Author Archives: Shep Hyken

About Shep Hyken

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

Emotional Connections Drive Customer Loyalty

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Emotional Connections Drive Customer Loyalty

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

There are many reasons a customer might come back to a business again and again that have nothing to do with loyalty. A repeat customer can come about because of a convenient location, a lower price, a bigger selection and more. But those don’t create loyalty. It just looks as if the customer is loyal.

Actually, you could say that they are loyal—but not to the company. They are loyal to the price, convenient location, etc. The customer who comes back again and again for those types of reasons can deceive you. Not on purpose. It’s their behavior that imitates loyalty. Consider a retail store with repeat customers (not loyal customers), and ask this: If a competitor moves into the neighborhood, has a more convenient location and advertises lower prices, would the customer switch?

If you want your customers to be loyal, you must find a way to create an emotional connection.

Meet Zhecho Dobrev, a principal consultant at Beyond Philosophy and the author of the newly published book, The Big Miss: How Organizations Overlook the Value of Emotions. I interviewed Dobrev for an episode of Amazing Business Radio, and he shared his insights on what drives loyalty.

According to Dobrev, “Emotional connection creates preference over the competition. Customers don’t just come back out of convenience. They see a difference between doing business with your company and other companies.” His research has found that the amount of business a company gets is dependent on its relationships with customers.

The relationship you want with customers is rooted in emotion. A good experience creates a positive memory. Dobrev is a fan of Professor Daniel Kahneman, who says that people don’t choose between experiences. They choose between the memories of their experiences.

Often, memory is based on interactions customers have had with a salesperson, customer support or a process that a company has. Ideally, it’s a good memory. And when the customer comes back a second time and third time and has similar experiences, the memories of those interactions become an owned experience. The customer expects it. They know it’s going to happen, just like last time. That’s where the relationship starts to solidify, with a consistent and predictable experience. It goes to an even higher level when the customer feels valued and appreciated. Ultimately, the brand becomes more important than just a place to stop and do business.

Dobrev surveyed more than 19,000 customers in the U.S. and UK and determined that emotional attachment was the biggest driver of value, being responsible for about 43% of business value. Compare that to a company that promotes product features, which came in second at 20%. “Customers don’t know what they really want,” says Dobrev. “They say they want a product, but what really drives business value is emotional attachment.”

Emotions can start to develop even before the customer chooses to do business with a company or brand. Emotions can be found in a marketing strategy. Consider the automobile manufacturer BMW, which in the 1970s used the slogan The Ultimate Driving Machine — a description of the car — until it switched its focus to the emotion of owning and experiencing the car with the slogan BMW is Joy. While BMW still includes The Ultimate Driving Machine in its descriptors, today’s slogan is Sheer Driving Pleasure. Joachim Blickhäuser, head of corporate and brand identity at the BMW Group, says, “The ‘Sheer Driving Pleasure’ slogan delivers positive emotions and does exactly what a claim should.”

While an emotional connection may help create customer loyalty, you can’t ignore other competitive features. While loyalty makes price less relevant, there is a breaking point. Being easy to do business is also a big factor, so eliminate the friction that will potentially cause customers to run to your competition.

So, here is your assignment. Ask your customers, “Why do you do business with us?” Their reasons will help you define the differences between features and benefits compared to feelings and emotions. Once you have your features and benefits in place, work on creating emotional connections, and your customers will come back for the right reasons—because they love doing business with you.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Music Can Make You a More Effective Leader

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Music Can Make You a More Effective Leader

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

You don’t have to be a rock star with an album that makes millions to say, “Music changed my life.” You can be the leader of an organization, searching for a way to overcome an obstacle or challenge plaguing you—potentially for years.

The key to resolving an ongoing leadership challenge could lie in the music you’re listening to. Listening to the right music can actually shift the way you think, help you overcome obstacles and make you a better leader.

Suppose you’re feeling frustrated with your team, wondering why they’re not as motivated or engaged as you are, why they aren’t handling customers the way you would like, why you can’t fully delegate or something else. In that case, you’re probably asking, “How can I get them to change?”

But that may not be the right question. What if you asked instead, “What can I change in myself?” What if the thing you need to change is your internal environment, not your external one?

This is the tough question that The Leader’s Playlist, the book debut by Harvard lawyer turned CEO coach Susan Drumm, invites leaders to ask themselves.

I had the chance to interview Drumm for an episode of Amazing Business Radio. In the interview, she talked about game-changing ways leaders can become more effective. Specifically, she shared a powerful, practical tool for shifting unconscious perspectives and behaviors that may create a poor leadership outcome. That tool is music.

According to Drumm, music is a “brain hack for shifting ineffective leadership patterns.” From her decades of coaching top executives, including billionaire CEOs and high-profile political figures, Drumm knows that when someone is struggling as a leader, especially if they’re feeling strong emotions such as burnout, frustration, imposter syndrome, etc., it’s often because there’s an internal ‘playlist’ on repeat that is shaping how they view their circumstances—not outside pressures.

Drumm says, “This playlist of thoughts is keeping them stuck. It’s become that soft background music they may be unable to hear, but it’s there, hijacking their emotional state.”

The internal playlist is typically rooted in childhood “wounds.” Drumm highlights common “playlist titles” she encounters in the executives and leaders she coaches, including, but not limited to:

  1. I am all alone
  2. I am not good enough
  3. I am trapped and confined

These subconscious messages are deeply embedded in the leader’s psyche, and it’s a challenge for most leaders to simply think or decide their way out of their playlist.

During my interview, I asked Drumm if playing music can dramatically change a mood. She quickly answered, “Yes,” so I shared a short story about a favorite song I listen to in the morning when I need a little boost to get me going. The song is Perfect Day by Hoku. It is the upbeat song that was played in the opening of ‘Legally Blonde’. The lyrics don’t match with my work ethic (Sun’s up/It’s a little after twelve/Make breakfast for myself/Leave the work for someone else), but the energy, lightheartedness and overall meaning make it a great song—at least for me.

Music can alter your mood, clear your head and change how you think over time. Drumm’s book outlines a strategy for using music to tap into your subconscious. Change the way you feel, and you shift your thought patterns. Her goal is to help leaders create a playlist that reflects the life they want to lead, understand how their current playlists came to be and learn how the power of music can unlock a leader’s true potential.

So, if you’re struggling to lead your team effectively, check for an internal playlist playing in the background, and then create a literal playlist to help rewire those beliefs. As Drumm says: your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution!

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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The Role of Instagram in Customer Experience

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The Role of Instagram in Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Part of what fuels a good customer experience is the content experience. That’s where companies and brands serve up content in numerous ways, which could include (but is not limited to) articles, blogs, text messages, newsletters, YouTube videos, podcasts, TikTok content, Tweets, LinkedIn posts and the subject of this article, Instagram. (Note: Check out this recent article about TikTok for business. TikTok has become the No. 1 visited social platform in the world, even bigger than Google!)

Customer behavior has dramatically changed as technology has allowed us to deliver content in numerous ways. There are plenty of platforms, such as the ones mentioned above, so which one should a brand focus on? The short answer is any platform you know your customers are on. That said, as new platforms evolve, some companies and brands aren’t quick to adopt them, although maybe they should be.

Who would have thought that Facebook would become a marketing machine for some brands? And it’s the same with other platforms. And that brings us to the topic—and platform—that is the focus of this article.

Instagram started out as a photo- and video-sharing social media platform in 2010 when Kevin Systrom (co-founder) uploaded a picture of a dog with the caption “test.” Over the past 12 years, it has evolved into much more, including an opportunity for brands to incorporate the platform into their content and marketing strategies.

A recent Passport-Photo.Online study surveyed more than 1,000 Instagram users to find out how the Instagram content experience is influencing their buying decisions. Here are some stats (followed by my commentary) to get you thinking about the power of Instagram and how this social media platform can work for you and your organization.

  • Instagram has 1.4 billion users each month, making it the fourth most popular social network. The potential to be seen is huge! Take advantage of another social media channel that gives you great exposure.

  • Ninety-two percent of Americans who use Instagram follow a business, with most following six to ten business accounts. The majority of Instagram users are Millennials and Gen-Z. According to a Hootsuite survey, ages 18-44 make up just under 88% of the Instagram audience. If that’s the age range of your target audience, this is a place for you to be.

  • Of those Instagram users who follow businesses, 26% typically visit business profiles every day. Another 27% visit business profiles every week. Daily or weekly visits from customers and potential customers are high. This is genuine marketing gold. Creating content that gets followers to come back again and again—daily or weekly—is something you don’t want to miss.

  • Seventy-one percent of Instagram users feel more connected to brands they follow on Instagram. Feeling connected to any company infers there is a sense of loyalty. Furthermore, 93% of people on Instagram are likely or very likely to buy from a business they feel connected to over a competitor. Some presence is better than no presence. Don’t miss the opportunity to engage and create a stronger connection with your customers.

  • Replying to the question, “Did Instagram ever inspire you to shop from businesses even when you weren’t looking to do so?,” 79% said, “Yes.” Do you need any more proof? Can you afford not to participate in an Instagram content strategy?

  • Eighty-nine percent of Instagrammers prefer short-form content (less than 1,000 words) over long-form content (1,000+) when it comes to text posts from brands specifically. Here is where the content marketing strategy comes into play. A 1,000-word post is still long. Consider experimenting with shorter posts, 400-500 words. Follow some of your favorite brands and notice their content strategy. Look for length, frequency, etc.

Content marketing is a powerful customer experience strategy. While it may cost to produce content, it costs nothing to post. And good content can be repurposed across all social media platforms. A good article on Instagram can work on LinkedIn. A few compelling sentences out of the article can become several tweets. One piece of content can be repurposed in numerous ways.

As you look at the stats and findings from the survey, you can immediately recognize the opportunity that Instagram offers. As the fourth most popular social network, this is a marketing channel you can’t afford to ignore.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Five Lessons from a Harvard Professor on Selling with Service

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Five Lessons from a Harvard Professor on Selling with Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Most people think that customer service is a department that handles complaints and problems. There may be a department or contact center that does, but customer service is more than that. It’s a philosophy that must be embraced by everyone in an organization, and that includes sales.

I had a chance to interview Frank Cespedes for an episode of Amazing Business Radio. Cespedes is a Harvard Business School professor and author of six books, including his latest, Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. One of his books, Aligning Strategy and Sales, was hailed by Forbes as “… perhaps the best sales book ever.” Here are five lessons he shared, with my commentary following, that should convince you that selling with service is today’s best sales strategy.

1. Sales and customer service merge together. Selling with service is all about what we do to enhance the sales experience. We make it easy, eliminate friction, stay in touch and make the customer feel (at least in the moment) that they are the most important customer we have.

2. Sales and customer support are increasingly intertwined. Typically, the sales team makes sales, and the customer support team delivers service. More and more, these two responsibilities (and departments) are connecting to create a seamless journey for the customer. During the “after experience,” as I like to call it, what is traditionally referred to as customer support continues the sales process with upsells, cross-sells and other tactics to generate revenue for the company.

3. The sales team is becoming a smaller part of the sales conversation. This doesn’t mean the sales team is any less important. However, the days of the salesperson being, as Cespedes says, “an organic, walking, talking version of product and price information” are gone. Customers are just one or two clicks away from getting the information and price they need to make decisions. We must recognize that to have a winning combination, online information, customer support and sales must work together.

4. People don’t want to be sold. They want to buy. This expression has been around for some time, but it’s never been more relevant than today. In the past, most customers would want to talk to a salesperson at the beginning of the sales process. Today, however, most prefer to start their buying journey with their own research. There’s great information to be found through a quick Google search. Before the customer ever talks to a salesperson, they may be close to a buying decision, if they haven’t already decided to do business with the company. The conversation with a salesperson becomes more of a formality.

5. The most important thing about selling is, and always has been, the buyer. Let’s never forget this commonsense, but very sage, advice. Customers get to decide how they want to buy. If they want to skip the formal sales process, let them do so. If they want to do their own research, give them the tools they need (a knowledge base on a website, videos on YouTube, etc.). If they want to talk directly to someone in the company, give them easy access to the right person. Let the customer buy from you the way they want to, which might be different from the way you’ve traditionally sold in the past.

With all the changes caused by the pandemic, supply chain issues, employment problems and a scary economy, we must be prepared to give our customers the journey they want, which is not always how we’ve done business in the past. Sales are not just sales. Customer support is not just customer support. Both fall inside the bigger concept of the customer experience. Heed Cespedes’ advice. Sell with service, and create the experience that makes customers want to buy from you.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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How to Use TikTok for Marketing Your Business

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How to Use TikTok for Marketing Your Business

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

If you think your business isn’t right for TikTok, you may want to think again. If you’re like most businesspeople, TikTok is not what you think. It’s not just 20- to 30-second videos of kids dancing, dogs doing tricks and influencers showing off the latest fashions. It’s become a serious contender for online/digital advertising dollars from all types of businesses, both B2C and B2B.

Most of you reading may still believe that the TikTok audience is made up of 20-somethings and younger. Again, it’s not what you think!

Dennis Yu is the CEO of BlitzMetrics and co-author of The Definitive Guide to TikTok Advertising. Yu’s company has placed more than a billion dollars’ worth of ads for its clients on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google and others, using ads and algorithms to drive sales. And now he’s focusing his efforts on TikTok.

I had the chance to interview Yu on Amazing Business Radio, where he said, “TikTok in 2022 is Facebook in 2007. It’s now the largest property on the Internet. It has more traffic than Google. It has a higher average watch time than Facebook or Netflix. People are spending more time watching short 15- to 30-second videos than two-hour-length feature films.”

Yes, TikTok has more traffic than Google! In 2021, TikTok was ranked No. 7 on social media platforms. In 2022, just one year later, it is now ranked No. 1. In Q1 2022, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the world.

According to the Search Engine Journal, TikTok is becoming a search engine. SEJ staffer, Matt Southern, posed the question, “What if people started using TikTok as a search engine?” In his research, he found people treating the app as a search provider, some even preferring it over Google. So, his question turned from “What if …?” to “What now …?”

The point is that as a business, you can’t ignore TikTok as a viable marketing and sales channel. TikTok does an amazing job of understanding what the user is watching and will quickly start serving up content that is exactly what the user is interested in. That means that as soon as a customer watches a company’s TikTok video, the platform will start serving up more of the company’s content for the user to enjoy.

I asked Yu how businesses can use TikTok. Knowing that the podcast focuses on customer service and experience, he related his first tip to digital customer care. Today’s customers turn to the Internet, specifically social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, to ask for help or complain to a company. And more and more, they are turning to TikTok. “Whether you are on TikTok or not, your customers are there talking about you on TikTok,” Yu said. “Remember the early days of Twitter when many brands said, ‘We’re not ready to be on Twitter?’ And then they think that somehow not being on Twitter means that people can’t talk about them.”

As more customers turn to TikTok for customer care, it’s imperative that you (your company or brand) be the one posting the answers, not other customers. Your company must control the narrative even if customers are sharing correct information. You must be visible on this extremely popular channel. And you don’t need to spend a lot of money doing so. Posting simple, non-professionally edited videos are just as effective as highly produced videos.

Going beyond customer service and experience, whatever your company does or sells, B2B or B2C, just create a short video with tips and ideas that would interest your customers. Shorter is better. Keep it under a minute—even 30 seconds. TikTok rewards you for videos that are watched in completion. The likelihood of someone watching a 30-second video to the end is much higher than a video that lasts four or five minutes. And while not necessary, if you can make it funny or entertaining, that’s always a bonus.

Yu’s advice is simple. Just create content. Then let TikTok’s algorithm do its job and find people (your customers and potential customers) interested in whatever you’re posting. Yu quoted the famous line by Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) from the movie Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” I’ll quote a famous shoe and apparel manufacturer, Nike: “Just do it!”

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Avoiding An Unamazing Customer Experience

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Avoiding An Unamazing Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

NICE isn’t just the right way to treat people. It’s the name of a software company that specializes in helping businesses improve their customer and agent experience. NICE has analyzed billions of customer interactions to better understand customer behavior. They know what customers like and dislike. They know what frustrates customer support agents and what gets them excited about helping their customers. But often, it’s not an agent experience that gets customers to come back.

A recent study from NICE found that 81% of consumers today start with a digital channel when they have a question, a need or want to buy something. They don’t call the company. They go to a website, YouTube, Google search, etc. They want and expect the companies and brands they do business with to have answers readily available. What they don’t want is to call a company, be placed on hold for what seems like an unreasonable period of time, talk to a rep who transfers them to another rep, etc., etc.

I recently interviewed Laura Bassett, Vice President of Product Marketing at NICE, and had a fascinating conversation about how customers’ expectations are changing. She said many experiences are unamazing. They simply disappoint, which doesn’t give a customer the incentive to come back for more. Bassett said NICE’s mission is to rid the world of unamazing customer experiences. Here are some of the nuggets of wisdom Bassett shared on how to do exactly that.

1. Customer experience is the entire journey.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that customer experience is customer support. It’s much more than that. While customer support is part of the experience, it really starts when a customer initiates a Google search, finds your company and interacts with your website. The service begins with how easy it is to do business with you regardless of where they are in the customer journey.

2. Customer experience involves every person in the business.

Just as customer experience includes the customer’s entire journey—not just when they reach out for customer support—it also involves every employee. If you aren’t dealing directly with a customer, you support someone who is or is part of the process that will impact the experience. Even people behind the scenes, who never interact with the customer, have impact on the experience. Everyone must understand their role and contribution to the customer experience.

3. Proactive communication is essential to the customer experience.

Companies know many of the questions that customers ask. So, why not be proactive about giving customers information before they have to make the effort to get answers? Bassett said, “Companies should understand and predict when they can answer a question before customers even realize they have it.”

4. Walk in your customer’s shoes.

This is an old expression, yet its meaning is timeless. You must understand what the customer is going through at every step of the journey. Then compare it to the experience you would want. When designing an experience that makes customers want to come back, think about what would make you come back. Is the experience your customers receive different than what you want?

5. Agents are consumers too.

Their expectations have accelerated. They compare what they should be able to deliver to what they experience with other businesses. When they have an amazing experience with another company, they want to repeat that experience for their own customers. They must be equipped with the tools to deliver what they consider to be an amazing experience.

6. Make your customer support agents knowledgeable.

This is a great follow-up to No. 5. Help them understand that they don’t have to follow a script when it is unnecessary. They don’t want to feel held back. They don’t want to feel over-managed or under-enabled. After you hire good people and train them well, you should empower them to do their job. Bassett said, “Turn agents into customer service executives who can really own that experience.”

7. Amazing customer service doesn’t need to have fireworks.

Seamless and simple wins every time. This is the perfect concept to close out this article. Nothing shared in this article is rocket science. It’s common sense. It’s what every customer wants. To be amazing, you don’t have to go over the top and WOW the customer with the most incredible service they have ever experienced. Delivering the simple and seamless actually creates the WOW factor so many businesses believe is unattainable. Just be easy. Eliminate friction. Easy and seamless isn’t that hard—and for customers, it’s the opposite of unamazing!

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Three Ways Technology Improves the Retail Customer Experience

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Three Ways Technology Improves the Retail Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

E-commerce hasn’t killed retail—it’s just transformed it.

For years we’ve been hearing that retail is dead, and the rash of store closures in cities across the country would seem to confirm the trend. The local mall no longer serves as a de facto community hub, if it’s even stayed open at all.

Given what we think we know, would it surprise you to learn that retail sales in 2021 were actually up more than 10% over the previous year, topping $4.44 trillion? Although fears of recession loom, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that both personal income and consumer spending continued to rise in June. And while e-commerce may be an unstoppable force, much of this consumer spending is still happening in brick-and-mortar stores.

That said, there’s no question that the retail experience is changing—and must continue to change. E-commerce growth and tech developments, in general, have transformed customer expectations. I always advise my clients to meet customers where they are, and where retail shoppers are right now is standing in an aisle, smartphone in hand, comparing prices and reading online reviews. Technology has become an integral part of the retail experience, and retailers would be fools to ignore that.

Luckily, they aren’t fools. Whether saving their customers time or offering them unique experiences, retailers are incorporating technology to improve the customer experience. Here are three ways they’re doing it:

1. Smart Screens Digitize the In-Store Experience – You probably remember the first time you went to fill your soda cup at your favorite fast-casual spot and found yourself facing a dizzying digital array of fountain soda choices. Smart screens are on the march, and they’re not just in restaurants anymore.

Clothing retailers are using touchscreens to help customers build their wardrobes, while furniture stores use similar tech to let shoppers design rooms in their homes. Smart screens can offer retail customers what they love about online shopping—plentiful product information, eye-catching photos and on-the-spot promotions—in an in-store setting.

Consider the cooler aisle at Walgreens, where high-resolution smart screens from Cooler Screens have transformed the drugstore chain’s fridge and freezer doors. Shoppers no longer have to brave an icy blast—they can see the beverages and frozen treats inside at a glance without even opening the door. Plus, they can get calorie counts and take advantage of instant deals—and soon will also see customer ratings and reviews.

Data showed that 90% of Walgreens customers prefer the new smart screen cooler doors to the traditional kind. For retailers looking to bridge the online/in-store gap, smart screens present the opportunity to both accomplish some point-of-sale digital marketing and enhance the customer experience.

2. Click-and-Collect Services Save Time – Another way retailers are meeting their customers’ hybrid shopping expectations is by beefing up their click-and-collect capabilities. Buying items online and picking them up in person offers consumers the best of both shopping worlds. They can browse a store’s product selection on their desktop or phone, and once their order is assembled, there’s no wait or shipping expense. Curbside pickup goes one better by allowing people to order products online and pick them up without stepping foot in the store.

I admit it’s not rocket science, but I believe that high-quality customer service depends on listening to what customers want, and many of them clearly value this hassle-free shopping experience. The 2022 Click-and-Collect Forecast shows that U.S. buyers will spend $95.87 billion via click-and-collect this year, a 19.4% increase over 2021. Retailers that expand their click-and-collect offerings stand to increase revenue by giving customers more of what they want.

Enabling this experience requires an up-to-date e-commerce website that’s optimized for mobile. Furthermore, retailers will need to achieve seamless integration between their online shopping platforms and on-the-ground operations. Many are already adapting by adding more parking spaces for click-and-collect customers and hiring more personal shoppers to gather orders.

3. Self-Service Improves Convenience – Another thing the e-commerce revolution has changed is customers’ expectations of self-service. From product page to shopping cart to checkout, the typical online shopping experience is a solo affair. While a retail store offers the possibility of assistance from a real person, many shoppers would rather take care of themselves. Smart retailers are using tech to let them.

Digital self-service kiosks help in-store shoppers get their bearings, look up product information, scan prices and see whether the item they want is in stock—and order it on the spot if it’s not. Retailers’ mobile apps enable customers to locate products, read reviews, compare prices and pounce on in-store discounts. By offering the right tech assistance, retailers give their customers a sense of control.

When customers think of self-service, self-checkout is usually the first thing that comes to mind, but even that is evolving. Going beyond the usual “Scan your first item and put it in the bag,” Amazon has launched fully autonomous checkouts. In its Amazon Go stores, customers scan a barcode going in and get charged electronically for purchased items as they leave. Instead of making customers do more work, Amazon employs its “Just Walk Out” technology to make customers’ lives easier and the retail experience friction-free.

Technology has greatly impacted people’s lives, and the retail setting is no exception. Retailers that use tech to improve the customer experience will see increased profit and customer satisfaction. Research has shown that experiences increase happiness more than things, so retailers that can provide both are setting themselves up for success.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Five Ways Discomfort Could Lead to Your Next Breakthrough

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Five Ways Discomfort Could Lead to Your Next Breakthrough

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

The disclaimer on investments is that “past performance is not an indicator of future results.” In other words, don’t get too comfortable with the past. All you have to do is look at the stock performance through last year (2021) compared to this year’s performance to know this is true.

Yet when it comes to people, the opposite is often true. Past performance is often an indicator of future results. Most people get comfortable and stay where they feel safe. But, what if you were willing to be uncomfortable? What if you were willing to go against the status quo, learn something new, regardless of difficulty, and take more risks? How would you feel living in a state of discomfort?

Sterling Hawkins, author of Hunting Discomfort: How to Get Breakthrough Results in Life and Business No Matter What, shares how successful people thrive on discomfort. These are the people whose past performance won’t always indicate what to expect in the future. They thrive on risk, stepping out of their comfort zones, and are fueled by something new and different.

In the book, Hawkins teaches his five-step process that produces results:

1. Expand Your Reality: Just because you were taught that something should be a certain way doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Some might call this “thinking outside the box.” It’s shattering paradigms and challenging the status quo.

This reminds me of the story that the late, great Zig Ziglar used to tell about a family dinner that included four generations. As the dinner was being prepared, a little girl asked her mom, “Why do you cut off the end of the roast before you cook it?” Mom said, “That’s the way your grandmother taught me to cook the roast.”

The little girl then went to her grandmother and asked, “Grandma, why do you cut the end of the roast off before you cook it?” Grandma said, “That’s the way your great-grandmother taught me to cook the roast.”

The little girl then went over to her great-grandmother and asked, “Great Grandma, why do you cut the end of the roast off before you cook it?” Great Grandma said, “A long time ago, the ovens weren’t as big as they are today. We had to cut the end off for the roast to fit into the oven.”

Just because we’ve always done something one way doesn’t mean we should keep doing it that way. Expanding your reality is just looking beyond the usual and ordinary.

2. Get a Tattoo: Hawkins believes you should commit so deeply to something that you’re willing to have it tattooed onto your body. You may disagree, but you do get the point. This is about commitment. The tattoo is a metaphor. You don’t really need to permanently put your feelings on your body, but consider this …

Scott Ginsberg is known as The Nametag Guy. While in college, he found that more people would talk to him if he wore a nametag. It made him approachable. He wrote a speech and several books about how to be more approachable. He committed to wearing a name tag every day. After five years, he made the ultimate commitment to his idea. He had the name tag tattooed onto his chest. That’s commitment!

3. Build a Street Gang: Surround yourself with people who will not only support you but also hold you accountable for your potential. According to Hawkins, having a trusted accountability partner can increase the likelihood of your success by up to 95%!

4. Flip It: The book covers a process for not just overcoming problems or obstacles, but instead using them to your advantage. To Flip It isn’t about seeing the reverse. It’s more about seeing the problem or challenge from a different perspective, starting with a complete understanding of the problem, obstacle, challenge or goal.

Hawkins quotes inventor Charles Kettering who once said, “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” Before you can solve a problem, you must first understand it. Clarity is paramount. You must be sure that the problem is not confused with the symptom. The problem becomes a challenge, and you must be clear about what impact solving that problem will mean to you or your organization. Most often, there is a larger purpose to the challenge. What’s the true end goal? For example, you may want to run a 10K race, but the larger vision is to be in good enough shape to run it.

5. Surrender: This isn’t about giving up. Instead, it’s about acceptance. Embrace inevitability and unpredictability. Be flexible and pivot when necessary. Sometimes you’ll find a breakthrough in the middle of the darkest problems. During the pandemic of the past two years, when faced with huge obstacles, some companies and brands not only survived but also found ways to thrive. The same is true for people.

We are in a world where change is happening at a faster pace than ever. We are faced with opportunities that are often disguised as problems and challenges. Hunting for the discomfort in your life and seizing it as the chance to have a breakthrough is what successful people do.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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6 Ways to Create Trust with Your Employees

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6 Ways to Create Trust with Your Employees

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Last week I wrote an article, 4 Ways to Create Trust with Your Customers. I don’t think anyone would argue (and the stats prove it) that a customer who trusts you is more likely to do more business with you. After all, why would they want to risk doing business elsewhere?

Well, it’s the same for employees. With so many employment issues today, it’s more important than ever to get and keep good employees. One of the crucial areas that can drive employee retention is trust. Just like customers, if employees don’t trust you, they may eventually leave for a competitor. And in the world of employee retention, a competitor is any other company that offers employment opportunities.

With that in mind, here are six ways to build trust with your employees.

1. Listen to your employees. Ask them for feedback. Frontline employees often have a better opportunity to know what customers think and say about you than anyone else in the company. Listen to them. And many employees have suggestions about processes and systems that can be improved. Creating an easy way for employees to share feedback and make suggestions can be a powerful way to improve the experience—for both customers and the employees themselves.

2. Act on the feedback and insights employees share with you. If you ask your employees for their feedback and insights and do nothing with it, employees eventually resent that they took the time to offer up their ideas and suggestions. And at some point, they will see it as a futile effort and waste of time, even if what they share with you is important. Employees often provide even more valuable feedback than customers. So, even if you choose not to use their suggestions, at least acknowledge their effort, express appreciation and let them know why.

3. Make sure leadership and management are accessible. If there is a metaphorical wall between employees and leadership, employees will always feel like they are on the outside. And if they feel like outsiders, any organization that may make them feel more included and appreciated could be the next place your employee—who you thought was happy—ends up working. There are different ways to go about this. An open-door policy is not always realistic. As an alternative, consider having “office hours”—a special time each week when employees can make an appointment. The point is that it needs to be easy for employees to connect with their managers, supervisors, and leadership.

4. Get out of the office and mingle with “the people.” If the only time employees see management or leadership is when there are problems, then the sight of them will create a level of fear and tension. Years ago, I read Tom Peter’s strategy he referred to as MBWA, Management by Wandering Around. The idea is that employees would not fear the sight of management, because they become used to seeing their bosses and leaders walking around. If a manager shows up just to point out problems or criticize, employees will always have concern whenever they see a manager or leader walking anywhere near them. The goal is to achieve trust, not fear.

5. Trust employees to do the jobs you hired them to do. If you hire good people and train them well, let them do their jobs. If employees feel like they are always being watched, scrutinized for their work and not being allowed to make the decisions you hired them to make, they will feel unfulfilled and frustrated. This is “Empowerment 101.”

6. Treat employees the way you want the customer to be treated. I refer to this as The Employee Golden Rule. You can’t expect employees to behave toward customers and each other in a way that’s different—as in better—than the way they are treated by their managers and leaders. Your actions and attitude toward your employees must be congruent with how you want them to treat your customers. You can’t invite them to your office, yell at them and then them, “Now go out there and be nice to our customers.”

What’s happening on the inside of the organization is felt on the outside by customers. To create the best customer experience, you must create a similar employee experience, if not even better. While there are many components that go into creating a great culture for an organization, trust is one of the essentials. Without it, you can’t expect to get and keep your best employees.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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4 Ways to Create Trust with Your Customers

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4 Ways to Create Trust with Your Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What brands do you trust the most? And why? There are certain products and companies that seem to own the trust of their customers. It stems from product quality, reliability, managing expectations, good customer service and, perhaps most importantly, consistency.

Keep in mind that consistency is related to all of the attributes mentioned. A consistently bad experience and poor quality, while still consistent, is the opposite of what you’re trying to create. And inconsistency is almost as bad. A great experience one day followed by an average or poor experience will cause customers to question what the next experience is going to be. A pattern of inconsistency kills confidence and trust.

Let’s break it down:

1. Quality and Reliability: A product or service must do what it’s supposed to do. When you think of the most successful brands, you trust them because you know what you’re going to get. That comes from confidence in the product and/or the customer service. If that confidence is broken, it can take a long time to rebuild trust—if the customer even chooses to give the company or brand another chance. For example, a popular restaurant chain had an E. coli outbreak. Even with a stellar reputation, it took years to regain the trust of its customers.

2. Customer Experience: Customer service must be easily available. Customer service isn’t a department. The best companies know that serving the customer is more than reacting to problems, answering questions and resolving complaints. It’s the way customers are treated throughout their entire journey with a company or brand.

And while you may want to have a 100% flawless experience in which the customer never has to reach out, it’s impossible. Every company is going to have problems. In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos was famous for saying that Amazon should be so good that it didn’t need a customer support department. Maybe it was that good, but when the product left the warehouse a third party took over the shipping. And if the package was lost in transit, who would the customer blame? To the customer, it was Amazon’s fault. So, Amazon needed a support center, even for problems that weren’t its fault.

It’s not if there will ever be a customer service issue, it’s when. The best organizations recognize the need for an excellent experience combined with excellent customer support, when needed.

3. Managing Expectations: You don’t have to WOW a customer to get them to say, “Wow.” When people describe a “Wow” experience, it’s typically over-the-top. The problem is that you can’t always be over the top. The opportunities to be over-the-top or go above and beyond happen when there are special situations, such as a problem that is handled so well that the customer says, “Wow!”

The key is to not worry about trying to be over-the-top with every interaction, but to be just a little above average. It is consistent and predictable above-average experiences—even just a tiny bit above average—that make customers say, “Wow!” Speaking of consistent and predictable, we move on to the next attribute …

4. Consistency: Anything less than a consistent experience erodes trust. Consistency is where “the rubber meets the road.” As just mentioned, it is the consistent and predictable above-average experience that gets customers to say, “Wow!” What gets them to that point is when they say, “They are always so helpful … always so knowledgeable … they always respond quickly. …” It’s the word always followed by a positive comment. Often, those comments are basic expectations. Shouldn’t all employees be helpful, knowledgeable and respond quickly? Of course. Just meeting a customer’s expectations, with maybe a more positive attitude, will fuel the experience to be better than average. Consistency creates trust. Anything less erodes it!

Think of the brands you trust and why. The product does what it’s supposed to and meets your expectations. The experience is consistent, and the customer service is great. And to emphasize just how important the customer service part of this is, our 2022 customer service research found that 83% of customers trusted a company or brand more if it provided an excellent customer service experience.

If all of this seems like common sense, it is. Unfortunately, common sense is not always so common. So, be a little uncommon. Deliver quality and reliability, manage expectations and create a consistent and predictable experience that gets customers to say, “I’ll be back.”

This article originally appeared on Forbes

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