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In this episode of Customer Service Secrets, Blake Morgan joins Gabe Larsen to discuss the importance of focusing on the customer and its role in attracting more customers. For the last 12 years, Blake has been in the customer service industry as either a practitioner or thought leader. She got her start as a customer service executive at Intel and for the past 5 years she has been a keynote speaker. Blake is dedicated to helping prepare businesses for the modern customer and helping them become the companies of the future. She is also the author of The Customer of the Future and hosts her own podcast titled “The Modern Customer.” Listen to the full episode below.
The Customer and Company of the Future
Times are changing very quickly and the customer service industry is not immune. The modern customers are in an interesting situation because they are being exposed to a variety of service experiences and not all of them are good. So what exactly should we expect from the company of the future? Blake states, “The company of the future has a soul. The company of the future is thoughtful. They’re thinking about more than just how much money they’re making the next quarter. They’re looking at the implications their behaviour has on not just the customer, but the employee, the community, the environment. They’re thinking about innovation as a core piece of their competitive strategy.” If these are the characteristics of future companies, how does your company compare?
Why This Change is Slow
There is a very pressing need for change, but it is happening at a much slower pace than what is needed. Blake suggests that this is happening because of the nature of CEOs and their short time investments in companies along with the need to change culture. Changing a company’s culture and being willing to make a long term investment into customer experience isn’t always appealing and is not a quick fix. One of the elements of Blake’s philosophies is the psychological aspect of customer service. This involves the mindset and the culture. If CEOs were willing to invest more time, be more patient and persistent, psychological and cultural changes would occur in a company. Blake recalls, “Customer experience has to permeate through the culture of the company. It has to be in the fabric, in the mission, the values, the way people talk. We’ve got to have that humble, open culture. It’s not easy to simply replicate what somebody else does, especially for big companies that have toxic cultures or have cultures where things move very slowly and change is hard. I think it’s extremely difficult for these companies to change the culture, which is the biggest piece.” Making these changes is a slow process normally, but Blake is optimistic that it will speed up as companies apply the principles in her book and invest more fully in customer experience.
What it Takes for a Company to Stand Out
In the middle of their discussion, Gabe asked a simple, yet powerful question, “Why does CX matter?” Blake’s response is that in today’s world, there is so much product competition that simply having a good idea isn’t enough. She further explains that by excelling in the customer service and customer experience department, companies can manifest their value. It’s important for companies to take the time to care about people and recognise the humanity of the customer. As Blake so eloquently describes, “In a time where many of our products and services are the same, customer experience is the only way to stand out. Our products and services have become commodities or simply competing on price. And maybe that in the short term, but in the long term we want to be relevant. We have to compete on experience on how we make people feel… Thoughtfulness is truly a competitive advantage today.” Quality customer service and experience is essential for the companies of the future and the customers of the future demand nothing less.
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Full Episode Transcript:
The Customer in the Future with Blake Morgan
Intro Voice: (00:04)
You’re listening to the Customer Service Secrets Podcast by Kustomer.
Gabe Larsen: (00:11)
Hi, welcome everybody to today’s show. I’m excited to get going. We’re going to be talking about the future of the customer or the customer being the future. To do that, we brought on Blake Morgan. She is a customer experience expert. She does keynote speaking. She also happens to have a new book coming out called “The Customer of the Future.” It talks about 10 guiding principles that we’ll dive on to just a little bit today. So Blake, thanks for joining. How are you?
Blake Morgan: (00:39)
Hi. Good, thank you. Thanks for having me on your podcast. I love podcasting. I have my own podcasts, so —
Gabe Larsen: (00:46)
That’s right. Can you tell us, maybe add that in, but tell us a little more about you and some of the fun things you do in your day to day.
Blake Morgan: (00:57)
Well, what’s super fun now is I am 29 weeks pregnant, so I’m a mom.
Gabe Larsen: (01:05)
It’s your first?
Blake Morgan: (01:05)
It’s my second.
Gabe Larsen: (01:08)
Okay, congratulations.
Blake Morgan: (01:09)
Yeah. So you asked me what’s fun. So I guess that’s like fun. That’s fun news. I also have two dogs. They’re fun as well. And a husband. The one thing I do is I bring my message that if you focus on the customer, if you make people’s lives easier and better, you will always attract customers to you. And that’s the basic message that I bring all around the world, whether it’s on a stage, on my podcast “The Modern Customer,” on my Forbes column. It’s a simple human message that we’ve gotten too far away from treating people like wallets. And we have to be real about how we are building and designing experiences for other people and how do we make them feel?
Blake Morgan: (01:57)
And now feelings are a business metric. And that’s really exciting for people like me. For over 12 years I’ve been telling stories about why how you make people feel matters. And now, businesses are starting to draw the correlation between, oh gosh, we’re making people feel like junk. And I can see our market share shrinking. Oh, it makes sense. So it’s been a pleasure to be able to do this job and I’ve been doing it for about five years, completely focusing on thought leadership. And before that I was a practitioner as an executive at Intel, the chip maker. But I’ve been in the customer world for about 12 years whether as a customer service executive practitioner or on the thought leadership side producing content.
Gabe Larsen: (02:46)
I love it. I love it. Well, let’s dive in. That’s a great intro. I want to hear a little bit about the book, but the looming question– I always like to think about titles and you’ve got this kind of customer of the future. So maybe start there. Who is the customer of the future?
Blake Morgan: (03:00)
The customer of the future. She is already here and I recently heard a quote that “the future is here, It’s just not widely distributed.” And I love that because you know, in your life you’re getting some beautifully easy, seamless, zero friction, personalised customer experiences from companies like Spotify and Netflix and Amazon and Apple products. And depending on where you get your healthcare or your airline, I mean hopefully you’re with the best, but many of us are not. So you’re getting these wonderfully delicious experiences in some areas of your life. But like if we look at the five most hated industries, they are travel, especially air travel, insurance, cable, Telekom and wireless services and internet services. So basically many of these experiences are extremely broken. But then, when we say the future is not widely distributed, but it’s here, the customer is comparing those horrible experiences with the wonderful ones they get. So everyone today is being held to a different standard.
Gabe Larsen: (04:14)
Wow. Yeah. You nailed it with the industries. I’m thinking of my cable bill, my Telekom bill, and like yes, me, me, me. But you’re right, times definitely are changing. So how does that compare to the company of the future? Is that similar? Does it have to react differently with some of the different changes with the customer of the future.
Blake Morgan: (04:37)
Yeah. The company of the future has a soul. The company of the future is thoughtful. They’re thinking about more than just how much money they’re making the next quarter. They’re looking at the implications their behaviour has on not just the customer, but the employee, the community, the environment. They’re thinking about innovation as a core piece of their competitive strategy. And that’s why you see — when I put out my lists on Forbes of the most customer centric companies, these are companies that do everything well. They’re good to their people, they have a huge innovation focus, they are good on customer service and they also are trying to look at ways to be more sustainable, to impact the community in a positive way. And so they do everything well. And that’s why when people ask me, Blake, what are the most customer focused companies in the world, I just point them to the great place to work list because we see that companies that are great places to work often have excellent customer experiences and their stock prices are going up as a result.
Gabe Larsen: (05:49)
Yeah, and that first thing you said; companies won’t just look kind of at the numbers, you know, they’ll have a soul. Well why is that so hard to make that transition? Is it that hard? Is it just something we got to kind of do? Because I feel like you still have leaders getting up there and yeah, it’s all the almighty dollar and that does matter. But if the customer is not happy the dollar doesn’t come. It’s like they’re not getting it. Why is that not happening? Or is it as simple — is it changing your mindset or what’s going on there?
Blake Morgan: (06:23)
Yeah, I think we have to look at what individual leaders are measured by and what their goals are. If you think of a CEO, they often come in, take over at a big company and their goal is to be there a few years, turn the company around, make it profitable and then move on to a better paying or more fancy, we’ll say, CEO job. And that’s a problem because for these customer experience programmes, they required long term investments. They often require being misunderstood for long periods of time. And when founder CEOs, they focus on their businesses, it’s often the long term view because they aren’t held to the standards by the board. They don’t really care because they’ve built the company, it’s their baby. And they’re willing to be misunderstood. Yeah, like Reed Hastings of Netflix. So I think that’s one of the problems is that the performance metrics for these leaders are not in service of customer experience. They’re in service of the almighty dollar, quick turnarounds. And it’s really a conflict when we think about things like digital transformation that require at least five years or so of sometimes taking a loss in order to transform into a better company.
Gabe Larsen: (07:52)
Yeah, that’s so interesting looking at some of the different examples of like a turnaround CEO versus an original founder, right? That mindset of this is my family, or this is — there’s just such a different futuristic view on that. You mentioned the Netflix gentlemen as an example, you’re right, they kind of see things different. The CEO compensation, yeah that probably would change behaviour, right? What are you actually here to do?
Blake Morgan: (08:22)
Right, exactly.
Gabe Larsen: (08:24)
So, in all of this going on in the world, we talked a little bit about the future of the company, the future of the customer. CX, a lot of people debate its importance. Why, why does it matter so much today?
Blake Morgan: (08:38)
So in a time where many of our products and services are the same, customer experience is the only way to stand out. Our products and services have become commodities or simply competing on price. And maybe that in the short term, but in the long term we want to be relevant. We have to compete on experience on how we make people feel. Um, and that’s why I think customer experience is the great levelling field of our time because any tiny company can build something that’s simply better where they take something that has been the way we do business for a long time that customers hate and just said, well, let’s make it better. Why does it have to be like this? And they simply win by creating something that people just love and can’t stop using. It often comes from frustration. There’s a company called Good Grips or Oxo Grips and the founder of Oxo Grips, which is a company that makes things that are like easy to handle.
Blake Morgan: (09:42)
Like in my shower, I have a window wipe, I guess you’d call it, or like a glass — I don’t even know what the name for this is. Basically, when your shower gets all streaky, it wipes the shower down and it has an amazing grip. And the reason this founder created this company, Oxo Grips was his wife had I believe Parkinson’s or her hands shook. She had a disease where her hands shook and she couldn’t hold things well. And so he created this company with products that were easy for people who had disabilities to be able to hold them. I think some of the best innovation just comes from frustration. Like why does it have to be like this? It can be better. And let’s just build it. And so you asked, why customer experience? Why now? It’s the great levelling field of our time. Experience matters. It is the only way to make a customer remember us and we can no longer simply rest on our laurels and ride our legacies into the future. It just won’t work anymore.
Gabe Larsen: (10:44)
Why, that is true, right? I mean, it’s like when you think you’ve got a cool product innovation and oftentimes, it can be knocked off. Whether it’s here or somewhere else. But yeah, that service level is one of those things that in particular about the customer. And there are multiple areas I think in the customer experience, but I like the service. What’d you say? What’d you call that? The great levelling field for — yeah, there’s something to that. That’s so bloody hard or whatever word you want to use. I’m not, not British, but it’s so hard to meet or knock off because that does require a culture and all these different, kind of, aspects where its products sometimes you can find the ingredients and you can do it quicker. So let’s dive quickly just into the book for a minute. Where is the book at the moment? It’s obviously — we can see it here on your LinkedIn profile, but give us some of the different topics in the book and some of the things you hit on there.
Blake Morgan: (11:46)
Yeah. The book is live, it’s been out since October. I’m really excited because it became a best seller on Amazon and Porchlight books, which is where the conference organisers buy books and the book is based on my 10 guiding principles. In my speeches, I bucket that into three categories and that includes the psychological, technical, and experiential aspects of a strategy. The psychological, the first piece, is the most overlooked piece of a customer experience strategy. And that’s mindset, culture, and leadership development because we don’t realise that the answers are often right in front of our nose and they’re free. But we don’t want to look at our culture. We don’t want to think about, well how do the executives walk around and talk about customers at our company. The second piece is the technical piece and that’s where I dive into digital transformation. Analytics.
Blake Morgan: (12:43)
What is customer experience technology? What does the market look like? And I talk about personalization. And then in the third piece we look at the experiential aspects of the strategy, which are more about marketing, which are more about data ethics and privacy. And lastly, experience design. And so the three pieces again in the book: psychological, technical and experiential aspects of strategy. You won’t find it bucketed like that in the book, you’ll find the 10 principles. But when I’m talking about it 10 is just too damn many for anybody to sit through me. It sounds like a laundry list. So for the sake of like keynotes or podcasts, I explain it in these three buckets, which I think people, it’s easier for them to get.
Gabe Larsen: (13:33)
Three is always a little easier than 10. Where do you feel are the best or the worst as you think about these three buckets? Or is there areas that you typically see we kind of are floundering the most or maybe have the biggest strengths?
Blake Morgan: (13:48)
Yeah, I think that the first is mindset. The biggest is mindset and culture. Because most companies, what they do– and I talk about this often because it’s like the biggest bruise in my industry– is they hire a chief customer officer or they hire an experienced group and that group or that person has no power, no influence, no one in the company really even knows who they are, or what they do. It’s just putting lipstick on a pig really. And even when I worked at a fortune 100 company, I remember asking my boss, because I was an executive in customer service and I said, we have a customer experience group. Well what do they do? And she said to me, Oh, I think they produce events. And I thought, what? That makes no sense. Customer experience has to permeate through the culture of the company. It has to be in the fabric, in the mission, the values, the way people talk. We’ve got to have that humble, open culture. It’s not easy to simply replicate what somebody else does, especially for big companies that have toxic cultures or have cultures where things move very slowly and change is hard. I think it’s extremely difficult for these companies to change the culture, which is the biggest piece. Instead of just hiring one person, like a chief experience officer and then just saying that, okay, we’ve done our job.
Gabe Larsen: (15:15)
Is there a leader or a company that you would highlight that kind of embraces some of these concepts? The customer experience, customer service in a way that is something that maybe you aspire to? Whether it’s the cultural aspect or one of these different ideas. Where would you go with that?
Blake Morgan: (15:35)
Yeah, I would say that from a culture perspective, Workday is one I really like. The founders are just good people and if you find inside the company, just the stories you hear are just human stories of leaders doing the right thing for employees. And they’re one of those companies that’s on the great place to work list. And they’re also known for customer experience. You can’t really talk about customer experience without talking about Amazon. They have changed the game for everyone. I went to Amazon because I wanted to know like, was there any magic or would I find bunnies being pulled out of hats at Amazon headquarters and when I did the tours and met with executives. What I found is that there was no secret sauce or magic that it’s simply a company that’s run extremely efficiently, focused on innovation, very hardworking, humble people. I met a head of logistics who would go driving with his delivery people at two in the morning just to see some of the hiccups or hindering blocks in their process to make more efficient operations for his employees. And I think most people in big companies just don’t have the stomach or the commitment to go through that to go on a 2:00 AM drive just to make something 10% more efficient.
Gabe Larsen: (17:02)
Yeah, that’s what it feels like they’ve been able to do. Right. It’s like that effortless experience. I know I’m stealing that word from others. But they seem like they have mapped that customer journey a billion times. They just know exactly where — they’ve just eliminated every, well, they’ve eliminated a lot of different headaches to make it so easy to do business with them that you’re like, I’d rather do that than go somewhere else. Well Blake, I really appreciate the time. It’s a fun talk track. I’m excited. Blake was a referral. I was talking to someone else and they said you’ve got to talk to Blake who’s got this new book.
Blake Morgan: (17:40)
Thanks Dan.
Gabe Larsen: (17:40)
So I quickly researched her. I wrote out to her, I ordered the book and it gets here in a couple of days. I’ll have to check that out. I’m trying to learn more about the whole customer experience and customer service. So I appreciate the talk track. In summary and then maybe for people who want to learn a little bit more about what you do Blake, how would you bring it to a close?
Blake Morgan: (18:02)
In summary, I think the best thing you can do for your business is hire sensitive, empathetic people who are interested in other people’s experiences. And these are the people that will build beautiful customer experiences because they’re very thoughtful and they really think about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of something. And that’s truly the number one thing is hire thoughtful people, whether they’re leaders, employees, customer focused agents. Thoughtfulness is truly a competitive advantage today. And if you want to learn more about me, I would love to connect with your listeners. Come to my website blakemichellemorgan.com. I’m launching a new podcast soon on entrepreneurship with my husband Jacob Morgan. So hopefully you’ll find that as well on my website and would love, any way I can help, anybody listening please reach out.
Gabe Larsen: (18:58)
Yeah, that’s so fun. As I was talking to Blake pre show it was like I honestly don’t know how to introduce you. You got all these different accolades and things you’re doing. So where should I start? So anyways, do check her out. I think that’s a great idea. We will make sure we put some of that in the show notes. So Blake, thanks for joining. For the audience, have a fantastic day.
Blake Morgan: (19:17)
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it.
Exit Voice: (19:20)
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