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Mary Drummond, CMO of Worthix, a specialist at improving customer experiences, joins Gabe Larsen on the Customer Service Secrets podcast to discuss the fundamental elements of building beneficial relationships between companies and customers.
The Value Of Time Well Spent
Mary shares an experience she had during a podcast interview with Joe Pine, the decorated author of the book The Experience Economy. As they discussed customer experience, Joe said, “Mary, when people talk about customer experience, they’re talking about something entirely different than what I’m talking about.” When most people talk about customer experience, they’re actually referring to customer service, customer satisfaction, customer relationship, customer success. However, Joe’s understanding of customer experience is centered on the value of “time well spent”. Mary adds to this point, stating, “it’s taking your time to create an experience out of that purchase.” From this perspective, customer experience can be seen in terms of the economic offering of an experience.
Starting With The Customer’s Needs
In order to create these experiences, one of the best starting points is by going through the process of identifying the customer’s needs and expectations. While the advancement of innovation and technology are continually changing the ways in which expectations are expressed, many of the fundamental needs remain the same. Mary shares an example of the basic need of transportation to convey this point. Before the invention of cars, people still needed to get around, but they either walked, rode a bicycle, or used horses to do so. “Now, as value propositions changed, innovation and technology came around. That need was exactly the same, but the expectations of the market started changing. And as the expectations changed, companies adapted to this ever-changing speed of the customer and provided more and more innovation in the form of automobiles.” As a result, Mary claims that it is the company’s job to identify “the need of the customer according to their ever-changing expectations.”
Building on this, the customer’s experience is established through each of the interactions they have with a company. However, these interactions aren’t limited to the moment of purchase, which is the way many companies see it. The interactions customers have with companies and brands begin as soon as they realize their need, and lasts past the point of purchase. In this context, Mary defines the experience as “the sum of the interactions that work together to provide a solution to the need according to the customer’s expectations.”
The Five Drivers of Customer Satisfaction
Mary offers five of the most important drivers that influence purchasing decisions and customer satisfaction. These main determining factors are “price, quality, relationship, social proof, and brand identification.” All of these hold value to some extent when someone is deciding which food to eat, which clothes to wear, or how they are going to spend their day off. “Depending on how they weigh out in a customer’s mind, you can either increase one in order to improve that perception of a good experience, or reduce them in case it’s causing a bad experience.” By examining these drivers and how they impact the customer’s experience, we can get a better idea as to whether the customer views the experience as “time well spent”.
For more ideas on building your customer experience, listen to the Customer Service Secrets episode “The Five Key Elements that Drive Customer Experience” wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Full Episode Transcript:
The Five Key Elements that Drive Customer Experience with Mary Drummond
Intro Voice (00:04):
You’re listening to the customer service secrets podcast by Kustomer.
Gabe Larsen (00:10):
All right, welcome everybody to today’s podcast. I’m excited to get going! We’ve got Mary Drummond. She is the CMO at Worthix. Mary, thanks so much for joining, and how are you?
Mary Drummond (00:23):
I’m good. So I’m like your marketing counterpart here at Worthix.
Gabe Larsen (00:26):
That’s right. We’re like marketing partners. I actually hope we are partnering on more stuff. Mary was just giving me a little tour of how to be a podcaster because outside of being the CMO at Worthix, she is also the podcast host of something called the “Voices of CX.” I probably can’t do it justice. Mary, can you tell us a little about yourself, the podcast and what you do over there Worthix?
Mary Drummond (00:51):
So, more than considering myself the chief marketer, I do truly consider myself the chief evangelist. And it’s probably because other than the CEO, you won’t find anyone in this world who is as passionate about this company as I am.
Gabe Larsen (01:08):
We can feel it from your voice, by the way. I’m like feeling the passion.
Mary Drummond (01:12):
I get genuinely excited when I talk about it. Yeah, but it does, it makes my job really, really easy because all I have to do is then take this passion and convert it into something that people can identify with. So, all I have to do is make sure that I’m distributing that message properly, which is why I have the podcast in the first place. Which is a great way to get that message across, to speak to the people in the industry that actually matter, that everybody else is listening to. And it’s been great because honestly, as the host of Voices of Customer Experience or Voices of CX, I have spoken to some of the most brilliant brains that are out there nowadays. And it’s been the biggest learning process of my life for sure.
Gabe Larsen (01:59):
I can only imagine. I can only imagine. I was telling Mary, I’m setting up on my own journey to become a podcast expert, so she might have to be a little bit of a coach and as I do that, but we’ll save that for a later time. Today, we want to jump into some of the trends and problems facing customer service leaders. And one of the things we were talking pre-show that actually was, you know, and I’m being honest here, it was pretty cool was this idea of not looking at it so siloed. A lot of organizations are looking customer experience as just kind of one point. And you kind of blew that up for me and said, Gabe, it’s different. It’s bigger than that. Give me a little more on that. How are you seeing that play out and why is it so important?
Mary Drummond (02:40):
So, I think that the number one problem that we have nowadays is that it’s really difficult for people to agree on a definition of customer experience. It’s just extremely problematic when you think about it. But when people are looking at the experience, there are a lot of definitions out there. The most accepted or the most commonly used one, and it’s the one that’s used by the CXPA, which is the Customer Experience Professional Association, is the idea that experiences are the sum of the interactions that a customer has with a company. Okay, in a nutshell it’s like 20 words, but basically that’s what it is. So, some of the interactions, right? And I agree with that definition, let’s say with some reservation. Now, customer experience has recently become super duper popular. Everybody’s using it. I like to say that customer experience has gone mainstream and you know, it’s gone mainstream when they start using it in advertising. So if you’re going through airports, you’ll see big signs that say, “Try to improve your airport experience.” I’m like, wow, airport experience… Turn on the radio.
Gabe Larsen (03:52):
Airport experience, well yes, there is an experience I guess. That’s weird.
Mary Drummond (03:55):
The bathroom experience when you’re at the airport is a thing too. And they’ll talk, there’s an ad running on the radio from Quicken Loans and it’s talking about improving your mortgage experience. You know, so experiences have really hit mainstream, which is pretty much a dream. I think that there are a lot of people out there, a lot of authors, a lot of thought leaders that really put a lot of work into making this happening, where people actually care, not only people, companies, investors, shareholders, everybody cares about the experience. So that is great. Now it also means that the message gets diluted and it also means that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding what it truly means. And since the industry is new, there’s still a lot of questions. So I understand that my definition of customer experience might not necessarily be same definition as the listener, but hopefully there is an overlap and hopefully what I do for you makes a little bit of sense.
Gabe Larsen (04:58):
Yeah, one quick followup on that, and I’m still kind of a newbie so I can ask this, but is there a big difference between customer experience and customer service? I mean obviously they’re interrelated, but how would you kind of coach people who are like, why are they people acting like those are different? How would you navigate that?
Mary Drummond (05:17):
That’s my favorite question…
Gabe Larsen (05:21):
If it’s too basic, you can be like that’s a dumb question.
Mary Drummond (05:23):
No, I think that it’s the first thing we need to get out of the way. Especially because your company Kustomer works very closely with customer service. And it’s probably one of the biggest focuses, right? We met at Customer Contact World, which is a conference that’s focused on bringing solutions to call centers and customer service. So there is a huge overlap, but it’s an overlap. One is not the same as the other. So as for a definition, I’m going to use what Joe Pine said. So if you know who Joe Pine is, he is the coauthor of a book called The Experience Economy, which was written in 1999. And it was the book that set off the whole idea of customer experience. So he could be called the father of customer experience. He created this whole concept.
Mary Drummond (06:26):
Yeah, and when I had Joe Pine on my podcast, what he told me super clearly was, “Mary, when people talk about customer experience, they’re talking about something entirely different than what I’m talking about.” So most people, when they’re talking about customer experience, they’re actually talking about customer service, customer satisfaction, customer relationship, customer success. What Joe Pine is talking about when he’s discussing the experience is very much the idea of time well spent. So it’s taking your time and creating an experience out of that purchase. So he’s speaking directly to the idea of an economical offering that is an experience.
Gabe Larsen (07:21):
Yeah, that’s deep. My mind… I’m kind of like, ooh… That was deep. So really, customer experience is kind of, I don’t mean to say it’s better, but it’s on top of, right? It’s like it almost, I would almost say, based on what you’re saying is it is, it’s on top of it. There may be that overlap, but it does feel like it is the broader category of some of these subsets like customer service, customer success, etc.
Mary Drummond (07:47):
Well, you see, the thing is that Pine was speaking of the economic offering of an experience. So that would be something like, Candytopia right? Where you offering an experience that people go in there and they have this experiential thing with candy and then you have like the ice cream museum or you have other things like Meow Wolf, this like immersive art. You know, so Pine was speaking specifically of these things, but if you take that concept and you apply it to business, what you understand is the experience boils down to the need. Okay, so way before products or companies or anything else, humans had needs. So if you consider before the automobile was created, people still had the need for transportation. So what were they using at the time? Horses. Bicycles. Whatever. Right, that need, that need existed. And the market was somehow providing that need.
Mary Drummond (08:55):
Now, as value propositions changed, innovation and technology came around. That need was exactly the same, but the expectations of the market started changing. And as the expectations changed, companies adapted to this ever changing speed of the customer and provided more and more innovation in the form of automobiles. And you know, nowadays we’ve got electric cars, right? If you think about it, essentially they’re still solving the same basic need that was there from the very beginning. It was being solved by a horse previously. Right? So what the experience, what I consider to be the experience in the business sense is the way that the company is providing the need of the customer according to their ever-changing expectations in the market. This goes from before the moment of purchase, the moment the customer realizes that he or she has a need, all the way to way after that purchase or transaction has concluded. Even once the relationship with the company has so-called ended, the customer continues to have expectations about that brand and about that company. So that’s what I consider the experience: The sum of the interactions that work together to provide the solution to the need according to the customer’s expectations. I know it’s a little bit confusing. That is how we see it.
Gabe Larsen (10:27):
It does seem like, and that goes back to almost my original question and maybe that fits in a little bit, right? There are different points in the customer journey, and oftentimes we have focused on one versus the other, but if you really map out that customer journey, it is pretty long, right? There are different touch points and there’s ultimately different things that drive that overall experience and therefore loyalty or satisfaction that really does drive people to again come back, repeat, you know, grow with you, stick with you, etc. Interesting. I’ve got a noodle on that one for a minute… That kind of customer experience versus customer service idea.
Mary Drummond (11:09):
Well i’ll build on it if you want. So when you have customer service, what you’re speaking of is a very particular moment or aspect of the experience, which is the relationship. So customer service is the relationship that the company builds with their customer. And relationship is crucial, it’s really, really important. But it is one of the multiple factors that ultimately affect the customer’s decision to choose to do business with your company or with another one that’s out there. So there are quite a few factors. So if we say customer experience is customer service, it is not, but customer service is definitely experiential. It’s definitely part of the experience.
Gabe Larsen (12:02):
But it is just part of it. It’s not the whole experience. The whole experience is… Well, paint that picture. So of customer experiences, what are some of the other parts of the experience that aren’t encompassed in customer service? For example:
Mary Drummond (12:17):
If we’re speaking of attending the need, right? So you talk about the need, you have to have a product, right? So when someone purchases a product, there are two like really easy cost-benefit factors that we can take into consideration there, which is quality versus price. So we always kind of make that relation, you know, like okay, I’m going to pay this much to gain this benefit. And pricing is so complex that there are whole schools of business that focus entirely on pricing. It really is very, very complex. But what we do know is that it’s not always directly related to quality. It is at times, but there are other things that affect it, like relationship is definitely one of them. People will pay more for a company that they have a good relationship with. Because it’s important to them, right? So just to kind of explain it really quick, what we believe in is that there are decision drivers and all of these decision drivers put together drives the customer to decide on how much of each they need in order to have a positive experience or negative experience. But it depends on the customer’s need and the expectation that they set for that company. So if I’m an Apple customer and I go to buy an iPhone, am I looking for price? No, I’m not looking for price. I’m not price sensitive. They are the most expensive. What am I looking for? I am probably looking for really good quality and probably looking for a very easy experience. So low effort in usability factors. Right? But there’s also something huge that’s a lot less subjective, let’s say, then price and quality, which is social proof. How you’re perceived by your tribe or by the people that surround you. So take it this way. I don’t know what phone you have, but I get really upset when I’m in a group chat and there’s that one person with a Google phone that’s making all of my text bubbles green. I’m like, just stop it already. Just go away. Stop ruining my group text.
Gabe Larsen (14:36):
I’ve got to stop you because I was having problems with the app. I have this total dovetail. It’s only five seconds, but I was that person. I literally was that person. I switched to a Samsung, or Android, I don’t know what it was. But I switched and the whole executive team at my last company, I hope they’re listening, they were all on Apple. And honestly, you would have thinked, you would have think you would have thunked. You wish you would’ve thought, that I killed the president or something. I’m dead serious. There was like a revolt. They were just like, you SOB, you mother***, we won’t put up for this. We won’t stand for it. And I got peer pressured back. So now, I mean, you’re not seeing this, but I’m holding this up for Mary. I’m back on an iPhone because I got guilty. So, sorry for the for the thing, but yes, I know what you’re talking about.
Mary Drummond (15:33):
Do you see how strong social proof is? It’s a huge motivator. And another one that’s also more subjective is brand identification. So one thing that we’ve seen recently, and you know, it’s been all over the news, is brands taking a more active stance politically and standing behind their beliefs and really making strong statements that maybe 20 years ago companies wouldn’t dare do. Oh my God, talk about something controversial. No way. But the truth is that the generations of today, they really want to stand behind something that matters to them. You know, so you have companies, I’ll give two, Nike is an example of a company that stood strongly behind what they believed in with the Kaepernick campaign that they ran last year. Or what was it, 2018? And analysts were freaking out, “Oh Nike… they’re really gonna take a hit for that.”
Mary Drummond (16:28):
And it was actually very successful, but it really could have gone either way. The truth is that Nike did some really, really deep research and they knew who their customers were and they knew that their customers would back them up even though they would lose some customers. The customers that actually mattered to them would stick around and actually create a stronger emotional connection with the brand because of that. I remember when that whole thing happened and people started burning their Nike’s. I remember going onto my phone as I’m watching the news go to Nike’s website and ordering anything. I just ordered anything because I just wanted Nike to see that people were still going to buy from them, you know? So I’m like, I’m going to buy right here just to show Nike how much I care.
Gabe Larsen (17:14):
So what do you feel like? And some of these examples are extremely powerful. Are there certain things that you’ve found that are the typical drivers to kind of get this? I mean, it sounds like, you know, price quality. You’ve listed a couple. Is there a typical list that you’re like, Gabe, these are the normal ones that companies need to be thinking about to drive that overall satisfaction?
Mary Drummond (17:35):
Yeah, we have five. Now these are the ones that we… So we did tons of scientific research and we narrowed it down to five, and these five drivers, they’re the main influencers of purchase decisions. Now, as you changed the decision, because you see the things that we make decisions all day long and ultimately on a daily basis, we’re constantly weighing out cost benefit. Let’s say, let’s call it cost benefit to decide whether or not something is worth it. So I’m going to give you an example. Waking up at 6:00 AM to go to the gym. Do you want to do it? Hell no. Hell no. Today it was raining so hard in Atlanta and I got out of bed and I’m like dragging myself out of bed. I’m like, I’m going to the gym. Did I want to? No.
Mary Drummond (18:21):
But in my mind, I’m telling myself that the benefits that I’m going to obtain from that sacrifice, what I’m giving up is worth it. So I go and I do it. So every moment in our lives, whenever we’re faced with a crossroad, we weigh out price, which can be money, it can be effort, it can be a sacrifice of morals. There are a series of things that we can do as paying a price in order to gain a benefit. And what does that benefit? It can be a better body. It could be health, it can be anything. So when it comes to purchase decisions, normally we’re giving up money in order to gain a product or service. So what we identified as the five decision drivers or purchase decisions are: Price and quality. It’s not in any specific order… It changes radically according to the customer and the situation. Price and quality, relationship, social proof, and brand identification. Each of the five things that I brought up.
Gabe Larsen (19:24):
Oh, price and quality are one. Okay. Got it. Okay, so say it one more time, one more time just so I got them. So, price and quality…
Mary Drummond (19:30):
Price, quality, relationship, that’s where you come in, right? Social proof, and brand identification. Depending on how these five factors… depending on how they weigh out in a customer’s minds, you can either increase one in order to improve that perception of a good experience, or reduce them in case it’s causing a bad experience. So if your customer has a really good impression of you and you don’t know why, you can run a Worthix survey and find out what’s causing that good impression so you can boost it.
Gabe Larsen (20:03):
Hmm, and really focus on one of those key drivers, right? Because I did like what you had mentioned pre-show, like oftentimes you guys were running these MPS survey and I’m just using MPS an example. But you know, it’s like, “Overall how satisfied are you?” And then you’re like, I don’t know what to do with that.
Mary Drummond (20:22):
Satisfaction doesn’t actually lead ultimately to the buying.
Gabe Larsen (20:24):
Well, I just love the idea of like when you talk about those drivers, I’m like, I can do something with that. I can coach my people. They can own it. We can do something. But satisfaction does feel like it’s so, uh oh, well they’re not sad. Then you gotta dive down more and more, so I like the action of building.
Mary Drummond (20:45):
Satisfaction is great if you’re doing a conformity check, right? So like I’ve got expectations as a customer, is that company living up to my expectations, yes or no? If the answer is yes, then I’m satisfied. If it’s not then no. Now am I going to leave you because I’m not satisfied?
Gabe Larsen (21:04):
Personally, I don’t believe that someone… it’s probably is all over the board. Some people, yes. Some people, no. I don’t know if it’s predictive of what we’re talking about here.
Mary Drummond (21:18):
It’s not because it’s only one factor. So if the price is really, really good, I might stay with you even if you suck. If I’m looking to buy like family heirloom that I want to pass onto my daughter when she grows up, I’m probably not going to measure the price because what I’m looking for is quality. I’m looking for durability, I’m looking for something that’s going to withstand the test of time, right? If I’m looking for a quick fix, something that I’m going to use one or two times, why on earth would I spend all this money for something temporary? So I’ll sacrifice quality, then I’ll probably sacrifice relationship cause all I want is this product for like whatever you know a party. Now what happens is… I’m a customer of Comcast. Okay, this this like the perfect example, because Comcast is known for having truly terrible relationship with their customers right now. Why is it that after five years with Comcast, I am still with Comcast even though their relationship sucks? Because I don’t need to call them that often.
Gabe Larsen (22:23):
It’s quality. It’s finding this balance between the different drivers.
Mary Drummond (22:29):
And when I think about the effort that I’ll have to leave Comcast and go to their competition, and then is there competition going to be that much better? Not necessarily, right? So in that specific example of Comcast, I’m not going to leave. But then again, internet isn’t a market that’s that commoditized. You don’t have that many players out there. It’s not like retail where you have hundreds of options. So depending on the industry you’re in, if you’re in an ultra commoditized market where price isn’t a differentiator, nor is quality, then you really have to stand out on other things like relationship.
Gabe Larsen (23:06):
You start to play those different games, yeah.
Mary Drummond (23:09):
And that’s where you have to innovate, truly innovate in the experience. So, you know, an example that I give all the time is Chewy. I don’t know if you know who Chewy is, it’s like a subscription for pet food. It’s like the most basic thing in the world. Chewy doesn’t sell cheap dog food. They’re more expensive than Amazon. They don’t sell super high quality or any different quality than all of the other pet stores out there. They’re selling the exact same products everybody else is selling. So an ultra commoditized market. How does Chewy get their customers to stay with them? How do they guarantee that loyalty if they’re not different at all in price and quality? Well, they really work hard on their customer service. They really work hard in their relationship. They like cultivate this intimate relationship with their customers. They’ll write handwritten cards. My dog got a birthday card! A birthday card in the mail from Chewy! These are these little things that make a difference.
Gabe Larsen (24:22):
Fascinating. Fascinating. So these companies got to find the different things that really drive their differentiators or behaviors, which really can separate them in the market. And you’ve narrowed it down to five doesn’t mean you have to do one could do the other. It’s about finding what’s unique in your industry and potentially commoditize a non-commoditized market. Well, Mary, that was not what I expected. I had like 10 more questions we’re going to have to bring you on again next time. But I really like this idea of experience looking at the whole journey and then the drivers that potentially drive that and you obviously narrowed it down to five. I’m going to have to think a little bit about that.
Gabe Larsen (25:02):
So as we wrap, if someone wants to get in touch with you or learn a little bit more about what y’all do over there at Worthix, what’s the best way to do that?
Mary Drummond (25:13):
Okay, well I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and everywhere is like @drummondmary, it’s really easy to find me. I’m like the one and only. You find some other people, but they look very sketchy. So don’t go with them. I’m like the one and only @drummondmary who looks like a person that would give you lots of interesting thought leadership.
Gabe Larsen (25:32):
So don’t follow them, follow her.
Mary Drummond (25:34):
Don’t follow them. You can also find me on Medium if that’s where you get your fix. And worthix.com to learn more about Worthix.
Gabe Larsen (25:42):
I love it. I love it. Well, it does it seem like a cool technology.I love the talk track and I’m looking forward to interacting more. Thanks again for joining and I wish everybody a fantastic day.
Exit Voice (25:58):
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