The Convenience Factor: Why Speed Trumps Friendliness

Stacey Miller: 0:13

Welcome to Auto Care On Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Stacey Miller, vice President of Communications at the Auto Care Association, and this is Traction Control, where we chat about recent news from the global to the local level and what it may mean to the industry, featuring guests on the front lines. Let's roll. Welcome back to another episode of Traction Control. Here's some of the latest headlines in business that kind of prompted today's episode. Apparently, the NBC Bay Area is reporting that Salesforce reduced their customer service headcount by 4,000, which has prompted headlines about how a genetic AI is changing the game in customer experience. The Houston Chronicle is reporting that high-end restaurants are providing better customer experiences, not by adding new menu items, but instead by refining their data, and Forbes is reporting on popular activewear brand Gymshark providing unique pop-up stores that wow their customers. Now, whether it's adopting a new AI tool refining your data, or brands that are making headlines with great PR, the thing that this kind of made me think about is that these headlines have one thing at their core, and that's customer experience. So I'd like to talk a little bit about how customer experience needs to be a cornerstone of your business strategy, and that's why we brought in today's guest.

Stacey Miller: 1:40

David Avrin is one of the most popular customer experience speakers and consultants in the world today. In fact, over the past 25 years, david has shared his insightful lessons on competitive advantage with leaders and teams from thousands of organizations in 28 countries on six continents. He's also the author of seven books, including the acclaimed it's Not who you Know oh, it's not who you. Acclaimed it's Not who you Know oh, it's not who you know. It's who knows you why customers leave and how to win them back. And his newest book, ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. There it is right there A practical guide to giving customers what they want and how they want it. Welcome, david, thank you so much.

David Avrin: 2:23

I appreciate you having me on the call. You know, when you talk about those headlines, it's exactly what so many of the conversations are happening right now in business. You know we're in a really interesting time. It's a great time to be a customer. There's a whole new generation of conveniences. Anything that you want, anything you can afford, you can have delivered to your home almost same day, right, and so businesses are really looking for those opportunities. Where are the real differentiators? And I would submit and we're going to talk about that today is the experience that you provide is a significant differentiator. When everybody's good, when everybody's capable, how is it to do business with you? And, to be clear, I don't write about it, I don't speak about customer service. I think we get that part. We've been talking about it for 40 years. We know how to treat people, but how your customers and clients expect to engage with you, how they expect to to research, find information, get information, resolve issues, pay, deliver all of that's changed, and it's changed really in the last several years.

Stacey Miller: 3:24

And so being on top of all of that, understanding what customers like instantly and what are those differentiators- but like the speed with which brands have to do this has accelerated to quicker than ever before and that that kind of can be a challenge. So I think you provide a really unique viewpoint in simplifying how you get that to customers. Tell me a little bit about that.

David Avrin: 4:01

Yeah Well, when you talk about convenience, I mean what's the opposite of convenient? It's inconvenient, right. And how do we cause? We're all customers, right, we're all clients, we're all constituents or patients of healthcare. How do we respond when we feel like our time is being wasted? How do we respond when we feel like we're talking to a brick wall? And so so much of today's experience is that.

David Avrin: 4:23

How easy are you to work with? And, as you see for those of you see the video version that's emblazoned on the wall behind me in neon I really encourage organizations. You have to not just be good at what you do, you have to become ridiculously easy to do business with, and that involves walking your customer's journey. What's it like to do business with you? Is it easy, is it simple, is it intuitive or is it complicated? Is it frustrating? And we all can think of experiences where we're just so frustrated. How often are we, are we screaming into our phones? Right? Real person, agent, real person. I think you said no, it's like, no, it's like. So the example you gave for Salesforce is a great example, because I was in a seminar and they were talking about that. One agentic AI chatbot can replace over 700 customer service representatives. So it is so alluring to businesses to go that direction.

David Avrin: 5:23

Yet, at the same time, I think we can collectively say that we hate it. Right, we hate it. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that has never asked a frequently asked question, because it never understands. Now, that said it's, it's getting better and it's going to get much better very, very quickly. But right now, part of my advice, as I speak to organizations and work with them, of course, through my books, is we have to give our customers options. We have to give them choices. We're serving many generations at the same time, and for anybody who has young kids or teenagers, you know that they want to communicate differently, and so when you think about the customers you have that are 22 years old and the ones who are 75 years old, their dollar spends the same, but they want to engage with you differently. Some of them are very fine. The technology natives are very fine with the digital options. Old people like myself my God, just give me a real person to talk to, whether we see it at the grocery store, and you can't get a real person, it's all self-checkout and you got a bag, a basket full of groceries. So much of my teachings is around understanding the options. You know that young people and many people there's so many different ways to pay.

David Avrin: 6:42

It's Zelle, it's Venmo, it's PayPal, it's Square, as a business, as a retailer or distributor or a manufacturer how rigid are you with your policies? You say this is how to do business. Well, how much has changed? Maybe that's your policy. It's been that way for 20 years. Think how much has changed just in the last five. So there's never a shortage of things to talk about. There's no shortage of things that frustrate us, but what's really important is to really understand what's changing in terms of your customer's expectations and do all that we can to align how we do business with how they prefer, because they have choices. We all have choices and if we're frustrated and we feel like our time is being wasted or we can't reach a real person, we just go to the next best alternative and that's a competitor and that's death for business.

Stacey Miller: 7:38

Absolutely. I mean, I love the conversation about choices because you kind of you struck a trigger with me there. I'm thinking about going to the grocery store and there's the self-checkout, or I could just go wait in the line. But I would just rather wait in the line because otherwise I'm going to have a Kevin McAllister moment and all the groceries are going to be on the sidewalk because I don't know how to pack the groceries.

Stacey Miller: 7:59

But it's an important distinction, the fact that there's so many different ways for customers to do business with us and it's changing, and it's changing faster than it has before and at the point of frustration. You know, you gave the example of you know operator. I want to speak to a representative, or I'm sure that you have had an experience in your life that just really triggered you to write this book and that's where this is coming from. In your life, that just really triggered you to write this book and that's where this is coming from. But it's an important point because customers remember and are most likely to talk about the negative, right. Sadly, they're more likely to leave a negative review than a positive review because their emotions are in the moment, and that's an important thing for businesses to remember too, as they're working through their online reputation, as they're working through relationship management, Right Like we have to reduce those points of friction.

David Avrin: 8:50

And it's more important than ever, because we all grew up in business and everybody in business. You've all heard this, some version of this. We used to call it back in the day. We call this guest relations philosophy, and here's how it goes and they'll sound very familiar. The average person with a positive experience tells two or three people, but somebody with a negative experience tells 10, right, we all heard that, friends. None of that is true anymore. Today we tell thousands. Today we tell millions.

David Avrin: 9:18

Today the ramifications of underperformance, you falling short, customers being frustrated the ramifications of that are profound because everybody has a bullhorn that reaches around the world. It's Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes and Glassdoor and regular social media. This is more important than it's ever been because customers have such a voice today and it doesn't mean everybody gets everything that they want. But we have to be so tuned into this. We cannot be complacent and complacent really, today looks like just good people doing good work. It's not enough if we're not changing. Like I said, it's a great time to be a customer. It is a really hard time to be in business. You have to accommodate everything, but we have to be very cognizant, very clear of what our best customers, what do they prefer and how do we meet those needs?

David Avrin: 10:11

So many companies, so many leaders fall back on uh, if you ask them and I and I do a lot of CEO groups and I'll ask the question why, what do you think makes you different? Here's what I hear all the time. Number one quality. It's our quality. Commitment, caring, it's about the people. All of that's true. Here's what the research shows. Your customers are assuming quality Everybody's good but they're prioritizing speed, speed of response, speed of answers, speed of access, simplicity of process choices. Speed of access, simplicity of process choices and, of course, convenience. And so if I hear one more leader say our reputation speaks for itself, I'm just going to open a vein. It's so lazy. I mean reputation incredibly important. We can't fall back on that today, and the good news is there's a lot of really great ways to understand our customers better, to serve them better. It's how I make a living teaching this. And those who do that, who really understand, have such a competitive advantage and they're going to be around long-term, because there's a lot of really great brands who just didn't realize that their customers had changed. Think about the companies that have gone out of business. They didn't do anything wrong. Their products are still good, their people are still good, everybody's feeding their families but they didn't recognize how their customers had changed, how we prefer to buy. And so, like I said, every there's not a, there's not a company that couldn't go out of business today and we'd be fine, because it would be replaced very quickly by somebody else who serve their customers better.

David Avrin: 11:50

And once again, I just want to be really clear. This isn't about being nice. I, my colleague Shep Hyken, had a great study and one of the statistics that 67 percent of people prefer a convenient experience to a friendly experience. Isn't that interesting? And I don't think it says we don't want friendly. We're fine with friendly. Just don't give me friendly and say no to stupid things. Don't be friendly and then frustrate me or read a script. Yes, I understand, mr Everin, how frustrating that must be. I'm like don't read the script, just help. So friendly is good, but really walk your journey and find those points of friction and see if we can expedite them. Can we simplify them? Help people get to what they want quicker, cause we're all going to call on the phone and we're going to hear it. Please listen closely, as our menu options have changed and we're going to hear nine things that we don't care about. Just let me. Let me talk to an operator.

Stacey Miller: 12:49

Yeah, and it you know you. You talk about competition and there's competition in every industry.

David Avrin: 12:54

Absolutely.

Stacey Miller: 12:55

The auto care industry. You know a lot of people when they hear competition they think price, oh, I have to compete on price. But competing doesn't necessarily have to mean price. You could also charge the prices you want, but provide a better experience and maybe be able to charge more because you're providing that simplified experience. Better experience and maybe even be able to charge more because you're providing that simplified experience.

David Avrin: 13:15

Well, we all. We have to be priced competitively. We know that. I've heard trainers and others say if you do X and Y, price is no longer an issue. You just took price off. It's crap. Price is always an issue, but provided your price competitively, even if you're a premium, you can be charged a premium, but you have to justify it and we justify it by being more flexible than others, giving more choices.

David Avrin: 13:39

We hear the term omni-channel. Omni-channel just means, however, your customers want to communicate with you or buy from you or pay from you or learn about product. Do we give them that option? And there's so many new technologies that allow for that. When we get in the way of that, when we slow it down, when we I mean poor customer service reps today, by the time you're able to actually talk to a real person, so often people are furious and that's all they do is talking to angry people all day. So that omni-channel is important. Price is always going to be an issue, but you're right, you can charge a premium if you provide a premium experience, and sometimes experience doesn't have to be a wow. You know we hear about create a wow. Just be ridiculously easy and you will have loyal customers.

Stacey Miller: 14:28

Yeah, absolutely. Are there some brands that we would give kudos to, or ones that have really kind of impressed you as you were writing that book, that delivered that ridiculously good experience that we could look at as examples?

David Avrin: 14:41

Well, there's some that are pretty obvious. You know people talk about Amazon. I'll tell you, my favorite, and it's a pretty obvious one, is Uber. You think about all the things that taxis, that taxis didn't do particularly well, you know they double park and then, and then when they, when you get there, you have to get pull out your credit card and you don't know when they're going to show up. You go to the app, you choose what kind of car you want, what price you want to pay, how long you want to wait. You click it once. You can see where they are, they're turning left, they're going to be here at this time and when you're done, you get out.

David Avrin: 15:12

That transparency of process has become so important. Every time one of your customers or clients calls you asking the status of their order, you're already behind. They should be able to log in and see it right and think what Amazon does. We know when it ships from the factory. We know when it was scheduled to arrive. You know it's four stops away or whatever that might be. Now, granted, many people say, well, we're not Amazon, no, but we can learn a lot of what customers really like, and so that transparency of process, um, actually a great.

David Avrin: 15:46

I'll give you a really great example and I talked about it in in one of my books was my daughter was had just turned 16 and and one of her friends in the parking lot of her high school backed into the front of her car and crushed the front corner of her car. I know it was just like and it wasn't my daughter's fault, it was somebody else. But they had just gotten their cars and so I took it to a body shop where I lived just south of Denver, and as we're checking in the car, the woman asked my daughter, who was 16 at the time. She says so what'd you name your car? And I looked at her. She says every girl names her car. And so when a friend she ended my daughter sheepishly says it's Dolores, I said Dolores, she goes, dad, shut up God. And so anyway. But as she's checking in the car, she's asking my daughter the questions, which was really kind of cool because it was her car, right, instead of dad doing everything. Here's where it got really, really phenomenal. Two days later, she and I both got a text message from Dolores and it said I just want you to know. They just brought me back. I'm really excited. I miss you. And then and oh, I'm telling you. And then the next day it was um, they said the parts will be on on Friday. I'm going to look so pretty, I mean all of these things. Now, what was so cool about is one is a little hokey shirt. But what they did was they found a clever way of keeping us informed. We never had to call to ask the status of her car. They didn't way. That was that we're talking to other people as well. I'm sure if it was a guy in his car, it probably conversation would have been I'm going to look so cool or whatever that was. I was so struck with the creativity.

David Avrin: 17:22

And any company can set up automatic reminders. Here's the stage, here's the status. Law firms do that here. Your court has gone to this, your case has gone to this place. But that kind of keeping your customers in the loop so they're not wondering and they're not worrying, because that affects the experience, it affects their perception. So just, there's so many great examples.

David Avrin: 17:46

And it doesn't have to be silly like that, but putting some thought into how you're going to engage, how your customers are going to get what they want, get the answers that they need. It doesn't mean the answer is always yes. One of the strategies I teach is, even if the answer is no and sometimes the answer is no, I mean, if you have a vegan restaurant and somebody orders a buffalo burger, sorry dude, that's a hard no, right. But there's a great response, and the response is this Let me tell you what I can do, just that and anything that.

David Avrin: 18:15

If there's something your customers want, well, can we do that? We're not able to do it. We don't offer that. But let me tell you what I can do, and just anything that offers an alternative. Maybe something that's a better choice than what they wanted. Maybe it's a referral to a trusted partner, but it's better than a no or sorry. That's against our policy. I just it's a great tactic of just saying let me take what I can do, and then we're really of service to our customers and clients. Answer's not always yes, but even when it's no, we can still be of service.

Stacey Miller: 19:10

Absolutely. How long have you been telling that story about the repair shop and Dolores?

David Avrin: 19:15

She just turned 26, two weeks ago, so 10 years.

Stacey Miller: 19:20

So you've been telling that story for 10 years and that tells you how memorable that experience was. It's very clear that, like, that experience turns you into an advocate, which is another benefit of, you know, being ridiculously easy to do business with right. Like, maybe you're increasing sales, you're getting more advocates, you're making customers more loyal, and it just like makes me think of this. You know we talk a lot about return on investment, roi but like, this is a return on an experience that you're providing.

David Avrin: 19:51

Absolutely, and people share it. I mean you're exactly right, but now we share it on social media. We share it through so many great ways. Honestly, customer experience today has become well, social media, in relaying those experiences, has become the primary driver of customer behavior and this is really unique. For so long, I mean for most of history, it was word of mouth. For the last 50 years it was advertising right has been that primary driver of awareness, of, of memorability Maybe it's a jingle. That has completely shifted, and especially within the last 10 years. Today we will.

David Avrin: 20:28

You're going to go, if you're going to go see a movie, you're going to go on rotten tomatoes and take a look Doesn't mean it's going to make the decision right. Nobody is going to take a vacation without going on TripAdvisor and looking at the rating of the resort or the hotel. It's true for every business and it's because of this there. And there was a study 40 years ago. Basically, it said that there's a mistaken belief that everybody is looking to make the best decision possible purchasing, hiring or contracting. The reality is most people are wanting to avoid making a bad decision and it doesn't mean that we, of course we want to make the best decision. We just don't know what it is, because we're not in that industry if we're a consumer, so who's less likely to screw it up?

David Avrin: 21:11

So we look for who's got the most four and five star reviews right. We look for that social proof, and so those ratings are important. Asking your customers and clients to give you a positive rating is incredibly important because that's become the primary driver. Your marketing is important. It always will be. Your advertising, all of that will be important, but the social proof creating an army of fans. But the social proof creating an army of fans, creating an army of ambassadors who just love doing business with you, is so powerful and, to the contrary, having detractors can be death for a business.

Stacey Miller: 21:51

Huge, huge, huge, huge. I mean you know when you go and you're doing brand reputation management, you're measuring your sentiment on the web. You have a lot of positive reviews. You know that one person that rises to the top that negative pin that could be absolutely detrimental. Now solving those, those issues and responding to those from a customer experience perspective we could talk about for an hour very important always respond, always always really really, really critical.

Stacey Miller: 22:19

You know, one of the things that I thought was really cool when you and I first connected was you made it really easy for me to do business with you, meaning, you know, you hopped right on, you were ready to go, you had your bio, your hedge, like I didn't have to do anything, you had, you did all the work for me. So really great example of how to be ridiculously easy to do.

David Avrin: 22:40

I appreciate that and listen. I come across organizations all the time Like and I ask audiences this you ever go to a website and you have a simple question there is no phone number like anywhere you're going page. There's no freaking phone number on this, but they have a contact form. And contact form is your worst employee, by the way, because 86% of people will never fill out a contact form. It doesn't mean you don't have it, but give them an option. Give them a choice for my business, because we're 24 seven.

David Avrin: 23:08

I was actually up at 3 AM this morning. I had a 4 AM call with somebody in Cyprus for an upcoming presentation, because my clients are all over the world but I am ridiculously easy to get ahold of, which is important as well, because this feeds my family, and so, if there is, I mean, do an audit of your own business If it's. If there's no way to reach a person, I know it. It's so alluring to have a contact form instead, but the reality of somebody has a question, somebody has a concern right now we don't want to fill out a form because we don't know when you're going to get back to us. We just go to somebody else and you have no idea how many of those clients and customers you're losing because they just weren't able to get ahold of you. So if you go to my webpage you'll see a contact form, um, but you'll also see everybody on my staff. You'll see everybody's cell phone number, everybody's email address and people say, yeah, but don't you have life balance? We have great life balance, but this feeds my family. And if a call comes in after hours, overnight, I want that business because the lifetime value of that customer may be huge. You have every right everybody listening or watching to set whatever parameters you want, but but most businesses there's a way to reach somebody. I mean, I don't expect I can get my haircut at four in the morning, but I expect I can make an appointment to do so or cancel that appointment.

David Avrin: 24:30

So the other question to ask is how easy are you to get a hold of? Because there's a lot of revenue in in being first. Um. Harvard business review how to study it said there's a hundred times better chance of winning the business with a response within five minutes. Not a hundred percent better, a hundred times better. And what it basically speaks to is oftentimes whoever picks up the phone first or whoever responds fastest gets the gig. So look at your internal systems. Are you, do you have policies that are geared towards rapid responsiveness for new prospects and, of course, for those who have concerns or questions as well? For new prospects and, of course, for those who have concerns or questions as well, it's the fastest way to increase your revenue in your business is be the first to respond.

Stacey Miller: 25:22

So so many good takeaways here. I'm writing all these notes down on everything but everything from making sure that your business has convenient options. You have a way to differentiate yourself, reducing points of friction and frustration. That contact form example is really good. Responding quickly it's such a simple concept.

David Avrin: 25:39

It sounds basic, but it is. It's a huge revenue driver.

Stacey Miller: 25:43

Huge, huge, huge. And you know you were talking about the 4 am haircut example. You know, again, not every business needs to do this, but, funny enough, there's a place that opened right down the street for me that offers 24 hour hair services, and I thought there's no way.

David Avrin: 26:00

Yeah, and you don't have, and you don't have to be that, that company, but there is a level of responsiveness that we're all expecting there. There's a level of flexibility in scheduling or payment options that is really required today and that's only increasing.

Stacey Miller: 26:16

Unreal, unreal. It makes me really excited, honestly, to operate in a business environment today because there are so many opportunities to create loyal and satisfied customers that as a way to build real relationships, build real trust and build your business.

David Avrin: 26:31

So it's an exciting time, as long as we don't go all in on one and cancel the other. Right? I'm not naive. I understand chatbots and AI assistants. They're getting better all the time. Just don't make your customers do business with you the way you want them to, because it saves you money. Give them choices and they'll give you their business.

Stacey Miller: 26:53

Amazing. I have one other question for you. Like you and I are super passionate about this. I can tell, would you ever go to organizations and you've got a couple of people who are just like very gung ho about this philosophy but you kind of have to convince and help instill some of these principles in the rest of the leadership team or the rest of the staff that don't really buy into this concept. I mean, how do you deal with that or how do you consult that if there's resistance?

David Avrin: 27:22

I think there's there's unanimity, there's a lot of agreement on what has changed and new generation of customer expectations, but there is resistance oftentimes in in wanting to make the changes, to make the accommodation. Sometimes it's easier to to criticize these young people. They're impatient, they, they can't keep attention on anything. I'm like, okay, but their money spends just as good. Right, they want to. They want to skip to the part that they want instead of waiting in line like everybody else. And my response is nobody wants to stand in line. The analogy I give is nobody wants to stand in a line at a buffet if you just want to refill their drink, right? So my response is, as opposed to criticizing how impatient they are, how can we accommodate, how can we serve? How can you understand the world through their eyes? And, of course, if you always put it within a business context and the revenue attached to it, it's easier to make the decision.

David Avrin: 28:26

But it's hard. Change is hard, change is expensive. That's why you'll see disruptors. You'll see companies coming to the market with a new business model, because sometimes it's easier to start a new model than to change your old model. You've got billing systems, you've got technology, you have equipment, you have leases, you have legacy clients who are doing it the old way, and it's hard but it's worth it and so and so, uh, you can go back to the old who moved my cheese and you can sit and wait for it to come back, but it's not.

David Avrin: 29:00

And so there's always, um, to answer your question, there's a, there's agreement that everything's changing. Um, there's frustration sometimes in in what it's going to take or cost to make those changes, but the cost of not changing, of being complacent. Then you become Blockbuster or Kodak or Bed Bath and Beyond, which I guess is now being a new resurgence, but there's a lot of really good companies who have fallen by the wayside because somebody else was able to serve them better and faster. And so, if you want to future-proof your business, if you want to stay relevant, these are conversations that we need to be having ongoing, and so it's whether the books that I'm reading or writing reading as well and the consulting and the conferences that I speak in. It's about raising awareness of all this and offering some of those new alternatives.

Stacey Miller: 29:54

Really, really amazing takeaways to help boost your business in the race for relevance which has come. It's going to continue right, like that's a never ending pursuit. So, david, I would love if you threw your book up one more time. Let people know a little bit about the book, and then where can they find you if they want to talk with you?

David Avrin: 30:13

Sure, the book once again, is ridiculously easy to do business with. Everything for me is just on my website. It's just my name, david Averin A-V-R-I-N. Davidaverincom. Follow me online on Instagram. It's the real David Averin. That's catfish for another day. But yeah, I respond to all emails and everything else. But yeah, look me up. And more importantly is, take a step back. Look at your own business. Walk your customer's journey and if you were looking at it with fresh eyes, would you know what to do? Would you be frustrated? Would it take too long? So I love the opportunity to spread the message. So I appreciate it.

Stacey Miller: 30:55

Amazing. Thank you so much for the great conversation and for taking the time.

David Avrin: 30:58

Appreciate it very much. Have a great day.

Stacey Miller: 31:01

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care On Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review that helps others discover our content. Autocare OnAir is a production of the AutoCare Association, dedicated to advancing the auto care industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocareorg.