Tom Milligan  0:03  
Hello and welcome to CX without the BS, Brian, how you doing?

Brian Nichols  0:08  
I'm doing good, Tom, how you been?

Tom Milligan  0:11  
Absolutely great. It's good to see you again, as always, just wanted to tell everybody. The reason we've done this show, CX without the BS Ryan and I started the show just a week ago. This is episode number two. And we started this show because there are plenty of podcasts out there about the CX industry about CX technology. But they're, I'm sorry, they're full of BS. And so we decided to make a show without the BS. So that is why we're doing this show. Now we're trying to be think do things a little bit different. And I hope that you like what we're doing. We drop a new episode every Friday. So if you like what we're doing, please tell the world by liking and reviewing us. You know, give us five stars or a thumbs up or whatever platform you're listening to just do whatever you do to make sure that the world knows that you like it. Now, this week's show, last week, we had Michael Belson, your ion from intelisys, scansource. He was amazing as a guest, and he is a legend in this industry. This week, we're going kind of the other side,

Brian Nichols  1:16  
which I love. By the way, Tom, I love that we're we're taking this approach.

Tom Milligan  1:21  
Yes, we're like I said, we're trying to be different than everybody else. And we're doing that because today, our today's guest is Pam O'Leary. And we're gonna meet Pam in just a second. And she's not in the CX industry. She doesn't understand the technology that we use, she doesn't understand the partner community. She doesn't know what any of us do for a living, but she is a customer and she has experience. So she is CX. What do you think?

Brian Nichols  1:47  
I think Tom, at the end of the day, this conversation and I'm not trying to downplay our conversation with Michael, or any future conversations, but it's this type of conversation with an actual consumer, someone who's actually going through a CX positive, or in this case, Nightmare experience. What what does that look like? And frankly, why are they having these issues? Because we talked about this last time, we in the CX industry, we throw around three letter acronyms like you know, it's just any day of the week, and yet you go out into the world, and the average person has no idea what these terms mean. And frankly, they don't care. They want to know I can reach out to a company have my issue taken care of quickly, and know that the issue is actually a result that that's where people care about and don't want to feel like a number. They don't want to feel like they're getting the runaround. And I think today's story is going to really showcase that. Unfortunately, a lot of CX is in fact, Bs. Yeah, that's

Tom Milligan  2:46  
perfectly said. And you brought up three letter acronyms I don't know of another industry that has more. And I'm going to tell you my the cybersecurity if that. I'm going to tell you my two favorites. My first one is TLA. Okay, three letter acronym. Yep. And my third, my second one is TFB. And for those who stick around to the end of the show, I'll share what TFB means. And I made it up. So it's that's why I use it all the time. There's so much to do with our show today. There's a teaser. If I ever heard one time you go. Well, with that. Let's get right into talking to Pam. All right, here we are with Pam O'Leary. Pam, thank you so much for being on our show today.

Pam O'Leary  3:29  
It's my pleasure.

Tom Milligan  3:31  
I'm so glad you're here. So just so our listeners and viewers know who you are. Tell us tell us a little bit about who's Pamela Leary.

Pam O'Leary  3:39  
All right, well, I am a certified personal trainer for about the last 20 years or so. And I also travel blog with my daughter. We have a travel page where we document trips all over the world. Trainer. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Tom Milligan  4:01  
That sounds like quite a life. Just let me ask. I mean, first off, how does one become a travel blogger? And what do

Unknown Speaker  4:11  
you take for that?

Pam O'Leary  4:12  
Exactly? Well, I think it's just luck. My daughter got us involved in that. Right after she graduated from college we started traveling and recording everything and all of a sudden you see that people are traveling and getting paid to travel and getting free travel and so she spearheaded this adventure that has become mother and daughter abroad on Instagram and we travel as much as we can. To as many places we can we just like to take people along with the rest with us for the ride

Tom Milligan  4:45  
and you get paid to do it. Yeah,

Pam O'Leary  4:48  
we get paid to do it but we also get free travel perks which is really great. We get free makeup we get free products. So being an influencer is a lot of fun.

Tom Milligan  4:58  
You had me at free makeup Yeah, I bet I can help you out with that. Okay, so Okay, so is that your that's your main gig or you said you're a certified personal trainer? Which are they both the side gigs or main gigs?

Pam O'Leary  5:13  
No, actually, the personal training is what I've done as a career. For the last 20 years, I work exclusively with women. I work on everything from fitness, to skincare, to just emotional well being. And that's why I only work with women, because I can relate better to them. They can relate better to me. And I've been doing that for quite a long time. I really enjoy doing that.

Tom Milligan  5:41  
That's sounds like it sounds like you've got a cool niche. And so what when you so you've been doing just, I mean, I'm sorry. You've been a personal trainer, just to women for your whole career?

Pam O'Leary  5:54  
Yeah, for 20 plus years. Wow.

Tom Milligan  5:56  
That's great. Well, let's go back to travel for a minute, though. What's your favorite destination? Yeah,

Brian Nichols  6:02  
like of all the places you've been? What's the most bizarre, exotic place to I'm curious about? Those

Pam O'Leary  6:07  
are two totally different questions.

Brian Nichols  6:09  
100%.

Pam O'Leary  6:09  
Probably my favorite place that I've been as Barcelona. There's just a vibe there that I have never found in any other place. It's not doesn't feel quite as touristy as Madrid. So Barcelona is my favorite place. And as far as the craziest place we've been, I don't know. It's probably gonna be Budapest. Not not someplace that I really want to go back. But, you know, I learned that Buddha and passed were two entirely different places. And I always just thought it was Budapest.

Tom Milligan  6:47  
I just learned something.

Pam O'Leary  6:51  
Yeah, it was it was very intriguing. Not not the most exciting destination, but you asked for the most bizarre and I found it was bizarre.

Tom Milligan  7:01  
Okay. Well, okay, then.

Pam O'Leary  7:05  
That's what I got.

Tom Milligan  7:06  
Yeah, no, I mean, that's a good one. I, you know, again, I just, we, and we've all learned. Alright, so that's fascinating about about all that. So one of the things you talked about was skincare. And I understand you've been dealing with an issue not with your skin. But you've been dealing with an issue what what's going on?

Pam O'Leary  7:27  
Well, um, you know, because we do get a lot of free products, in exchange for talking about them. A lot of times those products become staples, things that that we use every day, my daughter and I, I'm 56. And when I find something that makes your wrinkles look better, anything that you don't like about your skin, you just keep buying it long after they're giving it to you for free. And so I started to purchase items from a skincare company that I love, I love their products. But I've recently had a really bad experience with the customer service that this company offers. And ironically, I had always heard horror stories about this company. But I had not ever dealt with any issues. I'd never had to reach out to them before.

Tom Milligan  8:20  
How long have you been using their products? Probably

Pam O'Leary  8:23  
about two and a half years.

Brian Nichols  8:26  
Oh, by the way, I want to call out Tom that one thing that Pam just said, she never realized that there was actually a big issue with the customer service until you actually had to experience it. How many of us are in the same spot, right? Like I love working with this company. They're great. But you've never actually had to go in behind the scenes and deal with customer experience. So what was it that that made them biggest not so great?

Pam O'Leary  8:48  
Well, sadly, I had to call them they had a really huge promotion going. And I was super motivated to buy more products than I usually buy from them to get all of these different discounts that they were stacking on their website. But every time I would put them into my cart, and enter in the promo codes, it would take off to have the discounts and leave one of the discounts. And so I tried this multiple days multiple times went on to find their phone number on the internet because it wasn't on their website and found that they don't have a phone at all. They don't take any phone calls. They don't have any chat. Nothing, no

Tom Milligan  9:30  
phone number, no chat, nothing, just email or is that that's it.

Pam O'Leary  9:37  
Which, you know, nobody really wants to take the time to sit down and write an email. You know, I'm trying to buy something from your company and you're making it impossible and then wait for a reply which took I first got a reply that said we're extremely busy. It'll be 24 hours before we got back get back to you. Wow. So yeah, it was very disheartening. Um,

Tom Milligan  10:00  
you know, it's funny, I've been in this business long enough to remember when email was the, the phone killer. And everybody said that no one's ever gonna make another phone call to customer service. Again, it's all gonna be done via email. And I remember thinking, just what you said, nobody wants to sit down and type up an email. And so I wasn't too worried about it. And then of course, later it was SMS. And then it was social. And I don't know, what's the latest? I mean, I don't know what the latest phone killer is, or link

Brian Nichols  10:29  
is yet for this, right? But

Tom Milligan  10:33  
the phone is still king in customer service right now,

Pam O'Leary  10:36  
honestly, it really is because it's so easy to manage your problem if you can just speak to a person. And in this case, that wasn't an option. So I did send the email and wait for the reply and got multiple, multiple replies, I would say that over a three day period, there were no less than 50 to 60 emails between myself and multiple people, or what I thought were people that work for the company. And it turned out that one of the people that was emailing me, let me know that one of the people I was corresponding with over and over again, was actually AI.

Tom Milligan  11:20  
Person, we need to go back. Yeah. Let's go back. So you're sending an email, you email him, and you say, and what what was I mean, the purpose of the email was I love your product. You've offered me these promotions or discounts. And I'm trying to use the promotions and discounts that you've offered me and you're not allowing me to do so on the website. Right? Is that pretty much the summary. Exactly. And so you take the time, send the email, you get a response. Hey, we're busy. We'll get back to you for 24 hours. And then did they get back to you within 24 hours? Yes. And you thought that it was a person getting back to you? Yes. Okay. But yeah, isn't that the dumbest thing? Brian? I mean, again, yes. We're not really here to talk about the technology. We want to hear about your experience. But those of us in the technology business. Why the hell did your technology write a note to say, we're not going to write you a note? I mean, that's just damn stupid. So the CX without the BS, guess what? That's bullshit.

Brian Nichols  12:23  
Oh, enjoyable. Cool. All right,

Pam O'Leary  12:24  
sir. I felt that way. Okay, well, especially I spend,

Brian Nichols  12:27  
by the way time just just to call out to Pam because like, you're you're not just a customer, right? You are an influencer, you would think that someone of your your stature, but the company at the very least would have some type of escalated, you know, CX type of situation in place. But that's not the case at all. And not only was that not the case, you actually got the opposite of that you didn't get escalated, you got you got relegated to an AI robot. And you thought this whole time you were getting customer service, but you were just getting just fluff fake fake stuff. Wow. Sorry. I just like, that's

Pam O'Leary  13:05  
textbook answers, you know, just and the AI was incapable of helping me because it didn't know what to do in this situation. So eventually, the actual human which now I imagine this business is just one girl sitting in a room, which, which does make me think less of the skincare product and makes me wonder, God, would these would these positive things have happened from other products that I use? Was it even this company because clearly they don't have enough money to have more than one girl sitting in a room, which is how it was feeling at that point, very, very low end as

Brian Nichols  13:46  
kind of like smoke and mirrors almost Yeah, I would say for sure, kind

Tom Milligan  13:50  
of a JV company, she mixes it up on her kitchen table at night and then takes customer service emails during the day or vice versa.

Pam O'Leary  13:57  
God I hope not my cat hair and your your. Listen, I've been using that a long time. So I did talk back and forth with the actual woman, but also continually was getting the they never shut off the AI. So half the messages were for still from the computer. And I was so frustrated that I finally just said, they told me go ahead and place the order, and then we'll immediately credit you back the discount because they couldn't figure out how to do it. And so I did, I placed the order. And I contacted them again through email to say, Listen, I placed the order now I need you to give me the $70 discount. And if you can't do that, you'll have to cancel the order because I'm not going to wait weeks to get that and the AI picked up on you'll have to cancel the order and canceled the whole order. Or the human could go in there and fix the order. It was canceled. So you magnified at this point.

Tom Milligan  15:03  
Oh, man. So So now after 50 emails, 50 plus emails, some with a human and some with a bot. Right?

Brian Nichols  15:11  
Which which by the way, God bless you Pam for sticking with it for

Pam O'Leary  15:16  
$70 off. Okay, yeah.

Tom Milligan  15:19  
So so now you sit without an order, right without a product, and still no phone number to call. And so so this company you've been buying, I mean, we talked about lifetime value, you know, LTV of a customer, and I mean skincare products are expensive. And I don't know if this is, you know, if you normally pay 50 bucks a month or whatever it is you're using, but whatever it is, your lifetime value is pretty high. Not from not only from a cash perspective, but as Brian pointed out. You're an influencer. And if you chose to now you notice we have not used this company's name. And we've not asked for it. I mean, if you chose to share it, that'd be fine. But we're not going to pray for it. But you could choose to really decimate them if you wanted to. And so you would think that they'd go that extra mile,

Pam O'Leary  16:10  
you would think I did tell them in one of the emails that I only found their company through a social media influencing program that we had done with them. So they knew that I was an influencer? I don't know that they were worried that I would bash them on social media. But they certainly weren't worried about keeping my business either. Right.

Tom Milligan  16:33  
Clearly. Wow. That seems to me so, you know, as I think it was Chuck Woolery on the old dating game, he always used to say, So how'd the date end? You know, what, where are we? Well,

Pam O'Leary  16:49  
the very last response that I had from them was the human sent me an email and gave me a 25% off discount code that I could use on a future purchase. I have not made that purchase. I'm not sure whether I'll do business with that company. I'm not sure whether I'll just try to find another company that offers a similar product, the discount they were offering was $70 off 200. So a lot more than 25% off that they're offering me, I felt like they should offer me, you know, the price that they were offering through the special on the items that I wanted to purchase, because I was spending well over $200. So my lifetime benefit to them of what I spend on skincare is is pretty high.

Tom Milligan  17:41  
Yeah. Well, and it's at severe risk right now. And the they don't seem to I mean, at least they're their chatbot doesn't understand it. But it doesn't sound like they're humans understand it either.

Pam O'Leary  17:52  
Not really well,

Brian Nichols  17:54  
I'm just kind of, I'm stuck on the fact that the owner of the company, or at least we're assuming that this lady was the owner of the company, but just you know, again, lady who responded to you, you would assume that she would be able to dig into the context behind the nuance of you reaching out and all the different intricacies there. And, and she would have been able to identify like, oh, Pam is this person that we've worked with through this influencer program, like we need to triage this this request? And I think it just speaks to how so many companies there and just like us in the consumer side and utama, you and I on the seller of the technology side, like we kind of get stuck in our own worlds, right? Like the business owner gets stuck in the business owner world the customer gets stuck in the customer experience world we get stuck in selling the technology side of the aisle, Tom so like, it really, I think we're missing here. This is across the board is where all these different pieces come together and create that that cohesive customer experience. And I guess I I'm at a loss for words like I would have thought that at the very least the business owner seeing that would have started changing something of this 50 Email Plus exchange. And yeah, I hear you said and Pam, I think the biggest call out from this entire conversation thus far is that you might not only not be a customer going forward, but you might actively champion against them or find a competitor you're going to support in the future not only is that your future business now gone. It's your your, your audience's future influences. Well now gone those future customers

Pam O'Leary  19:27  
100% Wow.

Tom Milligan  19:30  
And the saddest part for me besides the fact that por Pam has spent how many hours typing but also it's an entirely and 100% preventable. The technology I'm sitting here just thinking in my head using the technology Brian and I salad sharpen. I mean, even if it were just email, that's the thing. It's not it doesn't have to be phone. It doesn't have to be chat or SMS. Even if the customer said I just want to use it. email, I can think of about 1000 better ways to have handled this situation utilizing AI and humans and everything else that you've talked about. But to do it the right way is really not that hard. No. And anyway, I'm sorry, you went through that, Pam. But I'm also glad you went through it, because otherwise you wouldn't have been on our show. So there's that.

Brian Nichols  20:23  
Just add to that, Pam, like, you're you're representing not just you, you're there's 1000s. I mean, it is a millions of folks out there who they've sat in your your shoes.

Pam O'Leary  20:34  
Yes, I'm sure most people would prefer to pick up the phone and resolve an issue in five minutes. And that's what I'm used to. This is really, you know, not something that happens all the time. But when it happens, I think that it really does decimate the relationship between the consumer and the company. Absolutely.

Tom Milligan  20:54  
Well, okay, Brian, any closing thoughts for our friend, Pam? Pam,

Brian Nichols  20:59  
I used to weigh 385 pounds, I lost 200 pounds, you're a fitness person, what should I do to make sure I don't gain any of that back?

Pam O'Leary  21:08  
Well, first of all, you should change your diet, or at least make sure that your diet consists of more protein than it does have carbohydrates. So I'm pretty sure you're already doing that. That's kind of baseline. So get out there, get some exercise every day, even if it's just walking your dog. Don't sit around watching TV, eating junk food, eat a little bit more protein. Enjoy life, do it the most fun way you can get out there and have the most fun, you can burn some calories.

Brian Nichols  21:39  
I love that I got a 14 month old chasing around. So I guess that's yeah, doing some good there. Okay, cool.

Tom Milligan  21:45  
Outstanding. Excellent. Pam, thank you so much for being here on CX without the BS. And we look forward to hearing an update if you if you dare to come back.

Pam O'Leary  21:56  
All right. Hopefully, it'll be better. Absolutely.

Tom Milligan  22:02  
Okay, that was fantastic. That was a great interview. She did. Amazing. And

Brian Nichols  22:08  
holy shit. I mean, Pardon the language, but it is Cx without the BS, but like, I'm just still shocked that the lady took that long to get back in touch with her. And the fact that an AI was just responding with no context or understanding of who she is just

Tom Milligan  22:21  
Yeah, yeah. But it's all cancel the order and boom, canceled the order. That's just nuts to me. And it reminds me, yeah, big red flag. That reminds me of a story. So anybody who's old enough, you know, I'm 56, you're 30, something 32. Somewhere in there. Okay. So when I was in my 20s, there was a very famous author, his name is Tom Peters, he wrote a lot of books about business, and one of them was called thriving and chaos. And he tells a story in there, or it's not even a story. But he tells a truth that doing what's expected, if a company does what's expected, does not generate brand loyalty. That's just customer satisfaction. So for two and a half years, Pam was satisfied. She had an issue, and they had a chance to create a loyal customer. The he posited, and I, you know, I can't say this is true or false, I kind of agree with him. He said that in order for a company to generate loyal customers, not just satisfied customers, you have to screw up and fix it beyond their expectations. And I remember reading that in my 20s. And I worked for a day planner company at the time. And so that's how old I am, is that we used to carry around actual paper day planners, and we decided to run an experiment. And we on purpose misprinted 1000 pages of this day planner for the next year. So we picked the date, you know, September 26. And it was probably a weekend or whatever, and we literally misprinted I think we switched out a zero for an O so I mean, literally no one would even notice that it was misprinted. And then after we shipped and we labeled those, we call them fillers, the full 365 day calendar. We sent those out, and we labeled the customers that got those 1000 misprints. And then we about three weeks after they received it, we sent them a new page that wasn't misprinted and a pen and with a letter apologizing for such an egregious error that we had made. And then we tracked those 1000 customers over the next three years and they purchased 15% more product from us than the average customer. And so we intentionally created a problem intentionally fixed it. And we got 15% more out of them. We created loyal customers. Now this skincare A company that Pam is working with, they are not like we just talked about, not only did they not create a loyal customer that they may have created a loyal customer for one of their competitors, who has a great deal of influence. Now, I should also point out before we go any further, if you want to follow Pam and her daughter, its mother and daughter abroad, on Instagram, so Mother and daughter abroad on Instagram, and they they do a great, a great, they put on a great show everywhere they go. It's a lot of fun to watch them. So anyway,

Brian Nichols  25:32  
it was a it was a net? Well, first of all, is a great conversation with Pam. But second of all, I mean, that goes into the world of sales, right? Like don't ask the sales question, you don't want to know the answer to the same idea. But you created the problem that you knew you're gonna build. So, but with that, and I think it really does speak to your showing different sides of the company, right? It's not just the sales side, it's not just the marketing team. It's not just the C level, now you're getting a peek behind the curtain. Now you're actually seeing how is this sausage made? And how is it maintained? Right? And if you start to get the bad experiences on that, that extra experience with the company, that starts to seep into the back of your mind into that gray matter, right? Like you start to think, well, if they're not that good in these areas, where else Aren't they good, right? And once you start to ask those questions, as a customer, you're instantly starting to put yourself into a buying mode right? Now you're starting to say, Okay, well, if they're not that good in other areas, are there other companies out there that are better, and you start to look and now to our point, as we talked about earlier, you're not just creating a situation where you might lose a customer now you're creating a situation where to your point, Tom, they will become enthusiastic supporters of your competition. So I think it really does speak to why CX is so important and not just having CX from a customer or from a company standpoint, as being a part of your business that you really focus on. But like, it's imperative, like this is something that you if you don't have it, it's going to impact your bottom line guaranteed. And Pam right now is a perfect example for a skincare company. So hopefully some folks in the CX space today who are listening can take some of the words of wisdom from Pam and from Tom Speaking of which, we do have some words of wisdom we got figured out Tom will talk about three letter acronyms. Okay. We didn't know what what is TLA. And what is TFB? TLA

Tom Milligan  27:25  
is three letter acronym.

Brian Nichols  27:30  
There's so mean. Mean, you know that all the people were taking notes at home? Three letter acronym for a three letter acronym?

Tom Milligan  27:39  
Yeah, so yeah, our business is full of TLS. And TFB is one of my favorites. And and again, pardon the French it stands for too fucking bad. So if someone doesn't like what you're doing, you can just say TFB and there you go.

Brian Nichols  27:55  
There you go. TFB indeed, and unfortunately, it's a TFB saying it's time for us to wrap things up. So folks if you enjoyed our conversation with Pam O'Leary, and if you're enjoying the conversations that Tom and I are having with Pam so we're on the customer side with folks like Michael on the the TSD side and some of the other folks we're gonna be having here coming down the pike really excited for that. Make sure you hit that subscribe button for CX without the BS on your favorite podcasts, whether that's Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, or if you want to see Tom and my lovely faces. Okay, let's let's be real, they're looking at Pam, during this episode today, head over to our YouTubes we are making sure we upload the entire video version of the show in its entirety over on YouTube. And if you are over on LinkedIn, we should be sharing some short video content throughout the week. And also we do link back to the main episode. So please go ahead. Give us some love over there. And when you do let us know that you heard us over on CX without the BS, Tom. That's all we had today. Any final words as we wrap things up?

Tom Milligan  28:54  
No, I just agree. It's TFB. We have to end it. I'm having a ball.

Brian Nichols  29:00  
Tip folks. Sorry about that. With that being said it's Brian Nichols signing off here with Tom Milligan for CX without the BS. We'll see you next Friday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai