Experts of Experience - #29 How To Achieve Championship Level CX with PGA Tour Superstore's CMO

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

On this episode, Jill Thomas, the Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer for the PGA TOUR Superstore, discusses the importance of understanding the customer and creating personalized experiences. She highlights the impact of technology on customer perceptions and the need for businesses to adapt. Jill also shares insights into the in-store and online experiences at PGA TOUR Superstore, emphasizing the focus on customer service and creating an inclusive environment for all golfers.Tune in to learn:Why digital transformation requires a roadmap and a long-term commitment to enhancing the customer experience.Why personalization, design, and deep contextual relevance are key elements of a modern website.Why understanding the ROI of customer experience is crucial for gaining support from stakeholders.The importance of being curious, reading white papers, and learning from other industries and how that can inspire innovative ideas.How to map the customer journey and why identifying pain points is essential for improving the customer experience.How prioritizing the human component of the customer experience can lead to exceptional results.–Imagine running your business with a trusted advisor who has your success top of mind. That’s what it’s like when you have a Salesforce Success Plan. With the right plan, Salesforce is with you through every stage of your journey — from onboarding, to realizing business outcomes, to driving efficient growth. Learn more about what’s possible on the Salesforce success plan website. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

The PGA Tour Superstore is trying to reach golfers regardless of how they like to play. This year for the first time there's 41 million people playing golf. It's more fun, it's more inclusive. Our business is up over 90% since 2019, while the industry is up about 35%. I never want people to come in and say, we exist to sell people stuff. We exist to help people play their best and feel good about themselves. If you have that mindset and every decision that you make is around that, the other things will follow. We target people, not segments or demographic profiles. We know

who the golfers are. We know who is interested in golf and we go and find those people. Hello everyone and welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. Today we are going to dive into the dynamic world of retail with Jill Thomas, the Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at PGA Tour Superstore. Jill has an incredible background, applying her marketing prowess to some of America's most beloved brands, Disney, Cinnabon, public supermarkets, and PepsiCo, just to name a few. So today we're going to discuss her approach to developing innovative strategies to engage and retain customers, how PGA Tour's brand is committed to delivering on an exceptional customer experience, and PGA Tours Superstore's impactful community engagement initiatives, setting a new standard for excellence. Jill, so wonderful to have you on the show.

So nice to be with you. So you've worked at some of the most well-known brands in the world. Like I had mentioned, Disney, Publix, PepsiCo. And when it comes to creating an end-to-end customer experience, I wanted to kick off by just asking you, what do you think these brands have in common? I take a lot of pride in that. I have a lot of passion around brands. I like the, you know, really trying to think about what story are they trying to tell me for who, who are they trying to appeal to? And then how does that come to life in the experience across every touch point, whether it's the in-store experience, a customer service moment, or certainly online? I think what they all have in common is they truly,

truly invest in understanding what the customer cares about. They know who they are and they know who they are serving. And, you know, if I had one mission in life, I always ask the question, for who? That's always my first question. Who are we serving and, you know, how do we design experiences and communications for specifically for that customer? And as you know, Lauren, in this modern world, people have a lot coming at them at all times. So the level of sophistication that it takes

to create an experience that feels personalized, right person, right message, right moment, it actually is a fairly complicated thing to do at scale. And so that's always the mission that we're on. It's our mantra, it's our mission. It's our purpose. Really understanding the customer. It's so, so key. I'm going to put a pin in that because I want to talk about how you actually do that. But before we get to it, I also want to just dive into your opinions about customer experience. What do you believe about customer experience

that few people would agree with you on? Well, I don't know that few people would agree with you on? Well, I don't know that few people would agree with me, but, you know, I was reading recently a study about the overwhelming nature of technology and how the consumer really feels that technology is happening to them, not for them. Yeah. And you think about the impact of all of the forces, like, you know, I hate to throw social under the bus, but social certainly has accountability to how people are feeling and seeing the world. And then you also read in the same study, a factoid that over 40%

of Americans feel like AI and some of these new sort of technologies are actually enhancing their experience. And I always use Uber as a great example of customer experience. The problem they were trying to solve was so clear and so easy for us all to quickly embrace, which then affected the experience that every brand has to deliver, regardless of what industry you're in. It's like, that's the standard. How are you going to deliver it? I don't know that anyone would disagree with that, but that is the standard, right? So the standard is the Uber, I call it the Uber effect,

which there's probably even more great examples. But a couple of years ago, that was such a big example. And when I'd be talking, say at Cinnabon, and I would be talking about Uber, sometimes people could not make that connection. And I would say the Uber economy is real. Like what people are feeling, how they are being served in that one vertical of their life, that is now their expectation across every single part of their life. So I don't know if it's controversial. I think the marketers or the customer experience folks will totally get why I say that. But out in the broader audience that we serve in the companies that we work in, they didn't they don't always understand that. Completely. I mean, the reality is, is that the competition isn't just what's in our vertical anymore. Oh, no, that cannot be better said. In fact, that's sort of what motivates me. I do look at big brands and I do look at all kinds of innovative brands and new brands. And I try to learn everything I can from what they're doing. They are setting the stage for how the consumer is going to think and feel and what they're going to expect from all the businesses that they love.

So not to be disrespectful to the golf retailers in America, but they are not my benchmark. Our benchmarks are out of the industry. Sometimes they're even entertainment or hospitality examples. We're very fortunate to be a part of A&B Sports and Entertainment, which is Arthur Blank's family of businesses. So we have the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta United, who have incredible fan experiences. And I look at as much as what they're doing at those live events. And I think about when someone comes to shop in our store, what can I glean from those live events? How can we mirror that or, you know, sort of take a page out of their playbook and activate that in

our own experience? I think that's what separates us. And I think that's what will continue to separate us. I love to hear it. It's something, you know, I'm very fortunate to get to speak to people from all industries on this show. And no matter whether it's like a B2B SaaS company or a golf retail store or whatever it may be, the way that we approach customer experience, that in itself, we can learn from so many different industries and companies to apply it to our own. So I'm excited to hear a little bit about how you're approaching the customer experience at PGA Superstore to really differentiate yourself in the market and leave a lasting impression.

When I was coming into this role, it's now been over four years ago, someone said to me, you know, golf retailing, that doesn't sound exciting. I don't know how fast it's growing. Is that something that's really going to interest you? And what they didn't realize is, one, I'm a very loyal golfer. So golf, just in general, I have a lot of passion around it. But as a marketer, I thought it was sort of the ultimate marketing opportunity to take sort of what people believed about golf and the golf consumer and try to evolve that to something different. Of course, I got a big boost when COVID happened.

And so, you know, that sort of propelled us forward. But what I encountered when I arrived here was we served one customer and that customer was very easy to define and therefore very easy to reach. And it wasn't a very complex marketing model. It was a very core golfer who could be found in those very expected places. They looked and seemed very similar. That's not complicated.

But I always think about how do we grow a business? We either expand occasions or get people to come more frequently through occasions or bring new people into the fold, into the franchise, into the family. And that's how I started. Like I said, COVID helped accelerate that. But once we started to see that our customer is very diverse, it is a diverse set of customers. It's not one dimension, not only in how they look and where they play, but also why they play. So their reasons for playing were totally different, how they play. So they're not going to follow conventional rules, where they

get their information and how they like to find out their information has completely evolved over the last four years. And that has made our marketing model even more complex because now we can't find them in one place. We have to make the customer the channel. And I say that a lot. The customer's the channel. We're going to find them where they are. Sometimes I'll have people that'll still say to me, do we buy television in Atlanta? And I laugh and I go, that's so cute. No, you'll do that. We find people. We target people, not segments or these demographic profiles of who we think people are. We know who the golfers are.

We know who is interested in golf and we go and find those people. So that is the evolution that we've been on as a marketing team is to really expand how we understand what those consumer needs states are and then how we reach them, how we create content to serve them. And it's certainly adding the layers of personalization to the best of our ability across every channel. That's sort of been our mission over the last four years. And so when you say that you find the people, it's really around like, this is someone who we're targeting and then this is where they're at. So that's why we're going in that direction. Am I hearing that right? Absolutely. And tell me a little bit about how you, if you can give me a high level of your

process to really defining who those people are, understanding what their individual needs and interests are, and then where they are. Because I'm sure you just took this like one very simple customer and made it a lot more complex. But tell me a little bit about how you did that. Well, they reveal themselves to us every day, right? They drop the breadcrumbs and it's our job to pick the breadcrumbs up and put them back together and to tell a story. So there's both the behavioral, like look at who the customer is. What are they browsing? What are they clicking on? What are they interested in?

How are they, what are they putting in their cart? How are they raising their hand or showing what they're interested in? And then what we know about them, certainly where they are located, all of those things, those help us too. You know, if someone is putting left-handed products into their cart and then going into the store and buying left-handed products, I can safely assume they are now left-handed, right? So why would I send them any other message?

We're not fully bright on that, but that's the mission. The mission is to create the world where if you tell us something about yourself, we quickly react to that. There's the inferred, and then there's the, we're going to ask you directly. So we've done both of those things. We've created a very robust data set of our customers, And we've created the underpinnings of foundation to be able to capture all that data and store that data and then trigger that data based on action. So that's very complicated, but that's what we've spent the last four years working on. And then we've done the other thing. We just ask them, you know, how can we serve you better? So we've done a lot of consumer,

primary consumer research. I'm insatiably curious. So I read everything I can get my hands on in terms of who the golf consumer is, how they're evolving, how they're changing. We also work with the greatest brands in the country, in the world, golf brands. So we meet with them. We hear what they have to say, they know their audience really well. And then it's my job to kind of aggregate it all back together and go, okay, what's our role in the show? How do we translate all of that into the marketing messages and the activity that we prioritize, we want to serve all the customers where they are and the way they need to be served. But again, we have to do it at scale. So it's, I wish I could serve

each customer individually, but I have to find ways to do that efficiently. And that's the thing that gets me excited every day to come to work is figuring out how we can create a world that's just yours, but we do it in a way that is extremely efficient and we can do it for everyone. And that's very complicated. I can imagine. So you have the in-store experience and then you also have an online experience. And I'd love to kind of tap into both of those to understand what that looks like and kind of how you tie it all together. So let's start with the in-store experience. Tell me a little bit about what that is like and what changes you've made to really increase engagement of those customers walking in your store. You know, that's where we really shine. And we always have. We are a very customer

forward thinking organization. We put the most talented associates on the floor. Our tagline is shop with the pros. And a lot of people assume that has to do with the PGA Tour, but we say the real pros are our associates. And how we make that real is we have the most robust training program for any associates in the golf industry. For example, in January, every year, we take over 400 associates to the best golf courses in the country. And we host them for upwards of a week. And we bring every major manufacturer on site to educate them on all the products, all the technology, all the innovation that is behind the product. So I can safely say that our associates are the best trained in the entire industry.

And that is really where it starts. They are experts. But in addition to that, we also train them on how to greet, serve, thank, right? Just greet, serve, thank. I always say it's service is not that complicated. Just greet someone, ask how you can help, and thank them for being there. And if we can just kind of blend those two things together between being an expert at what we do and we sell.

We're also very blessed in that we are a privately held company. We truly serve for a different purpose than most do. Our purpose as a brand is to give back to others. And we're very blessed. Like I said, we're owned by Arthur Blank. So that is his personal mission. He signed the giving pledge. He has given away over a billion dollars in the last 10 years. His aim is to give another billion away in the next five years. And we know that's what our purpose is. So if we can greet, serve, thank, we can welcome all different types of golfers, whether you're new to the game, you've been playing your whole life, or you're playing just to have a good time.

So we have a, you know, maybe we sell you a cooler. It's not even a golf club that you need, right, to have the best time you can possibly have. So we say we want to inspire people to play their best. That is, that's our sort of mantra. So with all those things in mind, I think our customers, I know that's what they give us the most credit for. So that is really, our associates are at the center of what we do in the store. Now, the harder part is how do you replicate that in a digital world? And that has really been much more challenging. So, but,

but the in-store experience, that's sort of our bread and butter. And that is our primary focus is serving the customer in the store. Today, we know that if we want you to play your best, we have to help you play your best, not just sell you products. We're not in a position to try to evaluate your golf swing unless you want to be fit or take a lesson. But what we are doing right now is every Saturday morning, we fit anybody who wants to come in for a new putter. Just come in, take a couple swings. We have a five-minute fit, and there's no cost. There's no obligation. You don't have to do anything. And there are other

brands that would charge you 50 to 100 dollars to do that. But we just do it for everyone. We do free fitting in our store every single day in every single day. If you want an elevated experience, you really want someone to spend time in technology and we have all those different ways that we can do it. You can do that. We have a premium experience, but we will fit anybody for free. We will give all the advice away. I always say just give it, we give it all away because we want you to play your best and have a good time. So that's to me, the other sort of differentiator that we have around experience. You're really committed to making sure that your customers are great at their game and have at least as much support as possible, both in terms of the equipment, but also it sounds

like the skill and the tactics of it all. Yeah, it's not a simple game. And I don't think, we should ever pretend that it is, but we want people to feel confident and comfortable. And, you know, there's a lot of fun jokes in golf. You know, there's a great brand called G4 that has some of the best apparel because I was just had a sweatshirt yesterday that I was wearing. It says, no one cares what you shot. If you're new to the game, your number one fear is being, you know, people looking at you, you know, like, I always notice whenever I ask someone if they're a golfer, they always, whether no matter what kind of a golfer they are, they always say, Well, I'm not that I am, I'm not that good, or not really. It's almost

like if you say I'm a golfer, that means something like, Oh, well, you're supposed to be on the PGA Tour. No, I'm a golfer. It doesn't mean I break 90. It just means I love the game. And we have to make people comfortable and confident that no matter where they are, they are welcome. They are included. We want them to be a part of the game that we love so much. And I think that's the spirit by which we serve our customers in the store. There's no judgment. It's everybody's welcome. It's inclusive. And that's not only how we serve, those are our core values, everything I just mentioned. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is not an option. At Salesforce, they get it. They've made their most highly skilled advisors,

Salesforce CTOs, available to help you with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of your journey. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. I can really feel the passion, both from you and also from everything that you're speaking about with the brand and the experience. So tell me a little bit about the online experience and the process in really developing that. Yeah. So when I first got here, obviously, as a modern marketer, data and analytics is a key part of what we do and how we add value to the organization. And we didn't really have those underpinnings in place. So very quickly, I said, you know, to be a world class organization, we really need to focus on the digital experience. In order to do that, it's going to be a world-class organization, we really need to focus on the digital experience.

In order to do that, it's going to be a journey. It's going to take us a little while from where we are today to where we think we need to be. And we are still very much on that journey. But the website was a great example because I made the comment, you know, we like, let's start with a mobile-first website. And that created a lot of waves in the organization because everyone said, but what do you mean? I can see the website on my phone. And I'd say, you know, that's interesting, but that does not make it mobile first. I only share that story as sort of that was the moment in time we were in where not only did we not have an elevated online experience that matched our in-store experience, we also didn't have the organizational understanding of just

technically speaking why the experience itself wasn't where it needed to be. So to sort of stare down the barrel of we need to create an environment to capture data, store data, leverage data. We also have to create experiences that match or stand up to the in-store experience that we deliver. That took a minute. So I probably spent my first year here just trying to educate and help people understand why this would ultimately make such a big difference. Eventually, we were able to put a roadmap together. It was a three-year roadmap for transformation on digital and the website in particular. It required a replacement of our

order management system, as well as a replatforming of the website and a redesign and all the things. That's a long process, but I'm so excited that we launched our new website just two weeks ago. And it's such an elevated experience. It has so much contextual relevance. It is mobile first. It has deep personalization and it knows where you are. It knows what the weather is like where you are. It's serving up different content for you versus for me. And it's finally like the true manifestation of all the things that we've been trying to get to. So that was a journey. You know, it's a big investment for a company to trust and believe that this is going to pay off from a business perspective. But from we're so fortunate because from our company,

it was more about the customer experience and how can we make it better. So even though we all know as marketers that elevating the experience is going to translate to business results, I think just the fact that it wasn't a great experience was enough for our company to sort of trust and make this investment. And now we've already in the two weeks that we've launched it certainly worked out a few bugs, but we've already seen increased conversion rates, increased satisfaction with the experience. So we know we're on the right track. We're not done, but we know we're on the right track. And I couldn't be more excited about that. Yay. Well, congratulations on getting that off the ground. I'm sure it's been a long

time coming and a lot of work to get there. But I really love what you're saying about mobile first. And I'm assuming based on what you've shared is that that is really meeting the customer where they're at. If they're in the middle of a game and they're like, I need more balls or, oh, my friend has this putter that's really incredible. Maybe I want that too. Like giving them the opportunity to be acting while they're in that headspace is exactly meeting the customer where they're at. More than 80% of all shoppers are shopping with a phone in their hand, right? So if I'm in the, it even elevates the in store experience. And that was the other big piece that we were helping the organization sort of

transition to is that the total, the omni-channel experience is enhanced as well. And it helps us sell more in the store because if you've ever been in our stores, they're huge, they're super stores, they're 40,000 square feet stores with, you know, many, many items, many SKUs in there. And sometimes you just want to find that SKU quickly or you want to know how many different colors or do they have it in my size without having to like look through every rack. And it's really helped us. You know, it's helped. We can see people in store ordering from the store. We're doing, we're about to add ship to store, you know, we really do see this as finally the final sort of effort to really get to that true omni-channel experience that, you know, we all strive and aim for. Just building it and pulling it off is never, it's not a simple idea, but we know we're really closing in on it. And that's exciting because we want every experience the customer has with us to be at the same exceptional level. And this is, we're finally, you know, I think we're finally there. The site is beautiful. It looks very different. Unfortunately,

I never want you to see the old site. No disrespect to the old site, but it didn't tell the same story as if you had gone to our store. You wouldn't have even felt like these were the same brands. We worked on that. We're excited. The site was actually designed by the same design firm that designed the PGA Tours website. So there's a lot of nice synergy with our partners at the PGA Tour itself. So those experiences are fairly seamless. And we put a lot of thought into that. How can it feel cohesive? How can it feel like one brand? How can we feel like, you know, we're one voice talking to the customer? And I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of. The personalization, I'm really proud, that we had to fight really hard to make that happen. And then there's three more releases that are going to come over the next couple of months that even have more functions and features that I'm even more excited about.

Great. A lot coming. Great. Tell me a little bit about the personalization component. Yeah, well, like I said, you know, I know if you're constantly purchasing or you're clicking on women's apparel or you're raising your hand, you're telling me something. I should be able to infer that and learn from that and serve it back to you. It's 2024, right? So this site is finally going to allow us to do that. And like I said today, if you're in a logged in state, obviously if you're not in a logged in state, the experience isn't as cool. So I highly encourage you to create a login, an account with us, just to change the experience a little bit

and just to feel like what it could feel like should you, you know, I think you'd start to quickly learn how it's learning about you and what you're interested in and how it's evolving and changing every time you're on the site based on the brands that you prefer, based on the types of products you're interested in. Say you're a tennis player, for example. We serve tennis as well. We are a large provider of tennis merchandise and apparel. And if you came to our website, you previously you would have never

known that. And today, over time, we'll learn that about you. And that content will become primary and not secondary as it is today. So it's, it's definitely a modern website. It is has all the logic built into it, we're going to learn how to operate the machine. And we're going to add layers of technology that help us do it even better. But I'm just so excited about that. Even the weather thing, in golf, weather is a huge factor in terms of the decisions that you're making and where you are in terms of whether you're playing or you're practicing. And now that we have the weather feature on there, it's a very front and center. It's the first module underneath the carousel, the top of the website. And, you know, it's acknowledging that it's raining where you are or it's cold where you

are or it's hot where you are. And, you know, to me, that's just a little light touch, but it's saying, you know, we see you and we we want to serve you better. Something that you touched on that I want to dive into a little bit is really the ROI of the customer experience. Because I think, especially if you're in marketing or any CX organization, we know and feel if we make this experience better for our customers, then they're going to want to come back. But it's different when we're not talking about feelings and we're talking about like hard numbers. And if we spend four years redoing this website and adding all these features, what are we hoping to gain from that?

Or what do we expect to gain from that? So I'd love to hear a little bit of how you've thought about that. And also just thinking about our listeners who may be needing to communicate something to the CFO and getting something passed. How to go about that? Well, I love how you frame that because, again, as marketers, I think we're fundamentally wired to believe that if I serve the customer and I do the things they ask for, they'll reward me with their business. So I start with that place. I fundamentally believe that. That mindset has never served me wrong. I have never I always feel empowered. Like if you have the opportunity to either talk to the customer and listen and hear what they're saying and you give that to them. I've never seen an occasion where they did not reward you with their business. I've just never seen it many all, all the years that I've been doing what I do. So I believe that I'm wired for that. However, the rest of the organization is not wired for that, right? They are, they are wired for what

have you done for me lately and the P&L and how much, you know, are we making? So we did a lot of work sort of educating along the way of where we thought the opportunities would lie. So one, there's the cost of ownership, the cost of doing business, just how many people does it take to run this machine? So there were some efficiencies and opportunities there. We also talked about performance marketing. We spend a great deal of money on performance

marketing channels. We saw that there was an opportunity to make them more effective, more efficient. So we did the math. We mathed that out. If these channels were more effective because they converted higher, what would that yield? We talked about the fact that we would be able to support more products. We'd have more features where we could promote more offers, more products, put more customers. We did the math around that. We did a lot of it ourselves, but we also worked with some very smart consultants who helped us think through it. And then the last part, the easy part, how much more traffic would we be able to drive? How many more conversions? How big would the basket size get if we were able to, like, for example, incorporate a feature like

people who bought this also bought this or some recommender features and those things. So there's some pretty good, widely available resources out in the Google world. And, you know, that will help you actually do that math or at least put something on paper that I think that CFO will respond to because they do respond to those metrics. And they're real. They're absolutely real. And it's our job to not only tell beautiful stories and create great experiences, but to sell things ultimately. But, you know, I've always believed that it is not our job. I never want people to come in and say, we exist to sell people stuff. We don't exist to sell people stuff. We

exist to help people play their best and feel good about themselves. If you have that mindset and every decision that you make is around that, the other things I really believe will follow, and they do. Like I said, I've never seen an occasion where they did not. But I would just challenge anyone who's going on a journey like this to think of all their stakeholders and think about what objections they might have and figure out ways to overcome those objections and feel confident doing it. If you're online researching or you talk to someone who's been through it or you're better yet,

you talked to five people who've been through it, I think you can really feel confident about where the hurdles are gonna be and where the opportunities are going to be. Then it's your job as a marketer or a leader to influence others through real information, not just my opinion about things. And just give everybody confidence.

Like I said, within two weeks of the launch of this site, all those behaviors that we thought we would see, we are seeing. And it's not by accident. It's by design. And you want to be thoughtful about all those things. I think the more information you have about the experience, even before you started, even if the information is I have no information, because then you go, well, I need that information. So what do I design? What's the feature or function I design here that will start to deliver that? Or what's the layer of technology I need to add that will allow

us to have that data? Because we want to see the journey. You want to manage the journey and every step along the way. I worked with an agency once, I won't name them, but I thought they did this beautiful piece of research that they illustrated in a super compelling way. So it was a very famous pizza company and they had done a journey and it was an online order of a pizza. And where were the pain points for the customer, and they illustrated those pain points. So you know, I get on the website, I log in my account, I look at the menu, like they stepped out every step of the journey. And then they mapped all the pain points. And that is such a brilliant thing. You don't need a lot of money to do that. You can go talk to customers, just, you know, get in the

store or get into your experience or just talk to a few customers. And you can do it super scientific or you can do it just like get it done. Use your own experience. And once you do that and then use that as a guide to how can I manage this entire experience across, it's really not as complicated as it sounds. And then you know where you need to put your effort and where you don't need to, you know, you need to, I mean, you want to put your effort everywhere, but how you sort of scale your effort, I guess is a better way to say that. So completely, I think you just have to be really committed to the experience. Yeah. That exercise of mapping out the journey is something that is so important. And I've actually built a template for this that I take my consulting clients through. So anyone listening,

find me on LinkedIn, Lauren Wood, I'll send it to you. And I also like, I just, it's one of my favorite things to do, to take companies and a leadership team in particular cross-functionally. So through the thought of what is the customer experiencing at each phase? What are those friction points? What are the opportunities here? If we did something different, could we actually make this experience way better? And then we kind of have that map of what we think, and then it's validating it. Go and speak to your customers. Is this actually the case? Because something that

I've seen so, so many companies do is we assume we know what the customer wants, but that's not really what the customer wants. We have to speak to them and ask. So I love that you share that because it's something that I've found to be just revolutionary in my own work as a CX leader. And I love to help other people do it as well. functional exercise. There are some things that we can affect in the experience and there's some things that have to be affected by our operations partners and just sort of creating the visibility of what actually matters. I think that's wonderful. That's good work you're doing. I wish you would have helped me with this four years ago. Maybe it would have only been a two-year journey instead of a four-year journey. I can't promise anything, but I'm here to help. I'm here to help anytime. So, Jill, you had mentioned that you're very curious and I've listened to some other podcasts you've been on. It sounds like you read a lot. You listen to a lot of podcasts. And I

wanted to ask, what are some of your favorite resources for the work that you do? I'm a nerd. I'm the reader of all white papers. So here's what I need to tell. I like make a public service announcement to all of the sort of tech companies that publish white papers on LinkedIn. Keep doing it. I'm going to read them all, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to buy your software or your tool. Like, I want to know how things work. I spend a lot of time in my job listening to the customer. But as a marketer, I really want to understand how to serve them better, be more efficient, really build a world-class marketing organization. What are the trends in marketing? What kind of tools are people using? And I read every white paper.

If you're in your LinkedIn scroll and you can download a white paper, I guarantee you I will download it. And who knows what you'll glean from it. I mean, I just like to read. I want to be able to speak with intelligence or ask questions if I don't know. I'm not afraid to ask questions or to look like I don't know because a lot of times I don't know. And I think you get to a certain point in your career where you realize it's okay to say you don't know versus feeling like you're supposed to know everything, which so I'm very comfortable saying I don't know. And then I talk to everybody I could possibly talk to. I listen to podcasts. I mean, I'm just insatiably curious. So I'm a sponge. And I think the other pieces you learn from looking at what others are

doing, I think one of my gifts is that I can look at an experience in another industry, like hospitality or, you know, food service, and I can apply that to my own world. And I think it's where we get some of our best stuff. A perfect example is within days of COVID happening and us having to shut down all of our stores, but quickly learning that golf was something that people wanted to do during COVID. I came from the restaurant world. So curbside is a restaurant idea. It took me about 30 seconds to say, curbside caddy, we have to deliver, you know, we have to create this curbside idea. I mean, we had it launched in 48 hours. And so I just like to try to take, you know, all the best thinking from,

there's so many smart people out there. I learn something new every day. And I just, I love to try to apply it to our own little world, whether it's at a big level or a small level, I'm just constantly connecting dots. I'm a dot connector. I love it. So I have, I have two last questions for you and that we'd like to ask all of our guests. So the first is I'd love to hear about a recent experience that you had with a brand that left you impressed. What was it? So many. I respect so many brands. And I think there's always going to be the ones you hear a lot about, which are going to be your Chick-fil-A's or your Starbucks or some of those brands that haven't mastered. So let me think of one. I mean, quite honestly, don't tell anyone this.

That's a joke because hopefully lots of people will see this. But I had not been on site at a Walt Disney World Park in many years. So my last experience at Disney, I was really, really proud to be a part of what we call the magic band or in the next gen experience, but the Magic Band Plus, which is, you know, a connected device and how that could elevate the experience. And I finally got to do a Disney experience using the Magic Band. And I was both really proud because I had like a teeny tiny role in the show many years ago. But it really sort of delivered on the experience that we wanted, which was to let people spend more time enjoying the park

and not so much time trying to figure out how to navigate their day and run around and stand in lines and all those things that, you know, we knew were disruptors to that beautiful experience, that magical experience that Disney guests want for their families. Generally, mom is planning the vacation. It's a lot of burden on the planner. There's so many decisions.

Where are we gonna eat? Which park are we gonna go to and what day? And to kind of move that out of the, simplify that planning experience and then allowing the digital experience and this magic band to kind of facilitate, you know, simplify that planning experience and then allowing the digital experience and this magic band to kind of facilitate that really cool visit. Like it was really cool. And I just did it a couple of weeks ago.

So it's really top of mind for me. Amazing. So big shout out to all my beloved friends at the Walt Disney Company, who I think really understand how to do all the things we've just spent the hour talking about. And if it weren't for my time there, I probably couldn't be sitting here today. It made me who I am. And I respect it like beyond. They are so good at what they do. That's amazing. I live in Southern California and I've been here for about three years and I haven't gone to Disneyland yet.

I think I was eight the last time I went. So you're inspiring me. I need to go. And then my last question for you is, what is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should hear? I really think it's what we just spent a little time talking about is don't assume you know. Invest the time up front. Know what problem

you are solving, right? We always say fall in love with the problem, not the solution. You think you kind of get mesmerized by all the technology, all the things that people, you know, you experience. But if you don't really know the utility, the problem that you're trying to solve, how you can add value to your unique customer. It's really, you're just sort of on a futile mission. Just really know, love, and care very much about what the customer you want to serve, what you want that experience to look, feel like, how you want them to feel when

it's over, and then leverage all the tools that we've just spent this hour talking about to deliver on that and be relentlessly committed to it. I'm sure there are times when people are like, yeah, yeah, right person, right message, right moment. We get it. But I say it every day and it's sort of a running joke in our company. I always say you'll never hear me give a presentation where those words are not spoken because I believe in it so deeply. And it means it's a CRM thing, but it's also very much an experience thing. And I'm just, you know, be committed to what you're doing and deliver it to the best of your ability. And last thing is, it's not a money thing. The PGA Tour Superstore, we're a mid-sized

company. Yes, I worked at the Walt Disney Company. That is a very big company and they make very big investments. But Cinnabon is a very small company and we cared just as much about that customer experience. And we did a lot of really cool things that were not digitally or technology enabled. They were just human. So think about that piece. It doesn't matter how big or small your business is. You can deliver an exceptional customer experience if you just care enough to do it. Well, you just ended this conversation on a bang. That human component is so important. And I fully agree with you. It doesn't need to be a massive investment. It's just thinking about the people who are actually going to be engaging with your product and your brand. So thank you so much, Jill. This has been an incredibly insightful conversation. I'm leaving very inspired and

we really appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you so much. It was fun. I appreciate it. You are a business leader with vision. You've seen the future as an AI enterprise thriving with Salesforce's agent force, and it is bright. Getting there?

It's a little fuzzier. Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work with you side by side and turn your agent force vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support from the best of the best. To learn more about Salesforce CTOs, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.