Jonathan Green 2024: [00:00:00] Can we use AI to give our customers a better experience? We're gonna find out what today's special guest, Stacy Sherman.
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Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you wanna make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you can come to the right place. Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. You will learn how to use artificial intelligence to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep.
Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by bestselling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.
Now your expertise is CX and a lot of people don't even know what that stands for. So let's start at the very beginning with. [00:01:00] What those letters stand for and why they matter.
Stacy Sherman: Yes, so CX means customer experience and I'm all about helping people in doing cx right, which for many reasons, because in general we don't, should never have bad experiences as a customer. Or as an employee or staff who fuels the customer experience. And I want people to also think about customer in, in terms of, there's a patient experience, there's a student experience, there's a listener experience. So customer don't be, think about it in terms of who interacts with you and your brand, and that is the context of the customer. So there's a lot behind it, but I do know for sure that people don't just buy on price alone.[00:02:00]
They buy based on experiences, and so if you're doing CX right, you'll actually be able to impact lives and your business.
Jonathan Green 2024: Let's dig a little deeper into that. A lot of people these days, my age and younger people, millennials say, oh, I don't wanna buy things. I wanna have experiences. Instead of buying a new car, I'd rather travel.
And that's one interpretation of experience. But also a lot of people, when they're starting to build their first business, they're so busy. Thinking about what to create that we don't often think about. What's it like for a customer to navigate? What's it like for a customer to visit my website?
What's it like for a customer to call my company or walk into my store? And there's a huge difference, for example, between walking into a Walmart and walking into a Prada and there's scientists who spend a huge amount of study showing which way people turn. 90% of people turn right when they walk in a store.
The starts [00:03:00] organized from right to left. That's why they're always done. I think it's clockwise or maybe I, maybe it's counterclockwise. They have it backwards, but there's all sorts of psychology that goes into it. When you're starting your own store, you don't think about that stuff. And you go, oh, I wanna put this here and that there, and this looks cute over here, and we don't even realize it, that we're hurting our own business.
When that comes to an online type business, what are the types of mistakes that like the big, like the really obvious mistakes that are very common that people should look at first. What's the most common mistakes that you see? Or just areas where we notice it as a customer, we don't notice it when we're the vendor.
Stacy Sherman: Yeah. Whether you're in a store, offline or online, the principles are the same, that there has to be this intentional design of the customer experience. Their journey of how they learn by get used pay and get help is the customer service piece. And when you are creating an experience for [00:04:00] someone, you have to literally map out how are they going to learn about your brand.
So if it's online an example, I worked at Verizon for many years. We would come together cross teams to design the journey. So when they come to your website, how are they gonna learn? What are they gonna learn? How easy are you making it for them to learn about what you're offering? Buying, how easy or difficult is it to actually buy what you want people to to put in their cart?
An example, a lot of times people will put words, a call to action in a button. And that button can be intimidating or it can be welcoming. Words matter, design matters, placement matters. The content around the product matters. The ratings and reviews matter. [00:05:00] So the point of story is that I tell people to learn or work with people like me in designing the customer journey so that you are actually making it easy for them.
To accomplish their goal. And when you design for that experience, that shopping experience, or that return visitor experience, you have to not only design it from the inside, but you have to also validate it with real customers that what you design is actually meeting their needs and close that gap.
Jonathan Green 2024: Let's talk about some specific examples, making sure people understand. I'll share some experiences I've had. The very first client I ever worked with was a massage therapist who had one of those cars that said, get our massage. Here's my business. Big phone number on the side. Had one of those wraps on the car and she would get tons of calls.
The car was really working for her, generally a lot of business 'cause she was a drive to your house one, and she said to me, my website never gets any phone calls. When I looked at her website, I said, that's 'cause your phone number's not on the website. [00:06:00] Really simple mistake that her website had made and she couldn't see it.
We often when sometimes when people say, oh, there's something misspelled on your website. I can't tell even if they send me the sentence, 'cause I've seen it so many times. So sometimes we can't look at it ourselves. And I love your example of how hard is it to make a purchase when people make it hard for me to buy from them.
I go through a couple of phases, I wanna buy it. How do I buy it? Why won't you buy it? I hate you. Like I go up to the rage cycle very quickly. Why are you making it hard for me? I get real. One of my pet peeves is when waiters disappear. When I'm asking for the check, I always think that should be your favorite part as the waiter.
That should be your favorite part of the whole night is when I'm gonna give you pay you, you get the money. But that's when they always disappear on me and I don't know why. This is like a very common problem for me. So it's why it's on my mind. And it's the same ideas that a lot of people when they can't tell me what they do [00:07:00] when I say, what's your product?
Or what do you do if they can't explain it? That's part of the customer experience. 'cause I don't know if I wanna buy from you or not. Like a lot of people have been taught, and I know there's a psychologist, oh, you want to make 'em want it before you tell 'em what it is or tell 'em the price. And they misinterpret that as don't tell 'em what your services at all, really make 'em work for it.
And. That always turns me off as well. If you are a video expert, you don't have to bury that part of it. You can let me know, I'm a video consultant or I'm a video editor, and then build up to your pricing. Fine. But you can't say I just do online stuff, but let me find out what your needs are before I tell you what I do.
That's too much gating. That's a bad customer experience for me. So when you talk about what's an intimidating versus a friendly button can you gimme an example of a really intimidating phrasing on a button?
Stacy Sherman: Sometimes, depending on how far people are in the funnel, it could be as simple as [00:08:00] learn more versus commit.
Now, even buy now, okay? Buy now. Sometimes it's in the wrong place where I haven't even learned and you're asking me to buy, so instead it causes friction. Here's another example of friction. Again, wording is if I'm on the airlines, I bought my ticket and all I wanna do is just check seats or view the seats.
And I've seen some airlines say to do that change seats is the button, but I'm not saying I wanna change them. I'm saying I wanna view them. So I get anxiety pressing the button because. I don't wanna commit to changing my seat. I just wanna look at my reservation. So people have to realize that when they use words, they need to test, they need to get feedback and [00:09:00] make sure there's no friction.
Jonathan Green 2024: This is really good because this happened to me today. I was looking to order something online and they were really wonky about the shipping. Sometimes the button makes it feel like I'm placing the order and I don't know what the shipping's gonna be yet. And that's, everyone knows at least you've been in business long enough.
One of the main reasons people stop an order is shipping costs. It's like one of the biggest cart killers. And I was hitting the buttons and I was like it says place your order. And I'm like what's the shipping cost gonna be? And when That was a bad customer experience for me and I didn't order I left 'cause I don't like to play the game.
So this is very good. You're very dialed in because we don't even, I think we don't even realize how often one of these mistakes causes us to jump ship as a customer, let alone as a vendor, because. It's very easy as a vendor to make these mistakes and not realize it and blame the wrong thing [00:10:00] because if you have a new business, you can say, oh, I have a traffic problem.
I'm getting the wrong people in my store. But maybe the problem is you just have a button mistake or a pricing mistake or a coloring mistake, and. It's important to get this outside perspective because yeah, sometimes we don't see things. One of the things I always try to do is after someone comes to customer, I say how did you find me?
Did you find me through LinkedIn? Did you find me through YouTube? Did you find me through a joint venture partner or something? Because it helps me to understand what part of the business is working in work, what's not. But it also helps to ask people. Are there things that we can improve about the membership area or the experience or the purchasing experience?
'cause sometimes people like the button doesn't work. That's a killer. If you have the wrong link in a button, same thing. Like it's a technical part. But I see that's really important. So when you're with a lot of the changes with AI and advent of AI and with your being an absolute expert in the space, need me teaching a major LinkedIn course, which I recommend for people on LinkedIn learning.
Absolutely. We're gonna link to it below the video [00:11:00] for sure. How can people use AI to start to help them improve with customer experience? One of the things that I recommend is just to say, especially now that AI can look, you could just give the link to your website and say. What's wrong. Now, the danger with that is that sometimes chat B is very mean.
If you give her permission to give you feedback. Sometimes it's very harsh, it doesn't couch it, but it'll give you a pretty deep analysis. But as a specialist, what are some other ways you would recommend for people to use AI tools to help them just get that external perspective?
Stacy Sherman: Yeah, so one of the game changers is with and without AI, is what I would call voice of the customer.
When you are trying to get feedback, it's multi-channel. So you have social media, you have ratings and reviews, you have surveys, you have your log forms that or your contact form, so you can use the AI to [00:12:00] give it all the feedback and then have it quickly identify your customer pain points. Instead of reading every one by one and it's not a one and done thing.
'cause feedback is always changing and customer needs are always changing. So that is one way that could save you time and identify. Use the AI to help you synthesize the feedback to make your business decisions.
Jonathan Green 2024: This is very good in the past. The process that I used was, and you would hire someone for this, 'cause it takes so much time, is you would have everyone fill out a survey and sometimes you'd have thousands of responses and you'd have to manually process it, organize them into categories, figure out and say, oh, this is this type.
What they're really saying is they don't like the colors. What this person's really saying is they don't like their pricing, and you have to organize them all into buckets to start to see. The data analysis would take days or even weeks [00:13:00] for even a smaller project. So one of the cool things is that an AI could do all of that analysis in seconds and figure out the buckets, which is very cool because one of the things we have a tendency to do is the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
Whoever says the biggest con like reply, right? Whoever says the meanest thing, that's the one we remember. When we are getting feedback, it's like that's the one and it's. I see this happen with a lot of companies where they'll respond to the loudest voice on Twitter rather than their actual customers, and that's often when suddenly, then it leads to a chain reaction because now you're listening to someone that was never gonna buy from you or was never gonna shop from you.
Or maybe it's not been a person. I don't know a lot of people that even use Twitter, and it's really important to be objective when you're looking at this data to say, one person was upset, but nine people liked it. So I, for example, my book 90% Super, five Star Views. They love the book. 10% of people hate my book.[00:14:00]
They just hate it. But if you look at every book, Harry Potter has 10,001 star views. There are 10,000 people that hate that book so much. That they said, I gotta, I need to write a review. I need to write the 10000th negative review of this book. There's 500,000 positive reviews, 10,000 negative, doesn't matter the book.
There's always someone who hates it. The real danger is when everyone thinks your product is a three star, when everyone thinks your middle of the road. So then you don't have any, you don't have any enemies. But we also don't have any super fans and we. Sometimes wanna drive towards that because we, it's like conflict avoidance.
So how can people look at the right data? What's the right way to approach the data and the right information that matters and the right people to listen to
Stacy Sherman: , this could be an hour in itself. So first thing we could say is most companies are using Net Promoter Score, NPS. It is not the only score, but let's start [00:15:00] there for a second. What happens is when people ask that question, how likely are you gonna recommend our product or service?
Okay? What happens is companies, even entrepreneurs, they'll look at the nines and tens, the promoters, and they'll look at the sixes and below and see the detractors and un and unhappy people. They ignore the passives, those seven and eights, and that's a big mistake because they pick a side. So for starters, I would tell you to take your promoters, activate them, use them.
They just said they're gonna refer you. Your seven and eights your passives. Make sure you understand what's in their way from being a brand advocate. And then your detractors understand their pain points and literally [00:16:00] fix what's the pain points and go back to them. Now, NPS is only one score. One of my other favorites is effort.
How easy or difficult is it to do business with us? How easy or difficult is it to get help when you need it? Customer service. And that is just another way where you can really drill down and understand what are the root causes, and then fix things at scale.
Jonathan Green 2024: I. So let's break these down. For people that aren't familiar, we've always probably seen the quiz on every product I have asks that question.
On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you recommend our product and you answer it, and then they start asking you more questions? Half the time. And a lot of it seems like when this question was invented. Everyone feels like it's the magic question that will tell you what's right and wrong about your business.
That the scores, it's people really believe in it. Almost like it's magical. I know there's a lot of weight to it, but I also think [00:17:00] that once a person has seen that question from a certain number of vendors, the way they answer it change. Like the way I respond to the question as a consumer change is the fifth, sixth, 10th, 50th time I see it.
So I wonder if the way people respond changes over time, because I definitely, I. Very passive like I very rarely leave online reviews as much as I'm someone who wants my customers to do it. It takes a lot to make me angry enough to leave a negative review and engaged enough to leave a positive review with one of those things.
What's funny is a vendor I worked with recently, right after a bad customer experience for me where customer support kept copying a patient, the response, but not paying attention to what I was saying because. I'm a sophisticated customer. If there is a problem and I know what it is, and I explain exactly what it's, and then they just keep copying pasting from the rule book and blaming the wrong thing.
I go, yeah, but I already know it's not that. Here's how I know it's not that. That was my last email. I stopped [00:18:00] responding to customer support. I'm probably gonna change vendors actually. I'm working on that process, I'm probably gonna change companies. And that's when they sent me the thing. I was like, I've been a happy customer for two years.
I recommended probably 50 people to join the company and now I'm gonna leave because of this bad experience. 'cause it's a technical problem that's added a lot of hours to my workflow. It's like a make my, it's made my life harder. And I go, that's, I always, that's the best way to get rid of me. And they were like, I guess because you stopped responding to support.
They think they've solved the problem. He's no, I stopped responding. 'cause I said the same thing three times. You didn't respond to me. And I'm already, I've already told someone else who's using the product 'cause of me. I'm out here. So sometimes companies put this in at the wrong point and there is exactly that point where I'm not mad enough that I'm gonna tell you what's going on 'cause I already don't think it's gonna fix.
'cause I already said something to support rep. You always get these surveys after you deal with customer support all of the time and. So often the [00:19:00] customer support can really make or break a company. Right now, a big problem that I have is a lot of companies believe they can replace their customer support team with ai and they go, we wanna put a chat bot in customer support.
We believe we can save a bunch of money by getting rid of those salaries. I'm like, absolutely, you'll save money in the long term and you'll kill your business as well. I've never met anyone who has had a positive experience as a customer with a customer support chat bot. I even asked the person whose idea is, I go, how many times have you had a good experience as a customer support when you've reached and talked to someone else's chat Bott?
Never. How is yours gonna be different? Because then I say this is the question. This is how I know. I always say, will you give your chat bot the ability to issue a refund on its own? No, of course not. Then that means it doesn't have the power to solve the problem, does it? So I already know when I talk to a chat bot that it can't actually solve my problem.
It can't send me a part. 'cause you would never give it the power to affect finances. That means you don't trust it. So [00:20:00] why would I trust it as a consumer? And I think this falls into that area of thinking about the customer experience. Sometimes saving money pennies now will cost you dollars in the long run as we've seen.
'cause some companies have had a chatbot that's really damaged the company's reputation ends up in a news story. When someone's, sometimes people think, I'm too small to think about this stuff. My business is too small. I can't bring in a, I can't afford a customer support consultant. I don't have a large enough customer base to ask these questions, and this is the chicken and the egg thing, right?
