On the Rooftops of London featuring Vance Morris

Transcript

Rob Dwyer (00:01)
Welcome back to another episode of Next in Queue. Today I have "Mug Buddy" Vance Morris on the show. Welcome to the show Vance, how are you?

Vance Morris (00:08)
Thank

Great Rob, thank you. I wasn't expecting that intro.

Rob Dwyer (00:16)
So before we get started and I give you a proper intro, let's show everyone why we are Mug Buddies today. Yeah, so you've got, is yours Chrome? Yeah, so I've got the original, the OG Black, you've got the Chrome. I found that this mug was a little difficult to drink out of, so I made it my pen holder and I use.

Vance Morris (00:32)
It's Chrome!

I went through a couple of them to find one that's

drinkable. And this one's actually drinkable.

Rob Dwyer (00:49)
Okay, I love that. So Vance, you are author, speaker, entrepreneur. You spent 10 years at Disney. You are here today to talk about customer retention. What am I leaving out that I should have put?

Vance Morris (01:15)
I think the big part is that I also own like bricks and mortar businesses. That and that's really what separates me from a lot of other coaches and consultants and gives me street cred for lack of a better word is that I own a carpet cleaning business, a mold remediation company and an oriental rug washing facility. So everything that I talk about I have done in those businesses. And I mean, if I can do it in a carpet cleaning business.

I mean, no offense to other carpet cleaners. I've heard all the jokes. you know, well, you know, we, we, have been looked down upon as an industry. but. You know, I've done it in those businesses. So if I can do it there, there isn't a blessed business out there that can't take these strategies and apply them or adapt them to their niche, their industry.

Rob Dwyer (01:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to spend time talking about home services in particular, but before we go down that path, I mentioned you spent 10 years at Disney. Let's just start there. What was the biggest lesson that you learned while you were there?

Vance Morris (02:35)
It's probably not what most of the listeners think. know, probably a lot of people think, oh, customer service, you know, picking up trash really quick, keeping the place clean. The biggest lesson I learned, and it was like actually on my second day on the job, my boss walked me in, we were opening up the Yacht and Beach Club Resort. I this was like 1990, 91. And we walked into this ballroom where we're doing the training. And this is before computers.

Well, before computers were prevalent everywhere and there were just stacks and stacks of binders. I mean, three, four inch thick binders. And I'm like, what is all this? He goes, well, these are all of the manuals, all the OJTs on how to open and run a resort for every department, housekeeping, food and beverage, you name it. Every position was there. I'm like, holy cannoli, these guys, you know, they got their act together.

I mean, not that they wouldn't, but I was just like blown away by the scope of the amount of, you know, detail that they went into on how to open and operate a resort. so I carried, so Disney has a process or a system for everything that they do. I mean, you want to change a bus tire? There's a system for it. You want to carry a tray in a restaurant? They got a process for it. And I found that

You know, a lot of people are like, that's too restrictive. I don't want to work within a script or a process or system. And what I found was that if you do follow the process, if you do follow the script, it actually gives you freedom. It gives you the ability to do other nice things. And that's, think, why Disney is so successful with their customer experience is because we know the system.

It's now rote. mean, it's just, it's just, you know, muscle memory. We know how to carry the tray. We know what to do. And now we have the freedom to be able to do the nice things that people, you know, the, you know, the, my God, the ice cream fell on the floor, you know, or, you know, in the middle of the pavement and the janitor swoops in with the new ice cream cone before the kid can even start crying, you know? So systems equal freedom in my world. And that was really the biggest lesson I got.

Rob Dwyer (05:03)
Love that it sparks two things in my mind right out of the gate. And the first is that a lot of companies really struggle with documenting their processes, right? It's a little tedious at times. It can be something that someone goes, well, I don't really want to spend that time documenting this process. So it's kind of boring, but it's incredibly useful, especially when you bring new people into the organization.

You touched on this freedom piece. And in my experience in contact centers, there is a process when you're new of like learning the call flow and learning all of the elements and what you're supposed to ask. And the hardest thing for a new agent is to critically listen and react as a human when they're

early on because they're so focused on trying to remember that process. Like what do I do next? And what I hear you saying is if you just make that part easy, it brings out the human aspect because now I can actually focus on making a connection.

Vance Morris (06:19)
Yeah, you know, you can't struck on the key word, which was simple. And Disney runs on three words, what to do, how to do it, and why we do it that way. And it's that third word that most business owners miss. And that's the key word, because if you want engaged employees, if you want them to understand their job, maybe, maybe not in the, you know,

Rob Dwyer (06:33)
Mmm.

Vance Morris (06:46)
complete large scope of the entire corporation. But if you want them to know why they're doing something the way you want them to do it, they're probably going to do it that way. Because, well, that makes sense. we answer the phone this way because it makes the guest feel comfortable and, you know, it's not confrontational. we've changed the bus tire this way because it's safer. I mean, they get it. And I think that that's really important to...

to getting employees engaged with your business.

Rob Dwyer (07:20)
Yeah. Okay, Vance. So let's talk customer retention. That was really kind of the focus of this episode. And I think we both know that companies often spend more time focusing on acquiring customers versus retaining existing customers. Let's start there. Why?

Vance Morris (07:47)
they don't know any better, quite frankly. I'm not on social media all that much. mean, if you see me out there, it's probably my CRM posting for me, rather than me being there. But if you doom scroll your feed, and if you're in business, you're gonna see all of these bells and whistles and shiny objects that are saying, here's how to get all the latest leads, here's how to get new customers, here's how to get new, new, new, new.

Rob Dwyer (07:49)
Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (08:16)
And so we're all brainwashed into thinking, well, that's how we do it. Now, I'm not going to say that you don't need new. You certainly do, because if you want to grow, you're going to need a percentage of your customers need to be new. Got that. Perfect. But if you want to grow profitably, you need to focus on the existing customers. If I can give a quick example. So just yesterday, I got my Google Pay Per Click

numbers from my Google guy. It cost me $136 to get a lead in the front door. $136 bucks. Now my minimum charge for my carpet cleaning business is $199. What does that leave me? Sixty some odd dollars to pay the technician, put gas in the van, rent, cost of goods, you name it? I'm going negative.

if they only do a minimum charge. I'm going negative. And I don't mind that because I have a very strong customer retention system that when I clean for them the second time, I'm already $100 or more to the good because it only costs me $21 a year to market to one customer. $21 bucks for the year.

Rob Dwyer (09:17)
Mm-hmm.

So tell me.

So let's talk about that. What what does that involve, right? Obviously, I think most everyone understands Google. They understand Google ads and and cost of acquisition. So let's talk about that ongoing marketing. What do you do? How do you do?

Vance Morris (10:00)
Well, first and foremost, you can't always be selling. First and foremost, you've got to create a connection. You've got to create a relationship. So you can't be just corporate muckety muck, know, big business. And most of us, we can't. We're not Goodyear. We're not Disney. We're not Apple. We can't be faceless. We've got to get our face out there. So we've got to create connections and we can't always be selling because, I mean,

There's nothing worse than the only time you hear from a company is when they want to sell you something, right? It's when they want money. So let's take that off the table. And the other thing is, let's get offline. Because so many messages, the inbox is so clogged, the emails, most email deliverability might be 70%, 75 % maybe.

And then you got the spam filters that are going to gobble some up. And then the people are probably filtering stuff anyway. I mean, you're lucky if 20%, 30 % of emails get through. Postal service, by the way, still has a 99 % deliverability rate. Say what you will about them. They're still pretty darn good. And then they beat the pants off an email any day. So I strongly recommend mixing in, I'm not saying don't do electronic or digital, but

Mix in the mail, mix in physical mail. The number one piece that I have, if you were to take away all of my marketing and allow me to have one marketing piece, and that's all I could survive on with my business, it would be my print newsletter. You may not take that away from me. So the print newsletter, it goes out monthly.

Rob Dwyer (11:44)
So how often does that go out?

Vance Morris (11:50)
So, and it goes out to my carpet cleaning business, our customers. So it's a four page, full color, send it out monthly. And it is designed not as a sales piece, but as a customer engagement, customer connection piece. All right, so think of it as readers digest light. It is designed to entertain. It is designed to get a little chuckle.

and remind people that we exist. Because remember, it's not the customer's job to remember us. It is our job to remind the customer that we exist. certain things are in there. I mean, there's one section I put in there. It's called Stupid Criminal Stories. People love the stupid criminal stories. I I ran I had it in there for, I don't know, 16, 17 months. And then I was like, I got tired of it. So I took that out and I put something else in there. And I got like five or six phone calls and

Where's the stupid criminals? And I'm like, well, one, I was like, people really read this, you know? But two, I'm like, well, I guess they really like it. So, stupid criminals went back in. I shamelessly use my children in my marketing. You know, my customers have watched my children grow up. So, I started my business when my oldest son was five years old, and then my youngest would have been one.

And so, like my daughter, did ballet. And I took a picture of her at her recital when she was five years old in her little tutu, put it in a newsletter. And I did that every year. And she was like, I don't know, nine or 10 years old, we're in the grocery store. And this lady comes running up to us, didn't even come to me, didn't even went to my daughter. She goes, oh my God, Emma, how was your recital?

She and I looked at each other and we're like, we're going to go running and hide in the frozen food aisle because who's this nutty lady coming up? And I'm like, it's got to be one of my customers. That lady is never leaving me. I have created an emotional connection with her and I'm sure thousands of others. I have to have to royally screw up to lose her. So not only am I staying top of mind by doing a newsletter monthly,

Rob Dwyer (13:51)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (14:09)
I've now created an emotional bond, a connection. And I think that's what so many business owners miss, is that connection. Now, do you have to use your kids? No. I mean, if you like fishing, great, talk about fishing. you like, you know, whatever. But something that you're going to connect with your customers. And I said it's not supposed to be a salesy piece. I mean, you could put something in there, you know, maybe about referrals or, know, hey, do you know somebody who might need us, et cetera, but

The design of it is to get the connections and keep it going. The sales, now you're wondering, okay, well, how do I make money off of my customers? Well, that's what the postcard comes in. And that is designed for your promotion of the month. That is your sales vehicle. So you send them a postcard once a month saying, here's our promotion for April. It is for customers only. It's an exclusive just for our customers.

Rob Dwyer (14:57)
Hmm.

Vance Morris (15:09)
I mean, there's nothing, you see these TV ads for, you know, like the phone companies are, you know, notorious for it. You know, it's like new customers get the best, you know, here, get six phones for free if you switch. Well, what about me? I've been a customer for 10 years. Can I get six phones? No, what the hell? Come on.

Rob Dwyer (15:31)
Yeah,

absolutely. I wonder in your experience, certainly when it comes to home services, right? These are things that we buy on a needs based and then there are services that are more of a subscription or a monthly bill that comes. Is there a difference in how you would approach that or is it all the same?

regardless of how that works.

Vance Morris (16:03)
No, that's a great question. So I think, you know, in home services, I mean, there are definitely two different kinds. Like a subscription I would think of is like pest control. You know, the guys show up once a month, they walk around the yard and do their thing and come in the house every once in a while. But you don't see the guy. I mean, do you just see the little tag hanging on the door that said he was there? Again, that's not a relationship. That's just

That's a transaction. So should they be doing a newsletter? Yeah, no doubt. Is it as important for them? I would argue yes, but not as important for, say, an HVAC company, where, like, I'll give a quick example. It happened to me a couple of years ago. The air conditioning crapped out, called a company, came out marvelous. I mean, great service. mean, took care of, you know, show my home with respect.

Put little booties on, know, decent price. The lady was out here, you know, very personable, told me exactly what she was doing. I was like, great. And next day they even, you know, did a follow-up call. How's everything? I said, fantastic. This year, the heat didn't click on on the first cold day. And I'm rooting through, I'm looking for an invoice, I'm looking for a business card, something that I would have kept. Even went out to the unit looking for like a magnet that they might've slapped on there. Nothing.

Nothing. Now, remember how much it cost me to get a lead? HVAC, I know lead costs are a hell of a lot higher than that. And they charged me $295 to come out. I know their lead cost has got to be at least that, if not more. So they went negative, getting me as a customer. But I didn't remember them. I had to go back to Google and call their competitor and have them come out. But had they sent me

Rob Dwyer (17:40)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Vance Morris (18:00)
Even every other month, if they had sent me a postcard, you know, maybe they didn't have to do the full-blown newsletter, but if they had just sent me something every other month, every month, reminding me that they exist, they would have been top of mind and I would have immediately called them because I had a great experience with them. I just couldn't remember their name.

Rob Dwyer (18:21)
So we work with a lot of pest control companies and in home services and I love this topic and I have also heard you say that there is something that exists called rave worthy pest control services. Is that true? And if so, I want to know what

these companies can do because we've got a stable of customers that want to know more about this. What can they do to stand out? Rave worthy pest control. Why would I rave about pest control?

Vance Morris (18:59)
What was it again?

my gosh, it's like you would rave about carpet cleaning. Your business has to be tellable. At the end of an interaction with the company, you want to go home, sit down at the family dinner table and say, my God, you'll never guess what happened when the carpet cleaner showed up. I mean, you don't do that when you go get your oil changed. You don't sit down and say, my God, you'll never guess what happened to the oil change because it's not memorable.

Let's take the pest control guy. I'll make a parallel to my carpet cleaning business, if I can, because I think they both drive trucks, they both got to go to the house. So I'll give you the script that I have my guys do to get into the home. So we park in the street, we don't park in the driveway, God forbid I've got an oil leak, now I got something to clean up, right?

Rob Dwyer (19:48)
Yeah.

Vance Morris (20:03)
My technician gets out of the van in a clean uniform because he carries an extra uniform with him in case he gets dirty on the job beforehand. So you see the parallels here between pest control and carpet cleaning. And he actually looks presentable. It's not like, you know, he got one thing hanging out of his pants. The other thing we don't allow is there is no smoking while you're on the clock. I don't care if you, you know, if you stand outside the van, you still can't smoke. There's definitely no smoking in the van.

The thing you want to do is go into somebody's home smelling like a Marlboro. And there's no cologne. Nothing worse than going in smelling like Marlboro and Axe. You I mean, you might think it smells great, but you you buy that stuff for $8 a gallon at 7-Eleven and no, it is horrible. Anyway, no offense to Axe wearers, but so we get out of the van. We have a special mat. We've got a gift.

And we go up to the front door. We lay down our special mat, which is a logoed mat that we're going to wipe our feet on. We knock on the door. We don't ring the bell because friends knock. Salespeople ring the bell. We take a couple of steps back from the door. Wait for Mrs. McGillicuddy to open the door. She opens the door and we say, Hi, my name's Josh. I'm here to create your healthy home. Now, just that term right there. We're not here to clean carpet, which we are.

But our mission is to create a healthy home. We do it by cleaning carpet, but our overall mission is bigger than just that. So we're setting her up for maybe other services. Upholstery, air vent cleaning, mold remediation, whatever might be going on in the home. And then we wait for her to invite us in. So when she invites us in, we do an exaggeration, a performance. So from Disney, we do a performance of wiping our feet on the mat.

We put little booties on our shoes and then we go in and we present Mrs. McGillicutty with a gift. Now when was the last time you had a home service professional, plumber, carpet cleaner, whatever, present you with a gift before they did any work?

Rob Dwyer (22:16)
Never.

Vance Morris (22:16)
Right, and I'm not talking like a tchotchke pen or chip clip or something like that. I'm talking it's a nice little custom blue box. It's got a bottle of spot remover, a bag of cookies, and a little note from me saying thanks so much for letting us into your home.

That is our entrance procedure. That alone will get people sitting down saying, you you'll never guess what this carpet cleaner did. I mean, the guy put booties on and then when he left, even left booties for the kids to wear. They're running up and down the street in them. And then he gave me a gift. Who the hell gives me a gift? You know, my husband doesn't even give me gifts anymore and the carpet cleaner gave me one, you know? So that is tellable. That is referable. That's a story that people can talk about.

Rob Dwyer (22:53)
Hahaha

Vance Morris (23:02)
And the gift, so this is the cool thing. So the gift, I mean, cost me less than five bucks. So when we implemented the gift, we saw a 26 % increase in our mid-tier package, which for us equated to about $65,000 in additional sales for that year, just by implementing that gift. It starts a process called reciprocity. I give something to you, you feel compelled to give something back to me.

Rob Dwyer (23:23)
Wow.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a fascinating story and I love that when you think about creating memorable experiences, I think a lot of companies will say, well, we just do X, right? We just do Y. And I would imagine that there are a lot of people who would go, well, carpet cleaning is not very special.

And yet here you are making a memorable experience out of it and showing the ROI that comes from doing that, which is significant.

Vance Morris (24:08)
I mean, it's the little things. I pest control guys. I mean, if you've got to go up the driveway, pick up the newspaper. Bring it into them. You know? I mean, you see trash on the front lawn? Walk over there and pick If it blew in from somewhere else, go over there and pick it up. Say, know, Mrs. McGillicuddy, I saw this bottle had blown onto your lawn. I picked it up. Do you have a trash can? I could drop this in.

Rob Dwyer (24:30)
Yeah, well and. Anymore with the presence of so many. Ring or like systems where you've got a camera facing out from the front door. Those things can actually be documented and shared. So when you think about social media and I know you mentioned doom scrolling before, but sometimes we want to scroll and feel good.

once we're done doom scrolling and that might be the the piece where we celebrate something really nice that someone didn't have to do and Now your brand is associated with that and that can make a huge impact on Again getting new customers for something that didn't cost anything As far as you know an ad with Google

Vance Morris (24:58)
Yeah.

Rob Dwyer (25:24)
I want to take a moment to talk about service recovery and as it relates to customer retention, because we're talking about all these good things that we're doing. But the reality is that every now and then something's going to go wrong. We are going to mess up. We are going to fall short of expectations, whatever the case may be. Talk to us about service recovery and how that

impacts customer retention.

Vance Morris (25:56)
Well, you a lot of times your company is going to, or your business is going to be held in a better light after a recovery than if nothing had gone wrong to begin with. Because that's your moment to shine. They're like, okay, well, they screwed this up, but boy, when they took care of us, they took care of us. So it is a huge opportunity.

Rob Dwyer (26:14)
Yeah.

Vance Morris (26:23)
I think the most important thing about recovery is that no amount of time is allowed between problem and recovery. It's got to be a short amount of time because that is just like a wound or getting a cut. The more time that goes by that you don't take care of it, the worse it's going to get. I mean, you get your cut. If you put a little ointment and a bandaid on it, you're to be fine in a couple of days. But if you get a cut,

And then you rub some dirt in it, know, sooner or later, it's going to get infected. It's going to get gangrene. They're going to lop it off. The same thing with a problem in customer service. The longer the period of time goes, the more and more ticked off the customer is going to get. I mean, just think of the last time you wanted to complain and you got on the phone and you're on hold for 10 minutes and you get passed around to six other people. You just get madder and madder as time goes on. So give the authority.

to the person on the ground, to the person who got the complaint, give them the authority to fix the problem. I mean, if it's, I mean, I'm not saying, mean, if, you if you back the van into their garage, well, you know, you probably want to call the boss and let's get this taken care of. But if you're 15 or 20 or 30 minutes late, okay, well, what can the technician do? You know, well, one, if you know you're going to be late, one, call the client and say, hey, look,

you know, from your previous job, say, look, this job's taking me a little bit longer. I'm really sorry. I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll probably be there in 20 or 30 minutes. Then you call the office and you let them know so that they can keep up to date. And since you're already late, I tell my guys, you know what? On the way, you're going to stop. You're going to see a grocery store. Go in the grocery store, buy some flowers. And if you show up at the front door with flowers, who's going to yell at

you know, a 20 year old with a bouquet of flowers standing at the front door. I mean, just put your big puppy dog eyes on, nobody's gonna yell at you. Here you go. And if a guy answers the door, you give him the flowers and say, here, give these to your wife, because you probably haven't bought her flowers in a long time anyway. So it's a win-win all the way around.

Rob Dwyer (28:42)
Yeah,

yeah, you are absolutely making someone the hero at that moment for sure. It may be the technician. It may be someone in the household. I love that idea.

Vance Morris (28:52)
You and I mean, it

just should be immediate and you should actually have stuff in your pocket, you know, that you could do like an immediate recovery. I work with a lot of medical offices like orthodontists and things like that. And they're notorious for being late. mean, you know, you walk, you're the first appointment of the day. Sorry, doctor's 10 minutes late. I'm like, how the hell does that happen? You know? But so I worked with this one office and the guy was horrible. I mean, he's always late. So we were at a staff meeting and

And I said, well, why don't we, we know this is going to happen. Why don't we interrupt this, own the problem and let's see what we can do. So we just agreed we're going to give, we stopped doing Starbucks just because Starbucks went downhill there. But we had a local coffee shop, got a whole bunch of gift cards for the coffee shop. Patient walks in, Marge at the front desk says, hey, know, Dr. Smith is, you know, no surprise, running about 10 minutes late, but we value your time.

Here's a gift card to go get a cup of coffee on us after your appointment. Now, we acknowledge the problem even before they were gonna complain. They got a little something something. And now we gave out hundreds of these things. At the end of the month when we sat down to do a financial reporting, the doc was like, what is this customer? I can't remember what the line item was called on the PNL.

It was like $3,000. And he goes, what is this? I said, well, that's all the $5 coupons we gave out for free coffee every time you were late. He's like, my God. He was never late again. Never. So even doing stuff like that will fix your problems in your business, especially when you tack a little money onto it. But give the authority to the person on the ground.

Rob Dwyer (30:29)
You

Vance Morris (30:47)
I mean, Ritz-Carlton, what do they give? $2,000. Any employee can spend up to two grand to fix a guest problem. And they're not going to get yelled at. I mean, they might get questioned, like, maybe could you have done something differently? But they're not going to get in trouble.

Rob Dwyer (30:52)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right?

You brought up Starbucks and I just had this conversation with Neal Woodson, my guest last week. And so I'd like to ask you a little bit about it. They've been in the news for some things that they're doing, going back to the things that they used to do, like handwritten names and or maybe notes on the cups, but they've

also said they're making some changes to that in-store experience, in particular the gathering place that was Starbucks, where they just invited people to be there, whether or not they were buying coffee or not. They're taking a different stance on that. They want paying customers in the lobby. What's your take on that?

Vance Morris (32:06)
You know, they have gone astray massively, which is why they called Schultz back in to fix it a couple of times. It was designed as the third place. You got home, you got work, you got Starbucks. And like any behemoth of a company, it just gets away from you. I mean, the menu, I mean...

Gee whiz, I feel bad for those baristas, because I wouldn't want to make a double shot, you know, caramel macchiato with 110 degree foam with a shot of potato juice. I mean, stuff, that's got to take you five minutes to make that drink. And that's not serving the customer. That's ticking off everybody else who just want a cup of coffee. So, and I think what I understood, there's a Wall Street Journal article a couple of weeks ago. I think they're like nixed like...

Rob Dwyer (32:53)
Yeah.

Vance Morris (33:05)
20 % of their menu has been like completely cut, which is smart, very smart. Because then you don't have that paralysis of looking up the menu trying to decide what you want. I think that their in-store experience is suffering by this. We don't allow people to use our restroom without buying something. I have seen...

Rob Dwyer (33:10)
Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (33:35)
stores that have pulled the furniture out. ain't no place to sit. Or they've put in uncomfortable furniture. I've seen stores that have timers, like you can only sit for so long and then, you know, somebody walks over. I mean, it's not a buzzer, but I mean, somebody will walk over and say, hey, you've been here too long. That's not hospitable. And I mean, I don't know about your town. I mean, my town, we've got 1,700 people here. This is a small town.

Rob Dwyer (33:52)
Right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vance Morris (34:04)
We have three coffee shops. Every city and town's got this plethora of coffee shops. They're all nice. They all have sofas. They're going to go somewhere else where they're wanted, where it's comfortable. I mean, they put the drive-throughs in. Well, I mean, that's not an experience. That's just like going anywhere else to get a cup of coffee. So yeah, I think they'll...

Rob Dwyer (34:07)
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vance Morris (34:33)
pull out of it, it's gonna be a while. I hope this new guy, I can't remember what his name is, but I hope this new guy is smart enough to realize that the Starbucks experience includes people sitting on their ass for three hours in their dining room.

Rob Dwyer (34:49)
Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. I want to switch gears a little bit and I do this at my own risk and probably I'm about to evoke a little bit of personal pain, but I swear we're going to relate this to the topic at hand. You are an Eagles fan.

Vance Morris (35:21)
That I am.

Rob Dwyer (35:21)
And

I am a Kansas City Chiefs fan. And this last Super Bowl matchup was an absolute beat down, and I'm sure that you celebrated and were really, really excited for. An Eagles Super Bowl victory.

What can we learn from things like the NFL and the fandom that we can apply to our businesses and the experiences that we try to create?

Vance Morris (35:58)
I mean, it goes back to the emotional connection that I talked about earlier. And don't blame the refs, please. Don't blame the refs. We're all human, they're seeing it in super speed. Don't blame the refs. I don't care. I don't care what team you're on. Just stop that. I'm an official for swimming. And I make bad calls, I don't want to say with great frequency, but I make bad calls.

Rob Dwyer (36:08)
Thank you, thank you!

Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (36:29)
Just leave us alone. But, you know, there is a power there that they are so strong in emotion. I look what, mean, or lose, people are going to rip lamp posts down in Philadelphia. I mean, it doesn't matter. Win or lose, they're coming down. They are, certainly. Now, I didn't partake in that, but I did watch it.

Rob Dwyer (36:51)
fans are a different breed that's for sure.

Vance Morris (36:59)
But it's amazing. mean, it's something that, and what I like about it is it brings us together, politics aside, color aside, all of the other things that might be dividing us around, it brings us together. And I think that when you create these kinds of connections in your business, again, it unites people.

around a common cause. And you might think, oh, pest control, I'm not uniting people. I'm like, well, yeah, you are. I mean, you are attracting, one, you're attracting the kind of people you want to do business with, which is very important. But it's just the way you behave, it's your personality that is going to attract these people. mean, if you're a, I mean, look at New York, right? I mean, they got

How many football teams they've got the Jets and the Giants both play in the same stadium. And they, mean, what makes a Giants fan? What makes a Jets fan? They both play in the same place, but yet they have vastly different fans and what makes up one versus the other. It's their connection that they have to, you know, whoever used to coach or play for the Jets and whoever used to coach or play for the Giants. And then it's just passed down family to family to family.

Well, that's what we want.

Rob Dwyer (38:24)
think if

you're a Jets fan, you just enjoy an eternal suffering. I think that's what makes a Jets fan, but.

Vance Morris (38:29)
Well, yeah, there is that.

There is that. You're not kidding. But, but, then it's passed down generation to generation. Same thing in our business is if we get an emotional connection, we're then referred to others and that referral is more powerful than a coupon. Right? So if, you know, Mary Sue down the street,

has just been coupon clipping to get, you know, whatever service she needs. then, but, you know, Debbie down the street says, you got to try these guys. That's a hell of a lot more powerful than a $10 off coupon. And so now we have that and now we're creating our community. Now we have two people referring us and then it just branches out from there. And then, you know, you hope that, you know, when, I mean, now this is a long time, but when mama has her kids,

I mean, we've got in our time, I again, we're a small community, but we've got some families that two and three generations that are using us. And so, yeah, I mean, it's not an exact football analogy, but that's what I would take from it.

Rob Dwyer (39:45)
Yeah, I love that. think we sometimes forget about the power of

What our immediate friend or family group uses can be something that brings business because particularly in family, right? And in particular, when it comes to a brick and mortar type of business, right? I always shop at a particular grocery store. And so my kids are more likely to go shop at that.

grocery store or if there's a special place where we like to go shopping for clothes, for instance, you can create an emotional connection with family that lasts. so if I'm creating an environment where I get my current customers to have that connection, the next generation may have that connection without me having to do a whole heck of a lot.

make it happen because we often just follow along in those footsteps.

Vance Morris (41:00)
And that loyalty will change people's behavior. Like we have two grocery stores in town. One's a little bit closer than the other. But one grocery store has got the smarmiest, nastiest people that don't want to help you. The other grocery store, I literally they're less than a mile apart. And you know when you go with your grocery cart and you're like looking at each line and which one you want to get in, see which one's going to go fastest and then there's like

never get behind the little old lady with two items because one of those items is going to be on sale and she is going to argue for that nickel and you can't even give her a nickel to get out of line because I've tried. Lady, if I give you a nickel, will you just move on? No, this is the principle of it, for God sakes. So, but at the other grocery store, if somebody, a cashier doesn't have anybody in her line, they walk to the front

Rob Dwyer (41:33)
because she's writing checks for both of them.

Vance Morris (41:57)
of their register and they stand by the little candy display and they say, you ready to check out, sir? And then right this way, same town. They're pulling from the same applicant pool. They're just training their people, A, to be nice, B, to actually deliver some service. And they also, the ones that are delivering service have no self checkout lines. Then there's other place installed like six self checkout registers.

Rob Dwyer (41:58)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (42:27)
And you're lucky if they've got like one or two other ones open.

Rob Dwyer (42:32)
Yeah, I think you and I could go off on a quite probably a whole episode on self checkout and self service, but I don't think we've got that kind of time left, but I I do want to talk. You brought up the word loyalty. And.

Vance Morris (42:39)
Yeah.

No, we certainly don't.

Rob Dwyer (42:52)
I want to get your take on these loyalty tiers and what they mean. First of all, I just wanted to share. recently saw a bronze, silver, gold. Titanium being the highest tier and all I could think of was. Since when is titanium?

Like more valuable than than gold like I don't understand what is happening with the way we're naming tears today, but let's talk about loyalty programs Someone called them loyalty schemes Are they any good how should we employ them? What are your thoughts on?

Vance Morris (43:40)
Yeah, it borders on bribery. You know, I think now, I mean, I've got a couple of coffee roasters, coffee houses as clients. And they, you know, they use the little punch cards and. You're already rewarding your best. I mean, you're rewarding your best customers if they're using it for that, which I'm all in favor of, but.

There's three kinds of loyalty, Rob. There's what I call behavioral loyalty, which is if you're driving to work and there's a gas station between your house and work and you get gas there because it's convenient, that's behavioral loyalty. Then there's rational loyalty, which is you're shopping for a particular brand because of price.

But you'll switch to another brand if you could find something cheaper or you have a coupon for it. But emotional loyalty, this is the one that we want. We want emotional loyalty because you're delighted by the brand, you're an advocate for the brand, you you recommend the brand to friends and family. So that's that emotional loyalty that we want. I don't know that a punch card is creating emotional loyalty.

It's creating rational loyalty, but that doesn't have longevity to it. Now, do you know your customers by name? I if they're regulars, you really should. I mean, I know, like most people will know the customer by eyesight and know their drink. Fantastic. A lot of places can do that, but do you know their name? And then can you take, hey, Bob, are you going to have your potato juice latte today? Great.

Rob Dwyer (45:08)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vance Morris (45:36)
Coming right up. So I think that sometimes it could be a bribe. I think that you could use, especially apps, I think can be particularly useful in driving sales in off peak times. McDonald's does this very well.

I don't know if you saw the thing where you get like free French fries or something every Friday, free Fry Friday. But it was only if you had the app and then like their app subscriptions went through the roof and you just got free fries on Friday. But it was only between like two and four in the afternoon, which they were trying to drive their dead time sales up. So it a good use of the app, good for the company, good for the user, good for the customer.

I think

The loyalty program has to be, there has to be value, real good value for the customer. I mean, our loyalty program and the cleaning business is what we call, we have an always clean club. And what that is, first cleaning is full price. Your next cleaning is half price. And then when we do that for four years, full price, half price, full price, half price. So.

They get their carpet cleaned twice a year. It's every six months. They get the carpet cleaned twice a year once it's half price. And then in the fifth year, they get two free cleanings. So there's incentive for them to stick around. So it's just like a punch card, you know, buy nine, get the 10th free. Ours is buy, you know, eight and get nine and 10 free. But it's got tremendous value. mean, if you've got a, you know, 3000 square feet of carpet, that

Rob Dwyer (47:10)
wow.

Yeah.

Vance Morris (47:31)
You know, those two free carpet cleanings are going to add up real fast. So, but I mean, so that's a good value for the loyalty. I mean, there are others that are just, you know, they're, I don't know, some are just cheesy.

Rob Dwyer (47:34)
Yeah.

It sounds to me like if you can leverage something that drives rational loyalty to get to the customer and create an experience where you can gain that emotional loyalty, then it's worth it. But if you're not doing that second piece is probably not going to be terribly effective.

Vance Morris (48:16)
And

and loyalty also it doesn't have to be a program Like a punch card, okay Loyalty can be is driven again by the experience but loyalty is also driven by personalization So for example when my guys go into a customer's home They have a checklist and they have a whole bunch of boxes that they have to check off. Are there kids in the home? Check that box

Pets in the home, check that box. Okay, do they have a dog or do they have a cat? Check the dog box. Okay, so now when we call them up, you know, we can say, Mrs. Smith, you you still have Fluffy? Yes, okay, okay, great. Well, you know, she made any messes. And then when we send out our coupons or our postcards, we send them the dog coup postcard. We don't send them the cat postcard. We send them the dog postcard because we've identified it.

Now, it's a little bit more personalized. We could send a generic, we could put a dog and a cat on the same postcard. Yes, it's a little lazy, but we know that these are dog people. Don't send them the cat postcard. And so you just, you start collecting this data. Hopefully everybody has a CRM. Start collecting this data and you can personalize your message to not to everybody individually, but darn sure into smaller groups.

and they feel like you know them.

Rob Dwyer (49:49)
Yeah, I think that's something that harkens back to this process piece that we talked about earlier in the show is you're talking about this personalization. And one of the ways that you can accomplish that is by having a good, strong process, a playbook, a binder, if you will, doesn't have to be a physical binder. But this is the way that we go through this process.

I imagine for your carpet cleaning technicians, They are after they have completed their service, particularly for a new customer, there is this process of, okay, now I need to document certain aspects of this customer so that we remember it for next time.

Vance Morris (50:39)
Yep. And I'll tell you, with documentation, process, and systems, if you are going to sell your business eventually, a business that has documented systems, whether it be marketing systems, operational systems, sales systems, anything, you are automatically anywhere between two and three times more valuable just because you have systems. There's a 2x or a 3x multiple.

just because you have those systems. If you don't have them, I mean, it's not that you're not gonna be able to sell the company, but if you wanna sell it for more, two to three X, just because you got systems.

Rob Dwyer (51:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vance Morris (51:21)
If that doesn't convince you to do it.

Rob Dwyer (51:21)
Vance.

You've convinced me Vance. So we've been talking about customer attention. You shared some amazing strategies, actionable things, tactics as well that that people can employ regardless of their business. Is there any last piece of advice that we haven't touched on that you would say, hey, by the way, you should do this.

Vance Morris (51:47)
It is what I end I end every email with this I end every interview with this every speech that I give around the world It is take one thing that you heard today. Just one Otherwise, it's just gonna be overwhelming. You're not gonna do a darn thing. Take one thing and implement it just one find one Implement it and and and see the results Because if you do anything more, it's just gonna be mishmash and you're gonna be

You're not going to do anything. Otherwise you're getting off the treadmill right now and you're like, that was a nice podcast. You're going to forget my name. You're not going to go Google me. You're going to forget to go to the show notes and click on my link. Just remember one thing that we talked about. Say, dang, I got to go do that. I got to go do a newsletter. I got to go change how I walk in the front door, whatever it is. Just pick one thing.

Rob Dwyer (52:45)
I love it and Vance is a master of segues. My listeners know go down at the show notes. Connect with Vance. Check out his website. Deliver service now and Vance. Thank you so much for joining us on next in queue today.

Vance Morris (53:02)
It's my pleasure, Rob. Had a good time today. Hopefully I delivered for you.

Rob Dwyer (53:06)
You absolutely did.