SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast. I'm your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with an industry expert to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is powered by Ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Learn what's actually happening in your restaurant and exactly how to improve while driving revenue. Learn more at ovationup.com. And today we have someone on who is just, I heard him speak at IAPA, which is the something, something, something amusement park something in Orlando. Great event. But I went to his session because it looked so awesome. And I looked him up online and he had some uh he's had some incredible experiences. Chris Stevenson, the founder of the Empower Group, he started off in the health and fitness industry. He owned Stevenson Fitness. He grew that to 2,200 members and ended up selling that. Then he went on and with his whole mentality of guest experience and customer experience, he's a keynote speaker, he's a workshop facilitator. He does some incredible things. And a fun fact, Chris, your fun fact blew me away. Can you share your fun fact with us?

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

Yeah. So um, all through high school, I was a competitive martial artist and I lived in Cleveland, Ohio. And I didn't have a typical college experience of the fun aspects of that. So I thought, you know what? I'm done competing. I graduated. I'm gonna go somewhere war and have fun for a few years before I start into my career. So moved out to the West Coast, got a job at Fridays, known for their hospitalities back in the day. And I was that guy, right? The suspenders, all the flair. Oh, yeah. Some people would say it was annoying. Some people would say awesome, whatever you choose. But I was still training and working out to stay in shape. And I happened to be working out with a couple other guys who worked in the stunt industry. And one day before my shift at Fridays, as I had put the suspenders on, a friend called me and said, Can you leave tomorrow for a year-long tour of North America? And I said, I don't know, maybe. And he said, Come now, we lost a performer. So I went down, I did the worst audition in history, but they were so desperate for a performer that I ended up doing stunts for the children's show Power Rangers. So I ended up being that for 15 years on and off. Uh stunts on other movies and television shows, an incredible experience. Oh my gosh. Did you ever get injured or are they pretty like the stunts pretty tame? No, especially the live things, you got beat up pretty badly. And when I first started, I didn't have the skills. So I got hurt even worse because there's an art to falling, an art that I didn't know when I started. So a lot of dropped on my head, a lot of uh big falls on stages and those sort of things. But you get better at it, you know, throughout the years and it hurts a little bit less, but there's always that chance for injury. Oh my gosh. Wait, so did you end up what's the live tour? I didn't even know they have that. Yeah, so this was back in, I want to say like 2000 or 2001. I can't remember if it was, it might have been Fox that owned them at the time, and they did an arena show. So, you know, when you see coming this weekend to Salt Lake Center, and we would they would block off half the arena, half would be like sort of a playground with bouncy houses and Spider-Man web call. And then uh we would do the live shows, and it was an incredible experience. And on top of that, you know, we got to do hospital visits, a lot of make a wish foundation, which were just experiences that I will always cherish.

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

Oh, that is so cool! What a great experience! And like honestly, such a cool, fun fact.

SPEAKER_00: 3:19

Yeah, it's interesting. It's I'll tell you one thing. The first presentation I ever did was for Merrill Lynch, and it was a high-end executives. It was more on the exercise uh fitness and wellness side. And the organizer of the event knew I had done Power Rangers and they wanted to see my slide deck. So showed them the slide deck and they're like, Where's the Power Ranger slide? And I said, That's embarrassing. These are high-level executives. I'm not putting that in there, like, trust us. It might be the only thing some of these people remember. And to this, to this day, I'll come across people that are like, Hey, you're the Power Ranger guy. And I'm like, Yeah, Power Ranger guy. Like, I was in your session. I'm like, which one? They're like, I don't remember, man. I just Power Ranger. So if nothing else, be memorable.

SPEAKER_01: 3:56

Oh man, I love that. Obviously, like what a great takeaway already is like be memorable. I made a post a little while ago about the power of nostalgia. And we often think about nostalgia as being a historic thing, right? It's like, oh man, these brands that used to be so cool, like they've got some nostalgia to them. But it's like, what are we doing today to create nostalgia? What are we doing today so that a 93-year-old woman, decades from now, is going to be like, oh man, I want to eat at that restaurant because I remember when dot, dot, dot. You got to create those memorable things. And what is your red Power Ranger of your brand? Like, how do you create that memorable experience to be uh memorable? And actually, which is why I want to dive into a little bit more about what you do currently as the Empower Group. Talk to us about what do you do, who do you help, and why do people bring you on board?

SPEAKER_00: 4:51

Gotcha. So you mentioned before that I started off in commercial fitness. And the thing about fitness that's really interesting is we see people multiple times a week, right? So you have a chance three or four, five times a week to screw up experiences, to screw up relationships. So it's one of those industries that uh far too often, I think people are surprised sometimes when their gym does something nice, right? People leave gyms all the time going, can't believe they did that. Well, it was dirty or I couldn't a class or some influencer was grunting and dropping deadlifts or those sort of things. So our mantra was always we want people to leave going, I can't believe they did that in a great way. So we knew when we opened this club that everybody, every gym had treadmills and everyone had dumbbells and everyone had classes and trainers. So that was never going to differentiate us.

SPEAKER_01: 5:33

But we wouldn't have red Power Rangers. Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

Talk about a differentiator. That's why I so good with body language, right? Yeah. But uh, it was one of those things where we knew if we could create this incredible experience that people would leave feeling better than when they arrived, which was our mission statement, that we could differentiate ourselves and be successful. So we took it very strategically. And I think with any organization and hospitality, anyone who serves customers, you've got to have a culture that's wrapped around creating a great experience. And it's got to come from the top down. The leadership's gotta demonstrate it, it's gotta reinforce how important this thing is. And team members need to know that that can be your true differentiator. So we did that, and then we were fortunate enough to participate in the first ever net promoter study for the fitness industry. Oh, interesting. Yeah, they did it in the UK first. It was the HFA, it's like the National Restaurant Association, but for commercial fitness, and they partnered with a software company and they did the first ever net promoter score study. So in that study, they did the UK first, and the average net promoter score was 22. In the US, it was 40. Ours was 77, literally the highest score in the industry at that time. So we knew that this strategic approach to member experience was in fact working. So when I did that, I got called actually by the HFA at the time it went by the name Ursa, and they said, Can we interview for our trade journal just about some best practices? And I said, sure. So I did this quick little interview, and I'm like, I kind of enjoyed that educating and sharing info. And I said to them, I go, I know you have a conference, maybe I could speak at it. And they said, No. And I was like, Oh, I thought I was a shoe, and they said, I mean, you can apply, and if we select you. So sure enough, I applied. I eventually did get selected. And then when you speak, other people hear you speak and say, we'd like to bring you to our event. So it's sort of snowballed. And at the time when we still owned and operated health clubs, people reached out after hearing me speak and they said, Do you consult? And I was like, uh, sure. Right. It was like consulting by accident. But as we started to get to work with other organizations, and then we started to branch out outside of fitness into indoor rock climbing into parks and recreation, the hospitality, amusement now, all these different industries. I'm like, I love this because not only, as you mentioned earlier, does creating a great experience, you have all the financial metrics of success, right? You have return visits, people spend more money, they write the good reviews, they were for other customers, which is crucial because we have to have those positive business outcomes, but it's the right thing to do. When we can do things where people leave and their family had this incredible experience that they will talk about, you know, throughout the holidays when they visit family, that they went to this restaurant and it was so unbelievable, or they came to this gym and it was so unbelievable, or stayed at this hotel. What we do is very powerful, especially in a crazy world where things are all over the place, when we can be that bright spot and all of us that serve people, whether they're customers, guests, patrons, whatever you want to call them, and we can make this positive impact, we're doing something really special. So, yeah. So then at that point, when we exited the owning and operating, we opened our company, which is the Empower Group. And we do, as you mentioned earlier, we speak at events, we do workshops and trainings, and then we do strategic advising for organizations.

SPEAKER_01: 8:32

And it was just so great to hear you have such great frameworks that you were using in your sessions and just like highly recommend people go check out Chris Stevenson, check out the Empower Group, bring him in. He's done some incredible content. And as I was looking it up there, it was like everything he was saying. I was like, Yeah, I've seen that in our data. That is 100% true. And even some of the things were even getting downplayed a little bit. Like the power of bringing back a guest is just bananas powerful. That's just like amazing. So, as you're thinking about some of the tactics, I know you have an entire arsenal of tactics, but what are some tactics that you've seen that have worked to improve the guest experience?

SPEAKER_00: 9:13

So, from an overarching standpoint, I always tell people you got to do three things easy, effective, and enjoyable. No matter what sort of organization you have. Again, if it's a restaurant, a hotel, if it's a barbershop, a salon, a gym, anybody who serves people, if you can make the whole process in the customer journey easy, effective, and enjoyable, then you hit a home run. So basically, any touch point that somebody interacts with you, what can we do to make it easy? And part of the easy too is we're seeing technology. For example, in the restaurant industry, and I saw this years ago actually when I was doing work in the UK, but now almost every restaurant brings you the card reader. That makes it easier, right? As opposed to having to it saves time, it's easier, your data's safer. So things like that are easy, or when you can check in digitally for to a hotel, those sorts. So it's got to be easy. And by the way, no matter what industry you're in, people compare you to experiences in other industries. So using Starbucks as an example, talk about easy. Load money on your card, order it. Do you want to order the same thing from the same place? Here's some fireworks because you tipped. Like it they make it so easy. People want that.

SPEAKER_01: 10:14

But Chris, I'm not Starbucks. I can't afford that app. So customers aren't comparing me to Starbucks, right? Wrong.

SPEAKER_00: 10:22

They are comparing you. No, but to be fair, for example, we do a lot of work in park and recreation, and it's an incredible industry that does so many good things for communities. A lot of red tape. A lot of situations where the software is super clunky or a registration process is terrible, or they can't get an app, or the app that they have is just so inadequate. So with them, I say, well, what can it's always not what can't we do? It's what can we do. So your staff being trained on how to make things more efficient, how to answer questions quickly, how to be empowered to for service recovery. So there are things from the human standpoint where if you just can't afford an app, fine. But what can we do through our processes that we can actually have an impact on to make things easier?

SPEAKER_01: 10:59

And I love that empowerment through service recovery. We've seen that where by giving employees the opportunity to like give someone a five,$10 gift card, that allows them to then feel like they are contributing to making someone's day. They're contributing to making something right. And what's this very interesting paradox of when you give people, when you in your verbiage, empower them to make and create a great guest experience, they actually are going to be more loyal to you because they like how that feels for them.

SPEAKER_00: 11:33

Yep, 100%. And we're in an era where employee engagement is a huge challenge. But again, when you're putting people in a position to make plays and make people happy, they're more engaged. When they're empowered, because staff will feel dumb if they can't handle stuff. So if they've got to be like, I'll try, let me go find somebody, that already makes them feel stupid. So to your point, not only are they more engaged and loyal, they feel better about what they're doing because they're empowered to make these decisions. And I hear this from some people, especially owners and operators, where they're like, Yeah, but we're terrified. If we empower them, they're gonna give away the farm. I can tell you, with the owning and operating clubs for 20 years, I never had a team member who was empowered give away. They almost err on the side of not giving away as much as you might as the owner, right, to solve a problem. So it might feel like, well, we're worried they're gonna give away. They never do. They just never do.

SPEAKER_01: 12:19

And the benefit is if you give someone a$5 gift card and your average ticket is$10, just for simple math, right? They are going to have a ticket of$17. They're gonna spend$7 more if you give them a$5 coupon. So it's like you're not losing because you get the margins in the other$2 that you give up in the five. And so you're just getting an extra visit and a guest recovered and a happier employee who's more engaged. It just is win-win-win all around. And in fact, I had on the head of public relations for Domino's on the podcast, and we were talking about how if there is a hundred people that complain, how many people are actively trying to rip you off? And when you look at the numbers, it's genuinely less than one. Yep. So if you have less than one percent trying to rip you off, why are you treating the other 99% like they're that 1%? Agreed.

SPEAKER_00: 13:16

And one thing that's really interesting with the department store Nordstrom, known for their high levels of service.

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

Then thank you for dropping the S on the end of that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:22

It's not Nordstroms, Nordstrom, thank you. Yep, okay, keep going. Um, but with them, you know, most places have a limit of two items when you go to a changing room. Nordstrom does not, because they're like, you know what? 99% of our people never try to steal anything. So why would we inconvenience 99% of our people with a rule that's really geared to the small percentage? Now, if they catch somebody, they're gonna take action, as they should. Somebody is stealing from you, right? So it's one of those things that when you're thinking about your customer service guidelines and all those different things, don't punish the small percentage to your point, right? You you want to make sure that you're catering to the majority and then deal with the little percentage the other time.

SPEAKER_01: 13:59

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's such a powerful concept. And really it gets to the fact of like give people the benefit of the doubt until they give you reason enough to doubt the benefit, right? And I think that's where it comes down to how do we think about customer experience? And so with that in mind, when you think about customer experience nowadays, what do you feel are some of the most important aspects? What are guests looking for? What is the modern guest looking for?

SPEAKER_00: 14:24

So I think we're in an era of hyper-personalization. People want your attention, they want your undivided attention, they want it to be treated special, especially with the advantages and technology that are making certain things easier. If somebody's gonna go to, let's say, a retail store, they serve customers, right? So you've got to create a great experience there. Somebody can just get it on Amazon. Matter of fact, they can order five similar things, send four back for free, keep the one they want. So if they come into your retail store, it means they want an experience. They want to be there, they want to touch, they want to feel, and they want to be treated well, right? So I think people are really looking for an elevated experience in most industries where it's personalized, where they feel like a VIP and where they feel absolutely like they are the center of the universe when they interact with your organization.

SPEAKER_01: 15:06

And I think that personalization extends really to every facet of the business, but especially when something goes wrong, like we're talking about with the recovery. And that's one of the reasons why it's like AI is getting really, really good. In fact, like, for example, the ovation AI is 10% better at winning back guests than humans, which is great, but it still needs that human touch. It still needs the ability to be able to get in there and build that relationship and create that true connection. It will be another couple of generations, if ever, before someone is saying, I don't want human connection. I just want AI. I think people still want to be able to shake someone's hand, look someone in the whites of the eyes, and say, and hear, thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 15:52

100%. It's funny. I actually last week hosted two webinars on AI. The reason I hosted it was because I know my lane and I am not a tech or AI expert. I know what I'm, you know, know what you're good at, know your lanes, customer experience, leadership, employee engagement. Yes. Tech, AI, no. So I'm like, but I'll host it because I'll get to learn. But it was funny after listening to these experts to your point about still wanting some human interaction, I kind of thought, you know what? Listen, AI will never replace you, but organizations that utilize AI to its potential will replace you. It's like in the old days, what should I be on social? Now it's not. It changed from should I be on there to I need to be on there and how well do I use it? Same thing with AI technology. You've got to adopt these things because they are going to make a better experience. They're part of that easy, effective, and enjoyable, coupled with the human interaction. On a funny side note is have you heard of Kalahari? It's an indoor water park. And yes, yes. So by the way, I've never been in my life. And last year I spoke at two conferences back to back in Kalaharis. I was like, wow, never been in my whole life. And then I was within one week in two different states in Kalaharis, but they had the check-in kiosks at the hotel part of it. Yeah. They also had people roaming around. So somebody like me went up there to try to check in and because I'm technologically challenged, was struggling a little bit, but somebody saw me. They must have noticed my body language. They were taught to own questions and came over and said, Sir, you look like you might need a little help. How can I help you? Oh, it's really easy. You just do this. So to your point, the kiosk was great. Once I had a little assistance because I needed it at the time, that made for a great experience. And I do think with service recovery, as funny as it is, is sometimes that's the biggest memory that people have. When something goes wrong and then they tell the story about how quickly and effectively you fixed it. I had a colleague once say, Yeah, I think sometimes staff should make a mistake on purpose just so we could fix it and really delight a member. I was like, well, I wouldn't go that far. Don't make mistakes on purpose. But sometimes really service recovery, when you empower your staff and they can handle it right away, people leave talking about how great that was.

SPEAKER_01: 17:42

Oh, I mean, our data shows that a recovered guest is worth 24 times more than your average guest in terms of like what dollars they bring in the door. I mean, it's just monumental, it's huge. So I've loved this conversation. Man, I feel like we could talk for hours about this because you have so many great experiences. But how can people find and follow you?

SPEAKER_00: 18:04

So our website is TEG Firm.com. That's the empower group. So TEG Firm.com, you can go there. My handle on Instagram is the Chris Stevenson, not because I am the Chris Stevenson because Chris Stevenson was taken. Sometimes I feel people are like, oh, really the? And I'm like, I swear to you. It was either that or like Chris Stevenson7897. So the Chris Stevenson was better. And then it's the underscore empower underscore group. So you can follow myself and that. And then LinkedIn just search Chris Stevenson. Okay. And anyone that's some Zach, really quickly, what you do and with ovation is I wrote an article several years back called Feel versus Real. And especially when it comes to customer experience, sometimes we feel like we're doing the right stuff, like we're trying and we're doing these sort of things. But what you're doing is so valuable because the data tells you what's real. You might think this is a great idea, but when you're like, nope, we've got all the data points, here's what they'll spend, or here's what the real problems are. We think most people are unhappy with this. Oh no, they're not. What the data shows is here's what they're actually unhappy about. When you have tools like you have that you can utilize to really provide data so you can make decisions based on real instead of feel, that's where the real success is at, especially in member and customer and guest experience. Amen.

SPEAKER_01: 19:12

I love that. Real versus feel. By the way, last question: who is someone that we should be following? Who's someone that you look up to in the guest experience industry?

SPEAKER_00: 19:20

You know, it's interesting. I saw the book as soon as we logged on above your shoulder, but unreasonable hospitality. Obviously, read the book and saw Will present at the fitness conference, HFA. And you know what's funny? Normally I'll hear a keynote and then go read the book. This was one of those opposite things where I had read the book and I'm like, well, how entertaining could the keynote be? And it was still just absolutely off the charts. So I think Will is one of my absolute favorite follows.

SPEAKER_01: 19:44

I love him. And for anyone who hasn't listened to it, go listen to the podcast that I did with him. He came on and just, I mean, crush it. I don't think I've ever been that nervous in my life than meeting Will Gadera. Like I was such a fanboy. And anyway, so the Worst hosting experience I've ever had, but he is awesome. So go check out that podcast. I thought it was a pretty good episode, by the way. I did listen to it. So don't be hard on yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 20:09

Oh, well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 20:10

Well, Chris, for showing us how to power up our guest experience. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Givenovation. All right, thanks. I appreciate it, Zach. Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We're all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by Ovation, a two question SMS based actionable guest feedback platform built for multi unit restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovationup.com.