Episode #86: Dan Gingiss Interviews Donna Weber

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Hello again, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Experience Maker Live show. My name is Dan Gingas, the Experience Maker. I'm a customer experience speaker, podcaster, author, and coach. And every week I bring a great new guest on this show to teach us something new about customer experience.

And this week is, of course, no exception. I do want to remind you and announce that the Experience Maker book is out there and it is now available in every format possibly imaginable. Hardcover, paperback, e-book, audio book, however you like to consume books. The Experience Maker is out there and would love for you to check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your favorite bookstore.

So today I am very excited to welcome Donna Weber to the program. And Donna is the customer onboarding expert. She's the author of Onboarding Matters and also known as a top influencer in the customer success space. Donna, welcome to the show.

Dan, thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here and congratulations on releasing your audio book and your book in general. Well, thank you. I was kind of pumped about the audio book.

I didn't do that the first time around. And I recorded my own. It was a lot of fun. And I'm shocked at the demand for audio books, mostly because it's not how I consume books.

But we got to know our customers. And we got to understand what they want. And so I was trying to deliver on customer demand there. Well, I completely relate because I am just wrapping up the recording of mine.

And I was watching your show with Drew Neiser, and he was saying how many typos he found with the audio book. And, oh, my God, I found the same. So I just got the manuscript updated. So hopefully there's very few typos left.

Exactly. I actually have a copy of my book right here that, if you can see, I have the word edits on it. Because anytime I found anything, I'm like, OK, for the next version, we'll just have to update it. Very, very minor stuff.

But it is funny because, I mean, the number of people that reviewed this book, including a professional editor, including family members, my brother who's a journalist, lots of other people. And I read it, however, many times. It's amazing that stuff still slips through. So talk to me about, let's first talk about onboarding.

And how did you get into this specific part of customer experience? Well, thanks for asking. Well, so my background is working on the customer-facing side of things. I've worked with customer education, customer enablement, customer success.

And, you know, I've seen that kind of transition as we've become more of a subscription economy. And, you know, I worked at companies where we're so focused on the, you know, the buyer journey. There's a lot of customer experiences very focused on the buyer journey, the sales funnel. You know, we map customer journeys, but we end when the deal closes, right?

And, you know, we're always like, you know, cheering and ringing the bell when we got a new logo. But then it was like, yeah, but what about our existing customers? I was always like, what about our existing customers? So I was the one at leadership meetings going, hello, you know, what about our existing customers?

And started to dive in and explore ways that we could engage and onboard and enable new customers immediately. because I believe that the renewal happens in the first 90 days, not the last 90 days. For sure. And when you talk about ringing that bell, I think of the B2B companies that I've worked for and have worked with.

And so often we have that celebration about the new logo. I don't even like calling it a logo, right? Because that's like calling a customer by their account number, right? Exactly.

Personal. But what I think is so interesting is that that celebration does not include the guest of honor. We very rarely ring the bell or go out for drinks with the new customer. And so, and I'd love for you to expound upon this, but my belief, having been that customer also in the B2B space so many times is that the customer is most likely at that moment feeling some sort of buyer remorse or at least fearing buyer remorse You know oh my gosh I just signed you know a six contract And if this goes south, you know, I might be out of a job or my boss is going to hate me or whatever.

So they're sitting here worried. And meanwhile, we're off ringing bells and having drinks. Oh, exactly. So I cover that in my book, Onboarding Matters, about the neuroscience of onboarding.

onboarding. Because, you know, I think, you know, I think we've talked about this in our just a casual chat before. But in the B2C space, there is some understanding of the psychology of the buyers and the users. And in the B2B space, we kind of figure we're not using, there's no people involved.

And, you know, that especially I work with high growth, high tech, generally B2B companies, and they're really focused on their product. And sometimes they have, you know, often they have awesome products. But the reality is that there's people who are buying the product and there's people who are implementing the product and there's people who are using the product. And there isn't much understanding or appreciation of that.

And I really, I find that fascinating. And I see that we have huge opportunity in the B2B space to be better at that. And I believe that, you know, well, like, you know, 10, 20 years ago, it was all about the killer app. That was the kind of tagline.

Do you have a killer app? And the reality is that our products are becoming more and more commoditized. And it's our relationships that matter, that are mattering more. And we need to learn how to do that.

And we need to learn why that's important. I totally agree. And one of the things I say in my book is that competing on price has become a loser's game. And competing on product has become harder and harder because so much has become commoditized.

And I even, you know, I bring up in the example of Uber and how Uber is probably one of the most innovative companies of our generation. And yet today, if you get into a car, I dare you to tell me whether it's an Uber or a Lyft. And the answer is it's probably both because the driver is looking for both companies. And so that's how undifferentiated the product is now.

And then therefore what's left is the experience. I want to talk about before we get to customer success, I want to talk about something else that happens in the onboarding and B2Bs, which is generally that as soon as the customer becomes a customer, as soon as they're done working with the sales team, the salesperson hands them off to somebody else. And it could be a customer success team. It could be an account management team.

But talk about that transition and how we can make sure that that's smooth. Absolutely. So in the book, I have six stages of the orchestrated onboarding framework. So it's the framework to drive customers quickly to initial value and then to lifetime value.

And we start in the embark stage and then there's, I'll just quickly tell you the phases and then we'll talk about the handoff. There's the embark, the handoff, the kickoff, the adopt, the review and the expand. And the handoff stage, traditionally folks think about, you know, the sales team's going to do a handoff to the post sales teams. I include two handoffs in my handoff stage, the internal handoff and then the customer handoff.

So the internal handoff, oftentimes there's like, well, go look in the CRM and you can see what they purchased, how many seats they have, what products they purchased. But I believe, especially in a high touch engagement, especially if you had like a long sales cycle that was maybe two, three, five, six months, the sales rep becomes this trusted party. And it's not just a matter of what they purchased, but really passing over that trust and that relationship. So it may be what could really help those post-sales teams, whether it's an onboarding specialist, an account manager, a customer success manager, is passing the nuances of the relationship over.

So kind of, you know, knowing, let's say I'm the customer success manager and the sales rep tells me, look, Dan is really technical. He's ready to dive in, go fast. Or, you know, Dan is really nervous. His career's on the line.

You know, his reputation's at stake for buying this. He's got a lot of buyer's remorse. I'm going to handle that very differently. Dan's not technical.

You're going to have to explain everything three times. You know, all those things are going to help me set up for success. So that's that internal handoff to really set those post sales teams up for success and provide some continuity from the buyer journey to the customer journey. So I want to talk a little bit about this concept of customer success.

And I admit I come at this from a little bit of skepticism, having been in customer success and sort of realizing the hard way that my job seemed to really just be inside sales. that I was basically just judged on, could I get the customer to spend more next year than they did this year? And what always bothered me was that as a customer, we wanna spend less, not more. And so to me, if we want the customer to be successful, we at least have to align in terms of objectives of what success looks like.

And I especially think that what often gets forgotten is especially in the B2B space, the customer success is really about, are they using our product? And are they getting as much out of it as they should be? Are they getting what we promised them out of it? And to me, those questions have to be answered before we start talking about what else they can buy from us.

But tell me about your perspective of customer success. And is this just, did someone just get really creative with the name of a department? Or is this really supposed to be about making our customers successful? Well, one of the reasons that I wrote Onboarding Matters is because I see most customer team, excuse me, most customer success teams are very internally focused.

So they're fixated on churn. They're fixated on, you know, how many meetings they're having with customers, on compensation, on how are you going to capacity modeling. and I'm like, nobody's talking about the customer. And I actually dedicate the book to the customer because when customers win, we win.

So my whole goal is to turn the spotlight from the internal focus to the customers And it not just about selling to them it about providing value You know you said customers want to pay less Well if you providing them a lot of value they are willing to pay a lot. You know, there's a research that I quote in the book that, you know, customers, I think it was 64%. And I can't remember the exact number or the source, but that customer, that people, consumers are willing to pay more for a better experience.

For example, as a consumer, I have an app for meditation. So I meditate most days. And there's plenty of free apps out there. But I am paying, it's about $100 a year for this one.

It's called 10% Happier. And that's a lot for a mobile app, right? But it's very well produced. It's very curated.

It's not about me scrolling through thousands of meditations and wondering what's going to be good because everyone in the world is posting on there. It's a curated experience, and I'm willing to pay for that. So that's an example. You need to know your audience.

And being the low-cost option may be what your audience wants and needs. or maybe being the curated high value experience is what your customers want to need. And then you charge for that. So the main thing is to know your customers and then to provide value.

I can't hear you. Hold on. So how do you go about knowing your customers? What are some of the best methods that you've seen?

Well, I think it's really important to just pick up the phone and talk to them, really listen to them. And, you know, most companies are busy running net promoter scores and surveys. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've got survey fatigue because every transaction we got a survey to fill out. And do you ever see any changes that result from your feedback?

So we actually are training our customers and our users to stop responding because they're not seeing any impact from all that time and effort. So when I work with companies, we do customer interviews and they can be 20 to 30 minutes. We have like five to 10 questions. Keep it really simple, open ended questions and ask the question and then listen.

And it's really interesting to hear even not just what they say, but how they say it. You know, like one company, I was interviewing their customers. So they're a learning technology company. And, you know, I heard from every customer.

One would say, oh, the customer success manager is awesome. Another one says, I never hear from them. You know, so then you start to find out, well, there's no consistent process. Everyone's doing their own thing.

Another company I worked with, all the customers declared that it was the best onboarding experience they ever had. They gushed about how great customer service they had. And that's great to know. And like, how are we going to scale with that if we want to continue providing that high touch white glove treatment?

And our customers, you know, they're not using our products in a vacuum. They probably have a whole technology stack. Right. And so I like to ask them, you know, tell me about your best onboarding experience.

And we learn from them. And that's how we innovate. We, you know, we innovate by listening to our users. So, you know, pick up the phone, like listen to one customer.

With companies I worked in and worked with, we've had huge innovations. I didn't come up with those ideas. My colleagues with years of experience didn't come up with those ideas. We learned from our customers.

That's how we innovate. I love asking your customer for their best onboarding experience. I think that's a great way to get them talking and to get ideas as well. Hey, Brandon, thank you for posting on LinkedIn.

Appreciate it. He says that feedback should be a real-time goal. Completely agree. Also mentioned emphasizing personalization, personal attention.

Definitely see that as well. So thank you so much for being here, Brandon. Really appreciate it. You know, one of the things also I would note, you mentioned feedback and we never hear back.

There's this concept of a feedback loop, and yet the loop seems to always get dropped. And one of the things I always recommend to clients is if somebody has suggested something to you, even if you don't take that suggestion until a year later, go back to them and tell them that you took their suggestion and implemented it. And they're really going to appreciate it and feel very strongly about you. And they're going to feel like that you did it because of their suggestion, even if you didn't, even if a thousand other people suggested the same thing.

And I think one of the best examples of this was when my former employer, McDonald's, launched All Day Breakfast. They even put into their TV ads actual tweets from people that had been asking for All Day Breakfast for years and years and years. They went back to each and individual, every individual tweet, hundreds of thousands of them, and responded back and said, it's here. And every customer now feels like, wow, I did that, right?

And I made that happen. And guess what? They're going to tell their friends and family. And that's a huge amount of promotion right there.

Absolutely. For sure. For sure. Hey, I've got another comment from an audience member.

Dennis, when onboarding, start with the desired emotional outcome before the business outcome. The business outcome is obvious. The emotional outcome is overlooked and underappreciated. What's your response to that, Donna?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So understanding the success outcomes.

So when I work with companies, we build out a success plan. And so you can capture those business objectives as well as the personal objectives. And when I work with companies, I ask that the stakeholder, the buyer I'm working with, you know, what would this mean to you personally? Oh, I'd be able to sleep through the night.

Oh, you know, I would be a hero. Oh, I could, you know, get a promotion. It's important to know what those personal aspects are. Yeah, it also gets you closer to the customer to just understand them and what makes them tick a little bit more, which I think is always useful.

I've been advising people, especially during this time where so many people are still remote, pay attention to the little details, right? The customer that's got the dog running around in the back, keep that in the back of your head So when you sending out a holiday gift this year include a little milk bone for the dog are g reach right into their hr ironically when we been we've actually had the opp much more about our custo before just by seeing what who's who and what are in can learn a lot about peop meet people in real life, your store restaurant or w that you're in, get to know them on a personal level, and then you can deliver experiences on a personal level as well.

Yeah, I agree. In the book, I talk about including small talk, and it seems really like superfluous, but I'll look on LinkedIn, get a sense of kind of who this person is. I always take a moment, you know, especially with it all being remote, I'm working with people from all over the world just to take a moment, like to learn about them, to bond over something, you know, whether it's curly hair or a shared passion or that the cat crawling across their shoulders while they're working, you know, just take a moment to appreciate kind of the people side.

And I feel like that that lubricates the relationship and you feel like you're on the same team and now you're partners. And especially if you're dealing with like a long and complex implementation and a very technical product, there's bound to be complications, delays, and problems. You're integrating, you're migrating, you've got your APIs, you've got your data. It's not going to be easy.

But if you have that personal connection, the studies show that people are more willing to put up with that. They're more patient. They're on your side. If you've established that solid footing of a people connection initially.

For sure. And if they've had good experiences with you in the past, they're going to be more patient if something goes wrong. I think customers understand that most companies are not perfect, that mistakes happen, that things go down. Last night I was trying to book a flight on my airline and their website was down.

And it happens. I mean, I know they don't intend for their website to be down. And so I think customers have a certain level of patience. It's really about what you do when things go wrong and how you respond that really kind of dictates the future of that relationship.

And so maybe the integration is taking longer than anybody expected, but has it been a pleasant experience? Do I still know when the new deadline is or is it completely, you know, it could be any time and I don't have any clarity on that? Is there enough communication? Do I understand what's causing the delay so I can explain it to my boss, et cetera?

These are all pieces where you're still evolving and working on that experience. And it's really important because, you know, a long integration like that or really anything that goes wrong with an experience can be an opportunity either to lose a customer or to actually make them more loyal. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to drill into the communication you mentioned, because we really need to have that transparency, that accountability and that communication, especially now.

I mean, the reality is if you order a pizza, you're getting this, you know, tracking of every stage. You know, they've threw the dough in the air. They've put the pastrami, the pepperoni on it. It's going in the oven.

You know, it's loaded on the truck. It's on the way. You know, when we order things, my husband's tracking the items every step of the way. I'm just like, just tell me when it gets at the doorstep.

But, you know, as consumers, we have that expectation now. So in the B2B, we really need to provide that transparency, that communication for every step of the way. We need to have that relationship from day one or even before day one. Definitely agree.

Donna Weber is the author of Onboarding Matters, How Successful Companies Transform New Customers into Loyal Champions. It released earlier this year and is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, wherever you buy books as well. Donna, how can people connect with you besides from buying your book? Well, I want to also share that just this week I received two book awards.

So the Best New Nonfiction and Distinguished Choice for Business and Entrepreneurship from the New York City Big Book Awards. So I'm really delighted to share that. That's amazing. Congratulations.

That's terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And so go to DonnaWeber.com. That's D-O-N-N-A-W-E-B-E-R.com to learn more, to look into the book and to reach out and connect.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Donna. I appreciate all the insights. I think onboarding is such a key part of the experience, and I love that you've made it your absolute focus.

I think if we get onboarding right, the rest of the experience can fall into place a whole lot easier. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. Thanks for having me, Dan. It's a real pleasure to talk with you.

Well, and thank you for being here on a special Friday edition of the Experience Maker Show. We will be back next week at our normal time, which is Thursdays at noon Eastern and 11 o'clock Central, where I am, nine o'clock Pacific. I guess I should include 10 o'clock Mountain so that I don't offend anybody, at least in the US. I also want to remind people that I have a weekly newsletter.

You can get it at cxnewsletter.com, where I share articles, videos, events, everything related to customer experience that you need for the week. It's a free newsletter, and I really have a lot of fun with it. I put a lot into it, and hopefully people get a lot out of it, certainly from the feedback that I've gotten, they do.

So go to cxnewsletter.com to sign up for that. We'll see you next week here on the Experience Maker Show. Again, thanks so much for joining us.

One last thing, if you have any suggestions on guests that I should have in 2022, because we are booked all the way through the end of this year, please reach out to me, Dan at DanGingas.com or hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want. And I'd love to hear your suggestions for future guests. Thanks so much.

Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time.