#121 Understanding Customer Value

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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(01:04):
today. Welcome to the
Delighted Customers Podcast. I am so glad you're
here. We challenge conventional thinking about customer experience
because I believe that improving experiences isn't just good for
business, it's a powerful way to make a meaningful difference in
people's lives. Each week we feature thought provoking

(01:26):
conversations with industry thought leaders from a variety
of backgrounds offering unique perspectives and actionable
insights. Get ready to sharpen your leadership and
transform your approach to customer experience. Let's
dive in.
Well, today's guest comes all the way from the other side

(01:49):
of the pond in Europe. I so excited to have guests
from Europe and especially Switzerland.
So excited to have Dr. Maxie Schmidt who
is a principal analyst in Forrester's
Customer Experience Practice. She leads Forrester's research
on CX measurement and value for customer and in

(02:11):
her role she advises leaders on how to build effective
CX measurement programs, make the case for CX and co
create value with customers. And also she got her
doctorate at the School of Business in Engelstaalt. Am I saying that right
Maxi? Yes, in
Germany. So Maxi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much

(02:33):
for having me Mark. I am so excited. Love the power of
technology that we can be halfway around the world and seem like we're in the
same room. Yes, today.
So I really have a scientist on the show and we're
going to be talking about this idea of
customer value metrics and understanding

(02:55):
what customers truly value so we can end up with better
business outcomes. So
when we start talking about this topic, Maxi, could you help level set for the
audience? When we say customer value
metrics, what is it and why has it been an issue?

(03:15):
So we have a lot of companies who want
to keep their customers. And the best way to do that is that
customers feel that there's some value for them. And I don't mean
value as in the price is low. We can talk about that. But do
customers feel that they're getting value from doing business with a company?
That's really important. We don't have all that good

(03:38):
metrics to measure that. And many companies use proxies.
For example, software companies will use the number of features that you
use or the number of logins. But that doesn't necessarily
mean that a customer's gotten value. And then these same companies will
talk about how they are delivering this superior value to the
customer. And as we talked about, you can't even deliver value to

(04:01):
a customer because it's a perception of that customer. And that customer
co creates the value with you. If the customer doesn't put their information
or doesn't bring whatever they need to do with them,
nothing can be created. So there's this idea of perception and co
creation and that makes it really hard to measure the value that a customer is
getting from doing business with you. So you're

(04:22):
already touching on some things that are going to
force people who are listening to the show to expand
their mindset. And so let's, if you
don't mind me double tapping on a couple of things. You said
co creation, so what can that look like? And
can you give me maybe an illustration or example of what a co

(04:44):
creation co created experience that brings customer value
looks like? Yeah. So when we talk about co creation
in a customer experience or design sense, we often talk
about co creating a new product together, right? That's not
exactly what I mean. What I mean here is that think about, think about this
podcast. This podcast, right? We are co

(05:06):
creating value with the audience. So for example, you and I
are having a conversation. We talked about what we would like to talk about, what
are the main points, what would we like to bring across, how would we like
the audience to feel? That's our part of the co creation. But there's also an
audience and if they turn us on while they also watch tv,
they're not going to get something from this. Right? So they have to bring

(05:28):
their attention to get something out of this podcast. But they're
also bringing their mental models, their
assumptions, their interests, their questions. So they
bring a lot to this. We bring a lot to this. And in fact,
they're probably creating something new here. So you and
I are not creating a little package of podcasts that gets

(05:49):
shipped over the digital wires to a Customer. But by
the act of us talking and the audience
listening, they have new insights, we have new insights and something new gets
created, gets co created. And there's some value of it for both
sides. We, for example, having a great discussion and probably some like, oh,
wow, hadn't thought about it this way, hadn't said it this way. And the audience

(06:11):
may be like, oh yeah, that's a new thing, or yeah, good thing that they
also talk about this. And that's why I'm just a small
example is what I mean by co creating value.
Yeah, yeah. So not the typical,
hey, help us create a new product together and product
design stuff. You're talking about the actual

(06:32):
engagement from the customer side.
In utilizing, I think about, I used to work at a
bank and people who,
particularly retail customers who interact with the bank
can now create how they want their experience to look like. They
can create which page comes up first and which fields come because they

(06:54):
may not care about certain things and they may care a lot about other things.
Would that be a good example of co creation in an experience?
Yeah, they're co creating with us what the experience should look like.
And of course there's lots of examples that also I think academia over the
last 20 years has studied this a lot because in most cases
when a company and the customer work together to accomplish some

(07:16):
customer goal, the customer has to be
a big part of it. Think about healthcare. If I go
into a situation with negative energy
and not willing to listen to advice and not taking any medication, then of course
the doctor can't deliver value via a pill. The pill does not have inherent
value. The value gets created when I take it when the dose is right. So

(07:38):
that's one part of that. But there's of course also more interesting
applications of this. Like you talked about the fact that customers can
co create their products. There's companies out there like Haier, the Chinese
manufacturer of white goods, and they do lots
of things, but customers actually have an influence on what that product looks like in
the end because they're involved in the creation of it. But this is

(08:01):
not like this is a very specific case. I think all of the people who
might listen to this podcast work for companies where even now
a customer and the company have to both bring something into the relationship to
create something new together. And it's not a kind of value gets delivered
because I create a bucket of things and I send it to you.
Yeah, so that was, that was the first part of what you said, was this

(08:24):
idea one of the parts, the other was co creation but the other
part was creating value and how difficult it is to measure. And
one of the things you said was is because it's in the perception of the
customer's eyes or through their lens of what the
perceived value is. So
what can just not getting into

(08:46):
driving more value for customers, but what we can even begin to do to
measure the value that we're delivering for customers better?
Yes. So you mean the value that customers think they're getting,
right? Yes, we. When I did my
research on metrics for value, I found a lot of
companies who had big assumptions on what creates value and then they were measuring

(09:09):
the proxies. I mentioned this earlier, like feature usage logins and so on and so
on. And these assumptions could be right or
they could be wrong, but we do have to test it. So actually that
research I've done then ended up going in a wholly different direction in how
to understand what customers actually value
and how do I understand what drives

(09:31):
the most value for them? Is it that the product is cheap or is
easy to use or is it that the employee is super empathetic or is it
that it makes me look really good and amazing and special or there's
some self affirmation. So that's the first thing, so the drivers
of value. And the second thing that I think is super interesting for us
as companies is that this kind of research also tells you

(09:53):
where do customers want you
as they're trying to accomplish a goal. I'll give you an example,
a real example. When somebody wants to protect their home for
example with an insurance so they have a property in casualty
insurance that protects whatever
valuable things are in their home. And many of the insurances that

(10:17):
offer this kind of service also offered apps in which
you could create an inventory
of your belongings. But over time all these apps or
functionality within apps got shut down because the customer
doesn't want that insurance company to do that for them. They don't want to cook
here that value with the insurance company. There's other apps that are still online that

(10:39):
are still working that you can use to create your inventory. But if you are
anyway thinking about switching every year, why would you have your inventory
with that specific app? So this is this idea that where do customers even want
you to play? There was another interesting example
that was from AARP and many of
the US listeners will know them as kind of like a, I want to call

(11:01):
it an interest organization for people over 50 and
which did research trying to find out where do customers want
AARP to play a role so, for example, if you are an AARP member
or you have a mother who is, and that mother dies, they
could have said, you know, we offer everything, grief counseling, this and
that. But they realized that customers or members were not really interested

(11:23):
in all of these aspects because they didn't think that AARP had
either the knowledge or the permission or just felt right to do these
things. And so, grief counseling, no, no, it's okay. I'll do that with some kind
of psychiatrist or psychologist. But give me that checklist and help me to
quickly resolve all of the accounts that I have that this person has. That would
be something that I want from aarp. So basically, the two parts are the

(11:44):
drivers of value, but then it's also where do customers want you to
play?
That is really fascinating. So if you are
a leader, business leader, and you're not asking
those two questions, maybe you should be. Yeah, because it's easy.
And you and I talked offline a little bit about technology for technology's

(12:05):
sake. And sometimes we see this, that we say, oh, we should offer this new
functionality, this new feature, because that's something that's really interesting.
But there's two problems with that. First of all,
for a customer to want to do more with you, to let them
into their lives more than they do, they need to trust you.
Right. And second, are you in the best position to do that?

(12:28):
Well, I'll give you an example from Asia dbs,
a really quite famous bank in Singapore who
is famous for their customer experience efforts for the
digitalization excellence. They, for example, realized that
when a customer wants to buy a car, that is really
complicated in Singapore, Right? It's complicated everywhere, but it's even more

(12:51):
complicated in Singapore. And so DBS knew that the
customers trusted it. So they had, first of all, they had earned trust by
being a good bank for these customers. And now they could think, okay, now that
we've earned the trust, why don't we look at a few customer issues
that they want to solve? Like, for example, buying a car where a
customer has to interact with many different people or

(13:12):
organizations to do that. They have to interact with a
car seller, maybe with a platform, with an insurance company,
with a lender in Singapore. They also have to interact with the government
because you have to get a license to even own a car there. And it's
really complicated. And so DBS was saying, you know what? We are at the prime
position. Customers trust us, so we could maybe orchestrate some of

(13:33):
that. And all these actors that I just described, imagine them
around that Customer, the customer that wants to just be mobile and because
they want to buy a car, but let's say be mobile, there's all these different
insurance company, lender, car company and so on. DBS as a bank is
one of them. But then they were thinking, okay, what could we help the
customer to do more simply? So they created a marketplace where you could find

(13:55):
cars. They helped you to figure out how to do the
purchase of the cars. They helped you figure out how to get insurance for the
cars. They do this all in one platform. So as a DBS customer, you go
to this platform and you don't need to have all these other interactions with these
other parties. So that makes your life much easier. Which means
that now DBS can play a larger role in your life. But

(14:16):
not because they said, oh, we can do all of these things, but because they
figured out what is complicated for customers and how
could we help? By the way, the licensing thing with the government, I think that's
still on the customer because that's something that DBS can't do. So they've also understood
that as probably not some place they want to play, but they've looked
at this whole value network for the customer and figured out where they should be

(14:36):
playing and facilitating for the customer. Yeah.
So I'm hoping there's some sparks triggering from some of
the listeners thinking outside the box a
bit about how they can play
a role in providing value based on how
customers, you know, their journey is and what they're trying to

(14:58):
achieve. So you mentioned jobs to be done
and maybe some areas where they think they might
be helpful, but they're really, there's no value there. Correct.
Exactly. And that is, of course, not just a question of
we shouldn't play there and the customer doesn't want us there, but it costs
you money to play everywhere. And if you can

(15:20):
identify better where you should and shouldn't play, that's
huge. So
let's talk a little bit more about the what's the Big Deal?
Is what I like to call it. And I'm talking specifically about
those decision makers in the C Suite. A couple of things,
as you've shared, and I would appreciate if you would expand on this a little

(15:41):
bit more, but it seems to me like, you know, if you're fishing in the
wrong waters, where you're wasting your
time and energy, because customers really aren't going to perceive value in that
particular aspect of what you're
providing. And also you may be missing an opportunity where you could be
leveraging the trust that you have earned

(16:02):
and you're in a strategically
beneficial position to be assistants, as you gave an
example of dbs.
Why, you know, that's just me sharing. But why do you think it is
such a big deal? And this idea of
understanding value creation on the side of the customer should

(16:24):
matter so much to the C suite.
So how many times do you go for a beer with
a friend who always lets you pay, Mark?
So if I was your friend and you'd always leave before we
pay at some point, I'd not invite you for the beer anymore.
That's the basic principle of reciprocity. Right? Cute way of saying it, but it's a

(16:47):
principle of reciprocity. And the company will
keep a customer as long as there's some perceived
reciprocity. Now, what you think is reciprocity might be very
different. Somebody just like, you know, I just want a cheap product and I want
the functionality, and this is reciprocity. Others, they don't really care about
the product quality, but it's just amazing to be a customer of this great

(17:09):
brand, of this founder that's also trying to go into space
and has cybertrucks and electric cars. That's all they need.
So there's a certain kind of reciprocity, and you have
to find out what is the thing that customers want
to get from you in order to stay with you. And as
I said, this could be very many different things. And that basic concept

(17:31):
of reciprocity I don't think is stumping anybody.
What is stumping or what's the problem then? Is that a. We need
to remember that it's the case. And if we try to suck customers
dry at every corner, this is not a sustainable position in the
long run. But also the question is, then, what do you want back?
This is like in any relationship, Mark. Maybe from you, I don't want to

(17:54):
be here. Maybe from you, I want a really interesting conversation about customer experience.
Or you tell me about how it was to be in the CXPA board. Super
interesting. And that'd be enough. I don't need you to pay for the beer. But
what is that? And that's the question behind that value of
research. Now, even if we believe that it's important to understand the reciprocity, I now
need to do the right research to understand my different target groups and what it

(18:15):
is that they want. And usually they just don't just want one thing.
Right. They want several things, and I need to find out which
ones. Yeah. And are
you familiar with Joe Pine? Have you ever heard the name? Yes, of course.
So Joe wrote the Experience Economy, and he
talked a lot earlier about this idea of mass customization and how

(18:37):
personalization and individualization of the experiences is so important.
And now what he's talking about is this idea of
marketing is going to go the way of customering and that there
are no segments, that there's just a customer of segment of 1.
There's an individual here. And
so what he's taught, what his most recent conversations, he's

(19:00):
coming out with another book, maybe it's out already, is this idea of not
only is there just a customer of one, but now it's one
customer with different modes. Yes. So if I
may want a beer at Oktoberfest, I might want a beer at home, I
might want a beer at a wedding, I might want a beer at a pub.
And each one of those would be considered a different value

(19:23):
creation. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's
always been the case, different. Amounts for the beer in each one of those scenarios?
I think that's always been the case. Right. There's always been the case that people
come in different. Like even 10 years ago, do I go into Starbucks on my
lunch break to be by myself, or do I go there with the dates and
then I don't want to be by myself. I wonder, you know, maybe it's a
new date that I've never seen before, and I want to be in public.

(19:46):
Very different modes, but the same person. That's why also, it's so interesting when you
see some of the research that gets done on customer needs, that's where it really
breaks down. Because I'm the. Not just Maxi, I'm Maxi, the
professional keynote speaker, blah, blah, blah. It's very serious. Also
Maxi, the mother who's sometimes thinking, oh, my God, how do I do this with
these kids? Then I'm also Maxi, the silly goose that makes jokes with her husband.

(20:07):
And these different people show up. But I
do still believe in the concept of simplifying this
a little bit. So we do have certain people
who have certain mindsets. And we actually just did some data
analysis at Forrester to get exactly at that. So I can tell you a little
bit about this. But there's kind of certain types of situations that

(20:29):
you could focus on. Because if you have this kind of big matrix, imagine a
big matrix right in the rows. You have the different situations in the columns. You
have the different types of people or Personas. The complexity is really
great. Now, at some point in the future,
we might be able to handle that better also because customers might tell
you which situation they're in on purpose because they want to get a specific service.

(20:50):
Right? So we can talk about that also. But right now that's very complicated. And
when people think about this they typically, oh God, that's so complicated,
might as well not start. And that's why I'm saying that there is a
specific types of, types of buyers and, or
decision makers and there are specific types of situations.
And this, this, this, this analysis that we did was we,

(21:12):
we looked at what drives value for
customers. We did an analysis, we used a technique called
maximum difference scaling. MaxDiff
or MaxIDiff as a colleague said.
So that Maxdiff scaling, that helps a little bit get at actual
priorities because it forces the person who answers the question

(21:35):
to make choices. You don't get to see everything's important. You
have to always pick the most and least important thing out of a
group of four and you see like 10 or 12 cards of that, which means
that over time you'll have compared many of the things to each other.
This is basically a really advanced way to do cool ranking. And that is more
than ranking. It also tells you how important something is compared to something else.

(21:57):
So if something has 20% importance and something has a 40% importance, the
40% is exactly double as much. So it's not just ranking but also the
relatives value, which is cool, right? So that we did
and we can talk about this, but we used that data and clustered it and
we found that there is different kind of clusters of people.
There's this one cluster that is totally price

(22:18):
sensitive. They basically just look at it needs to be the lowest possible price. I
want to get a discount and it needs to also have some functionality. So
reliability should be okay. But price needs to be low, low, low. That's the
kind of value for money. Segment. There was another segment that was
Price didn't play a role at all. Price had like a super low
value for them in terms of importance. What was important for them

(22:41):
was all of the functionality stuff I want to know.
I want to solve a problem, be able to solve a problem. This needs to
be reliable. All the features I want must be there. So these are basically the
people that I wanted, just the way I wanted and I'll be
willing to pay for it. Second segment, right. The third segment was the people
who also didn't have a high value on price but they looked very much at

(23:02):
the characteristics of the brand. So is the brand
doing stuff that I agree with values wise is
the brand maybe sustainable is the brand. One that keeps my
personal data safe. That's the third segment. And then there was
one segment that kind of used many of these factors in their purchase
decisions, but not any of them really strongly. So that's kind of like

(23:24):
these balance man in the middle. Right. So you have these kind
of like ethics, these people that are really into the values.
And by the way, values, whatever your values are. Right. I don't mean the
specific bend of values does not matter at all. But values based buyers,
kind of the quality based buyers, price based buyers, and then these
everything is kind of important based buyers. And that's what

(23:46):
I'm trying to say is that with this data we created these kind of groups
and I think every company can find similar groups
among their customers. As a simplification to get started with this
idea that value drivers are different, but this is not a complete
complexity that we cannot solve for. We can solve for
this. Yeah. Would leaders

(24:07):
be tempted? Like one question as you're sharing this breakdown, I think
it's fascinating and we may be getting a crash course
inside of Maxi's head some of the research
you've been working on. But, but I would be curious, like would
I hear the CFO in my head saying, okay, well, which one of
those groups is going to give us the highest

(24:30):
roi? Yes. And that's the thing that then every company,
we did this data based on a large, huge consumer
survey, but of course we don't have the spend attached to
that. That's the second step. You're completely right. What is it
that they want? And how valuable are these customers to us? And is it worth
it? Because I'm not just mind you, I'm not arguing that with

(24:52):
the customer's always right. We know by now that that's not. But I do want
to. What you want to find, you know what you want to find, Mark, as
a leader, you want to find what we call it for devotees.
And devotees are these customers that value what you do
so much that they reward it with their
loyalty. And their loyalty could be how they speak about

(25:14):
you, what they buy from you, that they give you feedback that they
forgive you, whatever that is. Right. Different people can maybe give you different
facets of loyalty, but that's the kind of customer
that ideally you want at the heart of it. And then of course, you
want to have other customers who are ideally close to getting there. And we've
done research for that about the last five or so, five or six years.

(25:36):
TJ Kid, a former colleague of Mine started doing research on that, and this
fits really well with my value research. So this has been a kind of like
a theme for us at Forrester for a long time.
So I'm gonna. Let me just play a little
brainstorming game here in. In my class at Michigan
State, I teach customer relationship management. And we're. Last

(25:59):
week we caught. We were at the point of loyalty. We talked about customer
loyalty. And there's a gentleman. I don't know if you ever heard of him, at
Vanderbilt. Oliver. Oliver. Richard Oliver wrote about
Oliver's framework. Yes. And he really talks about
these different levels of loyalty without getting too much in the weeds
there. But at the end of it, the bottom one he called action.

(26:21):
Loyalty is just a label, but what it really means is essentially
that I've got an emotional connection to the
brand, and that means I've got what he calls fortitude,
which is like sort of a stickiness.
It means that not only do I buy and
loyalists the next level down from

(26:42):
that buy on a regular basis or repeat purchasers, but this
other level, you know, there are people who will
defend the brand and stick up for the brand when there's
mistakes or shortcomings. Yes. I think that's. That's very
close to what we call devotees. I mean, I think there's this.
Luckily, luckily, there's very similar ideas. Right. Comparing

(27:04):
your attitudes, your emotions when it comes to loyalty, to your behaviors when
it comes to loyalty. That's one of the things that many frameworks have in common.
Remember that old Walker matrix on Trap customers? I mean,
you've seen it, I've seen it. Right. That's a similar idea. But also, I
think Esther Perel had this really cool insight. Do you know Esther Perel?
Yeah, sure. She does these relationships. Where should we begin?

(27:28):
That's her podcast. Yes, yes. It's amazing. Right. And she has this
amazing notion that marriage used to be basically a
business transaction. I'm oversimplifying. Right. But there's some kind of
business exchange, and now it's evolved into this thing where
your spouse is everything to you. Right. You exercise together, you raise kids
together, you live together, you have fun together, you go on vacation together. And that's

(27:51):
a lot to ask from a single person. And the same is true for
loyalty. If we expect a customer to buy from us and recommend us and
forgive us and advocate for us and do
all of these things, then that's a lot to ask. So that's the other question
is, remember earlier how we said that you need to figure out what
different types of customers want from you. You also need to figure out what

(28:13):
they can give you. Different types of customers. And maybe it's okay if one customer
doesn't buy from you, but they're such vocal supporters, they're so influential
and it's okay. But we don't have often in companies definitions
of loyalty that are that nuanced. Right. We
often look at the behavioral loyalty or when we don't have that, we look
at some kind of proxy like a net promoter score for more like an emotional

(28:36):
loyalty. But kind of the nuance is actually interesting both on the side of what
customer can give you and what you want. What a customer gets from you.
Yeah. Such a great point you brought up. One of the guests on
the show Fred Reichelt had recommended this company mentioned me in
London because the question I asked him
was, well, okay, if loyalty is so important. And he was

(28:58):
specifically talking about referral business being more valuable than
business you buy. And so. But how do you track
referrals? And he goes, well, it's been a challenge, but it's doable. This company
mentioned me, has done it in the B2C side
and he shared this. Andy Cockburn, who's the
CEO, shared the story of a woman who is

(29:20):
in London and this florist who's the biggest in Europe. I don't remember
the name of it, but I'm sure you would be familiar with it.
And she was a lost client. As they go back and look at
history and she left nine months ago. But when they
tracked the referrals, you talked about influencers. She was
responsible for $250,000 in business.

(29:42):
That's crazy. That's exactly. That's the Esteprl theory of loyalty. They can
go back and track that now through AI and look at the
network. Obviously there needs to be some
way to track identifier, like unique identification number for that
customer. Maybe a little bit harder in B2B or B2G.
Whatever. But to your point is that

(30:04):
influencers could also be a missed
opportunity or a hidden gem. Correct. But
also they're really hard to manage. Right, That's.
But you're right, you're right. And there's so many people who try to think about
how can they turn their happy customers into influencers. That is a
whole field of vendors and research just based on

(30:26):
that. Yeah, I agree. It might be a missed
opportunity. Because I
want to talk about. I want to just talk about
some strategies and we've already talked about some, but just to give people
some. Okay, here's some action steps. Here's some things that maybe you can either think
about or begin to think about where you are. And so

(30:49):
let me do my best to try and recap some you've already touched on. And
maybe there's one or two that I missed or we missed or we didn't get
to. One is, you talked about this idea of
trust and leveraging the trust that you have. So ask
yourself, maybe what trust do I have with my customer base?
Why would they trust? What have I done to earn the trust? What can I

(31:10):
do to earn more trust? And if there's an opportunity with customers
that we'd like
to attract to our business, what can we do to earn more trust
with them? Yes. And which, by the way, what does trust even
mean? Many people say, oh, we want our customers to trust us, but what do
you mean by that? Do you want them to trust you to do what's best

(31:30):
for them, or do you want them to think that you're fulfilling your
promises or that you're empathetic or that you're
competent? Like even defining what is trust for us? Because
such a big word, you cannot measure that. And as soon as you try to
put metrics to that, you actually have to define what this means. So break down
trust into a few kind of levers of trust and then measure

(31:53):
those. May I add that to your recommendation?
Yeah, please. That's what I'm hoping for by adding. This to your recommendation. Someone
who spent an awful lot of time learning about trust.
I 100% appreciate your bringing this
up and the complexity of it, but yet it's still
incredibly important. Correct? For an organization. Yes. Yes.

(32:15):
And we talked about this earlier. Remember how we talked about the
fact that sometimes it's hard to figure out what customers want and it might
be daunting. And very often we also talk about the fact that,
oh, why don't you consider the customer in your decisions and why
not ask one single question, If I do this and the customer finds out about
it, will they lose trust? That would be

(32:38):
a super simple question to ask for a business decision that you make so really
pragmatic as a takeaway to ask something specific, not like the customer
in the room, but will this customer lose some of their trust in us if
we do this? Yeah, that's something we can do tomorrow. I
just wrote a post which taps on what you just said about Starbucks
because they've come out with this new policy

(33:00):
that says that there's going to be no free
restroom use, no hanging out, unless you buy a
product from us, and it goes directly against something
that they came out with 2018 after some bad press
happened in Philadelphia. So now how do you
enforce, you know, people coming. I had people on the, on

(33:22):
the post in LinkedIn write about, well, what if I'm there as part of a
group and we're having a meeting there and I don't. I just had lunch, but
other people are buying coffee. Are they going to ask me to leave?
You know what, Mark? I think this is such an important topic because
the company has set expectations at some
point that you're all welcome, and they've benefited from that. They've

(33:44):
publicized it, they've taken all the PR from it, and
now they're taking it back. But now the
downside isn't necessarily only on
Starbucks. Of course there's negative PR you write about, others write about it. But
who is actually having to shoulder this burden?
It's the poor people in the Starbucks that have to say, oh,

(34:06):
excuse me, ma'am, sir, you haven't bought anything. Do you want to leave? So
the downside is all on these people in the front line.
And I think that's something that we need to keep in mind also, as
we write about this topic, that there's people in the frontline that now
have to deal with this and have to deal with irate customers who
maybe they should get over themselves. But also they have been promised something that now

(34:28):
gets taken away. And we know how it is when you take things away from
people. But your question is great because it is.
Is this going to be a plus or a minus on trust?
Right. You know, you brought up the idea of
understanding the loyalty levers. I'm going to describe it. What
is it that generates

(34:50):
loyalty from the customer's perspective in your business?
So understand what those drivers are.
And then you mentioned reciprocity. So
over the relationship, because that's really what we're talking about, a relationship.
What is it that you need to give
to them and they need to give to you to make the

(35:13):
relationship thrive over the long term. Exactly. We see. What loyalty
behaviors do you care about in your customers that might be different ones?
And based on that, understand what value perceptions
create those loyalty behaviors. And we know, for example, that
customers of Patagonia are extremely loyal because they get
value from doing business with a sustainable company. Customers of

(35:35):
Hermes might be extremely loyal because they get status from wearing the scarf and it
says Hermes on it. And like, oh, I'm so special. There's this kind of.
Even as you're trying to think about this. There's different ways that customers
get value and that will also translate into different ways of showing their loyalty.
And I can't afford a Ms. Scarf, but I've just mentioned them two, three times,

(35:56):
so I'm maybe an influencer. Now.
The other thing that I think you said, which
I don't know if it's a strategy, but I think it's definitely a mindset, which
is this idea of simplify because you could easily get
overwhelmed and just say, hey, I'm not going to even look at that. I'm not
going to go down that road. But simplification is just so important.

(36:18):
Yes. Take one journey, one customer journey. And by the way, by
journey, I don't mean the life cycle. There's no end to end journey. I mean
the path to a specific goal. Open a bank account, get a credit card, get
a loan, whatever that is, and translate this into other industries. So take a
specific journey and figure out what is the customer
goal and where in this journey currently is a customer

(36:39):
gaining value or losing value. For example, when you make it very hard for a
customer to accomplish something, they have to put a lot of effort in, that's a
value loss. When you treat them super nicely and they feel like,
oh, wow, I'm so special, that's the value gain. When they get a discount, that's
a value gain. When they see suddenly that you offered them the same thing
more expensively than others, that's a value loss. And you can just

(37:00):
imagine a journey in front of you and underneath, you don't put the
emotional curve, you put a value gain, value loss curve.
So now you can think about an individual journey and think about how much of
the journey is actually in value lost territory versus value gain territory.
And can you afford it? If too much of the journey is in value lost
territory, why should that customer go on another journey with you? That's like your beer

(37:22):
and me, you and me on a beer. I'd never not go with you again.
Right. If it's all just value loss, which it wouldn't be. I know. And now,
Mark, you do the same thing for the company. My
colleague Joanna de Quintanilla and I, we just published something about energy
givers and energy takers on LinkedIn also. Everybody can see that there.
But the underlying concept is that you take the value curve for customer,

(37:44):
value gains and loss for the customer, and the value curve for the company, value
gains and losses for the company, and you compare that and then you know where
to focus in your Journeys where you need to focus your efforts to optimize
both, not to blow the value for the customer out of the water. That's not
what this discussion is about, as we've just talked about. It's about the reciprocity and
optimization across both customer and

(38:07):
business. This is just so much value in one podcast
episode. I'm not even sure if it's legal. We have to ask
the audience if they agree, remember? There you
go. No, thank you for the compliment. I shouldn't
have, but. Yes, but it's really important that we. You know what,
that's maybe the one important thing I'd like everybody to take away. Stop saying we

(38:28):
deliver value because that is not true. A customer
perceives value. We might co create it, but we can't deliver it. And that
matters not because of the language police, but the language we use shapes our
actions. And so yeah, so
true. And it's a great point
to remember. I just also think it was a 2.0 thing that you said.

(38:51):
Those of us who have done journey maps many times, you know that emotions
are one of the things that differentiates it from a business process
map, Right? We're looking at the emotions. But what you're saying is I now think
about the value and then to go another step is how does that value
trajectory map to the business's value
trajectory? And that should open up a bunch of

(39:13):
insights in terms of business strategy. Yes, I think so.
Yes. And also this idea of understanding what your
loyalty drivers are and
dialing those up or down where they're just not.
AARP example. Where they're just not of value. Right, right,
exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that is

(39:34):
fantastic. We have had so much fun. I've got to ask you one more question
though, that I ask all my guests, which is what
advice would you give to your 20 year old self?
Start earlier to wear glasses. So I look older. No, just
joking. You know what, I would say that to
not necessarily have this really strict plan where the career

(39:58):
is going, especially now. I see that a lot and people ask me, so Maxi,
how did you make it from this step to the next? And much of my
career was being open to opportunities. And
that's something I would tell my 20 year old self to have a plan,
have some thoughts and try to find opportunities, but then also be open and not
thinking you need to have it all mapped out because that feels a bit constricting.

(40:19):
But also it might not be possible. So then you're mapping out something that
you don't like. This is just like Mapping out a birth plan. Excuse me, and
then not being able to deliver that way, and then you're like, disappointed. And why
would you be disappointed at your birth? I mean, at your child's birth.
Yeah. So that's the one thing that I think I did
right. The thing that I did wrong is I often thought too much about

(40:41):
what others think of me, but that might be a problem of
the people like me. So not everybody has a problem. But
that's also another thing that kindness and respect is important,
but you need to know what's
right for you. Great advice,
Dr. Maxie Schmidt. What is

(41:03):
a way, if somebody wanted to get a hold of you, reach out to you,
ask for your help or support, what would be the best way for them to
reach out to you? So if you want to reach out to me personally,
LinkedIn is the way to go. You can easily reach me there.
And if you want to have my help in the Forester capacity, then
email me@mschmidorrester.com

(41:25):
Excellent, Maxi, thank you so much. For being on the show. Well, thank you.
It was really a pleasure for me. And can the audience please tell us if
this was valuable and useful? I'd like that. I'd like to know that.
Perfect. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Delighted Customers
podcast. It would mean so much if you would take a moment to

(41:47):
subscribe. You can go to Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click on the plus sign or follow
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next Thursday.

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