During the first season of The Bear, Sydney talks to Marcus about his vision for making donuts for the restaurant, The Original Beef. Sydney, too, has visions for how to improve the restaurant, among them having online takeout orders to increase revenue. Both find themselves distracted from the nuts and bolts of running a restaurant by their desires to make dramatic improvements.
Beth Karawan knows a little something both about the nuts and bolts of restaurants and the challenge of making donuts. She also knows that there are no quick fixes to CX and being distracted by your desires to make dramatic changes can backfire spectacularly, just like they did for The Original Beef.
We discuss:
- The Sweet Start: Donuts and Life Changes
- The Reality of Customer Experience
- Women in CX: Recognition and Representation
- Behavior Change in Customer Experience
- The Measurement Dilemma
- The Human Element in Customer Experience
- The Value of Experience Over Price
Connect with Beth on LinkedIn
Music courtesy of Big Red Horse
Transcript
Rob Dwyer (00:07.189)
And now I'm ready. For another episode of Next in Queue, today joining me, Beth Karawan. Thanks for being here. How are you?
Beth Karawan (00:17.122)
I'm good, Rob. Thanks for having me.
Rob Dwyer (00:19.821)
So you are on cup number three of coffee. OK. Well, I hope that we have an invigorating conversation that just charges you up and maybe you don't even need caffeine for the rest of the day. What I have to we got to start. We are not in person doing this, as is the case with. Every episode that I do for the most part.
Beth Karawan (00:23.36)
Yes, I am. It's been a long morning already.
Rob Dwyer (00:49.603)
But that's personally disappointing to me because I feel like if we were in person, you might have a sweet treat for me and I would be very excited about that. So I'm sad face because we're not doing that. Tell me about donuts. What is with the donuts?
Beth Karawan (00:52.386)
Yeah.
Beth Karawan (01:10.094)
So in 2021, every weekend for that year, I made donuts for a local cafe. That was one of my many, I call it my pandemic induced professional sabbatical. I lost my job at the beginning of my corporate job at the beginning of the pandemic. And I took it as an opportunity to try out
a lot of different stuff. And one of the things was I went back into the restaurant industry and one thing led to another and the owners of the restaurant that I was working at said, we're going to reopen our cafe. was just for breakfast and lunch. We want to do something different for the town. We want to make donuts. And I was like, that sounds great. And they said, we want you to do them. And I said, that's awesome, but I've never made a donut before in my life.
I've baked other things. I used to have a baking side gig when my kids were younger. They're like, you'll figure it out. And handed, literally handed me the keys. And I made donuts every weekend for a year. So if you if anybody remembers the time to make the donuts guy from TV, that was me. Like
Rob Dwyer (02:32.024)
Hmm?
Beth Karawan (02:35.85)
including like wearing like all the all white baker's gear, covered head to toe in flour, getting up really early in the morning. And so that was how the doughnut started. And then just on a Friday afternoon, I had, was having writer's block and I was trying to think of something to write and I did it as a goof.
Like I really just, it was like, it's Friday, let's talk about donuts. You know what making donuts taught me? It was one of the best employee experiences I ever had. And I explained why. And to my absolute shock, people were like, that's a great story. I didn't know that about you. Tell us more. And that's turned into it's Donut Friday.
Rob Dwyer (03:30.177)
I like there are so many hidden, I don't even want to call it a side gig because I feel like that demeans it a little bit, but other things that we do in our lives that are not directly associated with kind of our main means of supporting our families, making money, paying the bills, whatever that is, that people are more interested in those things than they are in the
things that you do and I think that says something about number one who we are as people but also to the way that we kind of misjudge what will interest people because it's fascinating you were like I
Right? This is a goof. This is an accident, but people latched onto it became very interesting. And I think often we misjudged those things about what people will find interesting because, you know, we're so programmed with the algorithms and all of this. And it's those human things that really get people going.
Beth Karawan (04:38.102)
Yeah, I think the other thing though too was, and again, I didn't intend to start it out this way. This wasn't my intent, but there are lessons to be learned that are applicable to what it is that we do in our day jobs. And the other thing too, that I'm really proud of and really embraced was, so I've been on the front lines recently. I continued my restaurant work.
up until December of 2023. I was still working. They had moved on and they had a different restaurant and I wasn't making the donuts anymore, but I was still working for them. So on any given weekend night, I was hostessing or I was waiting tables or I was running food. And so I've still actually been doing the job of customer experience in a way that I think a lot of our colleagues don't.
And I got a little bit of, and so once I started to tell my story more and started talking about it, especially cause when I started Donut Friday, I was still doing the restaurant work. And people were like, why are you still doing that? I'm like, well, why aren't you? You know, we talk about, you know, this isn't just philosophical work that we're doing. And the only way to truly understand what it feels like is to
Rob Dwyer (05:54.531)
Ha ha ha
Beth Karawan (06:05.998)
do the job. And I personally find doing the job to be very gratifying. I had just I had to make a different choice to focus on my business. That was the only reason why I left. I would have still been doing it now. So
Rob Dwyer (06:24.279)
Yep, there are and this is part of the conversation that I want to get into. There are a lot of people in the. CX industry and and there are people will tell you CX is not an industry because. Right that the business is the industry CX is a facet of how we approach business. There are a lot of people that show up on a lot of lists.
And I know Alex Mead for one takes exception to this. had him on the show to talk about this very topic a couple of years ago. And that is he believes that a lot of these people are not actually doing the work. And so they're, they may be really good at doing some other things, whether it's speaking gigs or what have you, but there are people doing the work who may not have the bandwidth.
to get out there and go do speaking gigs. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Beth Karawan (07:29.782)
Yeah, it's one of my pet peeves. I've also talked about this subject of, know, there's all, like you say, there's all of these lists. And actually, it's, you know, five different lists and the amount of overlap on those lists is quite shocking.
The lists haven't changed much in the past three or four years since I've been paying attention to them. And it seems like they're on these lists because they're very prodigious content creators and they're all over the place and they're writing a lot and they're speaking a lot. But I haven't heard any of these and they tell you how to do the job.
or what it is that you should be doing or why it is that you should be listening to them. But it's very rare that you actually hear them talk about, I just did this with a client recently and this is how it all played out. You get that sometimes in conferences, but usually when you can get the client to co-present with you where they'll talk about what it is that they actually do.
Rob Dwyer (08:46.307)
Hmm.
Beth Karawan (08:50.478)
did and how they did it. But that's not really the case a lot of times. And so what is it that we're really learning? As a matter of fact, I wrote about this just last week about this concept of thought leadership. And it was Tom Godden, who said, I don't want to be seen as a thought leader.
because there's just too much repetition and too much of an echo chamber and I feel the exact same way. And that's what a lot of these people are doing in my opinion. And so I'm slowly but surely finding other people who think the same way that I do. And we're challenging some of the norms, challenging some of the thought processes and talking about the work that we're doing. And quite honestly, I don't.
I a lot of time on LinkedIn talking about, I actually do legitimately want to do the work because that is what is interesting to me. It's like a puzzle and it's an interesting challenge. And if you're not looking at it that way, then why are you doing it? If you don't have that sort of innate curiosity of how to fix something or how to learn something, why do it?
Rob Dwyer (09:50.519)
Ha ha.
Rob Dwyer (10:16.833)
Yeah, as one of those people that's on one of those lists, just one by the way, and I'm honored to be on that list, but there is an element of I think. A popularity contest and in some ways. And. To your point about being on LinkedIn, I find it harder and harder to be on LinkedIn regularly. The busier I am.
job and that's both a good thing but also challenging if people want to see some content that you have this podcast is really the bulk of the content that that goes out on LinkedIn that I'm involved with but I think that popularity contest aspect is both important to recognize but also there are a lot of guys
on those lists, aren't there? There a lot of bald guys like me on those lists.
Beth Karawan (11:16.334)
There are.
Beth Karawan (11:21.87)
Yes, there are. And I've actually done the math, just because I am a data nerd at the end of the day. And it ranges from across, what do I have here? I did make some notes, across six different lists. Women make up anywhere between 25 % to 52 % of the names on that list.
Now, 52 % is pretty good. All right, you know, we are 51 % of the population. So kudos to that particular publication that recognized that. But 25%, 27%, 28%, especially when it is the same names over and over and over again. And so I find that to be really frustrating.
Rob Dwyer (11:54.743)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Karawan (12:21.578)
I know lots of women who are doing the work. It is one of the reasons why I'm involved with the organization called Women in CX. They're based out of the UK. And as a matter of fact, they are working on this year's Inspiring Women in CX Awards. And I'm on one of the judging panels because they also
agree that women aren't getting enough recognition in this in the space. And so
Rob Dwyer (13:00.454)
I'm why you think that is.
Beth Karawan (13:03.738)
You know what, to be totally honest with you, I've been, so I haven't been doing CX the majority of my career. Again, we can go back and have the conversation about whether or not this is actually an industry or not. I think it is if you have a professional organization that's giving out certifications, then it's an industry, right? It's not just a job unto itself. So I've been more in,
marketing and brand strategy and consumer insights and shopper insights. And so I've been sort of like in and around CX. It's like that in every industry that I've worked in, where men are still getting the bulk of the recognition. It's always been frustrating. But now at least it seems like there are more and more organizations where women are taking
charge and saying, no, we're, we're contributing more. have a lot to say and a lot to contribute. and in my personal opinion, there are certain things that we are better at that make us more well-suited to being in customer experience. Women as, you know, as a, as a group of people. So I have to pause there. Can we pause? Sorry. I don't know if you hear my dog in the background. I'm sorry.
Rob Dwyer (14:27.725)
It's okay.
Beth Karawan (14:29.762)
Give me one second. This happened yesterday. Hold, hold please.
Rob Dwyer (14:31.075)
Okay, no worries.
Beth Karawan (15:30.336)
Sorry about that. Do I need to start again?
Rob Dwyer (15:31.619)
It's okay. We're talking about why you believe women are better suited for CX in many ways.
Beth Karawan (15:39.246)
Yeah, so I think women are better suited for CX in a lot of ways because we have inherent qualities that make us better at leading cross-functional teams, which is one of the things that I think is so important to being successful within an organization is getting those different teams to work together. Women are better at empathy.
active listening, balancing competing priorities, building trust. It's things that we do in our everyday lives. And I think we're just more naturally suited to, and therefore it makes us better at customer experience. And so I think that's important to recognize.
Rob Dwyer (16:34.431)
Yeah, I think too. Women are often not as willing to self promote. And. So when you look at these lists and we talk about again, popularity contest, a big part of that is how do I? How do I make sure that people know that I'm out here doing X, Y, or Z? Whether I'm doing X, Y, or Z or not as. Not even necessarily needed. I just need to.
Beth Karawan (16:41.46)
Very true.
Rob Dwyer (17:04.141)
have people know who I am, I need to be recognizable, and then there's a chance that I end up getting recognized on one of those lists. And I feel like a lot of women are just not interested in that or don't have the time for it because they're busy doing other things.
Beth Karawan (17:21.002)
Right, to get back to your point, we're actually busy doing, you know, a lot of them are actually busy doing the work. They're not, for lots of similar reasons, they're not getting the speaking engagements, so they don't have as much of the spotlight on them. And so it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think it's important to recognize how much it is that we have to contribute and why.
If we're going to try to improve, because I think everybody sort of agrees that CX is at this inflection point right now of, you know, we're not having the same kind of impact that we used to. How do we change that? I think it changes by changing our behavior. And I think the behaviors that need to change, women are just more naturally suited to.
Rob Dwyer (18:16.109)
So speaking of behaviors and change, this is something that you and I have kind of talked about a little bit in the past, lots of, I don't want to say.
Lots of executives who are chasing CX initiatives, maybe with a CX leader or maybe not, right? Depends on the structure of the organization, but they are looking for immediate results. They want ROI. Why is this potentially at odds with like really good customer experience work?
Beth Karawan (19:01.422)
It's at odds because changing human behavior is hard and it takes a really long time. And people have executive boards to answer to, shareholders to answer to, and want to be able to show something that changes quickly.
And so they latch onto single numbers because it's easy to show a change. But then you're working to change the number. You're not working to change the experience. And so it's at odds with what it is that we're trying to accomplish. And I think the other thing that gets forgotten in the equation is
It's important. It's difficult to change human behavior, not just our customers behavior, but it's our employee behaviors as well. We have to change our employee behaviors to affect the change that our customers want to make their lives easier, better, less friction, you know, whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish. and so you need to work on the employee behaviors as well.
And then I just saw this quote that I thought was really interesting, literally right before we started this conversation about how everybody thinks that it was Peter Drucker that said, what gets measured gets managed. And actually it turns out he never said that at all.
Rob Dwyer (20:48.351)
Not at all.
Beth Karawan (20:50.126)
And so I was like, oh, this is fascinating. I don't know if you've read the same article. Okay. About even when it's pointless to measure and manage it. And even if the measurement harms the organization, why are we still doing this? And what was so fascinating was that paper was written 60 years ago.
Rob Dwyer (20:55.445)
I think maybe I did, yes.
Beth Karawan (21:20.856)
So why are we still having these conversations about metrics and pushing forward this idea of single numbers that express the totality of a customer's experience?
Rob Dwyer (21:26.701)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (21:36.355)
So I almost wrote an entire article on that, but I had three things. And in doing some research, there were three sayings that I thought, well, these are incomplete sayings or misattributed sayings. And I'm going to write an article on this. But one of them I couldn't get exactly what I was looking for. think the
Part that people say is misattributed. There's not really any proof for that, but. We do this all the time, right? There's there's the saying that gets applied. Well, there's just one bad apple. That's not the whole saying. The whole saying is one bad apple spoils the bunch because apples give off. Gas when they start to rot and it tells all the other apples to start to do the same thing like.
We apply the first part of the phrase to say, this is an isolated incident. It's not a big deal. The actual saying says, no, no, no, it really is a big deal. And what you're saying is, and it's misattributed, is we latch onto one part of a saying when the rest of the saying completely negates what we're talking about if you put it in the context. Do we just suck at context?
Beth Karawan (22:53.208)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Karawan (23:01.87)
I think we do, but again, to be fair, I don't think that that is limited to just customer experience as an industry. There's lots of measurement that happens in lots of different types of industry or different parts of the organization where they do that too. My new latest one that I've just learned is EBITDA.
where it's like you're taking out all of the things to make your profit, your bottom line profit line look better because you're taking out things like depreciation and taxes and amortization and all of these other things. And I'm like, okay, but then that's a false number. So it's not just us. I, listen, I did...
Rob Dwyer (23:47.939)
sounding is so fun. It's so crazy when you get into it.
Beth Karawan (23:58.656)
When I learned about NPS, again, I'm a data geek. So I read the history behind it and I get how Fred and Bain got to the one statement. Like I understand the, I mean, I'm not a statistic, I wasn't a statistics major, but I understand enough to understand how they got there. And I understand that, you know,
they've put a stick in the ground that it's a system and not a number and all that kind of stuff. But still this, but that's not how people are using it. And it's just like you say, it's perpetuated over time. One bad apple ruins the bunch. So if one C-suite is looking at this one number, then another C-suite is looking at this one number, you know, and then you get into all things about
Well, what does that number actually mean? When you're not looking at it in context is a 35 good for the insurance industry, but bad for the automotive industry. And is a 35 that's good for the insurance industry. Is that us because in the UK that it's 25, but that's actually also considered a good, you know, and I'm like, why aren't we having these conversations?
We're missing, like you say, we're missing the context. And that is so important.
Rob Dwyer (25:29.155)
I think you just hit on something that speaks to a larger conversation about the fact that we often. And I say we and I don't know you can figure out who we is, but we often kind of all talk about the same things. So I look, I do this show every week. I can't tell you how long it's been since I had an episode where AI.
Beth Karawan (25:45.975)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (25:56.791)
didn't come up in the conversation. I just brought it up. So that's on me. That's my bad. Whatever. It's fine. We're not going to, but right. It becomes part of this thing that we're always talking about this thing. MPF is a thing and everybody's talking about it. And so everybody starts talking about it and everybody starts adopting it. Despite the fact that
Beth Karawan (26:01.518)
I don't want to talk about it. Alright, awesome.
Rob Dwyer (26:22.709)
Maybe it doesn't make sense for your business, or maybe the way you're implementing it is a bastardization of the way that it was originally used. And to your point, then we start doing this comparison game. And I feel like sometimes in doing that, you lose focus of the one thing that you should be focusing on, which is, what does my customer experience actually look like? How am I making that better today?
yesterday.
Beth Karawan (26:53.516)
Yep. Exactly. And also if you're going to take the time to measure something, how about measuring the thing that matters the most to your customer, not the thing that matters most to your shareholders. So for example, if you're measuring customer service interactions, first time call resolution.
That's what customers care about. Do I only have to speak to you one time in order for you to fix my problem? Are you not making me go through some convoluted chat and IVR tree in order for me to solve my problem? But if what you're doing is at the end of that call, you're asking them an NPS question and that's what you're reporting on, who cares?
Why does that matter? It doesn't matter.
Rob Dwyer (27:55.617)
Well, and then look, this is just me saying it. Those transactional surveys that use NPS, they are so missing the boat because that's not. Forget about. The fact that. We're probably chasing a number.
MPS is a relational survey. It's not about an individual transaction. It's about how I feel about this company, this product, the service. And I should be very strategic about when I ask that question, if I'm going to use that methodology, and we're not strategic about it at all, or at least most companies where I get surveyed, they're not strategic about it at all. Walmart is asking me every single time I go through.
Beth Karawan (28:45.262)
I was going to, that is exactly what I was going to say, which is I was not going to name the retailer. It's not Walmart. It's a different retailer. But that's what got me, I had never really thought about it again until I was more immersed in the CX side of what it is that I do where I was getting these transactional NPS surveys. And it's like, how likely are you to recommend this particular store? I'm not.
Rob Dwyer (28:53.618)
I'll name them.
Beth Karawan (29:14.926)
It's the one that's closest to my house. And I'm not having a conversation about shopping at this store with my friends and family. Right, exactly. So it's, right? And so that was what made me start to think about it of like, why?
Rob Dwyer (29:28.259)
Mm-hmm.
And if I am, it's probably a people of Walmart type of conversation, right?
Rob Dwyer (29:39.405)
Ha ha ha.
Beth Karawan (29:43.938)
Why are we doing this? Why is this so rampant? Why does this exist everywhere? And then as I'm sure you've said, I've probably said, other people that we know have said it too about, then there's the whole game in the system because the score, again, the score is more important than the actual experience. And that leads to a whole other issue.
Rob Dwyer (29:48.685)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Karawan (30:12.15)
And it's just so problematic. And so the fact that it still exists and is so prevalent everywhere is kind of mind boggling to me.
Rob Dwyer (30:27.905)
Yeah, there's a couple of things I want to jump into. The first is I think too, sometimes these companies, and again, it depends a little bit on where you live, but let's use Walmart as an example. Walmart is a large global retailer. There is probably one in your town. The smaller the town you live in, the more likely it is that there's going to be one up to a
Also, the smaller a town you live in, the more likely it is going to be that it's one of the very few places that you can shop for certain items. I question, do they even care, quite honestly, about those numbers outside of the individuals who might be getting additional compensation based off of that number? Because they've got you locked in if you're in a smaller community.
Like to your point, you say, it's the closest one. Well, yeah, that's the only reason I go to my local Walmart is because I have very, very few choices. And the next one's another 20 minutes away. Why would I go to that one? It's highly unlikely.
Beth Karawan (31:43.17)
Right, and is it really fair then to your point of, you know, rewarding or penalizing the store manager of that particular store compared to the store manager at the store that's 20 minutes away because of an arbitrary number that depending on any given day, maybe you were in a bad mood that day.
Right? Maybe the score was more about you and not at all about your experience in the store necessarily. And so it, again, context matters, attribution matters. If you're not, if you're using it to penalize somebody, that feels wrong. But I think
And again, this is not just limited to customer experience. As an industry, I think these things have become easy shortcuts to people manage and not treat each other like humans. And again, that begets a whole different conversation.
Rob Dwyer (33:04.525)
does. I also wonder
Beth Karawan (33:06.094)
Thank
Rob Dwyer (33:09.195)
I think a lot of companies are spending less or paying less attention to customer experience. And I wonder how much of that boils down to.
customer decisions that become more about the commodities and the prices that we see on certain things. I have to imagine, right, a lot of companies are seeing the white label, if we're talking like grocery, the white label products are probably doing a lot better these days because people are trying to find ways to save money. And if
things become commoditized. The experiences, mean, whatever, I'm going for the lowest price. I recognize that if I fly Frontier, I don't really feel good about denigrating Frontier right now, but I'm going to. So if I fly that, I'm not flying it for the experience. I'm flying it because you had the lowest fare. Like that's all there is.
Beth Karawan (34:15.402)
minus Spirit. When I'm looking for the cheapest flight from New York to Indianapolis, chances are it's Spirit. And I just, it's a short flight. I just need to get there. I don't need bells and whistles. Like you say, I'm looking for the cheapest flight.
Rob Dwyer (34:25.048)
Right.
Rob Dwyer (34:36.663)
Yeah, I wonder how much that
That behavior by customers when you're kind of in that race to the bottom has encouraged other companies to say, know what, let's, I don't really care.
Beth Karawan (34:54.092)
I know, and I understand that, but at the end of the day...
we're still humans creating experiences for other humans. We're humans interacting with each other and there has to be a baseline of consideration and respect. And I think that's the problem in the race to the bottom. We've sort of thrown out the window of even a baseline of consideration and respect. Like, why does it matter? And at a certain point,
And that's the other thing. Yes, there's always going to be a segment of your customers that are going to choose based on price.
But there's also gonna be a segment of your customers that are choosing based on the experience. There are...
There is a grocery store and there are two stores that are equidistant from my home. One is 10.7 miles. The other one is 11.1 miles. They are literally that close. did, I did, I did do that. I did the math. There is one that I prefer to shop at at the other because the store is cleaner, better while stocked, has a better selection.
Rob Dwyer (36:02.637)
She did the math, folks. She did the math. She's a data person.
Beth Karawan (36:19.25)
Same retail, same grocery store, different experience. Now I am shopping at that particular grocery store because it's cheaper than the other grocery store that is also within this 10 mile radius that I have. experience is still part of my consideration. So that's never gonna go away. And the reality is, and again, we know from data.
that when you improve the experience, you make more money.
And so at what point is the pendulum going to swing back where everybody sort of gets to this, all right, well, I at least have to have, you know, not make my customers do all of the heavy lifting, where I have to train my employees to, you know, hello, good morning, you know, you know, just like at its most basic human interaction.
That's never gonna not be important. There are even some, I've spent a lot of time in the CPG world. And so there are a lot of retailers that are actually getting rid of their self checkout lanes. And one of them has to do with shrink. So that, know, again, that's one, but there are some that have, you know, it's not,
Rob Dwyer (37:50.332)
for the customer experience. We're just losing money.
Beth Karawan (37:53.694)
Right, not for the customer, but some have made the deliberate choice because it is for the customer experience because they realize that their customers are happier, their employees are happier, and it makes them more and it doesn't just make them more money because they're not losing money. It's customers are shopping there more frequently because it's a better experience.
Rob Dwyer (38:18.979)
So I'm gonna come back.
your donuts were probably not the least expensive donuts in town. Would that be the case? Were they maybe among the more expensive donuts in town? So what drove those sales as you're making these donuts? Because I think this really helps encapsulate what we're talking about here with experience.
Beth Karawan (38:30.572)
Nope. Correct.
Beth Karawan (38:37.518)
you
Beth Karawan (38:50.264)
So it's a small suburban town, you know, we're in the suburbs of New York City. And so people know each other, give or take, you know, your kids go to school together, your neighbors, et cetera. And people knew who I was. So part of it was a little bit of self-promotion, right? Being on social media, posting photos of my donuts.
But part of it was, I know Beth and I know she's a really good baker. So she's making donuts at J Street. Well, then they have to be good. And then it also does help that it did help that. So after I would make the donuts, I would also work there as a waitress. So they actually saw me.
got to interact with me and ask me questions. And then also, again, I don't know that I was thinking about it as the customer experience per se, as much as it was to keep things interested and to keep people coming back. I was always doing weird, crazy flavors to get people to come in. I didn't care if they bought those donuts.
You could buy chocolate frosted donuts with sprinkles all day long, know, the stuff that I always had, but it was the lemon meringue pie, or it was the Samoa cookie donut or whatever it was that people were interested in. And that's what brought them in. And that's part of customer experience.
Rob Dwyer (40:38.721)
Yeah, that I feel like there is a thing that you can do really well when you don't have a huge scale. And I've said this many times, I think a lot of good customer experience work is trying to replicate things that are easier to do in a smaller environment and get more difficult as you scale. Having a personal connection with
A brand, whatever that is, is a huge part of customer experience work. It's way easier to do when, when the brand is, you know, there's a person there and, you know that person and you like that person and you see the work that they do. That gives me a personal connection with that brand. And so I want to go there and the variety and doing something new and something interesting.
keeps your business from feeling stale. That's another part of it as well.
Beth Karawan (41:45.038)
Yeah, but also think about it. Okay. So I would challenge you in that if you think about replicating that experience at scale, how many times have you heard from people that we know that are buying a subscription, you know, a SaaS subscription, and they only hear from their account manager once a year when it's time to renew.
Rob Dwyer (42:14.039)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Karawan (42:16.43)
Yes, I get it. That account manager probably has lots of clients, but how hard is it to pick up the phone and call your customer and say, check in and say, Hey, how are things going? Is there anything I could help you with? We have this new feature. Have you tried it out yet?
That scale, you can do that. There are easy things that you can still do, again, that are purposefully human.
Rob Dwyer (42:50.838)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Karawan (42:52.556)
that you show that you care and that you are interested. And I don't care how big of a company you are, there's nothing that precludes you from picking up the phone or sending an email.
Rob Dwyer (43:06.369)
Well, and it does more than just personalize. And I literally just had this conversation yesterday. So I'm talking with a new potential client and we're talking about what happens after you say yes. And part of that is let's set up time on a cadence for us to meet, talk about how you're using the product.
What you love about it, what you don't love about it, what could make it better. And that's something that I always strive to do. Look, not everyone wants to do that. And that's fine. Not everybody feels like, I don't want to talk to Rob every month. I just want the product and I'm going to use it. And I'll let you know if I have a problem. those are good too. But I think putting that on offer does a lot to.
Number one, allow you to explore opportunities for growth and how you can improve whatever you're doing for them. But it also creates this situation where they go, if they know someone that's looking for something that you offer, then you really do get to that willingness to recommend. I think we forget that the whole, I'm going to bring it back to NPS.
The whole point of that is referrals and referrals drive additional business in a way that is so much less expensive than my Google ad campaign or my sales team or whatever methodology that I'm using to acquire customers. The easiest, most cost effective customer to require is the one that came via word of mouth from another customer. That's it.
Beth Karawan (45:02.08)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Dwyer (45:03.945)
And if you really can get people to say, yeah, you should talk to Beth because Beth does amazing work and I know she can help you out with this. Right, that's that's what it's all about.
Beth Karawan (45:15.468)
Yeah, absolutely.
Rob Dwyer (45:18.475)
Okay, so I think we've solved all of the world's problems. First and foremost, talk to some women about your customer experience. There are lots of them. I will say, I feel like there are times when even this show has more male voices than female voices. I try to make sure that that is not going in the wrong direction all of the time.
Beth Karawan (45:21.58)
Awesome.
Rob Dwyer (45:48.685)
But if you're looking for some women who really know what the hell they're talking about, you can start with Beth, but you can also look back at previous episodes. I've got some pretty amazing people who've been on this show that know what the hell they're talking about. Reach out to them. Find out what they're doing. Beth, if someone wants to get in touch with you and see how you can help them in whatever efforts they're going through.
Is LinkedIn the best place? I know you're on there pretty regularly.
Beth Karawan (46:18.324)
Yep, I'm a pretty regular contributor to LinkedIn. You can find me there or you can email me. It's pretty simple, beth at imprintcx.com. Yeah, take a look at my newsletter. I always put my email address in there too. And here's the crazy thing. I have, and you know this, it's like if we meet in real life, I might bring you donuts.
Rob Dwyer (46:36.845)
Folks, you gotta subscribe. You have to.
Beth Karawan (46:47.342)
I have not had one person take me up on that offer yet. Well, I have one person, but he's become more of a friend than a potential client. So he doesn't really count. And also he's, I drive past where he lives on a fairly frequent basis. So he doesn't really count. But I haven't had one person take me up on my offer.
Rob Dwyer (47:13.987)
OK, if I were closer, I would take you up on the offer next week. I would just have a drive there. I'm not very close. It's. At least a two day drive. It's a short. They're always short flights, but you know if you're flying out of Wichita, it's always multiple flights. It's never. It's never one flight. Subscribe to this newsletter folks. I'm telling you the part that will be regretful.
Beth Karawan (47:32.718)
sure.
Rob Dwyer (47:43.271)
Is every Friday you're going to see amazing pictures of donuts that are going to make you really hungry, but also fun newsletter. Great value when it comes to CX insights. And really. Not the same BS that you're going to get from people that whose whose names I will not utter right now. Thank you Beth for being on the show. I appreciate it.
Beth Karawan (47:56.558)
Thanks.
Beth Karawan (48:10.584)
Thanks, Rob. I really enjoyed our conversation.