Episode 23: How to Leverage Customer Support Excellence to Build Your Brand

In episode 23 to kick of 2023 of the Kadence Beat, we take a look at how exemplary customer support affects our perception of a brand, whether it is an airline, fast food, or clothing company. We talk about Kadence’s philosophy on customer support and how it began from an empathetic perspective when founder Ben Ritner started the company. Everyone at Kadence does support, and we talk about how customer interaction informs both our devs and our marketing team to be more effective in meeting market needs. 

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Timestamps & Links

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 News about Kadence Blocks 3.0 Beta
• 1:54 Jake Pfohl’s amazing video showcasing what’s new in Kadence Blocks 3.0
• 4:07 Examples of outstanding customer support include United Airlines, Nordstrom, Chick-Fil-A, In-N-Out, Trader Joe’s and REI
• 14:32 Great support comes from support policy & how leadership sets a standard
• 18:43 What made Ben set Kadence’s policy of above and beyond support
• 19:59 How customer support informs development decisions
• 23:46 Community support and support from the community
• 26:25 Marketing and customer support go hand-in-hand
• 27:53 The cost of customer support, and the cost of NOT doing support well
• 29:30 Good customer support is essential to the brand
• 30:06 Even if you are a content creator, you have a community to support
• 32:39 Anyone can be a content creator (the YouTube videos about LastPass)

Transcript

Kathy: Welcome to episode 23 for 2023. Happy New Year, you guys.

Hannah: Happy New Year.

Ben: Yeah, Happy New Year.

Hannah: How convenient that we planned episode 23 on the first podcast of 2023. I didn’t even know that we did that. Kathy, you’re amazing.

Kathy: It’s the magic of marketing. I don’t know how these things happen sometimes.

It’s definitely fun. That last episode that we had where we did the livestream with Adam on YouTube, that was so much fun. That was just like the icing on the cake of 2022 working with you guys. I just feel like Kadence had an amazing year, and I’m so excited for what we have coming up next.

Hannah: Totally.

Ben: Yep. Very excited to come into this year. I think it’s gonna be a really good.

Kathy: Yeah, I think so, too. And you have a little bit of news, Ben, with Kadence Blocks 3.0 beta that just came out.

Ben: Yep. Yeah, you can get it now from one of our landing pages. We’ll post a link. this is not something to use on a production site, but it is gonna give people, a chance to play around with it and see really.

I think part of it is gonna ease people’s mind on like the backward compatibility part that we’re really, really working to make sure that this is not, a chore for you once it pushes live. Like you’ll just literally be able to go live when it’s released and nothing will change in your site, but you will have a whole bunch of extra, cool features, a new user interface, and I’m really excited to get people using it. we’ve already gotten some feedback, and I’ve been going through that this morning, we’ll even have a next version of the first version of a beta release out today.

Kathy: Today. Wow. Super exciting. That’s awesome.

That’s really cool. And Hannah, did you see that Jake Pfohl, one of our good friends who’s very active in the Kadence group, did you see what he did last night? Ben releases it and I was like…

Hannah: in maybe six hours. I don’t know. I was like, Jake, you’re a wizard. He has this 25 minute video out showing all the new features and Talking about it, and I’m like, Jake, you’re amazing. But I also have no idea how he managed to do that so quickly.

Kathy: No idea. It’s just like, did he forego dinner? Did he like just lock himself in a room and really had to study, had to study an application that has a lot of different changes in it and identify where all of those changes were.

I don’t know how he did it. Secret. I’m going to be watching it. Marketing people? We’ll be watching this to learn from you, Jake. So thank you so much for making our job a little bit easier. You are amazing. So I am super excited about that and so excited for being able to release this fully so that everybody can start using all of these amazing tools right in their WordPress dashboard.

I’m just seeing so many more people coming into the Kadence community and getting really excited about working with WordPress, with Kadence, that it really is changing a lot of people’s experiences with using the block editor, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Ben.

Ben: Yeah, it’s exciting.

And this is a really good launching pad to start the year off because yeah, from here we do a whole lot of new things, new blocks and stuff that are gonna build on top of it. So getting this structure in place it’s really exciting for me, this means the next phase of like innovation gets to come into blocks where we start creating new stuff and that’s gonna be really fun.

Kathy: That’s so cool. I know the form block isn’t a part of this initial beta release. Is it eventually gonna be a part of 3.0, or is it gonna be like a 3.* type of thing?

Ben: The plan is still that it’s part of 3.0. I think, things can change over the next couple weeks, but I would assume it’s still gonna be part of 3.

Kathy: That’s really cool. I’m really excited about that because I know that’s going to be a real innovation that’s gonna help a lot of people create more of those data-driven types of applications that open up an entirely new world of building a website. I’m just super geeked about that.

But today, I wanted to talk about this is one of Kathy’s cooking in the kitchen over Christmas ideas and you know, I had to do some shopping and stuff online, mostly for Christmas, and I had a number of interesting customer service experiences and I’m like, you know what Kadence has, and this is one of the things that I love about Kadence, is that this team has a philosophy of customer service and customer support that goes above and beyond.

And there’s a number of brands that do that really well. And I wanted to highlight what about customer service that we’ve experienced kind of out in the world has delighted us, and how does that inform how we do customer service? Do you guys have any examples of like exemplary customer support or service that you guys have received?

Ben: Yeah, There’s definitely, like, there’s one occasion I can think of where we were stuck in an airport and this really came down to a single gate agent and not really the entire company, but it was United. and this gate agent ha had pity on me, I don’t know, but spent an hour after she was supposed to be done trying to figure out our flight situation, and ended up getting us what the best she could do, which, you know, wasn’t great. And a lot of times when you fly it’s not like they can just roll in a private jet and be like, we’re gonna get you there. but that was one where a real person took way more time than they should have to try to figure out every possible way in which they could help us and even stay longer than their shift, to do it.

And that was, that’s the kind of customer service that you always want to hear about. I think for me in general, the best customer service stuff is preemptive and not like I had a problem and so I needed customer service. When you go to a restaurant and the waiter is giving you what you need, but not more, telling you what is important, guiding you as much as you want. Really interactive or the experiences when you go to a hotel and they have a note already on your bed and chocolates and things like that. All that kind of like, this is just what we do. It’s already set out in front of you.

That kind of stuff. I think it just makes the whole thing feel amazing, even though you never had to go and talk to someone and be like, Hey, I have this problem or whatever. the more that you can set that up almost in advance. We want to take care of you and we wanna open up the door.

It’s like all the companies who ask me a million times, can I do anything for you? And I’m like, no, it’s good. I’m like, I wish I had a problem, but I don’t. So yeah, you’re fine, that kind of thing.

Kathy: So like treat you like a Kardashian before you’re even there. Yeah. Just expect that a Kardashian is showing up and then Ben shows up. You’re kind of like a Kardashian, right?

Ben: No, I’m not.

Kathy: just like this expectation…

Ben: Don’t put that on me.

Kathy: It’s way different than like staying at Motel six, right? Motel six. You’re just there. Okay. Just let me sleep, make sure my neighbors aren’t annoying or whatever. But it’s like there’s some experiences where you just wanna be treated well. You want to have sort of a higher tier experience. And if you’re paying a lot, there’s an expectation of that, I think. There’s tons of brands that do that really well. I know Nordstrom has had pride in being just exemplary with their customer support. Not so much at Nordstrom Rack, but where it’s just kinda a free for all in the racks, right? But when you’re going to Nordstrom and you’re having an experience there and you’re buying really top tier kinds of clothes making sure that they fit very well, making sure that if it needs any kind of alteration, that that’s an opportunity that exists for you and just going above and beyond.

Hannah, do you have any other experiences that you’ve had where maybe somebody has gone above and beyond and made your experience amazing?

Hannah: Yeah, I mean to add on to like chocolate at a hotel. I think for all Airbnb owners out there, it is so nice when you walk into an Airbnb and there’s a bottle of wine on the table and then like nice shampoo in the shower and like it’s just has these little homey touches like snacks and like also a list of like things that you would actually want to do where you’re staying and not like, here’s random things that no one cares about, these local touches.

So nice. and I stayed at near Airbnb recently that had all those things and I was like, yes. And I gave them a five for review and yeah, it was amazing. Another experience I had recently, and I actually hate for them talking about this through the month of December. I like boycotted Amazon. I was like, I’m not buying gifts on Amazon. I wanna support local except for one person on my list wanted this specific thing on Amazon. So the one thing I bought on Amazon, he never got it. And I was like, what the heck? So I like go online, and there’s like a picture. It says it was delivered. There’s a picture of their door, my brother’s door, and I was like, it says it’s there.

And like there was a photo and he was like, that’s so weird. I literally never saw it, like did not come. They searched the house, never found it. So I emailed Amazon, I’m like, someone must have stole it. Send a message. and within five minutes they have a replacement coming. And even though they have a picture of it being on their door, no questions asked.

So just we didn’t get it. Okay. And then there’s another one coming. I’m like, frick. That’s why Amazon is who they are. Like, yeah, that’s amazing. You know, stuff like that, I still don’t love supporting Amazon, but that did make me feel like they deserve this service, because that’s really nice.

Kathy: Yeah, you never really have much of a touchpoint with an Amazon person, but they definitely do take care of you and making sure that you get what you.

If you’re not happy with it, then it’s super easy to return it. Although my return is always at Whole Foods and then I end up spending a hundred dollars at Whole Foods cause I can’t go there without spending a hundred dollars. So they get me anyway. They do have such exemplary customer service and it’s so important to their brand.

Do you, could you imagine if that experience happened to you, Hannah. Your brother had it on their doorstep and, and they tried to argue with you about it and didn’t take care of you. There’d be a conversation somewhere about that and that conversation really shines a light on the brand in a certain way.

So important. Do you guys have Chick-fil-A? Do you go to Chick-fil-A?

Hannah: The Lord’s Chicken.

Ben: Yeah. Chick-fil-a’s incredible. We just got one in Missoula like a month ago. Yeah. Chick-fil-A in Missoula.

Hannah: They’re incredible. The people who work at Chick-fil-A are the nicest people. It’s like, they’re like, only nice people can work here. And so that’s, they must market that somehow.

Our little brother works at Chick-fil-A and we give them such a hard time because, you know, they have to say My pleasure. And so we’ll be like, oh, is it your pleasure to hang out with us today? Like everything we like you would think the joke is for sure gotten old, but it’s still funny.

Cause we’re like, yeah, it’s your pleasure to do this for us. Thank you.

Kathy: This is so funny. Oh my gosh. He’ll probably have that follow him for the rest of his life. Good job guys. That’s what siblings are for.

Ben: Yeah. And that in particular is so ingrained in him cuz he has to say it so many times a day that it can come out even when he is not at Chick-fil-A, he’s ingrained to say like, it’s my pleasure. Like anytime someone says thank you.

Kathy: That is so funny. They do a good job though. In-n-Out is another one that we have an In-n-Out cuz we’re like the last stop out of Texas. And so In-n-Out does that, like wherever the last stop is, like there’s a cluster of In-n-Outs and wherever the last town is, the last exit, they put an In-n-Out there.

So it’s like always like the longest line of people coming in from Oklahoma for their In-n-Out. But the people there are also extremely polite and it’s just part of the culture. Right. Part of who they are and it’s part of their identity and you know the burgers well, I personally like them.

I’m not much of a burger eater. They are. But In-n-Out is one that I will make an exception for.

Hannah: Yeah, for a fast food burger. They’re pretty good.

Kathy: They are, but they’re not like, oh my gosh, drop everything to me. I’m like, it’s nice that it’s here being an ex Californian for a while, I just enjoy the people, and I enjoyed the vibe. And it’s not like there’s, there’s no extensive menu. It’s just like a few things and some secret like animal fries type of stuff, but it’s the people I’m there for the people.

Yeah. And the experience.

Hannah: Trader Joe’s is another one. Yeah. Trader Joe’s is an amazing grocery store shopping experience. They’re so nice. They always ask you how your day is and they’re helpful and kind, and everything in the store is just nice and clean and, It’s just nice if you like compare, like I’ll, sometimes I’ll do like a long shopping trip, I’ll do WinCo and Trader Joe’s and they’re just very different.

Kathy: Trader Joe’s is amazing. WinCo. That’s another thing we have here is a WinCo where it’s just like, yeah, you’re not even gonna get to use your credit card here. You’re getting stuff dirt cheap. It’s just like, I feel, I feel like I’m stacking up for the apocalypse every time I shop there.

Hannah: But they have great prices on certain things

Kathy: They do there’s nobody around for customer service and, but you’re there for the price, not the service. And some, some people, and some brands can get away with that kind of thing. But if you’re really looking to like, grow and scale a business, I think you have to start thinking about why your business is in business to begin with and that you need money, and the decision that money is going to end up in your account is coming from a person, not a robot. And so putting the customer first in the decisions that you make is incredibly important. Apple is another one that historically has just been amazing with customer service.

I’ve been an Apple customer forever, first iPod. way back in the day and I sweated all over it and ruined it and they sent me a new one. That kind of stuff where it’s just like if your Apple product isn’t working, they find a way to make it work for you and look at how well that’s worked for them.

Any other ones? You guys have had good experiences with?

Hannah: I’ve always had good experiences with REI, they’re really kind and taking returns without any questions asked. yeah, I feel like I feel really confident purchasing from REI because I know if I don’t like this, it’s no problem. Or if I use it and it doesn’t work, they’ll take it back. So they’re a big one.

Ben: I think when you look at, what makes good customer service, it’s like policy is a huge part of it. Like is your policy customer focus, customer first, the policy that you would want if you were a customer of the company versus there’s a lot of policy, like limited return time, almost like trap type policy of like, we don’t want to expose ourself to risk or to like abuse versus customer first policy, which is like, we’re gonna be abused. Like that’s a given. People are gonna take advantage of this. They’re going to return things that really they shouldn’t return.

And yet they can pull that off because they’ve been able to understand that like if they can put a customer first policy in place, customers will come and purchase from them. When you’re thinking about how do you implement good customer service for whatever your company or whatever, I think policy has to be like, one of the first things you’d look at is like, what’s gonna be our policy and is it gonna be customer first or not?

And then it’s the training part. Like how do we train our staff to really think about, your job is not to ring up groceries. It is to make sure that the person in front of you feels like you were present and happy to serve them and happy to help them get their groceries and like when you can change that dynamic. Because I worked at Subway for three years when I was a teenager. And I was rude, would be like… Generally, I was nice, but I could be extremely rude. I mean, it, it’s amazing what you find out about yourself when you get a job. I started there at 14 and I can remember being like so annoyed at people who came up and didn’t know what they wanted.

Because then they’d hold up the line and they’d be wasting my time. And it was like such a backwards type of thinking, this is all about me and getting me being able to get your sandwich done quick versus like them and them having a pleasant experience at like getting food and having lunch or whatever.

But I can remember feeling that way and that largely cuz of there was a lack of training and I thought I was there to make sandwiches really fast, you know, versus like, making an experience for the person coming. And so I think, that’s a huge deal. It’s making sure that your team is really in focus of we are trying to make this whatever it is that our customers succeed.

Kathy: It’s really comes from leadership setting a priority of what the values are, right? Because is the value to make as many sandwiches as possible, or is the value to make sure your customer’s happy and wants to come back and order a sandwich tomorrow? So what’s the value that the company is showcasing with every single conversation. Because, you know, if, if you had instead just like, okay, this person’s taken a, taken some time, and you just like crack a few jokes and ask ’em how their day was and well maybe not distract ’em too much because, okay, come on, is it a ? What sandwich do you want?

Right. But, but being able to have some kind of like personal touch there. Then that person, you know, finishes their sandwich and Ben was so nice to me, I’m gonna go have another sandwich. And he really made this well. And yeah, because a lot of times the purchase experience, they could go anywhere for a sandwich, but the purchase experience can really inform.

My husband was like that. If he had a good customer service experience, like if we went to a restaurant and he felt like he was treated really well, oh my gosh, we’re never going anywhere, ever again. And I’m like, please, can we just try the new place? No, we’re going back. There was one place in Arizona called, um, gosh, what was it? Twisted Italian. And he made friends with the owner and oh my gosh, it’s the only place we ever went. It was a good thing they had decent food. He was such a loyal customer because he had good experiences with the people. And the food was good. If the food was rotten, then that would be a different story.

But that the, the values of leadership really trickle down because employees are there, they wanna make you happy, right? They wanna make leadership happy because that’s where their money’s coming from. So if you show them that you are going to reward them, cuz a customer’s having a good experience, they’re going to do that. So it really does come from leadership. What, Ben, what made you. So relentless in pursuing excellent customer support for Kadence?

Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, in large part it was, based on what I would want. So there’s the practical side of like, I knew that if I was going to someone else, I would want good customer support, but I also felt like, especially in WordPress, I mean really we talk about it in all these brands, but like there is such an opportunity to be helpful with people using WordPress, especially people who are not professionals at it, people who are trying to learn, there’s just such an opportunity when you can be like, I’m not going to turn you away.

I’m going to do what I can to help you. I just felt that was the approach was to just, really try to shine as best we could and offering support and always trying to go above and beyond and even doing, custom stuff. We’ve written tons and tons of custom code for our customers because for us, it’s like we’re in business to help you be successful online.

That is part of it. So I always took it as like, Kadence is a service to help people be successful versus just a product suite or like software. And so yeah, from the get-go, it was, How do I make the best experience I can. And you know, there’s also a ton of other like practical reasons to be heavily involved in customer service that were, I didn’t think about going into it, but were huge wins and like it’s still massive wins and that is feedback.

To know what customers expect and where they’re having trouble. You don’t find that information out unless you really dive in and offer customer support that people want to use versus customer support that they don’t want to use. So getting the kind of feedback that we’ve gotten and insight and feature requests that stuff is so invaluable, to help dictate everything that we’re doing.

So to me, I’m never worried about running blind into new feature requests or running blind into like, we’re gonna develop this thing. And hopefully like customers want it because it’s generally some kind of innovation on what customers are requesting already and what we’re already aware of from in the support, from talking to people.

I think it’s crucial if in this situation to be really hands on with customers. I think where we’re trying to figure out is how do we better optimize the front end of customer service? Like, get you the things you need before you ask, get you the videos, get you the, the help before you even need it.

Because Kadence started as like a side project and basically ever since we launched our first product, it’s been almost like just try to keep up with support. Like, just try to keep up, that’s like gotta be the goal here. And at some point we’re gonna turn this corner where we’re like, we’re doing more than keeping up.

We’re actually getting ahead. What they’re asking and really starting to push stuff. And we’ve done a lot of that. I mean, to say we haven’t is not really accurate, but it’s definitely at times felt like all we’re doing is just trying to keep up and make sure that we’re getting people a response.

Yeah, I mean, and to me that’s always been, anyone that’s using our product we do offer. A different channel for premium support, but we do free support and we always have. And we always will. if you’re using any of our products, you’re not gonna be ghosted by us or like anything like that.

Kathy: Right? And that, that’s not to say that you’re never gonna have a somebody asking a question, that you’re always gonna have the answers. There’s gonna be plenty of times when you don’t have an answer, or it’s just like an edge case where someone’s asking for something that could be a feature, but it’s not really gonna fit with where we’re going as a business. And you’re gonna have to say no. And you’re gonna have to have boundaries. And a lot of support is having some like healthy boundaries of what you will and will not do what you will and wanna an answer. But that’s kind of dev anyway.

You have to make some decisions on that.

Ben: Yeah. Our policy has always been do what we can, even when we know for a fact it’s not our issue. Like we do a lot of support for hosting companies and things like that because people just don’t know what’s causing the problem. And it’s not very helpful to say, well, we can’t recreate it, right?

So like we’ve, we always try to go in above and beyond and be like, well, let’s try to problem solve. This is, you know, what are the host settings and things like that, or other plugins or all of that. And there is a point though where like our policy is to go above and beyond, but there comes a point at which we have to be like, we can’t build your website for you or code custom, really custom stuff.

And there’s a point at which we go like, that’s gonna need to Deb. And I mean, the response is usually good. People understand, they need to know, oh, that kind of thing requires custom dev work. I didn’t know that. But now that I do, I can assess how important this is to me and my website and things like that.

So I think we’re always trying to go, as far as we can, understanding that there, there’s always a limit,

Kathy: Right. Hannah, I’d like to ask you about community as a support, because we have this community that’s, woo, 10,000 people, for realz this time. Like just today there was like a crazy influx of people. I think it’s the beta release, uh, but it’s a very vibrant, active community and support happens there, but Officially, we don’t provide support on social media because it just can’t be done. We sometimes need sensitive information and for security purposes, it’s just not a good idea.

But oftentimes people are like, how do I do this with Kadence and support happens there. Totally. Can you talk a little bit about that, about how support and community kind of work together?

Hannah: Yeah, I think actually our Facebook group has become a primary place where people have gotten support, but not necessarily from us who work at Kadence, from people who work within Kadence and who have their own Kadence products.

And whether they’re just wanting to help people out. They also know it’s been a huge marketing place for other people. you know, just answering questions and then kind of getting side gigs for themselves, which is awesome. Like that’s kind of what we want it to be. , but it’s amazing. I mean, people really, they really feel invested.

Like I think when people are getting to answer questions on behalf of Kadence and they feel their own investment in the company. and that’s something that I feel like, like even just the fact that we offer a beta version of a lot of our products, I think is huge. Cuz people are like, oh, I get to test this. I get to, dive in and be invested, or I get to submit this feature request and if it’s fulfilled. Then it’s like they get to take credit for that. Like, oh, this was my idea. and people get to have these like, give us feedback and we actually. We actually use their feedback and, and make changes based on what people are telling us, and I think that’s huge.

I think just opening the door for people to be deeply invested, in Kadence has been a huge, area of success for us.

Kathy: It has and it’s not just been successful I think for us, but because of the solutions that we have, like Kadence Cloud and Kadence Child Theme Builder, we’ve have all of these other people who are like, oh well, I am gonna use this for me, but I’m also gonna create these amazing libraries.

So we have a number of different people who are doing that and they’re in there providing support for Kadence and people are having that same kind of positive experience that they would have with. Chick-fil-A with Jake Pfohl or Michelle Nunan, who both have their design libraries that they sell, but they’re helping, you know, here’s the custom CSS that’ll fix that particular thing for sure.

And so they’re providing service before they ever even make a sale. But that’s like such good marketing and support and marketing. Just kind of go, in my mind they go hand in hand. Yeah. It, it is next to impossible to market something where there isn’t customer support. Where you can’t, me, I can’t sell something and let, like if I’m going to go buy a car, I wanna make sure that at least it’s got a warranty for a few years and if anything terrible happens or if there’s a recall, I want to know about it and I want that taken care of to be able to say that you’re going to sell something and not support it, just.

It’s antithetical to the way I think, and I’m turning into a rant, and I don’t really wanna do that. I just wanna really highlight the fact, that marketing and support work so well together. If I need a content idea, I will go poke around and see what customers are asking about. And then, Hannah, you do the same thing too.

People are asking about this thing. Can we write a post about it? And, and so support informs marketing. But Ben, you’re also telling us too, that support inform. Dev and, and helps you decide what’s gonna be in those products. So support just, it can never be like this siloed thing, it has to be integrated with the entirety of, of the brand, doesn’t it?

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least for us, like everyone that works in Kadence does support in terms of like at some level we’re all involved and we all, I wanna make sure we’re all keeping involved.

Kathy: Yeah. But it, it comes with a cost. Can we talk about the cost of customer support and sort of like what you see as the ROI of doing that?

Ben: The basic one is like for you, we support our free customers and we have tons of free customers, and so, There’s everything, there is cost. There is no way to say, well, this customer paid us this much so we can spend this much time with them or anything like that.

In the end, you’re just going off of the understanding that like companies with good customer service get customers and get referrals and, that is how you make it. And if you can’t get customers, you’re, you’re not gonna be able to afford anything, much less support.

So, I think there is a cost. I think you do have to be completely free to look at your policies and go, how can we make this work? But you will do yourself damage if you turn your policies against your customers. So, I think in the end you have to find a way to make it work where you can offer support and, some of that is getting ahead and getting a lot of really good information in front of the user or a lot of good training for everyone that you have.

There’s a lot of ways you can speed up support using tools, where you’re dealing with questions that come a lot or things like that where you can give quick answers, link to documentation. There’s a lot of ways you can optimize it. And so I would go towards optimizing support versus trying to take it away.

And then just note that. This has to be part of our cost. It’s marketing cost. Call it whatever you want to. Yeah. It’s, but it’s important and you can’t do business without it. Right?

Kathy: Yeah. I see it as absolutely essential to the brand. And I think some of the examples that we gave, at the start of the podcast really underscore that we’re, we’re talking about those companies, not nobody’s paying us to talk about them.

There’s no affiliate relationship, there’s nothing going on. We just had good experiences. And what are we doing? We’re talking about them and using them as specific examples of how good customer service informs our brand perception and our brand understanding. And you know, here’s the other thing. So I had this crazy thing happen with a YouTube video that I made just a crazy thing. And all these people who are very concerned about LastPass start asking me questions about what to do. Do I ghost them? Just because I’m not selling a password manager, I’m not got no business interest in here whatsoever, but I made a video and therefore I made a commitment to everybody who comments on that, that I’m gonna help answer their questions so they understand the situation a lot better. So that’s customer service. It’s not serving me in any way whatsoever, but you know what it’s attached to. It’s attached to my own values, my own personal brand, which is important. You know, I wouldn’t want anybody to ever come across anything that I’ve ever published and say, she just published this and there’s no answers.

There’s no, yeah, there’s no community acknowledgement there. that, so that was really important to me and it’s taken a lot of time cuz that video went kind of crazy, but it’s important. And you know what that ends up doing. It means that when I then published another video about, and I will about, Hey, let’s do this cool thing, fun thing with Kadence, people are like, oh, that Kathy lady, she was kind of nice and interesting and she made it so easy to understand and they’re gonna watch the Kadence video and they’re gonna watch, you know, any other video that if I have that idea of customer service with anything that I do public.

I think that’s really important to consider as well, that if a company I like, I couldn’t work for a company that had a situation where they just did not value the customers. It just would not vibe with who I am. My soapbox moment.

Hannah: Yeah, I love it. I would just like to add that Kathy made this video on Christmas morning while I’m making pie, like who’s thinking about LastPass on Christmas morning? It’s incredible. Kathy’s amazing. Watch the video. She’s becoming a YouTube all star.

Kathy: Yeah, I told my daughter last night, she was being kind of a stinker and I said, you know, my name does start with a K and that means I could be a Kardashian, and so you better treat me like the influencer than I am.

Hannah: Oh my gosh.

Kathy: And she told me I needed a facelift if I was gonna be a Kardashian. So I should apologize now to the world for my daughter when I unleash her. She is, she is as snarky as I can be. So, but she’s awesome. It was fun. But yeah, it was an interesting experience because I just, I just acted from inspiration.

It was in my mind, I didn’t have anything else work-wise to think about. I was making pie. It was a good pie too. But anybody can go out and do something like that. Just take your knowledge and be of service to the world, and that’s what business is all about. And I think that’s why this conversation really makes sense is because Kadence is not just software.

Kadence is being of service to the WordPress world and the philosophy of customer support that. Particular brand has just makes me happy to work with you guys. Y’all. My Southern hospitality.

Any other thoughts about customer service? Anything we missed?

I don’t think so. Anything we should look forward to? I know Kadence Blocks 3. I mean, aren’t you glad nobody’s asking you when it’s coming out now? Well now they’re gonna ask when the…

Ben: When Pro’s version of it comes out or when Yeah. No, everyone’s, it’s neverending and like sometimes… we’re working hard.

We are working hard. Yeah. and making a lot of good progress and I’m excited about it.

Kathy: Yeah. And I am too. Thank you so much, and thanks for this conversation. it was fun for me. So thanks to everybody who’s watching. We are a video podcast now. Thanks for also humoring me with that because I, you know, the YouTube thing and for if you’re listening.

Thanks for listening as well. We are so glad that you are here with us on the Kadence Beat, and we will talk to you next time.