A customer signs, pays, and then goes quiet. Joey Coleman, author of Never Lose a Customer Again, helps companies like Whirlpool, NASA and Zappos keep their customers. In this episode he walks Chaz Wolfe through the eight phases of the customer journey and the six ways a business can communicate with customers. Part two, episode 471, covers keeping employees.
The 8 phases of the customer journey
Assess: the prospect checks your marketing, website, social media and reviews.
Admit: they sign and hand over their money.
Affirm: buyer's remorse sets in.
Activate: their first real experience of what they bought.
Acclimate: they get used to your way of doing business.
Accomplish: they get the result they pictured when they bought.
Adopt: they become loyal.
Advocate: they become raving fans who spread the word.
Why buyer's remorse is your problem to solve
When a customer buys, Joey says their brain floods with dopamine. As it fades, fear, doubt and uncertainty take over, while your team is back at the office celebrating the win. Most businesses have no system for that gap. Amazon does. You get a message when your order ships, when it is out for delivery, and sometimes a photo of the package on your front step. Most businesses give you "ships in 1 to 3 days" and leave you guessing.
Use the right way to reach customers
Joey lists six tools: in-person meetings, emails, phone calls, physical mail, videos, and gifts. A typical email gets read within 48 hours. A typical text gets a reply in about 90 seconds. That does not mean you should text every customer. Match the tool to the relationship. And make it easy. Send a calendar invite for next year's calls instead of a PDF that lists 17 dates nobody will read.
Stop treating new customers better than loyal ones
Joey's lawn company advertises cheaper 2024 pricing for new customers, while he pays more as a third-year customer already on autopay. You can give loyal customers better pricing, or you can make loyalty about the experience. His family's favorite sushi restaurant, where they eat five or six times a year, surprises them with free Japanese sodas one visit and tempura ice cream the next.
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[00:00:00] Chaz Wolfe: Are you a driven entrepreneur that says they want it all. But when you look yourself in the mirror, you know that you've made deep sacrifices and other areas that you shouldn't have. If balance is a myth, then what most entrepreneurs are missing is a roadmap to have it all. What if you COULD achieve exceptional success in your business, while also experiencing fulfillment in your family, in health, faith, and lifestyle?
[00:00:25] Chaz Wolfe: My name is Chaz Wolfe, and this is Driven to Win. I'm a serial entrepreneur leading a mastermind community of high performing entrepreneurs in pursuit of the exceptional life, which is characterized by winning in all areas business, family, health, faith, and lifestyle. You see, what I've learned is that growth in business doesn't have to come at the expense of other areas of life.
[00:00:48] Chaz Wolfe: I've made it my mission to help you win in all areas. On this podcast every week, we will be sharing interviews with successful entrepreneurs and subject matter experts, supplemented with solo episodes and co host discussions. By tuning in, you'll learn strategies for business growth and tips for winning in family, health, faith, and lifestyle.
[00:01:08] Chaz Wolfe: Not only is it my belief that you can have it all, but you must have it all. Your family, your business, and your community are counting on you. Some episodes are going to be solo episodes where I walk you through a framework or cover a specific topic. Other times, I'll feature guests who have also achieved success so that they can share with you exactly how they did it.
[00:01:28] Chaz Wolfe: So, if you're a driven entrepreneur who's looking to achieve growth and win in all areas, go ahead and subscribe to Driven2Win. And pretty soon, you'll be well on your way to achieving the exceptional life.
[00:01:46] Chaz Wolfe: As a business owner, can you relate to the following, you sell your product or service to a customer and both of you are excited, but when it comes time to actually deliver, they don't respond to your messages or emails. In fact, they might even ghost you. You're left wondering what went wrong today. We welcome Joey Coleman to the show.
[00:02:03] Chaz Wolfe: You get the first hundred days of your customer's experience, right? You have a customer for life. He's an expert on what it takes to win in customer retention. Joey wrote a book in fact, called never lose a customer again. When big companies like Whirlpool, NASA, Zappos, and others want to keep their customers around long term, they call Joey.
[00:02:23] Chaz Wolfe: And he's here today to give you the tools that you need to keep your customers longer. Joey gives us six ways to communicate better with customers and eight steps of the client experience. This is exactly what he teaches to keep customers coming back time and time again. If you want your customers to love your business and tell everyone they know about it, keep watching.
[00:02:43] Chaz Wolfe: You don't want to miss this episode.
[00:02:44] Chaz Wolfe: You have a wide range of experience. Um, you've written some incredible, uh, books and just material that's helping, uh, companies really all across the country, and I would love to hear.
[00:02:56] Chaz Wolfe: Your words on what you specialize in.
[00:02:58] Chaz Wolfe: So I've spent the last 20 years teaching companies how to keep their customers and how to keep their employees. All built around, what are the kind of experiences we are creating for the people we want to be in relationship with?
[00:03:13] Chaz Wolfe: So on the customer side, what are you doing all along the customer journey to create the kind of experience that makes them want to come back for more on the employee side? What kind of environment and culture are you creating and what kind of remarkable interactions are you delivering to keep your people engaged and retained as well as turn them into recruiters, bringing you new top talent as your business continues to grow and
[00:03:35] Joey Coleman: develop.
[00:03:35] Chaz Wolfe: What is the client journey or even kind of employee journey. I know that they're very, very different from each other, but generally they're the same. What, what is the definition here that we're talking about?
[00:03:44] Joey Coleman: So I believe that every customer goes through eight phases from the time they first hear about you and think about doing business with you all the way to the point where they're a zealous fan, raving advocate. The same is true for our employees.
[00:03:58] Joey Coleman: They first hear about an open position or a possibility to work somewhere, and then they go through a series of phases, again, eight phases in total, before they reach the point where they're a raving fan employee who is not only loyal and committed to you, but is helping to recruit and spread the good word about the work that you do.
[00:04:16] Joey Coleman: I think at the end of the day, the thing that ties both of those journeys together is. is that they are very humanistic in their approach. It's not just about what are the tactical conversations and interactions, but rather what are the emotional feelings that are also tracking along in this journey and the fact that it's all humans, right?
[00:04:36] Joey Coleman: So at the end of the day, I believe a human is a human is a human. We all have some very similar motivations. We all have some similar wants and needs and desires and wherever as leaders, whether that's leading a business to sell to a customer or leading a team to work with fellow colleagues and employees, whatever we can do to lean into the feelings aspect of it, we're going to have even better results.
[00:05:02] Chaz Wolfe: I love the idea that, that the other person is a human, like I've said in sales training for many, many years, it's like, Hey, don't forget that when you pick up the phone or when you're calling someone, the other person's a human.
[00:05:13] Joey Coleman: Yeah. And it's easy to do. And I empathize with it. You know, we're, we're operating quickly. We're operating at scale. It's easier to think of folks sometimes as a number than as a human. But I think that a lot of businesses today are overly fixated on whether they're B2B or B2C. Like, Oh, Joey, you don't understand.
[00:05:30] Joey Coleman: We're B2B. It's a little different. I'm like, I appreciate there are nuances. But at the end of the day, if you're thinking you're B2B or B2C or B2G, that would be business to government. You're h to h. You're human to human. You are one human trying to interact with another human and convince, persuade, encourage them to take a specific course of action.
[00:05:51] Joey Coleman: Whether that's do business with you, come work with you, build this project with you, buy this thing from you. Kind of doesn't matter what we're trying to convince them. As long as we remember that they're a human being, there are a lot of paths and shortcuts we can do that dramatically increase the likelihood of getting the result we want.
[00:06:08] Chaz Wolfe: Once you've kind of eliminated all of the nuances, if you will, and we realize it's just H to H and whether I'm in the sales process or whether I'm in marketing or whether I'm in, you know, the fulfillment side or whether I'm all the way into finance and I'm collecting like whatever part of the business I'm in or whatever section of the client journey that I'm a part of.
[00:06:26] Chaz Wolfe: Um, I'm dealing with a human, what, what are my tools here now? If I, if I know that the other person on the other side of the call or the stream or the desk is a human and, and I want to create an experience, what are my tools? What's my bag look like?
[00:06:41] Joey Coleman: Well, I would posit that there are six communication tools we can use when interacting with our customers or our team members. Those six tools are in person interactions, emails, phone calls, physical mail or snail mail, videos, and gifts and presents. And depending on where we are in the journey, where we are in the relationship, we can bring to bear each of those different communication mediums or different communication tools to create a different experience.
[00:07:11] Joey Coleman: Very few people, if you were to ask them, tell me about the best email you received this week, are going to say, Oh, let me tell you, I got a great one. This was an amazing one. No, it just did. Doesn't happen. Whereas if we counterbalance that against, for example, text messages, you know, the typical email gets read within 48 hours of receipt.
[00:07:31] Joey Coleman: The average response to read and response time is 24 to 48 hours. The typical text message gets responded to. Within 90 seconds. Now, some people hearing that might say, Oh, get all of our customers phone numbers. And we'll just text them anytime we need. No, we don't want to do that. And we've all been on the receiving end of those texts and we hate getting those texts.
[00:07:51] Joey Coleman: We want nothing to do with those type of organizations, but depending on the business, depending on the relationship, depending on the personal and emotional connection that you've not only built in the past, but are trying to build going forward with the recipient of the message, different communication tools can get you to those goals faster.
[00:08:09] Chaz Wolfe: understood. Okay. And so I'm, I'm going down the journey. Um, and maybe we'll nuance here, uh, or we'll, we'll separate client from, from, uh, uh, employee. Let's go client first. That's typically as business owners. That's, that's a seemingly our first focus. And so we'll start there, even though maybe it shouldn't be, we'll get to that in a
[00:08:25] Joey Coleman: I posit that we probably, as employers, need to start thinking about the customer first and think about our team member first, but I'm happy to focus on the customer first, just to illustrate that point and satiate some of those people who are just like, I just want to talk about customer experience. I want to hear what that part of the podcast is.
[00:08:41] Chaz Wolfe: yeah, I know you're a hundred percent right. I think that we're on the same page. Um, once you start really, first off, I think that the listener right now may not even, they may not have even thought about their client journey, right? We just, we just do our business. What are you talking about? And so I think first off the client journey will help them understand like, Oh, okay, cool.
[00:08:57] Chaz Wolfe: Like there's steps along the way and we're going to get into it. But when you really start like studying this, you realize that, Oh, it's actually my team that's doing this and I should probably focus here. So we'll get to that. Um, Okay. So client journey, what does that look like? You said there's eight steps.
[00:09:10] Chaz Wolfe: You kind of just overviewed it for us, but generally are most companies doing this half, half in half out? Like what, what have you found?
[00:09:19] Joey Coleman: Yeah, most companies are paying attention to three, maybe four of these eight phases. And with your permission, Chaz, what probably makes sense is to give an overview of each of the eight phases in kind of a whirlwind approach, and then we can dive deep into whichever ones you find most interesting. I'll preface this by saying, All eight of the phases start with the letter a.
[00:09:39] Joey Coleman: And the reason for that is not to confuse people, but it's rather to help folks understand that if you focus on getting all eight of these, right, it's like getting straight A's on a report card. Your customers are happy. They're getting good grades. They're giving you good marks. They're happy with the results.
[00:09:54] Joey Coleman: They're going to keep coming back for more. So the first phase is the assess phase. In the assess phase, a prospect is assessing whether or not they want to do business with you. They're checking out your marketing materials. They're probably participating in some sales conversations or interactions.
[00:10:10] Joey Coleman: They're on your website. They're on your social media. They're talking to other people that might've done business with you. They're reading reviews. All the things that you or I might use to describe a sales and marketing is happening in this first phase. So at the end of the assess phase, they then move into the admit phase. Now, in the admit phase, a prospective customer admits that they have a need or a problem they believe you're going to be able to help them with.
[00:10:33] Joey Coleman: They sign on the dotted line, they hand over their hard earned cash, they transition from being a prospect to being a customer. Almost immediately after that happens, they move into phase three, the affirmed phase. In the Affirm phase, the brand new customer begins to doubt the decision they just made. In common parlance, we often refer to this as buyer's remorse.
[00:10:55] Joey Coleman: Their feelings of joy, euphoria, and excitement when they made the purchase start to go away and those feelings are replaced by fear and doubt and uncertainty. What if this doesn't work out as well as I hoped? What if this product or this service isn't everything I had hoped it would be? In the Affirm phase, we want to you.
[00:11:11] Joey Coleman: reaffirm their choice. We want to remind them why they decided to pick us and reinforce that feeling that we're going to take great care of them. We then come to the activate phase. This is phase four. The activate phase is the first real moment of truth in a product selling business. This is when they receive the product in a service business.
[00:11:31] Joey Coleman: This might be the kickoff call or the first time that we start to deliver on the service. In the activate phase, you want to energize the relationship. You want to let this brand new customer know that doing business with you is going to be unlike any business experience they've ever had. Now let's be honest, jazz.
[00:11:48] Joey Coleman: Most companies are actually pretty good at the activate phase. They're pretty good at that first moment, but where they start to fall apart is in the next phase, the acclimate phase. This is the second day of having the product or what happens after the initial service call. Most businesses over index on focusing on that first impression while missing the opportunity to reinforce it with a second, third, fourth, 10th, 20th impression, the acclimate phase starts on that second day and runs for weeks or even months.
[00:12:21] Joey Coleman: As the customer gets used to your way of doing business, your cadence of a project using the product, whatever it may be, there's this ramping up stage as they acclimate to your way of doing business. If we continue to hold their hand through the acclimate phase, we're lucky enough to in the sixth phase, have them reach the accomplished stage.
[00:12:43] Joey Coleman: In the accomplished stage, the customer accomplishes the goal that they had when they originally decided to become a customer. See, every customer has a vision of what owning your product or partaking of your service is going to create. And it's not just, Oh, I own the shirt. No, they have a vision of wearing the shirt out on a date and the date going well.
[00:13:02] Joey Coleman: So what are they trying to accomplish? How are we tracking their progress towards that accomplishment? And what are we doing to celebrate with them when they actually achieve the goal? We then come to the seventh phase, the adopt phase. This is when the customer becomes loyal to you and only you. They're not listening to the competition.
[00:13:20] Joey Coleman: They are committed. If you make it, they're gonna buy it. They are bought in. These are our true fans, right? We love these types of customers. The problem that most organizations have is that they take their adopters for granted. They just presume they're going to buy everything and presume they're always going to be there.
[00:13:39] Joey Coleman: And as a result, we don't care for them the same way we cared for them in the beginning when we thought we had to hustle to keep the relationship. Last but not least, if we've done all these seven phases well, if we've held their hand through all the previous seven phases, we have the right, the privilege to invite them into the eighth phase of the relationship.
[00:13:58] Joey Coleman: The advocate phase where they become a raving fan, singing our praises far and wide. That's how you know you've reached the full magnitude of the customer journey. When they become an uncommissioned salesperson, bringing you more business from other friends and people that they know because they've had such a remarkable experience as a customer.
[00:14:19] Joey Coleman: They can't help but love you. But tell everyone they know about
[00:14:22] Chaz Wolfe: I love.
[00:14:22] Joey Coleman: So those are the eight phases. And as I mentioned, most businesses are paying attention to maybe three, four of those. There might be folks listening in where like, I never even thought of that phase or I heard of buyer's remorse before, but we don't have a system and a process in our business to address buyer's remorse.
[00:14:39] Joey Coleman: And yet cognitively, I know it's a thing. I know it exists. That's why paying attention to the customer journey and every step along the way is so powerful.
[00:14:47] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, let's, let's go right to that affirm stage because I've been a part of businesses, you know, that sales and marketing journey, it's always super fun. And you get a lead and you work it and you got a sales guy and you get the contract and that whole process is very enthusiastic. Usually, um, that the first two phases there, um, And so inside of that purchase, and then now, now we got that, that buyer's remorse section, I have those same organizations that are super enthusiastic over here, even if it's just a day or two or three or seven, it is a long time for your customer talk about this affirmation.
[00:15:21] Chaz Wolfe: What are some of the tools here that you use?
[00:15:23] Joey Coleman: Well, let's look at why this time period, the biggest change to kind of what was happening in the affirmed stage has happened in the last 20 years because of Amazon. So here's the interesting thing. We go on Amazon, we make a purchase. What happens? We immediately get an email after the purchase confirming our order.
[00:15:41] Joey Coleman: We then get a text message or an email when it ships. We get a text message or an email when it's out for delivery. Once it's been delivered, I, you know, I work from home. There are times where I will get a message that is a picture of my front step with my Amazon package on it. I'm in the house. They never even rang the doorbell.
[00:15:59] Joey Coleman: And I have proof that it's already here. Compare this to the typical experience that someone has in a business other than dealing with Amazon. We buy the product. When are we going to get it? Well, it says it'll ship in one to three days. Well, which is it? 1 to 3. And then when it does ship, do I get tracking numbers?
[00:16:17] Joey Coleman: When's it going to arrive? And how's it going to come? Is it coming? Postal service? Is it coming? FedEx? Is it coming? UPS? Is it coming? Some third party freight? I don't even know what it is. And on the service side, it's not much better. On the service side, we have all the whining and dining as you alluded to.
[00:16:32] Joey Coleman: We have the sales conversations. We have everybody getting excited about it. And then all of a sudden we find ourselves in a scenario where Wait a second. When is the next kickoff? When is the thing we're going to do? When is the interaction going to actually start? We're going to have the kickoff meeting.
[00:16:49] Joey Coleman: Oh, it's two weeks after we signed the paperwork. Well, what's happening in those two weeks? Is there any communication? Is there any reaffirmation? Is there any discussion about the fact that we're We're actually a customer now, or is the company waiting until you show up for that in person meeting and then they're going to razzle and dazzle you?
[00:17:10] Joey Coleman: Well, the reality is, if our emotions have fallen, if we've gone into that fear, doubt and uncertainty stage and nothing has been said by the company that sold us what this new service is going to be, the only sound we're left with is the sound of our own voice doubting the decision we just made.
[00:17:27] Chaz Wolfe: it's crazy that when you hear that, you're like, man, did you walk into a dark room, a valley of sorts? Like what happened? But it is so real. You hit the, you hit the button. You're excited for a little while longer. And then like, poof, all that disappears. And now you have fear. Um, and this is, you know, I think if, if, if, uh, entrepreneurs just slowed down enough to like, just put themselves really, this is put themselves in the shoes of the customer the whole time, right?
[00:17:54] Chaz Wolfe: This is how you do this. But if, if they just thought about it for a second, it's like, Oh yeah, I kind of do like when I went there. Yeah. Like it took a while and then I was unsure. It's like, wow. Uncertainty does, does not exist. Not breed confidence and is not breed a raving fan at the end of this. So, um, tell me about, I mean, without going into each individual ones, let's kind of go back high level.
[00:18:14] Chaz Wolfe: How does like, for example, in this, uh, a firm stage, if I miss that opportunity, how much harder are the other ones? Because now I have this like blemish. I don't even know it as an entrepreneur, but I do
[00:18:28] Joey Coleman: Yeah, I mean, what happens is you're digging out of an emotional
[00:18:31] Chaz Wolfe: that. You don't even are aware of.
[00:18:32] Joey Coleman: the exactly so at the beginning, when they make the purchase, the customer's brain floods with dopamine. They feel joy, euphoria and excitement. This is the product that's going to be the answer to my prayers. This is the service that's going to take me to the next level.
[00:18:44] Joey Coleman: But is that dopamine recedes those feelings of joy, euphoria and excitement are replaced by fear, doubt and uncertainty. Meanwhile, we're back at the office high fiving. We landed the client. We're getting all ready to either deliver the product or have the first call and the kickoff with the service. And we're walking into that meeting jazzed about what is to come.
[00:19:03] Joey Coleman: They're walking into that meeting in an emotional hole. So the first few days, weeks, hours, whatever comes after that, we're trying to pull them out of the hole instead of getting them up to speed, running with us and climbing to new heights. And so this is where not acknowledging where the other party is emotionally creates a giant delta or a difference between the emotional states that if we don't close it and close it quickly, we're fighting against that for the rest of the relationship.
[00:19:35] Chaz Wolfe: And things can be challenging. Not only is it challenging to come out of the hole, but, um, you could say one thing that might be slightly off that might in a normal circumstance have not been a big impact to them, but because they're already in the hole. It's, it's an exaggerated moment. Um, I was just talking with one of my companies.
[00:19:54] Chaz Wolfe: This was maybe two or so weeks ago. And we were walking through a scenario like this. I'm like, no, no, no, no. This isn't the problem. Let's back up. What happened here, what happened here, what happened? Oh, see right here is where we first lost them. And they're like, really? It's like, yeah, look, look right here.
[00:20:09] Chaz Wolfe: This is what, this is what we did. We should've done it like this. This was the response. And, and it didn't look like it in the moment, but three steps later, it showed up with, you know, lack of trust and fill in the blank.
[00:20:22] Joey Coleman: Absolutely. Rarely is it one big thing. Rarely, you know, lots of business leaders, they're like, well, if we can just guard against making the huge mistake. And while we certainly don't want to have a business filled with huge opportunities for mistakes, more often than not, it's death by a thousand paper cuts.
[00:20:40] Joey Coleman: It's this small thing, this small slight, this thing that we could have been better at, this broken promise, this over exaggerated claim. And when we start to stack all those things, they're all chipping away against the trust and credibility and any attempts to build the relationship.
[00:20:56] Chaz Wolfe: Let's, uh, let's skip down the line back to the customer who's been around. I don't remember the exact name to use for it, but been around for a while. Not quite to the end. The seventh one.
[00:21:05] Joey Coleman: The adopter.
[00:21:05] Chaz Wolfe: adopter. We, we forget about these and we let them just do their thing. We're appreciative of them, but we're not taking good care of them.
[00:21:14] Chaz Wolfe: Why do you think that this is and what can we do to guard against that?
[00:21:18] Joey Coleman: Well, I think there are a couple reasons for this. Number one, I think there's a biological imperative that is a general rule. Humans like the chase better than they like the catch. This is why as a general rule, dating seems more exciting than marriage. We take it for granted. I'm not, I've been happily married for 14 years.
[00:21:35] Joey Coleman: I'm not, I'm not, anti marriage. But what I am saying is lots of times when you're in sales and marketing mode, when you're trying to convince someone to spend their time with you, you're more cognizant of the words you're using, the type of little interactions you're having, the small special gifts, all these various things that are designed to accelerate the relationship.
[00:21:54] Joey Coleman: But once you've been in a relationship for a while, be it a year or five years or 10 years, we start to know the other person's habits. We know the other person's Picadillo's and often we take those for granted as opposed to using them as an opportunity to deepen and enhance the relationship. So where this often shows up is companies run a big promotion where they say, Hey, if you're signing up to be a new customer, we're going to give you the first three months free.
[00:22:22] Joey Coleman: Now, the person who's been a loyal customer for 10 years sees those ads, because by the way, we're not doing a good job of only making sure those ads go to prospects. They're getting mixed in with existing customers. And now we're saying, well, wait a second. Why does somebody new who's not been in relationship with you get a better deal than I do?
[00:22:40] Joey Coleman: And I've been here for 10 years. And usually it's a significantly better deal. So we can turn this on its head by saying everyone gets the same deal. We can really turn it on its head by saying the longer you're with us, the less you pay. That's when the conversation really gets interesting and can change to something more, uh, more meaningful and more, uh, informative.
[00:23:04] Joey Coleman: Of the depth of relationship, given your time
Hey Kings and Queens, Chaz Wolf. I want to talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort, we meaning myself and my team into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
So we would love if you would like comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things. On social media on all the different platforms or even on the podcast mediums of apple and spotify We would love to be able to get our content into more hands more entrepreneurs So they can grow their business as quick as possible together We are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights So let's do this.
Let's help each other grow
[00:23:54] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Joey, this, this is super interesting. Um, because I have felt this way, this exact way actually about, um, I don't know, any sort of television service, uh, cell phone
[00:24:03] Joey Coleman: cable companies, cell phone. They're notorious for this, right? And you're like,
[00:24:07] Chaz Wolfe: wait a second.
[00:24:08] Joey Coleman: You also see this with like lawn mowing service, like getting our lawns mode in the neighborhood. There are signs up from the people that mow our lawn talking about the new 2024 new customer pricing, which is cheaper than what I pay as a return customer coming back for my third year.
[00:24:24] Joey Coleman: And I actually called them up and I was like, Hey, by the way, can I cancel? Cool. And then re sign up as a new customer to take advantage of the pricing. They're like, Oh, that's not the way this works. Well, then how does it work that I'm paying more when you already know me? You know I'm going to pay my bills on time.
[00:24:41] Joey Coleman: I'm already set up in their system for auto pay. So it's like, All the heavy lifting you already did in year one of me being a customer. Now we're just kind of on autopilot. You come and you mow the lawn every two weeks, three weeks. Like what, what else do we need to be doing? Shouldn't this cost less than it costs the first time when you were figuring out, Oh, do we need to push mode?
[00:25:00] Joey Coleman: Do we need to ride mo? How big's the yard? How many trees, all of that. You already figured that out in the first two years. It seems like the third year should be cheaper. It's not
[00:25:10] Chaz Wolfe: yeah, yeah, I, I think that, um, there's a lot of intentional action that's going into these, these pieces. Now, as customers, we see this happen and we go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That, you know, that sucks. But then when we think about our own business, it's like, oh, Ooh, I, I see where you're going with that. Um, what, just real quick on, on the pricing, you might have, you know, maybe a restaurant, you might have a marketing service, you might have, You know, different types of businesses listening and they're thinking, well, okay, if I just keep getting, you know, my, my, you know, uh, loyal customers, cheaper and cheaper prices, then, you know, I won't, I won't have a business.
[00:25:48] Chaz Wolfe: That's potentially what they're thinking in their limited thoughts. What would you say to that?
[00:25:51] Joey Coleman: Well, I would say. One option is to give better pricing to people who've been with you longer so that loyalty have its its privileges, right? But another option is to not make it about the dollars and instead make it about the experience So for example, I've got a restaurant that we love going to my family goes to it's a sushi restaurant Absolutely love it.
[00:26:13] Joey Coleman: We go probably five, six times a year. So every other month, not not crazy, but a decent amount of time when you think about the typical person goes to a restaurant once a year of a certain and you're hopping amongst different restaurants. The repeat visit to a restaurant that's really valuable to them.
[00:26:29] Joey Coleman: So what's fascinating about this restaurant is they will surprise us. They'll surprise us with bringing out, uh, you know, Japanese sodas on the house one day. Uh, another day they might surprise us with, you know, a little bit of the, um, tempura ice cream as a surprise, as opposed to us ordering it off the menu.
[00:26:49] Joey Coleman: The little extra touches that in the grand scheme of things don't cost them a lot. And are things that have a perceived value that is much greater than the value they spend doing it for a different type of business. This could be something as simple as just acknowledging the person's name and not making them jump through as many hoops is an existing customer as you would as a new customer.
[00:27:12] Joey Coleman: I had this happen recently with a company called Uline. Uline makes packing materials, right? They sell cardboard boxes, they sell bubble wrap, they say all kinds of stuff for kind of the background operations. And I was mailing. out some mailers to some of my customers, and I called them up. And this is how the call went, Chaz.
[00:27:30] Joey Coleman: I dial in, phone gets picked up. Hi, Mr. Coleman, or I see you say it's okay to call you Joey. Is it okay if I call you Joey? Now they're using caller ID in their CRM to recognize this. I'm not one second into the phone call, and I feel like I matter. And I said, Oh, actually, yes, Joey would be great. Thanks so much.
[00:27:51] Joey Coleman: How are you doing today? They're like, Oh, great. Thanks for asking. And you? I said, I'm doing well. They're like, what can we help you with? I said, well, I need to order some boxes. They said, is this the same sized box that you ordered last time you called in? Now, at this moment, Chaz, I'm thinking, this is amazing.
[00:28:10] Joey Coleman: In the first few seconds of the call, they've called up my previous order. And they know because they sell packing supplies, the chances are pretty good I'm calling to order more of what I already ordered. And I said, yeah, it actually is. And they're like, do you need the exact same order? Do you need more?
[00:28:27] Joey Coleman: I said, well, actually, I need the exact same order. They said, no problem. Shipping to the same address as last time. Yes. Would you like to use the same credit card as last time? Yes. Is there anything you'd like to add to the order, Mr. Coleman? I mean, Joey? I said, no, we're good. Like, well, fantastic. What we're going to be doing is sending you an email, as you know, because you've been a loyal customer for a while with your confirmation tracking number.
[00:28:54] Joey Coleman: You happen to call in before our 7 p. m. cutoff time, which means this is actually going to ship today. It'll go out today. And given that you're shipping to your home in Minnesota, we're showing that it'll arrive Thanks. By Thursday at 6 p. m. But the tracking number will confirm that. Thanks so much for calling in again.
[00:29:10] Joey Coleman: We really appreciate your business. Now compare that to the typical interaction we have when we call up with a company we're already in business with, right? Cable companies are notorious about this. What's your phone number? Well, I'll repeat the phone number, even though I know it's showing on your screen.
[00:29:27] Joey Coleman: I tell you, um, what's your mailing address? I'll give you the address. Let me confirm your social. I'm like, Are there that many people calling into the cable companies imposter as imposters for other accounts trying to move things around? Or I love it when they're like, what's your account number? If you were to offer me a billion dollars to tell you the account number, you'd get to keep the billion dollars.
[00:29:48] Joey Coleman: Cause I'm not remembering my account number. You gave me that number. I never asked for that number. There's so many things we do in our businesses that if we step out of it for five minutes, we realize. This is crazy. Why would we be doing this? Why are we subjecting our loyal customers to the behavior profiling of not only a complete stranger, but in most businesses we treat a stranger better than we're treating the person who's coming back to do business with us again.
[00:30:17] Chaz Wolfe: yeah, the, the message that I'm taking away from that, um, of course, they're just the treating of the customer, but making it easy. Um, I just think that there's just too many automated tools. There's too many, you know, CRM softwares that track all that, that can just come right up. There's just too many opportunities for us to not be that good.
[00:30:37] Chaz Wolfe: Um, and depending upon what the service is, you know, For us to intentionally try to make it easy. Um, same thing with our, um, mastermind community. I mean, these are busy entrepreneurs. These are people that did not sign up for gathering the Kings to have a job or to do another thing, right?
[00:30:52] Chaz Wolfe: They're trying to sit at a table with some other entrepreneurs and like, You know, be encouraged, challenged a little bit, but then they got to go like run their business and their life. And so depending upon how we interact with them could make it really easy or make it really hard. It's like, I can, I can remind you of all of our meetings, but if it's an, if it's a, uh, an annoying reminder, as opposed to an easy on ramp to like, Hey, we're meeting, like you should join us.
[00:31:18] Chaz Wolfe: There's a big difference between those two,
[00:31:19] Joey Coleman: 100%. I'm involved in a couple of groups and one of the groups I'm involved in. When you sign up on the sign up page after you've signed up, you put in your credit card. It pops you to screen and it says we're so excited to have you in the community. First things first, if you press on the button below, which identifies which calendar you use Google Cal, I Cal, whatever calendaring tool you use, it will automatically put all of our events for the next year into your calendar. Great. Boom. Single button press. And now it's in my calendar. And what do I know about busy entrepreneurs? Most of them live and die by their calendar. And if something's in the calendar, they're not going to schedule over it versus trying to fit something into the calendar after the fact, because they missed the email you sent with a PDF attachment with the 17 dates that you're going to have calls over the course of the next year.
[00:32:13] Joey Coleman: It's like, I'm, I'm not going to read it. I'm not going to get it. Make it seamless, make it convenient, make it easy, and people will want to do more business with you.
[00:32:23] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, I think we could probably just make that one line the topic of, of this whole thing and just, just make it easy. Um, make them feel appreciated. Don't forget about them.
[00:32:32] Joey Coleman: Totally. And by the way, sometimes making it easy for them makes it easy for you as well. Let's go back to my lawn care service. They send me an invoice. In the mail at the end of every month. Now, mind you, it's a flat monthly rate that I pay. I'm not trying to bag on these guys. The invoice comes in the mail, which means I don't always get it right away.
[00:32:56] Joey Coleman: Why? Because, ah, it's the mail. And number two, I might not be home the day the mail comes and I send all my mail to a P. O. box that I go to about once a week. Once every ten days. If I'm traveling, that can be an even broader gap. So we had an incident. I'm not proud of this, but I share this to hopefully make other folks say we can do this too.
[00:33:16] Joey Coleman: We had an incident, um, last summer where I was gone for several weeks and I missed paying the first invoice and now the second invoice was coming due and they were still owed a past invoice. So I get a phone call from the owner of the company and he's like, Hey Joey, wanted to make sure you were getting our invoices.
[00:33:33] Joey Coleman: I was like, I was. Is there any way to email these to me? And they're like, yeah, I, it, it would be a lot easier. The service we're using doesn't really work as well with email. And I'm thinking. It's the present day 2024. How is it like, and, but, but I'm trying to lead from a place of grace and empathy. And I'm like, okay.
[00:33:53] Joey Coleman: I said, by the way, normally you send me the invoice and I mail you a check. Do you have a Venmo or a PayPal that I can use instead? And the business owner says, Yeah, I said, can I just set you up to auto pay every month via Venmo so you can stop sending me bills in the mail and I can stop missing the bills in the mail and this can just be charged?
[00:34:19] Joey Coleman: He's like, why suppose we could do that now stop and think about this from a business owner point of view. Chaz. What he just did is. Increased the likelihood of collecting. He brought the revenue forward in the calendar month. I set it to auto pay on the first of every month, even though there's a grace period to the seventh and then checks come in on the 15th, right?
[00:34:43] Joey Coleman: So he's getting a lot more money. a lot faster, and I feel better about the relationship because I don't have to think about the part that I don't want to think about, which is how much money I'm paying to have someone mow my lawn. Take the thing that you don't want your customer to ruminate and perseverate about and shift that to the automated conversation, and it makes everybody's life better.
[00:35:07] Chaz Wolfe: You have an incredible mind of enthusiasm throughout, uh, the entire show here.
[00:35:11] Chaz Wolfe: I'm sure you carry that with you everywhere, but where can the listeners find you? Of course, we'll have it in the show notes as well, but what's easy to find you online.
[00:35:17] Joey Coleman: So the best place to find me online is on my website, joeycolman. com. That's J O E Y like a baby kangaroo or a five year old, you know, Coleman, C O L E M A N, like the camping equipment, but no relation, joeycolman. com. My books are called Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again.
[00:35:35] Joey Coleman: They're available wherever you get books in whatever format you like to consume books. So we've got a hardcover, you can write in the margins. We've got an ebook. You can read and highlight on your Kindle or your Nook. If you're using a Nook, super exciting. I'd love to meet you. And we also have an audio book that I narrate.
[00:35:50] Joey Coleman: So if you've enjoyed the sound of my voice on this show, I will read both of the books to you if you'd like to have me do that.
[00:35:57] Chaz Wolfe: I love it. Uh, and we've had, uh, actually a few of our team members in preparation for the show, go through, um, well, I think one of each actually. And so just, just an incredible mind. Again, there's great words. You've, you've, you've. I just a whole, well, I could go over hours here, but I so appreciate you. Uh, blessings to you and your family, everyone that you're touching here this year.
[00:36:14] Chaz Wolfe: Um, yeah, I can only imagine that it's going to bring blessings. So thank you so much for being
[00:36:17] Joey Coleman: Oh, thank you, Chaz. And thanks to everybody who listened in and joined us for the conversation. I hope you had as much fun and left with as many ideas as I'm leaving with after having a chance to connect and talk with Chaz today.
Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over 200 or Other very successful seven, eight, and nine figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1000 Kings specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling Kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, That it ignites within us, the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates and resonates with you, and you know, that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings. com. Once you take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 Kings talk soon.
Chaz Wolfe introduces Joey Coleman, a customer retention expert, who shares insights on emotional intelligence throughout the client and employee journey. They discuss six essential communication tools for enhancing customer experience and delve into the 8 phases of the client journey, focusing on addressing buyer's remorse and the affirm phase. Joey emphasizes the impact of small mistakes in customer service and the importance of maintaining relationships with loyal customers. The episode also covers customer loyalty issues, rewarding long-term customers, and simplifying business interactions.
Joey Coleman:
Website: https://joeycoleman.com/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joeycoleman1/
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