Antonia Hock – Global Head The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center

Antonia talks about:

· The importance of building a world class culture first

· What it means to emotionally engage with your customers

· How to differentiate on brand experience

The book that has influenced Antonia the most in the past year:

· Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good: https://amzn.to/35XMFAK

Her tip to power meaningful customer experience:

“Be you, bring your own life experiences and your own enthusiasm for whatever it is that gets you going in this world, bring that to work because the very best customer experiences are created by people who are exuberant and excited about what they’re doing. And even if you’re in a role that has a level of repetition to it, never underestimate your power to make a change in someone’s life in some small way. So, bring yourself to work, and come tapped into what makes you excited and happy because you’ll create great experiences that way.”

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Nick Glimsdahl 0:00

Welcome to the Press 1 For Nick podcast. My name is Nick Glimsdahl, and my guest this week is Antonia Hock. Antonia is a Global Head Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center. She’s an author, thought leader, and global keynote speaker. Welcome, Antonia.

Antonia Hock

Thank you, Nick. I’m so pleased to be here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Nick Glimsdahl

Yeah, you and me both. I’ve heard so much about you. I’ve never gotten the opportunity to talk with you so many things I’ve seen online of articles on medium and just the thought leadership that you’re putting out there. So I look forward to seeing where this goes. But the first question I have for you and I have for every single guest is what’s one thing people might not know about you?

Antonia Hock

I love to be outdoors. And two of my big passions are mountain climbing, and rock climbing. And in fact, tall mountains are my favorite. And later this summer, I actually am climbing Mount Whitney

Nick Glimsdahl

Mount Whitney. So where’s that?

Antonia Hock

So that’s in the Sierra Nevada range, and it is the tallest peak in the lower 48 states?

Nick Glimsdahl

Wow

Antonia Hock

It is just under 15,000 feet at the summit

Nick Glimsdahl

That’s pretty amazing. And how long is that supposed to take?

Antonia Hock

The route that I’m planning to take is three days.

Nick Glimsdahl

Three days is a journey and it’s probably longer than most people are willing to invest, so kudos to you to taking the time. I fully expect pictures to be posted online when you accomplish that.

Antonia Hock

Of course, I don’t think I would miss it. September is such a beautiful part of the world. One thing I think everyone knows me would say is I love a great challenge. And that’s certainly one.

Nick Glimsdahl

Very cool. So let’s get into The Ritz-Carlton because, for over 30 years now, The Ritz-Carlton has been recognized globally for its brand experience. So what makes Ritz-Carlton so unique?

Antonia Hock

Two things make us very unique. One is kind of a bigger topic and I know we’ll get into it a little later. But our ladies and gentlemen, really create an exceptional experience for our guests worldwide. And they are the core, I think when we talk about differentiating our brand, they are the core of who we are, and why we’ve been at the top of our game for 30 years. The second thing I’d say is you take that group of exceptional human beings, and then you empower them to create very special memorable experiences for our guests. So those are really the two things that can really make a standout those experiences and also our people, our ladies, and gentlemen.

Nick Glimsdahl

I love the fact that you just brought that up, because Ladies and gentlemen, nobody else is calling their people, their employees, ladies and gentlemen. So why is that so important?

Antonia Hock

Well, the first thing I’ll say about it, because it has been an interesting source of dialogue for our brands for a while, it’s not built to be a gender identifier, so I’ll start with that comment. It is really about the concept of respect, and the way we choose to present ourselves. And so we strive for with that commentary is really, it’s a sense of manners, it’s a sense of respect, both for each other for our guests, for communities. We really choose to look at it through that lens, and that’s why for the longest time, we’ve continued with that language, because our ladies and gentlemen, when we take this out, and we do it on a regular basis, we asked for their feedback on that terminology. And it always comes back to us, yes, we want to keep it because it’s a spirit. It’s a concept, and it means a lot to the individuals that work for our brand. So we use it to convey a sense of how we choose to show up. And I think that’s very important.

Nick Glimsdahl

I think that’s very important. As a consumer, I feel like you respect your employees more when you call them Ladies and Gentlemen, because of how you are treating them, and how they’re experiencing it from the from the consumers perspective, and so I love it.

Nick Glimsdahl

Back to what you do specifically, share with my listeners what you guys do at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center .

Antonia Hock

We’re a consulting and advisory firm, and we really have three pillars of service that we provide. All of our services are all based on the best practices of The Ritz-Carlton. When we think about that through the three pillars, the first is consulting and advisory, where we work with fortune 500, mid-market clients across all kinds of verticals, to take our best practices and deploy them into their organizations usually to drive either employee experience, customer experience, or both, with a strong focus on the outcomes, maybe making a market, entering a market, changing or evolving a legacy.

Projects take on a lot of interesting work, but we love those because it gives us an opportunity to take our brands, best practices and adapt them. And its fun for us, we’re so proud of what we do and to be able to help others do it, and it’s a big part of who we are.

The other two pillars, one, we do public courses, which are knowledge transfer, I would call it a kind of inspirational taster, across two days of just who we are, what we do. And then the last is what I would call learning journey work, we’re going to come in and teach kind of an ongoing curriculum of our courses that are really built for an individual client to adapt our best practices into their own environment. So we do all three of those things, again, all focused on our best practices, and that we evolved over 30 years.

Nick Glimsdahl

They’re both physical and virtual. Correct?

Antonia Hock

Correct.

Nick Glimsdahl

I think that’s so unique. And we’ll talk about more about what the markets looking like in the future, but the hybrid approach I feel like is, is where people are going, and some people feel more comfortable to be on site and others are saying, Hey, I still want the training, but I want to go and do a virtual, so I love the fact that you’re giving those options.

Antonia Hock

Yes.

Nick Glimsdahl

When it comes to there’s so many questions I could ask when it comes to The Ritz-Carlton, but why is it important as an organization now for companies to build a world class culture based on shared values, inclusion and compassion and lateral services, before anything around customer centric focus, like, I just want to touch on that first before we get in anything else, because if it feels like a lot of people are just saying, Hey! We need to be customer centric, we need to have a focus on the customer and put the customer at number one, but you’re saying now, you need to have these other things prior to bringing in the customer centric focus.

Antonia Hock

You know, it’s this is a hallmark of who we are as a brand, and why we’ve been successful for as many years as we have. The data proves it out, at the end of the day, customer experiences are created by humans, whether they are the ones building the app, whether they are the ones standing on your ecommerce platform, or whether they are the ones delivering a customer experience in a store, in a dealership on an airplane, wherever it may be. At the end of the day, there is a human connection there, and if you do not start by creating a culture and an environment in which those human beings and those employees feel valued, they really feel connected emotionally to your brand, they’re passionate about your brand, we call them passionate advocates, if you don’t start there, the best you’re going to achieve on the customer experience and his short term tactical game. Because eventually, the fact that you don’t have a strong culture and emotional footprint internally for your place will catch up with you. And your customer experience will either be disingenuous or it will erode over time, because you haven’t taken the time to lay the foundation inside of your own company first.

Nick Glimsdahl

So from what I heard, it’s to build a customer centric focus, you can have good-ish services, or you can thrive with the foundation that you built first.

Antonia Hock

Absolutely.

Nick Glimsdahl

The next one I want to talk about is around emotion, because it says on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center website that any brand not emotionally engaging their customers risk losing those customers who are brand who will, and an anxious time’s consumers are especially likely to spend time and money where they feel safe and valued. So what does it mean to emotionally engage with your customers?

Antonia Hock

At the end of the day, it’s back to sort of human psychology. I think some of the best brands in the world today are really tapping into this concept of psychology, and emotion. And I think we can all look at examples in our own lives, where having an emotional connection to something makes it memorable. If its positive emotional connection, you want to come back, you want to try it again, you want to have more of what you’ve experienced.

So it’s those emotional connections that create that sustainable relationship between a brand and a consumer. If you’re not thinking through that lens, again, at best, you’re going to get transaction and maybe you’re going to get repeat business based on something like a cost model or you know exclusivity of a product, but over the long haul it’s the service and the emotions attached to those services that create the relationship and relationship drives loyalty, which we know drives additional purchases, it drives a relationship that’s ultimately tied to financials.

Nick Glimsdahl

I couldn’t agree with you more. At the end of the day, as a consumer, we don’t stop our emotions when we interact with the company, and so when somebody comes up to us regardless if it’s your front desk, or it’s your contact center space, how are you providing the listening skills through that moment, hearing where they’re at today, because they don’t just stop and they say, Hey, I’m frustrated, because of my life scenario, whatever that situation is, and because I had a bad experience at an insurance company, or a golf course, or a car dealership, and I’m going to take and stop that emotion because they bring all of that emotion along with them.

I think it’s important to understand and provide empathy and acknowledgement, then you can actually do something with it, instead of just saying, hey, that sucks. I’m sorry to hear about that, hit the “sorry” button, and then say, this is what I’m going to do. You actually acknowledge what they’re saying: it sounds like you’re struggling, it sounds like we didn’t meet expectations, here’s what we’re going to do about it. And I think there’s so much I think we can unpack that in so many different ways around emotion. But I love the fact that you guys are leaning into that.

Antonia Hock

I think it’s absolutely critical. And it’s critical on both sides, right, creating an incredible positive experience and attaching to emotions with consumers. And also when, as you just pointed out, when people become frustrated, or they have a challenging experience, how do we engage on that emotional level to turn that around, because as we know, working with some of our clients, oftentimes, the default is to as you just also highlighted, is to go in this kind of robotic recovery mode, which oftentimes just makes the situation worse. I had an experience like this from recently with Amazon, after multiple chat bots that I couldn’t seem to get out of the chatbot loop with, I finally invested the time to go try to find a human. When I did, it was robotic. I got it resolved, but if I had to score them on a great experience, it would be a zero.

Nick Glimsdahl

Customers’ expectations are now constantly increasing, which we can continue to talk about that too. But the one thing I really love and have heard stories of over and over again, is at The Ritz-Carlton, your ladies and gentlemen are empowered to offer the $2,000 a day, and obviously, you’re not going to use the $2,000 a day to solve problems or find a resolution, but you have the ability to empower those ladies and gentlemen to drive to a solution that is the right fit for those specific people. And I just love the ability to empower those people in trust you’re Ladies and Gentlemen, to create an environment that is the right fit for them, because everybody in customer experience kind of talks about great metrics, right? It’s the NPS score, it’s or it’s a CSAT or it’s the fill in the blank, but how do you create customers for life? That’s one way to do it?

Antonia Hock

Absolutely. You hit on two important themes for our business. One is that of empowerment. And the empowerment is great on two levels, it really ties back to our earlier conversation. One, there’s a psychological element to empowering someone, it comes down to value, trust, you’re saying, I believe in your ability to make a great judgment call, I’m giving you this authority and this power to do what you believe is right in a circumstance. And the psychology of that for the employee experience should not be underestimated. That ties you to a brand when a brand believes in you, trust you and empowers you, your connection to that brands becomes much stronger. So there’s that element with an EX pivot, and then the second piece with empowerment is also of course, the customer benefits. Because the opportunity to resolve something to create a special memory, to give that genuine care is also part of that equation, so it’s on the CX side.

The other thing that I would point out in this equation is first party resolution. That’s really important to couple that with empowerment, because if you can’t get the first person that touches a client requirement or need or is resolving something, they can’t drive it to conclusion, and they don’t have the empowerment take care of it. We know satisfaction and brand connection goes down substantially if they have to pass you off. So those are two really important things, and I would say a lot of brands get both of those wrong. They either fear empowerment and they don’t give it, or in order to resolve anything, you have to go through five levels of human until you get someone who can actually make a decision and by then you’re already very, very unhappy

Nick Glimsdahl

As a consumer, that’s the last thing I want is to be passed around an organization. A customer sees you as one company, they don’t see was five separate departments or six different levels, and they don’t really want to have to get frustrated and raise their voice and say, I want to spark to speak to a manager, they just want their problem solved the first time.

Antonia Hock

100%. And it ties back to just creating guests for life, creating customers for life. There’s nothing in my view that feels better or more satisfying than having your challenges resolved immediately, and exceeding your expectations on how that happens when we’re looking at service recovery. And then on the opportunity to surprise and delight is also just something I think everyone craves, and the more that brands can tap into that makes you feel special creates a unique bond for you with the brand, because now you feel known. There’s just so much value throughout the whole concept of empowerment. And first party work.

Nick Glimsdahl

So over the last year, it’s been a struggle for a lot of people and a lot of organizations for that matter, and it’s created a lot of pressure on these organizations to either strengthen under pressure, so forge, or they break. And at the same time, customers’ expectations have also increased, which we talked about prior. So why is it critical to power, a differentiated brand experience in today’s new environment?

Antonia Hock

Well, I would say, if you’re not differentiated, you just won’t be here. Consumer expectations are changing so fast and have moved so fast over the last over the last year. I think we’ve seen this cycle of compression happening for a while, I just think the last year has really accelerated with it. And the brands that are really great at what I would call Omni-channel, or have chosen specific parts of that Omni-channel experience to stand out, are so memorable, and so niche at this point, it you drives you back to them.

I had a scenario actually yesterday with overstock.com, I’d ordered a patio chair, and the delivery, I’m looking at it on my phone, probably like a lot of consumers do today, I’m looking at the records, and I can see it sitting in the warehouse hasn’t shipped yet, and I ordered it 10 days ago, and I see at the bottom of the screen, this little tiny chat button on my phone. And as a consumer I like I’m going to check this out, I bet this is going to be a bot, I’m probably not going to get resolution. I clicked that chat button, it opened up my iMessage on my iPhone, inserted an actual phone number, and started out a chat sequence and I chatted with a real human being over text, who resolved my issue in probably less than a minute, was super polite on brand, really did a lovely job of resolving my issue. And I went and thought about that for the majority of day, because the experience was so connected, so flawless and so personal. And my issue was resolved immediately. I thought it was extraordinary. And it’s things like that, that are going to make brands stand out right now, which is why that differentiate experience really matters.

Nick Glimsdahl

And you know what’s just as important is that you’re talking about this on a podcast, it’s your word of mouth, without them having to spend money on PR or marketing. They’re saying, Hey, we’re going to kick butt and take names in we don’t have to spend as much on marketing per se, because we’re driving new experience that customers are expecting or that were surprising and delighting them in that text message.

Antonia Hock

Absolutely. And those are the kinds of things when brands sit down to think about where they’re going to make investment, this concept of a great, shareable experience, factors in and so completely to customer experience. If it’s terrible and you’re crafting it in such a way where you are going to stand out, you better believe that’s going to get airtime on Instagram on Tick Tock. People are going to talk about it at the barbecue with their friends. That referral is so powerful.

Nick Glimsdahl

Every time I go buy something and it doesn’t matter if it’s a shovel or a vacuum or a watch or anything, I’m looking at reviews of people who I have no idea who they are, right, you know, saying okay, well, I’m going online. I’m looking for a watch band for my Apple Watch, so I’m on Amazon I’m backing for and it’s potentially not on the apple website. And I’m saying hey, this one has 4.6 reviews. This one has 4.9 reviews, but this one has more reviews. Let me go look at the comments and I have no idea what these people are, but I value their opinion because, it’s kind of a broad approach. It’s not just saying, I’m an ice cream shop, and that we have the world’s best ice cream.

Antonia Hock

You know what’s great about this raising such a great point, because I’ve really seen, I think we’ve all seen it last year, this is incredible focus on digital, hey, let’s digitize everything, let’s put everything online, let’s focus on e-commerce, and let’s focus on technology. But when you’re highlighting with your comments right here is the connection between the human experience and the technology. As human beings, we just will continue to love to engage with other humans. Now, it’s the principle behind Tick Tock, the principle behind reading reviews, a principle coming into a Ritz-Carlton, and having a great experience, there’s still that craving for human connection.

Nick Glimsdahl

I would agree. So how do you see companies focusing on the employee experience when they when they work their way back to the brick and mortars or work from home? Or the hybrid? Kind of like, we talked about the very beginning? How do you align with those internal brand experiences, because I believe it’s so important, but it’s going to be some mortar that’s between those, and there’s going to be some rough edges, so how do you work through that?

Antonia Hock

I think first and foremost, this is a great time, and we’ve advised a lot of clients on this, this is a great time to dust off and have a hard look at your culture.

What is it that you stand for how it’s time to do a little bit of an audit? And I think employees are really welcoming this right now, as the world is shifting yet again, for all of us, moving to hybrid models coming back into offices, it’s such an important time to demonstrate value to employees, an important time to ensure that your values and kind of what you stand for in in any of these environments is solid. And then what are you looking at as a company in terms of taking that next step? I think it’s an incredibly important time to lead from the front with your employee experience evolution, and to tackle these things head on, as opposed to kind of letting it happen to you or thinking because you’ve been on zoom for a year, you can probably continue to figure this out.

The best organizations are being very proactive, they’re benchmarking themselves, and the same way we think about customer journey roadmaps, we’re building out employee journey roadmaps, what should this new experience look like? Let’s treat it with the same fidelity, and the same importance that we treat customer experience. Companies doing that are off to a great start. And they’re really starting to smooth out the process by being so deliberate.

Nick Glimsdahl

That’s great. So somebody who’s a sought after speaker like yourself, a thought leader in the space, maybe provide my list or some advice that, how would you recommend leading in today’s new world? Because I think it’s always constantly changing, and you don’t necessarily need to be like the chameleon, but how do you find ways to lead in today’s new world?

Antonia Hock

I think it’s a very important time. And I would draw this connection back to just corporate brands as well, this is an incredibly important time to be open, and going that extra mile to connect. The same way we spend that energy and that time with our guests or our consumers, it’s so important to spend that time with employees to ensure that you’re doing meaningful purpose driven work, if you are really examining that work for how you can bring that to life, being authentic, and there’s such a movement right now towards that emotional connection, opening up more of who you are, and how you move through work, and making sure you’re adapting that to do other to your colleagues, your peers, to work groups, to people that work for you. It’s just a really important time to do that. And so I really lean hard on authenticity and connection as being important, probably such a critical and important leadership principles more so than we’ve probably seen in past.

Nick Glimsdahl

I would agree, because what organizations don’t technically don’t do over the last year is, and we all do it is we have back to back to back to back meetings on zoom, and they tend to overlap and there’s not that time to say Hey, how are you? How’s the kid? How is your soccer match your adult hockey group? Or how’s that time when you went rock climbing? Tell me more about that they don’t leave the windows of opportunity to connect with the employee, so I love the fact that you brought that up.

The last question the last two questions I ask every single guest Antonia is what’s a book or person in customer service or customer experience who’s influenced you the most in the past year. And then the second one is if you can leave a note to all customers service professionals is going to hit everybody’s desk Monday at 8 am, what would it say?

Antonia Hock

Well, I will start with a book, and may not be a very traditional pick, but I’ll pull it back to customer experience. I am reading a book called prosperity, by Colin Mayer, and it’s all about the evolution of the corporation. Moving away from this traditional concept of shareholder value, as a root metaphor, right for why your corporation exists, and sort of taking this pivot, that we should start to think about corporations in terms of how they can evolve for both economic and social wellbeing. And he really pulls us through and makes this argument around how a corporation can restore trust, can create purpose, can be a force for wellbeing, with both customers and communities. And so I think it ties back are, we believe at the Ritz-Carlton in the sense that a great Corporation serves the purpose of taking care of employees and communities as much as taking care of customers.

And at the point that you are solely and exclusively in business, for the purpose of making money, you’re probably, it goes to ties back into differentiation and purpose driven businesses, you’re not going to be nearly as successful long term, as a corporation that really starts to embrace what I believe is coming on the back of COVID, which is this concept of economic and social wellbeing. And I think we’re seeing it many, many ways, manifest with the conversations that are happening in many societies right now. So I think it’s a really compelling look at the purpose of a corporation. And that ties back to what is that experience for employees and for customers? so it’s fascinating book, and I think a very interesting read.

To your second question, if I was writing a memo that’s going to everybodys desk on Monday, the start of that memo would say:

“Be you, bring your own life experiences and your own enthusiasm for whatever it is that gets you going in this world, bring that to work, because the very best customer experiences are created by people who are exuberant and excited about what they’re doing. And even if you’re in a role that has a level of kind of repetition to it, never underestimate your power to make change in someone’s life in some small way. Whether you’re a call center rep, I’ve had a few calls, they’ve been 60 seconds, and they’ve been the highlight of my day when I talk to a call center representative that I know is excited and enthusiastic. So do that bring yourself to work and come tapped into what makes you excited and happy because you’ll create great experiences that way.”

Nick Glimsdahl

Sound advice. Antonia, what’s the best way for my listeners to connect with you or The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center?

Antonia Hock

We love people to follow us on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn, the leadership centers also on LinkedIn. And certainly to check out our website and our blog. We love to post lots of thought leadership and content on there, so those would be the best ways.

Nick Glimsdahl

The last plug that I’ll put in is I’m signed up for their newsletter and their emails that come out and every one of them has some has some a ton of thought leadership and a ton of value packed into those, so I would recommend going and signing up for those right away.

Nick Glimsdahl

Antonia, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and hope you have a great week.

Antonia Hock

Thank you. It was a pleasure to spend this time with you today.

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The Press 1 For Nick podcast is both educational and engaging, and each episode offers listeners a dynamic blend of insightful stories, best practices, and invaluable lessons.

Nick’s guests – each with a unique wealth of knowledge – include leaders from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some of his guests include:

Customer service & customer experience leaders
A hostage negotiator
Award-winning authors
Home Depot’s Senior Director of Customer Care
Former VP of Disney’s Magic Kingdom
Lyft’s Head of Partner and Customer Engagement
Deputy Chief Veteran Experience Officer from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

On every episode Nick asks his guest two questions:

What book or person has influenced you the most in the past year?
If you could leave a note to all the Customer Service and CX professionals, what would it say?

You can find all the podcast guests’ answers under their episodes below.

If all you want is the guests’ book recommendations, you can go here.

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