I’ll Be Back With Shep Hyken

Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments

 

How do you get your clients to say, “I’ll be back”? Renowned customer service and experience expert Shep Hyken believes that delivering an amazing experience is what keeps customers coming back for more. With this in mind, Shep has managed to work with companies and organizations that want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. He sits down with John Livesay in today’s episode to share how his upbringing instilled in him the values that are essential in the service industry. Listen in and learn more as Shep discloses his secrets on how to turn repeat customers into loyal customers.

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Listen to the podcast here

I’ll Be Back With Shep Hyken

This episode’s guest is Shep Hyken, an expert in customer service and the author of I’ll Be Back. He said that repeat customers are different than loyal customers. Find out what he means. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Shep Hyken, a customer service experience expert and keynote speaker. Shep works with companies that want to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. His focus is on delivering amazing customer service, engagement, managing the customer experience, and creating loyalty. He is a Hall of Fame Speaker and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author. His new book is I’ll Be Back.

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Shep, welcome to the show. 

It is great to be here. One day, I will get to say I am back. Will you have me back? We will find out at the end of this show, won’t we?

That is what is known and storytelling is an open loop. We are already creating them, so take us back if you will to your own experience of getting involved with this. Were you a child that had bad customer service and went, “I am going to fix this,” or did you start thinking you were going to be something else? How did this customer service business come about? 

There are two pieces of the story. The first one was when I was a child. At twelve years old, I started my first business. I was a birthday party magician. I would do magic tricks at birthday parties. The first show was on a Wednesday after school. My mom picks me up and takes me over to these people’s homes. I am there in front of 25 screaming little six-year-old kids. I do my show for about 30 to 45 minutes and collect a whopping $16. It was $15 plus a $1 tip. When I came home, my mom said, “What are you going to do after dinner?” It was a school night. The typical answer is my homework. She goes, “Not until you write a thank you note.” I go, “That is a good idea.”

That was a great customer service lesson. I did not realize it. My parents raised me to always say please and thank you and be polite, but she wanted to emphasize that. Even though I had said thank you on the way out the door, maybe a follow-up would be nice. My dad said, “That is a great idea. After they have received the thank you note, by next week, why don’t you give them a call and thank them again? Ask them, ‘How did you like the show?’”

Get some feedback. Find out if you did a good job, and get specific. Ask them what tricks they liked the best. If you do this enough times, people start to say the same tricks and won’t mention some of the tricks. You will notice a pattern. Those are the tricks you get rid of and replace with tricks they will talk about. I was like, “That is a good idea.” That is exactly how my whole entry to customer service got started. I had no idea that is what it was called, but later on, I found out.

It was ingrained in me from even much earlier than that. As I said, I was told to be polite and say please and thank you. I am a people pleaser and that helps if you are in the customer service world because some personalities are meant to take care of customers. Some people are meant to work on that frontline or call center. They live for taking what I call moments of misery, those complaints, and turning them into moments of magic. I might be one of those people.

I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again & Again

When I was about 19 or 20 years old, I was working at a gas station while I was in college. This was many years ago. Even though we were a self-serve station, we did not have the computer where you paid outside, come in, and get your receipt. We had to stand on the lot, reset the pumps manually, and make the change right out there. Even though the customer pumped their own gas, we walked around with a wad of cash, and I had a little metal changer on my belt, and I made the exact change.

One very cold day, I asked a woman who was elderly who I had seen in the station before. She was probably about 85 or 90 years old. She was pretty old but still driving. I said, “Let me pump the gas for you. It is a little cold.” I thought that was the right thing to do. I go inside and my manager goes, “What did you do?” I go, “I am not sure. What did I do?” He was like, “I saw you pumping that lady’s gas.”

I was like, “Yeah. I did that.” He was like, “Why did you do that?” I was like, “She is 90 years old. It is six below zero outside. It is pretty cold. I had to be out there. Why not let her stay in the car?” He was like, “Now, she is going to want it the next time.” I go, “Maybe she will come back here instead of the gas station across the street or the one on the opposite corner.” He gets mad at me, walks out, and slams the door. All I knew at that moment was that I was right and he was wrong. I have been living my life ever since.

I get out of college and I am looking for something to do. I see a couple of motivational speakers. I think, “I can do that. I am going to talk about customer service.” Within one year out of college, that is exactly what I was doing. I was doing speeches and talking to the companies that I was working for about how to deliver a moment of magic. I have been talking about creating that magic and avoiding misery for years.

I love that your twelve-year-old magician has created a career where you help companies turn unhappy customers into satisfied customers through a moment of magic, what a wonderful through-line of a hero’s journey there. Let’s talk about some of the clients that have hired you to come to speak to them. Let’s start with American Airlines.

I love American Airlines. I realize the airlines have a tough goal, but I have been with that airline and I have worked for the airline for years. Before that, I worked with TWA, Delta Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. I have had the privilege of working with these companies. The airline business is tough because it is very hard to make a customer happy when there is a delay that the airline or the customer has no control.

It could be bad weather or more traffic than usual. There are all kinds of things that could go wrong that can make your trip not perfect. The fact that if you get the right person, it does not matter whether or not they show up on time but eventually get there. If you get the right person, they take great care of you. If you get the right person on the phone when you have a problem, it is amazing how well you feel about that airline. I know you are looking at my list. There are American Airlines and American Express.

That is the other one I wanted to ask a question about, but before we jump off the airlines because I worked for TWA as a ticket agent when I was in college at O’Hare, the training I went through to be a part-time ticket agent was incredible. They always asked, “Did you shine your shoes?” They always made the appearance important. They also had the ability to answer people’s concerns and anger. They stand on the wrong line because they did not read the sign.

Create experiences that people will talk about. Click To Tweet

This is not a place where they sell tickets, check bags or whatever the issue is, or wonder how much sleep the pilot got. Those are the kinds of questions you got. People’s anxiety about flying would manifest in different ways. It could be being tapped on the shoulder while you are standing at the urinal in your uniform asking, “What gate is this?” If the employees feel like they are not being treated right, it will trickle off into the passenger experience.

Which airport were you at?

I was at O’Hare.

I was in LaGuardia, New York, one day, and this was back in TWA. There is this flight that I was on that was canceled. Everybody is getting put on to the next flight. The guy in front of me says, “Are you going to feed us? I was going to get a meal on my other flight.” The lady says, “We will have a meal, but you are going to have to feed yourself.” She smiled and laughed. His exact words were then like, “I am being a jerk, aren’t I?” They were close to the exact words. She goes, “I am not going to judge, but I am happy to put you on your next flight and I will make sure that there is a meal for you to eat if you would like to.”

You have to roll with it and have a sense of humor.

She was so funny and then I walked up to her, and I went, “Can I have a meal too?” She was so nice. That is the thing. You get people that are very difficult to deal with. I remember I was at O’Hare and this was many years ago. When you are a high-ranked flyer on their frequent flyer program, you get privileges. One of the privileges is you get to fly standby, and when you fly standby, they put you on the standby list. Based on the seniority of your frequent flyer status, they put you at the top. The guy said to me, “I am not going to put you on here. We already have too many people on standby. You are not going to make it.” I said, “I am the highest level flyer.” He goes, “Do you want to jump in front of everybody?” I go, “That is exactly what I want to do.” That is the privilege of spending all your money on one airline.

That is what I wanted to talk about. Your book is perfect. When I have maybe more convenient routes or a cheaper fare, but I want to build my points with one particular airline, then that is what keeps me loyal for the potential upgrades with miles or whatever it is.

I write articles about this all the time. There is a difference between a repeat customer and a loyal customer. This is right out of the book I’ll Be Back: How to Get Your Customers to Come Back Again & Again. One of the things I talk about is there is nothing wrong with repeat business. We need to go for it. It is really important. However, to create true loyalty would be for the airline to say, “We are getting rid of the frequent flyer program and we hope that you stay with us.” If you get rid of the free upgrades or the free trips, would that passenger says, “You are good enough to keep me?” That is loyalty.

Loyal Customers: Some personalities are meant to take care of customers, and they live for taking moments of misery and turning them into moments of magic.

 

A lot of times, even though we call this a loyalty program, it is really a marketing program. It is a way to get perks and points or perks and miles. If you think about those perks, the more points you get, you get a free ticket. What that really is is a discount program. To put it in a more simplistic term, if I go to a restaurant and they give me a little card that says, “Come back here five times and the fifth sandwich is free,” that is like a 20% discount card.

There is nothing wrong with repeat business and giving out the perks to give you discounts or free whatever, but recognize it for what it is. The goal would be you want to create both loyalty, which is an emotional connection, as well as the desire to do business because maybe they do take care of you in such a way. The combination of the two is unbeatable, but the moment you focus just on points, the company that has a better point program is going to win.

I do love American Airlines. They are my airline of choice. They do take care of me and there are times that I hate all airlines. There is no doubt about it. Things happen, but I realized that most of the time, the things that happen are not the person at the front desk control. I have had bad flight attendants. I had one flight attendant many years ago when they were cutting the salaries of people. It was sometime after 9/11.

She was not being very friendly. The person next to me was another flight attendant sitting there. She was deadheading, meaning they were going to another city. They are not in uniform. They are dressed in street clothes. I said to the woman that was working, “Are you having a bad day?” She goes, “They’ve cut my salary, so I am not going to try as hard.” I looked at the person next to me who worked for the airline and she goes, “I can’t believe she said that to you.”

What is interesting about these points or loyalty programs is there are different levels, but you have to qualify. If you flew an X number of miles, then you get up to platinum, executive platinum, etc. I find that mindset fascinating. That ties me into American Express, another one of your big clients. Now, American Express has a premium associated with it. They do the same thing where there is the green, the gold, and the platinum level. 

There is also the black card.

The levels of the prestige of everything are fascinating for people trying to impress people at a restaurant.

Here is what is cool about the AmEx card. They did a change that I don’t like, and I have let them know I am unhappy. I am one of those people that never publicly say what is on my mind because I realized I represent a lot of these brands. They changed something, and I wanted to understand why they did it. I understand why they did it, but it is not in sync with the highest level. The highest level is black, but the typical high level most people have is that platinum card.

Your last customer impression should not be a survey. Click To Tweet

It costs $600 a year to buy that card. I use it for FedEx now. I get 10% off FedEx. That almost pays for my card at the end of the year. In addition to that, they give you $200 in airline credit for miscellaneous fees, which could be everything from baggage to flight change fees to an American Airlines wireless. They reimburse you for your TSA approval for your global entry.

I get $200 back when I buy a Dell computer. At the end of the day, not only did all the points accumulate, but I also made money on this card. The American Airlines card that I have, which is a MasterCard, is a point card. The reason I like to use that for certain things is the points go toward miles. It used to be that every mile I have on American Airlines was because I flew it. Now, they said, “We don’t care how many miles you fly as long as you spend money on our airline or our card.”

To get an executive platinum card, you have to spend more than $200,000. They don’t even give you miles. It does not matter if the flight from St. Louis to Chicago is 250 miles, but if it costs you $1,000, they give you 1,000 points times a premium for your status. It is a little higher if you are executive platinum and a little lower if you are gold, but you earn the points.

Anyway, it is a different program. I am not sure I like it or don’t like it, but it is interesting the way credit card companies, airlines, and different companies are working toward creating what they term loyalty, but it is really the repeat business. Even Amazon and Walmart are going head to head trying to create loyalty, and the way they are doing it is by charging you to be part of their program. This is brilliant thinking. I am a member of Amazon Prime. The direct competitor of that is Walmart+.

Walmart+ gives you free grocery delivery and whatever other perks they have. Amazon Prime gives you a number of other perks as well. The question is, which do I like? No matter what, I am paying either $99 for Walmart or $129 for Amazon. I want to get my money’s worth, so what am I going to do? Once I pay, I am going to try to use the card. I love that that is a membership program that has a premium attached to it that you have to pay for.

You have got a company like Nike. Nike has no charge to be a part of their program, and from the standpoint of discounts and perks, they give you nothing, but what they do give you that makes it interesting to be part of that program is content that is served up exactly the way you would want it. What I mean by that is if I buy running shoes and that is all they see that I am buying through their program, they will never send me anything about basketball shoes. They know what I want. They also notice like, “You might be interested in the new version of your shoe. We put new technology in there.” They will give me a preview as to what is going on in my shoes.

People love that insider look.

It is giving me an inside feel.

Loyal Customers: The sense of airline customer service is if the employees feel like they’re not being treated well, it trickles off into the passenger experience.

 

Before we get off the airline and credit card thing, there is this new phenomenon of the flight attendants trying to get everyone on the plane to subscribe to a credit card that is separate from theirs where you get a free trip or you get so many more miles than a regular credit card. I think the flight attendants get a little commission. Also, it is all premised on that. You are not paying off that debt every month. They get a lot of money by charging a lot of interest. Otherwise, the whole thing is a house of cards.

That is standard credit card marketing. The airlines are brilliant to do that. To me, a guy that flies every single week, especially if I had to take two flights in the day to get where I am going, I got to hear that darn message twice a day. I could do the message for them. Act now and you get 60,000 bonus points. That is enough for two round trip domestic tickets or one to Europe.

With this new insider information that you mentioned that Nike is doing, I experienced that when I was speaking for the Wizards Play Network, which has Dungeons and Dragons. They have salespeople who call on retailers that sell the games and they want them to upgrade and spend around $20,000 to make the stores a special premium level. I said, “What is in it for the store?” They said, “They get to give their regular customers insights into what is going to be on the game before the game comes out.”

People who are avid game players love that bragging right. The throwing the blackboard down at a restaurant is the bragging rights that I know something that is coming before you do because I stopped at this store and this store happens to be one of these levels of premiums. I thought that is a valued commodity. Within the world that these are all of our customers, there is a certain niche that will pay or be loyal out of you giving them some bragging rights, for lack of a better word, yes?

That is right. That is the point. You make them feel like they have insider information, and it is very personalized because it is based on just the game or the shoe. There are other companies that will give you that inside scoop of information. I received an email from a guy that sells this little piece of equipment. Not many people would buy that, but what he said was, “I have 100 of them. The last time, they were gone within a day, so I remade some more for anybody that is interested.” That is like, “I am the insider. I got on his list,” because all my friends, when I said, “You need to go and get this,” they could not get it. It was gone and sold out.

That used to be something that the luxury market would be involved in. That is my background.

It is a scarcity mindset or mentality.

For example, the Hermes Birkin bag. Before, you are on a waiting list with all of that anticipation. Now, it has become much more mass where people wait in line for iPhones and other things like that.

A lot of times, loyalty programs are really just marketing programs. Click To Tweet

Do you know who has done a great job of this? It is Rolex. My son got me fired up about the watch market. I don’t know why he is into that, but interesting. Rolex has done a great job. There are only two watch companies that have done a fine job of making sure their watches on a regular basis will appreciate. They have some duds that they come out with that nobody wants, but Patek Philippe and Rolex are the two companies that have done it.

I watched how Rolex does it. They can release ten times more watches than they are releasing, but they don’t because it keeps the market solid. They would rather keep the demand for what they have so strong that the prices on the secondary market are often 2 and 3 times higher than what you might buy in a jewelry store, but the wait at a jewelry store is sometimes 2, 3, or 4 years to get the watch that you want. They could make a lot more money if they wanted to, but they have done two things. They have created a great experience for the person that owns the watch and think about how they are handling the middle person, the jeweler. They are saying, “We are taking care of you too because we are going to create the demand, and that means you are going to sell every watch that you have.”

What a dream for a retailer. That is loyal. You have this amazing ability to have your pulse on the zeitgeist, and that is what makes you such a great author and speaker. You are verbalizing people’s inner voices and frustrations and figuring out solutions to them. The one that you have done that I went, “There he is again getting ahead of the curve,” are the endless emails asking you to fill out a survey form. Everyone seems to do it and they won’t leave you alone. Shouldn’t there be a limit to how many times you ask?

The same customer gets the same survey. My car dealership is bad about that. I get the same 15 to 20-minute survey every single time I go in there. Whether it be for an oil change or a transmission overhaul, I am going to get the same survey.

These people’s livelihoods are dependent on it. I bought a new home and the people said, “You are going to get a survey of how every department did. Unless you give us all tens, none of us get a raise.” They are begging you to lie on the customer service report. The loan people were horrible, but they were great.

Somebody referred to it as they know that the Uber driver gets dinged if you give them a low rating. If I have bad service, I choose not to give a rating because I don’t want to hurt the guy’s reputation, but I am not going to help it by giving a false rating.

I remember the reverse was the surprise when Uber rates you. 

Uber rates you as well. We do a survey every year, and we survey over 1,000 consumers. It is a GenPop survey, so it looks like the cross-section of the US-based on age, ethnicity, geography, gender, and everything else. Forty percent of customers have said they have stopped doing business with a company because the survey was too long.

Loyal Customers: There’s nothing wrong with repeat business and giving out perks or discounts, but you need to recognize it for what it is.

 

That does not mean they do it to every company, but they have done it. They said, “I am not going back there anymore.” The last impression should not be the survey. Think about this. I have a great meal. If the next day I get a survey that said, “Would you answer two quick questions,” and it took me less than 30 seconds, I probably don’t remember doing that, but if you asked me to spend five minutes on a survey, I am going to remember that.

Your whole brand positioning for what you do is that customer service gives you a competitive advantage and not the product or price. I have to say the reason I love Apple so much is that Genius Bar. Dell does not offer that. I need someone that peace of mind that if I need to go have some buddy help me, I can get that help. I am loyal because of that. That is customer service in my mind.

That is why people love Apple. That is not my favorite way to do business. I don’t want to have to make an appointment to go get customer service. I want to pick up the phone and get it. Apple does a great job. If they can’t fix it on the phone, then I have to go to the Genius Bar. I wrote an article. It reminded me of something that happened a few years back, and I don’t mention the name of the company, but it was Apple.

I bought a new Apple phone and it was so different from the phone I had before that I was ready to smash it on the ground, put the parts in an envelope, send it back, and say, “Give me my money back.” I was that mad, so I called them up. I am talking to the guy and he knows I am not happy. There were things that we had to do to fix something that did not work as it should have, but this is what he said to me. He says, “I understand how upset you are. This is my job now. My job is to make you so happy with your phone that you would jump in front of a moving bus.” I go, “That was the perfect thing to say, wasn’t it?”

That is a passionate level.

What it did is it set a goal. It set a goal that I said, “If this is what this guy wants to do, I am going to give him a chance to do it.” In the end, I said, “I will jump in front of that bus as long as it is moving backward.”

Before I let you go, how do you, as a sales keynote speaker, provide amazing customer service when someone hires you as a speaker? 

The first thing is I inform them that I will be the only thing they do not have to worry about at this point. Number two is constant communication. We tell them, “You don’t need to worry about anything. We are going to call you. 6 to 8 weeks before the event, I am going to call you to start working on the content. We are going to have as many content calls as necessary, and I will interview others. If you don’t have the time for it, you tell me who you want me to talk to and I will do that.”

You need to make your customers feel like they have insider information. Click To Tweet

The product is the product. I am going to deliver the speech. I am going to meet the expectation if not exceeded. By the way, I have a really good demo video, but I am better than that video. There are plenty of speakers out there that are not as good as their video. I was very clear. Chris West from Video Narrative did a magnificent job. I said to him, “You cannot make me look better than I am. What I want you to do is make me look good enough to justify what I charge and make good enough to be comfortable that the client is comfortable booking me.” That was our goal because I have seen sizzle reels that are really sizzling, and when you see the speaker on stage, it is a dud.

We have all had that experience. I am not going to name the brand. I saw a car commercial and I thought, “I am going to go experience that.” I went to the dealership and was like, “This is a bait and switch. This is nothing like the commercial of what this experience is supposed to be like.” You hurt yourself by overpromising in a sizzle reel TV commercial. 

That is what we are worried about, but the moment I hit the ground, I text the client, “I am maybe not in the building, but I am on my way to the building. Let me know if you need anything before I meet you for my soundcheck.” The soundcheck is often the next morning before everybody gets up, and that is fine, but if they need me the night before, I always fly in. That is the other thing I tell them. I say, “I will never take the last flight.” I tell them a couple of things. Number one is that I have only missed one speaking engagement due to weather-related issues in my entire career, and that is because both airports, mine and theirs, were closed down. I felt bad, but those were acts of God. There is nothing you can do about that type of thing. I said, “I am going to figure out a way for that never to happen again,” and the way you do that is I tell them I am going to keep an eye on my flights.

If I see there is a weather pattern coming in and my speech is in Los Angeles, I might be there two days ahead of time. I showed up to a speech once. I will never forget it. I was out somewhere in the LA area and it was such a bad snowstorm on the East Coast and the Midwest. She was like, “How did you get here?” Only she and I were the only ones that showed up for this meeting. I said, “I told you I would be here.” I had to fly and drive to get to those planes, trains, and automobiles. I got there and she was so impressed. She goes, “The meeting was canceled. Other than the weather, we are going to redo this again. We are going to take care of you.” She was so amazed that I cared that much to get there. You have to do that.

What a great story. Those are the stories that people remember instead of you telling people, “Don’t worry, I will be there,” then you have a story to back it up, and that is everything. If people want to track you down, your website is your last name, correct?

Yeah. It is Hyken.com. It is pretty easy.

If you want to be entertained and learn how you can be better at customer service between the book or if you don’t get to hear Shep speak, then he has got a blog.

Go to the YouTube channel. It is called Shep TV. There are 900 videos. Everything that is in my head eventually ends up on YouTube.

That is impressive. Thanks again for being such a great guest and sharing with us how we can all be a little bit better at giving people an experience that makes them loyal. 

Thanks for having me. I will be back.  

 

Important Links

• Shep Hyken
• I’ll Be Back
• Shep TV – YouTube
• Hyken.com
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

 

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