Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success.

I am your host, Jacqueline Strominger.

And as you know, on this podcast we hear from just amazing, influential humans who really have an impact on our lives and who have had success and who can help us keep having that unstoppable success.

And today I, I have an amazing guest, Katie Mares.

Did I say it?

Maris.

Maris.

You got it right.

It's all good.

Like, I know last names are so awful, like hard because like mine, Straminger, people like strumming, whatever.

So, you know, it's.

I.

Last names are always tricky.

But let me tell you a little bit, listeners, about Katie, because she really, truly is remarkable.

So Katie has a unique blend to what she does.

She helps people in the expertise of customer interaction.

I mean, that is so important.

We were talking pre show about it and I'm sure it'll come up, but it's about that great customer interaction, resilience building and women empowerment.

You know, her approach is always personal, genuine, impactful, and she really has been recognized for her ability to connect with diverse audiences, audiences from the C Suite executives to aspiring women leaders.

She has an amazing TED talk, the Art of Choice, and she has a best selling book custom, her experience which encapsulates her commitment to inspiring, positive and actual actionable change within organizations that she partners with and also obviously with you listeners, because obviously we all are about making that unstoppable success impactful change.

So welcome Katie.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so excited to be here.

I am so glad you're here.

So, you know, I'm, I'm always curious what got you down this path.

There's, there had to be some.

Was there like a big aha moment or did you have an experience yourself?

Oh, gosh.

So if you're talking about down the path of the guest experience in general, there was an aha moment for me.

I had a mentor that I would.

This is while I was the COO for North America's largest dental consulting firm.

And I had a mentor that on my days off, on my sick days, on my vacation days, I would go and watch him develop experiences, watch him speak, watch him do his thing.

And so this is while I was running an organization.

I would go and do that and I just had this aha moment when I was on stage with about 6, 700 medical professionals in front of me and I was talking about the patient experience, something like came over me.

I got off that stage and I sent in my resignation letter.

I'M not even joking to my very cushy, very secure multi six figure position.

And I decided to chase the guest experience, chase the patient experience, learn everything I could learn about it and change the way humans experience businesses.

And so it was that moment when I got off stage, I was like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

And so I did it.

So what about, what about it where.

You'Re like, oh my God, I need to make a change.

You know, we work really hard for our money.

We work really hard to be able, have to be able to have discretionary income to spend on the things that bring us joy.

And as consumers, we should be provided an experience that makes us feel good for the how we're spending our hard earned money.

And unfortunately, the guest experience is a lost art.

And it's something that, you know, we've been so bogged down with now, you know, technology, we're busy being busy, life be lifing.

We want instant gratification that those that are serving us have forgotten just how important the customer actually is to their business.

Because if we could drop a truth bomb right here, right now, you don't have a business without customers.

And so we should be developing experiences that make our guests feel something pretty spectacular.

There's a difference between customer service and customer experience.

In my opinion, customer service is transactional.

It's here's my money, you give me a service or something in return.

It's just an exchange of service for money.

An experience is something that happens to a customer that impacts the way they feel, feel.

And right now, 79% of customers are going to choose the competition based off of the experience alone.

Now if we go back to that definition of experience where an experience is something that happens to you that impacts the way you feel.

Essentially, customers are choosing the competition not for your product, not for your price, not for your quality, but for how you make them feel.

And so it's this lost art of actually connecting with, with a human and anticipating their needs and surprising and delighting, delivering a plus one and actually caring about the human that's standing in front of you.

You know, I, it's so important what you're saying.

And I, and I would say it, it is true.

It is an absolute lost art about the experience.

Everything from when you pick up the telephone to call X company and you're like, right, like how many of us like, yeah, give me the, give me the number, give me the number.

I just want to talk to the op.

You know, a human.

I Want a human?

I don't want the blah, blah, blah, right.

To when you walk into a store, right.

Or anything.

Like, you know, and, and as you were saying, like even as you're, you know, a doctor's office walking in, how do they make you feel?

How does a dentist make you feel?

How does that environment make you feel?

Is it warm and inviting?

And, and it's true.

People forget that part.

And I think it's a, you know, it's.

And it becomes a top down.

It's top down.

It has to come from the top, right?

100%.

It's all culture.

It is top down.

And it is definitely something that will make or break whether or not a customer chooses you over the competition.

And you know, you mentioned from the moment you pick up the phone, it even starts before that, right.

It's when you're in bed and you should be sitting next to your loved one and actually connecting with them when you're, but you're in fact scrolling your phone, you're scrolling brands, you're comparing and you have a laundry list of different places that you can go purchase the thing.

And, and so that experience, that connection starts long before you even decide to pick up the phone or walk in to a retail shop.

But I have to tell you the story.

So I recently.

Fall is coming, so I'm like, I need some new clothes.

That's not the thing I love to do.

I don't love shopping.

I mean I love, every woman loves a little retail therapy.

But you know, when you have to, it's, it's just like, I gotta go.

I don't know what has happened to consultative selling.

It is obsolete out there right now.

I went into, I mean Aritzia, which is a well known brand.

I went into Nordstrom of all brands.

I went into Anthropologie.

So all high end stores.

Aloe or aloe, however you say it.

And I walk in and I'm in Walnut Creek in California and I'm going into all these stores.

Not one person says hello, not one person asks in all these stores, what, what do you need?

What are you looking for?

Not one person is willing to go and find, you know, items and pull them for you.

So it was the most.

I was out to spend money, I was out to feel good, I was out to purchase.

And, and I walked away with nothing, absolutely nothing.

Because I'm like, where is this human that holds your hand like they used to, that makes you feel good, that is intensive, that sorry.

Attentive that, you know, pulls the Styles that work for you and.

And spends that time and creates that client telling feeling it's not there anymore.

And I would have spent a lot of money, but instead I got frustrated.

I didn't feel special, and I just walked out.

So I went into meetings that I had, keynotes that I had, wearing my.

I mean, my dresses are fine, but I wanted to feel special.

I wanted something new.

And nobody was willing to give me that experience.

And it's unfortunate because humans are so inundated with social media technology that when they decide to come in and shop with you, when they decide to pick up the phone, that's all they're looking for.

They're looking for that connection.

They're craving that connection.

And we crave human connection.

And it's.

We crave it and we want it.

And we need it.

And what's really interesting, what you just said about that shopping experience is that there's.

There's two things to it that for sure, like, number one, that nobody was around, like, and it could have easily.

And some people don't want to necessarily, you know, be asked, like, what are you looking for?

But it all actually starts with something like, you know, you walked in and they could say, oh my God, I love what you're wearing, or I like that top.

And it starts.

And you, you start to build a connection.

And then you would say, you know what?

Thank you so much.

You know what I'm actually looking for.

And like, it starts to connect and people forget the art of conversation.

That's it.

It's the art of conversations, the art of connection.

It's the art of the guest experience.

It is not something most.

And here I gotta.

I'll clarify.

There were people there.

They looked at me and walked away.

It's like they had something better to do.

And I'm like, wait, do you like the life that you live?

The food on your table, the roof over your head, the clothes on your back?

Because it isn't the brand.

While they may be signing your paychecks without customers, they don't have money in the bank to sign your paychecks.

And so there is this disconnect.

And it's not about even selling, but it's about creating a relationship.

When a person actually leaves their home now to go to a brick and mortar store, they're there to buy.

And so the road to the sale is not your normal road to the sale anymore.

All it is right now is saying hello, getting their name, asking how they're doing, and letting that guest lead the way.

And having you responsible for the connection you create.

And what's really interesting about, I mean, it's so true.

I think people forget that the paycheck that they're earning, they have to get people in the door to get the paycheck to keep coming.

But the other part is, is that a lot of those professionals, and I'm going to call them retail professionals, you know, they get paid on commission.

And you know, and it's, it's interesting because if you work with somebody so that you aren't just selling them the highest priced item because it's going to help your commission, but you're selling them on the right thing for them, the right look.

And again, you're, you're, it's communication.

Yeah.

The likelihood that you will go back in and return is less if you know the connection.

Right.

Like, you know, but if you get me into an, if I'm saying to you I don't really want to spend that much money, but you keep pushing me into this direction, then I'm gonna maybe buy it and then return it because I, I'm getting annoyed or whatever it is, or, you know.

Yeah.

Buyer's remorse, 100%.

You know, my mentor has the saying, you can make price irrelevant with the guest experience that you provide and whether that's what you buy and not returning or how much you charge if you make the experience.

I use this example all the time.

When you go to a restaurant and, and you have an incredible server and the experience is amazing.

Not just the food, the food could be messed up.

It doesn't have to be perfect, but you feel, you feel great during that one hour, two hour meal service.

It's easy to tip 20%.

You want to open up your wallet, you want to give her that money or him that money.

But when, and if that experience is the opposite, the food can be incredible, the wine, the company at the table can be incredible.

But if that server doesn't create an experience that feels good for you, you have a very hard time opening up your wallet and tipping them.

And that's the best example I can give, because we all go to restaurants, is that when you create an experience that affects and impacts the way you feel, it's easy to give money.

You can make price irrelevant.

But if you create an experience where you're unsure, where you feel coerced, where you feel, where you don't like the way you feel, it's like pulling teeth to open up a wallet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm curious because as we're sitting There talking about this, what do you think about the whole tipping thing?

Like right now?

I mean, you know, because, because you go to, let's say, X Coffee Shop and they automatically turn the register around to give you a tip.

And you're like, for asking for a tip.

And I'm like, huh, I haven't had a full experience yet.

I don't know if I want to tip you yet.

Like, well, that's the answer right there is if you're questioning the experience, by the time you pay, then they haven't done their job and they're, they haven't done it worthy of a tip.

If from the beginning.

And you know, I bet you, and not that this will ever be tested, but Starbucks is a great example.

If Starbucks turned around and asked a barista or a cashier asked for a tip, I can almost guarantee you, even if it was just rounding up, you know, the cents to the whole dollar, I bet you the majority of Starbucks goers would tip.

Because from the moment you walk in the door, eyes are up, they're greeting, hi there, good morning, good afternoon, the vibe feels good.

From the moment you walk in the door, they have your name, they take your order, and now they have these new, not, I call them non negotiable standards, but they have these new standards where they write a really cool message on either your pastry bag or on your water cup or on your coffee.

And it's this little surprise and delight if at that moment they were to flip around the screen and say, would you like to tip me?

Almost all of us would say yes, because we felt the experience from the moment we walked in the door.

But for what?

The example you're giving is at that point, if you're like, but wait, I haven't even, I don't even feel like I've been given an experience, well, then they haven't done their job and they don't deserve a tip.

Right?

It's almost like the tip is coming at the wrong place, right?

Or like, right, like ask me for the tip when I get my coffee, when I actually physically pick up my coffee and see, so that I, you know, because the whole thing, you know, is it's the whole experience, not the, not just the start.

It's like the start to the end and at the end of it it's like, oh, put the, put almost like put the tip jar at the end of it so you can put the cash in there because that's where you're going to end up having that final amazing feeling when you look at your cup and like, oh, I want to give him a tip.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, there's different places definitely in the, in the guest journey that you could add that into.

And there's probably some better than other, especially with, you know, the coffee buying experience.

It's, it's definitely a different journey than the restaurant experience.

But I would actually wager that if there was a really cool vibe and energy and feeling that is in the coffee shop and you felt excited and you had hits of dopamine and serotonin going through your body, then you probably would tip without even thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's very true.

It's so true.

And I, but I really, you know, kind of just going back to that customer experience and how it relates to, into, you know, the corporate level.

Because when I think about that, this is where and, and listeners, you know, my big thing is, you know, that art of communication, that leveraging your communication, your employees and the people that work for you, you have to think of them as your customers.

Oh my gosh.

You have to treat them better than you treat your customers because how you treat them is a direct correlation to how they treat your guests.

Thousand percent.

Right.

And so think about that too, listeners, because this is a really key, important part.

If you can treat your people better than when they are on the phone with a customer.

Anytime, whether it's a customer service issue, they're taking an order, whatever that exchanges, or it's a sales professional going out to sell, sell your product or whatever it is you have them doing, whatever they're selling, they're going to do it 10 times better because they feel great, because you made them feel great.

Like the whole feel felt found.

Right?

I mean, we're almost forgetting that whole bit.

It's your happy customer is only as happiest as your happiest employee.

Okay, repeat that.

Because listeners, that was so good.

Right?

And it's so important.

It is.

Your happiest customer is only as happy as your happiest employee, full stop.

So true.

It is.

So that that culture that you create and that you allow, because it's a choice, right?

It's a choice to survive or it's, I would say it's an in instinct to survive.

So you just do what you got to do to make the business run, that's transactional.

It's an instinct to survive.

It is a choice to create, to create a culture, to create an experience.

It is a choice to create an employee experience which then creates that guest experience.

There again, transaction Interaction very operational instinct is to survive, do what we got to do it.

There's a choice to create.

And you know, I love Zappos for so many reasons, but they're such a great guest experience example.

And the reason why is because they will actually give you money to leave.

There is a bonus after three months of being hired where if that, if that internal guest, that internal customer, your employee, decides they don't want to swim in the same direction, that they don't want to sing from the same song sheet and really represent the customer first focused culture, then Zappos will give them money to actually resign and leave.

And that's how important it is at protecting that culture to ensure that every single employee and guest is being treated the way they want, is being treated by the philosophy of that guest.

First customer, obsessive customer centric philosophy.

If you put your money where your culture is, right, like if you really want to be successful, you have to protect your culture at all costs.

But first you got to choose to create it, right?

So let's say somebody's listening and listen, you know, they're listening and they're like, okay, where do I.

And they maybe realize that maybe we need to change that culture to create that.

What are the top five tips?

Oh my gosh.

So I have what I like to call the five Ps from promise to profit and that it basically outlines the things you need to do internally in order to gain an external profit.

The first one is your promise, your brand promise.

It's your why statement.

It's why you do what you do, why your employees get behind.

It's the, it's the thing that helps you filter all of your hires, all of your fires, all of your coaching.

Is this human?

Are we treating them this way and are they demonstrating it, treating the guests this way?

So that's your, your brand promise, your promise, and then here's your principles.

And these principles are the things that uphold your promise.

It makes it possible for everybody to sing from the same song sheet because they've about guidance from your principles.

You have process.

And this is where I call them your non negotiable standards.

You know, people call them journey mapping, moments of truth, you know, touch points customer, where whoever you want to look for on the Internet, customer experience expert, we all have a name for it.

But essentially designing your non negotiable standards, which is your moments through time that your guest does business with you or your employee does business with you, because there's an employee non negotiable standard Playbook, I like to call it, and a guest one.

So your process, designing that process backwards from how you want to make your employees and your guests feel.

So first you need to underline.

That goes back to your promise, your promise and your principles.

What are we promising?

What are we delivering?

Why are we doing it?

And then designing your process and not in reaction to it, but in order to actually achieve it.

So what do we need to do every single day?

What is our process every single day, with every guest, every time, or every employee every time to achieve the promise and the principles.

Then there's practice.

You have to practice.

You're not going to get it right the first time.

The last time I, I checked, we aren't robots yet.

Right.

Like we, we're humans still.

Right, exactly.

We're human.

So it's, you know, what are we doing to help our team members, our employees show up the best way they can.

So what does your training look like?

What is your.

Do you have morning huddles?

Do you prepare before clients come in the door?

Are you.

What does your practice look like?

What does your practice culture look like?

Are you coaching it?

Are you seeing it, saying it?

Are you reprimanding it?

Are you hiring and firing by it?

What does the practice look like when you have your promise, your principles, your process and you're practicing it, at that point, you gain trust, you gain the.

I like you, I know you, I trust you from your customers internally and externally, and it results in profit.

So I would say, you know, bite one.

You take one bite of the elephant at a time, but go all the way back, peel the onion.

Do you even know what you stand for?

Do your guests even know what and why they're shopping with you?

Do your employees know and wear that badge of honor?

And they believe in why you exist and why you do what you're doing?

The.

The process is the how.

So the, the promise and the principles is the why.

The process is the how.

And the what comes with practice of what you deliver.

And the profit as well is what you get in return.

And Simon Sinek, I designed the 5ps from prom profit based off of Silence, Simon Sinek's Golden Circle.

Right?

Why?

How?

What?

Because customers don't buy what you give them.

They don't even buy how you give it to them.

They buy why you do it.

They buy off of emotion.

And so if you design the process based off of the emotions you want to evoke in your employees and your guests, then you will always win.

Yeah, I love that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Love that.

And it is so true.

And as you were talking, it's, you know, something that I think is in.

In so important, and that is, you know, your values.

I call it the.

Your achievement code.

The.

The code that makes you you and that you want to live by.

You need to know what they are, and you need to know that how they represent into your company or into your team.

You need to know those values.

It's Is so important, and it's amazing how many people don't or they don't.

It's just something on paper.

Right.

You need to live in.

Need to live by it, breathe by it.

Yep.

It is so important.

It is.

So that's why, you know, I bring up the Zappos example, is that it's so important to them that they will literally give you money to go find another job.

And that's.

But.

And also that's so.

There's so many parts of that that are so key.

I mean, number one, it's like you could hire somebody and realize that they don't fit the culture.

You know, maybe it was just like a snafu in the hiring process.

Okay.

But not that they're a bad person.

They don't fit.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You're essentially giving them the opportunity to go find, you know, their next best position and they don't have to stick around.

And if they stick around and they don't fit, whether it's your decision or their decision, and then they create, you know, they become a virus.

Right.

They create trouble in the organization.

And why.

Why allow that to happen?

Let's help them have some money to go find their next best position because maybe they'll shine somewhere else.

To your point.

Right.

And that's absolutely.

I mean, that's the key thing is that if we.

It's investing in the people.

Not everybody is the right person for the right position, but you can help them find the right next thing we.

Where they will shine.

And by.

And you know, it's, you know, there's been, you know, some other really great companies that when they realized that there were certain people that in the company that didn't believe in the same values and where they wanted to do their.

Their charitable donations, they said, you know what?

Here's your exit plan.

And, you know, what ended up happening is that that company ended up doing more business with fewer people because they were all empowered and they were able to better work together again because it's the right culture, the right values, right people.

And it's not like it was A bad thing to get rid of those people.

It was a choice.

Go like you're, you don't fit this.

And it's so important for companies to know that.

And, and I feel like we operate out of fear, right?

Not, I'm not everybody, but there's organizations that, you know, I'll just.

Again using Zappos because we're stringing this along.

Zappos doesn't operate out of fear, right.

They operate out of a certainty of who they are, what they believe in.

You know, I work heavily in the automotive industry and a lot of dealerships, they operate out of fear.

They just want somebody that will fog a mirror, right?

Like somebody that's alive, that's on the sales floor that, you know, can greet a customer.

The reality is they don't even greet the customer.

There's a lot of work to be done in that space.

But it is ever.

I could show you.

We could, we could.

I'm like, oh my God.

Like.

Just that female.

Oh my God.

I know.

Well, that's how I wrote my book, by the way.

Custom.

Her experience was because a series of awful car buying experiences.

That's how I got into that whole sector.

But anyways, it is in.

It is, it is critical that we as organizations stand behind what we believe in and have faith in the fact that if you make this hard choice by letting somebody go, by tightening up your hiring processes, by you know, coaching and you know, writing up individuals or put putting them on performance plans, that having faith that that will actually work out for the better.

Unfortunately, a lot of leaders and a lot of organizations, they act in fear.

So they, they would rather have a warm body than have the right body.

And that's where we fall short.

They, they don't have the faith that the right bodies that are there will hold up the organization or what needs to be done.

So they bring in a warm body to help those who are the right ones and then it ends up unraveling.

So, you know, I would counsel any organization that's listening, any leader that's listening.

Are you hiring out of fear or are you walking in faith that the right people that are there are going to service your customers the way they should?

And that's so important.

And it's.

And as a company too, are you going to give your people the empowerment to do what?

Right to do what is right and have a mind to think, oh, maybe they didn't feel so great.

How can I make that better?

Or let me, let me be empowered to do the right thing and not have.

That would be letting go of control, right?

That would be running an organization out of full faith rather than fear.

You know, in these examples that I give you, you can find them on the Internet.

But the Ritz Carlton.

The Ritz Carlton empowers and gives the every Single team member $2,000 per customer to either make it right or to surprise and delight.

And they have this money that they don't even need to ask now it's over $2,000.

We need to have a conversation just to ensure.

But otherwise they're completely empowered.

They would first get in trouble to not use the money.

Rather than using it, they are actually celebrated to use that money to make, to be day makers, to make their guests experience elevated.

Ritz Carlton operates in belief.

They operate.

They use the thing called credo, which means, I believe they have credo cards that has, you know, their brand promise, which is ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen.

They have all of their principles or pillars or whatever they want to call it, but you know, semantics, but they have it on a credo card and every single employee knows this.

They have this credo card on them at all times.

So they operate out of belief in faith and empowerment and that's why they're so dang successful.

They don't need loyalty, they don't need, you know, discounts.

They don't need anything like that because they've created a faith filled belief in the culture that they run with rather than operate in fear.

When you operate in fear, you're worried about, you know, is my employee going to take advantage of that $2,000?

Is my employee going to spend it where it shouldn't be spen Is my employee going to spend it on themselves?

And you start to go down this path of what if my employees do the wrong thing?

Rather than operating in the mindset of what if they do the right thing?

And there's a stark difference in operating that, you know, in that there is.

Such a start and you know what you're saying.

I.

It's so important.

I could talk to you forever about this because this is kind of a key thing about this.

And I'm just going to share this, which is basically when you can put the faith and trust in your employees and they feel empowered, they are going to do whatever they can to make that company succeed because they feel empowered by it.

They have a sense of ownership.

It is when they don't that the other stuff starts to unravel and people will take more sick days.

They'll try to milk the system or work the system and versus be in it for the best reasons to help the company or the business thrive.

Oh yeah, 100%.

If you want the best out of your employees, you got to treat them like an owner.

You got to treat them like they have the best interest at heart for your organization.

The reality is if they don't, why have you hired them?

Like why?

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

So Katie, I really could talk to you forever because I think this is so an important topic.

So listeners, I want you to understand something.

This is if you want to have unstoppable success in your business, seriously, create the best experience you can.

For your.

Employees first, customer second.

Because it goes trickle, it trickles down and you really want to make that happen.

And then I also want you to do me the other favor is connect with Katie.

Katie, where can people find you?

Oh my gosh, you can find me on Instagram if you want A little bit of mix of five star experiences and five star living basically my life.

Katie Mares at Katie Mares on Instagram if you want all business though where I I host a CX is non negotiable weekly lunch and learn for 30 minutes every week.

So LinkedIn just search me up.

Katie Maris, say hello.

Connect with me.

I'd like to be your friend but also I I post multiple times a day with incredible experiences that you should be able to learn from.

Awesome.

I love it.

So listeners again go connect with Katie Instagram LinkedIn, get all of her good stuff and then please do me the amazing favor.

You know, as we are getting things going this year, it's all about being unstoppable and having unstoppable success.

So share this episode.

Help your friends, your colleagues colleagues have that experience and give them this experience because it's it says a lot about you.

And do me a favor of hit subscribe to the podcast and share.

I'm Jacqueline Stranger, your host and here's to amazing unstoppable success.

Thank you all for listening and thank you Katie for being a great guest.

Thank you.