Customer Service is Dead

Justin Recla:

Welcome back to Incorporating Superpowers. Today’s going to be fun folks. Today is going to be fun. My guest today is Mitche Graf. He’s somebody who’s done a thing or two. He is the father of three. He has got a couple of naturally syndicated radio shows, owns four businesses, and has been in the business world for the last 35 years.

And I’ll tell you what, he sports a really cool haircut too. I got to tell you what. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this conversation today because Mitche lives by a lot of the principles of how we live. How I live my life, how our family lives our life, and so forth. And we’re going to just be talking today about some of the things that have been going on in the world, especially in the business world over the last couple of years.

You’ve probably all experienced this, that you go somewhere and the person behind the counter could care less that you’re there. The server can care less that you’re there. They’re more interested in being on their device. We’re disconnected in this space, and in the business world that can mean death for your business. And so Mitche Graf is also the author of the book Customer Service Is DEAD: Delivering 6-Star Service In A 1-Star World. Mitche, welcome to the show today.

I don’t care what you’re doing, selling a house, meat, corn, bricks, potatoes, a restaurant, or selling paper products. You need to take care of your customers. If you just did that and every one of your customers brought you one more customer this year, guess what? You just doubled your business and those numbers sound easy. And they really are if you go back to the basics, the fundamental foundation of any solid business plan, taking care of the people that give you money in exchange for a product or service, whatever that is. And so I’m kind of on a mission. I’m out there trying to convince people to give 6-star service, whatever that means to them.

Justin Recla:

I absolutely love that. We need more of that, right? We need to get back to, I know it’s a really fast-paced world, but we need to get kind of back to the basics of taking care of one another. Taking care of our clients, taking care of our employees, and really leaning into them.

I had a previous guest on the show, we were talking about the concept of empathy, right? And we were looking at it from the place of employees, but we’ve got to look at that towards our clients as well, as to how do we fulfill their needs? But I got to ask you, Mitche, we kind of know that it’s a little bit off between COVID, and between the Metaverse, and devices and so forth. What are some of the contributing factors that have led to this lack of communication, and lack of customer service?

Mitche Graf:

Well, part of it really is the phone became such a great tool for most businesses. And back in the olden days, I just turned 60 and I have 16, 14, and seven-year-old kids. So my perspective on a lot of things business-wise is different than a lot of the new-age entrepreneurs. But I remember back in the days when they called them service stations, do you remember that?

Justin Recla:

Yeah. And you actually had somebody come out and pumped your gas for you and cleaned your window and all of that.

Mitche Graf:

Oh, everything, and say, “How are you doing, sir?” Yeah. They check your tire pressure, check your oil, clean the windows, and do all that stuff. And oh yes, you also got gas while you’re there. Well, now they’re just gas stations. And my family gets a little embarrassed when we go out and we’ll go to a gas station, we’ll go to a Safeway or whatever. And the first thing the person says is, “Would you like a bag?” No. Hello. Hi there first. Greet your customers first. I have no problem calling them out and I do it all the time. And it’s amazing how many people are not given that training. We’re talking about multi-billion dollar brands that are putting their brand in the hands of a lot of times, minimum wage employees that are not given that customer service, that customer experience training.

And I don’t expect an IQ of 180. I just want someone to say, “Hey, good morning, sir. How are you?” Make eye contact, and give me a little smile. That’s all I expect, but that’s going to go a long way for a company, whether you have one employee or a thousand employees to build that brand loyalty and create rabid fans for your brand. And it’s not about the quality of the products and services. It’s about the quality of the people that deliver that message. And I think that’s what’s kind of lacking the last handful of years and it’s not getting better, Justin. It’s only going to get worse as more people are being automated, and systems are being automated.

And I’m a huge automation guy, I believe in breaking down things in your business and your life into the fewest number of pieces, and then rebuilding those systems with fewer moving pieces. I’m a huge proponent of that. In fact, I build my life on that, but that doesn’t mean that we have to forget that human interaction, that human touch. As you said, that empathy, understanding the customer. God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason, we need to listen to their feelings, their thoughts, their emotions, their aspirations, their dreams, and then figure out how our product and service can meet those goals, aspirations, and dreams with empathy. Absolutely.

Justin Recla:

Oh, I absolutely love this. And on the backside of the break here, we’re going to dive into more of the conversations of what can we be doing in our businesses as to how to move the needle forward to bring us back into that customer service mindset? But before we go on break, Mitche, where can people go find more information about you?

Mitche Graf:

Well, for any of my books, you can just go to any bookstore, a brick and mortar, or you can go online. Amazon’s the easiest one, obviously. You order it, you get it in two days. I’ve written, I think nine books. The last one, the Customer Service is DEAD is now on Amazon. You can also go to Barnes and Noble. You can also go to Powermarketing101.com and that’s my educational business that has consulting, teaching, mentoring, and books.

Justin Recla:

Fantastic. Fantastic. Folks, go take a look at what Mitche has got going on. And when we get back from the break, we’re going to dive down this rabbit hole a little bit farther into how we can start retraining our employees, our businesses, and what it’s going to take for us to get back to a more customer-centric type of business. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.

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