In September, CEO of Experience.com (Formerly SocialSurvey) Scott Harris sat down with Don Goettling and Gino Fronti of “The Don & Gino Real Estate and Finance Radio Show.” The latter two are Area Managers at Finance of America Mortgage, who spoke with Harris at Experience.com’s annual marketing and culture conference, the Create WOW Summit.
The 2019 theme was “Win Local at WOW Town,” which Harris took a minute to explain.
“It’s about dominating your local market, which is an important message for real estate agents and loan officers and other folks,” said Harris. “Collecting and sharing the voice of your customer and then managing data everywhere so that when someone’s looking for a service you offer, you win.”
Goettling and Fronti agreed, and questioned how they could do a better job of winning local and getting customers to become “superfans” of their brand. The conversation then shifted to Experience.com’s reputation management platform.
“It’s unbelievable, the amount of engagement that you get with our clients,” said Fronti. “We’ve tried two or three other different companies [before Experience.com (Formerly SocialSurvey)]. Never had the success that we have today.”
GET BETTER FIRST
Harris explained that Experience.com is all about helping companies get better first, connecting the outcomes to the professional. He mentioned the importance of social proof and how customers are now impacting the buying decisions of people they’ve never met through reviews and online referrals.
“It’s amazing, the transfer of trust can happen today online,” said Fronti. “If I refer, there are platforms like yours that can validate that referral.”
According to an estimate by Harris, two-thirds of new business comes in through referrals, and one-third is from potential customers searching online.
“If you are getting referred but aren’t taking care of your online reputation, there are people that aren’t trusting that referral,” said Harris. “They’re going and looking you up. And if they don’t find what they want to see, they’re not calling you.”
AUTOMATE, EVERYWHERE?
The trio then discussed the benefits of automation. Harris encouraged Goettling and Fronti’s team to manually share their reviews on their personal Facebook pages for a bigger lift in business, because it usually gets more engagement than just auto-sharing.
Fronti said he sometimes disagrees with “set it and forget it” mindset and that automation should only be there as a fallback. Harris countered that there’s a lot of things that require automation, such as Experience.com’s new listings management product.
“There’s no way to manage 150 websites online with your name, address, phone number, hours of operation, and then be able to change it without automation,” said Harris. “If if you’re closed one day, you’re going to go to 150 websites and tell the world you’re closed. It’s just not gonna happen—this includes sending the surveys, mapping them back, driving competitiveness, all those things.”
CX 2.0
Goettling and Fronti w
eren’t going to let Harris get away without speaking about the pre-release of his new book, “Create WOW: The Evolution of Customer Experience Management”
“It’s funny, we struggled with what the title of this thing was going to be,” said Harris. “But it’s the promise we make to our customers and our employees, and it’s the one that they’re making to their customers and their employees: to Create WOW experiences. It’s a little word that sets a really big expectation.”
“So we are literally writing the book on the way this category is evolving,” he continued. “This is the reputation category with 400+ software companies checking boxes, but in the near future, this is not going to be the reputation category. It will be the experience category, and it connects lots of different business processes and systems that are currently disconnected within companies.”
Harris cited companies such as Uber, Airbnb and Amazon that recognize the importance of using behavioral drivers to power better customer experiences.
“The data should improve the data, put through the filter of automation to drive ego accountability, competition and new business,” said Harris. “You’re going to be able to power the brand with more reviews and better data. You’re going to be more connected to your customer, your loyalty numbers and audience will grow, and your employees will be happier, which creates better behavior.”
Goettling and Fronti used that example to explain that as leaders, they appreciate having a metric they can use to incentivize people, and giving bonuses to people based on their performance and creating WOW experiences.
WOW TOWN
Harris then took a minute to reflect on the Create WOW Summit and the Experience.com (Formerly SocialSurvey) team.
“There are a lot of outcomes of this event, we make development promises and there’s accountability,” said Harris. “People come up to me all the time and say, ‘Man the number one thing I love most about your conference is your team.’ And I’m like, ‘But you just saw me speak!’”
“We didn’t come in with an expectation, and we did have a WOW experience,” said Goettling.“What you do with Experience.com (Formerly SocialSurvey) for our clients and our business and what you did for this event is a game changer.”
At the Summit, Goettling and Fronti had the opportunity to engage with professionals spanning mortgage, real estate, insurance and auto verticals even convince a few to sit down for an interview. Check out more exclusive Create WOW Summit interviews with Experience.com (Formerly SocialSurvey)’s Craig Pollack, Sales Boomerang’s Alex Kutsishin and even our two keynote speakers, superfan expert Brittany Hodak and rehumanizer Ethan Beute.
Click here to watch the full interview with Scott Harris.
