Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode will talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. Best Selling author several times over, highly sought after Hall of Fame speaker, provider of customer experience and customer service wisdom to 1000s of companies. These are all superlatives that define just a small portion of the experience of today's cx passport guest Shep Hyken. Even though Shep has provided wisdom in this space for decades now he continues to deliver new insights, including a new book out September 21 2021. I'll be back focused on customer loyalty. I'm eager to learn more about that in our conversation today. And beyond CX, you know, with a global speaking career Shep will have some fascinating travel stories to share as well. I started this podcast with one goal, to have interesting conversations with interesting people. I have 100% confidence that goal will be achieved today Shep. Welcome to cx passport.

Shep Hyken: 1:24

Well, it is great to be here.Thanks for having me.

Rick Denton: 1:27

looking really looking forward to this one. It's gonna be fun. Well, let's let's start right off by talking about that new book, I'll be back, which launches on the day, this episode releases September 21 2021, you continue to find new inspiration for customer experience and service wisdom.

Shep Hyken: 1:42

Sure. So and by the way, the total title, it's I'll be back how to get customers to come back again and again. And it doesn't matter if they're customers, clients, guests, members, passengers, flying somewhere. But this all ties to getting that customer to want to come back. So what and so the question is what inspires me to keep writing is that,

Rick Denton: 2:06

yeah, how do you come up with new insights in this space?

Shep Hyken: 2:10

You know, I'm, I'm my brain is now trained to look for these things in it. I you know, as I travel around the world, it's really easy to come up with great customer service stories. And not so great. I mean, we've all had those moments where you want to never fly on that airline, again, we want to the staff at this hotel was horrendus you know, the the meal that I had the How could they serve like that, you know, it's really easy when the squeaky wheel is heard. It's when things go smooth, you know, but I learned from all of this, and I listen, and my brain is trained to pick up on the story, we may say something today, you may give me a line, or I may come up with something, I gotta write that down. And then I'll write an article about it. And after a while I have enough articles, it might be time for a new book. That's about how it works.

Rick Denton: 2:59

It is amazing how just travel alone. And that's part of why this podcast even created, why I came up with the idea is simply because I love travel and love customer experience. And it's amazing the insights that come from doing the travel and just being out on the road or whatever that looks like. Now one of the things that I really enjoyed in the book, and you mentioned that kind of things are kind of steady stream, but you talked about moments. And I really liked how you talked about it's obvious to avoid the moments of misery, we get that that's clear to most. But you also talk about avoiding moments of mediocrity. And so why is it so important to avoid not only the awful experiences, but avoid the meh experiences,

Shep Hyken: 3:41

and they may not even see my meh, they might. They're just satisfactory. And And the thing about satisfactory is you don't get to comment one way or the other. Right? And you don't know whether. So let's step back for a moment. There's a chapter in the book that covers there's actually it's my foundational concepts about the moment of truth concept and customer amazement, and they go together, but the moment of truth, and it ties in perfectly to what what we're talking about here because the travel industry, Yan Carlson, the former president of Scandinavian Airlines, was asked to take over an airline when it was failing. And when I say failing, losing millions of dollars, surely failing but losing money hemmoraging millions of dollars.

Rick Denton: 4:25

Regardless, you don't want it whatever the definition is

Shep Hyken: 4:27

to me it's a failure it they're not makingmoney, they're losing money. Anyway, he said, we got to turn this around the way he did it was he talked about this thing called the moment of truth. He actually eventually wrote a book titled moments of truth, one of my favorite customer service books, and it's about maybe an hour and a half read maybe at the most very quickly read but here's the the gist of it. He said that anytime a passenger or whatever type of business we're in customer member guests. As I mentioned earlier, anytime a passenger comes into contact with any app aspect of the airline, they form an impression. And the way we manage that impression will be will be whether or not that customer comes back again or not. So he said those impressions can be good, and they can be bad. And by the way, he took this simple idea, the moment of truth. Anytime that customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, they form an impression. That's the generic version, by the way, he went out to every city, they had a presence and brought every airline employee into a large airplane hangar any, he just told everybody, this is what we're focusing on the moment and he went on to define what those moments were, you know, maybe it could be something that's non people related, they see a billboard, okay, but once they get to the point where they want to make a reservation, back in the 1980s, when he came up with this idea, you had to actually pick up the phone and make a reservation, there was no internet back then. Okay. And so you, you made the reservation on the day of departure, you check your bag at the curb, you go into the gate, or the ticket counter, and then you walk to the gate, maybe you encounter a flight attendant or somebody that smiles at you, as they pass by you, which is an important interaction, even though it's not a big one, you're, you know, taking care of it, the gate, you're greeted on the plane, the flight attendant takes care of you, they're greeted the destination, you get your back. So there's this journey that happens within the business of the journey that the customer is on, you know, the customer is taking a trip. But within that trip, there's this journey that's happening with Scandinavian Airlines. And he said, if we manage every one of these moments of truth, and more, we're going to be successful. And with that simple idea, he turned the airline around. Now I have my spin on this. And that is there's good and bad moments of misery and moments of magic and moment of magic is anything that's better than average or satisfactory, doesn't have to be over the top blow me away. And by the way, customer amazement comes from the consistent and predictable, even slightly above average experiences that the customer has when when the customer says, you know, they always get back to me quickly, right, they always are so knowledgeable, they're always so helpful. They're always so friendly, that we're always followed by something positive. And those positive things I just mentioned, are simply expectations that any customer would want anyway, so they're not like over the top. But when they get them consistently, they get comfortable. They get confident. Now, you asked about that moment of mediocrity. That's one that Yon Carlson didn't talk about. That's the one that's average satisfactory, just okay. And there's all kinds of studies out there that show that satisfied customers don't stay loyal, given the opportunity to do something, some business with companies that are better than just okay, the customer will gravitate toward that. But the whole problem with mediocrity is that the customer doesn't complain. You know, it was just okay. Or as you said, I think you went meh.

Rick Denton: 7:53

Meh

Shep Hyken: 7:53

Exactly.

Rick Denton: 7:54

I think it was, maybe the Simpsons were the origin of that. I'd love to explore that a little bit afterwards. But yeah,

Shep Hyken: 8:01

man. So and the problem with meh is you don't know as a customer leaning toward meh might be good, meh . I hope he gets better, you know. And so if you put it into the net promoter score, numbers, and net promoter score is when you ask a customer on a scale of zero to 10. What's the likelihood that you'd recommend us a nine or a 10? As a promoter? I would recommend you Yeah, a seven or eight. Meh. Passive. Okay, average satisfactory, mundane, trite pedestrian, I do crossword puzzles. I know.

Rick Denton: 8:35

You've got your thesaurus kicking today.

Shep Hyken: 8:39

But then, of course, anything less than a seven or eight is a detractor who would just not want to do business and rally we refer. But anyway, the seven of the eight. You never know which way they're leaning toward, and they don't ever complaints. You think they're happy. And that's what I call and I've written about this before, I call that the dangerous customer and that's not submitted to could come in and physically harm you. It's, the danger is we don't hear from them, and we think they're happy. And that's exactly the wrong thing to think. So you must find out where your customer what they're thinking, by the way, if the customer is having a bad experience, they may tell you about it. And if they do well that's a gift because your goal when you get that kind of a of a if somebody says hey, I have a complaint or a problem, the goal is to eliminate mitigate it for the future.

Rick Denton: 9:28

Yeah, the complaints are gold. Absolutely. I get no company ever says I really want to actively disappoint my customers. But it's amazing how well you can learn from a disappointed customer that complains to you and then how you can restore that relationship and make it great on the back end of that restoration. You You said something in the book as well. And I loved it that the there is a four letter word, an F and F bomb of customer experience and customer service and it's probably not what folks are thinking and it was fine and I love That, how is it yet fine?

Shep Hyken: 10:02

In other words, mediocre sad, satisfactory? Just Okay, what is buying me? And let's put it this way it may not even be truly at that level of just okay. You know, Rick, Are you married? I am Yes, you are. And if you ever your spouse if you're ever chatting and you notice that something seems amiss, do you ever say Is everything okay? And if the answer is fine, everything's fine. What does that really mean? Rick?

Rick Denton: 10:29

Well, it means that it is not fine and we better explore this, we better get a little deeper into this. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Shep Hyken: 10:36

So the best fine is ever going to be is okay. Yeah. And it can be worse. Now, if you put an adjective in front of it like mighty fine. Well, that's different story, right? But fine by yourself. I actually say there's an acronym of fine f II, m e. f is for the fake smile that goes along with fine is for instance, your feedback because that's exactly what it is. And is for never really want to come back if I can. If he is, well, I'm emotionless toward you. I really don't care about you. The experience was just fine.

Rick Denton: 11:10

Yeah, boy. And that's what I loved about that section in page 95. If anybody wants to turn there, it is such a great section because we hear so much about the delight. And we hear about the the tractor, but that middle section, there's not a lot of attention paid to and I appreciated you doing that. And I think

Shep Hyken: 11:26

turn to page 95. Right now I want to see if it's there. How's the food? Fine. How's the service? Fine. How's your experience? Fine. You know, yeah, so does fine, really mean? Fine?

Rick Denton: 11:38

Oh, no, it really, really doesn't. Now, the theme of the book, right? I'll be back how to get customers to come back again. And again, right? It gets into that, that depth of loyalty and customer loyalty. And one of the things that I appreciate about your content on LinkedIn, by the way, the illustrations do a great job of this is you reminder about the basics. That's great, but contrary and views as well. And one that caught me and it's a theme in the book, as well as not to confuse a repeat customer with a loyal customer. And that point really stuck with me. So tell me more about your thoughts on true customer loyalty, not just repeat customer appearances, right?

Shep Hyken: 12:13

So the repeat customer appears to be loyal. loyalty is typically tied to an emotion, where you want customers to feel something about you, they feel really good about you. They trust you. There's all kinds of stats and facts out there that trust drives confidence, confidence creates loyalty. But let's step back and talk about what our repeat customers and by the way, repeat customers our goal we want repeat customers, anything you can do to drive the customer coming back is really important. And there's a question that I like to use, I actually call it the loyalty question. But it's really, it's really a repeat business question. Yeah. But because everybody thinks of loyalty as a lifetime, I don't I think of loyalty is the next time every time and Oh, yeah, yeah. So we break it down in a really bite sized chunks compared to a lifetime. And you ask yourself, this simple question is what I'm doing right now going to get this customer to come back the next time they need whatever it is that we sell, or do. That's as simple as it is, and, and you can, and that, by the way isn't about I'm dealing with a customer who's upset with me, what am I doing to turn it around? No, that's any interaction I have. If I'm a retailer and a customer walks in my store, did I greet them the right way that makes them feel welcome, that I manage the experience in a way that makes them feel confident and, and good about doing business with us. And when they left? You know, the last impression can be a lasting impression, did I do it the right way? And if I'm a b2b customer, am I you know, I may have talked to you on the phone, I may have sent you a proposal that I follow up with a thank you for your timing, there's all kinds of different ways that you can touch that customer to ensure that they understand that you care enough about them to want to do business the next time now repeat customers versus oil. If a customer keeps coming back in again, and again, the big question is why do they do that? Why did they decide to come back? Yeah. And here's what I want you to know. They can come back for a number of different reasons. In the perfect world, they're coming back because they love you. And they would no never do business with anyone else. Hence the loyal customer. But leading up to that point. Is it because you have the lowest prices? And if that's the case, they're buying you because of price. And the moment they find a price that's lower, guess what happens a gome don't? Yeah. is are they like and by the way, this all applies to b2b as much as it does get to see but I'm going to use some consumer examples. Do you go to a store because it's convenient. In other words, it's closer than the next closest store, which is a competitor. What happens if the competitor moves closer? So you really want to understand the why behind what's driving the repeat behavior. And I also mentioned the idea behind loyalty programs, which are often mis named, because they're really not loyalty, they're a repeat customer programs. Early loyalty, as I mentioned, is tied to an emotion. It's not tied to points that you get because you buy from us. I mean, if I give you a card, and I have a restaurant, and I say, hey, the fifth sandwiches free, that's basically saying, I'm giving you a 20% discount. Yeah, right. You know? And if you like that, you keep coming back. But what if I didn't give you the card, which is still keep coming back? Let's put it into travel experiences. Why do I like doing business with this airline? Many people will say I like doing business with these different airlines. Because the frequent flyer program, I choose this airline because I accumulate all my miles, why would I choose five different airlines and spread all my miles thin? When I can go with one and get more miles and get my free trip? quicker? Makes sense? Right? So if the airlines were to take away the mileage program, and nobody had miles, and I asked this question from many people just to hear what they want to say, So Rick, do you have a favorite airline?

Rick Denton: 16:06

I have what it is yet? No, I won't give you any brand names. But yes, I do.

Shep Hyken: 16:12

And do you fly them because of the frequent flyer program? Do you like their frequent flyer program? And here's the question, if they took away all the perks, the points, the free upgrades, and everybody was the same? Would you still want to fly on this airline,

Rick Denton: 16:27

there's, there's an airline to which I'm very loyal to. And there's an airline that I'm a repeat customer, you are making the point in my own experience. And there are two different airlines in my hometown, and one is the one I'm loyal to. And the other is they've got me trapped because of the loyalty program and I feel trapped. But I'm a repeat customer because of that.

Shep Hyken: 16:44

Yeah, you want to accumulate your miles Well, the one way to get out of the trap is to start using the miles. Yeah,

Rick Denton: 16:49

exactly. Exactly. So So no, if they got rid if that airline that second when you're describing get rid of its loyalty program. I'm gone. That's it. I'm out. No, I wouldn't touch them again.

Shep Hyken: 16:59

Right. So understand the reason there that you're doing business with them isn't about your true loyalty to them. It's your you're loyal to their program.

Rick Denton: 17:15

Shep, little change of pace here, you have traveled all over the globe, you travel frequently. I know you need to take a little rest from time to time. So join me here in the first class lounge. We will move quickly here and hopefully have some fun. What is a dream travel location from your past?

Shep Hyken: 17:31

A dream New Zealand?

Rick Denton: 17:34

Oh, tell me a little bit about it.

Shep Hyken: 17:35

Oh, the southern part of New Zealand is the coolest, it's like you take here in the US and North America. Take the Rocky Mountains take the Canadian you know, the the lakes, the beauty and all the sport and adventure. Being able to play golf, go into the water, ski everything. And and by the way, adventure. You've jumped out of airplanes, you do bungee jumping, you know? All these crazy, it's all in one place. It's really beautiful.

Rick Denton: 18:08

Boy, I can see why that's and it's come up a lot before New Zealand has I want to get there. I've not had the chance yet. In that vein, what's a dream travel location you've not been to yet?

Shep Hyken: 18:19

Wow, that I've not been to you know, I'm going to go with the Holy Land. I want to I love religion. I think it's interesting to me. I'm a spiritual person, not a religious person. But I think going and learning and being right there where the religions were born, so to speak, and just learning more about it. I think that would be a really cool place to go.

Rick Denton: 18:40

It is a fascinating place to be that is that is one that I have done. And it is true when you're standing in a place that X Y or Z was established or a moment happened and it is It's surreal to think what was happening in those those places. Now no travel and eating go hand in hand. So what is a favorite thing for you to eat?

Shep Hyken: 18:59

Ooh, favorite thing for me. I love Italian food.

Rick Denton: 19:04

Hard to walk away from that pizza comes up Italian food comes that's

Shep Hyken: 19:08

a pizza is one thing. Yeah. Homemade pie is and an unbelievably tender, you know, you know beef or veal or chicken. You know, I love great, great Italian food. And by the way, pizzas not so bad. As I'm traveling around. I do have favorite airport restaurants. Yeah. And you're not going to get the fine Italian food in an airport restaurant, but I tell you what you will get if you go I mean there's some great steak houses that have put their places and the restaurants, restaurants into airports, but I don't get to try to say this correct. But it's Cuban food in Miami. There is a great restaurant back here that I believe is how it's it's said and I've actually been to the real restaurant in Miami but they have this and then I go to the big one. And I order the skirt steak with chimichurri sauce, the plan Hanes and rice in it is I'm thinking about it right now I may just have to go down to the Miami airport just for that.

Rick Denton: 20:08

You know it's it's a nonstop flight for you. There's a lot of places to get in there you can just fly and drop and get your meal fly back.

Shep Hyken: 20:15

Yeah, well happen those seats are Papadeaux and Papa yep and Papasitas pappadeaux seafood policies, that's a Texas based chain and they put the restaurants in. Yeah, okay. Because you gotta love In and Out Burger if all you want to burger. And now those are popping up.

Rick Denton: 20:32

I was so happy when they showed up to Texas. And yes, the Papas family does a really good job based out of Houston and enjoy their restaurants that they've expanded to the north Texas area for us. So let's go the other way. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat, but you hate it as a kid?

Shep Hyken: 20:47

can string beans? Oh, it ruined it for me. I will never The only being I will now eat as a jelly bean.

Rick Denton: 20:58

I feel like the nutritionist might have something to say about that. But I can understand how you got there. So

Shep Hyken: 21:03

I like broccoli. I like brussel sprouts. I like spinach, but but there'll be green beans. They ruined it. They wrote before.

Rick Denton: 21:10

It's awesome. Okay, so you've got a ton of travel under your belt. Now you can't say your passport. You can't say your phone. But aside from that, what is one travel item you will not leave home without?

Shep Hyken: 21:19

Wow, um, my dop kit. You know, I have everything I need, you know, if I want to look, look, you know, I got look at this look, you know, I got my toothbrush, my shaving kit. And without that, who knows what it's gonna be like.

Rick Denton: 21:41

Shep staying with travel and hospitality. I know, it's cliche for me to say but culture defines how a particular hospitality experience will manifest. So without a culture that's oriented around the customer, there gonna be these moments, little spectacles of customer delight, but it's rarely sustainable. So what are your thoughts around how culture drives experience and how a company can build or reinforce that culture?

Shep Hyken: 22:04

Wow. And and I'm so glad you asked. Because there is a chapter in the book focused on creating that I'll be back culture. And there's I have I've, I've simplified the whole concept. And by the way, that's one of the things I pride myself is making the complicated, simple, but I'm going to share with you a few ideas that are required to create the right culture. First of all, you have to decide you want it, okay, then you have to define it. And let's use a great travel or a hotel chain that has I think one of the greatest definitions of what customer experiences and it comes from the Ritz Carlton, Horace Schultz, specifically, who brought this idea that he had when he wrote a term paper when he was a teenager. And in school, he brought it to him. And the title of the paper was where ladies and gentlemen serving Ladies and gentlemen, and that has become the credo of the rich Carl, and every company should create their own mind. I call it a mantra to stay away from credo. But that mantra is that simple phrase, it's easily repeated, because anybody can remember nine words, were Ladies and gentlemen, serving Ladies and gentlemen, you know, if you've got the Ace Hardware, the helpful hardware place, right, my personal mantra for our organization is always be amazing, be amazing to each other, be amazing to our clients and teach your clients to be amazing to their customers, members, guests, passengers or whatever. Yeah. So you've come up with your defining statement of what service looks like. And then you communicate it and you train everybody to it. Training is essential. And where most companies fail, as they think training is something you did, but it needs to be something you do. Yeah, ongoing. Now, that doesn't mean you take everybody out for a day, once a week, once a quarter, once even a year. But once they're on boarded properly, and by the way, you're hiring the right people as well, that will buy into this culture. And you can do that through behavioral style testing, and the right interview process, etc, etc. But once they're in, you probably do some type of training to get them to understand your culture and maybe how to deliver service. But most companies feel that somebody in the warehouse doesn't need customer service training. Somebody in the accounting department who never talks to a customer doesn't need it. And wrong. They absolutely need it more than anybody because they're the ones behind the scenes that are supporting people internally. Or maybe like the person in the warehouse. They don't recognize that if they don't properly pack the box with the way it with what the customer ordered. And it shows up and it's broken. That was their fault. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And they need to understand where they fall into the experience chain. So everybody gets trained and then as I mentioned, ongoing and the way to do it ongoing isn't about a big Training Day. Most companies have short meetings with their teams, their departments, they call them Monday morning, huddles are Weekly huddle their daily huddles, depending on the type of company, that's a perfect time to take three or four minutes, just to remind everybody. So let's use the Ritz Carlton again, as an example. They have 24 Gold standards that drive this phrase that I shared with you before, we're Ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen. And every day, at the beginning of the shift, the manager brings the team together, Hey, everybody, it's time to go out there and do our thing. Today's gold standard we're going to talk about is, whatever it is, and it's short, they don't spend, you know, 10 minutes on it, they spend two minutes. But guess what they do? It's number two day 334 all the way till you get to 24. You know what they do on day 25? They start again with number one. And at about the end of the year, the average employee at the Ritz will have heard this idea of this gold standard probably about 10 times or so. If they're full time. So they're doing this every day. And by the way, I'm in St. Louis, you're in Dallas, is that right? That's correct. If I think there's a Ritz Carlton in Dallas is there is there is well, the Ritz Carlton today is going to be sharing the gold standard, the same one that they do here in St. Louis. Oh, I love that. Okay, Sam and ob adata. Okay, it's, they're in sync with each other. Yeah. So I mean, it really is important to them that they do that. So I mentioned training, super important. leaders have to be role models as well, they've got to demonstrate internally, what should be happening outside of the customer. So those are just some ideas that are in the book, and we talk about them and, and, you know, we take people through a little bit of a process, if you do this, you'll start to design that customer focus culture now. Warning, small companies, you know, two people, 200 people, maybe even a few 100 people, it's easy to change your culture, and a fairly quick time with the smaller the business to quicker. Okay, right? larger companies. I had a client when I was talking about the process. This is several years ago about the customer focus culture. Guy raises his hands as you keep calling this simple as I do, but simple doesn't mean easy. Yes, how many people in your organization and everybody there was pretty big company. So we have 35,000 people I said, it's gonna take, you know, four to six, maybe seven years to turn this big boat around, if you've got an issue. Let me know when you want to talk about it, we can sign a contract. You know, it's like, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. But the bigger they are, the harder it is to move that massive group of people all going in the same direction. And that's what you need. You need alignment internally toward this North Star that you want to, you know fixate on that will give your customers the experience that you want them to have.

Rick Denton: 27:42

That's what I love about this conversation. And I love about the book is the practical nature of it, right? The very specific steps there. And it is important what you just said there simple is not the same as easy. And that's very true. But what you're describing is simple. But the effort involved will be something there now, I do I find it fascinating that started from a term paper. I didn't know that until I read your book. And I would love to see that term paper. I wonder if that's been published. title, but I'd love to see the term paper itself. And so maybe that needs to do some we both need

Shep Hyken: 28:17

things out there. This is the way to get the term paper. You should get an interview for horse shorts on this show. And tell them you want to see the term paper it might be in his book. He's got a great book out. I had something about class. I interviewed him for this on my podcast about a year or two ago. But it's it might be in there. But it's all about ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.

Rick Denton: 28:42

Well, you've given me some inspiration, some ambition, some aspiration. So yeah, and the the aspiration to get that term paper. Let me see if I can get him on the podcast as well. It and send me a copy. Yeah.

Shep Hyken: 28:54

At this point, because it's so old.

Rick Denton: 28:56

That's right, the grade is locked in. It pains me to say this, but we're coming close to the end of time. And so I want to close out with something here. And I want to close that with travel talk. Your speaking career has taken you all over the world. And I really do, I'd love to just kind of kick back and listen and just describe some of the more unique destinations where you've been. And then a little bit of touch of how your travels have influenced that approach to customer experience and customer service. We've heard a little bit of it at the beginning. But I'd love to just hear kick back and just listen to some travel storytelling from you.

Shep Hyken: 29:25

Wow, gosh, you know, I have traveled all over the world. I've been incredibly amazing places. And I remember showing up to a foreign country. And it was Amsterdam. And I realized, I don't speak the language and I don't have a clue as to where I'm going and how to get to the train. And I'm thinking anybody I talked to could I could become their prey, because that purple. So that was kind of a scary experience. And I realized it was really early on in my career. One of my early international trips, I realized you know what, I better Every time I go out, I need to have a much better clue as to what's going on and maybe have somebody Meet me at an airport pick me up, not be so independent to think that, oh, I'll just jump on a train, if you don't know the language. And there's a language barrier that makes it a little bit more difficult. Yeah, that was a unique experience. You know, I just had, one of my favorite trips I ever took with a client is I was working with an airline. And it was their meeting was in a beautiful, beautiful location in Utah. And they said, here's what you're going to do, Shep. We're going to, you're going to fly and we're going to take you to dinner. And then we're going to play golf in the morning. And when you get into the altitude of Utah, your your golf ball that you normally hit, you know, if I had to drive 250 yards and Utah in it 325 nights when I'm up there at the top of the mountain when the altitude is and I went, Wow, I turned on one of the best scores ever had. I did my speech and I was home by dinner. That was Wow. I worked for PADI, the scuba diving company, you know, preset professional association of pa di diving instructors. And one of the coolest things is they said, you're going to land we're taking you. We went in, like a private charter boat over to Catalina Island. This is an LA nice. We went scuba diving had the most incredible night. Next day I did my speech. I was home by dinner. That's pretty much fun.

Rick Denton: 31:30

I'm hearing a recurring theme home, I

Shep Hyken: 31:32

Home by dinner. Oh, by the way, I used to be able to do a lot of that I even would have it you know, it's like you find the Europe is easy, you know, and it used to be easier. St. Louis used to be a hub for TWA if you remember the airline years ago. So you could fly to England, Rome, Greece, Israel, Russia, Germany, everywhere. from St. Louis. Well, now I have to stop somewhere. But what that meant was, and it was multiple flights throughout the day, is I could you know, leave in the evening, land in the morning, do the speech and fly home late that afternoon in England and almost be home for dinner? Yeah.

Rick Denton: 32:13

Man Shep is uh, I'm one of the things that I feel very lucky about is living in the DFW area, because I do have an airport that serves that. And obviously pre pandemic is different than current right now. But knowing that even just mentally knowing that I could hop on a plane, and get off nonstop and Sydney or get off nonstop and Qatar, or whatever that might be is always been sort of a fascinating thing. Well, Shep, I have really enjoyed this conversation. How can folks get in touch with you? If they want to learn a little bit more about you? Where can they find your book, I imagine it's everywhere. Tell me

Shep Hyken: 32:46

It's everywhere in touch with amazon.com. You can go to Hyken.com HYKen dot com. But hey, you know, in the title of the book, I'll be back how to get your customers to come back again. And again, if you go to Amazon and you type in, I'll be back. You'll be surprised what you get a former presidential president that wants to be a presidential candidate again, you'll get a lot of information about it. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying that when you say Well, where's this book, just put an I'll be back book.com By the way, that's the website. I'll be back book calm got up on Amazon, you put an I'll be back book. You'll see my book pop up. Got it, just add the word book.

Rick Denton: 33:26

Got it. Well, I'll make sure all of that gets in the show notes as well. And I encourage folks to reach out to you and your team to fantastic. A lot of wisdom that I have gleaned around customer experience and customer service from you, not just from this conversation from your books from your speaking from your LinkedIn content. You are a fantastic following. I encourage everyone to do that Shep brilliant conversation today. I enjoyed every last bit of it. I'm sad that it's coming to an end. But thank you so much for carving out the time to talk to me about customer experience talking a little bit about travel. It's been a wonderful conversation Shep thanks so much.

Shep Hyken: 33:59

Thank you for having me.

Rick Denton: 34:04

Thanks for joining us this week on cx passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.