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In this episode of the Customer Service Secrets Podcast, Gabe Larsen is joined by Jarvis Harris from Visier. Jarvis shares his secrets to creating the perfect experience for his customers through mapping personas and using the right technology to supplement his team’s efforts. Listen to the full podcast to learn more about how you can get a 360 view of your customers.
Bridging the Gap Between Brand and Customer
At Visier, Jarvis develops effective strategies to help customers in unique ways like creating personas based on common and prominent characteristics among typical customers and then working to personalize each interaction to each persona. He calls this the three Ds model which includes the Driver, Dreamer, Doer. Each of these represents a consumer’s personality and needs, which helps the agent to evaluate various situations among the consumers and then make decisions to help them in the best way possible. “So for everybody who’s listening out there to implement this model, you have to be scalable. So it has to be cost-efficient. So it’s not a different person, but it’s a different perspective.” Jarvis finds that bridging the gap for his agents is easier when they’re already aware of how each persona interacts with their products and what their general problems might be ahead of time.
“You have to build a map to give each one of those people an experience that they never forget that gives them what they need and that makes them say wow.”
Personalization Through Adding Continuous Value
Adding value throughout the lifetime of the consumer-brand relationship is essential for lasting loyalty, particularly when implemented in the first 90 days of purchase. For Jarvis, adding value means not simply selling a product or service to the customer and sending them on their way; rather, it means helping them understand their purchase in a personalized, holistic view. He finds that a lot of organizations fail to add continuous value to their sales and ultimately flop in the consumer’s mind. To remedy this failure, he suggests:
I break it down in a couple of different ways. So when you have a new customer, you want to drive first value, and first value is value in 90 days. So you build your processes around the fact that we want to drive value in 90 days, meaning we want to have at least one baseline success in 90 days that’s above and beyond the fact that the system works.
It’s something we can all relate to that generally when we purchase something, we subconsciously expect an immediate benefit. We want to know that the purchase was worth the effort, time, and money. The same goes for SAAS customers. They shouldn’t have to wait to see benefits from their new software because they should be taught how to implement it in a way that quickly works for them, the brand, and their own customers.
Driving Experience with Technology
Data. How often do CX leaders hear this word on a daily basis? Probably more than enough to remind them just how important it is in this realm. Data is everything in CX and without the right technology, there really isn’t a great way to gain customer insights. Jarvis explains that having a good CRM has launched his department to great success because it allows them to store and access essential customer information on a whim. “That ability to have a full 360 view of a customer, being able to enter notes on the customer, and give visibility to my whole organization on where their customer is, is something that’s immeasurable.”
For many leaders, finding the right technology that fits their mission can be tough, especially when there are so many options on the market for CRMs. Here at Kustomer, we hope you will find the value in partnering with a CRM that helps you to become more customer-focused and data-powered.
When shopping for any type of new technology, especially a CRM, Jarvis goes back to pen and paper before overcomplicating the process. He jots down a few goals he wants to accomplish and then searches for a CRM that will accomplish those goals in the most efficient way possible not only for his agents, but also for his customers. By having the right technology on your side, your CX team can be unstoppable.
To learn more about having a 360 customer view, check out the Customer Service Secrets podcast episode below, and be sure to subscribe for new episodes each Thursday.
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Full Episode Transcript:
How to Get a 360 View of Your Customers with Jarvis Harris
TRANSCRIPT
Intro Voice: (00:04)
You’re listening to the Customer Service Secrets Podcast by Kustomer.
Gabe Larsen: (00:11)
All right. Welcome, everybody. We’re excited to get going. Another episode on the Customer Service Secrets Podcast. That’s a mouthful, Customer Service Secrets Podcast. I got Jarvis Harris. He’s the VP of Global Customer Success over at, I can’t say, I mean, you’re going to have to say it. We just went over it, Jarvis. Well, how do you say it? It’s –
Jarvis Harris: (00:29)
Visier, Visier.
Gabe Larsen: (00:30)
You told me about that like two minutes ago, Visier. But I botched it to my team and I was nervous about botching it there, but Jarvis, thanks so much for joining. How are you?
Jarvis Harris: (00:40)
I’m doing well, super excited about the opportunity.
Gabe Larsen: (00:43)
Yeah. Appreciate you jumping back on round two for us here. I’ve been bugging him over the last little while and he was nice enough to take some time to join us today. I always like to kind of get, before we get into business, maybe get something a little more personal fun about you. Any fun fact comes to mind? Funny experience, hobbies, something like that?
Jarvis Harris: (01:04)
Yeah. So I mean, it’s funny. I will say one of my fun facts actually is I’m a sports enthusiast and I love sports. I’ve been involved in sports my whole life, but more recently I’ve been a football coach for my son. I coached him through PE and the whole early years, then they fired me. They said, “Okay, he’s in middle school. You can’t coach anymore. You can watch, you got to be a silent parent.” So I went from the screaming crazy coach that had a kid on the field to being the dad in the background with tape over his lips. So I’ve been watching football for several years. I love football. I play football. My son plays football. I love going and he’s in high school, now he’s a senior, Friday Night Lights. Some I live for, I truly enjoy it, but fun fact, I coach my kids, so I couldn’t coach them anymore. Now I’m the crazy parent in the stands.
Gabe Larsen: (01:53)
That’s so funny. It’s funny you say Friday Night Lights. So I’m coaching my son’s flag football team for the first time this year. And my wife was like, I don’t know that much about, I like watching football, but I really think watching and playing and I mean, they’re really different. Backseat driver, right? So she’s like, “You ought to get ready for coaching your son.” And so she’s like, “You ought to watch Friday Night Lights.”
Jarvis Harris: (02:19)
Oh, wow.
Gabe Larsen: (02:22)
I guess she’d watched it a few years back and she thought it was pretty good, but that didn’t help to coach, but it’s a great show if you haven’t seen it. It is a great show. So how is Memphis doing by the way? Are they okay this year?
Jarvis Harris: (02:34)
So, okay. We’re four and three. I mean, we should be seven and O, but we’re four and three. Me and my son actually have season tickets. We’ve had season tickets for like the last ten years. So we’re at every game sitting there on row seven, like four-yard line, really close awesome experience, but more than three days a year, but it’s good stuff.
Gabe Larsen: (02:55)
It seems like they’ve had a few good years over the past, I’ve heard their name a few times on top 25, something like that.
Jarvis Harris: (03:05)
Absolutely.
Gabe Larsen: (03:06)
You got a good basketball program. It’s a good school. It would be fun to actually talk more about that, but we ought to dive. I think people want to hear now more about your experience, vast experience. Before we jump into that, maybe tell us, because I do think you bring such a wealth of knowledge. Tell us a little about your background, what you kind of do over there currently.
Jarvis Harris: (03:25)
Yeah. So at Visier, I’m responsible for a couple of different organizations. One is the Customer Success Management team and the other is what we call People Analytics consulting. So it’s our consulting team, so pretty much that experience with the customer, making sure they’re successful. They don’t just buy, but they grow and they enjoy, and they have an experience with Visier that’s outrageous. I’m going to use the word outrageous. I tell my team all the time, what do we want to do, is provide an outrageous experience for our customers and outrageous is not in a bad way. Outrageous is good. People are like man, what they do is crazy. So I’m really responsible for driving adoption, driving success in our customers. So from the time they sign on the dotted line for the rest of their life, they’re going to be working with somebody in my organization. So driving success and adoption.
Gabe Larsen: (04:12)
Yeah. That’s a good, outrageous experience. Yeah. I’ve heard some fun ones, but you might top it with that. So I might steal that. Well, let’s get into the way you drive some of that. I mean, you talk about outrage, you talk about an experience strategy. What is it? How do you do it? How do you set it up? How do you operate it?
Jarvis Harris: (04:29)
So I think, when you think about it from an experience perspective, it is something that’s essential. And I think it’s what I would say, it’s multi-directional. So part of that experience strategy is being able to meet the customer and the employee where they are and what I mean by that is in every organization and in every customer base, there’s a persona. There’s a persona that you sell to. There’s a persona that you drive services through. Well, what we need to do well, and what we have to do well is marry those two personas and provide an experience for each one of those personas. So what I call, I have a three-D model. Three D. So it’s a Jarvis three-D model. And that three-D model is what I call driver, dreamer, and doer. And in that driver, dreamer, doer mapping, those are the three personas that you want to build an engagement approach with for each person.
Jarvis Harris: (05:22)
So you’re going to give them a different experience. You’re going to engage with them differently based on where they are in driver, dreamer, doer. So you’re probably saying, Gabe’s saying, “Jarvis, what is that?” So a driver, dreamer, doer, real quick. A driver, that’s the person that’s more like the line manager, director, that person that’s driving the outcome, is driving the solution for the customer. So what does it do? Well, that’s the person that’s in the weeds. That’s the feature function person. That’s the implementation person. And then the dreamer, that’s your executive sponsor. That’s that person that has dreamed up the idea that owns the strategy. They might not ever be in the day-to-day but they’re the dreamer. They’re that executive champion. So you have to build a map to give each one of those people an experience that they never forget that gives them what they need and that makes them say wow. People always want to say, knock your socks off and this crazy experience, I want them to say, “Wow, that was outrageous, Jarvis, because it was just what I needed.” It wasn’t for anybody else. It was just for them. It was just for a manager director. It was just for an individual contributor. So the three D’s drive this, and it’s the same thing for the employee. Driving three-D, making sure that you touch every year.
Gabe Larsen: (06:27)
Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. So it’s driver, dreamer, doer. The three-D model, the three D. I like that. I always think in threes, I like your style, Jarvis. So couple of things that popped up as you were chatting about this, so it does align with, so the drivers kind of often like that more middle manager, probably. The dreamers, a little more of that probably going to be that executive. The doers, maybe the person kind of pushing the buttons. So it does also align a little bit to the different organizations. And then when you think about it, you mentioned like a map or an experience for each of them. Double click on that. That means you assign a different persona to each person or you, what does that mean?
Jarvis Harris: (07:10)
Yeah, so actually it’s not a different person because remember, this has to be scalable. So for everybody who’s listening out there to implement this model, you have to be scalable. So it has to be cost-efficient. So it’s not a different person, but it’s a different perspective. And then when I say that, so each model, you think about what is it that this person needs? So that middle manager, what do they need to be successful right now? What are they trying to do? So you say, what are the specific desired outcomes for the driver? And that CSM or that person creates what I would call a success plan, a map that says, this is what success looks like for that particular person. And you do the same thing for the dreamer. What does success look like? Hopefully, they align, but sometimes they don’t, but you want to make sure.
Jarvis Harris: (07:52)
And then at that doer level, you don’t really build a success plan. What you do is you build a solutions map and that’s more about what do you want to deploy and what do you want to do, which is more of the tactical side. So if I’m a CSM, I want to really lean on my professional services team, my implementation team for that doer in that solutions map, because it’s going to be in the weeds, but I want to make sure I drive alignment across the board with the driver and dreamer. So it’s really, you’re mapping out what they want in a success plan at each level, but it’s one person doing it. And the beauty behind all that is that person orchestrates it all and makes sure that everything comes together so the person that’s signing the check feels as good as the person that’s pushing the button.
Gabe Larsen: (08:32)
I like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of the individual journey for each of these personas. Okay. And then one thing you mentioned earlier that hasn’t left me, I do feel like organizations struggle with this. And if you’ve got quick feedback, you mentioned success oftentimes is bringing together kind of what happens in the sales experience and then like the after kind of that, the post-sales experience. And it does seem like organizations, sometimes they struggle with that because it could be two different organizations. One organization sells to a group and then a different organization implements and supports it, or it could be an acquisition team and a fulfillment team. And there’s this weird handoff that happens kind of pre and post. Anything you found successful to make sure that that handoff doesn’t just, something drops right between them?
Jarvis Harris: (09:17)
Absolutely, absolutely. So you’re exactly right. Sometimes that handout can be bumpy and that’s a disaster waiting to happen. So when you’re doing that handoff, one of the biggest things you need to do is specifically in the earliest and when you’re going from pre-sales to delivery, so when the customer’s signing and you want to pass out that information, you want to make sure that you have a tight interlock that exists. And what that means is ideally at about the 85 to 90% mark, when a customer hadn’t all the way crossed that line, but the salesperson knows like 85% of 90% of that time, you want to bring the CSM to me and say, “Hey, this is a high level of what we got coming out of the pipe.” So what you start to do is you set the table for what’s about to happen.
Jarvis Harris: (10:00)
So that system can start formulating ideas. And then you have a solid handoff document. And that document isn’t cookie-cutter, it’s specifically based on what we’re selling in our platform and what they’re trying to do with our platform. So those are baseline things that CSM or that experienced person can consume, and they can go back and ask specific questions. So when we actually meet the customer is like we were sitting there when they were doing the demo. It was just like where they were sitting there when they were talking about what they needed, because it’s so seamless, but it’s about getting introduced with deals complete, getting that document filled out, and being prepared ahead of time. And you hit the ground running, but it’s essential that you know before. Don’t get a sign when you’re at a hundred percent and they’re at their close. I sign them before they’re closed because you want to get your ideas percolating early.
Gabe Larsen: (10:50)
I like that. I think that’s such a great kind of real tactical example. It does seem like as a customer in whatever scenario, it’s frustrating to repeat, “I called the phone, I called the airline company. I was chatting with them.” I got to repeat. I’m in a sales cycle like you’re saying, and I get everything and then I go, I get handed off to fulfillment and I got to repeat everything I told the sales. Bridge that gap in some form or fashion just seems like, got to stop doing that. Let’s dive into a couple of other areas while I’ve still got you here. Process. You’re a big process guy. What type of process, how do you bring that into your strategy to create some of these outrageous experiences?
Jarvis Harris: (11:37)
Yeah. So, I’m going to take a unique approach, because I’m going to talk about it from a SAAS perspective, but I don’t think –
Gabe Larsen: (11:43)
Yeah, perfect.
Jarvis Harris: (11:43)
But I think this will probably fit in every experience. So again, if you’re sitting there and when you buy something, you don’t want to wait a long time to see the benefits of why you bought it. If you’re like, “Hey man, if I buy a car, when I sign my name on the dotted line, I want to get in and I want to go drive it. I want the experience.”
Gabe Larsen: (12:04)
To feel that engine man, I want to feel it!
Jarvis Harris: (12:05)
Right. Immediately. So the process that I believe every customer should experience is quick time to value and continuous value. But what does that really mean? So I break it down in a couple of different ways. So when you have a new customer, you want to drive first value, and first value is value in 90 days. So you build your processes around the fact that we want to drive value in 90 days, meaning we want to have at least one baseline success in 90 days that’s above and beyond the fact that the system works. It’s not, “We bought it to figure out how many tickets a customer can enter and we want to see how many tickets we entered and what’s the ratio of us answering those tickets.” So we don’t want to say your data is in and the system is live. You can start using it. In the first 90 days, we want to be able to show you and how you actually do that, get a report and be able to measure results so you can change a business process to be more efficient. So when we think about that, if I think about operationalizing processes, it’s about how do I drive value in 90-day increments? The first value, getting people excited early, and then after that, how do I keep them engaged? That’s every 90 days, every three months we do something extra. We do something more. And it’s literally saying, you want to do all these things. Let’s break them down at 90-day chunks. Bite-size, bite-size, bite-size examples.
Gabe Larsen: (13:27)
Yeah. That word, time to value. It’s so important. It, we lose vision. We, I think we lose sight of it sometimes in a company. And it’s like, well yeah. Look, if it’s SAAS, they’ll bill implement us in three, six, nine months, and then they’ll start to see the value. It’s like, nobody wants that. Nobody, we won’t, and again, that goes for a consumer product as well. It’s like, I don’t want to have to set this up. I want to see value sooner than I can. I love that mentality. And some of those increments are right. Let’s finish off with some of the systems. Technology is such an important part of everything that’s driving. I mean, it gives you the ability often to see that customer where they are, the red, green, yellow, the 360 view, whatever it may be. How do you think about systems to drive some of the experiences, the process, the overall strategy that you’ve designed?
Jarvis Harris: (14:19)
Yeah, absolutely. So systems, the first thing I think about with systems is they don’t exist. And when I say that is the first system is the pen and paper. And why that’s the case, you write it out and envision it before you find the system. So the first system is the pen and paper because you don’t want to put a straw man together of what you’re expecting. Once you do that, then you take it to the point of how do I get this the most efficient way and the easiest way? So, as I look at it from a CSM perspective, I’m looking at a system that will allow me to have almost like a centralized CRM. There are a couple of them. You got Gainsight, you get to Tango, you got Strikedeck, you got ChurnZero. You have a lot of them that take customer information and allow you to look at the customer health, look at the engagement of a specific person in the organization that allows you to figure out, tell me how many open tickets they have.
Jarvis Harris: (15:13)
How many businesses have you used to head? How many times have you talked to them? Looking at the timeline, looking at notes, looking at those different things that will be beneficial. So when I think about a system perspective, the first thing I want to do was write down what are the three things that I want to achieve and have visible in a system? And then from there, I look at the systems that are available and which ones allow me to at the easiest, because from you’re thinking about it, if I’m a CSM or a customer success person, a customer service person, an implementation person, whoever it may be, I’m talking to a lot of people. So I don’t want to have to do a lot of typing to enter a lot of notes. So I want to figure out what systems make that the easiest to do, easiest to get to, and I can go in and look at data and I can do everything for one-stop-shop.
Jarvis Harris: (15:55)
So I want to look at my customer to help them. I want to look at my customer success plans, and I want to enter my notes all in one screen. What gives me that ability, because again, I want to make it efficient for my employees because I want to make the job fun for them and also make it where if a customer is talking to me, be like, “Yeah, I see you have five tickets open. Let’s talk about that.” But it’s right there in front of them. So that ability to have a full 360 view of a customer, being able to enter notes on the customer, and give visibility to my whole organization on where their customer is, is something that’s immeasurable. But the thing that you have to realize is before you buy a system, use the first system, a pen, and paper, jot it down, figure out what you want, and then find the three things that you want to do the most and get the most efficient system.
Gabe Larsen: (16:38)
Yeah. Well said. I do think, having bought many systems in my day, I’m a shiny object. I’m this squirrel guy. Squirrel!
Jarvis Harris: (16:46)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Gabe Larsen: (16:49)
Systems don’t save you and I’ve found that actually, a great system overlaid on a bad process makes everything worse, actually. So pen and paper, that really resonates. And then I love the context. I just feel like, you know what, we need more than ever to provide a great customer experience. This is context, like what’s going on? What have they done? Why have they done it? How do they engage with us? Where are they? How are they feeling? And seeing some of these customer experience people, their notes and tabs and systems and phones, I’m like, “No wonder they can’t be smart. No wonder it’s not a great experience.”
Gabe Larsen: (17:31)
They’re dancing around all these different systems, tools, and stuff like this. I love that 360 view. I think we got to get there. And I think it’s, sometimes the devil’s in the details. Easier said than done. All right. Well, Jarvis, I appreciate it. I love the three D’s again, drive, dream, do. That’s a fun one. Love the build the process first rather than buy the system. I think there’s some great information, great tactical advice to take away today. If someone wants to get in touch with you, learn a little more about what you do, continue the dialogue, what would be the best way to do that?
Jarvis Harris: (18:03)
For sure. The best thing to do is send me an email. So reach out to me on Gmail. You can reach out to me at jarvisharris1@gmail.com. That’s jarvisharris1@gmail.com. Send me an email. I would love to connect with you and we can talk more from there.
Gabe Larsen: (18:17)
Okay. Well hey, Jarvis, thanks so much. Hope you have a great day and for the audience, likewise. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
Jarvis Harris: (18:25)
All right. Thanks.
Exit Voice: (18:31)
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