The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 014 - Blake Morgan: The Customer of the Future

Episode Date: November 3, 2019

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comCustomer Experience Futurist, Blake Morgan, joins the podcast to talk about the "Experience Economy," artificial intelligence and why tomorrow's customers need to be targeted today. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys and welcome back to the show. I am Ryan Hanley and I'm just so incredibly happy that you're here and that you take time out of your day to listen to these podcasts and hopefully get some value out of them. Hopefully some things that you are applying to your life and to your career. I know I use these podcasts as little mini consulting engagements. I get lots of free consulting from these incredible thought leaders and I just have a book full of notes that I take during all the episodes. So I hope you're getting as much value out of these conversations as I am. Today's guest is Blake Morgan. She is an author, she is a speaker, and she is a customer experience futurist, meaning she's looking out at trends and out at what's

happening in the world with technology and just overall consumer buying behavior and those kind of things and trying to figure out what companies, what brands should be doing next. And I first came across her four years ago when she actually interviewed me for her podcast. It was fun to now have her on mine. And when I saw that she had written a new book, The Customer of the Future, I clicked through to Amazon and at the very top, I saw that she had written a new book, The Customer of the Future, I clicked through to Amazon and at the very top, I saw the very first sentence, tomorrow's customers need to be targeted today and I was like, hook, line, sinker, need to have Blake on. This is a tremendous conversation that you are absolutely going to love.

It's lots of points in here that you should be writing down, taking and applying to your business. So get ready for that. Before we go there, I got to give you the pitch. This is an ad-free podcast. I expect it to stay that way forever. That being said, I do want to reach as many people as I possibly can. And if you're enjoying this show, subscribing, clicking over to iTunes, leaving a rating and review on this show, subscribing, clicking over to iTunes, leaving a rating and review on the show, or just sharing with your friends, just telling other people about this show is the best way for you to help support this podcast. I love you for listening to this podcast. Let's get on to Blake. Blake, it's great to have you on the show. I appreciate you giving us some of your time and sharing your expertise with my audience

and those listening, wherever they're listening from. We actually, I don't know if you remember, but we did a podcast together. I was on your podcast, I think for Forbes that you were doing at the time. This was like four or five years ago. Yeah, of course I remember. Well, I saw that you had a new book coming out, your second book, The Customer of the Future. And I was like, oh, that looks interesting. And then I went to the Amazon page for the book, and I saw right across the top, the very first line in the description of the book, tomorrow's customers need to be targeted today, in big, bold letters. And I was like, I need to have Blake on. Like, I love that idea. I mean, you know, it just, it hooked me immediately.

So talk to me about that concept. Cause I think it's something that probably isn't necessarily an intuitive thought for, for many brands. So let's just start there. Well, thanks for checking out my book and I'm glad the message resonated with you. In your own life, you're probably having customer experiences that run the gamut. So you might use Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Apple products, and then from other companies, the company requires you as a customer to do a ton of work. And some of the most hated industries, these are companies guilty of making customers work, are cable, insurance, telecom. the same seamless zero friction customer experiences that they're having from these technology companies, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon. And so companies need to really catch up because

they're already very behind. And in the future, the market won't have room for companies that don't make customers' lives easier and better. And so the companies that will survive and even thrive are those that have one special secret sauce, and that is thoughtfulness. The company that thinks about the design of their products and services and obsesses over how is the customer actually using our products and how is it making their lives easier and better? This is the company of the future.

So you bring up insurance. And insurance is obviously where I've spent the last decade and a half of my life. And you couldn't be preaching more to the choir in that they've done so little to actually address the needs of customers beyond just kind of a take it or leave it mentality. And the few that have done even the very, very beginner steps of this idea of thoughtfulness seem to immediately stand out. And it is my life's work to get the rest of them to get on board. Although half the the time I feel like I'm just running headfirst into a brick wall. So in terms of insurance and I want to take this, um, so when you're, you're, you're crafting, um, uh, a product there's, there's this, uh, and it may be more, um, it may be more like just his epic than actual truth.

But there's this idea that Steve Jobs built a product not because customers were asking for it, but because he knew that's what they needed. And I think that in certain industries, like in insurance, they'd say, well, these customers have no idea what they actually want or even what our product does. So we're just going to give them what we think they need. How do you marry that idea with this idea of being thoughtful and building for the customer first and kind of massaging your product to meet their needs? So you mean the idea how how steve jobs famously felt like customer didn't really know what they

wanted and he knew better as a designer yes yeah i think that he was on to something i think customers can't always imagine what could be better they just know what they want they want immediacy they want zero friction. They want to have the ease of use of say the Uber experience or Lyft, where you literally don't touch cash. You jump in and out of cars that have been verified that you trust. And it's so easy and so much better than a taxi. So I think he was onto something. I would say now, I mean, clearly Apple does a lot of customer feedback and more traditional feedback loop types of processes where you're going to be asked, well, how was your experience today?

How can we make it better? But yeah, I think he was on to something. He was more looking at user behavior of consumer behavior in society and then imagining what is possible. And I think if you want to be innovative, that is the way to do it, to not get so bogged down with what your competitors are doing or what would you like to see from us. I think that's a very lazy approach, but rather to educate yourself, to read like crazy, to go out into the world and understand how societal behavior is changing and what's on the horizon, what's coming in the future, and how can you be inspired by

industries completely unrelated to your own and create experiences that consumers want. When I can remember walking around with a CD player and headphones. That's quite a cumbersome experience to know your CDs get scratched. I remember having like a whole book of CDs in my Honda Civic when I was 16 years old, listening to the same music over and over. That compared with the iPod, I mean, you just can't. You can't compare them. Some people listening might not even know what an iPod is.

They're so young. But the point is that he was looking at overall behavioral trends, which I think companies don't do enough of. They're very short-sighted. And I think, well, if we just ask a customer, what would make your life better with our company? I mean, that's still a noble pursuit, but taking that even a step further and being a futurist to look at the horizon, I think, is even better. Today in the news, you can see stories about the emissions standards in California. And a few automakers, Toyota and GM, are siding with the U.S. government to lower emission standards and roll them back to like a 1970s era air quality emission standards for their vehicles. And here's an example of companies and executives that have their head in the sand that don't see that young people want companies that are going to support sustainability,

that are going to leave less of a carbon footprint. And I just wrote something for Forbes that are going to support sustainability, that are going to leave less of a carbon footprint. And I just wrote something for Forbes that's going up today that I just don't understand how these executives can live with themselves, especially those who have children, because young people will vote with their wallet. And I foresee a huge boycott for these automakers that are supporting the rolling back of emission standards to a 1970s era period. And they're not seeing what's on the horizon, which are major challenges brought by climate change, and that young people care deeply about companies that have a soul that will

be interested in creating products and services that leave less of a carbon footprint. And so I think that's an example of companies not being futurists, of thinking only about short-term profits. And I can guarantee you these companies will suffer. They will suffer in the long term by thinking so short-sighted. Yeah, I just had Jeff Fromm on the podcast a couple episodes ago, and he was talking about the idea of companies using purpose as a verb, that you actually have to put these mission statements

and value, three-word value structures and stuff, you actually have to put them into practice. They can't just be something that you say at rah-rah team meetings or during your earnings call. You actually have to put them into practice. They can't just be something that you say at, at rah-rah team meetings or, or during your earnings call, you actually have to make good on them. And the unfortunate truth, I think with the way our economy is set up today is that like those, you know, GM and Toyota, their CEOs making those decisions, it's, it's the only thing they can do because, you know, it's like self-preservation. It's the wrong decision for the larger ecosystem. But ultimately, like if they don't hit their quarterly numbers,

like they could be voted out tomorrow. And that I think the systemic problem is really I think what makes me sad is that they can't weather the storm of a, of a small downtick in their stock price, or they lose their job to do the right thing for everyone else. I mean, that's more political than it is not. But, um, I guess my, my question to you is, uh, you, you've mentioned a couple of times, like companies, um, companies thinking like futurists, which I think is a wonderful idea. Like what are some, what are some steps or what are, what are some ways that, that a company could take this on? So if someone's listening and going, you know, I definitely don't take the time to think out

like a futurist would about my industry or my business or my marketplace? Like what are some things that they can do or ways that they could maybe begin to add that mental exercise into their business? Yeah, well, companies like Ford actually have an in-house futurist. I've interviewed her. Her name is Cheryl Connelly. And she's looking at overall trends in like even driving, where in the future, we're looking at a world with self-driving cars, where that's going to reduce traffic in extremely congested areas like in China, in Beijing, in India. And so she's looking at overall technology trends. I think companies would really benefit from hiring someone to just be in-house

and that's their only job is looking at trends, understanding where industries are headed, not even industries just related to your own. I think we need people inside of companies that their only job is like thoughtfulness because business has gone so far in the other direction where it's like common sense is uncommon. Businesses make these decisions that are just really strange, but for them it's very normal

because the problem is companies are often very product centric, not customer centric. So they're very inward looking rather than outward looking. Like I used to work at a fortune 100 company and I worked in a, as a customer service, um, executive. And what I noticed in our meetings is that the jargon was so heavy with the secret language that we used internally with all the acronyms, like half the time, I didn't even know what people were talking about because they had this like special language only for people who had worked at the company for like 20, 30 years, which was actually most of my colleagues had been there like 15, 20, 25 years. And I think that's a problem when you become so internal that you're not even aware of what's

going on outside of your own company. And you make the mistake of thinking that the walls of your corporation will be there forever. I think that's why you're seeing a lot of big companies, they are struggling. They are flailing because the innovation is not there. They're not set up for innovation. And the innovation happens from listening, from talking to customers, from talking to employees, from knowing especially what's happening with customer facing employees. And instead, the company, it's very inward focused. And that's a big mistake. How do you, so in a lot of your work and in your presentations and stuff,

and I watched some of those on YouTube, you talk a lot about using AI or artificial intelligence machine learning, kind of words that seem to have passed their ridiculous buzzword phase and have kind of gotten into like how to practically implement these things, which is a good thing. How do we marry artificial intelligence through the filter of kind of thoughtfulness and empathy with humanity? And you know what I mean? Like, how do we like take, again, I'm going to go back to what I know insurance. So there is a whole, it is a traditionally incredibly human labor driven business, human beings doing the work. And there are increasingly either vendors or some of the much larger players implementing more technology and technology that,

you know, may not certainly not at AI stage yet, but it is definitely in the machine learning phase. And it feels at least, and maybe we're just at that stage where there's a lot of flailing, but it feels like there's a disconnect between, you know, kind of these humans that have delivered this product for so long and by all accounts done a pretty incredible job with insurance carriers who have almost completely disconnected themselves from the humans and are trying to, and then trying to grow that way. Like, is there a way to marry those two? Or do you ultimately find that they end up being, you know, you kind of have to choose a path. Yeah, I think there is a way to marry it. One example is Allstate. Allstate uses a company called IPsoft. They have a bot, an agent named

Amelia. And they're using this internally with their agents to help agents plow through tons of content. And insurance is a very highly regulated, a lot of legalities and terms and conditions that agents must know. And so the Amelia helps agents get to information faster and the agent can give the customer an answer faster. And so I, I do think you can marry technology and, and human effort. But the beautiful thing about machine learning and AI is simply its ability

to plow through millions of pieces of data and pick out important trends or information. There's an area of technology now called decisioning. Pegasystems and I, they're a client. Before, we collaborated on a few articles on this topic that decisioning is exactly that is plowing through millions of pieces of data and serving up the most relevant offer. Like for example, when you call your telecom provider and you want a new plan, because maybe you don't have enough data because you love to watch YouTube videos on your phone, which Ryan, it sounds like you love YouTube. When you call and they're using decisioning, which is a type of AI or machine

learning, that telecom agent, instead of looking through all of the offers themselves manually on the computer and customer having to wait on the phone, machine learning and AI will serve up the next best possible tailored personalized offer for you, the customer, and that's a better experience because it saves you time and it's less stressful for the employee. And so I think we can be thoughtful about our use of AI and machine learning. It doesn't necessarily need to be all technology or all human effort, but we need thoughtful leaders in place at these companies, making decisions that are best for the employees and the customers, not just doing the thing that saves the company the most amount of money. Because we made that

mistake in the 80s and 90s with call center software. We thought, wow, look how much money we're saving with phone trees and interactive voice recognition technologies. Like when you call a call center and they say, press one for English, press two for Spanish. And it's not a very pleasant experience because often the phone tree doesn't even understand what you're saying. And it's impossible to opt out to a person. So the contact center industry became very excited about this technology in the 80s and 90s and how much money companies could save. Customer experience is an investment. It is the best marketing investment you could ever make. So let's not forget that even

when a customer isn't necessarily going to make us a ton of money, that that's not a relationship building opportunity. But I think insurance has a great opportunity right now to use AI to provide better experiences to customers because they're leaving a lot of money on the table right now to use AI to provide better experiences to customers because they're leaving a lot of money on the table right now. For example, insurance companies talk to their customers less than once per year. So if you're talking to your customer less than once per year, you have no idea what's going on in their life. And if you know what's going on in the customer's life, you can sell them more products and it's good for the customer. Like let's say my daughter is turning 16 and she's going to be driving soon. Well, that's an opportunity for the insurance company to sell me driver's insurance for my daughter.

Or let's say you know that there's been a hurricane in the area where I live and I might need a new roof. That's another opportunity to upsell. But often insurance companies have very little data about the individual customer and they make customers do most of the work. What role does brand play in customer experience? The brand. Well, the brand is really the perception. It really is customer experience. It's how do you perceive the brand? Like, let me think about Amazon. When I think about Amazon, I think about a very customer-focused company that is always finding ways to provide more value to me as the customer, to get me a product faster, to offer me something I didn't have before. And there's a trust there because I have

Alexa in my house. There's a lot of data on there. I don't know when she's listening. Sometimes she accidentally talks when she's not supposed to. So there's a trust factor. Well, Amazon has so much information on me, but I trust them. And due to the value they provide, I give them a lot of access to my life, but, but the trust has been established. So for me, Amazon is a trusted brand, um, that I have a good relationship with, but other brands I wouldn't trust. Let's say my automaker. Um, I will tell you what kind of car I have. I want them to improve. I have a Mercedes and I am not very happy with the level of service they provide. They make life harder on the customer to make it easier on their own automaker. And the thing is, this is not unique. Most automakers are like this, unless you're Tesla, where it's a very old model. Still, you have to

take your car to be serviced. You've got to call, make the appointment. You've got to leave the car there all day, which for me is very annoying because I have a toddler with a car seat. I've got to take her to school. And the point is that automakers and the way you even buy a car, service your car, everything about the car process is still very old school, having to haggle with a car salesman. And so for me, when I think of the brand Mercedes, honestly, I don't think of what they're trying to tell you

who they are, which is luxury, which is a nice car. I think it at that. I think of a company that, you know, I'm having this issue with my car right now where the brake pads squeak and we have just left it because we don't, my husband and I are entrepreneurs, toddler, got another baby on the way. We don't really have time to like drive over and leave our car for a day for them to just put some oil on the brake pad. So honestly, we've left it. And anyway, I won't go through all the problems with the car, but it's a new car. Like if it were a Tesla, they update the car remotely. It's all about being service oriented and making the customer's life easier and better. And that is the future of the car dealership. And unfortunately, Mercedes, you know, they, I've seen,

I know there are books written about their customer experience. They're supposed to be amazing. For me as a customer, I don't really see it because I just see a company that still makes customers' lives harder. So I am going to be replacing my Mercedes in a month. I cannot wait to get rid my Mercedes in a month I cannot wait to get rid of that car it's not worth it's not worth it and so you said what's brand well for me brand is the actual real experience you're

getting from the company it is no longer the ads the billboards it's not what brand marketers put out there is the reality the raw experience the customer is having that's what's in their mind so let's not be fooled that brand marketers have all the control over how the customer perceives it a lot of it is literally just the raw experience of the product or service are you going to be getting a tesla You know, we're thinking about it. It is an expensive car. I'm kind of cheap. Like my husband's always embarrassed when I say that,

but I'm proud of it because I wasn't always like that. I think saving money is really, really smart. So I think you should try and have it live somewhere nice, but don't drive a fancy car. Especially in the Bay Area where I live, because everybody's like giving you a love tap when they park all the time. And anyway, I am.

Just go get a big Ford F-150. It'll be half the price. No, no, no. No one's going to want to bang into your car. Yeah. No, I love Tesla. I write about them a lot. I speak about them in my keynotes.

I think Elon Musk is doing such great work with solar, with the cars, with the batteries. He's really trying to make the planet a cleaner, more luxurious place for customers. I definitely am interested in a Tesla. I was really shocked recently when I went in one. The self-driving capability, it's amazing. The car can park itself. It's still very expensive. So for me, like my husband and I are entrepreneurs. We don't really drive

because we work from home. We drive maybe a mile a day and take our daughter to school and back. It doesn't make sense for us to have a really expensive car, but it's a beautiful car. We're actually also looking at the Hyundai. They have an electric SUV. We want, I want an electric car. I can't stomach the sitting in a gas guzzler anymore, knowing what's happening with the environment. Like I am so excited to get an electric car and be done with, with a traditional polluting car. No, I get that. So I know the Teslas are ridiculous. They're also super fast too. Oh yeah. And honestly, I don't want to give my husband a fast car because that's not good for me. So I guess with we're coming up to, you know, kind of the time,

our time limit here, there's actually one more, there's one more concept that I would like you to kind of take us home with, because I think it, it really rounds out our conversation. And it's an idea that, though it takes us a little back to the macro, I think it's, it's really what we're trying to solve for. And it's this idea of the experience economy. And I, my understanding of your understanding is that everyone operates in this space, regardless of what your product or service is, it may just operate in different places. But I would love for you to break down and kind of take us to the end here with this idea of the experience economy and how we should be shaping our thoughts and ultimately our businesses around this concept.

Yeah, research shows, Ryan, that customers prefer experiences today over things, that customers will gladly pay for access over ownership. This notion of renting and in the future we'll be renting more and buying less because it doesn't make sense for us to buy so many products at break. It's not sustainable for the planet. It's not good for our wallet. And so we'll see much more of the sharing economy, the renting economy grow, which I think is very exciting. The experience economy, I mean, generally people care about their experience and they care less, especially young people, about having a nice house, a nice car, like these old milestones of what meant you were successful. they no longer really determine your class even,

or if you've made it in life. Young people, they don't care about that. They want to go to Coachella. They want to travel the world, stay in Airbnbs. And so that's more interesting for them, which I think is really cool because I think the consumerism of the 80s, we've really gone away from that, which I think is very positive because most of us know that materialism is very empty and it doesn't satisfy the soul in a way like an experience can create a memory. I think that is important for every company to think about, well, what is your role in the customer's life? How are you enabling them to live their best life and it's it can

be as small as even I talked about Mercedes Mercedes coming to my house to fix my car so I can spend more time in my garden or cooking for my family you don't need to be an experienced company to think about your role in the customer, the modern customer's life. Part of that is just making the customer's life easier and better so they can spend more time doing the things they want to do. Because no one on the planet wants to sit on the phone with customer service. No customer on the planet wants to have to deal with insurance policies that take months and months for them to get their money back for an incident that happened. And so again, it's not only about

being an experienced economy company. It's just thinking about, well, if people care about how you make them feel, how are we making our customers feel and what is our role in making their life better? Blake, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on. Your book, The Customer of the Future, it's on Amazon. Your first book, More is More, two highly recommended reads for everyone listening at home. Where can people learn more about you, your work, and just connect with you further? Thank you so much for having me on the show. You asked some really thoughtful questions. I would love to connect with your listeners at BlakeMichelleMorgan.com. You can buy my book,

The Customer of the Future, which I would appreciate so much on Amazon.com or wherever books are sold. Well, thank you. I wish you nothing but the best. You're killing it. And it's really fun to reconnect after a few years here of being on your show. It's just good to connect and see everything that you're doing. So nothing but the best to you. And thank you so much.

Thank you, Ryan. Best of luck. Take care. 🎵 so so so so so so so

so so so so so so so so

so so so so so so so so so so so Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.

With the one-call-close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we used to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the one-call closed system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit MasterOfTheClothes.com. That's MasterOfTheClothes.com. Do it today.