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Mark explores the minds of visionary entrepreneurs who refuse to limit themselves to a single venture to learn how these trailblazers manage risks, innovate across industries, and turn ideas into impact.
Whether you’re scaling your first business or juggling several, this podcast is your ultimate guide to thriving as a parallel entrepreneur.
Understanding that incentive is now
who do people think about when I'm around them?
If I'm wearing a Jersey of my favorite team,
if I'm shopping at a particular store
I'm now associated with the values of that.
That becomes as much of an incentive
as all the typical perks and financial
Great experiences don't happen by accident
they are designed.
Susie Earhart is a customer experience
and organizational change executive.
Who spent her career helping organizations align people,
processes and technology
around what customers actually experience.
In our conversation today
Susie unpacks two things leaders
consistently underestimate;
1. how difficult it really is to think outside
your own biases when designing for customers,
and 2. how choosing between human
assisted
or automated experiences can either build trust
or quietly erode it. This is a practical
human conversation about designing with intention,
so let's dive right in.
I just love being in roles,
whether it's the actual job itself
or the type of function that I'm doing
that enables somebody to see what
they can do with their life.
And the impact that they're
making on others and then suddenly
do something that they didn't even think was possible.
So I love that.
I've decided to
do that kind of work
primarily through customer experience consulting
but I do a little bit of organizational change
management consulting as well.
Because guess what if you wanna innovate
if you want to focus more on your customers
you need to be willing to change.
And change is not always the easiest things that we do,
so understanding
the methodology and psychology
behind that is a big part of why
I Learned those things
in addition to my customer experience work.
I love that and the psychology of it.
What are what are three questions you ask a client
when you're trying to figure out what's wrong
and how you can help? Well,
first of all I don't always assume it's wrong.
Right,
because when you say what's wrong
it puts people on the defensive.
So the first thing I usually say is why am I here?
What is it that you want that you don't have today?
Right, so I open that possibility of that discussion
so that's the first. And then I always ask why?
Thank God for Simon Sinek,
he taught me a lot right?
But if you don't know the 'why'
then
you can't get to all of the other things that trickle
down of
what are the implications,
and what are you willing to do
about it and those types of things.
The third thing I usually ask is
what are the hot buttons?
What are the areas that don't cross,
don't touch? This is who I am,
this is who we are as a company
or an organization or an entity.
Because a lot of times people come forward
very excited about doing something innovative
or doing a different way of working.
But then when you get close to that moment
they all jump back and they're like no,
no, no
don't touch that.
So those are the questions I typically ask to start.
Take you back to your first statement then.
You use the term customer experience
what does that mean? Customer experience is basically
defined as every impression
that someone has about an organization,
or a brand. It's everything from
what's the signage that I see out there,
all the way through to
what was my interaction with somebody
who worked with the company.
And that interaction could be on the street,
like I happen to run across them
and they were wearing a T-shirt with the logo
and gave me a judgment about them
because the way they behave there.
Or it could be related to
I called them for help on their particular product
they sold and what was that like.
I think there's a book I read, eons ago
something about sacred cows make the best burgers
You've got. You
were touching on that, like
I'm not gonna judge what's right or wrong here
I'm gonna observe. But through the eyes of a customer
and are you bringing is a
one of your superpowers to bring the
the viewpoint
the view the perspective of a customer to your client?
It's absolutely one of my superpowers,
And I call it outside in,
people in our industry talk about
it's not what I see in my own mirror
it's what other people see
when they're looking at you from all those different
angles. And that outside in is not just a customer
it's also your employees,
it's the partners that you work with you co sell with,
it's your suppliers the people who come and quote
drop off the things that you need to do work
and how you treat them. It's all of the above. Yeah,
it's like a holistic approach to relationships.
I think we've been
speaking a lot about relationships and community
through the course of these conversations.
Give us a little bit more background
of what it was that set you in this direction?
I heard your why,
but I wanna understand a little bit more about the how?
So
what caused me to join a focus on customer experience
is because I was working in contact centers
for a large part of my life.
And the last two contact centers I ran,
actually last three, everybody came to me and said
here's the problem with your organization.
And they told me we stunk.
We were horrible. We were
the you know, the
forgive me the c*@p
that's the nice way of saying what's in my head.
The c*@p of the organization,
and when I looked and stepped back
I realized that the technology
people were designing a platform
that our users didn't understand how to use,
that our marketing people were pitching
a potential of what we could do
that we couldn't do. Our sales
people were making commitments
of how we could serve them
that were unrealistic. And so
what was happening is
all of these impressions were being set up
about the brand about who we were as a company,
and then they all they'd all walk away and ask me
why I couldn't deliver on it.
So that's why I started working up,
because customer experience again
is every impression of the brand.
So if you produce that beautiful
image of that juicy hamburger
on that sign,
you better make sure that the employees in the store
can make that juicy hamburger
every single time you go through the drive through.
But also with a pride a sense of accomplishment
and their reward. How does rewards fit in?
I believe that incentives rule the world fundamentally
like end of story. And how does it
how do incentives and rewards and motivations
you know fit into the fabric of
of how you're trying to solve
I guess
create opportunity for people to express themselves
better? Yeah,
I love that statement, because if I look back 15 years
I would have been more aligned with the incentives
like what is the financial incentive?
What is the bonus?
What is the opportunity to grow my career path etc?
And what we've really happened,
at least in the American space in the past five years
is that a lot of the dynamic is around
who do I want to be associated with, right?
What does that brand stand? For
like Target for example, right
they had this huge boycott
against them at the beginning of the year.
Because they made a decision,
a business decision.
And so understanding
that incentive is now
who do people think about when I'm around them?
If I'm wearing a Jersey of my favorite team
if I'm shopping at a particular store
I'm now associated with the values of that.
That becomes as much of an incentive
as all the typical perks and financial.
More holistic approach I love it.
More holistic approach. Holistic
So speaking of approaches,
the first time I heard CX as a concept or as a term,
there was a question that was asked directly after
and it was what are the resources you're putting
towards your customer experience?
And I think some of the things that you detailed out is,
I realized we have focus in selling
and selling and delivering.
We have focus in building the product and
and offering the product. But
what is it that makes companies
lose sight of the fact that
there's an entire journey that the customer takes,
that interacts with every bit of your product,
what creates that lack of focus,
on the actual experience that the customer has?
I don't think I can tell you any one thing, I mean
the reality is we get stuck in our communities
we know the people that we work with so well
so close that we get stuck in our ways.
The last company I worked for,
I remember them saying
our customers just don't understand how this works.
It's like well...
they're the ones buying,
so let's make sure that we're. Not buying. Yeah, yeah.
well that was the whole point
They weren't buying after a little while.
So there's a whole myriad of reasons.
It's really about making sure that
you step outside of your community,
out of your mindset.
Which is where I think innovation fits in
in a great way, it causes you to step back and say
if I was gonna do this, what would I need?
What do I want and how do I feel?
And even better actually
talk to the customers who you are having
buy your services or your products.
And ask them why they're staying with you
or why they're leaving?
You'd be amazed at what you learn.
I think that's a sin talking directly to your clients,
I didn't know that that's an option.
Yeah,
it is strange right?
I mean if
you could look at it with a different metaphor,
you could say I'm
I'm wearing blinders I'm a horse
I'm going forward I have blinders for no distractions
and that's your perspective.
All right, what happens when you take the blinders off
or what happens when you reorient,
and you I think?
You're bringing perspective into this decision making,
business making,
value creating thing that we call business.
I'm getting the sense that it's about expanding
and reorienting, and
and building your your perspective.
It's that and, so
you know decades ago
we said certain companies succeed
because they always produce the same product
every time, every way.
Other companies succeed
because they're so focused on innovation
they create new things
that everybody's excited to run to,
and wait outside in long lines to get. Right,
and then there's companies who highly personalize.
In the United States in the past
really five to 10 years, we
as consumers have become so conditioned,
that I can get what I need from Amazon in an hour, right?
So speed is there.
I can hop on the phone call and for example
USAA knows exactly everything about my portfolio
and knows how I want to be talked to
and can make this feel like I just knew.
Like this other person on the phone
that I've never spoken to
they've known me for 15 years.
Those types of expectations around speed
around personalization,
around the product matching my needs exactly,
have become so ingrained
that it's not just having perspective,
it's that we need to meet those minimum standards
no matter who and what company we're working with.
Otherwise I'll leave you and go someplace else.
Well if you're delivering that message to me,
I'm gonna pay attention.
So what's the,
what's the question you'd like for us to ask you
that we haven't asked?
How does innovation connect to customer experience?
All right consider that a softball.
Thank you very much. Proceed. Yes.
What I find fascinating about innovation is
it usually starts with the emotion of frustration
or anger
about things not working the way I want them to.
And that creates an opportunity for you to associate
and connect with other people
who have that shared perspective,
that shared need, and that shared desire.
And that innovation then
evolves itself
into something that more and more people adopt.
I think that's as good a place as anywhere to...
We dropped the mic on that one.
Thanks for joining us Susie.
That was the money shot