How to Become Unforgettable with CX Leader Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne Bliss is a leadership and customer experience strategic advisor and keynote speaker who helps the worlds' most beloved companies become unforgettable; earning growth and admiration through their elevated business practices and the humanity of their people.

In this episode, Jeanne shares how true customer experience transformation can and should lead to companies and brands becoming unforgettable.

Transcript

Rhoan Morgan:   0:01
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of revenue rebels. The podcast. The brings marketing and sales rebels together to share their stories and thinking on all topics related to accelerating revenue generating activities in the B two B world. On this show, we talk about the strategic vision of marketing lead customer experience that unleashes the combined power of technology, content and data. Are you ready to rebel? Let's get into the show. This is our first podcast of the new Year, and we've been working on some amazing new content and fantastic guests for you all. Today's revenue Rebel is considered the godmother of customer experience. She is a leadership and customer experience, strategic advisor and keynote speaker who helps the world's most beloved companies become unforgettable. I'm really thrilled have Jean Bliss joining the show today. She's an author of four books, the host of the Chief Customer officer Human duct tape show, which is a podcast as well. And from what I'm learning a true pioneer and customer experience. Jean, Welcome to the

Jeanne Bliss:   1:12
show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be with you.

Rhoan Morgan:   1:15
It is really great to have you on the show and I'm excited about this topic. I think our listeners will be as well before we jump in the Oh, you know, this show is about rebels in their field, and I can't think of a better way to start today and the new season, but with somebody who has definitely been ahead of her time. As I did a lot of research, I was just so impressed with you, really making moves in very early days. You know, a lot of people are talking about customer experience now and maybe in the last few years, but to have published your first book in 2006 you know, tell us a little bit about what defines you as a rebel.

Jeanne Bliss:   1:56
Absolutely, yes, I'm actually thinking of myself as the old man of the sea lately. But a rebel, I I

Rhoan Morgan:   2:03
it's a it's a little It's a little better of a picture in my mind anyway.

Jeanne Bliss:   2:07
Yes, I mentioned I think to you. When we were talking earlier, I had this great privilege of having a dad who had this Buster Brown shoe store. We'll talk about it later, but I learned about humanity in business when I was a child by watching how he treated people, and I didn't know that he was being a role model. Then, you know, we've watched our parents And where, My God, I will go work at the shoe store. Right, But, um, my first big job waas at Land's end, which we were those apples of our day. Um, and I answered an ad in the Chicago Tribune to go train 2500 phone operators. We were $100 million in sales. By the time I left, we had grown to a $1,000,000,000 in sales, achieving 98% loyalty rates, which allowed us to go public in one of the most successful public offerings of its time, especially in retailing. And so much of it was because of the humanity through which we grew this business. We were very deliberate about what we would do and would not do so. For example, we did not and would not practice in fake, inflated sales where prices went up and then went down. If the price of wolf from Mongolian sheep went down, we reduced the price of the sweater. If we accidentally made a mistake on pricing and gave you $40 off a pair of pants because we made a blooper on the catalog copy. We honored that when we found a little slump, which is like a piece of thread that's poking out of a towel. We didn't know how many customers had been impacted, so we sent all 200 customers a new towel saying, Look, if the old tell is still okay, keep it, use it to wash the dog, your friends. Atlanta And it was just the way that we chose to do business. It was like being at a moment where you catch lightning in a bottle, and it created my career for me because it took what I had learned with my dad and put it into this enormous, um, playing field, if you will. By the time I was 24 Gary had pushed, pulled me off the phones, and I was reporting to the Executive Committee of Land's End as essentially the first version of a chief customer officer. There were three men. Um, I grew up Catholic. I call them to the father, son and spirit, But it was heady. Heady times, for example, the people on the phones at Land's end were farm people. They got up with them or in the morning at three o'clock in the morning and hate the fields and cluck eggs from the under Billy's of warm Hens and then logged in to land's end and our whole thing Waas be yourself. Take your time. Here are all the tools, but we're not going to impose a talk time on you. Wow, right? Ah, big part of my job waas ensuring that that way of doing principal doing business as we had to start bringing people in because we were we were experiencing explosive growth was translated into our operating model, for example, are a really smart, great guy who had been running call centers for big big companies. I won't say who came in and started listing talk times, and he was posting them on the Little Hayworth cubicles where our call center people were. And as he was hanging them, I in my little Helling and way was walking right behind catching a Lhasa on. This guy turns around and says to me, He's like, What? The hat? What? Who do you think you are, Jin? I am my main names. Lumber. I am Jean Lombardo, and I'm not protection, huh? Any goes, we're gonna go talk to the CEO. And so I'm like, fine and we did. And you know, it wasn't always like that, but we had to help people recognize that we grew in a paradoxical way. We grew by doing the right thing by honoring the human at the end of the decision and believing that we would earn the right to grow by acting in an adult

Rhoan Morgan:   6:16
fashion. It's bringing the human element even to the business, right? So it's fantastic to think about, you know, people in the business and allowing them to be human, allowing them the space and time to be human and into to engage with your customers as other humans and not just numbers. But it sounds also like that expanded into culture and the's business itself as an entity. Taking on some of those human attributes absolutely is hard for some companies to think about when they've got a lot of other people knocking on their doors like stakeholders and stockholders and shareholders. And you know all those holders.

Jeanne Bliss:   7:01
That's right. It's a long in, you know, if you play golf for Ennis or anything. You d'oh! Go! Sports analogy people. It's playing the long game and in a world where people are quarterly inclined or have been forced to be quarterly inclined because of the market and other things which was interesting because when we went public, we didn't stray from this approach. And that is this other thing you'll see on my website is called Leadership Bravery. You have to be brave to stick to your guns. Yes, you have to be brave to continue to give your people examples of what it means to operate in this fashion. And that's what we did. Now you know, things have changed. We won't talk about that but it for the 10 years and like five or six years after that, it was an amazing, amazing place to be

Rhoan Morgan:   7:54
while I was there. That's fantastic. That's a great rebel story. I love it. And I love the story of you going behind, uh, fishing

Jeanne Bliss:   8:03
a little smarty pants. Italian girls. Well, and I'm fearless too, you know? I mean, um, and it made my career. And so when I was ready to leave the nest of Lance and I basically grew up there you know, I was there from 23 to 33. That's that's pretty creating young. But we had a lot of responsibility for ages because just like startups, we were essentially a retail startup in the catalogue industry that hadn't been done before And, uh, in the way we were doing it. And so I knew that would be my career. So after that, I deliberately move from industry industry on purpose to begin adding to my kid back Smart, very smart, that it was fascinating and nobody was doing the work. Then nobody even talked about customer experience. It was, you know, culture and leadership. Another things. So yeah, yeah, So I went from Land's End Thio Mazda, Coldwell Banker to all state to Microsoft every time deliberately choosing that path in that industry and B to B B to C

Rhoan Morgan:   9:04
etcetera. So we're gonna take a quick break when we come back. I want to start to dig into a little more around customer experience, how it's how it's changed over time and that sort of thing. But it's time for us to take a really quick break just to learn a little bit more about demand lab and how we're supporting company's strategic visions of being customer driven. Uh, so stay tuned. We'll be right back. As you can tell, I can't wait to get back into this. Conversation will be right back with G. Hey, listeners, we're back with lots more to dig into with our guest, Gene Bliss. So, as I said, we're going to talk more and dig really into customer experience and what I would love to know. I mean, that's just a fantastic origin story, especially at a time that was a completely different world than what we're dealing with today in terms of our digital experience in that sort of thing. So, Jean, can you tell us a little bit about how you define customer experience, especially in today's world? You know, it's catalogs almost don't exist anymore, right?

Jeanne Bliss:   10:06
So what, for me, customer experience, the term is actually a little hard for me right now, because it's it's becoming defined by mechanics, and what I think of it as is becoming an elevated kind of company. It's the end game. It's not the tactics to get there. It's becoming unforgettable, acting admirably, being brave, showing up differently in the marketplace being really clear about your place in people's lives and then having a very specific lens for everyone's decisions about how you will and will not get there. And in fact, this this notion of being unforgettable and being really clear is not done in a t East. 80% of transformations. Um, what's happening is we're jumping Thio, journey, mapping and only surveys and other things and not really starting with who are we as people? How do we want to show up? And then how do we translate that to our behavior, our leadership in our operating model?

Rhoan Morgan:   11:18
I totally get it. Absolutely agree. And, you know, it's interesting. There's there's a gardener study that came out. I don't know the data. Sure, I think it was very recent that actually said that 80% of organizations were expecting to compete mainly based on customer experience this year, and that that was marketing leaders I think were surveyed for this. What does that mean to them? Is it that they're going to deploy a new platform? I think sometimes there are companies that are kind of putting the cart before the horse. There's this sort of identity that you need to establish first and the human identity, the understanding, You know where your ad at your core as a company, right? And how you're going to engage people when we have all these words with authenticity and you know all of these things. But I like the way that you think about it and have described it.

Jeanne Bliss:   12:09
Yeah, and I think that there, if I could There's a little bit of risk right now. Whenever something becomes very, very popular, we also relabel what we're already doing with that old label with that new label, and so we're not necessarily doing something different. But now we're calling it customer experience, and we're giving ourselves and our leaders of false positive and a false sense of security that over we're on this. We got it.

Rhoan Morgan:   12:42
That kind of leads me to my next question, which is how you became known as the godmother of customer experience, because the vision that I just had was this very wise woman coming in as a Cinderella had, you know, this with her magic wand, but coming in, and that's, you know, dressing her up and getting her ready for the ball I know there are a lot of different other types of godmothers, but that's just the one that came to my mind, you know? Where did that come from? What? What's the impetus to to this?

Jeanne Bliss:   13:13
Well, I'm I'm actually not that kind of godmother, But I'm the godmother that coaches you and helps you along the way. Find your path. Now here's what's happened. I'm a giver for, you know, since 2006 when I first wrote my book chief customer officer, which I had to convince my publisher to do. By the way, they're like, Well, one person's gonna buy this book. My path has been around taking the complexity out of this work, the mystifying it and putting people in a position to be successful. Whether I was hired to do that or not made money on it or not, I taken everything I've written and broke it into bite size pieces. I fund my own podcast. I spent hours and hours. You know, years worth of ours as co founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association have coached over 20,000 leaders on this and and and so I, the godmother, is really the result of 35 years of focusing and sharing and d mystifying and helping others find their career path on this work and and actually making this work a justifiable and, um, a good way to make a living and to contribute. And so that's where it comes from. Yes, E. I don't think I have, What a fairing hat or anything. I'm very I'm very much a straight talker and Italian and from Chicago. I mean, I'm very kind and I take care of people, but it's been really around because I've been, you know, both back to the old man in the sea, right? I've just been one of the few who has been through it for the long haul and been very, very generous with my information and with helping people find your way.

Rhoan Morgan:   15:08
The guide, the sage guide. I'm really curious you were talking about this a little a few minutes ago. How it's becoming this sort of buzz word customer experience thing. It's something that we've talked a lot about a demand lab, and it's something I feel really passionate about. Time for have been very excited, that warm, where companies are starting to get what I think about is in terms of customer experience, which is sort of a less fragmented experience, like in today's world where you've got so many different channels. Um, and you're getting one message via email. Another message via the APP. Another message on the website and nobody they were Don't really know who you are, but they're trying to, uh, trying to understand who you are. These companies and they're trying to put things out. It feels very fake. So it's just us fragmented sort of experience, right? And I see it all the time. It happens to me all the time. Still, and for us are our journey of the company was Thio, you know, sort of it. It started with the platforms. It started with helping our clients, you know, leverage their systems. But then it grew into the content, and then it grew into the data. Because all of this is you have to have the right data in our digital world in order to serve up those experiences who we do talk a lot about the platforms, but we don't want to it unless they do have a strong identity. Unless there is a good understanding of where they're heading and un understanding of that sort of long term vision. But I'd love your opinion on this. Why do you think that so many companies air starting to move towards customer experience? You know their stats out there, partner? Um, a variety of other analysts. Firms. Why are all of the years opening up now? Sure.

Jeanne Bliss:   17:00
Well, I think that this is something that's culminated over almost 10 years. If I could say it that way, first of all, we we had an economic downturn and in it, and we may be headed into another, which is interesting, because it also actually emboldens this work. What happens in an economic downturn is that new customer growth diminishes, and there is an increased awareness and appreciation of growing organically and on through honoring, taking care of your your existing customer base. So, through that economic downturn, there finally became e mean. We I've been talking about this for years, you know, a lot of times it fell on deaf ears. Through the economic downturn, there became a final finally an appreciation. We got C in every organization I've worked with. We've got CFO's involved CEOs of course, the board to recognize that organic or customer asset growth is, I call it is as important as incoming acquisition based girl. So that started. Then we had social Media, which hit, meaning that customers now have the big megaphone in their hand and their defining who you are there determining, um, the trajectory of people's growth sometimes and also are able to with 1234 sometimes unfortunate reviews or a massive them impact the company and how they reacted things. We've had this whole social media responsiveness occurring now also with tweeting and chatting and other things. And people are making determinations about the kind of people who run companies and if they want to be involved in them. I would also say converging with that, of course, is that we have a A, and I'm not gonna call the Millennials because I think that's a crazy There is a shift. There is a shift that, along with all of us making decisions, you know, I think that you could say it's the convergence of social media, showing the rial true mirror of the company. It's not packaged anymore. It's how the company is actually behaving that skinning really blown up through social media as long with people who are growing up in that and being very, very specific because they have those social media tools. That's your first language now. And so we're saying it's the Millennials, But I think it's not only the millennials, but social media and the tools of millennials now have to be fearless about what they will and will not do and who they will. It will not work with

Rhoan Morgan:   19:51
it does I mean that to me is you're you're saying a shift and I wrote down as you were talking a shift and expectations, and it's almost like the social media. Is this the new connective tissue? So it's not just millennials, it's it's it's anybody out pirates. Any consumer that really wants to be value driven values.

Jeanne Bliss:   20:13
Well, yeah, and expectations and requirements. And then and then the third thing is organizationally and leadership driven, which is for a long time, as we've been drip drip dripping. This focus CEOs and others have said, Okay, we're going to be customer driven. Everybody go be customer driven and were trying hard, but in are trying hard. We're doing it separately and inadvertently. Now we've got every silo doing their own thing separately and were accidentally spending more money on partial programs or projects Vs becoming very united in focusing on one or two things and learning a new behavior for how to build product development of responses or an experience. And that's why what experience is in leadership is a comprehensive view of how your customer works across your organization to get their goals accomplished. And so there is very much underbelly, a unifying organizational aspect of this that has to be tackled. And leaders are finally realizing that the silos don't organically unite because they've all got different scorecards and priorities, and they've all they all earn bonuses and paychecks in a different manner. And what customer experience does is say, okay, let's recast what we should be good at by being really clear of the goals that we are promising our customers or even understanding. More importantly, what their goals are reorienting the operating approach of our business and then changing what we measure and how we unite People have shared goals. That doesn't happen by the CEO, saying everybody go be customer focus because there's those shared goals that reorientation, um, and those who metrics aren't gonna happen independently. That's why I called my podcast the human duct tape show, because we have to duct tape these disparage organizations who are working hard but working hard separately together.

Rhoan Morgan:   22:32
We've worked with a lot of companies and the companies that are more unified, where the duct tape has brought them closer and closer. They're absolutely more successful, and that takes a lot of mean,

Jeanne Bliss:   22:46
a lot of courage. And it is hard work. It takes checking your silo in the pride of your silo base, work at the door to recognize that while you're doing good work, the customer is still suffering because they're trying to patch you all together. That's hard. That's That's a lot of underbelly.

Rhoan Morgan:   23:10
It's really hard. I think it takes courage and you know, one of the things that I have thought a lot about recently, just based on another conversation I had separately from your perspective. In your experience, what can people that believe in customer experience? I believe that it's the right path forward for their company. What can they do if they're being sort of met by blank stares or even worse roadblocks from their leadership. Um, you know, because I think it takes a lot of convincing. Sometimes

Jeanne Bliss:   23:43
it does. So you know, I What are you thinking of a particular individual? Or roll or tell me more because it kind of depends on what they're trying to accomplish. You know, if you're you know, there is a difference between if you're a call center person running, doing great great work at the front line versus leaving the Call center versus a chief customer officer versus PIA market, right? And and I'm not saying they don't all have critical roles. But there's different approaches for each one. So let's take one. Which one do you want to start? Well,

Rhoan Morgan:   24:16
let's just talk about, um, you know, somebody in a leadership role in marketing, but they're not. The chief cost our officer and maybe achieve customer officer doesn't even exist in that company yet. There's an inkling that this is a good idea, but they've got a lot of convincing to d'oh. Okay,

Jeanne Bliss:   24:35
so the very first thing that I always encourage people to do is find at least one or two partners other like minded people in the organization who understand the criticality of this now one of the people I always love to link arms with is the CFO, because one of the first things that we need to do is measure in a very simple but consistent way. The asset of your business, which is your customers. And I have something I call five competencies There it's in my chief customer officer books and others. I talked about it a lot, but it's missing in so many organizations, and it's just doing customer math, and it's really around teaching your organization as a result of the experience we deliver. Did we earn the right to growth? So how many new customers did we bring in volume and expected value? It's not a complicated life than value. Thing is just what we expect is their value, because a lot of times new or acquisition is all we talk about. And that means uniting even across your product categories because let's say you're a product company. Now you've got every product person reporting to your CEO separately and they might call knew something different. Lost, lapsed, etcetera. So you're not rolling up. Okay, so what is our new customers volume in value. That's great. But what we also need to know are what behaviorally are other things that are happening and it's not survey results. It's actual customers voting with their feet at this point. How many customers did Mu's volume in value because one knew is not equal to the loss of people departing or higher value? How many did we lose? How many did we lapse? Perhaps, and maybe one other behavior that shows maybe people who downshifted. So now we've got is his math. We brought in new here, so many lost our laps. And so here's our net customer asset growth. What you will see in many cases is we're spending a lot of money and time bringing in new, and we're losing really valuable people at the bottom end. Even if that's not happening, what it does is shows the importance of that asset and the importance of the growth of an asset. Without that, it's very hard to move forward because you really do need to attach this to growth. This isn't something we're doing for our own sake. This is a great strategy.

Rhoan Morgan:   27:12
Yeah, that's great advice. And I think a lot of the marketers listening in maybe wouldn't think about the CFO is the first person you know. But at the end of the day, ah, you're gonna need budget for this and you're gonna need buy in and support from not just in CFO, not justice, but from the entire, you know, see, sweet. But if you can show what you're looking for, what your weight where you're heading in those numbers and speak the language of your partners in the C suite, you're probably gonna get a bit further, right?

Jeanne Bliss:   27:50
Well, yes. And so two things that you said are critical. And you know, it's interesting. This is where the godmother thing comes in, because I prevent a lot of people from stepping in the mud, the potholes, because if you don't make it about growth, you know you'll be first on the agenda than second on the agenda than third on the agenda, and you won't be on the agenda. And your work is, while considered an important is also, you know, going to be slashed or misunderstood or whatever. Number two. You don't want to be, um, someone who's pitching and begging when you do this alone, especially if it comes from a strong silo it can sometimes also looked at. And I'm not saying anyone's doing this. This is the perception as a land grab or power grab, especially his customer experience is becoming a big thing. Customer experience is not about ownership, it's about uniting and so link arms with others. So you are presenting this as a united group of leaders, regardless of where it lands, trying to create a shift in your organization. Does that make sense? How the optics of the are critical?

Rhoan Morgan:   29:08
It was a couple of years ago that I intentionally started changing a couple of ways, and I talked about other teams because, as I said, we work with a lot of marketers, right? And so I started to say, to use the words our partners in sales are partners in finance because I realized that we still, you know, after all of the books about marketing and sales alignment and creeping out there about this quote unquote alignment, still wear the line not enough and so sometimes it is, you know, justice. I love the way that you put that linking arms, you know, joining forces all got to be rowing in the same direction.

Jeanne Bliss:   29:49
Yes, right. And in a couple of practical examples, one of the the concepts that I also help people understand is as you're linking arms, you need to know who the link arms with. So there are going to be advocates of the work and out liars. It's just human nature. Some people, naturally, will get it some well, because of the orientation, or you know how long they've been at the company or how long till they retire. Sometimes they don't want to rock. You know, there's all kinds of things in practice. One of the things that I put forth it has helped a lot of people is this notion of the power core. The power core of your organization are the skill sets that people clearly understand and Harold and are really easy to measure. Sales Marketing is often the power core in different ways, so sales this is around the metrics of your business marketing. For example, when I was at Mazda many moons ago was very much about brochures and golf tennis tournaments. It's not anymore, but, you know, marketing fighting as could be a power core a vertical disciplines such as an insurance, it could be and sometimes if you've gotta evolve company customer. So when I was at Allstate, for example, we had two critical usually have to power cores of primary and the secondary First power core of Ball State was the sales organization because we had 50,000 agents and that was very much part of leadership. Everybody got it. Um, and then it was also the vertical of the actions of doing the insurance business. We were very internally focused because that's what we knew. So I knew I needed to link arms with the underwriting department and claims and the sales guy. And we couldn't get into the harder things like culture and others until we had danced with those power cores and done something that was meaningful for them, that they could be out front talking about. So one of the first things that we did this is change management. 101 right was looked at How agents were compensated. Going all the way back to my customers is that agents were compensated for new customers, but not the growth of their book of business. So we changed their compensation model, and I didn't present it. Yes, who presented it? Who? The sales senior VPs sale CV. So it's not just linking arms. It's also then checking your ego at the door and shining that big spotlight. That is how you are going to would start to get this be a thing.

Rhoan Morgan:   32:27
Fantastic. Let me ask it. I just have one last question for those companies that are getting it right, and you've seen a lot of them that are getting their rights, and a lot of them have been driven and led by you. But what are some of the business outcomes that you think are expected? You know, I mean, I think that a lot of people, they need to come with members. They need to partner with the CFO. Let's do the customer math. But even before that, they want to talk about growth. They're going to need to bring some proof points. Okay, we think we can do this, and we think it's gonna grow our business. What are some examples that you've seen out there that they might be able to share?

Jeanne Bliss:   33:04
Well, that's That's where there was a sleeper asset of verse station comes from, So so the way it goes is we're bringing in more people than we're. You know, we're bringing in this many people, but we're losing just as many. Well, now we need to look at how we're treating customers to understand what's preventing our growth or driving our lack of growth or driving people from departing. So that's where we say, Okay, we need to know the goals of the customer or the journey and understand across each one. Are we delivering our operating model to deliver on those things? So that's when we connect the dots between what we know is Nu Wood lost customer Assar grow asset or growth or lost. And then what are we actually doing? That's either inhibiting or driving

Rhoan Morgan:   33:54
that, And as an outcome, companies that have done it, they've done the math, they've moved forward. They've gone through and changed how they're operating. What have you seen in terms of success? That sort of proves that it was all worthwhile.

Jeanne Bliss:   34:12
Well, so when it happens and it takes, you know, a little while Um yeah, but what way do a couple things? First of all, we do things initially that cost the company Money versus driving growth Because people you've got it, you've got to take care of the top line in the bottom line. So it's interesting you We, for example, can assess the top 20 reasons why people are calling your call centers or tweeting on social media or asking for help, which are essentially costing you money because you're forcing your customer to come to you to find out something or didn't get something done. Because even the process is slow, the instructions don't make any sense or you're kicking back something to them that they don't understand, and they're trying to ask for exceptions. So that's kind of a little bit of whac a mole. But we can immediately prove that were solving problems that are now saving this money because we're reducing some customers depression. That's number one. What then find happens is this is not just about solving problems. It's also about changing leaders, language, uniting people on driving different accountability, not to the silos but to customers lives. So if you do this correctly and we get everybody involved when I do this work, for example, we actually a sign to see sweet leaders in a small skunk work team to building the beta version of each of these five competencies I call him Customers is an asset. Now this isn't a dashboard. It's also giving every leader the talk track where they now start their leadership meetings with their teams cascading throughout the whole organization. With, as a result of the experience, did we earn the right to grow? Now you've got a unified concert of people talking about this mind shift, which is the customer is the asset, not how many widgets we sold or how many flights we sold, but the customer. The second thing is, now we create a language for how we diagnose and Dr Accountability. Let's now go across our customer goals and understand how we're working together to deliver. It changes the metrics and what and and so what happens is we move the work of the business from reactive, too. Oh, my gosh, we had a bad situation or market decline or a bad thing happened with our survey results to an ongoing cadence of how we conduct ourselves, how we lied and how we're constantly improving, changing, rethinking. And that's really the shift that you're looking for. It's a behavioral shift in how you lied. Not just how much you grow,

Rhoan Morgan:   37:05
and that's a long game. That's a long game you were talking about getting.

Jeanne Bliss:   37:09
Yeah, sport. We have stork in winds initially, too, right? You gotta pepper it with short. That's why we understand the power core. We dance with the power core. Um, we get them involved early. We give them, you know, they are in front of it. They're the ones communicating. Um, they're taking ownership of it. So you you But it's It's not about just saying, Oh, we're going to grow because we did this new campaign. This isn't about the operation of the business. It's about culture. It's also about thinking about how you you you pay your people, for example,

Rhoan Morgan:   37:48
like disgusting. Yeah, there are a lot of levers, bladder levers to look at. Absolutely well. Okay, This this conversation has been fantastic. I really appreciate the time that you've taken with us today. Um, I have just one final question as we come to a closer. We like to end with now in our new season, if you will our rebel hero segment, and so I would love to just know if there is a rebel that you look to for inspiration or motivation, and And who is that and why?

Jeanne Bliss:   38:20
Oh, well, you know, I think I would have to start with. There have been a bunch of people who I call. I call them salmon leaders or brave, brave people. So first of all, I think, you know, I always talk about my dad. I can talk about this work without him. Um, certainly Gary Comer, who gave me a a start in business. Personally, I I'm I'm a huge fan of Eleanor Roosevelt in her bravery. And then there are brave, brave leaders who were watching, you know, in this cove bed thing. But also before that, you know, there's brave leaders like, um, the people at Cleveland Clinic who long ago Toby Cosgrove, the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, brought all these people together and said, Look, we're technically good at what we do, but but people don't like us very much, and so from there, they you it takes this humility and bringing people together. They completely re crafted what they do in their business. You know, they call everybody caregivers. They, including the janitors right there. Everybody is a character that permission. They created a no passing rule when that red call light is on and you've done many, many, many things. But it's it's leadership bravery around Lille, the CEO of Virgin Hotels calls the WiFi right, not a revenue stream. They also won't charge you for $7 for a bottle of water. They'll charge you what it costs you at your nickel mortar market. Um, they won't charge you for delivering your room service. There's, you know, that you all of our ya i who who dares to close on black Friday because they're not going to be incongruent with their values and stay open on the day, which should be about community. There are many leaders who inspire us, Um, and who recognized that their business is about improving lives, that their purpose in life is about improving lives.

Rhoan Morgan:   40:23
Perfect. Perfect response, honestly and very inspirational. I love those examples. This has just been such a wonderful conversation, Gene. Just really thrilled to have had you on the show. And I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to share your story and and you're thinking on the topic. So what is the best way for listeners to reach out here? You've got an amazing website so you can share that. And if there's any other way for folks to connect with you,

Jeanne Bliss:   40:52
please share. Sure, of course. Yes, my website is I married a guy named Bliss. So easy. Website. Customer bliss dot com. Crazy, right? I always tell people I went all over match dot com, but it was just serendipity. Actually, my Twitter handle is at Jean Bliss. And then if you go on lengthen, which is we're talking every day constantly to people you can link with me, and then we can have personal conversation either through Lincoln or if you want to talk off line again, I'm I'm a generous giver and talk to people all day long around their careers and this work and and, um, how they're moving forward with it. So those air three easy ways to get in touch with me. My emails easy to its gene spelt the French Way, J E. A N N. E. At customer bliss dot com, and I answer all my e mails so there's

Rhoan Morgan:   41:43
no Ma. All right, so thank you again. And a big thank you to our listeners for tuning into revenue rebels. Remember, you can get our show notes, lynx and other content related to today's topic at demand lab dot com slash revenue Rebels. While you're there, let us know if there's a leader you want to hear from or a topic you'd like to hear more about on this show. I'm your host, Rome Morgan, and you can find me on Twitter at Morgan. It's R H o N Morgan, and finally on Lee. If you think we've earned it, please head over to Apple podcast to Spotify or wherever you're listening to us right now and subscribe rate and review the show until next time rebels. Thank you.