Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer.

Shark 0:22
You've heard me often talk about Invoca and their outstanding technology and team. And that technology is also helping drive better customer experiences. And that's why this episode is even more exciting. One of my favorite conferences and summits is the Invoca Summit. Great tech, great experience in Santa Barbara, and those palm trees don't hurt. I love diving there as well, even when it's virtually. And that's why I'm even more excited to bring you this episode, "Digital Experience Is Your Brand’s Superpower, a Conversation with Brian Solis. Brian and I will discuss how digital experience will affect the future of customer experience, and how you can turn those takeaways into action items for your business.

Shark 1:00
Brian Solis is the Global Innovation evangelist at Salesforce; a world renowned keynote speaker, often referred to as one of the greatest digital analysts of our time; and he's an award winning author of eight best selling books, including Life Scale, How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life.

Shark 1:16
And on this episode, we'll discuss the love language of digital, the novel economy, shared data and trust, creating new experiences, becoming a customer unified company, digital Darwinism, reclaiming your life, from Digital distractions with some live scale, Jobs and Jobs' movies, who is the goat, and a lot, lot more. So let's tune into a global innovation evangelist with a globally innovative shark on this episode of a sharks perspective.

Shark 1:47
Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective. Very excited to welcome you to this special edition of A Shark's Perspective for the Invoca Summit. So let's dive in. How do you see digital experience affecting the future of customer experience? And how should businesses look at leveraging what they has have as a superpower, if you will?

Brian Solis 2:09
Kenneth thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today. digital experience there's there's been there's been talk going back 20 years, you know, when we say digital experiences, it's just all experience. And for the longest time, I used to say no, no, actually it's not. Digital is its own love language. It is it is absolutely different in how someone on the other side of the screen expects to go through that journey. And I've spent my entire research career speaking, writing, trying to help people step out of the their decision making comfort zone, so that they can see the world through the lens of a digital first customer or a digital customer so that they can feel the empathy that's needed in order to innovate in customer experience design. And with that said, let's let's let's go back real quick to this idea of what's happening to you, as you use the screen as a human being these devices, your favorite social networks, your favorite games, they've all been programmed to sort of compete for your attention. And the way they do that it's called persuasive design, they all change you in their own respective way to get more of that attention. And so the more you change, your brain moves faster, your your your chemistry changes in order to feel certain things as you're scrolling and sharing. And essentially, when you Oh, now we're looking at what 2007 was when the iPhone launched. And we're looking at a pretty long time of that programming happening at the very human level. So when you go to what touch point as a consumer, say, on your mobile phone, or on your, on your laptop, or your desktop, you're bringing into that touch point, all of that anxiety, all of that fast paced, multitasking mode, all of that I call it the digital narcissism. It's all of that expectation that you're going to get what you want, when you need to be convenient for you to be personalized for you. So that that's a very, that's a very human centered approach to thinking about how digital has changed the consumer so that when you come into that touch point, you bring that irrationality, but also that expected outcome into that touch point to say, Well how is this gonna come across, and then you realize, wow, our whole customer journey falls apart. Our website has too much stuff. The way that we present images has too much stuff though. The way that we've forced someone to check out has too many too many clicks in many instances. So then we'll we allow ourselves to realize where we can make improvements and then also, if we want to keep getting some extra credit. We can look at the best in class experiences in any single industry that has reinvented every touchpoint and the journey of We're all to be inspired by what we're also busy so that that hopefully accelerates what's broken, or at least the ability to identify what's broken. And also the ability to see what's missing. And that I think is what creates a roadmap for iteration and innovation, moving forward for any business, to reimagine that customer experience. Because once you understand that digital is its own thing. And consumers are bringing to that their own set of expectations, you realize, well, then it could be all about customer experience, because now we're the improvements we're making on this front, allow us to make improvements and other funds, better service, better sales processes, better, better, everything that become more modern and human centered,

Shark 5:43
is someone who enjoys reading your books and hearing your thoughts on the future of business. I enjoyed a recent post of yours and I'll read it organizations are disrupted when their customer expectations may change. entire industries are disrupted when customer expectations and behaviors change at once around the same time, elaborated on those thoughts a little bit, if you will, please, and how businesses should look forward in this post pandemic world that you've called the Novell economy, as you know, in relation to the novel virus or the novel economy in relation to the novel virus.

Brian Solis 6:18
Thank thanks for the kind words Canada, absolutely those those are very important words, essentially, what sets the stage for what's now a more accelerated version of what I've always called, is digital Darwinism. And digital Darwinism is essentially the the phenomenon as technology advances, right, but also as society's relationship with technology advances. And the one thing that we can definitely use in that regard is the understanding that in March 2020, everybody became digitally accelerated. So it wasn't just businesses that had to work from home, ecommerce, all of these things. chatbots automation RPA, we too, as human beings were digitally transformed, we had to now figure out how to use digital in our work, digital and remote learning, digital for shopping, digital, for entertainment, everything became a from home digital first experience. And we changed as a result of that a lot of the phenomenon around what we talked about with digital acceleration, in terms of multitasking, anxiety, all these things also accelerated to so the humanity of this change. So what that means is, essentially, this is that all at once, as you share it all at once moment, where everything is being disrupted. And we think that just merely reacting and now we were okay, with operating in this new world was enough? No, it just showed that we can do it quickly. But to your previous question, I just published some research with Harvard Business Review it that shows how to become a customer unified company, because only 15% of companies in the entire world claim and I you know, we'll see if this is true or not, but claim that they have re operationalize their organization to put data at the center of the company, which means customers at the center of the company, and have the ability to interpret insights and act on those insights cross functionally. So let's just assume that that's true. And people are telling the truth. That means that most companies, the entire world have to get there in order to be truly customer centric, and the slower they move, in terms of not just digitally transforming, but also operationally transforming. The slower that they move, the more that they set the stage for digital Darwinism to outpace them. And this is the next disruption that when consumers change all at once. Not only our entire industry is disrupted, essentially, on the bright side of that story, are the insights that help us through data understand how to accelerate that transformation and have meaning every step of the way.

Shark 8:43
One of the things that when I speak at conferences, and I preach about all the time, it's one of my favorite absolute things to tell other marketers and performance marketers, is it if you look at how consumers are trying new brands, is how this also shifted to think of a recent McKinsey study that pointed out that 75% of the customers or consumers tried a new brand during the pandemic, and roughly four out of five of those are planning to stick with it. How do you recommend businesses think through adapting to that volatility, if you will, as to how to best stay ahead of it?

Brian Solis 9:21
Yes, it's it's important to appreciate this this it's it that McKinsey data introduced a couple things one was trying new brands, and then also exhibiting new shopping behaviors or and that could be discovery that could be purchasing. And so the the one question to ask is why? What is driving them to do this? And it turns out, I've gone through this exercise with with many customers, and it could be everything from availability, but ultimately what it comes down to is experience. You add to that our own research. So this shows 84% of business customers, so b2b and then consumers b2c. I'd say that the experience you provide in their journey is as important as your products and services. So this comes back to the original question, which is how does that consumer see that journey differently than how you present that journey to them? And look, I think many businesses, I think I'll just be honest, take it for granted. The fact that if they just introduced digital, whether that's ecommerce or what have you, or a website or a mobile app, that they're checking the boxes for digital, when in fact, when a consumer goes through that experience, digital is invisible to them, it's just a mechanism for them to get to their outcome. It's how they feel throughout that process that is going to define their customer experience. This is why when I help anybody talk about CX, I add an apostrophe s to it. It's the customer's experience. And let's look at it through their lens.

Shark 10:50
So I've got a question here from Deanna McPherson, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Invoca. She asked this question, what role should marketers play in shaping the experience of their prospects and customers? Great question.

Brian Solis 11:05
Great question. So it really the answer is this is I just had a conversation with Seth Godin, I think we could all all say we're fans of his work, he's been really blazing a trail for a long time. And he said that every great marketer does one thing, and that is they make change happen. And he said that, if you're not willing to be in charge of experience as a marketer, then you're not the CMO. And then he followed it with and I can't say it any simpler than that. And those were powerful words. And what he's essentially saying is that marketing has the opportunity to take the lead on customer experience design, in that it is the ultimate form of marketing how a customer feels in one touchpoint. And in the sum of all touchpoints is what they walk away with feeling. And what they walk away with feeling converts into memories. And what it is that they remember, becomes their brand, what it is that they express online or to their friends becomes your brand. And so it all it all connects the dots. In fact, in our own research, we found that 60 I think 63% of the most elite marketing organizations in the world, do own customer experience within their companies. And I just published a report on this in Forbes, this past week that talks about how to create a marketing centered a new marketing, not traditional or classical marketing, a marketing organization centered on customer experience to be the hub to empower all of the other functions to deliver the types of experiences, they're going to create the brand, the brand experience that you want customers to have and share.

Shark 12:45
So I've got another great question from Greg Johnson, who's the CEO of Invoca. He asked, where should companies that want to transform their customer experience start?

Brian Solis 12:58
Wow, these are great questions. These, you know,

Shark 13:00
They are not throwing softballs at Invoca.

Brian Solis 13:02
So, you know, do you know one of the most common questions I get, and it can be anything, whether it's the future of customer service, future marketing, future experience, design, future of innovation? The number one question I get across the board is, where do I start? And the it's, it's a great question. And I hope, I hope that people are really willing to hear the answer. Because we're where we get into trouble is where we try to start is with our assumption that in seeking the answer, that we're going to go execute on it, when in fact, we are part of the problem. We are not our customer. We are part of the process, we are part of the system of decision making. We are part of a of a hierarchy of metrics, we are part of a part of an organization that has to report out progress to other stakeholders. And ultimately, we get caught up in this world of which is business operations and I get it, right, but you're, you're never going to innovate. If you're not looking at for example, Kemp, when you brought up McKinsey's data, if we don't look at why people are leaving, right, essentially what that data says is, loyalty is up for grabs. retention is critical, because people are experimenting. And at that level, that's, that's pretty disruptive. And also people are finding solutions. So what is it that they're finding? And how do we learn from that? The answer to the question is you start with your customer, and you recognize that we are not them. So we have to use data to bring them to life in ways that help us understand what it's like to go through our journey, what they feel through our journey, and it's also good to talk to them. It's also important to recognize that whatever, however it is that we define the customer, they're not the same as they were in March 2020. They're a completely different customer now. I call it generation novel, like novel Coronavirus, like the novel economy generation novel Gentlemen, was essentially the effects of having to live this digital first life in every aspect. So how they make decisions are different, what they value, for example, values now a matter more than ever, in fact, if your brand doesn't align with their values which have been, they become more conscious to what's important to them. Now in this time of disruption, 61% of them have left a brand to try another brand, which is part of the there's so many reasons for that McKinsey data, that's one of them. And that means that we have to, we have to get in touch with who they are and who they're becoming. Because it's it's something that isn't just different. It's cross generational, it's aspirational. And it's self interested to be quite honest, I call them digital Narcissus, because they they just have learned to expect to get what they want, and how they want it. So that's, that's where I started. Look, I'll just close that, that answer with, you know, a throwback to Steve Jobs. When he was brought back into apple. There's a lot of skepticism because the company was pretty much on your flatline. And he was asking, what are you going to do differently to bring Apple back to life. And he said, he took a pause, it was really, it's really beautiful moment, he said, you know, we have to start with the customer experience, and work backwards to the technology, essentially saying that we have to give technology a purpose, we have to give these times of purpose, we have to give our decisions a purpose, and to assume that all of our processes or standards or metrics for success, are previous experiences to assume that that's what's going to take the thrive in the novel economy. This, this, this new world without a playbook essentially, would get us into trouble. And I think this is time to open our minds and our hearts, to use digital and to create better experiences, whether they're physical or digital or hybrid, to make customers come to us so that retention grows, and acquisition grows to

Shark 16:57
Amen to that. Yeah, I think it's so often that businesses look at themselves in there. And they forget that on the other side of that the people are evolving, just like they're trying to evolve as well. So let's talk a little bit about one of your books, I've read several of them, but life scale, how to live a more creative, productive and happy life. I love the description that I read about the book. Somewhere along the way, we got distracted as much as we multitask, love our devices and feel like we're in control. Deep down, we know that something is off short attention spans, which works for me, declines in critical thinking, lack of sleep, self doubt, and decreased creativity are just some of the effects coming to light in an age of digital distraction. It's time to reclaim our lives, it's time to take control. And I thought about this because you wrote this and released it before COVID head. And then we were all sitting at home, looking at our phones, trying to figure everything out again, talk a little bit about the book and that journey and how you look at life scale today, through that prism and lens of self discovery and growth. And it would also be interesting to touch on how we can avoid these distractions coming out of a pandemic, so that we don't just bounce back to old habits.

Brian Solis 18:04
Oh, man, gosh, we could have a whole conversation about this. You know, when I when I wrote it, I found I found the hard way that I was struggling through digital distractions. And earlier when we talked about persuasive design and how how that plays out and getting customers to change to the apps benefit like Facebook, Instagram, tik tok Snapchat. What those research what those what those studies didn't continue to do was well, how does that change you as a human being? You know, like, what, you feel the same? Do you feel depressed? Do you feel? Do you feel completely lost? So that's the research I had to do, because I couldn't figure out why I was feeling all of these things I had to back into Oh, it turns out that after 15 years of reprogramming, that's what happens. And so the way back is, the life scale journey was a research based process of not just abandoning digital, it's actually using digital, reestablishing your relationship with All Things digital to move forward in a more purposeful direction. With that said, I had fat you know, in the context of business, there's two things one is what wasn't clear, then, you know, that was before Netflix's social dilemma. What wasn't clear then was that people didn't necessarily realize that they had a problem, everything, everything's just fine. And so just saying that, at the time, wasn't necessarily making the case. It's like it's imagine writing a book about not smoking, when smoking was first introduced, and you have doctors telling you it's okay to smoke. It was it was a little early, to be honest when the book came out. But now to your point, in a post pandemic world, where everybody's working and learning from home and digital First, it turns out that now people are starting to talk about and you'll see it everywhere. Digital wellness, self care, our depression, happiness. So all of these things are now starting to come to life like like customer behaviors. All of these things were accelerated in the last 18 months. So life scale actually has roared back to life, no pun intended, in an entirely new way, where we're now having these conversations about digital wellness, how do I take control of my work life experiences, and intentionally move in a direction where I feel like I'm gaining progress in in a variety of ways. And so thank you for bringing it up. It's been a really, it's been really wonderful to see now how it's changed. And Oh, and I forgot Canada. Let me just add one more part in in the in the business context of this. What the book really does is show you how the consumer comes into any touch point now, yes, well, so it isn't just about your life. It's also now through the lens of Gosh, I had no idea like the first couple chapters of the book just reveal like how crazy a consumers life is, as they're going through their journey. So that you can you can be a sense of relief, your touch points can be designed to be a reprieve to know that they're asking these questions and to answer them so that they just feel like wow, this is a great experience.

Shark 21:18
Yeah, great point. Hold on, while I take a call, send a text, watch a tick tock video and send an email. So you've obviously got a massive Rolodex of influential people in your life, but I remember reading engage a few years ago as well. Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher wrote the foreword for the book, how did that relationship manifest?

Brian Solis 21:35
Oh, we were actually business partners. For a long time. We, we did a lot of work with helping to transform the digital transformation of like Oprah Winfrey, the United Nations, Pepsi at the time, you know, a lot of really cool a lot of cool things. And so I, I had a company that was one part digital lab experimented with all the startups out there to figure out how to help businesses take advantage of these these new technologies, relationships, and the other side of the organization was to help actually transform those who using those technologies when they couldn't do it themselves, we would sort of be this, this rapid acceleration team. So it was a it was a relationship I, I miss and I helped him make some of his first startup investments too. So that actually Wish I followed the same investments I had him made because that's been wildly successful for him. Well, Brian,

Shark 22:29
My nickname is shark and that's why the show's called A Shark's Perspective. I dive and frequently swim with sharks and everyone who comes on the show, and you're in So Cal, so this is good question. What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Brian Solis 22:44
I'm just gonna have to do this in real time here. I'm gonna have to say the Maiko. Okay, and that is because my daughter's school here that they just started a brand new school for them two weeks ago. That is their mascot. That makes

Shark 23:02
Nice. So there you go. Fantastic. And it's a fastest, the fastest shark let you pivot in this digital world. So Brian's a special time in the show. As we close out, we get to know you a little bit better, you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Brian Solis 23:17
Well, I, I'm ready to take the questions. All right.

Shark 23:21
We'll Seth Godin called these his favorite questions. So alright, number one. We've been talking a little bit about superpowers with digital experience. So if you had a choice, which would you choose the power to fly or the power of invisibility?

Brian Solis 23:37
Fly, I often dream about flying. It's It's It's very cool.

Shark 23:42
So we've been talking also about performance and performance marketing. So the greatest of all time in performance in the NBA, Michael Jordan or LeBron James.

Brian Solis 23:52
I'm such a Michael Jordan had such just sale and Greg, you.

Shark 23:57
Alright, number three, what we'll have a larger impact on business trajectory in the digital world over the near to mid term, the impact of search or the impact of social and a US business trajectory. Because if I'd said growth, that would almost be too easy.

Brian Solis 24:16
I'm gonna say search. And the reason why is because we're watching the effects of social influence and a lot of things in our life right now. And it's not always the best results that we see. But search is an intentional process of discovery. And it allows for any brand to think especially going back to empathy as a superpower. How to be the mentally and emotionally available brand for a consumer and that discovery process or great one.

Shark 24:43
Great point number four, we spoke about Ashton Kutcher, so let's discuss Ashton Kutcher movies, jobs, the story of Steve Jobs or dude, where's my car about two idiots who couldn't find their car The morning after a night of partying.

Brian Solis 24:56
I'm such a big Steve Jobs fan. That that movie was horrible. So, dude, where's my car?

Shark 25:03
Good, very good explanation. All right, number five. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread?

Brian Solis 25:13
Can the answer be Yes, because that sounds I mean, I just had jalapeno cornbread that was through the roof. But then I just had biscuits and gravy other day that was through the roof too. So I'm gonna pass I'm just I can't I'm gonna take them both if they're on the menu, by the way, and this, and people who know me know this, if both of those things are in the menu, I will order both of them.

Shark 25:31
Good point. Good point. So Brian, where can people find out more about you keep up with what you're doing your thought leadership and more.

Brian Solis 25:39
Well, for the most part, I'm Brian solis.com, is a good hub at Brian Solis on all the socials. And you'll see that a lot of a lot of my role at Salesforce is global innovation evangelist is a lot of a lot of alignment with work with salesforce.com out there. So you'll see it all through those hubs. And I really want to say thank you for, you know, allowing me to share the some of my work and I if you want to connect, you can always ask me out there and I will reply.

Shark 26:10
Absolutely. Brian, thank you so much for being with us today on this episode of A Shark's Perspective with the great team at Invoca and the Invoca summit.

Brian Solis 26:19
What a What a pleasure Invoca. Thank you and thank you. It's my my first engagement with real life shark and so I appreciate it.

Shark 26:32
So there was my conversation with Brian Solis, the Global Innovation evangelist at Salesforce, a world renowned keynote speaker, often referred to as one of the greatest digital analysts of our time, and award winning author of eight best selling books, including Life Scale.

Shark 26:46
Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Shark 26:49
First, I will simply quote Brian from one of his writings and say, organizations are disrupted when their customer expectations and behaviors change. entire industries are disrupted when customer expectations and behaviors change at once around the same time. It's so true, businesses have to be looking forward to date as technologies advance as customer relations with those technology advance, and his expectations of those same customers skyrocket forward. A lot of companies say that they leverage data, but not enough do. And being able to do that to accelerate to your customers needs is critical at this point.

Shark 27:25
Second, Brian and I discussed studies on changing consumer behavior. It's an incredibly important issue for brands to realize, especially because customers are trying out new brands, three out of four consumers as the studies show, and a great majority of those intend to stay with those new brand choices. So this gives us an amazing opportunity as marketers to be able to capture a lot of audience out there acquire new customers, but it creates a lot of volatility, and a real need for companies to dramatically improve their customer experience. So his advice in mind is to start in focus on your customer.

Shark 28:00
Third, big shout out to the team at Invoca and so honored again to be a part of the Invoca Summit. Hit me up if you want the 411 on the power of their technology. Thank you Invoca!

Shark 28:11
Got a question send me an email to kenneth@asharksperspective.com. Thank you again for the privilege your time. I'm so thankful to everyone who listens.

Shark 28:19
Thank you to the amazing sponsors Invoca and Drips. All things considered. I'd rather be in Santa Barbara right now. But wherever you are physically or virtually, just keep swimming. And join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
[music]