The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – House of the Customer: A blueprint for one-to-one, customer-first, employee-driven business transformation by Greg Kihlstrom

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

House of the Customer: A blueprint for one-to-one, customer-first, employee-driven business transformation by Greg Kihlstrom Gregkihlstrom.com Between consumer demands for more personalized and greater data privacy and competitive pressures to provide better omnichannel customer experiences, brands are faced with a dilemma: build a foundation for the future of customer relationships or lose relevancy in a crowded marketplace. Doing this, however, is not without its challenges. While many enterprises a engaging in digital transformations in order to modernize and anticipate future changes, these efforts are often fraught with challenges, and many fail to deliver the results promised. The way to do this forms the foundation of House of the Customer. In this new book from best-selling author Greg Kihlström, readers are guided through the elements of a 1:1, customer-first, employee-driven enterprise that includes seven key elements, why they are important, and how to implement them. These seven elements are explained in terms of building your brand as a “house” for your customers and aligning, people, processes, and platforms in a customer-centric manner driven by strategic key performance indicators (KPIs) and measured by tangible business outcomes. Drawing on Kihlström’s experience working with top organizations, as well as dozens of interviews with Fortune 500 customer experience leaders and industry-leading platform marketing technology executives and thought leaders for this book and his podcast, The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, the blueprint to achieve a customer-centric, sustainable platform for growth is made tangible.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. A monster roller coaster with your brain. Wow, that sounds like something to do. Hi, folks. I'm Chris Voss, thechrissvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show.

We certainly appreciate you guys having me and us and everyone on the show and everyone else out there. And now, a man who thinks he's funny, but he's just an idiot. I'm your host, Chris Voss. Welcome to the show. That's just dumb. Anyway, guys, thanks for coming coming on we certainly appreciate you guys as always refer this year to your family friends and relatives

we have an amazing author on the show we're talking about his business he has a podcast too as I do everyone's into podcasting these days but only about 1% of people are good at it and he's good at it I'm not so we're going to find out how to make a podcast work also go to goodreads. I'm not. So we're going to find out how to make a podcast work.

Also, go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Go to all the places on the interwebs. You know, a real part of being on the Chris Voss show is part of the family. The family that loves you doesn't judge you. And we know that's better than what your mom gives you every day when she tells you to clean your room. Or your wife does. So there you go.

Pick up your socks, damn it. Anyway, she paid for that message, by the way. That's an ad on the show. So do that, but refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Put your arm around them this holiday season and say, I'm going to give you the gift that keeps on giving. By the way, I don't have to pay anything for it. Sign up for the Chris Foss Show and subscribe. It's the best thing for you.

It'll make you smarter, prettier, more lovely, and more educated. And everyone knows when you do that, you're more sexy. So you might get some more, uh, you know, sexy, sexy love time there from, I don't know, uh, whoever you're dating, whatever it's your business, not mine. Uh, but they are still DMing me, uh, anyway, guys, uh, on Snapchat. So anyway, guys, we're just kind of throwing in every comedy I can come up with here at the second. He is the author of the newest, hottest book that's coming out December 11, 2022. You can preorder it right now. House of the Customer, a blueprint for one-to-one, customer-first,

employee-driven business transformation. Greg Kilstrom is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking about his amazing new book and everything that goes into it. He is a best-selling multi-book author, speaker, and entrepreneur, currently an advisor and consultant to top companies on marketing, technology, customer experience, and digital transformation initiates as a principal and chief strategist at GK5A.

We'll find out what that means on the show. He's also the host of the Agile Brand with Greg Kilstrom podcast. He is a two-time CEO and co-founder, growing both companies organically through acquisitions and ultimately leading to both being acquired, one in 2017 and the other in 2021. He has worked with some of the world's top brands, including Adidas, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, HP, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota, and VMware. And now he's finally hit the pinnacle of top companies,

The Chris Voss Show podcast. Welcome to the show, Greg. How are you? Yeah, great, great. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for coming as well. Quite the ramble we put up today. So there's that. And wow, the Snapchats are coming in. So welcome to the show, Greg. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs.

Yeah, sure. So you can go to my website. It's gregkillstrom.com, and I'm really active on LinkedIn as well, so easy to find me there too. There you go. So let's, uh, let's still lead off with your book. We're going to talk about a few things today, your book, some of the consulting you do and the work you do. And then, uh, also, uh, let's, we'll get a plugin for the podcast cause I need to find out how to podcast. I'm still working on mine after 13 years. We're always working to get better and it's not. So there's that. Uh, so how's the customer? What, uh, you've written a lot of books. How many books do you have, by the way, in your library?

Yeah, so this is number 11. There you go. So I've written a few. And, yeah, you know, I've been doing a lot of work over the last year with, you know, some of the brands that you just mentioned as well as some others on, you know, I think there's a lot of talk about we need to improve customer experience and we need to personalize things and make things better. And, you know, I think we're all kind of agreed on that premise that that's a good thing when it's done well.

And when we treat customers, you know, data with privacy and all those kinds of things. I think what's been lacking to me and what I always try to do with my books and writing is make it practical. And, you know, I've been, I'm not only, I do speaking and I do coaching and all that stuff, but I actually am hands-on and do the work as well. And so, you know, I just try to take insights from what I've done, what I've seen, and what works at organizations as well as proposing what I think should work. And I took that, did some additional research, talked to a lot of people. Some of those were also guests on my show and just put it all together. And, you know, it really is a blueprint on how to do this well,

how to really provide great personalized customer experience as well. Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. You know, customer service really seems to be lost in today's world, doesn't it? Does it seem like we've, you know, I don't know about you. You seem fairly young. I don't want to throw my age onto you. But, you know, I grew up in the era of Search and Search of Excellence by Tom Peters.

And it was that big customer service revolution time where everybody's like, we're going to do customer service now. You know, they're talking about the Nordstrom tire, you know, stories and things like that. And so, um, and so I, I grew up in that whole era of all of that. And, um, it seems like it's so lost now, like so many companies, you know, like I'll send an email to somebody and they're like, we'll get back to you in three days when we care. You know, that sort of thing. And then people are going like, why are we making more money? So there's all that. So what do you think? Have we lost a lot of that?

What's going on? Well, I mean, there's a lot of talk about it and a lot of talk about improving. Not only, you know, so there's a lot of the full customer journey, let's say. It starts before when somebody just hears about a brand and what their experience is there, what it's like to actually buy the product. And then customer service is generally what happens when something goes wrong or there's additional questions. And I think what's been happening from an intellectual level, companies are starting to understand, okay, we need to tie all those things together. Now, from a practical standpoint, what you're experiencing is not, you know, is not unique. A lot of people are experiencing this disconnect between, oh, wow, you know, it's like, it was really great when I was about to buy the product. They were right there, timely with messages and all over the place, you know,

ads were following me all around the web and whatever, I buy the product and where's the service or, you know, what's the experience then? And so, you know, good brands, the ones that are talked about well, you know, they've been tying these dots together for a while, but there's a lot to do. And, you know, in a Fortune 100 company, there's a lot of silos. There's a lot of teams and departments and one hand is not talking to the other. And, you know, these are the kinds of companies that I work with quite often. And it's not even for lack of good intention. It's man, one person, they might as well be on another planet, you know, one department versus the other. And so trying to get them to say, well, why don't you talk with the person in X department? They're like, I don't know. I've never met them. I don't even know who they are,

you know? And so you can imagine then us as customers, we're, we're trying to buy and use these products and we feel a disconnect. It's not our job to know an org chart, but you know, it's, we feel the disconnect. Hi, Voxers, Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer,

and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out Chris Voss, leadership institute.com. Now back to the show. Yeah.

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and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, podcast um you know it's it and it's so i saw some tiktok videos that were really funny about it but uh basically you'll call them and they'll be like hi we have you on hold and you have a two-hour wait time but we care about your business you're very important to us now listen to this 30 second loop of a music uh cut that will drive you insane in the next half an hour because she'll be listening to it over and over again. Yeah. Like GoDaddy is the worst. I love GoDaddy, but they're the worst at it. It's like I've called them and sometimes I'll just tell their agent, Hey man, can you guys play the song?

Change the song, man. It's been the same song for like 10 years and it's like the same one minute repeat. Um, and, uh, they even, they finally did a thing where you can press pound to stop the song. But yeah, I mean, I see so many with the marketing we do, I see so many Facebook pages that don't get responded to.

No one's banning them anymore. We were joking in the show about how people reach out to the Chris Voss Show for customer service on some of the products that we review. Part of that is because no one will answer them at the companies. And so they're actually – people go to YouTube sometimes to figure stuff out, and they're using customer service. I used to tell our clients 10 years ago, I'm like, you really need to monitor some of the products that were reviewed.

You need to monitor some of the comments that you're getting, not only for feedback, but there's a lot of people that can't seem to find customer service. I've had PR agents that get calls from customers because they can't get the customer service agency to the company to respond to them. And so they're calling the third-party agency because they found the press thing on the website. This is how bad it's gotten. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I that that speaks to a few things i mean one you know i think there's been with the whatever they call it today but you know great resignation and and all those kinds of things there's been a lot of you know a lot of staff shortages that you know

everything from you know trying to get a meal in a restaurant to the things that you're talking about, just shortage of staffing. I think the other thing is the future of the customer experience means that brands have to be active on every channel that their customers want to be on. And that's a lot of channels. I mean, I think on average,

one of the stats in my book is on average, someone uses between five and six channels during the sales process out of about 13 or 14 that are commonly used. And so, you know, think about that. Even a very large brand, you know, multi-billion dollar company, they've got to be great on about 13 channels because in the hopes that someone is going to reach out and need something. And so hopes that someone is going to reach out and, and need something. And so inevitably someone is going to reach out on a channel that is,

you know, maybe if they just would have gone on Twitter, they would have gotten an instant response or something, but maybe not anymore. But, you know, if, you know,

they would have reached out on the right channel, um, you know, that would have happened, but, um, they, they use the channel that they they wanted to use because that's

what we expect as customers. We expect wherever we are, whatever we're holding in our hands, we're going to get a response from the brands that we support. So let me ask you this. I've always told everybody, hey, you need to take and be where your clients are. You can't just be on one platform. But you mentioned that five to six different... They're looking at five to six different platforms at a company.

Is that research they're doing? Are they using that to validate them as a good company? Because you're like, hey, I don't know about this company. Let's validate them. Maybe see their reviews and stuff. Is that what they're doing? They're validating or what are they up to? Yeah. I mean, some of that or some of it, it could be somebody's walking in a brick and mortar retail store, comparing prices online to the products they're looking at. And then they leave

the store, go home and buy it on Amazon on their laptop. And so that's three channels in a very short, that's a very short anecdote, so in other words, if they're doing research, if they're looking on social media for reviews or other things like that, you know, all of a sudden those channels add up pretty quickly. And, you know, and that's so. So, yeah, you know, they need to that brand needs to make sure that there's positive reviews on all of those places that they saw that they have good in-store placement. You know, all of those kinds of things. So it's, you know, it's offline, it's online, it's all of those places that they saw, that they have good in-store placements, you know, all of those kinds of things. So it's, you know, it's offline, it's online, it's all of the above. And, yeah, you know, it's challenging for big brands, but it's really daunting for small brands.

Yeah, it's because they can't hire enough people, especially nowadays. I mean, that's kind of one of the – I've kind of had to – yeah, I was pissed off about customer service before. I considered writing a book about it. I don't know. I'm still, I'm leaving it to people like you to write the book. But I have some axes to grind. Let's put it that way.

And I thought it was bad before, and I'm wondering if it's going to get worse because it seems like any time nowadays companies can hit a new low. You know, like one of the problems with COVID was, I saw this with like Facebook and Twitter where we had different accounts get to have issues and stuff. And we're like, hey, man, we need this looked at. And they're like, oh, sorry, you know, you get the auto back.

Oh, sorry, right now everyone's kind of at home playing Minecraft and we can't get to things because of COVID. And now there's, and the responses are still there. And you're like, you know, COVID, I mean, it's not over, but it's largely over. We're not in lockdown anymore. So, uh, and some people have returned to work and we were supposed to figure this remote work out by now. So what the hell? And so now it's gotten worse. You know, if I go in a restaurant or other places, I kind of have to bite my tongue a little bit, calm the jets a little bit, don't go full Karen. Because you realize that people are struggling, especially these middle-sized and very small companies, you know, your restaurants and stuff like that.

They're struggling. They have plastered notes on the door, you know, please, you know, I went into like, what was it, Five Guys Burgers the other day. They have like a whole table out there, like, please work for us. Here's the applications. Well, you know, like when they're taking your order, they're like, so what would you like, sir? I'll take a burger and fries.

And they're like, would you also like a job? Because we need somebody to cook the burger and fries for you right now. That's a good joke. So, you know, this is interesting. And then what was the other number you gave me? They need to be on 13 different channels. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the universe of channels that are typically out there.

I mean, there's plenty more, I'm sure. But, you know, it's up to about 12 or 13 that are most typically used. You know, and part of its validation, I think, is that if you see that a company is, you know, spread out doing their job, you can find them on LinkedIn, you can find out what people are saying. I mean, I'm a huge reviewer reader, especially on Amazon, man. I learned the hard way, man. And I learned the hard way, too. You can't just look at the review graphs.

Like, I almost bought a $400 reverse osmosis water thing yesterday, and I was ready to push the button because I was looking at that graph, and I'm like, 13% of those are really ugly one stars. You should go read them. And I'm like, no, I'm lazy. I'm sure it'll be fine. Push the button, Chris. And I'm like, no, Chris, you know this game.

You've lost before. And I went and read the one stars. Holy mother of God. And then I went and read the four stars, and the same thing was happening. It just wasn't happening to the level people were really upset about it. Or they just bought the product and the one stars were the people who had the product for four to

six months. The four stars are the people who did it. I bought it. I had custom issues and the company is replacing it and the second unit is not working either and I'm like, oh man, I see what's going on. So there you go. What are some other tidbits in the book that we can tease out that you talk about? Yeah. I mean, it's, I try, I've tried to make a practical framework to, to set up,

you know, creating, building an organization around, you know, designing and delivering these experiences. So I use the metaphor of a house. So, um, you know, the, the roof is the processes and the systems that kind of govern everything. And, you know, I kind of go through there's, there's pillars and the foundation of, of all of this is really the culture of the company that, um, that is, um, really centered around customers and everybody in the company can see how they are how their job and their role supports customers and, you know, customer expectations and the customer experience. And I think from my work, I've done a bit of work in the HR

and employee experience field as well. And, you know, a huge part of keeping employees engaged is just having, making sure that they have they feel purpose in their job and so my one of the things that i say is when customer experience and providing a great customer experience is part of the purpose of someone's job it's motivation and reward for that individual and so you know it's kind of it's a nice, it has a nice flywheel effect in that, you know, it's, we need to motivate employees. Employees want purpose and motivation. Let's make the motivation doing great things for our customers.

And then everybody wins because those customers buy more. The employees keep their jobs. Everybody, even shareholders are happy with that scenario. Yeah. You know, it's interesting to me because i've complained about the customer service and the non-responsiveness uh one of the biggest things i hate is zendesk i hate zendesk like a passion when i see you pop back with that you lose like so much standing with me as a company um and it's usually a response like uh we we have is zendesk

and yeah uh i think it is. You know, companies like that. And you get an auto response back. And it says, hi, thanks for your email. We really care about you as a customer and your customer service. We usually get back to you within three days. Three days? Yeah.

And if you need something more immediately, we have this forum over here that will not search any of the questions or problems you have. And you can go spend hours going through this when, really, you could just be on the phone with one of our customer service agents for five freaking minutes to resolve your problem. But we'd rather have you go spend hours doing that. Like, I hate that. Like, I would never hire that thing. And I'm sorry, I might lose Zencaster as an advertiser, but I don't care. It's just awful. Hire, do it internally, have people that work for your company.

And I love the idea that you have of making it, I don't know if you use the word game, but making it fun to help customers. You know, and the funny thing is about all the stuff that I've complained about so far in the show, which is getting to be a pile and we've talked about, is I know these customers, these CEOs and these boards are sitting around at their office going, you know, we need to have more sales. Like, why aren't we selling more?

We're not making enough money and we need to figure out how to sell. Hey, well, maybe you should answer the Facebook page. Right, right. Yeah. Well, and I, you know, I think that's, that's where this whole, this whole idea of, of a cultural shift in companies really is, you know, we're, um, we're so driven or companies are so driven by short-term sales and let's just get new customers in the door and we'll work it out in the end. And sure enough, you know, their customers are getting messages like like the one you just said, or we'll get back to you in 72 hours or whatever.

One of the other things that I talk about in the book is I lay out kind of a series of goals for for companies that are not necessarily immediately achievable, but it's called North Star Goals. That's where we're headed. We're not going to get there tomorrow. We know we're not going to get there tomorrow, but we've got to have something guiding what we do. And so one of those is really moving to this idea of just embracing this idea of customer lifetime value. So anybody in sales, we all know loss you know, loss leaders and things like that, you know, sometimes you got to get people in the door to, you know, and you lose a little bit of money on them. This is sure that that's a part of this. But this is really thinking about and embracing this idea that yes, a loyal customer for life, they're going to buy more,

they're going to buy more often, they're going to recommend their friends. I mean, you know, the brands that I'm loyal to, I am very loyal to, you know, a handful of brands because sometimes I just like points, I guess, but also, you know, they treat me well. You know, I, I've, I've been, been buying from them long enough and, you know, I feel that and, you know, that's, they're getting customer lifetime value out of people like me versus maybe the first 30 days. I wasn't making them a ton of money, but five,

10 years in, you know, that's a, you know, that's a moneymaker. It's a lot easier to keep me than it is to win a brand new customer. Yeah. And,

and you know, that old paradigm of how much it costs to retain a customer versus getting a new one. I don't remember what the numbers are. I remember hearing about it. It's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's huge. And do you, let me ask you this, because this is a big question I always have. Is this a generational problem? Cause we went from a generation that was very demanding, um,

you know, with Gen X, my generation, you know, we grew up with, you know, in search of excellence and Tom Peters and the whole, the whole Nordstrom, if you return a tire story that you can, they'll take the return.

You know, an exemplary award-winning sort of customer service stories and expectations. And then it seems like maybe millennials don't care as much or when they're working, they don't care as much for customer service. And then Gen Z seems like even more, it just doesn't really care much. It does what it wants and it's going to buy a lot electronically. So maybe there's not a lot of customer service there except when it breaks. I don't know. Is there a generational thing to it where we're losing this over generations of workers and people that don't care as much for customer service? So it's, I think there's a number of things that are compounding.

I mean, I think, I mean, I'm a Gen Xer too. So like, you know, millennials, I can talk shit about millennials and Gen Z, I guess. But sorry, I don't know if I can swear or not. So sorry. You can swear. It's just you want to keep it down because of YouTube. They'll put it in the back of the catalog. No worries.

But, you know, I think millennials and Gen Z just have a different relationship to work. And, you know, I don't – as a Gen Xer, you know, I was taught a hard work ethic and all that stuff. And so, you know, I take that stuff very seriously. I think it's just a different mindset and a different relationship between personal time, work time and, you know, work life balance, whatever, you know, whatever term you want to call it. So I think there's that. I think the other the other part of it is, you know, I grew up in a world where, you know, part of my life there was no Internet and, you know, there were three channels on TV and whatever. And, you know, we're running into a lot of people in the workplace that, you know, they grew up with the Internet. And, you know, even if even if it was very early in their life when the Internet became a thing, it's you know, they have grown up with nothing but choice and immediate gratification on all of these things.

And so I think there's just, there's different expectations on what I get when and how, and they don't want to talk on the phone, they want to do everything online. And, and their, their job is not necessarily defining them like it might people in other generations. And so you get all those things. And the worst of it, I think, is a lot of unengaged people on the job that don't really care, to your point. And, you know, I think there can be good out of it as well. But I think we do tend to see a lot of the worst come out when we're trying to get some customer service. Yeah. And I'm wondering if maybe they just figure, screw it, I'm just going to hop around.

I wonder what the numbers are between Gen X hopping around and just not being brand loyal. I think millennials and Gen Zs are less brand loyal, and they'll just say, screw it, I'll just go to somebody who talks to me and I'm better brand loyal. Well, yeah, and same with their jobs, too. I mean, gone are the days of pensions and, you know, and, you know, staying at a company more than five years. Right. So it's like that's when you when you look at that from the customer experience standpoint, you know, the employees, it's like they're going to be there like 12 months and hop to another job because they can. And they've been incentivized to do that. The only way to get a raise these days is to move companies. So, you know, like it's, you know, I can feel for that. At the same time, I'm also a customer that's frustrated with lack

of service. So, you know, it's a tough one. Yeah, and you look at, like, companies, like, Twitter's a good example right now because so many people left. My feed's like a mess. I get notifications that are a mess. I get notifications from stuff I don't even follow.

I'm like, why? And it seems like every worse person's buying ads there now because they're really cheap. And so I'm seeing a lot of just nasty stuff. I think I got an OnlyFans notification on my email from my list of people I follow. I'm like, why is that there? And I'm like, did I follow that when I was like, I don't know, drunk in the middle of the night or something?

Two or three times now, these have come across and I've clicked on them. They're not sponsored ads, so they're not coming through that way, but I don't follow them. And I'm like, why am I getting this when I don't it's not there but yeah the whole thing's a mess and i've sent notices for some account issues into twitter and like no one's even answering and so yet yet they're like hey advertisers come trust us and

stuff right uh let's move on to your book we want people to pick that up of course on the on the web house of customer blueprint for one-to-one customer first employee driven business transformation move on to your book. We want people to pick that up, of course, on the web, House of Customer, a Blueprint for One-to-One Customer First Employee-Driven Business Transformation. And check out his other books that Greg has done, the Total 11. Let's talk about what you do as your customer service. Get a plug in for your podcast as well. Yeah, sure. So yeah, the podcast is called Agile Brand with Greg Kihlstrom. I'm about to start year five. So I've been doing this for a few years. Yeah, yeah. A little over 300 episodes. So looking forward to, yeah, new year of gas.

And I talk with marketing leaders. So primarily larger like Fortune 500 brands, as well as marketing leaders from like marketing technology platforms and things like that. And just have a, have a dialogue much, much like,

you know, the, the stuff in my book of, of conversations about that. And, you know, it just, I,

I think it's, it's so fun for just to do it myself. And I get to have 150 conversations a year with really smart people, people smarter than me about all this stuff. But I learned so much and, you know, I hope the listeners, about all this stuff. I learn so much. I hope the listeners learn as much as well. There you go. Also, plug for your show.

I'll be on Friday in a few more days. I'll be on your show. I won't be one of the cool, smart people, but I'll be on your show probably quite a bit. I'll be funny, and that's why I make up for being stupid. All my audience right now is going, yeah, that's right. Well, this is the funny boy, but he's an idiot. Anyway, guys, let's talk about what you do at your company there.

Agile Brand with Greg Kilstrom. You do consulting, speaking. You have an academy. Let's talk a little bit about some of what you do for companies and companies that might be listening, how they can reach out to you and work with you. Yeah, yeah. So I do a few things. So I do speaking and workshops and training under the Agile brand.

And so that's things related to marketing level overview, overview to teams or actually do hands on exercises and, and workshops to really, you know, get in the weeds and, and, and prioritize efforts and things like that. I also do consulting through a company called GK5A. And that's, that is me as an advisor or consultant to companies, you know, in the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 space on, you know, the same types of topics. And, you know, in the fortune 500, fortune 1000 space on, you know, the, the same types of topics. And, you know, a lot of times I'll be part of a team that, that works to solve some of these problems. Sometimes I'll work as a, as an advisor to a CMO or, you know, SVP of marketing or something like that, just as they're trying to figure out the, the steps ahead and, uh, really guide a lot of teams into doing some, you know,

some big transformation efforts. There you go. There you go. Anything more we need to touch on with what you do in consulting? And I imagine are the thrust of most of your 11 books, they about customer service or give us kind of overview on some of the things you talk. Yeah.

I mean, I write about what I learn in my work and I also write in order to learn more. So, you know, I do, I do about what I learn in my work, and I also write in order to learn more. So, you know, I do research to write the books, but I also write about my firsthand experience and, you know, some of the challenges that I run into. And, you know, they're really for anybody in the marketing or customer experience field. But a lot of the companies I work with, they're larger companies. So I talk about some of the challenges that just exist within, you know, big brands that we all know and buy products from. But, you know, they have their own unique set of challenges. I've been an entrepreneur.

I've started a couple of companies. I've been, you know, I've done startups. I know what it's like to have a one to 50 person company as well. But a lot of the work that I'm, or the work that I do now as a consultant is really for the, for the larger ones. There you go. I think I'm going to start a speaking tour and it's going to be called fuck

Zen desk. I'm going to do a Ted talk on that. I mean, I, I'm sure they're a nice company with wonderful people, but, um, that in chat bots,

I think I'm, I have a big, I like, i want to find everybody who uh sold companies to do chatbots i want to find a way to hit them over the head um so uh just just in a literal sense not in a violence form uh unless i meet them personally no i'm just kidding those jokes people we're just doing jokes on the ship don't write me um but uh no, the chatbots are the worst because the chatbots many times just run you in circles. In the end, it's like, hi, the chatbot just ran you in circles for about a half an hour with idiot questions.

And in the end, we're just going to respond to you by email. So just respond to me by email. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's really frustrating. I think there's a lot of potential in that space, but I've, like you, I've gotten the runaround several times. And yeah, just inevitably, how do I just send someone an email if you just would have let me know that? It's like the call tree things when you call your bank or whatever. It's just like, I just know I hit pound. Like I don't even, you know, and sometimes it works. Sometimes it's a different button, but I just, I don't even listen to anything. I just like get me to customer service because whatever, whatever your options are, they're never going to solve the question that I have. I can check my, my balance on my phone.

You know, I don't need to call into a phone to check my balance. Like when I call in, I really need a problem because I don't like talking to people on the phone. That's the other thing I hate. When they go, they go, have you tried our app? Our app can get to you sooner. And you're like, yeah, I've looked at your app. It's a piece of garbage.

I can't find anything when I need there. And that's why I'm calling you because your app doesn't work. They're like, meanwhile, go to our app. You know, just like everything sends the message that like F you. We don't have time for you. We don't want you. And then even worse, you know, they'll tell message that like, F you. We don't have time for you. We don't want you. And then even worse, they'll tell you, I still care about you. It's kind of like my first seven marriages.

And just basically like, yeah, I kind of love you. Just keep the money rolling. And yeah, I don't want anything else to do with you. That's basically the first seven marriages. I know what you mean. Seven or eight. I can't keep track anymore. I think we're on the ninth. I don't know what that means. Anyway, that's a joke. People have been eight. I know what you mean. Seven or eight. I can't keep track anymore. I think we're on the ninth.

I don't know what that means. Anyway, that's a joke, people. I've been single. I'm never a nerd. But anything more we want to tease or touch on? I see a lot of your books are based on customer service, how companies can develop better processes on stuff. And, man, I need to catch up with you.

It took me 54 years to write my first book. At this pace, I'll be 102 when the second one comes out. You know, never too late. Like I said, I write so I can learn more. I feel like it's part of my job really to do this stuff. I love

doing it. There's a lot of people that don't love doing it. I think there's a lot of ways to share knowledge. Evidently, I can't do this stuff. So I love doing it. There's a lot of people that don't love doing it. And I think there's a lot of ways to share knowledge, but there you go. Evidently I can't do math either. It would be underneath, but I don't know. We're doing the show, man. There's a lot going on here. Yeah. Yeah. Don't blame me. I went to public school. Everyone knows that. So anyway, thank you for coming on the show, Greg. We really appreciate it, man. It's been very insightful and yeah, let's start a, let's start a new customer service revolution damn it i want one man i've

got my pitchfork and i've got my torches ready i'm ready i'm ready to go man like i'm i'm over it and uh companies need to get it like i see you see all these companies going trying to figure out how to make more money and you know the bottom line giving us the bottom line and how to make these workers more productive you know we're seeing a lot out how to make more money. And, you know, the bottom line, Gary, is the bottom line. And how to make these workers more productive. You know, we're seeing a lot of laughs going on because people are like, well, we don't have enough revenue. You know, what was interesting was back in the day when IBM, I think, hit its first recession or its first downturn of revenue, one of the ways they kept from laying off employees,

they turned everybody into a salesman and retained them. And that's how they drove up sales and saved the company or pulled it out of the recession. I don't remember what the story was back in the day. But just by doing that, increasing the bottom line, like here's an idea. Maybe to lay off all those employees, maybe put them on customer service. Right, right. Maybe take them off that Zendesk thing and move it from three days to like now. Yeah.

You know? I know, I know. With that many more people, they probably could. Yeah. There's the money right there. You know, one of the things we found is we deal with a lot of PR agents. And, you know, we do a lot of shows and CS show and South by Southwest, NAB show. And we do all lot of shows and CS show and South by Southwest and AB show. And we do all these shows.

And for decades we work with in a lot of our review products. Uh, you know, we do reviews of tech products. Um, we work with PR agents. And one thing that seems to have happened here, as I can tell over COVID is all the companies said,

well, fuck it. We're not, we're cutting that overhead of PR agents. And so they've taken some guy who runs, uh know who's doing the uh who's some employee who's doing i don't know warehousing job running the forklift and now he's over marketing a customer service and pretending to try to be a pr agent he doesn't understand anything yeah we're doing you know like why do we need to send you a product to review? This just

seems expensive. You're just like, do you understand this is a write-off? There's a TikTok joke here somewhere. What's a write-off? It's where you're going. It's like a write-off and you're not sending us the retail product

for cost. You're sending us the $300 product you spent $50 in China to make. You're out $50 and you're not sending us the retail product for cost. You're sending us the $300 product you spent $50 in China to make. Yeah, I know. So you're off $50, and you're writing it off. But do you understand the marketing? The marketing conversations I have with these people are just insane. And I'm like, you really need to go get your PR agent back because they know what's going on.

And this is the reason you don't have sales is because Forklift Jack is running marketing. Right, right. Yeah, you know, I mean, marketing is always the first thing to get cut when there's a downturn. Yeah, it's the last place you should cut. The last place you should cut. Like anytime we had to do cutdowns, I was like, fire me first. Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, like, take my salary. You know, don't cut sales, man. Don't cut sales. Slit your own throat. That's what you're doing. So this has been a really important discussion, and hopefully a lot of people right now are shamed about having their chatbots and their Zendesk.

But, you know, customer service is still a human-to-human thing. Like, I have people that will write me back and they'll be like uh is this a bot because it sounds like the ceo i'm like no it's actually a customer it's actually me because i give a shit yeah and uh i care what this doesn't happen yeah it does does with my company so So, yeah, I give a damn. Wow, that's weird. Yeah, well, welcome to my world. I'm a Gen Xer.

I come from Tom Peter in search of excellence. I want to make you happy. I want to keep you as a customer because getting a new customer, especially in the digital world, is even harder, I think, because there's so much competition, especially with the online ads you have and everything else. So there you go. Well, it's been wonderful having the show, Greg.

Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, sure. It's gregkillstrom.com. You can find everything there. And my consulting is gk5a.com as well. There you go. Check him out, guys, online. Follow him on all the different social media platforms there. He's 13 platforms or wherever he's on social media.

House of the Customer, a blueprint for one-to-one customer-first, employee-driven business transformation. I love the idea and concept. You can order the book now for pre-sale. Available, I think, December 11, 2022. We'll ship out to you. You can get this as a nice Christmas gift, too. It's right before the holiday. So order it for a Christmas gift.

Get your customer service fix right. It's 2023. We're going to make a lot of money next year, knock on wood. Hopefully, but it's looking that way. We're finally out of this whole COVID thing. So we're supposed to be knocking on wood some more. There's a lot of knocking for that one. And people are like, why is there

knocking going on the show? What's going on with the mic? But check that out as well, guys. As always, refer the show to your family, friends, relatives. Guilt trip them. You know, make them, shame them or guilt trip them into subscribing the show. You're like, you know, you'd be a whole lot smarter and I could put up with you and I might be more

interested in the bedroom with you if you would subscribe to the Chris Foss show and also pick up your socks and underwear, guys. Anyway, that's just a joke, people, but your wife did send me that on Snapchat. So anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to go to youtube.com for it says Chris Voss. Go to goodreads.com for it says

Chris Voss, and linkedin.com Chris Voss, whatever the hell it is. You know what's going on on LinkedIn. And yeah, tell your wife to quit sending me stuff on Snapchat. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for putting up with the Snapchat callback joke this episode. What the fuck? It's different every time.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you next time if we do another one. We've only been doing it for 13 years, but yeah, there's a lot more. And see me on Greg's show as well. It's going to be funny, man. I'm going to make him laugh so hard he's going to be like, why did I bring this idiot on?

Thanks for tuning in, guys. Bye-bye.