Marc Havercroft – Global Chief Customer Officer – SAP Cloud Business Group| SAP SuccessFactors

He talks about:
· Individualization vs Personalization
· Removing obstacles and listening to your people
· The importance of Emotional Intelligence

The book that has influenced Marc the most in the past year:
✔️ Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance: https://amzn.to/39W5LJM

Marc’s note all the customer service and CX professionals:
“Delight your customers and be the subject at their dinner table.”

Nick Glimsdahl 0:02

Welcome to the Press 1 for Nick podcast. My name is Nick Glimsdahl. And my guest this week is Mark hovercraft, the man the myth, the legend. So Mark is the global chief customer officer at as p, cloud business group and as p success factors. Welcome to the press one for Nick podcast. Mark.

Marc Havercroft 0:22

I’m, I’m honored to be here today. You know, this is this podcast is number one, right? So I’m, I’m deeply honored. Thank you.

Nick Glimsdahl 0:29

As long as it’s number one in your heart, we’re all winning.

Marc Havercroft 0:34

It certainly is. It certainly is my friend.

Nick Glimsdahl 0:36

So every guest, I asked one question at the very beginning. And it’s what’s one thing that people might not know about you?

Marc Havercroft 0:46

Right? Well, there’s a number of things, but I’m going to keep it you know, above the line. But one of the things is, I’m based in Australia, but I was born in a country called Rhodesia, which doesn’t exist anymore, which is Africa. And I went to school in the UK, right. So I am your classic. From your history lessons. The old colonial one of the last of the old colonials of when the world was kind of global, you know, a while ago, so I feel I’m coming full circle in my global role as well. So that’s, there’s the one above the line fact that people work now. I love that last but not least,

Yeah, is that they say, right.

You got it,

You got it.

Nick Glimsdahl 1:27

That’s pretty neat. I appreciate that. So for the not many people who, for the people who don’t know, what is SAP success factors, and tell me more about your role at a high level.

Marc Havercroft 1:42

Okay, so SAP success factors is the people part of success factors suite of applications. Most people will be aware of SAP if they’ve been around technology for the last 50 years. So ultimately, on premise II, RP systems, SAP, you know, invented e RP, 50 years ago. Success factors is part of the plan of as we, you know, again, innovate and transform. Really, it’s the people part of putting VRP in the cloud. So we bought companies like a rebirth for procurement, concur for expense management, and so on and so forth. So I do the people part, which is my favorite bit, so I’m in the right, right, right place. Second part of my job chief customer officer, and globally is not for those of you who are around cloud, you know that it’s a subscription business. And we need to be constantly working with our customers, not just buying new ones, but helping them to get the best out of the platform, and hopefully, you know, growing their usage of other SAP applications, so my job is to bring to the company and bring to our customers that are constantly on and making sure that we’re proactive with them and understanding what they’re trying to do as a business. And making sure our platform delivers that platform for them to execute their strategies on that in a nutshell, is, and is my role. And it’s, you know, it’s a joy. I’m loving it.

Nick Glimsdahl 3:06

Yeah, you can feel that from the conversations that we’ve had in the past. And the conversation just now is you’re amped up about what you do, and the product and the service that you provide. So it’s really cool. One of the questions that we started talking about prior to this recording is endeavor, individualization versus personalization. And I started geeking out and I was like, hey, let’s, let’s, let’s time out, let’s put the pause button on because we got to get this thing on record. So what, tell me more about the difference between those two?

Marc Havercroft 3:39

Well, so I think, you know, personalization, to an extent is we’ve all experienced that in our technology, right? We can kind of, you know, make what we want on our home screen be we can do our desktop background, you know, we kind of personalize our mind, but it’s, it’s kind of within a structure for everybody, right? You know, you’ve probably got your screensaver I’ve got mine, you know, all that kind of thing. Individualization is something that we really worked on with HSM with, you know, adding in Qualtrics. And really looking at the people aspect, not from an HR system that really regards people is unnecessary cost in a business, right. Individualization is where you really start to kind of grasp what we’ve grasped. And I think now what I certainly our competitors and industry is grasping is, you know what, funny with technology business today, the real difference is the people that you have, right, you know, you know what it’s like, you know, one good developers worth 10 not so good developers, all that kind of analogies that people have heard. So individualization is where you as a business actually, and it’s really cool, right? Are able to look at, okay, our people are our business. They’re not unnecessary evil, you know, they’re in our asset class. Now, they are the difference and we all know, good customer experience starts with a good employee experience, right? So rather than having this kind of, you know, computer says no HR system, you know, just driven for risk and protect From the company from its employees, individualization allows us to look at my job and set my system up to help me do my job best. And for it to limit any friction of me being a human to you, right, so we really able to individualize it and go, Okay, forget the process that we had before. Let’s look at Mark’s day, and the systems he touches, to give that great employee experience, which in turn will make sure his customers are delighted, and our business will hit all the marks it needs to from our point of view of stakeholders and everything, so individualizes, that next step to where you really throw the rulebook out on current processes, and make, the best way I can put it is make the system fit around me, not me fit around the system, and therefore the benefits of that as you can kind of, you know, imagine are very, you know, extraordinary for me, but for the business as well.

Nick Glimsdahl 5:52

Yeah, employee experience equals customer experience.

Marc Havercroft 5:57

Absolutely. Right. You know, you know, what, uh, you know, yourself, right? I mean, if, if somebody, anybody who directly interacts with your customers in whatever format, if they are not engaged and in your business and understand why they’re doing their job, what they’re doing and feel valued? Well, it doesn’t surprise you really, that when they answer that customer phone call that maybe they’re just not, you know, amped up, like me, maybe they’re just kind of, you know, a little bit resentful, and the fact that they’re treated as just this necessary cost, then they’re not, you know, it’s not, they’re not regarded, and they’re not praised and rewarded for giving a good customer experience, right, which is, you know, it’s obvious when we talk about it. But to be honest, this history will tell you, it’s very rare, you know, that that’s happened.

Nick Glimsdahl 6:42

And so how do you get people to be amped up? Like, Mark? How do you get them to be fired up and excited? To be at work? And to be is it is it for them to understand their? Why is it for them to understand the purpose of the organization? Is it for them to understand and maybe relate to the consumer themselves? What, what else is it or maybe it’s all the above,

Marc Havercroft 7:06

It’s only above, but it’s anywhere it starts, for me, it starts in leadership, right? To too often, right? I always do the triangle of organizations, because you have leaders at the top, and we’re all mentor, you know, in our grades follow below, right? I always say to customers, and I do this is leadership now is not about leading from the top from a pictorial view, it is about enabling and working for your people and turning that triangle upside down. If you want a visual, right, I work for my team, I clear those roadblocks, I made sure the system is around them, not them around the system, and that they have all their time, to be their best self with, with the customers. And, you know, I The other aspect of it is God, you know, communicate, you are in a privileged position as a leader, you don’t get there because, you know, it’s not some form of privilege, you’re in that privileged position because of the hard work of everybody around you. So, you know, oh, Boss of mine said, you got, you know, two ears and one mouth for a reason, right? You know, listen to the people on the floor, listen to the people dealing with your customers, understand their issues of delivering a good service, and make sure you’re removing those roadblocks. And secondly, communicate to them about where the business is going, why, what are the challenges and their role in it, it’s being you know, being a leader that removes obstacles and listens to your people and communicate what’s happening with the business and what’s going on. That’s all people want. Sometimes that information isn’t what they want to hear, or you know, things happen in the world, as we know, and that changes businesses. But you know, as my dear mother would say, treat people as you like to be treated yourself, and you can’t go far wrong. And I always say that to all my people, treat people I would like to be treated yourself, you really can’t go wrong in that whether you’re facing the customer that you’re leading a team of people so that’s how you do it, you lose the this top down mindset and you recognize that your people are your business and manage accordingly right and communicate accordingly. And you know, then you will see that amazing extra effort that goes in when people are engaged.

Nick Glimsdahl 9:13

Yeah, I love the diamond approach versus the triangle approach because you become the chief servant officer instead of the chief customer officer. And when people really realize that the most expensive resource is their people in specifically for me inside the customer service department. Yeah, man, their mind shift changes because they’re like, how do I create an effortless experience for my employees? And not just my customers? How do I drive efficiencies and maybe create a single source of truth or be able to manage their experience because inside the contact center, it’s the retention is ridiculous. So how are you creating that better experience for that, but then that done isn’t just spirit doesn’t just stick inside the contact center? It’s everywhere.

Marc Havercroft 10:04

Absolutely. I mean, his brand as well, right, you know, employee value proposition is you know, and I just said employee experience customer experience, employee value proposition and customer value proposition. Hey, your employees, the customers too, right? So how you treat them and you know, in the contact center, right? Sometimes its students, right, or different things, but that brand experience they take into their world. And you know, you do the right thing by people, and people tell other people, that’s why we all ask somebody, if we’re going to buy something, hey, what do you think about that? Have you bought this? You know, that referral mechanism that experience, right? Lasts a lifetime, right? So it’s really important in whatever environment and as I said, this is not fluffy HR stuff, this is good business, right? Look at you want some example, look at Tesla look at look at Apple look at these things, right people, you know, and people kind of wear those t shirts and be part of those businesses, they are all in. Right. And, and for me, I said to you look at leaders that communicate and that serve their people and serve their customers, you’ll see the commonality across those crazy personalities of those businesses.

Nick Glimsdahl 11:14

Do servant leaders attract other servant leaders?

Marc Havercroft 11:20

Yeah, I think so. Because, you know, you set a culture, right. And, you know, certainly, from my experience, and the leaders that I work for now, and I’ve worked for they all told me that, you know, when I moved from managing, managing operation and activity to leading leaders, it’s an enormous jump. And the commonality and people verbalize it in different ways. But the bit that I’ve talked for really successfully is Mark, you know, it’s about heart getting good people around you that know the answers, you know, it’s not if you knew all the answers, you know, you Well, you don’t, but if you did, you wouldn’t have. So hire good people, and let them make those decisions for you. Listen, and bring that together. And above anything else. Yeah, recognize that leadership is a privileged position based on the smart people working for you. So you will attract those people. Because if you operate that way, you know, that’s the DNA of your leadership business, right. And you’ve got to be very strict on doing that, you know, the classic stories of Oh, but you know, he’s great, you know, fantastic, or she’s fantastic. But, you know, culturally, it’s, it’s true, you have to remove those people as quickly as possible, they will find their culture, but you have to, you know, maintain those ethics. And that because there is no short term gain with the damage that that can be done if you don’t have that same ethos in your business.

Nick Glimsdahl 12:40

Yeah. You mentioned being able to listen and understand that you don’t know everything. And it takes humility that it does that is that is tough to do. For some leaders. So can humility be learned throughout that process? And does it does it take painful moments to go through that?

Marc Havercroft 13:03

Hey, look, I think you’re both I think, you know, some people, some people, they need a little bit of pain for it to actually trigger a behavioral change, right? We’ve all been there, we’ll see. No, yeah, I’m going to do this and this, and then suddenly, you know, something slaps you in the face, and you’re like, Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Learn by going well, hang on. You know, I’ve experienced that myself now. And actually, yeah, you know, I like that. I always try to think, you know, life is about experiences, right. So I always try and think, you know, I pull from my best leaders and pull from my worst, but you know, obviously, adopt what I got from the best and maybe don’t do what I got from the worst, right? And hopefully learn

Nick Glimsdahl 13:41

From those guys. Yeah,

Marc Havercroft 13:43

Exactly. So, as I said, I think as long as you can humility, look, yes, it can be learned. And I think some people either get there in a painful way, when they finally fall flat on their face. Others, you know, have the ability, as I said, you know, using their ears watching and observing, you’re learning, right? If you’re talking, you’re just repeating what you already know. If you’re listening, watching, you’re learning. And you know, as humans, we’re pretty good at adapting when we see those things. So, bit of both, hopefully, people get to the point. They don’t need a slap in the face. But some do, right. And we, we know those stories?

Nick Glimsdahl 14:19

Yep, absolutely. So going full all the way back to individualization versus personalization. How do you create that human connection?

Marc Havercroft 14:28

Oh, well, you know, people some physical question, because well, you’re human. I’m human, we’ve got a connection. So how do you create it? Recognize that we’re all the same, right? And recognize we’re just humans. And so connect on that basis, right as you do at a dinner party, as you did when you went to university and you know, that first kind of week when you’re meant to kind of meet all these people, right? You know, when I went to university these days, you just got drunk for the first week, and that’s how you met people. But I guess I’m not encouraging that as a way of all staff to get in there. Although you know, Friday beers in Australia is a well-run thing, but honestly, seriously be human go approach people not based on their job title or anything like that approach them like another human being right? Treat people as you’d like to be treated yourself, take a little moment in time to understand that person and their job. So empathy, emotional intelligence, and all those things we have intrinsically as humans. So just be yourself. Right? But get to know a person. That’s how you create human connection. And you can do that, as a leader on mass, you know, through informal calls and coffee corners, as well as you can do it individually, though. So just, you know, be human is the understands to that.

Nick Glimsdahl 15:43

Yeah. Be human, and understand that we’re all uniquely different. So, go through that process, understand and listen, with the intent, like you said, to learn. Yeah. Because if you’re just going to assume that you’re going to know what that answer is, then you’re not actually listening and acknowledging what they’re saying, or understanding what they’re saying, and then responding. You’re just regurgitating what you already know, like you said, it goes back to the two years in a mouth.

Marc Havercroft 16:15

Absolutely. Absent seriously. I mean, and also, you know, you’re not, you’re not inventing, you’re not getting to the great traits that we have of innovation and changing things, you know, you want a culture of people, what you did yesterday, doesn’t mean that that’s what you need to do today, right? And you want people to, you know, we’re great problem solvers, as human beings, right? We had to run away from dinosaurs and all sorts of stuff, right. So we, you know, we are, we are we have got it honed, and, you know, what we do by limiting our people through structures, and top down leadership, is that you are effectively taken away those, you know, that problem solving skills, you know, innovation, you know, curiosity, that that makes us who we are, and as you said, each person is different in all those categories. But, God, I can’t think of anything worse, if you take that away from your business, you’ve just got this static business that is going to get dumped at any particular moment in time. Right? So yeah, it’s just, it’s kind of the law of nature, we just kind of need to follow it sounds a bit weird, but we just actually just need to go back to our core strengths as human beings.

Nick Glimsdahl 17:20

So I always bring it back to customer service, because that’s what I know. But related to what you’re doing. A lot of organizations are still stuck in, in the legacy, what you just mentioned, kind of the old ways of doing business, the legacy policies and procedures, because that’s the way we’ve always done it. So you’re on the phone with somebody and you’re like, hey, man, can you just fix this? It’s not that big of a deal. And you’re like, you know what? Sorry, we can’t because that’s, that’s not part of policy. That’s not, that’s not how we do it. And as a consumer, I don’t feel known or valued in that moment. And so I’m going to go immediately to that competitor, and say, if I have that ability, and start making calls and seeing what, what’s that next solution look like, but why are organizations stuck in that in that rut behind policy and process? And how do you get them out of that?

Marc Havercroft 18:14

Well, the answer that is really simple. And again, I’ve looked into this a lot. So I’ll simplify the essence of the reason that’s the case is because we think we thought should I say in personnel departments thought the people, the people we employed were a risk to our business. So we hamstrung them in policies and processes and systems that when you have that logical call from a customer that says, hey, look, I know the policies, there’s been I’ve been a customer with you for days, I just need you to flick this over to the new company entity. It’s the same company, you know, just helped me out. I’ve got a business to run here. I’m sorry, sir. That makes perfectly good sense. And there’s a good customer, we should just do that for you. But the cyst, that’s my computer says no moment, I’m sorry. But computer says no. And it just, it just makes you know, even talking now just makes my stomach sink, right? Because I know that. And I just think what we need to do right is so that’s how we we’ve done it. And so what we need to do is first there’s leaders need to recognize our people are our biggest asset. Number one, none of them go to work with their prime objective to bring the company down, right? Like number three is go to individualization. How do we make the systems robust enough? That, you know yes, we do beat some safeguards, because unintentional activity might cause a knock on effect. So we need some safeguards. But let’s empower our frontline people to improve our processes to improve our customer experience by giving them the autonomy and ownership to make the right decisions for our customers and our business. And again, you know, you’re hiring professional people who wish to do that. So give them that ownership because from that comes to your point that situation becomes you know, it’s not perfect. Policy says no, but this makes perfect sense. I’m going to go away, and I’m going to try and fix this. And you know, hopefully we’ll fix this policy for others down the track, right? And secondly, give them the autonomy and ownership to do that, listen to them, and let them improve the processes and why things happens. Couple of things happen from that, right. Number one, obviously, the customer is like, yeah, this is why I’m with these guys, and tells his friends and other business owners, right, that the employees like, yeah, this is why I’m in the job, right? I want to do these things. Because normally, in that transaction, they don’t necessarily remember the company, they’ll remember Nick, okay, Nikki just helped me out big time. Thank you. Great. And that makes that makes that person feel good. That makes the customer feel good. And again, you know that that is why I call customer momentum, and you get that momentum going. It is an unstoppable force.

Nick Glimsdahl 20:50

In when you get momentum, it’s the it’s the trust factor versus the non-trust factor. And it’s the scale back and forth. And it’s a lot easier to pull from, from those non trust factors to pull back up than it is to add to that trust factor. And nobody can see my hands moving, but they’re going up and down, left and right. And so it’s making sense to mark and to nobody else. So I apologize for that. But you know, when it’s exactly right, I just had a father in law, had an example he called me on, it’s always funny, when you’re in customer service or customer experience, everybody calls you about the worst potential experience possible. And he’s at a bank and he started a checking account for one of my brother in law’s back when he was right, a young man, and he is now in college and is trying to close out and get his name off of his checking. So he doesn’t get to see what whatever else happens because he’s in college. Now he’s responsible for it. And the bank’s like, I know, you actually have to cancel the checking account, take all the money out, and then start back up. But he’s like, well, I just want to take my name off of it. Like what’s, what’s the issue? And they’re like, I’m sorry, man. It’s his policy. And I’m like, oh, yeah. I want to I want to show you something about your policy. But

Marc Havercroft 22:05

Exactly, exactly.

Nick Glimsdahl 22:07

You know, when it comes to all of this, though?

Marc Havercroft 22:11

How

Nick Glimsdahl 22:12

Important is EQ?

Marc Havercroft 22:16

Oh, my God. Yeah, it’s, it’s enormously important. Right? And it, you know, you said something earlier, and I don’t, you know, I want to come back to it in the essence of EQ so important, because, you know, ultimately, people do business with people, right? Even me, I’m in this, you know, 110,000 people company SAP, right. But I was late last night, yes, last night, I was on the phone with one of our great customers. Cargill, you may or may not know them. But, you know, when I’m on the phone with Jamie, who’s the kind of main guy there and I know, we know each other, you know, we know each other. We I know, he’s got his challenges in the organization, I’ve got mine, but we are working together for to get them what they want. But we, we have that trust that you were that you were showing, and we work for each other, he knows that I’m in this machine for him. And I know he’s in his machine for me. And that, ultimately, is why EQ is so important, right? Because it is to me, it’s the platform of your ability to have empathy for another person, situation and sure platform for I think, as I said before, not thinking you’re better than somebody else, because you’re in a leadership role or something like that, you know, we’re all leaders, if a business is having that humility, as you talked about, I think EQ is the basis of that, because if you’re unaware of how your behavior and your actions relate to different people, and I’ve learned as well, you know, like, the way I communicate, I need to change it for certain people, because, you know, they, they, they take on the information differently as, as easy as I might say, I have to do it in different ways. So EQ to me is that that’s, that’s the kind of, you know, that’s the special ingredient for all that kind of humanity that I just talked about, you know, having the time to listen, having that, you know, if you haven’t got EQ, and you can’t see past your own behaviors, you’ve kind of gone you’ve almost turned into a machine, right? You kind of become the computer, right? There’s like Lawnmower Man reinvented or something like that. So I think, you know, EQ is essential is essential, but to me, you know, I, I kind of explained it as just, you know, recognizing you’re one human on this planet, right? And everybody else is another human on this planet and having just the curiosity to get to know them. It’s actually even that is quite interesting. Because, you know, like, your first opening question, I’m sure you’ve heard all sorts from different people about the fact that they don’t know. You know, when I always meet people I like, you know, that’s your work side, but what about you? What is it about you that gets you out, you know, children’s sport, whatever, whatever, what get to know a person. And that’s EQ so to your point, I mean, it’s the platform of creating connections. It’s the platform of others humanity, making sure that we respect one another, and you know, live a decent life. So I’ve got Yeah, it’s, it’s kind of, yeah, man, we need it in everything you know.

Nick Glimsdahl 25:12

And I would say that we probably need it more than ever, with technology coming, is Tucker technologies here with automation showing up and arriving in more ways than we can imagine. People are hiding behind the technology sometimes or saying, hey, we’re going to be automating XYZ check. And they go full on automation, without actually thinking about the customer. You’ve got a net that really irks me, because they’re the ones that pay the bills. So maybe you should ask for their input before you go through that. And I think I’m okay with automating the mundane tasks. And I’m okay with automating and creating hybrid approaches for a better experience. But when somebody truly needs to talk to a person, let them talk to a person, like you said, humans do business with humans, period 100%. And, and at the end of the day, when it comes to a lot of organizations, maybe not 100, and tenant of person organization like SAP. But they’ll say, Man, I really enjoyed that. That conversation I had with Mark, what was what the name of that company was again. But the point is, it doesn’t matter. The point is that they trust you, and that you got their back.

Marc Havercroft 26:31

Nick guy, that’s my last 20 years of my career that I’ve learned is my network and my character in business, people will know and they’ll say, you can ask mark, but he’ll tell you the truth, like he’s not, you know, he’ll tell you what you need to do, and what’s good. And I do that with my customers. You know, I think the good thing with customers is, you know, you have to tell them, no, sometimes you have to educate them. It’s a two way street. And that brings trust around advice, because we’re not always right. And we don’t say, you know, yes, all the time, right. But it’s about establishing, establishing that trust. And, you know, to your point about the customers, one of the things I’ve worked really hard in our business to do, and you know, we do is our customers are part of our business, you know, I bring them into phone calls about product development, what we’re going to do big infrastructure changes, we bring them into the conversation, right? But then two very good reasons. Number one, it educates and helps them understand, right? Number two, they get they educate and help us understand as well, to your point, you know, we might, and we’ve got some great engineers, but sometimes they might come up with something that is great, but it’s not relevant in our customers world right now. Right? So again, it helps us hone in on what’s important to our customers. Also, what it does is it makes them part of your business, right? So when, you know, you need that input, and in in the day of business, certainly in our world of software as a service, but business in general, it’s an ongoing relationship, right. And it only takes one bad thing for them to change direction. So I think and again, it just makes logical thing. We think of ourselves as all humans, customers, and providers, have a conversation, listen to what’s important, bring them into it, if things can’t be done, and you explain why not. People are good with that. It’s just when they’re not listened to, right, if people aren’t listened to and not responded to, that still drives me up the wall, right. And but again, your point on empathy, whenever I deal with a call center or something, I’m you know, I can be that customer that be cranky about being, I always make the point of going, Look, I know you’re not the company, you’re just receiving this information, right? So I’m not going to lose, lose it with you. But I just want to be very clear that I’m not happy. And these are the reasons why. And I hope you can do something with information. And you know, what, nine times out of 10, I might not get what I want. But sometimes I certainly get discretionary effort. And then trying and also I get people coming back to me and saying, look, you know, we couldn’t do this, but we’ve thought of another way that’s less, you know, on your time. So again, you know, you talk about EQ, having a bit of empathy for the other person on the other side, understanding that, you know, in your own world, you have these restrictions. Again, people become human and they go that little extra effort for you. So it’s, it’s all good. Even if you’re, you know, the customer on the receiving end of what you perceive is not what you want right now.

Nick Glimsdahl 29:19

I think we could do a 24 hour livestream of just empathy, but we’re not, we’re not so don’t worry, it will stop it’ll slow down. So I asked every guest at the very end of the podcast, two questions, Mark. So the first one is what book or person has influenced you the most in the past year? Say that? I’ll ask one more question. So you can think on it. So no pressure? Yeah. So the next one is if you can leave a note, regardless of the size, it could be one word or it could be a paragraph. No longer maybe. But easily a note to all customer service and customer experience professionals. It’s getting to hit everybody’s desk Monday at 8am

Marc Havercroft 30:00

What did you say? Well, I

Write the book, let me go with a book, the book. Now I don’t read a lot is the truth of it. I don’t you know, I kind of subscribe to a few blogs, I catch up on people on things like that. But there was a, there was a book actually given to me from a boss, which was finally, the author’s name, and I’ll get it back to you. But it was called grit and resilience. Right? And it was, you know, it was about how we do, I’ve got two young boys, how do we instill grit and resilience into, you know, into our lives? And you know, it’s about kind of letting people try new things and not putting boundaries in front of them, right, a bit. Like, I’m sure your parents were the same. My mother would say, you know, Mark, you can be anything you want to be, right, whatever you want to be, you can be, right. But when I went through school, it was kind of like, Well, Mark, you know, you need to pay attention, you can stop messing around and you know, you know, and kind of what I wanted to be when I was little as opposed to going through our system was kind of restricted. And so I would say that’s the book to read and the underlying messages, you know, for you, your kids, whoever, whatever, you can generally be anything you want to be our systems at the moment, I think limiters but, you know, work on your kids and do that. So that that’s the book, gritted its called grit and resilience. Julia, someone anyway, not the best answer, but that’s my answer.

Nick Glimsdahl 31:20

It sounds like an awful last name. Julia someone?

Marc Havercroft 31:23

Yeah, well, it’s popular.

Nick Glimsdahl 31:27

I know, it sounds like a great book, I just meant I was trying to make a joke, and it completely bombed. But the Julia something is the lesson. So but it sounds like grit and resilience. Everybody needs it. And so how are you using it though? Right, using it the right way?

Marc Havercroft 31:44

Yeah, and I got a nice piece about positivity for me, right, you know, is, if you get knocked down, its how you get back up, right? We’re all going to get knocked down. But you know, believe me, it’s how you get back up. People fail 10 times for one success. So don’t you know, as my old sales career would say, every now is not now. Not a no, right? So my note to everybody, you know, from a customer perspective, is it this is a simple one to me, and I’ll credit where it’s due. And I’m bad with names today. But the guy who ended up customer service, if you like, for Tesla, I saw a TED talk with this guy. And it was great. And his thing and, and I absolutely took it because I thought it was fantastic. Which was, you know, if you can do anything, make that customer at the end of your phone call, go home to their dinner table and say, hey, you know, Nick, he really got me out of a bind today, you know, how was My day? Well, it was good, it was bad. But I’ll tell you what, Nick just, he got me out of something today that I knew that he went the extra yard. But you know, that that made my day took one less thing off my plate. And so I put a note on everybody’s desk and just say, just concentrate on whichever customer you deal with. Make that be a positive discussion over their dinner table tonight about what you did for them. And he did that in, in a context of the question of how do you scale that one off great customer service when you’re a starting up business or you’re small enough to, to care when you suddenly you know, exponentially explode, right. And you but you still want to keep that white glove that I touch. And he was, you know, an obvious you can imagine with Ian, he was kind of like, chasing the dragon all the time. So he said, you know, that’s how I did it. That’s how I did it, and to what we discussed before, empower them to do that, you know, give them that individualization to do that, and that ownership. So the note would be simply that delight your customer and be the subject of their discussion at their dinner table. That’s all I want you to do every day. And that would go a long way I think

Nick Glimsdahl 33:48

Sounds like you’re your first book is delight your customers and have them talk to you at you’re at their dinner table.

Marc Havercroft 33:55

I seriously it’s when you think about it. You know, when we go home and we say you know how your day was? You do remember those moments and those until way at the beginning of this you said you know what, what is it all about? And I think with customers and how we deal with things, it’s that connecting us humans and just trying to help each other out every day as we deal with this crazy world. If we could all do that, this world will be a better place and we go home and you know, enjoy our time with our loved one.

Nick Glimsdahl 34:21

I love that quote man. How can my listeners connect with you mark?

Marc Havercroft 34:27

My um, you know, I love you know, LinkedIn email, uh, you name it, Twitter, all these different things, anything at all? You know, I think you can just google somebody nowadays right and you can find their details but I you know, I’m happy to share them with you after I you know, I don’t just say I I’ve even said it when I get these jobs. I’m humble enough to say Look, I don’t know everything. But I’m a really good listener. And I’m really good at spotting you know, transformation and change and I love it. Innovation. So, I’d love to connect with people. I can always learn, I’m happy to share what I know. And I’ll try and remember people’s names when they do contact me.

Nick Glimsdahl 35:11

Thank you so much mark. It’s been a blast. I laughed and I’m going to talk to talk about you at my next dinner table. So I appreciate it and looking forward to what you guys in the success you’re bringing here in the coming year.

Marc Havercroft 35:26

Absolutely, Marc, it’s great to talk to you and wish well to all your listeners as well.

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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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