the companies that miss the opportunity to take advantage of these Innovations are going to be left behind mk's law is the fact that Innovation and technology is changing today at such a rapid Pace that it's difficult for companies to keep up and if they don't try and keep up a competitor will and then it's not even about trying to catch up anymore it's having to start over [Music] super welcome to Super entrepreneurs podcast I'm your host Shahid danani today we have with us Shep hkin Shep is a customer service and customer experience expert and the chief amazement officer at Shephard presentations he's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eight books and was inducted into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement Welcome to our show Chef hey I am excited to be here thank you very much for that wonderfully nice introduction that would make my mother very proud is she still around unfortunately she's not she's looking down and smiling at us though right now oh yeah oh yeah mothers are amazing time that we spend with them is just Priceless and we realize after right how precious it was oh yeah and growing up she because I I do what I do today probably in part to a choice that I had to make back when I was about 12 years old uh when I was a kid my parents got divorced and my mom said hey you get to do one thing outside of school you can do do anything you want in school play all the sports be in all the clubs you want whatever but outside of school there were three of us my brother sister and myself you each get to choose one extracurricular activity that I have to drive you around to just one my sister did figure skating and horseback riding so she dropped figure skating my brother did Ice Hockey oh younger brother and karate he dropped ice hockey to do karate and I was doing ice hockey and doing magic shows like party magic shows where I would perform oh and so I chose the magic shows over the ice hockey and today I am a performer on stage more or less as a speaker and I truly believe if I'd have made the other decision I'd have been playing old man pickup hockey like I still do but I wouldn't have the career I have right now when you said when I'm on stage right away I thought that you're still doing the magic show on stage I still do magic shows I do um I incorporate a little bit of magic into my oh you do I do I I've been talking about my very first speech back in 1983 when I got out of college that was 40 years ago believe it or not I wrote a speech about creating a moment of magic in the customer experience or the customer service which is about a positive experience versus creating a moment of misery and I use that word magic and I had fun with it and I actually did a couple of tricks in my speech when I started my business my first Entre R preneurial Venture at age 12 it was a birthday party magic show business and I would perform and I was doing on a good week I would do eight to 10 magic shows a week think about that and there were some months where I was making more than my school teachers were and so I eventually graduated to work at nightclubs comedy clubs and I did corporate events and when I graduated college I said I don't want to be a magician I want to do something that's more interesting to me and somehow or another I landed on the idea of speaking I saw a couple of motivational speakers and I said yeah I can do that and I love the idea of customer service I was drawn to that topic uh when I went to the bookstore I saw a few books bought them studied them and realized this is what I've been doing all my life and every job I've ever had every interaction I had with a a client who hired me for a magic show or when I was working at a restaurant or a gas station when I had my regular jobs too uh I knew I wanted to take care of the customers that walk through those doors and the Beautiful part about that story is the fact that you learned that skill at such a young age but now you Incorporated it into what you do as an adult but the funny thing is that what you do as an ad adult for example public speaking or doing an event people need some kind of an excitement when they're consuming that content is that differentiating factor that they gain from a presentation that when you walk out there and I'll love to come to one of them but you come out there and you do some kind of trig all their attention is on you now you grab their attention I refer to the entertainment side of what I do is the sugar that makes the medicine go down and even if I don't do any of the magic and every once in a while I don't I'm still engaging I Am Naturally I'd like to think I'm funny I I always say if you don't laugh I don't get paid and everybody seems to laugh so that's a good thing but seriously I do I take my information as you mentioned in the introduction I've written eight books we do research projects every year I'm just getting ready to roll out the 2024 project which has taken me longer than usual because I've I'm actually doing two research projects at once we're going to have a lot of information that I get to share with the world probably right around February or so after I write the report so I'm excited about that I take it really seriously but if I can't make you laugh if I can't get you for lack of a better term inspired or motivated by the style in which I present my information they might as well just read the book on their own right yeah so true Shep are you going to do something small for us that'll either make us laugh or excite us through a magic trick I have a deck of cards let's see if I can pull this off with you but this is audio and video so it has to be something that the audience on the audio side can hear as well they can you'll have to explain what's I'll explain what's going on and perhaps your reaction tell them I did it right or wrong so if anybody's watching great if not but I have a deck of cards in my hand and you can see them on the screen they will not leave the screen I want you to think of a card any card you want not an easy one like an Ace of Spades or a king make it a difficult card card do you have one in your mind okay okay and what is it name it out loud two the two of what and by the way I got a joker here Joker doesn't count was it two of what okay the two of spade two of spades now I'm gonna again I'm not gonna Spades Spades we've got it and I I think you could see all the cards are there but you will notice that only one card in the entire deck is upside down this is crazy you and I didn't set this up this is not the two of spades I'm going to give you $1,000 and I really this is crazy that pick the one card that was upside down wow yeah okay so now for the people who can't you gonna share the secret nower his eyes just got bigger moment he finally said wow yeah one card in the enti yeah everybody picks the same card it's really amazing so I'm just kidding I'm just kidding just kid there is a trick to that obviously there has to be seriously are you're not GNA share right now just get to business you know what you're not a magician I'm not telling you the secret but seriously I have fun with that I still practice as a hobby by the way my wife says you have so many hobbies you will never be bored and that is correct I do so many fun things but work hard and I believe outside interest makes a person more interesting and I do my magic I play hockey still I play golf I play tennis I play pickle ball like I do so many I like to read so play guitar you can see the guitars in the background yep so my office guitars I know that the maintenance people pick them up and play them at night time so oh can you imagine you have a camera on there and you're just seeing there is a camera I I don't understand why they don't know that I can see what they do oh they they actually do it you catched them I really don't care they're not like my most expensive guitars like I have at home but they are there and it's funny when they pick it up and look at it I can say somebody's been sitting in my chair so anyway let's get into some good stuff we talk about that's great yeah I want to ask you in your experience working with these top tier companies for example what key mindset approaches that separate successful entrepreneurs from the rest entrepreneurs in general are a little different than the typical World um I am an entrepreneur you're an entrepreneur and here's the thing amongst many of my friends by the way are entrepreneurs as and birds of a feather flock together as the old saying but here's what's interesting a lot of the guys I grew up with and I see my classmates who on a semi-regular basis the guys that I hung out out with most of them work for other companies and the reason is they're very comfortable getting a weekly or every other week paycheck whereas an entrepreneur when we start out we take a risk and there are times when our butts are on the line when we are the ones that have to make pay roll and wondering oh my gosh I've had a rough month I'll just have to pull it out of my personal account to make sure people are getting paid we take risks and we do things and we have a different mindset we also have a tolerance for risk that others don't have I know that I've been offered jobs to work for companies that I've done business with they've offered me really nice salaries and you know what I love the independence I I don't mind the risk because I'm comfortable and confident in myself this is what entrepreneurs do as I look at the leaders of some and and by the way there are companies like I I did the research partner I had this year was 59 okay you may not know who they are they're a very large Cloud Communications company recognized in their space as being one of the top companies the guys uh that are running it the guy started it he runs it I it's a big company lots of employees worldwide I don't think I would consider that anymore an entrepreneurial venture I would consider it more of a a corporate Venture however it's very entrepreneurial the guy the guy that's run it he left he came back it's the story whether it's a large company or a small company and I just love working with where the leadership understands what they need to do they get down into the trenches with their employees they're not in some Ivory Tower office making decisions in a void that's I think a big difference between the entrepreneurial leaders and the corporate leaders by the way not all corporate leaders are like that in in my recent book I write about a CEO that decided to go down and spend time in the customer support department to learn what customers were asking about and complaining about and one day A lady called back and said I just talked to this wonderful gentleman named Bill I'd like to talk to him again he was so nice and he seemed to know what he was talking about the company was Microsoft and the CEO was Bill Gates and he spent time on the front line and by the way you consider Bill Gates an entrepreneur he started this business pretty much while he was in college and look what happened so how do you suggest high output individuals strike a balance between Innovation and consistent customer satisfaction with such high speed of evolving business nowadays things are changing so quickly right so I'm going to be a little counterintuitive and share with you that nothing has changed in the customer service World hundreds of years ago somebody had a problem a complaint as a matter of fact there is a stone in a museum in I believe it might be the British Museum of History where it's the first customer complaint letter of all time and it's etched in stone was delivered to somebody here's the thing somebody has a problem and they tell you about it and they want it fixed all right a hundred years from now that's exactly what's going to happen somebody has a problem they're reaching out to the company they want it fixed nothing has changed in thousands of years and nothing will change in the future I say that but how we get to the end resolution is evolving changing and there's Innovation we have new check Technologies and everybody thinks chat GPT type Technologies are brand new in the last year or so IBM Watson I went to my first IBM Watson conference I think in around 2014 or 15 and that's when they were using artificial intelligence to drive a better experience so it's been around for a while the generative Ai and conversational AI it's just getting better and better and the public is starting to be more aware of it as these Innovations take root and they're accepted I think that we're going to have better experiences we're going to have faster resolution and the companies that missed the opportunity to take advantage of these Innovations are going to be left behind I believe I'm trying to remember what the name of the law is like they have Moore's law where the microchip doubles every so often and it speeds up oh it's smex law I'm looking over here because I had it written down at one point okay MK law is the fact that Innovation and technology is changing today at such a rapid Pace that it's difficult for companies to keep up and if they don't try and keep up a competitor will and then it's not even about trying to catch up anymore it's having to start over because it's happening so fast you have to scrap go at it again but if they keep up with the Innovation the changes it will affect the customer service aspect of the company as well how can they create more of the balance there think about it you want to keep up with it today the idea of a chat GPT type technology is so inexpensive that even the smallest companies can afford to implement so that will benefit the actual technology te the technology will benefit the actual okay got it and realize this that we're doing surveys and asking our customers is 247 customer support and expectation that you have today and with chat the answer is an easy yes because you don't have to be there but you do have to implement the system and make sure it's doing it right but here's the key in all of Technology no matter how good that technology is one day it's going to fail and there better be somebody behind the scenes ready to back it up and give that customer the experience that they want so the best companies are finding the balance between human to human interaction and self-service digitally driven technology type interactions yeah like some of these AI tools and programs that are coming out are very human and they actually have a full-fledged conversation with people and they're connected with apis with different platforms and providing information The Experience actually amplifies when you inject AI into your business so that's a very good example of bringing in technology that will actually improve customer experience now you must be seeing because this is your realm you must be seeing some exciting things happen do you feel there's still a percentage that is not jumping on that change right now because you mentioned if they don't they'll be falling short but it's all over the news everybody's talking about it but do you still find that some companies aren't jumping on the AI yeah so I'm a member of a of an organization called the entrepreneurs organization it's worldwide that that used to be Yeo now it's just EO there's YPO the young president organization I have a small group of people I get together with on a monthly basis they're my board of directors we act as each other's board of directors and I asked maybe just three months ago so realize chat GPT became introduced to the world back in November of last year just about year or so ago in January I did my research report and most people did not even know what that was they hadn't heard it it only been out for maybe a month and a half okay today if we said have you ever heard of chat GPT most people say yes but guess what my group of eight very successful entrepreneurs owners of businesses one guy does a couple billion a year in business okay but two of them said I I heard what it is I don't know what it is I go what do you mean you're you don't know you're using it you don't even know and this is what's amazing is that they aren't using it for their own company but they are interacting with other companies that do and they don't realize you're doing it so I still think there's a lot of companies a lot of people lot of owners of businesses that have no idea how to implement it into their business let me make it real easy if I've got a product and like a software manual okay if I sell software and I created a software manual on how to do or and and use my software and troubleshoot if there's problems I can go to chat GPT type Technologies okay and I could drop my software manual into this it's called the data set okay I don't want to get too complicated but I could tell the software say it's chat gbt you are not allowed to go on the internet and look for any information the only information you're allowed to pull from is this manual that I just load it in as a word file into your system so if I've got a question about how do I save a file and put it in wherever I as a human being a customer just type in how do I do this and the machine's going to not go anywhere else other than the manual look for the words and send them back to me and then I could say I don't understand I'm not technical could you explain it to me like I'm in sixth grade and it'll turn right around and explain the exact same thing a completely different way to help a guy like me who doesn't get things to understand it that's how powerful that is and uh so you can imagine if you've got a if you're a car manufacturer and you've got 10 different models therefore you've got 10 different big thick user manuals on how to program the garage door how to turn on the lights and the windshield wipers and cruise control and everything else you can have a data set for each one of those cars and if I'm a customer I could open the manual and look but if I have my phone I could just log into the app and dictate how do I program my garage door opener and it's gonna give it right back to me it's pretty amazing that's very simplistic but you can take the most complicated processes and put it into that type of format yeah there's for consumers for example in the car World they would rather communicate with a chat GPT for example they'll get so much more information from the AI than they could potentially get from the actual sales rep rep at the location and that depend for many products many services just so hard to know everything and then to actually simplify it the way that specific customer can understand is a gift when it comes to AI for that consumer right and maybe the salesperson or whoever it is at the dealership or the auto manufacturer maybe they do know everything but as a customer what does that mean it means I've got to make a phone call I've got to wait on hold I've got to identify who I am and the kind of car I have and blah blah blah blah blah and that takes time and time is friction and we want to eliminate friction we want to eliminate wasted time and we want to get the customer the information they need as quickly as possible the customer wants it that way so these Technologies are able to do that fast-pace information as you need it immediately yeah makes a big difference people are just impatient already it's going to make them even more impatient it's the Amazon effect that that started before the software came in because Amazon has taught us that we could have things quickly so it used to be I remember back back when I was a kid if somebody could deliver it in six to8 weeks if I bought on mail order that was exciting and and when it showed up like in five or six weeks oh they're fast and then somebody said two we delivery one week delivery today delivery then overnight delivery and then Amazon says depending on what you order you can get it in an hour we have trained the human brain to expect a quick response and get our needs taken care of quickly and boy when we have to wait we either have to show a whole level of patience or we're going to go leave and go somewhere else have you interviewed Jay Bear by any chance on the show no Jay let's see if I have it right here Jay has I'm getting ready to do my top you can recommend guests to us oh yeah this guy your friends if you have anybody wants to come on the show yeah look at this little book okay I'm gonna show you how little it is this is a regular siiz book this is Jay's newest book and Jay by the way is WR that's tiny right and it's called the time to win and it's all about time and it's all about how when you save your customers time they love you cuz anything less than that is friction now that's my word but here's the cool thing it takes under an hour to read this book it's I don't know 50 60 Pages there's not a lot of real small type there's even some pictures and diagrams I love that I love books with pictures anyway the point is if you're GNA write a book about saving time you may as well save time reading the book Jay's brilliant and this guy's done some amazing work he's one of my favorite speakers authors customer experience experts marketing experts by the way do you like tequila because he's one yeah number one tequila expert in the world be an honored to interview your recommendations so please do introduce us that's what we do here is we help people spread their message and build relationships so that'll be great yep I will do that cheep can you share what you feel your innermost superpower is that got you to this point in life oh wow my innermost superpower I've got a really good sense of humor so even when the bad stuff happens there's got to be something funny about it to to be able to smile I also have a really big Drive I don't mind working hard because to me it's not really working a lot people have said I love this definition of retirement you're doing what you love and somebody who's reti playing golf every day and they love playing golf they finally get to do what they love by leaving their job let me tell you I love what I do I've been loving it for the last 40 years so in a sense I've been somewhat retired for the last 40 years so I have this really good mindset about that and I think two other things I'm a people pleaser which is why the whole customer service experience thing really resonates with me and I I I think that's so important is that you do what is innately inside of you and I don't mind I don't mind failure because I realize failure is what you learn from and you move forward and get better as a result yes oh so those are call superpowers that's a very powerful make the comp a very powerful mindset trait yeah make the complicated simple and a unique way of looking for good in everything law of polarity everything has good and bad depends on where you're putting the energy and for you naturally you're in a more comic way you're looking for good in even the the worst kind of situations and that mention about uh failing to have a relationship with failure and you understand that it will happen and it doesn't Define you and you learn from it those are great mindsets traits for being an entrepreneur and you have that naturally so I can see where that success is coming from as well thank you I want to share with you a really cool thing that happened to me a number of years ago I there was a driver in Orlando Florida ala stagna who I would use whenever I had a speech in any of the Orlando hotels or the convention center and one day toward the end of the year he said to me hey I I'm giving out to my favorite clients a day planner it's a little pocket planner calendar that fits in your pocket and you open it up and you've got the whole week in front of you little blocks for you to write your whatever your plans are it's your day planner and he goes would you like that and I said nah I I probably wouldn't use that and then I thought about it go you know what I want it and he goes oh okay he gave it to me I said but I'm not going to use it as a daily planner I'm going to use it as a Daily Reflector and I decided starting on January 1 and I did this for one solid year and I still do a modified version of this every single day I wrote down on the weekdays when I typically would work I wrote down two things something good that happened to me personally something good that happened to me professionally and on the weekends it was always something personal sometimes professional great but every day I took a moment probably two minutes to write down something that was happening good within two or three weeks I noticed a pattern in my attitude which by the way I already had a pretty damn good attitude but I noticed that even the worst day had good things happening well you mentioned my mom passing away sure that was sad but you want to know what looked at that day I was there with my mom sitting next to her by her bed with my brother my my wife and my sister is from out of town she came in she zoomed in and then my brother's wife was there and I thought to myself this is a really sad day but look who I'm with you know that's the kind of attitude you start to have when you start to become purposeful about noticing what good things are happening around you and what happens is you train your brain to become positive positively aware of all the good and I think that was an incredible exercise that I put myself through and anybody that's struggling and not being happy this might be something that could help maybe they're under a lot of stress trying to make it work their business there are good things happening around you you just have to be able to become when you you just become aware of it and also when you put that in practice You're Expecting good to happen and you start noticing more good things start to happen that's just a beautiful connection that we have as human beings so it was great speaking to you Shep it was an honor your energy is wonderful and what you're doing for businesses because such an important aspect of a business customer service customer experience and it's only going to amplify even further so I continue to wish you the best thank you for your time and definitely keep in touch my pleasure I promise thank you [Music] super super super
2023-12-19