Anita Toth: 0:00

That's where the hidden revenue sits, is in that customer base. If customers are happy, what do they do? They refer other people they will share their experiences and they will stay longer.

Rick Denton: 0:13

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff. The best meals are served outside and require passport. Time for takeoff CX passport peeps. Today I am truly excited to introduce a Anita Toth, the hidden revenue hunter, a need to help small to mid market b2b SaaS companies find hidden revenue in their customer base. As the founder of ATI and EDI uses research and analytics to boost customer lifetime value cut churn and grow market share. Clients use her customer retention 360 system to transform how they think about their customers focusing on deeper, sustainable profits instead of just a quick hit temporary revenue growth with a curiosity score of 10 out of 10. A neat his passion for uncovering hidden revenue opportunities is infectious. Join us as we explore her journey and insights on customer retention. Anita Welcome to CX passport.

Anita Toth: 1:15

Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Rick, I think we're gonna have a lot of fun.

Rick Denton: 1:18

Let's get after it. Absolutely. And folks need is coming to us from Canada I from the US. So we are getting a global or at least an international episode today. So that's kind of fun crossing our borders here. Anita, we talked about hidden revenue. I mentioned it a couple times there in the beginning of introduction, I definitely want to get to hidden revenue and finding your best customers. But first, I kind of want to start with the origin story. What got you interested in CX in the first place? What drew you to customer experience work? And did that curiosity score apply here?

Anita Toth: 1:50

It was more like two really, really bad experiences back to back.

Rick Denton: 1:55

Oh, good. This will be juicy. Oh, yeah,

Anita Toth: 1:57

it was. I don't even know how many years ago now probably seven or eight years ago. And this is when the gurus were really big all over the internet. And you know, they're selling this and selling that. So I purchased from one. And I, you know, it was for there was a live event that was like seven months away. And I couldn't go so I asked if I could transfer my ticket. And they absolutely refused. It was like worth $150 Not as big, maybe $200? Nothing, nothing major. I've ran events before. So when you're talking that length out? Usually, you know you can you can work around those policies. So long story short, they said no. The owner of the company, Mr. Gerber himself got on and you know, essentially told me to take a hike. And I was like, alright, so you just lost now, not just me, but everybody who's going to ask me about you, because they know I just recently purchased your course, I'm gonna tell them about their experience. So he not only lost that, whatever it was that I may have spent with him. Lifetime value is very just that, you know, entry level. But then there were several people, I probably say five or six who never purchased from him as a result of my story. So hot on the heels of that. Another guru Promises, Promises, promises, became a customer and went, what the hell? This is not at all, what I thought I was buying. And same thing reached out to support and they're like, Oh, well, you know, whatever excuse they gave me no effort to try to fix the problem. So what did I do? I turned within 14 days. And that was that. And I was like, so that's two of them. It was like literally back to back and 1000s of dollars. I think in total, when I made these purchases, it was about $5,000 I had spent so I was like, No, I'm done with this, like this is terrible. And that got me involved in customer experience, like how can we make the customer's experience better? And then by making that better, they do things like refer buy more, you know, wow, all of these things, the exact opposite of what I just experienced

Rick Denton: 4:21

that so you've done the thing that you hear a lot about which business should you start? Well start when you see a problem. And that's exactly what you did. You saw a problem. And you're like, there's some ways that we can make this better. There's a there's a particular thing that I'm seeing going on right now. Right. And I think it's influenced maybe by economy or perception of economy, this are we in an economic difficult time or whatever. But regardless, there's plenty of companies that think that that is the case. Well then they go straight down the cost cutting path. Now I am a huge fan of efficiency that you can't have a bunch of wasted in business or anything like that. But I think you and I have both seen the pendulum swing way too far towards the cost cutting side a better path, I believe to profit. And I think you do as well comes from revenue growth. You talk about that hidden revenue, I wanted to get back to it. Here we are. What do you mean by hidden revenue? How can a company actually tap into that hidden revenue?

Anita Toth: 5:20

So it actually relates directly back to to customers. And make sense? Surprisingly, it's like totally opposite of what we've been taught. Cost cutting, right? This is it times are tough cut costs. I absolutely agree. But what tends to happen is customers then suffer. Right? So when a company is actually trying to hold on as much as they can, you know, if cashflow isn't isn't as good as it was, it seems kind of contrary to then be like, Okay, we should invest more heavily in our current customers and making their experience better. Yeah, that often doesn't happen when they're focused on just cutting costs, right? The customer experience suffers, especially things like customer service. I don't know about you, but sometimes some of these wait times are crazy. Yeah, right, just to get a question answered, or a problem solved. So that's where the hidden revenue sits, is in that customer base. Again, if customers are happy, what do they do? They refer other people, they will share their experiences, and they will stay longer. That's where the revenue is hidden. But you have to have systems to tap into those and cutting costs. That's one part. But you really, really have to question the costs that we're cutting and what we're cutting, how is it affecting our customers? And are we actually increasing our churn as a result of those cost cutting measures? Okay,

Rick Denton: 6:54

so it is it's in that reducing of churn, you know, for the company that has that kind of ongoing relationship model or that sort of thing. But it's also referral. That's where that hidden revenues, is this what you're describing. As an aside, I wonder if customers would be nearly as tolerant of average hold times if we didn't have speaker phones. I mean, I recall just something I was doing. I was like a week or so ago, I think it was an airline, but I don't want to blame them automatically. But it's something like that. And I had to visit an investment company. And I had to sit on hold for it was about 40 minutes before I get talked to someone and it didn't bother me as much as it should have because I had it on speaker and I was just clickety clack. And in a way on the on the others. Maybe that's how we need to fix this whole time issue is just get rid of speakerphone and then we're going to all be so frustrated holding it. And suddenly that'll fix everything right.

Anita Toth: 7:45

I think COVID Actually what happened with COVID trained us to where we are today.

Rick Denton: 7:50

Yeah, that we've accepted things because of that. How maddening that I don't want to take us down this rabbit hole. I really don't. But how maddening is it today to still hear, you know, call hold times are longer than usual. No, it's just the automatic message or I haven't heard the COVID phrase in a while. But there was for a while after we were well out of the official elements of a pandemic due to COVID. Like yeah, okay, yeah, no more blaming that. Let's aside from my whole time, foolishness, or I'm sorry, my speakerphone foolishness here. Now listeners are like, Okay, I want the hidden revenue. Great that you've got this theory that it has to do with experience, but let's get actual nuts and bolts tactical here, how, what are some actual tactical ways that a company can really tap into and access that hidden revenue? Okay,

Anita Toth: 8:35

so there's two ways one I'm going to talk about which is direct, and then the second is indirect by reducing churn. Okay, so let's, let's address the reducing churn. One of the most, there's two things, maintaining great customer experience is as best you can. And the second is actually improving your onboarding experience. Okay? If there's one lever you can pull, make that onboarding experience top notch. Because when customers become customers, and this is all of us, like, just think of our you know, your own experience, your your emotions are at a high point, right? You're either hopeful you're excited. Or maybe you might be like, I'm not sure, but there's still in there some hope that your problem will be solved, whatever it is. That's, that's that high point. Now, let's look at it that, you know, things don't go so well. So your time to first value is very long. You're like, Okay, I've been working with this for a while. I still don't you know, I've seen no benefit to this. Or in my experience, you're sold something that just doesn't exist. Very quickly as you go from this emotional high point boom, into what's called buyer's remorse. And we've all had buyer's remorse, where you just regret that you purchase, you might be angry, you might be disappointed, you might be frustrated, you might be kicking yourself. Like, there's all sorts of negative emotions. Once people are in buyer's remorse, once your customers are sitting there, it is a Herculean effort to get them back up to even just satisfied, never mind back to their high emotional state. So companies that do this well, and I'm gonna give props to Amazon for this. And across their product lines, it's not just their marketplace, I have several Amazon services that I subscribe to, for my business. And when you become a new customer, they do everything in their power right off the bat, from that very first email to keep your emotions at that high point. You know, they let you know what you should do first, what resources you should use, that will help your journey. And then, you know, they confirm that you made the right decision to buy from them. And it works even if you run into a little difficulty because they've, they've maintained that that high level of emotion within you. It doesn't seem as bad as when you purchase and then you're like, Okay, I didn't even get a confirmation email, like what's going on. And then now, I have to reach out to a company and I'm like, Ah, I didn't hear anything from you took my money really quickly. But

Rick Denton: 11:30

look at my credit card statement. And I see that it's gone. Yeah. So it's

Anita Toth: 11:35

the onboarding, the seeds of churn are planted right there. So that's, that's exactly where you need to focus.

Your CX Passport Captain: 11:44

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 12:11

I love that on two fronts. One, well, three fronts. Actually, I love the phrase that that needs to be the Nita toast t shirt is the seeds of choke. I'm gonna get around that seeds of churn are sown in the onboarding process, what a great phrase. And the other one of my most successful client engagements is exactly that they had during the cancellation, where did we discover the issue, it was an onboarding and even actually, before onboarding in the sales process. And so that idea of making sure that customer experience looks end to end is so vital. And then the other is I have a personal story very recently about this, that there is if you're if you're a company, and you want to send out mass emails, or newsletters and that sort of stuff, you tend to buy a provider that does that. And there's a well known one out there that I went with. And I felt completely alone unsupported in the onboarding process. And it was when I went from free to paid. And I thought, well, here's where I'm finally going to get some explanation of how to really optimize this, I was invited to set up a 20 minute call where someone basically went through and listed just the benefits that I could read on a sales sheet. It wasn't knowing me. And knowing what I wanted to get out of that product. Compare that to and I won't name the former, but I will name the one I'm about to be hive is who I'm likely to switch to. And the amount of support that I have felt just simply through their email threads every day. There's a here's how you can do this. Here's how you can do this. Here's and being supported through that even though I'm on the free plan. It is still helping me feel on boarded. And I'm likely to stay and be much more loyal to beehive than I am to my existing provider.

Anita Toth: 13:50

And we'd like to think that churn or deciding to turn his rational, it's not it's emotional. Show. Yeah. I felt like crap. I didn't get what I was promised. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. To heck with this. I'm out of here, right? Yeah.

Rick Denton: 14:10

That's so good. I need it. So let's it let's get the onboarding, right. What is it because I mentioned that 20 minute call. It wasn't the person I can say this. They weren't unfriendly. They were empathetic. They were kind and all those sorts of things. But they didn't help me. How can a company really get that onboarding? Right?

Anita Toth: 14:30

The best way to do it is put yourself in their customer shoes. And it's really hard to do. When you know, you're working with your product all day, you know, all the ins and outs. So, companies hire us to run customer interviews, to find out because we're a third party. We have no like sort of emotional attachment to what customers might say. We run customer interviews and then we ask those questions and and like you said, Did we go right back? Why did you choose choose our clients company? You know, what was going on? What problem were you looking to solve? Like to get a full picture of what's really going on in their heads? And then tying that to that emotional piece? What were you feeling? What were you hoping to get? Those are all like, very, it's all emotional, right? And then asking those questions about what was it like first communications? What, you know, what would you have liked to see? If you, you know, didn't get this? What were you hoping would have happened, all of those things, and we dig down deep, and then it becomes very evident very quickly, through running, you know, even 15 customer interviews, we're not talking hundreds here. But going really in depth, you can start seeing what the patterns are, oh, okay. Six out of the 15 said that this particular thing was either good or not good. And they would they want it change. So it'd be it becomes like a roadmap on what you can focus on changing first.

Rick Denton: 16:14

Anita, I want to make sure that I haven't brought you in anywhere close to the buyer's remorse, phase of joining me here on six passport, I want to keep you at that delight stage. So while we're not necessarily onboarding, I do want to give you a chance here. Hey, let's stop down and go in the first class lounge. Let's really keep you out of the buyer's remorse. Because we're in the first class lounge. We're going to move quickly here and have a little bit of fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Anita Toth: 16:41

A dream travel location from my past, I like very fortunately, just went to the Bahamas. Three weeks ago, that was a five year promise I made to my daughter who came to me at 10 years old and said Mum, can we go swim with the pigs in the ocean? And I went, Oh, pigs don't swim in the ocean. She holds up her little phone and goes Yes, they do. And actually, yes, they do. It's called pig beach. You know, can't get more descriptive than that. So

Rick Denton: 17:13

pretty much baked in the title. We're good there. Yeah. Yeah.

Anita Toth: 17:16

So so we went it was it was absolutely like just one of one of the best trips I've ever gone on. It was helped me

Rick Denton: 17:24

I mean, there's so much to the Bahamas. But I want to know specifically it yes, there's so much because so many islands and all that so beautiful. This the first time we've talked about pick beach on on CX passport, are they just in the water? Maybe because there's a tourist sort of thing that they're brought there? Or is this their natural? What's the what's the scene really like? So

Anita Toth: 17:44

what happened happened a while ago, I can't remember what it is. But these pigs are actually looked after by the government. So they have a vet that looks after him. They have health care, and they see the boats approaching the beach and they just swim on mass up to the sides of the boat. It is wild and like they have one boar he is huge, you know, several 100 pounds. He's you know, they they neuter? Some of them. Others they don't they leave their tusks like

Rick Denton: 18:14

really? Yeah. They don't mess around. It's wild.

Anita Toth: 18:19

And they had these piglets, and Oh, that'd be so cute. I don't want to encourage this. But you were you were able to, you know, scoop them up and hold them for oh,

Rick Denton: 18:27

that's, that's off the record. We're not going to talk about that. But my gosh, how cute. It's sort of like Stingray beach and in the Caymans. You're not supposed to do that. But my gosh, it's kind of cute. It's freaky when they're doing it. So yeah, so we won't we won't encourage that. But it is kind of a cute. Let's all imagine that. It happens and it's just a cute imagination. There it is. I don't know what's gonna compete with pig beach. But what is a dream travel location? You've not been to yet I want

Anita Toth: 18:51

to go to London. London is it I was just talking to my friend and Brighton the other day and I said to her, you know, I think it's time that I come for a visit over the pond.

Rick Denton: 19:00

Let's I support that for sure. Get on over there. Meet that friend from Brighton then you'll have a little bit of fun there and like have you been to other parts of the UK or it's just

Anita Toth: 19:09

never never okay, so it's going to be there and I have another friend and Wales so

Rick Denton: 19:16

you're gonna hit several nice, very nice. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Anita Toth: 19:21

Um, there's so many that I pretty much will shove anything in my mouth. I'm one of those people. I like food. I'll try I do. I do. I love to eat. I can't end the problem is I can't pick a favorite but there are some things like Chicken, Chicken paprika. I am Hungarian. So that's one of my favorites if it's made like the old way with you know, handmade noodles and all of that. Oh nice.

Rick Denton: 19:52

Okay, that sounds good. Well with that spirit towards food, I'm not sure what your answer to this will be. But what is something growing up? You were four wish to eat, but you hate it as a kid.

Anita Toth: 20:02

I know this. My mom made this nasty chop suey. And it was just she tried so hard. And she'd make it and every time she'd make it, I just be like, Oh, I don't want to eat this. But it was just horrible. I don't know what she did wrong, but it just was terrible. Oh,

Rick Denton: 20:22

man, I do listeners viewers. You know, I love this question, because I love the physical and then the the emotional reaction that it evokes, oh, this is so much fun. Sadly, you need it's time for us to exit the lounge, however. So what is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport that you will not leave home without.

Anita Toth: 20:40

So if I'm flying specifically, they're called airplanes. I'm somebody who experiences wicked pain on a descent. So it has to do Yeah, you can read all about what happens physically. But it means my hearing is actually muffled for several days. And nothing I can do. At that point gets rid of it. But these things, they're called ear planes. And they're actually a different type of ear plug to help with the change in pressure as you descend. And I used it. I used them with when we traveled a few weeks ago, and I had no pain at no muffling. It was wonderful. It was fantastic.

Rick Denton: 21:33

Well, I need I hope that the descent out of the first class lounge did not require airplanes. But what an interesting, I'm going to have to look that one up. I think Lee, I don't have any issue with it. But I know many that do. And so that's an interesting one. So airplanes that'll be fun to look at. Now, now that we've gotten our refresh in the lounge, I want to go on a slightly different path. And it's one that I don't know that I've actually talked about here on CX passporter Guests have brought into it before. It's all smiles. It's all loving when we talk about retaining customers, because that's great. We keep our customers but what about customers accompany should fire? How can a company know which customers don't fit? And how should they handle it?

Anita Toth: 22:14

So two things, first of all, you must have support from your senior management. Yeah, well stop. If if they do not support it, it is something that's very difficult to do. One of the easiest or quickest ways to figure out which customers might not be a great fit, and therefore should be, you know, their contracts shouldn't be renewed, are the ones that tend to have an enormous in lots. There we go support tickets. But, you know, like, it's a great event. Right?

Rick Denton: 22:51

And, and you see this huge outlier. Yeah, yeah, you'll see these

Anita Toth: 22:55

customers that are just reaching out constantly, they don't seem to ever don't ever seem to get the same traction with your product or service. Those are the ones that that you should look at more closely. And are they a good fit? Now, good fit employees, though, that you have some sort of ideal customer profile or something like that? Yeah, you can compare them to and be like, you know, what, these, these customers never should have been sold to? Full stop. Yeah. And so you need to have something to compare them to. And they're your ideal customer probe profiles should be should be the first place you look. And then the second is, look at what even your you know, you have your best best customers, they're spending the most they're loyal, they're referring often, then you have your sort of group, your biggest group in the middle, which again, has a gradient, and then sort of these customers that just never really seem to get much traction. And it's starting to compare what's different about this group? Here? Are these poor fit customers versus our middle group versus our best group and do some do some number crunching and figure it out. Do

Rick Denton: 24:11

there. There's a thought that's unformed in my head, hopefully by the end of the sentence, I'll get it get it formed. There. Is there a risk of letting those customers go when those could be the most vocal canaries in your coal mine? Of what's broken? Like how do you balance? I want to get rid of these customers because they're just a drain on my company versus Wait, these are customers that have insights that matter? There's a balance there. How can we make sure we sit in the right place in that balance?

Anita Toth: 24:47

Right. Fantastic. Question. Number one is those ideal customer profiles and being able to compare those customers to that ideal Like, how far away are they from that. But second of all, you're right. They might be canaries in the coal mine. And that's why it is critical to be running customer interviews that you should be running them with onboarding during onboarding, after onboarding, depending on how long your processes and then during, you know, key points in the customer journey. So pre renewal, post renewal, and always, always, always running churn interviews, to find out why customers are leaving a

Rick Denton: 25:30

needed that's, there's always going to be that tension between should wanting to keep a customer because you want customers, they have revenue, they're giving you revenue, and then recognizing, hey, they just simply aren't the right fit. And so I like how you've taken us back to that ICP. That's the part that matters. And that's where you can have that difficult conversation. I'm aware that we've got and I put it all on me, because I got excited with the onboarding conversation, this promenade to you get me excited. And then I forget the other thing, you had a second thing that you wanted to talk about. And let's let's talk about that hidden revenue. The second thing, let's close out with that, let's end with what is that second piece of hidden revenue that we need to explore? Right,

Anita Toth: 26:14

and this is direct. So remember how I said focusing onboarding is related to reducing churn. So that's indirect, you know, revenue gains, the most direct is referrals. And for most companies do not have a referral system in place. So it's different than customer advocates. And I must say this, because some people think it's the same thing, oh, well, we have people who advocate for us or part of our advocacy group, hey, that's wonderful. But often like, and I have found this, I have used a product or service where I'm like, I want to tell my friends about it. But I have no mechanism to do it, besides just telling them and then what they go off and do afterwards, I have no idea. But we know referrals are extremely powerful in terms of the speed to revenue, right? If I'm a great customer, and I'm referring someone else who's likely similar to me, then that sales process is, you know, your sales cycles shorter, it's going to be easier to get them on boarded. And then more than that, they are likely to stay a loyal customer. And with that, refer their own. So it becomes this beautiful loop. But most companies do not have a mechanism in place to to identify who might be great customers to refer. And second of all, a way to track how much revenue is actually coming in referrals.

Rick Denton: 27:50

You there's a theme in there, that is one that is dear to my heart. And that is there's a process you're describing, that we talked about experience, we talk about experience drives revenue growth, well, you have to have a process behind some of these experience elements to be able to capture the referrals that you're describing. I am curious, because intuitively, I would think that yeah, well, of course, that's one of the easiest ways to revenue because you're it's pre pre sold, if you're being referred the person's already warmed to you. Why would companies not have this in place? What have you seen out there when you've gone in and helped a company put this in place? Why did they not have it before? Because it's

Anita Toth: 28:31

not easy to do? It's as simple as that. And, you know, for some, depending on a lot of it reckon the reason why I'm stumbling over my words is a lot of it depends on what you're selling. So for some, it can be as simple as as a link here will give you your link. And you can refer like my bank does that right? I have my own special link. And when I send it to the person, they click on it, it's easy to track. But for my accountant, let's say, I don't have a special link. So it's asking what you can do. And this is a really early way until you operationalize this further, is just asking in the sales process. Did somebody refer you Oh, who was that? But then it's got to go somewhere. Do something with it. Yeah. You can't just be like, Okay, that's great. So and So referred you last, the last piece of this is some sort of reward. So going back to my bank, every time I refer someone, they give me$100. And the person who becomes a new customer also gets $100. That's our reward. Very simple. But with my accountant, the awesome thing that he and I'm teaching him this, by the way, he's you've learned is just to start looking at who has referred and if they've referred more than two people, send them something I don't care or if it's if, but it can't be swag. It's got to be something that is useful to them. And a handwritten note, I am telling you those handwritten notes and put it in the mail. When people get that it is because they're holding on to it again, it's an emotion, what emotion does it bring up that somebody took time? And write a note to you to express their gratitude? I, we're

Rick Denton: 30:27

going to end right there. Because yes, it is something when I get a handwritten note, what the heck, holy cow, it's amazing. And absolutely, and it would it and I'm sitting here thinking about I like your choice of you the accountant as the example because a lot of folks might be thinking of big referrals, you know, the big b2b or that kind of thing. Now, this can be your small business, it can be a self storage unit, it can be any, it can be your your cleaners, whatever that is creating that business referral loyalty to find that hidden revenue needed. This was this was good. It was wide ranging as I'd expected, and I'm glad for that if folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you a little bit more about that hidden revenue, what's the best way for them to get in touch

Anita Toth: 31:09

my website, so it's ATI dot Ece, and you can reach out to me there I am on LinkedIn, things are changing over there. So you can find me on LinkedIn. I've been kind of quiet just because I recently moved and we went on that trip. Yeah, halfway through the move. Crazy. I figured we were already in suitcases and stuff while why not.

Rick Denton: 31:32

Actually you know what? You're right. That is a pretty darn good choice. I take that back. Well, a neat I'll get that I get the website and they linked in path to a Anita in the show notes. US listeners viewers, you know the drill, scroll down and click those and connect and learn more from Anita Anita, I did enjoy today's conversation. It was it was fun. And certainly, along with all of the wonderful CX hidden revenue, churn busting wisdom that you shared. I now have a new place to travel. I am going to find about this this pig beach and get over there as quickly as possible. Need. It's been a delight. Thank you for being on CX passport.

Anita Toth: 32:11

Oh, there's been a lot of fun. Rick, thank you very much. And thanks to your audience for listening.

Rick Denton: 32:21

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.