 We take word of mouth for granted in every business. We just figure hey if we run a good business people will talk about us But that's not the way people behave Hello intelligent beings of this marvellous planet. Welcome to the 42 courses podcast and thanks for listening Jay bear is a marketing customer experience and customer service keynote speaker He's a New York Times best-selling author of six books an internet pioneer a seventh generation entrepreneur and the founder of five multimillion-dollar companies He's funny factual and fantastic. That's why in 27 years of marketing expertise Jay has worked with more than 700 companies including 36 of the fortune 500 absolutely delighted to speak today to Jay bear welcome Jay So much fantastic to be here. It's a real pleasure for me to speak to you because I'm just a huge fan of your books and yeah It's really great So Jay for people who are not aware of what you do Tell us tell us what you do with your company convinced and convert. I'm the founder of Convince a converge is a boutique strategy consultancy that works with leading brands across the world on digital marketing Social media content marketing customer experience word of mouth It's a really fantastic organization. We're in our 13th year. I've actually been in digital since the very beginning since 1993 so I've seen lots and lots of things since the very beginning I'm the co-host of a podcast called social pros have written six books And I love tequila and plaid suits Now I've seen you on on stage on YouTube I mean some of those screens that you come out in front of J It's bigger than the Rolling Stones. I mean Use the keynotes that you do. Oh, you know some of those big events It is amazing what they spend on AV, right? You know like whatever they pay me is what like the cost is for butter, you know Like that the actual staging cost could be in the millions of dollars It is it is really something you're right. And is there obviously that's being closed on I presume for COVID Is there any of that coming again in the future? Yeah, actually, yeah, absolutely as we chat I have two in-person events coming up in the next week or so Both happen to be in in Florida. And so it's starting to trickle back in in the States. You have Events here or there. It's still a little a little challenging on on scheduling especially for the big events Where people are coming from multiple countries with multiple scenarios with regards to the pandemic, etc So I've spoken a lot to my agent and and and we feel like Come the fall right you get into sort of September October Time frame things will start to loosen up and get a little bit closer back to normal But I don't think whatever Personally, I don't think we'll ever have as many events for business as we had pre pandemic because some of the smaller events I think we realize like, you know, why we could just do it on zoom and it'll be fine Yeah Well, I hope to see you live in person one day need to so maybe Europe even yeah, I would love to come but I know you through your books really and There's a there's a theme a running theme. I think through them and that's empathy and caring It's a massive thing in your books And I wanted to ask is it that you are just a big softy teddy bear underneath your digital marketing experience Maybe maybe no, you know what? I think it is. I'm a seventh generation Entrepreneur my son's an eighth generation entrepreneur my family's been self-employed since the early 1800s and The number of times that I had a conversation with my father or my grandfather About the need to treat customers with dignity and respect and kindness and humanity Literally zero times never once because I am old enough to remember that that used to be the default setting Right that that's just how you did it. There wasn't even a name for you You know one walked around talking about empathy and business 30 years ago because of course you would be empathetic to customers They're giving you money but somewhere along the way I think we kind of lost our way and We find ourselves where we have been in the last decade or so which is in an era of empathy deficit Where it's no longer the default setting. It's not even commonplace anymore to treat customers with kindness and dignity and respect and humanity and That kind of makes me sad actually a little bit as a as a consumer myself But I will tell you and I talk about this in my books It is a tremendous business opportunity because when you treat customers Better than they expect and they expect very little right now if you treat them better than they expect that has Manifest economic wins for your organization, right? This isn't just wow. It feels good to treat customers. Well, yeah, it does But I wouldn't write a book about that. I'm a business consultant. I'm not a pastor, right? So so yeah, it feels good to treat customers Well, but it makes financial sense to treat customers well and and all of customer experience is about Expectation management right if you if you meet or fall short of the expectations You've lost if you exceed the expectations you have one that could be the whole book right there It's one page. Yeah, and As you say it makes financial sense and the examples in your books like yeah, of course Why wouldn't everybody do that? But um, how does how does this empathy thing as you say generations past? It wasn't really there the empathy. How does it play in the States now where dollar is king more so than perhaps in Europe? How does it play when you're selling this to big corporations like do you get pushback? Sure, of course because there there are scenarios where it takes more time-money effort to treat customers Well, then it does to treat them shabbily And and so if you start thinking about that on a per customer basis You have to prove out the business case that says all right Well, if we go to the trouble of treating them well that will impact their Net promoter score or or or lifetime value or some other kind of metric that the company cares about And if you scale that out across the enterprise Then it's not a cost. It's an investment and ultimately I talk about this in my book One of the biggest challenges we have in business today is that even now in 2021 customer service Is still treated most often as a cost not as an investment And and that's just like a fundamental challenge with how business thinks about that part of the relationship So Jay that leads very nicely on to my first Interaction with you, which was tort triggers, which is I absolutely love this book. It's a quake book for me split the ground open fantastic examples of how to do business and marketing Now I think I saw it first in an airport because I saw the llamas on the cover its own tort trigger It's so well researched. There's so many great examples. How long did it take you to write this book? It's it I wrote it with my good friend Daniel lemon who used to lead the strategy team at Convince and convert so it definitely is a joint project that made it a lot easier to have both of us working on it And we kind of split up Sections of the book and research and things like that. I actually had coined the term talk triggers several years before in a series of blog posts that I wrote for the convincing convert site And and then sort of fleshed it out into a into a full book. So once Daniel and I decided to all right, we should write this book And then we wrote and it was probably six months. Maybe a little less To to kind of put it all together, but You're right when I when I create books to me Obviously you got to have a point to the book and sort of a what advice are you giving and why does anybody care? But but to me it's all about the examples, right? It's all about the case studies and and one of the things I really work hard on in fact You might appreciate this I literally have a grid that I use And it says okay big company small company b2b b2c us global Right and I sort of try to play bingo and and and check all those boxes because I don't want a reader to say well I've already heard this one. It's about starbucks or apple or some other kind of globally famous company or This one isn't relevant because I don't live in america or this one isn't relevant because I'm a small company I never want a reader to be able to say that so I literally have to throw out some good stories to to pull in other stories from Sort of a different dynamic so that nobody feels like the book isn't for them Yeah and Actually, I was speaking to two other authors Recently on this podcast and speaking about how they actually started the process and interestingly Simon Lancaster was saying that the the really important thing is to get the title And the subtitle and the back cover. That's how he starts it and approaches the publishers. Is that what is that your method? um No, not really For me, I I start with A speech actually I Write books quite a bit differently than most people so I will first write A keynote speech a 60 minute speech Um in talk triggers case about word of mouth and the power of word of mouth And then I'll go out and I will deliver that speech 40 times to an audience And each time I'm including new examples and then I see what the audience reaction is to different examples I'm changing the structure of the talk a little bit Working on the mental model the framework the mnemonics things like that Uh, and then after I've done it 40 times or so Then if it goes well, then I turn it into a book So I always start with a speech and then make it a book Which is why it's a little faster to do that for Daniel and I to take talk triggers, which is already Uh, you know a speech that I've been giving and turn it into a book as opposed to doing it from scratch I find that you end up with a book that has a really strong narrative flow Because it was born from a narrative, right? It was born from a speech that has a beginning a middle and an end So that's just the way I do it Well, it's very very successful Now the Favorite examples in the book. I mean, it's difficult to name some favorites because there are so many and they're so great Some some of mine are the dentist surgeon who calls before because that's just a Glenn Gorham And he's never been, uh, sued litigated. I mean that's just incredible, isn't it because uh, so many people are In the medical industry, uh, of victims of uh, you know litigation and stuff Holiday world which I know is close to your heart because it's close to your home And uh with their free drinks, which is so counter-intuitive and so brave and um And I think skips burger with the Joker in the pack, which is just amazing Would you would you like to talk about any of those or even you're happy to I can I can touch on all of those You know, you know, we talk about empathy being important and I think dr. Gorab is a good example of that He's uh, I just met him. I gave I talked about this idea of doing the speech first So I did the talk trigger speech to a dentist's conference And he came up to me afterwards and hey, I think I already have a talk trigger I'm like, well, that would be amazing and somewhat unprecedented because you're a dentist Uh, and he told me the story. I was like, yeah, that's amazing and then I ended up including it in the book and so he, um operates in in sort of in new york, uh, new jersey, connecticut that sort of part of the us where it's very, um densely populated There's 400 or so Other dental surgeons that do the exact same thing, right? It's not like somebody's got a secret sauce Like he does the exact same thing. They all do the exact same thing. They all charge basically the same amount of money Uh, there really is no advantage other than I guess Proximity, I mean most people pick an oral surgeon based on how far is it to my house Or how far is it to my place of business because I don't want to drive especially in in the traffic in that part of the us Well, he's got a totally different thing going on So every friday his office staff gives him a list of names and phone numbers and on saturday He just calls them from his cell phone. He's just like around the house or on a walk Hi, this is glenn. I'm your oral surgeon. I understand that you're coming to the office for the very first time next week Before you get here. Do you have any questions that I might answer? And people are dumbfounded, right? They're they're flabbergasted You know, if you've had an oral surgery procedure, right? You've had a wisdom tooth out or a root canal or something like that Um, it's possible that if you have a good surgeon, they'll call you afterwards Grant, how's it going? How's the pain man? Are you bleeding to death? That's what they ask you But you've never had a physician call you before you ever set foot in the office. It's just it's simply not done But it should be done because glenn reports that that almost every patient Mentioned the phone call when they're in the chair. He's in their mouth I'm going for a call. I'm right And then every day somebody calls into the office to make an appointment and they say something along the lines of I have to drive way out of my way I have to pass up a bunch of other oral surgeons that are closer to my home But I want you to be my surgeon because you're the one who called my friend Shirley Before she ever came to the office. It's such a simple way To to turn something that people don't talk about like dental surgery Into something they do talk about and and that's the the key here, right? Is that is that we take word of mouth for granted in every business? We just figure hey if we run a good business people will talk about us But that's not the way people behave that is not how it works competency is important if you're not competent, you're not going to have a business But competency doesn't create conversations. We don't talk about things that are good We don't talk about things that meet our expectations. We only talk about things That are outside our frame of expectations and that's why being called by the dentist before you ever meet the dentist Is so outside your frame of reference that you're almost forced to tell other friends about it Yeah, and it's that it's that non-conformity that makes volunteer marketers out of your customs, isn't it? It is it is but I think it's important Brenda point out that this is not This is not about stunt, right? So there's a there's a there's a fine but incredibly important line between a word of mouth strategy Like dr. Gorab implies which which which pays benefits to his business every single day versus Kind of shock and awe and and kind of public relations stunts like let's go rent an elephant and put a logo on its flank That's not what we're talking about here and and people conflate those a lot They think that word of mouth equals a big spike in conversations And that's not what we're doing certainly not in the talk triggers book or the or the work that we do for clients It's about building a sustained level of conversation where your customers do become volunteer marketers And that doesn't require some sort of random silliness, right? It's it's just having a good strategy and staying with it And that's that great framework that you put in the book I'm not going to give it away because I want people to read the book but the four five six framework and Yeah, talk triggers calm. There's tons of free resources there including the framework So obviously Daniel and I would love for folks to buy the book But if you go to talk triggers calm, there's a tremendous amount of resources there, please they're yours for the taking And but the first things that in that framework is the remarkable relevant reasonable repeatable And that's what is so fantastically illustrated by holiday world by you, right? Oh holiday world is it remains one of my favorite businesses of any kind And it's not because they're you know an hour down the road They just refuse to play the game the way all their competitors play it. They're a a amusement park theme park Has a combination water park and Kind of regular right, so they've got roller coasters and like water coasters. It's sort of a hybrid They've been around for decades and decades and decades family owned As you probably know, especially in the theme park business One of the ways they make a lot of money is on food and beverage Yeah, you'll charge you for a ticket for admittance, but you know, it's a 13 dollar, you know soda and and and you know $8 bottle of water and you know, it's it's expensive. They do it the exact opposite They decided to give away drinks free drinks and they've got these little huts all around the grounds And you go in there and you can get whatever you want and any sort of soda soft drink iced tea Maybe even coffee. I don't know why you'd want to drink coffee in holiday world that you can I believe And it's completely free and and it saves Their customers so much money, but again, it is so Outside the frame of reference for what you would expect from a theme park That their guests talk about it all the time, right? If you if you look at the reviews for holiday world On trip advisor or google or anywhere else that you might find reviews for that kind of place They invariably mentioned the free drinks because it's of course you would say that and what's hilarious is They've spent, you know, I don't know Half a billion dollars on rides And the thing that people talk about is a free soft drink that actually has a cost To them Of like five cents, right that the actual cost Is not significant They forgo a lot of profit because they're not charging $13 for a drink But their estimation is we make it back and then some in the free word of mouth And and that's again, you've got to think about this as an investment Not as a cost Yeah, and the and skips bird and that one is so brave And and you speak in the book about like The reactions to that from oh, they hate everybody in the theme park industry hates holiday world Then you go to you go to disney or you know name your theme park And they're like, well, wait a second. These guys give me drinks They also have free sunscreen by the way and free parking which is all of those are amazing Um, and and you go somewhere else. So well, these guys give away drinks and so they yeah, they're they're not they're not well liked By their theme park peers. That's for sure Skips is a really interesting story. Um So skip wall and his wife used to run A a regional chain of fast casual restaurants in northern california Decided they want to do their own thing entrepreneurial dream going to open our own restaurant. So they did And they it's a pretty simple concept, right? It's it's mostly burgers really good burgers But mostly burgers and it's counter service So no waiters or waitresses you order off a menu board and then they bring your food out to you When it is finished being prepared Well, they wanted uh people to to be able to do something while they were in line Because that kind of business always has a line at the front because you got to wait to order off the board Um, and so they wanted something to give you know something to do during the during the line And they thought about having televisions and other things as you know So he just decided on a whim. Hey, let's just try this and so the way it works as you order your meal You want a burger and some fries and a and a chocolate shake, etc And and after you've ordered but before you pay the front counter person from underneath the counter whips out a deck of playing cards Fans them out face down in front of you And looks you right in the eye and says Which is not something you typically hear in a burger restaurant Okay, and you pick a card and if it is a joker Your entire meal is free whether you'd ordered for just yourself or you've got seven friends with you now Everybody who orders gets to play this game, which is one of the reasons it works so well It's not just on your birthday. It's not just wouldn't on tuesdays when it's slow It's every person every time now on average Skip told me that about four people ish for approximately a day win this game, but when they win They go nuts, right? They're calling their mom. They're crying. They're putting you know posts on instagram Like it's a whole thing right confetti cannon, whatever And and it propels so much word of mouth For the business and in fact they have this giant neon sign out front that says skips kitchen. It's the name of the restaurant But nobody in sacramento, california where it's based. They don't call it skips kitchen. Everybody calls it that joker restaurant Yeah, that's a pretty powerful word of mouth statement when nobody even knows the name It's the only know the name of your talk trigger It's just so clever and it's it's gamified and it's not even digital You know, everyone's so obsessed right fine digital experiences. So true So it's so simple and and it's one of the it's one of the examples and I have hundreds of examples now In fact, my talk triggers show my youtube show that The details talk triggers ideas has a bunch of different ones that aren't in the book And I've got lots more even since I stopped doing that show So I have literally hundreds of examples But but the one about skips when we just talked about is one that that I include in almost every presentation Because it's just so easy to see like why it works how it works. You're like, oh, I get it Right. I actually lead a lot of presentations with that one Because it it's just so so simple for the audience to understand What I mean and also what I don't mean. So I like that one a lot and These are ones that we've spoken about here just now are like small enterprises But there are there are other examples of the bigger corporates Absolutely. Yeah, there's definitely there's there's lots of big company examples. Although I will say That it is typically easier for small and medium-sized businesses to execute on a talk trigger because it does require some degree of bravery and courage and and big companies Feel like well, we don't need to do that. We can just win by spending more money on ads or or, you know Having a lower price or some other kind of weaponry And and so there's no doubt that that some of the best examples tend to skew smaller because it's just easier for them to do it Yeah and We're just conscious of time. I want to move on to even though I love talk triggers and could talk about it all day I want to move on to hug your haters as well, which is another book Absolutely filled with empathy like how to turn your Customer service into a competitor advantage is is kind of what it's about, right? Would you do you want to speak about the The disparity between companies who think that they have great customer service Who's you actually that was some research from bain that came out? and that said that that 80 percent of companies When you ask them say that they deliver superior customer service 8 percent of their customers agree and I think that really says it all about the state of customer service like You know businesses are like, well, what's the problem? Right and and customers are like, are you kidding me? It's nothing but problems Uh, and I'm having a couple of customer service challenges right now with some businesses and it's like man Too bad these guys don't know I wrote a whole book about this They'd probably be calling me back. They might be in the next book. Uh, it says It's kind of funny in that way You know and and one of the things I see all the time as a consultant is is companies will say well Jay, you know, this doesn't really apply to us because we don't get that many complaints And what I always have to remind them is nobody gets that many complaints, right? The the data show That for every 100 dissatisfied customers, okay They're already unhappy 100 unhappy customers only five will actually complain Five out of 100 the rest just stop giving you money and they and they talk about you behind your back So this idea that well, we don't get that many complaints. Therefore, everything is fine. It actually doesn't hold water Mathematically, you know, even the best companies and even the worst companies don't get that many complaints As a as a share of total customer volume So it's not a reliable metric to gauge how well you're actually doing and the fundamental premise of the talk figure's book is that Um, it's shocking even today How often customers have a question comment challenge complaint and they are ignored And this has happened to almost everybody at some point in their life, right? They have tried to communicate with a business and they've heard nothing but silence I'm experiencing this right now as I mentioned In 100 of the cases that makes you feel worse about the company not better Right, it's not like well. I'm sure glad they ignored me. I can't wait to give them more money Said nobody ever so this idea that that businesses should somehow Pick and choose or or let's only answer the most unhappy customers or or somehow try and sort customer contact by You know by any mechanism is is wrong And we did a tremendous amount of research in that book and found quite clearly that if you reply to a customer Even if you can't solve the problem, right? If you just respond It has a tremendous impact on customer retention And customer advocacy. So as a consultant, we find all the time circumstances where businesses said well What percentage of your customers do you actually reply to? 32 percent So the other 68 percent you're just like well, I guess they're gone We'll replace them with new customers through more advertising It's just a flawed way to run a business and and It's interesting that that book and the principles in that book, which is essentially Customer service is marketing. Yeah, I'd really hope that by now Would no longer be relevant and sadly it's as relevant as it's ever been And yeah, you say that so like that that overt five out of a hundred who are actually complaining This this is the the point that you're making that customer service is the new marketing because it's a spectator sport now Absolutely and more now than more in the last year than ever, right that that's so often our interactions with customers take place in public Whether it's twitter or facebook or instagram or or google reviews or any number of other places, you know, it used to be in the day Um customer had a complaint. It was phone or face to face or even a letter I remember writing complaint letters when I was younger. Uh, nobody does that anymore and so the the economic consequences of your customer service approach Transcend the economic value of the customer with whom you're interacting Because if you've got dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of other customers or prospective customers watching This play out, uh in social media or review site It's not just, you know, how much money are we going to win or lose from brand? It's how much money we're going to win or lose from brand and all of his friends, right? Which could be significant and so, uh, you are you are on stage In customer service in a way that you didn't used to be in Yet, um companies haven't fully I think still today in most cases funded customer service As if that were the case Yeah, you said you're saying the book when you respond you're actually not responding just to the person you're responding to The whole of the earth pretty much. Yeah, at least in theory You know, you don't know who's who's tuning into your twitter exchange or whatever the circumstances are Yeah, now like in tort triggers where you've got the uh, the great 456 in in hug your haters You've got these great mnemonics the the hours and the fears again I don't want to give those away, but just just because you you spoke about social media just now or review sites I think there's a really really interesting one for people to hear about which is the are in There's hours and fears and the are in fears is reply only twice Tell us the secret of that one. Yeah So We did some research on this and I've also experienced it both as a consultant and as a human being There is a tremendous diminishing returns principle once you interact with the customer Three or more times What what often happens customer says, you know, I hate you you reply back terribly. Sorry. Um, what's wrong? It doesn't matter. What's wrong. I hate you Okay, well, um, that's unfortunate. We'd love to talk to you about that phone email, etc They come back. I don't want to call you I just hate you At this point you trying to convince them to call you is not going to work, right? They've already expressed their intentions They don't want to interact Too often I find businesses Look at that kind of exchange wrong. They think they're gonna somehow turn this customer around or or win the engagement And they're not Again understanding that this is on record in many cases. It's public. It's on a public website You just want to demonstrate your values not necessarily to that customer because they may be too far gone But to everybody else who's watching this interaction, right? You're demonstrating your values You're demonstrating that you care and that you're accessible and available and a human being And then you just move on right? It's it waste so much time Getting into these counterproductive like back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth like 11 exchanges If if if they don't take the bait to Engage after two replies stop replying because nothing good's gonna come of it Yeah, and in that public forum, you've shown that you are reasonable enough to say Yes, you've shown not only that person Uh, who probably doesn't care if you're reasonable. They're just mad But you've shown everybody else that you're reasonable and that's what you're actually trying to do Yeah Now j. Uh, what what's next for you in terms of book writing? Is there something in the album? You know, I I'm not certain. I've got a Uh a speech as I said, I always start with a speech that I've been giving for the last year or so Uh called the coveted customer experience Um, which is all about what customers care about disproportionately And the fact that customer experience doesn't actually exist It's just a nickname that that we've adopted that actually Is used to describe hundreds of different decisions that you make in your business every day So I've been I've been working on that and and that may become a book if I decided to write another one And then your future would probably be on that topic because it's it's sort of at that point where I've got it Polished and ready. Uh, I'm just not certain. I want to dive into the book writing phase. It's uh It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and and you know, a lot of my friends who write books Kind of shut things down. They're like, all right, I'm gonna take three months and basically just write a book And I can't do that. I have too many other things to do. Uh, and so I end up writing books only nights and weekends and that's uh, that's a commitment For me and for my family that I'm not quite ready to make again just yet, but one of these days for sure Okay, well, I will certainly be reading it if it comes out. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that Can we can we finish with some uh a little bit left field questions some of course on questions? Um If marketing were a food What would that be for you? If marketing Were a food What food would it be? um probably Popcorn I would say uh, it is um Uh It's it can be fun Uh, it can be, uh noisy But it's not terribly nutritional And if marketing were a song If marketing were a I like these questions if marketing were a song um, I would go with um Don't stand so close to me by the police. Um, I sort of feel like Marketing gets harder and harder because audience attention becomes more and more fragmented And instead of trying to increase relevancy marketers tend to increase Volume and and I'm not sure that's a sound strategy. In fact, one of the most harrowing statistics I've discovered recently Uh, I believe this was it's either Gartner or Forrester apologies to them for not having it correct. Uh, found that in 2021 Projected a 40 percent increase in the total volume of marketing mentions Wow 40 percent. So nobody is like as a consumer like man, you know, it'd be awesome this year Coming out of the pandemic. It'd be great if I could get 40 more marketing messages That would be awesome. So Don't stand so close to me by the police. That's my answer. Okay Now I have to uh, give credit where credit's due I got these questions actually from Rob Stevenson Who is on the previous podcast who's a mental health campaign and has some great questions like this? Rob Stevenson from form score great guy And final question that I ask everybody. Um, you have to fight between a horse-sized duck Or 100 duck-sized horses, which you choose to fight and why? Okay, so it's a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses Um, I always feel like Numbers gives you more strategic avenues, right? You can you can You know align your resources in different ways you can outflank A giant duck etc. So I'm gonna go I'm gonna go with the numbers. I'm gonna say 100 uh, duck-sized horses Okay Well, I mean if you just look at me just watch any nature documentary, right? And you see, you know a swarm of ants taking down a bird or something, right? I think I think the answer exists in nature Very good. Very good jay. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're super busy. Happy to do it. Take care yourself. Thanks jay. Bye What a voice he has right If you go to jbear.com, that's j a y and bear is spelled b A for alpha e for echo r for romeo dot com not like the bear in the woods You can sign up to his bi-weekly newsletter His consulting company you can find at convince and convert dot com and check out jay on his social pros podcast The talk triggers video show and the standing ovation podcast Thanks for listening. Until next time