Author Deborah Burns: 5 Things a Business Should Do to Create a Wow Customer Experience

An Interview With Orlando Zayas

KNOW THE STAKES. Writers know that every good story must have an inciting incident in the first 10 pages (some would even say on page one) to grab people’s attention. So, immediately get your customer’s attention — think the beginning of chapter one — through an inciting storyline that makes them instantly grasp and relate to the need and the possible risk if they don’t act.

As part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing Deborah Burns.

Deborah Burns’ story has always been about invention and reinvention — she’s lived those two keywords throughout her career as a women’s media Chief Innovation Officer and award-winning author. The experience of writing her memoir, Saturday’s Child, illuminated the path to her second book, Authorize It! Think Like a Writer to Win at Work & Life. Now, Deborah combines her strategic business and creative expertise with workshops that help teams improve results — learn more at: https://www.deborahburnsauthor.com

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I was the only child of a larger-than-life, unconventional mother and because of the dynamic of that core relationship, I’ve always been fascinated by women and their stories. I grew to be a journalism major in college with the dream of being a reporter, but entered women’s magazines instead and lived a media career that took me places I never imagined.

One of those places was England, where I found myself staring at portraits of unconventional women from history in a London museum. I suddenly knew that I had to learn more about them — and then write a book about my mother. Although I never had imagined myself as an author, it was a lightbulb moment that kicked off a seven-year creative journey. Ultimately, Saturday’s Child was published and then another unexpected thing happened. The experience of writing that book — which took me deep into a literary world filled with wisdom that also applied to the world of work — gave birth to my second book, Authorize It! Think Like a Writer to Win at Work & Life. Now, I show teams how to level-up through better business storytelling. At work, whoever tells the best story wins, so helping non-writers shape their stories for success advances careers and ensures that everyone lives up to their potential.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I tend to literally trip and fall hard with some frequency. There have been four or five doozies in the last decade — ice on the sidewalk got me twice, once splitting my lip and the second time slashing my eyebrow. I once took a fall UP the stairs that broke my nose, and another time I tumbled over someone’s roller-bag and broke my knee. My friends and family like to tease me about this — they find it funny that a woman who helped media empires and who earned a prime seat at the boardroom table can be completely undone by a slippery street.

But when I looked back at all of these incidents, I realized that they had one thing in common: in every instance, I fell forward. Not backward, not sideways, but somehow always forward. And it occurred to me that falling forward equates to something even larger, something critically important to any success I’ve had — I fail forward too.

Throughout my career, I never side-stepped the possibility that I might fail at work, that some grand vision of mine might not come to fruition, or that I might be dubbed foolish or inept. Instead, I took chances, I learned, I iterated, I pivoted. When I jumped in, I was all in. Many ventures in my corporate and consulting days ultimately didn’t work — the new magazine that didn’t find its audience, the new video technology that didn’t catch fire, the breakthrough subscription model that didn’t break through anything — but throughout them all, I learned and remained in forward-mode. I’m naturally wired, it seems, to get further than I did the day before. So when failure pops up as a part of your storyline, don’t run from it, own it.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I have been fortunate to have had so many influential and inspiring mentors/advisors throughout my career that there’s no way to narrow it down to one! I’m grateful to them all, and can only hope that I’ve managed to convey how important they are to me IRL.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

A great customer experience is the secret to success. Every company is in business to do one thing — solve a problem for its customer or end user. In the same way the protagonist — not the author — is the hero of the story, the customer is the hero of any company’s story (not the company itself). Get it wrong and you fail, get it right and you win. This Authorize It! writing tool will help you keep your customer — and their needs and wants — front-and-center. Be sure you can answer the following EDIT with clarity:

• E = Explain the character you serve (the customer).
• D = Describe their problem.
• I = Illuminate the solution you provide.
• T = Tell how your solution will make your character better.

If you begin to use this as a filter for how you position your messaging, your outcomes will improve because you tightened your focus around the most important aspect of your business.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

Like a writer getting into the heads of their characters, the most important perspective-shift is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Live their experience yourself. As you say, we’ve all been shocked by bad customer experiences in our own lives, from an automated phone call that goes nowhere to trying to open an un-openable product. It’s shocking but proof that not enough employees are living the entire set of customer touchpoints and fixing what’s not working — doing so will get you to WOW!

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

Absolutely, competition helps to force the issue. But finding the motivation to improve the customer experience from just your external challenges is not the best approach. Even if a company didn’t have a single marketplace competitor, they should be doing the inner work. Looking inward to understand and continuously finetune who you’re serving and how you’re serving them is a fundamental imperative for any company.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

My customers are the corporations I work with to help level-up employees and improve business storytelling. So, here’s a high-level answer vs. one specific example. What I do to keep clients Wowed is to use these five story structure lessons as my filter, always making sure we have answers to the crucial questions they kick-off:

• EMBRACE THE NARRATIVE ARC. Work is nothing more than people on a collective quest. Understanding the four predictable cycles and four ingredients of any story — that also hold true for any project — ensures that your customer experience will be positive. To begin, ask and answer these top three questions: What’s the backstory of our company? What is our quest? What are our biggest obstacles?
• UNDERSTAND YOUR CHARACTERS. In addition to understanding your customers, apply that same forensic mindset to your employees and executive team — the greatest force affecting your outcomes. Human nature and needs are the drivers of everything, and unless you grasp individual and group dynamics, you cannot succeed as well as you might. To begin, ask and answer these top three questions: What drives our employees and how do we help them to improve performance? What are our leadership and employee gaps and our strengths? How do we better combine and leverage our collective assets?
• WELCOME CONFLICT. A story without conflict is a giant bore and without it, results at work would be unimaginative and unproductive. No matter how annoying, we all need stressors to deliver the best product and experience. To begin, ask and answer these top three questions: Who are our biggest antagonists in the marketplace? Where are we not fully recognizing marketplace realities and the opposition we face? Where do we most often get in our own way?
• SEEK THE UNCONVENTIONAL. The world is accelerating so quickly, and technology is changing so dramatically, that the familiar or historically significant is no longer enough. Since new situations can’t best be solved by doing all the same old things, think differently by searching for unpredictable and unexpected plot points everywhere. To begin, ask and answer these top three questions: What are the macro-trends that could create an opportunity? Which entirely unrelated companies should we follow to learn from? Can we invent new products or additional benefits if we think unconventionally by reversing our approach, or by asking “What if?”, or by adopting a mashup, this-meets-that mentality?
• STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN. All writers know that it’s not really a story unless there’s venturing into uncharted territory where what’s next awaits. Even if your customer experience is stellar, always be on the hunt for opportunities to take it even higher. To begin, ask and answer these top three questions: On a scale of 1–10, how does our company really feel about failure and risk and does our score make us hesitant and indecisive, or proactive and daring? Where do we doubt ourselves as a company and what steps can we take to turn it around? What new value can we deliver; what are three new ideas, actions, incentives, or initiatives we can explore?

Did that Wow! experience have any long term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

Yes, the high-level lessons above serve as the first step toward better business storytelling and always lead to powerful discoveries and ripples. I know this to be true from the word-of-mouth and recommendations that follow, which bring in new business that I don’t need to prospect for.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

The key to creating a WOW customer experience is to awaken and entice the senses of your customer. Tell a compelling, exciting story they can see, feel, hear, and touch, and then make it easy to act. I call these five principles “Story Intelligence,” and they will amp-up your customer experience:

• KNOW THE STAKES. Writers know that every good story must have an inciting incident in the first 10 pages (some would even say on page one) to grab people’s attention. So, immediately get your customer’s attention — think the beginning of chapter one — through an inciting storyline that makes them instantly grasp and relate to the need and the possible risk if they don’t act.
• KNOW THE STORYLINES. As best you can, be sure to know your customer’s story — their persona, needs, and wants to have all the context. Information, as they say, is always power, and will help to shape your story in a way that will get the best response.
• BUILD-IN EMOTION. Include real-world stories like testimonials, case studies, and team member bios to give credence to what you are communicating, as well as powerful quotes to underscore your points. Make it personal by pulling from your company’s backstory to show how you came to believe in the work you do.
• KEEP UP THE PACING. Every story has a rhythm to it as does every interaction with your consumer. Keep it exciting, quick, and promising.
• CREATE A PACKAGE. Just like a book cover, whatever materials you produce need to have a distinct look, feel and design that enhances your story. And always have an ending with benefits and an “ask” — a call-to-action that will get you to the finish line or the next steps.

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

Here, “Story Intelligence” principle #5 plays a big role in how happy customers can share their WOW experience — package it up for them. Don’t just ask for a review, give them the link and a draft of what they could say; don’t just ask for a social post, give them an actual meme they can use. You get it — do the work for them and you’ll get much better traction.

My particular expertise is in retail, so I’d like to ask a question about that. Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

If you keep putting the customer first, the answers appear. Sometimes it means just telling a better story, or sometimes it means a collaboration. Since your focus is retail, let’s zoom in on the recent Walmart and GAP partnership. We all know about retail struggles from differentiation, to overhead, to store visits, to digital. This solution addresses all for both players — the iconic GAP brand expands its timeless style to interiors by launching GAP HOME exclusively at Walmart. Brilliant all-around, including how it will WOW the customer.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

In this moment, I would inspire the #thinklikeawriter movement. Great writers have characteristics that we would all be wise to adopt:

• WRITERS HAVE PERSPECTIVE. They are non-judgmental, uber-observers of life because they must write authentically. And to get at the truth, they need the perspective that only taking in all sides can bring.
• WRITERS ARE QUEST-CENTRIC. They first understand the story problem and then focus on the solution — the quest. This helps them to move their stories forward because they must always be for something rather than just against something.
• WRITERS ARE ALWAYS EDITING. They have a continuous improvement mindset and realize that nothing is ever really finished. The concept that everything can be made better with consistent re-assessing and finetuning will make everyone more successful at work.
• WRITERS ARE SELF-DIRECTED. They face the blank page every day in every way. If they don’t write, nothing happens — a powerful reminder that the reins of our careers are always in our own hands.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://www.deborahburnsauthor.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-burns-4362424/
https://www.instagram.com/deborah_l_burns/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/deborah.burns.735/

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About The Interviewer: Orlando Zayas is the CEO of Katapult, an award-winning omnichannel payment platform. Zayas is known for his revenue growth strategies and visionary leadership in the eCommerce and retail space. His future-forward expertise has led companies such as GE Capital, Safe-Guard Products International, and DRB Capital. Zayas is also highly committed to providing educational opportunities to underprivileged communities through his philanthropic endeavors. Zayas’ business insights are regularly featured in publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Retail Insights, and more.