It Works for Chanel featuring Chris Gillen

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:01.64)
Hey, thanks for joining another episode of Next In Queue. Today I am joined by Chris Gillen. Chris, welcome to the show. How are you?

Chris Gillen (00:09.266)
Hey Rob, great. Thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you today.

Rob Dwyer (00:13.088)
I am too. Now, Chris, you are the CEO of A Closer Look, a research firm, which we'll talk about a little bit, but I think just to frame things, people should know that you've worked with some of the largest brands out there. I'm talking Toys "R" Us, Target, Home Depot, just to name a few. And these aren't little stints where you're just working as an associate.

Chris Gillen (00:34.814)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (00:42.752)
you're doing some big things with these companies and, we're going to talk about brands and, some of the shifting things that are going on out there in the marketplace. before we get there, number one, people should recognize that you have your beard under control a little bit more than me. I'm, I've got a wild thing going on lately. I don't think my wife necessarily appreciates it, but it's.

Chris Gillen (01:01.812)
That's right.

Chris Gillen (01:11.092)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (01:11.668)
It's still cold here in the Midwest. Tell us about a closer look.

Chris Gillen (01:16.628)
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, thanks for having me, Rob. I've been a fan of this podcast and it's nice to be a part of it. And we're going to talk about my favorite subject, which is the changing nature of all things customer experience. And it's a great time to talk about it. yeah, let me just tell you a little bit about A Closer Look. I've been here now going into my sixth year as the CEO of A Closer Look.

Company's been around a lot longer than that though. It's been over 30 years. It was started 30 years ago by three individuals. Started as a traditional mystery shopping company. So about 150,000 independent contractors on our network. And we still do a lot of mystery shopping today. would say we're in the top five of the most premier mystery shop companies in North America. But over the last five years, we've really evolved because we recognize that the world is changing. Things are changing.

And so we've really kind of evolved ourselves into more of a customer experience research data analytics company. And we did that because we've really been hyper-focused the last several years on building new innovative products, ways for our customers to actually go deep on what the actual customer experience looks like. Not just scraping Google reviews and things of that nature.

You know, we have tools that allow, whether it's mystery shopping and we can send our evaluators out and collect any level of information you want. We have survey tools, we have competitive intelligence tools. We're launching a really cool app in a couple of weeks that we think is going to kind of change the game in terms of how consumers and brands hold each other accountable for things. And so that's really been the labor of love for us for the last several years is just evolving.

And we have, you know, probably 250, almost 300 clients that we work with all verticals. it's retail, restaurant, hospitality. We do a lot of work in senior living. And that's really cool, Rob, because it gives me purview into what's happening in all of those verticals. And there's so many similarities to what, whether you're in restaurants or hospitality retail, that these changes, what I refer to around consumerism changes are really kind of shaking things up.

Chris Gillen (03:30.42)
across all verticals. So that's a little bit about the company. We have almost 50 people in the company. We operate out of the Philippines, Colombia, Kenya. So we're globally distributed team of people. And we just love working with brands and really helping them get to the bottom of how they can create a better customer experience, especially when we talk about an emotive experience. So it's a lot of fun. I've got a great team of people and we love the brands that we get to help.

Rob Dwyer (03:58.328)
I love that and you just said a word that I want to dig into and that is emotive. Let's talk about loyalty and in particular emotive loyalty. This is a term that I have learned from you, but help help us understand what exactly that means.

Chris Gillen (04:16.574)
Sure. man. So let me paint a picture for you just because I think we have to start at a hundred thousand foot level to really understand this. So if you think about the last 70 years, and we're just going to talk about the United States, right? But this could apply globally. You look at the last 70 years, the consumer narrative has been controlled by the baby boomer generation, right? Large generation. They've decided

what brands are in and what brands are out and who's successful and who isn't. I'm Gen Xer. And so I've kind of followed closely in my parents and my grandparents' kind of footsteps. The restaurants that they went to, I went to because those are the restaurants, right? But as you get farther away from that generation and you get into some of these, what we refer to as the new consumer, the new consumer is far more tech savvy.

They're thinking about things differently, right? What's important to them is different. What's happening is you have this, you have the whole consumer consumption narrative changing, right? That's why you're seeing brands have been around for 50 and 60 years suddenly go out of business because they're no longer relevant. So in that, one of the things that's driving those changes, Rob, is inflation.

Rob Dwyer (05:23.7)
Hmm.

Chris Gillen (05:34.75)
things are expensive all over. mean, I can't go to the grocery store. It's just my wife and I, I can't go to the grocery store and walk out with anything less than a hundred bucks. And I got a little bag. I'm like, what did I just spend my money on? Right. We're all feeling that, right? We're all feeling that. And so what's happened now, if you think, go back to those last 70 years, loyalty has been defined as transactional loyalty, meaning you sign up for my app or my program, and I'm going to reward you the more you spend.

Rob Dwyer (05:46.044)
Yeah, we're all feeling that for sure.

Chris Gillen (06:03.848)
The more often you come in, the more you come in and the more you buy with me, right? The problem with that is that inflation has reached a point where you can't afford to do that anymore. Maybe, you know, five years ago, you could go to your favorite burger joint twice a week and you're earning those points and those things. Now it's too expensive. So now you might be going once every other week, right? To eat. So what's happening is all of these businesses that have used transactional loyalty as a driver of revenue and customer acquisition.

for the last 50 years, it's not working anymore, right? People just, they're not signed up. And I'm not saying that it's not valid. It still is a valid form of what that, but what's happening is it's forcing people to think differently. And so instead of now being value driven, the more I go and spend, the more I'm going to earn. What we're seeing with what we refer to as the new consumer is they want a deeper relationship. They want their values and the brand values to align.

And price isn't as important as it once was because everything's expensive. And so now limited wallet share, have to figure out where I'm going to go spend my money. I'm not just going to go to the place that has the cheapest hamburger. I'm going to go to the place that I can identify the most with. And that's kind of what we're seeing is that price is becoming less of a, of a driver, than other forms of connection, like a motive connection, meaning

Rob Dwyer (07:08.073)
Mm.

Chris Gillen (07:30.108)
you look at some highly emotive brands, right? Tesla, Apple, Lululemon. I mean, these are brands that you, when you talk to people, they are passionate about, right? And so that's that development of emotive loyalty. And that's what we're seeing kind of things move towards, where the new consumer is really more interested in, do I have a connection with this brand? Is this brand a reflection of me? Do their values and my values align?

What am I looking for there? Right. It's not just the price component. So it's a really interesting time to help businesses really kind of understand. You don't have to get rid of your transactional loyalty program. It's still a strong form of that, but you have to start thinking about other ways to connect with the consumer beyond just being value driven. Does that make sense?

Rob Dwyer (08:20.38)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I am thinking about some of the changes that we're seeing in various industries. One of the ones that I've been keeping up with a little bit, and part of it is because there's such a lag on it, is the alcohol industry, right? So bourbon and scotch has enjoyed just this tremendous growth and demand for many, years.

Chris Gillen (08:38.772)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (08:46.28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (08:49.48)
What you see with alcohol in general is generational shifts in preference. But even now, that industry is grappling with a younger generation that's saying, you know what? Maybe we don't want to drink anymore. Maybe we don't want actually to experience alcohol. And there's an entire industry that is struggling to adapt and change so that they can remain

Chris Gillen (08:54.856)
Yes. Yep.

Chris Gillen (09:04.475)
Exactly.

Rob Dwyer (09:18.708)
profitable. And you talked about businesses, brands going under that have been around for a long time. One of which I know that you worked for Toys "R" Us, but can you talk about some of those examples and why they're not all just related to the fact that it's, it's brick and mortar versus ordering online.

Chris Gillen (09:36.958)
can. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (09:45.012)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Well, first off, 100 % in agreement on the alcohol thing. If you talk to anybody 35 and younger, chances are they're gonna say that we don't drink, you know, we do mocktails and you know, no alcohol kind of stuff. And I see that when I go out too, if I'm out, I see more people drinking zero alcohol beer or mocktails, things of that nature. And yes, that's the type of consumer shift that's baffling businesses right now. Like,

Well, this isn't a price thing. So I can't, it's not just me lowering price and suddenly everybody's going to be clamoring back. That has nothing to do with it. It's that transactional loyalty. So they're having to rethink about how they stay relevant. Toys "R" Us is a good example of a brand that could not stay relevant, right? Here's a brand that's been around for a very long time. One of the most recognizable global brands.

Most people that grew up in the seventies, eighties, early nineties, remember the Toys "R" song. mean, you know, it was this really iconic thing and, and, and a cool brand. But what happened was is they failed to stay relevant. So even back then, you know, technology was becoming more prominent. Kids weren't playing board games and, you know, playing with toys as much. was this big electronic movement and Toys "R" Us could never get themselves in a position to shift to that. Right. They were just.

what I refer to, they were too big of a ship that just couldn't be nimble when they turned. And then they just clamored. They couldn't figure it out. They couldn't figure out the strategy. They couldn't figure out what they needed to do to stay relevant. And so they pulled out all the old tricks and things of that nature. And of course, it didn't go anywhere. It's just sad because what an emotive experience. I spent time at the Toys R Us that used to be on Times Square. And you went in there and it was just like FAO Schwarz.

Rob Dwyer (11:08.936)
Hmm.

Rob Dwyer (11:32.882)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (11:34.49)
in New York. I these were really iconic brands that offered some level of connection and attachment beyond just what they sold, but they could just never get the formula right. And they were too late. It was really too late. And if I'm being candid, it was really more of a kind of a corporate greed thing. One more year, we'll wait one more year to push for an IPO. And they got greedy and things tanked. And they just never could recover because they were too leveraged with debt.

It goes, but it's a, it's a warning for brands. Now, like when you look at Joanne fabrics, you look at party city, you look at red lobster, you know, these brands that are just, they're, they're struggling. JCPenney's, I just saw they, they connected with a much larger group. They're trying everything they can to say, how do we stay relevant? But they continue to miss the boat and they continue to miss the boat because they just keep pulling out of the same playbook.

Right. I love when I see these brands, Rob say we're going back to basics because you're assuming that going back to basics will make you relevant again. And they're not realizing how massively things are shifting around consumerism, around work. mean, all things right now. So it is really important for all brands. I don't care who you are, all brands to keep their finger tightly on the pulse of the experience and what's happening.

Rob Dwyer (12:32.628)
.

Chris Gillen (12:58.988)
and if they're losing revenue and they're losing foot traffic like many of them are, the first thing they have to do is take that old playbook and they have to throw it out the window. And they've got to say, this is a different time. These are different expectations. It's a different consumer. The world's changed. What do I need to do with this new consumer to stay relevant? Some of them will figure it out, but the reality of it is, especially in the retail space, you're going to continue to see more, more bankruptcies because retail just cannot figure it out.

Rob Dwyer (13:25.747)
Yeah.

I mean, if you listen to most CEOs of any type of retail establishment, they'll tell you they're doing all of the right things and that they're right. They'll tout whatever survey metrics they have and all the things that they're doing. Is there a gap that exists between what's actually occurring in these locations and how the

The executive team is perceiving what they're doing.

Chris Gillen (14:01.33)
Yeah. Well, and this is not new. This is something that's been in all business for a very long time, but I think now what's happening, it's becoming more prominent. And it's what we refer to as the invisible gap and the invisible gap exists because you get senior leaders that sit in their headquarters and, they, and they, they look at numbers and they look at spreadsheets and they say, yes, these are, these things are all happening in my locations. That's why we're, you know, driving the numbers we're driving.

They oftentimes rely on their regional and their district managers or their auditors to go out and assess what's happening and then bubble that information back up. Not a bad thing to do. spent 35 years in retail. I've done my share of store visits and audits. However, what we, what we try to remind people is that every one of those is biased. I'm certainly, if I'm a regional manager and I have 50 stores and I'm going around and I got a store that's really bad, I'm not going to necessarily tell you how bad it is.

And so what ends up happening, not maliciously, this is just part of business, is that the senior leaders who are not out in the field as often start believing what they're seeing. And then they just assume that all these things are happening. When you do an independent assessment, whether that's a customer surveys or mystery shops or take your pick, that is your opportunity to get an unbiased assessment of kind of what's happening and why more businesses.

don't do this is always baffling to me because it's just independent validation. And, you know, it's funny that we're talking about this because literally just today on LinkedIn, one of the things that we've been doing along this invisible gap is we've been sending our evaluators out on our own nickel to assess what some of these CEOs are coming out and publicly saying in the news, you can expect as a consumer. We want to know if that's actually happening. So we did this in

December for Starbucks because their CEO has come out and said, these are all the things that you can expect. And so we sent evaluators out to 50 different locations across the U S and, and we said, go look for these things. Are these things happening? And it's fascinating because you do find some things that are going well and you're like, all right, that's great. But more often than not, you'll find at least two or three of those things that the senior leaders have said you can expect not working in those locations.

Chris Gillen (16:24.924)
And we just dropped one today for Cava, you know, Cava restaurant group, is, you know, fantastic. I mean, in terms of their performance, you know, a quarter over quarter revenue growth, they're really growing. Their CEO has been all over the news talking about all the great things you can experience. And so I hope your people check it out just on our closer look LinkedIn page to see the results of it. Because our belief is, listen, if you're going to go out and say to the consumer,

who's spending their money with your business that this is what they can expect, then you owe them the courtesy of doing everything you can to make sure that that's what they get consistently every time they walk into your building. And so that's that invisible gap piece where we say it's just a disconnect, right? And you've got to put processes in place that give you unbiased validation that these things are actually happening.

Rob Dwyer (17:20.54)
Yeah, you know it strikes me just in the contact center world and we talked.

held was when you have quality being assessed by people, there's a little bit of a bias, particularly if these people report to me. It's a reflection of my own performance. And that holds true in any type of business sense, particularly once you get some scale. These are my locations. And the incentives are around

Chris Gillen (17:35.646)
Yes.

Chris Gillen (17:38.964)
That's right. Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (17:56.296)
performance and if I'm looking at them, right, I want to, I want them to perform, but I'm also going to protect them a little bit, right? They're, they're my people and, and I have an incentive to that. I wonder how much as you scale up, you know, I work for a relatively small company. I've worked for really, really large companies. And one of the things that strikes me is there's

Chris Gillen (18:05.364)
That's right.

Rob Dwyer (18:26.516)
There's some different challenges as you get bigger. Do you see that as well in the space of trying to ensure those kinds of consistencies that the executive team is saying, hey, we deliver on X, Y, and Z. And then the bigger you get, the harder it is to have consistency.

Chris Gillen (18:30.868)
Hmm.

Chris Gillen (18:44.373)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, at all. There are four elements that make up a mode of loyalty in our mind. It's connection. What am I connecting with you on? It's not just price, right? It's like, I have a product or service you want or need or you like, it fits into your lifestyle. How am I building that connection? Personalization, how am I making that unique for you, right, every time you come in? Consistency.

Meaning I should be able to go to any location anywhere and get the same level of experience, the same food quality, whatever it is, and investment. What am I doing to keep you coming back? So of those four, Rob, consistency is the killer. It's the one that always shakes down brands as they grow. You start with one location, you have total control on that location. You can micromanage every element of the experience because it's your business.

Rob Dwyer (19:36.03)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (19:36.564)
But then you start franchising and then you grow to 30, 40, 50 with other people running it. It's harder to maintain the integrity of what made the business successful in the first place. This is why you hear, you know, somebody that, you know, finds a little mom and pop loves it. And then they end up growing and then they start opening places other where, and then you go somewhere in a different city and you eat and you go, ah, yeah, that wasn't as good.

Wasn't as good as what is over here. That's that consistency issue, which is really, really important because what it's cognitive dissonance, right? So you get conditioned to experience something every time you go, right? That's what that conditioning is. So if every time you know, you go to, you know, your favorite restaurant and you expect the hamburger to taste a certain way.

Rob Dwyer (20:01.588)
Hmm.

Chris Gillen (20:25.15)
That's what you expect. The minute that it doesn't, causes you emotional pain. And that pain is, this isn't what I thought I was going to get. And then that, changes the experience for you. And it's one of the number one things where you always hear people going out. I love it when they're saying, yeah, that place is really going downhill, you know, or where that place isn't as good as it used to be because they've lost their ability to maintain control and integrity across all of those locations.

Rob Dwyer (20:55.748)
I am trying to hold back the laughter because what you are saying hits home so hard with me. You know, first of all, I think one of the most iconic brands that for a long time really got it right was McDonald's, right? When you talk about consistency and going into different locations, like the menu was there, the food was very consistent.

Chris Gillen (21:11.752)
Yeah, that's right.

Chris Gillen (21:22.067)
Yes.

Rob Dwyer (21:22.182)
I would argue that maybe they're not as consistent today as they used to be and their scale is as big a scale as you can possibly get. But there are other, we'll just say nameless quick serve restaurants that I've experienced and I am a person that doesn't eat out very often. It tends to happen when I travel. And I can tell you that

Chris Gillen (21:30.366)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (21:40.862)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (21:44.883)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (21:50.078)
More often than not anymore, those experiences like my expectations aren't right. It's a it's a quick serve restaurant, right? It's fast food. My expectations are not up here. But even if they're here. And what I get is well below that it sours everything about it. It's just like, why did I spend the money on this and then I just don't ever want to go back again ever.

Chris Gillen (21:59.571)
Hmm.

Chris Gillen (22:05.779)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (22:10.308)
It's towers, everything. Yes. Yes. Yes.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And what I remind people about that is that, you know, if I love the brand, if I love, I'll give you an example. One of my favorite hamburger chains is Whataburger, right? It's a Texas based chain. They're expanding, love them, grew up with them. And so as they've expanded, I expect that hamburger to taste the exact same way to get the same level of service, all of that.

And that hasn't been the case. Sorry, Whataburger, if you're watching, but it hasn't been the case, right? It's been very, very inconsistent because Whataburger did never expand it. Like they, their growth, were in Texas. They were able to keep it tight, you know, keep everything. And now that they're growing and they're pushing it out there, their food quality is changing. It's different. The service levels are different because they're expanding and they're not able to keep control anymore of tight control over.

curating exactly what that experience will look like. And it's hard. It's a challenge as you scale and as you grow. But there are tools and programs and processes out there that would allow you to do that. I always talk about Outback Steakhouse used to be the most consistent chain, food chain. would eat it because I in retail, I traveled a lot too. I was on the road for five days a week. Right. And so if I saw an Outback, I always knew.

that they had stuff I wanted. I always knew what the experience would be and what the quality was going to be. No matter where I went across the US, it was the same everywhere. That's not the case anymore. And you look at their performance is slipping. The food standards are different. The expectation is different. They've lost the control. And I think most brands just fail to understand how important that consistent experience is. So that doesn't have to be perfect to your point.

Chris Gillen (24:03.432)
But you've got to deliver on those core elements consistently every single time. That's what will keep people coming back because you may have a poor experience and you may be soured, but not enough to leave the brand completely. But if it happens to you enough times, you will, you won't go back, you'll be done. And I have a laundry list of brands where I've said, okay, last chance. I'm not going back there.

Rob Dwyer (24:27.476)
So I have a question about growth and about the impact availability has on your perception of a brand. And I'm going to talk very specifically about a brand that for me, up until recently, was a little bit harder to get. I'm going to go back to the alcohol industry. There's a beer called Yuengling.

Chris Gillen (24:55.112)
Yuengling, yeah. Yep. Yep.

Rob Dwyer (24:55.284)
It's one of the oldest breweries in the United States out of Pennsylvania. I live in the Midwest and it used to be that they, their distribution network was limited. the, like the closest I could ever get it was if I was in Tennessee for some reason, whether it was work or pleasure and like, my wife knew it was a thing. Like I'm going to come home with a trunk full of Yuengling because I can't get it at home. Right. And then they, they,

Chris Gillen (25:07.87)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (25:12.521)
Right.

Chris Gillen (25:17.844)
of you know, yeah.

Rob Dwyer (25:25.104)
established another brewery, I believe in Texas, correct me if I'm wrong listeners, but now I can get it, right?

Rob Dwyer (25:38.522)
It's not the same for me and it's not a consistency issue, which is one of one of those four foundations. But I wonder if you can talk about availability because for me, there is less of an emotional, ooh, I get to go get this. Draw than there was before because now it is, it's just available. Like I can go out and get it at any liquor store today.

Chris Gillen (25:43.529)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (25:46.984)
Yep. Yep.

Chris Gillen (25:59.41)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (26:05.235)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

Rob Dwyer (26:09.372)
and have it. And I'm thinking of other brands where they don't have that growth. I have to go to a place to experience that. Can you talk about that?

Chris Gillen (26:15.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's nothing. So I'm a student of retail. I grew up in retail, retail's in my blood, right? 30 plus years. There's nothing worse than going in, driving, getting in your car, going to a physical location could be your favorite liquor store or retail or whatever.

with the expectation that you're gonna go buy something and then you get in there and it's not available. It's out of stock, it's not on the shelf, right? It's the most frustrating part. And this is one of the big reasons I think it drives people to shop online, right? So if you ask people about that, we just did a big survey about out of stocks and it's available on our website for free about how does it affect you when you go and people get really irritated when they physically take...

take time and energy to go to a place only to find that it's either out of stock, unavailable. You don't have my size, whatever. And it kind of goes back to that experience. You leave going one, you're frustrated that they didn't have it. You expected them to have it was out of stock. And then you think to yourself, well, you know what? Shoot, I'll just go online and buy it. And that's what everybody kind of thinks is like, I can just go online and buy it because of the ease and the convenience. And it's low effort. It's the lowest level of effort you can get. So

Rob Dwyer (27:34.205)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (27:35.59)
Now all that to say Rob, that I still put a lot of stock on the physical experience. I just think it needs to change. And part of that change is ensuring that those, you know, that, that they have the product that people want, that they're keeping it available, that it's in stock for them, that they have a plan when it isn't. mean, I, I posted something months ago about my best buy experience, trying to buy headphones, you know, and first off I had to get over the wall of lot.

showcases that, you you have to go find somebody to get in only to find that when they did that, that they were out of stock on the product. So I wasted all of that time for nothing. I stood in that store, went right on Amazon and they had, they had the product and shipped to my house in 24 hours. How do you compete with that? Right? So you have to be tight. and if you think about how, how to brands monitor today, here's my best example.

Rob Dwyer (28:21.214)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (28:29.748)
You know, there's all of these small businesses that sell their products into places like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, right? Small businesses that are trying to thrive. They're relying solely on that business to stock that shelf and make sure that their product is out. And the only way they know that happens typically, if they're not able to go out and drive around and look is through their sales sheet. You know, am I selling? But then you might get to a location and go, I haven't sold any product in a month.

only to find out that the store staff has never stocked it. Right? So, so it's, it's, it's a real damper on the customer experience when you're the product that you, you, you, you took time to go get is out of stock and there's no plan. Cause like stores, you know, the, the, reality of the source can't stock everything, you know, they may not have your size, but this is where you get the omni-channel and the physical experience blending together to create a new experience where, know,

I want to go to a physical location and I want to touch and feel things because there's just some things I don't want to buy. But I want to be catered to when I go. want an expert to talk to me about the product and what it is and all that. I don't care how I get it, whether I leave with it today or I order it and it shows up 24 hours. That's that experience that I think a lot of retailers in particular are really missing. They're not able to blend the two effectively to still create this really cool experience when you go in. I remember, you remember the day back

back in the heyday of Best Buy. Sometimes I would just go to Best Buy to look at the stuff, you know, and just see, right? And just touch and feel and do all of that. And that you would get a knowledgeable person that be able to walk you through stuff. Now you walk into one of their stores, you're lucky if anybody says boo to you when you're in there. And so all of that kind of ties in, I think, and we're actually launching, I'm really excited about it because one of the things that we believe, Rob, is that the consumer and their brands could work together.

Rob Dwyer (30:01.46)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (30:13.122)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (30:24.626)
for the betterment of the experience, right? So if I'm already going to Best Buy to go look for something, if there was a way for me, for somebody to tell me, hey, while you're in that store, can you just walk over and take a picture of this display or take a picture of this end cap and imagine thousands of people going out to these locations and doing that. They're earning a little bit of money, kind of a gig economy kind of thing. But all that data is being fed back to headquarters or to a location.

so that they're getting real time crowdsourced intelligence on whether they're in caps or full, what the food in a restaurant looks like, this kind of whole concept of that, because part of it's just intelligence. I just have no way to know is my shelf full, is it not full, is there product available, is there not product available? And sometimes just a simple picture can go a long way instantaneously to help people figure out, well, I missing product. So I'll go back to that example where maybe I'm selling my beard cream.

right into, into trader Joe's or, whole foods. And imagine now if there was a way for me as a small business to get crowdsourced information is my product on the shelf, right? Is it there? Is it, is it, and then for me to get that in real time to go, know what it isn't, let me call that location and say, Rob, my product's on the shelf. Can somebody go put it on the shelf? That's cool stuff, right? Because then, then what you get is you get this dynamic between the consumer and the business kind of working together.

Everybody gets a little skin in the game, if you will, for how it works. So those are the kind of things that we're thinking about to help change the dynamic around some of this, to provide retailers or restaurants or whoever with some really cool tools and technology to create a better engagement with their customer. Cause at the end of the day, that's what they need to do to be able to survive.

Rob Dwyer (32:17.288)
You brought up something, and it just makes me think of the overall strategy when we talk about retailers that have both retail and an online presence. I can go into a physical store that they manage and buy, or I can order online. And I am thinking of a specific retailer that'll remain nameless.

But those operations run completely siloed from each other, right? So if I buy it in the store, I have to take it back to the store. That transaction is strictly with the store. If I buy it online, then I got to call and return it online. And that's a strategic miss, I think, for that company in not really... We talk about omnichannel when it comes to...

Chris Gillen (33:04.147)
It is.

Rob Dwyer (33:11.508)
communications, right? That's a big contact center kind of jargon that we threw around. But really the Omni channel that I want to experience as a consumer is with this brand. Yeah, if I walk in and and you don't have my size, but I I do know yes, I want that. Let's get it that you can just have it sent to me.

Chris Gillen (33:17.118)
Right.

Chris Gillen (33:35.956)
Exactly. Exactly.

Rob Dwyer (33:38.824)
How many brands today are just doing exactly that, operating in that old school way and just totally missing the boat there?

Chris Gillen (33:45.172)
Yeah.

I think most of them, I mean, I think with the exception of maybe like Bose and some of your higher end electronics where they have smaller square footage stores that are more experiential. I go in and I listen and a knowledgeable person is telling me about it. then I'm just, okay, yeah, let me hit buy. And then I go home and it's there 24 hours later. So many brands are missing that, all right? Because they're stuck in this old traditional retail model. I'll use Best Buy, because I like to pick on Best Buy.

As an example, they have these huge stores that they built in the 70s and the 80s, right? They have all this inventory and packed out all over the floor, right? All this stuff that if you go into any Best Buy and take your finger across it, it's just collecting dust because nobody's buying it. What an opportunity for them to shrink the square footage of their stores to go back to making that more of an experiential because they have a great e-commerce online program.

to making that visit more experiential where I'm walking in and I'm hearing and listening and touching. And I have a knowledgeable person explaining and answering my questions, right? So that I get to the end of the transaction and there's no inventory in the store and just say, okay, Rob, you good? You want it? Great. I push a button. It'll be delivered to you in 24 hours. Why more brands are not doing that.

And I think part of it is just they're all huge ships and they can't turn and they've got all this inventory that's piling up and building up in their store locations that they end up riding off at the end of the year. And it's not an easy thing for them to do. Right. But in my mind, that is the future. It is the future of.

Rob Dwyer (35:22.11)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (35:23.456)
what that will look like because there's still merit in I'm buying toilet paper. I don't care. I know what it is. I go to Amazon and I buy it right. But I'm certainly not going to spend three or $4,000 on a 4k OLED TV without actually looking at it and understanding what it is and the size and the dimensions. And sometimes you just need to touch it and feel it. And then you need an expert, somebody who's

Rob Dwyer (35:45.363)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (35:48.635)
well-versed. It's the Home Depot model. What Home Depot was built on, it was built on this fact that you could walk into their locations, they had what you needed, but more importantly, you were talking to an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter. And so part of that wasn't just getting the product, it was the experience of having these knowledgeable resources there to be able to help you. Not the case anymore, right? Now you walk in, you talk to an 18-year-old kid who has no idea where the toilets are, right?

Rob Dwyer (36:14.292)
Hmm.

Chris Gillen (36:17.064)
And so all that has changed because we've moved away from that old model of engagement and really creating an experience to this idea that everybody wants ultimate convenience. They don't want to talk to anybody. They just want to come in, get their stuff and leave. And there is certainly an element of the population that wants that. But I think what we're seeing with this younger generation is a complete reset and redo on what they expect going forward. That's why everybody's got to toss the playbook.

They got to stop going back to the same plays over and over, and they've really got to start thinking differently.

Rob Dwyer (36:52.316)
Yeah, you know, about a year ago, I did an episode with David Allison of Valuegraphics. And we talked a little bit about the same subject, And that is that.

It's not just the product, but does your brand align with what I value? And I do think that in this pursuit of growth for a lot of brands, like I want to sell to everyone and I want to become the biggest that there is a challenge in trying to align with your ideal.

Chris Gillen (37:16.274)
Yes, yes.

Rob Dwyer (37:39.006)
customers values because I need to appeal to a really large audience. And this kind of goes back to that scale piece. Like it becomes a real challenge to tell a compelling story that resonates with people. If I also want to just continue to grow and grow and grow. And we certainly see that in a lot of businesses.

Chris Gillen (37:39.794)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (37:46.857)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (37:56.776)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (38:02.728)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (38:09.644)
Are those really large businesses? they? I mean, we've we've seen it. We've talked about it a little bit, but are a lot of other big name retailers in for big trouble because they've just gotten so big that they can't align with values.

Chris Gillen (38:26.996)
Yeah, yeah. think that yes, to answer your question, retail is got probably another five years of a horribly bumpy road before we start to see real changes and what the retail experience looks like. And I say that because you're going to see more bankruptcies. I mean, you're already starting to see the fallout. You know, how much longer does the JCPenney's have?

How much longer does Container Store have? All of these kinds of brands that are just struggling. And again, I go back to what I said before, last 70 years, they've kind of built their whole model on that particular consumer. What is important to that consumer?

and price and you know, lot of other things are important, hence all the transactional loyalty. It's not the case with this consumer. So brands are having to find out what is that connection, that first element, like why? I love this little exercise I do with people sometimes where I say, if you don't tell me anything about yourself, tell me the two brands that you most align with that define you, like that you would just, I can only tell you about who I am by telling you two or three brands.

Right? Cause it says a lot about somebody when they say these are my favorite brands. And then you ask them why, and then you find that it isn't, well, they have the best price. That may be one little component, but it's, I resonate with it because of this. Like Lululemon fans are maniacal. Like if you talk to anybody,

who shops at Lululemon, I mean, they're all over it because it defines them, right? It kind of this, you know, I'm into yoga, I'm into fitness, I'm into this stuff. And so you see somebody wearing Lululemon, you automatically kind of have a perception about that person. That's a brand defining the consumer and the consumer being defined by the brand. And

Chris Gillen (40:09.84)
Not every brand is going to do this. We talk about it in terms of a handshake and a hug. There are some brands that you just have a handshake with, right? It's it's transactional. I go there, I have to buy gas. So gas might be the best price, right? And I go there and I'm like, okay, yeah, I buy my gas here because you have a good price. Then there's a hug and a hug is a much more intimate thing, right? It's a brand that goes beyond just you using it or being, you know, consuming it.

It defines you as a person. And that's what people are looking for. I think now, like it's a statement. When you see me, Tesla owners, Apple, people who are on Apple. I these are all examples. REI is a great example of a very purpose driven brand and their stuff isn't cheap. So it's not price, but they got a lot of people going there because they're connecting with it on a different level. And that's what I would say is what a lot of these older retail brands need to do is really take a step back.

Rob Dwyer (40:57.32)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (41:07.942)
and really understand this new consumer, what are they looking for? Cause it's not the same, right? They're looking for things that are different. And then how do I recraft or retailer my brand to be part of their journey as they come up? Some brands are going to figure it out, Rob, and I'm sure they'll be there, but there's other brands that I just think are built on this really old archaic model that are just too big to be nimble and to move quickly that I think you're going to, you're going to see go out of business.

Rob Dwyer (41:37.812)
Yeah, I don't disagree with anything you said. I do want to ask you about the customer service experience with brands. Obviously, I come from a background where it's all about the customer service side of things, particularly within the contact center. And I think there are a lot of brands who you would say

Chris Gillen (41:49.011)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (41:56.617)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (42:07.4)
They don't offer the best service. And I hear you talking about how this experience is really important. And why aren't these brands offering better customers? Even you talked about Best Buy, right? You go in and I don't get the same experience. It's not this consultation. It's just people who are there stocking shelves, maybe.

Chris Gillen (42:24.072)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (42:36.592)
If there's anything to stock or waiting for you to come check out. Why is that? Why aren't they? Doing a better job with the customer service.

Chris Gillen (42:36.872)
Maybe.

Chris Gillen (42:46.696)
Yeah. Well, I'm to give you the honest, real answer. I think that is the real answer, which is you can sit down every CEO of every major company and you can ask them, "How important is customer service in your business?" And they're all going to give you the standard stock answer. "Incredibly important. We take care of our customers," our customers, blah, blah, blah. Right. But then if you were to take that one step farther and kind of dig into their financials and see where they were spending their money.

What you're going to find is, is they don't spend a lot of money on service and they don't because they look at it as an expense. And I know this because it's exactly how they looked at it at Toys "R" Us. Every year, somebody would come to me and say, can you cut $2 million out of the call center budget? Yeah. I mean, do you care if service erodes or not? Well, you know.

Do your best, you know, so we would go and we would cut $2 million out of the budget by closed loop IVRing or, know, different stuff to kind of, you know, and so I say that, and again, not a blanket statement. I mean, we can't apply this to every company, but for the most part, I will tell you the senior leaders of most companies have a hard time tying back the return on investment of what real customer service looks like.

Rob Dwyer (43:37.682)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (44:03.332)
And you you, have metrics like net promoter score been around 30 years. You've got, you know, customer level of effort. You've got all these statistics, but none of those really tell you. Yeah. You can look at it operationally. You know, am I, am I lowering my cost per contact? Yes. But it's, but it's expense driven. When you start trying to tie that stuff back to real tangible profit improvement, revenue increase, like what is this doing? It gets really challenging.

And so C leaders sit around the table and they understand it. They say, yes, I, you know, I've got to say, yes, that service is important. But the reality of it is in most of these companies, these people leading the service experience are struggling. They can't get the money they need. can't get the resources they need. I sat at a conference in Amsterdam last year with a number of businesses around the table. All of these people were leading the CX customer service experience and their brands. And these are well-known brands.

Rob Dwyer (44:36.894)
the

Chris Gillen (44:59.356)
And it turned into this whole thing of like, can't convince my senior leaders to give me more money. I can't convince them that great customer service will translate to more foot traffic and better revenue. They're not seeing it. So they funnel the money in different places that they think are important and they don't put enough emphasis on the customer experience. And so my question is, you know, is it all this stuff that we've been talking about for 25 years? Is it, is it real or is it BS?

Right? Because to your point, there are still brands out there that give horrible service, yet customers keep going and they keep having the experience and they keep doing that. mean, you can argue telecom, right? AT &T probably is the one company that's known most often for the worst customer service ever. And I have AT &T. I don't like to call them because it is a bad experience, but people still keep buying AT &T.

Rob Dwyer (45:42.918)
you

Rob Dwyer (45:53.363)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (45:53.746)
Right? You know, and so you look at that and you go, it's, it's a real thing. Like this whole CX industry, you know, billion dollar industry, all these people consulting and doing this, our stuff included. Part of our big issue is just trying to convince people Vince brands that that excellent customer service, while may not be immediate, will lead to growth for you. If you put your money where your mouth is. That's why we've been.

doing this where these CEOs are coming out saying, here's all the service related things you can expect. Well, I'm going to go check. I'm going to see if that's actually really, really happening. And every consumer should do that. Every consumer, if you're spending your money at these brands and they're telling you this is what you could expect, if you're not getting what you expect consistently, vote with your wallet, go somewhere else. That's how you show these brands that CX is important.

Rob Dwyer (46:31.732)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (46:45.916)
Yeah, I mean you bring up AT &T and I think I have felt like that's in telecom. It's a challenge, right? My choices are pretty limited. I I can go to T-Mobile or Verizon and maybe I'll get better service or maybe I won't. Outside of that, right? I don't have a lot of choice. I can go. I can go prepaid. That's what I can do and prepaid the service is going to be even worse. So.

I do think there's an element of that, but I love that you bring up because I want to just talk about this a little bit. The consumer piece of it. And I feel like from a brand perspective, humans are notoriously bad at long-term thinking. Like we are just not good at it. We focus on short-term and

Chris Gillen (47:28.105)
Mm.

Rob Dwyer (47:45.734)
It's not surprising then that companies focus on short-term and often there are financial incentives to focus on short-term as well. And the long-term investment that comes from really developing customer experience, it takes a lot of time to pay dividends. You talked about it's challenging, but do we as consumers bear a little bit of the responsibility for.

Chris Gillen (47:50.035)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (47:54.142)
Right.

Chris Gillen (48:08.616)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (48:14.213)
Not voting with our wallets?

Chris Gillen (48:15.604)
Yeah, 100 % man. Yes, we're culpable as consumers. And I would say if you're the person that keeps going back to the brand over and over spending your money and every time you go, you get terrible service, you've lost your right to complain about it because you keep going there.

You know, and I asked this question sometimes when people will post something, you know, you see some of these people posting on LinkedIn about their bad experience. And sometimes I'll ask him, okay, so are you not going back to the brand? Are you done with them? Well, I didn't say that. And so sometimes, you know, the product, the service, whatever it is, my, you know, force you, if you have limited options to kind of put up with that, because you may not have options or it may just be too convenient.

But every time a consumer does that, you're just sending the message that it doesn't matter, that how you treat me, where I go, and the experience that I have is not important to me. And I think that fuels some of the thinking that the C leaders have as well, as they look at it and they say, I see all these negative comments on social and I'm getting bad reviews, but my quarterly numbers were crushing it last year. So does it even matter if I'm, how I'm treating you?

Rob Dwyer (49:05.159)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Dwyer (49:23.4)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (49:27.73)
And that's where I say all the time until companies and senior leaders realize that CX is a revenue generating concept, not an expense concept. You're going to continue to see it, cut it, you know, do this, eliminate agents, you know, all of these things, because they're just trying, they're thinking about it as an expense right now, whatever they can do. They're not thinking about it. Just like you said, Rob, which is this is not something that was going to change your numbers immediately.

but you're going to grow that base and people are going to become more and more loyal over time. They're going to spend more money. They're going to be more forgiving of your mistakes because when we love a brand, are right. We're, they just had a bad day. You know? So, I think that really is at the heart of it. And, and I've been a critic on LinkedIn, you know, look, there's a lot of influencers, a lot of CX people, they have a good message.

Rob Dwyer (50:09.086)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (50:22.13)
But we're on rinse and repeat right now. We're just rehashing all the same stuff over the last 20 years. And that's kind of what we're looking to do is how do we shake it up? How do we stop talking about just the jargon and the, know, CX is good and blah, blah. How do we start really showing tangible return on investment? That's what I want to be able to do. I want a company to be able to say, focused on this particular service metric, whatever it is.

We tied that back to revenue, which is difficult in some way, but this is what we're seeing. I think the best metric that's been out there for 20 years is NPS, right? Which I believe, don't quote me on it, says for every 7 % increase in your net promoter score, you can associate a 1 % revenue increase to that, but that was built 25 years ago. I don't know if that's still the case or not. And so that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking to try to help our brands and people really start tying back tangible,

Rob Dwyer (50:54.876)
Mmm.

Chris Gillen (51:19.162)
improvement, revenue, speak their language, revenue increases associated with great customer service. And I think that's the, that's the, you know, the, kind of the Holy grail of, of, of all of us getting to, so that these companies become maniacally focused on the importance of the experience.

Rob Dwyer (51:39.826)
Yeah. And pro tip, quit bastardizing NPS. Do it the right way. I mean, really, that's what's happened is companies have begun to focus so much on the survey and the results of the survey and not the whole point of it is to make actionable changes. you see this in

Chris Gillen (51:44.153)
That's right. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (51:54.13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (52:01.584)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (52:04.478)
have on LinkedIn, you'll see it. I've talked about it too. Automotive industry is horrible about it, right? We've got to stop incenting the people who are delivering the service strictly on the survey results. If you're going to do the survey, do it right so that you can make actionable changes. And I think that's where a lot of leaders are questioning the metrics.

Chris Gillen (52:15.657)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (52:22.792)
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

Chris Gillen (52:31.496)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (52:32.934)
It's not because...

It's not because you can't tie it. It's because the way we've gone about gathering the metrics have changed and the data is no longer reliable in a lot of cases.

Chris Gillen (52:41.0)
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, most people who I was just on the phone with a client, a CEO of a client, and we were talking about some stuff and they were like, well, you know, we're just getting, we're continuing to get these really bad reviews on Google. Right. So, okay. So I went and looked at a couple of their locations and they had four or 500 reviews, right. On, on Google over the course of five years.

Five years, four or 500 reviews. And so my question to that CEO was, how many people flow through your building every day? Thousands, thousands. So just call it at the end of the day, you got 50,000 people flowing through a location, right? And that location has four reviews. So what you're telling me is, is those four negative reviews are driving you to change your whole entire business.

or think differently because four people complained. And this is the downside with social media, right? Because you never hear from the 90 % of your real customer because survey processes are cumbersome, they're silly, people won't do them. If you can get to those people and establish a relationship where they're giving you real feedback, it changes the game when it comes to the type of feedback you're getting. And that's the other thing, think about that. So many companies...

Rob Dwyer (53:41.118)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (54:05.948)
are relying on social media monitoring where they're getting a tiny fraction of the opinion of the people that they're serving, but they take it as gospel. And that's a problem with it too, right? And so I agree with you is that, you know, stop the survey begging. I hate that. know, the give me five stars when I walk in, let your teams know the importance of service. Ask because...

Rob Dwyer (54:18.758)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Gillen (54:31.43)
It's a motivating thing too. Like on our survey program, 65 % of what we get are positive things about that server or that frontline worker. Right. And so it's a motivating tool, but if you ask a frontline worker how they feel about surveys, they glaze over because all they ever hear is all the negative stuff that they get. They don't get those positive things that often and brands would be wise to do that. I'm a, I'll say this and I know we're, coming up on time, Rob, but

Rob Dwyer (54:44.116)
Mm.

Rob Dwyer (54:51.634)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (55:00.818)
The least important person in any organization is the C team because they are not driving the day-to-day business. The most important people in any business are the servers, the bartenders, the frontline workers, the cashiers that are making minimum wage, but are responsible for getting people into that location. And it irritates me, come get on the soapbox for a minute because we got it backwards, right? We're paying CEOs.

Rob Dwyer (55:28.787)
Yeah.

Chris Gillen (55:30.042)
millions and millions and millions of dollars. And I get it, it's important to set the strategy and the vision and all that, but the frontline worker who's doing all of the work gets nothing. They get nothing. And so businesses have to change their opinion about that. They have to say, we're not just employee centric, but we're valuing, we're putting real investment into these people who are responsible.

for getting people in and creating this experience. And oftentimes they don't do that at all. They don't give them the tools, they don't give them the resources, they don't get into the enforcement to be able to go and create that experience. So that's a really passionate topic for me that we've got to have businesses start thinking again that it's not me, the CEO, it's the frontline worker who I should be paying a tremendous amount of attention to, lauding with praise and training because they're the ones that are gonna make that location successful.

Rob Dwyer (56:23.156)
Yeah, I am 100 % on board with that. Chris, awesome to chat with you. Obviously, all my listeners know that they can go to the show notes and find your LinkedIn. Go take a look at A Closer Look. In fact, take a closer look at A Closer Look.

Chris Gillen (56:30.206)
Thank you. Yeah.

Chris Gillen (56:41.696)
right. Take a closer look. Remember it's www.a-closer-look.com. So it's a little bit. But check us out on LinkedIn. We do a lot of work postings on LinkedIn because we love that channel in terms of just engagement. And we try to do a lot of stuff for free. So we put out surveys and reports and things that we want because we're trying to help the industry.

Right? If you like what we do and you want to talk to us about business, that's awesome. But more importantly, what we're trying to do is just get subject matter expertise out there so that we can help people really start to understand that CX is, we got to stop talking about it. We got to start showing what it looks like.

Rob Dwyer (57:24.308)
Thanks, Chris. That is awesome advice. And thank you again for being on Next At Q.

Chris Gillen (57:25.33)
Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.