Service that Sticks:

Jeff Walter (00:00) 

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the podcast. I have a special guest today, RAY MILLER of the Training Bank. Ray is the managing partner of the Training Bank. The Training Bank is a full service development firm headquartered in London, Ontario. He’s been there for the past 35 years. Training Bank has worked with a wide range of organizations, large and small, as well as multinational companies in Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, Europe, the Caribbean, the Pacific Rim, basically everywhere you can. 

 

around the world. Ray’s specialty is customer experience, customer service, management development and leadership training and consulting. Ray focuses on helping organizations achieve greater customer focus and improved service delivery and enhanced management leadership capabilities. Ray is a passionate and humorous speaker, gifted and dynamic facilitator, pragmatic consultant, and author of several customer experience and leadership books and training programs. Ray, welcome to the program. 

 

Thank you for agreeing to be here. It’s going to be an interesting conversation. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (01:03) 

Thanks Jeff, I’m looking forward to it. 

 

Jeff Walter (01:05) 

so I always like to get to know people a little bit more. think, you know, their story, how they ended up where they’re at is, is interesting. You know, we all kind of take our own paths through life. So, so how did you, how did you end up as managing partner at the training bank? Yeah, just a little walk through the, So yeah, I was born in a small town. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (01:23) 

Long, long, long story. The small cabin was 

 

closer to the seashore. My first career was in banking. And don’t hold that against me because I was a banker for many years, almost 20 years actually. 

 

What was interesting in the last few years of my career with banking, I was a bank manager. ⁓ This goes back in the 70s and early 80s. So it was a little bit kind of different environment then for bankers. But what was kind of interesting, I was a branch manager and the regional vice president of the area I was working in the Maritimes in Nova Scotia, actually. 

 

came up to me and you’ve got a good track record in sales and service in your branches, the branches you’ve managed. And we’ve got this program coming up that we’d like you to teach your managers in this region, all the managers in this region around sales and service management. So how to build better sales and service in the banking environment. 

 

And so I said, the main reason that you want me to do this is because of my record in sales and services. He said, no, the main reason is because we know that you do a lot of amateur theatre and you don’t mind making a fool of yourself in front of other people. And that was a criteria that was used in order to get me into training. 

 

Jeff Walter (02:50) 

Sorry. Right? That is the first time I’ve heard that story from someone that’s like, you know, I was in amateur theater. So, you he knows I don’t mind being, you know, I’m an amateur theater and I really understand how to put on a show. You just don’t mind following. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (02:51) 

So, I said… 

 

So I ⁓ said… 

 

Yeah. So I said, okay, I’ll do it. This 

 

sounds like fun. Right. So anyway, I get trucked off to ⁓ the head office where they have a train the trainer session. I’d never done any training other than, you know, like in branch type of training with employee. And so I attended this program and it was around sales management and sales and service management. And, and so we got, we, we also did a train the trainer. So we were taught 

 

Jeff Walter (03:19) 

Uh-huh. 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (03:35) 

program and then taught how to teach the program. That’s the first formal training I ever done. So then I get back. 

 

Jeff Walter (03:41) 

Hey, so one 

 

question I had was, what did you find, you had mentioned that the branches you were managing had good, very good sales and service. What about those functions called you? Like, yeah, there’s obviously a bunch of different functions, what about sales and service kind of was in you? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (03:50) 

Right. 

 

You’re wrong, Seth. 

 

I think it was, that was more, maybe that was just a little bit of my upbringing and, just, if we, if we, we had all these series of different products that we wanted to offer and, I didn’t like the transactional nature of banking. You know, you’re open from 10 to three and customers come in and they, they take, they put in money, they take out money and it was boring. And so even when I was learning, 

 

Jeff Walter (04:23) 

Okay. 

 

I remember those days, yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (04:34) 

the basic job of the processing all the transactions. I found it boring unless I was actually interacting with customers and getting to know them, talk to them, and make fun of it. You know, during the day have fun. But that kind of transition to more as understanding that, you know, we need these customers to come back. So let’s make sure that when we’re serving them, we do everything we can so that when they walk up, they’re smiling. And it was just a natural instinct for me. 

 

Jeff Walter (04:46) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (05:04) 

Plus if they needed something and we had a product that they didn’t have, then we’d let them know about it so that they would buy it. And so was more just intuitive. But that is just the way I’ve always been in terms of my approach to things. 

 

Jeff Walter (05:21) 

That makes 

 

the amateur theater make sense, Because it’s much more personal, interactive. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (05:28) 

Right. 

 

so, and that’s really where it all started. But then the way I was training people was just, you know, so we teach them, we show them how to do these transactions and then talk to them about, here’s how you would talk about this product or this service, and here’s how you would do these things. But then when I started getting more formal training in how to actually teach people how to do things in a classroom environment, that really intrigued me and I really got 

 

I started to really enjoy that more than anything else. So we ran the first program. Interestingly enough, the person that actually developed that training program, pardon me, eventually became my wife. So long story short, were several versions of the program. And at one point, I… 

 

Jeff Walter (06:03) 

That worked out well for you. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (06:14) 

wanted to be moved from the Maritimes to the head office in Toronto because that’s where my future wife was now living. And she was still developing training. She’s a brilliant training designer. That’s one of the reasons our business has been successful is because of the bespoke training that we create for organizations. Anyway, ⁓ and so I moved to Toronto and the next thing you know, I’m put in charge of more 

 

Jeff Walter (06:23) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (06:41) 

types of training. And she decides to set up a training business and leave the bank and I’m then promoted to senior manager in charge of sales and service training for this bank. That leads to all sorts of stuff and 

 

Jeff Walter (06:43) 

you 

 

But when she left, were you all in a relationship at that point? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (06:57) 

Yeah, 

 

we were then married. ⁓ so, yeah, she set up her own little training consulting business and I was working in this bank. Canada has five big banks and this is one of the top five. At the time we were rated number four in terms of service, but we went through ⁓ a massive… 

 

Jeff Walter (07:00) 

I’m okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (07:18) 

training process across the entire organization’s 2500 branches and 40,000 employees around service excellence and sales and service. ⁓ I was part of that process. And over the course of the next few years, we went from number four to number one. And ⁓ a lot of what we did, it was not all built internally, but we we did work with a lot of different consultants and so on and came up with 

 

Jeff Walter (07:28) 

Okay. 

 

wow. Wow. 

 

That’s impressive. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (07:44) 

a change process that actually stuck because we focused on frontline, we focused on leaders and how to make sure everybody knew what they were doing. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (07:53) 

So 

 

quick question on that, just because that’s a really impressive accomplishment on a large scale. And like everything else, it’s multi-dimensional. How did the training impact that, or what contribution did the training make towards that improvement versus other things that might go on, process re-engineering? ⁓ 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (08:13) 

But the training was a catalyst for the process improvement because the training wasn’t just small training. It was much more than that. was what do you need to know and do in order to affect change? What do leaders need to do to create ⁓ a customer service or sales and service focus within their branches? What do the back office need to do in order to support that? And so it became a top 

 

Jeff Walter (08:27) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (08:38) 

driven, top-down driven process that where we had buy-in from the most senior executive and it was supported through not just words but actions. And so the people were encouraged ⁓ to change and those that decided not to were encouraged to find other employment. And the organ, it really did commit to this change strategy and it worked. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (09:02) 

So at the 

 

most senior level, they’re like, OK, in order to have improved service, we need to re-engineer the process. But in order for the re-engineer process to really take hold and for people to deliver that higher level of service, we want to train the people not just on the process, but the reasons behind the process and how we came up with the process so that they incorporate it into their 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (09:25) 

That’s right. Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (09:30) 

It’s not just a mechanical thing you do. It’s like you have an understanding. And when you take those, I mean, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but this is what I’m hearing is like, when you do that, when you say, okay, here’s the change, here’s the new process, we’re going to train you not just on the new process, but the process of coming up with the new process. And then you can understand why we did what we did. And you might not agree with it. You might say, hey, we could have done this other thing. And you might apply that locally to your context. 

 

and improve service even more within the bounds of the process. Is that a? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (10:01) 

Yeah. The people, if you want 

 

people to change, they need to understand why. ⁓ quite often in most organizations, what happens is you get a directive coming from top down saying, now you’re going to do this. And a person says, why? And that’s because I told you so. Because if you don’t do that, you’re going to get fired. Right. This is the way it’s going to be done now. So, but if you, if you want to make this kind of transition, 

 

Jeff Walter (10:07) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

because if you want to your paycheck, you have to do this. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (10:28) 

and change, need to do it leader driven, but to look for consensus, you need buy in. If the people that you’re leading don’t trust you and support you and buy into whatever vision you have, then no matter what you do, they’re going to just sit there and do whatever they get rewarded on. For example, ⁓ and it wasn’t so much in this program, but this is something that we built into our programs. 

 

Jeff Walter (10:48) 

But… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (10:55) 

was the fact that you get what you pay attention to. So if you’re trying to make a change, your leaders are trying to make a change in something. And so they tell the employees, you do this, this and this, because this is what we want now. But then when it comes to employee evaluation time and recognition and financial rewards, they reward the old way of doing things because they want you to do this, but they don’t recognize or reward it. 

 

Jeff Walter (11:02) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (11:23) 

then most people will just sit back and say, well, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing because that’s what I’m getting paid for. I’m not getting paid to do these other things because if I do something wrong, I never hear about it. I only hear about stuff that I’m not getting rewarded for. But as soon as you start paying attention to the behavior that you want and you recognize and reward it, 

 

Jeff Walter (11:34) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (11:44) 

but also that you hold other people accountable, the people that aren’t doing it, the ones that sit back on the fence and say, I wait long enough, this too shall pass. If you make sure that they find out that if they do that, that their options are, well, either change or leave. So it’s really in any organization, if you’re trying to get that kind of change to happen, it has to be driven from the top, but also bought in from the bottom. 

 

But then it requires a level of accountability. But there needs to be measurement, valid measurement that people understand and agree to, and then a level of accountability for that in order to make these things happen. So if you’re trying to improve customer service within an organization, if all you do is train the employees in what service looks like, 

 

Jeff Walter (12:25) 

you 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (12:31) 

The only people that will benefit are the training consultants that created the program. 

 

Jeff Walter (12:34) 

Right, right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (12:36) 

On the other hand, if you train people in what service is, why it’s important to the business, and what they need to do differently in order to deliver high level of customer service. And then you train their managers in what they need to do in order to see that that happens. So that they know how do I reinforce all the things that my employees have learned? How do you build a measurement system and a reward system to make sure that ⁓ 

 

This training is tied into the performance evaluations and the pay structure so that a person that’s delivering service in a high level is getting rewarded for that and the people that aren’t, aren’t getting rewarded rather than cross the board increases for everybody. So it’s all these components. if you want to get the service to change or sales and the service culture, you need to be recognizing. 

 

Jeff Walter (13:17) 

or not being recorded. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (13:27) 

all of these things, rewarding all these things, holding people accountable for all these things. Which means managers and the managers of managers need to look at the processes, the procedures in place to make sure that they’re reinforcing the new behavior that you want. Does that make sense? 

 

Jeff Walter (13:42) 

So if we go 

 

back to when you were mentioning your prior employer, so to go from fourth to number one in Canada in terms of service, wasn’t, know, instead of just dictating this is what we’re going to do, training was used as an educational arm to say, well, not only here’s the new process, you do A, B, and C instead of X, and Z, but here’s how, this is how and why we came up with A, B, and C versus X, and Z. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (14:09) 

That’s right. 

 

Jeff Walter (14:10) 

so that you can understand the why. And then also that I’ve always found if your staff understands the why, they can also adopt it to local conditions. So we might be doing A, B and C, but in this particular place, know, Saskatchewan, we need to do A prime, right? Because it’s just a slight variant because here, you know, there’s a certain, a different relationship as opposed to over in Montreal where there might be a different type of. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (14:22) 

Yes. 

 

Jeff Walter (14:39) 

culture and relationship, right? you can tap into local. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (14:42) 

But the core principles will 

 

stay the same and the outcomes would stay the same. mean, how you get there might change slightly depending on where you are, but it all has to be stayed true to whatever your vision and values are. So you establish a set of core values around how people will do whatever it is that they do. ⁓ And then you define here, here’s what service is in this organization. Here’s what it means to us. And then here’s what we need to know and do in order to make 

 

Jeff Walter (14:45) 

Right, right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (15:12) 

that happen. But then give people the freedom within that to make decisions based on their individual clients. Like the way you would interact with a high-worth client will be different from somebody that comes in and is purely transactional. Not that you’re trying to treat one any better than the other because 

 

Jeff Walter (15:16) 

huh. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (15:33) 

everybody gets treated with the same level of respect and courtesy. But obviously, for those that have more in a banking context, more wealth, you want to make sure that you are looking at the various options available to them, which are more considerable than someone that is working at McDonald’s. But you still treat them with the same levels of respect and courtesy and friendliness and all those things, but also help them develop a path for how they can become 

 

more wealthy, right? 

 

Jeff Walter (16:02) 

Yeah, so okay, so that was at the bank. Your wife went off and started a training consulting firm. You took this training, took it to the next level. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (16:05) 

That was it for me. 

 

So, 

 

you know, I just started, I really got bitten by the whole training and development bug. And I also just happened to really develop a fair amount of understanding and expertise in the areas of customer experience and service experience. Customer focus is kind of the big category that I call it, as well as management leadership, because it’s the management skills and leadership skills that are required to make everything work. the whole thing. 

 

Jeff Walter (16:35) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (16:36) 

became a package. So I got to the point one day where I’m working in the bank and banks are very political places, small p political, where nothing gets done unless you’re recognized and you know, you have to know how to play the game and that tends to affect people’s behavior. I was turning into someone that’s very good at it, but that was changing who I was as a person, which is 

 

Jeff Walter (17:00) 

All right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (17:03) 

contrary to the way I like to do things. So I sat down and actually talked it over with Laura and said, well, you we could probably make as much and make a lot more doing what I’m doing now and you’re doing now if we combine forces and just take the training business to a new level. so we started the, I just joined her training company and we built it from there and it became the training bank. 

 

And she, as I say, a brilliant designer and has designed sales programs, service programs, leadership programs, a lot of it bespoke stuff, everything by going into organizations, looking at what they need, and then developing very specific training to meet that purpose. That goes back to the 90s, the early 90s. 

 

And over the course of time, we developed a number of training programs, all classroom based, which were customizable and all based on, we did a lot of research, plus we had a lot of experience from the work that both of us had done with that bank. And we just, over the course of time, developed a series of training programs in customer experience, customer focused leadership, customer focused communication. 

 

management development skills, leadership, supervisory training, all those different programs. And then, interestingly enough, in the late 1990s, we said, well, know, a lot of this stuff is now migrating itself to this new thing called online training. And it was, at that point, very, very basic. And so what we did was we created a couple of programs, all tech-driven. 

 

Jeff Walter (18:27) 

you ⁓ 

 

you 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (18:43) 

One was a management development program. One was an employee development program that included all different topics, like the management topics and everything from communication, problem solving, decision making, all the basic management and supervisory skills, and some leadership stuff. And ⁓ all based on the classroom stuff we had done, we just then began to convert it into text-driven online training and created these different programs. 

 

Jeff Walter (18:57) 

you 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (19:10) 

And we did the same thing with the non-venture, the employee development system that had topics that employees would need to know in terms of teamwork and communication, problem solving, but based on that. then customer service was a big part of it as well. And so we launched that program. We actually called it the Training Bank Online. And that became, that’s where the whole thing started. So then we got this notion that, well, let’s write a book. 

 

Jeff Walter (19:28) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (19:37) 

So I said, yeah, we can rattle that off in a couple of weeks. So nine months later, we’re still working on the final copy. And so. 

 

Jeff Walter (19:37) 

Hahaha! 

 

I’m 

 

working on my first one right now. I just rattle this off in a week. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (19:52) 

That became Best Customer Focus. And we got that published and then we created another one called The Customer Focus. I know, but the difference was this book wasn’t just, we didn’t want another business book. The world has so many of them and it’s the same concepts and theories just repackaged in different ways. But what wanted to do was create something that’s more to a how-to. So the book was really, how do you do the stuff that 

 

Jeff Walter (19:55) 

Yeah. 

 

They take a lot more energy than you think. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (20:18) 

to how do you create this customer focused environment? it’s basically the same stuff that we learned from all the training programs and all the input and feedback we got from all the participants all over the world and all the programs we did. And so out of that, we got that book and then another book called the Customer Focused Companion. And then next thing you know, we were getting calls from some multinational saying, we read your book, can you do this for us? 

 

Jeff Walter (20:43) 

All right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (20:44) 

Okay. And so, yes. And then, so that led to the development of a number of customized versions of the programs we had created. And I was most fortunate, I got to go around the world several times because these larger companies were located like in Europe and Malaysia and the United States. 

 

Jeff Walter (20:45) 

And hit the answers yes. Yes, we can. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (21:05) 

A lot of fun to do. I don’t like going to airports anymore. That’s sort of an unintended consequence of business travel. But anyway, out of that, one of the clients said, can you do any of this online? So we said, sure. So we created an online program called Maximizing the Customer Experience. And then we were looking for a platform to put it on. And we happened to cross latitude learning and the 

 

Jeff Walter (21:13) 

Pass. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (21:32) 

15 years ago and the next thing you know we put this eight module certification level course called Maximizing the Customer Experience into the Latitude Learning System and it’s been happy, happy, happy ever since. 

 

Jeff Walter (21:47) 

Well, thank you. That’s very kind of to say. We try hard. As we were talking earlier, well, one, appreciate your business over these years. But also, we’ve always operated with a long-term viewpoint of build that trust and help you be successful. that makes us successful. But thank you. Thank you for that. 

 

So, okay, so now you’ve got these online courses, you’ve still got the instructor led courses, you’re branching out, and you evolve over the next decade, you continue to evolve. So here we are today. So, and you’ve kind of touched on this, but if I was a customer of yours today, what am I hoping to accomplish? Like, what, like am I? 

 

my regulatorily checking off a couple of boxes or like what, why would I bring the training bank in? What do I wanna, what impact do I wanna have on my organization? And then, and who are you, are you still focused on financial services companies or? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (22:45) 

No, 

 

that’s where we started, but we soon discovered that the core fundamentals of service excellence, customer experience apply to every organization. The context changes, but the fundamentals are the same. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (22:56) 

Okay. 

 

So if I’m a decent sized multinational and I want to bring you 

 

in, what am I hoping to accomplish with it? What impact am I hoping to have? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (23:05) 

Well, you want to 

 

get people to do what the training is designed to do, which is what you’re trying to do is get people to understand what they need to do in order to focus on improving the quality of their customer service experience. Because they know if they can do that, it will stimulate and create long-term customer loyalty, which will eventually lead to customer advocacy. 

 

Jeff Walter (23:19) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (23:30) 

And when you get to that point, have customers that regardless of what’s happening in the economy will deal with you because they will stay with you because they trust you and know that if they have a problem, you will fix it. They’re also getting products and services that are high in quality and at a fair price. And they’re actually even willing to pay more because the service experience they have if they need to deal with you is at such a high level that they don’t think anybody else could do that. 

 

Jeff Walter (23:54) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (24:00) 

So it’s a business strategy and most organizations that we do work with understand that customer focus or maximizing the quality of the customer experience is a business strategy. It’s a profit strategy. It will contribute to the bottom line in the long term rather than just simply a short-term fix. 

 

Jeff Walter (24:19) 

Okay, 

 

so if I’m a customer or a potential customer, what I’m looking for is higher customer retention, growth within the customer to take out, to sell, you know, to cross sell additional products. I’m looking for you to help me with the customer experience and the service. based on what you said, it’s, you know, it’s a set of tools. 

 

that look for that long term to build that trust. And then that will increase retention, which will increase my revenues and profitability in long term. And that’s what I’m looking for as a customer. So then based on that, who am I training? Who has to get trained and what do need to know? Everybody. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (25:03) 

Everybody. 

 

See, the thing about services, most service failures are not as a result of the frontline persons growing up. Most service failures happen because the ball gets dropped somewhere within the organization. Whether it be somebody in the back office is too busy to deal with it or doesn’t know how to deal with it or the frontline person doesn’t know who to go to to resolve a complex problem. 

 

Service is inside out. If you can’t get it right internally within an organization, you’ll never get it right for the paying customer. And so it’s understanding that everybody in the organization has a role to play in adding value to the customer experience. Everybody. ⁓ And it doesn’t matter if they’re on the shop floor or they’re in the accounting office or they’re in a marketing division or HR. Everybody in their role does things that will contribute to the quality of the customer service. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (25:42) 

okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (25:57) 

customer experience. They just need to understand the role and relationship between what they do and the impact it will have on the customer, which means part of the learning is creating a process which we call internal partnering, where I need to identify who within the organization do I work with that will help me succeed with the customer. And then the person that the other is in who in the organization do I work with and what do I need to do to help them. 

 

Jeff Walter (26:05) 

Okay. 

 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (26:24) 

And so it’s creating this partnership within an organization focused on how do we change the way we do things for the benefit of the customer and how do we add value. So that process change now becomes something that’s more organic. It’s being looked at not as a simple process. Let’s evaluate this process here. Let’s evaluate that. What we’re doing is making sure the people that drive those processes understand 

 

what they’re doing now and then look for ways to make it better, faster and easier for the customer to do business. then, so part of what we’re doing in the training is teaching people how do we become better internal partners. Then we also teach them what do we need to look at? How do we evaluate and examine the customer experience? So we use a concept called moments of truth where 

 

Jeff Walter (26:55) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (27:14) 

Every time a customer comes into contact with the organization at some point, they have an opportunity to form an impression. That impression at that touch point will determine whether they continue to deal with you or leave. And so the moment of truth is, this goes back to many years ago when Yaron Carlson at SAS Airlines. 

 

use this concept in order to change the airline from a transactional one to a customer focused one and it worked. Anyway, so what we want people to understand is how do I make sure that at these touch points where the customer is interacting with me, and it could be frontline, it could be over the phone, it could be through email, it could be any number of things, but at that touch point, 

 

Jeff Walter (27:43) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (28:01) 

Who is involved in the success of that touch point and what are they doing now and what then you need to change in order to deliver a better service experience. Do you follow? 

 

Jeff Walter (28:10) 

Okay. 

 

So it will let me see if I get so it in order. So question I asked was who needs to be trained and what do they need to know and do? And your answer was everyone because it and if you could start with the customer touch points, those let’s just call those the frontline people, the people that are actually interacting with the customer. But then you have to also go up the 

 

value chain or the supply chain from them, because if you’re in customer service help desk, upstream from you is shipping, and upstream from shipping is the shop floor, and upstream from them is supply. And all that needs to work in order for that. 

 

high quality good to be shipped to the customer and receive it at Tommy Matter, right? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (29:01) 

And then 

 

if there’s a problem, then the call is going to come in to a customer service person who has to know who to go to find a solution. But the person that they go to needs to know what the options are available to them. 

 

Jeff Walter (29:09) 

Right. 

 

Right, not 

 

just go, that’s Jeff from customer service. I’m just going to return that call in a week. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (29:22) 

Yeah, yeah. And so everybody understands that the longer it takes to solve a problem, the less likely it is the customer will come back. know, customers want the solution immediately. And if they can’t get the solution immediately, the clock starts ticking. But if the service provider, the customer… 

 

service agent knows that they have to come up with a solution fast. And one of the things they will do over the course of time is build ⁓ an inventory of possible solutions. So if the customer, this problem X comes in that they already have an answer for it. Because over the course of time, it’s typically the same types of things, same kinds of problems tend to occur, or they’ll go through a troubleshooting process to zero in on what it might be. And then based on that, they’ll know who to go to for additional information. 

 

Jeff Walter (29:56) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (30:10) 

But if that’s the difference between this kind of training and smile training, because you can be as friendly and nice as possible, but if you can’t help the customer, they’re not going to be very happy. 

 

Jeff Walter (30:21) 

Yeah, it’s funny you say smile training because we used to own a 

 

and they went through smile training and you know we’d have issues you know as you would anywhere and the issue would never get resolved but they were the my nicest most courteous people ever but it drove us nuts we felt like we’re talking to an atomic you know like a robot like it’s like no I’m not happy so it’s the other thing that’s interesting is I’m listening to you is you know you know it kind of reminds me of some of the equality management training 

 

you know, where you’re empowering the individual as opposed to the Tayloristic, mechanistic approach to doing things where it’s like, because it’s a couple of different things, right? Like if you’re hired to, you know, pull inventory from the warehouse and box ship it, let’s say, and that’s your job and that’s what you’re being measured on. And then you get a call from somebody in customer service or some other customer experience touch point that says, Hey, 

 

Can you do X for me? Well, they got to be empowered to be able to do that because their primary job is doing this particular function. And they’re getting measured on that, but then they have these other interruptions. And in order to accommodate that, you have to empower the individuals and not what you see in a number of, what I would say, mediocre organizations where they would 

 

hit that individual inside the organization with a stick because they weren’t on the line producing another widget. They stepped off to help this customer service. then empowering them to be like, we’re going to treat you as a cognitive, sentient human being, and you’re doing what’s in the best interest of the company and helping. 

 

Like it’s a very different approach, but I find the empowering of the organization to do that and trust that they make the right decision. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (32:20) 

Yeah, it’s doing what’s 

 

right for the customer and backing the employee. even if it’s in a situation where the employee makes a decision to support a customer and provide them with a solution, which maybe it wasn’t the solution that the CEO would like, but the customer is now an advocate, happy, and returning to do more business, that the employee doesn’t get criticized or… ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (32:24) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

They don’t get reprimanded. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (32:46) 

they reprimanded for 

 

doing something that was right for the customer. But that’s where the support needs to come from the top. You you mentioned TQM and things like TQM and the statistical process control and all these things. Those are process driven, that they’re process related. What we talk about is the people side of it, because it’s people that drive the process, but the people have to have the right mindset. 

 

Jeff Walter (32:53) 

What? 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (33:12) 

and set of values and focus in order to drive the process in a way that will achieve the result around the customer focus result that you’re looking for. 

 

Jeff Walter (33:22) 

Yeah. Yeah. We’re always going with the TQM, or the continuous improvement on the empowerment side is one of the big tools that they found that really helps, especially on an assembly line type of operation. But just in general is to give that front, that worker, that, that line worker the power to pull the lever and shut the line down because something is, know, 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (33:44) 

And what the research says, and what the 

 

research tells us is, if you do that, they will become much more focused on making the decision at the right time. They won’t just exercise the power just because they have it. They will actually self-regulate, and because they take it so seriously that when they do do it, you know that they have looked at all the variables. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (33:59) 

Right. 

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 

That’s when I was referencing TQM. That’s what I was referring to is often, and you’re right, it’s a completely process-driven thing, but you’re empowering the individual and you’re giving them great responsibility. And with that power comes responsibility. And then being good human beings, they take that, one, it’s always appreciated, and two, they take the responsibility seriously. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (34:37) 

But the other side to that is that the managers of these people need to know what they need to do to nurture that and sustain that. So if a person does that but you have a manager that was appointed to the job because he happened to be good at the job and knows nothing about how to manage people, which 

 

Jeff Walter (34:38) 

You know, and that, ⁓ 

 

Right, right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (34:56) 

happens still quite a bit. When that happens, you need to make sure that the leaders are getting the training they need that supports the kind of behavior that you’re looking for with any training. 

 

Jeff Walter (34:57) 

Thanks. 

 

Yeah. 

 

And to go back what you said earlier, it reminds me of another thing. It’s interesting in the training you’re talking about. The empowerment was one, and with the empowerment comes the, it’s better to ask the ethos, the organizational ethos, which has to be from top down, that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Right? And so you as a… 

 

line worker or customer service, somebody customer service on the front lines there may make a decision that, you know, the manager and the CEO or somebody up to chain command as well. That’s not what we should have done in that particular situation. But the forgiveness versus permission is like you get the low trust environment where it’s like, I have to ask permission for everything that deviates from the process. Right. And that takes time. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (36:03) 

Right. then 

 

part of good judgment, you know, when you’re teaching these people to do these things, you need to be able to define the upper and lower control limits that they have to work within so that they know how much flexibility they have. And the more accurate you are at doing that, the more likely the person will always stay right in the middle and deliver something that because they know that they’re going to get supported because it’s within a framework that they understand. 

 

Jeff Walter (36:12) 

Right. 

 

Well, it’s interesting because it also circles back around to what you said, one of the things you were talking about earlier, which was if you have that ethos, even when they go outside the limits, even in those rare occasions when they go outside the limits, if the conversation is along the lines of, this is why that wasn’t a good idea. Like I understand your motivation and I understand what you were trying to accomplish. Your aim was true. 

 

that method was not a good idea for these reasons and therefore, you know, don’t do that again in the future is exactly. And as opposed to, you know, bad employee, you know, let me slap you on a wrist because you did something outside the bounds, even though you were doing it with the best of intent with the company’s interest in mind. And it kind of goes back to what you were talking about earlier with the customer experience training. It’s like, 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (37:06) 

Right. Right. It becomes a learning opportunity. Yeah. 

 

Jeff Walter (37:31) 

⁓ back at the bank is like, got to get the whys in there, not just the how. so even if you give them that latitude to, you know, and if they cross the line without asking permission first, well, permission takes time, but you don’t just reprimand them. You say, well, that wasn’t a good long-term thing for these reasons. You know, like, you know, it all circles back around that same type of ethos, 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (37:57) 

people need to understand what service is within the organization, their definition, why it’s important, but not just why in terms of, it’s profit strategy, da, da, da, da. No, individuals need to understand the financial consequences of the decisions they make. So if you do this, here’s what it could cost the organization. If we deliver poor service, 

 

Jeff Walter (38:00) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (38:19) 

It’s going to cost us this. It’s five times more expensive to bring in a new customer. We have to keep the ones we have happy. How do we keep them happy? But what are the limits that we have to work with? that becomes, that’s the why. What it is and the why. And then from there, we look at getting into more of the details. So what do your customers want? Why is 

 

And when it comes to general service experience, what do they want? What can you do in order to make sure that the experience they have is better than they would get elsewhere? Satisfy is not enough. Satisfy just means they’re getting nothing more or less than what they expect. You need to look for ways to give them a little bit more to keep them coming back for more. And then how do we do that? 

 

How do we trace the flow of the customer through our organization looking for those touch points that I mentioned earlier? And then who’s involved in the success of those touch points? Let’s work with them to make sure that when the customer hits that spot, that moment of truth, they are impressed. And then what are all the things that need to be done around that then? What happens if you have an unhappy customer? What are the kinds of things that we need to do in service recovery to solve the issue so that the… 

 

customer recognizes that nobody can fix it better. Yes, I trust you because if I have a problem, I know I can come back here and get it fixed the way it needs to be fixed. All these things become part and parcel of that. That’s the process that we try to teach people. And then the last component we talk about is how to look at what we do and constantly look for ways to constantly change and improve the way we do things. 

 

We’re really looking at continuous improvement and the philosophy behind that and trying to continuously improve how we interact with our customers. And that becomes integral to the value system within an organization. So we’re constantly changing and improving how we actually do everything that we do. Those are the components of our project. 

 

Jeff Walter (40:11) 

When you say we there, are 

 

you talking about the training bank or you talking about your customers and the training you’re providing now? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (40:18) 

The training we’re providing that, yeah. The course that does that is called the maximizing the customer experience. And those are the key components. There’s a lot more to it, but that’s really what we’re focused on there. So that everybody that goes through the course understands what it is, why it’s important, and what impact they have on the customer. And then what are the things they need to do in order to enhance the quality of the customer experience? How do I work together with my colleagues to make that happen? 

 

Jeff Walter (40:20) 

So. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (40:47) 

So that becomes the course. But then on top of that, just providing people with training doesn’t guarantee that they will actually use the training. And we learned this from our classroom program. So part of this whole process for those organizations that want the training is to look at what do the managers need to know and do in order to support the training. We have a program called Customer Focused Leadership, which 

 

is done either in classroom or done in live webinar format. Where we look at the managers get together and we look at what, let’s take now what your employees have learned online and transition that to their real world. And here’s some tools that we are going to work through to make that happen. And we have a implementation and embedding document, which is about 150 pages of action oriented meetings and stuff that they can do. 

 

Jeff Walter (41:25) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (41:37) 

in order to bring their teams together to then translate the general concept into something specific to their realm, their area of influence. So now you have the managers knowing what they’re doing. They have tools to help them engage their employees in how do I apply what I’ve learned. But then on top of that, you also then look at organizations looking at their rewards and recognition, their performance management systems. 

 

and what kind of buy-in and support is necessary at all levels in order to make it happen. We don’t always get to influence that last part, but we have the whole process for the training of non-management and management and the tools necessary to really engage everybody in making the changes that they need to make. 

 

Jeff Walter (42:21) 

Question that, have you guys, when you’re engaging in a climate like that, have you ever done longitudinal groups that get together periodically over a period of time? The thing I can’t, as you were talking, I was at a conference recently, and I think it was Marriott, somebody from Marriott was there, and it was interesting, they had had a training. 

 

pre-COVID that was like three days on site, right? Everybody comes in, autobonding, poof, they go away. They learn what they have to learn. And they migrated from that to a, you know, same content, but stretched out, but in webinar format over a multi-week period. And what they learned that was really interesting was it stuck. 

 

more because the classmates would do, they restructured the training so that at the end of each session over the multi weeks, I would say, try this for the next week on the job. And then they’d get together like two weeks later. What, you know what? forget what the temporal period was, but then the next session would be half the session would be talking about, well, I tried that and this is what happened. And I ran into this road, you know, this work, this didn’t. then somebody else would chime in. 

 

yeah, I ran into that roadblock and I did this and I started learning from each other. It became more of a. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (43:45) 

Yeah, we’ve 

 

done that. Yeah. And it’s a lot. That’s actually a lot of fun. But from just as a facilitator. And we have a project coming up at the end of this year into 2026 where that’s exactly what we’re doing where the we’re doing a pilot group of about 20 managers and we’re spreading the the customer focused leadership webinar over six weeks. 

 

Jeff Walter (43:51) 

Yeah 

 

Okay. 

 

Yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (44:09) 

⁓ 

 

And then, but the whole project, the whole pilot is going to spread over four to six months. And through that process, we’ll be able to, we’ll refine and define some of very specific objectives that will come out of that. Because as we work through the, the, the leader, the program with the leaders, there’ll be some very key things that come out of that we’ll be able to add to the, the whole thing when it rolls out nationally or internationally, because it’s a multinational group. 

 

Jeff Walter (44:35) 

Yeah, it was. 

 

Yeah. I mean, I thought that that approach that they did, I thought it was brilliant. Like, and because, I think the approach you’re trying, I think that’s brilliant. And I think it’s brilliant for a couple of reasons. Not the least of which is it’s really easy to implement. Like there’s nothing fancy needed. Right. And, and, and, ⁓ and what they found was not only did the lesson stick because people would go try it and then get feedback, but then 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (44:41) 

It’s brilliant. It is. 

 

Jeff Walter (45:06) 

the inter-organizational bonds that were formed over that, six-week period outlived the training. And these people… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (45:09) 

Yeah. 

 

That’s right. they, you 

 

know, they would start helping each other. so what, what, yeah. And we’ve seen that a few times. Not every organization is willing to do that because they’re not willing to commit their people for long periods of time, because they’re afraid if they’re doing something that’s going to improve their capability, they’re not going to be managing people. Just the commitment to this has to be right from the top to make it work. But when you get it, we’ve had three companies, 

 

Jeff Walter (45:17) 

Right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (45:41) 

where they were willing to do that. One was in financial services, the other, well actually two, where one was in investment, the other was in mortgage, and the third though was in ⁓ just a technology-based organization. But they were willing to do that and take the time. And you could really see dramatic improvements. One of those, no, two of those organizations, 

 

actually we submitted their names to the International Council of Customer Service Organizations for the International Service Excellence Awards for their performance. They both won in different categories. The improvements were extraordinary, but that’s because they bought into and supported the whole process. And our philosophy was, you know, let’s… 

 

Jeff Walter (46:11) 

wow. 

 

wow. Yeah. It’s like a repeat of your bank experience. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (46:29) 

When we enter a project, it’s how do we work ourselves out of a job? Because if we do that, then we make sure that we enable them to do stuff so that they don’t call us back. mean, some people might think that’s a dumb consulting move, but usually they call for some other issue then because you helped us with this. We don’t need you on that anymore. What about this? But, you know. 

 

Jeff Walter (46:49) 

Well, it’s dumb in the short term and brilliant in the long term, right? Because in the short term, you don’t get that come back and train us on that thing that you trained us to already. In the long term, it’s like, hey, these guys actually have an impact. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (46:54) 

Yeah. 

 

Well, that’s 

 

the whole thing. And that’s the impact of this. When people do it and they see how they measure the customer retention rates, the churn levels go down, retention rates go up. There’s a steady line in terms of ⁓ with the existing customers, the profit and it’s cheaper to serve the same customers. They already know the process, so it doesn’t cost you as much to serve. 

 

Jeff Walter (47:12) 

All right. 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (47:30) 

So there are lots of financial gains as a result of 

 

Jeff Walter (47:35) 

Hey, as long as I’m talking impact, I was talking to a franchise, a franchisor a couple of weeks back. And the gentleman started, used to work at some of the larger franchise, like Denny’s and Buffalo Wild Wings, stuff like that. But have you, with your clients on the customer experience training, we talk about customer retention. 

 

Have your customers, have your clients, or have they looked at employee retention? How has it impacted employee retention for those that have looked at it? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (48:06) 

Some have, 

 

the retention rates are significantly higher because in order to do all this, the employees have to be treated really well. Happy employees equal happy customers, guaranteed. So the more you do to… 

 

Jeff Walter (48:15) 

That, yeah, that, yeah. 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (48:28) 

contribute to the employees success and help them become more effective and successful to give them the kind of ⁓ not just financial gain, both creating an environment with both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators where they want to succeed. They get the rewards they want, they’re the extrinsic motivators, but they’re also challenged and looking for opportunities and they feel they’re contributing. They stay. 

 

Jeff Walter (48:54) 

Yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (48:56) 

most of the people that go searching for another job, they’re doing it because they’re not happy where they’re at. 

 

Jeff Walter (49:01) 

Right, right. Yeah, 

 

that was his whole thing. So he was in the restaurant business, which is notoriously high turnover, notoriously high turnover. And he talked about the training program, you know, in terms of improving quality and productivity and delivering a good customer service, know, kind of different, you know, completely different industry, right? Much different, you know, but he said his real, the real impact it had on his organizations was 

 

His employee retention rates just went through, you know, his turnover rate dropped like a brick, you know, and… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (49:37) 

There’s a direct correlation between employee 

 

engagement and performance management, which requires sizable levels of really good, highly focused leadership. Good management skills, good supervisory skills, good communication. 

 

Jeff Walter (49:53) 

Yeah, you know, I 

 

was gonna say usually like in, you know, say financial services, don’t, you don’t really think too much of employee retention, right? Or turnover because they tend to be relative to say a quick service restaurant relatively low. But if you could drop them dramatically and just your customer service goes up and your costs go down, you know, cause it takes 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (50:11) 

Yeah. 

 

That’s right. 

 

Jeff Walter (50:21) 

I mean, especially in something like, I mean, that’s what he found and it applies to other industries because it takes a while for a person to come up to speed. Like not only do you have to spend money to find, you know, it’s just like the customer thing. Like you said earlier, like it takes five, you know, know, five X to find a new customer versus retain a new customer. But it’s the same thing with the employees. takes, you know, five X and then it takes them like six to 12 months to get up to speed. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (50:48) 

That’s right. depending on the business, like hospitality is different, but if you’re looking at some organizations, when you lose good people, it’s hard to calculate the loss, but you know you’re losing customers. But you can look at your churn rates and you can see what has happened in the organization and what, you now if you can see, measure how many customers we’ve gained or lost each month and then 

 

Jeff Walter (50:49) 

You know? 

 

Yeah. Yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (51:13) 

terms of why are we losing them and look at those churn rates, you can calculate over the course of time what you’re actually, it’s costing you because of not treating your employees well, both from an expense training and development of the employee, but add to that the loss of the customer and how much money have you lost as a result of not being able to provide a level of service to your customers. It’s enormous. 

 

Jeff Walter (51:43) 

Yeah, so you’ve seen that with your clients that while you’re focused on customer service and customer experience and improving client retention and that a residual benefit or a secondary second order benefit has been improved employee retention, which 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (51:45) 

But interesting enough… 

 

yes. 

 

Absolutely, absolutely. 

 

Jeff Walter (52:08) 

And all of 

 

those things just lower your cost as an organization and increase your pay. So as you’ve, you you’ve hinted on a couple of things, especially with this more longitudinal. What do you find is the biggest challenges you or your customers face when you’re trying to implement these types of training programs? know, unless you’ve got some serious magic, ⁓ 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (52:13) 

That’s right. 

 

long term. 

 

Jeff Walter (52:35) 

There’s always some challenge. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (52:36) 

Long-term 

 

commitment, you if you have to also manage expectations, takes, if you’re going to do this, it takes some time to make it work. Like you can’t just train everybody and expect them the next day to be delivering at a level of service that’s going to make you gazillions of dollars. It doesn’t work that way. It takes time to make these changes. ⁓ You you start the process, then there will be… 

 

Typically what I see is, when it comes to the frontline, for example, you have in every group, there’s about 25 to 30 % are early adopters. They’ll buy in right away. They were like me when I got my job and I just had a natural tendency to want to serve customers in a certain way. And so you’re going to get early adopters. That’s about 30%. ⁓ Then you have another group that’s on 

 

they’re on the dark side, they’re on the other extreme of the continuum. And they’re the ones that say, if I wait around long enough, this too shall pass. I’m not really interested in doing this, you know. Yeah. And then you have a bunch of people and that’s about 30%. Then the remainders are sitting on the fence. They’re the ones that you need to encourage to move to the positive side of the equation. And you do that through reward, recognition, you know, support developing these people. 

 

Jeff Walter (53:36) 

kind of naysayers. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (53:57) 

I’m not talking about cushy stuff, I’m talking about just good solid management people development stuff. But showing them that there’s measures in place in terms of service performance measures and accountabilities. And the accountability if you do it, it’s positively reinforced. And there’s accountability if you don’t do it. And that’s reinforced. If people see that happening, then they’ll move to the positive side. On the other hand, if… 

 

a really good person keeps doing it and then their reward is to have to do more of it while other people are sitting on the fence, then the people on the fence are going to go to the dark side. They’ll just say, well, look, I why should I bother? There’s the good people that are going to do it anyway, but there’s no accountability to make this happen. And if I do, I’m going to get penalized. So why should I bother? So it’s really looking at how do we make sure that everybody is brought 

 

Jeff Walter (54:29) 

Right. Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (54:52) 

and those that choose not to, then they can go elsewhere. 

 

Jeff Walter (54:58) 

So you said it takes time. give us a perspective on what’s the time frame? know, it’s obviously not days, but are we talking weeks, months, years? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (55:10) 

If we were to 

 

take our stuff and so you put the employees through the program, I mean, the bigger they are, the longer it takes, obviously. But if you were to take ⁓ and take the program, by the time all the employees have been through the program and the managers over the course of 16 weeks have done all the embedding and stuff that these activities that we talk about and you’re actually building customer focused teams to look at 

 

Jeff Walter (55:17) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (55:38) 

corporate issues and you’re beginning all that, over the course of a year to 18 months, you should see some tangible changes. 

 

Jeff Walter (55:45) 

Okay, so it takes it, so you’re doing this, the training is taking, what do you… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (55:52) 

Depending 

 

on the size, it might take six months for a couple hundred people. ⁓ You need to look at it say, you it all depends also on ⁓ some other variables. For example, you may already have a very strong and effective performance management culture, where you may already have a culture, it’s just… 

 

Jeff Walter (56:02) 

Right. 

 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (56:16) 

It’s been transactional up to this point, and you want to shift the focus now to a customer focus rather than just transaction based. But you already have a really good effective performance management system, and you have managers and supervisors that are already well trained and know what they’re doing. Then it won’t take as long because you don’t have to spend time developing their ability to communicate, to problem solve, to… ⁓ 

 

evaluate performance, to deal with performance problems, to do all these kinds of things that leaders need to be able to do. So if that’s the case, then you go through the training, you point out to them, these are the things you need to do and you already have the skill to do it, but here’s the way you do it in this context, then it won’t take as long. And you should start seeing results within six to eight months. But it really depends on how much 

 

priority is given to them. So typically what I see happening in a lot of organizations, except for the three that I’ve mentioned, it starts off with good intentions. Everybody wants to do it until they realize how much work is in 

 

Jeff Walter (57:19) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (57:21) 

⁓ And then it’s. 

 

what could happen if you build into the project these are the things you make the senior decision makers aware of what they need to do and you try to get their buy into it and if they do buy into it the extent to which the buy in they may see one thing and believe another you never really know. But you can tell within six months if it’s going to work or not by what’s the next flavor of the month if they decide to shift focus away from this. 

 

Once you start it, that has to be your main priority. The customer focus is the organizational mantra and everything around what we do is based on that. And when you do that, it affects everything the organization does. But you have to be willing to stick with it. Otherwise, it won’t work. 

 

Jeff Walter (58:14) 

So if I can paraphrase, just make sure I got it right. The biggest challenge that your clients face and you face is for them to stick with the program. Because at the end of the day, what you’re talking about is changing organizational culture. And changing culture is hard, right? Teaching somebody how to process is relatively simple and straightforward. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (58:28) 

check whether. 

 

Jeff Walter (58:43) 

But if you want to make real change, it’s cultural change. it sounds like the training program might last three to six months with the formal training. That gets you a, I would imagine it gets it going and an indicator that things look good in the future, but you haven’t, it hasn’t shown up in retention rates or, know, those are, those are lagging indicators. Right. And so. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (58:55) 

That’s the starting point. 

 

Jeff Walter (59:09) 

Yeah, so people are like, hey, this feels right. This feels good. I feel like I’m feeling the change. Then it takes another three to six months for results to start trickling in. Again, depending on the size of the organization, called. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (59:22) 

Yeah. And we also, 

 

one of the things we do look at in the program is, know, ⁓ what kind of customer feedback are you getting? What are you asking? What kinds of questions are you asking? What kind of information are you getting? What mechanisms are you using in order to data mine? What are you doing to find out what your customers like, don’t like, want and expect when it comes to how you’re treating them? And once you have a process for that, you can start to look at 

 

If they’re leaving, why are they leaving? If they’re staying, why are they staying? But you’re getting reliable data to help you make these decisions. And then maybe you find that as a result of this, you may need to change the way one department or one function works. Or maybe you need to add a new level of servicing, or maybe you need to change the product to match the clients. 

 

need if it can be done, but you’re acting now on reliable information based on real unbiased customer feedback. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:20) 

So 

 

if you have a good performance oriented empowering culture with good customer service metrics, and therefore you don’t need to move the culture as much, you’re almost plugging into a healthy culture, impact happens, and you have good metrics to guide things, then the impact happens pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you’ve got less of that type of… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:00:28) 

Yep. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:00:47) 

performance-oriented culture and you don’t have good metrics, it’s a little bit longer haul to plug in because you got a longer journey to go as an organization and you also got to get the good metrics in place. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:01:01) 

Yeah, 

 

and then classic example, one of the clients I had mentioned earlier, it was a mortgage company, is a mortgage company. They already had a lot of the good metrics in place, their managers were very employee focused and their service was okay, but they knew that okay wasn’t enough. so, 

 

When we went in, a lot of the things we taught them, said, we didn’t realize we could look at it this way. We just shift the focus a little bit more in terms of how do you look at your business through your customer’s eyes rather than looking at it through a regulator’s eyes. And once they started to do that and they started looking at it, it started to click because they already had a really good. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:01:34) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:01:42) 

fundamentals in place, really solid performance management place. We just needed to give them an additional set of things to look at and some tools to look at it differently. And when they started using, ⁓ applying these tools in these various meetings, it engaged their employees, it became a catalyst for ideas, improvements. And they had to hold people back because they were getting so many of them and they were all really good, because people… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:02) 

That’s cool. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:02:08) 

when they knew they could get recognized, not rewarded, but recognized for coming up with improvements. In that culture, it was already a positive culture. And we started seeing results within much less time because it was the end of the first year we started it. was, I think January, February, March was when we did most of the training. I submitted their name to the ICCSO. 

 

in January the following year. within 12 months, and they had results to prove it. It was extraordinary. But we’re dealing with extraordinary people. They just needed some help to get to the next level. So. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:02:50) 

So, you know, over the conversation, we’ve been chatting for a while, it’s been so much fun. I’ve been learning a lot. We’ve talked a of, a number of best practices, the instructor led, the stretching it out, to do more of a facilitated session, the e-learning, the blended learning. Are there any other approaches or best practices that you think have really helped? 

 

make your training program more impactful that you guys are using. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:03:19) 

Well, what’s interesting, one of the things we did was we… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:21) 

or any techniques. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:03:25) 

sure this answers your question, we do focus a lot of our attention on corporate type clients, but we also have a number of NPOs that work with individuals in workforce development areas. And we have several organizations that we’ve set up branded versions of our portal where they are helping young people with training, not just in 

 

Jeff Walter (1:03:37) 

Okay. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:03:47) 

customer experience, but in a number of other business tools to help them get jobs. people that, some people are ⁓ physically disadvantaged, other people ⁓ maybe socially disadvantaged that don’t have the money. So, and so through funding, they’ve been able to put people through the program and they, but they. 

 

We provided them with a structure so they take people through a couple of modules and they get together and they talk through it, work through it, and they work through the program. And then these people are better equipped to get into the job market because the program is a certification level program. And so they can use this certified customer experience professional designation once they complete the program. And we found that’s been extremely helpful because what we’re creating 

 

within organizations from the bottom up, advocates already that know what needs to be done to improve service. And we already had in a couple of cases, there have been calls that have come to us, well, we hired this person, they’ve been talking about this, so we wanted to find out more about it. Yeah, and so in terms of what else are we doing, we’re constantly looking for ways to… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:04:47) 

⁓ that’s so cool. That’s so cool. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:04:59) 

make it easier for people to learn what they need to learn. But I think the fundamentals, we’re not looking for fancy bells and whistles. The e-learning component, the online learning course, it’s all the knowledge that you need. We’re not doing skill development there. That’s what happens with the implementation and embedding guide and the managers where they can now work with their employees and start the skill development component because you need to have 

 

three components, right? Presentation, application, and feedback. Well, we can provide the information and we can provide some limited feedback and knowledge questions, but learning happens in the application feedback cycle until a person gets it right. And we’re not doing as much of that. You can’t really do that in the online environment that we have. And that’s why we created these other structures with the implementation embedding guide. 

 

The employees complete a personal action plan as part of a study guide action planning process as they’re going through the course where they define things they’re doing now, what they need to do differently and what they need to stop doing. They also do some application exercises in the study guide, but it’s not evaluated. So that’s where the managers come in. We teach them what they need to look at and so on. So they’re getting feedback in a different way. 

 

At this point, from my perspective, the school is out on the extent to which things like technology-based support. ⁓ I have great fears with AI, especially in the customer service arena. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:06:25) 

Uh-huh. 

 

in 

 

what regards? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:06:35) 

Well, not so much in terms of the. 

 

My concern is where organizations will start using AI to replace people in the solving customer problems. Because a computer is not going to be able to provide the type of understanding and empathy necessary to deal with customer problem. Where I do see AI coming into play is the completion of repetitive tasks, things that, you know, 

 

in a service function where data mining, gathering information and doing things that are repetitive like sending out acknowledgements just to acknowledge something where they’re not actually interacting with the customer, that’s fine. But if they start using artificial intelligence as a customer service attendant, 

 

As soon as the customer finds out they’re not dealing with a real person, they will not be happy. And they will find out. 

 

That’s one fear I have. I can see using it in business in terms of gathering information, data mining, doing all those things, coming up with lists of suggestions, but those ideas need to be vetted. In terms of training design, I can see where repetitive tasks, like if you’re creating a training program and you need to create a series of knowledge test questions, get them to generate a bunch of questions, a person, a real person needs a training designer needs to go through and look at them. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:07:36) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:07:52) 

to make sure the questions are delivering the kind of responses that you are looking for to make sure that the person knows what they’re talking about. 

 

It may be making it easier for people or it may be able to help you cut down on the numbers of people you have working, which is the wrong way to look at it. But anyway, it’s a fear I have because what we’re trying to do is stimulate creativity and get people thinking about what they do and how they can do it more effectively. Once we have the computer doing that 

 

Jeff Walter (1:08:18) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:08:23) 

for the person, then we’re not developing individuals to their greatest potential. They’ll say, well, why don’t we just push this button, get a computer to do it for me? I have a fear that if they do that, we’re actually gonna have a negative impact on the intellectual development of our employees. Because all you need to do is teach them how to put in some variables and push a button. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:08:32) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:08:45) 

I remember back when I was a banker, I’ll go back to that, that one of the things I had to do was make decisions about the quality and character of the person I was lending money to, whether it be a business or an individual. Today it’s all done and they put figures into a system and the computer tells you whether or not you’re gonna approve it or not. But back in the day, I just said… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:03) 

but it’s all algorithmic. 

 

Hahaha 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:09:10) 

Well, back then, I had to make the judgment decision based on the information I had and the character and quality of the understanding the customer. And I had to learn how to do that. And I learned how to do that by sitting down with the best of the best to find out how do you do this? How do you do that? I don’t think if we were going to create good decision makers if 

 

their decision is, let’s push the button and see what the AI says. Because then they’re going to get a bunch of information. How are they going to be able to evaluate that information and know what’s the right thing to do? 

 

Jeff Walter (1:09:44) 

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because we’ve been talking a lot about AI on the content generation side and it’s been really helpful there. Also on the skill development side to use simulations and avatars. Because one of the neat things, one of the things I really liked about that approach of that manager training over weeks where you’re with a group is 

 

Skill development is all about practice and coaching, practice and coaching, practice and coaching. And it was a, I thought it in GD’s way, but I think the AI can do that. on the flip side, like you were saying, I mean, I’m noticing more and more, you know, chat support is all AI driven and, and you have to integrate in such a way that when it hits its limits, like, which is great because you can get some, some, some things resolved really easily and quickly. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:10:30) 

Yeah. Big day. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:10:42) 

But then you need to not, but then you need even more level two type of support person to handle everything that it can’t and take context. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:10:50) 

Well, here’s 

 

one of the interesting things. We’re actually developing, it’s an expansion of one of the modules in the course, and it deals with just a general statement on AI, but with online chat, because that’s becoming a real dog’s breakfast. See, online chat was originally created simply to provide product answers to product questions. 

 

And if that’s the case, how much does this cost? What do you open? What does this do? If that’s all it does, that’s fine. Unfortunately, what some organizations are doing is using online chat to solve problems. 

 

and without the involvement of a real person. I mean, I’ve heard stories where some problems have been solved and thousands of dollars have been lost because the solution ended up in court or the solution ended up giving the person a lot more than they should have been given because nobody got in the way to look at it and evaluate it. 

 

So, but if it’s simply to provide core information that has been vetted by the people in the know, that’s great. Problem is that when you start using it outside that realm, because it’s easier than having a live person talk to another live person, then you’re in for trouble. There are some organizations that actually do this. They don’t want to talk to the customer. So they put this stuff in place. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:05) 

Mm-hmm. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:12:15) 

to make sure that they never really do interact with their customers. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:18) 

Yeah, so there’s a couple of tech like who. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:12:19) 

It’s like grace beyond hell. 

 

Voicemail help. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:24) 

Yeah, yeah, well, it also reminds me of, you know, some of my colleagues who’s, you know, got a number of, you know, 

 

And they’re seeing a ballooning of AI on the recruiting side. And it’s interesting because they’re rewriting their resumes to get through the AI screening. So it’s interesting. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:12:50) 

People will do whatever 

 

they need to do to win the cheese. Whatever system you create, people will always figure out a way to get around it. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:12:53) 

Right, right. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, 

 

I think that the funniest story I’ve heard so far was my sister and her son is in middle school when he was in middle school. you know, because now the kids are all using AI to write their term papers, right? And so he submitted something that my sister knows was original, like she was there when he wrote it. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:13:17) 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:13:19) 

But because so many kids are using AI to write their papers, the schools are using AI to see if the paper that was written was AI generated or copied from somewhere else. And so they flagged my nephew’s paper as something that wasn’t original. And my sister was like, I was there. But I think it’s like, 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:13:41) 

Yeah. 

 

But isn’t that interesting 

 

though? Isn’t that interesting though that that’s where things are heading that and that is concern for me. think, you know, especially in the customer experience realm because maybe the very young customer won’t mind because they’re used to it, but can find the customers at my age, maybe not as old as me, but pushing my age. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:03) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:14:09) 

or if they have a problem, they have a fair amount of buying power. And I wouldn’t want to be pissing them off. And if you use technology, abuse the technology, that can happen. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:14:22) 

Yeah, well, you know, I was talking to a couple of younger colleagues and it’s interesting because I view this as like the third technological revolution for my career, right? It’s like I started my career in the 80s and started with PCs and then the internet and now this. I’m like, you know, like I think it’s a powerful tool, but like all tools, it’s gonna… 

 

It’s going to change everything, but we don’t know how it’s going to change everything. But it’s going to be, you know, the proponents are going to over promise under deliver and eventually it’ll change everything. And so don’t, you know, so there’s, but I think, cause at the end of the day, it’s a tool and we have to learn how to use the tool to maximum effect. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:15:13) 

Exactly. 

 

And you know, the trouble just because it can do something doesn’t mean you should use it. Or it can do more, right? Use the things that were originally intended, but don’t abuse it. And unfortunately, people have a tendency to look for the line of least resistance. So if they know that they can save money or reduce complement because they’re using this tool. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:20) 

Yeah, well, I… 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:15:36) 

You do get what you pay for. And there’s always unintended consequences. And those can really be serious. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:15:43) 

Yeah, and he won’t know what it is for a generation. you know, like I gave a talk on AI webinar a number of months ago, like, and I came up with the seven AI use cases for learning and development. And, but I led the conversation off with a picture of a statue of John Henry in front of a Pennsylvania coal mine. And I go, look, this is not new. 

 

I mean, this technology is new, but every time a new technology comes out, it eventually changes everything, but it takes time because we’ve got to learn how to use it to maximum effect. And so it gets overhyped, under delivered, but in time changes everything. John Henry, the folk story of John Henry, he was a minor. 

 

going up against the steam powered shovel and you he had a race with it and he won the race, but then he died. It was the folklore. And it’s like, but now we live in a world that’s been industrialized. That was the beginning of industrial revolution. now, you know, and so eventually the machines won, but we learned how to use them to maximum effect. And then also what’s the right way for the human, for humans to interact with them and use them. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:16:43) 

Beautiful. 

 

Right. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:04) 

what capacity. so, so it’s going to be it’s going to be interesting because I think it’s a lot that going on now. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:17:11) 

Yeah, I mean, I think 

 

there’s lots of great benefit behind the technology itself. I think if you put it back in the context of service, customer experience and the training, as long as people really understand what all of the different customer groups want and expect when it comes to the service they receive. And they understand what they’re if they understand what the customers like and don’t like. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:17:35) 

Right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:17:36) 

And they are using whatever tools they have to maximize their understanding and deliver a level of service that is better than the customer would get elsewhere. 

 

then I’m all for it. If they decide to use it for the wrong reasons, which is to save money, save, maybe to save time at the expense of the other, then you’re going to run into problems. But as a technology, it could be extraordinary. And the notion of using it for virtual reality and augmented reality in some kinds of training, that’s going to be exceptional as long as there are 

 

properly trained training and development specializes evaluating whatever is going on in there so that they’re designed to enhance learning based on fundamental principles, good fundamental adult learning principles, then yes, by all means use it. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:18:30) 

Yeah, 

 

the other thing I tell people is there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. So at the end of the day, it’s a machine. And what makes everything happen is humans have to do something. so it’ll change things. Some jobs will diminish, some jobs will grow. It’ll change how we interact with things to make the internet has changed a bunch of things. 

 

just go to your local regional mall and see the impact of the internet. But there’s no perpetual motion machine. So it’s to be really interesting. anything else heading in the future for the train bank? What do you got coming down the pipe? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:18:56) 

Thanks. 

 

⁓ 

 

Well, we’ve got a fascinating project coming up with a group that is in STEM. And we’re really looking forward to it because these, you know, so, you know, it’s very much driven around technology and math and science. so the people we’re dealing with are extraordinary people. 

 

And great fun to deal with too. Their head office is in the UK. So that’s a lot of fun, but they’re spread out globally. And so there’s that project. We’ve got to the point where we are taking projects, only what we feel will actually work. So we’re kind of, as clients are contacting us, we are vetting clients. When it comes to the big projects. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:19:43) 

That’s fun. Yeah. 

 

Ha 

 

That’s 

 

a blessed position to be in. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:20:03) 

But 

 

a lot of our stuff, though, we do have a number of organizations that also sell our training. So we have training companies that we’ve licensed to deliver our classroom programs, as well as offer the online certification program. And we have a number of MPOs that use the program and a couple of community colleges that use the program as part of their calendars. So there’s that flow. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:29) 

That’s exciting. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:20:31) 

Yeah, it’s fun. But these are people that are looking for a certification as a customer experience professional and may not necessarily be employed yet. We have other companies that find us and they’re going through the program and then we will, in some cases, set up a branded site for them so that they, and then they have their employees going through the program as… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:20:38) 

All right. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:20:53) 

In some cases, it’s all the employees up front. Then over the course of time, it’s onboarding, then they’re using people, they’re maintaining this philosophy. great. It’s actually, we’ve got several that, it’s really nice. So, in the morning, I boot up and just see what’s happening. And I say, ⁓ they got some new employees. They just sent five people into the course here and they’re training another cohort over here that is community college. so there’s that as well. So there’s the corporate things, which are… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:21:18) 

That’s very cool. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:21:23) 

challenging but stimulating work, but then you have these other things and you know, the end just as a plug for the latitude system. It is so easy to use. Typically the only problems people have tend to be, I forgot my password or for some reason there’s a traffic jam where I’m waiting for the system to give me access to the next module, but you solve most of those problems. So I mean, it’s a beautiful system to work with. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:21:45) 

Yeah. 

 

thank you. I appreciate that. And on our support site, how to reset my password is the number one page, page used. ⁓ 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:21:55) 

Yeah. But the nice 

 

thing about it is, I have them contacting me because when they contact me, I can find out who they are and who their boss is. And then I’ll say, well, maybe I should talk to you. And so we use it as a business relationship development tool. just it’s good to know where our customers are and what they like about the modules. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:13) 

wow, that’s neat. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:22:21) 

Sometimes they say that, it was a great module, but you had a comma in the wrong spot. ⁓ okay. So then we go in and fix it. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:26) 

Let’s go fix it. 

 

Hey, so shifting, so that was really, wow, I learned a lot. So thank you for sharing that. Shifting gears, when you’re not working on the training bank and making it all it can be, know, we’re learning professionals, we love to learn things. Outside of work, what do you like to learn about? What subjects interest you the most and what are you ⁓ doing? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:22:49) 

Music, 

 

mostly music. When COVID hit, I started to teach my granddaughter, she was eight at the time, how to play the ukulele. And then that graduated, then I got her a smaller guitar and then teach her how to play guitar. And now every once a week we get together on Zoom or Teams, can’t remember what it is now. But we get together and… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:22:52) 

What? 

 

Uh-huh. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:23:15) 

sometimes it’s a lesson, other times we just play and replace the music and chat a bit. She’s just 13 now, so you know, and she’s brilliant musician. She plays piano, saxophone, ukulele, guitar. She’s great. Anyway, so I spend a lot of time working through arrangements of songs to come up with stuff and… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:23:24) 

wow. 

 

Alright. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:23:43) 

I also like to play, so I just sit in my little studio and make noise. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:23:48) 

Yeah, in addition to the ukulele, are there other instruments you play? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:23:53) 

Well, did keyboards and piano and mostly guitar. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:23:57) 

I love it. And what style of music do you like to arrange and play? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:24:02) 

Well, 

 

I’m the product of the late 60s, early 70s, so what I can remember from that period. But a lot of it now is things like Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. ⁓ 

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:05) 

Okay. 

 

Yeah. 

 

So do you take 

 

their stuff and rearrange it or do you ⁓ arrange your own? 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:24:20) 

Well, one might say 

 

that just happens organically because I don’t play as well as they do. But yeah, I’ve also got this little music program, it’s called Moises and you can, as long as you Moises, M-O-I-S-E-S, like noises only Moises. But as long as you own, you bought the music, you can upload it to their system, but then you can mute different instruments. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:24:25) 

Hahaha 

 

But once again, Moisty. 

 

more is it? Okay, yeah. 

 

Uh-huh. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:24:49) 

So 

 

you’re actually playing the recording. But for example, if I’m playing my guitar, I can mute the guitar and play along with them. So they’re singing and the bass is there and all of the other instruments are there and I can play along with it. So it makes me feel like a rock star. Right now, I mean, I’ve got this thing, Santana does this piece called Europa, which is a beautiful piece of music. Anyway, I’ll turn him off and put my headphones on because… 

 

Jeff Walter (1:25:00) 

that’s so cool. 

 

huh, yeah. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:25:15) 

Never sounds as good, but anyway, and I’ll play along with that. B.B. King’s got The Thrill is Gone. does a beautiful, some of that stuff I like to 

 

Jeff Walter (1:25:23) 

That’s some great guitar in that. See, you 

 

play the lead when you… That is so cool that you can upload a song and mute the different instruments and then play along with the band. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:25:31) 

Yeah. ⁓ 

 

I used to have a fairly good singing voice, but unfortunately over time it has lost some of its range, like most of its range. And so it’s nice to be able to hear Stevie Nicks sing when I’m playing a Fleetwood Naxx song rather than me trying to, you know. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:25:42) 

Yeah. 

 

Yes. 

 

So the tool is called Moises. That is so cool. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:25:57) 

Moises, yeah, M-O-I-S-E-S. you just 

 

see, there are different levels of subscription. This one allows you to upload up to five of the instruments, but you can get the professional one, which gives you massive amounts of control over the instrumentation and everything. And it’s only like 40 or $50 a year, and it’s worth every penny, because, you know, but it’s a great, simple tool. so, you know. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:26:20) 

⁓ that’s not that that’s, wow. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:26:27) 

So yeah, so that’s So other than that, I just work on gaining weight and, 

 

Jeff Walter (1:26:28) 

That’s where we go. That’s fun. That’s fun. 

 

You’re putting your mind to it. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:26:36) 

Yeah, it’s not that I do it intentionally. It’s just every time I eat, it seems to just add another pound or six. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:26:47) 

But 

 

well, before we wrap up Ray, is there anything else you want to share? It’s been a really educational session. It’s been awesome. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:26:53) 

Well. 

 

I think 

 

with all the turmoil that’s going on in business these days and the unpredictability of what’s going on in these days, and a lot of it being generated by unnamed persons, one of the things that businesses are so focused on is, okay, like how are all these things going to affect my bottom line and supply chains? And they’re beginning to forget about the impact this is having on their customers. 

 

What customers want and expect when it comes to the service they receive is quite simple. They want providers that are helpful, empathetic, able, responsive, and trustworthy. Each of those dimensions of service requires very specific deliverable skills and understanding. So service providers are viewed by their customer as being helpful, empathetic, able. They have heart. That’s spelled with an anachronism. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:27:29) 

you 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:27:53) 

These days, everybody is so focused on the chaos, and we talked about that a while ago, they’re forgetting about their customers. And I just want people to recognize that ensuring that your service providers, your entire organization is focused on the customer experience is a business, a profit strategy. And right now, this is when you need to reinforce it and invest in it. Because if you wait, 

 

for things to improve, you will have lost so many customers that it’s gonna take a long time to get new ones. Because people are gonna go shopping for the best price. If they don’t think that they can rely on how well you serve them and they trust you, they’ll just go shopping. So right now it’s a matter of how do you make sure that you retain the customers you have, because those are the ones that are the most profitable long-term. And if it starts with some training, give us a call. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:28:50) 

I think that’s a great ⁓ way to wrap it up. Ray, thank you so much. Like I said, I enjoyed the conversation. I’ve learned a lot. Yeah, let’s do another one another time. It was a lot of fun. We’ll take in a different direction, talk about some other training stuff. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:28:57) 

I did too. We should do this more often. This is great fun. I like this. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Yeah, pick 

 

a different topic instead of us talking about our stuff. Let’s talk about stuff. Anyway, yeah, I enjoyed it. 

 

Jeff Walter (1:29:11) 

Yeah, that 

 

was a lot of fun. So thank you for all for your time. And to everybody out there, thank you for listening. We enjoy it and we’re having a great time. I’m having a great time. Ray, thank you so much. 

 

RAY MILLER OF THE TRAINING BANK (1:29:26) 

my pleasure. My pleasure.