1742 – Customer Experience with David Ewing of Motiv

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0:59with us right now david g you are the founder and ceo of motive motive is on the web at motive cx.com and that's m-o-t-i-v cx.com david thank you so much for joining us hey thanks josh it's great to be here yeah absolutely give us an overview of what you do with motive so at motive we believe that the best customer experience wins. And we think that every company should have access to the tools, technology, and processes that your Fortune 500 companies have. And most oftentimes, they can do things a lot better than they can when they have those tools. So our whole approach is to make sure that not only do you get the customer, but once you do, you actually keep the customer because that's how you get lifetime value from all of your customers, build those relationships and compound the word of mouth that they can bring to help you grow your business.

1:59Yeah, it's amazing how many, I'd say, especially on the SMB side where the user experience is just, it's not great, right? Or I could also say that, in fact, I was just thinking about this as I was having to do a government thing. I'm like, who designs this? I mean, And this is just the most unintuitive, confusing, frustrating experience. And it was almost like, are they doing this intentionally? Are they intentionally trying to discourage me from doing this? You know, and that was my conspiratorial mind kicking in. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe sometimes when I look at those, I think they have the mindset of maybe if we give them a bad experience, they'll quit bugging us.

2:36Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Would you mind maybe just kind of defining from a consumer standpoint, what would fall under that kind of customer experience? Yeah, yeah. So let's think about it like this. Whenever you're engaging with a company as a customer, you are going on a journey. That journey begins with you first hearing about that company, however that may be, how you build trust before you actually are willing to put your toe in the water to try their product or buy their product. And then everything that happens from that point forward until the day you say, you know what?

3:16I'm done. I don't need this anymore, right? And that could have involved many repeat interactions with that company. But at some point, it comes to an end. And that whole journey is what you have to master if you are going to make sure that you create this really winning relationship with your customer that results in all the things you want. Certainly, you want profit from the customer over that lifetime, of course. But you also want the referrals, right? And you want that social buzz or review or whatever it is that you need from that customer to continue to emphasize and reinforce your brand promise.

3:52So that is the customer journey. And what we do at Motive is we look at that journey and try to pinpoint all the moments that matter. And the thing about a moment that matters is it could be a high, high when they're experiencing wonderment with your product. Or it could be a tremendous low, low where they're incredibly frustrated. And that might be because of something you did or something totally outside of your control. But either way, the customer is now associating that bad feeling with your brand. And so no matter which way you're going there, those moments that matter are when you have an opportunity to shape and change the lifetime value and experience that you have with that customer.

4:37So I'll give you an example of what you're doing. But at any of those moments, the key thing is to be able to do as much as you can to influence the customer's attitude. if you change their attitude, you change their behavior. So we're all going to have negative moments with customers, right? None of us has the perfect brand with the perfect solution. If you do, you're not innovating fast enough, right? So when that moment that matters happens, how do you change the attitude? Let me give you an example of one that happened to me. It was not because of the brilliance of this airline, but it was a moment that mattered and my attitude changed.

5:11Here it was. I was in the waiting area for the flight, you know, standard flight. I don't even remember where I was going. And I happened to look across and there is a niche little author that I really like. Not a huge popular author. I'm not talking about Stephen King or somebody big like that. Just somebody that I recognized. And I was sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, if only I had a few minutes, I would love to go chat with this person. And then guess what happened? The airline puts out an announcement and says, the flight is going to be delayed 45 minutes. And everybody's upset, right? Except for one guy, me.

5:45I'm delighted. This is like my gold moment that the airline's late because I get to hang out with this author, right? So my point on that story is everybody had the same experience with the airline. The flight is delayed, but I had a different attitude about it because there was a tremendous benefit in it for me. Now that just was a lucky fluke for me, not something the airline did, but there are those moments that matter where companies can influence things deliberately. I'll give you a great example. I oftentimes am in a meeting with people and we're journey mapping their customer. And I want to get everybody in the room thinking about wonderful customer experiences.

6:23And so I ask, where was a moment that mattered for you with a company that you loved or that was a magic? I get, we can all talk about the complaints and the bad stuff, but where's a great, great moment? This one woman last month raised her hand and she had tears in her eyes and she said, you know what? My dog passed away. It was our family dog. We loved the family dog. And Chewy noticed that we had stopped ordering food and they realized what had happened. And so Chewy.com sent her flowers and said, we're really sorry about your loss. Now that's just amazing. That kind of stuff just, I mean, that's a customer for life at that point, right?

7:06That's influencing something totally horrible that happened to this woman and at least doing one little thing to make it a little bit brighter. And if you can find moments that matter like that in your business, you don't have a customer for the next transaction. You have that customer for life. And that's, you know, it's funny. Like, I think we've all now heard that chewy example and how amazing that not only, you know, was this the right thing to do in that moment, but because it was so effective and so thoughtful that it's now in every textbook on CX, right? Yeah. You know, that would be the gold standard of what we aspire for.

7:48What would be, I don't know, David, if you could think of any examples or any maybe customer that, you know, when you started evaluating what was going on that you witnessed this, or maybe there's some notable examples that have come up in the news, or maybe there's a company that just has a reputation of some ways that maybe they really didn't do a great job and or also like how we can learn from that. Because we might say, you know, in theory, that could possibly happen to us because, you know, we're not watching that aspect of it. Or, you know, we start thinking about, and we'll get into this about like how we can, you know, ensure that quality of service throughout the organization, throughout all of our systems we'll get to.

8:29too. But any other like warning signs of why this is such a big deal? Yeah. So I think everyone has thousands of examples of things that didn't go right. And so picking on any one company is unfair. So I'm going to pick on my own company and just say that, you know, despite your best intentions, it can always, always backfire. And it's just surprising sometimes that that occurs. So I'll give you an example where, you know, we came in for a customer and wanted to offer them just, you know, we had the right intention, right? Our intention was to just make this customer super, super happy. It was a medical provider and we were going to help them shape their customer experience for their patients and do everything that they wanted to do in the best possible manner.

9:18They saw that there was a chance for them to double their throughput just without adding any headcount if they were just more efficient. And so at Motive, we went ahead and we did everything we could to shape this customer experience. But what we really missed on was the change management of helping everyone inside their organization understand what it is that we're doing and why. And so all of them kind of just turtle shelled, right? And so we released this unbelievable system that made customer experience at their company smooth and transparent. It was great for their end customers, but we really neglected how we would bring that through this company because we were so excited to just get the solution ready that we didn't stop and listen to them and make sure that they were heard along the way.

10:04And as a result, the go live for that launch was delayed by several months. And it was a classic case of we had the best of intentions. We absolutely wanted to deliver, but we went so fast and so quick that we left them behind. And that happened. And we had to learn a hard lesson and it slowed everything down with that customer. And it was a tough moment for everybody. But it happens. And I think the thing that everybody realizes is I think there's not a founder in the world that in their heart wants to create a mediocre or a lousy customer experience. Nobody says, you know, I can't wait to start this company and give people some so-so.

10:44You know, I mean, that's just not a thing. But it takes a lot more than intention to be able to deliver an amazing customer experience. The amount of thoughtfulness, preparation, systems, and timing that you have to put into it so that when the unexpected occurs, the decision is not top down, but it's something that your team can do at the moment that matters. That's the essential missing ingredient. And I think that's where you miss in translation between a leadership team that is committed to their customer and the result of what their experience is at the boots on the ground. That gap comes from that.

11:22it's not intention. For the SMB founder leader, maybe it's even like a, just a solopreneur, right? That may be doing this. I think one of the most important things we could do is ask frequently and ask for honesty. Like what was something that I could have done to make this a better experience for you and to be humble enough to do that. And I think a lot of times I can speak for myself. I think in the early days, I didn't want to do that because I was afraid of bad news. And that was just like a turtle with his head in the shell, right? And I just, I didn't want to get my head bitten off. But unfortunately, there was probably some pretty valuable intel that I could have used so that I can make sure that I have the best service on the planet.

12:09If I keep asking, oftentimes those fresh eyes are going to give you unique perspectives. And again, I'm sure this is a part of how Motive works, is truly gathering great data. You're 100 % right, Josh. And I think the thing that I've seen from a lot of entrepreneurs, solo entrepreneurs, or even large companies is sometimes they're afraid to ask their customers about this because either they can't take the criticism or not that they can't take it, but they cringe when they think about what's happening. They know that they need to do better. But what I have found is that there is absolutely no substitute for having that difficult conversation with a customer because the catharsis of them just knowing that they've been heard almost always results in more business.

12:54So I will tell most of my entrepreneur customers, you could have had the worst customer service in the world, but if you just pick up the phone and talk to the customer about it and find out what they have to say, you're probably going to get more business from them. It's very unlikely that they are going to say, you know what? I wasn't paying attention to how bad your service or your experience was, but now that you called it to my attention, I will switch to the competition. It's not happening. But that's what everyone's actually afraid of. And that's just not where they need to be. Yeah. So talk more about who Motive works with, where you come in, and what engagement looks like.

13:32We work with a diverse set of companies. So we work with utilities who, you know, their main motivation is to make the experience of paying your bill better. We work with banks who are trying to help make a great experience for people who are consumers, who are trying to, you know, do a better job at getting a loan or opening accounts or doing all the things there. We work with medical providers and we help them with making sure that your grandmother can get to her appointment on time at the hospital and that everything is smooth and easy and that she's proactively receiving the recommendations for what new appointments she has.

14:08We work with manufacturing companies who are trying to provide parts and assemblies to other companies and make sure that they keep inventory on time and smooth and that they're doing their job to be innovative to their customers. We work with construction companies who are trying to provide really great support services to maybe a major contractor on large commercial projects. And so customer experience just happens in every single one of those things, whether it's business to business or business to consumer. And being able to shape that customer experience so that our client is always the easiest to do business with and creates that fulfillment of the brand promise results in an emotion, right?

14:50It results in that emotion of appreciation, gratitude, love. You can call it a lot of different things, but it's that emotion that brings the customer back, right? And so if we can make sure that that customer experience is outstanding through sales, marketing, service, commerce, content, all of those different pieces, then the exponential growth begins to occur. Yeah. Your website, motivecx.com, that's M-O-T-I-V-C-X.com. Let's talk about where folks go from here. We've had this conversation. They've been listening in. They're like, okay, I'm interested in continuing that conversation. What would you recommend they do?

15:29I don't know if you have any content that they could dig in or is the appropriate next step to just grab a call? Yeah, MotiveCX.com has all sorts of blog articles. If someone's just looking to up their game individually and make an improvement, if they're looking to work with Motive, that's also got lots of great resources. I also love working with other leaders. So if you go to LinkedIn and find me, I'm very easy to find. It's LinkedIn.com forward slash in forward slash David G. Ewing. I am there and always welcome the chance to link in with other leaders. I found that what my company is really all about, we've been doing this for 22 years, and that I sense our mission comes down to actually one word, growth.

16:11And we have found that growth of our clients' bottom line is certainly rewarding and helpful, but it's also growth of the people who are working at our client corporation. So helping those leaders become better, helping them through the change management process, helping them shape that customer experience, that growth is very, very important. And then finally, internally at Motive, it is one of our biggest commitments is to our own people to make sure that they're growing as leaders and as people who can shape customer experience at not just one company, but at the multiple companies that we work with at Motive.

16:47Yeah. I'm just going to point out, you guys have gone through some pretty rapid growth pretty quickly. Motive was founded not that long ago, right? At the very beginning of 2001? No, no, no. Wait a minute. Wait, 22. Wait a minute. I am wrong here. What is, oh, give me the timeline here because I misread your LinkedIn. So you guys have actually been in business for quite some time. We've been in business since 2001. Yeah. I mean, personally, my own journey has had some kind of some exciting rollercoaster moments. I hired my first employee on September 10th, 2001. So my first payroll was the week of 9-11.

17:21And yeah, that was a tough moment. And so there's been lots of ups and downs in the journey at Motive. But what we found is a consistent, bright spot. Our North Star has always been making sure that we're balancing our clients and helping them grow their businesses. And as a result, we've had shocks to the system from external sources, but we've always carried through because of the incredible loyalty of our clients. And so, yes, we were on the Inc. 5000 two years ago and can look forward to being back there in the next year. But we've been growing and scaling our practice. But it did take a while to build the craft and to make sure that we had something that we could scale so that we could continue to deliver on what I call client experience and that our client experience would be superior.

18:09I love it. David G. Ewing, founder, CEO of Motive. Again, your website, MotiveCX.com. Thank you so much, David, for joining us. Thank you, Josh. It's been a great pleasure being here.

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