Customer Experience Design Principles | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 10

Wow Your Customers

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Wow Your Customers 〰️

Customer Experience Design Principles

Every time we interact with a customer it’s an opportunity to impress them. We want our customers to walk away excited and happy that they are in business with us. Regardless of if we are providing a service or product we need to be intentional when it comes to the user experience of our customers. We can do this by ensuring every touch point is carefully thought out to optimize their experience.

Let's start by thinking of our user experience from the receiving end.

We know we don’t like to sit on hold for long periods of time, it isn’t ideal when the site we were shopping on crashes, or when our delivery arrives a week late. We know what a bad user experience is and the emotions it creates and that is not what we want for our customers.

Creating Your Ideal User Experience

When starting the process we should make it clear what our mission is and how that mission is being reflected in the steps or touchpoints of our user experience.

“Is my mission aligned with what my user is experiencing during each interaction?”

And

“Is my mission being portrayed on a daily basis?”

We need our customers to have a consistent experience that is in alignment with our mission and to do that we need to be intentional and optimizing in every interaction with our customer, no matter if the interaction is on our website, Instagram, or with a sales rep.

To avoid creating a sub-optimal user experience we need to think as a new user, not from the top of the chain. We need to start from the first touch as if we are a user to find where any friction or misalignment is within the interaction process.

Once we’ve found the weak points we can then meet the user where they are, instead of forcing them to meet us where we are at, which leaves room for more innovative competition to step in. Because our job as business owners is to make it as easy as possible to work with us.

Reducing Friction

The entire point of doing the above exercise is to reduce the friction that the user experience has with the client. Friction would be any point where the customer experiences frustration, confusion, or simply takes too much time.

We want to stop having “Items left in the cart” for our business, which means we didn’t capture potential value.

An example would be a person passing by our restaurant and deciding to eat at one down the street or a sales person who’s customer doesn’t go through with the entire process. Both potential values are uncaptured.

Incredible User Experiences Create Longevity

It is our job as business owners to make doing business with us a breeze. This isn’t just because we want to complete the current transaction with a customer. Having a great user experience will not only keep our customers coming back but it’s likely that they are going to tell their friends and the same is possible if our user experience sucks.

Word of mouth is similar in importance to ratings, a few five star ratings can be the difference in 20 people viewing your product or content to 200. Similar to good word of mouth could be the difference between having a fully booked restaurant or one struggling for customers.

We want to have a relationship with our customers long term, so it’s important that we know how we want our customers to feel at the end of our process.

“If this is the feeling or end that i want them to reach, how can I reverse engineer that”

We think about how we want them to feel at the end of each interaction and then what we need to provide for them to start on the path to that feeling. And when we start with the end we have a chance to soften any friction that is unavoidable, like a delay in shipping time for a product. If it’s unavoidable then we need to put preparations in place to ensure that the user doesn’t turn sour on the product or service during their user experience. Softeners can be coupons, thank you messages, or just an alert using empathy for any delay.

How To Put It Into Action

We need to create a system. A system is a set of policies, processes, and technology that aid the business to its goals. We need to think about how we can use these three things to elevate our user experience.

A process might be sending a coupon when a customer’s order is delayed, a policy might be that every customer email is responded to within 24 hours, and a technology can have the information entered on your website by the customer be savable for their next time visiting and purchasing.

The goal is to find ways to automate, design, and invent on a customer's behalf to make their experience better. Customers want better even if they don’t know it. Even if it might cost a bit more, think of it less like an expense and instead an investment.

Employee User Experience

We want our customers to be over the moon about doing business with us, and our employees to feel the same about working with us.
People should be put in a place where they feel they are working in their strong suit. When people are placed outside their genius it can lead to them feeling drained and as though what they are doing isn’t meaningful work.

Our job as business owners is to find where people should be placed so they can feel fulfilled in their role. Because if they aren’t satisfied and happy they aren’t able to provide a great service to anyone else. Staff should be able to come to us with discontent, that means allowing time for review and being open to their input and potentially change.

There shouldn’t be any unspoken topics that your team or staff is afraid to speak on.

We want our internal and external processes to be quick, easy, professional, and enjoyable if anyone is going to enjoy working with us.

Here at Better Than Rich we avoid creating any suboptimal user experiences by creating over the moon emotions through systems including processes, policies, and technologies.

Andrew Biggs 0:01
What's going on everyone? Welcome to the better than rich so Season Two. I'm your host, Andrew Biggs. I'm here with my special co host, Mike Abramowitz. Mike, how you doing today?

Mike Abramowitz 0:10
I'm ready, man, we're actually live, you know, 2022. This is exciting versus recording in 20, and then launching it and releasing in 2021. And, you know, and a year later, things have gone down. But I'm excited that we're here. Season two is ready, roll.

Andrew Biggs 0:27
Absolutely, absolutely. What Mike's alluding to, if you've been listening to our previous episodes, a lot of those were recorded way back in the fall of 2020. So a lot has changed since then we're sitting here in towards the end of January. This might be coming out a little later. But we're gonna be having these be a lot tighter for y'all. So they're, you know, quicker and more topical and really relevant, as relevant as possible to what you're going through on a day to day basis. And, yeah, today we're our topic is going to be how to design an incredible user experience. And we're going to break down how to start to finish, really think creatively, really think systematically about how to design a user experience that is going to leave people with their jaws on the floor and just have them really amazed with what you're able to do. Whether you're a business owner, whether you run a team, whether you're an individual contributor, this can be really, really useful in terms of how to actually make sure your customers are having the best experience possible. This is also really topical for what we're doing. We wanted to give you guys a little taste of the event that we have coming up, because I know a lot of you are coming out to visit us in Tampa. And that's going to be coming up March 18 through the 20th. If you don't know about it, Mike, what should people know about the event coming up here? In just a month or two?

Mike Abramowitz 1:45
Yeah, if someone's a C suite executive who has someone who's in charge of their operational department in their business, or if they're a business owner of a smaller, medium sized business that just want to question or poke around the design of their infrastructure, I think it's really important to just kind of take a step back and evaluate the business. Look at this, break it down to the studs, question everything in the external user experience, question everything on the internal user experience, from clients to staff, going through all of it, questioning it, and then taking what's good, or eliminating what's not so good delegate figuring out what could be delegated, figure out what could be automated, and then creating a new design for for this business, and in just a two or three day immersion type of experience is going to be fantastic. So I'm really looking forward to to helping these business owners and these operators, just narrow their focus on what's what's gonna bring the most revenue, profits and extra time to to their businesses into their lives. So it's gonna be excellent.

Andrew Biggs 2:49
Absolutely. And I'll just kind of tack on, I think even if you are, maybe you lead a sales team, but you're part of a larger organization, anybody who has some creative control and creative license inside your, your business, this is the event for you, it really is going to be an incredible life changing experience, we just put on an incredible experience in Mexico, if you haven't checked out the video on that, make sure you hit the website, but go to better than rich comm backslash business leadership, mastery. And you will go ahead and be able to see exactly what's going on there. And you could check out what we got going on. But anyways, let's dive into today's topic. And it's all about how to design an incredible user experience. Which, you know, when I think about big picture, what we're trying to think here is, what are the stages of a customer's life, in terms of their experience with your company, with your organization, or with your sales team? And then how do we actually really be intentional about how they're experiencing your company, every single time you interact with the customer, it's an opportunity to allow them, it's an opportunity to impress them, it's an opportunity for them to walk away saying, Wow, I'm really glad I'm in business with those folks, whether you know, it's a service oriented business, where you're going above and beyond with your service, or whether it's a product, and you know, they're just having an incredible experience, not only using your products, but also purchasing your product and just everything that your company, you know, is is every touchpoint that you have with them is really carefully designed and thoughtful. So, Mike, when you think about how to design incredible user experience, I'm curious, where do you begin? And, you know, take us off here with some frames and just, you know, some intentional thinking around how to design a great user experience.

Mike Abramowitz 4:36
Yeah, the first thing immediate shows up to me is I think about how I feel in certain interactions or as a user. So I think that's the first place everyone should begin. It's like, Have you ever gone through an experience where it was not so good, it was not a pleasant user experience. You know, I think about sometimes dealing with the airlines or being on hold for an extended period of time with like a credit card company. Money, or trying to get a human person to help you at your bank, it's like, you think about how much friction is involved with the user experience as a customer, as a user, for some of the companies I've been, you know, doing business with. And I think that's a great place to start. Think about all the friction and all the pain points that you've experienced as a user, that's a good place to start number one. And then plus, second place that you could also begin is thinking about your mission of your business. And questioning is, my mission being demonstrated at every single part of the user experience? Are they aligning? Is my mission aligned with what my user is experiencing? During each interaction? That's the first immediate thing that shows up for me? So think about user experiences on the receiving end? And then what is the mission of my company? And why am I doing what am I doing? And is that being portrayed at every single step of the user experience?

Andrew Biggs 6:02
Right, what's interesting about mission is we all have this, you know, shared mission that we share with our company, right? Internally, maybe we say that our mission is this, maybe even externally, we say, you know, better than riches here to help the next generation of leaders through wisdom, leadership, etc, you know, to develop their skills, discover their purpose, and help them, you know, deepen their wisdom to change the world, we can we can name our company's mission. But the question really is like, is that mission being felt on a daily basis is that mission, you know, when the customer actually interacts with you as it felt? And, you know, let's just be real, you may not even realize how many times a customer can interact with you. But there's a lot of different places where a customer can interact with you, they can interact with you, on your website, they can interact with you on social media, they can interact with you by reaching out to customer service, maybe trying to find your phone number on Google, maybe they're going to reach out to a salesperson, and what's that interaction? Like? What about the drip campaigns in your marketing? What are they experiencing there? Are they getting a taste of the getting a flavor of what your company stands for every single interaction that they they have with your company, and every single time that there's a touch from your, you know, sales team, marketing team, customer service team, fulfillment team, no matter what it is, who's who's actually engaging with your, with your prospects with your clients, we want to make sure that they have a consistent experience and a consistent experience that is also in alignment with what it is that your mission is, right. So you know, I really like that. And, you know, I'm sure that every time you have a bad experience with a credit card company or an airline, the reality is that that's that's not what they want. Right. And it's not what their stated goal would be. And so but why does that happen? Why does a company give a user experience that maybe is suboptimal? You know, let me let me ask you that, like, what are your thoughts on why you think companies oftentimes fail with creating a wow experience for their, for their prospects and clients?

Mike Abramowitz 8:15
I see it all the time looking on the sidelines, it's because the higher ups forget what it's like being the brand new user, they they're thinking from the lens of the top from being at the top versus going through the actual experience. That's why I really like that show. Undercover Boss. I love it. It's a great show, because it's exactly that where it's like you get into the, into the where the lens of the worker and the lens of the customer. And seeing like, what what is the communication I know using like retail as easy example, or restaurants a really easy example. But a lot of business right now is done through like email or social media or text messages, or, you know, there's some some automation on on how to schedule an appointment with someone like, if I want to schedule an appointment with a massage, I'll tell you the old school way of picking up the phone to book with a massage. It's like not that it's outdated, but it's inconvenient. There's friction, it's like, do I really want a massage? So what is what is the massage place you do now? It's really good. They actually there's two ways that you can set an appointment the massage, you can, you know, they'll go to the website, click link and you know, set it up. But what I like even better, is they'll send a text message once a month is saying, Hey, do you want to book your next appointment? And respond yes or no? Yes. Cool. When would you like to come in? You know, let us know what your availability is. We'll try to work around it. And it's very easy for the user to be able to schedule an appointment with the massage. How could we do something like that for all of our clients or if we're a recruiting company? How can we do that for our recruits where we make it as easy seamless as possible for them to be able to get on the calendar. And for us to meet up for us to meet them where they're at, versus what most of the owners try to do is they say they should meet us where we're at, which I don't I don't I don't think that's the case nowadays. I mean, because there's too many, there's too much competitiveness in the marketplace where they can go somewhere else, right, we got to meet them where they're at versus trying to meet, have them meet with municipal we're at. Andrew, you're muted,

Andrew Biggs 10:33
right. And if you haven't really gone through this process, then you're going to be left behind by someone who has right and just recognize, like, there's so much innovation in the marketplace these days, that the reality is, you have to innovate to stay alive. So, you know, let's talk about that. You know, when we think about some specific things, one of the things you said was friction, you know, I really love using that term, because our job is to basically reduce friction through the process. Well, what's friction, friction is any point where the customer is experiencing frustration, where they don't know where to go, don't know where to look, don't know where to click, don't know who to ask. Anytime there's some some sort of point where they're, they're confused, or not sure what to do, or it's too laborious in general. You know, I think about like a sign up for a free call today. And then you go to click, and it's going to take me 15 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. Okay, well, that's too laborious for me, and my busy lifestyle. So guess what I do? X, I'm out of the site, right? We really want to be thinking like, a little bit like a tech CEO. And you know, it's about how much probably data and information and, you know, thought that has gone into this, both from a human standpoint, and from an AI standpoint into optimizing Amazon's user experience. We want to have that sort of thought process to say, Yeah, I mean, how do we reduce the number of items left in the cart, so to speak, in your business? And what does that mean? An item left in the cart for your business, it could be your restaurant tour. And every single time somebody drives by your restaurant, that's an item left in the car, or maybe it's somebody who picks the restaurant, you know, just down the street is an item left in the cart, you didn't capture that potential value. If you're somebody who's, you know, a salesperson, it's obviously somebody who didn't quite follow through all the way in the process and decided to go with you. Or maybe they decided to go with one of your competitors. So reducing friction is to make it as easy as possible. So our job as business owners, is to make it as easy as possible for people to do business with us. And if we're not doing that, we're going to lose to somebody who is making it easier, quite frankly. What are your thoughts, Mike?

Mike Abramowitz 12:57
Yeah, into into your point, we also want to think with the end in mind, we're not necessarily only trying to make that transaction, we want them to come back to us repeatedly, and also tell their friends. So if that we know that that's the end in mind, by us reducing this friction and creating a great user experience, they're going to spread the word, hence, opposite of that, if it is a terrible user experience, and there's a lot of friction, they're also going to spread the word. So we know that, that and sometimes that's that's where, like all these reviews, people look at the Amazon reviews and these reviews. And so a lot of a lot of these companies now, like they'll buy reviews, they'll though, like I know that I get that all the time where it's like, Hey, if you give us a five star review, we'll send you a $5 gift card or something like that. It's like they're gonna buy the reviews because they know how important that word of mouth is. Where I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just it is a strategy. It's

Andrew Biggs 13:53
a strategy, right? It is a strategy. By the way, if you haven't rated and reviewed the better than rich show, please check us out, shoot me an email, we'll come up with something we can get you out right now we're we're not quite dialed in on what we'll offer you. But we will definitely get yourself in if you give us a five star rating and review it and because you need it. Right. It's it's it's a necessity in today's marketplace. And otherwise, you know, you can get by as a small business owner, right? Like, don't get me wrong, if you want to be an old school small business owner and grind, grind, grind and just show up to work every single day and just put in 1012 hours and just kind of be glued to your phone or your computer. Hey, fair enough, you've maybe you don't need these strategies. But if you're somebody who wants to scale your business, and make it operational, and maybe open up different locations and and find a way to license a franchise or whatever it is that you want to do. You know, the reality is you're gonna need to be thinking in a more sophisticated way. So that's what we're here to do today. You know, I have started with the end in mind as well in my notes and from my perspective, what that means is thinking about how I want the customer to feel at the end of an experience and sometimes It's actually nebulous to say what is the end of an experience, because to your earlier point, we are actually interested in having a lifelong relationship with this customer, whether they purchase 100 times from us, or two or five, or even just one, either way, I still want to be somebody who has a relationship with this customer long term. But the reality is, there are certain benchmarks or, or kind of like, breakthrough moments or milestones that a customer might reach. And so sometimes it's just the initial phone call for sales, right? Let's use that use that as an example. How do I want someone to feel at the end of the sales process? And okay, I want them to feel open, excited, energized, committed, you know, trusting of my organization, these are just some things that come up for me as a business owner for in the coaching space. But you know, okay, if that's the end that I want them to reach, how can I reverse engineer that? Right? What do they need to get at the very first, what do they need to see on social media that's going to help them engage? And then what do they need to get as soon as they they click submit on my Calendly? You know, what sort of confirmation do they need to receive? What sort of experience do they need to have with me when they're interacting with me on that phone call on that Zoom call in order to produce that result? Because anything shy of that is sub optimal? And so that's the way you want to be thinking, How do I want them to feel at the end of each moment? Alright, maybe that's a sales call, after it's a sales call, let's say they say yes, then it's another moment. What about the end of their first call? What about the end of their first month? What about the end of their first three months working with us? What about the end of the first year? If you're a product based company? How do you want them to feel on the day they received their product? Right? How do you want them to feel on the day they order their product? And so just thinking about that is so important. And if you're not, again, they're going to get the form email that everyone sends them, and it's like, Thank you for your order, here's your confirmation number that Tada. Right, and they might return it, right? Because they're like, I don't, you know, I don't know that I really need this product anymore, they're gonna change their mind. But if you give them a great experience, you know, chances of returns go down. And chances of repeat business if you give them a great experience, also improved chance to have a great review, etc. And building a relationship with this customer for the long term goes way up. So Mike, what's coming up for you?

Mike Abramowitz 17:29
Yeah, and especially with with, there's, there's gonna be times where unfortunately, we're not going to be able to make it 100% Perfect or seamless, like there's going to be some some friction that's like unavoidable, it's just going to happen. So you can almost think with the end in mind where it's like, ah, but Mike, you don't understand like this, there's going to be some sort of delay in shipping, or there's going to be some sort of delay here, there's going to be some sort of whole time, like, we have a ton of an influx, like, so that that brings up the question. It's like, how can you soften that that gap or soften the friction or, you know, allude to it or something to make them still feel like on the same team as you, because you don't want them to become like a rival in the middle of the user experience, you want to be like, empathetic, like I hail, hey, I understand if I was running the business to like, There's no way around that. So I empathize with you, it happens, you know, I'm still going to be patient. And I'm still a raving fan. So there's probably examples that we could think of, but it's important for you to think if it's unavoidable, at least, make sure they stay on the same team as you and they don't become a rival. That's one thing that showed up for me. Another thing that showed up is a really beautiful example of this is, you know, one of one of my clients. She's in a real estate space. And she does staging she she's a she runs a staging company, for real estate agents, and she does a really great job at it. And she had one of her clients that she that did staging did business with her in the past, kind of the communication kind of Scottsdale, the conversation kind of went dry. So she said, How do I grab her attention again? So there's a principle called AI da if you ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross, it's a good sales movie, but AI da attention, interest, decision action. So it's if if there ever is an end in mind, it's like how if there's friction, like there's no communication, there's no distraction, whatever it might be, and you grab their attention again and create that interest. I said, using the concept of gift ology by John Rowland is a great way to grab attention. So let's grab her attention by sending her a meaningful gift. So she got a cut, go a Cutco petite santoku knife, put a nice gift box and put to the sharpest couple I know and put their names on it, put it in a nice gift box, sent it out, sent the white color so you Yo stands out in their kitchen. And this is a woman who hasn't responded to a phone call or a text or an email and months, got the package, open the package and immediately got the my client got a text and a call saying this was awesome. I love Cutco. What a great gift. This is so cool. Two days later, 48 hours sent her three referrals for for other clients and and for properties that she can stage. And the point is she got their attention, got the interest, positioned her to make a decision and put her into action all by doing something meaningful for that client. Because she's thinking of at the end in mind, there's a lifetime value of this client and fostering this relationship. How can I? How can I close the gap? And sometimes it's just thinking in those terms of what you said, thinking with the end in mind, and if there is like the stale client, how do you re go through the AI da and in that model? So I thought that that was that was something that triggered with me?

Andrew Biggs 21:00
Absolutely, absolutely. And I feel you know, a lot of this, you might say, okay, so I get it. So start with the end in mind and think about how I want them to feel at any stage in the relationship. But then how do I execute something like this. And, you know, if you haven't listened to episode seven of the better than rich, I definitely recommend you go back and listen to that. Because we give a really kind of high level overview of what we call policies, processes and technologies, which is our definition of a system, right? A system in a business is a series of policies, processes and technologies that aid the business towards its organizational goals. And so what does that mean? Well, a policy is a rule, right? That's in place. A process is a series of if then statements, and a technology typically is some sort of digital tool that helps you get leverage on your business leverage on your time. And, you know, gives you alerts, reports, etc. So you want to be thinking about how can I use those three things, right? If the process in Mike's case, in this example with his client, it's like, if the customer has gone stale, we haven't heard from him in a while. Right? Send them a gift after three months, or send them a, you know, send them this and then that and maybe for you, you don't want to spend $100 $150 on the gift, maybe you just need to buy a thank you card, right? And a $10 Starbucks gift card and send that to them. Or in my industry, I like to send books, right? Because it's like, Hey, I'm in the personal growth space, here's a book I think you would really like. And I think it would really help you, given where you're at right now. And you know, when someone receives that, yeah, it's a little bit of a cost. But the whole point is, you're building this relationship for the long term. And it's just a nice thing to do, right. And even if they never spent another dollar with you, it's still a nice thing to do. And they'll still remember the day you gave them that gift. So that's, that's an example of a process. And then on the technology perspective, you know, thinking about how can you automate some of these things, right? So just so that you don't have to send that confirmation email, you don't have to do everything yourself. And the truth is, there's so many tools out there these days, I say, I see people spend tons and tons of money on a ton of different things for their business, on advertising, on, you know, social media strategy on this, that and the other. But sometimes they're just not spending the right 10 2050 $100 A month on a some sort of technology, that's just going to give them all that they need. And they might get, you know, a 40 times return every single month on using that technology. So, you know, go back and listen to that episode, for sure. Is there anything else you want to say about that, Mike? And then I'd love to transition a little bit towards internal using this internally, right? It was it look like to actually use this in a in a context inside your organization. But what what do you want to say on this topic?

Mike Abramowitz 23:55
So when you're designing, you're designing on the customer's behalf. We already mentioned that and there's also a concept of like inventing on the customer's behalf. So when you're when you're going through and thinking about the technologies, it's yes, there's one word we'll jam on in just a moment of the internal that making it more efficient internally. But it's also to think, hey, even if it cost the business just a little bit more money, but if we were able to invent or design or craft this on the customer's behalf, to make their experience better. Don't think of those as expenses. Think of them as investments, because the return that you get on that investment, again, is a repeat client or word of mouth advertising. And it's hard to quantify exactly what that is going to be long term. But it's easy to justify, especially if you have enough evidence from some some of the past. Whether it be inside your business or in inside of other businesses. There's enough evidence to say you can never go wrong if you're inventing or designing on the customer's bath.

Andrew Biggs 24:53
Absolutely. I mean, Basil has had I have a clip that I showed everybody when I teach them this concept, I'll probably play it on for everybody, when we're in Tampa together, but he's talking at some conference, and he's talking about this, this concept where he says, customers always want a better way, even if they don't realize it. And like, if you think about it, you know, I use this example, I think I've used it in previous episodes. But when, you know, Steve Jobs was designing the iPhone, you know, if he asked people, hey, what do you want in a phone? They would, they could have never even told them that they wanted get out a smartphone in their pocket with a touchscreen and all of these apps, like, no one could have told him that. So he had to invent on the customer's behalf. What do they really want? What do they secretly want? What do they want, that they don't even know that they want? And you need to be asking yourself those questions about your customers about your prospects about who you're trying to influence. Because if you're not again, they're gonna be like, even if they're like, happy, quote, unquote, they're just happy because you're better than somebody who was really bad. But they aren't thrilled. And ultimately, what we want is we want to thrill them, we want them to go, This was incredible. I can't believe I only paid this much for it. Like, I can't believe Andrew, that that retreat that you sent us, it was only 4500 bucks in Tampa, like, it's incredible that that I was able to get so much value out of this experience that was such a steal. And so we want them to be like over the moon excited about working with us not like yeah, it was pretty good. It was probably worth the money. You know, maybe I'll go back again. And so you know, this is how I like to think about it inventing on customer's behalf. What do you think Mike?

Mike Abramowitz 26:34
It's great. Henry Henry Ford said it if I if I listened to the people, we'd have faster horses.

Andrew Biggs 26:40
Yeah, right. I love it. I love it. Well, hey, let's let's transition a little bit about how to actually apply this to your employees. Because the reality is, the relationship with an employee influences a relationship with the customer, I ran into a business owner, just the other day to sit down at breakfast. And he owns a series of restaurants here locally, the buttered biscuits here, which is a great breakfast place in Northwest Arkansas. And you know, we kind of start with one location and expand, it's got, you know, several locations at this point, and, you know, really great guy. And he was just talking about how it's all about the ingredients and the people. And like the ingredients, you get an understand that at a nicer restaurant. But like he really works on the internal culture, and wants everybody to enjoy working there. And Stella, who was my waitress, she, you know, she leans over and she goes, Yeah, this is my happy place. And you know, she's working at a restaurant, she's kind of, you know, in charge that day, but she comes to work every single day pumped and excited to serve, you know, great, great dishes and breakfast, food and coffee to people, and to have a great relationship with them. And for her happy place to be work. How do you make that happen? Right. And I think you're somebody who I've seen too this a really, really well. So I want you to speak a little bit to how do you actually use these principles to make sure that your internal culture is strong and also reflective of your company's mission. And so that mission actually does seep out to the customer eventually.

Mike Abramowitz 28:13
So it's a great question. One of the a couple of things that immediately show up is that I want to put people in a place where they feel they're working inside of their genius. So in Stella's case, she's probably working inner genius, cuz she's working in the frontline with people. So if the manager had put Stella on admin data entry, you know, spreadsheet stuff, even if she's working in the business, and she loves the permission loves work, but she's not working in her genius, and she's not working with people, she might, she might be miserable. And even though she might do it, because she she hates her job and she wants to help the company, there's going to be we come back to the word friction, there's friction with the user experience where she doesn't feel like it's meaningful work for her because I'm not 100 genius. So it's important for us as the owners of the organization to say what is in these people's genius where it's going to fill them up for them to do the role whatever is whatever it is the role that we put them in assign them to. And then also creating a creating boundaries within the conversation or framing the conversation of speaking the unspoken where if their genius changes or if they're the role changes or if they're not really aligned or having as much an excitement for that role, then creating space for them to speak the unspoken and I think that's something that I've done a good job with in my staff in my organization. It's like listen, if there's any point in time, where you're not enjoying what you're doing, like it's okay to be tough and being challenged. Like that's a good thing. But if you're like truly disengaged, disenfranchised, like completely unplugged not enjoying it, I want you to be able to come to me and let me know. So that way number one, we can either make it right or number two, we make some changes. Because ultimately, if you're not satisfied or happy, the the detriment that that can create to the rest of the organization is why it's more important, it's important for you to be happy, whether that's here or not here. But we've got to make sure that you're in a good place in order for you to provide a great service to everyone else that's involved in the process. So creating that creating that open openness of dialogue, there's too many too many fear based managers that say like, they create such a large separation where their staff doesn't feel like they can come to them and, and ask them questions or bring things up to the table. Because there's so much separation where I they all know they have a link, click this link. Anytime you need me, you click this link and get on my schedule, whether that's to celebrate something, if you want to celebrate with me, click this link, if you want to learn something, click this link. If you want to discuss enhancements of something, click this link. And and obviously, we also have our staff meeting weekly, where we start stopping keep every week start, stop and keep, why do we need to start doing that's not happening? What do we need to stop doing that's not working? What do we need to keep doing that's that we want to continue doing? Well, within this organization. We pair that up with what just happened, review some stats and data from the previous week. So that way, we're not talking about feelings, we're talking about real results. So it's feel vers real. And that way we can bring the conversation there. And then it's like, actually, you know, I appreciate you bringing that up. Let's jam on that one on one. I don't know if that's relevant to the rest of the group. But Let's jam in that one on one, here's my link, get on my schedule. So we could talk about that one on one. And they appreciate this. They appreciate the openness that we could have dialogue, individually, but also openly around these unspoken topics.

Andrew Biggs 31:42
Absolutely. So what I'm hearing you say is finding the zone of genius for a particular individual. Right. And from my perspective, a lot of that has to do with personality. You know, one of the things I like to give people as a personality test, there's a lot of them different different ones out there. My favorite is understand myself. And I really enjoy that. But there's others as well, right? A lot. A lot of people use CVI or different things. But when you give someone a personality test, you can kind of pair them with the role that's right for them. Obviously, in the interview process, you can also figure out the role that's right for them. But just in general, trying to find out where this person is going to be a good fit. I also think just in general, we talked about, like how do you create an easy onboarding process for your customer, right? We want that, that funnel to be as frictionless as possible, as people are coming into the sales process, from kind of like a cold lead to like a raving fan. We want that that process to be as quickly as quick and as easy and as painless as possible. It also we want the same thing to happen internally, right? From somebody who really has never heard about your company, but is applying to being a raving fan who's like a champion of the culture. What's that process look like? And how do we make sure that the process from start to finish his professional, is respectful, is challenging, but also supporting and matches the the culture that you're looking to give. And so that means that they need to have a great interview process. They need that to be quick and easy and nice and fun. And, and, and, you know, maybe not fun, but they needed to be easy and professional, and they need to enjoy that experience, if they're going to enjoy working with you. What about the training process? You know, how have you really streamlined your training process to say, how do I want someone to feel at the end of day one? Right? For instance, can you get their shirt size and their favorite candy bar and their onboarding serves, you know, survey and then when they come back from lunch, it's sitting there on their desk, a shirt with your company logo on it in their size and their favorite candy bar? What is it that you really need to do to make sure that they feel great at the end of that day? Okay, well, let's extend that out. What about the end of their like onboarding ramp probationary period however that VAT? Is it three days? Is it 30 days at 90 days? Is it you know, 120 days? At the end of that? How do you want them to feel? And then how do you want them to feel a year from now when they're sitting down for their first annual performance review? What are the sorts of things you want to hear them saying about working with you about working with the company in general, and then reverse engineering that so these are just again some some additional concepts about how to bring this this frictionless mindset into what we're doing internally. Because if you are able to turn somebody who's never heard about your company is just applying today into a raving fan and a champion of the culture in 369 12 months? Well, that's going to do wonders for for internal morale, it's going to do wonders for retention. And ultimately, your customers and your end users are going to have a better experience because of that.

Mike Abramowitz 34:49
And to our point before repeat business word of mouth advertising Well, eventually they might move on especially if we're working with Gen Zers the chance of them staying with your company for an extended period of time is very, very small chance because they hop around a lot, you know, are interested in a lot of different things, it's going to be tough to kind of hold their attention. So if you know that we'll meet the marketplace where they're at, it's like, cool. If you're working with Jen's ears, it's like, Hey, I just want to, I want to get an idea from you, what are all the skills that you want to learn over the course of the next couple years of your life, like whether you're going through college traditional education, or you're going through like YouTube University, or you just want to kind of get into the workplace to, you know, learn new things? Like, what are the skills that you want to develop to do? How is it self confidence is a time management? Is it goal setting? Is it communication skills? Is it money management? Like, what are some of the skills you want to learn, it's like, Cool, well, one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to craft the kind of the syllabus, we have all these different departments within our organization, that maybe there's some sort of rotation or role that we'll be able to kind of rotate you around, as you master one and graduate from one where you're good enough to teach that to someone else, then boom, we can move into another position, another position and the position. So by the time you graduate from our program, you'll have all the skills that you want. Plus, you've always replaced yourself with someone else, because you learn to teach, and then you teach to learn, and you continue to do that. So by the time you're done, you could either advance within our company, you could franchise or you could do something, or you can move into the next endeavor that you're on to, but you've left a legacy. And you have a lineage of talent that you left behind with an organization that's on brand with our culture. I don't know about you, but if I'm a Gen Z are and I hear that I'm like, Sign me up. Like that sounds like a great place to work. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, but you're meeting them where they're at.

Andrew Biggs 36:40
Right? And it's like, Why does someone leave? It's because they have a better option, right? And if you're able to provide the best option, then then awesome, the why would they why would they ever want to go anywhere? Is what comes up for me? And what I'm also hearing there is you're thinking about the long term? How are they learning? How are they growing, they need to be challenged on a daily basis. And also they need some autonomy, they need some space, they needed something that they can own. And if they feel like they can own something, and they're learning, there's really no reason for someone to leave, unless you just out competed. But at the same time, if you have the relationship where they're constantly coming to you when they are concerned, then you can find a way to actually meet them with their needs and try to out compete other positions that maybe they you know, are looking at or potentially are coming their way. So this is

Mike Abramowitz 37:35
an earn money, and anyone could earn money, everyone's giving money. I mean, there was there was a time within the last couple years where McDonald's was paying like 20 bucks just to apply, right? So. So if you're trying to dangle the carrot of money in, in order to draw people to your organization, I think those days are behind us right now, I think we need to, you know, think differently about how we're going to retain and attract the talent that we want inside of our organizations. And I don't think money is going to be the lead in at this point in time, I think it's going to be some of the things that you just alluded to Andrew, it's going to be the long term learning the short term benchmarks, you know, the skill development aspect, the culture, the mission of what you're a part of what we're trying to get done as an organization. Like, that's the stuff that we want to lead with, to meet our demographic, where they're at, because we're just competing with other companies that are offering more money? Well, especially if you're a small to medium sized business, these big corporations are going to have more money than you and they're going to win every time. So that's, that's, that's I just want to double click on that one.

Andrew Biggs 38:37
Absolutely. Right. And, and again, you know, especially in the service industry, in the gig economy in, you know, working with younger folks or people who are, are more entry level, you know, this becomes even more important. It's also super important that the higher levels too, right, because a lot of times people are taking positions and then leveraging that experience, a lot of people in the tech space do that, where it's like, hey, they go somewhere, crush their quota for 24 months, and then just, you know, go get a 30% promotion somewhere else. So how do you actually make sure you retain that person? Do you need to offer them more? Or is there some other way you can compensate them? You know, cash money, right is not the only way to compensate somebody? There's a lot of different forms of compensation, right. So one is financial compensation. But there's also, you know, learning compensation so they can actually be an apprentice in the position and learn on the job and giving them greater experience. There's also autonomy, right? That's another form of compensation, time freedom, right? Maybe they have more control over their schedule. That's a perk. And in a way, it's a form of compensation. Right? Maybe you have a really nice leave policy. Remember, my old company just said basically, you don't have days off and you don't need to ask us for a day off if you need a day off, take it. And that was just how we operated right now of course, making sure that I was in alignment with my duties. I do Didn't take advantage of that. And most people did it. But it was unlimited leaves, right? There was no two weeks off or anything like that. Another way to compensate people is with a title right or psychically. So a psychic compensation is giving someone some prestige inside the organization, and something where they can and can feel proud of themselves on a daily basis. So, there's a lot of different ways to compensate people. And if you're not thinking about that, you think it's all about the the almighty dollar. Again, if you attract them with money, someone's gonna just attract them with more, right? If you lead them to your company, because you said, Hey, we can pay you more, someone's gonna, you know, whether it's three months from now, six months from now, or three years from now, they're gonna offer them more money, and they're gonna out compete. So this is really, really good stuff, man. What else is coming up for you anything else, before we start to head for the exit, any closing thoughts here for the day?

Mike Abramowitz 40:58
My closing thoughts are as the same as my opening thoughts is if you can know what your mission is of your organization, if you can think back to any time in the past, where you have had a, a friction, a friction experience with a business where you just felt like stuck or lost or confused. If you experienced those, learn from them, and craft your mission and making sure that you create an excellent user experience for your external clients and also for your internal staff. And by doing that, you're going to create a long lasting company, it's really been fun for me inside of, you know, being vector and Cutco for 18 years now. And I still am very enriched by the process. I've been able to launch other businesses, nonprofits, books, all these other things around the center of the mission, which is my life mission that I tied to my business mission. I know we'll jam on that in a future podcast. But you know that that mission is to educate, inspire and be a force for good for myself and others. And I use my businesses to educate, inspire all represents become exceptional individuals. And by making a difference in them. And by developing ourselves as leaders, we can make a powerful difference in our community. So aligning your personal mission with your business mission, and making sure everything's congruent. You're going to be able to have an excellent reputation, create raving fans, word of mouth advertising and a lot of repeat business.

Andrew Biggs 42:25
Absolutely. And hopefully you've got a lot of value out of today. We really appreciate you joining us here for episode one of season two on the better than rich show. We also hope to see you in Tampa, make sure you check us out www dot better than rich.com backslash leadership mastery live. Learn more about what we're up to. And if you're just curious about that, you can also schedule a call with my cry to get on our calendars. Let's Great having you all here today. And I hope that you have a great week ahead and remember to leave today better than you found it. We'll see you next time. Bye