Eighty percent of businesses believe they deliver a superior client experience but only eight percent of their customers agree. Is this a delusion, or an urgent gap in perception?

Nikki is joined by two of her new favourite people, Erica Wood of Client Journey Advisors and Katrina Scarlett of Scarlett & Co., to react to the data, argue with the word "superior," and pull apart why so many founder-led businesses have convinced themselves they are delivering something their customers are walking away from.

What you'll hear in this episode

• Why the word "superior" is a red flag on its own, and what it tells you about a leadership team's self-awareness before you even look at the numbers
• The Yelp problem: how a five-star rating means something completely different to your CEO than it does to your sales team, and why an uncalibrated rubric turns every dashboard into decoration
• How to design a feedback loop that actually catches problems, including why you should incentivize the act of giving feedback, not the rating itself
• The "I sure fucking hope so" test for figuring out whether what you are calling a benefit is actually just the bare minimum

About My Guests

Erica Wood

Erica Wood is the founder of Client Journey Advisors, where she helps service-based businesses turn client experience into their biggest growth strategy. With more than 20 years spanning pediatric healthcare, virtual staffing, and founder-led service businesses, Erica has built her career on one belief: retention is not an accident, it is designed.

Website: https://www.clientjourneyadvisors.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericadwood/
Free resource mentioned on the episode — Client Experience Audit Checklist

Katrina Scarlett

Katrina Scarlett is a partnership-centric Client Experience Strategist and founder of Scarlett & Co. She works with relationship-driven founders to get ahead of client-related issues before they ever happen by helping them rethink their client experience as an intentional business strategy.

Website: https://scarlettandco.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrinascarlett/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/scarlettandcoltd
Free resource mentioned on the episode — 17 Ways to Reduce Friction & Frustration in Your Client Work: https://scarlettandco.ca/reduce-friction/

For Your Enjoyment:

Lean More About Entreprenistas

The Conversations Founders Avoid That Are Costing You Your Best People (and Your Best Clients) ft. Lia Garvin

What Is Customer Experience and Why Does It Matter for Your Business?

How to Layer Surprise and Delight For a Big Payoff (Without a Big Budget or a Big System)

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about.

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't.

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession

What actually happens between the yes on the sales page and the moment the engagement falls apart two weeks later?

Nikki opens this episode with a five-figure cautionary tale, the kind most founders have lived through on both sides of the invoice, and uses it to unpack the first paradigm shift in the Would Recommend Standard: Would Buy.

This is part two of the Would Recommend Standard deep-dive series and the follow-up to What Disney, Lego, and 11 Madison Park Know About Growing a Business.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• The bait-and-switch story that made Nikki rethink what a working "yes" really looks like
• Why Promise is not a tagline or a mission statement, and how The Ritz-Carlton's laminated card turns a standard into a decision-making tool
• How Ikea engineered every step from front door to soft-serve on purpose and how you can do the same
• Why an ideal client avatar built on age, income, and zip code is a filter setting on a Meta ad account, not a Person
• What changes across marketing, delivery, and retention when Promise, Path, and Person are firing together

The yes at the sales page is easy but the yes at renewal is the one that means your business is working.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about.

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't.

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession

Nikki has been going to business events since she was five (retail-exec dad, family vacations spent at produce marketing conventions with 40,000 of her closest friends), she spent a decade running them, and she once managed a half-million-dollar-a-year event portfolio.

So when someone in a recent peer mastermind asked what everyone had seen at events that they loved and wanted to steal, she lit up like a kid at a LEGO store.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why a two-minute cell-phone walkthrough of your venue does more for guest anxiety than anything else
• The checkout-form question that surfaced a breastfeeding mom, a hearing-impaired guest, and a wheelchair user before any of them walked in the door
• The "recovery corner" concept from an Austin biohacking event that Nikki still thinks about ten years later

An event is a customer experience that just happens to have a start time and an end time; most of the work that decides how it feels happens before anyone walks in the room.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about.

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't.

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession