Lynn Daniel: 0:00

You can you can go online. You can review things, all you want. But ultimately, in this, in the industry working they want to talk to somebody. It'll be a long time before A d6 caterpillar is sold completely online without any human involvement,

Rick Denton: 0:18

customer experience, wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. Welcome back to a new episode of CX passport. Joining us today is Lynn Daniel CEO of the Daniel group and the sponsor for today's episode, having founded the Daniel group in 1989 Lynn has ample experience in helping B to B companies improve the experience for their customers. Back in 2004 2005 range, Lynn started to zero in on what was then this new thing called customer experience. I'll be curious what his motivation was. Today, the Daniel group's experience connect survey program is used by over 80% of Caterpillar dealers in North America, as well as Daimler Trucks North America and many other B to B brands. Lynn's experience and customer experience spans various industries including construction, transportation, agricultural products and material handling. His focus is on helping B to B companies measure, manage, and ultimately improve customer experience. Now, you never know what will happen when a Duke alum host interviews an NC State undergrad and UVA MBA alum. However, I suspect instead of a good old ACC battle, we'll simply have a really insightful chat about customer experience, but we'll see. Lynn, welcome to CX passport.

Lynn Daniel: 1:43

Rick, thank you so much, and I will say at least you're not a UNC alum. Well, we

Rick Denton: 1:49

can agree, there we have the best episode ever, because you and I agree on something very, very solidly, very, very

Lynn Daniel: 1:55

true, critical, very important.

Rick Denton: 1:57

Yes, sorry to all of our tar he, well, I normally say something else. Tar Heel fans and I am and glad that y'all are listeners as well. So hey, I mentioned that that it was this epiphany in 2004 2005 what was it then that drew your focus to this merging discipline back then of customer experience?

Lynn Daniel: 2:18

Rick, I had several research strategy projects with clients, and one of the things I discovered is they had very little knowledge of how many clients were walking out the back door, how many customers walking out the back door. They knew the big ones. They knew if they lost a big order. They knew if they lost a big client, a lot of the medium and smaller customers, they didn't really understand. So we started to think, well, how, how can we help them solve that problem? How can we help them keep those customers in the fold so that they don't have to go hunt for new customers again? That was a real genesis of us getting started and focusing so much on CX way back then, what?

Rick Denton: 3:09

So it's, it's about them walking out the back door or, you know, just not being aware of it. So at the time where you it, was it sort of an insights gap? Was it A, what am I trying to say here? Sort of a just not even focusing on the customer aspect of it. Where was that gap that triggered you to say it's CX, this is what they need.

Lynn Daniel: 3:30

There are several things. First of all, the product, way back many, many years ago, as you noted that I do have quite a bit of experience in a nice way. You saying I'm older? Yes, I am.

Rick Denton: 3:46

Hey, we both have a similar sort of profile here. But

Lynn Daniel: 3:51

I can remember, after business school and working in industry for many years, the focus was on product differentiation. That's what drove companies a lot, and it was not an inappropriate thing to do, but now, and certainly starting in the late 90s and early 2000s it was harder to differentiate product simply because the engineering and design talent throughout the world was getting better and better and better, right? So all of a sudden it was not just about the product, but it was about all the other stuff that went along with it, and then the worlds that we work in, the service tales, as I call it, the parts and service and support that's needed, to say, support, a Navistar bus, Navistar truck, a caterpillar, piece of equipment, whatever. That's a long service tail. And so customers really got to expect more from their their provider. Wider than just a really great product, because they could get a really great product from several different sources. I think the second reason I just real quickly, I'll add that, is is we have a focus in marketing about finding the new which is not inappropriate, but we've got to start thinking about the existing clients and customers that we have to make sure they stay with us.

Your CX Passport Captain: 5:29

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: 5:56

I You saw my grin, and if folks, if you're just listening, you didn't see it two really important points that you've made there. One is that product alone is not going to win. Now, if you have a crappy product that matter, great, your experience is right. If the bulldozer falls apart, then it's not going to serve your needs. However, the differentiation comes from the experience. What's interesting to me is when I talked about those brands earlier, we're talking about heavy equipment. Even there, you're talking about a Navistar bus, right? I'm talking about yellow iron, heavy steel. I know that when I first met you, this is not an area that I immediately thought of needing customer experience. How did you come to realize not just that customer experience was important, but that that impact on experience would then deliver tangible business results

Lynn Daniel: 6:46

in the dealer network. Can I say we work with OEMs and dealers. A lot of our focus is, is that dealer network, because they're the last step in delivering something to a to a customer. We came to focus on that because looking for the right words here. But there just wasn't that focus. There was an assumption that the service and all that was going along was going along great. In some cases it was, and in some cases it wasn't because of feedback. I'll go back to a story early, early on with one of our client groups where there was always this conflict between the salespeople and the product support people of operations. People said, God, you guys in product support would mess up anything. And then the product support people would say, well, we're not getting the straight truth from what's really going on, because a salesperson at that time felt like they own the customer relationship. Okay, right? So they said, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna try to get some changes made for the hard headed way. So there was this sort of conflict going on, but there wasn't anyone to say, what just how well am I doing with this customer? You know, do you tell me the one thing we screw up on every six months and then all the other times it goes great? Or are you telling me we're just how good or how bad are we? So I think one of the things that we helped to address was that conflict. Second thing is the dealer network makes a lot of their profits. And this is true for material handling, for trucks, for Caterpillar dealers, they must make a lot of their profit on the after sale support. Okay, right, so you've got to get that right. So if you get that right, things, you start to see some enhancements and improvements in the big profit making mechanism in your organization,

Rick Denton: 9:07

you and in there. One of the things that I heard was the assumption, and I love that that was kind of that initial I could see a lot of brands, a lot of dealers, with this assumption that this is going right or this isn't going right? We should focus here. We should focus there. Well, that happens in this industry, in many other industries, if you don't listen to the customer, because the customer is the one that's telling you what's working and what isn't. And too often you see the boardroom, the conference room, determining what is working what isn't, without actually bringing the customer into that space. In that vein, you surprised me again when we first met that you said an area of getting input from the customer phone surveys. It is something that most CX conventional wisdom disdains at this point, yet in this industry, it is a vital and accurate source. Of customer insight that surprised me. Why is it that this area continues to be successful and really often required for B to B insights in this industry?

Lynn Daniel: 10:11

There are several reasons from the users, from the end customer standpoint, oftentimes a phone survey is the easiest way to give feedback. I know all people will start saying he's crazy, but who picks

Rick Denton: 10:27

up the phone? Right? You can already hear us, the chattering classes, saying that, right?

Lynn Daniel: 10:31

The reality is, a lot of people we're talking to are out in the out of the office somewhere. They're not necessarily sitting in an office. They're in a warehouse. Maybe they're a manager. They're a frontline, not a Yeah, frontline manager, maybe more senior level manager. They tend not to be in the office. It could be in a pickup truck. They could be anywhere. So it's a pretty effective and easy way for them to give feedback. Second thing is, from the our client standpoint, you get a lot more feedback. The feedback is richer. We we see, we see double the kinds of feedback on a phone survey versus a email or let's call it digital survey. Okay? And so that's one of the benefits to our clients for using a phone, is that we sort of eliminate that step. If the customer gives you a bad score and digital survey, then you got to call the customer and say, Well, tell me what happened, because you're not going to get a lot of feedback, typically on an email survey, but in that phone survey, we will eliminate at least part of that first interrogation with the customers to say, Well, tell me, tell me what went right and tell me what went wrong. What do we what right? What does the client need? What does our client need to do to make your life better, Mr. Customer,

Rick Denton: 12:04

I I have this vision that you've you've reached out to someone that's in the field, they're in the warehouse there, and something did just go wrong, or something was fresh in the mind. We spend a lot of time in the other areas of customer experience, trying to discern sentiment and trying to understand what a customer was feeling, thinking and doing. Yet I imagine that when they're sitting there on the phone, there's no hesitation telling you what they're thinking, feeling and doing, and perhaps in some of the saltier language that you might actually benefit from when you're trying to understand what to improve.

Lynn Daniel: 12:39

Yeah, there's they're very willing to tell you both good and bad action. It's interesting because we have this thing called a good job flag. It's when, when a customer offers up someone or group in the company that say, Hey, did a great job. We get about 15 to 16% of our surveys have a good job on them. This is something we're not searching for, but the customer has to bring it up. So the customer will, will, if you give them a chance, if you give if you give them their mic, like you have in front of you, and I have in front of me, right, they will tell you. They will talk to you. I laugh,

Rick Denton: 13:20

because you're right. You stick a mic in front of me, and going to tell anything to anybody, right? So I have no problem holding the words back. One of the things about this approach, though, is there's a scalability challenge, the benefit of digital or any other sort, even if it's non customer involved, where you're just absorbing what their behavior is digitally and technologically, there's a scalability to that. Is there something unique about this industry, the B to B industry, the yellow iron, the heavy equipment, that either scalability isn't a factor, or there's another way to solve for that? Scalability?

Lynn Daniel: 13:57

Scalability? Yes. First point is to to your scalability issue. Yeah, it's, you know, we have to think about when we bring on a big client, we just brought in, brought on a very big client, still bringing that client on dramatically increase the number of surveys. So we've been hiring and training people for the last three months, and we've got one or two more months to go. So yeah, it is. It is a little more difficult on the scalable scalability side, but we have offered digital options to our clients for years, and the ones that have been with us, they may have tried it a couple of times, but they don't get that richness that they're looking for. Okay? And going back to one other thing, Rick, if, let's say you're a caterpillar customer, and you just pay $25,000 US for a some kind of service which is not atypical, okay, then both the customer probably wants to give some feedback about that, and then the the client. Our client wants to get that feedback. They want to understand what went well, what could have been better that? I

Rick Denton: 15:23

think there's an important lesson for folks like me and folks like you, and you've already learned it, but in the customer experience industry, as we think of the solutions that we want to do, we almost need to drink our own medicine and say, Hey, in our world. I sit behind I sit at a desk. I'm sitting in front of a monitor. I'm more interacting with my keyboard than I am with my phone. However, that's not the client that you're describing and and being wise enough SCX individuals to design our voice of the customer, to be in the space that the customer themselves reside is a vital way to make that happen. I want to you're teaching me a lot in all sincerity, right? I'm actually learning a lot here today, which is why I love doing CX passport. Tell me more about this specific industry that you're in and more the customer itself. What's unique about the customer? We talked about some elements of it. But what is it that excites a customer? What is it that gets a customer really excited and wanting to engage with a brand? And what other factors have them less energized in this space,

Lynn Daniel: 16:35

the factors that really engage our customers, and we know this now because we ask during the survey process on all of our surveys, well, Mr. Customer, tell me what went well, and we tag it. The next question is, what could have been better? So the things that really excite a customer are make it easy for me to do business. Okay, not, not surprising a friendly staff, okay, the human, you know, that's one of the top things that really jacks up the NPS score, because among those customers, we know if, if they say ease of doing business or something, we have some ways to categorize that ease of doing business. Then we can look at those customers mentioned that particular factor and tell them. Tell me what the NPS score was, and that MPs score goes up if they mention it. Ease of doing business, friendly, staff, professionalism, those are the factors that really tend to make them loyal customers. On the flip side, it's like a typical situation where you've got some things that turn them on, some things that turn them off. So you can turn them off. If you don't communicate well with them, really turn them off. We'll see the MPs score go down as much as 25 points for those customers who said, Man, the communication could have been better. Things like you don't. They didn't do the job right the first time. Really, that that tears the customer out of the frame. One of the interesting things Rick is pricing. Pricing is always mentioned as something that could be better. It doesn't matter. The industry, capital equipment, material handling, all of these companies, everything the second thing or first thing, generally, second or third down list is pricing. What's fascinating to me is that pricing, if they mention that as a negative, it has a much lower impact on the Net Promoter Score than do the other things. Why you go out and you buy a new truck, you buy a cat, you buy a dozer, whatever. Man, you may like them, but, well, what could be better? Man, I'd like a lower price. And right, so I think they still may like the product. Yeah, I would like a lower price, but that's not going to cause me to to reduce my view of the product, necessarily. So those are some of the things we're learning that really turn customers on and really turn customers off.

Rick Denton: 19:35

Lynn, I like that, and I was chuckling about the pricing one, because who doesn't go into any situation like, Yeah, I wish it were a cheaper price. I think the only place where pricing seems to be a higher price seems more valued by the customer than a lower price is a cover charge at a Vegas nightclub. It seems like, oh, yeah, oh, they want to charge me 500 odd. Well, that must mean that it's a great club, which is why I'm not a Vegas nightclub kind of guy. You know what I am? So I am a first class lounge kind of guy, and I love it when I get the chance to stop off in the lounge. And that's what I want to invite you to do with me today, is join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly. Have a little bit of fun here. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Lynn Daniel: 20:15

Dream travel location from my past is Peru. We visited Machu Picchu. We were on a tour that actually took us into some back water areas, some of the native population. So we learned a lot more about the native population. We had some fabulous, fabulous food. Oh, yeah, that was great. I did actually try guinea pig, or, as they call it, Koi,

Rick Denton: 20:47

all right, not something that's traditional here in the US, but, you know, it went in Rome, or when in Cusco, right? Winning Cusco do

Lynn Daniel: 20:57

do as they do. But the trip was just an amazing, amazing experience, just to see Machu Picchu and think about how that was built.

Rick Denton: 21:11

It is mind blowing to think how that thing came together, it and where it came together, and how it came together. And that's that's why I love asking the question, why I love the dreams of travel. So what is a dream travel location that you've not been to yet?

Lynn Daniel: 21:26

Oh, not been to probably somewhere in the Far East. My daughter worked with a company, a jewelry company, in New York, for a while, and they're actually the bracelets, and all were produced in Bali, and she got to go to Bali several times. Okay, yeah, and so she says we've got to go to Bali sometimes. So I think sometimes we will wind up going into Bali, although neither my wife and I are would be looking forward to the length of the plane ride to get to Bob. No,

Rick Denton: 22:02

hence the need for a first class lounge, right? So, yeah, absolutely, find your way into that lie flat seat and get into the lounge. I'm assuming guinea pig is not the answer to this, but just in case, what's a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Lynn Daniel: 22:15

Ooh, favorite thing for me to eat is pesto. Oh, yeah, a lot of fresh pesto. We grow our own basil, so it's nothing like nice going out and harvesting the basil, coming in, making it and having a nice bowl of spaghetti. Oh, I

Rick Denton: 22:34

bet you those flavors are intense. And the good way, if they're coming right in from the garden, that's awesome. Well, let's go the other way. What is something growing up that you were forced to eat, but you hate it as a kid,

Lynn Daniel: 22:47

greens,

Rick Denton: 22:50

just any

Lynn Daniel: 22:53

had to eat the greens. Or else, yeah,

Rick Denton: 22:56

oh yeah. We certainly were part of that. You eat it. Or else. I actually always liked greens. I was kind of unique kid that way. When greens were served for me, I was like, No, I kind of like this. And it could have been the vinegar splash under now, all the hot pepper sauce that I put on there, but I always kind of like

Lynn Daniel: 23:10

them. Well, actually, I that changed for me when I got my late teen years, I began to appreciate greens much more. Yeah, they certainly love them now,

Rick Denton: 23:21

they certainly aren't presented in a way that most kids would look at it go, yeah, that's what I want to put in my body so I can understand it. It's time for us, sadly, to exit the lounge. I do want to know, though, what is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without? Hmm.

Lynn Daniel: 23:42

Now that's an interesting one, probably a jacket of some sort. We just got back from a trip to Scotland and Ireland, and having a waterproof jacket was really important there.

Rick Denton: 24:02

So all right, Lynn, I haven't had jacket on, at least. We're approaching 200 episodes here, and I don't recall jacket yet. I think that is one of the more brilliant answers. We were on a holy lands tour deck 1520, years ago in Jerusalem in March, and I would not have expected snow, and yet it started snowing. And so yes, having that lightweight, waterproof travel jacket was one of the wiser and more practical things that I've ever had. Getting back to the world of B to B, CX, and the work that you do again, when we had talked earlier. Another thing that you'd surprised me with is certain you mentioned that marketing, especially B to B, needs to change. That's that's not surprising of itself, yet, you said that it was under utilizing the value of referral activity. And what surprised me is I thought that was the way that. Business got done in this industry. Why is it that marketing needs to change in the area of referral activity, there's

Lynn Daniel: 25:06

a lot well, first of all, there's a lot of referral activity going on in all the markets we serve. We've asked in the past, have you actually asked them a customer? Have you actually referred this provider to someone else in the last six months, and what we found is about 30 to 40% of the respondents said yes. Now, of those respondents, over 91% were from were people who gave a nine or 10 on the Net Promoter Score question. What's missing is there's an informal way that people know I got a referral and I sold whatever to someone. But most of the time, when a new customer comes in, there's not a good way to capture Well, how did you come in? What caused you to choose us to come here? How? Tell me. Tell me about why you came. Now, the reason, the reason I say it's important for marketing to pay attention, more attention to that, is that's, I won't say free marketing, but close to free marketing work, so you can, if you understand where these customers are coming from, and love them, especially when they come on board and pay some real close attention to them, you know, you build that network of people, right? I really do think people need to start tracking this a little better. In Fred reichel's new book, winning on purpose, he talks about earned growth rate. And for those of listening to the program, I would urge you to either get a copy of the book or go online and understand how it's calculated, because it's a really simple way to determine how much value you're getting from referrals, and maybe some insights into what you can do to further up the referral activity and hint it all comes back to better. CX, it all comes back to better. CX, well,

Rick Denton: 27:20

you're singing my song, and that makes sense in the and there's a piece of that too, that I think what I'm hearing and tell me, if I'm not hearing this right, is there's a common understanding that referrals are how business has grown. What I'm hearing is there's an absence, or perhaps a less frequent discipline around the process of capturing and then leveraging those, and I'm seeing you not. And so if that's the case, then a lot of it proves a point that CX is not just the, you know, the fluffy, oh, let's be friendly and that kind of stuff. There's a discipline and a process to that that helps extract the value from a great customer experience,

Lynn Daniel: 28:01

yes,

Rick Denton: 28:02

and and that that leads me, and I'm looking at the clock, we're getting close on time. I got a couple more things I want to ask you. We'll see if we get to both. But I know one that I really want to get to ask you about is we've and you've mentioned, you've mentioned, hey, the NPS score goes up. We've talked about scores. Scores are a great indicator. And I know that you help a you and the Daniel group, help companies gather that insight, the score itself, though I know you and I agree on this is not the real value. So how are you helping companies go beyond the score and get into then the insight, and then, more importantly, that action, that process we were talking about, the do something with that insight.

Lynn Daniel: 28:40

There are several different ways that we do that. First of all, in the actual ongoing process. We capture, we actually record the phone surveys we have so those are available online, so our clients can actually listen to what the customer had to say. It's not being changed substantially by the the capturing of the our people who write it down, they can also then listen to what the customer had say. So it brings them into the customer's tone, how they're feeling, what they're saying about it. I think the other thing that we have learned is it's really important to have the information widely available within our client. So that's why we have a large, robust platform that we can share that that data. And the third thing in the interview process I mentioned the what went well? What could have been better question? This has come for us to be a very powerful way to understand what the customer is thinking. Not just, you know, they gave me an eight or nine or whatever on the question on the score, but then this is gets into the why behind that score, which is. Where you've got to go if you're going to improve CX, and

Rick Denton: 30:04

that why is exactly because a number without understanding the why forget about it. I mean. And there's even ways to game a number, right? And so, yeah, we need them all, yeah. And the car industry is, or the auto dealer industry is, where it's probably the most well known, but I see it in plenty of other areas. I mentioned. I was going to ask you another question, even though we're a little bit long on time, I don't care, hopefully you don't mind spending a few extra minutes around here. You we've talked about this human element in this business, and even we talked about phone surveys. I just want to get kind of almost your human opinion on what is it about this industry that remains and really even requires this humanity, as opposed to the efficiency that digital theoretically promises?

Lynn Daniel: 30:55

The interesting question, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that people who are buying this, these products, buying the services, buying the parts. They're buying it because they've got to use it in something that's critical. The it could be a road project. They're working on a housing development. It could be school busses got to run on time. It could be that material handling, they're building a new plant, so they got to have, you know, 50 forklifts that work and work well. You can you can go online, you can review things, all you want. But ultimately, in this in the industry, working, they want to talk to somebody, so that's why they put a lot of credit in the sales rep that they are working with. I think it'll be a long time before A d6 caterpillar is sold completely online without any human involvement. There's so many. The other aspect of this Rick is there's so many variations on products, so you have to really get the product that you need for whatever your work situation is. And it gets so complex that people have to rely on people. And I think the last thing is, we're humans. We want to work with other humans on things that are very important, and the things that are very important generally come at a high cost. And so you've got to make sure it's a degree that you can that, hey, this is going to work for me. I

Rick Denton: 32:49

want to just let that sit. That's I'm so glad we cheated grabbed a few extra minutes, because I really love those three factors I and why this remains human. I think it's why some of us even crave humanity in some of the other areas that have gotten more digital. More digital, and there's places that know I don't ever want to speak to someone when I buy an airline ticket. I'm quite comfortable with a digital solution there. I do want to speak to someone when my flight is canceled, and I need different options. And so what you're describing as an industry on that extreme of complexity, way beyond what I was using there as examples that the human is still highly valued. Lynn, this is I've learned a lot here. I've enjoyed getting a little deeper into the B to B world. It's not one that I play as much in, but I it was really helpful getting to understand it, some of the nuances there, if folks wanted to get to learn a little bit more about you, your approach to CX and the Daniel group in general, and the services that you provide, what is the best way for folks to get in touch,

Lynn Daniel: 33:48

to reach me? Email address is Lynn, Daniel L, I n, n, d, a n, i e, l at the Daniel group.com my local number is 704-607-0182, always glad to chat with most anybody.

Rick Denton: 34:05

You know what I like about that most everybody says, sometimes the email shows up, sometimes the website shows up. I don't know that I've had somebody give me their mobile number. So proving the point of the entire episode of humanity, of B to B, you've provided your mobile number. I'll get all that into the show notes, and folks will be able to access that and get in touch with with Lynn and the Daniel group I do. Lynn, thank you and thank you to the Daniel group for sponsoring this episode. It was a delight to have this conversation with you. Spend a little Monday morning with you and get to learn more. Lynn, thank you for being on CX passport.

Lynn Daniel: 34:42

Thanks, Rick. This was great experience for me. Enjoyed it.

Rick Denton: 34:50

Thanks for joining us this week on CX passport. If you liked today's episode, I have three 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 enjoy CX passport too. Then head over to cxpassport.com 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. You.