Link to the first half: https://cxgoalkeeper.com/firesidechatwithoutthefires1/
CX Goalkeeper & Fireside Chat Without The Fires E44 2nd Half- Words of Wisdom from the CX Community – Customer Experience Goals with the CX Goalkeeper
The CX Goalkeeper had a smart discussion with Neal Topf and Paul Catherall.
Neal Topf’s LinkedIn Headline: Customer Experience | Contact Center / Customer Care | Podcast
Paul Catherall’s LinkedIn Headline: Driven with a passion to help people become unstuck | Helping people identify and then solve obstacles
The discussion with Neal and Paul was split in 2 episodes. In this second episode you will learn:
- Paul & Neal biggest personal learnings from the Podcast “Fireside Chat Without The Fires”
- Their preferred “CX myth busted” from the podcast
- The most mentioned CX heroes from the podcast
… and much more
Contact Details:
- Neal Topf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nealtopfcustomerexperience/
- Paul Catherall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-catherall-b5785aa/
Paul’s Golden Nugget:
“People forget what you said but they don’t forget how you made them feel.”
“People forget what you said but they don’t forget how you made them feel.” @nealtopf & Paul Catherall @ChatsFires on the CX Goalkeeper Podcast
Tweet
Neal’s Golden Nugget:
“Automate or don’t exist anymore. Eliminate irritants, create value and waste less value”
“Automate or don’t exist anymore. Eliminate irritants, create value and waste less value” @nealtopf & Paul Catherall @ChatsFires on the CX Goalkeeper Podcast
Tweet
Thank you, Neal and Paul!
#customerexperience #leadership #customerservice #bpo #podcast #cxgoalkeeper
Transcription:
Gregorio Uglioni 0:01
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the CX goalkeeper podcast. Your host, Gregorio Uglioni. Will have small discussions with experts, thought leaders and friends on customer experience, transformation, innovation and leadership. I hope you will enjoy the next episode.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Gregorio Uglioni. Your host, the CX Goalkeeper. I had the great pleasure to interview Neil Topf and Paul Catherall, it was really an outstanding discussion, which I split into episodes after the success of publishing the first one. Now I’m going to release the second one. Stay tuned. It’s really great one. Enjoy.
Thank you, Paul. I think what you’re what you’re saying it’s really important. And on the other side, also, for me, it’s really good. Or really transparent. I was in one of your webinars two weeks ago, last week, it was really great to be there to get some insights on podcasting, we can learn from from each other. And this is this is really cool. We spoke a lot about business. Now perhaps also, based on what you’re saying kindness, linking customer experience to business, is that something that you will learn that you are also applying in your private life? Let’s start with Neil again.
Neil Topf 1:30
Wow. So as a leader, oftentimes what is required of us is strength. Communication. Empathy is a new thing. I believe in leadership that is occupied more and more volume of important. There’s one thing that is always been, I admit, a continual learning process for me, we talked about continuous improvement. One area for me, that I really started to hear about on the podcast was emotional intelligence, EI, SANDRA THOMPSON, she was a guest on our podcast, you know, her, many of us, you know, follow her. Emotional Intelligence is one thing that is always important to apply, of course, in one’s work life. But without a doubt, in one’s own life. Right? I have a son is almost nine years old. To be a good parent, I have to be very emotionally intelligent, and I’m not always all the time, I’m human. Sometimes I get upset, sometimes I get frustrated, sometimes I don’t know what to do. Sometimes he’s smarter than me. And I have to be very emotionally intelligent to try to figure out and navigate those things. So that’s, that’s, that’s certainly one of them. I think that would be the one that stands out the most, for me, or what I apply in my personal life.
Gregorio Uglioni 3:06
Thank you, Neil. And now making again, really difficult for Paul, you cannot repeat what Neil said…
Paul Catherall 3:14
No, but the lots of wonderful answer. Kudos to him. And you were wonderful that throughout your, you’re just a great person anyway, I think for me, what I’ve learned is The mindfulness approach, and just to be a little bit more cognizant that not everybody is looking at the way things that you look at the way that you look at things right and that’s that’s really helped me understand kind of what what my so my wife is heavily involved in the BPO industry and currently she’s, she’s out in Taiwan, she’s she’s been there since January. And it’s helped me understand how I can communicate better with her in terms of the challenges that she faces and so for example, she might come and she says, right, Paul, I’ve got this is happening work and she just wants to vent and she wants to let off steam right and normally I would go right let me try and fix it but she’s not looking for me to fix it. She’s just looking for me to share ideas etc etc. So I think for me, I’ve learned more about the mindfulness and more about just being not so quick to anger if people don’t see things the same way as you right that’s that’s also helped me in my golf game to be honest with you. I now don’t get so frustrated as I used to when I when I hit a bad shot so yeah, and I had plenty of bad shots believe
Gregorio Uglioni 4:34
thank you the next time we’ve changed my pitch behind me can play thinking about now is I don’t want to be unpolite. I start with you Paul that Neil can copy your answer. And you are always closing your podcast with three three questions. And I from your point of view, what was one of the most interesting CX myth that was busted in your in your podcast.
Paul Catherall 5:06
So there’s there’s so many there’s so many it’s taken me a while to really get down to the one that that really hit home with me as we spoke about Jess noble, but the one that I really want to bring it back to was Rachard. So we reached out on on Friday. And I’m not saying this simply because he’s the most recent. What he said to me, and we’ll share it in the podcast on Monday was there’s no such thing as one customer journey. And initially when he said it, both Neil and I went, not mushy, you’re talking rubbish there you’re on. And he went on to explain it. And I went, Oh, my God, that is so true. And so Jess noble, but Rishard really smashed that other part for me. But there’s just so many to choose from. We’ve had so many people that have come on and smashed, wonderful mess. We are reshot all the way from a brilliant, brilliant.
Gregorio Uglioni 6:02
Thank you, Paul and Neil on your site. But this time, you are not allowed to mention the truth at all already mentioned. Not, please, not not mentioning Jess Noble and Richard. And others.
Neil Topf 6:14
This is a hard one, because there’s so many really brilliant ones that have come up. I want to, I don’t know if this is specifically one, but this has, this has been one that’s appeared a couple times we use the term a very colloquial term, we need to suck less, we need to suck less. I’m actually going to believe that I’m not going to bust that myth, I’m going to agree with it. Cost Customer Care customer experience is not always successful, whatever successful means it’s very difficult to achieve optimal customer centric experiences. I’ve said this for years, there is no call center, or you can substitute customer experience easy button, you don’t press it, and you receive it is that magic, it’s not a button, you get the press in your chapter. Gregorio, you very clearly state and many people use this statistic that so many percentage of people would pay more for better customer experience, I would challenge that. Just because you’re going to pay more doesn’t mean you can offer you meaning like our organization doesn’t mean you can offer it. If a customer is willing to pay more, all of a sudden, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to do actually deliver it, even if we have more money to do it. I think our objective is to figure out, first and foremost, how do we suck less? Now if we go back to your model, and we start to eliminate the irritants? How do we add value? Or the opposite? How do we destroy less value? This is in quotes. How do we suck less of course. But I think looking at your model? How can we do those things? How do we eliminate irritants? And how do we start to add more value knowing that eliminating the irritants altogether and adding 100% value whatever that means? Very, very difficult. Maybe it’s a unicorn. Maybe it’s a unicorn. Very few of our organizations have the ability to truly do that. We’re not all Amazon, we’re not always apples. And even if we want to be it’s very hard to achieve it. I hope that made sense.
Gregorio Uglioni 8:47
To me, and I fully agree with you fully transparent, it’s not my model. It’s Bill Price model. The best services no services is also the source of all of this model, the value irritant matrix, but I completely agree with you. I am really invest or spending time with you and I know today’s Labor Day and you are investing, let’s say times in this podcast during one of your Fridays. I don’t want to use too much time but I still have two three questions that I would love to ask and I hope that we can we can quickly discuss them please stop me if you want to stop. I continue for the next few hours and then introduce pizza for all of you. Now, joke by sight. On on my on my podcast one of the most mentioned books is Ian Goldings. Book. Customer what and you are also asking to your to your guests. The CX hero, which heroes which CX professionals are the most mentioned or that they come often. Neal, Paul, up to you.
Neil Topf 10:10
The ones that are most mentioned, let’s see some support. I have talked about this before that let’s see if we can come up with the list. Inevitably we hear Shep Hyken name. We often hear Nate Brown. Occasionally we hear Jeremy Watkyn, who’s a wonderful CX thought leader and practitioner in the US. We have heard the name Claire Muscutt. Her name has resonated. Claire, if you’re listening, we want to have you on our podcast. We want to have you on the podcast, but we can’t get you to respond, please respond to us. We want to have you and give the chance to interview you.
Gregorio Uglioni 10:55
Sorry Neal, her assistent left and therefore they have some issues with emails. But
Neil Topf 11:02
I could spend time with her and get to know her and understand organization because she’s she’s had a tremendous organization she’s building and we want to know more. We want to know more about what, what they do. How does the organization works? Paul, who else am I forgetting of the, you know, really common names?
Paul Catherall 11:19
I think they’re the main ones that you know, we hear particularly, you know, Shep and Nate, they they tend to come up quite quite a lot. But what I like Gregorio is the ones that aren’t necessarily in the CX space. So we’ve had, for example, Sandra Thompson, as I call her, she came on and she gave a wonderful story about, I believe his name was Steve, and he’s a local mechanic. And well, actually, he’s not local. That’s the story, right? He’s, I think he’s about a 30 minute 3030 mile drive away from where Sandra lives, but because he gives such good customer experience, she keeps going back to him, right. So there’s the story of CX in in a nutshell. So I like those are a little bit out of left field. I know when Neil and I first started the podcast, and I asked Neil, who was one of his CX heroes. He’d had a great experience at school at Jacobs School for that week. And he called out the teachers. So those are the ones that that I that I really like. And I really enjoy, because it gives you an insight into the type of person that they are. And listen, anybody can go on to LinkedIn five minutes before they come on the podcast and go write CX hero, CX leaders thought leaders who are the top five or six and just reel out those names. And we very rarely get that we get people who have thought about the heroes, what it’s meant to them, and why they’re calling out those people. So yeah, and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all our guests who come on and who give up their time so freely, and who actually make the podcast what it is, Neil and I could talk for hours, but people wouldn’t listen to Neil and I, people want to listen to our guests and want to hear you know, stories such as yourself such as you know, Rashard, such as jazz such as Nate, all these people that have come on, and have really, really brought the podcasts life. And if I can, as well, I would like to give a fairly large shout to Lesley Oh, Lesley has been a fan of the podcast more or less since since episode one. And she’s always wanted such as yourself. Gregory. She’s one of the first to like when we post always gives us feedback. So yeah, so Lesley, please, if you’re listening, thank you so much for your support you, you really are an angel.
Gregorio Uglioni 13:35
Thank you very much. I think it’s really an outstanding discussion with Paul, you are a podcast expert, and therefore I think you should organize a solo episode together with Neil, I think quite a lot of people would listen to you and to your discussions.
Paul Catherall 13:48
We’ve we did well on the start, but I think we should go back and circle back. And maybe that’s how we’ll finish this year is I’ll interview Neil and Neil can give us kind of his thoughts on how this year has gone because this year for us in podcasting from a podcasting perspective has been a bit of a learning curve, right. We’ve pivoted, we focused a lot more on the on the CX 3 book, and we’ve got some really, really exciting plans. For next year. We’ve got a brand new, I guess you’d call like, like like, like a splinter off. We’ve got a we’ve got a wonderful arm, a new arm starting to the podcast, and we’re very, very excited to launch over the next week or so. So yeah, there’s some good stuff happening. And that guy they even though he says I’m, I’m the smart one. I’m so not the smart one, the Neal’s one who comes up with all these wonderful ideas and it’s just a pleasure to work with. And you know, yeah, there we go. I don’t I don’t I don’t want to make as big as had any bigger stuff.
Neil Topf 14:44
Exactly. It doesn’t fit on the screen already know. This, as you know, Gregorio is coming up and creating a podcast. I mean, maybe you’re making a lot of money on this podcast. I don’t know. I mean, if you are I want to know the secret. We do this because we love What we’re doing we like to create, we like to make good content and show that show the content. But these are challenging, right? Like this takes a lot of time to invest in plan and schedule and all these things. It takes work. And we have to be fresh. One thing Paul and I have found with the podcast is, there’s so many CX podcasts now, right? How do we differentiate ourselves from each other? Many of us are interviewing the same people, which nothing wrong with it. But at some point, I don’t know if that’s sustainable, right, we have to, if you look at it is, at some point, we’re competing for listeners and downloads and likes them. And then we have to make sure we continue to be relevant. We’re trying to do that. And your feedback is really special. Thank you. Thank you for, for sharing that.
Gregorio Uglioni 15:46
Neil. I fully agree with you and fully transparent. That’s my passion. That’s my hobby, getting zero Swiss francs, that it’s equivalent to $0.00 and 0 euros. But I am getting a lot of good contacts, great discussion, and I am learning a lot and therefore I’m doing that my wife is fully supportive. She’s always asking, When are you starting? Well, I think that but I don’t know how to monetize that. But this is another discussion. coming to an end. Neil, could you please share your contact details if somebody would contact you?
Neil Topf 16:27
Sure. I mean, here i Well, I’m not gonna put up on the phone, but I’m on LinkedIn. I think my name is it just says my name is spelled N E A L TOPF. Same thing on Twitter. I think I’m on Yes, I’m on Instagram, but I don’t post anything on it. I don’t know what to post on there. And I think I’m on Tik Tok. I have no idea what I’m doing in Tik Tok. I’m not on Snapchat. And if I am if someone sees me there, you know, tell me to stop and get off. I shouldn’t be on that place. LinkedIn is the best place to find me, especially around CX content. That’s that’s the place to be.
Gregorio Uglioni 17:01
Thank you. And Paul, what’s the best place to find you?
Paul Catherall 17:05
Exactly. Neil, LinkedIn and Twitter. So LinkedIn is paul Catherall. Or you can look at my for my page, the podcast coach page. You can also look for the fireside chats about the fires LinkedIn page. So please, that’s where you can find our content. And on on Twitter, I’m at PaulCat72 Isn’t my age 72 is the year that I was born. So although I’m not that far off 72 right now so yeah, that’s that’s how people can find me. Or I wish it was my goal scorer. But I’m on Instagram, polcat72 on Instagram podcastcoach on instagram facebook page for podcast coach. And for fireside chats. But predominantly, Neil and I live in the LinkedIn world and simply because we’re CX focused, right, and that’s where all the content is. So yeah, that’s where you can find, um, please reach out. And you know, if you’ve got any questions for the, for the podcast, or you have any topics that you’d like to discover, discover, unresearched, then please let us know. And we’re happy to do those types of things.
Gregorio Uglioni 18:07
Thank you very much. And I’m coming to the last question that I read asked twice. And please don’t copy for each other again. It’s, it’s the last question is, let’s start with Paul. Paul’sGolden Nugget is something that we discussed or something new that you would leave and share with the audience.
Paul Catherall 18:27
Yeah, so this, this goes back to probably one of my favorite CX quotes. And it’s not just about CX. It’s, it’s more encompassing than that. And I forget which guest said it, but the quote is along the lines of people forget what you say that people never forget how you made them feel. And for me, I live I try to live where I possibly can by that motto, because it means the world to me that I was able to make somebody feel happy or improve that day just by being nice. Right? So yeah, that’s my
Gregorio Uglioni 19:05
Thank you, Paul. We listened to Paul’s golden nugget or not complimenting that because it was Paul’s Golden Nugget…. And now we hand over to Neil.
Neil Topf 19:15
Well, it’s hard to follow up that one that that was profound. By the way that’s I think similar to what our guest and our we’re all friends with him. Gustavo Imhof said it’s the most important thing is the memory that the customer has the memory that someone has not necessarily what happened. It’s what the customer remembers how it happened. But I agree, mine is completely different. Mine is not as nice or is warm and touchy feel. It’s it’s more around the direction of the CX business. Automate or don’t exist anymore. that’s heavy, we have to as a business, figure out and understand the role of automation. Not if you’re going to automate, you have to. The question is, how do we do it? How do we integrate it? That’s my great business challenge, specifically trying to figure out and create those contexts and those environments, because it’s one of the easy ways to eliminate the irritants. Going back to the model in your chapter. It’s a way to add value or to destroy less value. We have major challenges in our industry. And I think this has to be one of the solutions that we all have to embrace.
Gregorio Uglioni 20:43
Thank you very much, Neil, also, for your golden nugget and golden nuggets Neil’s Golden Nugget was really outstanding to add you both at the same time on my podcast. Thank you very much, Neil. Thank you very much, Paul. It was really great.
Neil Topf 20:59
Gregorio Thank you, you are a wonderful host, you are a thought leader. You are a very smart contributor to our community. And we’re lucky to have you and it was an honor to share some time together with you on this podcast and in future collaborations that I hope that they will have together.
Paul Catherall 21:16
Gregory, you may have some question or football alliances and allegiances, but in terms of your knowledge in the CX world, make there’s nothing questionable about the quality that you bring and the content that you put out. So thank you so much for this. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed it
Gregorio Uglioni 21:32
Thank you, and also to the audience, ladies and gentlemen. It was really an outstanding discussion. I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed it because it was really brilliant, great and outstanding as the same as the podcast of Neil and Paul fireside chat without the fires. Thank you very much.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with word of mouth, subscribe it, share it until the next episode. Please don’t forget, we are not in a b2b or b2c business. We are in a human to human environment. Thank you
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