In this episode, meet Howard Tiersky, Author of the Wall St.Journal best-selling book, Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote To Irrelevance. In a wide-ranging interview with this digital veteran, Howard takes us through his five-step roadmap to thriving in a digital world.
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode, meet Howard Tiersky, Author of the Wall St.Journal best-selling book, Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote To Irrelevance. In a wide-ranging interview with this digital veteran, Howard takes us through his five-step roadmap to thriving in a digital world.
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven’t already, be sure and click subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so new episodes will land automatically twice a week, and check out my other retail industry media properties; the Remarkable Retail podcast, the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and the Food Professor podcast. Last but not least, if you are into BBQ, check out my all new YouTube barbecue show, Last Request Barbeque, with new episodes each and every week!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company & Maven Media, and if you’re looking for more content, or want to chat follow me on LinkedIn, or visit my website meleblanc.co! Have a safe week everyone!
About Howard
I've had the amazing opportunity to help leaders at dozens of the world's largest brands navigate digital transformation—to re-invent their customer journeys to earn the love of today's "Digital Customers." I've learned so much after 20+ years doing this type of work and I'm excited that my most recent book was named on the WSJ Best Selling list. It's called WINNING DIGITAL CUSTOMERS and is a blueprint for how any company can methodically remake itself to win in a digital era. In it I reveal the methods I've developed to get alignment at large organizations around transformation and then to implement it successfully. If you'd like to check out a few sample chapters just IM me.
It's been an incredible journey. I spent 15 years leading digital practices at 2 of the world's largest consulting firms. Then 12 years ago I decided to leave a senior role at Capgemini to start my own firm, initially with 1 client and 0 employees. My wife was quite concerned about that decision! She's happy now though, as the company has grown to over 75 amazing people working with large brands like Verizon, NBC, Avis, A&E, Mattel, AAA, & Airbus. We've won many awards but more importantly have driven massive and measurable value through helping transform our client's customer experiences.
I speak regularly at conferences such as The Front End of Innovation, DMA, Internet Week, and CES. I also publish frequently and have been a contributor to CIO magazine. I was named by IDG as one of the "Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers," & by Enterprise Management 360 as “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.” I was also honored to be featured on a 1 hr video program with the Harvard Business Review, and I've served as an adjunct professor at the NYU graduate school.
Other brands I've worked with include: Turner, Sprint, Office Depot, Farmers, CNA and Mercury Insurance, Sears, Merrill Lynch, GM, Amex, CBS, Allstate, Amazon, Mastercard, Sylvania, Merck, Aventis, Houghton Mifflin, Universal Studios, Wiley, Viacom, Crayola, Mcgraw-Hill, Nutrisystem, NFL, NBA, Visa, Shubert, Moodys, Morgan Stanley, Gulfstream, Exelon, GMAC, Fox, Chevron, D&B, Bloomberg, Sesame Workshop, Barnes & Noble Education.
I live in NJ with my wife Lana & my 5 children...or I guess I should say 4 of my children..my oldest, Rachel, left this year to begin her freshman year at Dartmouth.
If you are at an enterprise looking to transform and win digital customers, please connect with me, and we can schedule a call to explore whether and where my team and I can be of help.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide. Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail’s prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in 2022.
Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms. Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome to The Voice of Retail. I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc. This podcast is brought to you in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode meet, Howard Tiersky, author of The Wall Street Journal best-selling book, ‘Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance’. In a wide-ranging interview with this digital veteran, Howard takes us through his five-step road map to thriving in a digital world.
Howard Tiersky 00:27
And then how do you transform that into a vision for what would we want it to be. If we were building this company from the ground up right now to compete the digital world. What should that customer experience be, without the fear of the fact that you know the next step is going to be to ask the question, how do we get there?
Sometimes, sometimes we sandbag our vision of future because we know if we envision the future that we really should be heading towards, how the heck are we ever going to get there? But that's the purpose of this book to say, no, let's envision what would really be the truly competitive experience for today's digital customer, who now hopefully we understand the research we've done. And then the third step is to, to create a road map and build it. And of course, one can say a lot about that. But I talk in the book a lot about design thinking practices, to how do you take that bigger picture vision of a journey, break it down to individual products and services and experiences?
Michael LeBlanc 01:15
Howard, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. How are you doing this afternoon?
Howard Tiersky 01:18
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, glad to be here.
Michael LeBlanc 01:20
Well, thanks for joining me. Where in the world am I finding you today?
Howard Tiersky 01:24
Well, I am in my home office in Mahwah, New Jersey, just outside of New York City.
Michael LeBlanc 01:27
Oh, fantastic. Now, were you born and raised there. Did you move there? Do you travel around a lot? What's, what's a bit of your backstory from that, (inaudible), -
Howard Tiersky 01:34
I was born and raised in a suburb of Chicago called Lincolnwood. And I moved I went to NYU, for school. And so, other than a couple of st-, years I spent in LA at one point, I've been in the New York area ever since and at a certain point, I had kids and moved to New Jersey for the playgrounds on the (inaudible), market.
Michael LeBlanc 01:52
(inaudible), right on. All right, well, listen, we're here to talk about your book and your insights. It's a real treat and I have looking forward to this for a while. So, why don't we jump right in and tell us and listeners about yourself, your background, how you got to where we are today and, and what you do for a living?
Howard Tiersky 02:09
Sure. So, well, I have spent the last 25 years of my career working with large brands on really one question, which is how can they use digital to improve their business. And when I started doing it, digital was a little bit of a peripheral marketing channel, you know, an extra way to create awareness amongst certain populations of people that wanted to go to websites back in the mid-90s. And of course, today, it's for most businesses, and in most industries, the single most important component that determines whether they're successful or unsuccessful. So, it's certainly grown a lot.
And I've, I've had the amazing opportunity to work with major brands in, in many industries from banks like JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley, to big manufacturing companies like Airbus and General Electric, and have worked with many retailers like Macy's, Aeropostale, as, as well as am-, American Girl, and also retail venues like large malls like the Mall of America, places like Universal Studios theme parks and where you know, other, other locations where retail and, and even with an organization like Barnes and Noble Education that runs college bookstores, on campuses all over the country.
Michael LeBlanc
Now, looking at your background, you came from a consulting background? Was, was it always the case? Did you, you know, when you're growing up did you want to be in the consulting space or as you were going through to school or whatever? Is that, is that what attracted you the opportunity, the dynamism of, of consulting or talk about that for a bit?
Howard Tiersky
So, I've had a chance to work in a lot of different flavors of, of retail and a (inaudible) aspects of retail from how to improve the sort of customer's online shopping experience, to how to use digital to improve the in-store shopping experience to digital components in retail that relate more to management of inventory, or more effective in marketing, or more effective ways of using big data and analyzed for merchandising and things like that.
Michael LeBlanc 03:35
Yeah, little four-year-old Howard was like, someday I'm going to be a consultant, (crossover talk), - Let me put that, let me put that sandbox into a matrix for you, over there the top performing matrix, we got the shovels, and we got the pails (crossover talk), you know, (crossover talk), -
Howard Tiersky 04:03
That's right, exactly that's right. Yeah, well, I started, I was very into theatre, film and television. And that was really what most of my education was focused on. And I mentioned, I went to NYU, and I went to grad school at USC, studying that. And, as I was beginning my professional career, the early versions of interactive digital capabilities were becoming more commercialized and things like CD-ROM's, and, you know, very early internet capabilities and online, different kinds of online bulletin board systems and things like that.
Howard Tiersky 04:12
And so, I became very interested in those as well. And interestingly, you know, they had some of the same characteristics that I loved about theatre, film and television, you know. They had storytelling, they had visual components, they had technical components, working with different types of creative people and different types of technical people to create an experience for some kind of an audience. And, and frankly, one of the things I loved the most about live theatre was the interactivity. And of course, you know, you have so much opportunity for interactivity of so many sorts in the digital world.
Howard Tiersky 04:23
So, I wound up kind of getting sucked into that world. I was, I, I started working at (inaudible) consulting, working with brands on digital implementations at a time when, again, it was, it was, is new, many companies didn't even have a website, etc. And I stayed there for about 15 years doing that type of work.
And then wound up starting my own company almost 15 years ago. So, my career kind of breaks into these sorts of two, roughly 15-year chunks. So, I started my own digital consulting firm slash agency in 2008. So, I guess that's maybe 14 years ago, something like that, I have been, you know, just loving the opportunity to work with all these big brands on this continuing problem of how do they create a customer journey that's really competitive in this evermore digital world?
Michael LeBlanc 05:51
Your background is interesting. I'm not I'm talking to a lot of retailers who and when we talk about the types of people to hire for their digital strategies, and, and, you know, I guess in the first wave of digital, a lot of us were hiring direct response type folks, right, folks who are very analytical, direct response oriented. And then it seems I want to get your opinion on this, as these had this huge, different fragmentation of channels and different elements, you know, everything up to including like TikTok. Storytelling becomes pretty important and that blend of having a team that can both measure, but also tell stories has got to be pretty important. What do you, what are you thinking about that? And what are you hearing from your clients?
Howard Tiersky 06:35
Storytelling is the single most powerful tool in our arsenal in business, and storytelling impacts? Well, since we're here to talk about retailers, retailers are number of ways. One is certainly you have to be able to tell a story about what your brand is about, and why, for example, if you're a brick and mort-, mortar retailer, why it's worth the trip. And why tell the story and not just sort of tell them why you know, that just be rational, is because people pay attention to stories, the human brain is psychologically wired to pay more attention to stories for all kinds of reasons rooted in evolutionary psychology that I actually talk about in my book. So, storytelling is the most effective way to communicate almost all content.
Howard Tiersky 07:22
Furthermore, the way the, the most effective way to think about planning and executing an awesome digital experience for customers is also through storytelling. Because when someone you know is going to, let's say, go to the store, they're writing a story, right there. Stories have a hero, usually the customer, stories start with a problem. Well, people usually don't go to the store, if they don't have some kind of a problem or need, whether it's I need new fall clothes for my kids for, you know, start of school, which is what I'm dealing with right now. Or, you know, I'm, I'm repairing something, and I don't have the right size saw blade, or whatever else, or my friends and I are bored, and we want to go hang out somewhere. But whatever the reason is, we, we head, we get in our car, and we go somewhere, because we're trying to solve something we're trying to meet some kind of a need.
Howard Tiersky 07:38
And then, of course, some things happen as they do in stories. And it's either, you know, a story of victory, or a story of frustration, and, and failure. And so, storytelling is a very powerful way to think about the overall experience and journey that we're trying to create some for someone. And I think one of the challenges that a lot of retailers have, and not just retailers, lots of businesses today, when they're not succeeding at the level they'd like to with today's extremely, you know, high expectation customers, is that there are aspects of the story that don't, that aren't a positive emotional journey. There's points of frustration, disappointment, confusion, etc., at some moment, at various moments of the retail experience, even if they're peppered together with moments that are satisfying, or even if they're combined with the ability to actually accomplish the goal, you know, I can go to the store to buy jeans, and I can walk out with a pair of jeans, it doesn't necessarily mean I had a great experience, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to want to rush back there.
Howard Tiersky 07:45
Or on the flip side, if I could go to a store to buy jeans. And I could walk out with nothing, but had, had an amazing experience that I tell all my friends about. And I want to go back to that store again and again. And that is the most fundamental secret to businesses today that are successful is that there are creating those kinds of experiences, particularly because retailers, they have to compete on convenience, because if you're talking about a brick-and-mortar retailer, for example, you know that it's trying to compete with Amazon and a, and a, in a wor-, in a digital world. You know, should you bother going to the store when you can just click and order something in under 30 seconds. And there has to be a good reason to go to the store, and very often there are several key reasons why someone would go to a physical store, but one of the most important reasons is the experience.
If I have a, a, a beautiful, wonderful, fun, exciting, interesting, you know, there's many different positive verbs you could put in there. Experience in the retail store, then that's the kind of thing I'm more likely to go back to. If it's just a longer, more time-consuming way to accomplish the same thing I can do on the internet, you know, I'm probably not going to want to do it. And of course, for retailers that are competing through their eCommerce stores, you similarly have to consider how is your, your eCommerce experience is going to compete with the experience of Amazon or other leading retailers? Because, man, they put a lot of energy into creating a fantastic and efficient and low effort experience. And so, you've got to compete there.
Michael LeBlanc 10:35
Well, you've, you've, you've captured in that statement, that kind of essence, I think that confuses a lot of analysts looking outside into retail, the difference between buying and shopping, right, the difference between efficiency and experience, and the two can, the two could coexist, you go to, you got to pick your spot, though. If you're going to be efficient, you better be really efficient. But that isn't the only path to success. You can also be experiential, because people might not know what they're looking for, right?
Your example, the jeans, maybe I'm looking for a pair of jeans, but I don't really know. But if you know what you're looking for, exactly, then you want the most efficient experience potentially. Anyway, let's jump right into your book, ‘Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance’. Now, it's a big book. I mean, it's 300 pages plus the big scope, it's ambitious, but it is well, you know, compliments to you, it's well-structured, it was a great read.
When you wrote the book, who did you have in mind? Who are you writing it for? Who should read it? And who's going to get the most benefit for picking up a copy, which is available today? So, just a note that it's available at about all the places where my listeners would love books? But tell me a little bit about what, what was in your head when you wrote the book?
Howard Tiersky 11:39
Sure. Well, it's funny, you asked a couple questions. And, and the answer is slightly different, who I had in my head. And then the somewhat broader group of people who have been telling me that they've been benefiting from the book, but who, who I had in my head were the people who have been my clients for 25 years, which is to say, executives at large brands, who are cha-, char-, chart challenged, who are assigned, who are or who self-proclaimed themselves, that they're going to help lead that company to a successful digital future. And sometimes that's a CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. Sometimes it's the CIO, sometimes the Chief Digital Officer, sometimes it's a CEO, or someone else you know, Senior Vice President of eCommerce or whatnot. But the people who basically it's their job to figure out how to make this company successful in the digital space, or people who are responsible for some kind of a P&L and recognize that in order to make that P&L successful, that business (inaudible), successful, whatever it may be, they're going to have to be able to deliver, you know, a stronger and stronger digital experience. So, that, that's what I had in mind. And that's a lot of who, who has, you know, has used the book.
And there's a lot of quotes, the beginning, the book from people who got the early release version of the book at big brands who benefited from it, which is very, of course, gratifying. But one of few things that I've heard since then, is people who are not at big brands and big enterprises, people at small and medium-sized businesses, people at not for profits, and others who are saying that they're applying the principles in their, in the book to their businesses, as well. And I think that's really cool.
You know, I spent my whole career working with big brands. So, I didn't really have that much clarity on how much of what is in the book might or might not, you know, in the first interviews that I did for the book, I remember when it was not yet even out, people would ask me, Well, what about for small, medium businesses? And I, my answer was kind of like, I don't know, I'd like to think it's applicable. But to be perfectly honest, it's not what I do. So, I, I, I'm not really in a position to say, but now I have all this feedback that tells me that, even though a lot of the stories in the books and the examples are from big brands, that people have been adapting the content very successfully. And I hear stories of like a hardware store or a bakery, or a gas station that's doing customer research, using principles in the book and improving their business as a result. And I'm like, that's, that's so cool, I'm really excited to hear that.
Michael LeBlanc 13:49
You start out with one of my favorite terms transformation and, and talk about what you're seeing now through the lens of your, your experience, your, what, 2025 years, what you're hearing from your, your Fortune 1000 clients. I mean, it feels like more and more when we talk about digital and business, that it, it's becoming a distinction without a difference. In other words, it's all digital. Now, that's an overstatement. There's still lots of, you know, different types of, of media and terrestrial and malls and all that stuff. But when you think about transformation, what, what, what is it that you're hearing? And what is it that, let's say, keeping your clients up at night that you're providing solutions for and that the book really can help, as you said, small, medium and large businesses with?
Howard Tiersky 14:29
Yeah, well, I think about transformation in a way that maybe is a little different than I usually hear people talk about. I like to think first about the transformation of the world. And even within that most critically, the transformation of the customer, because that's really what's driving all of this. And that's why I call my book, ‘Winning Digital Customers’, right? Well, what is a digital customer? What does that even mean? Well, to me, these are people who are living lifestyles that are really digitally centric and while we were all using, you know, computers 20 years ago, since the smartphone has come to maturity, and the massive ecosystem of apps and the whole mobile world, the there's been a dramatic societal change, and a dramatic change for the experiences on a day-to-day basis of most of our customers, people are now using digital means to, to shop to work, to date, to, to do almost everything in their lives. And that is a big shift for most people from where they were 15 or 20 years ago. And, and COVID, of course, has only further accelerated that as many people have observed many people, (crossover talk), -
Michael LeBlanc 15:44
the co-, the COVID part I really want to dip into, because, you know, the journey of writing a book takes a long step. So, I think you wrote most of the book, if not all of it, kind of free COVID. But it takes a lot to get books on the shelves, is there anything, you know, as you, as you reflect on this particular issue around consumers? You know, we've, we hear, and you talk about a little bit in your preface about acceleration of existing trends, is does any, are you thinking about things that have changed? You know, there's things that we did in the COVID era, and whatever, we're in now quasi-post-COVID era that were kind of adjustments for our life, right, versus structural changes are you observing? Are you hearing? Are you thinking about how consumers have changed in an in a more permanent way, how do you think about that?
Howard Tiersky 16:29
I think that a lot of the changes that we've seen from COVID is permanent. And I think there's a lot of data to support that. I think that, you know, the world was already on this transformation, more and more things were becoming digital, and more and more customers were doing more and more things digitally. But of course, for most people, there were still some things that we weren't doing as digitally. And then there will always be, of course, some things that we don't do digitally. But you know what, what happened with COVID was simply that the some of the non-digital ways that we did things were taken away from us. And therefore, if we still wanted to, you know, get food from the restaurant, we couldn't go there. And you know, we had to order digitally, etc., or if we wanted our groceries and things like that. So, that, that accelerated the adoption of things that probably would have been adopted anyway, I don't think they were so many.
Howard Tiersky 16:43
I mean, there's obviously certain COVID behaviors that hopefully will go away, like you're wearing masks everywhere, and things like that. But if we're talking about things like ordering your groceries from, you know, from Instacart or using Uber Eats, to order food, or, you know, finishing the transformation of doing all of our banking, digitally, things like that, I think that those types of changes were inevitable, and COVID Simply sped them up because they, they temporarily blocked us from our non-digital alternatives.
Howar Tiersky 17:01
And so, you know, what I see is that, well, of course, you know, like, like, for example, streaming massively skyrocketed during COVID. Because nobody could go to the movies. So, now most people feel it's safe, reasonably safe to go the movies, I certainly feel it's safe to go to the movies, though. I'm not here to give anyone advice on that sort of thing. And so, have I gone to the movies since COVID, yeah. But am I going to the movies as often as I went before COVID? No, and if we look at the data, with the exception of certain blockbusters that everyone really wanted to go see, movie going is still substantially down despite the fact that most people they clearly, you know, vacation going, however, has, has rebounded beautifully.
Michael LeBlanc 18:25
It's a, it's a really, (crossover talk), -
Howard Tiersky 18:25
So, clearly, those, let's say crowded environments that people can't replace easily with a digital at home experience they have returned to, but other experiences, they had realized through COVID that hey, you know, it's I have a pretty good experience streaming stuff at home, you know, there's a ton of stuff on Netflix and HBO and Disney Plus and all that. And so, you're seeing now, sort of a retrenching where some of the old behaviors come back, but most of the change has remained, think that's, that's the trend with COVID.
Michael LeBlanc 18:38
It's a super interesting discussion, I want to hang on it for a minute, because what many of us are observing is kind of an action reaction. And you know, there is some talk, you know, the COVID would accelerate eCommerce by a decade which, which I never bought into, I think you see in the day-to-day eCommerce, flat lining, particularly in things like grocery people going back. You, know you work with malls, you would know this, people are going back to physical retail. So, have hasn't gone too far. Is there a point of saturate-, let's say, a point of over-saturation of digital, where people are like enough? And I've read studies where, you know, kids are saying, listen, I, I go to the mall, because I want to get off social media. It's not always a very positive experience, as you know. What do you think about that? I mean, action reaction has have gone too far. And should brands be thinking as much about physical experiences as digital experiences in the context of the modern environment?
Howard Tiersky 19:50
Yeah. Well, so, your-, you're asking two different questions, right, digital versus non-digital and sort of physical versus you know, virtual or whatever eCommerce experiences, and so I'd say a few things. First of all, you know, I was at Banana Republic at the mall the other day, and I tried on some pants, and they didn't fit. I'm not going to say whether they were too tight or too loose, but let's just say they didn't fit. And so, I come out of the dressing room, and the person says to me, you know, would you like to see those she-, I hand them to her, I'm not going to get these. So, would you like to see them in another size? And I'm, I kind of have this moment of pause, because I think I've had this experience before where then you say, yeah, you know, do you have this in a 38, or whatever. And then they disappear for 20 minutes, and you feel this obligation to wait for them, because they're supposedly off looking for some pants for you. But you know, you don't know if you're ever going to see him again. And so, I almost as I, I've become trained, almost to hesitate to ask someone for help. But so, I said to her, I don't know, you know, do you know if you have a different size, so she takes the tablet in her hand, she scans the, the bar code on the, the tag of pi-, the thing in my hand, and she look, and she says, yes, you know, I have three, three of these in a size 38, you know, and she goes and gets it for me. And it's, it's like, nearly instantaneous.
Howard Tiersky 20:06
And so, you know, I think one of the things that we want to remember is that part of creating great physical experiences is digital enablement, which means both creating a better interaction, for example, with a salesperson, through digital technology, and look at things like what Amazon is doing with their Amazon Go stores, you know, making the checkout experience much faster, or even non-existent. You know, you walk into an Amazon Go store, you scan your QR code, when you enter, you just get what you want, and you leave, you feel like you're shoplifting. So, I think that that's a part of it is how do you not view the world as you know, physical and digital, but see digital as a force that you're going to use to give your customer a better experience, whether they're connecting with you remotely through a device, or whether they're actually showing up at your facility. And, and then I think that when it comes to creating, you know, the question of and by the way, that also goes for the customer, whether that is kiosks or apps that allow way finding in the store, it's not only digital technology that supports your associates or other people working in the store. But it's about allowing that digitally centric customer to have a great experience that they want in your store, you know, getting more information about a product from a shelf through a QR code, finding the right product in the store, and, and potentially being able to scan items and checkout without having to wait for an associate to, to pay.
So, I think there's all this opportunity to create these next generation physical retail experiences. And at the same time, you have to motivate people to get in the car and go somewhere if you're going to make it worth their while. And I think there's a lot of different types of retailers, right?
Howard Tiersky 22:07
If you look at one of the things, if you, if you look at what's happening with where people are going for retail, certain types of retail real estate is doing much better than others. The thing that's doing the best are multi-use mall type facilities that include dining, entertainment, you know, there really are destinations. And because, as you point out, people want to, wants someplace to go. And if they can go someplace and have that mixed experience, see a movie, do some shopping, have a meal, have a drink, you know, put their kids on the ferry go-, merry-go-round or whatever, then, then this is an appealing thing. If I've just got to go drive 15 minutes to go to Macy's to buy some underwear. Well, you know, (crossover talk), -
Michael LeBlanc 23:14
Passing three, (crossover talk), passing three stores that sell the same thing on the way there, it's not very compelling. Let me ask you this question. I'm willing to bet that if you pulled out a PowerPoint presentation, you created a (inaudible), 20 years ago, you'd be saying a lot of the same thing. Did you expect we'd be farther along? I mean, I created some of these things in 2000 that you're describing. They're all wonderful, you know, the kind of arming associates with more knowledge, way finding. Is it, and you talk about this in the book, which is why I'm kind of referencing it. How do you overcome the challenge of executives resistant to change, you know, like why did you think we'd be farther along? And, and what are your tips to, to kind of getting that change happening?
Howard Tiersky 23:54
Yeah, you know, I, I don't know that I ever had really a prediction. I, I'm not going to claim that I had the level of imagination to have predicted how far we've even come. So, yeah, I, I, I wouldn't sit here and say, oh, yeah, 20 years ago, I thought by now we'd be we'd be farther along. I actually think we've come an enormously long way. And as I say, we have a society that in what feels to me like a short period of time has become so digitally centric.
Howard Tiersky 25:11
So, I feel like the change for the customer has been pretty fast. But I think that what has lagged is some brand's ability to keep up and of course we've seen some brands go by the wayside, whether that's Sears or Toys R-, focusing on retail, you know, live Circuit City or Toys R Us. We've seen some, you know, some shocking, you know, disappearances of brands, which we would have previously thought were very, very strong, you know, cornerstone retail brands. And while, of course, every one of those stories has many factors into what led them to bankruptcy. Very often a key, critical major component was their failure to move quickly enough to meet the needs of digital customers. And so, I think that the change in the world has been as faster, faster than I ever tried to predict, to the degree I tried to predict it. But the change at certain brands or many brands has been too slow. And I think that's that relative difference of speed is been, been the biggest problem.
Michael LeBlanc 25:20
Your book, as I said, is, is, is quite readable but you and you break that down into, into five, a five-step road map. So, quickly, because I want everybody to get the book, take us through what those five steps are just as a, as a hint to what they can find in the book. What are, what are the five steps that you recommend?
Howard Tiersky 25:37
Yeah. So, so in the book, we're trying to answer the question, well, how do I get there from here? Because for many brands, you know, it's easy to look at the Amazon experience, or what have you and say, good lord, you know, how am I ever going to get this, you know, sort of legacy company that I'm working at, to be able to compete toe-to-toe in a world where I've got all these sort of pure play digital companies that were built for digital. And by the way, some big brands are succeeding in doing that, as you probably know, Walmart is the number two eCommerce player in the United States right now, Starbucks is the number two largest digital wallet. So, plenty of you know what we might have called legacy analogue companies have successfully transformed into companies that are absolutely toe-to-toe competing in the digital world in a no excuses kind of way, but many others are not. And so, the purpose the book is, so what do you do? How do you get from here to there?
Howard Tiersky 25:47
So, the five steps we talked about, the first is to understand your customer, because as I've been saying, the thing that really drives transformation is the fact that the customer has transformed. So, how well do you really know and understand today's customer. And there's a whole bunch of research techniques that are described in the book. And this is, of course, my core consulting business as well. What we spend an enormous amount of time on is trying to understand how of the way people shop for groceries changed, how is the way people consume news changed, how is the way people plan for the retirement changed? How have all these things changed, and how their needs and expectations change, not just as a result of digital, by the way, because COVID has changed people's behaviors and needs in, in other ways too. But, but getting a fresh and really clear and detailed understanding of your customer, that's the first step.
Howard Tiersky 26:03
The second step is to map and envision the journey started by starting by making sure you really understand what is the experience your customer has today, when they engage with your brand, because many companies have a perhaps to show us a, an idealized notion of what happens when someone walks into their store. But is that really what happens? How many people get lost in your store? How many shopping carts have wheels fall off of them? How many people can't find what they're looking for? How many people have a rude experience with a salesperson, how many people wait too long for a checkout, etc., etc.? So, really a realistic, including what's great about your current experience, but also where your current experience is letting people down? Letting your customers down? And then how do you transform that into a vision for what would we want it to be?
If we were building this company from the ground up right now to compete in the digital world? What should that customer experience be without the fear of the fact that you know, the next step is going to be to ask the question, how do we get there? Sometimes, sometimes we sandbag our vision of the future because we know if we envision the future that we really should be heading towards How the heck are we ever going to get there? But that's the purpose of this book to say, no, let's envision what would really be the truly competitive experience for today's digital customer, who now hopefully we understand through the research we've done.
Howard Tiersky 27:08
And then the third step is to, to create a road map and build it. And of course, one can say a lot about that. But I talk in the book a lot about design thinking practices, to how do you take that bigger picture vision of a journey, break it down to the individual products and services and experiences and turn that into and bring it to life and take that vision and make it something that your customers are experiencing. And while you do those three steps, there are two parallel steps.
Howard Tiersky 27:26
The fourth step, which is parallel with all this is to optimize the present. Because, as I mentioned earlier, many companies are doing things that aren't meeting their customer's needs today, combined with other things that are meeting their needs, but it's the, the gaps which we want to focus on, because that's where the greatest opportunity for growth and new revenue is. And so, some of those things may require big transformation. But you know what, when you start to do this kind of research, some of them may not. Some of them may be simple things to solve, with a sign with one new roll into your store with a change to the way you organize your inventory, etc. So, identifying those quick hit optimization opportunities and continuously improving, even while you think about kind of a next generation approach.
Howard Tiersky 27:42
And then the last is something you alluded to earlier, which is to lead the change, because transforming an organization starts first and foremost not with stores or real estate or technology but with people and unfortunately for transformation, people have kind of a built-in natural resistance to change. Not all people, but a majority of people. And so, when you're trying to get an organization to think differently, to adopt new ways of operating, you need to be able to provide the kind of leadership that gets people to overcome their natural hesitation and really support the change. And so, I talk in the book at some length about what are some of the biggest barriers to driving change within an organization, and what are some techniques to overcome?
Michael LeBlanc 30:12
Well, the book is ‘Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irreverence’. Howard it's been such a treat to having you on the podcast to great exploration recommend the recommend everybody who's listening pick up the book at their local favorite booksellers. Now, if people want to get in touch with you, or keep up with what you're doing, are you a LinkedIn person was best way to get in touch
Howard Tiersky 30:32
I am. And by the way, there's a website for the book, which is at Winning Digital Customers dot com. If you go there, you can download the first chapter for free and also get added to my mailing list. I am also a big LinkedIn person. Yes, I post stuff almost every day, multiple avenues, LinkedIn newsletter, I put a lot of videos up there and things like that. So, absolutely, you can follow me on LinkedIn under my name, Howard Tiersky and those are probably the two best ways of, of getting in touch with me.
Michael LeBlanc 30:57
Well, wonderful, well Howard, thanks again for joining me on The Voice of Retail. It's real treat to, to meet ya and chit and chat about this content. I wish you much continued success and a great rest of your day.
Howard Tiersky 31:05
Likewise, thanks for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 31:07
Thanks for tuning into this special episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, be sure to click and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, so new episodes will land automatically twice a week.
And check out my other retail industry media properties the Remarkable Retail podcast, Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, and The Food Professor podcast with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. Last but not least, if you're into barbecue, check out my all-new YouTube BBQ show Last Request Barbecue with new episodes each and every week.
I'm your host, Michael LeBlanc, President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company and Maven Media. And if you're looking for more content or want to chat, follow me on LinkedIn or visit my website at meleblanc.co.
Have a safe week everyone.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, digital, book, retail, experience, brands, store, stories, customer, digitally, create, big, storytelling, transformation, world, business, retailers, change, Howard, customers