210: Fireside with Nicholas Zeisler

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

And welcome to episode two hundred and ten of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Nick Zeisler for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Nicholas Zeisler. Nicholas Z. I always stumble over that because every time I say hello to you, I say hi Z, but suddenly, like in my best podcast voice, it feels really weird. I don't know why, but it's the 26th letter.

Nicholas Zeisler: 0:51

You just go right to it.

Charlotte Ward: 0:52

It's right at the end. I mean, you get there eventually. Um, anyway, welcome. Um, so I mean, we've had such a lovely chat before I hit record, but we're gonna have another lovely chat now, I feel sure.

Nicholas Zeisler: 1:09

Cleaned up my my my language, yes.

Charlotte Ward: 1:12

Yes, yes, just a little bit. Um, so welcome back for another Fly Side, right? Um, and you're here to tell us why we're all doing what.

Nicholas Zeisler: 1:21

Well, yeah, I wish I knew why. Actually, I have a theory as to why. I'll tell you how for sure. Um, it's it's about it's about how we're doing CX wrong, Charlotte. And in fact, it's the topic of my new book, which is called We're Doing CX Wrong and How to Get It Right. Um, because as a as a problem solver, I didn't just come with the problem, I come with the with a solution.

Charlotte Ward: 1:48

It would be a it would be a short book if you just presented the problem, wouldn't it?

Nicholas Zeisler: 1:52

Well, not necessarily. In fact, I had to edit a lot of what I think is going on wrong down. But the the thing about it is that I used to think that I was unique in my approach to CX because I came to it from a different angle. So many folks who are in CX come from marketing or sales, they come from customer support or a contact center or something like that. And I thought it was interesting to enter it from a different perspective. I am from the US military, I'm an operations research analyst going back almost 30 years now. And so I was approached to work in the CX world thanks to my black belt and lean six sigma and my process engineering backgrounds and so forth. And I thought that's really interesting. And it was really um fun too, because lean six sigma, process improvement, process engineering, continuous process improvement, whatever you want to call it, they have a reputation, which frankly is kind of well-earned within the business world of uh of being kind of like the bobs from office space. We're here to find efficiencies and find ways in which you're wasting your resources.

Charlotte Ward: 3:05

I love the bobs. I love the bobs, but but maybe not necessarily what they do.

Nicholas Zeisler: 3:10

Yeah, you love the bobs because you were never on the on the uh pointy end of that. And that's what they do. They, you know, and and and and that's a shame because those of us who are true believers in process engineering and process improvement and lean and so forth really get frustrated because like that's not how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to find efficiencies and then put the people who no longer have to spend all day going through your ridiculous processes to work innovating and helping your customers and inventing new things and driving sales or something like that, rather than just saying, okay, thanks for your interest. We'll show you the door and write you a big severance check. Uh, nice as those big severance checks are, that's not in the spirit of why you do it. And so those of us in this line of work and in this line of study and practice get frustrated a lot of times when we see businesses doing that wrong. So when I came into customer experience, for me, it was a no-brainer that there are really two huge moving parts to customer experience, because this is kind of how I came into it. First is, of course, voice of the customer, surveys, walking in the customer's shoes, uh, you know, passive listening on social media, all these sorts of things. You're looking for what your customers have to say about you. It's amazing to me, um, given that background, it was amazing to me to see how many people in CX don't think too much beyond that step and don't recognize that really the more important part of CX is what you do with that voice of the customer. What do you, why did you ask your customers all these questions? Why did you inquire about their most recent experiences with you just so that you can report it to your leadership and say, hey, we're doing better or we're doing worse than we were last year or last month or last quarter, something like that. You really should be acting on it. Otherwise, you're wasting here you go, a lot of resources asking your customers. And so for me, I thought that was the unique thing. There's another part, by the way, of CX, and that's um uh building and supporting a customer-centric culture within your organization. So it isn't just that there are those two things, but as far as moving parts are concerned, these are these are the two things that happen, more or less. You ask your customers what's wrong, and then you act on what they tell you. And that's how CX should work. So I was uh initially surprised how many people kind of missed that second part. And that makes sense that for me, that would seem odd because that's kind of how I came into it in the first place. Folks who start off in the contact center and support talk about like closed loop feedback and how important it is to take the information and the insights that they get from the voice of the customer program and share them with product and sales and engineering and so forth. And that's good, but there's not necessarily a mechanism to make sure that that's a holistic, enterprise-wide, deliberate process where you listen and then act, you know, as I think and and I I yeah, I agree.

Charlotte Ward: 6:04

And I think that that's by and large, honestly, where I come from. You know, we are on the Customer Support Leaders podcast, um, obviously. And I and I think that would I think that would ring true with a lot of our listeners actually, who are obviously in the in the support field by and large, and and and talk about that closed loop and talk about getting getting that feedback on the roadmap, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Nicholas Zeisler: 6:27

And that's not to say that there aren't plenty of people who are in the CX world that come from the support or customer success or or whatnot world and and and recognize how important that is. But that to me, start that that to me was something striking because I started CX with that in mind in the first place. So to see that absent some places was kind of you know, those that seemed a little off for me. So when I started thinking about that and I started building out my my framework as as a uh as a fractional chief customer officer for my clients. And I said, there are the three parts, and there's those two parts, and and as I'd alluded to, there's also the uh the the customer-centric culture part of it. So those are there are those three things. One of the things is I started to spend more time within the CX community and listen to CX experts and practitioners and thought leaders was there's a recurring topic that came up. And that recurring topic was what's the ROI of CX? How do you sell CX to your business leaders? How do you get your CEO on board? How do you get your CMO on board? How, for goodness sakes, do you get your CFO on board with spending money on hiring people and hiring a team and so forth? And that to me, that struck me as well because there's a dissonance there that, and and not to accuse anybody of cynicism, but if I answer the question about what the ROI is of finding, hiring a chief customer officer, standing up an office of the customer, staffing it with voice of the customer people and process engineers and taking a deliberate approach toward building a customer-centric culture that takes resources in order to do. And I answer that question and I tell you what the ROI is of that. And then you turn around and say, Great, let's do it. And then the first thing out of your mouth is our customers are the most important thing to us. Um I was in that meeting just a minute ago where I had to convince you to be customer-centric in order to drive your revenues. So I I wonder, you know, how true that is, because you just said that your customers and your customer-centric approach is really a means to an end to drive your revenues. Now, I'm not a Pollyanna. I recognize we're all in the business of business to make money. And you don't want to just go pissing away, as we say, money uh because it feels good to do CX. But I started thinking about it. I thought, is there a better reason for CX than ROI? And the nice thing is that two things can be true. You surely want to make money and you have to make money, otherwise, you're not going to be around. But to say that the reason you're doing CX is to drive revenues and drive sales makes it harder to turn around and say, and therefore the customers are most important to us. So what I do when people pose the question to me, well, what's the ROI of CX? Is I say, well, kind of let's put this, let's turn this around and ask it in a different way. And what I say is, do you believe that if your customer experiences were aligned perfectly with your corporate mission, vision principles, and values, your brand promise, do you think that that would provide positive business results? And again, all the cynicism aside, because I know some people look at like a mission statement and a vision statement and say, okay, blah, blah, blah. Those are just words. I don't, I, I'm, I'm I, I, I guess maybe I'm I'm starry-eyed enough to believe that most people in leadership positions really do believe in them, and I really do, um, even though I acknowledge that some people don't. I think that when people dedicate themselves to their mission and vision and and and the place that they want to play in the lives of their customers, the niche, the the corner of the market that they want to own, when they really truly believe that, that they get into it and and and it's easy for them then to sell themselves on CX. Because what I say to them is what CX is all about, the purpose of CX is to eliminate the misalignment between what your customers are experiencing and what you're promising them in the first place. That opens up a whole different discussion. By the way, Charlotte, you do make more money when you align those things, right? Because you drive tremendous loyalty and love on the part of your customers when you do that. Yeah, because this brand is that discount brand that I know and I trust and is always giving me the better deal. And while the quality may not be as great as this um high quality brand over here, I do know that I'm gonna get the lowest price. And when I want the highest quality, I go over to this other brand here, even though I know that it means I'm gonna pay a little more. It's about understanding and knowing what your mission and vision is all about and then applying it and deliberately making those experiences on behalf of your customers.

Charlotte Ward: 11:38

And and we know it, we know as customers as well, don't we, that we know when we align with that brand promise. We might not be able to articulate it, but we definitely know what it is we're buying into when we buy the thing. And I think what's really super interesting here when when we think about organizations delivering on that brand promise to their customers, I think one thing I'd really love you to explore with me is how that sits with some often conflicting opinions that I've heard that for instance, for instance, customers don't churn from a product, they churn from a customer office or a customer experience. And conversely, customers don't churn from a custom from a customer office or experience, they churn from the product. And and it strikes me that basically your brand promise is those two things intertwined. It's the product and the experience. And I think together they make the brand promise. Would you would you agree, or am I like entirely up the wrong tree there?

Nicholas Zeisler: 12:41

No, I I think I think you're absolutely right, Charlotte. In fact, that is that's demonstrated, for example, in in say that you are that discount brand, right? You're a value brand. We promise our customers the lowest price product. And the reason that we do is we want to save our customers money, right? So you produce your widget at 70 cents on the dollar to your nearest competitor, right? That's a huge, but by the way, that's incredibly differentiated, right? 30% you're saving your customers every time. Your customers recognize that because the promise you're making to them is that you're going to save them money, that your quality, the quality of your product, the timeliness of your product, the the um versatility of your product, any of these things aren't going to be the same as that next expensive competitor, let alone the one that charges $3 or something like that, right? And that's the promise. As you say, that's the promise that you're making. But here's the thing if the quality of your product is half as good as that next more expensive product, well, now I have to buy two of yours every time. So now suddenly I'm paying 40% more. Now the quality of your product has taken away from the value brand promise of being the lowest price. So you're no longer saving money. And so that's that that can happen really acutely in an example like that. And then it also happens when these customer experience gurus will come out and say, you have to blow your customers away at every time that they interact with you and follow me down this path of making these wow experiences and these unbelievably make your customers love you and you love your customers, and kumbaya. And and and this is what life is, you know, life has been made grand because we've just completely just obliterated our our our customers. So inundated with tremendous experience, are they that they can't even. I mean, I'm running out of words, Charlotte, to describe it, right? That's how great it is.

Charlotte Ward: 14:56

It's just it's just so superlative. We've run out of superlatives.

Nicholas Zeisler: 15:00

Exactly. It's the superlative is really. And and it's like, well, you're missing the boat completely because all your customers want is to make sure that yours is the whatever and deliver on the promise that you're making.

Charlotte Ward: 15:12

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one thing you said there um actually got me thinking, and and that is that we're talking, I think you called it like the I'm I might be putting words in your mouth here, but I think you I think at one point you said kumbaya, like the real, like the real like evangelists of CX as an experience and almost nothing else. Um, and how that um how that sits with exactly the opposite which you just described, and well, almost at the very top of our conversation, which is what's the roi on CX? Like is that is actually the the as is so often the case, like is the place that we really want to settle somewhere in between those two, because we don't want to discard the fact that we have to be, as you said, we have to be realistic, there is an ROI, or it has to have an ROI, let's say. But on the other hand, we don't want to like discount that so much and pretend it doesn't exist that we go down the down the evangelist route.

Nicholas Zeisler: 16:20

Yeah, right. It's easy for me to say, isn't it, Charlotte? Because you know, I'm not the one that's having to sign. Yeah, um, I'm not the one who has to sign the checks. But you know, speaking of signing checks, I remember having a discussion with a uh with a customer support uh leader, and uh and and he was a Brit and he said, Well, Z, so you can appreciate this. He said, Well, Z, we could just give all of our customers a Ferrari and then they'd be happy. And, you know, since since I'm since I'm uh intoning the the Brits here, I I think that there's the uh Church Hillian uh uh old joke about, well, now we're just haggling over the price is is appropriate. And and the point is that, yeah, well, it it isn't free, it isn't cheap. Um, for example, if you're the discount brand, you have to run your supply chains and your margins incredibly tight in order to pass those savings on. But that's the thing. Some uh uh brands are really good at driving their margins way down. I worked for a company once that had their suppliers on such a short, tight leash that their suppliers needed them more than vice versa, right? And so what did they do with those savings? Well, did they drive the price down for the customers or did they invest in new technologies and make their new technology much better in the next offering all that slicker? Well, do you know what's gonna make a decision? You know what's gonna answer that decision for you? What's your brand promise? Is your brand promise to take the savings from having your suppliers and your entire supply supply chain on such a tight, short leash that you can drive and squeeze all the cost out of that? If your brand promise is to be the cheapest, I shouldn't say cheapest, but least expensive, then you pass those savings on to your customers. If your brand promise is to have the coolest, greatest, newest technology and the next best mousetrap, well, then you take those savings and you put it right into RD and you make things better that way. That's what you do because that's what a company, what an organization that's dedicated to its mission and vision and brand promise would do. Well, if you're the chief customer officer of that company, congratulations. You've got the easiest chief customer officer job because you're already obviously living in an ecosystem where everybody's on board with that.

Charlotte Ward: 18:40

Living the dream, I think we call that.

Nicholas Zeisler: 18:42

Yeah, you would be, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 18:43

Yeah, living the dream. And you know, I think we've talked about this a little bit before. I think, but I think I think it's worth reiterating that I think fundamentally everything you say there about um investing all of that return in a way that reinforces and and uh reinvigorates your brand promise is is going to drive more successful customers in the true customer success sense of the word, right? Because I think that one thing that I think I'm not a customer success professional, I'm a support professional, but I think one thing that I've come to appreciate is despite all of my like very, very simplistic views on how useless CSAT is and how useless MPS is, um, that actually I think fundamentally what the what um signifies a truly successful customer in the customer success sense of the word is are they getting everything you promised them?

Nicholas Zeisler: 19:44

A hundred percent, Charlotte. In fact, if I could say since since you brought it up about CSAT, um CSAT and MPS suck, but they don't suck any more or less than any other top line KPI.

Charlotte Ward: 19:56

Very true.

Nicholas Zeisler: 19:56

I've yeah, I've created my own top level KPI and it's Called the brand alignment score. I would not recommend to anybody, hey, dump CSAT, dump NPS, dump these. But what I would say is, why don't you add this? Why don't you ask your customers? Hey, and this is how I would frame it. Our goal at ABC Incorporated Amalgamated is to play this role in the lives of our customers. This is our brand promise to you, period. How would you say we're doing? Right. And and and I'll let the I'll let the other nerds. I'm one of them, but I mean I'll speak of them in third person, but I'll let the other nerds think about whether it should be a one to five scale, whether it's a zero to ten scale, and whether you want to subtract a percentage from another, like the abomination of MPS mathematically is, or however you want to calculate it. But do whatever you want as far as like what the numbers mean. But what you should be asking your customers is from the VOC perspective, here's what we want to deliver to you and what we promised to you. How are we doing with that? You identify those gaps, you turn your process engineering professionals loose on those gaps. I think, I think that you've got CX nailed. And that I think is what your baseline should be. That's what your goal should be. And when you've hit the point where your customers are repeatedly saying to you, yeah, you definitely are the quality brand because I've tried your competitors and your quality is better. I or you are absolutely the, you know, uh uh the luxury brand because I've gone to your competitors, and when I come to you, I always feel a lot more special, whatever it might be, right? And it's gonna be different for every for every brand because every brand is trying to get that that niche covered. That that's how you know you've arrived, and that's a successful customer experience.

Charlotte Ward: 21:45

See, now that is a great end sound bite for this conversation, but I'm not gonna stop it there because I purposefully shut up right after I said that, Charlie. No, because I've got one.

Nicholas Zeisler: 21:59

All right, so there's still a chance for me to screw it up. Go ahead.

Charlotte Ward: 22:02

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, but I'm sure you won't. I have every faith. Um and that is um what I think is interesting about the idea of a brand alignment score, whatever the score is, whatever the maths are, um is that I think it probably talks to existing customers and prospects as well.

Nicholas Zeisler: 22:28

Oh, yeah. You know that oh, this is why I love talking with you, Charlotte. I never consider that.

Charlotte Ward: 22:34

I'm so thought-provoking, aren't I?

Nicholas Zeisler: 22:35

I think you can ask somebody, you can ask somebody who is a customer of yours how likely they are, based on their previous experience with you, to recommend you to somebody else. You can ask them, quite truly, how satisfied they are with dealing with you, but you can also ask a prospective customer do you have the impression that we are this brand? And even if they haven't necessarily directly interacted with you or purchased your product or service, it's out there in the zeitgeist, and they can tell you, oh yeah, yeah, we know that Zappos is this awesome, you know, they love us and they'll talk to us on the phone all day and so forth. Could because there's there's uh an experience out there, even among people who aren't necessarily the customers. Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 23:20

I yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Zeisler: 23:21

The thing I invite you to I invite you to use brand alignment score that way, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 23:26

I I certainly will. I certainly will. The reason that it occurred to me is that I had a very interesting conversation recently, which went something along my my opinion. My opinion is this that fundamentally you should build a product that you're cut you should build a product. I I'm in a SaaS environment, you know, just to give that context, that you should build and evolve a product that your existing customers want and can continue to extract meaningful value from, because that is what your prospects will want to buy as well. And so to that end, I don't think, and this is the support professional in me talking about feedback, right? But but I think that fundamentally, I think therefore there's probably very diff little difference in the landscape between your successful customers and prospects who will become successful customers.

Nicholas Zeisler: 24:21

Your potentially successful customers, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 24:23

Exactly. Um and I think therefore, so the so the the conversation I have, I had, there was a conflicting opinion, which is that there is probably a tipping point for most businesses where you build in again in my SaaS environment, I'm talking about a technology roadmap, um, you build a product that your prospects are interested in first to get them in the door because you want to try new sales. And then there is eventually a tipping point where you concentrate more on your existing customers and making them successful.

Nicholas Zeisler: 25:06

Yeah, I suppose, yeah, and you know, that would probably come with a greater the greater understanding of their needs that comes with a developed relationship that comes with the time, right? I mean, you you you don't necessarily know them, they've picked you nascently because they recognize and acknowledge that what you're providing for them is something that that will solve an immediate problem or an identified issue. Then when you get them in the door, then you show them how valuable they are to you. And then you flip the script and you say, Well, what would you, what might you need and what you know, what will solve more of your problems? And now you're a partner and now you have a relationship built.

Charlotte Ward: 25:45

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that early, that early, that nascent kind of uh touch point, I think, I think it is just everything we just said about brand alignment. I think you know, people come to you because they recognize that that's what you're doing and that's what you're delivering already in the marketplace. And that's why I think I like the idea of it being uh valid for both prospects and existing customers. So thank you for that. That's super interesting.

Nicholas Zeisler: 26:13

I have to go back and edit the book now and put that in.

Charlotte Ward: 26:16

Please do. I'll I'll take I'll take a credit.

Nicholas Zeisler: 26:19

All credit to you.

Charlotte Ward: 26:21

Thank you so much, see. This has been, as ever, a very thought-provoking and lovely conversation.

Nicholas Zeisler: 26:27

As ever.

Charlotte Ward: 26:32

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two one zero for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.