Ep85: Gold Dust Archive - Bright Ideas with Karl Sandland

Speaker A: Welcome to the Customer Service Goldust podcast. This is the UK's only podcast where customer experience professionals share their journey, insights, challenges and current focus in an ever changing customer service landscape. My name is Gavin Scott and I invite you to join us as we delve into another great conversation. Whether you want to increase customer satisfaction or decrease customer complaints, sure to be plenty of gold dust that will help you to stand out. Hello and a very warm welcome to the Customer Service Gold Dust podcast and I'm your host, Gavin Scott. My guest today has over 15 years of experience working in customer service roles and is passionate about providing successful customer outcomes. He has worked in the private sector with startups as well as mature small to medium sized businesses. His roles have included Service delivery Director, Customer Success Director and Chief Customer Officer. And at the start of 2021, on a mission to challenge the acceptance of simple customer satisfaction, he founded a, uh, CX consultancy called Bright CX Ltd. With the aim of teaching the importance of outside in customer experience and enabling businesses to deliver their own customer experience continual improvement programs. Let's give it up for Carl Sandland. Hello Carl.

Speaker B: Hi Gavin. Great to be here. What an intro. Thank you very much.

Speaker A: I want to make sure that I really bring my guests into the room in a nice warm and welcoming way because I really do appreciate and value you making some time for the customer service podcast today.

Speaker B: Yeah, no problem. Well it did absolutely that. Right, right on the money. I feel almost like uh, I needed a backing track to come into after that, so. Thank you.

Speaker A: Some Sting music, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: And just on that thinking on your feed then if you were to have some Sting music that gave you that arrival on stage, what would your tune or what would your track be? Carl, have you got one in mind?

Speaker B: Oh, haven't. There's probably a few to go out. It would have to be. I'd have to research something that was very much psychology based, I think something a little bit surprising.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. Love it, love it. I remember I was doing some conferences with, with a big uh, telecommunications provider and my Sting music when I arrived on stage, making it sound all very fancy. But it was, it was fun. It was fun. It was, it was boom, shake the room. I mean, can you imagine walking out onto, onto stage in front of a, uh, few hundred people to boom, boom, shake the room and it was a great experience, but I loved it.

Speaker B: It is a good intro music that. Although, you know, if you're from the background, I've had a little bit of a, that's sort of like a Bit of an insight to some of the stuff I've done. I actually worked on the doors for 10 years, and music like that is definitely not what you want to be on. But, you know, all the club, because you get all sorts of people bouncing around and then obviously there's all sorts of trouble. But I certainly get it from a, uh, from an intro perspective. So.

Speaker A: Good. Yes. So you worked on the Doors as well. Maybe we'll have a conversation about that at some point during the. During the course of this podcast today. Okay, good. So, and listen, I can't not share this call because today we've. We've got a new dog. And I went and did some work this morning with the clients, uh, actually at St. George's park, which is a, uh, great venue. And when I came back, my wife had been to collect our dog. And we've got a chocolate Labrador, a calling it Ronnie Scott. And as you can imagine, my three kids are just blown away over the moon. And so if you hear any barking in the background or any levels of excitement, it's because, uh, yes, the kids are, are, uh, running around and playing with the dog. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's great. I mean, dogs are great. On Nicole.

Speaker B: Oh, they're fantastic. We've got four dogs, believe it or not. One of them that's referred to as the horse, because even though it's only about six months old, it's, uh, it's a can, of course, so. And it's, uh, it's huge. It's like one of the vicious dogs off Game of Thrones, but it's lovely. But, yeah, we've got plenty of animals in our household.

Speaker A: Love it. And, you know, I talk a lot about dogs and I make a link to the customer experience because if you were to leave, you know, your dog at home for the whole day, right, and when you return, no matter what, they will always provide you with that warm welcome every single time, don't they?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they've missed you. They're hankering after you. You come back and there. And there's the attention. It's almost like everything else is forgotten. The time that you've left them, you know, when you've not taken them out for a walk before, is all forgotten. Um, and if only all customers were like that, eh?

Speaker A: Yes, this is it. And if only all of our customer experience or, uh, our customer service agents provided that warm welcome every time a customer came through, then, you know, they don't absolutely make sure every conversation got off To a great start.

Speaker B: Yeah, agreed.

Speaker A: So listen, before we get stuck into some of the things that you're doing now, tell me some more about your background then.

Speaker B: Well, my, my m. Background. I've got a couple of different ways of delivering my background. There's, there's a talk that I do for, for students to talk about what I've done over the years and don't do what I did. And there's a whole list of all my titles or the short version. Which, which, which we prefer. Would you prefer the longer. The short one.

Speaker A: Let me just tell you a quick story. One of my colleagues was on a train once, right? There was a hen party in the carriage, right? And um, the person came along with their trolley with drinks and light refreshments. And he got to the hen party and one of the ladies said, can I have a rose wine please? And he said, do you want the long or the short answer? And she says, give me the short answer. And he says no. She said, what's the long answer? And he said no. And then he carried on. But, you know, the, the whole carriage was in uproar. But listen, when you said you want the short or the long version, it made me think of that story. But that was certainly an experience that he created for that group of people and many others. So give me a. Let's, let's go with the, the short version and uh, let's see how we get on with that.

Speaker B: Okay, cool. So my career started off oh, many, many moons ago in 1994. So yeah, you can probably do the maths there and work out just how old and archaic I um, am. So I'd always had a fascination in it. I'd been brought up with the early versions of computers by my father. Even the old ZX80, ZX81 that, you know, some of the kits you had to build yourself. So for me the natural thing to do was to go into, go into programming, be a developer. So first job, junior programmer. Fantastic. I was, I was, I was great at it as a junior and lasted six months because I just couldn't really debug anybody else's code. So very short lived. And I uh, then moved into basically technical support. So I guess, you know, looking at it analytically, that's probably where my focus on customers came from all the way back there in 1994. Although I wouldn't, you know, put a rosette on that and claim that as my experience in CX and cs then sort of worked up the ranks really through you know, technical support Technical support manager, moved into IT consultancy, working then as an outsourced IT consultant and IT manager for various businesses, software trainer, head of it, and then took a bit of a pivot around about just before the change uh, of the millennium and moved into business analyst roles and project manager roles. Right, that's really where it sort of changed significantly forward. Because what I realized at that point was in order to get those successful outcomes and just to, sorry, just to rewind back a bit, these were, this was delivering software projects into external clients, not an internal project manager. It was specking what they needed and then delivering it externally for the business. So what I arrived at uh, very quickly was the realization that irrespective of how the project goes, you know, whether it's delayed, whether it's, you know, necessarily exactly what they want and obviously there's all sorts of frameworks around how things should be delivered, Agile and prints too. But ultimately the key thing that mattered was the relationship that you had with the customer who was going to be the decision maker and the person signing it off. Quite often a lot of the projects weren't necessarily seen as a huge success, but the customer was over the moon with the collaboration of being involved and uh, the communication that had gone on during that and felt part of that delivery and in effect they got their successful outcome. So that then was pivotal for me and then all of the roles from that which then led on to obviously lead project manager, head of service delivery, head of implementation and software service and then moving into the customer success arena was, was very easy to transition into because again it's that concentration of what it is a customer wants as a successful outcome lucky enough to join a very early startup software business. As uh, the chief Customer Officer, I would love to brag around the MPS score 86 that we got, but to be honest we got it through probably underhand ways and the misuse of MPS as it is out there in a lot of industries and then took responsibility for all of the service delivery from that business. And it was at that point during COVID sort of sat back a little bit and thought, well hang on a minute, there's lots of businesses that don't really do things the way I think they should be done. I mean, and I'm not some guru, but I've got a few ideas about things that have, that have worked for me over the last couple of decades and that really then led to forming Bright CX and offering individuals and businesses the way to, to look at things using a slightly different framework than uh, than they're used to doing. And hence the birth of BrightCX. And that's what I'm doing now.

Speaker A: Wow. Okay. So what I'm hearing then, 1994, fascination in it, uh, junior programmer, did some tech support, worked with the ranks, got to head of it. Bit of a pivot, some business analyst roles, working in project management, realized one of the key things to focus on was the customer relationship, moving on to the customer success role or the customer success arena that you then bec part of getting a score of 86 for NPS, which is. That's a fantastic score. And then with, with COVID it was a bit of a time to, to reflect and think with a few ideas. And um, that's where you formed and founded Bright cx. And now you just help people to look at things in a different way and share some of the, I guess, the principles and the things that have worked for you to support them when it comes to helping them to improve their customer experience. Is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, it's. It's about. And um, one of the people that inspired me was, was James Dodkins. I don't know, don't know whether you've heard of him. Rockstar cx. He's got a very unusual way of looking at things. Very, I wouldn't say controversial, but it's. It seems to pick out the bits that a lot of other people miss. And I've took a bit of inspiration and a little bit of coaching from him on that and, and really try to concentrate on the things that people overlook when they're looking at customer service and customer experience. And um. And ultimately I'm really enjoying just, I guess and it sounds a bit cliche, but giving back, you know, inspiring people to look at things in a different way. You know, I've done a, a couple of talks at colleges getting them to, you know, trying to foster a little bit of thought into what they're doing in their careers and emotional intelligence and really try to link a lot of things back, I guess to, you know, Personas, emotional intelligence, you know, drivers and that sort of thing to really help them build relationships with people, whether that customer or colleague. And that's, that's one of the key things really that I try and inject into the customer experience design that I, that I leave people with.

Speaker A: And absolutely, we do have, uh, James Dodkins is, Is, uh, booked on the podcast. So his, his episode will be out soon after yours, I would imagine. Carl. So, yeah, I've definitely touched base with him and I was thankful that he agreed to come on, come on to the podcast. So, um, yes, we'll be getting him on the show. And you've talked a lot about, you know, relationships and you know, if you think about the world that we live in today, then Carl, you know, customer service has changed dramatically and the experience we provide our customers with is absolutely key. And uh, why are relationships so important as far as you're concerned?

Speaker B: Well, prior to Covid, I mean, relationships have always been important anyway because let's, let's face it, nothing, Nothing ever goes 100% to plan and you need that, that middle ground and that's like tolerance with, with a customer anyway, so you've got to build that relationship. But I think, I think that's been amplified more so with since COVID because we've lost a little bit of the speaking to people walking into a room, having a chat. It seems to be. Because we've now been a lot more digital and we're having, you know, teams, zooms, meetings. It seems to be a lot less about a little bit of small talk. It seems to be right straight into the meeting.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: These are the things we've got to go through. And everything now seems a rush. Whereas before, you know, you would have just grabbed a coffee and um, gone sat on the sofas and had a chat with somebody about, you know, either a problem they had or give them a bit of advice. Whereas now everything seems very agenda and structured. So I think it's, it's really important that we find a way of still connecting with people and still understanding their, you know, what's motivating them, you know, what their values, behaviors, personality, you know, their goals are and find a way of doing that. Even though we've got these tools, you know, the remote meetings, which are sort of dulling things down a bit because if we don't, we're never really going to have that level of relationship with the person that we've had prior to Covid. So it's all the more important now.

Speaker A: And you know, picking up on a word that you shared there, Carl, connection. I guess over the last 20 odd months, you know, people have missed out a lot on, on connection and being able to connect with people. And so therefore we need to sort of, you know, do more of that and uh, given an injection of connection almost, don't we, to build that relationship?

Speaker B: We, we do, we've got to find new ways, new techniques whilst we're on these, these calls with people. I mean, I, I'm a, an avid user of, of Miro. I don't know whether you've come across it and quite often on the meetings, well, you know, they'll have an icebreaker, uh, a little icebreaker game during it. You know, something to level the playing field, something to put people at ease. Friday, fun activities that just extra things that we've not had to do before that I think it's all important that we do now. The other thing that's really quite interesting or I found really interesting with my own personality when I am a strong introvert, very strong introvert, I've got all the introverted traits. You know, I've actually been done the various quizzes, tests and been fed back on by a psychologist. Ironically, when I'm, when I'm behind a camera with microphone, when I'm on a teams meeting, you, you probably wouldn't realize that. And I actually enjoy it and it does give me energy. But put me in a room full of people and it zaps my energy and it's, it's really weird. It actually allows me to be more fun, charismatic, build better relationships remotely. So I, I think I've managed to, to get a little bit better. But I don't really know what that, that key piece is that you pass on to somebody else who perhaps already is an extrovert. It's, it's an interesting one.

Speaker A: And if you think about, you know, you know, customer, customer service, you know, introverts, extroverts, you know, this often people say when it comes to sales, you know, extroverts who, who can sometimes, I'm not saying that this is a fact but you know, people say extroverts can sometimes be the better salesperson. And I've heard people talk about something m called OMN where you were a bit of both. And so for you when it, when it comes to providing, you know, um, and creating exceptional customer experiences, what is it that we've got to do for our customers in those situations and how do we get people to. Who potentially might be a little bit more introverted to really turn up that dial a little bit to provide that great experience.

Speaker B: One of the things that I like to do sort of early in to the journey of doing a little bit of customer experience management is the Persona framework piece, you know, really understanding the customers, customers, you know, gathering the cross section of the people that are purchasing from them, um, and involve them in the customer interviews with their customers that I'm sitting down with and I guess sort of coach them on looking for I guess six key things out of their customers, the values, behaviors, personality, their lifestyle, goals and influences. And when we do a customer interview where we're trying to assess those things, you know, how they think about things, how they make their decisions, who they listen to, but we're asking completely random questions and, and making it a little bit more fun. You know, we're not saying, you know, what are your values? Um, you know, we're not saying what are your goals. We're asking them, you know, if, if you're an animal, what animal would you be? And then, and then it's the and why and it's the and why bit, which is the key thing that allows them to open up once you've broken down that barrier of asking that initial question, which really gives you the insight to how they are and what their, I guess, psychographic Persona is as opposed to the traditional demographic. And I found taking a client, a customer, on that journey of going through those interviews with, uh, their clients themselves, I think that's key. And that really helps them understand what it is they should be doing and how to break down the barriers of whether they're an extrovert, introvert, whether they're a happy customer or unhappy customer. Because actually you're asking about completely different things. You're not saying what feature do you want? What would make you happy if we gave you this? Would it, would it make you happy? You're actually asking completely different things, but can use those answers to build that Persona and work out then what their needs would be. Mhm.

Speaker A: And let's move into that space. If you were to describe yourself as an animal, what would it be?

Speaker B: If I was an animal, I would probably be a squirrel.

Speaker A: A squirrel?

Speaker B: Squirrel. A squirrel. One of the red squirrels that you don't very, you don't see very often anymore.

Speaker A: A red squirrel.

Speaker B: Yeah, quite happy doing my own thing. You know, I'll scourge around, I'll find nuts, I'll bury them, I'll come and get them later when you're not looking. But you know, I'll probably, uh, pose for a photo in a tree if I'm in a park and a fancy it, but it's on my terms. That's so I'd probably be a squirrel.

Speaker A: Love it, love it. And I hope that many people are sitting there listening to this thinking, okay, what would I be if I was to describe myself?

Speaker B: I was going to say lion or tiger or something like that, didn't you?

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I did. And um, you know, and I guess if you were to ask me, I Probably would say a line. And that's partly because, uh, I'm a Leo. So. So that's probably one of the animals that springs to mind quickly. But I guess, you know, in terms of, uh. And why, hey, you know, pride. Pride in terms of the stuff that I do like to be in control of situations where I can, you know, I can be quite anal when it comes to lists and, uh, you know, making sure that stuff gets done and things happen. If that links in or lines of the line, I'm thinking on my feet here, probably making a complete ass of it. But anyway, all good. So I like that, you know, so that Persona framework, you know, coaching them on these six different things that you've mentioned there, Carl. Uh, and that helps you to get a deeper understanding, right, of individuals and certainly of customers. And with that deeper understanding, how is that then going to help you?

Speaker B: Well, that helps because what you're doing is you're building your different Personas of your customers, and then you're looking at your different service offerings and working out how to, I guess, deliver against each one of those elements of that Persona for that particular person. So you actually, if you were to put this into, like an Excel spreadsheet, you'd end up with this grid that was like, you know, 16 by 16. Because you've got all these different Personas of all these different people and all these services you need to deliver.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then when it comes to customer experience management, you've just got to concentrate on one. Just pick one and then look at that and you've got your. Then your. Your Persona that you're trying to satisfy, you what you know, how they make their decisions. And then you take what it is you're doing, map out what you're currently doing, and then make sure that based on their Persona, you can work out what all of their needs are. Uh, not their wants, not their desires, their needs. Because again, I mean, a good example that I've heard before is if, you know, if you asked a kid what they wanted to eat, they'd say sweets, they'd say an ice cream, they'd say biscuits. But what's a child actually need to eat? Well, they actually need a balanced diet. So that's what you do with customer experience mapping. You know, you're looking at delivering the things that they need, not necessarily what they say. And then you'd move on to the next category in the next category. So, in effect, you've got this continual list of improvements, hence the continual improvement element to what I do, which is I'll show you how to do the first few Persona category mappings, but then you can see the big roadmap there. What you've got to go and play with yourself. Take this technique now and go and do that with the rest.

Speaker A: And it sounds like that's something that you certainly offer at the moment with Bright cx, right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker A: Okay, great, great. You know, just thinking about the customer experience and uh, why the customer experience is so important today. I guess we've talked about, you know, the need to create connection with our customers and that's certainly something, you know, relationships and building relationships and you touched on that. But certainly, you know, for organizations today, as far as you're concerned, Carl, why is, uh, the customer experience so important to get right?

Speaker B: There's a couple of different answers against it, different layers. I mean, we, look, we all know happy customers are more likely to be loyal and therefore returning customers, or less likely to churn. Yeah, you know, that's something that doesn't really need to be said, but I think with COVID it's made a lot of businesses a little bit more complacent. We've gone down a lot of guest transformation digitally and tried to put some streamlined approaches in, perhaps taking a little bit of the human element that we don't just survive survival mode through Covid. But unfortunately that's built a lot of what I like to sort of call CX debt. That's, that's built a lot of situations where the customer actually isn't getting what, what they want. And what a lot of businesses have done is concentrate on delivering a level of customer service or customer satisfaction as, as operationally lean as possible. But what we've done over, certainly over Covid, is built this tremendous amount of debt where, you know, customers just aren't getting what, what they expect to get. There's some companies that are very good at it, just, you know, Amazon, Apple. But there's so many others that have just, I guess they've gone with a minimum viable product. They've, they've said, right, let's, let's just do what we need to do. We'll get this new ticketing system in and the automatic emails will go out. And to be honest, a lot of people just want to talk to somebody. You know what I mean? We've lost that human element. And I think, and I think it's. Now is the time with COVID I guess, relaxing slightly for businesses to look back and look at this customer experience debt, this gap between what the customer experiences and what they've put in place, the shortfalls they've put in place, and really start now to flesh that out a bit again. Go back and concentrate on it again now and actually make it the right solution to deliver the customer successful outcome, not just the one for the business. That is correct.

Speaker A: Yeah. It reminds me of a recent transaction I had with an organization where I just sent a quick email and it was a simple question. I, I didn't think it, it needed a huge amount of thinking and I just got an automated response, come back with a ticket number. You know, seeing that I'd be responding within 24 hours, I was thinking, really, you know, can we not have a quick answer to that? So, uh, I guess, yes. We have to make use of some of the digital solutions that are out there, but just make sure that they, they still, you know, create a level of connection with our customers. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: I've got a great example actually of that. So I'm at the time of life now where I need a decent mattress. So had a look at the Silent Night site and, uh, found one that was a fair amount of money. So thought, I'll do what everybody else does, I'll go to Amazon, I'll search it and see if I can get it cheaper. Managed to do that. Now, fast forward three months down the road, noticed there was something a little bit weird going on with this mattress. And again, bear in mind that this mattress is one of those like a little morphing alien, you know, one that you get delivered in a box and then you unravel it, you let air into the bag and it sort of morphs and grows. So I was always a bit skeptical as to has it done any damage to the mattress. And lo and behold, it's, it had. So a few months in it, it sort of torn part of the foam, even though the surface of the other mattress still looked fine. So did the usual. Dug out my receipt. Uh, and I thought, this is going to be one of those situations where, you know, Amazon, tell me that I've got to go back to Silent Night and Silent Night. Tell me I've got to go back to Amazon. And here we go. So first thing I did, bit of proactive, went onto the Silent Night site and had a look and the list of things that you had to do in order to send a mattress back was absolutely crazy. So photo of the mattress with bedding on it. Take the bedding off, take a photo of the mattress, take the mattress off the base, take a photo of the mattress off the base, take a photo of the base without the mattress on, and so on and so on. So I'm there, armed with all of these photographs, all this evidence. I've got a PDF copy of my receipt, go onto the website, open up a chat session, basically say, this is what's happened. As soon as they see the receipt, they say, oh, yeah, that's not with us, sorry, you need to go back to Amazon. Oh, my God. You know, so get onto Amazon, similar sort of situation, open up the chat. And straight away there's this, this, this lovely woman called Marina. I've even remembered her name. And before we even got into anything, it was like, you know, how's, how's your day going? How's your week been? You know, And I thought, oh, this is, this is quite nice. So I'm text chatting back and she said, oh, would it be easier for you if we actually had a voice conversation? So she said, if you give me your number, as well as texting and chatting, we could speak on the phone. So I thought, well, fair enough, that's, that's good, I'll go with that. Uh, and so I'm there chatting away with her on the phone, explained the issue. She said, oh, yeah, we do, we do sometimes get this, this happen, but don't worry. She said, is this your order? And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, I've looked through your order history and if you look in the chat window now, is that the mattress order that you're on about, that particular one? And so. Well, yeah, it is. Fantastic, thank you. And she said, oh, okay, no problem, we'll arrange to pick it up when, when's good for you. And I'm then thinking, right, well, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a stupid time. I'm going to have to take time off work or it's going to be sort of. We could, we can work around you, you know, it can be morning, afternoon, evening, it could be weekend, whenever's best. So I picked the following day and bear in mind this was a Sunday as well. So they said, yes, no problem, we can come tomorrow, we can come and get it. And I said, look, the only problem is, bear in mind it was one of those mattresses that was rolled up and had all the air sucked out of it. So I'm definitely not giving it you back in the state it was. And I said, and I've got nothing to pack it with whatsoever. Said, I'm assuming the courier does need, need it packed and she said, well, yes, it needs to be bubble wrapped. It needs to be, you know, watertight. It needs to be secure. I said, but look, it's a king size mattress. I don't really know what I'm going to do. She said, well, don't worry, it's fine. She said, any materials you need to bubble wrap it to tape it all up, uh, she says, just order them through Amazon. And she said, and we'll refund them for you. It's absolutely fine as long as you don't go silly with it. I said fine, great, I'll order them now. And she's. And I said, what, what do I do then once, you know, once it's been picked up? I said, do I then have to come back on to chat and tell you that I've ordered this bubble wrap and ordered this tape? She said, no, it's okay. I've put a note on the system, I'll look out for it personally. And in the next couple of days, as soon as I see that order come through, I'll put a straight credit onto that account. And uh, I left that, that whole experience thing, my God, you know, they've done what the supplier, the manufacturer hasn't done and couldn't do. They've used technology to its advantage there because they've had a chat window and called me. There's been the personal touch and any worries or concerns or inconvenience I have about sending this thing back, even down to packing it and having to buy packing material, they've just taken that away from me completely. Now that is good customer experience. That's a good customer service person. And um, that's the sort of thing I aspire for with my clients. That's the thing that we need to do. Be more Amazon.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's just a great example, isn't it, of going above and beyond and just making the whole experience feel easy for you as a customer, creating exceptional customer experiences. And when you think about it, today, people use Amazon as a benchmark when it comes to other organizations that they interact and engage with and receive some customer service from. And so, you know, other organizations absolutely have to think about how they can, you know, up their game to at least get on some sort of a par with the approach that's now being taken by companies like Amazon and many others, right?

Speaker B: I think so. I mean, strangely enough, I have a little bit of a saying when I'm, when I'm working with customers and you know, leaders saying when, when they're looking at their, uh, what they currently do, either with their support function or the whole customer experience, their journey map. It's, it's that challenging question of, well, yes, that's great, but what would Disney do? What, what would Amazon do? And they said, well, they've got loads more money that do this and they do that and they do this. Well, find a way of doing that, but just, just cut the purse strings on it a little bit. But, but that's what you should aspire to, you know, and I think that's, that's a great, I guess, mantra to have, you know, what would, what would one of these key leaders do in customer experience? And if they would do that, and we know that works, stop ignoring it and aspire to get to that level.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I recently had Alec Dalton on the podcast Carl, and he's, uh, an expert, a former executive in hospitality work for the Marriott. And he talked about experiences being, you know, the experience provided by Disney and by Ritz Carlton and um, by Apple. You know, looking at the, the approach that they take and seeing what you can do yourself as a business, as an organization to, to at least do what you can to aspire to that sort of standard of service. Because that's, that's the gold standard, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, anything, anything between where you are and heading towards that has got to be heading in the right direction because they've got the budgets to, uh, you know, to research it, to do the right thing. You know, if you're saying to yourself, well, we wouldn't do that because Disney's wrong or Amazon's wrong, then you do an absolutely wrong thing. And it's, and it's not a. Quite a lot of the time. It's not about the amount of money spent. I mean, we're not necessarily saying that Amazon, the way they made me feel was all of the digital transformation in tech. Actually the key thing that made me walk away from that and think, wow, was when she suggested phoning me and talking to me at the same time as doing the tech side stuff. So it was actually that human connection and feeling that she actually was bothered about what I was going through and sympathetic and empathetic. That's the key thing. And that doesn't cost. You just need to find the right people that have that, that skill.

Speaker A: And it's sometimes the little things that make the biggest difference. And for you, that simple case of, okay, would you like me to give you a quick phone call, discuss it that way? You know, that, that in itself. Well, yeah, and that the, the fact that she was keen to create that connection, that, uh, emotional connection with you by having a conversation that certainly, you know, took it up a notch, didn't it, for you?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Like it did. And I think. And again, it. Especially in. In. In covert times, I think it's all the more important that we try and get those. Those connections back, don't we? We've got to get those back. I think a lot of people have got very comfortable with sitting behind a camera, and then when the camera goes off, that's. That's fine. You know, they don't need that stuff. I don't like the term human element, because we're all humans, obviously. You know what I mean? That human element is getting lost. So we need to get back.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Okay, great. Well, listen, let's have a look at, seeing if we can bring this one to a close then. Uh, and we've had a good chunk of time there. We're already getting close to 40 minutes. Coleman, doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Right.

Speaker B: Well, you put me on a soapbox and start talking about customer experience, customer success, and that's it. You'll never get rid.

Speaker A: It's great. I mean, we can get you on again at some point, but, uh, so for the listeners, then, before I get you to share some of your contact details, if you happy to do that, what would your top tips be or what's your gold dust that you would want to share when it comes to creating exceptional customer experiences?

Speaker B: I think exceptional customer experiences come from good customer relationships. And I think the way to gain good customer relationships is to look, is to just scratch the surface of emotional intelligence a little bit. Uh, understand your own personality, maybe look at the Myers Briggs, look at the KLS drivers, understand yourself, and you'll learn to start understanding behaviors of others. And then you will be able to interact an awful lot better because you'll know their needs from the conversation and you'll know your own. And you better marry that up and bridge that gap a little bit. And the reason I personally think that's cold gold dust, this is ironically, when, when I was managing Ryan and a large team that Ryan was in. So, Ryan Noakes, one of your previous guests, we actually did exactly that. We got the whole customer success department to do these various questionnaires online to work out what their drivers were. Some were, you know, hurry up somewhere, please, me. Oh. And so on and so on, to work out what they were so that even when they were interacting with each other, they understood that for example, you know, that person wants something quickly where that person wants to take the time with it. We'll find, find that meeting in the middle because that's what you need for that successful outcome between those two parties. So I think for me it's really about a little bit of emotional intelligence. Understand personalities and those relationships you build will be solid.

Speaker A: Great advice. And like you say, you know, good customer service, you know, is about relationships. And so first and foremost, the more you understand emotional intelligence, uh, the better uh, able you are to, you know, create better connections and have a better understanding of the requirements of your customer and recognize and value difference in terms of how they communicate and not be put off by someone who's very different to you. So I uh, think that's time well spent when it comes to having that raised. Awareness of how you show up yourself is going to help when it comes to how others show up with you when uh, you interact.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely, totally agree.

Speaker A: So what's the best way then for uh, our listeners to connect with you and get in touch with you?

Speaker B: The easiest and the best way is probably LinkedIn. I mean that's become all of our sort of digital CVS and our sales front our storefront nowadays. So yeah, LinkedIn. It's Carl Sandland. So K A R L Sandler dollar word on LinkedIn. You'll find all my other different ways of being contacted on there. But from there you'll see a uh, various showcase of things I've done, what I'm about and if anything sparks anybody's interest and they want to know more then, then feel free to, to give me a shout.

Speaker A: I'm sure they will and we'll make sure that we put uh, a link to your profile into the show notes. And just while I think about it, I used to a friend that went to school, his name was Neil Sandland. Any relationship? His sister's called Catherine.

Speaker B: Uh, it doesn't, I mean obviously his surname rings a bell. His forename does. Doesn't ring a bell, but the Sandlands, because my father did a lot of genealogy and went back to I think around the 1700s. They were all originally from Cheshire. It was a very large family in, in Croon, Antwich and Wem. So he will be related, I can guarantee it. I just don't know which generation and how far removed.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: If you ever speak to him from one of his relatives, this is it.

Speaker A: I'll uh, make sure I say hello from you. So listen Carl, it's been, it's been Great to have you on the Customer Service Golders podcast. Thank you for taking the time. I think now is a good time for both of us to enjoy spending some time with our dogs. You with all four and me with just the one. But. So we can sit back and relax. It's the end of the day now and. And it's the weekend as well. So listen, have a great weekend. Uh, look after yourself and I'll catch up with you before you're. Not too much.

Speaker B: Yeah, will do. And thanks for having me on, Gavin. It's been. It's been an absolute pleasure and an honor to. To be on the golden show, so thank you.

Speaker A: No, you're more than welcome. You're great to have you. Thanks, Carl.

Speaker B: Uh, cheers.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Customer Service Gold Dust podcast. I'm sure that there were plenty of ideas you can take away and apply to your business today. Three things to do now subscribe to the podcast podcast so that you can benefit from every episode. I'd also love to see a little review as well. This helps to spread the word. Um, and the gold dust, of course. Head over to Amazon to get a copy of my latest book, Finding Goldust how to Create Exceptional Customer Experiences. The book is endorsed by a former executive Vice president of Walt Disney Resort. And finally, visit my website at www.gavinscott me and sign up for some more free content. Until next time, stay memorable.