Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This is the Executive Connect Podcast - a show for the new generation of leaders. Join us as we discover unconventional leadership strategies not traditionally associated with executive roles. Our guests include upper-level C-Suite executives charting new ways to grow their organizations, successful entrepreneurs changing the way the world does business, and experts and thought leaders from fields outside of Corporate America that can bring new insights into leadership, prosperity, and personal growth - all while connecting on a human level. No one has all the answers - but by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:02.069)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we have Chris Hood to talk with us about digital entertainment. Chris's background is a digital strategist, author and veteran in the digital entertainment industry and a fellow podcast host. Welcome Chris.
Chris Hood (00:23.53)
Well, thank you.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:26.183)
Excited to talk to you today. You've worked for some of my favorite companies like Disney, Fox, Google, Electronic Arts, and several others spanning three decades, many different industries. And I wonder if you can give our listeners a brief introduction on what actually drew you in to the digital entertainment industry.
Chris Hood (00:52.152)
Yeah, well, that goes all the way back to my first job, which was working at a movie theater. And so it was right there from the start. And what was really funny was I was sitting with my best friend in high school, and I think we were at like Del Taco having a taco burrito. And we were thinking about what movie we were gonna go see for the weekend. And, you know, we're two starving high school students. You know, we both actually had,
crazy jobs, but we sat there and said, wait a second, if I got a job at the movie theater, we could get in to see movies for free and we wouldn't have to spend all of our money. And so the next day I actually walked over to the movie theater, put in an application, got hired on the spot and yeah, it went from there. I mean, I had a passion for movies. I loved entertainment and storytelling.
And it was really just a, you talk about wanting to wake up every day and go to work. And that was a job that I really genuinely loved doing. And it stuck with me. And throughout my career, I continued to go throughout media and entertainment, thought about other areas that I could explore. So got into the music industry, got into television for a little bit, video games, which I still do today.
So yeah, all over the place. And it was all about telling stories and entertaining people.
Melissa Aarskaug (02:24.619)
Now, what motivated you to focus on customer transformation and digital strategy?
Chris Hood (02:33.57)
Well, I think it was all a part of the experience that I was going through at the movie theater. If we really start to connect the dots, the movies were all about telling stories. And then as technology started to become more prevalent in our lives, I realized that engaging with a website was just another way of telling a story. We talk about customer experiences. Well, when we go to a...
movie, we want to have a fun time when we go to a website, we also want to have a fun time. If we get frustrated on a website, we are more likely to not visit that site and do business with whoever that company is. And I saw this really strong correlation between entertainment value, like going to the movies or watching something on TV and that experience that we have when we engage with other brands.
or companies that we want to engage with. If you think about, if you go to Starbucks as an example, there's an experience around that. And to then make that a digital experience, which we've had to do since like say COVID, the process of ordering your coffee, how you get your loyalty rewards points, all of that is this package that is a digital experience. And so customers,
as they think through those processes and engage with the companies that they want to engage with, that experience has to be memorable, exciting, entertaining. And so yeah, for me, it was just kind of a natural fit to bridge the gap between what we were already doing from a film and television entertainment perspective, and then put that into a business technology, digital experience perspective.
Melissa Aarskaug (04:25.685)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. I'm a big fan of the Starbucks app. I think it's a great, easy app to use. And so, you you've touched on a really good point, really focusing on the experience and the clients that are going to your website and what they're experiencing. So I know you emphasize a lot on customer centric approach. Why do you believe it's crucial for businesses to focus on their
clients and customers first and foremost.
Chris Hood (04:58.51)
Well, this goes back to a very basic business principle. If you don't have customers, you don't have a business. So, I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of executives and similar conversations on other podcasts. And there's a lot of different types of views on this. But there is no other higher priority for a business than your customers.
income and budgets and P &Ls, not your leadership style, although I could argue that your leadership style should be customer centric. There is no other higher priority than your customers. So organizations that focus on their customers and build cultures and organizations, leadership models around their customers are the ones that are more successful. And we can see that time and time again.
no matter what business you wanna focus on. And the reverse is true. If you start to not focus on your customers or begin to ignore them, you do run into problems. You do start to lose business. Now, depending upon the size of your organization, that might take more time to realize, but it is inevitable. It will always happen. And so your customer has to be that
source of truth for your decisions, your directions, what you're doing. so customer centricity and building those organizations is all about finding the avenue for the most success for your business.
Melissa Aarskaug (06:42.389)
Yeah, absolutely. I think back to the beginning stages of the pandemic and post pandemic, customer service has changed a lot. I know I've been in several restaurants where there was very little or no customer service and I haven't been back to any of those restaurants. using your Starbucks approach or your Starbucks point, every time I've ever gone into Starbucks, they greet me, they're friendly. If they mess up, they fix it quickly.
You know, if I ordered a grande and they messed up, they give me a Vente. So they're very customer focused, very, you know, engaged with the clients that are coming in to buy products from them. So talking about businesses, what can businesses actually do to create this type of environment so their employees are all in and servicing their customers, no matter what business they're in?
Chris Hood (07:36.588)
Yeah, there's a couple of different things that you should be thinking about doing. The first one is actually talking with your customers. So that means surveying them, having conversations, figuring out what they want, looking at social media, analyzing the data and thinking about what they are asking for. It's amazing how many companies don't even talk to their customers. They just go and do what they do and
that feedback mechanism for, I on the right track? Are we aligned? It's just not there. So first and foremost, actually have conversations and talk with your customers. The second part is how do you build that culture internally? And that is about either a leader coming in and saying, we are going to become customer first, we are going to become more customer centric,
And here's how we're going to do that. So you definitely need that leadership direction and encouragement to go in to the processes and procedures and everything else that you need to have in place to be customer -centric. And then there's also just how do you hire people? Crazy as this might sound, but you have a lot of people in organizations that don't even think about the customer. They go into work.
What's the job that I have to do today? What's my role? And I get asked a question a lot of times around, well, everything that you're saying makes sense, but how about for those people that don't actually engage with customers? Think about like a financial team or the technology team or your human resources team. We think about the
teams that actually engage with customers like marketing and sales, Customer support. But for customer centricity, you actually have to think about hiring people and how they will engage with the customer, whether they're directly associated with engaging with the customer or not. So if I think about technology, you might have an interview question that says something like, in your daily job,
Chris Hood (10:00.91)
where do you think the customer comes into the software you're developing? Now, I can guarantee you, I can ask that of 90, 100 % of the companies out there and probably 90 % of them will say, we don't ask any question like that for our technical teams because you're focused on the skillset. But if you really wanna focus in on that customer, then you're bringing in, you're hiring people.
who have that same mindset and desire to serve your customers in the way that is going to be beneficial to the company.
Melissa Aarskaug (10:38.207)
Yeah, absolutely. One point that you mentioned that I absolutely agree on is the people behind the scenes, right? So sales is obviously customer focused, selling products and services. But if the sales account executive sells something and the delivery team is rude, doesn't deliver it correctly,
doesn't listen to the customer, delivers the wrong thing. You can do all the things right to that client up to delivery. And it takes one person to ruin that experience for a client. And then the client doesn't come back. I've been part of those experiences and it takes a long time to get those customers back for them to trust you again, once the trust is broken. And so I think you're right. It is teaching your employees
what customer first, customer focus, hugging your customers, how important they are. It really is a culture and it's something that's not a one -time thing that you're nice to the customer, you reply to their email. It's an ongoing thing. So how do you suggest from your perspectives business continue to really test that internally to make sure that it's sustainable, it's working?
and they really do actually have happy customers.
Chris Hood (11:57.388)
Yeah, it's a continuous process, like you said. So you have to have data points, you have to be analyzing that data, you have to be responding to the data. I had a client that I was working with once and we went through this whole process. They wanted to change something in their checkout flow and they were very positive about what that change needed to be. And I said, yeah, but
have you actually asked the customers? Like, is this actually a problem for them? Is this a challenge? Maybe they don't like something else. And the CEO was insistent, no, this is the problem, go and fix it. We actually ended up doing a survey and we got the survey results back and the survey showed clearly that there was a different issue. Like 70 plus percent said that this was the issue.
And it had nothing to do with what the CEO believed was the real issue. And the CEO basically said, I don't believe it. Let's actually go and do what I want to do. And this is an example of you go, you ask, you get the data, and then you don't actually do anything about the data. Actually in this case, you do something completely different than what the data actually shows you. Now this was the extreme scenario, but that particular business,
actually went out of business about four months later. And they had the power to change, they had the power to fix things, but they chose to ignore what the customers were saying. And it's a great illustration about how you have to continuously stay in touch. And again, not just ask, ask, analyze, and then do something. And maybe you're...
doing something as we need more data or we need to analyze it a little bit more, that's fine, but you're not ignoring it and you're not just going in a completely different direction than what your customers are asking.
Melissa Aarskaug (14:06.805)
Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. It really starts at the top with a CEO. If the CEO isn't customer centric, customer focused, not everybody else is going to be all in in that regard. It's kind of like monkey see, monkey do. So if he's not doing what he needs to be doing from a customer standpoint, not everybody is going to follow suit. And I think, you you're right. It is a culture thing. is. It has to be start from the top. It has to be
a continuous understanding of what the customer wants. if we make mistakes as companies, the CEO could easily call the client said, hey, we made a mistake, we're sorry, what can we do to fix it? And then fix it and then continue to really focus on continuing to build that relationship and maintain that relationship. So I think it does affect top to bottom.
Any other thoughts about that before I kind of switch gears on you?
Chris Hood (15:06.528)
Yeah, no, I agree. And, and I've said it, I think it also works in reverse too, right? If, if you don't do it, or if you ignore the customer, or if your priorities are something else, then you will start to see customers leaving you and going to your competitor.
Melissa Aarskaug (15:27.477)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes too, customers just don't jive with people that maybe they're account executive that they're assigned to. Maybe they're a really introverted, know, low key calm, you know, person and they're matched with a high energy, talk really fast, pushy account executive. So sometimes you could have the most all in account executives, they're customer centric, they're calling the customer, they're
setting a birthday cards and they're all involved, but they just don't match, right? So we really have to understand and ask our customers, hey, are you happy with Susie? Are you happy with whoever that's working on this project? And really get their feedback. I wanna switch gears a little bit about innovative approaches to customer experiences. So you've been recognized as one of the top 30 customer.
experience gurus, what are some of the innovative approaches that you're implementing to enhance customer experiences?
Chris Hood (16:29.742)
Well, I think again, a lot of it is what we've been talking about. It sounds so simple at times and it's amazing when I go in and consult with organizations and I explain like, here's what you should be doing. they, well, that sounds so simple. Like, what am I missing? Like, there's gotta be more to this, but there really isn't. You know, talk to your customers. And even challenging your executives, for example,
I pick on the airline industry a lot in this example, but when do you think the last time the CEO of American Airlines flew coach sat next to a customer and just had a conversation as they're flying to their next destination, right? Like sometimes you have to actually get involved. When is the last time the CEO of say Coca -Cola went to a random grocery store and just talked to
customers who are shopping for groceries up and down the soda aisle and asking them like, what's their favorite brand and why, right? Like I usually get the response, well, they're the CEO, they're too busy for this. And yet again, I go back to my original point, you have no higher priority. If you can't take a day out of your schedule to actually sit down and talk with your customers, that's
the problem, right? It really is, that's the problem. And so some of the strategies that we go through in my workshops or when I'm consulting is to take these different perspectives. It's to take a customer first perspective and how would you think about this? How would you redo this? How would you engage with a customer more often? And maybe we can come up with a solution.
We talk about like round table types of discussions or our customer advisory boards or ways that you can bring. And again, all of that is typically handed over to a marketing team. When was the last time you had a customer advisory board and you brought all of your technologists who are actually building the digital tools to sit down and hear what the problems are? Like that's a completely different way of doing things, but it still engages your customers.
Chris Hood (18:57.524)
and the people who are responsible for building those experiences. And so I think again, you have to think about these things differently and engage with them in ways that are not the way you're currently doing it in your business to truly understand how to be successful in these areas.
Melissa Aarskaug (19:18.485)
Yeah, absolutely. think that's a great, great point. Like there were, I remember back in the day, there were secret shopper programs where people could go in and sit in a restaurant and be one of the customers. And I think it's a fantastic point you make because by actually sitting in the environment and being, you know, a passenger on an airplane, you notice a lot of things that you otherwise wouldn't notice up in a C -suite office. And so I think you're spot on with getting out there.
Chris Hood (19:26.273)
Yeah.
Melissa Aarskaug (19:48.161)
You know, if you're a general manager of a grocery store, go to a separate region and go buy some groceries there, go through the experience, see how it's working, see the layout of the grocery store. I think it's a great point. And there's so much new technology now for companies to use to get feedback after an experience. I know I've had a massage recently. They send me an email, hey, how was it? And they ask me some questions to give feedback about the therapist. And so,
From your perspective, is there a way businesses can use technology to keep their customers satisfied and engaged?
Chris Hood (20:27.04)
Yeah. I technology obviously is one way that you can do it. Your phone call is also another way you can do it. but yeah, think about, your basic survey and dominoes did this really well a couple of years ago. And what they were doing was here's a survey. Tell us how you feel and how you felt about the overall experience. And if you answer the survey, we'll give you a free
medium pizza. And so everybody filled it out, you got the free medium pizza. And what I started to realize is I would get the free medium pizza and I would get another survey. And pretty much for a month, I had free pizzas from Domino's because every time I got a pizza, I got another survey for another free pizza and I just kept doing it. I mean, on some level, this was ingenious because what it was doing was it was keeping a consistent
Melissa Aarskaug (20:57.835)
Mmm.
Chris Hood (21:25.506)
way of triggering a response for how are we doing. And I think a lot of times when we fill out these surveys, as consumers, getting overwhelmed by everybody wants my opinion. So you have to start thinking about, what's the reward that you're going to receive for your time and effort. And it can no longer be like, I'll give you two bucks.
you know, $2 off your next purchase, you it's gotta be substantial. It's gotta be interesting. It's gotta be motivational because if you can make that motivation into the survey process, yeah, leveraging the technology, leveraging ways of doing it even on the spot. Think about pretty much every store you go to now has your digital checkout. You go, you tap your debit card.
And then it says, what does it say? Would you like to leave a tip? And here's the tip amount. If you removed the tip system with a survey system, how do we do today on a scale of one to five stars and you track that, I can guarantee you, you would probably start to generate more business that would accommodate whatever the tips are that you're getting. Just from understanding in real time in the moment,
what your customers are thinking. And that's a great example of how you just change the mindset. Remove the tips, add a survey into the location right there at the point of sale, and anybody can do that. And yet tips are more critical and no feedback.
Melissa Aarskaug (23:14.551)
Yeah, absolutely. think that's a great idea. Because I think it's also to making them easy. I've received surveys that are 25 click pages. I get like 2 % of the way through and it's like, you know, there's so many questions that I'm like, no way I'm going through all of these questions. So.
Chris Hood (23:28.292)
Yeah.
Melissa Aarskaug (23:37.943)
It's gotta be, like you said, simple too, right? If you're gonna ask 150 questions and then you're gonna give somebody a $2 discount for a sandwich, it's highly unlikely that they're gonna go through the whole survey to use their 20 minutes to fill out your survey. So I think you're spot on making it easy, making it quick, and then giving them something for their time. They're giving their time to make your business better.
And so you're spot on with that. And I think it goes back to, you know, a large majority of my career, I've been in sales and a lot of times, a lot of other salespeople show up to a business and say, okay, I'm selling these things, which ones you want? I've got A, B, C, D, and they start right out of the gate selling people something. Instead of really understanding the customer, telling a story, who they are, what they do, why they're good at what they do.
So I want to talk a little bit about storytelling and how businesses can use storytelling to sell and share their products with their customers.
Chris Hood (24:48.13)
Yeah, it goes all the way back to what we started with. You I love the movies because they're stories. We get to escape. We get to go into somebody else's life and experience something new and different. And the same process can be said about your online experiences when they come to your website. Same thing can be said about a survey is like, if you could tell a story while you're asking the questions, that's even more interesting. And,
Definitely during the sales process. Storytelling is all about putting the customer into the shoes of somebody else to give them an idea of what they could potentially accomplish. For as long as I've been in sales, not directly in sales, but I've supported sales often, it's
will always resonate more when you can go in and start having a conversation and start using other companies as examples, like Starbucks and Domino's Pizza and Disney, and you share these stories, people get engaged with those stories, and then all you have to do is say, now, wouldn't you like to be like this company? Wouldn't you like to accomplish what they've accomplished? It's like, wait a second. Some of the funniest...
conversations I ever had when I was at Google was talking about Domino's Pizza, and then explaining what Domino's Pizza has accomplished in both in terms of generating more revenue, but also in how they are leveraging technology to meet the needs, demands, expectations of their customers. And the number one response after sharing everything I've ever...
could share about dominoes and their success story. The responses were usually, yeah, but we're not dominoes. I'm like, you're totally missing the point here. And I can't help you anymore. Like if you don't understand this, but yeah, you do that through storytelling process. And it's always fabulous when you have the aha moments where a lightning bolt goes off in their head and they're like.
Chris Hood (27:05.838)
I get it now, right? But you can't do that if you go directly into the sales. Sales is a defensive mechanism. People will always put up the walls. They're like, I don't want to tell you, I don't want to answer these questions. But if you start with a story and you start talking about somebody else that's completely unrelated to them, and you talk about how even in your own experience,
How many of our listeners have gone to Starbucks to order, know, have either ordered coffee and then gone and pick it up or walked into a Starbucks and have ordered a drink? That's a great example. And if we start to talk about the process of actually picking up your phone and placing an order and going in and picking it up, like Starbucks had been doing that and all of a sudden now COVID hits and there's this thing called curbside pickup.
Like where did curbside pickup come from? That had been around for years, but all of a sudden we put it into a different context and now it becomes a thing that we're all familiar with. And business and storytelling is no different. You have to root it in something that people are familiar with so that you can then change the perspective. I use the example all the time is if you went into the grocery store today,
and you're going up and down the aisles and you're filling your cart with a bunch of groceries and then you got to the checkout line and you put all of your groceries on the checkout line or maybe you did self checkout, doesn't matter. You already have a mental picture of this scenario because you've done it before. Now you get up to go and pay and the person behind the register says, we only take cash. Now you're complete.
realization of the story has shifted because you understood up to a point reality. And then all of sudden you got presented with something that you realize is not a reality. And yet, if that was to happen, you as a consumer would say, well, I'm gonna go to another grocery store that takes debit cards. I don't have any cash on me. Or do you have an ATM? There's all of these things that would start going through our minds.
Chris Hood (29:22.562)
But you can't get into that position, into that mindset, into that understanding of what I'm trying to tell you until I started with, imagine going to a grocery store. so yeah, storytelling and sales and business and consumers, it's all intertwined. And the more familiar you are with that process, I would say the more successful you'll be.
Melissa Aarskaug (29:47.115)
Yeah, absolutely. You made me think about an experience I had today at Starbucks, was actually at Starbucks. I went to Starbucks earliest morning. It was busy, very busy on the store. Every seat was taken. People were picking up their orders. The cash register line was low. But the person that greeted me to place my order, she was smiling. How was your day? Did you realize you have this many points? And today we have our Starbucks cups on sale.
you should use these points, you have $20." And she was so happy, so helpful. And so I think we've talked a little bit about the customer, but the other side for the business owners is that employee that took the time and energy to meet my need, to understand what I want, to understand where I was today. She's a very valuable employee versus the employee that's like, what do you want? Here you go, here's your receipt.
So the interaction is very different. Like the employee that is transactional, running the line, giving, taking money, giving receipts, get out of here. They're not gonna keep the customers happy long -term, but the cashier that's smiling, engaging, talking about the customer, making the customer feel good, they're valuable to the organization. So for business owners, it's also important to reward the employee.
that are getting those five stars consistently and really looking at the data. So if you have an employee that's had 10 one stars and an employee that's had 10 five stars, we really need to sit down with those employees and really explain why one's getting five and why one's getting 10. Maybe marry them together and co -peer them on how they can learn from the one that's doing it correctly. So I think it's both ways. It's...
appreciating the customer and appreciating the valuable employees you have for doing really great.
Chris Hood (31:48.942)
Absolutely, and there's a whole bunch of stuff that we could unlock in that alone, but there are plenty of stats and research that is out there that shows the correlation between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. If your employees are happier, your customers are going to be happier. And what's really interesting is also one of my first time jobs was actually working in retail at a mall, and I would have a district manager who would often come in and complain because our sales numbers were not
where they should have been. And this is an example of, you're making me uncomfortable and unhappy, so I can't necessarily directly serve the customers in the way they want, because you're focused more on sales than you are on the customer. And if we fast forward and we look at a company like Best Buy, Best Buy actually was a pretty high stressed sales role until now. They got competition with like Amazon, they opened it up. All they care about right now is customer satisfaction.
And if you go into a Starbucks, no one's gonna sit there and try to sell you something. They're going to sit there and answer questions, help you, spend time with you, no sales pressure. And as a result, Best Buy has increased in sales over the last five years solely because they have shift their focus from the sales mentality to a customer mentality. Happier employees in the process and more satisfied customers in the longterm.
Melissa Aarskaug (33:16.853)
Yeah, absolutely. So when we look just kind of in closing, when we look at the future of customer transformation and we think about, you know, a couple years from now or even next year because we're moving so fast paced these days, what do you think are some future trends that are going to be emerging as it relates to customer transformation and digital strategy?
Chris Hood (33:43.288)
Well, the premise behind customer transformation, this is, I wrote a book called Customer Transformation. It's a framework all about this topic. The premise is the understanding that it's the customers that are changing first, and that a business has to be able to keep up with the transformation that customers go through. Now, why do customers go through various transformations?
One thing that leads that is technology. They have an expectation to use specific types of technologies and specific types of scenarios. And so as consumers needs and expectations change, businesses have to be able to adapt to those changes. And so this is an ever evolving process. The process of customer transformation isn't necessarily going to change because the cycle is
A customer wants something different, business has to keep up with that, something different. And as technology evolves, businesses are going to be in this cycle of one, understanding what the customer wants, two, making the change to deliver what the customer wants, and then also being able to ensure that you're continuously supporting the customer in that process. you know, customer transformation as a standalone entity,
isn't going to change much. It's how businesses have operated forever. And so now it's just a matter of watching how both the technology and how consumer behavior evolve and businesses being able to adapt to that evolution.
Melissa Aarskaug (35:26.603)
Yeah, absolutely. also, it made me think, we're all bombarded every single day with app pop -ups, emails, text messages from many different vendors, whether it's in the medical field or retail or places we shop. And I think the ones that make me click or read are the ones that are providing value to me as well. They're mutually beneficial.
know, relationships like Starbucks would send an email, hey, today's double points day, or, hey, we've got, you know, pumpkin spice lattes out now, come in and get them. And so I think when we think about customers in the future, we have to be thinking what's best for the customer and also what's best for the business as well. So it's not just a transactional relationship. We need to be making sure the customers are getting information that they need versus
just sending an email for the sake of sending them an email, because we're all getting thousands of emails at a time. And I know for me, I start to unsubscribe to them if they abuse the, know, every day I'm getting an email from the retail store. So I love what you say. We've covered so much ground today. Chris, I thank you so much for being here. I know you're a busy man. Any final thoughts that you want to share with our listeners today?
Chris Hood (36:49.598)
No, I'm I think we like you said, we covered a lot. But feel free if you want to reach out to me, you can find me on my website, chrishood .com chrishod .com and you can get in touch with me find all of my stuff there and happy to chat.
Melissa Aarskaug (37:06.571)
Thank you for that. Connect with Chris. Thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you subscribe and that's the Executive Connect podcast.