Customer Experience (CX) is key to an organization’s success. It is all the rave today and organizations are reporting that they are heavily focusing on and investing in it. How are the results? Are these investments paying off in form of hard ROI or offering feel good soft ROI? Does CX have the potential to be a profit center?

Contributors

• • Steve Zoltick, CIO, Hasbro
  • Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer, TGI FRIDAYS

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:23]:

Hello and welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. The topic for today is The Hard ROI of Customer Experience  , and I have with me Sherif Mityas, who’s Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays. Hey, Sharif. How are you?

Sherif Mityas [00:00:41]:

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:43]:

Oh, great and honored to have you on our show here. And we were talking just before we got started about a great customer experience we have had quite a few years ago, and I keep going to your different chain restaurants that are there all across the country. When we talk about customer experience, I’m sure that’s what kept your organization going and growing and be successful. And we are all in different organizations working on it, focusing on it, and investing in it. The things which we have to look at is customer service or customer experience totally should be looked at from ROI standpoint and that too only the hard ROI or we are looking at it as a good investment but it’s going to give us something which is some attaboys from the customers or from other people who get to know about us. What is customer experience development buying us and if we had to really get to measure the hard ROI, what will help us increase that ROI? So that said, Sharif, when you look at this whole concept of customer experience, that can be created by us saying something or not saying something, doing something or not doing something. What do you think is a mix, an ideal mix, which will allow the customer experience you provide to keep going up?

Sherif Mityas [00:02:18]:

Yeah. I think customer experience gets used a lot, that term. And at the end of the day, it’s really about putting all the pieces together for a guest. From a consumer perspective, it’s not just about the price. It’s not just about the product. It’s not just about the service. Each one of those might be a trigger. I might want to come into a location, into a restaurant, into a store because I saw a hot price, because I like a particular salesperson or server. But at the end of the day, true loyalty only comes from having all those pieces working really in lockstep with each other. The experience that a consumer has, and that the loyalty that it then engenders, the statistics on this are through the roof. If someone comes into a restaurant the first time and they have a great experience, so the food, the service, the ambiance, the value, everything is working together, I have a 40% chance of bringing that guest back in. If they come back in the second time and they have an equally great experience, all the pieces working together, I have another 40% chance of winning that guest. But on the third visit, if I can equally create a great experience, that number now jumps to 80%. I have now created a loyal guest. And there’s no harder ROI to measure than loyalty from a guest perspective coming through increased sales, increased frequency, increased engagement?

Sanjog Aul [00:04:03]:

So the result is what you look at to measure. So the person may or may not leave a feedback form for you, but if the person returns, you are looking at that as a clear measure of you did something right in the previous visit. Right?

Sherif Mityas [00:04:21]:

Absolutely. Especially in our industry. I mean, if you drew a five mile circus circle around every Fridays, there’s 200 places that a guest can have another food or beverage. So how am I creating the right experience for a guest to disregard 200 other places and come to me and come to me frequently? That’s a great measure. Regardless of what everyone says, whether they talk about it, it’s really footsteps. Am I creating more footsteps? Am I creating loyal footsteps back to my locations that comes from providing a great guest experience consistently? It can’t be one off. It has to be a consistent type of experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:09]:

So it is almost, a magic that you pull if you’re able to do it given the constraints and the variables that you’re dealing with. So without divulging your secret sauce, are there some core fundamentals that you depend on? And in order to make those fundamentals to be operationalized and stay consistent, do you, in some form or fashion, leverage technology?

Sherif Mityas [00:05:39]:

The only way to leverage the only way to pull this off is leveraging technology. I mean, if you have one restaurant or you have one store and you’re the sole proprietor, you can manage everything. You’re always behind the desk. You’re always at the front door. You’re always helping that guest. It’s personal service. You can manage that. You don’t need loads of technology or capabilities. But when you have 900 locations and you serve over 500,000 people every single day, you have to be able to leverage technology to provide that consistency at scale. To be able to put in the right processes, to be able to put the right training in for your team, to be able to understand who’s coming through your door and what they want and don’t want. We utilize AI technology to really understand with all the data that we collect not just who is a millennial coming through our door versus a Baby Boomer or a soccer mom in Atlanta. We understand John versus Mary. And when you get to that level of specificity and that level of personalization, you’re creating that single store opportunity. You’re creating the mindset in the organization that every guest that walks through our door is important and is different and requires a unique experience, but you enable that by understanding who they are through the use of technology.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:09]:

And when you do that using AI, you have to profile them somehow. And while people have gotten used to using some services for free and they don’t mind divulging their whereabouts and what they consume, etcetera, at the same time, there are quite a few people who also find it creepy if you cross a certain line, that virtual line, which we don’t know what that is in many cases.

Sherif Mityas [00:07:40]:

Right.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:41]:

So when you’re creating this or collecting this data at the very source, you have to be cautious that you don’t cross that privacy or that alienation line, if you will. What are you doing to be proactively aware of the sentiment that prevails for a given customer group or, for that matter, an individual customer? 

Sherif Mityas [00:08:08]:

So for us, we find the more upfront you are with consumers, the more they’re actually willing to give you permission to give you their data to have you use their data. And so we don’t come up and say, I’m going to collect your data and use it in nefarious ways. We come up and say, if you give us this, I’m going to make life easier for you somehow. I’m going to make it more convenient for you when you want to place an order, when you want to make a reservation, when you walk into our restaurant. Wouldn’t you like to have your favorite drink waiting for you? Would that make you feel special like a VIP? Would you like to try our latest dishes? Because I know you like ribs, and I have a great new rib dish. So I’m going to give you a sneak peek at it. Would you like that type of personalized engagement? If you do, and some guests say no thank you, and we respect that. But some guests say yes, absolutely. And we collect that information, then we use it to make life better for them, make it more convenient or special or personalized. And so I think the more upfront you are and really telling guests not only that I want to collect your data but why I’m going to use it to make something better for you, we found guests are much more engaged and much more willing to share that information and have us be part of personalizing their experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:48]:

So one is to use technology to customize a product or give them privileged access or a sneak peek like you mentioned. Another is having a person reach the restaurant because you intrigued them and had a pull factor. They sit down and they are handled by a server who has had a bad day or has personality issues, and that’s the last mile or in fact, the last 10 feet, if you will.

Sherif Mityas [00:10:16]:

Right.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:18]:

What do you do to control it or rather, going beyond the word control, rather empower that server to even compensate for any shortcoming you might have had in your technology or in your other product strategy, if you will. Because those humans are the ones who are going to create the experience for you.

Sherif Mityas [00:10:40]:

Yeah. There’s no question. At the end of the day, no matter how much technology you can put in, we will always be a people-first social brand. We will never have kiosks taking our guests’ orders. That interaction with the team member, with the hostess, with the bartender is critical for us. But to that same vein, how we use technology is still important. I’ll give you an example. We have the ability to look at the performance of our servers. We look at how they perform with real guest metrics, with tip percentages, with a number of data elements that allows us to see who are our best servers. And so from a scheduling perspective, we can actually schedule our best servers during those time frames where we have a lot of traffic, Friday and Saturday nights. We want our best servers out there providing that great Fridays experience. And so we’re able to leverage technology. But even from an interaction perspective, we’re piloting a new AI-driven virtual mixologist. This is a tool that allows the guests sitting at our bar to create a one-of-a-kind drink just for them, just that night, just at a Fridays bar. And that interaction that occurs between the technology and the guest and the bartender, because the bartender is still making the drink, the AI is helping create the recipe based on the taste and profile of the guest. But it’s that combination of guest, bartender and technology that’s creating an entirely new experience. It’s leveraging and making our bartenders actually better. They’re making one-of-a-kind innovative drinks. They love it. They love getting the second drink from the guest because the guest is enamored with a new tool, and everyone sees the benefit of that technology from an experiential perspective. That’s really utilizing technology not to replace, but to enhance that human interaction that needs to occur in our establishments.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:51]:

So hospitality and the restaurant business is not for the faint of heart. Margins can be very thin. And you, on one hand, have to pull people in by giving them good deals, which also has an impact on your bottom line, and then you have to keep innovating in your menu and your other offerings so that the person stays or, in fact, not only stays but tells three or four other people. So is your customer experience primarily to generate revenue or word-of-mouth so that it makes these customers become your evangelists, which in turn offsets your expenses in marketing, if you will? Because a satisfied and a vocal customer could be your best evangelist. So the customer experience that you work on—the strategies and the way you create it—are you actively or strategically working towards that versus putting more technology in, creating those smaller moments of wow, which you can only do so much with innovation? So they will not be as sustainable.

Sherif Mityas [00:14:10]:

Right. Yeah. And so we’ve taken really a dual path approach on that. We clearly believe going to the root and personalizing the guest experience drives loyalty, which not only drives their loyalty, but everyone tells their friends. Someone just had a great experience at Fridays. They just made their own one-of-a-kind drink. They are telling people about that. They’re posting that drink on social media. It’s clearly part of our marketing effort to create these evangelists. And we will continue to use technology to find ways to do that like the AI-driven bartender. There’s no question those have a place. But similarly, we have to, at scale, do a better job of managing the overall profitability of the restaurant. There are ways again to do that from a guest and a four-wall efficiency perspective. So from a guest perspective, I’ll give you an example. It’s understanding the specific guest. If I know a guest orders on Tuesdays at 07:00 and they order online because they don’t have time to come in the restaurant, they’re picking up food for their family. It’s soccer night, and they have to get home. If I know that and I know what they like, I know they have 2 kids based on their past purchasing behavior. I know the time of day. I know how they interact with me. If I send them a message, an in-app message, a half an hour before, I know they should be ordering. And I fill their basket with exactly what I believe the AI tool is telling me that individual should want for him and his family. And I don’t even put a discount in. I don’t have to discount anything. I’m just timely with the right content, with the right message, at the right time. I get people to click yes. I get people to put their thumb down and order from me by just reminding them and making it easy. So that’s one way that I can use technology to create an extra visit during the week without a discount because I know who these people are and I’m targeting them in the right and personalized fashion. Now contrast that with managing my profitability inside my restaurant through the use of technology. I have an AI tool that sits like an angel on my General Manager’s shoulder. Imagine a tool that understands and learns the most efficient way to run a specific location. It understands the traffic patterns. It understands the menu items and the mix that gets sold in that location. It understands buying. It understands scheduling. It understands waste. And it creates basically the right decisions at the right time for the General Manager. So I don’t want that General Manager sitting behind his office computer for 4 hours a day going through spreadsheets. I want them walking the floor. I want them with their team members coaching them. I want them talking to guests. And when they have to make a critical decision, their phone alerts them and says you need to buy this now or you need to schedule this person for next week. It’s creating decisions in real time so that my manager can be out on the floor not only creating great guest experiences again, but running the most efficient restaurants from a profitability perspective. Again, marrying the two pieces together of creating a great experience with managing the profitability behind the scenes.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:47]:

If you were to look at the different ideas that you mentioned and frankly, this is very fascinating. This is like a Star Trek version of restaurant management, right, what you just mentioned. So all of these have to be implemented. Yes, training has to be done and the mindset of the people who are going to adopt it including manager or the server, all of them have to be brought on board. So let’s talk about the execution challenge of adopting whether AI or process improvement and doing it with people who may not always be that savvy or as amenable to this drastic shift in the way you may want to run a restaurant or to serve a customer or use technology because they somehow have a chip on their shoulder that, hey, I have been a server for 20 years, who are you to tell me? Or I have managed a restaurant for so many years, who are you to tell me what to do better? I’m talking people issues. What is your approach to that?

Sherif Mityas [00:18:53]:

Yeah. It’s one of the things that is critical to any implementation. Technology doesn’t exist or live or function by itself. For us, it was really going back to showing the value at each step in the journey. That’s really what this was, was a journey. We didn’t flip a light switch and have all these cool new tools for our guests in our restaurants. It was, let’s create a use case. Let’s focus on a specific improvement area and let’s figure out what we’re going to measure. Let’s figure out a pilot set of groups or stores or people that we’re going to measure it with and let’s build the case. You have to start small. You have to take baby steps in this area especially in dealing with some of these new technologies. And because not just the machine has to learn. It’s the people that have to learn. They have to be in lockstep or it will never work. And so we took baby steps. We took small groups of pilot restaurants or small groups of individuals, and we made specific use cases. Here’s the metric we’re going to measure. Does it meet it? If it exceeds it, great. Let’s talk about it. Let’s get people on board with it. Let’s put together a plan on how we’re going to roll it out that makes sense for our organization. Shoving technology down anyone’s throat is never going to work. This has to be a build. And from a momentum perspective, what we found is once we started taking these baby steps, there becomes a pull. You don’t have to push it anymore. These 10 stores looked at what those 10 stores were doing in the pilot and go, I want those results. I want that. And so they started throwing out emails going, when do I get that? So it’s that kind of groundswell of seeing the results. Again, going back to your initial question, this has to be a hard ROI. You have to show that something moved the needle, that these things moved a metric that’s important. And whether that metric is top-line sales or traffic comp or even reducing waste and fraud inside the four walls by making better decisions, all those components impact people’s salaries. Everyone’s bonused on some of these metrics. And so as soon as you start impacting people and they’re saying, okay, I can see if I do this, I can get better results and I can measure that in a hard ROI, it actually makes my compensation better. It makes my environment better. And so that pull that starts to occur is really the natural effect of this going forward. But you can’t come out of the gates pushing this down anyone’s throat. It has to be a build. It has to be small use cases where you’re proving the value at every step of the way.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:52]:

So you did so much when you initially got started with it or your organization got started at some level. What was the conversation? Were they looking at the upfront dollars which will be spent in even building the foundation and counting pennies? And was that something which made them only pick up initiatives which will directly bring dollars home or new customers or existing customers? Or was it, let’s think like a venture capitalist. Let’s invest in a bunch of different pilots to see what works. Let’s have a sandbox. Given that margins are thin and if you’re trying to grow, every organization has those times when you are trying to revive yourself or, of course, take yourself to the next level. Was the discussion about money first, experience as a means to an end, or let’s only focus on experience and money will follow?

Sherif Mityas [00:22:51]:

Yeah. The way we thought about it upfront, that kind of threw out the initial mantra. When I started, we were 50 years in operation. So we’ve been around since 1965. And so the mantra I threw on the wall was, we need to start thinking about how we do things like being a 50-year-old startup. And so to your point, it’s not thinking about this is my budget and here’s what I have to spend and I can only do so many initiatives. It’s if I was a startup in a restaurant chain, what would I be thinking about? What would I be doing? And that gravitates naturally not to making just something that makes the first dollar. It gravitates to I need people, I need guests. That’s the foundation of anything from a B2C perspective. You need consumers. And so thinking about acquisition is critical. And again, it’s not a matter of acquiring people that have never heard of Fridays. Everyone’s heard of TGI Fridays. The mantra we threw out was thinking like that, what’s plus one? And we called that the plus one initiative. So it’s existing people, existing guests. How do I get them to come one more time, one more visit, one more item in their basket? What’s the plus one? And then new guests or new demographics, how do I get them to come that first time, plus one? And so that’s starting. Even though it’s a financial thing you can measure, you can measure a $1 increase, you can measure a plus one visit. It starts with the consumer. It starts with what do I need to do from a customer journey perspective to create the right acquisition, to create the right pull, to create the right experience that someone is going to give me plus one. And we started there. And then again, we created more tactical use cases under that strategy that said, okay, with this set of consumers, I really want to try to get a $1 increase. What’s the experience that I have to give to get a $1 increase or to get a plus one visit? And then I can measure it. But that’s the outcome of these things. The going-in premise is I need people. I need to have great customer experiences to get great customers that are going to come back again over and over again, which then engenders loyalty, which then engenders a sustainable business model. Without that, all the money you’d spend in the world on technology and people and process doesn’t mean a thing.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:42]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. What a fantastic conversation we’ve had so far. So let’s take this and use it as a baseline to have discussion around the very execution, the way it happened for TGI Fridays and, Sharif, you can explain how you rallied the troops together with a company which is 65 years old and some old timers, some fresh blood, different generations, different technologies, I’m sure different locations and cultures. How was that brought together for it to start seeming like one brand, one experience, one place where we are all going like a swarm of ants? How did you maneuver alongside working with your leadership? Was this only done at the ivory tower or was it your people first and leaders followed the people? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:37]:

Welcome back listeners. So, Sharif, when we look at all the different successes you’ve had and you shared a bit of your journey on how you got the technology put in there, and then you discussed at the top what needs to be done. Now let’s talk about execution a little bit. So if you pulled out the chapters of your playbook, would you say the next step was discussion with people who would make it happen all the way to the operational staff? How did you go about getting the 65-year-old company to think like a startup?

Sherif Mityas [00:29:16]:

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, it has to start again with the people. The approach we took is first, you have to make sure you have the right people on board. We really looked around and I think when you want to really look at transforming an organization, you have to look at the experience of the people that you have on the bus. For us, one of the key first steps was we can’t just have people that have lived and breathed in the restaurant industry their entire career. And so we went out and we got people from airlines and automotive and hotels and other retail and even telecommunications and really started to build a team that came from different disciplines, from different schools of thought, from different ways of thinking about transformations, not just on a digital side, but organizationally. That really helps when you infuse the organization with that kind of new blood and new thinking. You have to have different people in the room having these conversations, not just at the senior level, but more importantly at the doer level. That’s where some of the best ideas come from. We also then looked externally as well. You can’t just always work with the big technology groups out there. You have to work with some startups. You have to maybe find the next two guys in a garage that have some really interesting ideas that no one else is thinking about that can infuse some of that new thinking into the organization. And so that’s really where we started. Then it was going out and talking to guests, talking to our team members, our restaurant managers, and really trying to identify not just what the guest journey looks like, but what are those pain points that our folks internally were feeling when we started this journey? What were they running into saying, man, if you could fix this or if we could relook at how we do X, I think I could do a better job of serving my guests. So really kind of collecting that information. It was a lot of fact finding in those first several months as well as level setting the playing field. We have 900 locations. There’s a lot of different things going on out there. We need to really understand what was happening, who was doing what, not just from an organizational and process perspective, but technology as well. So we spent a lot of time really just cleaning up what is the data that we have out there? How are we going to collect it? How are we going to stitch it together? No AI or machine learning tool is going to work without having good data. Garbage in, garbage out. And so we spent a lot of time really just making sure that the foundation of what we want to do from a technology and from a people and a process perspective were really rock solid, before we even started playing around with what’s next and new things. 

Sanjog Aul [00:32:22]:

When you did so much, and I’m sure the work is not done yet, because this could be a continuous improvement type of process. How would you make this sustainable? Because it should transcend leadership. It should transcend change of guard. It should weather the downturns and economic or other sociopolitical issues, which always shake the restaurant industry or any hospitality type of organization. Where is the resilience going to come from?

Sherif Mityas [00:33:01]:

I think for two things that I’m pretty happy with what we’ve done. One is when we first started and we had to do this because we had to create enough critical mass is we actually created a separate team. We kind of had, for no better term, the digital team that was kind of leading this transformation for us. This group of folks from internal that we had and external were kind of the core group that kind of spread the gospel. They kind of went everywhere, talked to everyone, led the big initiatives. What I’m most happy about for that team is that it no longer exists. We disbanded it because all the individuals from that team still work at Fridays, but they work in various functions. It’s embedded now. Some of that team is in marketing. Some of that team is in operations. Some of that team is in sourcing, in supply chain. That team is now where they need to be, which is embedded in how those functions think about what they need to do. It’s embedded in how they think about when they’re doing planning. What are the key initiatives? It’s not well the digital team is telling me we need to do this. It’s no, I’m marketing and this is what we’re going to do and I have the right people on my team to do that. And so that to me really helps solidify to your question that this transformation, this innovation mindset will continue by embedding it into the core groups of our organization. And then secondly, I think the way we think now about engaging with external partners is also a key part of this. We have basically a mindset now and really a way of doing business where we’re always looking for new people. We hold a quarterly Shark Tank where we invite five to six startups to come and talk to us. And it’s basically locked in the stone that we’re always going to do this not only every quarter, but we’re always going to pick somebody and do something with them. Try a pilot. May not go anywhere, but we’re going to try something so that every quarter, we’re at least trying one thing new. Always trying to think about innovation. Always trying to think about what’s next. And then at every end of year, when we do the planning for the following year, I bring in all our key vendors and I basically have them take off their vendor hat and they become Fridays employees for the day. And those folks have to think together collectively what are going to be the key efforts, the key things that we need to do as the Fridays brand to continue to innovate, to continue to differentiate and stay in front of our competition. And that is now embedded in how we operate. And to me, it’s one of those key things that will continue to allow us to be innovative moving forward.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:16]:

So when you started this, your metric was plus one, and that’s a lovely metric. It allows people to not feel that it’s a herculean task they have to achieve and they don’t lose steam going in.

Sherif Mityas [00:36:30]:

Yes.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:31]:

When you started it, great way to keep them motivated. But now that you are making quantum leaps compared to what you may have otherwise envisioned, what’s your metric now? Are you thinking plus 4, plus 10?

Sherif Mityas [00:36:47]:

No. That’s the beauty of plus one. No matter what level they’re at, I just want to get one more. If everyone’s different and we want to personalize John versus Mary. And at the end of the day, no matter if John’s at 10 visits a year and Mary’s at 4, I don’t need them to have Mary at 10. I just need to have Mary at 5. If I can continue to drive that across all my guests, to continue to drive always considering Fridays for one more visit, for one more order, we win. This is a highly competitive sector. We sit in casual dining. It’s pretty oversaturated. So this is a share-stealing game. If they’re coming to me plus one time, they’re going to a Chili’s or an Applebee’s or a Buffalo Wild Wings one time less. And to me, that’s how we win. That’s how we continue to stay in front and continue to steal share in our sector.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:02]:

Let’s take a quick break, again, listeners. When we come back, let’s look at the risks that may be there when you are trying to introduce this plus one concept in your organization and you use that to improve the customer experience, which will of course give you the ROI that you’re looking for. So in this fast-paced world, we have a number of risks we have to keep in mind which is like putting brakes on a Ferrari. You want the Ferrari to run as fast as possible but you want the brakes just in case there is a risk of toppling, because there is a pace at which a company can grow or move forward without making it either a long diminishing returns or somewhere that creates a huge amount of risk. So let’s talk about it, staying grounded, staying real. What does it take to create that plus one customer experience forever and ever, but not losing the focus on keeping yourself sustainable. Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:16]:

Welcome back again, listeners. So we spoke about what good things you can do to improve the ROI and get everyone all gung-ho about this plus one idea. So, Sharif, when you look at the risk side of the equation, which is also an important area to consider, what is the math looking like? Is it too trivial for you to care about or is it becoming big because in the digital world, security is a big issue, and risk is a big issue, and privacy is a big issue? What does your math look like as you’re going in this plus one race?

Sherif Mityas [00:41:53]:

Yes. Great question. I think as business people, we always have to minimize and manage the risk of anything that we do. The risk for us is twofold. One, as you mentioned, is clearly, as we utilize more and more data, as we utilize more and more of these personalization and technology tools, protecting our guest data and the risk of anything happening with that data is always at the forefront of our mind and obviously a key pillar of everything that we do to ensure its security. That risk is always there. It’s something you always have to be wary of and manage and be diligent. The other risk from a business perspective is what is the risk of potentially going too far, which is what we talked about earlier, what is the risk of utilizing too much technology? From a business perspective, people do spend a lot of time on their devices. We live in a technologically enabled world. There is a race to utilizing technology as quickly as possible. But we’re still people-first. So being able to manage not taking away that human element that would impact the guest experience, where technology detracted versus enabled that human-to-human connection that we still need to have in our restaurants, that’s the line we have to continue to manage and de-risk so that we’re always thinking about technology to support and not to hinder. It can really think about, again, back to that initial piece, which is do no harm. From a guest experience perspective, it has to be perfect. If technology can help that, great, up to a point. But if it crosses that line and you find that it’s impacting a guest experience, then it’s really wasted investment and all for naught. And that’s what we have to continue to manage from a risk perspective: not always trying to race for the coolest, newest, shiny new toy. We’re always going back and asking that first question: is it right for the guest? If it doesn’t pass question one, I don’t care how cool it is. It’s not going inside our restaurants.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:45]:

What did you have to unlearn for the right reasons so you could, in a successful way, move forward towards this plus one mantra and make it a reality?

Sherif Mityas [00:45:00]:

I think for us, it was we had to unlearn or relearn how we think about what guests want. The unlearning part is everyone has a certain thought process, especially growing up in the restaurant or retail industry. Everyone has a certain gut feel on what they think the guest wants. Here’s what I think my guest wants. The first thing you have to get out in every meeting is I don’t really care what anyone around the table thinks. And I’ve told my team that. Someone will say I think this and someone else says I think that and with all due respect, I don’t care. I care only what our guests think. Let’s find out what they think. Let’s find out what they want, and then let’s do that. The first sin of any of this is thinking you know more than the guest. You think you know more than the consumer. You almost have to unlearn what you think you know because our guests and consumers in general are changing so quickly. What they want, what they need, what they’re attracted to, what creates a great loyal guest is different next week than it was a week ago. So it’s really unlearning what you thought you knew and putting your trust and faith in guests and what they want and learning from them to drive every decision you make.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:42]:

If you were to do this all over again, or in addition, what certain leadership style would you propose to other listeners who may be in a situation where they’re trying to find their own formula of plus one and deliver that delightful customer experience? What would be some of that advice you’d like to give given your journey and what you’ve learned in the process as a leader? 

Sherif Mityas [00:47:10]:

Yeah. I think 3 things. One, surround yourself with different points of view and smarter people than yourself. There’s so much going on right now, both internal and external. Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Don’t think you’re the expert. Allow yourself to listen and get very different viewpoints, backgrounds, experiences and data and let that guide your course. Number two, start small again. Don’t think you have to go out of the gate with something that’s going to transform the organization. These things are built brick at a time. These things are built small and then grow into something that you never thought could exist. They get bigger on their own, and allow the journey to build over time. Don’t feel you have to get there overnight. And the third thing I would say is always ask the 3 questions. For us, the 3 questions are, and they go in order: is it right for the consumer? Can we execute it? And third, can we make money at it? If something passes those 3 gates, then you probably have a winning initiative or effort on your hands. But it has to pass those 3 gates in that order, because if it doesn’t pass question one, question two and three are meaningless.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:49]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Sharif, for sharing your valuable insights on how organizations can fundamentally rethink and unlearn what they’ve been doing about customer experience and align their people, their organizations, their policies, their processes, and their budgets to make sure that they create that delight for their customers, which results in some hard ROI. Thanks so much again, Sharif.

Sherif Mityas [00:49:17]:

Thank you for having me. 

Sanjog Aul [00:49:20]:

Thanks once again and listeners, hope you enjoyed. I liked a whole lot, learned a lot of things here. Please like us on Facebook, search for CTN CIO Talk Network and also please follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CIO Talk Network. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week. Take care and God bless.