The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Secret to Post-Click Psychology: Turn Eyeballs Into Loyal Buyers

Episode Date: February 15, 2026

The Secret to Post-Click Psychology: Turn Eyeballs Into Loyal Buyers Smartpandalabs.com About the Guest(s): Shamir Duverseau is the Managing Director at Smart Panda Labs, a technical marketing agency. With over 15 years in marketing and leadership roles, Shamir has worked with major brands like Southwest Airlines, The Walt Disney Company, and NBC Universal. Previously the Senior Director in digital strategy and services for Marriott International’s Vacation Club Division, Shamir co-founded Smart Panda Labs to harness his expertise in both marketing and technical spheres, aiming to improve the post-click experience for consumers. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, Chris welcomes digital marketing expert Shamir Duverseau to discuss the intricacies of technical marketing and the importance of the post-click experience. As the managing director of Smart Panda Labs, Shamir delves into how his company helps B2C enterprises optimize user experience on websites to convert traffic into loyal customers. The conversation spans topics from post-click psychology to technological marketing adaptations, highlighting the necessity of understanding customer behavior and simplifying complex shopping experiences online. The duo explore the vast potential that lies in improving the ‘post-click experience’, underscoring how businesses can unlock conversion opportunities by making their digital customer interactions seamless and intuitive. In discussing the common pitfalls in digital marketing strategies and MarTech stacks, Shamir explains how Smart Panda Labs assesses and addresses gaps in client operations to create robust sales experiences and strategy roadmaps. With insights into optimizing advertising spend and improving ROI through savvy digital experiences, Shamir shares practical advice while drawing from his vast experience in working with significant industry players. Key Takeaways: Post-Click Psychology: Engaging customers effectively after they click on an ad is crucial to converting them into buyers, primarily by minimizing friction and simplifying interactions. Importance of Seamless User Experience: Simplifying the complexities of online shopping can lead to better conversions and repeated business. Leveraging MarTech Stacks: Many companies underutilize their marketing technologies, running at just 20% of their capacity, leaving room for significant improvements. Tailored Strategy Roadmaps: Building a customized roadmap helps companies maximize their digital potential by outlining clear paths and methodologies for enhanced customer experience. Focus on Customer Satisfaction: Excellent customer service and experience can significantly impact repeat business, as seen with brands employing thoughtful, personalized touchpoints. Notable Quotes: “The internet brings an interesting mix of the creativity of marketing, the technical aspects of IT, and the product aspects of what you’re selling.” “If something has to be complicated, let’s not make the things that don’t have to be complicated, complicated.” “On the corporate side, I found that marketing people tend to be very creative, which is great. But they also tend to shy away from anything that’s technical.” “If you’ve got, if you spent the money to get someone to the site, it only makes sense to spend money where people are spending the majority of their time.” “When those two things collided. So was born Smart Panda Labs.”

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Today we're joined by a wonderful young man. Shamir Duversso is on the show. with us today. He's the managing director of a company that's called Smart Panda Labs. And evidently what they do is they hire pandas that are really smart and they get them in the labs to do science and stuff or something. No, we're going to find out. Anyway, that's why you got to wait to find out. Shamir is responsible for business management, marketing, and business development for the company. He has worked across numerous industries from travel to entertainment to technology, working with brands like, Southwest Airlines, the Walt Disney Company, and NBC Universal. During his last 15 years of marketing and leadership roles,

overseeing everything from product management to digital strategy, including yours to your experience, web development, testing, web analytics. Prior to Smart Labs, he was the scene director in digital strategy and services for the Maria International Vacation Club Division. Welcome the show. How are you, sir? I'm very good. Thank you so much for having me.

Congrats, by the way, on almost 3,000 episodes. That's pretty incredible. And thank you for referring to me as a young man. So great start. You like to gas up our guests and make them feel really good about themselves. And you don't look at a day over 30. So you and me. Well, more than you.

So. coms, where do you want people to find out more about you guys on the interwebs? Yes, smart panda labs.com is the best place to go to learn about us and what we're doing as an agency. And certainly to learn more about me. You can follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I guarantee you you will not find another Shemir Duru So on either of those platforms. So I should be pretty easy to find. You got that great unique name.

Yes. He's to get your dot-coms and stuff. So give us a 30,000 over you, what you guys do at Smart Panda Labs. And how many pandas do you have over there? We have a whole zoo full of pandas. We do a lot of things at the lab. The name doesn't at all speak to kind of what we do other than the fact that we definitely are about the science of it. Right.

So we're a technical marketing agency and we help enterprise companies. companies with their technical marketing efforts, particularly around the kind of experience they want to deliver to their customers once they actually get to the website, once they start interacting with the company, making decisions about what to buy and what happens after that. Ah, with what to buy. Now, is it a SaaS service or looks like it's B to C? How does it, how does it basically work? How do people sign up with the agency and integrate themselves into what you do or vice versa or both? Yeah. So the way that we kind of, to describe it to people is we kind of think of a typical situation, right? You're driving home

from work one day and you decide, you know what? I need to stop and pick up a box of cereal. I just realized I'm out. You know, I need to get something for the kids to eat in the morning. I swing by, hit the parking lot, run inside the store. Fortunately, I kind of sort of know the store, so I know where to go. I'm able to read the aisles. I find my box of cereal. And I run and I get to the checkout counter and all of a sudden there's only four lines open. Self-checkouts broken. the lines are like 20 people long and you say to yourself, I'm tired, I'm not doing this. You put the box of cereal on the nearest shelf and you leave and you're like, I'll come figure this out later.

I'm not dealing with this now. So what we refer to that as is the post-click experience. So you've gotten someone to come to your store. In our case, you've gotten someone to come to your website. Now, what are you doing to make it as easy for them as possible to actually do what you want them to do, to fill out the form, to make a purchase, whatever the case is? So what we do is we help companies by means of our consulting services to do that, right? What do they need to design?

What do they need to build? What do they need to research in order to help people make those kinds of decisions and get them all the way through the checkout? And hopefully get them to actually say, this was such a great experience. This is such a great product. I want to come back and I want to buy from this brand again. I want to do business with these people again. You know, it all makes a difference in the quality of stuff that you do. Now, how long have you guys been around for?

we've been around for let's see this year will be actually this month actually will be 16 years since we got started oh wow 16 years yeah that's quite a long time now have you been with them the whole time or did you help launch the company i did yeah i'm one of the i'm actually one of the co-founders i launched the company a bit on the side as i was kind of finishing up my time at marriott and then fortunately it was a side gig at first um but then it's enough that i was able to to quit my day job and make this my day job. And I've been happy for 16 years ever since. Ah, that works out well in getting all the stuff done. You did a lot of things before this. You worked for Disney and other places and Marriott, a few other Southwest Airlines, NBC Universal.

What sort of things did you do there that help kind of lead you in this direction of eventually, I guess, working for yourself? Yeah. So I started my career, my professional career, working with Southwest Airlines, working with their vacation packages, and I was actually in product marketing at the time. And as I was doing that, one of the things I kind of picked up on was whenever something got a little bit more technical, more complicated, I felt comfortable doing it, and everyone else kind of shied away from it. So they kind of threw all that stuff at me.

So I got really comfortable, really fast with the technical stuff. It was about the time early 2000s when the Internet was really taking off and really becoming a big, big part of any corporations, any organizations, organization's business. People started throwing more and more and more resources at this internet thing and trying to figure out, okay, how do we make that grow? By that time, I'd gone to NBC Universal. I was working with some of their internet partners, you know, like Expedia and those kinds of guys. And then they said, you know what, we need more people on the actual team working with our website. So, Shmere, guess what? You have a new job. You're now going to, instead of doing this,

you're now going to do this. You know, I had a good mentor there. I grabbed a couple of books, back when people actually used to read books. I read up on coding and more technical aspects of things. And I started actually getting into the Internet and kind of learning that world all a sudden. And I kind of grew up with it as it kind of got bigger and bigger and became more and more bohemouth going into the late 2000s, early 2010s, mid-2010s. That's where I kind of came up, kind of learning that world and all that was involved in it.

Oh, wow. And now you decided to quit marketing for a while at that time. or just quit and start your own agency? I decided to quit and start my own agency. What I kind of found was a couple of things. So on the one hand, on the corporate side, I found that a lot of the issues and challenges that we were having across the companies I worked for,

whether it was Universal or Disney or Marriott, was the fact that marketing people tend to be very creative, which is great, but they also tend to shy away from anything that's technical. And again, as I kind of mentioned, that was something that I kind of learned to be good at, and the internet, you can't really avoid it, it's going to get technical. I mean, it's the internet, right?

It's on a computer. It's going to get technical. The internet brings an interesting mix of the creativity of marketing, the technical aspects of IT and engineering and software, the product aspects of what it is that you're actually selling. And having all those things really kind of hopefully kind of morphed together in a way that makes sense and allows the business to actually be in business and actually do business online.

Yeah. But people have a lot of challenges with that. But I found that was something I was good at. So once I kind of realized that, I said, I can help other people to be able to be good at that. I can kind of fill that gap. I can kind of bridge that world. I can be the translator at the table where marketing is speaking French and engineering is speaking Japanese. And I can kind of be that person in the middle, that diplomat that helps them kind of figure out exactly what they want to do and ultimately kind of serve themselves and their customers and get home in a decent hour because they're not banging their heads against the wall.

So that was one reason. That was one thing that kind of took me in the direction. The other thing that took me in the direction was, frankly, I really wanted a lot more personally control on my schedule. I just wanted to do the things I wanted to do in life. I do a lot of volunteer work. So those things were really important to me. And that was the time when remote work was very scarce.

And when you didn't find a remote job, it was one of those things where it's, yeah, you can work remote. Just make sure you push this button once every 10 minutes so that we know you're sitting there at your desk at the time. I was like, you know, I could find a remote job, but, you know, that's not giving me much latitude. So I kind of came to the conclusion, the only way I could get the latitude I wanted is if I was my own boss and was able to give myself the latitude. So those two kind of worlds kind of collided.

Hey, I found I'm pretty good at this. I found that I really wanted a little bit more control over my schedule and my life, but I wanted to put certain things first when those two things collided. So it was born, SmartPang Labs. Oh, well, the, you know, working for yourself, I mean, there's just nothing like it. I mean, it's challenging. It's, it can be dangerous because, you know, you're, you're like, hey, you know, what if this doesn't work out? That's always the thing. Now, one of the things you guys talk about is this, this concept of post-click psychology. Let's get in the framework of this. And how does it turn traffic into committed buyers? Yeah. So, right, we go back to that.

that idea of that store, right, running in that supermarket. And all the things that need to happen, all the things that need to go right to be able to make that purchase, right? So being able to quickly find that box of cereal, being able to go to checkout, being able to check out quickly. And like the example I gave, it wasn't like, you know, you or I can't stay in line for, you know, whatever it is, the 10 minutes or 15 minutes it takes to buy the box of cereal. It's that, it's a hassle. As human beings, we don't like hassle. Yeah. So really, experiences of buying online, it's really about taking away that perceived hassle.

And that's really about behavior and how people think and how people feel and how we make decisions about things. It's less about kind of the technical kind of one's zeros aspects of it. So what we kind of found was, as we started to think about this, it's really these psychological elements of how people's brains work, of how people sometimes are in a mode where they're making these fast, quick decisions. and sometimes they're in a mode where they have to really slow down and make more complex decisions. You know, behavioral scientists talk about this a lot. They talk about the part of your thinking and the part of the brain that operates when someone says, you know, hey, Chris, what's two plus two? And you say, you know, it's four.

Great. Super easy, right? I mean, you can do that and chew gum and walk at the same time. Like, it ain't no thing. But when someone says, hey, Chris, what's 17 times 34? And Chris, you may be a savant and I don't want to say you're not. But for most of us, normal people, you know, we have to stop. and think, okay, I can figure this out, but I am walking. I'm probably going to stop and I'm probably

going to look up and I'm going to need to visualize the numbers in my head. I might even close my eyes. It's going to take a lot more brain power, right? I need to start shutting things off to devote more brain power to this more complex decision, right? We want to keep people out of that complexity and we want to keep them in that simple aspect of their thinking. And that's what post-pick psychology is all about. It's about what are those kind of tips and tools and triggers that we can use on a website, in an email and a text message that as much as possible keep people either in that kind of simple what we call system one thinking

or at least keep them out of system two the more complex thinking as much as possible. Like they have to go in there sometimes because you have to think things through if you're buying an expensive vacation or you're making maybe a healthcare decision. But how do we kind of keep them out of that as much as possible and kind of keep the stress

and the pressure off so people can make those kind of decisions? And that's kind of the overall thinking and framework we use, as we're helping people work through their website, as we're helping them work through their communications and how they're working with their customers. Would you call that Keep It Simple, Stupid sort of thing? I would call it keep it as simple as it reasonably can be stupid. It's kind of thing. Because some things are just going to be complex. I mean, if you're shopping for a car or, you know, you're trying to find a hospital to maybe to treat some serious condition. Like, it's going to get, it's serious.

Like it's going to take thought. Some of the stuff's not going to be very simple, right? So if something has to be complicated, then that's not like the things that don't have to be complicated, complicated. Let's keep those things as simple as possible. That's kind of bring it down a notch, right, so that people are in a better frame of mind and they can kind of focus on what really matters. The focus on what really matters. Yeah, anytime you do option overload or too many options or too much, you know, I've had times where some people, you know, they'll give me some form that they want me to fell out and I'm just like, I don't have the kind of time for that. I'm just trying to buy some

shit from you, man. Like, why are you making this? I got more hoops to jump through than, you know, whatever. And on top of that, and then half the time you buy something, you got to review it. Yeah. Everybody wants to review on every damn thing I buy now. It's like, but yeah, it's, it's option overload can just paralyze stuff. And a lot of times I'll just be like, I'll just come back whenever. And so I imagine, you know, one of the things you guys combat is, the cart abandonment sort of situation, right? Absolutely. Yeah. You gave an example of the hassle, right, of going online and filling out this form and, you know, ticking this box. And by the time you do it, it's just, I don't, again, I don't have time for this. But you compare it to, you know,

you and I probably both bought things on Amazon. And sometimes, you know, you buy something on Amazon. Like you bought it before you even realized you didn't think. Like, yeah. All of a sudden, you just spent 50 bucks. And it's just, oh, okay, I guess I spent that 50 bucks. You know, that's understanding how to make things so easy for people. They just kind of slide into the sale. And that's what you're trying to do, right? You're trying to create that kind of experience for whatever your product or service is as much as you can. Amazon sure knows how to make it simple, though, on the seamlessly of it, you know.

And I mean, the other thing is, too, is you can, you build this trust with Amazon that you know you can return something. Yep. So you could be a little more what's the right word, flippant. I don't know if this is going to work out, but I can always return it, you know, Like sometimes, you know, maybe you don't fully understand a product or the comparisons or, you know, I've gotten products that they're nothing like what they, what they purport to be. And now with AI, they can make pictures that make it look like the product works. Like I just bought a, I just bought some, it looked like a walking octopus that your dog would play with that was covered in, you know, stuff that would just sustain their biting. And it looked like the octopus walked.

And the 3D pictures showed it walking or video. And when it came, the legs don't operate at all. You can stand it up, but it just falls down. And it's, they're just, it was a total scam. But, you know, Amazon will return it. So, yeah, keeping it simple, you know, with Amazon, I mean, you can just buy now. It keeps your credit cards. And if not, it goes and hunts for another credit card.

I always like how if the one credit card you use, it doesn't go through. you don't hear about it. Just later it's, yeah, we build this other credit card. We took care of that for you. Don't worry about it. Yeah, we took care of that. We have 50 of your credit cards or whatever on. When I go to Amazon, there's this list of credit cards.

I'm like, and half of them have been changed or, you know, outdated or whatever. It's like probably 10 of them. I need to go in there and just delete or update the thing. But yeah, making it easier. You just want to make the buying process easier. The one concept you had, I kind of had an aha moment on it, is this is a way to dramatically get more conversions from traffic that you're already paying for.

You know, you're paying for the ads, right? You're paying for this to get the eyeballs on your stuff. You want to maximize your ROI, your return on investment, you know? Otherwise, you're just going to have to blow more money in ads and lose more abandoned carts. That's exactly it. And I think a lot of times people don't think about that. I think, you know, meta and Google and all those guys do a great job making you think that you go

in their platforms and you put in your credit card and you buy a whole bunch of ads and people are just going to come and they're going to purchase and, you know, and you're done and, you know, Bob's your uncle and rock and roll, right? I got everything I need and it's never that simple. You know, people spend mere moments interacting with an ad. The time they spend is what happens after they click on the ad. That's the post-click experience because that's where they're actually learning and making a decision as to what it is they do or don't want to do.

If you spent the money to get someone to the site, it only makes sense to say, spend the money even more so where people are spending the majority of their time to help them make that decision. And if you really do it right, and you think about it, if you do it right, not only do you get them to buy the first time, but you establish a relationship with that person,

and now they'll come back again, and now you don't have to pay for it. You pay for it once, and you get them to come back and become a customer for the next several months or years or whatever the case may be. So you built all this value over that initial purchase, and it wasn't about how pretty your ad was. It was about what happened after that click and the kind of service you were able to deliver

through that experience and then subsequently after that. Yeah. That post-sale service is important, too. Absolutely. It just really is. Now if I could just get people to quit using chatbots, that would be great. That's that in Zendesk. You know, I'm not even going to get into that.

That's a whole... That's a whole other episode. I'll be bitching for an hour of that. Now, you talk about how MARTEC stacks only run at 20% capacity and you help people fix it. What are Mark, or MarTech stacks for people who don't know like me? Yeah, so MarTech is short for marketing technology, right? Oh! So it's the technologies that run the things in the internet, right?

So the technologies that manage the content on a website or send out email communication. or send out text messages or, you know, gather data about the people on the site and what they're doing. It's all those kinds of technologies. And the reason we know they only want at 20% is because oftentimes the people who sell those technologies will kind of go into the company. And a lot of times they'll sell to the marketing folks. And they'll say, you put this magical tool in and all you have to do is press this one little simple button and it will do all these wonderful things for you.

And it's never that simple, right? So they go in and they start using this tool. but because they don't understand the complexities behind it, they only use a fraction of what the tool can do. They only use the things that happen when you press the one little button. Like maybe 20% of the things it can do, but that's all you know how to do. But if you really understood the tool and what's able to do,

if you're able to work with the other people in the company to help do it, to work with the engineers and the software developers and all those other folks in the organization, now all of a sudden you're running this thing at full speed, right? Now all of a sudden you're shifting in the fifth gear. I don't know if the kids know what fifth gear is anymore, but all of a sudden you're running a fifth gear, right, and you're able to really maximize this and run this engine at full speed.

Do they even know what gears are? I grew up, I don't know about you, but I grew up in the age where the, oh yeah, on the side. Everything was on the side of the steering column. Absolutely. You shift that way, right? He had three gears, I think it was.

I think it was three gears in reverse. Reverse might have been one of the gears. I think it was parked driving. In reverse, I think that was it. Maybe like low or something. There might have been, yeah. But yeah, that was a crazy days. We should bring those days back.

I should. That way I can be like, hey, I got a car for you. Here you go. And there's a, there's a clutch. So, what are you? What is the third pedal for? That's right. Break.

Where's the button for the window? How do I put the button? Where's the button? For the power window and the power locks. You're going to do not have a, this steering wheel is kind of thin. Do I have a bag in there? No, man, you don't have seat belts either. So have fun with that.

But you're in something big enough that can be a casket. So what else have we talked about that you guys offer with your services, the work you do? Yeah. So we kind of fill whatever gaps or roles that the company needs, right? So it could be the upfront research and strategy and planning that they need help with. It could be the design and the actual coding and development of the elements on the site or emails or things like that need help with. Actually building those things in their system. It could be just kind of managing it on an ongoing basis and maintaining it, measuring what's happening, making sure they're making improvements and tweaks and changes.

Because none of these things are really set it and forget it. I mean, they can't be. Like things are changing way too fast for anything to set it and forget it. So a lot of those things that need that maintenance and kind of improvement over time on a constant basis. So you kind of had that whole spectrum of things that need to happen. And with some organizations, we find they just need one or two of those. And some of them need the whole thing. Some of them just need it for the website and some of them needed for their communications or both.

So we're able to be kind of flexible and kind of fill whatever gap that needs to be filled to make those things happen. And because we understand both the marketing side, the creativity and the technical side, the engineering, the coding aspects of it, we're able to kind of do that glue that diplomat I talked about that's able to. sit down at the table and say, okay, marketing, what do you want? Okay, this is how you translate this to engineering. Engineering, this is what they're asking for. So what kind of specs do you need specifications? Do you need engineering to make that happen? Okay, great, I'll get that from the marketing folks, right? So you're able to make that translation back and forth, so that things are able to move forward smoothly. And that's ultimately what we end up doing, and we just fill the gap that the organization

has in terms of how to accomplish that and move that forward and do it. So what is the client for you that qualifies working? for you looks like. So usually they're a large company, probably somewhere, north of $100 million, maybe up to maybe $2 or $3 billion. Usually they are, we work mainly with B to C companies, so people that work direct, their marketing directly to consumers. And a lot of times, we've been most of our time with high consideration purchases.

Not so much like T-shirts and books, more like travel packages and cruises and health care. and online education, right? So some of those more intense decisions that need to happen online, higher price point, more risk, more emotional risk to the decision, things where people need to figure things out, they need to talk to the spouse, they need to talk to the family, right? Those kinds of decisions are the ones that we work with because, again, that's where those psychological factors tend to come more into play. That's where making sure the appropriate information there is really coming more into play. So those are the ones that we mostly focus on.

All right. Do they need to have a minimum net worth or spend, a minimum spend or anything special, the size of company, small, medium, large? Not really. I mean, as long as they're relatively sizable company, like I said, probably about north of $100 million in revenue. By that, by nature of that, their spend and how much they're spending and marketing and what they're investing and what they're trying to do on the internet is by nature going to kind of afford itself to be the kind of company that we would work with. to have the kind of technology that we would help them to put into place and to maximize and make sure they're really using it and using it well and getting the most out of whatever they're paying for those technologies right so if they're using things like sales force or you know those kind of heavy big technologies to really help them kind of figure out okay like what do we do with this so that we're just like like lighting money on fire every time we pay this bill

or we're actually getting something out of it and and we're using it to actually make us money Are we lining money on fire when we get this bill? Wait, I think you described my whole bill payment systems for the month. Is that your system? Yeah, pretty much lining money on fire. Yeah. I just got a new Husky, and it's a husky puppy, and he's pretty much lighting most of my money on fire when it comes to chewable treats

and whatever else he decides to destroy. I said he absolutely kidding, so I can empathize with you there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He just chewed up a cord to a heater, space heater. Just to shred the whole thing. It was fun. It was fun for him, evidently.

Yeah, fortunately, it wasn't plugged in. I did the Alexa cord, Chi-Chi. He chewed to the Alexa cord. That was nice. Wow. That was done. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

I, you think, I mean, I stuck my fingers once in a plug, and that was it for me. I didn't want to deal with electricity directly anymore. And, but yeah, I guess you got to learn. So you guys have something on your website called the Digital Experience Strategy Roadmap. Tell us what that is and how that plays into your work with your clients. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times people don't know exactly what they need, right? They know they need help, but they don't know exactly where the gaps are.

They just know that things aren't flowing, things aren't working, but they're not sure where it's kind of tripping up in the process. So what we kind of do is we kind of do a bit of an assessment and we then develop a roadmap that kind of says, okay, here's where you're tripping up. Here are the things that you need to do to move forward. So you think about a company that maybe wants to have. Amazon-like experience, right? Like, wow, that cool stuff that Amazon does,

that we want to do that stuff. We want to be personalized. When people come to the website, we want to recommend, you should buy this product or you should buy that product or whatever the case is, right? But they don't know the 25 things

that need to happen to make that experience come to life. So the roadmap process helps us assess where they are and basically say, all right, here are the 25 things that need to happen, and here's the order in which they need to happen to do it. Do you need us to help you do it? Do you need us to help you find people to do it?

Are you guys able to do it internally, which is cool too, right? But just kind of like, here's what needs to happen. And here's generally the order in which it needs to happen to be able to do that. So that's what that roadmap's about. It's about giving them kind of a plan of action to say, here's how you get from point A to point B. Here's the path you need to take in order to get there and reach your destination. And people can register for a free consultation or book a call with you guys?

Absolutely. Yeah. It's obviously no obligation. It's free. We'll have a chat. And the thing about us is to, if we're not a good fit, if we're not going to work out for you, we'll be happy to tell you. We had a conversation maybe about two months ago with TripAdvisor, which would have been an awesome client for us. I mean, you know, who wouldn't want to work with TripAdvisor.

That's just cool. And it'd be great to get some inside information on trips. But we ended up telling them, like, we're not a good fit for what you need. And we kind of turn them down. And that's kind of how we are. Like, you know, we don't want to be in a situation where we're not going to have a good relationship. And just like when you're dating, I mean, it's a lot better if after the first or second date, when you realize that maybe we're not too compatible, that's kind of ending now before it turns

a lawyer. That's kind of how we are when it comes to our relationships with potential clients. That's pretty smart because, I mean, bad clients can be bad clients. Or if it just doesn't work, it's not seamless. It says here on your website, 223 percent return for every dollar invested in website optimizations. Companies can get a return of 223 percent. which is pretty good. And it's money you're already spending. So you're just maximizing the ROI.

Exactly. I mean, some companies, you know, they spend additional dollars on that to make sure they're maximizing the ROI on their ad spend. Some companies get started by maybe diverting a portion of their ad spend to improving what happens post-click, right? And they end up seeing just as good, if not better results. And they're actually not spending a dollar more. They're actually just kind of diverting funds to, again, where people are spending their time. So there's all kinds of ways to do it that end up putting them in a, a much, much better position than they would have been before. No. What a more have, should I be asking you or anything I've missed that you want people to know about you guys to do in business with you? No. I mean, just that, you know, obviously, you know,

we've been doing this now for 16 years. It's funny. Chris, when we started doing this work, we started as kind of what we call a full service agency, which means we kind of did anything, because we were starting out. And if you wanted me to pick up your dry cleaning or wash your car or shang your shoes, like we would have done that because we were starting. Yeah, and we just run on anything. But it's funny, over the years, we started to kind of shed different services and really kind of focus on what we do now, which is this technical marketing post-click experience aspect for two main reasons.

Number one, it's because we liked it better. We didn't really enjoy doing the other stuff. And two, frankly, we weren't really good at doing the other stuff. Like, this is the stuff that we're good at. And it's probably the best decision we made when we kind of just shed those other services and said, that's just focused on what we enjoy the most and what we're good. good at. And not only are we happier, we got better at it, right? Because we weren't distracted by kind of the other stuff. That's what we're about. And that's, and we enjoy helping companies. And more

important, Chris, frankly, we enjoy helping people. Because in the end, it's nice to be able to say, hey, you know, your company got whatever, you know, another $10 million in sales or, you know, you got, you know, 3,000 more customers or whatever. And that's all fine and good. And I mean, we enjoy that. But in, in the end, it's about helping you. It's about, helping Chris, right? It's about helping you look good to get the promotion, to get the next job, to get home at a decent hour because you're not getting stressed out by some big project. That's what we're really focused on. So if I want anyone to know anything about us, it's about that we started this company because we're focused on the things that are important

to us and putting our life first. We want the clients that we work with. We want them to put their life first too, and we want to make them look good. And that matters more to us than how much we can increase conversion for whatever, you know, a million-dollar company. all that fun stuff. Great service. And customer experience is so important. I mean, more people need to monitor it. I really wish I could force like cable companies and CEOs and other people to see the service front end. I just had, I was trying to close one of my checking accounts with, I think it was P and C Bank. What a freaking nightmare just to get somebody on the line or talk to somebody then Riggermore just to close the check account. It was almost like trying to close your AOL account.

Remember how that used to be a thing back in a good day? It really became something. They're like, you can only close your account if these things apply. It's like, you know, you're not negative, you know, you don't owe money. And there's no pending things. And it's just like a backup account we had for a long time. We're just like, yeah, we really don't use that. And it was charging us every month fees.

And so finally we just, you know, American Express and Capital One and other banks, we don't have fees. So I'm like, why are we paying this stupid $8 a month for this crap? Man, it was like getting away from AOL, man. It was rough. They're like, are you sure that you don't know, I don't know if any money? I'm like the account's, you know, still got $10 in it. I'm sure we're okay there, buddy. You know, just close, I mean, anything to keep from close the account or just experience,

you know, the chat bots are nightmarish. Zendesk is nightmarish. I personally hate both of them. To me, when I run into most of those things, I just look at companies and go, you really don't give a fuck about customer service. at all. Don't even fucking bother with me. You know, the AI shits getting to be the worst. And if you start swearing in it now, it just puts you off more. Can you reframe the question? And it's, I'm a pissed off customer at this point. And you're asking me to continue to refree. You're,

your tone policing me, you know? And you just keep typing, give me a live customer. And I just like, F off. And, you know, I remember years ago, I think, I think Tom Peters sold this story in one of his books, everybody thriving on chaos. And you talking about there was this company that made the TV dinners. Remember those? They're still around, I think. Good for it. If I ever want to commit suicide, I'll just go eat some TV dinners.

Don't do that, folks. TV dinners, that's easy top song. And they couldn't figure out why sales are down. No one wanted to buy their TV dinners. One day, the CEO goes, hey, man, we're going to start having these TV dinners brought into the board room. And we have our board meetings, we're going to eat this crap we're making. that's when they found out why sales were down because they were like, shit, the customer experiences,

this stuff is garbage. It tastes like garbage. No wonder they're not buying it because we wouldn't eat it either. And, you know, there's more and more, you know, I used to have that habit. I learned that probably from that story in Tom Peters of tracking your customer's experience and where you lose them, where they fall out, where they, you know, where they don't feel appreciated or loved or, you know, It's, like, some of the best experiences I have is people put little notes. Like I buy a different expensive coffee that are highly rated.

And they'll put notes in the thing, just a simple note. And it just says, hey, man, thank you. We appreciate you doing business with us. Sometimes just those little teeny simple things. Huge. Just make all the difference. And I'm like, I don't want to order if those people again, they value my business. And then the review thing.

I don't know. Is there a way we can get that review thing to stop? probably not probably not damn it's just you feel so guilty because you're like hey we're going to fire bob if you don't review bob you're like i don't know bob i just had an interaction with him that bought some groceries and they're like uh yeah bob's got a wife and four kids and if he doesn't get good reviews we're going to kick his can down the road he's going to live under the bi docking shit you're like god walmart this is a lot of pressure you're putting on me man for bob So give people a final pitch out and how they can onboard with you, how they can reach out for the emails, final, or free consultation, et cetera, et cetera.

Absolutely. Yeah. So feel free again. Find me on LinkedIn, Shamir Duverso or on Instagram and just DM me and reach out directly. If you have any questions, happy to answer them. Or you can go to our website, smartpanda labs.com. You can book a free discovery call. Happy to again have just a quick 30 minute or less chat and just figure out for a good fit for each other.

And hopefully we can help. Thank you, sir. for coming on the show and hopefully we educate some people and got some people to maybe improve their ROI. Call Shamir unless you love just burning money and throwing it out the window. You want to do that. Just have kids. I hear that's what children are like.

So it's like throwing your money out the window every day. So thanks for tuning into my audience. Go to Goodreads.com, Forchess Christch, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, forrest Chris Foss. Check them out at smart panda labs.com. You're not going to find any pandas, but I don't know. seems, you know, fluffy and nice. And so he's going to help you.

Maybe you can make enough money to buy some pandas. Yeah. If you save enough money, I don't know. Can you buy pandas? I don't think you have to lease them from China or something. Yeah, maybe not legally. I'm not sure. Yeah, probably not legally, though.

I'll give them stuff pandas, though. I think you guys, do you guys have a panda as a mascot sort of thing? We used to have a panda as a mascot. Yeah, we used to. Yeah. I can see like a smart one. You could make a panda and he has got one of those collars. ledge hats on or something.

They wear glasses and a lab coat. Yeah, glass lab coat. And he's, hmm, your marketing sucks. You need us. Exactly. He retired. Yeah, he retired. He's like, lived in mind. He's got to be kicked up. He's good. Hopefully he's sitting on the beach there. He's got us feet up in a

mitai or something in the thing there. Thanks for us for doing. Go to Goodrease.com. Fortress Christchristch, Christch, Christch, Christ, Foss, one, the Tickokkotkiti and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy.

Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed. Got to love the brain bleed.