Beyond the simple “Thank You”: The New Era of Customer Loyalty

“The consumer, quite honestly, especially the younger generation, is looking for something more than just love me because I’m spending my money, they want to be connected to a brand.”
Chris Gillen

As the CEO and co-owner of A Closer Look, Chris brings nearly three decades of expertise from the frontlines of retail and customer service, guiding brands through the labyrinth of CX transformation.

In this episode, Chris explores the profound shifts in CX driven by recent industry changes, including the impact of COVID-19 and the rapid rise of AI. From his early days with retail giants like Target and Toys R Us to his current role steering A Closer Look, Chris has witnessed firsthand how customer expectations and loyalty have evolved. He delves into the challenges brands face today, including the need for emotive loyalty and the difficulties of maintaining customer connection amidst changing consumer demographics and economic pressures. Chris also highlights the shift towards consumer empowerment and how brands must adapt proactively to meet rising expectations for better service and products.

Curious about how to leverage these insights to transform your own approach to customer experience? Tune in to hear Chris Gillen share practical strategies and visionary ideas that can help you stay ahead in this dynamic landscape. Don’t miss out—listen to the full episode now!

In this episode you’ll hear about

• Emotive loyalty vs. Transactional loyalty.
• Impact of COVID-19 and inflation on CX
• The role of AI in customer experience.
• Generational shifts in consumer behaviour.
• Proactive vs. Reactive customer service.
• The value of human connection.
• Proactive leadership in customer experience.
• Consumer empowerment and expectations.
• Innovation amid economic challenges.

Key links

Chris Gillen LinkedIn
A Closer Look Website 
A Closer Look Facebook Page
A Closer Look  X (Twitter ) Page
Toys R Us Website
Target Website 
Burning Mountain Adventures LinkedIn

About our guest

As CEO and co-owner of A Closer Look, Chris leads the team towards achieving their vision of being the ultimate partner for brands fanatical about the customer experience. He is dedicated to building brand loyalty for clients of all industries by providing robust data about the first-hand experiences of all customers who interact with their brand.

Chris’s experience in helping businesses iterate and improve their customer experience spans nearly three decades, including various leadership positions in retail companies known for phenomenal brand loyalty. His extensive expertise in leading and managing customer service programs has been instrumental in helping businesses improve their service offerings through the use of technology.

In his spare time, Chris enjoys traveling, spending time with his wife and reading up on past and trending topics, like technological developments and their parallels with today’s artificial intelligence advancement.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:07
Hey, and welcome back to the company road podcast, where we explore what it takes to change a company. I’m Chris Hudson, your host, and today we’re going to be in for a treat as we dive into the world of customer experience, AI, and some other things with the true industry veterans. So my guest today is Chris Gillen. Chris is CEO and co owner of A Closer Look based in the U S. It’s a company dedicated to helping brands become fanatical about customer experience. And Chris has got nearly three decades of experience in retail and customer service leadership and has been at the forefront of using technology to revolutionise how businesses interact with their customers. And from his time in retail juggernauts to his current role steering A Closer Look, Chris has seen it all when it comes to building brand loyalty. And when he’s not busy transforming businesses, you might find him experiencing the great outdoors or pondering parallels between, you know, the past technological developments and today’s AI advancements. So going back a few years, I’ll just tell you a bit about what Chris has been up to. So he was the vice president, digital experience and customer service operations at Toys R Us, director of ops at Target, among other roles. And more recently owner and co founder of Burning Mountain Adventures, which offers private customised tours. Tours of Yellowstone National Park, which is a very wonderful place. So saddle up people. We’re going to take a ride through customer experience through a few different stories and get into it now. But Chris, a huge welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on.

Chris Gillen: 1:25
Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris Hudson: 1:27
Yeah, thanks so much. And yeah, maybe we start with a closer look. I mean, this is where you’ve ended up. What does being fanatical about customer experience really mean to you and really mean in practice?

Chris Gillen: 1:37
Yeah, it’s a cool story and I love what you do in your podcasts and you’re really talking about. intrapreneurship, because I think the story of A Closer Look kind of fits that really well. 30 years, actually. Started 30 years ago by three individuals who had this idea. They said, you know, it’d be cool if we could just send friends and families into restaurants. Maybe they could take some pictures of the food and they can document the service. They’re really credited with being one of the companies that founded what is known today as mystery shopping secret shopping. In 2018, it got bought. I joined a CEO with the charge, if you will, of creating new products to help businesses measure their customer experience and the impact their processes have on people. And the reason I did that Chris is because I self identify as a maniacal customer service person. I’m one of those people that I believe I work really hard for my money. And when I go to a brand, be it a restaurant, a retailer, a hotel, I feel that I have a right to feel good about that experience and be treated very, very well. So we’re passionate about our mission. That’s why it fits so well. My background and what I’m doing for a closer look.

Chris Hudson: 2:47
And you’ve been in the customer experience game for nearly three decades now, and obviously you’ve seen a lot of change in that time. So what have been some of the big shifts that you see happening, have happened or are happening still? Like what’s going on in the world of CX, do you think?

Chris Gillen: 3:00
I was very fortunate, Chris, to start my career with Target Corporation, which I’m sure everybody is familiar with, 1990s. And Target was, they were maniacal, if I can use that word. About service. If you ever went into a target in the nineties, you couldn’t walk in without somebody acknowledging you asking if you were finding everything, okay. They were impeccably dressed. It was that time in that nineties where you saw this kind of increase in service and focus for brands of really understanding loyalty and how to bring people in. And that’s really grown over the last, probably 20, 25 years until we got to COVID. And COVID in my opinion, kind of destroyed everything. It kind of set businesses back 10 or 20 years. And so now I feel like brands are starting to kind of rebuild, there’s a changing consumer sentiment that’s out there and it’s not in the U S it’s everywhere, you have some competing factors that are kind of changing the nature of consumerism right now. I think you’ve got low birth rates around the globe. You’ve got aging populations, you’ve got gen alpha, gen Z that are kind of coming up that are really flipping the script, if you will, on what’s important to them. And as a result of that, you’re seeing longstanding global brands. Really struggling to try to figure out how to reconnect with the customer. So it’s a very interesting time with all of these competing forces, throw a little bit of AI on top of that. And suddenly I think brands are kind of scratching their heads right now saying, how do we win customers back? How do we drive that emotive loyalty to get people coming back in and shopping or eating with us or transacting with us, it’s an interesting time to be in the States.

Chris Hudson: 4:40
A lot of the work that we do here at Company Road is also centred around that and around manoeuvrability and I think one area of concern is maybe around the change that’s happening and the fact that we need to address the need of new generations and so on as you described, but also the businesses aren’t geared up for the speed of change that they need to be implementing. Basically, so you could see something on the way to work, but you wouldn’t be in a position as a large corporate to basically move on that for nine to 12 months, which of course, in a Gen Alpha or a Gen Z sense is kind of a long way away. So what can we do in that respect? You’ve done some work in operations. Maybe you could talk to some of that too, what are we thinking we can do to basically speed up that to respond with what COVID did out of change the consumer business relationship. out of necessity. You throw inflation on top of that, that the global world is experiencing all over. One of the biggest things that I think is happening is that most companies build their models off transactional loyalty, right? So that was based on price. It was based on repeat purchase. And that model has sustained businesses for the last 20 years, the rise of the loyalty program, people coming in and repeating. And now you have inflation, which makes repeat purchases is very difficult. Because it’s expensive. And so now what I think is happening is the whole concept of transactional loyalty. It’s kind of under fire. It’s not working like it used to. Loyalty programs that were really successful for some companies are starting to see some drop off, some breakage. People aren’t doing it as much anymore. And I think the consumer quite honestly, especially the younger generation is looking for something more than just love me because I’m spending my money. They want to be connected to a brand. This is why I talk about emotive loyalty. And how to actually build that. How do you get people to come in and keep coming in with something other than just price? Because everybody’s experienced that now. So you’re starting to see businesses, I think, get a little more creative in their thinking. I think that will continue to grow. I think from a restaurant perspective, you’re seeing them push out a lot of new menu items and limited time offers and products and things to drive people in. You see other companies that are looking for that deeper connection with the consumer. Does the brand value on the consumer value line up? So it’s not just about purchasing. I’m actually involved in something greater, right? I always use Patagonia. The brand Patagonia is one of my favourite and motive loyalty brands or Lego. Which is my other one. Here, LEGO is an interesting story, right? Because we all grew up playing LEGOs, regardless of what part of the world we were in. Lego prices have gone up right over the years. Their sales haven’t declined because there’s just this connection to that brand that transcends just the toy, the product, the price, and you try to help companies kind of figure out what does that mean for them? How do they connect with the consumer at a deeper level? Yeah. Lots of interesting stuff in there. I think the Lego one’s interesting too, because obviously they were fixed on that. On the shape and the dimensions of the bricks. They weren’t going to change that and make it smaller. It’s not like it’s a box of Pringles or something. You make it smaller, charge the same amount or more, but yeah, it’s, it’s a different trick that you play diversification in their range has been incredibly interesting to watch. And obviously the several partnerships and different joint ventures that they’ve set up into different entertainment spaces has been pretty cool. So yeah, interesting to see, right. Interesting to see the shifts in terms of on the operational side. Behind that are kind of interesting because if you lift the hood on what happens within a company to examine a change, understand what the true problem is, respond to it in some way, it just feels like that whole process has become a little bit more urgent. It just feels like it needs to be looked at on a very frequent basis. And obviously the sense of alarm and the sense of what needs to be done. There’s an urgency to the way in which business needs to be done now. So how are you finding that?

Chris Gillen: 8:29
Well, I like to talk about for so long and look, I’ve had the privilege of working for The targets and the Home Depots and the Toys R Us of the world, wonderful companies on all levels. The problem in general, and not just with those companies, it’s all companies I think, is that they continue to see CX as a reactive part of their business, a necessary evil, if you will. I have to put money into it because if my customer calls me, I’ve got to be able to take care of the customer, handle a complaint or handle an issue. And they have yet to realise that CX is much more than just the necessary part of doing business. It’s a revenue driver. And I know this because we tested this at toys. I always have to put my hand over my heart for toys or us because let’s try to make a comeback, but so long there. And it was such an iconic brand. We really, really towards the end, tried to figure out how to make that sticky relationship. With the customer because the Toys R Us customer would shop one time a year and a loyalty customer would shop four times a year. That’s it. And so the question for us was, you know, how do we continue to reach out to show customers that we value them beyond their purchase? And that’s kind of what got me interested in this concept of. Proactive CX. You don’t wait for there to be an issue or a problem or complaint. Let your customer know you’re thinking about them. You care about them often, right? That’s what kind of creates it. And I’ll give you a quick, there was a company that I was with and we took, we did this test for us for 30 days. We devoted some call centre agents and said, we’re just going to reach out to people proactively. Like if they completed a survey, it doesn’t matter if it’s five stars, one star, we’re going to reach out to them. And so we started just having them pick up the phone. And randomly call people and just say, Chris, thank you for your purchase. We want to know how much we value you. That was it. We weren’t offering them anything and net promoter score went through the roof. And that’s where I kind of learned there’s real power in building these emotive relationships and building a connection with your customer, a proactive connection with your customer. That’s. CX no longer is a cost centre, it becomes a revenue driver. And that’s where I’m hoping companies are really starting to think now about, well, how do we build that emotive loyalty? You have to do that proactively. You can’t do that reactively.

Chris Hudson: 10:41
No, I agree. I think it’s a really interesting one because I think particularly at a brand level or at a brand experience, even when you’re thinking about how money is invested in some of those activities and what it then translates to, I feel like the speed of change is pretty Basically making a lot of CMOs and COOs that CXOs that they’re looking at faster ways to market. But it feels like that brand in the way that it translates into some activities might end up still feeling like quite a transactional set of executional outputs touch points with the customer for sure. But in the way that you’re describing, it’s not like they want to give away all of that budget for nothing. Cause they still want sales back. Yeah.

Chris Gillen: 11:16
The other thing, Chris, and I, and I’m going to guess, cause I, yeah. Not had the privilege of visiting Australia. Oh you should come. I mean, it’s like Yellowstone, bigger. I’m going to guess that it’s expensive, that things have gotten really expensive. Just like, and so you can’t go out here in the U S two people go out, you go have a burger and French fries and beer or two, and you’re in 60, 70 dollars easy. It’s just horribly expensive to go out. What I help. Our clients really kind of understand is when that consumer who works hard for their money and it’s getting harder and harder to come by decides to go for that burger and that beer and they pick your place to do that, you need to make sure you’re telling them how much you appreciate them making that decision to come spend that 50 or 60 there. And I think that’s really important. Brands have just kind of lost that in general that we talked about. Thank you goes a long way, that server, that art tender, uh, picking on restaurants, but it applies to retail hospitality. That they want somebody to look them in the eye and say, thank you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for being here. Thank you for spending your money here. That’s what consumers want. They want to feel the value. They want to feel the appreciation from the brand. Well, they’re spending this hard money.

Chris Hudson: 12:34
Yeah, for sure. America’s got a long history of service and people around the world talk about the standards that are set there. So what’s your perspective on that? Do you think it’s still like a pretty good standard or what are you looking out for now when it comes up? Obviously a thank you.

Chris Gillen: 12:47
Yeah. You know, I get the privilege of traveling a lot all over the world and I would tell you there probably is no country better when it comes to service because it’s just ingrained and inherit and who we are as an American people. I think we’re genuinely, we’re helpful. comes in, it’s natural to today and ask you don’t get that everywhere So I think the standard i I worry about though is it slipped. COVID really did a number I think on customer experience, if you think about that, everybody was wearing masks and social distancing. So it really wasn’t so, Hey, how are you today? Let me come up and get in your face and tell you, thank you. And I think a lot of people would agree. I think we’ve seen an erosion of that experience and we had a good run up to COVID. The 15 years of So much talk about CX and so much talk about innovation and disruption. You were seeing a lot of progression, a lot of really cool things. And COVID came and that just kind of taking a step back and now you got inflation, businesses are struggling or cutting staff and trying to stay operational. So I feel like there definitely has been a couple of steps back with that though. I think that there’s some very exciting things, AI being one of those. That could really help businesses kind of change the narrative on service, redefine it, if you will, take a different approach. And probably the biggest thing is how do brands move from transactional loyalty, which will never go away. It’s always going to be about price and product, but how do they move more towards an emotive loyalty model where they create stickiness beyond price. With the customer. And I’m starting to see little things pop up and little things happening that give me encouragement that I think we will start moving in the right direction. You can’t deny the ride, what I call the rise of the influencer, right? As a marketing guy, you have to look at that and say, suddenly consumers, they’re not trusting the brands like they were, they’re trusting people like you and other influencers. Hearing from you, like where you spend your money, where you shop. And so I think that’s a very interesting thing that will continue to grow over the next several years, and we’ll see how that plays out. But I think where you see this right now, especially in the U. S., is there’s so many long tenured brands that are really struggling right now. Starbucks comes to mind. Here’s a brand that rarely missed revenue forecast ever. They’re in a period now where they’re missing several. And of course, I’m sure the news, you know, they just brought in a new CEO. They’re having to redefine who they are and what they are. And I talked about this on another podcast when Starbucks rose, just to give you an example of kind of where this is going. They had this great idea about being the third place, right? You’re where you get coffee in your home, your work. And so they really focused on this experience. And if you remember, you couldn’t walk into a Starbucks, it would blow your mind because somebody would say, Hey, Chris, welcome back. You want your double macchiato? And you were like, you know, what fuelled them is this experience that you had when you walked in and they were writing names on the cup and it was just mind blowing and they got away from that. complete, they focus too much on the digital side. And there’s a lot of reasons why, but I think one of the reasons they brought on the Chipotle CEO is because if you look at a brand like Chipotle, who’s the exact opposite, who’s just had this unbelievable growth and trajectory in this very loyal following don’t quote me on this, but at one point in time, the Chipotle app, I think was one of the most downloaded and used loyalty apps out there consistently. I don’t know if that’s still true. They’re able to make that connection through the product that they offer and the experience when you go in, the quality of the food. And so I think that’s where brands are kind of headed. If you look at who’s doing well right now as a brand called Kaba, they’re just crushing it because they’ve got a great product and they’ve got a great experience. And you go in, so they’re investing in that experience. They’re investing in their customer and you’re seeing that grow where other brands that have been around a long time are kind of going in the opposite direction. So that’s kind of my barometer is who’s doing well right now in a really tough environment. Why are they doing well? And if you trace that back, they’re putting energy. into connecting with the customer beyond just come in and get a low price and come in again and you know, repeat transactions.

Chris Hudson: 17:00
I think that’s insightful. I think there’s a lot that you can read in from the way in which you’re seeing the market shifts roll out. What are the big players doing? What are some of the emerging players doing? I feel like right now the playing field in CX has never been as level. In a sense, because of AI and, you know, some of the other things. So in a sense, the opportunity to create proprietary product services, have your app, have it all running, your marketing, your automation, like all of that sort of stuff. You can be looking to everybody else for the benchmark on that, but coming back to what you were saying, unless you’re doing something beyond that and taking a wild leap this way or that way, or, you know, Zigging while the others are zagging or whatever analogy you want to use. It’s going to feel like a lot of the same stuff. And I think from a consumer’s point of view, that feels like a lot. I feel like we’re getting more and more overwhelmed with some of these messages. And some people are just choosing to shut it all off. Are you seeing that?

Chris Gillen: 17:50
I am. Matter of fact, I’ve got a LinkedIn article dropping today. You’re familiar with the company here called Ross Stores. And what’s interesting about Ross, and I think they’re a really good example. They have no e commerce. They are 100 percent brick and mortar retailer. They’re killing it. So many other retailers are struggling right now. Their comps just continue to go up. And it’s really interesting when you look at that. But really what it is, is this experiential kind of experience when you go in, it’s this treasure hunt mentality. So when the customer is going in, it’s, Ooh, what am I going to find today that I may not find in the world. So, Really, I think what you’re seeing and what’s resonating with the younger consumer is that’s what they’re looking for. The younger consumer is looking for engagement. They’re looking for, like I keep saying, something beyond just transactional. Go in and I buy it because it’s a good price. It’s almost a bit of gamification. It’s almost a bit of, I love the treasure hunt mentality. If you think about thrift stores in general, they’re on the rise because this generation is now more cognisant about the social impact of buying decisions and things of that nature. So it’s going to be really cool to kind of just watch this space over the next probably 24 months or so. As more companies kind of think about how they build that emotive loyalty, as they start to implement AI, which in my opinion, will increase the level of humanness in their business. A lot of restaurants are trying to deploy voice AI through the drive. Eliminate the need for a human to take the order. So what will that human do? Yes, in some cases, I’m sure there’ll be some erosion in the job market and people lose jobs, but What a great opportunity to elevate the humanness of your business. If you can use AI to get rid of all those stupid little tasks that nobody likes to do anyway, and allow your staff to really be the face of your brand, and position them in front of the customer in a way that creates that stickiness or creates that mode of loyalty, they have all of the tools in the toolbox. It’s just going to be the question of how they use them and how quickly they’ll use them. And do other brands leapfrog and suddenly they’re ahead of the game. And these other brands just kind of wither and die at the bottom.

Chris Hudson: 19:53
I think as a consumer, it feels like the control is out of your hand. Sometimes you go in, you’re in McDonald’s or whatever, trying to get everyone using the app and pre ordering and we were made to use the self checkout at the supermarket because they’ve made 20 of those Instead of like two of the other ones where you can use a person, it feels like everyone is being handcuffed and walked through a new version of CX that not everyone really likes.

Chris Gillen: 20:15
I just have to say this. I’m going to say this on your podcast. I think the whole concept of self serve, self checkout, self whatever you want to is the biggest scam perpetrated against consumers in the history of consumerism. Because think about this is what I tell people all the time is you walk into your grocery store. And you know, you’ve got a cart and you don’t want to go. You want to check yourself out. You do the work, you get nothing out of it other than convenience. And the brand is the one benefiting by saving payroll, saving money, the whole bit. And it just always strikes me as odd because most people won’t do that kind of stuff for free, right? Like you think about serving, you need to motivate or incentivise people if you want to do survey. So The fact that there’s theory out there that you kind of come in and you check yourself out, you bag your own groceries, you do all of this for free is a very interesting concept. And it’s probably one of the reasons why it’s just starting to fail. You look at what’s happening in the self checkout world. A lot of companies are pulling them out because I think consumers have gotten wise and said, why am I doing this myself? Isn’t that part of the service that you’re offering me when I come in is to be able to check out and bag my groceries or take my groceries to the car. It’s an interesting

Chris Hudson: 21:27
For sure, yeah. We moved from London, so everyone was used to doing their own self checkout over there. But when we came over here, what was refreshing was that person scanning your groceries would put it through and then also pack your bag. Which we hadn’t seen in London for like a long, long time. The UK got rid of that ages ago. But now it’s shifted the other way, so you’ve got the self checkout. It’s not just a matter of, you know, doing that for free but also there’s an element of trust I feel as well because there’s a camera just above this and if it sees that you’re basically putting something into your bag that you shouldn’t have done then the alarm’s gonna go off.

Chris Gillen: 21:59
The brands that are doing that though I just feel like they’re missing the value, like there’s no value. Better mouthpiece for your brain than a well trained, right? That’s who you’re interacting with. Whatever name of the supermarket you walk into that person you’re interacting with, that is the supermarket, right? So how do you make a good meal taste bad? You serve it poorly and it’s the same thing. How do you make a great experience bad? You insert the wrong individual, the wrong team member, and it just kind of erodes the experience. It’s 50 percent of the equation. So even at a grocery store. Your connection with the cashier, right? The person asks you, did you find everything? Okay. Or interacting with you and picking up, Oh, I love this brand. That’s little things that are building a connection. And so now suddenly you’re not just going for the convenience you’re going, because you really like interacting with the people that are there. They’re friendly. They’re helpful. They’re engaging in brands have forgotten that they really, I think you’ve forgotten that they focus too much on convenience. You’ll come to me if I’m close or you’ll come to me if I have. And that’s true. But to create real emotive loyalty, those employees you’re interacting with, restaurant, retail, hotel, name your business are a critical part of building loyalty.

Chris Hudson: 23:16
I think the consumer trust and obviously building a connection. is very important. But I think even when it comes to transactional retail in particular, that can erode trust really quickly. I mean, if you’re thinking about, you do your groceries, you go in, you buy the same things week in, week out. But if you go there the next time, they know that you’ve bought it before. So they’re going to put the price up in one week or two weeks, and then they’ll try and sell you another alternative product, which you think is inferior, and you still end up buying it as a grudge purchase. And all these kind of feelings of negativity start coming out because you’ve been served a different experience to what you’ve You’ve what you’ve expected for it. And

Chris Gillen: 23:52
here’s a really good example. I mean, I’ve had the privilege of working for Home Depot, phenomenal company here in the West, it was founded on this principle that not only do they have all the products and services that you need, but if you had a plumbing issue in your house, when you went to a Home Depot, 99 percent chance that that person you were talking to was a plumber, right? Or an electrician or a tradesman they hired. And so. It wasn’t just about the product, right? It was about the ability to engage with an expert and then have somebody walk you through that. And that’s really one of the key things that helped Home Depot kind of rise to prominence. That’s not that way anymore, right? Things have changed. So you walk in now and you’re likely to talk to a kid in college who may or may not be a trades person. And so that’s eroded some of that connection, or I think that some people have to Home Depot, but they got it. And most brands did that. Target was the same way back in the nineties. They focused on hiring the right people, investing in them, training them. And then letting them go out and build a relationship with the consumer. And that’s why so many people back in the nineties, when Target was really on the rise, they were known for high quality products and a great clean atmosphere. The experience there was unparalleled, especially at that time, if you compared it to some of their competitors, brands have just missed this. And I think because inflation has been so low, money’s been easy to come by pre COVID. They just were like, come in, spend, do it again, keep doing it again. This transactional relationship. And now I think brands are going to have to work really hard with this new generation and some of these competing things that are happening in the marketplace to really start winning those customers back in a different way.

Chris Hudson: 25:36
I think it might be a neat segue into maybe looking a bit more at the internal side of the businesses as we go. Talk about some of these points, because we’ve talked about what the ambition is and what’s going wrong, the do’s and don’ts and that kind of thing, a little bit of the CX world, but I’m wondering if we rewind to when these ideas are come up with within an organisation, what needs to change there? Do you think there’s something’s breaking down? It’s either out of panic or immediacy, whatever the thing is that’s driving that like businesses and business leaders and teams are all ending up in the wrong place. How do we start to unpack that?

Chris Gillen: 26:07
Priority number one, and this is what I tell all brands is you have to understand who your customer is and what they want. That’s change. So anybody that says, Oh no, no, we understand the customer. We understand who they are. No, no, you don’t because it’s changed. The dynamic is changing. So you need to focus on energy. And I don’t even like to use the word survey because survey has kind of gotten a negative connotation about it. But You need to find ways to understand what your customer likes and doesn’t like about your business and then pull all that data together, analyse it and understand it and make decisions. Now that sounds pretty straightforward and simple. But brands have a really tough time with it. I still think that they miss the value and deeply understanding one of our core tenants here. Cause we have a variety of products that help customers do just that. But one of our tenants is really understand how your operational processes impact the spirit. And to do that, that transcends just survey, right? Customers, you’ve got to go deeper. You’ve got to use other products and to get in to really kind of understand what that is. Experience beginning to end looks like for your customer. If you get that piece of it done, then you’ve got to pull all of the data back. And I always get frustrated with brands because they usually get a lot of data, Chris, but it’s all disparate and siloed, and they don’t know how to pull it together and really look at it holistically. And that’s what you have to do. You have to look at data you’re getting from all parts of the company to really kind of paint this portion. We say we’re storytellers. And the way we tell the story is we pull all of that data together, we analyse it, and then we paint a picture for the brand to say, this is what your customer likes and what they don’t like. These are how your processes are either helping or hurting in that. And at the end of the day, to be a successful business, All you have to do is listen to your customer and respond to what they want. And you can’t do that just by listening to complaints. It’s my number one issue. So many brands think, well, Google reviews and these other places, which are not bad, but they’re a microcosm of this tiny little percentage of your customer base that’s telling you. And a lot of times it’s personal versus listening to your, you know, the 80 or 90 percent of your customer that really loves your brand and has thoughts and opinions and ideas to help you change that. So. That’s where we help brands. We try to help them do in that process. And if they do it correctly, it’s amazing what they’ve bet out and what they find. And it’s amazing how they can make little changes and improvements in the business. to increase foot traffic, revenue, you name it.

Chris Hudson: 28:44
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s a degree of orchestration, degree of alignment to stitch some of these steps and processes together. And maybe thinking back to your time, Toys R Us or, you know, any of the previous roles that you’ve mentioned, do you feel like getting that level of Consensus or shared purpose or vision and then following through to the execution is a hard task. I mean, are there simpler ways to do that side of things? Do you

Chris Gillen: 29:07
think? I don’t think it’s a hard task. I think brands make it hard, right? I do think they make it more difficult than really what it has to be. Oftentimes I believe that that’s ego. That’s just a brand believing that they know exactly who the customer is and what they want. And they’re afraid to go out and get outside counsel or opinion or unless you really kind of analyse that, that’s kind of a mistake. You see that. You see that with some brands that are failing. I think that was a classic case of Red Lobster. There were a lot of things that drove Red Lobster down, but I think they’ve just, they lost touch with, Who is my consumer? They would tell you they were the consumer, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they realised who the consumer was or who the new consumer needed to be for them. So I think brands make that a little bit more challenging. And it goes back to what I said earlier. It starts at the C suite. And the problem I have with a lot of companies in their C suite is they just view CX as an operational expense. And I’ll view it proactively. And this is a situation where you really need to view it in a proactive light. I was just listening to a brand who named a bot and they called it the complaint bot. And it just broke my heart because unfortunately that’s how brands think about feedback. They think that feedback is just nothing more than complaints. Cause that’s what they’ve been conditioned to think because they’re only getting to this tiny little piece of the population. When you figure out how to engage the core of your customer base and get them talking to you, which is a really important thing for a brand to do, you find out everything you need to know about what you need to do and change in your brand to become successful. They just have a hard time getting to that 80 or 90 percent of the customer.

Chris Hudson: 30:45
So it’s finding the right data sources. And obviously there’s a lot to do with the internal naming and the branding of such initiatives. You know, if it’s called the complaint bot, then that’s going to kind of end up down a triage and down here somewhere. Yeah. It’s not going to go straight up to the C suite as being this great enablement tool. But I think, you know, there are practitioners, and coming back to entrepreneurs, there are practitioners that can kind of take hold of some of these initiatives, find the sources of information, find the data, get the stories out, advocate, champion the cause for what needs to change, and really drive the agenda forward. So have you seen that happen well in any of the organisations that you’ve worked for?

Chris Gillen: 31:20
I mean, I wish I could give you a laundry list of them that I think are doing it correctly. I think some of them are starting to kind of get it. And to be able to move forward, like I said, I think if you just look at the brands right now that are winning versus the brands that are not, and then you just start to dig in to what those brands that are winning are doing, I would argue that those brands are more connected and in tune. To getting feedback from their customer at all level, looking at their operational processes and making tweaks and adjustments to create a better experience. I don’t think anybody’s got it completely figured out. I mean, this is all new too. It’s just like AI. When we talk about AI, the question for AI right now, Chris, is where’s the ROI of AI because nobody’s seen it yet and seen a lot of talk. They’re seeing some small scale use cases, but I think people are figuring it out. And I just think there’s so much going on that it’s a little bit overwhelming for brands right now to kind of. pinpoint one segment or area of the business that they say, ah, that’s it. That’s what we need to fix. I think they’re battling, uh, battles on many different fronts. I think we’re getting there. I think, like I mentioned, some of these brands like Kaba and some others are really starting to piece it together because I always say product is 50 percent of the equation and the other is service. And so usually you have a great product and poor service or great service at a poor product. It’s the brands that are kind of marrying the two together that are really starting to get some momentum. So I’m excited to see, especially as we move into 2025, who emerges, who continues to change the narrative on the experience and deeper connection with their consumers to really help kind of change the experience for a lot of this, the younger generation that’s kind of coming up.

Chris Hudson: 33:03
Yeah, for sure. Now, that’s exciting. I think that product and service, I mean, these are some levers that you can pull, obviously, and the formula in getting that right is kind of where the magic happens. If we think about innovation and where to kind of sprinkle that magic and how to do it, what have you found has worked in that area? Because it’s done in very different ways in different organisations, and sometimes it’s a big collaboration, sometimes it’s an individual directive from people. Top down, this is a great idea. You should go and do it. There are different ways to kind of get to that secret source. But have you got a point of view there?

Chris Gillen: 33:34
Again, I think we’re coming out of what I refer to as kind of chaos and confusion when it comes to AI. And so I think people were just, you know, here comes open AI, drop this product on everybody, everybody’s like, what is this and how do I put it in place? And I think a lot of people are figuring it out. I’ll talk about it in verticals. You think about restaurants, quick server, right? Restaurants. Are really kind of figuring out how to lower operating costs without eroding the product or the experience AI will be a big component of that. They’re starting to experiment with AI through the drive thrus, like I mentioned. I think that’s really exciting. I think voice AI is probably one of the most exciting things that’s out there. Not ready for prime time. But I think it’s shorter and will be, but think about that for a minute. I mean, if you think about the restaurant in general, margins are really, really tight. It’s in their best interest to figure out how they continue to call out operating costs without eroding the product or the experience. And I think AI is a great starting point. And it’s not that you need to eliminate that person altogether. But as I mentioned, you elevate the humanness of your business. What does that look like where you want to go in? So. Again, I don’t think anybody’s got this at scale. There’s a lot of restaurants that are talking about it and doing it, which I think is, will be interesting to kind of follow. When you talk about retail, I talked a lot about brick and mortar. The brick and mortar experience today is the same. It was 25 years ago. It hasn’t changed. You walk into a store. There’s product, you purchase something, and you kind of leave. And I think it’s ripe for disruption. And I wish I could tell you, here’s four or five retailers that are really figuring it out. I think retail is behind when it comes to how they’re going to change that experience. As I mentioned, Ross stores, not that they’re doing anything groundbreaking. I just think they’ve really kind of figured out How to drive the consumer back into the brick and mortar experience. So I know that’s a long way to answer. I wish I could tell you that there were people out there that were really doing it well. I don’t think that’s the case yet. I think there’s a lot of people who have a good start, but when you talk about scalability, I haven’t seen. Anything that’s really been at scale yet, and that’s kind of what I’m looking for. I think it’s coming. I think we’ll start to see that in 2025.

Chris Hudson: 35:44
I mean, I see this in the work that I do as well. There are lots of companies investing a lot in CX and in designing for new products and services. I do also feel like there’s maybe there’s a confidence issue, but, but it’s also thinking about how you can take something fresh to market in a way that’s differentiated. It feels unique to the customer and it’s doing something above and beyond what predicates that is usually some level of. Okay, well, we’ve done it this way before, so we need to bring that through. And then the safety mechanism kicks in, you end up with something that’s kind of a little bit the same, but there’s window dressing over the top and it looks like a fresh, because it’s been rebranded in some way. And there’s a concept store that’s been launched for this telco or for this electronics company. And it’s kind of like the same thing, but looking different.

Chris Gillen: 36:24
Well, I love when brands talk about their stores of the future, right? And oh, there’s, they’re watching the story of future. And then you look at it and it doesn’t look futuristic at all. It looks like the same store. Maybe merchandise a little bit better than it was before. So I think it’s ripe for disruption right now. And I think that’s what the consumer is looking for. It’s just changing at such a fast pace. Everything, like I said, birth rates, aging population, how we think about working, how we think about shopping. It’s this convergence of all of those things hitting that once. And I think it just overwhelming so many brands right now than just. And I’ve talked to them where they just feel like that. We have so much going on where revenues declining, foot traffic’s declining. We need to think about AI. We need to think about this, need to think about that. It is just really kind of an overwhelming time, but I clarity has come and I don’t want to be the naysayer. We’re very much in this chaos and confusion, but I think we’re emerging the, what you’re going to see is kind of the. Normalisation and implementation where more and more brands are going to start to see other brands who’ve done use cases or small scale testing. They’re going to start doing it. And I predict in 2025, you’ll really start to see some innovative brands doing some innovative things because they’ve spent this year kind of figuring it out and developing their own. So I’m excited to see what they come up with.

Chris Hudson: 37:44
From a sort of startup to scale up type culture in the U S that you’re seeing at the minute, because here it’s obviously a smaller market, but there’s still a lot of that going on. And there are some established players within the market that it would take quite a lot for people to basically come along on top of that. But in the U S and internationally, you see Tesla and Elon Musk in it, various things kind of happening and just coming out from the side and being able to contest with automotive manufacturers that have been around for over a hundred years. What are you seeing there? It’s still like all to play for, do you think?

Chris Gillen: 38:13
I think there’s a lot of exciting things that are happening. The problem is, is, you know, right now, inflation and, and money’s expensive, right? And so you are seeing a bit of a, an erosion, I think, in VC private equity funding of startups. Not that it’s not happening, it is happening. I think when inflation starts to come down, Money gets a little easier to come by. I think you’ll see a lot of startup businesses kind of spinning up and challenging the norm because it’s just a perfect time for disruption in almost every industry what’s out there, right? Restaurants, retail. We do a lot of work in senior where senior living is a huge. Business in the U S right. I think there’s 1. 5 million people living in senior working facilities across the U S and that’s expected, I think, to double if not more in the next 10 years, but it’s an archaic business. And so it’s completely ripe for disruption. When you think about AI and that’s something you can do, haven’t seen any of yet, but feel like that there are some like very early stage thinking and idea. That I think you’re going to see really kind of pop up that’s standard. I think when you talk about disruptive technology and changes, if you use history as your guide, that’s kind of the process, right? New technology hits the market. Everybody freaks out about it. They struggle to try to figure out how to use it. They start using it, right? Things change, new businesses are formed, new ideas come up, and I think that’s what we’re on the verge of. It’s like we’re on the 2025.

Chris Hudson: 39:40
Should we go back to the metaverse then? Should we go and live there? I don’t know about

Chris Gillen: 39:44
that, but uh, who knows? I mean, self driving cars, There’s a lot of talk here in the U S about drone delivery, Chick fil A, which is a huge brand. There’s a great video going around of a little robot that’s driving down the street, delivering food. So that’s pretty compelling. So there’s just so many things out there that you don’t know. You don’t know if they’re marketing gimmicks that just look cool. That’ll never materialise or if they’re really scalable solutions, but there’s a lot of that. And I think it’s an exciting time to really see what new innovative ideas are born out of what we’re seeing.

Chris Hudson: 40:17
Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s never been easier in a way to take a product to market, but obviously the market’s never been as cluttered as it’s now either. So it feels like you’ve got the opportunity to go to a store, buy a drone, set up a service preto-type that in some way, and get an experience out, up and out, and see how people respond. So I think the feedback opportunity is definitely there. See how customers respond, get some data in real time business case to the next stage.

Chris Gillen: 40:42
I don’t think there’s a better time in history right now to be an innovator, to be somebody with a creative idea, because to your point, it’s easier than ever to stand up an idea and scale it. And AI is going to make that easier and easier. I read an article, and I forgot who said it, but they said in the next five years, They’ll be the first one person, billion dollar company. Think about that for a minute. One person, billion dollars, right? And that’s the power of AI. It’s the power of the influencer economy. It’s the power of AI. It’s all these things kind of converging. And I believe we will. I believe we will. Somebody’s going to launch an AI only driven business and have no employees and make a billion dollars out of it. And that will be fascinating. On a two hour work week as well. Two hour work week. Yeah, that’s exactly right. It could be you, Chris. It could be you.

Chris Hudson: 41:38
Listen, I wouldn’t hate it. I’d be fine. You’d be okay with that. I mean, that’s maybe the finishing question, but it’s kind of where you see things going, because if you look at big bang theory, I think start somewhere that explode, things start coming back in and other initiatives are probably some will sink, some will fall, some will rise to the top and there’ll be a billion dollars for each employee. You know, it’s kind of like, you know, where do you see it all going?

Chris Gillen: 42:00
I would say before I even talk about business, I’ll go to the consumer. I think the consumer is waking up and saying, I deserve, right? I’m spending my money. I deserve a better level of service. We’re seeing the airlines change their opinion on changing flights and refunds, right? Wasn’t that long ago that you bought a ticket. They would be like, sorry, can’t get a refund. They’re changing the tune. And I think it’s because the consumer is finally waking up a bit to say, you know what, I do have the power to change the brands where I shop and where I spend my money and I need to be more vocal and I need demand better service. And I think we’re starting to see that that in itself is going to force brands to do things differently. And I’m a huge advocate of the consumer. As a matter of fact, we, a lot of our products are consumer based. Driven products. I mean, we do mystery shopping. It’s a great example. We rely on 150, 000 independent contractors to go out and help reform our work. And there’s power in that when you do that. So when you try to talk to a brand, you need to change. And it’s add our on it suddenly when the consumer base starts to vote with their wallet and they’re no longer going there because the service is poor and the product is inferior, it’s going to force brands to change. And I think the consumer is coming into their own, if you will. They’re saying, you know what? I don’t have to. put up with poor service or poor product or poor experience. I can demand better and force brands to change. I think that fundamentally is where we’re heading.

Chris Hudson: 43:30
Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. And then the scope for what happens if there is a dissatisfied customer or consumer, it was like the channels are all there, right? You can just take your pick and do whatever you like.

Chris Gillen: 43:41
You just take your pick and do whatever you like. Yeah. I mean, social media was that thing, 20 years ago, it was, that was your power as a consumer. You could just go to social media and freak a brand out with a bad review. Now it doesn’t matter why it’s just become normalised. You go to the, you give a bad review. The brand may or may not respond. It’s just kind of lost some of its lustre. The social media blackmail is what I call it. I think that there are consumer, like I said, it’s starting to say, you know what? If I go and I don’t like your service, I don’t like your product. I just won’t go back. And you’re seeing this becoming more prominent with these brands that are really starting to struggle. And fail. I think that’s what’s happened. The consumer is saying, this isn’t worth it to me. I’m going to go somewhere where I got a great product, great service, and I’m bound. And I think that’s really what the consumer is looking for. What I would end this by just telling brands, you’ve got to really think about how you show your customer how much their money and their business means to you. And that in itself changes the nature of CX from reactive to proactive, and that’s where brands need to go.

Chris Hudson: 44:41
Great spot to end, and yeah, really appreciate the chat and talking through the world of CX, brands, businesses, what’s happening in the US. I mean, it’s just great to talk to you in relation to all of your experience and the stories that you tell as well. So really appreciate you coming on to the show. Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris Gillen: 44:56
You bet. Thanks for having me, Chris. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.

Chris Hudson: 44:59
No problem. All right. And if people want to reach out, ask you a question. Is that okay? Do you want to leave any, any ways for people to get in touch?

Chris Gillen: 45:05
Yeah. I mean, certainly can visit our website. It’s www. It’s a weird website. It’s a closer look. com, but it’s a dash closer dash look. com. Please feel free to go to the website and check it out. You’ll find my contact information there and you can feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have.

Chris Hudson: 45:21
Perfect. All right. We’ll leave it there. Thanks so much, Chris. Awesome. Have a good day.

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