Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Unlocking Customer Experience Excellence: Blake Grewal on Data-Driven Growth, AI Integration, and Simplifying Tech for Small Businesses
Unlock the secrets to extraordinary customer experiences with our special guest, Blake Grewal, founder of Bold Growth. We explore the often-overlooked potential of data and technology in transforming how businesses interact with their clients. Through the lens of scorecards and critical metrics like net promoter scores, Blake shares how businesses can streamline their focus and unearth opportunities for growth. Discover how mapping every interaction across the customer journey not only identifies areas for improvement but also integrates technology seamlessly to enhance services, whether you’re in the service or product sector.
In a world increasingly dominated by technology, prioritizing customer experience is a game-changer for startups and small businesses alike. With Blake's insights, we navigate the delicate balance between leveraging AI for productivity and maintaining the human touch that's so vital to customer satisfaction. Avoid the chaos of tech bloat by fully utilizing existing tools before jumping onto the next shiny new thing. By automating low-priority tasks, your business can transition from a reactive to a proactive stance, leading to happier employees and more satisfied customers.
We'll also dive into the common pitfalls small businesses face with technology adoption and how simplicity can lead to success. Blake shares his entrepreneurial journey and the significance of staying grounded in tangible goals while being agile in response to customer feedback. Experience firsthand the power of innovative tools like Typeform and Unsurvey in making feedback collection more interactive and insightful. This episode is packed with practical advice and strategies designed to elevate your business's customer experience through the effective use of data and technology. Join us for an engaging conversation that promises to redefine how you view customer interactions.
Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Gwendavera Querrey, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR. Today we're going to be talking about the experience for your customers getting the love and driving the experience that they're having through your employees and tech. Super excited to have Blake Graywall on the call with us. Blake, introduce yourself to the audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on. As you said, my name is Blake Graywall. I'm the founder of Bold Growth. Bold Growth is a tech and creative studio. We work with mainly owner-operated legal and accounting firms and offer services and build tech that helps them become more client-centric and focused.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So what does that mean first grader for people?
Speaker 2:who are?
Speaker 1:listening.
Speaker 2:So on our services side, we go through gathering and understanding client data.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, what we do with that data as we help these companies get that in, because most aren't tracking that. So we'll dive in deeper into understanding one the data to the feedback that they're getting, and we put it into our scorecard process to really make it easy to understand and we use that data as a guide. So what I mean by a guide is, after we get the data, we hop into our customer journey mapping process and that's really where the creative side of the business comes in. We take a look at the entire customer, client, user journey whatever you want to call it of that business and look at each interaction that they're having and ultimately look where we can improve. So at times it may be looking into a process, other times it may be hey, there's tech available for you to help make the service more tech enabled and easier on your employees right and make it more automated. I love that. So question for you to help make the service more tech enabled and easier on your employees right and make it more automated.
Speaker 1:I love that. So question for you what are you seeing as being kind of the biggest game changer in the results you're finding for your customers or clients? What do you call them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So with our clients, as far as on the service side goes, one, using a scorecard, I think, is super important to drive focus. Every business is going to have different metrics that are more important to them. Right, it really depends on your industry, stage of business, et cetera. What we do when we're gathering customer feedback and data is really key in on one net promoter score, so how likely someone is to refer your business. Two, we'll look at customer satisfaction scores at different stages of the customer journey. And then, three, we try to get open ended feedback as well, because I think that's very important, right, to not only have the number side of it, but also have the word side of it. Right, and see, see what your customers are saying. Once we get that data, we'll throw it into our scorecard, which also tracks things like revenue, brand sentiment, marketing, spend, lead volume, and we like to have it on a scorecard and a very simplified dashboard for our clients Because, again, as you can imagine, just having those simple, easy to understand metrics in one place, it can really drive focus on.
Speaker 2:Hey, here's what we need to focus on right now.
Speaker 2:Right, this is the most important thing.
Speaker 2:So one thing I have noticed is getting everything into a scorecard really helps these owner operated businesses focus on right now.
Speaker 2:Right this is the most important thing. So one thing I have noticed is getting everything into a scorecard really helps these owner-operated businesses understand where they need to put the majority of their time right, and then, on top of that, taking that data and unraveling the entire customer journey. It can look like a super simple process but ultimately, when you can imagine having a whiteboard right of an entire customer journey and looking at every interaction they have with you, a lot of people don't realize how many interactions customers are having right with their brand, because I always say that the first interaction with your brand is not that first phone call or first meeting. It's when they land on your website when they see your ad right meeting it's when they land on your website when they see your ad right. So there's so many different things that I feel like we get we lose track of in the day to day right that are important to keep a pulse on, and I find that the scorecard and the journey map really helps with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then if you add in the fact that if you're a services company there's probably way more touch points than if you're a product company, I'm guessing right, yeah, and different opportunities as well to ask for feedback, to ask for that referral review testimonial.
Speaker 2:Whether you're a product or service company, it goes hand in hand. It's the same thing, right? If you're a product company, maybe you're dropping the ball at checkout or checking in with that customer a few months after they buy from you, right, similar to the service side. When you complete a significant milestone for that client, that's a great time to ask for a referral or how their experience is going with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what do you find is the biggest challenge that you see your clients dealing with pre and then post your services?
Speaker 2:I think pre I'll start with the data side. There's usually three scenarios on the data side that we encounter when we start working with a client. One they're not tracking data at all. Two they are tracking data, but spread across many different platforms. You and I in the green room before this we're talking about how or I mentioned this that tech kind of seems to outgrow, at least in our space, these small firms and they're kind of forced to duct tape different solutions together.
Speaker 2:So the second scenario they could be tracking data but it's all over the place on different tech platforms and when it's all over the place you can't focus on it right and it's hard to keep track of that. You know what's going on and what's important in the business. And then, third, they are tracking it but they just don't know what to do with it. So I find a big benefit is actually going in and helping them activate that data and being creative about it too. I have a creative background. I did not start out having a very, I guess, qualified data analytical background right. I find that I can go in and spot trends pretty easily in a more creative way and that goes back to being able to do that one and then second, activate the data once I see those trends and then dive into the journey mapping stuff that we do.
Speaker 1:That's great. So I'm thinking about the listener here. Why should they care about this? I mean, obviously, like you need customers for revenue, but this kind of goes into the next phase of the customer experience getting customer love. What does that look like in regards to actually spending time, energy, effort, right? Small startup businesses? They only have so many resources, people, money, time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why should they care about this and make this a priority.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I look at customer or client experiences as a significant lever for growth that I think many miss out on, especially for your audience If they've raised venture or raised from investors.
Speaker 2:It can be very easy to get caught in this growth at all costs mindset where you're really just focused on top line growth, but what you're missing or could be missing is that client experience, that customer experience in the background and that helping your organic growth Right. So I always say that there's a major growth at all costs problem that typically goes on in business where they don't focus on the experience side of it, which I think is the most important. Businesses that I've been a part of that are still around and are happy and healthy usually have the best customer experiences and relevant to your listener in this podcast, I find that you know the better the client or customer experience in these businesses, usually the employees are happier as well. They're not dealing with unhappy customers or spending time in different processes right, that could have been automated or more tech-enabled. They're working with better people, working with people that they want to work with. So it's overall a happier and healthier work environment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would totally agree, and there's a lot of correlation, you know, customer experience to your employee and candidate experience as well, so there's a lot of I see a lot of familiarity in that perspective. So, talking about people, I know we were briefly talking earlier about building your business from a human empowerment or centric piece, while also tech focused. Tell a little bit about what you mean by that statement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, as you can imagine, with the industries that we work with, sometimes people hear tech studio, right, and they're like, oh my God, you're going to come in and replace all my employees, right? Especially with the talk of AI that's constantly going on. I always like to approach it from an angle of human powered tech assistant. So I think AI is amazing.
Speaker 2:I personally don't believe that it's going to replace humans, as we talked about, but I think there's a major opportunity to really help empower your employees with tools like that and make their lives easier, which again relates to having a happier and healthier workplace. So, bringing this back to customer experiences, right, looking for different ways to automate processes, understand data easier, and things like that. Tech can play a huge part in that and it doesn't mean that it's going to replace your workforce. It's actually going to make it more productive for you. And back to what you said earlier startups are tight on cash, right. Small businesses are tight on cash. The more you can automate and make employees more productive, the less you're actually going to have to hire right, and it can help with growth, help with keeping expenses down as you scale. So I think giving people the tools to become tech-assisted and succeed in that way is so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think if you can get to a tool that like reduces 10, 20, 30% of my administrative crap, right, everyone has administrative crap on their desk for that low hanging fruit that we can never get to.
Speaker 1:That is important, but it's not, it's not a high priority. How great would it be that we'd actually be able to get some of that off of our plate but completed, some of that off of our plate but completed and then give us? I think one of the biggest things I see is that, especially in a startup, you're just really reactive.
Speaker 1:And the way to really be successful is to get to a proactive state. But it's hard when you're in a reactive state. It's really hard to flip that script. So being able to have this AI and technology, automation, streamlining things, come in and simplify things and take even 20% off of your plate that 20% you can start spending on getting into that proactive state, how much better would your business be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's one thing, too, that is relevant to this topic that I've seen, and it's a word called tech bloat or a phrase called tech bloat, where it basically means that you're using multiple tools and not really using a one tool to its full advantage.
Speaker 2:And I see businesses that we work with get in this spot and startups do as well. Right, it's easy to, because it's so easy now with a single click you can onboard so many different tools but it's dangerous because you could have employees using again multiple things, not using them to their full advantage, and that creates a. It can create a pretty chaotic environment, because then you're having customer conversations on multiple tools, you're having team conversations on multiple tools. So I think it's important to also, when you're onboarding different tools, make sure you're really using that tool to its fullest, look at your tech stack and make sure that you're optimizing every tool that's in there to its fullest before onboarding to a new one, because I find time and time again, it's like most businesses use like 10 to 20% of a tool and they don't know what its full capability is, and then they Like I'll totally double down and say the same thing with hr stuff.
Speaker 1:It's the hr systems. I love the hr tech stack. And I come in and I'm like, wait, you're complaining about this, but you're not actually fully like onboarded the functionality of it, like it can make your life so much easier. Or a lot of times I see too, like at the time that they decided to go with that tool, they didn't go with the whole, all the modules, all the functionality, because they couldn't afford that. So they went with the baseline of what they absolutely needed in that moment and then never revisited again. And, like you said, now they're looking at another tool which, by the way, probably your current tool could do if you just for a fraction of the price, because you're already on a baseline process with them and then all of a sudden, like you said, you're just like bogged down with all these tools that are actually making you and your employees' lives harder and potentially having a bad customer experience because of it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just posted about this on LinkedIn today. It's more relevant to the legal and accounting world and where I see it going. But I mentioned this briefly earlier a lot of tech platforms are outgrowing that smaller firm and I see a world and opportunity. Instead of going and onboarding to different tech platforms, I think there's a big opportunity for tools to empower the existing tech that's already out there. So there's a lot of bigger players in the space that I don't think makes sense to compete against, but I think there's opportunity to just make it smarter and make it more fitting for that smaller, smaller firm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah. It's the small guys that always lose out, right, because everyone wants to go get an enterprise customer and grow their business from that perspective, but it's the small guys that can actually really benefit the most from some of these tools that are being created out there.
Speaker 2:And they can move faster too right. That's why I enjoy them.
Speaker 1:They don't have the bureaucracy and red tape that a lot of enterprise customers have right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So let me switch the topic here. You are also a founder and you've been in business and I always love to give an opportunity for my listeners to hear a lesson from another founder. Would you mind sharing something, a lesson learned, that if you could go back in time and tell your younger self don't do this or do this instead, or you know, whatever it might be, would you share that with us today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing that comes to mind immediately. Well, two things. They kind of go hand in hand, but the first one is be simple, and what I mean by that. I think it's so easy, especially when launching a business, to overcomplicate things. You can focus on a fancy website or fancy pitch, deck right and get super caught into that, or the worst thing, for me at least, is get caught in a spreadsheet projecting where you're going to be in 10 years from now.
Speaker 1:And you look up and five days have gone by.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You're like maybe I should go talk to a customer. So I'd say be simple is a huge one, and I try to practice that in my day to day. It helps me personally drive focus. And then, second, one thing that came to mind is enjoy the ride, right. I think it's so easy to think so far ahead, right, and get down on yourself, but I find time and time again, just enjoying the ride, enjoying building relationships and having good conversation, like we're having right now, that's the fun in business. Right and enjoy it, and ultimately you never know where your business is going to end up.
Speaker 2:My business was completely different two years ago than it is now. Right, I had a completely different business and I think that goes for most people, right. So I think it's just important to really enjoy it and not get so hard on yourself. Right and enjoy. This may not resonate with the startup audience that has raised money from investors, but I also like to just build slow with that and then right and and just enjoy the process of building. That, to me, is fun and it also helps my decision making and creativity when I look at that more long term mindset, so, yeah, that'd be the bulk that comes to mind for me on that question.
Speaker 1:I love that because, as a founder myself, I do find that you have these aspirations and dreams and all of a sudden, you're trying to do 20 billion things. You're not going to do any of them. Well, keep it simple. Focus on something that is going to be tangible and simple, that you can get done and then build on that. And I think you're right.
Speaker 1:I've seen so many companies who are constantly reshifting. You have to be agile and I think if you're listening to your customers right from the customer experience, your NPS score, all the other factors that you and your team could help those listeners get to and understand, you're going to be shifting and you're going to be understanding your target audience better. And when we're going to be shifting and you're going to be understanding your target audience better, and you know when we're, when we're trying to solve a problem which most entrepreneurs who start a business, it's because you see a problem that you're trying to solve. You're trying to solve that problem in a in a vacuum, and come out with a product or services and it falls flat. It's because you aren't listening to what's really the problems of your expected customers. So getting that customer experience and hearing from them is such a key in order to actually grow the business in a way that the industry is going to accept it and actually build and grow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think it's crucial to, as you grow, to, like you said, be agile and not have your blinders on Right, because I think when people get super in the weeds and their plan right that they originally set, you miss things right. And, regarding customer feedback, different opportunities there and just overall opportunities, you tend to miss things when your blinders are on. So I think it's super important to be open to new things. And the last thing I'll say I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of people I'm a health and wellness nerd and I think it's so important to take care of yourself. When I'm not taking care of myself, I feel it immediately and my creativity is off, which, as a creative person, that really bothers me, makes things worse throughout my day. Right Again, I think it's so important to take care of yourself. If we don't have our health right, I mean, what's the point?
Speaker 1:So oh, totally yeah, there's no reason to drive yourself into an early grave. That's what I say. It's like I'm not trying to angle myself to an early grave here. Maybe early retirement, maybe that, but not an early grave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but God, if I retire, I don't know what I would do. I think I'll go crazy.
Speaker 1:You would probably do something else, right.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another thing I always tell people I work with is, like, just breathe, because if, like, the worst thing you can do is stop breathing, pass out on me. You're really not going to be any good to me, right? So it goes back to that basic wellness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and I think things keep coming to my head. But one other thing would be don't make assumptions and this is really big on customer feedback and looking at data and stuff like that, I think it's very easy to assume things. Biggest thing is go have that conversation with that person, right? Go have that conversation with that employee or customer and find out. That way. Don't go on your day to day and make assumptions on something and just have that hard conversation.
Speaker 1:That is so true I can't tell you how many times that happens where I mean, I would say it's okay to have a hypothesis.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Go validate that. Yes, real conversations right and I think.
Speaker 1:I'll pick up what you said earlier in the call when you were talking about let's get like number data, but then we're going to follow up with open ended conversation or questions because we want to hear more about it. I think that's one of the hardest things. I mean I presume from a customer experience survey or, or, you know, asking for feedback is the same as an employee engagement survey you get great. Our ENPS score is this and our, you know, experience is experience is rating X. But like, okay, what does that really mean? What does good look like? What is it that is missing?
Speaker 1:You can make all the hypotheses in the world and be completely going in the wrong direction, and then you wasted time, money and energy on something that your customers or employees don't even want. So it's really important to have that follow through. Okay, I know my score can improve. Whose score couldn't improve? No matter what we're talking about, right, no one's going to get a 10 out of 10. Let's just be honest. But then what does that look like? What does that mean? How can we improve? And it might actually surprise you that it could be something that you didn't even think about, right, because none of us are going to be able to think about everything and every possibility.
Speaker 2:No, no, and I think I'd be curious to hear if you're seeing this in the HR space, but it doesn't really exist in the legal and accounting world. But I'm really enjoying seeing survey tools that are popping up, like Typeform is one that I'm obsessed with. It helps make it more interactive and engaging and professional, so you actually get responses. I can't tell you and I'm sure you get this too the amount of emails I get asking for feedback and it's just this like boring old feedback form and it's like I'm not going to tell you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I will toss out. We haven't. We talk about technology, but we danced around the two letter word that is so popular in today's world, which is the AI word. Right, I actually will toss out. There is a new company that is forming. It's called Unsurvey and it is an AI tool and what I'm loving about it is that it takes survey functionality to the next level. So, where you can actually go okay, here's your question Like, let's just use the NPS score or NPS score for customers, right.
Speaker 1:Nps score right means zero to 10. Great, and then you can actually, through this, you can say, if customer responds with zero, through three, follow up with this question, or five follow up with this question, and then maybe it's like you know, maybe, maybe what is it? Nine and 10 are your high scores. So if they give us nine and 10, ask them what we do well or what they like about us the best, and then you can follow up from that question. Follow up so it actually lets you, based off of answers, then have other questions that it can follow up and then take you back to the basically a tree, right, and so that's what I really like, that, because a lot of surveys it's really hard to be able to do that deep dive root cause analysis right there on the spot, and that's what this is trying to solve for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's sweet. We do a similar thing with type form with clients, mainly when they do if they do score high on a customer satisfaction score or net promoter score just depending on where they are in the customer journey will then route that person to give a Google review schedule, a testimonial and things like that. It's touchy. Google is pretty crazy right with reviews, so it's super important to make sure that that person is going to give a good review. So sometimes you kind of have your fingers crossed, right. Yeah, typeform does have some form logic. I'd be curious to look into that tool, though, to see how I guess the right way to put it would be how smart they're getting with it, because I still think there's some gaps with existing tools that are out there right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they also have a call-in functionality, so you can actually call in and you can talk to it.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it feels more human centric in that perspective. So, just throwing that out, I have no connections, no ties to it, but it is a tool. Like I said earlier, I love AI. I'm kind of a nerd for it. So I'm trying to get interacting with all these companies that are true AI functionality, building and learning from itself and growing to be better and easier for us.
Speaker 1:And I think you know, from an employee perspective, it is really tough sometimes to get into that root cause. I think if you got, if you, if you got the hook on the customer right and they want they, they see the potential in your product or services and they're interacting with you and giving you that score, you have a hook where you can then kind of follow up and get more information. They probably want you to, they probably see the potential and want you to succeed and are helping you Right. But a lot of times with employees it's so hard to like pull that information out and it's like sometimes it just unfortunately these surveys can turn into a little bit of a I don't know, bleep this out, but bitch fest, right, and so like it's like, okay, I want to help make it your experience better, but you got to tell me what good looks like. Well, I don't know. I'm just not happy. Oh quit, that doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 2:I'd be curious if there's a tool out there that can I don't know how to say this but rework the questions that are being asked depending on the response that you're getting, cause, like you said, you can get some employees or even customers that are just pretty defensive, have their guard up, maybe don't want to give you an honest response, right, or answer it. You want an answer. It'd be cool to see if there's a tool that's like as the person's entering that survey, right, like it's actually reworking different questions based on interacting with your form.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe it's a little bit about what Unsurvey is doing. I'm just scratching the surface with them, but that'd be a good thing to pass over to them, cause I feel like they would probably be able to do something like that, and I'm sure there's other tools out there I'm not even aware of, but that's the one I I've been playing around with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as we talked about, there's millions of tools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then let's just recap what we said earlier Don't get yourself bogged down with a billion tools Like making sure that you are identifying tools that are going to help your business and then every company is going to be enhancing and adding to their platform. So, even if you looked at whatever tool you have a year ago, look at it again because they might have new stuff and of course, it's on them to let you know and keep you in the loop. But you know, we all, we all know we all ignore those emails too right, I think.
Speaker 2:Again, I find, with the scorecard process that we do and the customer journey mapping process, it really helps identify, like, what key problems are truly going on. And then that then goes to what is your existing tech stack look like? Can we solve this problem with what you already have in place? If not, then okay, let's go explore and see what's out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Well, Blake, I can't believe it. We're basically at time. But just to wrap up, is there any last final thought or tip or trick you want to share with the audience before we finish today?
Speaker 2:No, nothing that can come to. I think we preached enough on this call.
Speaker 1:Yeah, check your tools out. Make your you and your life and your employees and your customers lives more efficient and effective, and make sure you know what your customers are experiencing. You can get that love. Customer referrals are like they are the best free gift you can ever get right. So make that experience be great and with that, thank you so much for joining us today and don't forget to share the podcast out with everyone and follow us. Like us and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
