#26: Marilyn Suttle - Success in the Palm of your Hand

How do we do a better job handling it when we get flustered and defensive?

How do we give and receive criticism in a way the builds trust and encourages improvement?

What is the alternative to flight or fight that promotes cooperation and collaboration?

These and other critical question for success in business and in life are answered when customer service maven Marilyn Suttle joins the Rabbi and the Shrink.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marilynsuttle/

https://marilynsuttle.com/

0:50 Wellbeing and security are critical to a healthy work environment for workers and customers

Ethics creates a culture of trust, solid relationships, and loyalty

Raising trust increases expectations, which is a good thing

Develop the skill set to deal with difficult and unexpected situations

Different values and styles need to be accommodated

6:00 Learned behavior is not easily unlearned

How do we handle it better when we get flustered and defensive?

We’re 100% responsible for 50% of every relationship

We make assumptions about the facts, which may or may not be true

We make up stories that create feelings by exploiting our unmet expectations

What outcome do we really want?

Clear communication often defuses conflict before it happens.

13:00 When we get into fight or flight, our biology hijacks our thinking and decision making

The other option is a challenge response, which can focus and motivate us

Being honest make us vulnerable, which is frightening but creates the potential for closeness

17:30 It’s all in the palm of your hand:

First impressions -- eliminate the potential for annoyance

Last impression

Manage high emotion moments

Marry yourself to your team and your customers

Measure and gauge -- feedback

21:15 Value their time and ask only for meaningful feedback and use it

How do you respond to criticism

Redirect attention toward the good to promote reframing

Take responsibility and show appreciation

27:00 Empower employees to address customer issues

Have someone to call to help you regain clarity

31:00 Different perspectives generate an ethical view

32:00 The word of the day:  pithy

We don’t want to reduce all ideas to soundbites, but we do want to be concise so our ideas have impact

34:00 Happiness is a profound concept that come from being part of something important

36:00 Tailor your customer care according to the needs of each customer

37:00 Blaming, complaining, and making excuses are responses that will not lead to improvement

The difference between responding and reacting

Get comfortable with silence or pausing

Counting to 10 reboots your brain

Resist the pressure to fill empty space without thinking first

The benefit of one, two, and three second pauses

The pauses are the most essential part of the class

It takes stress to alleviate stress

46:00 The core of ethics is growing

If we aren’t experiencing growing pains, we aren’t really living.

Transcript

Margarita Gurri: 0:03

Welcome to the rabbi in the shrink. I'm Dr. Margarita Gurri, Dr. Red shoe. And this is my favorite rabbi, Rabbi Yonason Goldson. I love having the rabbi here. And we have the privilege today of interviewing one of the most amazing global experts on customer service, Marilyn Suttle. See everyone, I get so much for joining us. Oh, I'm

Marilyn Suttle: 0:34

happy to be here. How exciting the rabbi and the shrink? Oh my gosh, I have to be here.

Margarita Gurri: 0:39

Well, how could we do without you? One of the things that that you're especially good at is the issue of customer service and well being. So why don't you address that? And then we have questions about ethics. Good, well, well

Marilyn Suttle: 0:54

being is the hot topic of the day. Because if you're going to be thrive in a business, you need to keep your employees able to work. And right now, with so much uncertainty in the world, we've got the highest rate of anxiety and stress. And then anxious and stressful people working with customers doesn't work real well does it. And the customers are anxious and stressed. Because whenever the unknown is what you're stepping into, that can be scarier than anything else. Because our minds are designed to protect ourselves, right? And the unknown is uncertainty. So more than ever, we need to focus on the well being of our employees, and also making our customers feel safe and get that I belong here feeling.

Margarita Gurri: 1:45

So what does customer service have to do with ethics? Oh,

Marilyn Suttle: 1:50

I'm glad you asked that, because this is so juicy. People don't realize, especially new employees, young people coming into the field. How important trust is, when you want to employ a customer for life trust is it's it's broken, it could last 40 years before they're coming back. But when you establish trust, and this is where ethics comes in, you do what you say you're going to do. And if things go wrong, you fix it, you address it, you do those steps you need to do to set things right.

Yonason Goldson: 2:26

And it really is kind of common sense. Who are the people that we trust are the people that we're not worried about? We're not questioning their their moral compass, we're not questioning their motives. You know, one of the catchphrases days transparency, when we see the behind the scenes, we understand why decisions are being made the way they are. And we see there's a process for getting things done. All of this creates trust crew builds relationships, and earns us the kind of loyalty that we want to have, particularly in our business relationships.

Marilyn Suttle: 3:05

And the thing that people don't realize around that is his trust goes up. The difficulty also goes up because people's expectations go up. And the higher the expectation, the more challenging it is to serve them well. And so you know, I've worked in companies where they say, we get a thriving business, but their expectations are so high. Well, that means you're doing a really good job of building trust. And I think that that's like a little what would you call that little switch in your mind that you call your your book is grappling with the gray? Rabbi, it's Yeah, grappling with the gray around. Okay, how do I look at this? You know, it was easier when they didn't trust us and I had no employees customers to deal with, then you have no job.

Yonason Goldson: 3:53

And that's a bit of a paradox, isn't it? That the better you get the higher expectations, and then that's more demanding. Exactly. And don't go ahead below that. And that's really how it should be. You know, we were talking before we started that, you know, I said, I hope I'm smarter in five years than I am now. And the doctors I hope and smarter tomorrow than I am today. And we really should be raising the bar for ourselves. daily, weekly, yearly. Yes,

Marilyn Suttle: 4:25

absolutely. And this is where the well being piece comes into how we run our business and as Margarita is that the queen of dealing with difficult people. It's having the skill set to keep yourself calm when you're dealing with difficulties when somebody is yelling or crying or, or complaining that you can be soothing yourself and seeing yourself not as being attacked but as hearing the information you need to help set things right.

Margarita Gurri: 4:57

I think these days are more and more missing. standings because people are doing things differently than when we're doing things new. We don't always know the implications of our choices, whether we're the employee or the customer or the business owner. And I think it leaves more room for misunderstandings.

Marilyn Suttle: 5:15

Right? Oh, yeah, yeah. And how you handle if you can be calm in the storm. And if you're just feeling like, Oh, my gosh, they're being so rude. And, and really, they're just asking you a lot of questions and you're misunderstanding, lots of questions as being they don't trust you, when in reality, certain personality types, the analytical people, they will ask you all the questions because they want to dot their i's and cross their T's. So it's not about them, not trusting you, it's about them soothing themselves to make the decision to work with you. Like, those are the kind of misunderstandings where personality styles clash, and we need to look at that and say, okay, people don't have to have the same way of expressing themselves, right? It's like, when you have a values clash, it's like a beliefs on steroids. You You were like, so triggered, like, I would never say that to somebody. Well, they would said, okay, something to think about.

Yonason Goldson: 6:13

And I'd like to dig into that for a minute. Because, you know, it would just I just had we just had an episode when our pre interview meeting where we weren't understanding each other. And, and I got a little bit cantankerous at that works as a crankcase, and but and I know, I know exactly where this comes from. You know, my father was an extremely intelligent man. And he got very quickly impatient. When people didn't understand what he was saying the first time. You know, we learned from our parents, for better and worse. Yeah, I passed on. I hope, my good and my, unfortunately, my less good traits to my kids. Yeah. But, you know, it's something I'm aware of, in principle, conceptually, but I'm not always aware of it in the moment. Hmm. And the doctor could call me out on it. And because we have a trusting relationship, I could accept that. Yeah, I got a little I overreacted. But I still find myself slipping into that kind of behavior. Mm hmm. And you mentioned the anxiety of our times, you know, we were pulled in so many directions, we have so many pressures on us, and we don't always feel equipped to deal with them. So we become defensive, we become insecure, we were sort of out of a baseline where everything needs to be flowing smoothly. And the minute it's not, we get we get flustered and agitated, right. What do you do you have some some techniques, or some advice for how we can help each other and help ourselves

Marilyn Suttle: 8:04

this type of interaction? Yes, so I love this quote by Wyatt Webb, it's we're always 100% responsible for 50% of every relationship we're in. Yeah, so we can't have control over what the other person's gonna say or do. But we always have control over the thoughts, we think, the actions and behaviors that we have, and the images we hold in our mind. So you're like laying in bed, just imagining this horrible conversation we're going to have the next day when it may never happen. So really looking at if I want to take 100% responsibility for my half of the relationship, what do I have to own? What do I have to measure? What do I have to say? And you know, those are those pieces and parts that create clarity, and also break away from the assumptions, we have to really check it out? So one of the questions I would say there's always the facts, the facts of the story, the facts of whatever the situation is. And then from the facts, we determine the story, we make assumptions about the facts. And that creates a feeling and then the feeling creates an action. I'll give you an example. So Bob, and Mike are up for the same promotion, Bob gets the promotion. Now, Bob and Mike are in the same task force. And Mike comes in late for three meetings in a row. Those are the facts, no emotion in it, no story in it. That was the facts. Now, what do you suppose Bob is saying to himself? What's the story Bob makes up about? Mike being late? What story do you think he might make up? He's miffed that he didn't get the promotion? Yeah, he is taking risk. Exactly. He's undermining me. He's, you know, he's doing this on purpose. And with that, It creates the feeling. And so the feeling there would be anger, resentment, all of those things. Yeah, you know, resentment, the definition of resentment is having an expectation about the other person that they don't meet. It's really all that's where West resentment comes from, and then you don't communicate it. So you're sitting there in that hole for resenting somebody, like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It's like, if only it's hurting you so clarity, you know, you want to address it, so he, he wasn't addressing it. So with that feeling his action was, you know, when asked, What are you going to do about it, I'm going to call him out in the next meeting in front of everyone. That's what he was going to do. That was the action because he was mad. So that's the unconscious action that you take based on the story and the feelings. So instead, my recommendation is step back. Look at the big picture, ask yourself, what is it you really desire here? And so Bob, and his real desire was to have a good working relationship with Mike would call him out in front of all of his peers do that? No. So here's, you know, so that's the moment of the 100% responsibility. So you look at it, and what I feel like doing will not get me the results I want. So what might and so he decided to have a conversation with Mike. And he took him aside, he said, Hey, Mike, I've noticed that you've missed three, you've been late three meetings in a row. And I'm telling myself that there's some resentment going on, on your part that you've kind of, it feels like it's a little undermining. But I want to check it out from your point of view, because this is just the story. I'm telling myself. And so Mike, he says, Oh, well, my wife's been sick. I've been driving the kids to daycare before work. And so I'm always gonna be about five minutes late. And it's like, oh, you know, that completely busted open what he was thinking, but then you ask yourself, who's responsible for the breakdown? They both are, because Mike was accepting the meeting invite knowing he was going to be five minutes late. And Bob left three weeks go by, without saying anything without checking it out. So they both Yeah, exactly. And we do this all the time. And our customers, they have perceptions about things. And their perception is more important than the truth in their in their world. So you might have done just the best you possibly could have done a no, but no other company would have done such great work for them, and they're still not happy. So this is the breakdown of clarification and communication. And this is my greatest expertise. And, you know, communicating with different styles of peoples really important.

Margarita Gurri: 12:56

It's still hard to do, though, no matter how much any of us are experts. The trick is to think how am I going to have this difficult conversation, especially when we tell these juicy stories in our head about what the person's action means, right?

Marilyn Suttle: 13:11

Exactly. Our stories rule, our feelings and our feelings. determine our actions, we think No, no, no, I'm a logical person. But the truth is, we make emotional decisions, and then we justify them logically. Because we're human beings and our brains are set up to it. This is a this is an amazing thing. So when we're triggered, we, you know, often get that threat response, which is fight or flight, right. So when you hit fight or flight, what happens is, the digestion, your blood flow to your digestion slows down to your reasoning slows down and everything goes towards survival. So your muscles can run or you can fight you can, you know, everything else is out the window. However, you can also have a challenge response to stress. When you have a challenge response to stress. What happens is you don't get hijacked by that whole fight or flight thing, you move into focus and flow. And this is why people can really thrive in stress if they see it as a resource. So you have a deadline, and you're thinking, Ooh, okay, this is a this is a this stress I'm feeling is a resource to help me focus this is important. Now we go into a challenge response and challenges create champions in customer service in business and in life.

Yonason Goldson: 14:33

I heard a study done that some time ago, that they gave groups of people a task to do. And they have different groups different amount of time in which to do it. So I've got two hours. I've got four hours, I've got eight hours. And what they found is that very little got done until the halfway point. Right, they've concluded people need that sense of urgency driving them Before they really get focused and get down to work.

Marilyn Suttle: 15:04

And so what you're saying to me is a good thing to think for ourselves is our relation is urgent for us to have strong positive relationships. So having that urgency of Oh, somebody is upset, I'm not going to say anything. Hmm, let's pause and think about that. What's the big picture? What do I desire from this relationship? And then you start to say, okay, doing the hard thing, having that difficult conversation is the kindest thing I can do. And building up that connection. Yeah. And

Yonason Goldson: 15:33

that's a really great way of reframing. Because there's so much uncertainty. You know, what if it's, what is the person takes it the wrong way? What if I don't express it, what other things going on that I don't know about? I have to be willing to communicate, which has an element of risk. And when others communicate with me, I have to be willing to try and accept it in the best possible spirit. Yeah. So that I don't discourage them from help coming back the next time with something

Marilyn Suttle: 16:07

that is so true. And I love this example of, you know, there's two ways of looking at something it's like, it's suppose your spouse forgets your birthday. And then you you know, one way of thinking is, he forgot my birthday, he must not love me. The other way of thinking is somebody who loved me, forget my birthday, I wonder what's going on. And you're gonna have two very different conversations based on thinking. So challenging your beliefs, challenging your thoughts, in the moment, don't just believe everything you think, pause, and especially when it's a partnership or a team. Let's, let's err on the side of assuming that this person has good intentions. And let's clarify is clarity is king and queen and everything else, you know, the clarity really helps to get things set in the right path.

Margarita Gurri: 16:56

It's very hard to do that, though. Because you have to be willing to trust yourself that even if you're hearing something that you would die opposing, yes, you have to ask yourself, especially if you want a relationship with this person, or if you're stuck, like in a working relationship. What do I want to have happen with this discussion? Because sometimes feelings don't matter. What is the end point? And if we can delineate it, now you you teach something that I find very helpful. Could you teach the rabbi and anyone who's going to be hearing this tape about your hand? Not just from Michigan?

Marilyn Suttle: 17:35

Yeah, where we live, we always point to our Yeah, so especially for those of you own a business or you're working in customer service. You wonder, from the customer's perspective, because we're talking a lot today about perspectives. What do we need to do to keep customers coming back to get get that customer loyalty and trust, it's all in the palm of your hand? These are the main touch points that keep things going. So the first one is your first finger. And that's first impressions. And we think in terms of first impressions, when you meet somebody, you make eye contact, smile, but these days, it's going to your website, can I find their phone number? Oh, you're searching, there's no way to find that email address, and use those things that are Pew, we want to get rid of the irritation lists with the first contact. So first impressions are important. The last finger is your last impressions, which people underestimate. Because last impressions leave a lasting impression. There's even research around doctors who sit down the final minute of visiting with a patient are less likely to get sued, because there's a sense of connection, they care. So that last impression. And have you ever bought something expensive, and they're finding all over you till the sale is done? And then crickets, this is God, right? So it's that follow up after the fact when the last impression, then you've got this middle finger, which we don't want them pointing at us. The problem is, these are the high emotion moments, right? That's my taller than the rest is the high emotion. how you handle high emotions is the most critical touch point because when they're upset or emotionally charged, you've got somebody passionate, you want somebody passionate in your business, because they might be passionately angry right now. But if you set it right, they're going to be passionately for your company and a beacon of sales. So managing those emotion, your emotions, so you can be there during those high impact moments. We could write a whole book and talk about all the different ways we've talked about some but really listening and caring and you know, there's the saying customers don't care how much you know till they know how much you care is really true. That caring piece is really big here. And then that leaves this finger here which is the ring finger which we want. We want to marry our custom To our businesses, right? But this is the subtle touches. These are the subtle touches the small little things you do the little thank you note, you send it remembering somebody's birthday. being there for somebody when they have a loss, especially internal customers with your team, anybody inside the company that affects your work is your internal customer. Are you showing them consideration? Are you saying little appreciations to them? Are you doing the little things that you don't have to do that make an impression? Those are those subtle moments that are so powerful, and that leaves the thumb. And we all hear the whole gauge like, are you giving them a positive, negative or neutral experience. But really what this is, is your measuring gauge on feedback, because what you measure is managed. And we want to make sure that we're measuring the customer experience, we're measuring the results of every point of contact. So this is our gauge. And if you if you measure the right things and take action on them, you're going to get better results. So that's my, in a moment right there in the palm of your hand, the essentials of keeping that customer connection strong.

Margarita Gurri: 21:14

I love that hand. So give us an example of some of the things that can be measured. So let's say I've done all the other four fingers, right? Mm hmm. So then what am i measuring?

Marilyn Suttle: 21:28

Okay, so here's where a lot of people go wrong. Have you ever had this happen? You go, you're very happy with the service, then they send you a little survey, and you think, Oh, I was so happy, I'll fill out the survey. And the survey goes on and on and on. And all of a sudden you hate that company? It's happened to me has this happened to you? Yeah, it's so that's an example of don't measure just to measure don't waste their time. If you value your customers time, they will give you all kinds of information, but keep it short, and only asked measurement questions that you're willing to do something about. Don't just say, Oh, that's a good question. Let's say this question. Oh, that's an interesting question. Well, what are you going to do with that result? What are you going to do when you know that? I worked? When I was writing my Who's your Gladys book with my co author, Laurie jovis. We interviewed for a year and a half companies all over? Yeah, there's the book. Yep. And love your book. Thank you so much. One of them was clear vision optical. And they measure customer satisfaction with a little survey. If they get a low, like a real low measurement. The CEO calls them now this is business to business. But he literally calls him I'm sorry, you had a bad experience. Please tell me more. Tell me about it. What a beautiful thing to do. Do you feel like this company cares? Yeah. And did that take a lot of time that you think a CEO doesn't have time for this? Well, maybe you don't have time not to do something like this. Because if you don't care, they are gone. So though that would be an example of measuring the right things in the right timing, so that you can do something with it. And I can give you one more example, if you'd like. Yes, please. So you know how we have Yelp and Google and we're doing customer reviews all the time. And sometimes they will give you a negative review, I work with a spa. And the spa would get done, they would they have this big seven page list of all the things they do to make sure you have a good customer experience. So when they get a negative review come in on Yelp, you can reach out anonymously, like you don't know who they are, but you can reach out to them. And so what what this woman Peggy she does is she sends it, she's the CEO, she sends a message and says I'm so sorry, this happened. I wish I had known this right away, please let us make it up to you. I'm going to give you a free service. And then she gives a service they haven't done before. Like, if she has it. If all they've done as a manager, she'll give them a facial or something like that. And I'm going to send you a seven page evaluation, please will you rate us on all seven pages and get this beautiful free service. Now, a person who gives a negative review is somebody who likes to give their opinion right? And so they come in and they're all of a sudden they're seeing all these seven pages worth of little things. They hadn't noticed these things here. But the subtle differences that make the experience great and almost 10 times out of 10 after doing that, they go back and change their review and give a glowing review. So that is you know, it's what do you do after something falls apart is what makes all the difference?

Yonason Goldson: 25:00

There's so much to unpack in this, but that this last point you made is really compelling. Because as human beings, we tend to focus in on what's wrong. There's this exercise where they, they show they show people a piece of blank sheet of paper with one.on it and say, What do you see as a black dot? What about the whole sheet of paper, that's why you pick the one dark thing to focus in. And that's just our nature. So what you're describing here is a means of redirecting the client's attention to notice the good, so that they will, on their own reframe their evaluation, their impression, the only thing that I really think is an important takeaway is we're talking about the business versus the customer. But I think your your five rules also apply between bosses and employees. Mm hmm. My wife teaches Chinese to Chinese children in China via zoom. And add for some reason, they had to change the scheduling around. And they wrote an apologetic note. And they said, because of the inconvenience, we want to give you a gift, and they sent a stuffed zebra, which is their logo. Now, you know, my wife has an adult woman, all the kids are out of the house. She was over the moon with this. Because she actually use it in her teaching. But mostly it was that sense of we did something that is inconvenienced. You, we want to show you that we appreciate you know, here's something that we don't give to everybody. Mm hmm. That we want you to have. And it really doesn't take a lot to show appreciation to show consideration to compensate for minor inconveniences, if we just have a little bit of initiative and created.

Marilyn Suttle: 27:10

Exactly, exactly. And over at Sky lakes hospital that I interviewed them, and they give every employee a discretionary amount of money that they could spend on the spot. No question asks for those kinds of situations. So if they see that a person has had to wait, and that appointment got cancelled, because a doctor is still in surgery or something, they can give them a gift card to the cafeteria for a free meal, or they see a child crying, they could go buy a teddy bear and give it to the child for no reason, you know, for that reason, you know, at their discretion, and those are so meaningful. And then you have the flip side where it backfires. So I had a horrible experience at a hair salon. And I usually don't complain, I'm like Gladys, Gladys doesn't complain, most of your customers won't complain, they'll just go to a competitor and never tell you again. And we want the complainer's because we have a shot at making things improve. Well, I wasn't going to complain, but I was so upset I did. And they sent me like 15% off my next service is like, coming back. Like, that's an inappropriate thing. Like I love what they did for your wife that was a highly appropriate and connecting thing. So yeah, I've got

Margarita Gurri: 28:29

a new Maryland subtle quote that I love. So Marilyn, as you can tell, Rebecca is very quotable. And I'm quoting her all the time. So I say talk to them. And and I mean Marin, I her business is named subtle shifts from her last name, Marilyn subtle, which I think is brilliant. So I love the whole idea of can you create a challenge response to stress and don't get hijacked by the apps in the in? In FEMA and CDC? They talk about the five apps, fight flight, you know, freezes fry, you know, things like that. But there's five of them. And then so don't get hijacked by the apps. Go for focus and flow. And I think that the example Rabbi with your wife and, and her employer, and Marilyn, what you're talking about, I think that goes with my new favorite quote of yours.

Marilyn Suttle: 29:20

No, thank you. And now, Margarita, what you do with it. I've never seen anyone do it the way you do it with the different characters you use when you're talking about difficult people. But that is such an essential thing that every organization needs to take into effect because we do have different personalities. And we don't always know what to do with them. And then we make assumptions that are incorrect and respond in a less than compatible way. So we really need to look at so many different aspects and challenge our thinking, to create that connection.

Margarita Gurri: 29:56

It's so true, but it's so hard to sometimes you In charge of our own selves, because we're all difficult in our own special way. And the issue is that I don't even have to know if I'm the one being difficult or someone else's. Right, I just have to decide what needs to happen. And when I'm not sure, I could always call one of you guys. Um, my friend Sue, is on the call. I could call her I could call my twin sister. So one of the questions is, who do you call that helps you be reasonable rather than say, that person's or you know, the certain people that build the fire? Right? Yeah, I to the flames. That's a good. So hello, I got a call. Well, Maryland is one of those, Maryland if people want to reach you, what is your favorite way to be reached? So you can be of service to them?

Marilyn Suttle: 30:45

Well, the quickest way is to go to my website, Maryland at Maryland subtle, calm, oh, no, that's my email, I look down. You can buy my books on Amazon, or you can reach me on my website, or I give you my email address, Maryland, Maryland, subtle, calm, feel

Margarita Gurri: 31:01

free. So I'm putting your book page for Amazon down again, and I'll put your email to them.

Marilyn Suttle: 31:08

Thank you so much, and how fun I loved your insights, both of you in the having the rabbi and the shrink here is so amazing, because I'm getting this wealth of deep wisdom coming through all the little things I've been sharing, and then you're like, bam, bam, it's so good. You know

Yonason Goldson: 31:27

that that's one of the critical elements of of ethics, is having different perspectives. Yeah. And if you have two people who see things the same way and think the same way, and they're on the same page about everything, then it's kinda redundant. Exactly. What's the point having two people there if there's nothing new, but it's the differences between us. And this is true in any kind of a business environment, too. You want partners who are good at different things. You want team members who have different roles and different strengths. And when they all work together in pursuit of a common purpose. That's when you have tremendous success. And that's when you have those kinds of really trusting and intimate relationships that drive success.

Margarita Gurri: 32:17

So I think we've come to the point, where a rabbi, what is the word of the day, sir? pithy.

Yonason Goldson: 32:27

I'm trying to be pissy in my presentation. It's, it's, it's worth thinking about. We live in an age of sound bites. And that's a, that's not always a good thing. Because in many ways, when you try to condense every idea into a few syllables, you don't allow for deeper thought. You don't allow for context. But if we want to communicate effectively, we need to be able to take complex ideas, and present them as concisely as possible. Because, as Marilyn said, we're all overwhelmed. We're all stressed for time. And people go rambling on and on and on. And we can we can stop listening at some point, and then there is no communication going on. So keep it busy.

Margarita Gurri: 33:27

You have any words of wisdom on how to how to do that? I mean, you, you have faced some of the most challenging situations for your clients, and you have clients all around the world. And as a global customer service, award winning customer service expert, what do you send us home with as a key takeaway, what can we do?

Marilyn Suttle: 33:50

Well, here, I'll play off of the word pithy, okay, and I'll shift it to sound bite. So if you can express yourself in a memorable way, so that your, your goal for the business you have that care for you, if your customer is quick, and easy to remember, your team will embrace it, and run with it like happiness is the key for zoo, then servos. What is that companies Apple's Zappos? And they actually created a line of a phone line that people could just call when they want to talk because they're stressed out for no other reason. So creating happiness is their their thing. So what is the theme that you want to run through your company? What's the thread you want? express it, show it in every newsletter, treat your internal team with it and they will treat your customers with it.

Margarita Gurri: 34:50

That's one of the things I have found you're very good at and the rabbi to actually helping people figure out what is their theme, whether it's for one meeting Or for their business is very hard to be pithy, as I've demonstrated.

Yonason Goldson: 35:08

Simon Sinek made this popular with find your why. But that idea goes way back. Because ultimately, what is happiness, happiness is feeling that I'm connected to something greater than myself. Happiness is a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of mission, my life matters, and what I'm doing matters. And I'm being successful in a pursuit that matters, and it's going to live on after me. And I think the way to win customers, is to not just provide a service and not just provide value, but to give them an opportunity to feel that they're part of something big and something important, is it meaningful?

Margarita Gurri: 35:52

So we're all in if someone is having a trouble, how do we use this hand of yours? to help them focus so that we can have a more meaningful conversation? Or how do we use it? What do you suggest,

Marilyn Suttle: 36:05

I would get specific, get very specific with the situation and the customer. And maybe you run through it, you could create it, I did this with Blue Cross Blue Shield we, we created, like I have Gladys, well, they had five names of five different characters of their typical customer. And let's run each one of these through these pieces. An elderly person who has to now text, it's hard with their little fingers in their eyes and having to see it that's not customer friendly. So maybe rather than using text for them, you do phone calls, you know, there's that saying treat people the way you want to be treated, know, treat people the way they want to be treated. Because we all have different preferences, we all have different physical limitations are situations in our life. So you want to take very specific situations and run it through. And what would be a last impression for a senior might be very different than a last impression for a teenager. So think about your target market and the different people in it, and then run through specifics and see what's happening at each. Each of these points is a great activity to do as a team, because then you get everybody owning the process of what you're doing. When everyone owns a piece of how you treat customers. They do it well.

Margarita Gurri: 37:27

And so one situation I've seen that you also handle very well is when people get into either denial or blaming others not themselves. What would you suggest that anyone who's lucky enough to be hearing you? What do they do about that?

Marilyn Suttle: 37:42

So the three things you have to give up if you want to be successful in life, is blaming, complaining, and making excuses for why things are the way they are. And typically what we do when we don't like the results in our life, we blame the event over there, our mother cause this or that bad customer service person caused this or, or that mean customer caused issues, and we blame back over here of what happened. You don't have power over what has already happened. Your power is in how you respond. Now, you have all kinds of power to affect the outcomes in your life, right in how you choose to respond. So rather than complain about what was look at, what can I do? What response can I have to the situation to get a better outcome? That's where your power is. I put it in the chat for everyone.

Yonason Goldson: 38:44

I can't remember where I heard this. Not my observation, but I think it's very instructive. There's a world of difference between responding to treatment and reacting to treatment. Hmm, yes. And in our when we react, it's generally visceral. It's in the moment, it says without a lot of conscious thought. When we respond, it's when we take the time to actually contemplate how we are responding. And that can make a difference in

Marilyn Suttle: 39:20

the world. It absolutely but that takes a pause. Right? It takes place. And a lot of us are very uncomfortable by silence. And so one thing you could do, you're on the phone and they're asking you this and you're ready to blow up. Let me get back to you. I'll call you back in a half hour, give yourself the pause or even a few moments of silence in a meeting to gather your thoughts and consider strategically What do how do I choose to respond here because our automatic reactions usually very, you know, animalistic, right is it we go back to our roots as a Back in the prehistoric times, and we're going into fight or flight, we don't want to do that you want to pause, breathe. And here's, this is kind of an interesting thing that you always hear people say when you need to calm down, breathe and count to 10. And it's like, oh, gosh, is that over used? Don't tell me to do that. But then I talked to a doctor, I actually interviewed a lot of doctors. And one of them said, Here's why you do it. When you breathe, you oxygenate your brain. And when you count, you reactivate the frontal cortex, where reasoning and logic is, so that you're actually rebooting the computer, so to speak, so that you can respond rather than react. So pause and choose your response instead of just unconsciously reacting. I think that's lovely advice. And it's it's hard to do, isn't it?

Yonason Goldson: 40:56

It's one of the challenges that I have with, you know, frankly, with what we're doing right now, is that, you know, if I pause for five seconds, the audience is going to start checking the feed to make sure that the the the the line hasn't hasn't disconnected. It's, we've sort of created a society and a culture where we can't we feel we can't pause. And therefore we end up in these kinds of situations, sometimes where we spoke too fast. We spoke too hastily. We didn't, to how we didn't take the time to frame our response properly. Because we were too uncomfortable with that silence.

Marilyn Suttle: 41:40

You know, it's interesting, my husband wrote an article that ended up on the cover of Toastmaster magazine around pausing. And he talks about, there's a one second pause, where you let people follow you, because if you just talk monotone and continuous and continue, people tune out. So there's the one second pause, then there's the two second pause that has people think so you pause. And it gives them a chance to catch up with what you're saying. The three second pause allows them to make a conclusion. So if you're posing something, you're giving a big example, you're posing a situation, what do you think? Pause three seconds, so they have time to formulate that thought. And then you're actually compelling. I think fear is the reason why we continuously talk and we don't like silence. And it's not true. In other cultures, they're much more comfortable with silence than we are. So if we can alleviate the fear by soothing ourselves, I actually talked about bringing up an inner coach that soothes you through why because we have that inner critic, right? We want the inner coach it calms us down, will be more likely to be effective in our communication.

Yonason Goldson: 42:54

You remind me of a short story that was a rabbi was giving a class and one of the students on put down a tape recorder to record the class tape recorder dating myself. And it was a one of the new fangled tape recorders, it had a device that would have auto pause. So that, you know it wouldn't record the pauses in the speech. And somehow the rabbi's saw, there's something different about this paper crazy. What's different about this? And so the student explained to him, and he shook his head, and he said, The pauses are the absolutely most essential part of the class. Mm hmm. And that that line has stayed with me for exactly the reasons that you're describing. Yeah. And I know this from 23 years in the high school room classroom, that, you know, if if I would say something, and I've just stopped and let my students have a moment to digest, to reflect, to think maybe I wanted to elicit questions. Or maybe I just wanted to give them the opportunity to let that idea settle and sink in. It's slowing down, can really benefit us in a lot of different ways.

Marilyn Suttle: 44:16

Absolutely. And I do want to point out, Margarita, Dr. Red shoe. I love that you said several times in this conversation today. That can be hard. And I think that's so essential for anyone listening. Because if you think that it's going to be easy, and then you're finding it's hard, you might stop trying it. But you know what, it's hard for everyone. It's hard. But the more you do it, the more that there's a saying that it takes stress to alleviate stress. So give yourself small stresses that are a little hard. And then you'll build up your ability to be in challenging conversations and do all of these things. So thank you Margarita for bringing that up so well. That it isn't easy, but It gets easier as you do it.

Margarita Gurri: 45:03

Well, the rabbi talks about building your ethical muscles. And this is building your paws muscles. We have an MSA, the National Speakers Association, as my friend Dave Berger says it's the NSA that speaks not listens. He is the king of the paws. He teaches the pause in my favorite pause story is I was many years ago, helping to unions hash out a conflict that we're having, and it was hadn't come to blows. So they call me in and I'm young then. And I somehow thought I could be of service. And at one point, I was so flabbergasted by them that I just paused. And I just looked straight forward. I was just collecting myself. They both thought they had that I was disappointed in them. And they apologize. And I learned in that moment that if I don't apologize for what I'm doing, and just take a pause the way that you were talking Maryland about the stories people write, they wrote the story that I was disappointed in them. And truth. I was just trying to avoid giving them a verbal slap because they were all mohito No, they were behaving badly. And I'm thinking, what do I say, that doesn't add more fuel to this big fire. And it's amazing. So just by not knowing what to say. I said the right thing, which was nothing. Who knew? So I think that that's funny.

Yonason Goldson: 46:28

someone pointed out that these same letters that form of the word, listen form the word silent. So

Margarita Gurri: 46:35

my kindergarten teacher used to say that all the time, and it wasn't in a nice way. I was just learning English back then. So what is this silence? I didn't know what it was. So it's fun. Well, Marilyn, subtle. You're just such a treat. I could talk to you all day. Do you have a final thing to say before we say goodbye to everyone? Oh,

Marilyn Suttle: 46:58

I just I want to do a shout out to the two of you. Because they providing this service allows people to learn about ethics in all different kinds of fields. Every time you do one, you're bringing different experts in and you're creating a forum for people to grow. And so i just i and this is, for me, one of the essentials in life is continuously growing continuously improving is the core of customer service. It's the core of success in your life, and keeping relationships drawn, keep growing.

Margarita Gurri: 47:28

Well, Maryland With you around I suspect I will Rabbi you too. I'm grateful for both of you. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week for the rabbi in the shrink. Marilyn subtle at Southern Maryland subtle.com. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Do you want to say goodbye? Yeah.

Yonason Goldson: 47:54

I would also like to thank you, Marilyn, for being with us. You know, the last point you made about growing in before that your point was about it being hard. And there's a reason why they're called growing pains. Yeah, we're not experienced them means we're, we're being stagnant. And we're not moving forward. And so thank you. And thank you, doctor for providing the context in the framework that helps us all grow. Pleasure you all take care. We'll see you next week.