57:18
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, customer, website, buying, company, customer experience, internet, technology, bit, purchase, understand, nigel, google, selling, couple, business, find, talk, learn, information
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Nigel T. Packer
Damon Pistulka 00:02
All right, everyone, Welcome once again to the face of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. We’re here today with Nigel Packer coming to us from the UK. Late Night his time. Thanks for being here, Nigel.
Nigel T. Packer 00:18
It’s my pleasure, Damon, it’s really been quite excited about this all day. So I just come back for a nice long walk on the beach a couple of hours ago. Oh,
00:27
nice.
Nigel T. Packer 00:28
Yes. So I got all fresh freshened up and ready for today’s session.
Damon Pistulka 00:31
Nice. So awesome to have you here, man. Because it’s, it’s not so often not ever yet have I had, I would say an internet legend like you on because man, it is cool as heck, when you look at your history, and we’re going to talk about your background a little bit. But it’s just fun for me to be able to talk to somebody that has literally been around the internet since it you know, since some of the inception days, and then continued to work with it and now are continuing to work with the you know, some of the latest things that are happening and customer experience.
So I’m just I’m super pumped to talk about it. But that’s don’t listen to me talk less than less than listen to you explain a little bit about your background and some of the things when you you know, starting in the internet and kind of how that transitioned into, you know, customer experience and helping people and, and how that came from, you know, the birthplace of the internet almost into selling things online and moving to where we’re at today.
Nigel T. Packer 01:34
I think it all goes back to when I was quite young, I’ve always been interested in how things work. And especially on mechanical perspective, even as a small child, I had quite a quite a rocket from my father from time to time, because some he loved tools, and he had taken apart and put back together again. And he got quite upset because I always ended up with one or two screws left over.
Damon Pistulka 01:56
Yeah,
Nigel T. Packer 01:57
we think can still works. I mean, they didn’t need these in the first place. But then, after a while, and he that’s when he got upset. But but it moved from that. And I remember when I was 10 years of age, oh, standing up the television shop watching two men climbing down a ladder or one chap climbing down the ladder and stepping off it. And he was the first man to walk on the moon.
And it just put me in front, you know, in that position where I was just excited about technology about, you know, all the advances in science and everything else. And I’ve always been interested in that perspective. But funny to say that because when I was 12, I started my first business. Now I grew up by the seaside and one of the great things about living by the sea, there was always plenty of fish in it so you can catch fish and then sell them on the beach. Yeah, I noticed was it goes nice to the people buying and ask them questions about about what they would do with it, how they caught the fish macro, mostly.
I used to find that they they would say to me, and then I would adjust my conversation with them to demonstrate how easy it is to cook and what a wonderful breakfast it will make for you tomorrow morning. And so I use all those features and benefits for them. And as a result, I sold more I can put my prices up. But they got really excited because it’s so fresh and everything else. And I think I’ve always carried that belief, if you understand your customers, if you know what they’re going to do with whatever you’re selling to them, and what are they actually buying, then it helps them
03:35
to purchase
Nigel T. Packer 03:36
or helps them to encourage them to purchase. So it’s something that I I’ve done all my life really. And I went as I said I was in engineering at the time, electronics was the big thing. So I went off and study electronics engineering after school and college. I studied and worked in in Swansea University, and they were working on that.
And this is back in the 70s. Now, so we worked on the on the late state of the art technologies we’ve seen CMOS logic rather than TTL have moved on. And it’s amazing the technology has changed. And how you’ve gone from back in the early 70s where the computers fill my office now. Whereas today they fit in a watch or small mobile device like a phone. So anyway, we will go on from there and I really wanted to get into mechanical engineering again. So I got a job working as a production manager.
So production engineering was my thing. But I was learning about business, not just the stuff I learned on the beach and various other businesses I’d run up until the time I went to work in in I was production manager and I learned a lot about other things such as quality issues. And, you know, and again about the importance of efficiency within production systems. So that was my engineering stuff coming up. And then I got a bit upset with the people who run the business, even small family firm, the I didn’t get the promotion I was expecting, so I got really upset about it.
And I walked out from that job. And three weeks later, I walked into a mechanical engineering company, not far away in a similar industry, where I proposed an idea and a concept with them, which they ran with. And that’s when I ended up getting a couple of patents with my name written across the top. I don’t own the intellectual property rights, unfortunately. But I did do all the development of the product. And that was sort of steel coal industry, which I’ve been with junk from electronics, but it was still engineering still at the forefront of design and innovation.
Anyway, again, I seem to upset my people who employ me quite a bit. So I ended up walking over that night. Yes, I released my contract on that job. And my wife, who I’ve married in the meantime, she was a graphic designer. And in 19 1995, she built the first website, website, and because suddenly the internet’s HTTP and Tim berners Lee’s development of the Hypertext Markup Language, HTML, allow that to happen. So yeah. The essence of the website she was building, because we talked quite extensively about it was was about how, who’s gonna be using these, these websites?
It’s not the companies. It’s the customers of the companies. Yeah. So they need to be able to get the information they’re looking for. Yes, it’s got to have a little bit of it’s got to give an impression of the on the background of the company through the design and the imagery. But fundamentally, people are looking for information. And the thing is, if you don’t lay out that information, and they language, how they want it, then they’re going to just leave. And we’ve seen that very early on from the beginning. And then this company called Google came along in 1998.
And started off this new search engine thing. It’s quite interesting, because the other day I was, there’s a book here called the incredibly indispensable web directory. And this is how you should be able to, there’s a book here, how you should be able to find websites. And these are print direct. Yeah, yeah. websites. And Google came along and spoke all that printing work, and had this search engine. So my wife’s clients were complaining to her that they couldn’t be found on this newfangled search engine in 98.
So I’m still working for the engineering company. But in the evenings and weekends, I was helping her clients started to get onto this search engine, how to how, how would they be found. So I, I looked around in the UK, and there was nothing. But then I merican market, where they were a little bit more advanced than us at the time. As far as websites were concerned, I was trying to learn things about search engine optimization, but even that, that always, even though getting to the top of the search engines was important.
And it was much easier back in those days, it was much harder to get engagement with the customer, because the designs, and the information was much more important than the way people communicated. And this hasn’t changed. And it’s still back to this fundamental even today, all the technology is improved. And we’ve got wonderful things these days. I mean, back then you’d never imagine you could take a device out of your pocket straight from start Star Trek, I mean, the film people, and they post them on the internet as a matter of seconds later on this, this is the thing, the technology has advanced considerably since then.
But there’s one thing that’s been consistent, and that is the human being that people use it, they’ve always been consistently at the same perceptions, the same ideas, the same needs the same once the same desires, the same psychological issues that come with using the internet. And the one thing that we learned back then, was that the internet is a self service environment. Yeah, customer, the person using the connection device, whether it’s a mobile a PC or laptop, or tablet. They’re the ones controlling to a point where they’re going, because they know what they want.
And if they don’t understand what the journey that they take through that that digital journey from link to link and the information that’s presented to them if they if they get lost on that journey or they’re presented with a barrier. Then, because now we have millions of different websites across the world, they just think, Oh, I just go back to the search and go to the next one in the list. So you’ve lost the client inspired them to actually buy the product or buy the device that you’re selling, or engage with them. And you’ve lost because of a screen that comes up and say, sign up to our newsletter now. Yeah, so they’ve arrived on the website.
Damon Pistulka 10:28
Yeah, it’s it’s interesting when you are talking about this, though, because partially because I just did a presentation on an overview for an e commerce group this morning. And we talked about the very same thing about the fact that the digital transformation that’s happened over since about the late 90s, to the early 2000s 2010. And really, once we got a phone in our hand, the, the whole game changed on the way that that sales are done, and people research and find out what they want to do, because you showed such a great example there of the printed directory.
And before that, the phone book, and the phone book was just getting you the phone number to call somebody on my phone, which now that then it went to the same type of directory showing you where to go on the website, or on the internet to find to find a certain website. And now we use Google to search everything. And we’re not using desktop. Now we’ve also got our phone. So we’re searching it every minute when in the exact minute we need it, to hopefully get the exact information, we need to take us to the links that go right to the information that we’re looking for.
And when you get to that point, the whole sales process has changed because of the fact of what I just said, and what you were just talking about, in that we have all this power at our fingertips literally 24 seven, and the customer is in control of this journey. Whereas used to be us as salespeople, we were in control a lot of it, because we had to explain to the customer that needed something about us the solutions and the things that we provide. Because they and and make sure there’s a need.
Now the customer wants to find that information they want to find out about you. They want to find out about how how you’re helping people and they want to do it the way they want. They want to feel the way they want to feel when they’re doing it. Yeah, they want to get a great feeling about bout you when you’re doing it. This is just it’s so fascinating, because you’re talking about customer experience. And and I think that people don’t really understand customer experience like they should and the digital realm.
Nigel T. Packer 13:03
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things are fundamental things that people should realize business owners, with digital shops and all the other things that go with it even on the online businesses, and even the ones who are not online, but use the internet as a route for their customers to get to them. Firstly, not everybody wants to buy your product. The very big fundamental, there are more people out there who don’t know you exist. Okay. And the other thing as well is if you talk in the language of your industry, that people who want your services or Won’t your products don’t understand that language.
They don’t understand the out the nickel terms that you use the industry terms that you get. So don’t write in that language. And I published an article a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn. called are we shooting ourselves in the foot? And basically people write wonderful articles, great information about the industry and about the things that can be provided or that people should be looking out for. But the one thing that in their eagerness to write that content. It’s only for a competitive.
Yeah. Okay. And it’s not for the people that actually looking to get into the industry. And it I’ve seen it so often. I do a lot of work with the languages industry because of internationalization of websites. And I was talking, I was doing a presentation out in, in Lisbon in Portugal back a couple of years ago, I asked the question, what is it that translation companies do? And people are putting their hands up, put your hands up and tell me and I counted a couple of people and they were saying things like, well, we translate it. I said, No, you don’t.
You help your customers to communicate. So you’re a communications company. You’re helping them to translate their language into another language that they can communicate. With the customers in that market. Yep. I just like it’s like the late 80s went on later 1980s all through the room. And this was a European conference, it was brilliant thing. And it’s so much fun with them. Anyway, that’s another story. But But the thing is, is that realization? And the thing is, what is that there’s one thing that the technology cannot do.
And yes, AI is getting much more clever all the time. But AI only looks at the past, it counts up the numbers of steps that people have taken. And it can give you some indication of what’s going on. But people are people that don’t do things by the book, the different everyone’s different, we are all have different prompts to go and do something. And I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make is they rely on data and data analysis written by, or information that they draw from data done by algorithms are written by technology individuals, software developers and technology people.
But what does that information really say, and sometimes a conversation with a client can give you so much more information than all the analytics, you can pull from Google, you know, all the information you can get from Google. And all other systems are out there. I’m not saying they’re no good. They do give you prompts and ideas and make you help you put a hypothesis together. But then you can test that hypothesis by talking to lose customers by asking the right questions.
It takes a lot of experience to understand what are the right questions are, I think one of the things that I found is, is that technology can’t tell you the emotional journey that that customer is taking. And it depends on what you’re selling, if you’re selling holidays, people are looking forward to their vacation, they’re looking forward to the holiday that they’re going on. Okay, so they’re excited about it, they’re really pumped up. And yeah, we’re gonna have our family holiday, we’re going to someone nice and warm, and the hotel and all these lovely things to do. So they’re excited. So they looking looking for a place that’s going to do it.
But if someone’s got financial issues, and they need to sort out with a debt management agency, or some water, some other financial services company like that, then First of all, they’ve gone through a barrier of, of guilt, of lack of loss of pride, of failure, there’s all these muscles there, their emotions really go down. So if you can actually interfere with that and prompt them, so when they they spoken to you when they’ve engaged in, there’s no judgement, there’s nothing or at all, and it’s, you know, a lot of people have been in the same situation, if you could take them up above the line of CT row, from a negative position to a positive position.
How much better will they be feeling afterwards? Yeah, how much they think of you as an individual. And again, there’s all these different things. I mean, that AI can’t tell you that. Yeah, it can’t, and sending out a blanket email or questionnaire with a load of inane or questions that we’ve defined answers. Okay, and all the good news tick one to say, this is why how you feel? How do you know because you can only give an option of say, four or five different answers.
Whereas if you have a conversation, just like this with the client in a, you know, in the right environment, then you’re able to be able to give them the the support they need on that journey. And you also help to understand now this is something we could do in the shop. You know, you walk into a sharper hardware store, I used to work in a hardware store in swanzey, many, many years ago, I was younger than I had dark hair as well, anyway, I go in and customers would come in and and you you see what you’re looking for and the big responders, or what is it to do?
And this is the thing, that this, this is the thing when someone buys something, are they buying it because they want that particular thing? Or are they buying it for another reason? That’s another question that nobody asks, What is the person buying because customers buy things that you’re not selling? Take for instance, a drill bit. Okay. Did you do any DIY Damon?
Damon Pistulka 19:27
Yes, I do. Yes. Yeah.
Nigel T. Packer 19:28
So you’ve got probably a nice workshop and you’ve got some, all the drill bits laid out so you can get what you need. When you go and buy a drill bit. Are you buying a drill bit? Or are you buying a whole that’s the whole it’s the whole you’re buying.
So what’s the whole thought is it in a piece of metal to get a thread in it so you’d need something that will do, you know, a steel drill bit or drill bit is always in a war hole, you know, all these other things. And then it’s more than just the you know, it’s not just the drill bit. Even when you’re Selling other things, services and facility software, even if you don’t understand what the customer is actually buying or why they’re buying it,
20:10
How the hell can you?
20:12
Sorry? Okay, I don’t know if you bought so every month.
Damon Pistulka 20:14
Yeah, that’s all right. It’s just
Nigel T. Packer 20:17
how do you know what to sell? Yeah. And and this is another thing, another part of it. So not just the emotional journey, it’s understanding why they’re buying it. Because are they buying it as a gift for a father in law for his birthday? Or are they buying it?
Because they want to do it themselves? And if they do it themselves, have they got all the other pieces that go with it? So there’s a huge opportunity to upsell. So when you’re in the shop and someone walks in, you can talk us through? Yes. Whereas on the internet, you can’t, because they’re all anonymous. When you’re on the internet, it’s a self service environment. So the customers lose meaning it’s how do you lead them if you don’t know what they’re looking for.
And this is, this is something that can be done very, very simply without having to spend a vast amount of money on one technology systems and AI systems and data analysis systems. You just pick up the phone and talk to someone talk to put your head down again, you can do that as a team within your own company. And this is where we do our training of facilitation. You know, we go into companies and we talk to the marketing and the sales team. But we want to talk to the people who are front of house, we want to talk to the people who are actually talking to the customers because they got the answers.
So involve the city, you know, and walk in the customers shoes. I did a TED talk a couple of years ago in swanzey. On the TEDx talks, and it’s up there on one day you’re walking in the shoes of your customers, and it’s all about the tourism industry. Yeah, is when someone I go back to that when someone is buying a holiday, you know, who usually makes the pert the decision? Okay, and and how can I say this? It’s usually the female partner. Yeah. Yeah. She makes the decision of where they’re going because hubby’s too busy working on things.
And then you turn she turns around, she’s found the place because that’s the two weeks we got holiday or one week in the States. We get two weeks in Europe. That’s, that’s that’s the thing. So she makes an ultimatum and says, this is where I want to go this year with the kids. And we have a good time. But what is she looking for? That she looked for the especially if it’s self catering accommodation? is she looking for a place where there’s a fantastic kitchen model? Where I spoken to the last thing they want to do is be cooking whenever they want to?
Yeah. And so she, you know, when you look at the websites, they’ve all got perfectly appointed kitchens. Okay, but what she wants is a little bit romance. I’m sorry, it sounds like it. These are the things that you discuss when you develop personas about your customers. They have to be open discussion, environments where nothing, nothing is left unsaid. Because, yeah, it’s about identifying your customers and how they work and how they feel, you know, what the scenarios are of their journey. Where’s the starting point, from discovery to purchase, and, and beyond.
And those are the sort of facilitated events that we have with clients. It’s sometimes people just don’t think of these very, very small things at all affect what you writing content, what keywords you’ll use to optimize your website, what touchpoints you create, to sprinkle around the internet, on social media and on our in articles on on guest blogs, and all the you know, website, magazine websites, these sort of things you need to be thinking about. But you need to know who your customers are beforehand. Yeah. And I’m sorry I’m blathering on but no, no, but
Damon Pistulka 24:12
I mean, you’re going through the right thing, because we’re talking about customer experience today with you. And really this, this is all about it. Because when you look back and you look back at when when people started building internet or building websites, right?
They built websites to show off themselves basically, that’s what it was. It’s a show off themselves. And their customers really honestly don’t give a shit about that they they’re there. They’re there to buy a product to find a solution, whatever it is, they don’t really care that you’ve got a really nice building and you’ve got great people and you’ve got they really don’t care. Is it is it Do you have what I need at this point? That’s what they want. And I now
Nigel T. Packer 24:56
go ahead. It’s not instant thing and and it’s funny. When you look at, even today, your website’s going up by look at today. You’ve got home about services. blog, contact us. That’s that that’s the the global menu on on every page of the website. Most people are more, you know, where do you want people to be spending half an hour looking to find out who you are where you’re based?
That’s a step that should be on every page. Yeah, right on the bottom, because we know people learn. And this is something that was said by NIDA in the need for normal growth, you know, part of their the things that they said people learn more on other people’s websites than they do on yours. So you’ve got to have a consistency with other people’s websites. But the important thing is is can they get to the information they’re looking for?
They don’t people when they arrive on your website, they don’t want to spend half an hour trying to find it, because you’ve lost them after the first 30 seconds. Yeah. Okay. Everyone goes out with high expectations when they go on the internet to find the information is a high expectation, and they get very low frustration levels. How long do you think it takes for the frustration to build up and the expectation and excitement to drop down to the crossover? Okay. Everyone thinks always five or six seconds, actually, they’ve measured it down to point 7.75 of a second. Oh, wow.
A second. And they’ve lost interest because something slow loading. And yet Everyone is busy rushing to put up widgets and clever things on their website. So it slows the load time. And when you’ve got Wi Fi? It’s even slower again. Yeah. So it’s, if they look, you’ve lost the customer before they even got to the website. And that’s something that you know, and you’ll never know how many of those around. Okay, so it’s, you’ve lost those customers before even had a chance to find out and tell them what they are. And most of those customers don’t even know who you are. But quite remember I said earlier?
There are more people out there who don’t know you exist and don’t know your products and services exist? And do you think it really everyone’s chasing after the ones that do and always chasing after the ones that don’t? So how do you get to that market, you’ve need to understand what the process is for them to go into that discovery pipeline. So they discover your website, they discover your business, so what do they call it? And this is where keyword research is the key phrase, and now you’ve got things like voice activated search, with Siri and Alexa and all the other systems that are out there. So people’s questions have changed.
Whereas in the past, they’re waiting two or three words for the truth, people are too lazy to type in full questions. So that when they’re speaking, it’s easier. So they say Where can I find a? Whatever it is? Yeah. And this is one of the interesting things about the technology. I find it very difficult, I got to keep clearing my cache all the time. Because when I do research, and I do searches online for a whole wide range of things. And what’s so frustrating is that Google now is collecting my information. And they say, Oh, we can predict what he’s looking for. We offer these. And we’re a completely different sort of subject or topic area.
Okay, so they are suggestions are way off kilter, huh, you know, the wrong taking me down the wrong thing. So you know, becoming gatekeepers. And that’s the difficulty. Because I got to go and find other search engines and look on stuff, I find that what I need, and then go back to Google and do the same searches, because I need to find on Google because that’s the one everyone uses. Mm hmm. So I have to be good for the clients. And these are all the things that present difficulties for people. And that’s just to get them to the website. Once you get them to the website.
There are so many things. I came across it a couple of months ago, where people use WordPress and don’t get me wrong. WordPress is a wonderful system. It’s easy for people to use, it does lots of things for sales, shopping, shopping carts, and booking systems and all these other stuff on there. But the difficulty that we have is that the more you load into the site, the slower it becomes. And now we back to that frustration and expectation or excitement and frustration. The other thing is, is what happens when those two lines cross over? Yeah. People leave, they’re gonna bounce, bounce off and go and find someone else to talk to, or to find information for.
29:37
So how can
Nigel T. Packer 29:39
businesses overcome that issue? And it’s fairly straightforward. You think like the customer. Yes. you present yourself like the customer, you understand how their digital journey is going, what they are prepared to do and what they’re not prepared to do. And then you re engineer that path to give Some information sent so that they, they’re encouraged to keep taking the next step. And when they get to your web, so they don’t go to the home page or to some page where they then go to search for something else, they’re presented with a button that says start here.
That’s what they’re looking for. And most, most failures on websites are because there’s a failure to start from the actual customer, the visitor to the website. And that’s where things like user experience comes in. Now, the problem with user experience is that that deals with individual steps in the journey, whereas customer experience deals with the whole journey from start to finish. And this is where this is where I find the excitement of it all. Yeah, because customer companies are already starting to wake up to it now.
Damon Pistulka 30:56
100%, they’re just starting to understand what that really is.
Nigel T. Packer 31:00
The big companies, Amazon, eBay, Google. You know, those big international companies, these global corporates, they got teams of people will be studying this for a long time, Google, we’re in a perfect position. Because these there are, as I said, they’re a bit of a gatekeeper. So they can make small changes they website to see if it improves transition. Okay, so it’s always good to watch what they’re up to.
There’s a lot of companies out there that are gaming, what they do, and they’re trying to game the algorithms that they’re producing. That’s why they keep having updates. And it’s a bit like the, you know, the International battle, will they build a faster, higher playing jacks, the Vanu, and then they develop a system to pull those things over the sky. So then you’ve got to get a better one again.
And so there’s this sort of back and forth seesaw effect. And it’s the same on there, where people gain Google to try and get their clients higher up. And then Google puts in algorithms to stop that happening. And this has been going on since the beginning. I remember the first algorithm he built was white, if the text is the same color as the background, ring, all this, okay, disadvantage that site, and it all came, and I’m sorry to say this, but it all came from the porn industry, because they were gaming it.
So anything you typed into Google back in 1999, youalways end up with a half a dozen porn sites. I’ve seen that seesaw going on all the way through in the last 20 years. Okay, then it became that links, backlinks are really important. So then you’ve got companies out in other parts of the world who set up a series of 10,000 websites, and you pay $100. And suddenly, you have 10,000 backlinks coming in. So you saw advancing your website, you got to the top of the search engines, Google will come along if the if a company has 10,000 links in less than 24 hours from one geographical region of the world, then disadvantages that site, so they never find another thing.
So then recommendations, how many recommendations have you got how many testimonials here. So you see online people will offer to sell you 100 recommendations for $100 It keeps seesaw back and forth, back and forth. And this is where technology is always going to be gained. Whereas if you actually start off with the premise that the customer is going to be using this site with so without getting to the top of the search engines, because that can be done in many ways you can start an AdWords campaign, you can do all these other things. I keep talking I hope I’m not talking to
Damon Pistulka 33:43
no I’m listening, I’ve been listening because I’m preaching to the choir here because it really is it is one of the things that I think that people need to a put themselves in the position of the customer when they look at anything they do and this is this it doesn’t matter if you’re creating a flyer, or if you’re if you’re creating the homepage redoing the homepage on your website or your product pages or your listings or whatever you’re trying to do online or in real you know in the physical world.
It really has to because of what we talked about a very long time ago here is the the position of the customer has changed the buyer has the power now in these in this situation because of their access to knowledge and what they want to see and if you’re not putting yourself in their position and providing the the experience the information, the path that they want to follow this aren’t gonna follow it you just use done and as you said,
there are so many people that don’t know about you that that in that you should a think about first that customer experience and how you can let them know Know About you while helping them find what they need and helping them find out if you’re the right solution or not, or whatever they’re looking for. But if you don’t do any of that, there’s going to bounce away.
But there’s but your opportunity I always think of ecommerce when I’m talking to people or digital strategies for businesses and in the fact that it comes back again, to what you said two things promises, you said, it’s like, most people don’t know about you. And they’re gonna get away really quickly. If they don’t find what they need, they’re just going to get off your website. So those two things in mind and just build, build your website with that build your processes, even your process all the way through, if you’re selling online to the buy, and make that as simple as you can, from the customer’s perspective, or as easy and pain free.
When you look at the Amazon or the Walmart’s or some of the big ecommerce, Alibaba, some of these e commerce places are bigger, Amazon’s a notorious I mean, if you’re selling on Amazon, you may hate their customer policies that they can return whatever you want them return, however, you know, for basically whatever reason, but they do that for a reason they make it in they they do prime today shipment in like the least they do in the US for a reason. They, they know that that’s what the customers want. They want the customers want to return things easy. They want and they want to be able to get it quick.
Nigel T. Packer 36:24
I don’t the same mistakes. But one of the issues that we’ve got in the UK is that 50% of deliveries never made, never never get picked up on the day that’s mostly delivered, because people are either out on the miss the slot or whatever goes on. And so there’s a there’s a huge issue with returns. And it’s a massive issue, because lots of companies again, it it’s down to putting the systems in place.
Now this this is not that this is not to do with the internet. But it is to do with customer experience. Yeah, yeah. And and I think this is sometimes this is an issue when you get some people in the industry who aren’t aware of all the things that are going on around it. It’s about the business processes themselves.
Now, have you got a good delivery service? And can you tap in and show people where things are, do they do they give a location of where the product is, or your purchases in the journal that come to your house? Do you get a phone call or an email or text like 20 minutes before to say it’s, it’s going to be with you in the next half an hour, make sure you’re there. There’s all these things that a lot of the smaller companies and medium sized companies are not delivering on because they’ve got their own internal systems, but they haven’t thought it through for their customer.
Because that is still part of the customer experience. And customer journey is the bit when they’ve made the purchase. And they’re getting excited about receiving the goods. Okay, and these are, these are some of the things that Apple have done a really good job on. Because they now have where they can actually advertise the fact that it takes 1.37 seconds or whatever it is, or even longer 13 seconds, when you hold the corners of the box of your new I 27. Where you just hold the corner box, and that’s slow, they measure the time it takes for that box to open. And they’ve made an issue of this as part of their customer journey.
And the customer experience the excitement of opening the box, and there’s a new phone and then peeling off that plastic thing. I think there was an episode of The Big Bang Theory, where they just received the new phone all the guys have gathered round. And they’re taking I think it’s right now the one guy, the Indian guy on the program, and he getting all excited about peeling back plastic sleeves, yeah, yeah, he’s part of that process. They, they joined in with the customer and said, you know, if you really want to enjoy property, you should be doing this. And so they they got investment in customer experience, they’ve got the investment in the journey.
And if people sat down and thought about their process, they can have that same excitement build up for their customers, how to enjoy your packaging, okay, and and again, when you’re buying a product or something that you have to assemble yourself, because you get that satisfaction of making something, but all the parts are in the box, if there’s a part missing, but frustration levels, so I care of you know that they’ve really developed that system. So even they produce the documents to assemble it, the assembly documents that you know, and they do it by visuals and images rather than by writing in 17 languages.
So they’ve had to overcome cultural differences as well because I you know, as you know Avon, USA manufacturing our evening and I joined them.
For us. It’s a Thursday evening. It’s lunchtime for you both. But but it I get a pleasure of that. But I’ve learned so much about the cultural differences of using things like Twitter, I often get very nervous about making some comments which should be treated as humor with us, but may offend someone in the States. So I actually hold back quite a bit. Yeah, often I see things that people in America put out, but I’m thinking, Wow, that’s a bit bit strong, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s acceptable over there.
Whereas it would be seen as a bit rude here. And also, again, there’s a language issue. Okay, because you call certain things, certain things, and we call them something else. And sometimes what we call something quite innocently, you treat it as something bit bad. And I love those contradictions that go on here. And we share the same language. Yeah. You don’t have to spell a property by the end of the story. Yeah. I’d be interesting to see the the the text at the bottom to see how it’s translated when the record program goes out? Because can they understand my way, Welsh accent
Damon Pistulka 41:16
that’s doing pretty good. So far, I think we’ll see. The, you know, the interesting thing that you talked about here from customer experience today, it was just a little difference that, that in the US, when we get deliveries, they don’t very, very, very seldom Does anyone have to be around for a delivery. So it’s basically the driver comes to your house, they drop it off, boom, that’s the end of the end of the thing, because I think they’ve virtually given up on most of that coordinating the deliveries.
And, and, and literally, I don’t know what it’s like, they’re obviously in the UK, but we get deliveries, there’s a lot of households, they get a delivery day, or multiple deliveries a day throughout the week, because the the e commerce buying habits have changed so much. And COVID just drove him that much higher when you know when you could Well it started out with supplies, you couldn’t find toilet paper, you couldn’t find whatever else, but Amazon had it or and then you’re sitting here and you couldn’t go to the store that you wanted to well, then I had to buy some laundry detergent, I had to buy some clothing or I had to buy electronics.
And then the next thing you know, you’re just like, well, it’s just as easy. I’m just gonna click click, and it shows up at the door. I mean, I just did it with some vitamins. My wife brought some down to me today I ordered vitamins. I didn’t order vitamins online, before that, and then and I’ll probably never walk into a store in order. I’m again.
Nigel T. Packer 42:42
This is where the future is going. Yeah, I
Damon Pistulka 42:45
think so too.
Nigel T. Packer 42:46
And it’s a funny thing, because I wrote an article a couple of quite a few years ago, where I said that the future of purchase, the future of shopping is going to be online. Now it’s not going to be for everything because there’s still no no need to walk into a shop and buying something you’ve discovered and trying it on and and if there’s the interest in instant gratification, or the purchase. Now this is quite interesting, because I bought quite a few discussions about this. Because when you deal with the internet, there’s multiple, there’s multiple gratification points. Okay, there’s the first one, which is the discovery finding and the purchase.
Okay, so when you know the discovery to start with, there’s an excitement point, the next thing is the is a purchase. So you have that excitement that you get when you’re in a in a boutique shop. And you get that excitement, and then there’s the weight and the build up. And then it arrives. And there’s another excitement point, okay, and gratification points. And then there’s the train it on. And then there’s the eventually taking it out wearing it and showing it off to your friends. And so the internet actually provides multiple gratification points, whereas a purchase in the shop as you go in, you see it, yeah, but it all happens in a very short period of time.
Whereas on the internet, it’s drawn out on 24 hours, or Yeah, depending on delivery times. But I think the future is going to change in that. I can see a time when we walk into shops to trade clothes on, and to look at stuff and then we’ll go to the checkout. It’ll be taped out and then it’ll be delivered to the house. It’ll be done online, you’ll just see a model of it and that and that’s a business model I’ve discussed with with a couple of retail clients, because the high street is still a place you can go and look at it and people but you don’t actually buy it in shop, you pay for it there. And then it’s sent to Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 44:45
and you know, that’s funny because they’re using that model to certain extent already here in nordstroms. they they they do that here you can see that their store footprints have been shrunk down an awful lot and much less inventory is held in the store, and you just you they keep them so you can try them on basically.
And eight. That’s great. We’re gonna play Sorry, I’ll be delivered to your delivered to your house. Yeah, tomorrow. And you’re right. And I didn’t think about the e commerce purchase process like you’re explaining it does give you multiple gratification points there and multiple points of excitement. If you if you do it, right, and we’re the the physical purchase, or the process of going in and buying really doesn’t because it is so compressed. And yeah,
Nigel T. Packer 45:35
that’s something I’m so you know, if a business knowing that processes going on, if a business can pop in at each time and say, tell your friends on Facebook, tell your friends on on Twitter, this is happening or or one of the other platforms, it helps them Instagram or whatever a local agents found, hey, I bought it is coming tomorrow morning, it’s on its way,
I’ve just had a notification for the wreck, you’ve got those multiple messages that people can show off to their friends that they’re buying this new product, this new thing, whatever it is the new dress, hat, jacket, whatever it is, and, and it just builds that excitement, okay, but also the company is then being able to throw that customer being able to push out to a bigger marketplace where people never existed. But see, that’s how you start bringing people in.
And I think companies have got to start thinking about this. Now. I know we, you know, we work a lot in the manufacturing sector. So how do those businesses work with other businesses, what they’ve got to remember, it’s not the company that’s buying your product, so human being within that company. So you need to understand how that purchasing manager how that specifier actually works, I think conversation I had on one of the things in the day, but I think this was made in Britain, our which we have a quite early in the morning for you.
And one of the questions was, are you saying that we should be targeting specify as rather than the purchasing manager? I went, well have a think about it. Talk to them. Okay, understand if they are the ones you should be targeting, not the purchasing manager, because the specify you will tell the purchase manager, we are looking for one of these, I found this company that can supply it. So it’s seeing those sort of things that are going on, but the only way you find out is by talking to people and having that conversation.
Like I said back at the beginning. In the old days when people walked into the shop, you could talk to your customers. Yeah, today. Yeah, they just a number. They’re just moving through the website. And so it’s it’s that fundamental thing. So customer experience is something that that that small companies and big companies as well, media companies, they can learn about, especially in the in the digital journey, they can learn about it. I think, you know, I describe myself as a bit of a tracker that I track how customers move through it.
It’s the psychology that’s involved. It’s the all these other aspects, the more you learn about the customer, and not not as individuals, but as groups, because you’ll find everyone fits into these different things into groups. So your personas, when you when you’re developing personas, make them comprehensive. cover all these details, the sort of favorite, favorite points that you are your main core customers looking for and and put them into your promotions, put them into your target, you know, when you’re targeting a particular group of customers, make sure they can recognize themselves in your promotions.
Yes, yes, I did an article a couple of years ago, targeting directors, I just opened up with directors, are you ready for your 1000 pound fine. And it caught the reading. I mean, the number of views it had was phenomenal. No the sent me a public message or put a light on that particular broadcast. But the number of emails and personal messages I got and people who turned up a networking events, who also came up to me to a Nigel Craig article that I didn’t realize we had to do that. on audio only was that is when you register your company with it with Companies House.
There is a requirement that you put your company registration number on your registered address on your website. And I just did a survey of new websites being launched. How many of them were limited companies and how many of them were in Companies House and did they have that information on their website? And when I did the research, I found that like 68% of them didn’t. So I just did the article.
And they said well, you know some of them said to me personally, they said Shouldn’t the web designer do that? Or tell us about that? And I said, No, it’s your responsibility, you want to direct the company. And the fine is 1000 pounds for not doing it, so they’re all panicking. And they didn’t want to show themselves up that they didn’t have. Most of them. I only looked at the website at the beginning when it’s first launch and never look at it. Yeah, that’s another thing. How often do the owners of the company or the directors of the company actually go and look at their own website?
Damon Pistulka 50:27
Yeah, and look at it, and not just look at it with somebody that knows, like you said, industry jargon, wants to show off their company, blah, blah, blah, whatever you want to do look at it from the viewpoint of a customer.
Nigel T. Packer 50:40
Yeah. How many times you say we, instead of the times you say you, huh, this is about the people reading it, you are looking for x not we do x mean, when you’re looking for a good company to supply x for toys. Okay, bring them in the positive about the message.
You know, this so many other things. And again, there’s a huge market that people like restaurants and public, tourist places and everything else, I’m missing out on a Nazi, the disabled, you know, 10% of the population in the UK is expected to it’s the same, I’m not quite sure what the American issue is, but roughly 10% of the population, but they say disability is so it’s not necessarily something that’s visible. Yeah, my wife’s a celiac, we don’t eat out very often.
But when we do look at a restaurant, when you can go and eat out, we look in to see if they provide people for your food. Yeah, but they never say, what’s in the actual meal? Is there any chance of cross contamination when they’re preparing the food, so they don’t show that sort of information. So they’re losing 10% of the, I think, one in 10 is celiac. And 10% of the population in the UK has issues with wheat, or intolerance. So they won’t go because they can’t see it. Whereas they lose in that market. They losing that that spend, and it’s the same for people with wheelchairs.
And yeah, and AIDS of that type. They have difficulty in seeing whether it’s a place yeah, they can see we are wheelchair friendly, but when you actually get there, the tables are too close together, you can’t get the door to go into the gentleman’s or the services. And, and so once they do make allowances for people with wheelchairs when you get there The truth is, it’s not that easy. Yeah, yeah, there’s another huge market there. So So and it only you only have to write this once to put onto your website and making it accessible for people to find. Yeah, so I can see that. It’s now just to admit my chair, so
Damon Pistulka 52:57
it has, I didn’t even know. Yeah, yeah. Well, I tell you, Nigel, it’s it’s, it’s incredible Vietnam to talk to you because your depth of knowledge and customer experience is just, it just exudes from you. And I love listening to you. And I know the people that are listening to this and there will be listening to this will surely get a lot of value from it.
Because they we there’s very few people that understand it like yourself first of all, and and talk about it and the way that you, you, you really can explain it in terms that we can understand. So yeah, I just I really appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time with us late at night to to be on here at our live stream time. And share with us about your your knowledge and customer experience. So you You are a speaker, you you help you and you help people with customer experience. And I wanted to make sure that was clear. And and that if people wanted to contact you what is the best way to get ahold of you?
Nigel T. Packer 54:04
Well, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter, Twitter if you want to learn because I publish from time to time articles and things of that. LinkedIn. Follow me there as well. If you want to follow up information. Yeah, but my email address is Nigel at Pilates. Online. Pilates, not Pilates. Yeah, wage regime is his pal artists. Yeah. And he changed place but it’s great for customer. So it’s nice.
54:33
Yes.
Nigel T. Packer 54:35
And it’s it’s what we do. So we do training, we
54:39
do
Nigel T. Packer 54:40
advice guidance, people can contact me and we can have a chat, learn about their company what their objectives are and then help them with a Saint’s. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 54:51
Yes, that’s the other thing too is you’ve done global work for sure. And it’s Nigel t Packer on in and you will Obviously, you’re mentioned in this post on LinkedIn so people can get a hold of you there. If you’re on Facebook, you’re going to be able to see him there as well through my through my stuff, but, and we will when we put this up on our website and out on YouTube, it’ll have your email address and other things in that in the description as well.
So I just wanted to thank thank you, Nigel, first of all for being here today, stopping by to talk to us about customer experience. It’s something that I I know you’re very passionate about I something that I know that the listeners myself wanted to learn a lot more about, and we certainly have today. And I just wanted to thank you for being here,
55:38
man, absolute pleasure.
Nigel T. Packer 55:41
It’s always a pleasure to talk wherever, wherever I go. And I just love the enthusiasm from the from from the American audience and people in business in America, there’s so enthusiastic about it. We could learn a few things in the UK from your passion and your attitude.
56:03
Well, as well.
Damon Pistulka 56:05
And the what? And your friendliness. Oh, thank you, thank you on that and and I accept the compliments and hope that we can we can live up to them. And I think that, you know, the one thing that I learned today is that we really need to be customer focus and think about it and put ourselves in that from every every the way things look, the words we use, and and the feelings we get when we when we look at our son, both in the physical world and in the digital world. And thank you so much for sharing that with us today.
56:39
Thank you, Damien for having me on your program.
Damon Pistulka 56:40
Awesome. Well, that’s it for us today on the face of the business. We’re going to be back here again on Thursday. And we’ve got another great guest talking about, well, actually, we’re talking about helping veterans transition into the private sector, which I think is going to be really fun. We’re gonna have Brian Arrington from Brett vets to industry on Friday on Thursday, and talking about that. It’s a great organization. Nigel Packer, thanks for being here today. Everyone. Thank you for listening on LinkedIn, live Facebook and everywhere else that we’ve got people rolling right now and we will be back again. Thanks.
