Vision Pros Live Podcast
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What's your vision? Stacy Sherman. Podcast Session 1.
2,384 words · 3 speakers
Tell me about your vision.
Yeah, it is all about doing customer client experience right. And to me, having worked in companies of all sizes for over twenty five years and doing tons of research and speaking on stages and workshops with people, I've come to learn what right is. And the fact of doing, because so many people are thinking about customer experience and customer loyalty, but not really doing it right.
Mm hmm. Um, tell me more. I'm very curious. There's some very, very specific words you used in that. And it gets me very curious. So tell me more about that.
Good. Curiosity is good. That's intentional. So
customer experience, customer service per se, has been around a very long time. That's when you think about you have a problem, you pick up the phone or you chat with the contact center to get help. But customer experience is the broader experience you have with a company from how you learn about them. Marketing is a big play there. Buy, could be e-commerce, could be retail. Learn, buy, get, use, pay, and get help. And there's these micro experiences within them, and there's a journey. So what doing CX right entails is this formula of how do you go through the journey
and make sure that every single interaction point, we call them moments of truth, is exceptional? Because if one part, if learning about your brand is great and buying it's easy, but paying the bill is so hard, customers will leave.
And the whole experience matters. So that's really where I encourage listeners to really learn about through me, through the internet, whatever your best means is to understand what is customer experience, what is the journey mean? And then what I teach and educate is how do you do it right? How do you measure? How do you know that you're doing it right so that people come back again and again and tell others?
That's awesome.
Most of the entrepreneurs, they are, they're focused on getting new customers and, and converting new customers. Very, very few can get to this stage or even think about the stage where that experience is what they focus on and building systems and processes around that. But we experience that every day. Me, you, specifically in the Western world. I mean, the brands you go around, think about Walmart, think about Google, think about Facebook. The, the customer experience is impeccable. Netflix, for example, they've thought it through.
And they're, that's one of the reasons they're the market leaders in that place where even Costco is also one of the examples that they get you to buy big stuff. They put the big TVs in front of you, same as Walmart is starting doing that as well. But you can see, you walk in and there's a big TV in there. And so you don't feel guilty about buying small groceries and small gifts and small tokens. So that's a very, very big part of what the customer experience and now people are focused on that. So for you, Stacy, how did you get into this world of doing customer experiences and focusing on that? Where did, where did you start?
Yeah, I graduated college in marketing and got my master's, my MBA in marketing. And I did sales in companies. Then it started to evolve. Around 2013, I joined Verizon and I started to be in different roles in the company. And CX, customer experience, started to become a real known career path.
And it blends all the roles that I did have in marketing and sales
into how do you really keep those customers? Because as you said, getting new customers in the door, that's like flashy lights and it's exciting and it's sexy, but keeping them, the loyalty, that's, that takes a certain skill. And there's so many studies that say that acquiring new is more expensive than keeping the ones you have and they buy more and they become your, your walking, talking billboard to others. That, that's a goal that's, that's so valuable to the brand. So I started to learn that, study that and be a practitioner in Verizon and then in other companies after that, in different industries.
And I consciously made that decision that to me, it is so important for businesses because when prices go up, and they do, the economy, you can't really control that from where we sit. But prices go up and other things happen. It's experience that keeps people coming back. It's what they remember. And when you said about some of these great brands, I would challenge to say that they're not perfect. Yet, when challenges happen, they take the right actions to be transparent, to inform and to own the challenges.
And customers see that. They realize that. They're forgiving versus others that don't do that right.
Exactly. Um, I want to focus on the one key word you mentioned. You mentioned that it takes skill to do this. Can you tell me more about that?
Yes, so half of this is common sense. It's like the basics. It's what we learned in kindergarten. Say hello to your customer when they walk into your retail store. Say goodbye. Say, you know, the common things that show appreciation. The skill comes in where there's a real CX practice on how do you actually design the experience? The journey map, the validation with real customers to know that you're meeting their needs. The measurements, obviously, there's net promoter score and PS. But that's not it alone. And so there's a skill and there's
more things that people need to learn how to do. Or they come to people like me who say, I can help you. You worry about your core business. I will make sure that you're doing it right and course correct.
Yeah, I want to emphasize on what you said there. There is no way an entrepreneur can learn every basic skill or every good skill out there. If you did, you're going to go crazy and you'll never be going to be able to do it yourself. The, the skill, I think the most entrepreneur need to learn is hiring the right people at the right time for the right job. Or bringing together the right experts that need, that you don't know what to do. I am, I'm in digital marketing as well. Plus business growth strategy, there's so much more I can do. But I know the value of teams and what teams bring to the equation.
So hiring the right people or bringing in the right people for what they need, even if I can't afford them for, for a salary. There's a lot more you can do. So entrepreneurs do not focus on, on that. So thank you for sharing that. You have something you want to share? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, to what you said is very important. That even if you're a solopreneur, you still have partners, experts that you work with. You might have a virtual assistant, right? There is a team. A team doesn't have to be what you think in a traditional corporation of full-time employees and a, you know, a tight-knit team per se.
Part of doing CX right is when you're designing the journey that your clients go through, your customers go through, it does take into effect the people that you work with. Because if, for example, you have a virtual assistant and they're handling the communication as a part of your team, they have to be trained on customer experience. They have to deliver an experience that's consistent every time, from beginning to the end of working with you. So I want to emphasize that doing CX right is not just about you, the owner of the company. It's also, it's the whole ecosystem.
I want to add to what you said.
There is, there's a difference between bringing the right people in to help you do what you do. And there's also bringing in the right people to build you the system that's required to run the people that you hire that go to the customer experience, or the people that make the customer go through an experience. So supposedly, if I hire you to come in and help with my customer experience, my goal would be to have you build me systems, processes, and resources, templates, and designs, so that my team can rely on those when our contract is over,
or if whatever you came in to do is completed, that those people can refer back to those systems and templates and resources so they know what to do in regards to when, what to do when this, this happens and if this customer's experienced this. So the skill they need is hiring the right people with the right, with the right choices, with the right skills, and figuring out who not to hire and who to hire. And I think that's also part of, part of what you were saying as well. So thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, it is. And I personally believe the philosophy and my doing CX right framework is co-creation. I don't know your business as well as you do. So I'm bringing that expertise to actually audit. What are you doing now? Specifically, specific questions on how are you really taking care of your customers and clients? And then validate what is today actually is how they want it. If you only offer them, let's say, and let's say a chatbot that they can communicate for help.
But they really want to talk to a person and you're not giving them that option. You need to know that.
Yes.
Right? The same thing, if they are talking to a chat and let's say the chatbot can do some really good, quick answers, but the person says, you know what? This is a, a big cost to me, to my business. I need to talk to a person. Well, how easy is it to get to a person? Is that bot giving the information to the human? So they don't have to repeat themselves? Like those are the kind of things in the journey that you might not realize how it can make or break the experience for them and they'll go somewhere else because of it.
Yeah, people find reasons to go places all the time. And think about, and there's, there's so many nuances to think you said, and I think you're very, very, very right in, in, in mentioning that. Think about when, so I recently had an experience when I was looking for, I can't remember what it was. I think I was looking for some, some, some sports equipment and I was at a shop. And usually those sports equipment costs a lot of money. And in the moment, usually I think like, I think online's cheaper or online's better or whatever there's warranties, information.
So I'm looking at the things he's showing me and I'm looking at the prices online. And right as I'm doing that, he, he said, hey, we have a price match guarantee. On from all I'm like, oh, that saves me a lot of time, energy and effort. Like, hey, this is something you mentioned. And that's part of the customer experience that most people don't think about where like,
What is, what am I experiencing? What, what, um, what are my concerns when I'm going through your experience? Um, most people don't have any systems or processes in place to onboard a client, let alone to de-board a client. Uh, they don't have systems and processes to place when, when you're taking information from them or when you're, when you're making them go through back and forth on things they need from you. Uh, so like, in like website world and in development world, um, you need, there's cycles people are need to follow to build the right product for someone. You need to be con- continuously talking to them like, hey, is this what you need? Is this what you need? Do you want to change the strategy? Do you like this experience? That's how it's gonna look like.
And most people don't have that. They're, they're so focused on the, the, the right now providing, um, for their family that they can't think about it. And we have to get them out of that mindset. We have to get them on like, hey, focus on this while you're doing this so you can build this.
Yes. When I was working at a company in the e-commerce department, um, I was managing the marketing and the e-commerce of the, the website experience. And something that was so essential to this success was really looking at the voice of the customer, getting the customer feedback, both in a structured way, like surveys, but then also unstructured, unsolicited, looking at social media, reading a review sites, taking all that information and being able to see what the customer's saying about you, huh, behind your back and in front of you.
And then being able to make decisions, not from one-off topics, but really those areas. And you learn a lot that people can't get through the e-commerce funnel. They get stuck and you have no clue why are sales going down when there's just simple, you know, simple points in the funnel that they get stuck. So there's so many examples and I want listeners to understand that. Whether you're a really small company or big, that really understanding and gathering that voice of the customer, you are flying blind without it.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.
Page updated November 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
