Unlocking Your World of Creativity Transcript

Mark Stinson: Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity.

The world of brand experience is certainly changing right now. And it’s changing on the inside, from the standpoint of customer service and training, and it’s changing on the outside too. When was the last time you said, “I’d like to talk to the manager?” No, you probably just left a Yelp review or changed your review on Google rather than talking to the manager.

That’s why we want to talk to our guest today about that changing experience for the customer and how we can address that.

My guest is Adam Alfia, and his company is Real Time Feedback. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Alfia: Thank you, Mark. Great to be here.

Mark Stinson: Yeah, as we think about creativity in the context of creating a brand, the experience is paramount. How have you seen it with your clients and in the industries you work with, the changes in that experience?

Adam Alfia: Brands spend a lot of money. Customer acquisition cost is so high now, and people are bombarded with messages. Then finally, when a customer chooses to do business with you, a lot of times they’re let down by that experience because an hourly employee doesn’t understand what the brand stands for, doesn’t really care about their job, and then lets that customer down.

That reflects poorly on the brand. You had a chance to really wow that customer, and it’s gone. Like they say, you only have 1 chance to make a first impression. And if you don’t nail it every time, customers are finicky. They’ll go somewhere else, or worse, they’ll go ahead and leave a negative review online.

So we built a platform called Real Time Feedback that lets you very easily communicate with upper management, take care of the issue, usually while you’re still on site, and give that manager a way to know about your issue. That’s the most important thing. Then they can respond to you and take care of it. So we like to say, give them help before they Yelp.

Mark Stinson: I like that. The old sign that used to say, “If you like it, tell a friend. If you don’t like it, please speak with the manager.”

Adam Alfia: Exactly. There you go.

Mark Stinson: Particularly with your background, you describe this as good for either the local corner auto shop all the way up to Fortune 500 brands like Infiniti, Mitsubishi, and Ford. How does this really go back to the brand? How do you think this is contributing to brand building for clients?

Adam Alfia: Everything ends up with an experience in a brick-and-mortar location, usually. There’s obviously the online experience as well, but when the customer chooses to walk into a place of business, you have to really give them a reason to come back and keep coming back.

If they have a negative experience, as you know, there are probably 3 or 4 other competitors chomping at the bit to get their business. So when that customer walks across your threshold and into your world, you really have to do a lot to keep them engaged and happy. And if they’re not happy, you have to make it very easy for them to let someone know.

The younger generation is growing up behind screens. Their face-to-face communication skills aren’t like older generations. When I grew up, there weren’t any cell phones. At best, you had a beeper if you were lucky. But now when everything is interaction behind Facebook, TikTok, and text messaging, people don’t engage face to face the same way.

My kids almost never answer my calls anymore. So when people grow up in an environment where they’re not communicating face to face, and then go out into the workforce, they don’t recognize when a customer is unhappy. They don’t really have the empathy or awareness to react to that.

In a chain of restaurants, for example, you can look at a table and, if you know what to pick up on, you can tell if the customer is happy with their food or the atmosphere just by looking at their face and body language. The younger generation really doesn’t always have those skills.

So giving that customer an opportunity to engage with management and say, “Hey, I’m not having a great experience,” or, “You guys need to fix this,” really opens the door for how to make that place a better place to visit, solve the issue, and leave the customer happy.

A lot of companies are trying to do that after the fact through surveys and other tools. But when was the last time you filled out a survey and somebody actually called you and said, “Hey, I want to discuss your survey. How can we get you back?”

Mark Stinson: I always check that box that says, “Do you want to be called?” I say, sure, why not? Maybe I can help you out. But the hotel never calls me.

Adam Alfia: Exactly. Surveys are supposed to fill that gap of letting you know when a customer isn’t happy, but nobody ever expects a phone call and the business never calls you back. It’s really a 1-way street. I’m giving you my time and my energy to give my opinion, and everybody feels like it’s going into a black hole just for data crunching, so somebody can say, “Hey, we raised our customer satisfaction.”

But if you have a 20% dissatisfaction rate, what are you doing for that 20%? That’s really where we fill the gap. What happens when a customer is in your place of business, is having a bad experience, and wants to communicate with somebody but can’t find a manager? Most people won’t walk around looking for one. They’ll just leave and not come back, or leave a negative review.

So there’s really a huge opportunity to take care of that customer in real time.

Mark Stinson: Yeah, the real time part is the key here.

I love that on your website there literally is a How It Works page. I can’t tell you how many of these magic apps we hear about where I really don’t know how it works. It sounds like you’ve made it pretty simple. Maybe you could give us an overview of literally how it works.

Adam Alfia: Yeah, so we make it very simple. We actually don’t have an app that the customer has to download. It’s QR code based, which everybody has gotten really accustomed to. The pandemic kind of pushed that to the forefront with touchless everything. But what really unlocked QR codes was integration with the phone camera. Now everybody knows how to point their camera at a QR code and use it.

Our QR codes automatically take you to a page branded to that customer. For example, at American Airlines Center we have TellAAC.com. When they scan the code, it goes to a specific page where they can put in whatever their issue is. As soon as they submit it, and it can be anonymous if they want, it sends management a notification.

If a manager has our app on their phone, or they’re behind a computer, they can also get a text message. Then they can instantly respond to that customer, and that customer gets the response via text. So now you open up that dialogue. It’s super simple.

We even have a patent-pending feature called trigger codes. The QR code is already prepopulated with information. So let’s say you’re in a men’s restroom at a business or an arena and there are no paper towels. Most people just walk out wiping their hands on their pants. They’re not going to find someone and tell them.

But if there’s a QR code in that restroom, when you scan it, it’s already loaded with the location and something like “paper towels are out.” Of course, you can add information like the sink is overflowing or the toilet is running. It’s incredible how much people love engaging with something that’s that simple. Scan the code, put in the issue, hit submit, and you’re done. Then you helped that business. If you walk back in later and the paper towels are there, it feels like magic.

There’s a new metric that’s really being watched now called customer effort score, or CES. The easier you make it for a customer to engage with your brand, the more loyal they are because they love that interaction. We really push that button of, “I need something and I need something now.” Not only can I tell you about it, but I can get a response letting me know it’s been taken care of.

Mark Stinson: We’ve been talking about some of these industries that are natural fits, and we think of restaurants, auto service, and retail stores. But your website also lists a few unique industries and locations I wouldn’t have thought about, like medical facilities and parks and recreation. I mean, imagine being at a park and leaving a question, review, or issue, or at a medical facility. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked how my experience was at a clinic.

Adam Alfia: Yeah, exactly. That’s 1 of the things we’re really pushing, opening that engagement platform.

I’ve got 6 kids, so I’m always at a park once a week. A lot of times I’ll go and the water fountains aren’t working, or the porta potty is full, or something smells terrible. Nobody really wants to call anybody anymore. Here in Dallas we have a 311 service, and by the time you’re talking to somebody, you’ve already been on hold for 6 or 7 minutes. People don’t have time for that.

If you can put a QR code throughout the park and let visitors report that a swing is broken, or a sprinkler head is leaking, or any other issue, that’s incredibly helpful. Instead of sending personnel through the park once a week to aimlessly look for stuff, now your residents and visitors can be your eyes and ears. Then somebody can respond and even say, “Thank you for sending that feedback last week, you’ll be happy to know the swing is fixed now.”

It’s great because people almost never get responses to the complaints they make.

Mark Stinson: Well, and if you’re trying to run a repeat business, getting that kind of feedback means maybe I’ll go back, maybe I’ll try again, maybe they fixed the issue I had a problem with.

Adam Alfia: Yeah, actually there’s a thing called the customer service paradox, which shows that if you visit a business and never have an issue, you have a certain level of loyalty. But if you’re a customer and you do have an issue, and they take care of it quickly and efficiently and to your satisfaction, you’re actually even more loyal to that business because you saw what happens when you had a problem.

That really differentiates a good business from a bad one. Do they do the right thing? Our platform not only lets them know about the issue, which is half the battle, because most customers have something they’d like to change about a business, but they just don’t have the ability to relay that to a manager. With our platform, it becomes very easy.

Mark Stinson: Well, thinking ahead and looking over the horizon, here we are really staring 2023 and the next quarter right in the eye. What are things you’re looking forward to? What new products, developments, or even creative goals do you have for yourself?

Adam Alfia: 1 of the things we just implemented was a masked call feature. We realized that a lot of managers want to have a real conversation with a customer, not just text. But a lot of times they don’t want to call from their personal cell phone because then the customer has their number forever.

So we built a masked call feature where managers can actually call a customer directly from their own phone, but it shows a different number, kind of like Uber does. It hides both numbers.

The next platform layer we’re building is allowing a manager to actually record a video and send that back to the customer as a text message response. So instead of just a written reply, they can say something like, “Hey Mark, this is Adam. I’m the manager here at the restaurant. I appreciate your feedback. We’re going to take that into consideration. Hopefully next time you come visit us, come see us.”

When somebody opens that up and sees an actual video from a manager, that adds another level of personal attention. I think that really shows the company cares. It gives it more of a human touch than just a text message.

Mark Stinson: I love that.

Well, thanks for sharing both the past of how this was developed, the present of where the company is, and the forward look at where you think the future is going. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation, Adam.

Adam Alfia: So did I. Thank you, Mark.

Mark Stinson: Yeah. It’s Adam Alfia from Real Time Feedback, and the website is RealTimeFeedback.com. It’s got a great How It Works section, industry ideas, a blog, and all sorts of information.

Follow Adam and you’ll learn a lot about customer experience, even if you’re in the service business of any kind, and how feedback can improve the customer brand experience. Adam, you’ve been a creative inspiration. Really appreciate it.

Adam Alfia: Thank you, Mark.

Mark Stinson: And listeners, we’ve stamped our creative passport at DFW today. Dallas-Fort Worth was our worldwide location, but we’re going to continue our global travels talking to creative practitioners everywhere about how you can get inspired for new thinking, how you can organize those ideas, and most of all, how to make the connections and gain the confidence to launch your work out into the world.

So join us again next time. I’m Mark Stinson, and we’ll be unlocking your world of creativity.

Outro: Unlocking Your World of Creativity with best-selling author and brand innovator Mark Stinson. This program was produced by DSP Media, creators and storytellers. Unlock your world of creativity and the peace room.

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