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April 17, 2024 | 26 Mins Read

Creating CX That Fuels Business Growth

April 17, 2024 | 26 Mins Read

Creating CX That Fuels Business Growth

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Episode 261

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro is joined by Joseph Michelli, Professor of Service Excellence at Campbellsville University and New York Times #1 Bestselling Author, to talk about how service organizations can achieve success in creating differentiation through customer experience.

Joseph is a globally renowned speaker, author, and consultant known for sharing expert business practices to create joyful and productive work environments with a focus on customer experiences. He is also a Certified Customer Experience Professional and CEO of The Michelli Experience.

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Watch the Podcast Video here:

Joseph: I think we hear so much about transformative leadership and this digital transformation. And so people really do think it's just going to blow everything up. Transformation has a sense of whatever it was turns into something phenomenally different. And that is one way to do it, obviously. And the speed of change in digital definitely predicts a need to not just be incremental about things. But I think the biggest thing is to figure out what's working and to improve on it today over what you did yesterday. It's how we leverage strengths and step into opportunities from that SWOT analysis. But I love people who are willing to get on the leading edge of technology and innovation, but not all of us should do that. I think the really great place is to be a fast follower of the things that work. So you don't have all those upfront costs and all of the learning curve problems that the early adopters have.

Sarah: Hello, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be having a conversation about how to create customer experiences that will help fuel business growth. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Joseph Michelli, who is the Professor of Service Excellence at Campbellsville University, as well as a New York Times bestselling author, certified customer experience professional, and CEO of the Michelli Experience, where he helps companies create outstanding customer experiences. Joseph, you told me before we started that you've written 12 books on this topic.

Joseph: Yeah, I think I'm going to finally get it right one of these days. But I keep approximating the world of customer experience excellence for sure.

Sarah: Well, what I think is just you're learning a lot. And as you go and you learn new things, there's more things to share with people. So I think that's incredible.

Joseph: Well, and I think that speaks to customer experience. Just for all that are joining us, this is a journey, not a destination. If you think that you arrived today, holla, aloha, we've got it now, you don't understand this.

Sarah: The game has changed tomorrow, right? Yeah, so there's always opportunities to learn and evolve. And yeah, I think that's great. So tell everyone a little bit more about yourself.

Joseph: Yeah, I've been doing this before we called a customer experience in the days when in a hospital setting, we were trying to come up with consistent service delivery. And we even had scripted service. And so it's been a journey for me and an evolution and fortunate to get a PhD in organizational development that gave me context. But really getting in the game is important with this and really making all the mistakes necessary to understand how to use people, process and technology to make craveable experiences that cause those customers to keep coming back and spending more and telling their business friends to do the same.

Sarah: Yeah, I was sharing with you before we started how this topic applies to field service is really interesting because I've been doing this for quite a long time. And when I started, the conversation was never around something like customer experience. It was always around how do we cut costs? How do we eliminate headcount? How do we maximize productivity to the nth degree? And while companies obviously still have to pay attention to those things, as organizations began to realize the power that service holds in impacting the customer experience and customer loyalty, and the differentiation of their brand, it's been really fun to have a lot more opportunities to talk about this topic through the lens of service and to really expand the conversation beyond some of those really specific operational things to this bigger world. So. I'm really excited to have you here to talk about it.

Joseph: I love the evolution. Just if I can put a pin in that for a second. I think it's a natural evolution for businesses to go from more of a commoditized view of the service phase of a customer journey to one where this is a value creation and really an important flywheel back into the sales cycle. I love that evolution and I've seen it now across industries, whether it's automotive or even contact centers, rethinking the contact center. It's exciting to see it in field service.

Sarah: Absolutely. So one of the things that I thought was really interesting is this piece of research from Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, which says that in the U.S., 80% of companies think their customer service is going well. Only 8% of customers agree. That is a massive, a massive disparity there. Where does that disconnect come from?

Joseph: All of us think our kids are above average and that we have great senses of humor, right? Unfortunately, other people get to weigh in on the opinion on that to validate the perception. I think that what happens here in organizations is we want to believe that our customers love us and that we are creating a lovable experience. While we're thinking about things like how to cut costs at this turn, how to use automation instead of people, we're doing all these things and wanting to believe that there's zero negative impact to these decisions. And really using the voice of the customer to guide our decision-making is the true north for most organizations today. And that not only are they giving you the voice, but they're also giving you their behavior. So tracking the behavior of purchase intent, repurchases, stickiness of your offerings. So I think people are sobering up to that and they're starting to look at where the perceptions that matter are. And I think it was Drucker who said that we're not in business to make a profit, we're in business to make a customer. And so it's through customers that profits come. So who cares what we think, really? Who cares what the 80% thinks? The opportunity lives in how do we take that 8% up and make sure all our decisions are guided.

Sarah: Absolutely. When reading that stat, I'm sure people would have different reactions, right? My initial reaction was, boy, what an opportunity, right? If you think about if some of that 80% started putting real focus on bringing that 8% up, how much impact that would have. How would you describe that opportunity to listeners in terms of going back to our title of this conversation? How can... Getting honest about those numbers and putting appropriate focus here really helped them grow their business.

Joseph: Well, yeah, getting honest is everything except you have to then execute. So we have a lot of businesses today that appreciate that they need to do better on the customer experience. It's a strategic priority for more than 50% of all businesses. So I think people get it. Now the execution of it is a whole different thing. So we've got a lot of money going into trying to improve customer experiences. And yet the American Customer Satisfaction Index a couple, about a year ago, was at its lowest point in 17 years. So we, knowing that it's important and executing are two different things. So the opportunity lives in figuring out how to execute an experience that's resonant for your customers. Using the technologies that you need at the moments that matter most. Having people available when people need to opt in to humans to deliver the experience. Training your people to not let your technology down by the attitude they bring to the service call. When all the technologies have notified people and they've got all the smart, intelligent technologies to have the right products on their vehicle as they're coming out to the job. And all the IoT has given them all the diagnostics that they need. All the wonderful technologies can be let down by an attitudinal problem on behalf of the person who's representing all that technology. So I think that's where the challenge is. How do we go from 8% to 50% because we have really put the people, process, and technology in the right place. And we have the right people to deliver against those processes and technologies.

Sarah: Yeah. It's interesting what I'm thinking about in my mind is you're saying that more than 50% of companies have this as a strategic priority. Which makes sense. But it's one of those things where. We talk about these different buzzword categories as it would be crazy for any board or CEO to say, yeah, we don't really care about customer experience. They know it has to be a priority. But I wonder if the amount of intent that turns into action is correlated to the recognition of what you said in the quote earlier, or the belief, I should say, that profits come from customers, right? Because there's this whole sort of philosophy around the chicken and the egg, or what should come first, right? If we... Focus on the numbers versus focusing on the customer experience and letting that drive the results. Does that make sense?

Joseph: Yeah, Michael Tushman at Harvard says we do a lot of and or thinking when it is a both. I think that's where we are with a lot of this. You've got to drive numbers. You've got to have tight margins. You've got to operate efficiently. There is no pass for sloppy work and really loving people. That does not get you where you need to be. On the other hand, tracking all those KPIs on the here and now sales and then not investing enough in the technologies in the service side or in the people development side so that humans have an experience that keeps you sticky is not particularly sound. I worked for a long time in the automotive industry. I wrote a book about Mercedes. And, you know, a lot of money goes into trying to get people to sell cars. But the car sales margin is fairly thin. And the way that manufacturers make a living is getting people to come back to their dealership for service. And having a positive service experience that then causes them to have a relationship with that dealership for the purposes of the next car purchase. And in the B2B, it's even more substantial in terms of fleet sales. So I think it is appreciating how do we make sure that that service team is a part of the sales team, that that field service group understands their role in revenue generation over the long term. And some of that is efficiency driven. But a lot of it is understanding how do we create more value in our service calls, the anticipatory value, the need not to call me again because we've taken care of things that would be routine service annoyances. That the service team thinks more about the equity you have in this product more than the person does because they're tracking on your behalf the maintenance and the regular performance of the product. So those are really big shifts, I think. And the brands that do that well are the ones that I think are going to hit the numbers and also capture hearts of the people that they serve.

Sarah: Yeah. And to your point, it comes back to getting honest, right? Which requires you to understand not what do we as a business think is important to our customers, but what are they telling us is important to them? And then figuring out how you create the value proposition around your ability to impact that. Okay.

Joseph: And what do you know? What do you know that they don't know that you can create value that they don't even realize they need for?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I'm thinking about, you just said, that's a lot of change, right? And so there's different reasons, some conscious, some subconscious, that companies fear innovation when they think of doing whatever would be different than doing the status quo, especially when the status quo is working okay. Is it possible for companies to improve customer experience, make a positive impact here without disrupting things at a large scale or not?

Joseph: Yeah, I mean, I think we hear so much about transformative leadership and this digital transformation. And so people really do think it's just going to blow everything up. Transformation has a sense of whatever it was turns into something phenomenally different. And that is one way to do it, obviously. And the speed of change in digital definitely predicts a need to not just be incremental about things. But I think the biggest thing is to figure out what's working and to improve on it today over what you did yesterday. It's how we leverage strengths and step into opportunities from that SWOT analysis. But I love people who are willing to get on the leading edge of technology and innovation, but not all of us should do that. I think the really great place is to be a fast follower of the things that work. So you don't have all those upfront costs and all of the learning curve problems that the early adopters have. Now, if you're incredibly huge and you have a lot of money, and I'm sure there are a lot of people in the field space, the field service space who are in that, you can be there. But for the rest of us who aren't really willing to gamble at all, or gamble, given that we don't have as big of a pot, then we just have to really be aware of who are our customers and what's working. And I just released a book called Customer Magic, and that's one of their superpowers, to be really honest. There's a company I work with out of Australia, and they do these study tours. So they're based out of Australia. Sometimes they're coming to the United States a lot. They're going to the UK a lot, and they're looking at what's working in those markets. And then they're going back and saying, let's look at the use case here in Australia. That'll work for a country of shopkeepers in England, but it won't, work for us given the geography of our clientele. So they're constantly looking the horizon for what is everybody on the cutting edge doing, and then saying, oh, data centers, that could be a good idea. So some 10, 15 years ago, they started to get into building data centers, which has been incredible for them.

Sarah: So they can learn a lot and have that curious mindset, but then pick and choose what applies to them. Based on a variety of different criteria.

Joseph: Yeah. And it's not as disruptive for them under that scenario to go back to your original question.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think that's also, I talked about how in service we've seen this shift toward focusing on customer experience over the past decade plus. But along with that has come the need to look outside of your own competitive set. Like you shouldn't be looking for those best practices or that what can work only from the companies that are your direct competitors. You need to really be assessing trends across different types of industries and see what could apply or what could work. So I love that they're using that exercise to be learning and evaluating different ideas and different concepts.

Joseph: I have lots of clients, you know, in areas like field service who are studying a Ritz-Carlton. And my goodness, that's a completely different model, right? Ritz-Carlton is a hospitality brand. It's all about nurturance. It's all about anticipating needs and really strangely personal ways. But the idea of anticipating needs in a Ritz-Carlton is something you want to take into field service. It really is a part of we want to service you today, but we want to anticipate what you're going to need up ahead. Both for our cost savings elements of our service delivery, but also for you to see us as a trusted partner in your long-term journey with these products.

Sarah: Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So when we think about looking at customer experience in helping drive business growth. What do companies need to get right to make that connection?

Joseph: Yeah, well, growth is an interesting question. For me, growth isn't necessarily opening up another brick and mortar somewhere. And a lot of companies gauge on that. For me, it really is a growth of your market share and relevance to the markets that you're attempting to attract. It's looking at once we've really got a foothold on that beachhead, how do we get our adjacencies? So most of all, that starts with understanding who your customer is, what they value, what your products can bring to market and have value to. It's always trying to understand what catches their eyeballs and their attention when you are marketing those things. So it's really a lot about customer analytics and customer design. So designing from the customer outward and your people process and technology and knowing what are your target markets for that growth plan.

Sarah: So when we go back to that divide between the 8% and the 80%, where are most people getting this wrong?

Joseph: Most people are getting it wrong because they want to be everything to everybody, first and foremost. So they don't really have a tight understanding of the psychographics and demographics of their core customer segments. That's part of where they get it wrong. I also think that they get it wrong because they talk about it, but the discipline of it requires only taking on a few things at a time. So what are those three or four moments of truth we have to absolutely execute on every single time, every customer, no excuses. And I don't think a lot of people have that. I don't think they know beyond the practical benefits of their product and service, what are the emotional benefits of the experience that we want to deliver. We want to be known as the nurturing brand if we're the Ritz-Carlton, right? That's a very different value proposition than if you call Zappos where they want to create this personal emotional connection called a peck, right? And they want you to leave feeling like you've had a fun personal moment. It's not understanding the emotional dynamics and creating an experience that both hits all the operational drivers at the key moments of truth, but also the emotional drivers as well.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense. And I like that you bring up that piece, especially for companies that we're talking about that are in the B2B space, because they might not naturally think about the emotional in addition to the operational or the product deliverables. And I think that is an important part of why customers, whether they're individuals or organizations, are loyal and feel a certain way about the relationship they have with a provider, et cetera.

Joseph: Let me just, I'll take that for you really quickly. In Mercedes, we define that as delight. We said we wanted customers to experience their service journey with delight. So when we would do that pulse survey, like we're accustomed to doing after a service interaction, and one of the questions was, to what degree do we delight you today? Maybe one question or two questions. How likely are you to recommend and to what degree do we delight you today? On a scale of zero to 10, we got a lot of zeros early on, right? But what we started to communicate to service professionals is that your job is to create delight. In addition to resolve the problem, anticipate future problems, you're to create delight. And what might you do today during the service call that would increase the likelihood this person would give you a score as a 9 or 10 on delight. It's important to help people understand what the final product looks like. At the human level besides the operational excellence on the execution of the service technique.

Sarah: Yeah. So I have a question related to that. Would you say getting this right, so delighting customers, is it more art or more science?

Joseph: Oh, it's both. There is definitely art to it. And it also takes a certain disposition and a willingness to engage because humans are challenging. But there are certain processes if we impose consistently on the raw material called human beings, increases the probability that they will leave an experience delighted. And those things involve listening. It involves proactive communication. It involves a lot of the emotional intelligence components like empathy. All those things are absolutely scientifically proven to increase the likelihood of this. And there are trainable skill sets. But then there's also some nuances to know when not to do certain things because Sarah likes it done differently. She has an invisible sign that's telling me something different than John who follows her in the next service call.

Sarah: Yeah. So, part of why I wanted to ask that question is because when I think about customer experience, I think about NPS. That's one of the first measurements that comes to mind. And I think you can share your opinion on whether that's a valuable tool. But I think to me, it seems like when it becomes not so is when two things happen. One, it's not paired with any sort of anecdotal insight. There's no listening customer sentiment, like you can rate us. But what does that rating mean? Tell me more. What would you like to see? What would delight you, etc. And then the second issue is when people ask those questions and do absolutely nothing with the feedback, because obviously that's going to frustrate people. So I was thinking about art and science also from the perspective of more quantitative measurement tools and then also like more of the qualitative. Methods of engaging and listening and to your point, empathy, et cetera. So how do you see those things?

Joseph : Well, I'm a fan of NPS at a relational level. NPS is a transactional tool. The jury's still out a little bit for me in terms of, you know, I just had an interaction. I'm much more interested in the satisfaction, whether or not it resolved to the completion. I'm looking more for how was the experience in the moment, in the now. I'm looking for some of those as predictors of relational strength as measured by NPS or customer effort score, other relational metrics. But to get to your point, I think just having any quant number like seven, well, thank you so much for the seven. And now what do I am supposed to do with it? I know it's not as good as a 9 or 10. And I know you supposedly would love me and tell your friends if it was a nine or 10. But a seven, what do I do with that? And you may be, for you, a seven may be a nine or 10 for the average person like, that was a rock my world kind of thing. And for someone else, a seven is really like, oh my gosh. I wanted to give you a zero, but I'm too nice. Unless you have some qualitative ability to read that data, it's pretty hard to do much more than looking at trends. Are we better or are we worse than we used to be?

Sarah: Yeah.

Joseph: As an aggregate. So I do think the only valuable information is a combination of transactional pulse surveys that have quantum qual and longer term surveys that have some quantum qual. And then you have to just use your big data analytics as well as your intuition and nuances to move those things forward with actual solutions.

Sarah: That makes sense. What is the advice around creating a culture that delivers those delightful experiences? So let's say we have a company who has this as a strategic objective and means it. How does that permeate down through into creating a culture that collectively wants to put focus on this and move the needle forward?

Joseph: I think you have to look at yourself in the mirror, leader. The culture starts with you. I wrote a book about a fish market where the owner said, fish smells from the head. I still don't know what that means, but I think it implies the likelihood that if it's not working at the top, it's probably not going to work throughout the organization. So it starts with how are you treating the people you serve? Because if they're not being treated well, then the people they serve are probably not going to do too much better. I think it really is a fundamental understanding. We're creating human experiences, not customer experiences. Customer experience is just a label for one group of humans who actually pay the money, but everybody else in the supply chain is pretty important. So I think that's the beginning point. I think you have to be very clear about what you value. You can't be all things to everybody. You have to have a set of values, and then you have to live by those values. And you have to tell those values to people who are prospects, and you have to determine whether or not they have the basic ability to execute against those values in the way you really interview them. And once you have that, then you have to celebrate the stories of the people who do the things that are mission and value consistent. And you have to really invest in storytelling is one more pitch to the group that on the recent book, they do an incredible job of having a department that actually collects stories and shares those stories back. And links those stories to values and constantly narrates, this is who we are here. This is how we roll. I used to say in the Michelli household, I had a certain set of values that included sitting down to dinner together. And when my kids would say, Dad, this is the lamest thing other kids don't have to do this stupid stuff. I said, that's how we roll here. That's how we screw up Michellis for future generations. They have to sit and watch their parents eat. And until the other people are willing to take you on as a project, you're going to be contaminated with that set of values. And I think that's the way we should think about business. We really are trying to behave so consistently. That's how we roll here. And if it fits you and we can do great things together, you're part of the fold. And if not, find a company whose values align more with you and enjoy your journey on your career.

Sarah: Okay, so we're looking at that from the perspective of sort of the workforce. What about the, it was referenced as the way we serve statement. What about how, to your point, when you think about, let's say a company has a long way to go between closing that 8% gap, right? They're not going to be able to do everything at once. You already said that one of the keys is you have to focus on making some improvements and having success before you move on to the next thing, et cetera. So how do you sort of articulate your customer experience ethos to your customers? Like what they should expect? Or how do you communicate when there's feedback that you can't address at that particular time, et cetera?

Joseph: Well, there's two pieces to that. First off, I think you have to start by taking your values and flipping them around. So oftentimes we talk about we are going to, integrity is our value. Well, if that is our value, then what would the customer experience if we had it? They would trust us. So our job is to create trust that we're in the trust creating business. Integrity is our buzzword as a value. And so you think if you're always looking through the lens of what is the customer going to experience if we live our values, and then you define that. And that is what the way we serve statement is to me. It's like articulating our values in reverse from the customer's vantage point. That being said, then we have to communicate something to customers. I would not communicate our most aspirational deliverable to them until we're executing it with enough consistency, because otherwise it's just fluffy language and it doesn't execute. So I would say, here's our service standards and we're going to execute against those. We're going to make sure there's a little cushion so we are consistently there. We don't want to make the cushion so big that we were basically underselling what we're going to deliver. And people are going to go, well, big deal. You're going to get back to me in two weeks. Great service standard. So I think you have to find that sweet spot that is reasonable where you can execute every single time. And then you have to over deliver against that. In instances where people want something that you can't deliver, it really is a conversation to say, this is what we can and to define whether or not there's a roadmap for you to be able to get to that place. And if enough people want it, it better be on your roadmap, irrespective of whatever you think your technology advanced romance are going to be. You got to really define where you want this business to go to meet where the customer is going. So that's my nutshell answer to I kind of think a three pronged, an effort at a three pronged answer anyway.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think it is interesting to me how challenging it is for people to really truly embrace that outside in perspective. It's not always about, oh, yeah, customer experience is important, but it's not even people that believe it and have the intent default to that inside out perspective so often. And I think that really is just fundamental to this whole thing is being able to think through the eyes of the customer. Like you said, if this is what our values are, this is what we're doing, delivering, et cetera, what are they experiencing? It sounds super simple, but I'm just thinking about how incredibly challenging that can be.

Joseph: I think it's the secret sauce. You just want to put it in a nutshell for the podcast. It is to continually force yourself outside of the way you do things. I'll give you an example of how we do it. We created something called the customer walk. And literally, the employees had to walk from the parking lot as if they were a customer, make sure no signs were mowed down during the night that they might not have seen because they parked in a different parking lot, stand in line, listen to what customers were saying, look at the condiment area, fix that because that was in their purview. If there had been a sign knocked out, tell a supervisor so that gets escalated. The point is, when you're on that side of the interaction, you see the smudges on the glass before you see the pastry. When you're on the other side, the glass is a long way away from your view. And it's just the way to get an advantage and to create that into your process, as opposed to just add talk about stepping into the shoes of your customer.

Sarah: Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. Maybe you can talk some about how you put that into process by sharing a bit of the story from the new book. So the new book, the latest book is Customer Magic, and it's talking about a story of an Australian company that has taken sort of a revolutionary approach to customer experience. So tell us a little bit about what makes them interesting.

Joseph: Yeah, and a formative. Well, first off, when I first got a contact saying that they'd read my book about Ritz-Carlton and their telecom and they're in Australia and their world-class customer experience journey, I thought it was a prank phone call because who in the telecommunications world really cared about that? But they did, and they got their market share in the mid-market B2B, so mid-sized to large companies, B2B. They went up against the government-owned behemoth telephone company just as AT&T got dissolved in the U.S., so they were a few years behind in Australia doing the same. And they had no capital, but they focused on one thing. We are going to create value for markets that are overpriced and underserved. And so I think as long as you constantly are looking for that space and if part of the value proposition is a better understanding of what your people need and filling those gaps, that's how you take on the Goliath businesses and get more and more market share. And for them, it's sometimes just as simple as saying, let's make your bill readable. Let's make it so that this is not in technology ease, but it's really made easy for you to understand. And that mindset and that over-the-top and using NPS very effectively to our earlier conversation and leveraging it as a way of getting. Another level down to understanding how can we make it better, constantly evolving, just allow them, along with other things we've talked about, non-disruptively looking for trend data that fit their, what they knew about their customers, and then making offerings in those spaces. That's how they did it. And really, they are a story worth learning about. And unlike most of my books, whether it's Ritz-Carlton or Mercedes or Zappos or some name that everybody knows, I think the beauty of this particular example is that a lot of us are not going to have books written after us. And yet we're doing some pretty amazing things that we can learn from each other. So that's the hope that people will take when they look inside Customer Magic.

Sarah: Yeah, it's also interesting that it's, like you said, you thought it was a prank call because it's a telephone company in Australia. But it shows the way that this focus has become important in every industry, in every application. Any other... Thoughts or advice around how to do this right or what people commonly get wrong.

Joseph: I think the greatest one is to say, keep listening to Sarah. And I mean that in the ultimate sense of continuing to be growth-oriented. Just as we suggested, there is no destination to this. People are coming up with some pretty exciting ideas. I think it is a lonely journey to continue to make a better experience for people and testing your ideas, being part of community, looking for resources that have curated content to people who are actually doing this. I do this for a living every day. I have lots of scars to show for all the things that we try to make customers' lives better to drive more engagement, to drive more referrals, to drive increased repeat business. The KPIs are how we live and die. And it takes a lot of trial and error, experiential design, thinking, iterative design work. And so being party to communities like this, I think, is the biggest thing you can do to have an advantage over those who are trudging alone without looking up to see what's happening.

Sarah: Yeah. And to your point, when you can connect with people that are on similar journeys, it's less lonely, right? You know that we have live events that we do in different cities across the globe. And one of my favorite pieces of feedback is always, I feel so much less isolated. I feel reassured, too, that we're not the only company that doesn't have this all figured out, right? So there is a lot of benefit in that. And also learning as...

Joseph: I think of it as...

Sarah: Right, like the new book.

Joseph: Yeah, I think it's a lot of being in a maze. And so you need some people who might have already been through that path of the maze who can tell you, no, there's no cheese down this end. Or we really got some momentum and traction over here. So attending those live events, listening to podcasts, being a lifelong learner, all those things make a difference.

Sarah: Absolutely. Joseph, can you tell everyone where they can find you, find the book? Where can they learn more?

Joseph: Well, readcustomermagic.com is the website for the book. You can find me anywhere and everywhere if you have my name. I'm mercilessly Joseph Michelli at LinkedIn and Joseph A. Michelli at TikTok. If you have my name, you're going to be able to search for me and find me, I'm sure.

Sarah: Okay, excellent. Well, Joseph, thank you so much for coming and spending some time with us today. I really appreciate it.

Joseph: My pleasure, Sarah. Thank you for having me.

Sarah: You can find more by visiting the home of UNSCRIPTED at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.