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How would you score your business's customer experience? 📝 The best judge will be today's guest Susan Salgado, a keynote speaker with a doctorate in organizational behavior. Hosts Phil and Lauren ask Susan to share her wisdom on hospitality, customer connection, and effective communication in the digital age. With fascinating recommendations and endless knowledge, this episode will have you rethink everything about your business experience!

Phil

Hey listener, before we dive right into this episode, which I know you're gonna love, I wanted to tell you quickly about a brand new podcast by my client and my friend, Dr. Laura Shaheen. The podcast is called Baby or Bust. And since you're listening to this podcast, I guess you listen to podcasts so you might as well add another one to your list. This podcast explores the fascinating world of fertility. Now Laura is not only a world renowned fertility doctor, but she is a former fertility patient herself. So she approaches this topic from the perspective of a caregiver and a patient in a baby or bus. She interviews a new member of the fertility community for their story, and they tackle all kinds of topics like sperm donorship, lesbian family building, adoption, surrogacy, emotional wellness, mental health, and so many more great topics. It's called Baby or Bust. I know you're gonna love it. Check it out on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Now onto the show.

Phil

Well, hello, there. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.

Lauren

And I'm Lauren.

Phil

And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. We're so happy you're here, guess what you've done listener, you've picked an episode that just happens to contain one of our very favorite people, I'm just gonna say clients, but Susan, now you're a friend. If someone was to say, Phil, pick a project on your website that you're the most proud of it would be hard to choose one, first of all, since we've been doing this for a decade, but you are for sure, in the top three projects that we are so immensely proud of, it's been a long time coming to have you on the podcast. You're a keynote speaker and advisor. You're a thought leader, you are amazing. And we're so happy you're here with us on Brand Therapy. Welcome.

Susan

Thank you. I feel like I'm going through therapy right now just getting all of this wonderful feedback. Thank you so much.

Phil

I just love our project. I love what we've created together. I say this to you every time, when your name appears in my inbox, it brings me joy.

Susan

Oh, you're so sweet. And I can't tell you how many times I have been complimented on this website. People love it. And they really feel like it stands out from every other speaker that they look at. It's just so different. It's so much more simple and elegant. Whereas a lot of speakers have these really splashy websites with, you know, things flashing all over the place. And ours is just so elegant and beautiful. So I'm grateful every time that I look at it, for having found you and to be part of your community. So thank you, and thanks for inviting me here today.

Lauren

Ah, you're the best at what I love about your brand. And your website is, like you said, it's elegant. And I think it's very warm, but also full of knowledge. And I feel like it's really true to the simplicity of the messages that you convey through your talks. I think you have a very unique and very refreshing perspective on things like leadership, hospitality and customer service. And you really use a lot of data to support your messages. And so that's part of why we're really excited to have you on the podcast here today. So our listeners can learn from all of your wisdom.

Susan

Oh, thank you. And I love talking about customer experience. So I'm very excited about this.

Lauren

So first of all, I just want to understand, really for my own knowledge, is there a difference or an overlap between customer service and hospitality?

Susan

Great, there's definitely an overlap. You know, having come from Union Square Hospitality Group, where I spent 17 years of my career at USHG as we call it a very specific definition of customer service versus hospitality. So they would argue that they're two completely distinct things. That service is technical. And hospitality is emotional. In every business, we have something that we're doing for the people that we serve our clients, our patients, our customers. Think about all the words that we use, even internal customers, our colleagues and other departments and organizations, we have all of these different types of customers. And we have a service that we have to provide to those people so there's a job to be done. However, the way you make people feel while that job is being done is what the hospitality piece comes to.

Because hospitality in its true nature is about taking care of strangers. That's the definition of hospitality. And so when you think about inviting someone into your home, who's a stranger or hopefully at least you know them a little bit you know, bringing complete strangers into your home and the way we would take care of them. When someone's coming over you know you're gonna have guests arriving, you prepare for that like you go shopping ahead of time, you think about what they might like to eat or drink, maybe clean up the apartment or your house a little bit. Get the pizza boxes out of the living room. You try to protect Prepare for this visit. And there's a sense upon arrival that it's, you know, we're here, we're in this moment together. And that is a moment of hospitality in itself. And then along the way we anticipate what might they want next, what might they need? If someone's staying overnight, have you prepared a bed for them in the bathroom, and all the things that they need? These are all the components of hospitality that we display to people at home.

And when you transfer that into a business setting, and you think about the parallel, when we are meeting with a customer, whether it's virtually or it's in person, we have a certain amount of preparation we need to do to make sure that we know them, we can anticipate their wants, their desires, their needs, and that we can execute on a process in a really effective way. And to do that, you have to have these technical components of customer service down. But how you make people feel while you're delivering your service to them, is where the hospitality comes in. So I think of it as technical versus emotional, and customer experience to me, this broad term that we use, I think it encompasses all of it's both the technical and the emotional components. But service in itself, I would say it was really focused on technical.

Lauren

Most of our listeners are either small business owners and or freelance creatives. And when someone hears hospitality, they think, you know, Ritz Carlton, they think of really, really big organizations. But could you sort of speak a little bit on hospitality for a smaller business and what that might look like?

Susan

To me, hospitality for smaller businesses is the most intimate form of hospitality. Because when you're dealing with big companies, it's very hard for bigger companies to institutionalize hospitality. And that's really what you have to do, you have to systematize it. You have to make it so that it feels consistent across every experience with a company. So I think the challenge of hospitality is greater the bigger you are, because you have to ensure that at every touch point, in your customer experience, they are getting that same feeling of hospitality, that you as the business owner want to come across. In a smaller business, you have the joy and the privilege of being able to provide that service yourself, and to provide the hospitality that you deem most important, or what you want it to feel like for your customers.

And the hospitality piece of it is how you're building relationships with your clients, right? This is all about relationships. Repeat business is definitely about the relationship. Because when you consider technical and emotional components, if we mess up on the technical side, we don't do a really good job. But our customers love us, they have a strong relationship with us, they've come to trust us to believe in us, they're going to give us a second chance. But if you do something, just even the smallest mistake and you have no relationship with that person, there's a very good chance that they're going to walk. And so that really underscores the importance of having that relationship and having the emotional component. And as the sole practitioner or a member of a very small team, I think it's easier to create consistency than it is the bigger you get. That's where the challenges come in with leadership and organizational culture.

LaUREN

You bring up a really interesting point with the repeat business. I was wondering if there are any metrics that someone could look at to evaluate their own hospitality, since if you're running a small business, someone might be a little uncomfortable giving you that feedback. And I guess looking at how many customers come back is probably the first place to go.

Susan

Sure. Sure. Net Promoter Score is one of my favourite metrics in the customer experience area. And that's just likely to recommend. It's one. Would you recommend this business to somebody else? It's the only question. And so when you think about someone's willingness to recommend you, that's actually more important than their willingness to return. Take a restaurant as an example. If you asked me, you're coming to New York City, where should I go out to eat? Well, I have a couple of favorite spots that are a little quirky. It's like the service may be on or off one night, the food may even be on or off one night. But they know me. And I feel like I'm going home every time I'm there. It's so comfortable. They know my favorite things. They anticipate my needs, because they've gotten to know me so well. So I put up with the ups and the downs of their service and hospitality.

But would I subject you to that? If you ask me for recommendations? Probably not. Because I want to make sure that you have a great experience wherever I send you. And so I'm going to focus on those places where I know there's consistency in that customer experience when I recommend a business to you. And so that is why I find net promoter score to be so important. It's like would you go back and would you recommend this to other people? Those are two distinct questions, and they're both really important questions to consider.

Phil

I have never thought about that. Had you asked me before answering that question. I would have thought oh, well, they're probably the same. But now that you've explained it that way, I can totally see how They're not the same.

Lauren

I'm just gonna keep asking all the questions until you interject though this is always whenever we're on the phone with Susan. I'm always like, what about this? What about this? What about this?

Phil

I feel like my school but like it's like a good school. It's cool. But I like to pay attention to and I think about it. There's so many quotes, by the way from even working together. There's so many times Susan, you pop in my mind. Remember Susan said, this approach to things. You're just you're really a master at this topic. Truly.

Susan

Thank you.

Lauren

Can I say my favorite Susanism? I always say it to myself, before I have to have a tough conversation with someone, ‘the behavior you ignore, is the behavior you condone’. Magnificent.

susan

So true, right?

Lauren

Yeah, so true.

Susan

And this is true in all aspects of our lives. It's true, the customers, it's true at home with family members. It's true when you're raising children. Whatever behavior you accept, you're saying that's okay, you can keep doing that. I mean, really, when you think about it, if I don't tell you that you did something wrong, I'm not on your side, I'm not taking care of you. You're gonna keep repeating the same behavior. And other people may be getting so annoyed with you. And nobody's telling you about it. Like, really? Is that fair to people? And if you want to keep consistency in your customer experience, it's another place where that really holds true.

So you know, I said, bigger companies have this challenge of creating consistency. Well, you better be sure that you're auditing, you're giving feedback to people all the time and letting them know how they're doing. Because that will determine whether or not they stay within the parameters of what you're looking for. Or are they coloring outside the lines in ways that you wouldn't necessarily hope? So is it really true in all aspects of life.

Lauren

Do you think it also applies to clients or customers? Like if a client is difficult, for example, what would you recommend?

Susan

Okay, this is a very tricky area, bad customers are such a challenge. And when you are a sole proprietor, small business, and you're dealing with that really difficult client, I feel for you, I've been there many times.

I think it's important when you're managing clients to set boundaries early on in your relationship. For instance, I tend to email late at night or on the weekends, and sometimes I'll send emails out and clients write back to me immediately, they're online also. And then it creates this expectation that I'm always going to be there waiting to reply to their emails. And so I learned a long time ago that I need to set the tone for what they can expect from me in terms of my responsiveness. And part of that should be upfront. It's best if we set those boundaries out loud with our clients, right? If we say like, just you know, if you need anything, I don't look at my phone much over the weekend, but I'll be back to you right away on Monday, you have my text messages, like if you really need something I will get my phone out. I don't mind people doing that if it's really urgent, but what kind of urgency do we have in organizational culture and leadership, like it really takes something special for them to ward calling me or texting me over the weekend. But I try to set that boundary out loud. And then also with my behavior to make sure that when I'm saying I want them to do is consistent with what I'm doing. I can't send them an email over the weekend, and then be like open, you know, this weekend and not answering emails, or you shouldn't send me emails over the weekend. So I think setting those boundaries is an important piece of this.

And then when they get difficult, there's a range of responses that I've seen work really well with that. Some of it is there are times when we just have to put up with difficult clients, right, like we're just gonna put up there not that bad. It might be annoying, but it's not egregious. But I will never forget the story of a colleague of mine who ran one of Danny's restaurants, Danny Meyer's restaurants at Union Square Hospitality Group. And he had a customer complain about the experience they had at dinner. And their complaints were really, really petty. And the meal was for six people. It was like an $800 bill, and they wanted this guy to just make the bill go away because they had these little grievances. And he listened to them for a long time and asked questions and really tried to understand just how bad it was. He had already talked to the server. So he knew the servers side of the story before he even called this person back, which is a very smart thing to do to get your team's perspective on something that went wrong before you jump in and start, you know, coming to conclusions that may not be valid. And then when the customer was really pushing for the free meal he took a huge risk. He said listen, I have to ask you honestly, do you think that what you're complaining about really warrants an $800 comp. And there was silence. And the customer said, all right, you're right. It doesn't. And he said, why don't you come back and visit us again? We'd love another chance to make this up to you. I'll help you get a reservation at a time that's convenient for you. And the first bottle of wine is on us. And they're like, okay, great. And they came back, and it all worked out fine.

That's a huge risk to call the client out in that way. But there's a certain point where, especially if you want long term relationships with people, we have to be bold, sometimes we have to take those risks in really thoughtful ways to say, let's put a boundary on this because I want to feel good about doing business with you the same way you want to feel good about doing business with me, right? And there are clients who I have declined to work with a second time, because the first project was just so difficult and I have a new jerks rule, right? Like, I don't want to work with jerks. So I will say like, you know, I think maybe there's someone else who's better suited for this, I have some recommendations of people and pass them off to somebody else to deal with. Which is not always the nicest thing to do to your friends. But they may get along better. Sometimes it's just it, right? It's just a personality fit and a style fit.

Lauren

The fit thing is such a great point with that, that even I need to remind myself of that sometimes. I mean, Phil and I are really fortunate to have incredible relationships with I'd say 99% of the people we work with, like truly, we also have a no jerk policy, we call it no diva policy, but it's basically the same thing. But for the times where it doesn't really work out, and we don't see eye to eye, and it's just not meshing, I have to remind myself that it's not necessarily a fault of ours, or even theirs. It's just sometimes you don't fit. And that's okay.

Susan

Yeah, it's very true. And sometimes the people ask me for a recommendation of a coach, like an executive coach, someone to work with, on their own performance as a leader, and I always give two or three names, and I tell them, Don't just go with the first person, you really need to talk to all three of them, and find the person who fits you the best. Because when you're dealing with the stuff that you guys deal with is so personal, like your personal brand. It's everything for a small business owner. And so making sure that you're working with someone who really gets you and you guys know very well that I worked with another website company before I came to you. And I really liked the people, they were all lovely people. And I think they thought I was lovely, too, but we could not figure each other out. We didn't speak the same language, we didn't see things the same way. They saw splashy, flashing lights on the website. And that's just not my style. And I had previewed their work. And I said to them in the early stage, like, I want to understand from you guys, the websites I see as your client work on your website, that's not my style, how are you going to get to know me, and really build a website that fits me, that doesn't look like all the rest of them. Oh, that's what we specialize in. Like, we're really good at that.

Let me say to everyone who's listening to this, please don't promise something you can't live up to. They absolutely could not. They were just replicating the same style over and over again. As a matter of fact, the other day, I was on the phone with a potential client, and they're asking me if I could talk about the future. And I'm thinking about talking about the future, like, what do you want me to get out my crystal ball, like, I have no idea how to talk about the future. And I said to him, you know, that's, that's really not my area of strength. What I can talk about are things like, changes that I see happening in the workplace right now with virtual environments and hybrid work environments. So I can talk about trends and evolution, and what I would recommend to companies to do and think about that, but I'm really not a futurist in that way. And there's this long pause. And my agent said, lead never heard anyone say that before. No one says, I can't do that. Right. It's like no one I'm sure some people do. But it's a rare thing for people to say, that's not my thing.

We're chasing the business, we're chasing the revenue, we want to get those jobs. And especially after the year that many of us have had where business has been so slow, like you just want anything that you can get your hands on, right. But we have to always remember that the word on the street is going to determine our next job. So if we don't do a great job with that client, and the word of mouth that's out there about our brand is not the word of mouth we were hoping for, we're destroying ourselves. We're shooting ourselves in the foot by taking on work that's not a good fit for us. And so being able to really carefully consider your strengths and your competencies and know where your wheelhouse is what's best for you in terms of the kind of work that you want to take on and you're going to have the most impact and being willing to turn the rest away, I think is a really important strategy and the smaller you are I think the more important it is because you are your brand and you have to be able to live up to the point promises that you make.

Lauren

Yeah, so true. Now I'm having these flashbacks of all the times in the past where we've said yes to things that were just beyond our comfort zone. And I mean, even though you can do the job and do it, well, I do. Sometimes I feel like it's good to know what you're best at. Because then you're working from a sense of purpose and passion as well. And

Susan

I'm not saying you should never stretch. I mean, that's the only way I grow and learn, right? I love taking on challenging projects. So it's not that you should only stick to a specific set of things that you're really good at. But you have to know when you really can stretch, right? And especially as you're taking on a lot of business at once. If I take on this extra challenging project right now, and I'm also onboarding to other clients, can I really manage all of that and do it all? Well, and it's so important to ask yourself that question. And you may even say to someone, like, listen, I would really love to do this project with you. The timing is not great. If we could revisit this in two months. I know I could take this on. I just don't want to let you down. And actually I remember using a lot working with Danny Meyer's group at those restaurants, because customers would ask for things in the restaurant. And this might be a good analogy for some businesses, they call it and make reservations. And they would ask for things to satisfy their own needs.

For instance, there was a table at one of the restaurants that sat eight people, but it was just comfortable with eight people. If you were to squeeze a ninth person onto the table, it was going to be tight. And so people would call and say, Oh, we can please as we have nine people, can we just squeeze that one other person in? And so there were times when the restaurant said yes, they tried it, it was not good. The customers would walk out complaining, even though we told them in advance, it's going to be really tight. Oh, we know, we know. But we love each other, it's going to be fine. And so they would insist that was going to be okay. And then they were let down. And they complained about it. And so we had to learn to say to customers, listen, we would love to do this for you. We have tried it in the past, and we've seen the outcome. And that's not the experience we want you to have with our business, we want you to have a great experience. So please trust us when we say it's just not a good idea to put that ninth person on.

Lauren

I love that. And the delivery of that is key. Because it's not saying no, it's saying no, because we care about your experience. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Okay, I have some questions about virtual working, and having clients who maybe aren't living in the same place, as you. You had mentioned that relationships are a really big part of hospitality. Do you have any recommendations for developing a relationship with customers when they're virtual?

Susan

Yes, absolutely. So that falls into two categories. Also, there's the kind of virtual where you might be able to do zoom calls or have phone calls. So you're actually communicating live with people. And then they're exclusively digital relationships, right, where you might only be emailing. And I'm actually doing that right now, as a customer, where I'm working with a printer that is printing materials for me. And it's exclusively digital. I've never talked to her on the phone. However, her email communications are so clear, so thoughtful, so well articulated, so organized, all of that technical stuff, for the customer experience, right.

She's getting a clear message of her service offerings, pricing, quantities, everything that I need to know about printing something. And on the emotional side, she is so warm in her style of writing to me, it's always like Good morning, Susan, hope you had a great Thanksgiving, what's going on. So she is just really warm, and how she comes across that I have this image of her in my head, like it'd be funny to see her one day and what she actually looks like because I have this wonderful warm image of this person. And I, I smile, and her emails come into my inbox because I know it's going to be a pleasant interaction.

So that's the hospitality and the service working together in a digital way. And we need to do that in our email communications, we need to do that in terms of our user experience on our websites, thinking about how people use it. And is this going to make sense to people? This is all you guys taught me most of this. So I'm preaching to the choir on that. And when you consider how people are going to feel, you're going to build a relationship with them because you're tapping into the emotional component of your relationship. That said, you better have all the technical things really well situated so that you can articulate steps of processes and all of the components that they need to know to make a buying decision in a really easy way people want it to be easy, like an easy button from staples like boom done. So you have to be able to do both of them. But I think that's how you build the relationship in a digital form. Now when it comes to the virtual that is on Zoom or whatever platform you use or on the telephone, it really is not that different than being In person.

The difference sometimes comes across more like the chemistry that you experience when you're face to face with someone. I also find that being in an organizational setting since I consult to these companies and I go in and I meet with employees, feeling the buzz of the workplace is something that I really miss from a virtual engagement with a client. However, the virtual environment has also given me the opportunity to kind of expand the breadth of my work with a client that's geographically dispersed. Because they may not want to fly me all over the country to meet with different people in different locations, that now I get to meet those people, because we're all so much more comfortable with video conferencing than we used to be.

And so I think when you consider that virtual live experience, we need to go back to those basics of technical and emotional, are we planning our meetings really effectively? Do we have a clear agenda? Do we know we want to get out of meetings? Are we invite the right people to every meeting? Do you know who the decision maker is when you're pitching something to a client? Right? So making sure that you're, you know who your buyer is, when you're working with a client, you know, who's really in charge? And are you anticipating the needs of those key people getting ahead of any questions they might have seeing around the corner to problems that you know are probably lurking on the other side of the corner, but they haven't figured it out yet.

All of those technical elements, and on the emotional side, it's like the warm smile, it's the brightening your day kind of greeting. When I see you guys there, we're so excited to see one another right, you can produce that same warm energy at a distance. But eye contact is going to be really important. If you're doing these video calls, and you're looking in a different direction, like your eyes are over here, but the screen is, so they're getting the profile of your face, it's not gonna be the same. You're not gonna feel that warm connection. If you're looking at the side of somebody's face. And also our etiquette in these meetings, are we checking email and doing other things multitasking, everyone can do that. Now I can tell when people wear glasses, I can see their screen change in front of them.

Phil

Because then the brightness of the screen changes are happening on their face, it's very obvious.

Susan

You're doing something else that, yeah, that's all etiquette. But it's part of building the relationship. Think about what goes into building a relationship with a client is the respect that we show them, which is courtesy, it's the respect for their work, it's having the empathy to be able to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine what they need and anticipate those needs. It's even a bit of humility, to know that we don't know everything. And we may think we have this client figured out, but we may not. And be ready to ask great questions and be curious about that client, so we really get to know them. And those are the things that will help us to build a relationship in the long run.

So don't be deterred by this digital world that we are moving into in the hybrid environments that we're in. I think we can do this as a society, we can do this. It just takes a little bit more effort. And you have to be willing to dedicate yourself to the extra little things that it takes to warm up the relationship and build that connection.

Phil

For a lot of people. It's new, but for us it's not new. It's been years of working in this way and we started this trend. Okay, the three of us. Hello, hello. You guys have met in real life, haven't you?

Lauren

The highlight of my life honestly. Yeah. is usually Phil to meet up with all the clients in person.

Phil

But you got this one at a time. I say anytime I'm like, Lauren, I'm making this kind of like, well, I've met Susan in real life.

Lauren

I like to use that card a lot.

Susan

I’m coming to you guys every time I need to pick me up.

Phil

But it's true. I mean, we did all of our intense branding, personal branding work together all virtually. Oh, you're so full of wisdom. I learned so much. It's like, I don't think I asked the question of just sitting here listening and learning. I just learned so much. That's another cool part of what we do is like working with people like you, we have to learn your perspective. When we learn from you in building whatever it is we put out there to show for you. And like I said at the top of this episode, we're incredibly proud of what exists out there that shows people you in the absence of you meeting them face to face, they're looking at your website, but that experience is still so true. So I want people to go to your website, susansalgado.com. We're so proud of this website. It's always featured on our website and I post it and put it in presentations, probably without asking your permission, but I just assume you're okay with it.

Susan

I am it because I'm very proud of it too. And, hey, this loves your exposure. So thanks for that Phil. That's awesome.

Phil

Well, thank you. We said it a few times. We'll say it again, thank you for spending your valuable minutes with us on Brand Therapy. There's so much to take away from this episode. We really appreciate you.

Susan

Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to talk with the two of you. Again, I always look forward to these moments. And don't hesitate to reach out to me if there's anything else I can do. Everyone is listening. My website has my email contact. So if you have questions about the things that we talked about today, please send me an email. I'd love to start a little chat with you and share any other insights that I can if there's anything I can help with. Thank you.