January 10, 2022 • 31 mins
In episode 111, host Eric Dickmann interviews Justin Varuzzo. Justin has over 20 years of experience focusing on the intersection of marketing and customer service. This led him to start the Marketing and Service podcast for business leaders and entrepreneurs who want to build stronger customer relationships and set themselves apart from their competitors. The podcast features successful business leaders who reveal how they overcame pitfalls to become what they are today.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/create-unique-buyers-journey-s7ep10/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:02):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Justin, welcome to The VirtualCMO podcast.
Very glad you could join ustoday.
Justin Varuzzo (00:23):
Thanks for having me, Eric.
I appreciate it.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
We get a chance to dive in, talk about some of
my favorite topics today with afellow podcaster.
So that's always exciting.
I'm excited to talk about thisbecause, you know, we had a
discussion the other day, and Iknow you truly get this idea of
a buyer's journey.
And more than that, just what itmeans to have a comprehensive
(00:46):
journey that continues on pastthe sale and into the service
side of the business.
And I really want to dive intothat a little bit today.
But just to kick things off, canyou tell the audience a little
bit about yourself and alsobriefly mentioned your podcast
as well.
Justin Varuzzo (01:02):
sure.
Yeah.
So,I I'm Justin Varuzzo and I amcurrently a Director of
Marketing at a music companycalled Paul Effman Music.
We essentially provide bandprograms and orchestral programs
to private schools and Catholicschools, parochial schools
across the nation actually, andit was a need that these schools
(01:24):
can't afford full-time musicinstructors, a lot of them.
So it's more or less like anoutsourced band where we provide
the instructor, the instruments,and the kids get to learn music.
So it's a nice,
Eric Dickmann (01:35):
That's very cool.
Yeah.
It's
Justin Varuzzo (01:38):
Feel good business.
you know?
I started very early on as ateacher I've been there for 20
years and then I've kind ofworked my way up and now I do
all of the marketing and we nowhave retail stores and we've
grown a lot and gotten into alot of different things over the
years.
So it's been a fun adventure.
Eric Dickmann (01:56):
So I'm curious, you know, when you started up
the Marketing and Servicepodcast, what was really the
thought process behind that?
Why did you focus on marketingand service together?
Because typically you don't seethat, even though I think we
both realize how important itis.
Justin Varuzzo (02:10):
Yeah.
So the thing that really led medown that road was that I
started thinking to myself, whatis the best service experience
I've ever had?
Because anyone who owns abusiness or runs a business, or
if you're in marketing, it'sgood to kind of sit down and
think about like, what are thegood things that I've
experienced in my personal lifeand how can I recreate that
experience?
(02:31):
I could think of In particular.
And then I started thinking,well, lets start listing them
all out.
And number two probably tookabout 10 minutes to come up
with.
And I couldn't come up with athird one.
So I started asking peoplearound me, Hey, Eric, what's
your best customer service?
What's your second best?
So almost nobody I've everspoken to can actually name
(02:51):
three times that they've hadgood customer service, which is
insane in a world where weengage in dozens of transactions
a day, right?
You get your gasoline in themorning, you get your cup of
coffee, you might go outsomewhere for lunch, you go buy
something at a store, you get agift for your spouse.
There's all these things thatyou could do.
And the fact that in America,where all these companies say
(03:15):
they're rooted in service, yetwe can't come up with three
examples of really being wowedand impressed by a nice service.
So that kind of led me down thisroad of you know, that's
something I think I'm a podcastabout.
You know, hopefully at the end,it'll make the world a little
bit better of a place if just afew companies can work on their
(03:37):
service a little bit.
Eric Dickmann (03:39):
Well, I love the way you frame that because I bet
if you switch that questionaround, you know, name three bad
experiences that you've had thisweek, I bet people could explain
three bad experiences they'vehad today.
Justin Varuzzo (03:51):
Yeah.
we could go on for hours.
Eric Dickmann (03:53):
Yeah.
And it's sad because I thinkpersonally, I wonder why more
businesses aren't learningbecause there is such a chance
to differentiate yourself fromthe competition by delivering
that service level thatcustomers are clamoring for, but
so many don't.
Justin Varuzzo (04:10):
Right.
Yeah.
They really don't.
And the good news.
It's an amazing opportunity forsmall businesses and medium
sized businesses.
Honestly, it's a big opportunityfor big businesses too, but we
know how in the bigger thebusiness, the more bureaucracy
and the harder it is to makethose changes happen.
But for small businesses, itreally, is a nice
differentiating opportunity forthem to leverage, to grow their
(04:34):
business and to grow bettercustomer relationships, and
really improve that entirecustomer experience because it's
going to be in a lot of ways, alot easier for a small business
to do that and do itconsistently than trying, having
a mega corporation with, youknow, thousands of support
personnel and you know,marketers and sales staff, and
trying to get them all on board.
(04:55):
It's a much bigger challenge.
Eric Dickmann (04:58):
So to play devil's advocate a bit, I can
hear fellow marketers out in theaudience saying, well, I agree
with this.
This makes a lot of sense, butJustin, I'm in marketing.
I'm not in service.
How can I affect service as amarketer?
Justin Varuzzo (05:14):
Yeah.
So one of the biggest things isreally having, especially in a
bigger organization, a lot oforganizations will have their
marketing department, they'llhave their sales department and
they'll have their servicedepartment.
And in so many companies, theyreally don't Interface with one
another, right?
There's like firewalls betweenthem.
(05:34):
And I think the more you can getthose three elements together,
and the more you have commongoals and common strategies, and
actually speak to one another,because I think we've all been
in a position.
If you're a sales person, you'vecertainly been in a position
where you see a commercial foryour own product and you think
to yourself, that doesn't dothat.
(05:54):
Why are they advertising it likethat?
And if you're a service person,you've certainly been in a
position where a salesperson hasmade a promise to a customer,
and now a month later they'recoming to you and you're saying,
Hey, I don't know who told youthat, But you know, that piece
of equipment can't do that's notgoing to happen.
So we see this all the time.
And, you know, again at a smallbusiness level, it's really easy
(06:16):
to get everyone on the samepage.
If you've got, you know, threeor four technicians, you've got
two or three salespeople.
And you know, you got one guy inyour marketing department, it's
real easy to have thatalignment.
But as things scale, it becomesincreasingly more difficult if
it's not really addressed.
And if that focus isn't aroundmaking sure that those three
groups of people work togetherand cohesively with a.
(06:40):
common goal, strategy, and planto move forward.
Eric Dickmann (06:44):
You know, listeners of this show know that
I'm a big fan of HubSpot.
And for many years, HubSpot wasvery much advocates of this
whole idea of the buyer'sjourney.
Which of course, we talk about alot on the show, but when you
talk about a buyer's journey,you tend to think of something
that's fairly linear.
And the reality is, people atHubSpot realized this several
years ago that it's really not alinear progression.
(07:06):
They termed, you know, flywheel.
You know, it's a circularprogression because a customer
who buys your product and thenneed service for that product
may come back and buy otherthings.
And so it's this loop that getscreated.
What are your thoughts on that?
Justin Varuzzo (07:22):
So yeah, I love that you brought that up because
the one thing is most businessesview service as an expense,
right?
They're not income generators,they're not the rainmakers in
the business.
But there is such a hugeopportunity to turn that around.
And they can be.
For exactly the reason you justsaid.
Someone has a problem, they comeback.
(07:43):
If service, I'm not sayingreplace the sales staff or the
sales process, but if they'retrained to a capacity where they
can make recommendations andsuggestions and cross sells and
upsells at the time of service,it works.
You know, they will generaterevenue in a service call.
And you just don't see that veryoften, and I'm not sure why.
(08:07):
I mean, I have some ideas why.
I mean obviously it's hard totrain a customer service center
with 500 operators to also begreat salespeople.
But you know, there's alwaysthat every time I've ever had a
phone call with a client or acustomer, and it's been a phone
call that's been because of aproblem.
At some point in thatconversation, we usually figure
(08:29):
something out about how we canbetter provide that product or
service to that customer.
And they are usually happy tohave what they need to make
everything work.
We're doing this podcast here,right?
You've got the microphone,you've got this stand that the
microphone is on, you've got itplugged into a computer.
You need all those things for itto work.
(08:50):
So if you went to a store andyou said, I want to do a podcast
and I want to buy thismicrophone and they just hand
you the microphone and youleave, now you get home, you
don't have what you need.
And then you call service andsay, well, how do I plug this
thing in this?
Oh, you need a cable.
Are they actually capable ofselling you the cable at that
moment and say, Yeah, we haveit.
Let me put the order in for youand I'll get it to you.
And a lot of times they don't.
(09:11):
They're going to say, oh, let metransfer you to the sales
department.
And you know, then they startthis whole cycle over again.
It becomes a very frustratingexperience.
Eric Dickmann (09:18):
Well, and I think that everything gets mixed in
together.
How many times have you beenonline trying to purchase
something and maybe there's aproblem, there's an error,
there's a question that you haveabout shipping or stock, and you
need to call in.
That's not necessarily aninteraction with their sales
department that may be aninteraction with their service
department, but it's pre-sale.
(09:39):
You're actually helping thatcustomer buy.
And so the roles tend to meldtogether and get a little fuzzy.
Justin Varuzzo (09:46):
Yeah.
So one of my favorite examplesabout that is way back when we
were looking for a shippingsolution and we basically wanted
to get that tape that Amazonuses, right?
The nylon reinforced tape, andit's water activated.
I knew nothing, nothing aboutthis at the time.
But I knew that it was good tapeand it would hold the box
together.
And I remember actuallywatching.
(10:09):
videos on how it was used.
These were post-sale.
I mean they were designed forpost support.
If you bought this product, thisis how you assemble it, right?
And fast forward to today, nowyou see YouTubers with the
unboxing videos and you know,this is like a thing.
But if a company takes themoment to create the content,
think about the power of thatcontent.
(10:30):
You showing an unboxing or anassembling or setup of a product
or a service, you're going to beable to use that with your
customers after you sell them.
And they're going to be veryhappy that they have the support
they need.
But it's also going to be anacquisition tool because there's
going to be people like me, who,one more in-depth curiosity
about what it is.
Well, how does this work?
How does this thing work?
(10:50):
How does that actually gotogether?
How does it fit in into thisworkflow?
Now you've got this great pieceof content that you're going to
use, it's going to be in theacquisition phase, you can use
it in the support phase, andit's there and people will
really appreciate it.
And you're creating a bettervalue in that journey.
And like you said, if someonehas an issue on your website,
there's a technical issue, theyneed to easily be able to get
(11:13):
past that and get in touch withsomebody who can actually help
them through, not just an ITtech support, that's not really
gonna be able to offer them anyhelp other than we'll work on
the website or we'll open up aticket for that.
Eric Dickmann (11:26):
I think that's such an excellent point because
when we talk about things likebuyer's journey, it makes a
little bit of an assumption thatpeople are going to go step one,
step two, step three.
And that's not really the way itworks.
You may anticipate that somebodyis going to come to your
website, they're going to lookat your product page, they're
going to download a piece ofcollateral, they're going to
read that, they're going to comeback, they're going to follow
(11:48):
up, they're going to fill out acontact form, but maybe they
don't do that at all.
Maybe they see, like you said, aYouTube video or somebody does a
review or your product ismentioned in a blog article and
they come in a different way.
You can't necessarily anticipateall that.
But in marketing, part of ourjob is to have all of that
content available to them sothat they can come in where they
(12:10):
want and get exposed to theproduct the way they want.
Justin Varuzzo (12:15):
Yeah.
If that marketing strategy isdone right from the content
perspective, you know, youalways hear content is king.
If you've got that strategy inplace, those little snippets,
they can be repurposed over andover and over.
A great example I like to use isDave Ramsey, financial guy,
right?
You You know, five, six babysteps.
(12:36):
He's been touting that for 20years and has built a billion
dollar empire over literally sixthings you could write on a
little napkin.
Taking that same content andrepurposing it over and over and
over.
And you know, a milliondifferent books and videos and
seminars, but it's literallyjust these, you know, these
little baby steps over and overagain.
And that is how we should kindof treat our marketing assets in
(12:58):
the same way.
How can we repurpose these toyou know, one maximize our time
as the marketer and as thecompany, and provide the best
value to the customer at thesame time.
Eric Dickmann (13:09):
What's interesting too.
About what you're saying thereis that as you're repurposing
this content, using it indifferent ways, or maybe you're
having content that was createdfor another purpose, a post-sale
how to video, or something likethat.
If you have analytics in place,if you're able to really do a
good job of tracking how thisinformation, this collateral
(13:30):
might be used, you may spot aweakness in your marketing
strategy that maybe you're notexplaining your product well
enough that people don't haveall the information that they
need from your marketingmaterials to be able to fully
understand what your product orservice does.
So sometimes these other assetscan give you real clues as to
what you may need to adjustwithin your own marketing
(13:52):
messaging.
Justin Varuzzo (13:53):
Yeah, to piggyback that, one of the
things that I always do, I had abackground in IT for a while,
and whenever I'm looking at anew solution, something like
HubSpot or whatever piece ofsoftware we might be looking
into, the first place I alwaysgo are the user forums because
that's where the truth is beingtold, right?
I want to hear what are theactual customer experiences, not
(14:14):
the marketing on the website,but what's in the back end here,
like what's really going on?
Are these people happy?
Are they all complaining?
You know, how's the service?
Are they complaining?
They can't get answers toquestions.
And you learn a lot about acompany when you kind of see
that back door of their product,and you see what the users are
actually discussing.
And you can certainly learn alot of insights from that.
(14:38):
And again, I think even in asmall business, it's easy when
you have 5, 6, 7 people workingfor those insights not to get
back to you as the marketer oras the business owner, someone
might call and say, Hey, thisthing has XYZ problem.
Oh, okay.
Well, let me take a few minutesand we'll get this worked out.
Next day, someone else gets thatsame call.
(14:58):
Oh, it will take a few minutesand work this out.
Next day, the third person getsthat same call.
But there's not really thatcohesive strategy where any one
person's going to come back andsay, Oh hey, we're getting calls
all the time on this one thing.
But the solution could be a30-second YouTube video that you
shoot on your phone.
And now not only you're going tocut your service time because
now when you get that inquiry,you can just say, Hey, here's
(15:18):
the video step-by-stepinstructions on how to do it.
Thanks.
Have a great day.
You know looking at forums andlooking at what people are
saying is such an easy way,especially when they're common
issues to say, Hey, okay, let'smake a video about this.
Let's put this somewhere that'seasy to find, let's work on a
little SEO on the service sideof our content as opposed to the
(15:41):
marketing and the acquisitionside.
Eric Dickmann (15:45):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
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(16:06):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
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schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(16:29):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
You know, another missedopportunity when it comes to
service is I think a lot ofservice interactions are a great
potential opportunity to sellthe customer something else.
I think about the example of amobile phone, I've got an AT&T
mobile phone.
(16:49):
Well, believe me, if I didn'thave an AT&T internet service,
they would certainly ask meabout it, right?
They said, who are you using foryour internet, right?
They know that that's an upsellopportunity.
But many times, if I go to awebsite of a vendor that I'm
doing business with, I'm poundedconstantly with messages that
are completely out of context.
It's every time I log in, theyseem to want to sell me
(17:10):
something.
And I don't think is a reallygreat time to do it because
there's no context to it, you'rejust basically logging into the
system.
But sometimes when you have aservice interaction, especially
when you've solved a problem forthe customer, and they're
leaving that interaction with apositive view of your company,
that's an ideal time to ask themsome questions and see what else
(17:31):
you might be able to do.
Justin Varuzzo (17:33):
Yeah, I'll say in my experience, the biggest
advocates that we have, and themost brand loyal people that we
have are the ones that hadsomething go wrong, usually
horribly wrong, and we were ableto address it very quickly and
do it in a way that they don'tjust have their problem solved,
(17:54):
but they really become a brandambassador after that, because
the expectations, this is why Isaid at the beginning about that
potential for small businesseswhere they can really exploit
this, the expectations inAmerica are so low with service
that it almost takes no effortto win someone over forever
simply by answering the phone.
They don't even expect that.
(18:15):
They expect they're going towait on hold for at least 40
minutes and listen to music, soyou answer the phone and you
solve their problem in one phonecall, it's like, you've just
created one of those top threeof their customer service
experiences.
Eric Dickmann (18:26):
That's right.
And it's a perfect opportunityto see if you can meet another
need of theirs, to see ifthere's a product or service
that you have.
That might be a good fit becausethat's a prime opportunity to
sell them something.
But what I see most businessesdoing is taking it a prime
opportunity to see if you'dcomplete a survey.
Justin Varuzzo (18:43):
Yeah.
Yup.
Yeah.
The survey thing is reallypopular and I always wonder what
happens to all data.
It seems like an exchange toomuch based on the survey
results.
Eric Dickmann (18:56):
No, that's exactly right.
It seems more like companies areeager to pat themselves on the
back for doing a good job,rather than taking the
opportunity to really build thatadvocacy with that customer or
find a way that they could servethem with additional products or
service.
Justin Varuzzo (19:12):
Yeah.
The surveys are a drag and Ifeel like both on the consumer
facing side and the businessfacing side, I personally had
experiences where if you do takethe time to fill out the survey,
let's say you're on hold for 45minutes, and then you get
disconnected,, you call again,you're on hold for a half hour.
Then you get someone who helpsyou and then it says, how has
(19:34):
your overall experience?Let'ssay afour, because I had to call
twice and was on hold for anhour and a half.
And now that poor customerservice person gets fired the
next day.
I've literally had someone callme and say, listen, you did this
survey and it reflects poorly onme.
And I said, I didn't sayanything bad about you.
Yeah, but the overall score hasgot to be a 10.
If it's not a 10, I'll get introuble.
(19:55):
And it's like, all right.
So obviously that's not thepoint of the survey.
Like you know, no businessshould want that to be the tool
that they use to manage theiremployees expectations of how
they're performing, right?
It could be an indicator, butthese companies like they live
and die by this.
So it's got to be a 10, it'sgotta be a five, whatever,
whatever the perfect score is.
And then you just get people whowork at trying to get the
(20:16):
perfect score and not trying tobuild the best relationship.
Eric Dickmann (20:20):
Yeah.
That's exactly right, after allin this relationship, you're the
customer, you're the one whoshould be served, and they're
more concerned with the resultsof the survey.
I think it's a real missedopportunity for a lot of
businesses.
I think the same holds true forsalespeople, you know?
Salespeople take leads that aregenerated.
They're trying to close thatbusiness, but they also have the
opportunity to say, well, isthere something else that we
(20:42):
need for you?
Did you pick the right productor service?
Is there an upsell cross sellopportunity?
And I often feel that a lot ofthose opportunities are missed
to sacrifice, you know, maybethat longer-term relationship or
the right product fit for aquick sale.
Justin Varuzzo (20:58):
Yeah.
I mean, you, you mentioned thesales staff, uh, how many times
have you called the company andyou just don't get a call back.
You want to buy something?
You're not a warm lead.
I mean, you are a scorching redhot lead that comes into, I have
to get this someone, please callme back and you just never even
get a call back.
That happens all the time.
And again that's why thatservice element applies to the
(21:20):
sales staff as well, And that'skind of that intermingling, like
a sales person also needs to bevery aware of how they're
affecting that buyer's journeylike you suggested earlier.
It's so important that they areable to help, that they're able
to make this happen, right?
crazy to me when you see a leadnot get followed up on, and that
(21:43):
in my mind is in most people'smind as bad service.
So it kind of goes in theservice category.
And obviously with tools likeHubSpot, you mentioned I'm a big
fan of HubSpot too, and it makesthose follow-ups so easily.
it makes tracking deals veryeasy.
It's free, which makes itreally, really easy, right?
And when you see all thesemissed opportunities as just as
(22:05):
a consumer, it's disappointing,it's frustrating with all the
tools that are out there.
Eric Dickmann (22:10):
Well, you know, we talk about buyer's journeys.
We talk about flywheels, but oneof the.
The greatest sort of inventionsthan I think I've seen in the
last couple of years, is thismove towards customer experience
design.
And there's been a lot of focuson that because I think customer
experience design reallyincorporates a lot of what we're
talking about here.
It's not about a marketingeffort or a sales effort or a
(22:32):
service effort, it's talkingabout how that customer
experiences your company as awhole.
And I think it's great thatthere is now a focus on that
because especially in largerorganizations, like you
mentioned before, things caneasily get siloed.
There's a VP of Marketing.
There's a VP of Sales.
There's a VP of Service, butsomebody who's got a
responsibility for customerexperience design, hopefully
(22:54):
they're empowered to bring thosegroups together.
Justin Varuzzo (22:56):
Yeah, I love seeing that.
And I do see it more and more,and you're absolutely right.
Even with bigger companies, Isee more job listings for it.
I see more people who, uh, havethe job title, Customer
Experience Specialist or youknow, Customer Journey
Specialist, or Director ofCustomer Experience, and it is
really positive to see Thatstarting to come about.
(23:19):
And I think I'm sure over thenext, I mean, nothing we're
discussing here is a secret.
Obviously corporations are wellaware of their struggles that
they're having in their customerexperience.
Small businesses are not alwaysaware of the struggles they have
with their customer experiencebecause they don't have the
money to invest, to hire someonejust to do their customer
(23:41):
experience and track that fromthroughout the whole journey.
But it's easy enough if you're asmall business owner, just put
yourself in your customer'sshoes, use your own website,
actually do the checkoutprocess, right?
Like so many people will do thisonce.
Like you know, they installShopify and they'll go through
the checkout process once andthey'll never look at it again.
And if there's things that arewrong or broken, or in the wrong
(24:02):
spot, they'll never even knowuntil the customer brings it to
their attention.
So I always kinda think of indigital marketing, everyone
always talks about the socialmedia audit.
But I kind of like the customerexperience audit, like put it on
the calendar once a month, justtake a moment and think about
your customer's journey, putyourself in their shoes and go
through it step-by-step, andthink, is there a way I can make
(24:22):
this better?
At every single step, you know,Google your business name, what
comes up?
Is there a way I can make thisbetter?
I go to your website, try to buysomething and think to yourself,
is there a way I can make thisbetter and just work through it?
And if you do it on a regularbasis, I think it does make a
big difference and ultimatelycreates a better experience.
Eric Dickmann (24:40):
That old Japanese idea of continuous improvement,
right?
You just have to look for thoseopportunities to get better.
And you know, I just also saythis, if our customer raises
their hand and makes you awareof a problem, listen.
Because there are probably 50other customers who don't bother
but have experienced the sameproblem.
And too often I think businessestend to turn a blind eye to
(25:03):
that, they say, well, thisperson is just a complainer, you
can never make this personhappy.
You know, usually where there'ssmoke, there's fire.
And I see too many businessesignoring really good feedback
that could make their businessesbetter.
Justin Varuzzo (25:14):
Yeah.
And a great personal example ofthat that I use a lot.
And I usually don't like tomention companies names, but for
years I rented U-Haul trucks.
We were a seasonal business andthere'd always be the back to
school season, we always neededto rent trucks.
And they were always the worstold broken down trucks with a
hundred thousand miles on it.
And I mean, we would use them.
(25:36):
Then one day I couldn't get atruck there, they were out of
stock, and I ended up going downthe road a mile further to
budget.
And got this truck 10,000 mileson it, box truck, power windows,
I never went back to U-Haul, andthey'll never know why they lost
what seemed like a fairly loyalcustomer.
They never asked either.
(25:56):
But that was one of thoseexperiences that made me realize
what you just said is that mostpeople will not go in and say
this, you know, I had a terribleexperience.
These trucks, especially if it'sjust mediocrity.
I think mediocrity is easy.
If you're doing something reallywrong, it's going to come to
your attention really quick.
But when you just dabble inmediocrity, no one's going to
(26:17):
bring up, no one's going to say,Hey you know, I listened to that
podcast episode.
It was alright.
So it was all right, It wasn'tgreat, It wasn't bad.
It was just alright.
That never happens in anycustomer experience.
So, yeah.
Great point, great point.
Eric Dickmann (26:33):
And sometimes it can be small little things.
I went out with some friendslast week to a Taco Tuesday at a
local place nearby and up on theboard, you know, they had their
schedule for the week and onTuesday it Said Taco Tuesday.
So we're like, well, we'll havesome tacos.
Oh, we stopped doing that thissummer.
Justin Varuzzo (26:49):
Yeah.
Eric Dickmann (26:49):
And I'm like, it's November and that's written
in chalk on a chalkboard.
Nobody could walk from the barto the chalkboard to erase that
there's no longer a TacoTuesday?
And just little things likethat, they leave you with an
impression that the businessjust doesn't care.
And that's a really dangerousthing for a business when people
think that you don't really evencare about the business, that
(27:11):
you're running.
Justin Varuzzo (27:12):
Yeah.
And to be honest, it's easy tomiss because I'm someone who
will tend to just my by nature,what I do to scrutinize things
like that.
First thing I always look at ina restaurant was I would look
around the air vents, and mostof the time you will just see
globs of dirt and stuff clingingto the ceiling tiles.
And I just think to myself, justput four new tiles and they're
(27:32):
like four bucks a piece or youknow your 24 inch standard, you
know, drop ceiling tiles, justreplace them.
But it's easy, you know, youcome home, and I looked at the
side of my house.
I say, wow.
You know, I got to really powerwash the house.
But you don't see it.
Like when you're in it everyday, you don't see it.
I'm sure those people, they justdon't even look at the board
because there's not a process ora procedure to say to look at
(27:55):
it, you know?
And it's kind of like, that's amanagement function, and part of
the service side where it'slike, Hey, who's, who's in
charge of this?
Who's going to everyday look andmake sure there's not dead bugs
in the light fixtures?
Who's going to make sure there'sno dirt piled up on top of
things that are hard to reach.
When's it going to happen?
How's it gonna happen?
And you really have to take thetime to detail those things out
(28:15):
if you want them to actually getdone on a regular basis.
Eric Dickmann (28:19):
I think that's such an excellent point because
I could say the same thing aboutmy house.
We can easily turn a blind eyeto things that we see all the
time and that's just humannature.
I often share a story.
I lived down here in Orlando,Florida, we've got the theme
parks down here, a big part ofthe community.
And I was listening to a storyabout the President of the Walt
Disney World of the theme parksand whenever a big new
(28:41):
attraction opens up, he doesn'ttake the VIP line to go right to
the front, get on the line, andsee what the attraction is all
about.
He goes and buys a ticket,brings his family along, walks
through the park, goes throughthe pre-show, waits in line with
everybody else.
He experiences the attractionwith his entire family so that
it's not his perception, hisbiases, because he's been
(29:02):
involved for years in theplanning process.
He wants to get a freshperspective of what it would be
like for a customer toexperience that and then also
get the perspective of hisfamily, who hasn't been privy to
all that information.
And I think it more businesseswould just take that kind of
approach.
You know, ask friends, askfamily, to give you their honest
opinion on things.
I think they'd be shocked atwhat they heard.
Justin Varuzzo (29:22):
They would.
If you want a fun game to play,tomorrow morning, when you go to
your office or you go to yourplace of employment, just take a
minute as if you've never beenthere before.
Just walk in the door and thenjust look around like it's a new
place.
And I think you'll be shocked atall the things you see and write
them all down and y'all have agood list of things to do over
(29:42):
the next few weeks.
Eric Dickmann (29:43):
I think you're exactly right.
Yeah, that's a great exercise.
Just that this is a fascinatingconversation, I know we could
talk for a long time, there areso many great examples out
there.
But I'd love it.
If you could just tell people alittle bit more about where they
could find you on the web andwhere they could find your
podcast as well.
Yeah.
So
Justin Varuzzo (29:58):
it's marketingandservice.com.
That's the website, that is alsothe name of the podcast.
It's Marketing and Service withJustin Varuzzo, and that's it.
I have nothing else to reallypromote other than hoping that
some businesses build bettercustomer relationships and
hopefully take some of thesetips, and improve their bottom
(30:21):
line while making a betterexperience for the customer.
I think that that's great.
I love the name of your podcast,I love that you're giving tips
to businesses out there becauseyou know, that's the ultimate
goal of everything that we'retrying to do.
I know on your show and on myshow, we just want businesses to
be successful and there are manytools and tips and tricks that
you can use to do that.
Yep.
Eric Dickmann (30:41):
Justin, thanks so much for being a guest today.
Justin Varuzzo (30:44):
Thank you for having me, Eric.
I really appreciate it.
Eric Dickmann (30:48):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Justin, welcome to The VirtualCMO podcast.
Very glad you could join ustoday.
Justin Varuzzo (00:23):
Thanks for having me, Eric.
I appreciate it.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
We get a chance to dive in, talk about some of
my favorite topics today with afellow podcaster.
So that's always exciting.
I'm excited to talk about thisbecause, you know, we had a
discussion the other day, and Iknow you truly get this idea of
a buyer's journey.
And more than that, just what itmeans to have a comprehensive
(00:46):
journey that continues on pastthe sale and into the service
side of the business.
And I really want to dive intothat a little bit today.
But just to kick things off, canyou tell the audience a little
bit about yourself and alsobriefly mentioned your podcast
as well.
Justin Varuzzo (01:02):
sure.
Yeah.
So,I I'm Justin Varuzzo and I amcurrently a Director of
Marketing at a music companycalled Paul Effman Music.
We essentially provide bandprograms and orchestral programs
to private schools and Catholicschools, parochial schools
across the nation actually, andit was a need that these schools
(01:24):
can't afford full-time musicinstructors, a lot of them.
So it's more or less like anoutsourced band where we provide
the instructor, the instruments,and the kids get to learn music.
So it's a nice,
Eric Dickmann (01:35):
That's very cool.
Yeah.
It's
Justin Varuzzo (01:38):
Feel good business.
you know?
I started very early on as ateacher I've been there for 20
years and then I've kind ofworked my way up and now I do
all of the marketing and we nowhave retail stores and we've
grown a lot and gotten into alot of different things over the
years.
So it's been a fun adventure.
Eric Dickmann (01:56):
So I'm curious, you know, when you started up
the Marketing and Servicepodcast, what was really the
thought process behind that?
Why did you focus on marketingand service together?
Because typically you don't seethat, even though I think we
both realize how important itis.
Justin Varuzzo (02:10):
Yeah.
So the thing that really led medown that road was that I
started thinking to myself, whatis the best service experience
I've ever had?
Because anyone who owns abusiness or runs a business, or
if you're in marketing, it'sgood to kind of sit down and
think about like, what are thegood things that I've
experienced in my personal lifeand how can I recreate that
experience?
(02:31):
I could think of In particular.
And then I started thinking,well, lets start listing them
all out.
And number two probably tookabout 10 minutes to come up
with.
And I couldn't come up with athird one.
So I started asking peoplearound me, Hey, Eric, what's
your best customer service?
What's your second best?
So almost nobody I've everspoken to can actually name
(02:51):
three times that they've hadgood customer service, which is
insane in a world where weengage in dozens of transactions
a day, right?
You get your gasoline in themorning, you get your cup of
coffee, you might go outsomewhere for lunch, you go buy
something at a store, you get agift for your spouse.
There's all these things thatyou could do.
And the fact that in America,where all these companies say
(03:15):
they're rooted in service, yetwe can't come up with three
examples of really being wowedand impressed by a nice service.
So that kind of led me down thisroad of you know, that's
something I think I'm a podcastabout.
You know, hopefully at the end,it'll make the world a little
bit better of a place if just afew companies can work on their
(03:37):
service a little bit.
Eric Dickmann (03:39):
Well, I love the way you frame that because I bet
if you switch that questionaround, you know, name three bad
experiences that you've had thisweek, I bet people could explain
three bad experiences they'vehad today.
Justin Varuzzo (03:51):
Yeah.
we could go on for hours.
Eric Dickmann (03:53):
Yeah.
And it's sad because I thinkpersonally, I wonder why more
businesses aren't learningbecause there is such a chance
to differentiate yourself fromthe competition by delivering
that service level thatcustomers are clamoring for, but
so many don't.
Justin Varuzzo (04:10):
Right.
Yeah.
They really don't.
And the good news.
It's an amazing opportunity forsmall businesses and medium
sized businesses.
Honestly, it's a big opportunityfor big businesses too, but we
know how in the bigger thebusiness, the more bureaucracy
and the harder it is to makethose changes happen.
But for small businesses, itreally, is a nice
differentiating opportunity forthem to leverage, to grow their
(04:34):
business and to grow bettercustomer relationships, and
really improve that entirecustomer experience because it's
going to be in a lot of ways, alot easier for a small business
to do that and do itconsistently than trying, having
a mega corporation with, youknow, thousands of support
personnel and you know,marketers and sales staff, and
trying to get them all on board.
(04:55):
It's a much bigger challenge.
Eric Dickmann (04:58):
So to play devil's advocate a bit, I can
hear fellow marketers out in theaudience saying, well, I agree
with this.
This makes a lot of sense, butJustin, I'm in marketing.
I'm not in service.
How can I affect service as amarketer?
Justin Varuzzo (05:14):
Yeah.
So one of the biggest things isreally having, especially in a
bigger organization, a lot oforganizations will have their
marketing department, they'llhave their sales department and
they'll have their servicedepartment.
And in so many companies, theyreally don't Interface with one
another, right?
There's like firewalls betweenthem.
(05:34):
And I think the more you can getthose three elements together,
and the more you have commongoals and common strategies, and
actually speak to one another,because I think we've all been
in a position.
If you're a sales person, you'vecertainly been in a position
where you see a commercial foryour own product and you think
to yourself, that doesn't dothat.
(05:54):
Why are they advertising it likethat?
And if you're a service person,you've certainly been in a
position where a salesperson hasmade a promise to a customer,
and now a month later they'recoming to you and you're saying,
Hey, I don't know who told youthat, But you know, that piece
of equipment can't do that's notgoing to happen.
So we see this all the time.
And, you know, again at a smallbusiness level, it's really easy
(06:16):
to get everyone on the samepage.
If you've got, you know, threeor four technicians, you've got
two or three salespeople.
And you know, you got one guy inyour marketing department, it's
real easy to have thatalignment.
But as things scale, it becomesincreasingly more difficult if
it's not really addressed.
And if that focus isn't aroundmaking sure that those three
groups of people work togetherand cohesively with a.
(06:40):
common goal, strategy, and planto move forward.
Eric Dickmann (06:44):
You know, listeners of this show know that
I'm a big fan of HubSpot.
And for many years, HubSpot wasvery much advocates of this
whole idea of the buyer'sjourney.
Which of course, we talk about alot on the show, but when you
talk about a buyer's journey,you tend to think of something
that's fairly linear.
And the reality is, people atHubSpot realized this several
years ago that it's really not alinear progression.
(07:06):
They termed, you know, flywheel.
You know, it's a circularprogression because a customer
who buys your product and thenneed service for that product
may come back and buy otherthings.
And so it's this loop that getscreated.
What are your thoughts on that?
Justin Varuzzo (07:22):
So yeah, I love that you brought that up because
the one thing is most businessesview service as an expense,
right?
They're not income generators,they're not the rainmakers in
the business.
But there is such a hugeopportunity to turn that around.
And they can be.
For exactly the reason you justsaid.
Someone has a problem, they comeback.
(07:43):
If service, I'm not sayingreplace the sales staff or the
sales process, but if they'retrained to a capacity where they
can make recommendations andsuggestions and cross sells and
upsells at the time of service,it works.
You know, they will generaterevenue in a service call.
And you just don't see that veryoften, and I'm not sure why.
(08:07):
I mean, I have some ideas why.
I mean obviously it's hard totrain a customer service center
with 500 operators to also begreat salespeople.
But you know, there's alwaysthat every time I've ever had a
phone call with a client or acustomer, and it's been a phone
call that's been because of aproblem.
At some point in thatconversation, we usually figure
(08:29):
something out about how we canbetter provide that product or
service to that customer.
And they are usually happy tohave what they need to make
everything work.
We're doing this podcast here,right?
You've got the microphone,you've got this stand that the
microphone is on, you've got itplugged into a computer.
You need all those things for itto work.
(08:50):
So if you went to a store andyou said, I want to do a podcast
and I want to buy thismicrophone and they just hand
you the microphone and youleave, now you get home, you
don't have what you need.
And then you call service andsay, well, how do I plug this
thing in this?
Oh, you need a cable.
Are they actually capable ofselling you the cable at that
moment and say, Yeah, we haveit.
Let me put the order in for youand I'll get it to you.
And a lot of times they don't.
(09:11):
They're going to say, oh, let metransfer you to the sales
department.
And you know, then they startthis whole cycle over again.
It becomes a very frustratingexperience.
Eric Dickmann (09:18):
Well, and I think that everything gets mixed in
together.
How many times have you beenonline trying to purchase
something and maybe there's aproblem, there's an error,
there's a question that you haveabout shipping or stock, and you
need to call in.
That's not necessarily aninteraction with their sales
department that may be aninteraction with their service
department, but it's pre-sale.
(09:39):
You're actually helping thatcustomer buy.
And so the roles tend to meldtogether and get a little fuzzy.
Justin Varuzzo (09:46):
Yeah.
So one of my favorite examplesabout that is way back when we
were looking for a shippingsolution and we basically wanted
to get that tape that Amazonuses, right?
The nylon reinforced tape, andit's water activated.
I knew nothing, nothing aboutthis at the time.
But I knew that it was good tapeand it would hold the box
together.
And I remember actuallywatching.
(10:09):
videos on how it was used.
These were post-sale.
I mean they were designed forpost support.
If you bought this product, thisis how you assemble it, right?
And fast forward to today, nowyou see YouTubers with the
unboxing videos and you know,this is like a thing.
But if a company takes themoment to create the content,
think about the power of thatcontent.
(10:30):
You showing an unboxing or anassembling or setup of a product
or a service, you're going to beable to use that with your
customers after you sell them.
And they're going to be veryhappy that they have the support
they need.
But it's also going to be anacquisition tool because there's
going to be people like me, who,one more in-depth curiosity
about what it is.
Well, how does this work?
How does this thing work?
(10:50):
How does that actually gotogether?
How does it fit in into thisworkflow?
Now you've got this great pieceof content that you're going to
use, it's going to be in theacquisition phase, you can use
it in the support phase, andit's there and people will
really appreciate it.
And you're creating a bettervalue in that journey.
And like you said, if someonehas an issue on your website,
there's a technical issue, theyneed to easily be able to get
(11:13):
past that and get in touch withsomebody who can actually help
them through, not just an ITtech support, that's not really
gonna be able to offer them anyhelp other than we'll work on
the website or we'll open up aticket for that.
Eric Dickmann (11:26):
I think that's such an excellent point because
when we talk about things likebuyer's journey, it makes a
little bit of an assumption thatpeople are going to go step one,
step two, step three.
And that's not really the way itworks.
You may anticipate that somebodyis going to come to your
website, they're going to lookat your product page, they're
going to download a piece ofcollateral, they're going to
read that, they're going to comeback, they're going to follow
(11:48):
up, they're going to fill out acontact form, but maybe they
don't do that at all.
Maybe they see, like you said, aYouTube video or somebody does a
review or your product ismentioned in a blog article and
they come in a different way.
You can't necessarily anticipateall that.
But in marketing, part of ourjob is to have all of that
content available to them sothat they can come in where they
(12:10):
want and get exposed to theproduct the way they want.
Justin Varuzzo (12:15):
Yeah.
If that marketing strategy isdone right from the content
perspective, you know, youalways hear content is king.
If you've got that strategy inplace, those little snippets,
they can be repurposed over andover and over.
A great example I like to use isDave Ramsey, financial guy,
right?
You You know, five, six babysteps.
(12:36):
He's been touting that for 20years and has built a billion
dollar empire over literally sixthings you could write on a
little napkin.
Taking that same content andrepurposing it over and over and
over.
And you know, a milliondifferent books and videos and
seminars, but it's literallyjust these, you know, these
little baby steps over and overagain.
And that is how we should kindof treat our marketing assets in
(12:58):
the same way.
How can we repurpose these toyou know, one maximize our time
as the marketer and as thecompany, and provide the best
value to the customer at thesame time.
Eric Dickmann (13:09):
What's interesting too.
About what you're saying thereis that as you're repurposing
this content, using it indifferent ways, or maybe you're
having content that was createdfor another purpose, a post-sale
how to video, or something likethat.
If you have analytics in place,if you're able to really do a
good job of tracking how thisinformation, this collateral
(13:30):
might be used, you may spot aweakness in your marketing
strategy that maybe you're notexplaining your product well
enough that people don't haveall the information that they
need from your marketingmaterials to be able to fully
understand what your product orservice does.
So sometimes these other assetscan give you real clues as to
what you may need to adjustwithin your own marketing
(13:52):
messaging.
Justin Varuzzo (13:53):
Yeah, to piggyback that, one of the
things that I always do, I had abackground in IT for a while,
and whenever I'm looking at anew solution, something like
HubSpot or whatever piece ofsoftware we might be looking
into, the first place I alwaysgo are the user forums because
that's where the truth is beingtold, right?
I want to hear what are theactual customer experiences, not
(14:14):
the marketing on the website,but what's in the back end here,
like what's really going on?
Are these people happy?
Are they all complaining?
You know, how's the service?
Are they complaining?
They can't get answers toquestions.
And you learn a lot about acompany when you kind of see
that back door of their product,and you see what the users are
actually discussing.
And you can certainly learn alot of insights from that.
(14:38):
And again, I think even in asmall business, it's easy when
you have 5, 6, 7 people workingfor those insights not to get
back to you as the marketer oras the business owner, someone
might call and say, Hey, thisthing has XYZ problem.
Oh, okay.
Well, let me take a few minutesand we'll get this worked out.
Next day, someone else gets thatsame call.
(14:58):
Oh, it will take a few minutesand work this out.
Next day, the third person getsthat same call.
But there's not really thatcohesive strategy where any one
person's going to come back andsay, Oh hey, we're getting calls
all the time on this one thing.
But the solution could be a30-second YouTube video that you
shoot on your phone.
And now not only you're going tocut your service time because
now when you get that inquiry,you can just say, Hey, here's
(15:18):
the video step-by-stepinstructions on how to do it.
Thanks.
Have a great day.
You know looking at forums andlooking at what people are
saying is such an easy way,especially when they're common
issues to say, Hey, okay, let'smake a video about this.
Let's put this somewhere that'seasy to find, let's work on a
little SEO on the service sideof our content as opposed to the
(15:41):
marketing and the acquisitionside.
Eric Dickmann (15:45):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(16:06):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(16:29):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
You know, another missedopportunity when it comes to
service is I think a lot ofservice interactions are a great
potential opportunity to sellthe customer something else.
I think about the example of amobile phone, I've got an AT&T
mobile phone.
(16:49):
Well, believe me, if I didn'thave an AT&T internet service,
they would certainly ask meabout it, right?
They said, who are you using foryour internet, right?
They know that that's an upsellopportunity.
But many times, if I go to awebsite of a vendor that I'm
doing business with, I'm poundedconstantly with messages that
are completely out of context.
It's every time I log in, theyseem to want to sell me
(17:10):
something.
And I don't think is a reallygreat time to do it because
there's no context to it, you'rejust basically logging into the
system.
But sometimes when you have aservice interaction, especially
when you've solved a problem forthe customer, and they're
leaving that interaction with apositive view of your company,
that's an ideal time to ask themsome questions and see what else
(17:31):
you might be able to do.
Justin Varuzzo (17:33):
Yeah, I'll say in my experience, the biggest
advocates that we have, and themost brand loyal people that we
have are the ones that hadsomething go wrong, usually
horribly wrong, and we were ableto address it very quickly and
do it in a way that they don'tjust have their problem solved,
(17:54):
but they really become a brandambassador after that, because
the expectations, this is why Isaid at the beginning about that
potential for small businesseswhere they can really exploit
this, the expectations inAmerica are so low with service
that it almost takes no effortto win someone over forever
simply by answering the phone.
They don't even expect that.
(18:15):
They expect they're going towait on hold for at least 40
minutes and listen to music, soyou answer the phone and you
solve their problem in one phonecall, it's like, you've just
created one of those top threeof their customer service
experiences.
Eric Dickmann (18:26):
That's right.
And it's a perfect opportunityto see if you can meet another
need of theirs, to see ifthere's a product or service
that you have.
That might be a good fit becausethat's a prime opportunity to
sell them something.
But what I see most businessesdoing is taking it a prime
opportunity to see if you'dcomplete a survey.
Justin Varuzzo (18:43):
Yeah.
Yup.
Yeah.
The survey thing is reallypopular and I always wonder what
happens to all data.
It seems like an exchange toomuch based on the survey
results.
Eric Dickmann (18:56):
No, that's exactly right.
It seems more like companies areeager to pat themselves on the
back for doing a good job,rather than taking the
opportunity to really build thatadvocacy with that customer or
find a way that they could servethem with additional products or
service.
Justin Varuzzo (19:12):
Yeah.
The surveys are a drag and Ifeel like both on the consumer
facing side and the businessfacing side, I personally had
experiences where if you do takethe time to fill out the survey,
let's say you're on hold for 45minutes, and then you get
disconnected,, you call again,you're on hold for a half hour.
Then you get someone who helpsyou and then it says, how has
(19:34):
your overall experience?Let'ssay afour, because I had to call
twice and was on hold for anhour and a half.
And now that poor customerservice person gets fired the
next day.
I've literally had someone callme and say, listen, you did this
survey and it reflects poorly onme.
And I said, I didn't sayanything bad about you.
Yeah, but the overall score hasgot to be a 10.
If it's not a 10, I'll get introuble.
(19:55):
And it's like, all right.
So obviously that's not thepoint of the survey.
Like you know, no businessshould want that to be the tool
that they use to manage theiremployees expectations of how
they're performing, right?
It could be an indicator, butthese companies like they live
and die by this.
So it's got to be a 10, it'sgotta be a five, whatever,
whatever the perfect score is.
And then you just get people whowork at trying to get the
(20:16):
perfect score and not trying tobuild the best relationship.
Eric Dickmann (20:20):
Yeah.
That's exactly right, after allin this relationship, you're the
customer, you're the one whoshould be served, and they're
more concerned with the resultsof the survey.
I think it's a real missedopportunity for a lot of
businesses.
I think the same holds true forsalespeople, you know?
Salespeople take leads that aregenerated.
They're trying to close thatbusiness, but they also have the
opportunity to say, well, isthere something else that we
(20:42):
need for you?
Did you pick the right productor service?
Is there an upsell cross sellopportunity?
And I often feel that a lot ofthose opportunities are missed
to sacrifice, you know, maybethat longer-term relationship or
the right product fit for aquick sale.
Justin Varuzzo (20:58):
Yeah.
I mean, you, you mentioned thesales staff, uh, how many times
have you called the company andyou just don't get a call back.
You want to buy something?
You're not a warm lead.
I mean, you are a scorching redhot lead that comes into, I have
to get this someone, please callme back and you just never even
get a call back.
That happens all the time.
And again that's why thatservice element applies to the
(21:20):
sales staff as well, And that'skind of that intermingling, like
a sales person also needs to bevery aware of how they're
affecting that buyer's journeylike you suggested earlier.
It's so important that they areable to help, that they're able
to make this happen, right?
crazy to me when you see a leadnot get followed up on, and that
(21:43):
in my mind is in most people'smind as bad service.
So it kind of goes in theservice category.
And obviously with tools likeHubSpot, you mentioned I'm a big
fan of HubSpot too, and it makesthose follow-ups so easily.
it makes tracking deals veryeasy.
It's free, which makes itreally, really easy, right?
And when you see all thesemissed opportunities as just as
(22:05):
a consumer, it's disappointing,it's frustrating with all the
tools that are out there.
Eric Dickmann (22:10):
Well, you know, we talk about buyer's journeys.
We talk about flywheels, but oneof the.
The greatest sort of inventionsthan I think I've seen in the
last couple of years, is thismove towards customer experience
design.
And there's been a lot of focuson that because I think customer
experience design reallyincorporates a lot of what we're
talking about here.
It's not about a marketingeffort or a sales effort or a
(22:32):
service effort, it's talkingabout how that customer
experiences your company as awhole.
And I think it's great thatthere is now a focus on that
because especially in largerorganizations, like you
mentioned before, things caneasily get siloed.
There's a VP of Marketing.
There's a VP of Sales.
There's a VP of Service, butsomebody who's got a
responsibility for customerexperience design, hopefully
(22:54):
they're empowered to bring thosegroups together.
Justin Varuzzo (22:56):
Yeah, I love seeing that.
And I do see it more and more,and you're absolutely right.
Even with bigger companies, Isee more job listings for it.
I see more people who, uh, havethe job title, Customer
Experience Specialist or youknow, Customer Journey
Specialist, or Director ofCustomer Experience, and it is
really positive to see Thatstarting to come about.
(23:19):
And I think I'm sure over thenext, I mean, nothing we're
discussing here is a secret.
Obviously corporations are wellaware of their struggles that
they're having in their customerexperience.
Small businesses are not alwaysaware of the struggles they have
with their customer experiencebecause they don't have the
money to invest, to hire someonejust to do their customer
(23:41):
experience and track that fromthroughout the whole journey.
But it's easy enough if you're asmall business owner, just put
yourself in your customer'sshoes, use your own website,
actually do the checkoutprocess, right?
Like so many people will do thisonce.
Like you know, they installShopify and they'll go through
the checkout process once andthey'll never look at it again.
And if there's things that arewrong or broken, or in the wrong
(24:02):
spot, they'll never even knowuntil the customer brings it to
their attention.
So I always kinda think of indigital marketing, everyone
always talks about the socialmedia audit.
But I kind of like the customerexperience audit, like put it on
the calendar once a month, justtake a moment and think about
your customer's journey, putyourself in their shoes and go
through it step-by-step, andthink, is there a way I can make
(24:22):
this better?
At every single step, you know,Google your business name, what
comes up?
Is there a way I can make thisbetter?
I go to your website, try to buysomething and think to yourself,
is there a way I can make thisbetter and just work through it?
And if you do it on a regularbasis, I think it does make a
big difference and ultimatelycreates a better experience.
Eric Dickmann (24:40):
That old Japanese idea of continuous improvement,
right?
You just have to look for thoseopportunities to get better.
And you know, I just also saythis, if our customer raises
their hand and makes you awareof a problem, listen.
Because there are probably 50other customers who don't bother
but have experienced the sameproblem.
And too often I think businessestend to turn a blind eye to
(25:03):
that, they say, well, thisperson is just a complainer, you
can never make this personhappy.
You know, usually where there'ssmoke, there's fire.
And I see too many businessesignoring really good feedback
that could make their businessesbetter.
Justin Varuzzo (25:14):
Yeah.
And a great personal example ofthat that I use a lot.
And I usually don't like tomention companies names, but for
years I rented U-Haul trucks.
We were a seasonal business andthere'd always be the back to
school season, we always neededto rent trucks.
And they were always the worstold broken down trucks with a
hundred thousand miles on it.
And I mean, we would use them.
(25:36):
Then one day I couldn't get atruck there, they were out of
stock, and I ended up going downthe road a mile further to
budget.
And got this truck 10,000 mileson it, box truck, power windows,
I never went back to U-Haul, andthey'll never know why they lost
what seemed like a fairly loyalcustomer.
They never asked either.
(25:56):
But that was one of thoseexperiences that made me realize
what you just said is that mostpeople will not go in and say
this, you know, I had a terribleexperience.
These trucks, especially if it'sjust mediocrity.
I think mediocrity is easy.
If you're doing something reallywrong, it's going to come to
your attention really quick.
But when you just dabble inmediocrity, no one's going to
(26:17):
bring up, no one's going to say,Hey you know, I listened to that
podcast episode.
It was alright.
So it was all right, It wasn'tgreat, It wasn't bad.
It was just alright.
That never happens in anycustomer experience.
So, yeah.
Great point, great point.
Eric Dickmann (26:33):
And sometimes it can be small little things.
I went out with some friendslast week to a Taco Tuesday at a
local place nearby and up on theboard, you know, they had their
schedule for the week and onTuesday it Said Taco Tuesday.
So we're like, well, we'll havesome tacos.
Oh, we stopped doing that thissummer.
Justin Varuzzo (26:49):
Yeah.
Eric Dickmann (26:49):
And I'm like, it's November and that's written
in chalk on a chalkboard.
Nobody could walk from the barto the chalkboard to erase that
there's no longer a TacoTuesday?
And just little things likethat, they leave you with an
impression that the businessjust doesn't care.
And that's a really dangerousthing for a business when people
think that you don't really evencare about the business, that
(27:11):
you're running.
Justin Varuzzo (27:12):
Yeah.
And to be honest, it's easy tomiss because I'm someone who
will tend to just my by nature,what I do to scrutinize things
like that.
First thing I always look at ina restaurant was I would look
around the air vents, and mostof the time you will just see
globs of dirt and stuff clingingto the ceiling tiles.
And I just think to myself, justput four new tiles and they're
(27:32):
like four bucks a piece or youknow your 24 inch standard, you
know, drop ceiling tiles, justreplace them.
But it's easy, you know, youcome home, and I looked at the
side of my house.
I say, wow.
You know, I got to really powerwash the house.
But you don't see it.
Like when you're in it everyday, you don't see it.
I'm sure those people, they justdon't even look at the board
because there's not a process ora procedure to say to look at
(27:55):
it, you know?
And it's kind of like, that's amanagement function, and part of
the service side where it'slike, Hey, who's, who's in
charge of this?
Who's going to everyday look andmake sure there's not dead bugs
in the light fixtures?
Who's going to make sure there'sno dirt piled up on top of
things that are hard to reach.
When's it going to happen?
How's it gonna happen?
And you really have to take thetime to detail those things out
(28:15):
if you want them to actually getdone on a regular basis.
Eric Dickmann (28:19):
I think that's such an excellent point because
I could say the same thing aboutmy house.
We can easily turn a blind eyeto things that we see all the
time and that's just humannature.
I often share a story.
I lived down here in Orlando,Florida, we've got the theme
parks down here, a big part ofthe community.
And I was listening to a storyabout the President of the Walt
Disney World of the theme parksand whenever a big new
(28:41):
attraction opens up, he doesn'ttake the VIP line to go right to
the front, get on the line, andsee what the attraction is all
about.
He goes and buys a ticket,brings his family along, walks
through the park, goes throughthe pre-show, waits in line with
everybody else.
He experiences the attractionwith his entire family so that
it's not his perception, hisbiases, because he's been
(29:02):
involved for years in theplanning process.
He wants to get a freshperspective of what it would be
like for a customer toexperience that and then also
get the perspective of hisfamily, who hasn't been privy to
all that information.
And I think it more businesseswould just take that kind of
approach.
You know, ask friends, askfamily, to give you their honest
opinion on things.
I think they'd be shocked atwhat they heard.
Justin Varuzzo (29:22):
They would.
If you want a fun game to play,tomorrow morning, when you go to
your office or you go to yourplace of employment, just take a
minute as if you've never beenthere before.
Just walk in the door and thenjust look around like it's a new
place.
And I think you'll be shocked atall the things you see and write
them all down and y'all have agood list of things to do over
(29:42):
the next few weeks.
Eric Dickmann (29:43):
I think you're exactly right.
Yeah, that's a great exercise.
Just that this is a fascinatingconversation, I know we could
talk for a long time, there areso many great examples out
there.
But I'd love it.
If you could just tell people alittle bit more about where they
could find you on the web andwhere they could find your
podcast as well.
Yeah.
So
Justin Varuzzo (29:58):
it's marketingandservice.com.
That's the website, that is alsothe name of the podcast.
It's Marketing and Service withJustin Varuzzo, and that's it.
I have nothing else to reallypromote other than hoping that
some businesses build bettercustomer relationships and
hopefully take some of thesetips, and improve their bottom
(30:21):
line while making a betterexperience for the customer.
I think that that's great.
I love the name of your podcast,I love that you're giving tips
to businesses out there becauseyou know, that's the ultimate
goal of everything that we'retrying to do.
I know on your show and on myshow, we just want businesses to
be successful and there are manytools and tips and tricks that
you can use to do that.
Yep.
Eric Dickmann (30:41):
Justin, thanks so much for being a guest today.
Justin Varuzzo (30:44):
Thank you for having me, Eric.
I really appreciate it.
Eric Dickmann (30:48):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
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