Ryan Klausner returns to talk about understanding customer feedback in the context of (and often the contrast to!) how customers actually behave!
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Transcription
Charlotte Ward 0:13
Hello, and welcome to episode 253 of the customer support leaders Podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward today welcome back Ryan Claus now talking about the difference between what customers say and what customers do. I’d like to welcome back to the podcast today. Ryan close now, Ryan, lovely to have you back so soon after joining me for a panel not so long ago.
Ryan Klausner 0:42
I know it’s great to see you virtually Charlotte. It was had a lot of fun on that panel was great to finally meet you. That was a lot of fun that that support driven leadership saw
Charlotte Ward 0:52
us. And yeah, I mean, it was quite memorable for a number of reasons. So the panel was the topic of the panel was demonstrating the ROI of key initiatives, particularly inside support, obviously, but didn’t we have a lot of fun? That was quite a group of people. I distinctly remember who I was sat between I was sat between you and had a support from, from what I think was kind of a partnership made in heaven at some point. I hope, I hope
Ryan Klausner 1:21
all right, wait, well, right with with hinge we were talking about and then we’re talking about how it gives a crap in here. Yeah, but natural alignment there of course are so eco friendly tissues and hinge doing what they do perfect. potential partnership. I recall a lot of laughter though, as well. That was a lot of fun that that was a lot of fun. So fun.
Charlotte Ward 1:41
Yeah. And ROI is not a topic that you think you’d have so much fun with. But that was great. And, but really insightful. Everybody has such good opinions on that on that panel, I recall. And yeah, what great experience. So I love it
Ryan Klausner 1:57
when people can bring a bit of their own personality to what is otherwise a very dry topic, especially in a two day conference when there’s so many intensive ideas and thoughts going on. So to be able to go deep in something while also being able to laugh at ourselves, I think is always Yeah,
Charlotte Ward 2:13
it’s crucial, actually, isn’t it as crucial? Yeah, so we aren’t we are sort of exploring something different today, though, aren’t we? I guess we had a little chat a couple of minutes ago about what we’re going to talk about. And I think we’ve summed it up to, well, I summed it up as something in the ballpark of the difference between what customers say and what customers do, particularly in the context of feedback. So this this was a really interesting topic, I thought, and I’ve been thinking a lot about CSAT, and surveys and feedback generally, recently. And I gather you have to so so. So what what are your first thoughts? What, what, what brought you to bring this topic up? Yeah,
Ryan Klausner 3:00
it’s a very interesting topic. It’s one that I’ve been thinking about a lot myself, especially in the last several months, really, since last August, when I was initially implementing the voice of the customer programme and who gives a crap and we started really looking at really a deep analysis of customer feedback. And customer feedback, of course, is critical for any organisation, we do a really incredible job, especially compared to some of the organisations that I’ve been with previously, in terms of sharing that feedback across the organisation, making it relevant to different functions, and most importantly, making it actionable. But when you only look at feedback, especially in the context of when we were designing this programme, it’s literally looking at only one side of the equation. And feedback is important. It’s critical to what we do and how we operate. But what customers say in my experience is very different than the actions or behaviour they take. And we don’t want to look at either of those in the silo, certainly only analysing customer feedback or only analysing the customer actions or behaviour that they take. But combined, I find that there’s a much more complex narrative that is providing a much broader depth of insight that we can apply as CX leaders to our vision, our strategy, and also contextualise a lot of our work for other functions, so bring both to the table, because it’s shocking how often they actually are in conflict with each other. Yeah, that was one of the big sort of aha moments for me, is I’d go, Oh, interesting, what they do and what they say isn’t always aligned. How true to the human experience, right?
Charlotte Ward 4:48
Very true. Very true. Unfortunately, we all are human, I think. Yeah. So I want to first of all clarify something. When you say feedback. Oh, we spend specifically and exclusively talking about that survey question or are you gathering feedback from across social channels etc? Are there other other opportunities to hear the voice of the customer? Are you specifically dialling into the survey feedback?
Ryan Klausner 5:15
Yeah, great, great question. And I think an important piece of clarity. So certainly, we look at customer surveys, CSAT, NPS, all of these more traditional legacy, CX metrics. I’m not a huge proponent of it, any of them independent of each other. I think they’re all just a piece of the puzzle. A lot of people like really like to go deeper on three or four of them. But just like when we look at behaviour and feedback, that’s just a small equation. So certainly surveys is a part of that. But we also use a lot of customer sentiment measuring tools like chatter mill, and chatter mill has been really helpful for us to extract all the conversations we have across our ticketing system, to better understand what customers are saying understanding trends, drivers of customer feedback, and drivers of tickets themselves, looking at what are the points of friction so we can make recommendations across the organisation to reduce those those pieces. So we don’t have to even have those tickets. Because those are often what I refer to as low value interactions. They don’t really serve the customer, but they have no better way of solving for it. But it’s really about the entire piece. So when we talk about customer say, I think it’s at every point of the customer journey, whether that’s surveys are more conversational, based pieces of feedback that we can contextualise as part of larger trends within the customer role.
Charlotte Ward 6:44
So, so let’s let’s dive right in then with an example. What have customers told you, that has been diametrically opposite to a behaviour that you’ve seen? Yeah,
Ryan Klausner 6:57
that’s, that’s great. So often we find customers have this assumption. So I work of course, who gives a crap makes eco friendly paper products, that’s our core offering. So we make eco friendly toilet paper tissues, kitchen towels, and we donate 50% of our profits to help build toilets and provide clean water to the billions of people worldwide without access. Awesome. But we often hear from customers that they want, especially in a diversity differs in each market. Because of course, we have a large, our largest customer bases in Australia, we have a very emerging market in the UK. And we’re here in the US, of course as well. But looking at that across all of those markets in the EU. Different customer expectations vary across all of these markets, sometimes we produce domestically to meet those unique demands or expectations of our customers in each market. So it’s not all produced centrally. Sometimes we do it for supply chain reasons. Sometimes it’s to meet that localised customer expectation. But what we often hear, for example, in the US is people expect this very 345 ply toilet paper that isn’t as common in other countries, such as Australia were to ply might be more common, or in the UK, for example. And I would never buy a product that has less than x plies. Yet they’re purchasing it from us often the people that are providing that we’re changing their behaviours, because turns out the supply doesn’t actually have anything to do with the experience. Sure, I think a single ply that you get at a, at a gas station or somewhere, you know, just go public school, that’s a different experience. But in terms of the home, the assumption of what a product is, versus what it really is, isn’t necessarily aligned with the behaviour, when we also look at the types of feedback that customers are providing in terms of how they want to order their products is sometimes very different than the behaviour that they actually exhibit. In terms of either the frequency, the purchase rate, or even the reasons of purchasing you’ll see is very different than their their feedback. So obviously, at the end of the day, most of our customers have a very strong connection to our brand and our values as a business. And that’s enough to bring people in and it’s enough to keep them around for failing to meet their baseline expectations around the product. The convenience, the element of delight, the aspect of fun, we slept save that we we’d like to make it fun to do good. All of that is out the window if we’re not meeting their their baseline expectations. So when it comes down to what customers say, versus the customer, what they do, often that is best highlighted by the actions they take on a website, for example. And that’s why metrics like customer effort score are arguably one of our most critical metrics and CX because it really is looking at customer behaviour, and not just the feedback itself, so we can highlight areas of focus. But in terms of product offerings, everyone has an incredible idea of the next thing we should do or we should make. And we’re really as we continue to expand, looking at how we can get more regional in how we operate to meet the customer’s expectations and meet them exactly where they are in that market. So in the UK, we’re currently exploring unique channels for customer engagement and customer support, that would best meet the unique expectations of that market versus the US or Australia. But this isn’t something we can access saralee capture in a survey, because a lot of people, their assumption is, oh, it’s email or a phone call is definitely the best way. But we know that a phone calls might not be the best way to reach a company that makes toilet paper, there’s very few we often joke, we have emergency rolls and all of our boxes, but there’s very few true TP emergencies unless you actually do run out, in which case, there’s an opportunity there. And we’re always looking at how we could explore that further to create those moments.
Charlotte Ward 11:05
I think what’s super interesting about much of what you said there is that I don’t want to diminish any of what you said. But it’s not really surprising, either. To be honest, and I think I think that what strikes me as well is that these ideas that just asking your customers what they want, and then giving them what they tell you. It has long been established to be like, the the most imperfect way to develop product, right and to integrate services that because exactly, as you said, right at the top, what customers say and what they actually really will respond to in product or in service is so so often different, because because they’re human more than anything, I think it was Henry Ford, who said if he’d asked customers what they wanted, they just said faster horses.
Ryan Klausner 11:56
Right? Yes, exactly. Like actually
Charlotte Ward 12:00
delivering what customers? You know, it’s about delivering outcomes, isn’t it? And I think that that’s really, you don’t establish what the right outcomes are for a customer by asking them, or at least you don’t solely rely on that. That’s just one. To your point. It’s like one data point of many, including, and you should include customer behaviours.
Ryan Klausner 12:24
And how do we challenge those assumptions. Because customers come in, they have that feedback. Those are their own bias that they’re bringing to the table. They’re sharing it with us, we want to make sure that they feel heard. We do want to take that back and view it but we want to contextualise it along with behaviour actions, trends of customer sentiment across the board. Of course, 100 customers 100 unique pieces of feedback, but there might be a correlation between all of them. That’s not immediately visible when you’re looking at it on first class. So that’s where I think going deeper and looking at the behaviour along with the feedback because yes, there might be this invisible line of connection between all of them, but being able to go deeper to contextualise it with the behaviour, and then being able to implement whatever that might be, whether that’s a new product, offering a new communication channel to engage with your customers. But being able to do it in a very subtle way of challenging that bias, educating without it being in a condescending or expert view. But coming at them in the way that they’ve come to love the brand and the team behind the brand. to delight them in new ways is often a sort of an exciting and very creative opportunity. I always enjoy those those challenges.
Charlotte Ward 13:41
Yeah, yeah. And actually, that’s something customers will never tell you they want they don’t they will never be so overt as to say I want to be delighted. You know, they want five ply, or they want they want whatever totally. But yeah, and
Ryan Klausner 13:54
often to many companies, I think focus on the delight you often hear about like in customer success and customer happiness teams, how do we delight our customers? And the biggest one I think about when we look at feedback, and we’re trying to implement new programmes, within an organisation to engage customers and create those moments, if you’re not meeting their baseline expectations, which we often aren’t as organisations, your your north star shouldn’t be finding opportunities to delight it should be how do we meet their expectations with the least amount of friction possible. And then once you’ve done that, you can then build on the delight but instead we’re always my view. And with many startups in particular, we’re always trying to jump ahead to that how do we delight? Yeah, but delight is that add on, no customers coming in and going I hope they delight me. They’re just going I hope they deliver and ship and is as promised. So exactly.
Charlotte Ward 14:45
It’s the hierarchy. It’s the hierarchy of needs, isn’t it? It’s, it’s absolutely you can’t you can’t build the delight at the top of that pyramid pyramid with Shifting Sands at the bottom. It just won’t hold stable at all. I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. So what is the I mean, you gave a few examples early on, of adjustments you’d made and how you deliver service or product. How do you? I guess my final question, really? When you’re talking about behaviours, and looking for patterns are you looking at you’re looking at purchasing patterns and things like that propensity to churn and things like that, I guess, what’s been a surprising behaviour that you’ve either found or, or have dug into a little bit that has that has really kind of made you go? Oh, I did not expect that.
Ryan Klausner 15:46
Yeah, it’s a great question. So when we look at our customers across all of our markets, the unique expectations and cadence and repurchase rate is very different across the board in different countries in different markets. And we have been very flexible in meeting those demands across different markets. What’s often I think, most surprising is when we look at all of these different markets, and we look at customer feedback, we often think that our values around donating 50% of our profits, which we do with full transparency is one of the strongest drivers that brings people into the business. And it’s actually how fun we make things that bring people into the business. What’s interesting is once they’re in the door, and they’ve engaged the brand, they’ve received the product, it’s this delightful experience, from purchasing, through to delivery into their bathrooms, that they start to go great. It was delightful, it was convenient. Those are the reasons that met their baseline expectations. But once you had been around for a while, that’s Is that enough to keep people especially unable to stay space, right, that has emerging competitors coming in every direction, what we find keeps people is our transparency, and our openness to discuss where our 50% of our profits go, who are the partners that we work with. And that is, again, going back to our one mission, we make it fun to do good. We do make it fun to do good. But it also is something you can feel good about in terms of who you’re buying from its contributions to the world. And that is often a reason that keeps people sticking around. It’s not necessarily one of the drivers, or one of the biggest drivers of why people come into the business in the first place and purchase. Yes. So that’s often surprising, because for me, when I first discovered who gives a crap, it was very much that was the one for me that aligned most with my values. But consumers can be very different. And of course, that’s great. But at the end of the day, the convenience, the value, the element of delight once you’ve met that has to be there. And ultimately, that’s how we’re maximising the customer lifetime value.
Charlotte Ward 18:01
That’s awesome. Thank you so much Ryan What an interesting conversation. I do hope you’ll come back for another chat sometime maybe we can revisit that panel and make you know the ROI on key initiatives fun all over again another time I’d love to yeah, this has been super interesting and I’m it’s given me a lot of food for thought. So I hope it has our listeners too. And thank you so much for spending time with me today.
Ryan Klausner 18:29
Thanks so much, Charlotte. Always great to chat.
Charlotte Ward 18:35
That’s it for today. Go to customer support leaders.com forward slash 253 for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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