Have you ever walked into a restaurant, only to be met with indifferent waiters and lackluster service? Or tried to contact a business, only to be left on hold for what feels like an eternity? We’ve all been there, and it’s a frustrating experience that can leave a sour taste in our mouths. But for businesses, it’s more than just a frustrating encounter – it’s a slow death. Ignoring the customer experience is a surefire way to lose customers and damage your brand’s reputation. On the flip side, successful businesses know that treating the customer as king is the secret to their success Are you ready to turn your business into a customer experience powerhouse? Tune in to today’s episode of Bella in Your Business: Pet Industry Business Podcast, where I will spill the tea on seven insider tips to improve your customer experience game. Drawing from my own experience, I’ll share practical advice on managing client expectations, streamlining communication, and building trust. From clear communication to client-centered onboarding, I’ll reveal the keys to success that will take your business to the next level. Don’t miss out – listen now and start wowing your customers today! Let’s dive in!
Topics Discussed and Key Points
- Seven Tips for Businesses to improve their customer experience
- Simplifying the communication process with clients
- Retaining clients and employees by perfecting onboarding methods.
- How to cultivate a positive attitude and transparent culture in business.
- Strengthening trust and achieving success in business
- The importance of supporting and empowering staff
- Importance of Community
Timestamps
[01:23] Introduction, customer experience
[02:49] Asking the right questions
[03:57] Let clients know what the next steps are
[05:02] Document everything
[04:00] Manage expectations
[06:51] Streamline communication
[08:19] Back up your staff
[09:47] Moving to solutions
[13:02] This month on the Mastermind
[14:26] Benefits of a supportive community
Notable Quotes
[00:04:27] “You need to let the clients know what the next step is. By doing this, by managing people’s expectations, what you do is they gain trust in you.” [00:04:34]
[00:09:21] “Sometimes it’s better to hand it off to the staff and through that, they get to see that you trust them, that you value their opinion, that you realize that they’re a valuable member of your team. And all of this is going to help solidify your company culture.” [00:09:38]
[00:09:44] “Always when you have these conflicts, you want to be moving towards solutions, not talking about the problem or playing the blame game or nitpicking who did what.” [00:09:54]
[00:10:35] “You also need to go through situations to provide a beautiful experience for people. That means always moving to solutions. It means backing up your staff. It means setting expectations. It means having streamlined communication. It means letting the buyer know what to expect, and what your process is. It means asking the right questions.” [00:10:57]
[00:11:31] “Onboarding is where a lot of people lose a client. Onboarding either takes too long. There are too many steps. There are too many stops in the sales process. You need to be looking at this from a client-centered focus, not from yours, not from your ego.”[00:11:48]
Links
Resources
- Podcast: Bella in Your Business: Pet Industry Business Podcast
- Join Mastermind
- Email Bella: bella@jumpconsulting.net
- Sign up for a 20 mins call
Connect with Bella
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Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Bella in your business. My name is Bella Vasta. Today we’ve got quite the show for you. We’re drawing on some of the goodness that is happening right now in the mastermind in May 2023. We are talking all about customer experience. And as our previous guests Eddie Cristian describe to us customer experience is being on the offense and customer, and customer service is being on the defense, it was cool. If you’re a mastermind member, you want to go check that out. But first, before we get into the show, I want to do a major shout-out to some of you. I’ve been inviting you guys to call me. And like let’s set up a call for the free 20 Minute Calls at jumpconsulting.net/20. And I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with a bunch of you. Through that, I learned that you’re not just listening to me while you’re walking dogs driving, or folding laundry. Like I usually say, Leah, is getting her Bella in your business while she’s in the shower, which is amazing. Because she’s just she’s getting it however she can get it. I talked to Kristen and Kristen was digging ditches in her backyard and she had her earbuds in so that she didn’t have to remember that she was doing a task that she didn’t like, you guys, I love it. I love hearing where you’re listening and what you’re doing. So keep that coming shoot me an email, Bella@jumpconsulting.net.
Well, today we’re gonna get into some lessons learned. We recently at jump consulting redesigned our website and it was a total train wreck. For any of you who have ever designed websites, you can’t expect it not to always go completely smooth, because there’s just too much stuff with tech that you cannot foresee. And that’s okay, that’s expected. What isn’t expected is when you have one of the most worst horrible experiences with a company. And things get sideways, there is just hostility, there is a lack of communication, there is blaming, and there is a lack of professionalism. And if you’re in the mastermind, you know what I’m talking about, because we talked about it in depth there. But today, I’m going to use that experience. And I’m working to make out lemonades. We’re going to make lemonade out of these lemons, I am going to 1234567 we have seven different things that I want you to remember when you are doing customer experience and customer service. Because this is on both ends of it. It is the defensive end and the offensive end. And when you encounter situations where the company or, or your clients, I want you to remember these lessons that we learned.
So the very first thing that any business should do is they should ask really good questions and the right questions. If you guys have downloaded, my sales class, my phone script class that’s on the website, it’s only $79. We talk a lot about that during that discovery phase. That’s what we’re asking all the questions where we get to understand the client’s pain points, their specific pain points. And knowing this stuff, and doing the investigation, asking the right kind of questions will deter you from making mistakes in the future. Now, when it comes to the website example, we had two websites that were emerging, and for the lack of communication or lack of questions, the clients aren’t going to know the right information to tell you that’s why they’re hiring you. They’re the expert. As the expert, you need to know things like how does your dog react around other dogs? How does your dog react when people they don’t know come through the front door? All of these are important things to ask and to know. But at the right time during the onboarding process.
The next part about that kind of coincides very easily with that is to let your clients know what the next steps are to manage their expectations. What do I mean by this? Oftentimes, I see pet sitters fail at this because people will fill out a form on their website. And then crickets, the client has no idea if they got the form, and they have no idea when they’re going to contact them back. And one of those will reach back to you in 24 to 48 hours is not what I’m talking about either. That is drastically hurting your sales process. But you need to know what the mean you need to let the clients know what the next step is. By doing this and by managing people’s expectations, what you do is they gain trust in you, they start to know that they can follow your lead and that you truly are the expert, and that all of the voices in their heads can subside. Also, if they know what to expect their anxiety will go down and they also know what steps of the process are coming up and where things are going to be appropriate. So definitely let your clients know what the next steps are.
The other thing I would do if you or ever in a situation with a contractor is document everything. Now, you might think that email is enough, and it’s a really good start. But sometimes email threads even get really out of hand. Email is for email, it is like a full-on conversation, it’s a document, it’s a letter back and forth. Okay? It is not a text chat, it is not something for one-word answers or one-sentence answers, and like 26 threads deep, that is not efficient communication with your clients. That is not efficient communication with your staff or inter staff period. Emails, and should be clear, concise, have good subject lines, the subject lines should change as it goes through. All of this stuff is going to help give your clients a better experience when they want to look at or recall any kind of information that they might need. When they have clear subject lines, it’s easy to search for also internally inside of your own business. So you want to make sure that you have clear emails, clear communication, and that everything is documented, so that no one can ever really come back at you and say, Well, you promised this or you said this, or you can hold someone else accountable to it.
A good example of this in the pet industry and something I used to use in my former business before I sold it was telling people I could be inside my client system at that time. And someone emails me or calls me and they’re like, hey, Fidos food is changing from one cup to two cups. Okay, well, I want to make sure that this actually happens. So our policy is that you have to update it because I don’t want to make any mistakes, or forget or anything like that to the client. It’s the client’s responsibility for that documentation of, you know, that specific thing. The next thing is to streamline communication. And I just was talking about this with one of my clients today on a coaching call. She had Grasshopper for text messaging, she had precise pet care for journals, they had emails, and I think they had slacked, no, there was something else for clients. And it was out of control. It was causing her so many extra hours of work. And you had to check for places to make sure that you didn’t make miss the message. Or you had to check for places to find out where the answer was because you didn’t remember where the answer was. Y’all want to streamline communication, less is more, I always say that this is dog walking and pet setting. It’s not rocket science. And that is not meant to minimize anything that we do in our industry. But we want to make things streamlined, we want to have one place to go. If you have software, where you have journals or client communication and app, keep everything in there, reserve email for your internal team, or reserve email for emergencies. But you know, you have to train your clients, you have to let them again, back to the other the first point, you got to let them know what to expect, how to communicate with you, and how to get the fastest response. By doing this, you’re going to save time, which is money. And you’re also going to increase your client’s happiness with you and decrease their anxiety because they too aren’t going to have to go around to 500 different places to figure out where you responded to them.
All right. The next one is, um, backup your staff. In situations where there are tough things, you know, we’re doing a lot of situational questions in the mastermind this month, as we deal with customer experience, what would you do in this situation, Howard the different ways that we could solve this really creative thinking and creating processes from them, I want you to always back up your staff. Now, of course, if they did something terrible, that’s an exception to the rule. But you never want to come at your staff like, you know, accusatory until you gather the evidence and the facts from both sides and understand what’s going on. You want to know that you want them to know that you empower them. I also want you to think about like using your staff, when you can’t do it anymore. When you can’t do it anymore, or you are too emotional, or maybe you’re going through something in life, and you just have to tap out or delegate. Sometimes it’s better to hand it off to the staff and through that. They get to see that you trust them, that you value their opinion that you realize that there is a valuable member of your team. And all of this is going to help solidify your company culture is going to add to it. It’s going to build trust, it’s going to be a beautiful thing. And then always when you have these conflicts, you want to be moving towards solutions, not talking about the problem or playing the blame game, or nitpicking who did what?
And all of this stuff, unfortunately, happened while we were In the process of trying to redesign our website, I have never encountered such an unprofessional company in my life. And these lessons come from that, I had to tap myself out and tap my admin assistant in to head up the project because it was becoming such a hostile environment that we had to keep going through it. Because of the stage we were in, we had to get to the finish line. And, and she was quite willing and capable to jump in, she was amazing. And, you know, I think as a leader, you need to know that, but you also need to go through situations to provide a beautiful experience for people. That means always moving to solutions. It means backing up your staff, it means setting expectations. It means having streamline communication, it means letting the buyer know what to expect what your process is, it means asking the right questions you have to discover, and getting all of the information before you start that engagement so that you know what they’re going to do. And you know what you’re going to do and you know exactly what to expect of each other. These are all things that I want you to think about. If you’re if you can improve on it anytime in your business, or maybe you’re going through something right now, where you want to improve communications, you want to improve the experience of the customer.
Onboarding is something where you can see a lot of this happening. Onboarding is where a lot of people lose the client. Onboarding either takes too long, there are too many steps, or there are too many stops in the sales process. You need to be looking at this from a client-centered focus, not from yours, not from your ego, put your ego aside, there is no room for ego in this. I want you guys to think about how can you create great customers experience customer experience, I’m trying my best to put this all in the most positive light. But they were all glaringly obvious things to me that I was so enlightened, to remember that not everybody knows this. And I’m sure much most of my jumpers know all of this. But I think that there’s always a tidbit that you can pick up and you can say we could do this better. What can you do better? In your business? Can you streamline things better? Can you explain to your customers the expectation, the phone script class talks a lot about that not only does it do the questions, but it also tells the customer it outlines Okay, guys, this is what you can expect from me. And as I speak of this, I’m also reminded that this is very applicable to employees as well. Your onboarding process for employees. How great is that? Like? How long is it? How convoluted is it? How easy is it? I want you guys to think about how can you improve your customer experience?
Now, this month in the mastermind, we did have Eddie Christian come in. He’s a former MLB player as well as the VP now for Resi, which is kind of like Open Table in American Express. And he came in so laser sharp and dropped so many nuggets for us. And I’m not exaggerating. It was it was beautiful. And then we also had Jay Baer come in. And Jay Baer is an absolute expert as well. When it comes in we got two experts this month it was it was so exciting and enlightening. Our members loved it. We also gave them a worksheet that they could use with their staff or their internal their their their scenario-based questions. What would we do in this scenario? How would we solve it? And it provides it provided a lot of great discussions internally within the companies. So there are a lot of really great things that someone told me today too, that I enjoyed hearing. One of our members who I recently did an intensive with in Seattle, we kind of did like our follow-up call. And she said she named three people in the mastermind. And she said she was so she felt so supported. Because other members were struggling with the same thing she was or not maybe struggling but overcoming they were working on overcoming. And guys, I can’t tell you how important it is to have a community. The devil is in isolation. The devil wants to isolate everybody, or whatever it is that you call it, and your own beliefs and you can’t isolate yourself. That’s where depression starts. That’s where the negative thinking starts. And that’s where you just get in this swirl on this conundrum inside of your head. And it is it is the killer of entrepreneurship. Like it is. You got to get out of your head. You got to have a team of people around you supporting you Loving you cheering you on picking you up when you’re down.
And knowing you For the long term, there are long-term relationships in the mastermind through the accountability partners through people just helping each other. And I encourage you if you’re trying to figure out how do I get involved with a jump, that’s one of the very first starts, get in there, understand the culture of junk consulting, understand the things that I say on this podcast all the time, that I believe that your business should be an asset, you should not be a slave to it, you should have a social life, if should you choose, you should have time and financial freedom, you should have a savings account and a business savings account, you should be able to go on vacation and spend the holidays with your friends and family. And you should be able to have a steady flow of clients and customers. I know that might sound like a magical unicorn to some of you out there. And I get it because I’ve been exactly where you are. I’ve been those nights where I used to lay awake at night and think oh my gosh, if I had just one person, you know, call in sick or tell me, they didn’t want to work for me anymore, I’d be screwed. I remember how that feels. I also know systematically how to solve it. And I know that systematically solving it is not the problem. It’s always your mindset. And the best thing to do is to water your mindset on a daily and weekly basis.
So I invite you to come to the mastermind jump consulting dotnet forward slash mastermind. Come join us. But as I close here, I want you to think about how can you keep improving your customer experience and be on the offensive before there’s a problem. How can you be successful in this? Which of these tips of ask the right questions, and letting clients know what the next steps are? documenting everything streamlines communication, and expectations, backing up your staff moving to solutions. Which of those can you do? I just thought of one more last example that I’m going to send or I’m gonna give to you before we go. And that is under the documentation, everything that also looks like, hey, Molly, I’m so glad that we had that phone call today I was just following up in writing, to make sure we’re on the same page, or just following up in writing so that when I’ve got too much for following around in my head, I still have this to fall back on. Oh, and you just reiterate what you said you know, I got your message. I understand XYZ and ABC will happen. Those are great ways that you can also provide good documentation. Good trust building, because it’s all in writing. You guys this has been another episode of Bella in your business. Please like and subscribe and share with your friends. And don’t forget to reach out if you want to, you know get on a call with me. I’d love to meet you. jumpconsulting.net/20 By now
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