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What’s the number one thing customers want from a business? More often than not, it’s convenience. If you want to make money, make things easy. In this episode of the Creating Superfans podcast, I’m joined by David Avrin, author of Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With, to explore how simplifying the customer experience can be your biggest competitive advantage.
We cover the many ways companies unknowingly create hurdles for their customers—like the inability to reach a real person, sneaky not-so-free trials, complicated contracts, and lack of price transparency, to name a few. Drawing from our own experiences as consumers, we break down how businesses can eliminate these pain points before, during, and after a transaction. Tune in to hear practical tips for making your business ridiculously easy to do business with.
Get your copy of David’s book: Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With
Learn more about David Avrin, including his speaking and consulting services, here.
Listen to the Episode
Transcription
Brittany Hodak [00:00:02]:
Well, hello. I’m Brittany Hodak, and I wanna welcome you to another episode of 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 tips for how to turn more of your customers into super fans. Today, I’m chatting with my good friend David Avrin. He’s a fellow customer experience speaker and the author of 7 books, including a brand new one called Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. Nobody sets out to create friction or inconvenience in their business, right? If you’re listening to this podcast, I know you wanna make things easier for your customers but their research shows that consumers say it’s not easy to do business with just about every company out there, and that’s a big problem.
Brittany Hodak [00:00:51]:
So today, David is gonna share his thoughts on why there’s such a disconnect and how we can eliminate that friction before, during, and after interactions to turn those customers into super fans. Let’s get to it. David, thank you so much for joining me on the show.
David Avrin [00:01:10]:
It’s so nice to see us. Great to be on the show.
Brittany Hodak [00:01:13]:
Yeah. We are gonna talk all about your new book, which is brilliant. It’s called “Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With.” But the first thing I wanna ask you, you’ve written so many books on customer experience, employee experience, everything sort of in that vein. Why this book now? What is it about the time we’re living in right now that made you say, I’ve gotta write a book about this?
David Avrin [00:01:37]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, for I think all of us who speak or consult for a living, we wanna stay current, wanna stay relevant. And what’s interesting is is how much has changed. When I first started writing books, it was marketing and branding. And and I know that that you come from that background as well. And how do we better how do we best describe ourselves? How do we differentiate ourselves in a competitive marketplace? And in my career, I I just saw this tremendous shift as many of us have about 7 or 8 years ago where what we say about ourselves, was becoming far less impactful than what other people were saying about us. And so that’s what led to my first customer experience book, which was why customers leave and how to win them back. And so what was interesting and that one did very well.
David Avrin [00:02:18]:
We’re in in 6 different languages. But, I also want to write something that was that was very positive. I mean, what are the positive things that we can do? What are the ways that we can gain a really compelling competitive advantage, in a marketplace replete with talent? I I would think arguably for the first time ever, everybody’s good. And so what we would generally think is our competitive advantage, and I’ve and I’ve had thousands of conversations with company CEOs, and I would ask them that question. What’s your secret sauce? What’s your competitive advantage? And it’s always, Brittany, some version of quality, commitment, caring, trust. It’s about it’s about our people. Here’s what the research shows. Today, customers are prioritizing speed and speed of access, speed of answers, speed of delivery, flexibility, simplicity of process, and, of course, convenience.
David Avrin [00:03:05]:
I mean, in in many ways today, to paraphrase, Sally Hogshead, who talks about different is better than better, I say convenient is better than better. And so I think what really, precipitated this book and I think the need that I saw was, how are we responding to a marketplace where everybody’s good? Because if you weren’t, you would be outed, right, very quickly on Yelp or TripAdvisor or Rotten Tomatoes. And so I I think there’s I I tried to make a really compelling case for eliminating friction in the process. I mean, you gotta be good at what you do. Let’s not take our eye off the ball. But I think the real differentiators are who can who can get me in and out faster, who can who can say yes to me more often. And so that was sort of the thought behind, behind the book ridiculously easy to do business with.
Brittany Hodak [00:03:53]:
Well and I love the book, and I love that you look at every single stage of the customer journey. So it’s not just make it ridiculously easy to buy, it’s before that, make it ridiculously easy to do research, to get a hold of you, to get the information that you need, ridiculously easy to use the product, to return the product if it doesn’t work out, to do service. You you walk through all of the steps, which we’ll which we’ll go through. But nobody sets out to say, let me create some friction. Right? I I really wanna talk about how how this happens because anybody listening to the podcast right now, if I said, do you want it to be ridiculously easy for customers to do business with you? A 100% of you would say yes. Absolutely. And yet, the research shows that most customers say it’s not easy to do business with most companies. So I wanna talk a little bit about what has gone wrong, whether it’s mindset of, you know, what was good enough 5 years ago is gonna just have to keep working today when the market says, clearly, what was good enough 6 months ago might not be good enough today, or if it’s people just getting complacent.
Brittany Hodak [00:05:01]:
But let’s talk about this. Why are the reasons when we know that convenience is king, we know how important it is, so many people aren’t alleviating the the heartache and the friction and the extra clicks and taps and steps that must have to go through?
David Avrin [00:05:16]:
You know, there there’s a variety of reasons. And I was on I was on another podcast and someone says, why do businesses not get it? And I said, I think they do get it. I’m not I don’t think I’m smarter than the people in the back offices at Walmart or some of the major retailers. I’m just an advocate for the for the customer side. I think there’s a grand experiment going on right now, which is as we see the shift to some of the digital options, some of the shift to the do it yourself, the question is how much of it is is too much? You know, if you ask somebody at Walmart, they’re gonna say, we give you a choice. You can do self checkout or you can do a staff. Well, it’s not a choice when you have 47 self checkout lanes and 1 person and 9 carts waiting in line. Right? It that’s social engineering.
David Avrin [00:05:58]:
And so I I think they get it, but I think they’re trying to strike a balance. Part of it is the fact that we’ve, we want some level of predictability. I think as business owners, as entrepreneurs, if we can have, if we can design that customer journey, right, here’s how they’re gonna learn about us and reach out and talk to us and and communicate and buy and select and customize and deliver. If we can predict that path and create that path, we have a greater level of predictability of revenue and cash flow. Right? We can we can plan for that. We can hire for that. The problem is is your customers haven’t read your employee manual. They don’t know how they’re supposed to do it.
David Avrin [00:06:38]:
They just know how they wanna do it. And how we wanna do it, right, is is changing. And so I think there’s a little bit of a disconnect because, I I think, unfortunately, the CX or the marketing people aren’t in the room too often when decisions are made. And I understand things look very good to the bean counters. It looks very good when we eliminate staff, but there’s also the law of diminishing return. And at some point, we’ll reach a point of frustration where we decide to shop elsewhere. I think Target is a really good example. We’ve seen recently they’re rolling back some of the policies regarding self checkout.
David Avrin [00:07:12]:
They’re putting a limit of number of items. They’re increasing the the amount of of checkers because the the feedback is is coming. So I think I think there’s it’s it’s a bit of an experiment. I think there’s some companies that get it. I think, clearly, Amazon has set the standard for everyone, and we’d all don’t have the resources to to replicate what Amazon does. But I think there’s just great lessons in that. It’s how easy can we do it. We walk into an Uber.
David Avrin [00:07:39]:
You know, we we order them up. We see who it is. We see their rating. We can see where they’re turning and when they’re gonna be here. We’re done. We get out, and we walk away. It’s pretty frictionless. But you’re right.
David Avrin [00:07:49]:
I think you made the point that that sometimes we’re just kinda holding on. Well, it worked, and it always worked. And you look at companies like like a Toys R Us or a Bed Bath and Beyond. They didn’t do anything wrong. We just changed, and they didn’t change along with us. We can lament the loss of a Toys R Us, but I guarantee you nobody’s struggling to find toys. Right? We just we’ve just changed. And so part of my admonition and the teaching I do when I speak and I consult is to to take a step back and sort of walk it from the customer’s perspective and then also to compare to other things in our in our lives, other retailers, other, potential business partners or whatever else.
David Avrin [00:08:30]:
How are they doing it? Not just those in our industry, but but broadly because we’re all customers. Right? We’re all clients of somebody else. So I think there’s lessons to be learned, and that’s what I try to share in the book.
Brittany Hodak [00:08:40]:
Well and and I and I love that you you share it this way in the book, and I think one of the points that you make very early on in the book is you can learn from every industry. Don’t just compare yourself to your peers because and, you know, this is my language that I use when I speak, but in an experience economy, people aren’t just comparing you with your direct competitors. They’re comparing you with the best experiences that you have from anywhere. And and you you talk about that time and time again in the book. And I think another important thing to remember is that the team making the decisions about how you will enable your customers to experience your brand needs to be as diverse as your customer base. Because if your executive team is made of people that look, act, think, feel just like you, you’re probably gonna do a really good job capturing customers who also look, think, act, and feel just like you. But what about all of the other customers in the world? And this is I know something your your kids are a little bit older than my kids, but, I experience this still all the time with with my little ones because they think about the world completely differently than I do. Actually, this is I I’m I’m I’m giving a brand new AI keynote, and I I’ve done the keynote before, but I’m doing a slightly different version, in a few days.
Brittany Hodak [00:09:48]:
And my 6 year old the other night was like, mom, why are you get off your phone. Get off your phone. Because I was putting him to bed, and I was like, I’m sorry, buddy. I’m just trying to get a little bit more done. I’ve gotta go do this AI keynote, and I’m I’m trying to get it just right. And he looked at me and said, that’s dumb. AI can do it for you. And I was like, oh, yes? Tell me more.
Brittany Hodak [00:10:07]:
And he’s like, yeah. Just upload it and ask AI how to make your AI keynote better. That’s gonna give you the best advice. And the fact that my 6 year old’s first thought was, let’s do this. And then I and I you know, like, I didn’t know he knew about AI. So then I’m asking him all of these questions, and I was like, hey. Do you know the difference between AI and generative AI? And he goes, yeah. And I said, okay.
Brittany Hodak [00:10:29]:
What’s the difference? And he said, well, traditional AI is like if you had a friend that’s really good at building Legos, but they can only build what’s in the instructions. And then Gen AI, that’s the new AI. That’s like a friend that can build anything. They don’t need instructions. Wow. How do you know this? And he was like, YouTube. And I was like, alright. Okay.
Brittany Hodak [00:10:53]:
Let’s get back to your bedtime story. So anyway and I had no idea. Like, he is my child. He lives in my house. I, you know, theoretically, am the one sort of monitoring all of his consumption of media. And he he was schooling me. Right? He was telling me these things. And customers know so much more Oh, good.
Brittany Hodak [00:11:12]:
Yeah. Most companies know that they know because we don’t take the time to ask. We’re not having those conversations, or we have executive teams that don’t quite look as diverse as our customer base looks. And that leads into, as you were saying before, let’s just design one option, try to make everybody fit this mold. If you wanna shop here, do things our way, and that leads to the Toys R Us and the Bed Bath and Beyond’s of the world no longer being with us.
David Avrin [00:11:35]:
We’re in a we’re in an interesting time, and I and I would argue, I heard somebody say that we were for the first time, we were serving 5 generations at the same time. That it’s pretty expansive. But it’s also generations that were were very or newer generations that are very tech savvy and and others that are are less so. Right? And so when we talk about omnichannel being being easy to do business with for everybody, I was at a conference and I was gonna speak around the lunch hour and I was in the morning session. They had this panel of millennial tech entrepreneurs, and they were all in their black T shirts and hipster beards where it really condescending. It was really interesting watching it. And they’re like, nobody wants to talk on the phone. Boomer.
David Avrin [00:12:17]:
And I’m sitting there going, dude, no. You’re you don’t wanna talk on the phone. But I have clients in their eighties, and I got clients in their twenties. And we how we wanna do business is different. It’s one of the most biggest challenges for organizations right now. It doesn’t mean you have to serve everybody a 100%, but you better know who your core audience is, who has the money, and you better be ridiculously easy to reach, resolve issues, pay. I mean, people ask me, do you take Stripe? Do you take Zelle? Do you take Square? I mean, the answer is yes. Yes.
David Avrin [00:12:45]:
Yes. I
Brittany Hodak [00:12:45]:
will think women would like to give it yes.
David Avrin [00:12:48]:
Yeah. I mean, there’s one chapter that I think I I tried to do a few that people wouldn’t have thought of. One of them was ridiculously easy to see. And the reality is that the vast majority of revenue is from people who are over the age of 50, but most marketing materials and collateral are designed by people in their thirties and forties. I can’t read business cards. I can’t read menus. They’re too small. Or you go to a restaurant today and it’s a QR code.
David Avrin [00:13:10]:
I mean, it’s a perfect example of what you said before, which is what don’t they understand. QR codes are a phenomenal thing for restaurants because they don’t have to print. They can change their items whenever they want, but it’s frustrating for us. I’m 60 years old. I can’t read the menu on my phone. And so I’ll ask you, do you have an actual menu? No. No. Just scan the QR code.
David Avrin [00:13:29]:
I said, I I can’t read. I don’t have my reading glasses with. I mean, this whole section on how big the reading glass industry. But it’s, once again, we talk about a frictionless experience. Where is the revenue coming from your customer base? What are the points of of friction or frustration for you? And that’s one of them, is being able to to see, to read your materials or your collateral or things like that. And so there there’s all these little points, and I tried to to make sure that I had enough in there to be, well, I hadn’t thought about it that way. Right? There was one I talked about being ridiculously easy to to remember what you’re paying for. So often we get into a a real comfort zone with our customers, and we say, what’s what’s your competitive advantage? It’s the relationship.
David Avrin [00:14:10]:
Right? Well, how are your customers feeling a year, 2 years down the line? How how often are we asking them, how are you? I mean, we assume they’re not complaining, but there’s no shortage of competitors out there who would love to convert your long time customer until their first time customer. So one of the things that one of the things I recommend is that the, depending on the industry, is send them a year end review. Here’s how many times we did this. Here’s how much of this you enjoyed. Here’s how much this you saved. Remind them there’s no shame in getting credit for doing good work, but don’t be complacent. And so there’s a lot of things that we can be, not just competent, but preferable. Right? And preferable today as being ridiculously easy to do business with.
Brittany Hodak [00:14:52]:
Yeah. And what a great example sending them those reports. I you know, everybody loves Spotify wrapped at the end of the year when Spotify tells me this is what you listen to, this is how often, it’s so easy to share, and there are so many businesses that do a great job of it at every touch point. I shop a lot with Walmart Plus. I rarely go into a Walmart store, but I find it incredibly convenient to have Walmart bring me whatever I want because they’ll deliver it in a couple hours for free to my house and every time I look at the app, it says, here’s how many trips you’ve saved, Here’s how many hours you’ve saved. Here’s how many dollars you’ve saved. So I’m seeing that value proposition constantly. Yeah.
Brittany Hodak [00:15:32]:
Incredibly important. So you have so many great chapters in this book. Just to may name a few, make it ridiculously easy to provide valuable feedback, make it ridiculously easy to track the status, make it ridiculously easy to anticipate your needs, make it ridiculously easy to reach. I mean, really every single step in the journey. You talked a little bit about ridiculously easy to see. I wanna know, what are a couple of your favorite chapters? Either when you were writing it, when you were researching it, when you were putting it all together, what are a couple of the ones that when you wrote it, you were like, oh, this is gonna change so many businesses.
David Avrin [00:16:07]:
You know, I should have the book in front of me so I so I could remember more. You know, when you get to the end of it, you’re like you’ve read your own book so many times to to look for spelling errors or things like that.
Brittany Hodak [00:16:18]:
Or you forget what’s in it and not in it. I do that all the time. I’ll say, oh, a story in my book, and then I think, wait. That wasn’t an early draft in my book. I don’t know if it made it into the final draft of the book.
David Avrin [00:16:27]:
Well, I’m actually this week, and I’m gonna read it again only because I’m doing the audiobook next week. And I know this podcast is Evergreen, but at the point of this recording, I’m getting ready to record the audiobook, and I wanna make sure that it’s that it’s fairly smooth. You know, for for me, the ones where part of it is because I’m such an advocate and I can be a little bit volatile. I mean, I think we’re a really good guy, but I’m my wife is so easy going about everything. I go I, like, hate self checkout. I understand it. It’s not going up, but every item is an unexpected item in the bagging area. Right? So for me so the ones that really stuck out were the ones where I felt like I could go on a little bit of a rant.
David Avrin [00:17:03]:
Like, I get really frustrated when companies play games with a price, where they hide the price, or they take you down the rabbit hole. I told a story that we were my wife and I were looking at some mountain property and some cabins. We found one we really liked online, and it said click here for the price, and I clicked there. Did I get the price? Of course not. I got a contact form because I understand why they wanna do that because they wanna get me on the phone, and then they can they can talk to me or give me options or whatever. I but that’s not what they said. Right? I couldn’t find a price. Don’t don’t play games.
David Avrin [00:17:35]:
I at the beginning of every chapter, I put the title chapter and then I put the gist. And the gist in that chapter ridiculously easy to see the price is stop playing games with the price. It makes you look slimy.
Brittany Hodak [00:17:44]:
And Well and it also gives the customer a reason to be suspicious and not trust you because the customer thinks serious. If it’s this hard to work with you before you even know who I am, how much harder is it going to be once I’ve given you my credit card?
David Avrin [00:17:59]:
100%. The other one, if we talk about being, ridiculously easy to try before you buy.
Brittany Hodak [00:18:05]:
That was one of my favorite chapters, and I was just about to ask. I so I love in this chapter, you make the analogy of being in a food court in a mall and offering samples because all of your competitors are, I think you said, 11 feet away, which
David Avrin [00:18:18]:
felt 11 feet away. Right. They’re right next to you.
Brittany Hodak [00:18:21]:
It’s the
David Avrin [00:18:21]:
most Yeah. Yeah. It’s the most competitive environment imaginable is in a in a food court. And it’s it’s Panda Express is the most brilliant, because they will stand up front with a tray full of orange chicken, which is their number one seller. They actually have a line item in their budget. They know how much orange chicken they have to give away to turn into a paying customer. I mean, it’s a major part of their marketing because those other ones might be good, but we know that’s good because we got it we got it in our mouth. And so the whole idea of the problem is where’s the friction come in is when it really isn’t a free trial.
David Avrin [00:18:55]:
It’s like, here, you get a free month, but it’s not a free month because what? You have to put in your credit card information. And the biggest source of of, you know, that sort of the subscription model of the abandoned shopping carts is the people that abandon the process when it’s when you’re asked for credit card information. Once again, I fully understand why companies do it. It’s a little bit of a quid pro quo. If you’re gonna want something free, but we know that we’re gonna forget to cancel it in 14 days. We know they’re gonna charge it, and they’re gonna charge it for a year. And we’re gonna forget about it, and it’s it’s gonna take 2 hours on the phone to try and get that money back so we forget about it. What happens a year later? They charge it again.
David Avrin [00:19:36]:
And we’ve gone through it so many times. Once again, I’m trying to be an advocate, but I’m trying to to offer that perspective for people in business. And what’s interesting is there was a study that showed that people who companies who don’t ask for a credit card actually convert more, subscriptions, which is a little counterintuitive. But I I think and it’s one of the things that I’ve been been saying for years on stage and otherwise is your greatest source of lost revenue is the customer you never knew about, or they got to the site and they clicked away or they found that point of friction. Oh, here’s the catch. Right? How many times do we have that in our mind? Oh, look at this really cool thing. This is great or this cool app, and then you click and you realize, nope. You know? Or here, you can you can do a profile picture with AI.
David Avrin [00:20:20]:
You can see what it looks like if you’re a Disney character and you download it and it’s 6.95 a week. And you have to you just go ahead and and delete it. Once again, from a business perspective, I understand why they do it. But my job is to say, here’s why we hate it, and here’s an alternative version to make this, with less friction, and and engender real support. I mean, I think there’s gonna be real backlash. There’s a lot of companies. They make most of their money from people who forget that they have, you know, that they have a subscription. And then there’s the ways to do it right.
David Avrin [00:20:52]:
The ways to do it right is what Planet Fitness does. They make ridiculously inexpensive. And then even if you don’t go for a few months, it’s $10 a month. You know? Whatever. Right? And and that’s why
Brittany Hodak [00:21:02]:
aspirational. If I wanna go, and I’m gonna keep it because then I’ll be more likely to go. Right. I I absolutely agree with you. And I would say anyone whose business model is built on maybe people will forget and keep paying us. Your business is not built to last.
David Avrin [00:21:18]:
Right.
Brittany Hodak [00:21:18]:
Period. Full stop. And you
David Avrin [00:21:19]:
certainly won’t engender, positive, positive feelings or a strong brand.
Brittany Hodak [00:21:25]:
Oh, yeah. Of course not. And that’s you know, and and if you’re looking to build a business that doesn’t have good reviews, doesn’t have any kind of customer affinity, and will not last, then, yeah, like, do those things. And maybe you can get lucky and exit before it all comes crashing down, but that is not how you build a lasting sustainable business.
David Avrin [00:21:47]:
And if you wanna generate super fans, like my great friend Brittany Hodak talks about, is right? It it’s the antithesis of it. Right? It’s it’s why it’s why the cell phone companies have contracts that lock you in because they know that we would bolt in a heartbeat if we could.
Brittany Hodak [00:22:06]:
It’s like saying, what if all of our customers were in prison? Could we sell more to them as a captive audience? That is what it feels like when you’re locked into those contracts. And, you know, just to brag on your book a little bit because it it is really a great book, my friend. It is everyone should read this book because you give so many examples. First of all, it’s a really quick book to read. I I think, you know, it’s gonna be, like, 2 and a half hours to read the whole book.
David Avrin [00:22:29]:
Easy to read quickly.
Brittany Hodak [00:22:30]:
It is ridiculously easy to read, and it’s ridiculously easy to apply the lessons because you’ve got, I don’t know, 30 something chapters, and every chapter is sort of a different hot take, if you will. A different, instantly applicable thing that you can think about for your business. And, you one of the things that you mentioned up front is to really look at this through the lens of don’t be overly focused on what the industry example is because there is something in almost every one of these that will apply to any business. And the make it ridiculously easy to try it before you buy it, where you were talking about Panda Express in the food court. The example that came to my mind of experiencing something like that recently, I got a flat tire, And my husband said, we’ll go to Discount Tire. And I was like, what? I I don’t know anything about tire places. I was like, okay. Like and he was very like, you have to do it.
Brittany Hodak [00:23:22]:
And I was like, I did not know you had this affinity for, like, a tire store. And he was like, yeah. You gotta go to Discount Tire. They’re the best. And if you they can fix the the flat, they’ll fix it for free. And I was like, what do you mean I’ll fix it for free? Like, the tire I didn’t buy my tires there. They came on my car. And he’s like, it doesn’t matter.
Brittany Hodak [00:23:38]:
They’ll fix it for free. I did not believe him. I showed up. 10 minutes later, I’m on my way. They were like, oh, yeah. You ran over a nail. Here’s the nail. Don’t worry.
Brittany Hodak [00:23:48]:
We fixed it. We put the whatever in it. You’re all good. And we checked the tread on all your tires. Everything looks great. You’re good to go. And that, of course, endeared me to them in a way to where like, my husband just replaced all 4 tires on his truck probably a month ago. Right back to Discount Tire.
Brittany Hodak [00:24:04]:
Of course you did. Tires. And by the way, I I have a Tesla, so you have to replace the tires more often, I’m told. Mine’s still pretty new. But you have to you know, it’s like a really heavy car, so you have to replace the tires more. Obviously, I’m going to Discount Tire now. They made it so easy to love them by doing me a solid fast and for free, and not like it’s gonna start in case we need it 2 years from now. Let us fix your tire.
Brittany Hodak [00:24:28]:
Thank you for coming in.
David Avrin [00:24:29]:
Well, I think that’s a great example because it it’s an example of playing the long game.
Brittany Hodak [00:24:33]:
Exactly.
David Avrin [00:24:34]:
Right? It’s it’s do you want do you want the the the dollar now, or do you want the the $50, you know, or $200 or whatever it is down the road? It’s just it’s just smart business. But but it makes the point that I make, which is everybody’s good. The question in our mind is are not just are you competent? Are you good? Do you have great people? But are you preferable? And I make the point multiple times because we’re all in a in not only competitive environment, but a comparative environment. And so it’s not where are we gonna go or it’s not are you qualified because people aren’t making a decision in a vacuum. They’re not saying, should we buy from you? They’re saying, no. I have a problem. I have multiple options. What’s preferable? And today, what’s preferable is convenient.
David Avrin [00:25:17]:
What’s preferable is faster. You know, when when when all things are equal, and I’ve always talked about that as being the foremost dangerous words in business, all things being equal, because when all things are equal, then we lose for almost any reason. Price, proximity, convenience, we can’t allow everything to be equal. So be good at what you do. Don’t take your eye off the ball. That’s a product centric. Right? We’re very good at what we do. But when we shift to customer centric, it’s it’s not only we good at what we do, but we are we are, I I sort of put it this way.
David Avrin [00:25:50]:
Customer centric asks a different question. Product centric asks, how much can we sell them? Nothing wrong with it. I am an unapologetic compassionate capitalist. But customer, customer centric asks a different question, which is how many ways can we enhance their life? That’s not touchy feely. Can we get it to them faster? Can we be more convenient? Can we be more responsive? One of the examples I gave in the book about about seeing the the the price not playing games, is a, and I think it was a chapter on that. But I talked about in where I am in Denver, we have a car dealership, and they have I mean, what’s our biggest complaint about car dealerships? Right? It’s the haggling. It’s we’re gonna take a whole day. Well, that’s their model.
David Avrin [00:26:27]:
They want you to take a whole day so you don’t start over again somewhere else. And the other thing, one price, one person, one hour. How would you not want to go there? One price, one person, one hour, and you can be in and out the door. Everybody can sell me a car. They’re all selling the same models. I’ll likely strike similar deal. They win because they’re preferable.
Brittany Hodak [00:26:49]:
They win. And and so for me, like, very similar pain point, I had a horrible experience buying my last car. Hated every time I had to go back to the stupid dealership to get serviced or whatever, was at the dealership for an oil change. And of course, they’re like, and you need an whatever, like all these things, you know, it was gonna be like 1,000 of dollars for a car that was, I don’t even think, 5 years old. And I Googled what’s the easiest car to buy. And what came up was Tesla. And I was like, oh, I never thought about getting a Tesla. Six clicks, David.
Brittany Hodak [00:27:20]:
I’m not kidding you. Six clicks. I have a car, and I’m like, if I press this button, I buy this car. It took 6 touches to say, which one of the models do I want? Which one of the motors do I want? What color do I want the inside to be? What color do I want the outside to be? And do I want it to completely drive itself or not? And so I text my husband, and I was like, I think I’m gonna buy a Tesla. And he was like, cool or something like that. Like, you know, like, nice thought. And I was like, alright. And so I bought it and then I sent him the screenshot and I was like, yay, I bought a Tesla.
Brittany Hodak [00:27:52]:
And he was like, aren’t you still at the Mazda? Like, what are you talking about? And I was like, yeah, I bought it in the app, like in the waiting room, like, while I was waiting to get my oil changed without driving it, without seeing it. I’d never even been in the model of the car that I bought, but I wanted it to be easy. They made it ridiculously easy, so they got my money. And speaking of ridiculously easy, they bought my old car and brought me my new car.
David Avrin [00:28:15]:
Yeah.
Brittany Hodak [00:28:16]:
Awesome.
David Avrin [00:28:16]:
It’s the essence of disruption, though. Disruption is when the environment is is ripe for disrupt disruption is when when people are I mean, we’ve traditionally, we look at every business model and we say, how do we tweak it? How do we make it better? How do we make it a little bit disruption asked a different question, which was if we were gonna start over today, how would we do it differently? Not how do we make it better. What would we do today? And it’s one of the exercises I do when I consult or I speak with an organization. As I say, imagine you left your your job today, not that I’m suggesting it, and you and you moved across town and you opened a competing business to the business that you have now. You gotta try and beat them and everybody else in your industry. You’re fully funded. Technology is not an issue, but you’re not bound by any legacy systems or people or technology or leases. What would you do differently? And then they’re just then the ideas flow.
David Avrin [00:29:05]:
Right? That’s just crowdsourcing the room. But some of the best disruption asked a question about how do we do this better, but is that the way we should do it at all? Yeah. And, and you experienced that. It’s it’s it’s almost every industry you can look at. What do people traditionally I mean, take a step back and be honest. What do you think people dislike about your industry? How many of those things are you guilty of?
Brittany Hodak [00:29:26]:
Yeah.
David Avrin [00:29:26]:
Is there I mean, boy, if their pandemic taught us one thing, and it taught us a lot of things was we gotta look at alternative delivery models. And I’m really I’m really bullish on this. I’m super optimistic. Even when I speak, this isn’t about scolding. It’s about saying there’s some great opportunities out there, and most in the industry are lagging behind. This is a great opportunity to eliminate friction, walk your customer’s journey. Look at your contracts that are 14 pages. They used to be 5, and now they’re 14.
David Avrin [00:29:53]:
What would it take to bring them back down to 7? I mean, if I’m still and you know this because you and I both speak. Probably 80% of the time, I still get contracts that I have to print out and sign and scan them with my phone because I don’t have a scanner anymore and send it back. It’s like, you know, 1994 called and they want their BlackBerry back. You know, why why are we why are we doing silly things? Because we’ve moved on. So, anyway, I’m I I my whole thing is about trying to encourage, give examples, help them envision ways to be, to be easier than than they used to be.
Brittany Hodak [00:30:28]:
I love that. I this this story, I’ve not told because it almost sounds fake. I was switching payroll providers earlier this year because I switched finance platforms, and the payroll provider that I had did not have an easy integration with the new, with the new system where all the finance stuff was. And everything just felt old and clunky. I was like, I feel like, you know, this was built in 1995. So I had to call to cancel. I was on the website trying to figure out how do I cancel the subscription, couldn’t do it. I had to call somebody.
Brittany Hodak [00:30:55]:
Call somebody. Yeah. It made it super hard. And and they said, you know, why are you canceling? And I said, well, I’m canceling because you’re not compatible. You know, there’s not a good integration with this new service that I’m using. And by the way, everything feels really hard. Like, the fact that I had to call you on the phone and the guy starts saying, oh, no. We’re very cutting edge and we’ve got this and we’ve got that and we’ve got that.
Brittany Hodak [00:31:14]:
And I was basically like, cool. Good for you. Like, I still wanna cancel. David, the next words out of his mouth were you have to send a fax to this number to cancel your service agreement. And I started laughing, and he was like, why are you laughing? And I was like, because it’s not 1997. You just serious. 5 minutes trying to tell me how, like, cutting edge you are, and then you I was like, are you joking? Like, I don’t even know how to send a fax. Like
David Avrin [00:31:42]:
Yeah. Let me let me let me chisel that in a stone tablet Right. And, and and have the donkey bring it over. It’s it’s Doesn’t
Brittany Hodak [00:31:48]:
even sound like a real thing.
David Avrin [00:31:51]:
No. And and but companies do. They make it very difficult to to cancel. And and, you you know, part of it is well, strategies to to get around some of those things. I mean, right, it’s very difficult to reach a real person. And and it’s it’s unfortunate that part one of the strategies, if you find yourself in this loop, whether it’s a chat, you know, typing it in or on the phone, and you’re you’re yelling, real person, agent, Reuben. I think you said no. No.
David Avrin [00:32:13]:
Right? That it’s here’s a real strategy, and it’s unfortunate. If you just start shouting profanity into the phone or typing it into the box, the AI will recognize that you’re you’re distressed, and they’ll send you to a real person. It’s true. It actually works, but it shouldn’t have to. Why should we have to do that to reach a real person? And I even split it up in the book. Reaching a person and getting resolution are 2 different issues.
Brittany Hodak [00:32:36]:
Yeah.
David Avrin [00:32:36]:
Right? Right? We all talk about that. Shep Hyken, our our great friend, talks about that as well, is is that the time between contact and actual resolution is important as well. But but don’t waste our time. Just there there’s so many ways to make it easier. And the strategies behind the scenes are just a little bit slimy sometimes because if we make it really difficult, if you can’t reach a real person, all you have to do is say cancel service, and you’ll get a real person. Right? Why? Why does it have to be like that? And so I think the companies who who heed the advice, I think have a a a competitive advantage. And and as we look to future proof our engagement, you talk about that in terms of, that perception of creating those super fans as well, is is it it’s so paramount because the marketplace has so many great players. And the worst part about all your competitors, the worst part, most of them are really, really nice people.
David Avrin [00:33:30]:
Right? We’re all just trying to feed our families. And, and I think we just I think those who take a step back and find a little bit smarter ways of being a little more customer centric, I think, have a great competitive advantage.
Brittany Hodak [00:33:42]:
Well, they have an amazing competitive advantage, and you have given them an almost unfair competitive advantage with this book. Whatever business you’re in, you have to be ridiculously easy to do business with if you want to win now and even more so if you want to win in the future. So do yourself a favor. Pick up David’s book. David, tell everybody where they can find it and where they can get more from you.
David Avrin [00:34:04]:
Thank you so much. Of course, everything’s on on Amazon. You know, we’re we’re I was talking about certain publishers and getting in bookstores. I sell ones of books in bookstores. So everything’s on Amazon, the Kindle version, the hardback version, and very soon, the audiobook will be available as well. And if they wanna learn more about me, just look me up. It’s David Avrin, a v r I n, website. Social media, it’s the real David Avrin.
David Avrin [00:34:28]:
It’s a catfish for another day. But, I respond to I respond to all emails or communication. But, yeah, go pick it up on on Amazon. And if you do, leave a leave a review. And if you have not yet picked up the amazing creating superfans by Brittany Hodak, one of my favorite books, probably one of the best looking books, well designed, super great, but it’s the it’s the mutual fan club. But pick up that. Pick up creating super fans and then pick up ridiculously easy to do business with. Just saying.
Brittany Hodak [00:34:59]:
Oh, thank you, my friend. They do make a ridiculously good set, don’t they?
David Avrin [00:35:03]:
Yes. They do.
Brittany Hodak [00:35:05]:
Thanks, my friend. Talk to
David Avrin [00:35:07]:
you soon.
Brittany Hodak [00:35:08]:
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.
