Creating Superfans Podcast Episode 306: Blake Morgan

Brittany Hodak [00:00:02]:
Hello, and welcome to the Creating Superfans podcast. Here’s the deal. If your customers aren’t telling their friends how awesome you are, you’re in trouble. But don’t worry because by the end of this episode, you’ll have some brand new ideas for getting your customers talking about just that. Today, I am joined by the woman that Meta has called the queen of CX, and I am lucky enough to get to call a friend, Blake Morgan. Blake is a customer experience futurist and author of not 1, not 2, but 3 amazing books on customer experience, including her newest, the 8 laws of customer focused leadership, the new roles for building a business around today’s customer. Now Blake and I think very similarly around customer experience. So if you like listening to me, I promise you’re going to love listening to her.

Brittany Hodak [00:00:52]:
Today, she is gonna share some really fascinating case studies and statistics from her book, including stories about In N Out, ADT, Trader Joe’s, and more. If you’ve ever struggled with implementing a customer obsessed mindset at every level of your organization, then today’s episode is for you. Let’s dive in.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:14]:
Blake, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Blake Morgan [00:01:17]:
Brittany, I am so disappointed that we had to stop chit chatting because we are having so much fun that it really was hard to get started. But, yeah, I’m excited to meet your audience, and I’m excited to talk to you about customer experience.

Brittany Hodak [00:01:32]:
Yeah. Well, one of my favorite topics, of course, and it’s such a delight to have you here because you just put out a book that I think should be required reading for every leader, whether you have CX in your title or not, because it is just a blueprint of what you need to know if you wanna succeed, not just now, but I think forever going forward. Like, there is no going back to a time when CX didn’t need to be on the forefront of every executive’s mind. Yeah. Actually, I wrote my new book, the 8 laws, which I sent you a copy.

Blake Morgan [00:02:08]:
I have it here. I wrote this book because I just started to meet with executives, and I realized they weren’t sure how to create this customer focused culture. And I was at AT and T in Dallas, and one of the leaders asked me if I felt that the frontline could impact the culture to make the whole company customer centric. And they said, no. It has to be driven from the top down. Because if you think about what customer ex experience is, a lot of it has to do with things that can only be impacted by leadership, like resources, like reducing back end complexity, like employee experience, making sure employees have what they need to serve the customer and do their jobs. These are decisions made by leadership. And for the most customer focused companies, they often have CEOs that really call themselves almost chief experience officers, because you can ensure that when the CEO and the c level really care about customer experience, things start to move.

Blake Morgan [00:03:10]:
And when you don’t have the c level bought in, the change just doesn’t really happen. So customer experience is a leadership conversation, and there are books about customer service and books about customer experience, but there aren’t a lot of books about customer focused leadership bridging those two things.

Brittany Hodak [00:03:31]:
Well, one of the things I love about this book is you use so many real life examples of companies of all sizes. Many of them are transformation stories showing we went from x to y when we began to really implement CX in a real way. And we’ll get into the 8 laws, but I really wanna spend some time talking about the first law, which is create a customer experience mindset. Because as you said, this has to be something from the top down, and I think a lot of people have this misperception that you’re either customer centric or you’re not. You’re either a leader who cares about CX or you’re not. And what you really do is lay out the case and give the road map for how someone can become more customer centric and why they have to. Like, why this is not a nice to have, this is a need to have. So I would love for you to talk a little bit about this idea of what it means to have a customer experience mindset and why it is a nonnegotiable for your leadership team.

Blake Morgan [00:04:31]:
One of the things I’ve learned in my 10 to 15 years of setting customer experience back way back we were in New York at the same time, even starting out my career doing content about customer experience, is that customer experience is not a division. It’s not a discipline. Customer experience is just a decision that every employee has to make every day. And we all have to make it for ourselves. Do we jump up out of bed in the morning excited to serve somebody else? You and I are both moms. We have little kids, and we are in a life of service. So you can you can compare being a parent sometimes to being a manager or a leader, and jumping up out of bed knowing that what your purpose is every day at work to serve an employee, to serve a customer, it gives you a pep in your step. And for me, work has been a real place of meaning.

Blake Morgan [00:05:25]:
It gives me purpose in my life, and I think work can be that for everybody. But if we’re connected to the work, if we’re engaged in what we’re doing and we understand the value that we bring in the connection to the customer’s experience, it’s going to give us more pep on our step. We’re gonna whistle while we work and feel really connected to what we’re doing every single day at work.

Brittany Hodak [00:05:48]:
And it’s not just about the connection. It’s about the commerce side. Like, this is a really good business decision. One of the statistics, I think you said it was, about 40%. Less than half of leaders are effectively tracking the ROI of their CX, and I think that’s another mistake where people think, oh, this is just like feel good, soft, whatever. But in the book, you talk about the importance of tracking the ROI so that you know this is something that’s not gonna just add the pep in the step, but is going to make you more money, as you say, both in the short term and the long term.

Blake Morgan [00:06:21]:
Yeah. And I think the ROI has been a big conundrum for the entire business industry for a really long time. It’s how do we think of customer experience as a growth accelerator? And that has been really tough for many executives. They don’t know how to think like a business person to think, you know, if we’re gonna present our customer program to the CEO, we’re competing with all these other people that are also presenting their program and trying to get more money for their program from the CEO. The CEO is gonna go with the program that’s going to grow the business or make the company money. We know in theory that if we make people feel good, we make their life easier and better. They’re going to come back. They’re going to tell their friends.

Blake Morgan [00:07:01]:
But in practice, showing proof, it’s not easy.

Brittany Hodak [00:07:07]:
Yeah. It’s not. What are what are some of the the tips that you’ve seen be almost instantly transformational for companies that are, you know, trying to show the ROI or prove the effectiveness of their CX initiatives for the first time?

Blake Morgan [00:07:23]:
One of the most important things that people can do is really understand the data they have to work with and get really smart about how they’re able to track the data. Fred Reichold, I’ve had on my podcast a few times, and, of course, we all know him. He’s, like, the godfather of NPS and customer experience metrics. He even came out recently and said, well, NPS is valuable, but how about earned growth rate? So how do we track our customers that come in through word-of-mouth? Because the customers that are referred that come in are spend they spend more money, they’re better customers, they’re more valuable, and they refer their friends. So this requires a company to track what’s happening with their customers in a new way, almost like a Costco, like a membership based approach. And so we have to start tracking our new customers. Where are they coming in from? Are they referrals from other happy customers? Because these are the most valuable customers. And it seems simple to track customers, but most companies just don’t do a great job of figuring out where their new customers are coming in from.

Brittany Hodak [00:08:27]:
Yeah. And it really doesn’t have to be that hard for anybody that’s listening to this right now that has a small business, earned growth EGR is an amazing metric. It is a bit intense to track. If you’re not tracking for your company right now, it could be as simple as looking at your business in 4 buckets. How much growth did I pay for? You know, what were sort of those retail leads that I got? What did I get based on my reputation? How much came from repeat business and how much came from referral business? And if you look at that repeat and referral, the percentage of your business that’s coming from that should be high and should be growing because those are the leads that you’re not paying for. Those are the leads that you’re earning. And we know that people who come in because they’re repeat or referral are, as you said, going to spend more, they’re gonna be more loyal and they’re gonna send more friends your way. So it doesn’t have to be something that’s incredibly daunting or costs tens or 100 of 1,000 of dollars to set up.

Brittany Hodak [00:09:20]:
One of the stories that I tell in my book of, I went to a dentist that my nanny at the time had recommended. She was a she was a college student, and she loved the dentist that she had been going to since she was, like, 5 years old. And when I made an appointment for my son’s first appointment and they said, how did you hear about us? And I, you know, said my my nanny, Sadie, told me about you guys. They made a note of it, and I know they made a note because when I was in there, I had 3 different people say, oh, we love Sadie. We’ve been taking care of Sadie since she was a preschooler. She’s the best. It’s so great that she’s your nanny. It’s not that hard, like, to ask, how did you hear about us and to track where your customers are coming from doesn’t have to be something that requires an incredible tech stack if you’re just getting started.

Blake Morgan [00:10:05]:
Yeah. It’s amazing how these experiences, like the orthodontist or the dentist, these seemingly it feels small. It’s like they’re able to have these more in person human experiences. But when you’re dealing with millions of customers, something gets lost. And often people don’t even ever see their customers. They’re just numbers. They’re just barcodes. So I think it’s important to use technology and data to be able to track your customers, to figure out what’s happening with them.

Blake Morgan [00:10:30]:
That’s why I’m a huge fan of just qualitative data. Leaders that work in the contact center that go to the frontline, like Undercover Boss. Remember that show? Yep. Where they’re actually they’re going to the place where the work is done. And in the book, I reference Lindsay Snyder, the founder and president. Well, she’s not the founder, but she’s of the family, Lindsay Snyder of In N Out. I love in have you ever had In N Out, Brittany? Yep. I

Brittany Hodak [00:10:53]:
love it. Yes. I am so excited because In N Out is actually gonna build, their headquarters for, like, the eastern part of the United States in Franklin where I live. So we are gonna have several In N Out around this area and they’re moving, like, a bunch of jobs here and they’re gonna have, like, hundreds of people working in Franklin. Yeah. I wanna work there.

Blake Morgan [00:11:11]:
In N Out is a big case study in the book because of their approach to how they treat their employees. And Lynsi Snyder is a president. She’s basically the CEO, even though she doesn’t call herself that. She flips burgers next to employees. And this is so important to build camaraderie with your teams. Another example is Jim Fish, the CEO of Waste Management, who attends 3 AM huddles with his employees that take out the trash to build that camaraderie so he knows what employees are going through. Because understanding the employee experience can help identify opportunities for improvement.

Brittany Hodak [00:11:47]:
I circle this in your book, from this podcast. You were talking about what a leader needs to be able to say, to to truly be customer centric in their mindset. And you have it, but one of the the lines, I regularly show an interest and participate in customer facing activities, and I’m not above flipping burgers next to the staff. And I thought that was so important because it’s easy to say that you’ll do that, but have you shown your team that you will do that? Have you taken the time exactly undercover boss style to say there is not a job in this company that I am not above doing?

Blake Morgan [00:12:24]:
Some of the most engaged leaders, they do really simple things, like even just memorizing employees’ names. I recently had John Ross man on my podcast from the Amazon way, and we were talking about T Mobile and John Legere, who was the former CEO of T Mobile and how employee focused he was. In T Mobile in 2012, John Legere got on stage and said, we’re gonna be the uncarrier. T Mobile is going to be different from all these other telecom providers that pull the wool over customer eyes customer’s eyes that take advantage. We’re gonna do everything differently. We’re gonna not lock customers into contracts. We’re not gonna charge you roaming fees. We’re not gonna kill you when you stream video and and charge you up the roof for data.

Blake Morgan [00:13:08]:
And I love his example of how he his brand transformed and he transformed. So if you see old pictures of Jean Legere, he looks like every other corporate CEO, with the short hair and the pinstripes shirt and the suit. And after 2012, you see his transformation of pink clothing, leather jackets, long hair. He would go to all the contact centers of T Mobile and take, like, a 1000000 selfies with the staff and post it to Instagram. He was cursing. He was having fun with his slow cooker Facebook show, if you remember that, where he would slow cook a recipe and you could ask him anything. So I talk a lot about leadership because leadership really matters. Engaged leadership, flipping burgers next to employees, taking the time to know who your employees are, spending time with them.

Blake Morgan [00:13:58]:
This is so important today, especially as the world gets more difficult and complicated, engaged leadership has never been more important.

Brittany Hodak [00:14:07]:
Yeah. Well, and one of the cases the the one of the points that you make in the book is that when you model that leadership, your team will follow even when nobody is around and even when nobody is looking. And you have so many amazing stories and examples in this book. I would love for you to share the alarm example, because I think that’s such a perfect story of why all of this matters and why you have to set this tone as a leader. So can you share that story from the book?

Blake Morgan [00:14:37]:
Yeah. I heard this story that an ADT technician was going to the home of an elderly couple to install just the general sensors and an alarm system that you would buy from ADT. And as he was touring the home, he realized there was a no there was no alarm system in the basement. And they’re like, it’s fine. We just want the traditional alarm system. We don’t want any sensors or any carbon sensor in our basement. And and the ADT technician said, I’m sorry, but I am not going to leave your house unless you install this carbon sensor in case there’s a fire in the basement. And he was a volunteer fireman, so he really knew the dangers of not having this type of sensor in the home.

Blake Morgan [00:15:19]:
Well, 7 years went by and nothing happened. But after 7 years, there was a fire. And these elderly this elderly couple had their grandchildren staying there. If that alarm sensor hadn’t been installed, they could have died. And it just goes to show when an individual feels extreme ownership over their work, they feel accountable to the customer. I might have left out the fact that the ADT technician had paid for the sensor out of his own pocket. And so it’s that type of extreme ownership. This is the dream employee.

Blake Morgan [00:15:50]:
This is the customer centric culture that is really hard to achieve. And I love that story that shows the power of really having employees that just care about their work and feel so connected to their work.

Brittany Hodak [00:16:03]:
And it’s impossible to do that if you’re not modeling that behavior as the leader. Right? Like Yes. He cared about that because, a, he was a volunteer firefighter and he knew how important he was, but, b, he knew that his job was about more than just going and installing something that a customer asked for. It was about creating that safety.

Blake Morgan [00:16:24]:
Yeah. This gentleman cared about this couple, this customer, as if they were his own parents. And I think that’s what’s missing so often in at work, like, the experience that we’re curating and building, would we wanna offer it to our child, our best friend, our loved one? Can we be proud of this experience? And it’s almost like I just put up a video about trash bins. I mean, you and I both lived in New York City in the early 2000. And, you know, in summer, when you walk around and the trash is out there on the street, not in a bin, like, it’s hot. It smells horrible. They New York City just got trash bins for those trash bags. And it’s like, how why did it take so long? And it it’s similar to like working in a restaurant.

Blake Morgan [00:17:08]:
Like how many times does someone have to walk by like a piece of food on the floor before they pick it up and they feel that extreme ownership. And in any company, like what’s your version for our audience? What’s your version of employees walking by something that’s obviously broken and not fixing it? A customer centric culture, employees see some dirt on the ground, they clean it up themselves if anyone’s looking or not. And that’s the extreme ownership that we really all seek to have in our companies.

Brittany Hodak [00:17:38]:
Well and I think part of why that doesn’t happen in more companies is something that you get at in the book. And again, I know I’ve said it. I will say it again. Everyone should read this book. You did so much work for this book. There was so much original research, so much secondary research, so many great stories. But one of the research points that I thought was startling was you said that only 35% of leaders view their employees as customers, which I think is why we see such low level of ownership with employees. Because if you’re not viewed as not just a customer, but the most important customer by your company, how are you gonna ever feel that sense of buy in and ownership to then outwardly express all of the things that we’re talking about?

Blake Morgan [00:18:25]:
I think this is why it’s so important to operationalize employee experience as well into your culture, like Trader Joe’s. Do you have Trader Joe’s in Nashville?

Brittany Hodak [00:18:33]:
We do. Yeah.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:34]:
Okay.

Brittany Hodak [00:18:34]:
So I would And I love the Trader Joe’s. Maybe talk a little bit about that because that’s another that’s another story that you share in the book that’s just

Blake Morgan [00:18:40]:
so good. I love Trader Joe’s. I don’t know if it’s just shopping there, just in general, like food shopping, I really enjoy. But I I’m pretty sure it’s Trader Joe’s specifically. You walk in, there’s good music, the employees are wearing Hawaiian shirts, they’re in a good mood. I am one of those customers where I always have to sample. I look like a crazy person, but I will always sample my fruit like the strawberries before buying them. Because, you know, if you buy bad fruit, it’s really annoying.

Blake Morgan [00:19:07]:
So you can sample any item in the store and any employee can open that product for you. But the the point is more about the employee experience that employees at Trader Joe’s get dental and medical. They get competitive pay. They get 20% off all groceries. On holidays, they get time and a half and they have just very, very strong customer retention, which is not an accident. I actually read a book by the founder, Joe Colum, for the research for my book, Joe Columby, Italian guy. And he even way back in the sixties when Trader Joe’s was created and seventies, he said, why do you think no other grocer has been able to disrupt Trader Joe’s? Because no one else wants to pay the staff as competitively as Trader Joe’s pays, which is a living wage for the area that they’re operating in. And I could talk about Trader Joe’s all day and all night because I’m so obsessed with them, but that is the one thing they do really well is the employer brand and the employee experience is almost unparalleled in their industry.

Brittany Hodak [00:20:08]:
And you can feel it. You can feel the difference as an employee or excuse me, as a customer because of those employees. And that’s I think that that’s what, like, your your 6th rule maybe, is don’t forget that the employees are customers too, the 6th law.

Blake Morgan [00:20:24]:
I mean, it makes sense, you know, for every call center. Most contact centers, do the agents seem happy? Do they have a smile on their voice when they talk? I mean, you can tell that that, like, if they’re not happy, they’re gonna be miserable. They’re gonna treat you badly as a customer. If employees are happy, they have what they need to do their jobs. They’re getting breaks during the day, especially in the contact center, which is a rough place to work. They’re gonna do a better job with customers. And so the happiest customers, they often are being served by a person that feels happy, that has what they need to do their job. And it’s not rocket science, but for some reason, this is the missing link at most companies.

Blake Morgan [00:21:04]:
And I’ve been doing this so long, I used to put these lists up on Forbes of the world’s most customer centric companies. And what we were finding in the research is that so many of these companies are actually just on the great place to work list. And so the companies that are great to customers, they’re often they’re also great to employees and get rewarded on that workplace list.

Brittany Hodak [00:21:25]:
Well and let’s talk about that because I think a lot of people still mistakenly think that being great to your employees is like free lunch and nap rooms and all of these other things that we know are not culture. So from your research and from your experience working with some of the biggest brands in the world, what are the things that you see actually work? What do employees actually care about?

Blake Morgan [00:21:49]:
Well, most of us want to work for great people. And often if a person leaves a company, they don’t leave the company, they leave the boss. I mean, think of, you know, you and I were both coming up in New York. You probably had some amazing bosses. I know you were self employed, but, like, I had an amazing boss. I had a few amazing bosses, both men and women, that in New York, when I was younger, they would take us out for these fancy lunches, which I was so broke at the time. It was like, oh my god, sushi lunch or it just they made you feel like a real adult, like, person, and they would talk to you not just about the work, but about your life. I had so many mentors that really shaped who I am today, and it took a long time.

Blake Morgan [00:22:30]:
So I think that especially young people are looking for not just managers or bosses, but coaches that engage them. And we’re having a disengagement crisis in America, at least, where today’s today’s staff, they really need to be engaged by bosses that are coaches. And so I think the employee experience, again, developing managers to be great and giving managers time to manage and not putting so much work on them. They’re so busy producing and managing. They really skip the management part.

Brittany Hodak [00:23:02]:
Yeah. So

Brittany Hodak [00:23:05]:
of the 8 laws, do you have a favorite? Is it possible to pick one that you relate to or have seen the impact of more than the others or are they like all your favorite, baby?

Blake Morgan [00:23:17]:
My favorite is number 1, customer experience mindset because it is something I’ve had to do for myself where, you know, every morning, you you got little kids, you got responsibilities, aging dogs, taxes to pay. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood, so you have to get yourself into the mood. And this is the thing that I bring to the stage mostly is just how do we create that energy in ourselves to be excited about the mundane, about stuff we don’t wanna do? I mean, for us, like, sometimes changing diapers. I’m not changing diapers anymore, but a disciplined person is a happy person. But how do we be excited about all the challenges and do it with gusto? Do it with a smile. And that’s why even customer service leaders are some of the most passionate, empathetic, wonderful people because they’re dealing with the place where all the problems go, and they’re just really good and not getting overwhelmed and dealing with problems beautifully. And I think for all of us, customer experience mindset, jumping up out of bed in the morning to greet whatever day, whatever the challenges of the day bring. I know you and I were chatting that often.

Blake Morgan [00:24:26]:
It’s like little kids saying, mommy, I want cereal, but doing it with gusto and style. This is what the world needs today. Serving, being passionate about serving your community, your employees, and your customers. You will never be out of work because the world needs inspired, inspiring, passionate people to bring all the good stuff to others. Amen.

Brittany Hodak [00:24:54]:
Well, Blake

Blake Morgan [00:24:55]:
like a church sermon, to be honest.

Brittany Hodak [00:24:57]:
But it in that and that’s you have to feel that passionately about it. You have to care so much about your employees’ experience and your customers’ experience that you put it above everything else. And I’m glad you said that was your favorite of the 8 laws because that was my favorite too. Everybody needs to read this book. You’ve gotta pick it up. It’s the 8 laws of customer focused leadership. And because I know you are a podcast listener, you’ve gotta listen to Blake’s podcast. It is truly one of my favorite.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:25]:
It’s the modern customer podcast and it’s fantastic.

Blake Morgan [00:25:29]:
Brittany, I love meeting you. You are so fun and I hope that we can go get coffee now. I don’t wanna Yes.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:37]:
I cannot wait. Alright. Blake, where can

Brittany Hodak [00:25:38]:
people I know I already told them the book and the podcast, but where can people learn more about you? You’re an amazing speaker.

Brittany Hodak [00:25:44]:
Anybody who’s ever hired me

Brittany Hodak [00:25:46]:
to keynote, you would love Blake’s message. She and I are very much aligned in the way that we think about customer experience in the world, and you create so much content. You are a content machine. You have so many amazing things that you put out in the world. So where can people get more

Blake Morgan [00:25:58]:
of Blake? Thank you so much. So so kind of you. Just my name, blakemichellemorgan.com, and would love to connect with any of your listeners. And thanks for this opportunity, Brittany.

Brittany Hodak [00:26:09]:
I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show, and thanks for writing such an incredible book.

Brittany Hodak [00:26:16]:
That’s it for today’s episode. Please help me out by leaving a review for the show or sharing it with a friend. Until next time, remember, don’t settle for standard. Be super.