Brian Nichols  0:02  
All right and with that joining us here on CX without the BS trip Robinson How you doing, man?

Tripp Robinson  0:06  
They're well how you doing right?

Brian Nichols  0:08  
Doing good I mean Tom this just feels like a conversation at work because trip works with us so it kind of makes it easy for us Well not

Tom Milligan  0:15  
only that but trip and I've known each other for at least 10 years yeah cuz yeah too long way too long you know trips dad was my boss for many years at a prior company and so trip was I would you know, we're just we're just family at this point.

Tripp Robinson  0:34  
I was thinking to myself before I came on here you guys must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to to guest if you're having me on

Tom Milligan  0:40  
there's no doubt about it.

Brian Nichols  0:44  
I was gonna let Tom carry that one. So we didn't

Tom Milligan  0:46  
want to say anything trip. So but thanks for filling in. Someone Someone far more desirable, canceled or something.

Tripp Robinson  0:54  
You're going off to be team now.

Tom Milligan  0:57  
Oh, you give yourself way too much credit. So Tripp, this is your first first podcast appearance.

Tripp Robinson  1:04  
It is it is I'm honored to be on with two seasoned veterans of the podcast industry. But yes, this is my first podcast experience. I do a lot of talking but never on on a podcast.

Tom Milligan  1:15  
Well, we're honored. And when someday when you like do this for a living, we will say we knew him when?

Tripp Robinson  1:24  
I don't know about that. Well, that's great.

Brian Nichols  1:27  
So Trump talked to us you work here at sharpen with Tom and I, you're you're an account executive. I'll let you paint the rest of the picture. Who are you? And what the heck do you do in this world?

Tripp Robinson  1:38  
Yeah, thanks for that, Brian. So as you alluded to, my name is Chip Robinson. I'm an account executive here at sharpen covering the southeast. And as Tom kind of mentioned earlier, been in the contact center space, since I was about 12 years old, either directly or indirectly, not necessarily by choice, either. My dad has, he worked at nice in contact or in contact before was nice for about 10 years. So grew up around great guys, like Tom got to meet some great people in the business and, and knew that that was something I wanted to do at a really young age. So after I graduated college, went into a sales development role, really cut my teeth there setting outbound meetings, and then got an opportunity to work at a different C cast vendor within the space. And that's really where I felt where I fell in love with C casts. I've been in a direct sales role for about four years now had the pleasure of coming over to sharp and about five months ago, I think we have a great opportunity here within the market to capitalize on some areas that a lot of the other vendors might be overlooking, where there's a lot of revenue, and I'm really loving my time here. And that's where I got to meet my esteemed colleague, Mr. Nichols here, and I'm really loving it.

Tom Milligan  2:51  
By the way, Brian, I haven't even told you this. And I just thought of this while Tripp was given us his little bio. Trip. Where did you work in high school?

Tripp Robinson  2:59  
McDonald's with with

Tom Milligan  3:05  
my nephew? Oh, I

Tripp Robinson  3:07  
did. Yes. I forgot about that. Yes. Yeah. My

Tom Milligan  3:10  
brother's family lives here in Atlanta. And trips trip grew up about two or three miles away from my, my brother's house in Kennesaw. And we've been tripping out again, like we said, we've known each other 10 plus years and it was just a year ago or it not even that it was probably just like five or six months ago that I just remembered. I worked with your nephew at McDonald's. Eight years ago, or whatever that is. It's like holy Yeah, so what

Brian Nichols  3:39  
trip I gotta know what is it about you finding people from our yester years or our past lives? Because Tom here's a fun story about trip as well. Trip was at I forget the event down in? Was it North Carolina trip? Yes. In short, yeah. I love it. That's right. And also they get a texture and trip and he goes, Do you know guy named Andrew Giles? I'm like, yes. So by the way, for context, folks, I've talked about my past company, Stratus ip. I worked in the channel for a while and we used to do a lot in the cybersecurity space. And Andrew Giles, just all sudden trip mentions and I'm like, Yeah, I know him because he was one of the folks I worked with in the channel from a company called Silver sky. He was my account rep from there, and we'd bring him into deals. And he's like, oh, yeah, I'm like what you said you're sitting and having lunch with him or whatever. And he's like He mentioned Brian, Nick. Wow.

Tripp Robinson  4:28  
I'm a master networker, Brian,

Brian Nichols  4:30  
that's even happened. How did you find him? I forget the details of that story.

Tripp Robinson  4:35  
It was a partner event and it was with a partner out of Charlotte called off kala. We played in a golf tournament and we had some drinks and dinner after and I was just going around shaking hands kissing babies, as Tom likes to say, and I and everyone was asking me who I was with. I said sharpen and then I when I met Andrew, he said sharpen I think that's where Brian Nichols works. Do you know Brian? I said Yes, unfortunately. And then we went into the went into that.

Tom Milligan  5:02  
Are you sure this is your first podcast? It is.

Brian Nichols  5:07  
Every conversation with trip internally feels like a podcast. I love it.

Tripp Robinson  5:12  
I've been known to be full of shit before the time, so it wouldn't be the first time.

Tom Milligan  5:16  
Yes, yes. I'm fully aware. Yeah. Your dad used to tell me some fun stories.

Brian Nichols  5:23  
On that note, yes.

Tripp Robinson  5:25  
Let's change the subject on that.

Tom Milligan  5:27  
Yeah. So So trip, you've been like you said, You've been in this business for a million years, even though you're like 18 years old? Wait, you're 2626? Yes.

Tripp Robinson  5:38  
And I'm clean shaven now. So it takes a few years off?

Tom Milligan  5:42  
Yeah, I was gonna say, okay, so you do look like you're 17. Now. So. And this is the thing. Working in the contact center space. Anybody who's been in this in the CX industry knows that it's not something you learn overnight. It's this is not a, you know, come on board and get a one week of onboarding training or something, all of a sudden, you're a C Cass expert. It does take a lifetime and trip even though you're 26 years old, you've had, you know, you've literally been part of this business since you were 12 or 13 years old, which is kind of kind of funny. It's almost like the old school whenever when you grow up on a farm and you just that's your family business. Well, your family business is CCAFs, which is unique, I think. Yes, it is. But here's what I want to ask you because you're going to tell us a story today about a potentially disastrous CX experience, CFC X experience that's like ATM machine. really disastrous customer experience. Disastrous CX sounds horrible. But anyway, yeah, really bad, potentially bad customer experience. That turned into something good. But as you're telling the story, I'm going to ask you to tell include a couple of thoughts in it. And that would be how did you see it differently because of your lifetime of experience in CX. But so with that, I think we should just jump into the story. And we're going to interrupt the shit out of you. So we can get some context here. But go for it. Perfect.

Tripp Robinson  7:10  
Perfect. Yeah. So last week, I was out of the office all week, I took a much needed vacation. I don't think I've taken a week, a full week vacation in a very long time. My girlfriend

Tom Milligan  7:21  
worked here for five months, people just so you're all talking

Tripp Robinson  7:25  
about my professional career time. We're including, I'm going to use my trump hands for you, Tom. We're including a lot of different different companies here. Okay. But so my girlfriend and I decided to take a week long trip to San Francisco with another couple we went down to Monterey Bay salt Pfeiffer beach went up to wine country. Lovely, lovely trip. Lovely. Yes. Lovely.

Tom Milligan  7:50  
Zoom. Since you're not married, that you stayed in separate rooms? Yes, absolutely.

Brian Nichols  7:55  
Good. Christian boy was a good

Tripp Robinson  7:57  
LDS boy would. And so yes, we had our separate rooms. It was double the price for hotels, but it's worth it to not live in sin. Yes, exactly. So. And then. So we were there Saturday and Saturday. So our flight out was Saturday morning at 11am San Francisco time, Pacific time. We stayed with her cousins on the last night. And by the way, shout out to my beautiful girlfriend Taylor line. If you're watching this Taylor, it was fantastic. But we stayed with her cousins on the last night, which would be Friday night. And we were because they live in Marin County. So we were just going to drive to the airport quick drive, leave around 8am and then head out. And then I woke up to a text around five in the morning from Delta. And I don't think the CrowdStrike outages are a secret to anyone that's listening to this. Welcome to a text around 5am Just saying your flight is canceled. And I've gotten similar text before where it says your flight is delayed three hours or your flight we're working on getting you a new plane, something along those lines, but if it didn't say anything like that, it just said canceled, you know,

Tom Milligan  9:06  
I'm going to break in because, excuse me, I was on a call the other day talking to somebody and they were they were involved in the whole CrowdStrike Microsoft whatever we're going to call that the debacle and he said look, you know he got to the airport before he knew that he his flight had been canceled and he was coming back from vacation with his wife and kids. But he travels like you know like we do you know when you travel as much as we all do, you're used to cancellations delays, that kind of stuff and you you find a an outlet and you're you're buckled down and you just go right but some people who travel once a year or less with you know with family, they're not used to this crap and so they're freaking out. And anyway, so I'm assuming trip that you got that text and while it didn't have it wasn't normal to get a cancellation. You probably didn't freak out. I mean, you probably cried because you're such a child. But But, but the bottom line is you probably just went well with the clock, right? Yes, exactly. I'm

Tripp Robinson  10:10  
like, What the hell's going on? So then, you know, as someone that's this has happened to you before, the first thing I do is hop on my delta app and say, Okay, well, let's, let's just book another flight for later today, Saturday, or let's look at Sunday, because I was coming back to work on Monday. So I wanted to get back at a reasonable time, we had planned to get back on Saturdays so that we could have all day Sunday to reset clean, do whatever we needed to do. And then I look, when I looked on the Delta app, for Sunday, and Saturday, it just wouldn't pull up anything, there were no options or availability. So I'm like, Well, this is concerning. So then I, you know, being the CX expert that I am, I decide I'm going to jump in the queue and called delta. So delta interestingly enough, when you call into their customer support line, the first thing that they want you to do is input your frequent flyer number into the IVR so that they can identify you, and then route properly based off priority and who you are. Yes, and value. And I guess I'm not a very important customer because I was sitting on hold for about an hour and a half. And unfortunately, Delta doesn't offer Q callback within their IVR. So I'm sitting there half asleep, laying on the bed with my phone on my chest. Blasting elevator, hold music and I don't know what it is about hold music, but somehow is louder than anything else that comes out of my phone speaker. It's like It's like the amp it up a little bit. But it was extremely loud and sat on hold for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile, my girlfriend is next to me. She's trying to get a chat agent in the queue. Sorry, Tom.

Tom Milligan  11:47  
Why was she next to you know,

Tripp Robinson  11:50  
at this point, we had woken up and we were meeting in the hallway, okay. convening in the hallway. So she's next to me and she's trying to get an agent on the phone or on the chat queue. She hops into the chat queue and the first thing it says is your wait it was in terms of minutes, but she divided by 60 and it ended up being 20 hours to get an agent on the chat.

Tom Milligan  12:11  
Yes. Whoa. And

Tripp Robinson  12:15  
so we're stuck on the other side of the country with really no idea how we're gonna get home so you know, me being the the young guy that I am. First thing I think I gotta call my dad. He and for those of you that don't know my dad, he's he's approaching 3 million lifetime SkyMiles on Delta. And that's I think that might be his second or third prized possession behind his Herschel Walker jersey and and Rusty's graduation sash, but he's flown a lot. He's flown more than any human I know. So I called him and I say that, what do I do? What do we do? We're screwed. So then he's like, you know, Mr. Mr. Macho Delta. He's like, Well, hang on, let me launch a call. And they never leave me on hold. And I'm thinking he's full of shit. I've got 1000 people calling in right now and whatever. Sure enough, 30 minutes later, about an hour later, I get a text from my dad. And he got through to an agent. He spoke with them on the phone. He got my girlfriend and I on a flight out of Oakland, California for Saturday evening at about, I want to say 11pm. And he just said, Okay, well, you're going out of Oakland, and he tried to use some vouchers to get us first class tickets out of Oakland. But that didn't work. And I wasn't going to sit at the in the line and try to make a complaint about that. Then we spend all day Saturday in the beautiful Marin County it was, again, lovely. My new word Tom. Yes, he went out had dinner with my girlfriend's family around 4pm. And then we were planning to leave to the for the airport by at 8pm. So this whole time we're tracking our flight, and it's showing that our flight in Atlanta because the plane is coming from Atlanta, it's delayed. So the but it's showing our flight is on time, which is a little bit of a contradiction there. We're confused. So we're deciding, you know, do we leave for the airport now? Or do we wait, what do we do bla bla bla. So then we decide, you know, at 8pm We're just going to head out to the Oakland airport, we'll get there at 830 and the flight still showing on time? Well, literally as soon as we drop our rental car off, it's it shows that our flight is delayed now I think three or four hours until like 215 in the morning. So then

Tom Milligan  14:31  
this gives you a chance to spend more time in Oakland, which is exactly what everybody wants to do when you're in the Bay Area. Yes. Yes. Just hanging out as a coliseum stop there at BART.

Brian Nichols  14:41  
A day doesn't sightseeing down the streets too, right?

Tripp Robinson  14:44  
Yes, yes. We saw the beautiful boards on the Windows lots of locals. Yes, yes. Say hi to the locals made sure we kept our laptops locked to our backs. Yeah, so we got to spend a little more time in the lovely Oakland airport and that was my first experience in the airport. If you've been to the city of Oakland at all the airport is actually shittier. Believe it or not, so

Tom Milligan  15:10  
I actually don't mind the Oakland airport. I tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. But anyway, well, everything was closed. Because it's in the middle of the night. Yeah. Yes.

Tripp Robinson  15:19  
Like literally nowhere to purchase food or like snacks or water or anything. So we sat in there for about four to five hours we got through the airport looked like a warzone. There were people sleeping everywhere, upside down, like bats. I mean, it was crazy. But you know, so we sat there for about four hours, and then we were worried that our flight was gonna get completely canceled. Eventually, the plane got there. We took off around 215 In the morning, and we got home to Atlanta around 930 in the morning on Saturday morning. So then we slept all day, Saturday, it was a long travel day. And I was you know, I was in a what was me mindset. But when I looked around and saw everyone else in the airport, like you said, Tom, there were people that didn't travel a lot. They had no idea what was going on, they were trying to get to Atlanta for a connecting flight, they were stuck in the Atlanta airport, they had hungry kids with them, I mean, we probably have the best situation of anyone there. So that put it a really into perspective. And then you know, my dad comes to save the day with his with his SkyMiles status. And, and delta ended up actually another part of the story that just happened today, you know, Delta, they made it right. And they they use this opportunity, they use this chaos as an opportunity to kind of bolster their customer experience. I got an email this morning saying that they are going to give us 10,000 miles for the inconvenience, and that they're going to if we have any expenses as far as food, hotel rental cars, anything like that we can submit those expenses for reimbursement. Wow. So we're originally I was disappointed and unhappy with Delta, I think I have a stronger loyalty to Delta after this experience, and especially after receiving the email this morning.

Brian Nichols  17:03  
You know, Tom, I gotta go back. I don't mean to interrupt. But like this goes back to something. I think it was episode three, episode two we had with Pam, and talking about when you have the negative experiences, right? How it's an opportunity for the company to do the right thing to then make you actually like a more of a fan. But in this case, that's exactly what delta did. But when you go back to Pam story, it was the exact opposite. Not only did they make the experience worse, they made they actually pushed her away. And now she's not only going to not advocate for the company, she's probably going to be a champion for their competitors. And I'm like, I think this speaks to why it is so important to have great customer experience across the board even when things go wrong like to take the ownership because you can take someone who had a horrible experience like trip and create an opportunity to not only show that you care, but now to make trip become an advocate. I'm gonna guess for the foreseeable future trip. Am I wrong,

Tripp Robinson  18:02  
though? You're 100% Correct. Brian and, and you know, Tom's use delta for those of you listening that aren't familiar with our sharpen up partner program, you know, Delta has done an amazing job of building brand loyalty. And this is generational for me, my dad's a Delta guy, I'm a Delta guy. When we book company flights, I have to always put in the little box Why mine cost way more than every other flight because I refuse to fly any airline that's not delta when I'm submitting my expenses, and and that's just it goes back generations I'll never fly on another airline that's that's not delta I've flown spirit before worst experience of my life. But you know, they take care of their own and they have a great job of building brand loyalty. People love their Delta credit cards, people will do anything to get their status on delta or keep their status and it's, they have a great brand loyalty and a great following.

Tom Milligan  18:54  
So I'm going to tell you guys first first off that is a really great story obviously those those poor suckers that were sleeping as bats and stuff they made the mistake of not having a 3 million miler dad idiots. Yes. But then kudos again to delta for understanding that even though you aren't the 3 million miler, you've got the 3 million miler calling on your behalf. You better damn well take care of trip, you know, Bill Jr. Yes. But I gotta tell you guys a little I'm going to make it a very short story. But it has to do with airlines. And this happened. It's got to be at least 15 years ago, my now ex wife and I had just finished a short vacation. We just took a weekend over in Denver. We used to live in Salt Lake City at the time. And so we took a quick trip over to to Denver, and on the Sunday afternoon. She was flying back to Salt Lake and I was flying to Dallas for a business meeting the next morning so we were parting ways. And we were flying frontier and I have no problem trashing frontier publicly.

Brian Nichols  19:56  
It just sort of tick tock page. Oh, we're

Tom Milligan  19:58  
getting there. Oh, So, so they we, I was flying southwest to Dallas and she was flying frontier. Because Denver is frontiers big hub. And so we she was flying frontier back to Salt Lake. We checked in online, we tried, we did everything right. And we showed up at the airport like two hours early. And we had to go check in at the little kiosk thing. I mean, this was before, smartphones, that's how old I am. And they had planes back then. I know it was weird. We all had to flap. But just to help get off the ground. Yeah, everything. They said everybody jumped at the same time. And anyway, so that so they didn't have a lot of online check in or whatever. But they had the kiosks there. So we showed up in plenty of time, but the kiosk was down. And so we were we were the first people in line at the frontier counter. And this wasn't an early morning flight. This is like, you know, 11 in the morning, and there was no one at the counter. So we're calling the frontier customer service line, we're doing everything we can. And then finally, about an hour before the flight, the lady comes up to the counter. And so she calls us up there and she goes, Oh, you're too late. If you haven't checked in 60 minutes before your flight, we give away your seat. Now I don't I don't really have a temper. I don't get like mad at people. It's more like just perplexed, but their stupidity and like what? And I said, we've been standing here literally waiting for you to show your ass up right here for the last 30 minutes. We were there at the kiosk. 30 minutes before that this is not our problem, you're getting her on that damn flight. Anyway, they did not no matter what we did, they wouldn't get her on that flight. So we paid 375 bucks to get her on a Southwest flight to get home that afternoon. So I started writing emails and calling people and letters and stuff like that saying, I guess, you know, Frontier, you fuck me, I need 375 bucks out of you. And they never would give it to me. And I didn't really expect them to but hey, how about an apology? But no, they just kept telling me that I should have been there on time that we should have done differently. And it's like, there's nothing we could have done. So after getting all the way up to like VP of Customer experience, or whatever it was back then. And him telling me the same bullshit. I just said, Alright, and so I created a Facebook group. So this is the advertising for the my Facebook group. It's called I Hate Frontier Airlines.

Tripp Robinson  22:28  
And I was named not taken.

Tom Milligan  22:31  
I don't know. Well, it has it has almost 10,000 members now. And every single time. Every time somebody joins, they get a request to share their their shitty frontier story in the in the group because no one ever flies it again after they read these horror stories. And of course, my story was nothing compared to the shit that I've seen. I mean, you read the stories in that group. It is like, I feel almost bad that I started the group because there's some people like, you know, like they they were they lost their luggage, which included their their dad's dress uniform that they were flying to his funeral. So he could be buried under dress uniform. And I mean, just crazy shit like that. So and again, my story is nothing. I mean, just like your strip, yours could have been a lot worse. I mean, there's people trying to figure out how to get home and you've been home and working all week. Yes. But But anyway, so anybody interested go join the I hate Frontier Airlines Facebook page, and it is like literally the opposite of trips feeling about delta, because they screwed up and they didn't screw up. I mean, that was a Microsoft problem. But they, they took ownership and they made it right. And so Tripp who was already a loyal customer is now even a more loyal customer. And I think I mentioned during that same episode with Pam, Brian, that customer you know, if you're satisfied with your experience, if you got what you expected, you're a satisfied customer. If the EFF it up, and then make it right. Now you're a loyal customer.

Brian Nichols  24:04  
So we we and by the way, I mean, we've been doing the show now for a couple of months. And maybe there's some new listeners who didn't hear your past story. Can you tell the story about I forget the company that you are working at but where you were delivering it was it a phone book and it wasn't a phone but it was like some day planners? day planner? That's what what can you tell a story?

Tom Milligan  24:22  
Yeah, so I worked for Franklin de planners. And for those in this group who are not old enough to remember paper day planners, I'm looking at you trip

Brian Nichols  24:32  
some of us still use our days.

Tom Milligan  24:35  
Yeah, we had, you know, they basically it was a page per day. And you know, it was a very, very popular item. And we got a guy named Tom Peters used to write a bunch of books and he's he's the one who said if it's not broke, break it, find a way to break it, and then fix it to create loyalty. And so we just decided to give it a try. And so we misprinted on purpose. I think it was 1000 or might have been tempted, it's probably 1000 pages on like October 12, or some, you know, we picked some random date way into the year. And I think we literally did like a one instead of an eye or a Oh, instead of a zero or something that wasn't even obvious, they probably wouldn't even noticed it. But when we tracked which 1000 Customers those got shipped to, and we sent them a letter apologizing for the mess up a replacement page, and a free pen that probably cost us a nickel. And then we tracked those 1000 customers over the next couple of years. And their, their buying behavior was that they they stayed with us, all of them. I mean, basically 100% of them kept buying from us, and but they also had like a 10 or 12%, higher purchasing value or purchasing, you know, revenue to the company over the average. And so we we screwed up on purpose. And then I mean, we kind of manipulated the thing. But that think about that a 10% increase in revenue from that small group of customers because we screwed up was totally worth that. Whatever it cost us a couple of bucks to send them the page. I mean, it was it was a really cool experiment. I'm glad we did it. And

Brian Nichols  26:16  
Tom like that's not to say that what delta did here was trying to make things right with trip was all intentional, right? Like they didn't crash their their CrowdStrike stuff with it, just to be able to give trip a positive customer experience after the show hit the fan. But that's an example though of like, when when the shit does hit the fan, like how you should act. And there is actually a positive ROI there. Like when you do the right thing. Your customers will appreciate it because at the end of the day, we're like we're human, right? Like, shit happens. It's the old Forrest Gump running across the country and goes, it happens, what it like, yeah, it does happen. And there's things that you can control. And there's things you can't control. So if you're in a situation like delta, where shit hit the fan, I mean, not much you really could have done from a Delta standpoint. I mean, okay, let's go ahead and do what we can to make things right. And oh, now here's Tripp on a podcast promoting Delta's CX across the board because they made him feel special. And I mean, that right there shows why CX is so important without the BS.

Tripp Robinson  27:22  
Yeah. And it's little things to write like sending someone a pin. Like Tom said that pin probably cost a nickel. But Delta does a great job of building value around their SkyMiles program, what does it mean to them to give me 10,000 SkyMiles. But Delta could come in and steal my dog and give me 50,000 SkyMiles. And I would let it go. They just they do such a good job of building value around that program. That doesn't actually mean anything for them. And, and I just thought of this, too. This is actually a trend with Delta, because I had two flights in a row that got delayed going down to St. Simons and see my girlfriend's family. And it's a 30 minute flight. And I think it got delayed two hours twice, way there and way back, something like that. So I wrote an email to delta. And again, I'm nobody as we learned through my IVR experience, I don't have the priority. But I wrote them an email and just said, Hey, I fly Delta a lot. I'm a little customer. To my last two flights have been delayed over two hours, I've been sitting in the airport, I'm very unhappy, very frustrated, blah, blah, blah, whatever else I said, and I got 20,000 SkyMiles. In my account an hour later, they just they do such a good job of building loyalty. It's remarkable Connect.

Tom Milligan  28:31  
Just add to that. I was flying to Raleigh, a month ago. It's a 50 minute flight from Atlanta. And I'm sitting in my you know, so I'm not going to pay extra for first class or comfort plus, or I'm not going to pay anything. I mean, I can do 50 minutes standing on my head. I don't care or sleep. I'm like, What's that? I said cheapo. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so I'm sitting there in my steerage seat, and the flight attendant comes up and says, Hey, sir, this mom wants to sit with her child. And these are the two these two seats, would you be willing to move to a comfort seat? So they could sit together? I'm like, Sure. So she moves me up to a window seat, you know, a clear closer up front and with all the legroom and I'm like, ma'am is great. Then she came by a little bit later. And she goes, Do you have the Delta app? And I said, Yeah, and she goes, Can you pull it up for me? And she took a look at it did something with her little phone thing and scanned it or whatever. And I said, What do you do? And she goes, Oh, I just gave you 5000 miles. I mean, I didn't ask for him, but I will next time but but that was like one of the like you were saying they made 5000 Delta miles means I mean, it cost them nothing. Nothing whatsoever. And I was thrilled. I mean, I was already thrilled with Hey, I got a more comfortable seat. What do I care? But now I got 5000 miles on top of it. I'm I'm ecstatic So

Brian Nichols  30:00  
two things we can learn from this episode thus far, at least what I'm gathering first is the trips point. squeaky wheel gets the grease right when shit happens, reach out because otherwise your concerns are not experienced from the customer experience team. real life example on my end right I went a little lesser than, you know spending hundreds of dollars flying across the country but I went to one of my favorite establishments for dinner Buffalo Wild Wings, I had my order placed for 720 pickup I placed my order at six o'clock I get to Buffalo Wild Wings at 720 My orders not ready 755 My order finally comes out. And I'm like, This is fucking ridiculous. I put in, like I get an email, how was your experience and I just let them have it. manager of the restaurant emails me personally saying we are so sorry. We were understaffed that day. And there's no excuse, but we want to make it right. Next time you come in, we're gonna give you XYZ and a percent off your order. That would never have happened, where I could just sit there and stew in my anger harm, I feel like that wouldn't have accomplished anything. So right there. squeaky wheel gets the grease. Number two, though, and this is something that Tom you you kind of are hinting at. And Tripp was hinting at as well, in a roundabout way. And that is if you are a company, and you have folks on the front lines, empower them to make things right. If the front that if the Frontier Airlines person back when Tom was going through his experience had been, you know, just understanding and had been empowered to make things right. A Facebook group with 10,000 Plus folks would not exist because Tom would not have been feeling in such a way to do that. Right. Going back to the example Tom gave about the Delta flight, your your stewardess was able to go up to you and say, Hey, here's an extra comfy seat plus an attaboy extra 5000 miles, she went off her way and was empowered to make things right. And what's that done? It's created you guys to be champions of your of your companies now, or in Toms case against frontier and mortal enemy. So like right there, it's so important to Yes, squeaky wheel gets the grease. So if you're a customer voice, you're concerned, do those surveys, like it does matter. And it will make things better. And if you are a company, empower your agents empower your frontline workers let them make things right when things go wrong.

Unknown Speaker  32:27  
Yeah, absolutely.

Tripp Robinson  32:28  
Well said. And I'm so glad you called that out, Brian, because one thing that just made me think of is, you know, one bad customer experience can can almost burn your business to the ground, right? Especially if you're a mid market business, you know, you could piss off Tom Milligan. And next thing you know, you've got a tick tock or Facebook page of 10,000 people that hate your business, right? Misery loves company. So when people see that, oh, these other people had a bad experience. They're just going to get on there. They're going to embellish their experience, they're going to exaggerate, and it makes your business look terrible. And you know, Frontier, they've got a lot of customers. So 10,000 people in a Facebook group isn't the end of the world for them. But if you have 12,000 customers, and 10,000 of them go on and say they had a shitty experience, probably not good for business.

Brian Nichols  33:11  
And it's also how many other folks besides the 10,000 folks in that group voicing their concerns. It's the other folks who are sitting passively watching and paying attention, right? Maybe the person who was like, Alright, I got a choice between delta and frontier for next week's flight. And then they listen to this podcast and they're like, oh, shit, all right. I guess my answer has already been made for me. Because Tom's experience with the frontier and trips experience with Delta. My choice has been made, right? So that's, that's a customer experience for a frontier that never happened. Right? That they never even got the at bat.

Tom Milligan  33:44  
Exactly. And by the way, friends, don't let friends fly frontier. That's the motto. And there should be a t shirt. Yeah, exactly. I should.

Brian Nichols  33:56  
Your 10k group.

Tom Milligan  33:58  
I'm gonna call Kelly right after this. So the the thing I was going to tell you guys, though, is that the even though frontier screwed up, there's no doubt about it. And I gave them so many opportunities to fix it. And at the time, it was over $375 That is such a small amount of money. And I recognize that they had policies and everything that they had to follow. But as I moved up the ladder, they continued to be obstinate. And then when that when my when my group only had four or 500 people in it, I got a cease and desist letter. So it was insult to injury. And you know, I had an attorney friend he looked at and goes, you don't have to stop this. I was using their logo. So I stopped using their logo on the page. And now it's a picture of the Hindenburg blowing up and I superimposed Frontier Airlines on the side of the the Hindenburg. But, but But yeah, that was anyway so they have nothing and they have they've actually sent me letters offering my mind The back now, if I will take the page down, and they can eat shit. But I have offered to stop being the administrator. But I will pass it on to somebody else. So, but that's the thing that is now a lifetime. I mean, that's been I should go back and look, it's been at least 10 or 15 years. And they have done nothing to try to make me a happy customer. 15 years. And delta took literally 10 minutes for me and a couple hours for trip. But I mean, yeah, I'm with trip I fly Delta literally, I want to I don't want to say 100%. But 95% of my flights are delta, because I know that they're going to take care of me. So this is like the Delta kudos to you Delta episode. And screw frontier episode. Yeah,

Tripp Robinson  35:48  
and one of the things I've learned and in my early work experience working at McDonald's was that the customer is always right. It doesn't matter if they ordered their food wrong, whatever. It's like you were just talking about Tom what's 367 bucks to frontier you know, what's, what's me giving the customer a new MC double to McDonald's, right? When you're looking at the lifetime value of a customer, someone that could eat at McDonald's 7080 more times that year. Right. It's not worth it arguing over a freakin hamburger. Just let them have it. And you know, that's the premise of customer experience. That's the most important thing about customer experience is that the customer's always right, you're not going to pick fights. And just don't argue and let them have their way and it goes a long way for your business in the long haul.

Tom Milligan  36:33  
Absolutely. All right trip.

Brian Nichols  36:36  
I think we are at the point where we are going to get ready to say goodbye. So you teased it at the beginning? Yeah, you work with Tom and I I'm sorry. But also you helped make other companies CX experiences better by giving them the tools they need to help empower their members and empower their agents. So talk to us about that really quick. where can folks go ahead and reach out to you? Specifically, you're in the southeast area and they're looking to improve their customer experience? Where do they start trip?

Tripp Robinson  37:03  
Yeah, absolutely. You can go on my LinkedIn trip Robinson, two peas. Make sure you spell with two peas. If you send me an email and spell my name with one P I'm not going to respond. Unless you're trying to buy CX then I might. Or you can email me t Robinson at sharpened CX. I have a pretty good presence on LinkedIn. If you're in the channel community at all, Tom and I go to a ton of events. I know you guys will be attending an event here in what, two, three weeks? Two weeks? Yep. Yep. So we're always out and about for anyone that's in the channel community. If you have any customer experience issues, and you want to be more like delta, reach out to me, and we'll talk about how we can help you do that and implement some artificial intelligence in your customer experience as well. And do

Tom Milligan  37:46  
you think your dad would like sell his services do you think you'd like if anybody's pissed off at Delta and needs to get a hold of Delta? Do you think your dad would?

Brian Nichols  37:54  
Escalation services?

Unknown Speaker  37:55  
Yeah. Well,

Tripp Robinson  37:56  
for anyone that's ever tried to get my dad on the phone? To good point.

Tom Milligan  38:01  
Yeah, that's a good segue. Nevermind, they're probably not Yeah, he needs he needs a CX team. All right. So that also brings us to our final question trip. That's the question we ask every guest. Hopefully, you've had a few moments to think about this. What is the biggest crock of bullshit that you have seen or heard in the CX space this year?

Tripp Robinson  38:25  
Well, I've been thinking about this the whole call Tom, I don't know if you guys could see the smoke coming out of my ears or not. Sometimes that happens when I tend to think a lot that wires get crossed, whatever. I think the biggest BS within the CX space is AI is replacing humans. I think that that's something that a lot of, you know, contact center agents are concerned about that anyone that I talked to you that's an agent, they're concerned that AI is coming and take their job. And and I don't think that's the case at all. That's not what we're seeing. I'm seeing, you know, Charlie came on. And he cited this statistic that there's actually more contact center agents than there were two years ago. So it's, it's really interesting, I think AI empowers your agents, like Ryan talked about enables your worst agent to become just as good as your best agent and streamlines your customer experience. But I don't see AI replacing humans at all. I think the most applicable use case is gathering large amounts of data, interpreting that data and then delivering that data to humans to help them improve, but not replace humans by any means.

Brian Nichols  39:31  
I hope we're all catching some recurring themes here on the show, because that's the goal right? We have so much bullshit, so much white noise that's in the market. So just the reoccurring themes. It's nice to really hammer home these points that we've heard in the show from industry experts and folks who are experiencing some CX that has BS unfortunately for themselves. So if you want the CX without the BS, obviously listen to more episodes from the archives. And of course, please reach out to Tripp if you're a Business Owner, he's going to help make your CX experience that much better. So a trip. Thanks for joining us, man. We really appreciate your time today.

Tripp Robinson  40:06  
Thanks for having me on guys, man. Pleasure. Thanks, guys. So yeah.

Brian Nichols  40:13  
All right, Tom, that's gonna wrap up our conversation with our coworker, trip. Robinson, you've obviously known Tripp longer than I feel like I've known Tripp for a while at this point, because he's just such a down to earth great guy. But I mean, it's a little different of an episode than we usually have here on the show, I think this was much more of a conversation than it was an interview. And frankly, I actually enjoyed that, because we got to really dig into what makes great CX beyond the tech, beyond the specs beyond the buzzword bingo, we talk about a lot here in the show, we actually got to talk about it from a use case where you can see where things went, right. And frankly, where a lot of things went wrong. Same for your story. So I think these kinds of conversations like they are as important, if not, in some cases, more important than understanding the text. And the specs that are out there in the industry like this is just talking about how to just do good CX across the board. So what are your thoughts? Well, yeah, exactly.

Tom Milligan  41:11  
Along those lines, I used to work for this company, I won't mention their name, because they don't exist anymore. So it doesn't matter. But they, you know, I ran their customer service center, you know, their contact center, and we had like 20, or 30 people working in the contact center, and we needed about 60 or 70. So we had long hold times we had, I mean, it just wasn't a good experience for the customer. And so they would complain, they would write letters, blah, blah, blah. And so once a month, I'd sit in the CEOs office, and he would bitch about our customers having a bad experience. And I said, John, you need to understand the customer experience doesn't happen in the call center. Customer Experience is the overall experience, the call center is trying to fix the shit that everybody else. I mean, why are they calling? They're calling us because there's a problem? Yes, they don't call us to say how good things went. They're calling because something, their experience was really bad. And so the stories that we talked about today, in my mind, kind of remind us that CX stands for customer experience. It's not technology. CX is not technology, CX is an experience. And and so C caste UCaaS, CRM, all of those things contribute to the customer experience. But the agent can does the pricing does the clarity of the advertising, the honesty of the marketing, the fact that that flight attendant gave me 5000 miles and I mean, those things are part of the experience. And so I think it's important that our listeners and us I think we both fall into it to that we think of CX as technology, CX C technology is a I don't want to say a small part. It is a not small part, but not the greatest part of CX. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  42:55  
well, and by the way, just to to drive home your point, Tom, like CX is why we're in business. Like, if you're a company, that should be why your company exists, because you're not just solving a problem, you're solving a problem. And doing it in a way that's helping make your customers life better. If if your customers walking away from an interaction with you as a company or as a business. And they feel that something went wrong that they got the short end of the stick, you did CX wrong. And that right there speaks to why it is so important to focus on CX beyond just the text and the specs. It's not just the products that make CX it's everything across the board. It's the deliverable. It's the the engagement with the employees, it's when things go wrong. And yes, when things go right, like that's the overall experience. And you know, what a great episode to really drive that point home. So, Tom, I really enjoyed this conversation. And by the way, I'm looking forward, a sneak peek ahead to folks who they're wondering about Tom and my life, we're going to be able to hang out next week, we're going to be in Nashville at the Partner Summit. They're one of our TSD providers. So I'm looking forward to hanging out with you in real life, Tom? Well, I think last time Yeah, we're gonna have to snap some photos and you know, kissing babies as trip mentioned all that fun stuff.

Tom Milligan  44:11  
Yep. I think we're gonna have a great time. I mean, we have a great time on the show every week. So we're gonna have a great time in real life IRL, as the kids say.

Brian Nichols  44:18  
They sure do. All right, Tom. Shall we go ahead and wrap things up so we can go ahead and get packed up? Let's do it. All right. Well, with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're on CX without the BS for Tom Milligan. We'll see you next time.

Tom Milligan  44:35  
Hello, and welcome to another episode of CX without the BS. My name is Tom Milligan and I'm Brian Nichols. Bryan. It is so great to see you my friend as always how you been?

Brian Nichols  44:45  
Ben busy but then good. Tom. Ben good How you been?

Tom Milligan  44:49  
You know, working in the Seacat space is always a It's a day to day joy and a day to day living hell I mean, I love this space. Don't get me wrong, but every once in a while you just think, why the hell am I still here. And I think anybody who's been in this space for more than five minutes knows the feeling. So I love it, but we'll leave it at that life has been pretty damn good.

Brian Nichols  45:13  
That's good to hear good to hear. And by the way, I'm talking about when you look at the industry, you and I are in today's conversation is gonna actually, I think, paint the picture of why what we do is so important, because it's not just about the technology, you know, seek as contact center, right? But it's also the way it's applied, right? It's the overall customer experience when things go well, which that's the goal, but also when things don't go so high when the proverbial shit hits the fan, like what do you do as a company to not just fix it, but make things right. And I think that right there speaks to why I'm excited for today's conversation, because we're gonna hear a story about when things didn't go so hot, right? Yes.

Tom Milligan  45:57  
Well, and I think there are probably 1000s of people out there right now that can relate to the stories today. So the story is going to be told by a friend of ours. We're going to introduce him right now. His name is Tripp Robinson. Tripp is not only a co worker, he started here at sharpen about five months ago, six months ago. But I have known trips since he was 12 years old, because his dad was my boss. For what, seven years. My favorite boss of all time, and we stay in touch. I in fact, trip and I actually spent Easter together and I actually was up at their place for Thanksgiving last year as well. So I'm kind of like the the, the adopted son in the family. You know, they thought, Oh, Tom doesn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, which I kind of did. But that's okay. I had a great time. We had a wonderful time together. And I'm really grateful for the invitation. But yeah, Tripp and I have known each other I guess that makes it what 14 years or something like that, that we've known each other ever. Yeah, but he was 12 so I didn't give a shit about him. So anyway, but Tripp is a great guy. He runs our southeast sales region. And I think that's as much introduction as we need to give him should we just bring him in?

Brian Nichols  47:10  
Let's do it. All right, Tom. TRIPP Robinson here on CX without the BS

Transcribed by https://otter.ai