The Art of Customer-Centric Marketing: Learning from Expert Debbie Levitt

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Speaker 1: Is your digital marketing truly customer-centric

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or are you just assuming it's tailored to your audience's

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needs?

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Understanding your customers better than they understand

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themselves isn't just an art.

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It is a science and critical for your business success.

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This episode features Debbie Levitt, author of Customers Know

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you Suck, revealing groundbreaking strategies and

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mistakes to avoid in customer experience.

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We'll explore why deep customer research is a game changer and

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how you can transform insights in actionable strategies,

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nurturing a more loyal customer base.

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Curious about revolutionizing your approach to digital

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marketing?

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Learn all this, and more so.

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Stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing

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Coach Podcast.

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Speaker 2: Digital social media content, influencer marketing,

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blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter,

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facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing

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there's a lot to cover.

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Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or

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business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert

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advice.

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Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer

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is your digital marketing coach .

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Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing,

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one episode at a time.

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This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital

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marketing coach, and welcome to episode number 363 of this

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podcast.

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So the latest news I like to share when opening these podcast

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episodes, I guess we got two main things going on that I want

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to talk about today.

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One is obviously OpenAI is, as I speak, announcing some major

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evolutionary changes to JetGPT, becoming a really a blend of

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speaking, listening, drawing, basically doing everything you

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want in terms of content creation from an AI tool.

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It was rumored, actually, that they were going to be releasing

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a full-on browser to compete with Google Chrome.

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It sounds like they didn't announce that today, but all

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eyes are on ChatGPT, openai and obviously, their APIs and how

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other companies are going to leverage that technology.

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As I mentioned in last episode, number 362, my 11 essential

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takeaways from the Content Entrepreneur Expo there is just

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more and more that AI can do.

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In fact, I went into Jasper, one of my favorite AI tools, for

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the first time in a few weeks to give it a new task, and I was

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literally floored by the results of what it gave me.

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So if you haven't looked at these tools in the last few

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months, you really owe it to yourself to do so, especially

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keeping an eye on ChatGPT's latest changes.

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There is also a very, very interesting article.

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I subscribe to many interesting blogs and news sites on my

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inner reader, my chosen RSS reader, and one of them is

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Martech martechorg.

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They had a really interesting article about how Martech, or in

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other words, marketing technology, the cut out of the

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marketing budget fell to its lowest level in 10 years, from

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2023, at 25.4% to this year's 23.8% Pretty significant 7, 8%

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drop.

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Now, what that means is that marketers or CMOs with marketing

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budgets are spending nearly a quarter of their budget on

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technology.

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So this is a quick check for you how much are you spending

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out of your marketing budget on technology is sort of the first

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thing that comes to mind.

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On the other hand, what is interesting is that paid media

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spending increased from 25.6% of the budget to 27.9%.

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In other words, paid media you know Google ads, facebook ads,

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tiktok ads, what have you?

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I guess for some organizations, maybe influencer marketing is

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part of that.

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That also took up a quarter of the budget Now, and it used to

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pretty much be on par with marketing technology.

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Now, the amount spent in paid media takes up 4% more of the

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budget than the technology.

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So you know why is there a decline in MarTech spending?

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Well, a few different things are talked about.

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One is that, with AI tools and other tools, it's now less about

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CMOs making the decision as to what is purchased and more about

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IT and other divisions.

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So a decrease in CMO influence over the technology and, in

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addition to the increase in paid media, signs also point to an

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increase in spending on AI just having greater efficiencies that

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impact the entire marketing technology stack.

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So I know you may not be a CMO listening to this podcast, but

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these are really really good data signals to give you a feel

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as to.

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Are you underspending, overspending?

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Are you already potentially seeing an impact on your

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marketing spend from the use of AI?

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All right, my personal updates for this week.

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Well, I'm excited.

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Next week I will be speaking in Mexico City and I'll be

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previewing content from my book digital thread.

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So I'll be speaking at the Expo Publicitas 2024, which I

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understand is the biggest marketing conference in all of

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not just Mexico but Latin America.

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If you're in the area, I would love to hear from you.

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Make sure you ping me, but I'll be actually presenting three

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different presentations.

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One is going to be on what I consider the bridge between

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organic social media and external influencer marketing,

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in other words, leveraging influencers that you have no

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previous relationship with, and that is the leveraging of

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user-generated content and evolving that into a brand

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ambassador program.

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So I'm really excited.

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Like I said, I have two dedicated chapters of this on my

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book.

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I teach about this subject.

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I've never really presented solely on this subject, so busy

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creating new content for that.

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I'm also going to be presenting on external influencer

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marketing.

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It's a term that I first heard, actually, when Analytica had

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their B2B Influencer Marketing Summit and they talked about

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internal influencers employees versus external influencers

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people outside of your organization.

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But I take it one step further.

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You know I have that I introduced in the Age of

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Influences brand affinity model of influencer marketing, and

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anyone that is not in your brand affinity, let's consider them

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an external influencer.

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Everyone that is in your sphere of influence, let's consider

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them an external influencer.

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Everyone that is in your sphere of influence, let's convert

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them into becoming a brand ambassador.

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So that's the way that I paint it out in my book.

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And then I'll be speaking for the first time again on personal

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branding how to become an influencer.

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This will pretty much be a summary of the class that I'm

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teaching at UCLA.

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The spring semester class actually started last Tuesday,

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so I'll be going on to UCLA again to teach that and that is

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going to be the subject of a future book that I hope to begin

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working on in the fall, but anyway, excited to be presenting

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and meeting fans and friends in Mexico City.

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Like I said, if you are located in Mexico City, I would love to

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hear from you and update on the book.

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I am finally, finally.

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I just need to do the final back matter and then I will be

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able to submit the files to a formatter and I will finally

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begin the process of sending out the advanced reading copy to

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influencers.

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So excited to finally be moving forward on that.

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The companion workbook is actually going to be done faster

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.

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I have now the final print and the final ebook versions, both

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of which I have with my formatter, and I am soon going

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to be making the paperback cover .

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I already have the cover image, the back cover, for that as

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well.

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So, man, it's a lot of project management.

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It takes a lot of time, but I'll be excited to share it all

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with you when it is finally done .

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All right, today, a special interview with Debbie Levitt,

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the author of Customers.

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Know you Suck talking about customer experience and

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customer-centric marketing.

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In my days in B2B sales, we talked about customer-centric

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selling, so it's only natural that we should always be

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thinking about our customer and, in fact, at Content

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Entrepreneur Expo.

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That was a theme that was really woven throughout the

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entire two days.

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There is you need to understand your customer better and, in

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order to do that, ask them.

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It's that easy, but very few people do it, and even fewer

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companies do it.

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But I'll stop there.

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Let's go right into the interview with Debbie Levitt.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to your digital marketing coach.

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This is Neil Schafer.

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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, neil Schafer here.

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Welcome to another live stream edition of the your Digital

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Marketing Coach podcast.

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Today is going to be all about the customer.

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You know it's funny.

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As you know, small business owners, marketers, entrepreneurs

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, creators all the different people, the different peeps in

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my audience we often get lost in the tactics of a social network

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or how do we build a product or how do we market something, and

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I often find, believe it or not , we forget about the person

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that is paying the bill, which is the customer.

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Now, I have a background in B2B sales and I've actually read,

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when I was in B2B sales, books on customer-centric selling.

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So, whether it's sales, whether it's marketing, it's just

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something that often we need to be reminded of so that we make

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sure we align what we do with what our customers need and want

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.

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Because if we can't do that, I think and I'm sure our guest

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today is going to talk more about this but a lot of CMOs, in

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a recent survey that I was able to get information from that

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hasn't been published their number one concern was this

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topic of customer experience, which obviously customer-centric

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selling and marketing is going to feed into.

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So today I can't think of anyone else but the expert,

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debbie Levitt, who wrote this book.

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Customers Know you Suck, and as I ponder the title of my next

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book, I wonder if I should have a provocative title as well.

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So I'm looking forward to asking Debbie about that, but

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nevertheless, I want to bring her on stage, debbie Levitt, and

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then we can get into the deets.

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So, debbie, welcome to the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast

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.

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Speaker 3: Hey, thank you, neil, and hello audience, on whatever

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platform you are.

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Thank you so much for including me.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you one-upped me there on the little animations

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there, so I'm going to have to up my game here, all righty.

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Speaker 3: You're so competitive .

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of my nature.

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So customer-centric marketing.

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Customers know you suck customer experience.

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I'm assuming that when you were born you didn't tell your

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parents you wanted to become a customer experience expert.

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So my son plays high school soccer and they had senior night

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yesterday and all these seniors like what do you want to study

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in college?

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I just want to study business.

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What do you want to study in college?

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I just want to study business.

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So I'm just curious as to what led you in your career to

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customer experience and then, obviously, writing this book.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for asking.

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So if we want to go back to year zero, I was the little kid

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who was the problem finder and the problem solver.

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I luckily came from a family of people who really supported

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critical thinking and wanted questions and wanted us to think

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about what could be the answer, what isn't the answer, what

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might be the answer.

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And so, no, it wasn't my dream to be a customer centricity

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person if that existed but I knew I wanted to understand

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people better and solve their problems.

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A lot of people when I was little thought I was going to be

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a lawyer or a psychologist and we could joke that I'm a fake

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both.

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So many years later I went into .

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Originally, I started in websites, like I think many of

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us did in the mid 90s.

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We started in websites and how to build them and market them,

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and my specialty was helping other small businesses

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strategize their businesses and get themselves on the internet

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and go digital in the 90s into the 2000s and so on, and so that

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was where I started.

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With that kind of angle, I think my slogan at the time was

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like start, market and improve your small business, or

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something like that, and so that's what I was doing back in

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the year one and then after that I moved more formally into a

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lot of CX and UX strategy and tactical work, doing a lot of

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user research, interviews and observations, doing design

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though I don't come from an art background.

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Again, I come more from a psychology problem solving

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background.

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So I I come more from a psychology problem solving

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background, so I would say I'm that type of designer.

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Speaker 1: You know it's really fascinating.

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There are a lot of characters I'm thinking of Daryl Eves, who

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wrote the YouTube formula, ran Fishkin from Moz of a lot of

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people that began, like you did, in just websites in the early

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days of the internet and helping businesses that way, and

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everybody has gone on to really, really interesting paths.

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So let's talk about the term, and I think it's important to

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define the term customer-centric marketing, and I totally get

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when you said it's sort of part psychology, part lawyer.

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It's all about advising and, as you are so good at advising the

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customer, now you're working on advising us.

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To help us advise our customers , I guess, is the way it works.

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So how would you define customer-centric marketing to

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someone who has never, ever heard the term before, but yet

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they're a marketer?

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Speaker 3: Sure.

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So the way that I see customer-centricity would be how

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can we put users, customers, whoever's in your ecosystem at

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the center so your ecosystem could have partners, resellers?

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There's all kinds of humans, or sometimes non-humans, if you're

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making something for dogs or whatever but there's all sorts

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of people in your ecosystem and we're not always putting them at

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the center.

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Sometimes, as I say, they're in the periphery.

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We get customer peripheric and we go ah, what can we make these

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people do?

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And sometimes we see that in marketing, where we go, can't

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they just click this button more ?

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Or I wish I could just push them to do this checkout, or I

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wish they would buy this extra thing Should I put it in their

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shopping cart?

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And so we make decisions constantly, especially as small

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business owners which I am as well where we have to decide

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what should I do right now?

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Because sometimes what's best for my business isn't best for

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the customer.

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What's best for the customer might not be best for my

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business, but I think if we can get more customer centric and

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understand customers and users in that ecosystem better, we'll

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find the better balance and we won't be so, let's say, tempted

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to make the customer our pawn and we'll try to find a balance

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between the goals we have as a business and what your customers

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and users are coming into your ecosystem to get from you.

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Speaker 1: So it sounds like, based on that, it's this we

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think about customers but what is good for the customer, what

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is good for us, can we all live better together?

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And I suppose, then, that understanding what the customer

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wants better comes down to now understanding the customer.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's about making sure they're in every

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decision and not from the perspective of what can we make

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them do.

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And so we do have to know those customers better because

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otherwise, again, we run the risk of running with guesses or

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ideas and things that miss the mark and put yourself, I could

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say as a joke, put yourself in your own shoes right now.

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All day long, there's probably stuff you interact with that you

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want to throw out the window.

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Long, there's probably stuff you interact with that you want

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to throw out the window.

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You're angry at this phone app.

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You hate this website.

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You can't believe these people.

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You have to call customer support again.

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All day long, we deal with stuff that we don't like and a lot of

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companies made those decisions, in some cases deliberately, and

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I remind you, we can do better.

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But that starts with how do we get to know our customers and

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make sure that we've removed our biases and our assumptions and

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our stereotypes and we're really looking at when we say what are

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their needs?

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Needs is very general.

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Let's say what are their tasks?

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What are they there to do?

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What are their decisions?

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Who else decides with them?

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Is there a collaborator?

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Who decides the budget?

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Who approves this Again.

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It's an ecosystem and we will make better, smarter decisions

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when we know the players better.

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Speaker 1: That's a really powerful way of looking at it as

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an ecosystem you together with your customer, because obviously

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it's their sales that generate your livelihood or your

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business's livelihood.

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So I suppose and I guess that's where this leads into being

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customer centric is a natural lead into customer experience,

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therefore.

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So you know, have you ever been in?

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Do you know Dan Gingas, for instance?

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Speaker 3: No, I must say, I don't.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so Dan, he's written Sorry.

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Speaker 3: Dan.

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Speaker 1: And no worries, no worries, dan's a good friend of

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mine.

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I mean, he's a Chicago Cub fan but I give him some slack but

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he's written some books.

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He's been on this podcast talking about customer

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experience and talking about one of the things and maybe you do

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for your customers as well is this concept of a customer

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experience audit, of actually being.

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It's almost like the mystery shopper back in the days for the

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Gen Xers and above that remember.

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But put yourself in your what are your customers experience?

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And it's interesting because, as I look around at what I do,

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for instance, I recently purchased a course and there was

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no onboarding, there was no thank you, and I'm still getting

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these automated emails trying to sell me additional VIP

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courses and the customer experience is terrible and I

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probably will not do any more business with that company.

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So I think, no matter, and that's just an entrepreneur with

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a ConvertKit sequence of emails .

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Speaker 3: Right the drip campaign.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we are all influencing what our customers

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think of us, and that's why I just want to urge those

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listening who may think, oh well , I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a

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small business owner, that customer experience is just for

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enterprises, because, I'm sure you'd agree, it actually isn't.

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But I wanted to get to one of the things we were talking about

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before the conversation, which is in order to understand your

00:18:02
customer.

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I think, going to a lot of conferences, this is something

00:18:05
that comes up a lot, this shift away from demographics and I

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believe the term is psychographics.

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I'll let you discuss that, but it's something I'm hearing a lot

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about over the last 12 to 24 months.

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I'm sure you've been talking about it before then, but tell

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us more about the shift away from demographics in order to

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better understand our customer.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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So when we think about traditional demographics, let's

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get personal a moment.

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What buckets would you put me in?

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You're going to say, well, debbie is a woman, and so we put

00:18:31
her in the female bucket.

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Don't forget to send her emails with flowers in them and make

00:18:35
things pink.

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And then you know, okay, debbie's 52.

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So we put her in the 45 to 54 bucket, or we put her in the 50

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to 55 bucket and, wow, she's probably a mom of college kids,

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or she's a grandma, or she's going to be a grandma soon, or

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whatever.

00:18:51
Put her in the grandma bucket, or put her in the older mom

00:18:55
bucket, you know?

00:18:56
Hey, debbie is, you know.

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Now we think about what's Debbie need in her life and we make

00:19:00
stuff up because nobody's researched with me, we just go

00:19:03
by stereotypes.

00:19:04
Oh, debbie, she's probably menopausal, you know.

00:19:07
So what does she need?

00:19:08
Oh, she needs skin cream and diet help, and you know.

00:19:12
And so, basically, we try to boil people down to these things

00:19:16
, based on things that are easy to grasp.

00:19:18
It's easy to grasp that Debbie is a female, or white, or of a

00:19:24
certain age, or married, or at least strongly connected to

00:19:27
another human.

00:19:28
And then we just say, well, look, these must be the things

00:19:32
we can sell her, or this must be the way we should speak to her.

00:19:35
And I always recommend that we shift away from that because I

00:19:40
think many of us, especially those who are maybe getting a

00:19:43
little older, we're in our forties or fifties or sixties

00:19:46
and we say I don't know, you know, I don't feel like the 52

00:19:50
year old, I don't feel like these things.

00:19:53
And and then especially for me, like I ride a motorcycle, I

00:19:58
purposefully had no children.

00:19:59
You know, there's a lot of things that I've done with my

00:20:02
life that don't look like the what I call lazy buckets you put

00:20:05
me into.

00:20:06
So when people are marketing to me as if Debbie's a 52 year old

00:20:11
woman, I go, wow, you don't see me the way I see me, that's not

00:20:15
what I see.

00:20:16
And so that's where we talk more about psychographics and we

00:20:20
talk more about how do we understand someone's behaviors.

00:20:23
So, for example, debbie is someone who shops for cool

00:20:27
things for her motorcycle.

00:20:28
Okay, maybe not where we would have dropped the average

00:20:32
52-year-old woman if we were being very demographic, lazy

00:20:36
buckety.

00:20:36
But you know, now I get put into buckets with lots of other

00:20:40
people.

00:20:40
Maybe I'm put into buckets with college-age guys or other women

00:20:44
of other ages or locations.

00:20:46
Now we're talking more about behaviors, and that's where I

00:20:50
think a lot more winning stuff is.

00:20:52
And when we look at the behaviors, then we take a step

00:20:55
back to what's the task, and to me, that's the core of

00:20:59
everything.

00:20:59
Whether you're an accountant or a service of some sort, or you

00:21:03
have a product or you have e-commerce or something else,

00:21:07
whatever you do, people are coming to your website with a

00:21:10
task.

00:21:11
That task might be check these people out and compare them to

00:21:15
someone else.

00:21:15
That means they don't plan to buy today.

00:21:17
You're going to complain they're a tire kicker.

00:21:19
Oh, our numbers look so sad, but they're accomplishing kicker

00:21:21
.

00:21:21
Oh, our numbers look so sad, but they're accomplishing their

00:21:23
task.

00:21:23
If you've made your website easy to understand what you offer,

00:21:27
then you've made it easy for these people to understand your

00:21:29
value proposition and compare you and complete that task.

00:21:33
Not every task is buy from you right now.

00:21:35
So the more we can understand the larger picture of who people

00:21:40
are, the less we will rely on these bizarre things like this

00:21:45
person is this age, or the weird ones are when they try to bring

00:21:48
in Myers-Briggs or what brands they like.

00:21:52
Oh, she likes Starbucks.

00:21:54
Well, not really only by accident.

00:21:58
So they're in a lot of places, so I walk in the door.

00:22:02
So I think that it's important to start really trying to look

00:22:06
at who your customers are holistically and how they see

00:22:09
themselves, rather than putting them in old, tired buckets of

00:22:13
age or really the one show me sometimes like personas or

00:22:20
segments or other types and they go this is our white person and

00:22:24
this is our non-white person and I go that is racist in so

00:22:29
many ways.

00:22:30
I'm not even sure where to start.

00:22:31
But yet people still do these things and they even think

00:22:35
that's being diverse and open minded.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, we could go, man, we could have a whole

00:22:39
separate podcast about that.

00:22:40
So I guess then, obviously the key then is to better understand

00:22:44
the psychographics.

00:22:45
And I'm also curious this probably also leads into you

00:22:47
were sort of hinting at your website and are you solving the

00:22:51
task?

00:22:51
The task might be research, it might be purchase, it might be

00:22:55
who the heck is your company, but are you satisfying that?

00:22:57
So I'm just curious then, because, as you mentioned, the

00:23:00
demographics are sort of all over the place and they really

00:23:04
don't define who the person is.

00:23:06
I'm assuming that if we can nail the psychographics and I

00:23:10
mentioned this because if you have broad demographics, how do

00:23:13
you create one visual user interface that satisfies

00:23:16
everyone needs?

00:23:17
But if we shift the thought process to psychographics and

00:23:20
their actual needs and wants, it actually makes us easier to

00:23:23
design experiences, whether they're digital or physical, to

00:23:27
meet those psychographic needs.

00:23:28
I'm assuming that's sort of the direction that we need to go

00:23:30
correct.

00:23:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's why I'm a big proponent of a

00:23:33
technique that we do as researchers, called task

00:23:36
analysis.

00:23:37
And that is what are people trying to do right now, what is

00:23:41
their task?

00:23:41
And their task changes.

00:23:44
For example, we did a project a couple of years ago for a

00:23:46
company that does like logo items, promotional items.

00:23:50
Now we're marketing about marketing, but logo promotional

00:23:54
items from cups to shirts, to tote bags, you name it and they

00:23:58
said, gee, we really don't know that much about our customers

00:24:01
other than some of them are B2B and some of them are B2C, but we

00:24:04
really couldn't tell you too much else about them.

00:24:06
So we did a project where we met I think it was about 27 of them

00:24:09
and we made sure to meet some B2B and B2C ones and by the end

00:24:14
and basically we just said to I mean, first we did ask them

00:24:16
questions.

00:24:17
We learned more about when you're shopping for this type of

00:24:20
item, what's usually going on, who else do you shop with, who's

00:24:24
involved in decisions or approvals or budgeting or

00:24:26
selecting what kind of item it will be, who does the artwork?

00:24:29
So, as you can see, we're starting to map a little

00:24:31
multiverse here where it's who's involved in this from A to Z

00:24:36
and it was very different for very different types of people.

00:24:39
Then we start breaking those people up into the typologies

00:24:43
that we did, and then we also observed them.

00:24:46
We had them share their screen and we said imagine you need 125

00:24:50
logo water bottles for the company picnic.

00:24:52
You've got a thousand fake dollars Go and then we just

00:24:56
watch and we act as detectives and then we've got some

00:24:59
questions at the end.

00:25:00
But based on that, we were able to group people in six different

00:25:03
buckets that really had a lot more to do with their role and

00:25:06
their task.

00:25:07
For example, we met a number of people who worked in like state

00:25:11
organizations.

00:25:12
They worked at a state organization or, you know, like

00:25:16
the Department of Fisheries somewhere, or at a nonprofit,

00:25:19
and those people tended to have similar behaviors.

00:25:21
Now we're grouping people by their behaviors and their tasks,

00:25:26
so these people tended to like really close personal

00:25:29
connections with someone at the company, like having a

00:25:32
salesperson.

00:25:32
Some of them still wanted catalogs.

00:25:35
Remember when we wanted catalogs of promotional items

00:25:38
Whoa.

00:25:39
Speaker 1: I still do.

00:25:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of them wanted to be able to fax in an

00:25:42
order and this research was two years ago.

00:25:44
A lot of them wanted a lot of remember when they would send

00:25:48
you camera ready, art, you know, preview.

00:25:50
They were a little bit old school because that's the way

00:25:53
their departments and organizations ran Heavy on

00:25:55
paperwork, heavy on back and forth, heavy on paperwork, heavy

00:26:00
on back and forth.

00:26:00
And so people who say, oh, give them a great e-commerce site

00:26:02
and let them go running, did not take into account that you

00:26:04
might have a segment or typology or whatever you want to call it

00:26:08
I care less about what we call it that still wants that kind of

00:26:12
high personal touch, that old school personal touch, that

00:26:17
doesn't want to just shop on an e-commerce site and hope that it

00:26:19
comes out right.

00:26:20
The other end, they want the PDF previews and the color

00:26:24
samples and all that stuff.

00:26:26
And if we don't build what that customer needs from the point

00:26:32
of view of the website or the logistics or the customer

00:26:35
interactions, we might alienate that audience.

00:26:38
That audience might say, oh, neil's logo shop didn't give me

00:26:42
what I needed there.

00:26:43
I'm gonna have to get my stuff from somebody else because I I

00:26:47
can't get done what I'm trying to get done the way I like to do

00:26:51
it.

00:26:51
You can't always make somebody change their task or change how

00:26:55
they want to get it done, especially if there's an aspect

00:26:58
of it that is driven by their business policies, and so that's

00:27:03
an example.

00:27:03
But we also met Girl Scout moms, and the Girl Scout moms lived

00:27:08
in a whole different world.

00:27:09
Where it was, you know, this is going to be a Girl Scout or

00:27:11
school band fundraiser.

00:27:13
How cheap can we make this?

00:27:14
How fast can we get it?

00:27:16
Because we make crappy last minute decisions, because we're

00:27:19
just a loose bunch of moms and dads and others.

00:27:22
And you know they had very different tasks, concerns,

00:27:26
confusions what's a Pantone color?

00:27:29
What do I need to know about a Pantone color?

00:27:32
And so they had a different set of stuff.

00:27:34
So again, the more you're going after these audiences, the more

00:27:38
you have to really understand them.

00:27:40
What's their task, who else is involved and how much knowledge

00:27:43
do they have?

00:27:44
Because you know, for those of you who might be a little

00:27:47
familiar with this stuff, a Pantone color is usually a

00:27:50
number, and there was a box on the website that said what's

00:27:53
your Pantone or PMS color?

00:27:55
And someone wrote Navy.

00:27:57
So you know that's not the right answer, but that shows

00:28:03
that they had a limited amount of knowledge, which means if

00:28:05
your website is not facilitating the do-it-yourselfer who

00:28:09
doesn't know the lingo, that's another audience you might

00:28:11
alienate.

00:28:13
Speaker 1: Right, and I you know , I think, and I want to go a

00:28:15
little bit deeper into this and give some advice to the

00:28:17
listeners.

00:28:17
So I myself recently did a survey of my own list of the

00:28:21
people that are most engaged on my list and basically you know

00:28:24
the questions I asked them.

00:28:25
I got some really, really interesting answers.

00:28:28
The topic that I'm writing a book on that's going to come out

00:28:31
in a few months is not the number one or even number two

00:28:33
topic that they're interested in learning about.

00:28:35
So anyway, that's a whole other story.

00:28:37
But another one was should I develop courses?

00:28:41
Have you ever taken a course?

00:28:42
Everyone's saying oh, content creators, you know, authors, you

00:28:45
need to have courses.

00:28:45
Well, two thirds of my audience have either never taken a

00:28:48
course in their life or have only taken one.

00:28:50
So that's not, probably not the best way to engage with them.

00:28:52
Maybe they're book readers, maybe you know whatever that is,

00:28:55
and I think that sort of hints at what you're talking about,

00:28:57
not just from the user interface of a website, but actually like

00:29:00
product development, right.

00:29:01
So I'm curious for those that are listening.

00:29:03
You mentioned that you should do more research and testing

00:29:07
with current and sort of these.

00:29:10
I won't call them avatars, but potential customers, and I'm

00:29:13
assuming that a survey like that , obviously hiring Delta, cx and

00:29:16
Debbie's team to do it, is the easy way to do it, thank you.

00:29:19
Thank you If they wanted to try to DIY this.

00:29:21
Is it a collection of surveys?

00:29:23
Is it like the old user focus groups and, you know, like

00:29:27
Procter and Gamble did in the nineties, or what is the best

00:29:30
way to go about doing it?

00:29:32
Speaker 3: So, because you said the best way, look, we know we

00:29:34
can run a survey, we know that we can run a focus group, but

00:29:37
unfortunately there are times where those are just not done

00:29:40
very well.

00:29:41
We've all received surveys where we were like, are you

00:29:44
effing kidding me?

00:29:45
You're asking me what you know?

00:29:47
I got a survey recently.

00:29:48
I swear it was 40 minutes long.

00:29:50
So of course I noped out in the middle, but it was like do you

00:29:53
use this type of service?

00:29:55
Are you happy with the service you're getting from someone else

00:29:57
?

00:29:57
And I was like what are they even going to do with this?

00:30:00
It's a freaking fire hose.

00:30:02
So, while you can run a survey or you can run a focus group, I

00:30:07
like to remind people, get a personality like mine and your

00:30:09
focus group is toast the end.

00:30:12
You know, the focus groups obviously are unfortunately

00:30:16
easily messy.

00:30:17
So in the UX world in which I tend to live, we do a lot of

00:30:22
observational and interview research.

00:30:25
The upside of that is it's going to give you amazing

00:30:27
information that you didn't have .

00:30:28
The downside of that is it's usually not the best for DIY,

00:30:33
because very often it takes us years to get good at it.

00:30:35
Does that mean you can't try it ?

00:30:37
No, you can try it.

00:30:38
Does that mean you might mess it up, unfortunately, you know.

00:30:40
Try it.

00:30:40
Does that mean you might mess it up, unfortunately, you know,

00:30:42
as I like to say, I can cut your hair, but you might not be

00:30:45
happy.

00:30:45
I did so we have to just be.

00:30:48
You know, sometimes you got to hire a pro to do something

00:30:51
lawyer, accountant, outside marketing help, et cetera.

00:30:54
So this is one of those things where you can try it yourself.

00:30:58
But if you feel, you know, I like to say, if you're hearing

00:31:07
too much of what you expected to hear or what you hoped to hear,

00:31:08
you've probably skewed this a bit, accidentally or on purpose,

00:31:10
because really we do like to hear what we hope to hear, but

00:31:13
now is a time when we need to hear what we're not expecting to

00:31:15
hear and we didn't want to hear .

00:31:17
So we typically do observational research, like I talked about.

00:31:21
You know, can we shadow people doing stuff?

00:31:24
It's almost like that old mystery shopper.

00:31:26
Can we shadow people doing stuff?

00:31:28
Can we watch them in their environment?

00:31:31
Some people say I'm going to make them come into my office

00:31:33
and I'm going to hand them an iPad and I'm going to have them

00:31:36
do something.

00:31:36
Not their iPad, not their home.

00:31:39
No crying baby, no barking dog, no blipping internet.

00:31:44
So you've taken them out of their element.

00:31:46
So it's not going to be as realistic a perspective.

00:31:49
You almost have to be junior anthropologists.

00:31:53
We're really trying to see people in their natural habitat

00:31:57
and environment doing the thing.

00:31:59
So that's usually the way that we conduct that research.

00:32:03
Some of it is best done in person in some fashion, and some

00:32:06
of it can happen online and digitally through video calls,

00:32:10
where we want to watch people use a website in a certain way

00:32:14
or an online tool or system or something on their phone and we

00:32:17
can share that screen and we can see it.

00:32:19
But that would be some of the key ways that we get that data.

00:32:25
It's kind of being mini detective.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: I get it so you can look at heat maps on websites.

00:32:31
You can conduct surveys, but unless you're looking for the

00:32:34
right things and analyze it in the right way with the right

00:32:37
audience, you're probably going to get a result that might lead

00:32:41
you a different direction than you need to go.

00:32:42
Speaker 3: So I think that became very clear.

00:32:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you very much.

00:32:46
Speaker 3: No, thank you.

00:32:47
Speaker 1: So I want to go then into, obviously, the book.

00:32:50
So all this, I'm assuming, led you to write.

00:32:52
Customers Know you Suck, and there we go, oh, a hardcover

00:32:56
Like it.

00:32:57
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Sorry, I call it my library quality

00:32:59
hardcover and it's color printed .

00:33:02
Speaker 1: Nice.

00:33:02
So how did all this lead into, I'm assuming that the work you

00:33:08
do?

00:33:08
There's a little bit of evangelizing, because people

00:33:10
just don't know what they don't know.

00:33:11
So there's this need to sort of educate the public, and I'm

00:33:13
assuming that's why you wrote the book.

00:33:15
But can you tell us a little bit more about the book and who

00:33:18
should read it?

00:33:18
I'm assuming anyone that's interested in learning more

00:33:21
about this topic should read it, but any other sort of

00:33:23
background you could give us would be great.

00:33:25
Speaker 3: Sure Thanks.

00:33:25
So Customers Know you Suck can be found at cxccto slash ckys.

00:33:33
I've got both free versions of the book and paid versions of

00:33:36
the book available.

00:33:36
So you are absolutely welcome to consume it for free if that

00:33:40
works better for you.

00:33:41
In some way.

00:33:41
We've got paper and digital and audio book narrated by me.

00:33:45
So however you like to consume a book, it's there.

00:33:48
And the book kind of grew out of some consulting work I had been

00:33:51
doing for companies who were trying to get me to come in and

00:33:54
they were saying you know, fix our stuff, find what's broken

00:33:58
and fix it.

00:33:58
Help us be more customer centric, help us achieve our

00:34:02
business goals better through better serving customers.

00:34:05
And I just started seeing a lot of that carnage more close up

00:34:09
and I started seeing how resistant some of the companies

00:34:12
were to changing, even when they were paying me decent money to

00:34:15
come in as a change agent and it was like holy cats.

00:34:18
I think I want to kind of scale what I'm doing here and kind of

00:34:22
have a platform for the kind of change I'm trying to make to

00:34:25
see if I can empower.

00:34:27
So basically the idea of the book was you can work in any

00:34:32
sort of role, it's not just for CX people or marketing people or

00:34:37
product managers or any.

00:34:39
You know, it's not for one role .

00:34:41
It basically assumes that you've got little or no

00:34:44
background in CX or UX.

00:34:46
We're going to explain things to you and it's really a look at

00:34:49
how to strategically and tactically improve what you're

00:34:53
doing.

00:34:54
Now some of the book assumes that you're a big company.

00:34:56
They assume it assumes you're working in these larger

00:34:59
organizations with development teams and agile methodologies

00:35:04
and you might say, okay, that's not me.

00:35:06
I'm really more of a smaller business or entrepreneur.

00:35:09
Feel free to skip that chapter.

00:35:11
It was also written for people to cherry pick a little bit and

00:35:14
to skip around.

00:35:15
So if you feel like, hey, this really isn't aimed at me, feel

00:35:19
free to say we're.

00:35:20
We're not Agile, we're not coding software.

00:35:22
You can certainly skip the two chapters on Agile.

00:35:25
But other than that, it's aimed at everybody.

00:35:28
There's no prerequisites, there's nothing you need to know

00:35:31
going into it, other than stuff isn't going as well as we hope,

00:35:35
we're not attracting and satisfying and retaining

00:35:38
customers as much as we wish we did, and how did we get here and

00:35:43
how do we get out of it?

00:35:44
Speaker 1: So I'm assuming that obviously we talked a lot about

00:35:47
the user experience digitally on the website, but the book

00:35:49
really deals with it holistically and would be a

00:35:52
really, really good primary to get people started and

00:35:55
businesses started on that path towards understanding the

00:35:58
customer experience better and really becoming more

00:36:00
customer-centric.

00:36:00
Would that be a good summary.

00:36:03
Speaker 3: A bit.

00:36:03
Yeah, I would say.

00:36:05
A lot of the book assumes you're doing something digitally

00:36:07
, whether it's the website or more of a digital product, and

00:36:11
so it's not tremendously about physical products.

00:36:13
If your company is making giant cups, I'm not necessarily

00:36:17
addressing a lot of the physical product universe, but I still

00:36:20
think there's a lot of advice in there that is definitely

00:36:23
translatable, because it's really about, in many ways Okay,

00:36:27
maybe not all of Neil's listeners, but a lot of

00:36:30
companies suck in one way or another.

00:36:32
There's stuff we're getting wrong, there's stuff I'm getting

00:36:35
wrong.

00:36:35
There's always a way to be better.

00:36:36
And what?

00:36:38
How can we recognize some of the places where we might be

00:36:41
going wrong could be an over-reliance on some wacky

00:36:44
surveys, and how can we make some changes so that we are more

00:36:48
in tune with our customers and that we're able to satisfy our

00:36:52
business goals by better delivering to them what they

00:36:55
need and expect from us?

00:36:57
Speaker 1: Awesome, debbie, this has been great.

00:37:00
Obviously, as you mentioned, maybe not as relevant for

00:37:03
physical product, unless they obviously have an e-commerce

00:37:06
website, in which I'm assuming, that it's really the e-commerce.

00:37:09
Speaker 3: Still relevant-ish.

00:37:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, understood?

00:37:11
Well, I think anybody.

00:37:12
Hopefully that the short interview gave you a peek into

00:37:15
the world of customer experience .

00:37:17
But from this very, very specific customer-centric lens,

00:37:21
half Glass of Water is very full , not empty, and obviously I

00:37:25
think for anyone listening that's interested in the subject

00:37:27
, I can never do this right.

00:37:28
Customers Know you Suck obviously is a no-brainer read

00:37:32
that you should pick up.

00:37:33
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you.

00:37:34
Speaker 1: Go to the link.

00:37:34
I know that we have the short link, but I couldn't get it in

00:37:37
StreamYard, so it's deltaCXmedia and I think if you go there

00:37:41
you'll be able to find it.

00:37:42
Nevertheless, the link will be in the show notes.

00:37:43
So, debbie, thank you so much.

00:37:45
Is there any sort of last bits of wisdom or advice that maybe

00:37:50
we didn't cover, that we should have, that you'd like to impart

00:37:53
with our listeners before we end our interview?

00:37:57
Speaker 3: That's a great question.

00:37:58
I would probably say don't be afraid to be wrong or surprised.

00:38:04
This is going to be a great way to grow.

00:38:06
Don't be afraid if if some research that you do or you hire

00:38:10
someone to do says the opposite of what you thought your

00:38:13
customers were or needed.

00:38:15
It's important to keep challenging ourselves and keep

00:38:18
getting better.

00:38:19
It's not a failure if you find out customers needed something

00:38:23
from you that you haven't really been delivering.

00:38:25
It's the success of finally finding that out and being able

00:38:29
to take action on it.

00:38:30
And other than that, I just want to remind listeners that I

00:38:33
love to make myself available to people who've heard me on a

00:38:36
podcast, happy to answer some questions.

00:38:38
Get yourself in my calendar, you know, no charge for

00:38:41
certainly an initial conversation and just to see if

00:38:44
I can help at all.

00:38:45
Speaker 1: This has been great, debbie, and you know there's

00:38:47
always a way to improve things.

00:38:48
Nothing is ever perfect, and I think that you listening to this

00:38:51
show proves that you understand that we can always be improving

00:38:55
.

00:38:55
Right, we can always be reading more books, we can always be

00:38:59
listening to more podcast episodes.

00:39:01
So, yeah, and I will tell you, I have read more books at the

00:39:05
beginning of this year than I read probably all the last year.

00:39:07
So I am doubling down on this At the end of the day and,

00:39:10
debbie, I think that your service at Delta CX and just in

00:39:15
your book is a testament to that of this holistically I won't

00:39:20
say intellectual, but intelligent way of really trying

00:39:22
to analyze, to get to this truth that then you can leverage

00:39:25
for your business.

00:39:25
So I thank you for your contributions.

00:39:27
Thank you, niamh.

00:39:27
I hope that everyone will reach out to you.

00:39:29
You can get the book there at cxccto slash ckys or just go to

00:39:35
delta cxcom.

00:39:36
We'll have all this in the show notes.

00:39:38
But, debbie, thank you so much for your time today.

00:39:40
I wish you the best of luck and hopefully our paths will cross

00:39:44
at a marketing conference sometime in the future.

00:39:45
Speaker 3: I hope so, thanks to you.

00:39:46
Good luck to listeners and catch everybody soon.

00:39:49
Speaker 1: I hope you found that interview to be as fascinating

00:39:52
and insightful as I did and I hope to get to know more of you

00:39:57
as well, because you are also my customers of this podcast in my

00:40:02
audience, and for that reason did you know that I have a

00:40:04
weekly newsletter?

00:40:05
You can go to neilschafercom slash newsletter to sign up and

00:40:10
stay abreast of where I'm speaking.

00:40:12
I share lots of industry news, like I do at the beginning of

00:40:14
this podcast, and, yes, you'll be able to be the first to know

00:40:17
when I launch the Kickstarter for my next book.

00:40:20
And that is it for another hopefully insightful episode of

00:40:24
the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

00:40:25
This is your digital marketing coach, neal Schaefer, signing

00:40:29
off.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: You've been listening to your digital marketing coach

00:40:33
.

00:40:33
Questions, comments, requests, links go to

00:40:38
podcastnealschafercom.

00:40:40
Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at

00:40:45
neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil

00:40:49
has published to support your business.

00:40:52
While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group

00:40:55
coaching membership community If you or your business needs a

00:40:59
little helping hand.

00:41:00
See you next time on your digital marketing coach.