Rick Malsch: 0:00

Sometimes people talk about surprise and delight, and it's good, as long as you've got your core value proposition down,

Rick Denton: 0:06

customer experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk, we've been cleared for takeoff.

Unknown: 0:11

The best meals are served outside and require passport.

Rick Denton: 0:16

Welcome back. CX passport travelers today, let's get an open road trip in as we talk with this month CX, open to work guest, Rick mulch. You can tell why I'm thinking open road today as Rick joins us from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, bringing expertise sharpened through years at Harley Davidson Johnson Controls and recent consulting work. Rick's approach is rooted in curiosity and practicality. He focuses on breaking down barriers and creating seamless customer journeys. From developing lead gen platforms at Harley Davidson to streamlining processes for a global pharmaceutical company, Rick knows how to tackle customer pain points and turn them into growth opportunities, and clearly, Rick has my favorite first name in the world. So grab your helmet, put your road leathers on. We are hitting the road now. Rick, welcome to CX passport.

Rick Malsch: 1:09

Thank you. Great to be here.

Rick Denton: 1:10

Yes, and here and now. By the way, everybody that's listening, we're recording this at the beginning of December. I've got a big, sunny, but crisp, chilly day. I can imagine that maybe the road trip might be put on pause there in Milwaukee right now. Rick, What's it like there today?

Rick Malsch: 1:25

Well, it's not too bad it is chilly, maybe about 25 degrees, don't we? So for us, that's just a little chilly. We really don't have any snow on the ground, other than maybe a tiny little dusting. But other than that, it's a beautiful day.

Rick Denton: 1:41

Okay, well, that sounds it sounds like a mixture of delightful and my vision of hell, I often say the only reason for snow is for skiing, and anything below 65 Well, actually, what I say is there's a reason why Dante's Inferno, the deepest Canto of hell that Dante described, was not fire, but ice. So you enjoy it. I'm glad it's a delightful day for you. That's why God has placed this in two different places. You're there. I'm here. We're going to talk about CX today, though. Rick, I'm curious what is it that has drawn you to customer experience? Why is this field, of all the fields you could choose, important to

Rick Malsch: 2:14

you? Well, that it's a it's a great intro question here. Rick, we all have our stories of times as consumers, we've encountered situations as consumers that have us scratching our head, wondering how something can be so difficult, even to the point where you look around to see if you can spot the camera that has you on reality TV, and I've had enough of these encounters personally that have me take pause and think there's got to be a better way to do this, and in most cases, better ways are not insurmountable. So many years ago, I felt this tug in the direction of improving the customer's experience,

Rick Denton: 3:03

do that's an that's a common sort of angst, right? That a lot of us have felt that we're sitting there and you're thinking, no human could have possibly designed this. And yet, not everyone goes into customer experience. So taking that frustration that you're describing, that if you're a human, if you were a customer, you felt that frustration, you get, you chose to do something about that. What is there something kind of in your personality that you know from way back when you just couldn't leave a problem unsolved? Or what is it that really took you forward into that world?

Rick Malsch: 3:39

Well, maybe in that said, I I got my start in in sort of a subset of the CX world. But I think those lat that last line you said is these problems that are unsolved, and I continue to encounter these. Some of them are they're actually relatively good, and other ones. I think, how, you know, I just maybe step aside, let me come in and fix this for you.

Rick Denton: 4:09

I like that, and I like the step aside aspect of it. There's many times, and I did mention the introduction that you've been a consultant, and there's many times that we do have that temptation. Now we can't always do that. So I'm curious, how have you created an experience your customers wanted in the in a past, either when you were working for those iconic brand names that I mentioned, or as an independent consultant

Rick Malsch: 4:33

as well? Well, it's been in a couple of areas, and this is going back to my Harley Davidson days, and I'm just going to kind of make a connection here, that the line that's famously attributed to Henry Ford is, if I asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, right? But so what we did was build, and I was instrumental in, intimately, in one of them, and in very. Involved in another but the two things were, I would put in the bucket of customer engagement programs, a way for people to get closer to the brand, the product the industry would have you. And those two programs were the rentals program and the writer training program. And I was heavily involved. I helped. I was on the team to design launch and evolve that rentals program and tours. There was tours as well. But so think of a customer, a person having this aspiration of, I think this whole thing of motorcycling and Harley Davidson is cool, and I want to be part of it. How do I get involved? Well, I don't know how to ride, right? So I'm going to go through the rider training program. I'm going to learn how to ride. And it wasn't just the state programs are great. They they fill a need for the the communities that are out there. The Writing Program that Harley Davidson had still has, and it's what we call the white glove approach, where it it's additional training time, additional riding time in the range and so on. So now you learn how to ride. Well, I can go and test ride a motorcycle. I can go to the dealership and salesperson maybe comes with me, and I'm going to go on a 1520 minute ride. Yeah, that's not really going to fill that full gap of how do I know what I want? So we have the rentals program. The dealer has a fleet of motorcycles, and now they have a variety of different options. I can go and test drive the different platforms, the different models, and now I can experience it for an entire day or a weekend.

Rick Denton: 6:38

I'm intrigued by the training. I didn't know that. Actually, I had no idea that this program existed. I didn't know about it. I'm the thought that's coming to mind is, why don't other manufacturers do that? What is it that allowed Harley Davidson to do this? And you know, Porsche doesn't have a program like that, or maybe they do, and I don't know about it, but that idea of, we're going to teach you, not only just the basics, but we're going to purposely bring you into our brand and just ensconce you in our brand so that you'll never want to leave.

Rick Malsch: 7:12

Well, I can't speak for the interests of other manufacturers not wanting to do it, but I know that what we did when we take it beyond just the mechanics of the training and bring them there's other additional activities that were included in the rider training program. Now it met the curriculum of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, okay, right? But there were additional activities added. So for example, if you were in a class and you're learning about helmets, and they might have a helmet on a or two different styles on a table or up on a PowerPoint slide. What we did was added an activity to bring you into the store so you can try on different helmets. Yeah, you can try on any helmet that's sitting there in the showroom. Try on different kinds of gloves, try on different kinds of footwear and riding glasses. If, let's say, you have a half helmet, you might want to have a certain kind of eyewear for comfort and protection. So it was taking the core curriculum of block and tackle and learning the mechanics to a higher, more involved level. And the other part it did. And think of the reputation that the motorcycling community has for right or wrong has developed. If some people think that, you know, it's a scary place. There's bike gangs, you have the movies and the TV series and so on, right? And it was a way to get people in the door, to help break down barriers, to show this isn't a scary place, and we're not scary people.

Rick Denton: 8:56

Hey, there's CX passport, travelers. I want to let you know about CX passport, live. Cx passport live helps brands amplify their events impact with the power of live in person podcasting. Brands partner with CX passport live at their on site event to help excite attendees, reward high value customers and convert potential customers. Bring a new level of energy and excitement to your event and amplify your brand's impact with CX passport. Live, Learn more at CX passport, live.com, now back to the show. I like that like I almost would want to just end the episode on that, because I just love the way that quote sounds. But of course, we I've got so much more that I want to ask you I'm curious, and if you're not allowed to talk about this, we'll just cut this part out. Do you Was this a program that was intended to be at least either rev cost neutral, the rental program, the education program, or was this a bit of a cost that Harley Davidson had to incur in. In order to build that brand loyalty, to build that experience and build that engagement with the customer.

Rick Malsch: 10:06

Well, there's definitely a cost to the company for it, because the the dealer network is the one who actually fulfilled it. They had the program that they delivered to the to the customers in their in their markets now, so the company paid for a team internally to develop and keep the program going. The dealers did not pay back the company for the rights to do this. It was a royalty free license to use the trademark, and what goes along with that is you got to follow some rules so that we have some continuity, right? And we have, we're building brand equity in these programs that were commensurate with the brand equity of Harley Davidson. So the where the money came from was, we're, we're essentially creating new customers, yeah, so you have all these aspirants, people who aspire to learn how to ride and ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and we are filling a gap to connect. We're going to bridge that gap, and now we're essentially creating new customers, and once we create them, now we're going to bridge another gap of well, which motorcycle Do you want to buy,

Rick Denton: 11:23

and which one do you think they're gonna buy after they, you know, go through an experience like that, you know, I think about that if I and I have not, I think I've written a motorcycle three times in my life, and only one of those was on the road, and I was on the back of it and scared to death, because I like to be in a little more control. The the thought that comes to mind is, if I were to look for and if I were to get into this world, I would be looking for a program like that, I would purposely sort of seek that out. And as you're saying, these aspirants that are drawn to that brand, how have you seen either here or beyond, this idea of delivering customer experience in such a way that it actually affects business results. We're dancing around it here. There's some tangible business results we're talking about,

Rick Malsch: 12:13

right? And, you know, while we're sort of dancing around it here, in the context of these two customer engagement programs. Of course, it drives revenue, and through that, it'll drive customer lifetime value. It's hard to calculate a customer lifetime value of someone who is aspiring versus someone who has a motorcycle license, has now bought a motorcycle, and so now we can continue help them continue their journey with other tools, other engagement tools that are there for the business. It'll increase retention. It'll increase the brand value and reputation. It'll boost customer loyalty and advocacy. If, let's say, I go and learn how to ride through Harley Davidson's program at the dealership, the dealer also has the rental program, and I'm going to rent a bike. If all of those experiences are good. Now I can tell my friends, my family, hey, you got to go and go through this program. They're gonna give you that con people say, I'm just too scared to do it. They're gonna give you that confidence, yeah, through this process, in order for you to take those next steps in your journey,

Rick Denton: 13:33

can we? Can we talk about that? Because you said you were deeply ensconced in this program, it sounds like I've used that word a little bit today. It's on my mind, but you've been because of being such a part of it. It's one thing to design it, but every program has to understand what its customers want, like these, the ones that are aspiring to the brand, those that are already a part of the brand. How were you as inside of this program, listening to those customers, and then being able to take that input back into the programs and change or keep the same, whatever the feedback was telling you to do with these programs.

Rick Malsch: 14:12

Well, I wasn't as involved in the rider training aspect. I was more involved in the rental program aspect, where we did do a couple evolutions of surveys. So it started out now this is back in the day when email and online surveys were not nearly as prevalent as they are today. So it was, it was a mailed survey, it was a postcard, and the results would come back and it would be broken down by dealer because of how the coding and the in the deliveries were set up, so I knew what results were by whatever dealer. And then we went to an online version, and we ended up getting a much higher response rate, and our volume had grown significantly by then, and so we're taking input now here, here's one thing that came out of that, which was, which was kind of fun. I. Uh, in CX, sometimes people talk about surprise and delight, and it's good, as long as you've got your core value proposition down, surprise and delight is can be fun and important. Sentence,

Rick Denton: 15:12

very important sentence, you said, yeah.

Rick Malsch: 15:14

So there was an open end on the postcard version, and it said, you know, any other notes you want to write? Okay? So people, there was enough people saying, hey, send me a bike. Jokingly, send me a bike. Okay, we bought a couple cases of now, there's this company called Maisto, and they make sort of these, what do you call it, die cast, or die metal replicas of different vehicles. They have cars, and there's a series of them for Harley Davidson motorcycles. It's a licensed product. They're solar dealerships and other retailers around the country. And so we bought a couple cases of these. And if somebody put that on their survey, we would send them one.

Rick Denton: 16:00

Dude, oh man, did Do you get any reactions back?

Rick Malsch: 16:06

Coming back? Okay, I was just only party to how some of this was happening. I was also on the field, so I didn't hear of anything after the fact. We sent it of, of, if anyone you know made any public announcement on, hey, they sent me a bike,

Rick Denton: 16:21

right? I imagine, you know, in today's world, the social media action associated with that. Now there's a danger here, Rick, we have now just revealed to anyone who is going to be filling out a survey with Harley Davidson, the amount of folks that are now going to put I want a bike on their surveys could skew the results in some way, but we'll see how that, how that comes about, that rental program. Can we talk a little bit more about that? How, how did was it one that, like the whole range of bikes were offered? How were you able to know this is what the customers want to test and sample and use, and who was the typical customer for that rental program?

Rick Malsch: 17:04

Well, this varied quite a bit by market. Okay, and so my role in all of this was developing the network and then working in the field, sort of like a district manager working with the dealers in building their capabilities with this program. Now, for example, at various points throughout the years, I had Orlando, I had Las Vegas, I had San Diego, Los Angeles, as my markets, lot of those are significantly geared toward the tourist customer. And so there. So if you go to Las Vegas, there's tour operators that bring groups of people from all over the world. And you know, 1012, people on bikes, and they're going to ride throughout the wide open spaces, nice of the Southwest. And they do a significant volume of that in some of these markets, then you have the small markets, and these are just regular run of the mill markets. There's no major airport. There might not even be any airport for quite a distance. They're using it much more as a sales and service tool. So the sales department would use it for the reason I mentioned earlier, and they would also use it as a service tool. So for example, you bring your own bike in for service, yeah. And then here, why don't you try out the new electro glide, or fat boy or Road King? Because their theirs might be seven years old. Why don't you try out the new one while your bike is in here getting serviced for the oil change, or whatever the case may be. And now there's the opportunity where, what the dealers did as a result, okay, we're going to put you on the rental bike, and while it's normally just sitting here for the day anyway during the week, we'll charge you, you know, whatever, $75 Okay, so you get some takers for that. Well, what they also did is, well, okay, if you buy from us in the next two weeks, we'll credit you that $75 so it's that good. End up being free, nice.

Rick Denton: 19:19

Rick, I hadn't even thought about the idea of there being a rental industry associated with motorcycle, a rental car. You go to the airport, you got a rental car. But I hadn't thought about those that are traveling to those great destinations that you mentioned. Wanting to have that same opportunity, either to be a part of a tour, or just, hey, I'm in Vegas, and I want to be able to have access to a bike like that. There's some distance in what you were describing your territory as being, and I imagine there were some times that you really wanted, or perhaps got the opportunity, to be a part of the first class lounge. So today I'm going to give you that opportunity. Want you to join me here in the first class lounge. We'll move quickly and have a little bit of fun here. What is a dream travel location

Rick Malsch: 19:53

from your past? I have two, okay, Western Samoa, oh and South Tyrol. In that's the northeast part of Italy. Ooh,

Rick Denton: 20:04

okay, I know of the northeast part of Italy. I just had not heard that. And I definitely have not had anybody say Western Samoa. Let's go there. Just why Western Samoa?

Rick Malsch: 20:15

Well, I went there on an assignment for my military unit, Western Samoa is an independent nation, independent of American Samoa. Most people walk around barefoot. They wear lava, lavas the men, which is a skirt and without a shirt. But when I was there, it's a little like stepping back in time, I'll tell you they are the nicest people on the planet, nice. And I haven't traveled everywhere, but I have traveled in Europe. I have been to several other countries, and the Western Samoan people are the nicest people I've ever met.

Rick Denton: 20:59

The ability to engage with a culture like that must be really delightful, like the fact to be able to perceive on that kindness and that niceness, it is so nice when you're traveling somewhere that you get that kind of warmth going the other direction, thinking towards the future. What is a dream travel location you've not been to yet? It's

Rick Malsch: 21:19

hard for me to pin down at a precision, but I would say I want to visit other parts of Western Europe, notably Southern Italy, where part of my family is from, and to be able to walk through the village where my great grandparents came from, which is a small village in southern Italy, would be just to step back in time A little bit and reminis, you know, maybe remember that. That's

Rick Denton: 21:43

so nice. Oh, I like that. I like that idea of getting back to the heritage, the roots, and feeling that. Another thing that I know, that I love about Italy, I don't have any roots there, but I've had the chance traveler a couple times, is I eat really well when I go to Italy. So what is a favorite thing of yours to eat? Well,

Rick Malsch: 21:58

this will be Italian, and I'm not gonna say pizza, although that is ranks high in the list, but I'm gonna say, if I could have my last meal, it would be master choli, but with our family's family recipes, red sauce.

Rick Denton: 22:16

Okay. Oh, I like that. Okay. So what this means, Rick, is that somehow I'm gonna have to find my way to you and your family so that I can try this thing that sounds so amazing. I'm sitting here kind of hungry as I'm listening to it the other direction again. What is something that you were forced to eat growing up, that you hated as a kid?

Rick Malsch: 22:35

Well, it doesn't really apply to me, because, okay, I liked just about everything. Oh, nothing was, I was I wasn't forced to eat anything. I wasn't that all a picky eater. However, I won't eat eggs or olives.

Rick Denton: 22:56

Okay? Well, there you go. You weren't forced to it, but it's defi nitely not in your list. Those are two things that I love very much. So that's okay. You don't eat tho se that gives me more to have

Rick Malsch: 23:07

give them to you. Rick and stefer is to

Rick Denton: 23:09

leave the first class lounge. What is one travel item, not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without?

Rick Malsch: 23:15

Well, I'm going to be cheeky, and then I'll give you the real answer. Oh, okay. Like close.

Rick Denton: 23:20

Okay.

Rick Malsch: 23:22

You went in on that one. But in reality, I almost never leave home without lip balm and an eyeglass cleaner, you know, to clean these jobs here.

Rick Denton: 23:42

Boy, Rick, lip balm absolutely now, it probably doesn't fit my one item, but I've got a specific zipper pouch in my backpack that I travel with every trip, whether it's work, local, whatever, it's always there. And yes, man, those planes can dry you out or when you're just somewhere living life. And, yeah, that lip balm is nice to have. Let's go back to talking about customer experience. What are companies and teams and businesses missing in customer experience today, and how should they improve on that?

Rick Malsch: 24:15

Well, I have, I have four of them, okay, where a lot of companies are just kind of missing the the mark on on this first starts with a holistic perspective of, you know, the aka silos, but okay, the perspective of how various systems, processes, people all need to come together to deliver experiences for customers. If you think of the service profit chain, there's a buyer or a user, they're going to have an experience, whether you like it or not, they're going to experience something. So let's say you're a manufacturing company. Ask the company, do you leave your. Capturing processes to chance, probably not. Do you leave your accounting or finance function to chance? No, well, then why do you leave your customers experience to chance?

Rick Denton: 25:13

Okay, can I actually, I know you said you had four I'm curious why? Why would a company do that?

Rick Malsch: 25:20

Well, and I said this to a lot of people, it's not that people or companies are nefarious, or anyone is stupid, or it's, it's people are fixated on their swim lane within the organization, yeah, and they tend to not look at the things that they're impacting beyond just that first level of connection and, well, that's where people like you and I come in to the mix of we have the perspective of the holistic and looking at it from which is number two, the outside in and long term thinking. So the the thing of that's missing is the outside in point of view. It's just that that tends to be missing in the business processes, is that outside in perspective? Yeah? Playing the long game. And I'm sitting

Rick Denton: 26:12

here, I'm trying to swivel and do my weather man pointing at the green screen. It's not a green screen, but it's my office pointing backwards. You know, I've got outside in up there, right? I love that book, yeah, and that that decades old now at this point, but it is so true that outside in view, and choosing to have that, because it's not natural, you think of your own internal world. You think of your own internal processes. And so that external view, that outside in view, is something you have to choose to do. And I can see why. That's number two on your for list.

Rick Malsch: 26:37

Then the third one on the list in this is something that I talk about a lot, and there's a couple expressions you can use. One is, they're not eating their own dog food, or maybe call it drinking your own drinking

Rick Denton: 26:51

their champagne. Yes. So

Rick Malsch: 26:54

when you're going to market and you're building the people processes and systems to do that, go through the process yourself, or use a mystery shopping service and see if it's an experience that's acceptable to you. Start there, use the first

Rick Denton: 27:12

pass. At the very least, get the mystery shopping or, sorry, at the very least, just do it like if you are an executive of an airline, or forget executive. You're just an employee of an airline. Don't go sit up in first go sit in that middle section right in front of the lab. Go live it. Sorry. Okay, I'm gonna tone it down. Ah, you're gonna get me riled up here. Yes? Well, yeah, I

Rick Malsch: 27:32

think the airline industry gets us all riled up because, you know, there's, there's a couple of industries that just the general populace has joked about for decades. That's the airline industry. Yeah, and the cable industry.

Rick Denton: 27:48

I could sit here and steep in the thoughts of cable communications and airlines, but there's a fourth one that you wanted. You mentioned four. I've heard three. What's that fourth one that is missing today? The Platinum Rule.

Rick Malsch: 28:00

Talk anymore treating people how they want to be treated, and I want to in companies are that's one thing that's missing. Going back to your question, if we take that a step further, is not asking the question, are we doing something to our customer, or are we doing something for our customer. So essentially, are we adding value or are we merely extracting value?

Rick Denton: 28:27

I like it. I like those four there. So Rick, we know that you're part of our open to work episode here. What? How can you help companies overcome those four?

Rick Malsch: 28:38

Well, it's going to go back to a question you asked me just a moment ago, and I look at things so I would act like any good doctor or mechanic. I listen, I evaluate what's going on, and then I dig in to find the root cause of an issue, while treating symptoms, will temporarily address a customer issue. Prevention really should be the goal. An ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure. You know, for example, if you were to tell your doctor that your knee hurts, your doctor is unlikely to tell you to go get a root canal,

Rick Denton: 29:13

one would hope so.

Rick Malsch: 29:15

It's it and then, so that's, that's where I would look at it. And additionally, once we have some of these, the low hanging fruit of where this unnecessary pain and friction are, we resolve some of these things is digging a little deeper on that and finding opportunities within the customer's journey and the business processes to evaluate those moments and increase customer and create engagement and brand value, but you've got to make sure that your basic value proposition is delivered consistently first before you really start tacking on surprise and delight in any you know, scalable form.

Rick Denton: 29:54

Boy, that and that is such a key point, right? There's so much energy because surprise and delight is exciting. It's, it's the fun. It's, it's the thing that'll end up on some sort of, either a viral post or on some sort of a news program or something like that, whereas really what most of us as customers, I think I can speak for a lot of customers. I don't ever need to be surprised or delighted if you just deliver your brand promise consistently good on any great just give me good at this point and I'll be happy. Rick, what's next for you with customer experience? Where are you targeting to apply customer experience next

Rick Malsch: 30:32

that's in helping General. My target focus is a consumer focused company in the SMB mid market space, identifying facets of the business that make it hard for the customers to do business with them. Okay, you know, it's those unnecessary pain and friction and then finding the opportunities in the journey and the business processes to elevate moments, increase customer engagement, brand advocacy, going back to those bikes at Harley Davidson from the surveys. So we can do that, but let's make sure we're delivering at each location. We're delivering a good, solid delivery and return experience and in all of that, so we can have both aspects of that ecosystem working in concert with each other, yeah. And that's where I come in, is helping that mid market space find those opportunities to to make it easy to do business with. And then, yeah,

Rick Denton: 31:32

yeah. And that Rick is something that long time listeners and viewers will know that I, you and I are very aligned there, that it's while we did talk about the outside in and it is so important getting the Inside Out correct, to support that outside in view is really a statement about those processes and the execution that you're describing, getting that right, understanding what makes it difficult to do business with a business, and then helping to improve that, thus Creating that wonderful, or again, forget wonderful, that good experience for the company. If folks wanted to get to know a little bit more about you, your approach to customer experience, just get to know you. What's the best way for them to get in touch?

Rick Malsch: 32:10

Well, find me on my LinkedIn profile, Rick mulch at well, LinkedIn, just Rick mulch, you can type in. And there's a couple of us out there, but really, okay, there are. There's a couple in in Pennsylvania. I'm the only one here in Wisconsin.

Rick Denton: 32:27

Well, I will be certain to get that in the URL, the URL in the show notes below, so you can just click it, and you won't get confused with any other Rick malls. Rick. Thank you for coming on today, sharing your stories, kind of your stories, kind of your insights and approach, and certainly those experiences, as we focused on Harley Davidson, you had other companies as well. Those are things that I didn't know, and I had a chance to really learn about that. I love that training program. I love that rentals program as a way to really build that brand loyalty and thus create great business results. Rick, I've learned a lot today. Thank you for being on CX passport, and

Rick Malsch: 33:01

thank you for having me. It's been great to be

Rick Denton: 33:03

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. here. 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.