Bring People Back to the Core of CX Work: Make Mom Proud Resources

“An actionable, smart, and fun book everyone in hospitality should read. It gets us back to why we’re in business in the first place.” – Raul Leal, CEO of Virgin Hotels

My latest book, Would You Do That To Your Mother? The Make Mom Standard for How to Treat Your Customers has been on sale for a little less than a month now, and I’m immensely grateful for all of the positive reviews it’s received. These reviews from fellow colleagues, associates, and others, have helped breathe a new life into the book, further spreading the message and values that I want all of you to employ in your business decisions as leaders.

With the guiding question, “how would you act if every customer were your mother?” my aim is for people to use this book as a resource to become better business leaders and employees, all working together to fix customer frustrations, earn loyalty, and drive growth.

Bring People Back to the Core of Our Work

During my book tour, I’ve chatted with numerous experts in the customer experience and service industry, including New York Times best-selling author and founder of the marketing strategy firm Convince & Convert, Jay Baer. In my Facebook Live interview with Jay, I share that I’ve been working on this book concept for a few years, and the messages conveyed are extremely important because as our business interactions and decisions get more complex, unfortunately, we get further and further away from the humans at the center of the work. Especially as technology comes into play, I really want our community to get back to why we do this work in the first place.

Treat Your Customers with Humanity and Respect

In my interview with fellow CX expert, Author, and Keynote speaker, Blake Morgan for her Forbes article and podcast, we further propagate this notion of putting humans at the core of our business decisions. I stress the importance of thinking about who’s on the receiving end of our work. When you think about it, this is actually a simple approach to business. We take good care of the people we care about, whether it’s our mother, sibling or a close friend, right? But in far too many situations, I’ve seen that there is a difference in how customers are treated in comparison to how we treat our loved ones. We mustn’t forget that every customer we interact with is someone’s mother, sibling or friend, and needs to be treated with that same humanity and respect.

How can we untangle some of this complicated work? In my interview with Blake, I explain what I essentially refer to in my book as letting policy and the golden rule collide. Business leaders and employees need to learn when to pause and evaluate a specific situation before taking action. When practitioners can avoid being stuck in a sea of red tape and processes, they’re freed up to connect in a more human way. Customer experience shouldn’t be about following a bunch of rules – how can you provide a good experience in such a rigid way?

What Does a Great CXM Culture Look Like?

Now, if you’re a business leader, you might be asking, what does successful customer experience transformation and management actually look like? Thankfully, there are plenty of tactics and strategies you can implement to make CXM a part of your organization’s culture. In this webinar I recorded for Adweek, I speak with Marshall Kirkpatrick, Senior Director of Influencer Relations at Sprinklr, about what’s needed from the C-Suite and leadership teams to build and support customer experience management that will differentiate your organization.

More Articles and Resources to Improve Your Customer Experience

Thank you to everyone who took the time to interview me, write an article about the book, and share the Make Mom Proud wisdom. This is all knowledge that I’ve gained from personal experience, and through observing and researching businesses who exhibit customer-focused behaviors. Below, I’m sharing more articles with you that feature insights and lessons learned from “Would You Do That To Your Mother?”

• 800 CEO Read: Editor’s Pick: Would You Do That To Your Mother? – Dylan Schleicher reviews the book pulling out important lessons such as, putting employees in a position to succeed and enabling them to thrive will help your company succeed in the long run.
• Customer Think: Enabling Graceful Departures: A Casper Case Study to #MakeMomProud – A highlight of one of 32 case studies in the book about the impact of allowing your customers to stop doing business with you gracefully.
• Shep Hyken for Forbes: Would You Do That To Your Mother? – Shep highlights one of the invaluable lessons that companies need to stop operating on their own time and operate on customer time.

Have you read the book yet? What are some of your favorite lessons that you’re ready to implement within your organization? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

HOW WOULD YOUR COMPANY ACT IF EVERY CUSTOMER WERE YOUR MOM?

How do we cut through the rigmarole of business to give customers the treatment they desire, and employees the ability to deliver it?  Customer experience expert, Jeanne Bliss recommends making business personal to get the traction you need by focusing on one deceptively simple question: “Would you do that to your mother?”