Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast
If you work in customer support, if you lead a support team, or if you are looking to better the customer experience for your company, then this podcast is for you!
Happy to Help is a podcast about all things customer support brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout. Join us, on the second Tuesday of every month as Buzzsprout's Head of Podcaster Success, Priscilla Brooke dives into the world of customer support to make remarkable support the standard, not the exception!
Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast
Journey Mapping the Customer's Experience with Stacy Sherman
Customer support is just one step on a much larger path. So how do you make sure every step along your customer’s journey is intentional, seamless, and delightful?
In this episode, Priscilla welcomes Doing CX Right host and customer experience expert Stacy Sherman to demystify the practice of customer journey mapping. With 25+ years of experience building connections between people and brands, Stacy breaks down how to go beyond support tickets and start crafting every phase of the customer experience with purpose.
Check out Stacy's book, "Transformative Experience Journey Management", her podcast "Doing CX Right," and free templates at doingcxright.com.
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke. Today we're entering the world of journey mapping. The customer's experience is more than just their interactions with your support team. So today we're discussing what journey mapping is, how it can impact your product and customer experience, and some strategies for doing it successfully. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it.
Priscilla:I am really excited today because we have a wonderful guest with us to introduce us to the world of journey mapping, which is something I don't have. A ton of experience with, Jordan. Have you ever heard of journey mapping?
Jordan:No, I've never heard of this.
Priscilla:Yeah, I feel like I've started to hear about it in the last couple months, but the fact that I've been working in customer experience for almost a decade and haven't really heard about before, that is interesting. So I'm excited because today joining us is Stacy Sherman. Stacy has dedicated 25 years to creating authentic connections between people and brands. She is a published author, a keynote speaker and the host of the podcast Doing CX Right. She's also the founder of Doing CX Right Consultancy, where she helps companies and professionals improve their customers' experience. Thanks for joining us today, Stacy.
Stacy:Thank you for having me.
Priscilla:Yeah, this is really fun. This is like your expertise, and so I'm really really pumped for you to join us and talk to us and just share with our listeners all of your amazing insights, you know what I'm really happy to
Priscilla:Oh, there we go.
Priscilla:I love it.
Priscilla:I love it. It's funny. When we started talking about Happy to Help is the possible name, I was like, oh, I hope it just becomes like part of the vernacular and like the conversation. So it's really fun. I love it when people say I'm happy to be here, I'm happy to help. Before we jump into it. We always like to start our episodes with kind of like a surge of positivity and shout out someone in the world of CX or just in your world who has made your day better, because we have such a great opportunity and customer support to positively impact people's days.
Stacy:I'd say my husband.
Priscilla:Great answer ,. Great answer.
Stacy:Yeah, well, especially because I did not have any role models growing up in the area of marriage. I come from a divorced family, so going on 30 years this year is a big deal. Yeah, and I answer that with my husband because we've had a big pivot in our lives, and that is I've been in the corporate world for 25 years and now an entrepreneur, and so without him going on this journey with me and every day supporting that, I just I'm speechless, as you can tell.
Priscilla:Yeah, that's great. I love that answer. It's so important to have someone in your corner who's cheering you on when you're doing something new, especially. But, even when you're doing things over time and it becomes, you know, sometimes routine or you're like is this the place I'm supposed to be? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? To have someone in your corner Really encouraging you, that's so wonderful. And 30 years Congratulations, that's amazing.
Stacy:It really is. I don't take it for granted. Congratulations, that's amazing. It really is. I don't take it for granted. Yeah, but life is about experiences, which is why I talk about it personally and professionally.
Priscilla:Yeah, it's all made up of experiences in the professional world and in the personal world. I love it. What an amazing answer. It really is an amazing answer. So for our listeners who are not familiar with the work you do, can you share a little bit more about your extensive background in journey mapping, but in customer experience, and then also just what you love about working in customer CF?
Stacy:Yes. So I grew up in marketing and sales and I fell into customer experience, and what I mean by that is there became this moment, this choice, when I was working in corporate that dude, I want to continue the marketing and promoting and selling, or did I want to go where it's actually designing the experiences that people have with brands, both the customer and client and equally important are the employees, the workforce that deliver that experience and so I decided to pivot and really lean into that experience management. Journey mapping is a tool, it's a framework, it's a way to design to make sure that you're really meeting the needs and impacting lives. My background, though, is really that blend of meeting needs and stopping loss losing customers, losing employees, losing friendships, losing jobs and so I want to stop the loss.
Priscilla:Yeah, life is too short, right, we got to move back to the enjoyable part of it and stop the loss. I love that. So in your podcast Doing CX Right, which is a great podcast, and everyone who's listening to this should go and listen to that podcast because it's really fantastic yes, you always ask your listeners to go back and to give you some kind of advice that they would give themselves as a 20-year-old starting in the corporate world. So I figured, I'd flip that around and ask you what advice would you give yourself?
Stacy:Yeah. So my question is that, but not pertaining to the corporate world. It is about your younger, 20-year-old self, based on what you know now. What would you tell yourself then? So for me to answer that, my belief is to take more risks. Cross the street by myself earlier, let go of the railing earlier because I was afraid to fall, I was afraid to get lost and therefore I didn't go many places. I stayed around my neighborhood and now I take more chances. I go on more roller coaster rides, so much more because it's blue sky and not being afraid to fail.
Priscilla:Yeah, I mean, there is so much that can be learned in the midst of failing or not doing the thing exactly how you expected it would turn out, and so I think that's such good advice for anyone really at any stage in life corporate, not corporate whatever you're doing, it's okay to fail, it's okay to give it a shot, and if it doesn't work out, you've learned from it and you could try something new.
Stacy:Yes, and I have to say my real truth, because podcasting is a love of mine, it's a drug of choice. And one thing about this whole fear of failing is that I didn't take my microphone out of the box for six months. Oh wow, because I was afraid to start podcasting. I was afraid Do I have the right microphone? Do I know this? Do I have that? And so if you are an aspiring podcaster or entrepreneur or whatever it is, take the mic out of the box.
Priscilla:Yeah, I love it. That's so good. It's not a unique experience to you. So many podcasters specifically have a hard time with that first episode, getting the mic out of the box, setting it up. And you're right, just do it. Start doing it and you will figure it out as you go. So let's get into journey mapping. Will figure it out as you go. So let's get into journey mapping. Like I said, this is pretty new to me as a technique to use in customer support or just in brand loyalty with your customers and your customer experience, but you have been doing this for a while and you have a ton of information and insight into how to do this really well. So, to just start off, for anyone who doesn't know what journey mapping is maybe it's the first time they're hearing this term Can you define what journey mapping is and some of those phases that a customer might go through during their journey?
Stacy:Yes, absolutely so at high level. A customer journey is literally those micro moments that you experience with a brand, and so it's the intentionality to map that out, and you start first with your internal teams how a customer, a client, a prospect will learn that you exist. So that's typically marketing. It's the awareness and learn beginning stage. Then the buying experience how will they buy what you're offering? Is it e-commerce? Is it a retail store? Is it a salesperson comes to you directly? How will you get what you bought? Is it shipping? Again, do you have to go pick it up? So the learn, buy, get use, pay and get help. And get help is what we know as customer service, and it's an essential part of the customer experience. But it's not the same. Customer service and customer experience are not the same thing, and that's where people make a mistake, because customer service and customer support is a important part of the journey. It is not the whole journey.
Priscilla:And one of the things that you say a lot is that everyone has a customer experience role. You talk about that a little bit, about how everyone can have a part of that experience, not can must.
Stacy:Must. Yeah, because here's the thing If marketing is coming out with these great promotional campaigns, if all the people in that journey are not at the table and understanding what's marketing doing, how are people going to get the offer? How are they going to get, if there's an issue with the billing get that support? If the contact center and customer success and service team don't know about that offer. The customer calls in and says where's that promotion? It's not working. And the care team says I'm so sorry, I don't even know what you're talking about. Right, they leave.
Stacy:Yeah, so everybody needs to be part of the exercise of designing the experience, the communication flow. How does it communicate through the journey? What's the technology used through the journey? Where's the AI versus the human? And then you don't stop there. You then go to real customers and clients and ask them what you design, does it really meet your needs? If we offer a certain way for you to pay your bill, but that's not helpful to them, you're missing, there's a gap. You need to know that and go back to your internal teams and say we've got to alter this.
Priscilla:Yeah, so it's clear, just hearing you talk about it, that you are very passionate about this journey mapping strategy. Yeah, what got you into journey mapping in the first place? Like when did you first learn about it, and where is all this passion come from?
Stacy:Yeah. So two reasons. One, as a consumer of brands, like you, I just have no tolerance when brands make it so difficult to get help to buy the friction. There's no reason for it. So personally, as a consumer, I get so heated when some company's wasting my time or creating that effort so I want to do something about it. And then, professionally, that was the role that when I was in a couple of companies ago, they just threw me that ball and they said Stacy, you own customer experience on top of the marketing efforts. And I said, oh well, what does that mean? And they said you go figure it out. And so the good news is I figure everything out and the bad news is I didn't like that boss in the moment.
Priscilla:It's healthy to be able to separate those two things, to say I love this thing, I love figuring that out, but the place I'm doing it is not ideal, and sometimes I think it's hard to separate those two things, and so kudos to you for separating it and staying passionate about the thing you're passionate about and not letting the organization you're in kind of affect that.
Stacy:It became an opportunity that I saw every company, regardless of size and regardless of product and service, that this ability to map out the customer journey, the client experience. It can start on the back of a napkin or whiteboard to then using those sophisticated tools. So I want people listening to understand that don't get nervous about the tech stack and how you do it, really go old school and I'm happy to help literally.
Priscilla:So, like you were just talking about customer support, interactions are part of the journey, but they're not the whole journey. So you talked a little bit about how each department will have a connection with this map over time, but who owns it? Like, where would you put the ownership of the customer journey mapping?
Stacy:Companies that have a customer experience manager or leader or team. They typically are the Elmer's glue of the company. Yeah, and that was the role I played.
Stacy:If you don't have that role in your company, well come talk to me, because you need it, and if you don't, then someone in the organization really needs to take that responsibility and it needs to be at the executive level, so that it becomes a priority for every department and that people are measured in the same way, because if you don't have those unified customer goals, no one cares and it becomes the blame game.
Priscilla:Yeah, which is a dangerous game to play. Yes, you were talking about that communication that's necessary between these different departments and how having that strong communication is really necessary in order to make an actual, accurate journey map of the customer's experience. Accurate journey map of the customer's experience what kind of strategies or advice do you have for companies that maybe don't have very good communication there? Let's say that someone's listening to this who's in the customer service world and they're like I really think we need to have more cohesion here. What would you say to that person to try to get that communication to be stronger so that they can start mapping out that journey a little better?
Stacy:Yeah, a couple answers. So one is, if you're in a customer service and support success role number one go shadow other people in other departments. Learn what it's like in their shoes and then connect the dots to how it impacts your team. Don't wait for a formal program. Number two invite those people to your team meetings to listen in on customer or client calls so they understand your space in the big picture. I would also set up a governance where people come together and literally solution the problems you hear on the front line of the complaints, the frictions and the good points to celebrate.
Stacy:I would also recommend, if we just laser in the customer service, the customer care department, there is a journey within that entire role Interesting, so you can now go into that whole micro moment of what's it like to be the caller, what's it like to be the one chatting, and how have you designed that experience to be. For example, if someone needs to call for help, well, what is the 800 number experience? What do they hear? What are the prompts? Is it easy or difficult? Do they have to repeat themselves when they get to a human? Do they get to a human? Yeah, what's it like for the human who's trying to service that customer or person calling in? How many systems do they have to go through? Is the content updated to be able to provide the support? There's a whole lot of moments of truth, yeah. So you map that, you design that, you optimize that, but you can't do it just internally. You've got to bring the customer to the table so that it's a co-design and optimization and measurement of just even in the customer service realm.
Priscilla:Yeah. So let me ask you when I was first introduced to journey mapping, I really didn't know what the final result looked like, whether it was a written explanation of the journey or whether it was more of a graphic kind of view.
Jordan:That's what I'm picturing is like an infographic, yeah.
Priscilla:So, and I think over the last couple of months, learning more about it is more of a visual type of thing. Can you tell us a little bit more what that like final product looks?
Stacy:like Absolutely. So what I do coming into companies is do these workshops where there is a template of going through the journey. It can be the entire experience. If I can get everybody from different departments together, ideally. And if I come into just one department, it would be workshopping that organization and what they've designed or sometimes don't design. It's just kind of a free-for-all. We do map out on paper and help every team member connect the dots to see oh, that's your role, the domino effect that everybody can now see. Oh, that's why you always ask me for that information, oh, that's why you need this from me. And so everybody then sees, not that they're all going to do every job, but they understand and can be accountable and see where the gaps that nobody is communicating to fix that. So it is visual and then you can overlay the data thereafter.
Priscilla:That makes me excited because I love making things look nice. That's like one of my strengths, and so the idea of like, oh, getting to figure out how to graphically make it look really cool, like that, makes me excited about journey mapping, for sure.
Stacy:Yeah, no, and it's an important point here, because the journey map is not wall art Right. A lot of times people will just take the journey due to the exercise and then it stays in the desk, and that's where companies go wrong, because then you've got to go put it into action any good, and I think there's also.
Priscilla:I would assume that there's an aspect of updating it too. Maybe as your product changes or as you learn more about your customers and their experiences, you will update that journey map over time 100%.
Stacy:And not only that your customer, your base, their needs are changing in this fast-paced tech world, but you're also deploying technology, and that's part of the exercise. Where, in this journey, is the technology, the AI, the one delivering the experience, versus the human that has to be on the map?
Priscilla:Yeah, so how do you see journey mapping influence, the day-to-day work at a company? So the day-to-day, like you were just talking about those changes, how do you see that really affecting product development and customer support and these different areas that are mapping it out?
Stacy:Well, a lot of times. I like that you brought up product development, because many times, product development teams will develop a product or a new feature offer, throw it out and hope it sticks, and that's wasted time, money, effort. Instead, you need to get the customer feedback early in this journey that they're designing, and so that's why it's so important that it's an iterative process, day-to-day. Where this comes into play is what I would call the voice of customer VOC, and that is getting the voice of your customers, your clients, intentionally in structured and unstructured ways, and what that means is when you have your journey, you actually are paying attention to those micro moments that either you're getting in a survey or you're getting on social media because people are talking about your brand, or you're getting it in your website contact form, that people are filling out Ratings and review sites. There's so much information that people are giving you. Are you paying attention and are you using it to optimize the journey you've created?
Priscilla:Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know you've worked with a lot of different people and companies on journey mapping and setting this up for them and your workshops. Do you have any success stories that you can share with us of companies that really have implemented this and it's had a huge impact on the brand loyalty and the customer's experience?
Stacy:huge impact on the brand loyalty and the customer's experience. One telecom company I worked for in a particular department. We were rolling out buy online pick up at store and to do that you needed everybody on board. You needed the e-commerce team to understand that was the experience and help build that. You needed IT to create that infrastructure. You needed the retail store to understand that people are going to come and want their product very quickly and easily. There were so many different aspects marketing and communications to have the right content on the website. So what happened was when we rolled it out, it all worked seamlessly. But customers were frustrated because when they went to the retail store they had to wait on a line, especially when there was, like an iconic iPhone launch, and so they're waiting on line. That should be a different line than when you're going to go into the store and shop versus pick up.
Priscilla:You already paid you want to get in and out. Yeah, I think we've all been in that situation, and so that's such a good example.
Stacy:Yeah, yes, so by understanding and actually getting the voice feedback of the customer, we were able to identify that there was a pain point, that there wasn't a separate queue for those buy online pick up at store customers, that we can then go institute that and also help the retailer understand that you know who's coming to your store. You know that they bought this iPhone. You can actually bring out some accessories and show them what they might want when they're picking up their new device. You could actually be helpful that you know that they're going to need to transfer certain data on their old phone to their new phone and use that as a customer relationship opportunity. Yeah, so there's so much there in understanding that design of experience across the organization and ways that you can be supportive and helpful during that transaction and post-transaction.
Priscilla:Yeah, that's such a good example of how that can all work together and how insights from different departments can really impact the customer's experience there in the store.
Priscilla:And it's all these situations where there's so much to be gained from being in communication with other people like and understanding their insights and understanding their perspective, because we all look at the customer's experience from a different perspective, and so bringing everyone together and saying, hey, you're not seeing this from your side, but I can see it from my side, so I'm going to share with you and let that impact how you do your work really creates this cohesion in your company, and you were talking about it happening in a real in-person experience, but it can happen when you're fully online or when your customer is in a product Like.
Priscilla:So for us, we have a hosting service, so they're using our software and the customer support team sees it from one perspective and the developers see it from another perspective, and our communication about our different perspectives can really have a huge positive impact on the way the customer is experiencing the product. And so I think it really comes back to journey mapping being this really cool way to facilitate that communication and make it really clear to everyone in the company as a whole.
Stacy:Yes, and that's why the ability to do journey mapping solves so many challenges. One is it creates the connection. It breaks the company silos and helps everybody understand how they own, they have a piece of customer experience, whether the back office or the front line. That's so important, number one. Number two it's helping you really identify what your customers and clients really need and expect and that you can deliver. You can't do that otherwise. You can't do that otherwise and therefore I really encourage, whether you are a big company to a midsize, small company, that you really design the experience intentionally. And these are the reasons.
Priscilla:Yeah, ok so, speaking about like company size, one of the things we really want to do with this podcast is make sure that people have these actionable tips, they can take back, these actual steps that they can do tomorrow to start putting this into place. So what would you recommend specifically for those smaller teams that maybe don't have so much of the structure built in, because this can feel a bit overwhelming. I would imagine to hear this and be like, oh gosh, how am I going to do this, how am I going to map this all out? Or how am I going to do this, how am I going to map this all out? Or how am I going to get everyone on board for this? What would you recommend for a smaller team to kind of take that first step tomorrow?
Stacy:To start building out the journey. So, first of all, I do have a free template on my website. There's two options you can do it yourself, yeah, and with some coaching involved. Or, you know, bring me into your company and plan out a half a day and we can literally go through it so that it jumpstarts your efforts.
Priscilla:Yeah, that's great. If you're listening to this, you know now, stacey, she can help you do it. You mentioned one thing that I kind of want to touch on about how sometimes, when you're mapping out this journey, you'll bring in the customer themselves and talk to them directly about it. How do you actually recommend doing that? Like, what kind of ways do you connect with the customer, especially if you're kind of like Buzzsprout or some of our listeners, where you aren't actually seeing a customer face-to-face or really talking to them virtually that often? How would you recommend you kind of get that information from a customer?
Stacy:I'm glad you brought that up because I want to make sure listeners understand that if you're a remote organization and there's no real conference room, that's okay. Yeah, you can do this virtually, it's just the human in the room is beneficial. As far as customers and clients are concerned. You have to have a pulse of what's working and what's not. You need a relationship conversation so you would literally take the map and ask them the right questions to understand how was the onboarding experience? How is it being a user of the service? What are we missing when you get help?
Stacy:Is it easy or difficult and literally measure that, Just like many companies know, net promoter score and PS the likely to recommend. But that's not enough of a measurement to be actionable. That's where, again, I'm helping to design the right questions to know, to get a pulse, a real check on how you're doing with the right metrics, and then you ask your customers. If you ask, they'll tell you, yeah, they will Close the loop. What they tell you. Make sure you do something with it with the right people, Right who own those journey points.
Priscilla:We live in the world of AI right now. I mean, everyone is talking about AI in so many different conversations. Where do you think AI fits into this journey mapping process? How do you see people use AI to do this?
Stacy:A lot. I always say that the AI is enabling the human experience and we're working together.
Jordan:It's both and not either or.
Stacy:Yeah. So one of the things I would recommend, before you do a journey map, is understand the persona of your buyer, because who are you designing the journey for? You have to know who are those humans, unless you have a bot to bot customer and that does exist. But persona development for who is your current buyer? Who is your? Maybe you're going into another segment that's helpful too, so AI can really be valuable in persona development.
Priscilla:Yeah
Stacy:Using AI to be your collection and aggregator of the voice of customer, so you understand what are people saying about you solicited and not solicited and therefore you take that into the design aspects and that's important for people to pay attention. Using the outside to build what you're delivering, what you're creating, and fix those disconnects.
Priscilla:I think that's a really great insight and can be such an impactful strategy to use in building that brand loyalty and that experience for your customers. So what is like the one main takeaway that you want people to remember tomorrow when they're thinking back on this episode?
Stacy:That your customers have a journey with you or without you, so you might as well design it.
Priscilla:There you go, they're going to have a journey, so do without you, so you might as well design it. There you go, they're going to have a journey, so do you want to have control over that, or do you want that to just be fully up to however they end up interacting? I think that's really simple and clear.
Stacy:It's so good. If you are not intentional to the design, then if one small thing goes wrong, they will go to your competitor. Yeah, they might badmouth you on social media, so you can get ahead of that.
Priscilla:Yes, by mapping out that journey, you can get ahead of that. Thank you so much, stacey, I really appreciate it. You know your knowledge about journey mapping does not stop here with this conversation. You have a book coming out that is all about journey mapping, and so I was doing a little research and looking at the book and I saw a description that I kind of wanted to read out, because I think it really did a good job of laying out the problem that a lot of companies run into. So I'm going to read this. It said why do customers leave or stay with brands? It's not about superior products or services, ai driven or increased marketing. Retention hinges on seamless, trustworthy and efficient interactions across every touchpoint. Too often, companies focus on quick fixes rather than the broader customer experience, leading to disjointed efforts, frustrated customers and stalled growth. I thought that that customer retention hinges on the seamless and the trustworthy experience.
Priscilla:Yeah, I thought that was just really a great way to say it. So can you tell us a little bit about the book and when it's available, what's in it and how people can access it and get it?
Stacy:Yes, so it is on presale on Amazon now. It will be coming out later this year. This is about journey management. So journey mapping is one part. It's a tool, it's a technique of journey management and experience management. So the book is really helping you to do it yourself and understand the fundamentals of the why, the how, and it's an omni-channel viewpoint. It's the retail, it's your partners, it's your employees, it's your customers. It's a whole ecosystem that you need to design for. So today we talked really more about the customer experience. The book is more of that bigger, broader ecosystem that affects your company.
Priscilla:That's great and we will link to the book in our description so if it hasn't been released yet, you can go and pre-save it there. Otherwise you can go and purchase it and I really think it's going to be a great resource for a lot of companies who really want to level up that customer experience. Definitely find that book and look at that and then reach out to Stacy. Another way you can get in touch with Stacy is through her podcast, which we mentioned at the beginning of the show, but she has a fantastic podcast called Doing CX Right. You want to tell us a little bit about what you do on that podcast and then how people can find that show.
Stacy:Yes, so a lot of free resources and content are on my website, doingcxright dot com. That's where you'll find my blog articles. My newsletter is really valuable, giving you how-to tips to create customer retention, revenue, a better reputation and referrals, and so I'm giving you the how-to. Journey mapping is a technique. My show is weekly talking about this, bringing on leaders from different companies and authors and everybody who shares that passion, because we all are making a difference. There's a movement happening.
Jordan:What an incredible resource.
Priscilla:Yeah, and I will say about Stacy's episodes they are 30 minutes, they're nice and tight.
Priscilla:They bring a ton of really good actionable tips for you. So, if you're like, I'm really trying to level up my game when it comes to anything in customer experience so it might be how to use AI to make your service better, or it might be about customer feedback. She is so I mean, you have, I think, like over 150 episodes at this point. There's so much, and they're succinct and really, really helpful. So I highly recommend you go listen to some. Sometimes I will find myself in situations where I'm trying to work on a project and I'm like man, I just wish I could listen to someone else talk about this and get a little bit of an outside perspective, and that will help me as I go and try to solve this problem. I guarantee you you can search her episodes and you will find one that aligns with the problem that you're trying to solve and you'll get some really helpful insight into how to solve it for yourself, including you on my show. So check that out too. Yes, that was really fun. I got to join you for a show about what it means to be actually happy to help customers and it was really. It was really fun to talk with you about it. So thank you so much for coming on, stacey. This was really fun. I feel like I've learned a lot about journey mapping and I'm really excited to figure out how we at Buzzsprout can start using that more intentionally in our processes to impact our customers' experience, and I hope for anyone listening that this has inspired you to also start taking the next steps on creating this experience and being really intentional about it and reach out to Stacy if you have any questions or if you want her to come and help your company. Reach out to her. She would love to do that and I'm sure you would have an incredible impact on that. So thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you.
Priscilla:Well, it's time for Support in Real Life, which is our segment where we talk about real life support experiences and Jordan. I wanted to bring to the table just some like positive support moments I've seen over the last couple weeks. I love it. Yeah, I feel like I've seen this on social media, probably like in the last month I've seen this two or three times where someone that either I follow on social media or a friend of mine has had a pet pass away, which is always really sad and really hard. Yeah, and both of these two situations that I'm thinking about, they talked about how they had like a pet food delivery service and so they got like one more order. You know, in the midst of figuring out and grieving over the loss of your pet, you might forget to turn off that service, and so then they're getting like one more order. Yeah, and that's really hard. And so then they have to reach out to the customer support team to cancel, to the customer support team to cancel.
Priscilla:And in both of these experiences one of them was with the farmer's dog and the woman whose dog had died she said that she had forgotten to cancel it. They sent her the next month of food and she reached out and said, hey, what should I do with this food? Like I don't need a refund, but my dog died, I need to cancel this and I don't know what to do with all of this food. And the customer support person wrote back, refunded their order with no questions, was very empathetic about the loss of their dog and grieving that, and then gave them very detailed instructions about how to freeze the food so that it could be used for a future dog if they get another dog or some like resources and different like animal shelters in the area that they could gift the food to if they wanted to go that route. Wow, so they did the research for them.
Priscilla:Yeah, oh my gosh and I thought that was such a great experience. And then the other story was about Chewy and how they canceled their subscription or their you know next order and then Chewy sent them flowers to their home as a way to console them after this, like grief and losing their pet. So both of those I ran across on social media, yeah, and they really impacted me as a person who works in customer support. I don't have a dog. I know what it's like to love a dog, but I don't have one personally, so that part didn't even like hit me. The same way, but just seeing a customer support representative take the time to want to positively impact their customers, even though in both of these situations they're not currently customers.
Priscilla:Both of them were canceling their service, yeah, and so I think that, you know, I thought it would be cool for our support in real life segment today to kind of highlight that and how those stories and sharing those stories can really inspire us as customer support professionals. Yeah, to go that extra mile next time we're in a situation like that with a customer. I know that's how I felt was. I want to be the kind of person that positively impacts the next customer that we have that writes in in a situation that's somewhat similar. So you know we're working in podcasting, not in dog food, but you still have the ability to positively impact your customer's day.
Priscilla:So, okay, all of this to say, I thought it would be cool for us to kind of put the word out to all of our listeners that if that is something that you are also inspired by to hear those kind of really awesome customer experience stories I want you to tap the link in our show notes which is, it'll say, like send a text, yeah, and I want you to text us and write us a story that you have experienced.
Priscilla:Or maybe it's a personal experience you had with a customer support team, or maybe it's something you saw as a third party, or maybe you were the customer support team, or maybe it's something you saw as a third party, or maybe you were the customer support person and you gave a really great experience to your customer. Yeah, whatever that story is, I want you to take a second, write it out. It doesn't have to be super long and detailed, but send it in to us and we're going to read some of those on future episodes of the show and I think it will really be a great way for us to kind of encourage each other and inspire each other to really take this job that we get to do and, like, level up those standards of that one-on-one experience with your customer.
Jordan:Yes, my daughter's first grade teacher calls this filling your bucket.
Priscilla:Oh, I love it.
Jordan:I know you just have these like positive things, because throughout the day, there's little things that make water like spill out of your bucket and then, before you know it, your bucket's empty and you're feeling sad, and so sometimes, when you pour good energy into things, it can really fill your bucket. Yeah, so this is like, yeah, what kind of stories just fill your bucket.
Priscilla:I love it. You know we always start our episodes off with who made your day recently, like who made your day better, and so I kind of like I want to hear from our listeners who made your day better, oh yeah. So share those stories with us. I want to read them out on future episodes. I want to shout out our amazing listeners who are listening to these episodes, and so if you would share those with us, I would love, I'd love, love, love to share those publicly in our next episode. What a great idea. Love it, yeah.
Priscilla:So tap the text, the show link, yep, and send those in and we will gather them up and share them. So if you have a question or a support story or situation, like we were just talking about, you can email us at happy to help at buzzsproutcom or use that text, the show button, and text us directly and then we might answer your question on a future episode or share your story. As always, if you like this episode, please share it with someone who works in customer support and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It's always great hanging out with you, jordan. It was great learning from Stacy. I'm really excited for everyone to hear this episode and let this really impact the way that they craft that experience for their customers using journey mapping. Thank you all so much for listening. Now go and make someone's day.
