0:00

What is the importance of customer experience when it

0:02

comes to driving a successful business? I think it's the

0:04

only reason they come into a store. It's

0:07

as simple as that. What other reason is there to go

0:09

to a store to offer the customer experience? I

0:11

love that you call them coaches. They're

0:13

not just store associates. They're there to

0:15

coach and help people. We don't

0:17

want to hire cashiers. We want to hire coaches. That

0:19

is our special socks, is coaching the store. Hello,

0:24

everyone. Welcome back to experts

0:26

of experience. I'm your host,

0:29

Lauren Wood. Today, I'm thrilled

0:31

to have Michael Costello, CEO

0:33

of GNC on the show.

0:35

We're going to discuss all

0:37

things retail landscape, GNC's innovative

0:40

support programs, and the competitive

0:42

dynamics of the health and

0:44

wellness sector. Michael, thank you so

0:46

much for coming on. How are you doing today? I'm

0:49

excited to be here. It's fun. Great. So

0:51

in looking into your background, you've

0:53

been in the CPG industry for

0:55

30 years, spending

0:57

a lot of time at Clorox. You've spent

1:00

a lot of time advising. I'm

1:02

on my 36th year now, so... 36 years.

1:05

I'm trying to bring you down a little bit. Thank you, Lauren.

1:07

I appreciate that. All good. What

1:10

I'm trying to say is that you have

1:12

a ton of experience in this space, not

1:14

only at Clorox and GNC, but also advising

1:16

startups and Fortune 500 companies. And

1:19

so I'm curious to know from your

1:21

perspective, what is the state of consumer

1:24

behavior today? And how has it changed

1:26

even from the past five years?

1:29

That obviously involves a lot of different things,

1:31

right? Yeah. Consumers change. The reality is

1:33

consumers are always changing. Yeah. And

1:35

so we talk about, you know, you go back in

1:38

1990, 88 when I started working to today. But

1:44

what I see is consumers change a lot of

1:46

behaviors and how they do things, but

1:49

so many of the motivations are still the same motivations.

1:51

The desire for folks to live well, for

1:53

example, in the health and wellness space, it's

1:56

been there consistently. How they do it, what information

1:59

they have. they how they react

2:01

to the messages are very different. So much

2:03

health and wellness information is off TikTok these

2:05

days, which is very different

2:07

from just a few years ago. Yeah.

2:10

And when I think about that, I agree

2:12

with you, consumers are always changing and it

2:14

kind of feels like right now, but

2:17

they're not. Because my point

2:19

is the core behaviors, the reason why they're

2:21

doing the things they're doing are typically very

2:23

similar. So you have to think

2:25

about both of those, right? Like why

2:27

they do actions, but there's a lot

2:29

of tools and opportunities as the environment

2:31

has changed. I

2:34

think about how the state of the

2:36

world today with social media, the rise

2:38

of AI, so much competition entering the

2:40

market. I'm curious to know your perspective

2:42

when it comes to legacy brands such

2:44

as GNC, which has been around since

2:47

the thirties, I believe. What is the

2:49

key for survival? How can

2:51

brands that have been around for

2:54

so long really stay up to

2:56

date with changing market dynamics? So

2:59

Lauren, I want to go back to it. Signing a

3:01

reframing from a legacy brand as yes,

3:03

we were founded

3:05

in 1935 as one of

3:07

the first mission driven brands out there. We

3:10

were mission driven before mission driven brands were

3:12

cool and that's how

3:14

we stay relevant. We've got to stay on our mission

3:17

of helping the boomers live well. Now

3:20

yes, that means we have to follow the

3:22

signs, make sure our signs are all updated.

3:24

We are on TikTok talking about our brands

3:26

on TikTok. We're on Amazon, you know,

3:28

as consumers want to shop on Amazon, but

3:30

more importantly, this category of health

3:32

and wellness is confusing. Walk

3:35

to a store and just try to

3:37

walk around one of our stores, walk to a

3:39

big box, type in

3:41

online and you're going to find that

3:43

there's a plethora of products and

3:46

they have various different needs. Some

3:48

folks should use A versus B, magnesium.

3:51

There's five different types of magnesium out

3:53

there. Which one should you take? Well,

3:56

if you come to our stores in GNC,

3:58

we're going to coach you about that. We're going to ask you. questions.

4:01

One magnesium, I actually use two different

4:03

versions for different times that I need

4:05

them for, but that kind of

4:08

knowledge is hard to really, for the

4:10

normal consumer to gather or it

4:12

takes them so much time. And there's

4:14

been studies out there that show on TikTok, only 2% of

4:16

the claims on TikTok are actually true. So, you

4:19

know, we can see- We gotta

4:21

watch out. Say it's 50% are true and the

4:23

other 50% are not. It doesn't

4:25

really matter. The point is don't you want

4:28

that educated coach to help you kind of

4:30

navigate? And of course, the other things are

4:32

needs change over time, right? What

4:34

I needed in one of my twenties when

4:36

I was taking a lot of creatine and what

4:39

I need now as I'm trying to healthily age,

4:41

this is a very, very different. So

4:43

that coach or coach in store goes

4:45

through lots of training to be able to help you with

4:48

those issues. So what

4:50

I'm hearing from you is it's really about the customer

4:52

experience and them being able to

4:55

solve their full problem. Not just I

4:57

need to buy magnesium, but I need

4:59

to understand what magnesium

5:01

to take. That's exactly it. That's

5:03

why we teach our coaches to open with lifestyle questions,

5:06

not product questions. So what are

5:09

you trying to accomplish is one of our questions, not

5:11

do you want a protein, right?

5:13

And even if you want a protein, what are you

5:16

trying to accomplish? Because maybe you want a weight

5:18

gainer because you're trying to bulk up a lot.

5:21

Maybe you actually want maybe a lower calorie

5:23

protein because you're actually just trying to feel

5:25

full and add some more proteins in your

5:27

body. They're sitting on the shelf

5:29

next to each other, but it's not inherently obvious

5:31

all the time for somebody who

5:34

just walks in the door. So yes,

5:36

it's about that, throughout those lifestyle questions,

5:38

and then therefore what the coach can

5:40

help with that experience. I

5:43

love that you call them coaches just as

5:45

a starting point. They're not just store associates.

5:47

They're there to coach and help people. We

5:49

don't want to hire cashiers. We want to

5:52

hire coaches because the

5:54

coach makes that experience happen.

5:57

That is our special sauce. is

6:00

coach in the store. Great.

6:03

Tell me a little bit about these coaches. How do

6:05

you set them up for success?

6:07

What's the training program like? What's

6:10

their world? Yeah, so we have a bunch of different

6:12

ways that we train. One of the

6:14

primary things is we have a GNC university,

6:16

which actually I just finished shooting a spot

6:19

for a promo coming out, explaining the

6:21

why behind the promo and how I want the

6:23

coaches to behave in a store. All right.

6:26

So they'll see that GNC university spot. We put those

6:28

out on a regular basis. We

6:30

also, when a new person starts, we have

6:32

a training program that starts to

6:34

where they get bronze, silver, gold, platinum.

6:37

And that goes through training from how to open a store,

6:39

how to do things just to be able to take your

6:42

return, all the way to what

6:44

products we have, whether the products matter, and how

6:46

they can talk to consumers about those products. And

6:48

so I was just in the store the other day in New York, had

6:51

a person who'd been there barely three months and

6:54

was already a platinum coach because we're

6:56

setting an expectation that we want our

6:58

coaches at a difference. He

7:01

was super proud, obviously, about the fact that within

7:03

a short period of time, he was able to

7:05

look at everything and he was able to walk

7:07

around the store as consumers came in and tell

7:09

them about the very different sections. Is

7:13

it like kind of a self-led program or how do

7:15

they move through the different levels? So

7:18

for that particular training, it's very self-led.

7:21

So they can do it as if there's

7:23

a downtime in the store or whatnot, or

7:25

in their initial phase when they're training with

7:27

another coach there, they can go through

7:29

that. We ask questions at the end, so make

7:31

sure people understood. So that's

7:33

a typical kind of web training where you go through

7:35

all the things, you see the videos and then you

7:37

hopefully answer the questions right, otherwise you have to

7:39

go back to the beginning again. But

7:42

that's only one part of our program, a

7:44

training. I was in Queens

7:46

last month where we did

7:49

a training for when we rolled out

7:51

GLP1 on April 28th. April

7:53

27th, we took all of our stores and

7:56

had people come in. I was, I showed up to the store in Queens

7:58

at 8.30. We

8:00

went through role plays, we went through the

8:03

whys behind GOP ones, the science behind why

8:05

folks will take the semilitides with the GOP

8:07

ones out there, how our products can help

8:09

them with it. And then we did role

8:11

plays that we had set up with consumers

8:13

coming in. So the person had their

8:15

own kind of only, like, I'm a secret shopper

8:17

in that way. A couple of, here's who

8:19

I am, here's my things. You asked me lifestyle questions, I

8:21

have the answers there, and I play

8:23

into it. And hopefully you are

8:26

able to help solve those problems. So

8:28

it's a mixture between having the

8:30

standard web-based training and then

8:32

when you have these new rollouts like the

8:35

GLP1. And just so for everyone listening, just

8:37

in case you don't know, even though it's

8:39

all over the news, this is the Ozempix

8:41

of the world and GNC has really rolled

8:43

out a whole new suite

8:45

of products and section of the store

8:47

specifically tailored to the side effects of

8:50

GLP1 for customers, which I'd love to get into

8:52

a little bit more. But I want to stay

8:54

on this training topic for a moment just to

8:56

understand because I think I've helped to develop these

8:58

training programs and companies. I've been an employee in

9:00

companies where I've gone through these training programs. And

9:03

I think when you're only in

9:05

a web-based application, sometimes it can get

9:07

a little boring. Boring.

9:11

Thank you for saying that. And so

9:13

how do you find the balance between the

9:15

web-based as well as the in-person? So

9:17

we balance it, right? And

9:20

it is, and we continue to reinforce

9:22

it. But I'll give you a good

9:24

example. So on the GLP1, we rolled

9:26

out a series of videos that were all

9:28

a few minutes apiece explaining what GLP1s were,

9:30

how our products did side effects, the empathy

9:33

we needed with consumers when they came in

9:35

the door. And each

9:37

one of us, the executive team, also watched all

9:40

the same videos. So I watched the same

9:42

videos because it was going to get too boring. I'll get

9:44

bored too. The

9:46

point is that everybody should be really

9:48

kind of working through that same training.

9:51

Everybody was done with that web training. That's when we did

9:53

the in-source stuff. So they

9:55

already have a base. They've already went through all of it.

9:58

But we're going to reinforce it with additional. videos

10:01

and on that videos we actually have our science

10:03

team on the video talking about all the products

10:05

and reasons behind it and then we went

10:07

to role play and the role play is fun, right?

10:09

It always feels a little out of body when you

10:12

do role playing because you're working with your

10:15

peers or sometimes with me showing

10:17

up there that a little bit uh of

10:19

course but going through that role play really

10:21

brings to life that real consumer situation. Mm-hmm.

10:25

All right and we all we all learn from practice. It's such

10:28

an important component to it and I think

10:30

the reason why I'm just double clicking on

10:32

this is because we we need to give

10:34

people that real life experience even

10:36

if it is role play but getting to

10:38

say those things out loud is

10:41

so necessary and you

10:43

said something that I want to double click

10:45

on which is empathy and how do you

10:48

teach empathy to your

10:51

coaches so that they can really show up

10:53

for the employees. So I'll

10:55

give you I'll go back to GLP-1 just so we did

10:57

it most recently. Yeah. First of all and

10:59

we did a training on we had two things we

11:02

talked about. One was

11:04

to understand how what

11:07

a big deal it was for somebody who

11:09

has GLP-1. I was trying on a big

11:11

weight loss journey typically for them to come

11:13

across our lease line and open that door.

11:15

The courage it takes

11:17

them to do that and

11:19

to think about how much courage that person has

11:21

just walking that door. Yeah. And so once you

11:23

realize it took courage for that person to do

11:25

that well then what's our job

11:28

is to like welcome them. Mm-hmm.

11:30

And then I asked every one of our coaches

11:32

when that person walks in to think

11:34

about a father, a mother,

11:36

a son, a daughter. All of

11:38

us know somebody who has some problem with losing

11:40

weight that they struggle with it they're working hard

11:42

but they're not really able to get over that

11:45

that hump and GLP-1s are a

11:47

miracle drug for for that group. So

11:50

imagine that person coming through the door is

11:53

my mom. How am I gonna treat my mom?

11:55

How am I gonna give her advice? That's a very different

11:57

than thinking about it somebody's just coming to buy a hundred

11:59

dollars with product. Yeah, that's

12:01

amazing. Another

12:03

question I have is, so you're spending a

12:05

lot of time and effort making sure that

12:07

your coaches are trained up and able to

12:09

not only show up with the facts, but

12:11

also show up with empathy. How

12:14

does this impact your customer retention and

12:16

overall business performance? How do you

12:18

draw the lines? A lot of things are very

12:20

hard to connect straight from one to the other. Totally.

12:23

But we need stores and we don't argue every day

12:25

about whether we need a store. The reason

12:27

why GNC exists, the reason why as

12:29

a specialty retailer, we are going to continue to be

12:31

here, is because of the

12:33

coach and the coach bringing that concern

12:36

in. I've been in a ton of stores

12:38

where I sit there. I worked a store about

12:41

two months ago, stocking shelves, cleaning everything else,

12:44

so we could all understand what it takes

12:46

for our coaches to accomplish things in the

12:48

store. But the amount of people who walk

12:50

in and actually talk to the coaches, to have

12:52

the coach's name, talk about what's

12:54

going on, the coach talking back about,

12:56

hey, so how's your workout going? What

12:59

are you doing on these? How that creatine worked

13:01

for you, right? Our best coaches create these friendships

13:03

with people. That's retention.

13:06

There's no better retention than that.

13:09

And I think about it myself personally. I

13:12

buy my shoes, my running shoes at

13:14

this one particular store. And

13:17

I buy it there. They're actually more expensive than Zappos and

13:19

more expensive than Amazon. But every time

13:21

I go in, I'm a hooker user and

13:23

I love them, but they're always changing different versions

13:25

of what's going on. I come in

13:27

and I say, hey, here's what I'm meeting. They

13:30

put them on me. I get up on the

13:32

treadmill. I do a little running on it, right?

13:34

And I get exactly what I need. Now,

13:37

can I buy it from Amazon and return it,

13:39

buy it again, or yes, and finally get that

13:41

one? But feeling

13:44

that they're working for my best

13:46

interests is that experience. That's

13:48

what we want at GNC every day.

13:50

I think it's difficult, especially

13:52

for smaller companies sometimes to understand

13:54

that because you can't show

13:57

the KPI of trust. KPI

14:00

of that relationship, right? Like

14:02

we can't necessarily measure the fact

14:05

that Bob, our

14:07

customer at this store really loves this one

14:09

coach. And so he always comes in and

14:11

talks to him and buys things from him.

14:14

Like it's kind of intangible. And so it's

14:17

a difficult thing to explain sometimes. It

14:19

is. And I think you see it over time, right?

14:21

That's the challenge is that you're

14:24

not gonna see this happen in tomorrow, we're

14:26

gonna see retention go up. But over time,

14:28

right? Folks will, they'll remember the

14:30

GNC experience. They'll want to repeat that GNC

14:32

experience and they'll come in more often. So

14:35

it's probably 12 to 18 months before we see

14:37

it really show up. I know it's true.

14:39

I know we know it from my own

14:42

personal experience. I know that the

14:44

stores that tend to really have really

14:46

great customer experiences are the ones that are growing today. Tell

14:48

me more about that. I mean, that's obviously what

14:51

we talk about on this show is how customer

14:53

experience is such a key to business

14:55

growth. But in your opinion, like

14:57

what is the importance of customer experience when it comes

14:59

to driving a successful business? I

15:02

think it's the only reason to come into a store. Right?

15:07

Simple as that. What other reasons do

15:09

I go to a store except for the customer experience? Everything else I

15:11

have I have I have I have I

15:13

have. So the big

15:15

thing is retail exists today. Now

15:18

we exclude some other channels like C stores and

15:20

I need to get food and groceries, but even

15:22

that I can buy offline. Especially

15:24

whether it be clothing or food or shoes

15:26

or a lot of the other products or

15:29

specialty retail is always been

15:31

focused on. Only reason to

15:33

come to my store, the only reason to come to the GNC is

15:35

because there's that experience. So

15:39

then how do you tackle this in the

15:41

online world? How do you create

15:43

an experience that is as sticky when

15:45

you don't have the physical aspect? It's

15:48

harder, but why really

15:50

believe the folks who are shopping us primarily online once

15:52

we've actually been in store before? So

15:54

if you wanna come into one store and next

15:57

time you just wanna go online and buy from

15:59

us, perfect, right? We've had the experience.

16:01

Maybe you need to come in a few years later

16:03

to recheck and as I said update because there's other

16:05

needs You might help come back

16:07

in store go back online There's a

16:09

lot of performance marketing a lot of CX work

16:12

that works online to try and make it easier

16:14

and It's a

16:16

shop easier to be kind of more intuitive We

16:19

do all that but it's really table stakes the outline

16:21

the differentiator for me is in retail

16:23

and you can go to other sites

16:26

But really only at us Can you

16:28

actually really get that experience but also come

16:31

back and get this coach experience in store?

16:33

Mm-hmm Do you provide any

16:35

type of coaching experience online? We have blogs and

16:37

a lot of articles as you're searching but if

16:39

it's some of the onus back on the consumer.

16:42

Yeah Totally to

16:44

me. It's still less ideal and we're trying to

16:46

figure out how we continue to make that better and I think as

16:49

As some of the tools change with AI

16:51

will get better and better at it. Yeah,

16:53

but that's that's still in the future Mm-hmm.

16:57

What's your hope? I talk to people

16:59

about this all the time where I you know, I have

17:01

clients of mine I'm a customer experience consultant and I have

17:03

clients who say we don't need to we'll

17:05

just get rid of customer service We're just gonna have AI

17:07

to tackle it and I think that's just

17:10

very hopeful and also Probably

17:12

not the best for anyone involved at

17:14

the end of the day. So what's

17:17

your opinion on that? I highly doubt

17:19

wherever I get rid of customer service.

17:21

I mean there are times Where

17:24

I just want to send a an IM

17:26

and have my thing get resolved, right? I

17:28

don't talk to anybody This

17:30

is broken. I want it replacement sent

17:32

simple problem. Just like fix it That's

17:36

my preference though. Mm-hmm. If I want to talk to a

17:38

customer service person, then I should be able to do that,

17:40

too Where I think AI is gonna help

17:42

is that we've all had the situations

17:44

where we've been on customer service lines where we

17:46

call somebody We get one answer you call back

17:48

a different answer you call back either third answer

17:51

So you keep calling so you get the answer you want? I

17:55

Think AI will help with training in a

17:57

lot of customer service so we can get

17:59

one system experiences online. Whether

18:01

that be from the chat bot, whether that's

18:03

from an IM, whether that's from

18:06

the phone call or the DM,

18:09

I think we'll have a, any AI

18:11

will really help accelerate how

18:13

those customer service agents can actually help consumers.

18:16

Completely. How's GNC looking at AI? Is

18:18

there anything that you're working on to implement? There

18:21

are things we're looking at. I mean, there's a

18:23

lot of back office stuff that we're still looking

18:25

at. How do we work with the warehouse and

18:27

whatnot? Those are easy to implement. We

18:29

are looking at some consumer facing things, but not ready

18:31

to build those yet. Yeah. Cool.

18:33

I think it's going to be so

18:35

fascinating to see how this

18:39

really plays out. We're at such an

18:41

early phase of it. And I think the consumer is

18:43

still holding on to

18:45

the human interactions. I've been reading studies

18:47

about this and humans

18:50

still want that human interaction. I think

18:52

we're still skeptical of AI. Yet we

18:54

also see that AI could help us

18:57

to avoid those lengthy

18:59

wait times and having

19:01

to call back multiple times in order to get the

19:03

answer that we want. There's a

19:06

ton of inefficiency in this space that

19:08

can definitely be solved by AI. The

19:10

question is, how do we implement it

19:12

while still thinking about the humans on

19:15

the other side, our customers? And what

19:17

does that human actually need in that

19:20

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19:22

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19:24

customer data than ever. But

19:26

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19:28

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19:31

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19:34

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19:36

truth for every customer. Ready

19:38

to get started? Work with leading

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Salesforce experts from professional services. Visit

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salesforce.com/products slash data to

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learn more. There

19:49

are times all of us don't want any human

19:51

interaction. We just want this stuff done now. And

19:53

then there's more complex problems that I want to talk

19:55

to human. I want to explain what's going on. Maybe

19:58

I'm just upset and I want to rant. Yeah.

20:01

And I want to hear the sorry from the

20:03

company. Yeah.

20:07

There are some cases where an AI is just going

20:09

to make this a lot worse if you don't

20:11

just put someone on the line to apologize. Yeah.

20:14

So as I said, I think, yes, we're

20:16

definitely early stages. I don't think we

20:18

all want to talk to robots every day. No, we don't want that

20:21

at all. I want to pivot a little

20:23

bit to how

20:25

you approach innovation. And

20:27

I know you had mentioned GLP1 and this big rollout, and

20:29

I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about

20:31

that. Maybe we can use that even as like a case

20:33

study in how did you

20:36

approach kind of seeing

20:38

the trends, which everyone's talking about as

20:41

MPIC and GLP1. But

20:43

how did you then translate that into, okay, here's what we're

20:45

going to do that's going to best serve our customer. Yeah.

20:49

So we've always had a section of

20:52

our category called weight management, right?

20:55

And if you think about it, the GNC is

20:57

here is to figure out what health journeys people

20:59

are on and how we

21:01

can best solve them. So

21:03

there's over 40% of Americans are

21:05

trying to lose weight, couldn't give them a ton.

21:08

So we had a category and that category

21:10

has products in it that help you

21:13

assist with your losing weight,

21:16

especially if you're working out. I'm going to grab one

21:18

for you. Actually this

21:21

January, we actually just launched Glukatron,

21:23

which I'm personally on, and

21:25

it helps you, it's that last

21:27

10 pounds that you're trying to lose.

21:30

And it's really for the folks who you're already

21:32

working out, you're already doing things. It helps manage

21:34

your blood sugar and kind of keeps you a

21:36

little less hungry at times. It's

21:38

really good for me for late night snacking, which is my

21:40

downfall. But

21:43

when we said as GLP1s come

21:45

out there, the fact is

21:47

50% of people give up on GLP1s within the

21:49

first year and they don't reach their

21:51

goal. And

21:53

so there's all these side effects. And if you watch

21:55

the Oprah special, you would see people

21:57

talk about all the negative side effects. to

28:00

come here to Pittsburgh and present in a shark

28:02

tank like atmosphere to a

28:06

group of our buyers merchandisers as well as

28:08

some of our franchisees and

28:10

really explain why these products were cool and

28:12

what was going on and what customer needs

28:14

they met. And then we're choosing

28:16

a set of those to

28:19

actually get distribution inside our stores. We

28:21

also talk with some venture capitalists and private

28:23

equity companies who are looking to, as they're

28:26

looking to fund new companies, understand

28:28

what they're looking at, what trends they see. So

28:30

we're going as broad as we can to

28:33

understand what consumers are looking for.

28:35

And direct consumer

28:37

brands are a great example because consumers

28:39

already paid money to get these brands.

28:43

We know they want them. And so how we

28:45

go back and really get them out there. Learning

28:48

from your partners is such an important piece.

28:50

I'm going to show you another one. I

28:52

love this one. Oh yeah. So SuperGut, right, is

28:55

now launched across all of our GNC products. This

28:57

is a great product I'm taking it to.

28:59

And And the fact is,

29:01

we know the product's growing,

29:03

it's growing online, the product's doing

29:05

really well. And now

29:08

we brought it on in GNC because

29:10

to provide more access to more

29:12

people, so it's such a great product. Yep.

29:14

But learning from your partners, right? Because

29:17

SuperGut, I assume, has

29:19

a whole different audience. I'm sure

29:21

there's some overlap, but they're bringing

29:23

an audience into your store as

29:25

well. Yeah. We

29:27

launched Bloom a while back here and a

29:31

significant portion of people who came

29:33

in were incremental to us as a

29:35

company. But importantly, it was also incremental to

29:37

them because while they brought in some of

29:39

their own consumers, there's folks who had never

29:41

seen the product who were new

29:44

to Bloom. So it's a win-win. Is

29:46

there any technology that you really like

29:49

to use as you're managing customer

29:51

insights, partner insights? How do you

29:53

pull all of this information together

29:55

into something that's tangible that you

29:58

can actually act on? information

32:00

is really what I'm focused on right now. Yep.

32:03

Great. Is there any AI for that? Yeah. You

32:05

know, go through my inbox and just tell me,

32:07

what do I actually need to read? No, no, you

32:09

need to send it to me. I gotta try and get to

32:11

it. Yeah. A

32:13

couple questions that we ask every single guest. I'd

32:16

love to hear about a recent experience that you

32:19

had with the brand that left you impressed. What

32:21

was it? So, anybody who knows

32:23

me knows that I'm not typically going out

32:25

and buying the higher end clothing and whatnot,

32:28

but we were on a tour recently

32:30

to really look at what some of the best

32:32

consumer experiences are in other stores. Oh,

32:35

I love that. That's so much fun. It is a lot of fun. And

32:38

I was introduced to a brand called Viori.

32:41

I was looking for, I'm now in Pittsburgh, so I need

32:43

some jackets and some clothes to run in that are a

32:45

little bit, when it gets a little colder

32:47

here. I'm coming from Miami. I

32:49

didn't need as many jackets before. For

32:51

sure. And so he completely sold

32:53

me on the jacket. It's fantastic. I got it. I've

32:56

now been back to Viori again.

33:00

I bought three shirts. And

33:02

what I loved about it was that, so I'm

33:04

already impressed with how good they are, how they're

33:06

not very pushy. They're talking about all different great

33:08

products here. And then I

33:10

go to buy these three shirts and I

33:13

bought two extra large as one large. And

33:15

the cashier was like, you know,

33:17

sir, do you know you have one large, two extra

33:19

larges here? And if you need, I can actually order

33:21

an extra large in the white for you if that's

33:23

the wrong size. Like I

33:26

wanted two sizes, I tried them on, but

33:28

the attention to detail and the,

33:32

how she tried to assist me in it, well, she

33:34

could have just run them off all three, right? And

33:36

if I picked the wrong size, whose fault would have been, have been mine.

33:39

But she was pointing out something and did

33:41

it in a very empathetic, open way, right?

33:45

And she obviously could have lost the sale because I'm like, I'm

33:47

not a large, you know, I have a large here. And she

33:49

was helping me out as a consumer. Guess what? I'll be going

33:51

back. Totally. It goes so far. I

33:53

mean, they've built trust with you. You can now

33:55

trust that you're going to go into that store.

33:58

You're going to get the support you need. You're

34:00

going to get great clothing at the same

34:02

time. That's that's great. And I love that

34:04

story about the cashier taking note of that,

34:06

because that's exactly how we want to train

34:08

the employees who are working with our customers

34:10

every single day. We want to make sure

34:12

that they're looking out for the best interest

34:14

of the customer, even before in

34:17

many, not all, but in some

34:19

cases before the company. Right. We want to

34:21

make sure that we're giving that expert

34:24

experience, even if we lose a sale. I want our folks to

34:26

give the expert experience to the store. Yeah. Yeah. And

34:28

I got another great example that I'll tell you,

34:30

we actually had somebody come into one of our

34:33

stores and they went through the

34:35

whole GOP one wall and they talked about the whole

34:37

thing and our our just talked to them about all

34:39

different issues. And the person was on a

34:41

GOP one and said, I'm having all these issues. I

34:43

see all that. I can't afford it right

34:45

now. I don't have my paycheck. And she said, come back. Right.

34:49

Like come on back when you're ready. You know,

34:51

get you one or two things

34:53

and maybe the next one. So she let the person

34:55

walk out of the store. That was

34:58

a fantastic, fantastic experience. Totally.

35:01

I'm glad she did it because you'd

35:03

argue, well, why don't why don't you just buy this one

35:05

thing? No, like let them go and

35:07

they're going to come back because they got

35:09

the expertise from four months. Totally. We're

35:12

playing the long game here. That's what customer

35:14

experience is all about. It's not just that

35:16

single moment. It's long

35:18

term trust. So I

35:20

love that. Yeah, for loyalty. Right. Because.

35:22

Yeah, completely. I'll be more loyal to

35:24

those stores that I know treat me

35:27

right. Completely. So my

35:29

last question for you is, what is

35:31

one piece of advice that every customer

35:33

experience leader should hear? I think there's

35:35

two pieces, which is number one, if

35:38

you're doing customer experience, you're not going to the store. You're not

35:40

going to where it is. You're you're

35:42

not doing it right. I

35:45

really believe, really, really believe

35:47

that you have to go to the the

35:50

where the customer experience happens. Could be a

35:52

lot. Yeah. Right. Could be in

35:54

the store, but wherever that is, make

35:57

sure you know how that feels. And

36:00

the other one is realize that

36:02

your key is those people. So put yourself

36:04

in the folks who are giving that customer

36:06

experience and make it your

36:08

job to make their job as easy as possible.

36:10

Because the harder you make it, right, we think there's great

36:12

things where we're having to do all these different tasks. The

36:15

harder you make it, it's harder for that person

36:17

to deliver that customer experience. Go to

36:19

work, right, find out what's

36:21

going on and then make it easy. Because

36:24

I inherently believe everybody wants to do a

36:26

good job. Everybody wants that customer experience is

36:29

when everything gets in the way of it that folks

36:32

kind of back off. The employee

36:34

experience drives the customer experience. If we

36:36

want our employees to create a seamless

36:38

customer experience, we need to create a

36:41

seamless experience for them as well. It

36:43

goes hand in hand. And if we want

36:46

our employees to respect our customers, we need

36:48

to respect our employees. There's

36:50

so, so many parallels between

36:52

the employee experience and the customer experience.

36:55

And I think just this is a

36:57

passion point for me. If

37:01

we're talking about customer experience, we have to look

37:03

at the way the employees are set

37:05

up for success as well. It's just

37:07

like they go hand in hand. And we call it

37:10

our coach's journey. Mm hmm. Great.

37:12

So like, how does that coach have the journey and what do we

37:14

do across that journey? Yeah. I

37:16

mean, if we're mapping our customer journey, we should also be mapping

37:19

our employees journey. Because

37:21

the way that those first 90 to

37:23

100 days of our employees experience

37:25

with our company is really setting

37:27

them up for how they're

37:29

going to feel for the rest of

37:32

their time with your business. So it's

37:34

really important to think about everything from

37:36

the hiring process, the onboarding process to

37:39

how those performance reviews are going. It

37:43

all will contribute to your customer experience at the

37:45

end of the day. So I'm so glad that you bring that

37:47

up. Totally agree. Awesome. It's

37:49

been such a pleasure having you on the show. Please

37:52

keep in touch and good

37:54

luck with everything over at GNC. And

37:56

Lauren, if you ever go into the GNC store and you

37:58

have an experience that you want to Say positive or negative,

38:00

let me know, I'd love to hear it. Perfect,

38:03

I will. We are clearly

38:06

in an AI revolution.

38:10

And thankfully, Salesforce is helping customers navigate each new wave of AI.

38:16

But the question is, how do you actually

38:18

use AI effectively? And my answer

38:20

is, yes, it is. It

38:23

starts with your data. With

38:25

Salesforce's Data Cloud, you can connect, federate,

38:27

and harmonize all of your data from

38:29

any product and system in Salesforce. To

38:33

learn more, visit salesforce.com/products slash

38:36

data.