Customer Experience 101: A Talk with Jonathan Shroyer

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m Shane Barker, your host for the show. Jonathan Shroyer from Officium Labs is back with us to discuss customer experience and how to use it to your advantage in business. With 23 years in the customer space, you might have a bit of experience. Last time I checked.

I just want to talk to you one-on-one about customer service and customer experience—what that looks like. You’ve worked with some big companies, and we’ll dive into some of them later. But, what is your definition of a good customer experience? Tell me what’s at the core of what you do.

It comes down to customization, right? That’s about understanding your customer, because we can’t assume everyone is at the same level or in the same category. The issue arises when you assume everyone is at the same level and try to educate someone at a different level.

Jonathan, please allow me to take a minute here to tell our listeners how my team and I can help them optimize their website and marketing strategy to engage their customers better. If you want to send personalized emails, write engaging marketing copy, or optimize your site for sales, reach out to me at ShaneBarker.com for fully managed branding and marketing campaigns.

And now, back to talking about personalization and customization with Jonathan.

It’s that customization. We talk about the personalization and customization of everything—whether it’s marketing, emails, or other forms of communication. People expect a better experience now. It’s no longer a situation where you talk to a chatbot, and they write something completely unrelated to what you’re talking about. There’s a disconnect. So, how do we make the experience better? We need to ensure the customer feels understood—like, “Okay, they get what I’m talking about. They understand what I’m going through.” This happens when companies have data or insights that allow them to understand where the customer is coming from and can address it accordingly.

Yeah, see how you’re performing. I love that. So, I know one of the things you mentioned was your company shifting from a customer service model as a cost center to a profit center. You were saying, “Hey, let’s empower the people in contact to make decisions, help with upselling, or whatever it is.” So, tell me more about that, because it’s tough enough—like I said, some of the companies I’ve dealt with can’t even handle my problem, let alone try to upsell me or make me feel comfortable about doing something else. Other companies I’ve talked to, though, will say, “Hey, I can upgrade you for this, this, or this,” and it feels very salesy.

I love what you’re saying because I think that’s the problem. If you’re in customer service and have certain sales numbers to hit, it becomes a situation where you’re just selling to meet a target, not thinking about what’s best for the customer. What I really love that you keep touching on is data.

It comes down to understanding the history of the person over the last few years. Why are you offering them something when you know their history? For example, offering them an upgrade to 50 megs might not make sense if they’re already on 50 megs, or they were previously on something better. Why are you offering this? What’s the rationale behind it, other than just making a sale? It’s about having the backstory, and I think that’s the differentiator you guys talk about.

Well, because you’re also cutting back on the 1,500 or 1,000 people who are calling up saying, “Hey, there’s a new deal over here.” Instead, you just give it to them, and now your retention is a lot higher. You don’t have to negotiate, you don’t have to do anything extra—you know it’s coming in the pipeline. I love that.

But of course, most companies will look at it and say, “How do we upsell them to our newer package?” And it’s like, well, maybe you don’t do that. Maybe you want to retain them because they’ve been around for five years, and you should take care of them. What’s the right thing to do? I don’t think many companies think about that. It usually comes down to revenue, but it’s about revenue and doing the right thing. What would you feel good about? That’s what people miss. There’s this mentality that it always comes down to numbers, and we have certain targets to hit. I get that, but it doesn’t always feel right when it comes to the customer. A customer just wants what they want, right? There are ways to address that, and it’s about educating the people who are answering the phones, working the chatbots, and making things happen.

You mentioned ROI, and I don’t think it always has to be revenue-driven. For example, how do you measure happiness when you have a happy customer? When it comes to customer experience ROI, how do you measure that? What do you look at? I know you focus on the long term—like, who cares about the $5 today? You care about the $10,000 over the lifetime of that customer. How do you measure ROI?

It’s the same with Facebook and Instagram. They want to know how long you’re on the platform, how much money you’re spending, and how many eyeballs are on there, right? That’s their big selling point. If you’re an advertiser, this is what they’re looking at. We talk about stickiness, and if anyone doesn’t understand what stickiness is, it’s the idea of keeping someone coming back or keeping them engaged on the platform.

For example, you haven’t been on Facebook in two days, and suddenly you get an update that your mom just posted a funny cat meme video. Now, you want to go back, and before you know it, you’re in the “matrix,” spending three hours watching 39 cat videos and feeling happier about your life, even though you didn’t do anything for those three hours.

Now, let’s talk about customer service during the pandemic. Obviously, we saw e-commerce skyrocket because everyone was online, with people saying, “Hey, I’m going to go buy some stuff.” How do you think the customer experience was affected by the pandemic, and how did it change?

Yeah, I think what the pandemic did is it forced a lot of people’s hands. It was either going online or improving existing systems. Some industries were slammed. I remember hearing stories about events, like a concert or an event space. They had just ordered food for the next month, and then suddenly everyone canceled. They had to give everyone their money back, which led to losing around $200,000. The big question was, “Now, what do we do, and when do we start back up?”

Meanwhile, other industries just took off and saw massive growth. So, I do believe that when bad things happen, good things can come from it—it all depends on how you look at it. Obviously, no one was excited about COVID. I don’t think anyone was saying, “Yay, COVID, I’m so glad this happened!” But we have seen some interesting developments in various industries where companies said, “Hey, we’ve got to figure this out.” And it’s accelerated things like remote working.

I’m with you. I would never say I was pumped about COVID, but I can tell you there have definitely been some benefits from it happening. It’s always an ebb and flow situation. I’m not going to say, “Hey, it’s awesome that this happened to these people,” but there have been good things that came from it. I do feel like it accelerated the learning curve for a lot of different things because we had to.

Well, I can tell you, my wife’s a nurse, and my mom was a nurse, so I know firsthand how crazy that industry can be. Now, there’s actually a hospital— I can’t remember the name—but they’re all over the nation doing COVID monitoring. They’ll hook you up to a monitor at home, and a nurse monitors you remotely. So it’s not just you doing it yourself. It’s pretty amazing.

I was talking to my wife about it, and I said, “So, you could sit at home, and there’s a friend of mine’s wife who does this in Austin, Texas. Some nights, she’s watching a movie and monitoring patients at the same time. Everything is fine. But other nights, she’s knee-deep in it, monitoring 10 people, with alarms going off and making things happen.”

It’s really interesting how remote work is evolving. Before, you had to go in, but now, in some cases, you can do a video call. Of course, not everything is possible remotely in medicine, but for some things, it makes sense. Why not eliminate the 20-30% of visits where a camera and internet connection are all you need?

It’s definitely an interesting shift. Thanks, Jonathan. It’s been a great episode, and I’m sure our listeners now know all about customer experience and how to do it right. Thanks for listening, and see you next week for another fun episode with Officium Labs’ Jonathan Shroyer.