What is customer delight and who's responsible + examples (HubHeroes Ep. 9)

TRANSCRIPTION OF THE SHOW

George B. Thomas (01:09):

Yeah, no they don't. And it's time to rock and roll, baby. I just can't wait by the way, we should have added Christina into that little subsection. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, because she has her own thoughts. Believe it or not ladies and gentlemen, but let's start out with that because it is a different crew today. We've got max, we've got myself, but we have a special guest. So Christina, why don't we just start out by letting all the hub heroes out there, know who you are, what you do, where you do it. And of course I had to throw in one top secret thing that people might not know about you, the amazing person, Christina Garett. Hey,

Christina Garnett (01:45):

Thank you so much for joining me. I am hyped by that intro. That was excellent. Like you said, just slide my name into that little legal jargon piece as well. I am the senior marketing manager of offline community and advocacy at HubSpot, which is just a fancy way to say that I activate and work with all of our customers and partners who absolutely love and are deeply knowledgeable about HubSpot. And my job is to delight them, find opportunities for them. How can we help them to work with internal HubSpots to be able to improve product, get the word out.

We just had our inbound correspondence program, which I created last year that was activated again this past year. And also the afterhour show with the one and only George B. Thomas. So those are all coming back this year, too. So very excited. I get to work with an amazing crew of just brilliant people, which I'm not surprised Mac you're one of my favorite Hubspotter. So I'm honored to be here with you. You're also one of my favorite talkers and then things that people probably don't know about me, like top secret things. I was a volleyball and cheerleading coach for two years. So yeah. Little, little slide information there.

George B. Thomas (02:45):

I love it. Max, can you imagine if your whole job was to give people the feels like you had to go to work every day and just, I have to make these people feel appreciated. I need to make these people feel loved. In other words, AKA, I need to delight the people who are part of in this case with Christina, the HubSpot and inbound community, what a job to have. And I love that she's on this episode because that's exactly what we're talking about.

We're talking about customer delight, which by the way we say customer, but I think it can be prospect delight. I think it can be customer delight. In other words, if we boil it down to what we usually do here on this show, I think it's just delighting humans that happen to have interactions with us. And we're gonna talk about what it is and who the freak is responsible. And we might even talk about a few examples along the way, but before we get into the deep end of the pool, again, we always like to kind of humanize this a little bit. And I wanna ask the question. What was one time in your life when you felt extremely happy?

Christina Garnett (03:47):

Can it be personal, personal?

George B. Thomas (03:49):

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't throw business in there yet. <Laugh> yet.

Christina Garnett (03:53):

I'd, I'd have to say having my kids. I love my kids. They've completely changed. They're not a chapter. They're like a whole different book, but it changes the way that you see things. And honestly, also as a marketer, they are my biggest hack. They are my biggest secret because I can immediately tap into younger culture by just listening to them. I know about video games. I know about subculture. I know about anime. I know about all of these things that as a marketer, I would probably never know because it wasn't in my specific purview. I know that there there's a lot of like, do you have kids? Do you not have kids? But, and I think it's a personal choice, but for me it not only was a, is a blessing, but it also unlocked a lot of knowledge for me that I wouldn't have otherwise. So I gotta save my kids. I love my kids.

George B. Thomas (04:34):

I love that so much because it's almost like, what do you mean web three? I know all of web three. It's exactly what my kids are using. Like it's, I'm being educated right now on it. So max, I wanna get you to kind of gimme and by the way, it could be the same thing could be totally different. But what was one time in your life personal or it could be business when you just felt extremely happy? Yeah.

Max Cohen (04:56):

Well, I mean, I have two daughters too, so I'll, I'm gonna pick a different example. Cause obviously that takes the cake over everything. So I've played competitive paintball my entire life. And there was this one particularly tough season that we had a long time ago with a really like core group of guys that we were kind of building a, a really cool kind of program for a while with. And you know, the team kind of like struggled a little bit, like during the first like couple events of the year, we ended up kind of splitting up and losing some of our core guys and they ended up going to this other team that was just kind of spanking us all season. We were, we were coming in second place, second place, second place, like every single time. It was the final event of the year in this league called the new England paintball league.

They call it the bone cup, which stands for best of new England. So we met them in the prelims, right? So we played 'em once in the prelims, they beat us four to zero. They just absolutely wiped the floor to us. We somehow scraped into the playoff, ended up getting into the finals to face them yet. Again, they were up four to zero when it was race to five. So you basically have to win like five points in a Roach. If anyone's not familiar with paintball, you have to win five paintball, like five on five paintball games, right in a row. And at that point they were up four, zero on us. And we ended up coming back, scoring five unanswered points and actually winning like the best new England championship. And that moment was like really, really cool because this crazy sort of insurmountable, it was like the only like really wild sports moment I've ever really kind of been involved in. And so it was really cool to kind of experience what it was like to come from behind and like, you know, win something with all the odds against you and get a little bit of revenge there. It was super emotional. Everyone was yelling at each other and hugging at the same. It was just, it was wild, but that was like a really, really cool moment for me back in the day.

George B. Thomas (06:32):

And I feel like we should be playing like we are the champions or something under that story that you're telling. And I'm gonna come back to, by the way, both of you and kind of why I think that that is the moment that you picked. And we're gonna unpack that a little bit, cuz it does have exactly what we are talking about in mind. But I have to tell you a little story and it's a recent story and I too, four kids could say bestest days ever where, when they were born and when they moved out.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah. But, but here's the thing I, I was recently in Myrtle beach and I don't know about you ladies and gentlemen, but you may have in your lifetime ordered a strawberry milkshake and you get a, you get a milkshake, it tastes like strawberry and it's great. And, and just, you're kind of used to that in your lifetime. You may have actually ordered a strawberry milkshake with cheesecake bites in it and you're like, oh yeah, this is kind of next level. Like I'm, I'm, I'm sort of delighted here. I'm sort of delighted. However, when I was in Myrtle beach, I had the opportunity to order a strawberry cheesecake milkshake. However, this thing, when it was delivered to me was a.

Max Cohen (07:38):

Oh, My

George B. Thomas (07:38):

God moment, because it was an actual Mason jar filled with strawberry milkshake. And then it had these two like strawberry swizzle, edible sticks kind of coming out of it. They had rolled the top of it in like some type of strawberry icing with some type of then crumble on top of that and then laid a big fat juicy piece of New York cheesecake on top of the Mason jar and then whipped cream and a strawberry on top with some drizzle ladies and gentlemen, might I say that this was more than I ever expected, although I should have expected it because the name of the shake was take me back to New York. I'm just gonna throw that out there. But in that moment in time and I'll put a picture, my friends, they took a picture of me and I am grinning from ear to ear because I am extremely delighted in the fact that I have received more than I ever thought that I would receive.

When I gave over my money and said, I would like a strawberry milkshake. Now, if I think about what I just said, it's the fact that I got more than I thought I would get max. When I think about your story it's that you were able to achieve a place that you didn't think that you would be able to achieve. And when I think about you, Christina, it was that you knew that you were in a journey and you had these humans that you were gonna be able to pour your entire heart and soul into and grow into future human beings on the planet. And so it's these aspirational, extraordinary, large moments. Mine just happens to be about a milkshake in life. They just equal happiness and equal being delighted. I'm super curious. I'm gonna pause my words and see when I say that, are there any things that come to mind from you? Two?

Sharing our own "customer delight" moments

Christina Garnett (09:14):

I think for me, it really comes down to core memories. Like if you've ever seen the movie inside out is creating those core memories and they can be large and grandiose, but they can also be small and intimate. And that's what I think delight at the heart of delight is because it looks different to different people, but it's, can you create a core memory? So that years from now, you're gonna tell that story about that cheesecake years from now. You're gonna talk about that paintball tournament years from now. I'm gonna talk about memories with my kids. Like just those core memories that we keep hyper sacred to us.

I think that's what delight is all about. And I also think that's what love is all about. Like love and affinity is when you think about the people who are important in your life, whether it's romantic love or it's family, you intrinsically connect specific core memories to them and how that made you feel. And it's that little like, that's that dopamine, that's that little love chemical that I remember this. And I remember how these people made me feel. And because of that, I have this natural tendency to have this level of affinity with them.

Max Cohen (10:14):

I agree with all that. And I think what we you're kind of hitting on here is that delight can mean a lot of different things. Delight doesn't just mean happy customer. Like it means so much more than that. And there's a lot of tactical value behind it. And I think those are kind of three different examples that was like very different versions of delight. There's always gonna be different versions for your customers. And it always takes a much more nuanced approach when you're thinking about this stage of the inbound theology.

George B. Thomas (10:38):

Yeah. It's funny because there's probably the listeners like, okay, we're, you know, 10 minutes into this, we haven't really talked about business, although yes we have. Yes we have. If you've paid attention, there's been several little nuggets of wisdom that each of us has dropped that you could be using for your business. But the one thing that I wanted to lead up to here is if you are in a place where you're trying to figure out how you can delight the prospects, leads the customers, the humans in your life. One of the key things that you've heard through this whole first 10 minutes is that you probably need to understand what their language is, what their love language is. Is it that you should give them a shout out on social or send them some HubSpot socks or some hub hero swag? What is it that actually would make them feel delighted? Now here's the thing I wanna ask you another question in this vein, and then we are gonna get into the core topics of the conversation that is when has a company made you feel extremely happy?

Max Cohen (11:32):

I have a small one, something that like, I think probably a lot of us have maybe experienced we've all, you know, shopped on Amazon. I remember there was a couple of times where I, like, I ordered a whole bunch of cables to kind of set up my whole thing here. And I clearly like ordered way too many. Even some cases I got the wrong one, you know, I had like five or six cables left over that. I was just like, all right, I shouldn't have bought these. Like I gotta go ahead and send these back. Totally my mistake, nothing that Amazon did wrong. It was not like a, you know, it was not any sort of, kind of mistake they made in what they sent me. But I went to go do a return and they have this funky little thing that happened, that just said, all right, cool.

We've we've went and had and returned it. We've given you a refund. Keep 'em don't even send them back. Don't even bring 'em in. Just, just hold on to 'em and you know, it's crazy because the, the lesson there is like, no, don't just give everything away for free. Sometimes it's just gonna make more sense to do the right thing for your customer and not create an issue over something small, because if they had really made that like a lot more difficult, what they're doing is they're risking a bad review from a customer. Or maybe I, I would shop there a little bit less if they had made that super difficult on my end. And that would've been way more expensive than just like giving away a couple cables that cost them nothing. Again, I don't want this to sound like give stuff away for free, cuz that's not what delight is. But it's like finding things that you can sort of compromise on that will give you leverage to create a much better interaction. It was much more important for Amazon in that case that I had a good experience and I stayed with them as a customer versus getting a couple cables back that they could go and turn around and sell. And

George B. Thomas (13:02):

Let's be honest, let's be honest, max. They realize the lifetime value of max Cohen and the amount of gear that he's PR they can look at the dad and be like, this homeboy has bought some stuff, Hey, let's give him a couple cables. But the thing is, it made you feel a certain way. And what I love that you said in there, you said just do what's right. And the right thing is always right, ladies and gentlemen, it just is always right. I'm gonna talk about why I'm asking it in a secondary way here in a minute. But Christina, what was the time when a company actually made you feel extremely happy? 

Brands want customers to love them, but many aren't willing to put in the work to delight them

Christina Garnett (13:35):

Have to go with Pinterest. I got to go to can earlier this year to go to see the can lion festival. And I got to go to a lot of the activations that a lot of brands were holding and it was an, and me being who I am, I'm live tweeting, absolutely everything. My phone never leaves my hand. And I go through all these different activations and I went to Twitter beach and I went to Pinterest beach and I went to all these other things. And I said, lots of positive things about all of them. My favorite activation though, wound up being Pinterest because it was so other, it was so separate from all the other types of activations where it was like, here's the beach, here's the DJ stand. Here's some couches go Pinterest, wasn't you actually wound up walking in through this activation with like black, rubber tarp with like white ink all over it.

And it's all these like negative comments that you would see on social media. And while you're going through it, you get these social notification sounds. So it's this interactive hellscape of social media, like all the bad of social media in one place. But then you come out on the other side and it opens out onto the beach and you see this little Perilla that says it's different here. And then you have these tiny little hyper activations and it is such a celebration like their CMO, they get it. And so they did all these things and it really much, they really understand that their strategic advantage is that they are a creative, peaceful place on social. It's really hard to be negative on Pinterest. So that's not the, that's not the part where they made me happy that that made me super happy. But where they personally did was I do a lot of social listening.

I am hyper curious. I am a Allison Wonderland was born in North Carolina and wound up in marketing. And so I'm constantly looking for content. I'm constantly doing social listening. And so I know what that looks like. Pinterest is the only, and I mean the only brand that I talked about, their activation positively and they responded, they liked me. They followed me. They re-tweeted my content and it takes seconds to do that. But it shows that you paid attention and then you acted on that. Once you found it, there are so many brands that want people to love them. And they literally don't engage with their customers. They don't engage with anyone on social. And then they're like, why is this so hard? It's not hard. You're not doing the work. You, it takes seconds, seconds to make someone's day. I have mark camel will like a tweet of mine makes my entire week. It took a second. And so for me, that's, what's hyper important.

George B. Thomas (15:59):

Yeah. We could probably stop the podcast right now, ladies and gentlemen, because the idea of paying attention, paying attention to your prospects, to your leads, to your customers. And that really goes along with mine. My story, because mine actually, what was giving me the most aggression this morning, my headphones by steel series is actually one of the companies that delighted me most because when I received the headset one, it was solving a problem that I hadn't been able to solve before, because I was looking for a Bluetooth headset that actually tied into my roader pro mixing board. And that's actually very hard to do. And I hate walking around with a cord. Here's the thing, the thing that delighted me though, was they understood the audience and the packaging. And when you open up, it's like this magical, it's like Christmas, it's like Christmas because you're opening up the package and it's like this cloth that you pull it out and this is different pieces.

But then where they really got me was there was this silver card of like this almost super hero looking kind of gamer collector's card. And I was like, oh, oh, well, this is so good. I was like, this is amazing. And I was just extremely happy because AI was solving a problem. They understood that I was a nerd and they paid attention to the small details that would actually make me enjoy the experience that I was going through with their product. So here's the thing, what I wanna tie back to. And my, my son, Noah will probably edit out the pause when I asked the second question of company. But even max was a little bit like why is it that when I ask the first question, something in life that made you extremely happy, we all immediately could say this thing. But when we said to a company, we took pause and we had to think about that. Why do you think that is

Christina Garnett (17:49):

The bar is the floor the bar is to do right now. There's so many companies who can't even do what they promise. They can't even do what they pay them for that right now, the standard is to hopefully make them okay. A lot of companies haven't even, can't even get to delight because they can't get people to just not even not be mad. That's why.

George B. Thomas (18:09):

Yeah. It's pretty funny that I got super stoked over Amazon giving me a couple of cables that cost them like a few cents. That puts a lot in perspective. <Laugh> right. I am who I am and I do what I do with these episodes. But the whole point is ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to this and you think you've historically been delighting your customers, I would ask you to rethink everything you've been doing and listen to the rest of this podcast. And what we're about to say, because I really do fundamentally feel there's a ton of space for growth around this conversation of delighting from a business standpoint people and what we're talking about. So with that said, we're just gonna jump into, when you think about this question, just brain dump, max, Christina, what does customer delight really mean? Because maybe they're at bar zero. Maybe they're just trying not to keep their customers not being mad because it's a moving target. So let's stop moving the target and really define what does customer delight really mean to you guys?

What are you doing to make your customers feel safe and happy in the short- and long-term?

Christina Garnett (19:09):

For me, it means understanding that just doing what you said you were gonna do is the bare minimum. It is the absolute bare minimum. And then from there, what are you doing to make them feel safe and happy in the short term and in the long term? So you could have a really happy customer, but nothing's perfect. So maybe there's a problem down the future to be able to say like, all right, we've taken care of this for you. We took care of this in the time period that you wanted. We solved the problem that you had. But you know, if something happens, please reach out to me. That's the thing too, is a lot of companies wanna automate absolutely everything, but people, especially when things go wrong, I want a human, a bot is not gonna understand my needs. A human will. That's why you get so many people getting angrier and angrier and angrier is they're almost waiting for the bot to wake up and realize like at this level of anger, maybe I should like change to a change to somebody else.

But it's creating safety. It's creating the ability to understand that you actually care about their success, that you want there to be a relationship between you and this customer, that lifetime value that you created. When you treat someone like a one time transaction, they feel that when you treat someone like a relationship, they feel that too. So if I feel like I can trust you, if I feel like if something happens, I can come to you and you're reliable. And I know you'll fix it. You're giving me resources that, Hey, maybe I don't wanna ask questions, but I'd like to do stuff myself. Where can I go to find solutions for things when you open up a world to somebody? That's why I think community is that piece. It's a conduit for a lot of companies where they're trying to figure out where delight can be. Community is a really great bridge for that. Cuz then you're giving them an entire group of humans who can also help them, who can also make sure that they feel connected, that they feel welcome, that they feel like they're a part of something bigger.

Max Cohen (20:59):

It's even kind of Christina, how you started talking about delivering on like, what you promised is, is kind of the bare minimum. I think there's also like a lot of work people can do to ensure that they're even delivering that first. That's a foundation you kind of have to set before. You can add in all these other things. It doesn't matter. You know, how great your additional stuff that you're doing to keep your customers happy. If you're not like delivering on what they're expecting in the first place. You know? So like when you're thinking about delight, if you haven't kind of already just nailed delivering your product or service in the way that it's promised to be, that's what you really should be figuring out first. And then adding stuff on top of that. Like all this other stuff that we're talking about here and you know, that can touch other areas of the business too, as well.

Max Cohen (21:40):

Are you marketing it in a way that will meet someone's expectations if they purchase it, are you setting proper expectations in the sales process? Are you setting folks up that work with customers post sale in any capacity, whether it's support on a product someone's buying or customer service on a product someone's buying, or if you do sell a software or a service people who are supporting the implementation of that product, are you setting those people up for success so they can deliver it in a way that's gonna make sense?

There is a lot of work that I think a lot of companies can do to ensure that, okay, step one, our foundation is laid when we know we're delivering what we're promising and we're setting good expectations around it and not having to lie in order to push that product out the door. Because again, if you can't get that right, no amount of additional customer delight or anything is gonna do anything because there's no foundation for that house to even sit on, you're just gonna have walls and roofs falling down on people <laugh> like on, on the dirt.

But I think there's a lot of people who kind of look at the delight phase and just go, oh, well this is the very fluffy part of it about let's just, let's all be just COO by odd, make everybody happy. Da da. It's like no, dude. There is a very tactical reason and it comes down again. I talk about inbound physics, like all the time. This is really where all the momentum in your flywheel comes from. The physics around delight is that if you don't have people who are successful, not just happy, successful using your product, they're not gonna keep buying it. They're not gonna renew. If you're in some sort of like renewal type product, you sell like a software or service or anything and they're not gonna recommend it to anybody else. In fact, they're gonna stop using your product. They're gonna give you terrible reviews.

And if any of their friends, colleagues, family members, or whatever, they catch wind that they're considering that they're gonna say no, don't do it. And you create all these negative forces on the outside. And when you don't pay attention to this. And the funny thing too is to kind of like talk about how this has always been there. Like delight is not a new concept. If anything, it's older than even the idea of inbound itself. When I was an implementation specialist and we were getting people up and running on the marketing hub, for example, the question I would ask is like, how are you getting leads and new business? And you know, all that. Now, if you're not like doing any digital marketing or any inbound stuff or anything like that, and they always go word of mouth, where do you think the word of mouth comes from?

The word of mouth does not come from not delighting your customers. It comes from delighting your customers, whether it is all in the great product that you sell, because having a great product can delight people by itself. That is that's a fact, but it's everything else you do. It's, it's everything you do to ensure that they're actually successful with it. Not just happy with it. There's a big difference between those, but they play into each other. The big point I wanna get across, like it's a lot more tactical than people think it is. And it provides a lot more value beyond the very feel good aspect that this part of the inbound methodology kind of provides. I mean, a lot of us wanna be good people. So a lot of us tend to have sort of like a natural disposition and maybe like focus on it, especially kind of in our space and, and talk about how important it is. But for folks that haven't drunk, the inbound Kool-Aid yet, you know, sometimes they might, oh, it's this day. This's a little weird, right? It's like, no, like it's the most important part,

Customer delight is a much more important phase than most people realize

George B. Thomas (24:43):

Max. I'm so glad that you unpacked that. It's not a kumbaya ya moment because it is really the most important. And while two actors have been stealing the show, traffic awareness and convert, engage delight is actually the actor that everybody should be paying attention to because I bet I would. I'm not a betting man. Well, actually I am. When I get on a cruise ship, I like anyway, not why we're here, but if I was a betting man, because that's how this saying goes. If you were tracking your word of mouth sales process, I bet it's faster. I bet it's easier. And I bet you close more of them because you've already won with the trust because it was other people talking about you. But here's the thing what's funny is there's three of us talking about this concept where all three gonna end up giving you different answers to what is, what does customer delight really mean?

You need to be writing down and unpacking all of them kind of across the whiteboard or your notes or whatever. And before I give you mine, might I say this? If you don't have a voice of customer system in place right now, that would be an action item that I might talk about at the end of this episode of listen, all of our customers are going to have a different version of what it really means to be delighted. We need to be able to hear them. This needs to be a conversation. Meaning they're talking, we're listening. We talk it delights. Boom. Now here's what I'll say. There's three major things that I think about around this topic. The first one is that I truly am delighted when people figure out how to simplify the complex. If you'll please just take a moment to look at the BOLO spaghetti that you're trying to hand me as far as a process to either navigate your website or go through your sales process and just straighten it out just a little bit, make it Ricke Tony, where I can drive right down the center or something besides this convoluted mess, I'm gonna be delighted.

The other thing is, if I'm going through that process, number two, if you can please evoke an motion, cuz I'm waiting for my next hit of oxytocin so that I just feel good about what I'm about to do. And by the way humans, we purchase based on emotional response. And so if you can streamline the process, simplify the complex and actually evoke an emotion along the way I am 75% of being a delighted customer of yours.

But the last thing that I will say is in the way that you would treat me please, by all that is wholly focus on being transformational and not transactional because if you are there to truly transform me from where I am to where I need to be, you've actually simplified it so I can get there. And you've made me feel good about myself. I am going to talk to 1 billion people about who you are as a company. That to me is truly what delight means. Now let's go ahead and move forward to this next one, because we are quickly running out of time on this episode because here's the thing somebody's listening to this max and Christina, and they're like, sweet. This is the dopest episode ever. Let's pass it over to Jimmy in service. Let's pass it over to Bobby in marketing. Let's give it to Jose in. No, no, no, no. Which team is responsible for everything that we're talking about.

Customer delight examples in marketing

Max Cohen (27:55):

Some examples might be helpful for folks too as well. I say this a lot. Let's say you're a marketer. You gotta remember like you're delighting people with your content. If it's educational, why? Because they're finding it when they have a problem, they're consuming it. Hopefully they're learning something from it. And then they're taking some sort of action that makes their life, their job, their goal, their cha like whatever it is better in, in a certain way, you've created delight there. And then you've built a little bit of trust and that kind of helps them move through their relationship with you a little bit further, those little like micro progressions, if you will, to kind of get them further down the chain in, in building a relationship with you also like if you're a marketer, you stop trying to educate your customers after they become a customer.

No, Hey, you can. There's nothing wrong with continuing to ensure that they are well informed. They're educated. They know how they can use your product, like how they can get the most out of it. You could teach him something new every once in a while, make them feel a lot closer to you, make them continue to trust you. Continuing to build trust is something, not just getting it at the beginning and then, you know, selling something to 'em. If you're in the sales process, there's plenty of things you can do to delight people in the sales processor. Again, it comes down to being honest with people, not selling them a false bill of goods, not being a snake oil salesman or whatever. The, whatever the saying is ensuring that you're being honest with folks being clear when things aren't a good fit explaining why things are a good fit in a way that's actually true.

And it makes sense and not disingenuine and ensuring like you're not hounding them. You're not jumping down their throats. You're not being too aggressive. There is such thing as a delightful sales process. Like we can do this. We don't have to kind of rely on old school quote, quote, a killing focused like sales tactics. There are like better ways to sell in ways that you can delight folks. It's kind of easier to clearly see if you're in some sort of customer success, customer service, customer support, whatever sort of role on, on that side of the coin, where you're kind of taking care of folks who, who are paying customers, things like that. I mean, you're delighting in every single action that you take, but there are also things that you do to attract and engage as well. Right. But that's a different episode.

Who on the team is responsible for customer delight?

George B. Thomas (29:52):

Yeah, it is. And by the way, if you haven't watched or listened to those episodes, definitely go back and head over to the main page for hub heroes. I wanna kind of still dig into this a little bit more Christina, because really what max did is he went down the avenue of, okay, so we all quickly went everybody. So in that case, if it is multiple teams, which we know it is when we ask the question, what are their responsibilities? Where does your mind go? Are there certain things that you kind of pick out or think about responsibilities of humans who are helping other humans be delighted?

Christina Garnett (30:25):

Yes. I think the heart hub, what heart, I think that that is something that is intrinsically focused on all of the employees and those are the characteristics that we want everyone to have. And so I think that that becomes our north star as to how we behave with each other, how we behave with customers, how we treat others. And so I think just having like just how, how you would have a north star for like KPIs or mission or anything like that. I think having just a sense of what does your, what do your employees need to be like when they are working together when they're working with others?

And I think heart sets a really good precedent for what that can look like. So that, and you say this online, when you do social listening, when people talk about HubSpot, they talk about the employees and how it's great to work with us and how it's great to talk to us. And we genuinely wanna help them. That's because HubSpot hires nice people. Like we hire kind people, but also you have to go beyond that. You have to actually care. And because we care, you can see it in all of the different steps that we take. We just naturally want to be there for them. And it shows in our work.

George B. Thomas (31:25):

Love it. So when we think about this, let's actually dive in because you know, a lot of people, myself included, I, I really do come from the show, me state, like show me a great example of where this is happening so I can necessarily clone it or copy it in a bad way, but I can maybe mirror it a little bit and make it mine for the company that I work inside of. So when you think about some great examples of customer delight in action, and I'll go last by the way, because I have one and it's very personal, but I still feel like I wanna share it here. And, and when I get to that point, I'm not trying to be grandiose, but I think it's something that everybody needs to hear. And so we'll get there. But when you guys think about what are some great examples of customer delight in action, where does your mind go?

Max Cohen (32:13):

I bought this like streaming software that I use every once in a while when I'm on doing some stuff on like Twitch or, or YouTube or LinkedIn, and they have this premium membership that you can get does a bunch of stuff. It lets you like set up a merch store. It lets you set up like a little website for your stream. It lets you set up, you know, a whole bunch of fun, extra stuff on your actual stream itself. What's cool is when you actually become a member there, they're constantly sending you like a whole bunch of different tips and educational information around streaming, how you can get most outta a lot of the really like super deep features that I just would not stumble upon. Like on my own, when I was trying to like set up the store and the website, I was having trouble because I actually messed up and punched an incorrect spelling of like a name I was using for something.

And it kind of got like hard coded into the backend of the website and I didn't have a way of changing it, but like I was able to like easily get access to their support team who brought in their engineers and was able to go like fix this thing in the backend for me that like I wasn't able to do through the settings. And I think that kind of ties back to this very specific thing we see in the customer code called solve for my success, not your systems where they could have easily told me, Hey, that's a mistake you made that you, you can't do that. Like they went above and beyond to say like, oh, you know, it was kind of on us that we didn't allow you to kind of like change that or fix that on your own. So we kind of like, you know, took a little bit more of an extra step in the back end to, to make that right for you. Shout out to stream labs. If anyone uses stream labs, it's great. 

Chewy is a world-class customer delight example as a brand

Christina Garnett (33:36):

Have to go to chewy. Chewy is the gold God tier standard delight. They don't treat their customers like customers. They treat them like family and friends. They treat them like individuals. They are empathetic on levels that I have literally never seen a company be empathetic. If you are great exam, they go viral every time they do it. So it pays for itself in dividends every time they there's been multiple examples where someone's pet has died and they have called support to basically say like, Hey, I have like a recurring payment for this. My pet has died. So I don't no longer need this. Sometimes they even have, they have like dog food or cat food left over and they'll say like, that's okay. Like you can donate that to to like a local like dog shelter, animal shelter, things like that. And then they'll give them flowers with like a note from the person that they spoke with the name of the person they spoke with, or they sometimes do probably the best like day of the year activation I've ever seen is from may the fourth.

They actually had requested customers share their pets that were named Dr. Star wars characters. And they had hand painted portraits of their pets given to them. So like you have all these like chewies and Yodas and like it's precious. That is in my opinion, just like God tear, delight, where that is saying, we know your animal is a family member of yours and you genuinely love them. And we want to make sure that you're taking care of in the good moments and in the bad moments and those paintings, those people will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever throw them away. And every time they've they think about going to a different vendor, they're gonna think about that picture and think, no one's ever gonna take care of me the way they are. No one's ever going to go that extra mile the way they are. And so delight is the biggest, biggest strategic advantage because people can beat you on price and people can beat you on location or flexibility, but they cannot beat you on delight when you are taking care of people at that level, like it's impossible. So I have to go chewy every single

Max Cohen (35:37):

Time. And you know, what's even like cooler about that too, is there is a high probability in that situation that that customer is done spending money with you. Cause a lot of time, like your pet goes, you're like, I'm not getting another dog. If that's what I have to do again, especially if it's your first time losing a pet, a lot of people don't want to go through that again. There's a very good chance that person's not gonna spend any more money on you, but you spend time, resources and effort to essentially thank them for, for being a customer and also really make sure that they're taking care of and their sort of pain is recognized and things like that. It's okay to do those things. Even if you don't think there's gonna be some sort of return, like they're, they can't always be sitting there being like, Ugh, now they're definitely gonna buy cat food for us again, when they get another cat, cuz the poor whiskers has gone. They're not doing

George B. Thomas (36:20):

That well, they definitely get it. They definitely get it. And max, couple things, one, thanks for going, cuz I needed a hot minute to not be emotional talking about this whole process that we went through as somebody who has lost a pet and, and now has new pets like this, this whole process. But it's funny because chewy gets it right? It's they evoke emotional response, but they also understand, yes, this person may never buy again. But the family they're gonna talk to about the photo, the people that maybe they share the photo on social, like there's this six degrees of all the people that we know. And I, I fully believe that's not why they do it, but they get that. That might happen as a byproduct. It's not an expectation. It's just a possibility. Here's the thing mine. And again, I don't say this to be grandiose.

I'm not trying to boast, but it is. It is. I'm gonna get to a point where I want to ask if you're doing this for your customers. Because I had a recent experience where I was delighted beyond anything that I ever thought that I would be delighted in, in my life. Now, many of you who are listening to this may have been following me for the last 10 years and know that fundamentally when HubSpot gets it, right. I talk about when HubSpot gets it right. And when HubSpot jacks it up, I'm not a HubSpot Homer. I don't work for HubSpot. My name is in that intro. I can say whatever it is that I wanna say, because I can say it. So the rest of the story has to go under that context as I'm going to tell it the way that it is, I was at inbound and I kept walking around and normal people, HubSpot users would be like, Hey, congratulations 

The fact that you started a business, great job. Then the strangest of things started to happen to me. And it was HubSpot employees coming up and saying, Hey, congratulations on your new venture. Congratulations on your new venture congrat. And we're talking like Nicholas Holland, we're talking Dan tire, we're talking DMA Shaw. I'll get to the last one, which was just the, the piece like, oh my God, my brain is gonna just fry and melt down. But all these HubSpot employees were like, dude, congratulations were rooting for you were in your corner. I'm getting ready to leave inbound. I'm in an Uber, myself and Zach Basner and Brian Halligan himself had just got done interviewing Barack Obama. And I see him kind of walking towards the west end Eileen kind of just to look, but I'm like, nah, I'm not gonna bug him. Man. Dude is super busy.

Whatever. I lean back in my chair, my seat of the Uber, all of a sudden we hear a knocking on the trunk of the car and we're like, what is going on? And then all of a sudden, a knocking at the window where Zack is sitting. And so Zach looks over it's Brian at our window. And so Zach window goes down. Brian leans in the car, shakes. My hand says George B. Thomas, congratulations on, on your new venture. We're rooting for you goes outta the car and just walks away. Window goes up. We're paused there for a second. And Zach goes, well, that just happened. And we both, and we both start laughing, but here's the thing I got to the point about 80, 90% of the way of this happening. And my brain started making up things like does HubSpot have a Wiki that I quit my job?

Like what is going on? And here's the point that I want everybody to realize for me, it was a matter of how are they doing this? And ladies and gentlemen, I gotta ask you, when is the last time that your customers have wondered? How are they doing this? How are they making this magical? How do they know me so deeply? Because HubSpot, by the way, I will never ever use another CRM for the rest of my life ever, because I've been delighted so much by the way that the employees have paid attention, the founders have paid attention, the emotional response that it invoked at inbound and the way that I'll move forward and talk about, I mean, I've already been talking about like, it's amazing, but I'm gonna talk about it. Like it's amazing because of this whole relationship and by the way, that's the one word that we really haven't said through this episode is that when you're focused on delight, you're focused on building a long lasting relationship without expectations, no matter if it equals revenue or not, you're just doing what's right, because it's right now, here's the thing. Why with like a couple minutes left here, why do you think it's so dang important for people to pay attention to this and implement something today, around delight in their business. If they aren't doing it, you're

Too many put all of their efforts into marketing and sales, but not a lot into service

Max Cohen (40:53):

Just missing a fundamental piece. If you don't, that question is kind of just like, oh, you know, how can you build a sailboat without a sale? It's something you have to be focusing on. I think the big problem is like people just put all their time and effort and energy into marketing and sales and not a lot into service. Cuz a lot of people say like, oh, service isn't revenue generating. When in fact it is revenue generating, it's all the revenue that continues to stay with you. It's one of those things where it just, you gotta think about it a little bit more nuanced and it has a much deeper impact on the business than you think it does. I, if anything, it's an amplifier for marketing and sales. If you go out there and you create folks that are shouting your name from the mountain top, those are the best kind of marketers. Those are marketers that pay you cuz they're your customers, but they're doing marketing for you. It's just as big of a piece of the puzzle as marketing and sales is and, and you know, attracting and engage or however you wanna think about

Christina Garnett (41:42):

It. I think probably the best visualization is that meme with the couple. And he turns around to check out the other girl. That is what every company does with new customers versus current customers. Retention is so critical. Think about like Netflix in the past two years, their stocks dipped. Not because they didn't get new it's because they lost retention is hyper critical and it takes less money to keep than it does to, to get new. The thing is is that your, your current customers have the potential to be the best sales team you've ever had. The best marketing team you've ever had better than any paid ads you've ever had because people actually believe them. People will listen to strangers over a brand. So HubSpot and any company can say how great they are, but I don't care. I wanna know how your customers feel about you.

How do the people who have to use your product or service daily? Are they happy if they have problems? Do they get fixed? The thing is that if you really believe in inbound marketing, if you really believe in the shift from the funnel to the flywheel, then you have to believe in delight. If you aren't delighting your customers, you are still running a funnel model where as soon as you're done and you get that check, you're done, they fall straight through and like whatever happens happens, you have to have that flywheel. And the thing is, especially with like the work that I do for advocacy, it greases the firewall. It creates that momentum that max was talking about because they create ripples every single day. Every time they mention you, every time they talk about a win, every time they get a HubSpot academy certification, they are creating ripples that you will never ever ever know about.

There are people talking about HubSpot right now in a community that we don't own. And they're talking about HubSpot and what questions they have. And there are HubSpot users in there answering those questions. We may never know about that conversation, but that's happening. And that's influencing people whether or not they wanna become a customer. It could be crossing them over the edge to like, alright, that's the sign. I'm finally gonna do it. Customers, your current customers and delighting them. That is the ultimate. The ultimate thing. The reason I think that people don't like to do it is because they don't like to do the things that don't scale. There's a lot of personalization on this side of the flywheel and a lot of people wanna automate and, and absolutely everything. And what you need to do is you need to create this really beautiful balance of what's automated and what's human. And once you find that nice balance, you're gonna be able to have things run efficiently, but you're also gonna have that very personal piece where people feel like they're genuinely being taken care of and cared about.

George B. Thomas (44:08):

So good ladies and gentlemen, it's about the ripples. All right. One of the things and we'll do this quickly because well, we gotta get back to work, ladies and gentlemen. And so to you, one of the things we like to do Christina, at the very end is give them an action item that they should do. So after this conversation that we've had, which by the way, in my opinion has been absolutely amazing. What is the action item? We'll go Christina, then max, and I'll close it out. What is the action item you would tell the hub hero's audience to take next.

Christina Garnett (44:36):

You need to interview your customers. And not just when you need quotes for an ebook or a marketing asset, you need to talk to them and you need to be open and create a safe space. So they can be negative. Cuz even the fans that you have, they have negative things cuz to say, cuz nothing's perfect, but you need to be just as receptive about the negative as the positive, because the negative is actually where you can create change. If someone comes to you and be like, everything's perfect. I'm good. I can't action on that. But if someone's able to tell you like, Hey, I like this, but I wish we could do this. You can action on that. Your customers will not only be able to create those ripples, but they can also create your roadmap. And a lot of times they'll even tell you how to do it. They'll tell exactly what they want, how they would use it, how it would help them. They can be such a core secret weapon for you. So talk to them and be okay with it. Not all being sunshine and rainbows.

Max Cohen (45:23):

I have three takeaways I'm gonna rip through. 'em Really fast. First one is if you're not already try to start thinking a little bit more tactically about delight specifically through the lens of how can we make sure people are being genuinely successful? How can we make a genuine effort to ensure our customers are successful? Happiness is a byproduct of that. It will come successful as what you really wanna focus on the second piece, which kind of contradicts the first it's okay to do something cuz you think it's the right thing. It's okay to do something. Cuz it feels good. Give yourself the space. It doesn't always have to have a tactical tie back to revenue or the business. It's okay to do something cuz you think it's the right thing to do. Last bit that I will do is if anyone needs any really kind of solid sort of tenants, if you will, on how you might think about delight and like specific actions, you can take, go check out the HubSpot customer code, something that we published a few inbounds ago. And it has some of like the best stuff in there in terms of like how you can kind of take care of your customers and promises you can sort of make to them. So if you just Google HubSpot customer code, it's the first link that pops up. There's like 10, I think like tenants or something around there. Go check that out. Super good stuff in there that can give you like a really good framework on how you're genuinely making people successful. How while you're taking care of 'em and, and how you're driving delight.

George B. Thomas (46:37):

Yeah, I'm gonna, first of all, up vote everything that both max and Christina said, then I'm gonna plus one, the listen to your customers, ladies and gentlemen, seriously. I mentioned it earlier. If you don't have a voice of customer system in place, I need you to do that. And then when you can actually hear your customers, I want you to start thinking, how can I simplify the complex from what I'm hearing? How can I evoke emotion from what I'm hearing? How can I build a system processes that are transformational instead of transactional, based on what I'm hearing. And then I want you to stop, rethink everything and ask yourself, is it possible?