Using Service To Help Drive Growth

Have you ever wondered how exceptional service can be a catalyst for business growth? In today's episode, we'll uncover strategies and tips on how prioritizing service can propel your business to new heights. Stay tuned as we dive into the secrets of using service to drive growth.

Join Tim Fitzpatrick and David Sohn for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!

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Using Service To Help Drive Growth

Tim Fitzpatrick

Have you ever wondered how exceptional service can be a catalyst for business growth? In today's episode, we'll uncover strategies and tips on how prioritizing service can propel your business to new heights. Stay tuned as we dive into the secrets of using service to drive growth. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate growth and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thanks for taking the time to tune in. I'm super excited to have David from Helpt with me today. David, welcome. Thanks for being here.

David Sohn

Thanks, Sam. Thanks for having me.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this. When we connected prior to the show today, as we started to talk, we started to realize how many similarities there are between marketing strategy and service delivery strategy. And so I'm excited to jump into this because I think this is something that a lot of people overlook. But before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions. Help us get to know you. You ready to jump in with both feet?

David Sohn

I think I'm ready.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay. When you're not working, how do you spend your time?

David Sohn

Reading. Love reading. I never did it when I was younger. Realized what I was missing out on. Now I do it all the time. I take another two.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Fiction, non-fiction with all the-

David Sohn

Fiction. Anything that I was supposed to read in high school, that goes first. Just got done reading a picture of Dorian Gray, The Giver, things that were assigned reading that I totally didn't read, that's first. Then anything that's recommended to me is second.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay, cool. I love it. You're a voracious reader?

David Sohn

That's right.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Now, do you speed read?

David Sohn

No, I take my time. I enjoy it. I absolutely want to get the context. I want to understand what's happening. And also, I want my mind to enter that Zen state of reading and being in a different world.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah. Cool. Man, I love it. What's your hidden talent?

David Sohn

I tried this one time at a... I think it was an elementary school talent show. I can wiggle my ears, but independently of each other. The problem was when I tried this at that talent show, I was brought to the front of an auditorium, and everybody said, David, go. What's your hidden talent? And I turned my head and I started wiggling my ears. Nobody could see it because we were in this auditorium. But maybe here with my earbuds in.

Tim Fitzpatrick

I can see it a little bit. Yeah, I can see it a little bit. That is a crazy weird talent. Okay, so I'm going off the path here a little bit, but we're talking about the head area. My oldest daughter can stick her tongue out and flip it around like this. It is the strangest thing I've ever seen, and it is a crazy hidden talent. But it's like, How do you do that?

David Sohn

Yeah. Isn't that a little thing that's supposed to...

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah, I have no idea. It is the craziest thing ever. But I've never met anybody that can wiggle their ears independently. So that's cool. I like it. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

David Sohn

I had somebody tell me that nobody will look after your career except for you. And I thought that that was amazing. That's my buddy Ray, if he ever watches this, we were complaining about work. And he said, Listen, David, nobody's going to look after your career except for you. And I thought that was empowering. I thought that was something that almost everybody needs to hear at all levels of their career.

Tim Fitzpatrick

You could apply that and just say, Nobody's going to look after your life except for you. It's like, no matter what's happening in our lives, the world keeps spinning. What's one thing about you that surprises people, other than the fact you can wiggle your ears independently?

David Sohn

That's usually the icebreaker.

Tim Fitzpatrick

That's usually it.

David Sohn

I'm tall. I'm not super tall, but I'm tall, and I think that that throws people off sometimes. I'm about 6'1. When I'm wearing shoes, I'm a little taller than that. Not massive, but when I talk to people, I think I'm not super imposing. And so they think, Hey, maybe David's going to be a little bit shorter of a guy. I think that throws them off for sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick

It's always interesting, too, meeting people on Zoom and then meeting them for the first time in person. That just happened to me with somebody that I had connected with on Zoom two, three times. Had a lot of communications back and forth, and met her face to face for the first time. And it's like, oh, my gosh, this is so cool.

David Sohn

It's like a context thing, too, right? In your mind, you're building this little world and this thing that they live in that's on the screen. And we see them in person, it's like, what? It's a totally different experience.

Tim Fitzpatrick

That's right. It totally is. What does success mean to you?

David Sohn

Time. Success means time. The harder I work at what we're doing here, the more I'm trying to align myself so that I have more time to spend with family and friends and enjoy myself. So I think success equals time.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Where's your happy place?

David Sohn

The beach. We're about 15 minutes away from the beach now. The funny part about that is that my happy place is the beach at night. A lot of people like the beach during the day, sun's out, enjoy the weather. But I just love that feeling of it being dark, looking out, seeing the ocean, maybe a couple of lights out there. So beach dark.

Tim Fitzpatrick

It brings in your hearing senses a lot, right? Yeah, that's a really interesting idea because you're in Southern California, right?

David Sohn

That's right.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Cool. So what beach are you close to?

David Sohn

So we're right off of Laguna Canyon Road. So if I were to just go straight, I'd hit Laguna Beach.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay. Got it. Cool. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

David Sohn

Transparency and consistency. I am definitely the type of person that will say too much about something, just in the name of being honest. And I'm also the type of person that really likes a to plan or to live up to expectations. And so as long as the communication is there, I want that consistency so I know it's going to happen so that I can start to plan around it. .

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah, cool. So David, tell us a little bit more about what you're doing at Helpt.

David Sohn

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the last gigs that I worked at, we were servicing these massive multibillion dollar companies that were seeking these insane SLAs. And so as somebody that was running a support organization, I was trying always to figure out a way to satisfy those requirements. And after time, I realized that it would be impossible to do with my team. And so I went out and tried to find some partners that could help me with it. And when I continued to struggle with that, I realized that this is what the world needs, frankly. And so Helpt has been built as a help desk or a service desk force multiplier. Our goal is to be able to bridge the gap to be able to plug in as if we're a part of the team of the client that we're serving and be able to really deflect a lot of the stuff from them and also provide that 24/7 coverage or just be there when their customers are expecting them to be there.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Cool. And are your support people US-based, overseas? What's that look like?

David Sohn

Yeah, absolutely. This is a funny one, but everybody's US-based, everybody's US-born. We believe that expertise lives everywhere. But when there's something that's going on where maybe you're a little bit stressed out about an issue that you're experiencing, it's really nice to be able to have a language and a cultural match with the person that you're talking with. And so that's why we We're focused on that US-based support personnel.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Cool. So anybody that needs a help or service desk of some kind, you guys can help. You're working a lot with that managed service providers, but any organization has a need for that, you guys can help.

David Sohn

Exactly. It started as we were both executives at a company that sold widgets, and you realize that this is where it began. And then when we open this offering up to the market, we started to see a lot of MSPs that said, hey, I really need this type of bridge. They're constantly working in an interruptive state, and they wanted to break their habit of doing that. And so being able to just plug in, be the front line, take as many of the issues off their shoulders as possible, it really allowed us to blossom in this MSP space. The reality, and I know this is terrible for marketing, so I'm sorry. The reality is that our ideal client is literally anybody that needs to bridge that gap.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah. And how do you guys price? Is it priced per attendant? Is it priced per minute, per hour? What does that look like?

David Sohn

That's exactly right. It's per minute. So our focus there was to be able to be granular. Somebody calls in and says, Hey, I've got an issue with my computer. And then moments later, they say, Oh, wait, it stopped happening. We didn't want that to be a per our ticket cost. We didn't want that to be a per user cost. We didn't want it to be like anybody else that's offering similar services. We wanted it to be purely consumption-based. So that was a big difference.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Cool. So clients are only paying for what they need and use.

David Sohn

Exactly. Exactly.

How are Marketing Strategy and Service Delivery Strategy Aligned?

Tim Fitzpatrick

Awesome. Well, let's talk about service delivery, man. How are marketing strategy and service delivery strategy aligned?

David Sohn

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that I can spot off idioms and sayings about how there's no way to make a second, first impression. But I think that as we think about how we interact on the service side, it's incredibly important to be professional, be courteous, be consistent, be transparent, be all of those things that I think that a good marketing strategy aligns with as well. That's your side of things. So tell me if I'm on track there. Do you see that same parallel?

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah. So when I think of the customer journey, I think of marketing on the front-end, then you have, sales, and then you have service delivery, customer service. They're intertwined there. But the marketing, the message needs to be the same from marketing to sales to service delivery. And so there needs to be alignment there. There should be alignment. I also think that they can play off of each other. The data that you gather within service delivery can be used to help fuel sales and marketing efforts, right? Because you are capturing conversations and interactions with clients that can be really, really important in supporting sales and marketing efforts. So that's where I see that alignment, right? And I think we're going to I'll talk about that a little bit. But what are they saying at service delivery? What kinds of problems, roadblocks, pain points are coming up that you are solving for the client, that's information that can help sales and marketing.

David Sohn

Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Now, from a service delivery standpoint, if you solve something quickly, that's a great opportunity to get a testimonial, get a review, get a referral. And that's where there's alignment, I think, with marketing and sales as well.

David Sohn

I like that. Yeah, I like that. I think that I might have thought in my mind, like you said, the customer journey and this concept of there being the entire picture that starts, like you said, with marketing, goes to service delivery. And earlier on, I didn't do it on purpose, I promise. But I said that I like transparency and consistency. And so if you're out there marketing something that is this stellar service or this stellar product or this whatever, and the customer comes in and is sold on that, and then the first couple of interactions that they have with the service team doesn't align with what they've been sold, they're going to get frustrated and upset. And we don't want the feedback loop, but we don't want somebody to say, You know what? I saw your ad or I saw your thing, and you told me it was going to be this way, and it wasn't. So I think that it has to be consistent.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Absolutely. We can't over promise with our marketing efforts and then under deliver on the service side, which frankly, marketing as a whole has a name for that. Over promising, oh, we're going to do X, and then it never happens. And so we always... We want to make promises that we can keep, right? And promises that are simple, I believe. And that promise we're making from marketing to sales, we need to be able to deliver on that on the service side. And if we can't, we're going to have problems, right? That is also then going to impact retention, right? Referrals, which I, again, see as part of the market marketing process. So it's like, man, the more we just talk about this, it's really it's like they need to be aligned, but they're intertwined.

David Sohn

Because you need the net promoters, right? If you were to say to somebody, Hey, listen, I'm going to walk up to you and I'm going to kick you in the shin. And that's what I'm going to do. No matter what, I'm going to walk up to you and I'm going to kick you in the shin. And this is the marketing. And they say, Yeah, of course, I'll take that. I would love that. And then we walk up to them and slap them in the arm. It's going be a completely different experience. And they're going to say to themselves, Hey, wait a minute. I was sold a bill of goods. This is completely different than what I expected. And the next time somebody says, Hey, I need a guy to come and kick me in the shin. And they're thinking about that experience that they had with all they wanted was somebody to kick them in the chin, but they got somebody to slap them in the arm, they're not going to promote you. They're not going to say, Hey, you should go to my favorite chin kicker. I feel like that went off the rails a little bit, but hopefully that made sense.

Tim Fitzpatrick

No, it makes perfect sense because service delivery is where we either gain proof that we've done what we said we were going to do or we lose it. And proof within our marketing that we can actually do what we say we're going to do is absolutely imperative to our success long term. So if we're making promises, again, on the marketing side that we're not upholding, we're losing the ability to prove that we do what we say we're going to do, which is going to impact our marketing, which is then going to impact our sales and our ability to generate revenue and profits.

David Sohn

Absolutely. That's what we're all here for, right?

The Keys to Growing a Business Through Service Excellence

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, hey, look, if we don't make money and profit, we can't serve people at the highest level. So there's nothing wrong with making money. We need to make money. So when we, David, when we look at service excellence, what are some of the keys to growing a business through service excellence? What do we need to think about?

David Sohn

I think that one of the things that I always think about just in life is keeping it simple, but also keeping it. A lot of people say, Hey, let's make this the simplest thing. Let's make it efficient. Let's make it this and that. But I think what we really need to do is continue to measure. We have to keep that information. Tim, you mentioned the data and the sound of referrals and feedback and things like that earlier. We need to keep all that data. And I think that's the only way that we can continue to grow our services capabilities is through continuous improvement based on the data that we've been able to capture and collect. Not just CSAT, but agent sentiment is one of the things that we do a lot of. A customer can come in and say, Hey, I had this or that experience, but we also want to capture how our agents feel about the call, because then that allows us to align the issue, the solution, and the sentiment, and say, All right, well, the issue was resolved, but we need to improve our service delivery. We need to improve because the customer didn't deal with it. Or, Hey, you know what? The customer was a little bit upset. What else was it that might have happened in that experience? And so keeping all of that data-driven improvement. That's what we're here for. I've got one for you. I'm sorry, this is super cheesy, but what's the biggest room in the world?

Tim Fitzpatrick

Oh, jeez. I don't know.

David Sohn

It's the room for improvement. So I think that when it comes to service, it'll never be perfect. But as long as you're constantly striving to improve, that's a rafter. But if you don't know what you've done before, you can't improve on that. And so keeping it, keeping all the data, keeping all the analytics, keeping all the sentiment, keeping as much as you possibly can to review it later and improve upon that means incremental improvement means better and better.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay. I love it. David, you just keep throwing me softballs because we'll be... We're getting more parallels between service and marketing here, right? I love the fact that you talk about keeping it simple because I say that over and over again with marketing. It's so easy to overcomplicate things, and complicating things gets in the way of results in everything we do. So I love that. We always talk about measuring data, right? If we don't have data, we can't make good decisions with marketing. Same on the service side, right? We've got to measure it so that we can then constantly improve, right? And that's what with marketing, we're always talking about we're testing, we're measuring, and we're learning. And then we iterate on it, and we just do the same loop over and over again. You're never done. And that's what it's talking about here. Look, marketing is never perfect. There's always room for improvement. But if we don't test, measure, and learn. We can't improve. Same thing on the service side, right? You can test things, right? You can say, Hey, let's try this to see if it improves our service delivery. So you test it, you measure it, you learn from it, and then you make adjustments and course corrections. And so it's like, we're never done.

David Sohn

That's right. And one of the funny things about both of these fields is the fact that people are experiencing it on a regular basis. It's pervasive in our lives. We're getting service delivered to us every moment of the day, basically. We've got Internet on our computer that could go out. We go to stand in line at the Starbucks, and we're getting service provided to us. Same thing with marketing, and I know this is going to be a weird parallel, but same thing with marketing. You're constantly looking... When I turn my TV on, my Fire TV pops up and I get a Carl's Jr. Ad. Something silly like that. I wonder why it's a Carl's Jr. Ad. I wonder if that's target. So we're constantly experiencing this. And so everybody that has been a party to that has been a part of the improvement that has happened over the however many years that these things have been going on, which is forever, almost. And so it's all of us, right? If somebody likes a service thing, then it's going to be the thing that's going to be measured and learned upon. And then it's going to be that better next time. Somebody likes something in marketing, it's measured and learned upon, they're going to say, Hey, let's make that better next time. So we're all evolving, all of us.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Well, you know too, as we talk about this, David, it makes me think about we all have experiences like this. Think about the last time that you had a really poor service experience. All the work that that company did on the front end to market to you, to sell, and bring you on as a client or a customer, to just blow it in the sales experience, in the service experience, is really bad. I have two that I'm thinking of right now. I worked with a they came out, they did some tree trimming in the fall. They were supposed to come out and do some additional deep root watering and that stuff in the spring and some treatment. Dude, David, I haven't heard from them since they did the last treatment. I have no idea what the hell they're doing. I honestly think that they forgot. That's really bad. I also I had an experience recently with my power company. They were trying to get a hold of me. It was an auto dial call where they called me. And instead of an agent actually being there when I picked it up, it told me that I needed to call them back. Take a guess what happened when I called them back. It was a freaking 30 plus minute wait. That is horrible service delivery. Now, with Power Company, I don't have much choice, right? I can't go to another Power Company unless I freaking move somewhere else, right? But if we are in a business where they have choice?

David Sohn

Mm-hmm.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Not good, right?

David Sohn

It's exactly it. I know that this is what this call is about. In the managed service provider space, there are so many different options. There's so many different folks that are out there that are saying, They're better than this. They're better than that, which is all marketing, which is good. We want to be able to prove that we're better. But when it comes to the service, it has to live up to what you're saying, or else they're going to go find the next guy down the road, next person down the road. So I think it's... Your two examples came down to expectations, right? And I love that. If the tree-turning people or the tree folks would have said, Hey, we're going to call you back in three months, and then they didn't, they broke their promise. With the power company or the utilities company, they said, Hey, we're going to call you back. And they did, but it was an automated thing. Then you had to call back. It broke their promise. That one was a little bit more implied. Did they say, Hey, an agent is going to call you back? Or did they say, We'll call you back to schedule something? When you think about a callback, we were assuming an agent. Not sure if they said it was an agent or not. But just that small little level of maybe miscommunication, maybe an expectation that you set, maybe some promise that you were expecting to have been made, and then it not happening, it's enough for you to say, Dang, let me go to somebody else. Let me go try some other option. Power, utilities, you're right. It's tough. Everything else, not as tough. You live in a world of abundance these days. You can pick up the... I was going to say phone book, jeez. You go on Google and find the next treat, folks.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Well, and if you think about the managed service provider space, I got a computer problem. I don't want to be sitting here waiting for an hour or two hours. It's like, when I pick up the phone and call, I actually want to speak to somebody. Because if I don't speak to somebody, then I'm sitting there wondering, How long am I going to be sitting here dead in the water?

David Sohn

One of my favorite things to talk about is the anatomy of that issue. You're speaking to it right now. This idea that when you get to a point where you're seeking help, you're already more than likely frustrated. You've already probably spent 5 to 10 minutes trying to figure it out yourself. Then you get to the place where you're like, All right, let me get some help from somebody. You'd call or you'd send a take in or something like that. If you don't get a response almost immediately, you're going to think, Well, what am I doing with these people? Why do I pay them for this type of service if they're not going to be there for me when I've determined that I need them?

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah. Our minds start running, right? We're left to our own devices and we just go off. And that is not a place that we, as a service provider, want our clients to go.

David Sohn

Exactly. One of the things that we do, and I know this is speaking a little bit more to help, is we tell our clients what our SLOs are, our service level objectives are. And then we try to ask them what theirs are. Because sometimes, and this is going to sound crazy, ours are much better than theirs. And so we want to make sure... We want to make sure that we're aligned with them. So if they sign a contract with a client of theirs that they've done marketing, they've put the effort around selling this idea that they're going to call back within an hour, or they're going to take care of that ticket within an hour, or they're going to do something within some amount of time, and we're half or a quarter of that amount of time, then they're going to start expecting it to be half or a quarter amount of that time, even though everything was agreed upon, the expectations were set contractually based on a different number. It's a give a mouse a cookie. That's one of my favorite things. You tell somebody it's going to take an hour, but every time they call in, it takes 30 minutes. I guess call in is a weird one. Every time they send a ticket and it takes 30 minutes, they're going to start expecting it to be 30 minutes. And then that one time that it's 45 minutes, it doesn't matter that you said it was going to be less than an hour. It's the fact that it's more than 30 minutes, and every time it was 30 minutes before that.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Well, this also goes back to your point about measuring data. If we measure data within service delivery, those are numbers that if we've measured it accurately and we feel confident in it, we can then use that in our sales and marketing efforts to make promises and help differentiate our business from somebody else's, right? Because if you measure the data and all your tickets are being solved within 30 minutes or an hour, that's a promise you can start to make. And if you've got good data, a lot of people who don't have good data are going to be uncomfortable making a promise like that. But if you've got the right data, you can say, no, here it is. And then you can make the promise. Now you start to differentiate, and that's going to help grow your business as well.

David Sohn

Absolutely.

How to Capitalize on a Good Service Delivery Experience

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay, so we touched on this a little bit. I want to dig a little bit deeper into this. What are some of the ways that we can capitalize on a good service delivery experience, on a good service experience.

David Sohn

I have a story. This is folklore. It's the Bernie story. And the Bernie story goes that we had this person at the last gig who wasn't really technical, but they were the friendliest person in the world. It didn't matter what happened. If somebody called in with an issue, if somebody spent those 5 to 10 minutes leading up to calling in, being frustrated and angry about something not working, called our service desk, got a hold of Bernie. By the time they were done with the call with Bernie, they were customers for life. Because they were able to get somebody immediately to solve their issue or to at least begin starting to solve their issue, just acknowledge that they had an issue. Maybe it wasn't even resolved at all. But having somebody that was there that they could count on, that they could have their expectations set by the company that they're expecting them to be set by, as opposed to the thing you said earlier about it just running away in our minds, knowing what it's going to be, and then not breaking those commitments or those promises, that means that that customer is going to say, You know what? Their support is awesome. I called in, I had an issue. I don't even care about the issue. I care about the fact that I was greened by somebody that was super professional, competent, courteous, whatever it was. They told me exactly what was going to happen next. And lo and behold, exactly what they told me was going to happen, happens. And so every one of my expectations were met. That's good in my mind. It's good in my mind. When I go to McDonald's or I guess, I should give a royalty for that, I expect to be in and out in 10 minutes. If it's ever longer than 10 minutes, I'm frustrated. Nobody's ever told me that it's going to be 10 minutes, but my expectations are always met. If somebody were to tell me it's going to be 30 minutes that day because something's happening in the back and it was less than 30 minutes, expectations met. That's a good service experience.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah.

David Sohn

Sorry. How to capitalize.

Tim Fitzpatrick

No, I love that because I want to pull something out that I think is easy for people to overlook. In Bernie's calls, in the very beginning, once he understands what the problem is, he's communicating to the client, here are the steps that we're going to take to resolve this. So this unknown not for the client now becomes, okay, I don't understand all this crap, but I know exactly what steps are going to take. I know what to expect. That also helps diffuse the situation. It brings a comfort level to the client of, okay, I know what to expect. I know there's things beyond my control. I know there's things beyond their control, but I know what they are going to do to attempt to resolve this as quickly as possible.

David Sohn

I'm going to try this one on for size. I've never really said this or verbalized this before, so bear with me. But the idea that we're living in a very technically competent age. People know what they're doing when they're on their computer, and they call in because they've got an issue. When they call in, they're maybe not expecting to get a resolution immediately, especially considering that they think that they're capable enough to have figured it out themselves. And so all they're calling in for is to get to that resolution. Whatever path that's going to take, they need help defining it. Maybe it's 10 minutes. It's no big deal. Bernie was able to hop on the computer and fix it. Maybe it's, Hey, a system-wide outage. We were able to find that out. It's going to be at least three to four hours until it comes back on run. Maybe it's, Oh, my gosh, this is some real problem that's going on. We're going to need to be reactive to this and spend a lot of time to fix it. But all of that just reinforces that idea that in their minds, this is a really tough thing. And all they wanted to do was figure out how to get the resolution. Whether they got it immediately or not, it doesn't matter anymore. It's just the fact that they got a hold of somebody, they got the commitments, and now they're able to measure against them, right?

Tim Fitzpatrick

Yeah. Well, David, we touched on this a little bit earlier, too. When you provide a good service experience, It is an amazing opportunity to ask for testimonials, reviews, get case studies. You touched on NPS, Net Promoter Score, surveys, right? Gathering learning that data that we can then use to make better business decisions. When you solve support issues quickly to the client satisfaction, there are all kinds of opportunities for low hanging fruit like that that a lot of businesses overlook.

David Sohn

Absolutely. I'm thinking about all the different CSAT companies that are out there these days that send that request for a survey at the end of the call. I'm not against that idea, but I also don't want it to appear like that's the only reason why that's being sent or that's the only reason why this service is excellent is because we're being measured on it. I love, and I know it's a mess of. I love this idea of being able to do without expecting something back. And a lot of the times when we have these experiences with customers that the sentiment goes awry, and they're frustrated, and they go on to our Yelp or whatever, and they throw in something that says, Hey, this is a really terrible experience. I think that that takes away and it almost pushes forward this idea that we're only ever going to hear that. If instead, what you're saying is survey people agnostically, I'm all for that. I like that idea of saying it either goes out with every single interaction or on a quarterly basis or on a weekly basis, we're going to send out this request for these surveys and make it really easy for them to say, Hey, this was a good experience. I'm all about that. I feel like it went a little sideways, but I hope that makes sense.

Tim Fitzpatrick

No, I get it. If you're going to do it, you need to do it consistently. Frankly, you're... You want to know whether you did a good job or a bad job. It's not that you're just reaching out because you did a good job. We need to know about... Honestly, doing it consistently helps you identify blind spots that you might have, too. If you didn't do a good job and you're not told about it, you don't know about it. It's just sitting there under the surface and it's doing harm and not good. But we don't know about it. When we don't know about it, we can't address it. So to me, it's about having a consistent process in place around your service delivery that helps drive better business outcomes. It helps drive better business decisions. It helps gather data that you can utilize throughout the entire company to grow.

David Sohn

The feedback loop should be ever present. Maybe we could rewind a couple of minutes. It has to always be there so that we can continue to collect that information.

Conclusion

Tim Fitzpatrick

It goes back to the whole test, measure, learn concept. It's a constant loop. David, this has been awesome, man. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with today?

David Sohn

I think that it's important to think about yourselves as customers and think about how you want to be treated. I know we're talking about the golden rule and these other things out there, but I think it's really It's important to consider what is a successful service experience to you. Consider also what's a successful sales cycle to you. We're all consumers of both service, marketing, sales type prospects, things with little thing popped up and threw me out. I think it's important to just realize that we're all in this together, and we're all going to evolve and improve over time.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Awesome. And where can people learn more about you?

David Sohn

So down there, gethelpt.com is our website address. And then that number on there, (949) 996-3257, that's our mainline number. I really wanted to make sure that that was present so that when somebody called that, they would get a human, they would get somebody to talk to, that you could find out a little bit more about Helpt if you're interested, and really start to see the process that anybody who used us was like, being there is more than half the battle, and that's what we really focus on.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Cool. So gethelpt.com , and that's HELPT.com , or reach out at 949-996-3257. I hope you guys got an idea from this conversation, how David and the folks on his team really approach the help desk, service support. Reach out, because I think that there's a lot of leverage that people can gain by working with you, and hopefully they reach out based on this conversation. So please do that. David, thank you for taking the time. Those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you taking the time to do so as well. You can connect with us at rialtomarketing.com . We talked a lot today about how marketing strategy aligns with service delivery. You got to have a strategy in place. And if you want to know about which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com . Takes less than five minutes, so that's another opportunity to get some assistance as well. So thank you again. Till next time. Take care.

Connect with David Sohn

• Helpt

Links From The Episode

• eBridge Marketing Solutions