right. And I had the good fortune of like learning that lesson, you know, or being asked that question in 2004. And so that was one of those powerful questions that kind of changes the way you look at the world. And so I spend most of my time trying to be interested in others.
Rolando Rosas 51:42
And is that a process is is that just an ongoing thing? Because you know, your customers? If you have a lifetime value, they’re going to be getting older. Right? And so is it a process of just constantly collecting information? So you’re, you’re understanding where they’re at, so that you can meet them at their need?
Jason Friedman 52:02
For sure, but like, even on a more micro level than what you just shared like that? Yeah, yes, macro, right, they’re gonna, they’re gonna age and they may need other products or services or things. And that can be how your business expands and grows, it can be how you build relationships with partners that can then you can kind of hand that customer off to the next place. But you’ve made a smooth transition to the next vendor, or a company that can help them. But even on a smaller level, let’s say that I’m helping you with weight loss. And, and I and we get to that 20 pound mark, and that’s what they signed up for. And they’re feeling good in their skin. And now they’re afraid they’re going to put it back on. They don’t know what the next phase of their journey looks like. What are they worrying about? Then? The different worry, the different fear? It’s a different? Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 52:45
well, how do you keep it off? What do you do? You got there, right? He lost the 20 pounds, you met your goal, what it’s theoretically you should be able to get stay there for
Jason Friedman 52:55
life. And you might need support for that. Right. And so like, you might have another program that you invite them to join at that point. And if you don’t know them and understand their journey, and you’re not interested in finding out what they’re looking for what their needs are, you’d be you’d miss that. Right? And you’d be the one trick wonder if I have one product, one service, one program, and that’s it. And then I got awesome. They congratulated me they got their success, let me go fill the funnel. And that’s where we miss. Like, there’s so much more to the picture, right, though the whole lifecycle of client journey. You know, like I use an analogy of Disney go back there, right. So like if you went to Disney World in Florida, right. They have different theme parks, they have magic kingdom, they have Epcot, they have Wide World of Sports, they have animal kingdom, each of those has its own journey. And then if you go into magic kingdom, there’s five different worlds, like there’s frontier land, and there’s Tomorrowland, and, you know, so on and so forth. And so those are different journeys, Main Street, USA. And then there’s like the Pirates of the Caribbean, that has its own journey. So in your business, you’re gonna have nested journeys all throughout there. It’s kind of like the Russian doll thing, right? There’s like inside, inside, inside inside. And so as you think about your business, where I want you to start, is I want you to start at the lowest level, pick one journey that’s at the lowest level, it’s a single product or an experience that they have, it’s not your whole business, and go through that. And get that smooth out, remove the friction, find the parts that are getting people stuck. And I briefly mentioned onboarding earlier, like one of the most important things you can do to set the relationship off right from the get go, is to think about the onboarding. Onboarding doesn’t happen just once. We believe that onboarding happens at every key transition in a relationship. So coming into your world, just to be marketed to and so they need to be on boarded there. Then they become a customer, they need to be on boarded there. Then they complete your program, and they go to maybe get invited to join something else. They need to be on boarded there. Right. And if you’re gonna have handoffs to different groups within on their journey, they need to be on boarded there. So like, the first impressions matter. And as we go through those journeys, we have to be constantly, every transition point is an opportunity. It’s like the theater stuff, we rehearse every scene change. So going from scene one to Scene two, we rehearsed the heck of that, so that all the curtains move, right, these sets move on and off, the costume changes, the right actors,
Rolando Rosas 55:25
a lot of choreographed movements to make that happen. And you
Jason Friedman 55:28
in our live sports plays, you rehearse the plays over and over again. So you don’t fumble the ball. And you don’t have all these things. Till it’s like clockwork, you the quarterback can throw because he knows that guy is going to be there at that moment. Yeah, right? You look, make sure boom, when you get to that level of choreography and practice. It’s magical, what can happen. And so that’s where we have to smooth out these transitions, with the businesses
Rolando Rosas 55:53
that you’ve worked with, you know, you come in, give them these recommendations, you say, Hey, we found your friction point. At the end of the day outs, maybe some of these folks in different you know, all different business sizes, you know, do you really need somebody that can be accountable for this. It’s really, it’s a new way of thinking for a lot of businesses. And in the in the way a lot of businesses work, you know, somebody is accountable to the logistics, and you have an operations manager and you have a sale, a VP of sales, and so on and so on. Do you need somebody that’s point person to make sure this is part of the game? This is part of the process? We have this playbook and we’re going to repeat it? Or can you just Is this something you incorporate? You know, company wide? And everybody has a little piece in it? Yeah,
Jason Friedman 56:41
that is an amazing, amazing question. I appreciate you asking it. So the answer to that is yes to both, right. So you need a leader and owner that oversees the whole thing. And the most successful businesses that we work with, bring their entire team into this in some way. And people select what part they want to play a role in, and they take ownership of pieces of it. And so you might have people that own different pieces that report up to the overall owner. And and the the most success comes from involvement. And what we found is as you bring your team into the process and doing this, first of all, you’d be surprised how many people on your team don’t know what anybody else on your team does. Like, this habit is just textbook lately, like holy shit, I can’t believe that you work so hard. Well, I thought I had the hardest shot that guy working harder than I am, like, you know, it’s like, it’s crazy. What comes out of this, the team building that comes out of this is amazing. The culture building that comes out of this is amazing. And the transformation from being a Wii to evey, like our customers like, we start looking at them in a very different way we have more empathy, we have more understanding. And when we make it smoother and easier for our customers, what ends up happening. So we do that we map the journeys on both the front stage, everything that’s customer facing, and the backstage, everything that’s in place to support that front stage journey, we end up cleaning up so many things in the backend that make the employees lives happier, simpler, more fun, frees them up to work on these kind of projects, like we’re talking about to improve things, enhance them, and gives them more time to spend with customers. Because what we were talking about before, if you truly want to obsess over your customers, you got to be with them. You got to know what’s going on with them. You got to like observe and interact and guide and support. And when you do that, it is money is the best money you’ll ever spend. It’s just money well spent. So yeah, great question. Love it. We always advocate for who’s going to be the adult in charge the owner of that experience, and then, you know, we bring in the rest of the team. And again, almost everybody does it say hey, I want to work on that, hey, I want to be on that team. I want to do this. And then you kind of build team leads and things like that within
Rolando Rosas 59:08
Lynn, I wish we had like some more hours because I got like at least 40 More questions that I want to ask you. I know I know time is limited. But before we get to to the last thing I want to do, which is a little rapid fire segment for you. I just want to get your thoughts on something because the customer journey is important. customer experience is important. Something I’ve noticed and I’d love to get your opinion on is that a lot of companies have moved their support some of the onboarding and made that a premium. You want to talk to somebody go ahead and pay extra for that because that’s what you got to do now. You want to get you want to find our phone number. It’s not on the front page anymore. It’s non existent. You got to go through seven hoops to even get to the phone number if it’s available. We only provide email support What is your thought on that? You know, when when customers move to that kind of model? Where were you want to talk? Somebody you gotta pay extra?
Jason Friedman 1:00:07
Yeah, I hate that model personal customer, I understand where they’re coming from, in their thinking their thinking is how do I reduce costs so that I can maybe reduce price for the customers in general? And, and how do I lean it out? And how do I maybe he’ll handle capacity issues where I don’t have enough people to do all the inbound phone calls. So I’m going to shift it this way. That’s a very myopic point of view. Right. And I think it’s detrimental to the success of the company, I think you need to like ask yourself some different questions like, like, so I in our company, we had my big company, right? We we did a lot we, you know, nine figures in sales. And over the, over the long haul, we we had a call center. And when we we had our first call center manager that we hired off the street, you know, because we needed someone to manage it, we kind of grew it organically and had a bunch of misfits that had no leader. And we brought in a leader that was a season call center manager. And when she came in, she had all the credential, she knew how to do it. Her measure of success was volume of calls per minute. And she wanted to make sure that we can get more calls per agent done and completed per minute. And that was the worst possible metric, in my opinion, you could use, right?
Rolando Rosas 1:01:27
That’s the metric most most call centers, most call centers. And with that, that I you’re talking my language, we deal with call centers and support centers because we sell products into those types of customers. Yeah, that’s the number one metric for still for a lot of call centers for how do we measure an agent’s success rate is on calls along, you’re on the call, if the call took 30 seconds took 30 minutes, right?
Jason Friedman 1:02:00
Yeah. And so like, the way we were we got to at was, what is the success? What like what is the success of a call? success metric for us was a happy customer. We didn’t solve their problem. Like as the metric, they were happy with the outcome. And so the outcome didn’t mean the issue was closed. The outcome meant that they felt that we handled it in a great way in that moment, because sometimes, we needed to send them a new piece of equipment, or we need to send a technician out or we had to do something. Right. But we wanted them to be really happy with the with the call. And so we would start out all of our calls, by generally speaking, apologizing to them that they had to take time out of their busy day to even make this call.
Rolando Rosas 1:02:48
Does that work? Or is it doesn’t seem disingenuous? I’ve been I’ve been on a lot of calls, I’ve talked to a lot of people and I’ve listened to a lot of calls. Does it just to me, I don’t know, just me. Sometimes it feels like you’re just reading the script? Or does it actually work psychologically, even though you may think it’s a script?
Jason Friedman 1:03:06
You know, I don’t know the answer to that. From that perspective, I know that we genuinely believed that every one of our people believe that. So I think when you truly believe something, and it’s part of the culture and the DNA, that it comes across that way, and so we would just say, Listen, you know, I’m Jason, I’m my goal for this call is to help you get the result, the outcome that you most wants, you feel happy at the end of this call. But I do want to apologize that you even have to take the time out of your day. I mean, that sincerely. Um, so what I want to do is, with your permission, I want to ask you just a couple quick questions, that I can help you quickly and get you on your way. So that you know, you know, so you know, whatever, right? And so they really cool, thank you so much. And you know, we’d ask them how their day was, we’d have some thoughts, starters, we had all that kind of stuff. But we started out with like a genuine apology, because honestly, like, the things shouldn’t be going wrong that most of them were having. And like they had to stop and sit on hold or do whatever they had to do. And we didn’t want that. And so they develop a relationship over the period of the call, and we were not trying to rush them off the call. And once they say, look, I only have two minutes. We’re great. Like, we do as much as we can in two minutes. You know, and we respect that. We say, listen, we’re about two minutes. I know you said you had to go, here’s where we’re at. I think the next step is you want to set up a time that I can call you back so you don’t have to sit on hold. Or if you’d like We’ll dispatch a technician. That may take a little bit longer. And nine times out of 10 that saying you know we you know, great. Can you call me after three? Great, we’ll call you at 310 How’s that sound? Perfect. Talk to you that awesome. We’re happy. That’s all they wanted. They wanted to feel heard and they didn’t they want whatever, like we just respected the two minute thing. We didn’t try and push them and keep them on longer. And if they said you know what? I’m good for another couple minutes. Then we’ll spend another couple minutes right But hard, it’s not. But I think when you go, I think it’s great to have premium services. I just don’t think that the basic services should be have to be paid for. If I bought your software and I need help using it. I can pick up the phone and talk to me. Right?
Rolando Rosas 1:05:18
What do you think about chatbots? Okay, so this wasn’t in there, but chatbots are supposed to maybe do some of this stuff. And so, you know, chatbots instead of humans are we still going to need some a blend of both to get to a certain kind of a blend
Jason Friedman 1:05:34
of both? And I think if it’s done well, and, and you really map out the journey with the Chatbot and make it fun, and make it interact. narstie
Rolando Rosas 1:05:45
Chatbot? No, you are not asking me that question. I can tell I don’t know. Go back.
Jason Friedman 1:05:50
You wouldn’t ask a human that question. Why do you feel it’s okay to ask me that question. Right beyond brand, the voice of your company. But like you could have it be that people are chuckling and giggling and say, Hey, dude, go log on to the site and check out this chat bot. It’s
Rolando Rosas 1:06:06
advice from today from Jason is install a snarky chatbot I’m saying
Jason Friedman 1:06:11
do it on brand and voice of your customer error snarky company have a start the chat bot. But think about stand up comedy like so many people love stand up and love humor and love that. So in in your brand’s voice? How could you have it be more fun? How could you be more clever? How could you have it be something that’s like, that was cool. Like, I want to tell somebody else about it. You know, there’s a great story. I know we have limited time we gotta go. But there’s a great story about CD Baby years ago, you could have CDs printed and whatever you can google like CD, baby, welcome email, right? And they spent a lot of money, we’re finding this email. And they would send this email out like it’s and it was like, Hey, I’m in the factory. I’m being printed right now. This is what’s going on. Like, it would just be a fun email that like got you to feel like wow, this company is awesome. And it was a delivery fulfillment email that was made fun that people shared, which got them more customers. So, you know, look at the journey, and just see how can I make it easier for my customers? And if what would happen if that phone call that you wanted to charge for if you didn’t, but it got a customer that was on a month to month plan of software to stay? What’s the lifetime value that that one phone call just created? You spent all this money trying to get them to be a customer now you’re like, I don’t want to talk to you. I mean,
Rolando Rosas 1:07:31
yeah, you’re not lying. You’re not lying. Isn’t that right? Flavor Flav? This for my guest, Jason Friedman, who’s dropped so much knowledge, we couldn’t fit it all in this episode. We got to have a second one second round, because there’s a bunch of stuff that we’re not going to be able to get to today. But, Jason, when you want to come back, you have an open invitation. So we can keep this discussion going. Because I wanted to get into techniques and tactics a little bit more with you. And maybe we save that for part two. Yeah, let’s
Jason Friedman 1:08:08
do a party. Man. That’d be fun.
Rolando Rosas 1:08:09
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So if you’ve been nerding, out with us, and you got to the end, I want to invite you to go and hanging out with Dave and me on an episode we did with Dave, with Dan macaroon, who talked about the evolving customer experience. And before we we close, I want to let you Jason, go ahead and plug whatever you want it if people want to get a hold of you, and and talk to you. I know we also have a special offer that you came with today that we can also talk about, go ahead.
Jason Friedman 1:08:45
So I mean, listen, I would love to have any of you that want some help with your business are interested in this. Yeah, definitely go check us out on our website at cxformula.com. But I have a gift, right? So I want you to go check out this gift that cxformula.com/teck and it’s, it’s a PDF, you can get it on our website. And you blew the surprise by showing the website because I try and make people go there without knowing what it was. But but
Rolando Rosas 1:09:13
you know, some of those people that are on audio, haven’t, they’re not seeing it, they’re gonna be hearing your voice.
Jason Friedman 1:09:19
If you’re seeing it, then you know, but you’re, here’s the thing. What I want you to do, it’s less than 10 minute investment of your time. And it’s going to give you a fundamentally different perspective on your business, it’s gonna give you a different way to think about your customers. And it’s gonna give you a path to coming up with some tactics that you can implement. So two asks, If you download it, actually open it and look at it. Don’t let it become shelfware and two, if you did it, and you’re gonna use it, just shoot me an email, tell me what you’re doing. I want this is how I stay in touch with customers and see the progress that you’re making. So let me know I emailed them there. And just yeah, just hit me up and tell me what’s going on with it because we want to help You are
Rolando Rosas 1:10:00
awesome. And you’ve provided so much valuable information today for so many of us that are for our audience that’s listening. I appreciate you providing this kind of special offer. So the link is going to be below as well. So if you’re, if you’re listening that site is gift, that CXformula.com/teck spelled T E ck, just like the name of the show. So I want to thank Jason for coming on today, helping us improve the customer journey. I and hopefully Dave, will join you the next time. Thanks for joining me today.
Jason Friedman 1:10:40
Thanks for having me, man. I really, really love it. Thank you
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