The one where offboarding matters - Gary Marra CX #OpenToWork E190

🎤🎞️This month’s CX #OpenToWork seeker in “The one where offboarding matters” with Gary Marra in CX Passport Episode 190🎧 What’s in the episode?...

CHAPTERS

0:00 Gary Marra's background in financial services

1:19 Importance of customer experience in Gary's career

3:12 High-profile client relationships and business impact

6:12 Client retention and significance of offboarding

10:12 Employee experience's effect on customer experience

14:12 Onboarding large clients: best practices

15:52 Gary's travel dreams and personal interests

22:12 Employee experience's direct link to business results

26:12 Gary's future plans and entrepreneurial ventures

29:12 Final thoughts and contact information

If you like CX Passport, I have 3 quick requests:

✅Subscribe to the CX Passport YouTube channel youtube.com/@cxpassport

✅Join other “CX travelers” with the weekly CX Passport newsletter www.cxpassport.com

✅Bring 🎙️🎬CX Passport Live to your event www.cxpassportlive.com

I'm Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport

Episode resources:

Gary Marra LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marra/

Blog: www.marracxhub.com

Gary golf YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@gforce41

Transcript

Gary Marra: 0:00

I was taught from a head of institutional marketing client service a long time ago. He said, he said, The split second a client ceases to become a client is a split second they become a prospect again.

Rick Denton: 0:11

Customer Experience wisdom, a dash of travel talk. We've been cleared for takeoff. Welcome back CX, passport, travelers. It is a great day today as we have the opportunity to hear from this month's CX open to work guest, Gary Mara, a client, experienced leader who cares about enhancing customer success within the financial services industry. Gary's career includes 20 plus years at both asset servicing and asset management companies, where he built trusted relationships that drove business retention and growth. I say it often, but do you hear that those words of tangible business value? Yep, that's what matters. While Gary secures that next great opportunity, I've come to find out that he's starting a podcasting life. I love hearing about folks brave enough to step into this space. It is a ton of work, but incredibly rewarding. We'll try not to talk too much shock today, but you never know. Gary, welcome to CX passport.

Gary Marra: 1:19

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you having me here.

Rick Denton: 1:22

And do you hear that? Listeners and viewers and viewers, you see it, but listeners, you hear it. Gary's got the setup. He's he's gonna be the podcast, but you can hear it absolutely. Gary, I asked as a very open to work person, right just off the bat, when it's when it's the CX space, what is it that drew you to customer experience? There are a whole host of areas that you can play in this business world. Why is customer experience important to you?

Gary Marra: 1:45

It? And it's really a matter of the impact that the business relationships that I built and my coworkers and colleagues have built over the years have on the business results. So institutional investment management, asset servicing, it's more of a B to B thing, right? It's not a it's not a customer thing. We use the word client, not customer. And these are very big relationships with a lot of assets under management or custody and large revenue amounts, very high profile. These could be state pension plans. You could be having a relationship with the state treasurer, Chief Investment Officer, Treasury office, large university endowments. And really you're maintaining a relationship with these customers that are very high profile for everyone. And there are a lot of people involved on both sides of the issue, of both sides of a relationship. And I learned that early on, I, you know, I started on the asset servicing side of the business, and my first real client exposure just happened to be I joined a group with the two largest pension funds in the

Rick Denton: 2:50

country. Oh,

Gary Marra: 2:52

welcome so well, you're right. So these are the and they still are, the California State plans, the California State Teachers plan, and the California Public Employees plan and those, I mean, they're at like, four and 300 billion today. They were huge back then, and we had teams dedicated just to them. And you do work in dedicated client teams, but this was such a unique team, because they have very unique needs, and that, you know, drove the point home of how important these customer relationships are and how the client should, can and should drive everything you're doing in, you know, those roles, it's sometimes easier when you have the power of such a huge client behind you to motivate people to do things. Yes, but it really, you know, it really drives the point home. These are relationship driven businesses, and that is, you know, super important to keeping everybody on focus and keeping the goals of your team and your colleagues, you know, keeping everybody on track and keeping everybody working toward those common goals. And it's, you know, it's not that easy. It's a lot of work. And you know, you're dealing with customers and clients every day, meaning you're talking to them every day. You're literally face to face. These days when we could do things like this, right, in the old days, it was the phone and, you know, the dial up conference calls and Bing, who's there? You know, doing the roll calls.

Rick Denton: 4:21

Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't want you to think about this day. Is that? Yes, right?

Gary Marra: 4:24

So, so we did a lot of it, but again, you know it's so you're listening. You forget the voice of customer programs. We were the voice of customer programs, and still are right, because we're listening to the actual customers every day, right? You don't, you don't necessarily need a persona, because you're talking to the personas. You're talking to the people. And so part of that job is managing those people, those relationships. And you know, everybody's a little different. So all these clients are very similar, but a lot different. So that's a big part of it, and helping your colleagues through that, when somebody new is coming on board, etc, what's going on, what's important to this client, etc. So that's. Really where all this kind of comes from

Your CX Passport Captain: 5:01

This is your captain speaking. I want to thank you for listening to CX Passport today. We’ve now reached our cruising altitude so I’ll turn that seatbelt sign off. <ding> While you’re getting comfortable, hit that Follow or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. I’d love it if you’d tell a friend about CX Passport and leave a review so that others can discover the show as well. Now, sit back and enjoy the rest of the episode.

Rick Denton: 5:27

I can see that it will if that's your first one, right, like right out of the gate, where the loss of a client of that caliber would be disastrous, correct? And so it doesn't take much for me and for anyone hearing that story to link. Okay, the experience matters. I'm so without having to really dive into does it matter, right? I think we can accept that. Yeah, if you piss them off, they're gone. How? I don't know that I've had as many conversations with guests that are dealing with such large and impactful entities. How is it that you, in your past, delivered experiences that that customer, that client, not only wanted but required in order to maintain the business relationship?

Gary Marra: 6:18

Yeah, yeah. And certainly you're right. And thank you for pointing out that one of those leaves, it's big, right? It's, it's, yeah, it's, you can't just instantly replace that, right? It's not like, you know, fight if I don't buy a shirt from Amazon and I go to LL Bean tomorrow and get a I think Amazon will get over it, you know. So there's

Rick Denton: 6:36

not an alert on Bezos desk, no, oh, Gary did not buy the shirt today. What are we doing? Right?

Gary Marra: 6:42

So it's, it's a big deal, but now there is a big lead time. It is not a simple process to me, sure, especially on asset management's a little different, because it could just be asset allocation, and you move from one portfolio to another. But on the asset services only, that's a big that's a big deal. So onboarding is a big deal, as is offboarding, believe it or not, and that's something I've worked on over the years. Just if we have time, I want to get to

Rick Denton: 7:09

that, I may want to accelerate you into that, because I, on a much, much smaller basis, I had a incredibly poor offboarding experience with a cable company that ensures that, well, you know, everybody's right, not going back. There's no way in hell I'm going back to this company unless they are literally the only choice between me having internet or not. So, yeah, right, get back to that. Well, nobody wants

Gary Marra: 7:30

to talk about it, because who wants to lose the customer? And it's a big deal when you do, and the tendency as well, they're going, they're leaving, let's, let's, I'm exaggerating, right? Yeah, but it we're not going to pay much attention to, but that's exactly the point is. Let me put it to you this way. I was taught from a head of institutional marketing client service a long time ago. He said, he said, The split second a client ceases to become a client is a split second they become a prospect again, and they should be treated as such. So if you think about it, right, in the marketing and sales process, you got a prospect, oh, you put on the white glove treatment where, you know, telling them how great it's going to be, how wonderful. And so, you know, when they're on the way out the door, unfortunately. And it, it could happen for any reason. It could just be a manager due diligence. It could be on the asset management side. It could be just an asset allocation, allocation change, like I said before. So you want to ensure that you are showing them you know why they hired you in the first place, even in that tough situation. And the other thing, it's the professional thing to do, you have to work together to move these clients between one organization to the other. So you want to extend that courtesy to the next, the next provider, as you would expect, them provided to you on the way in when you're bringing the clients in. But I think that often goes overlooked, and it can leave a really bad taste in a client's mouth. And like you said, I'm not going back, so why not remind them you know, why they hired you first place. And maybe when the new provider falls flattering on their face in a few months, you might want to they might be thinking twice about that decision.

Rick Denton: 9:00

I even had that. I said that to the person I was interacting with. I said, you realize that, God willing, I've got multiple decisions in my future around this product, and I would like to come back to you, but you're creating such a space that there's no way an LM coming back, right? Do you want to change that experience? And I'm dealing with something that probably was unable to do. It's the CX consultant and me trying to make something that couldn't actually happen yet in a world that you're describing where exactly that, that that, that fund that or not that fun, but that client likely will have more decision points in the future. And wouldn't you want them to have that thought? I remember that fondly as we left, is that in your experience, is that an area you mentioned that mentor that said that phrase, have you found that to be the case where it's actually ingrained and trained, or is it more of a tribal knowledge passed down, and certain pockets are better at that? That than others,

Gary Marra: 10:00

yeah, in my experience, yeah. Certain pockets, I think the continuity, the consistency, is a little tough. You have a lot of independent client teams working together, and it does. It is a little bit hard to get the consistency. A lot of it is just the people with experience and not tooting my arm, like me and my colleagues and people have been in industry for a long time, knowing these things and being aware of it. It's, it's you know, a process that you learn by. And I think that's you know, the value of people in the experience that you bring, and part of the part of the ex stuff that we'll maybe talk about in a bit.

Rick Denton: 10:36

Well, why not we get right there? Because normally, and folks that have listened to this series for a while know that I tend to ask the same questions of the open to work candidate to get y'all to share the great experiences that you've had, but we know that deliver your customer experience affects business results when we're talking about this, this space here. So I cut you off when we were talking about offboarding, because I just thought that was so intriguing. You're talking about onboarding, you also talked about the employee experience aspect of that. How has that played into your past, and that delivery of customer experience?

Gary Marra: 11:09

It's right, it's Well, it'd be tough, right? These are very, you know, a lot of these are very big clients and all, there's a lot going on. And so you a lot, lot of folks are trying to do less with more these days, right?

Rick Denton: 11:26

The chuckle is at the understatement, the delivery of it. I'm

Gary Marra: 11:29

trying to be good about it.

Rick Denton: 11:33

Forgive me for the chuckle. You're right. Yes, a lot of folks are trying to get away with that, aren't

Gary Marra: 11:37

they? And so, you know, let's just be honest like this. You know, there's this layoff of mania going on where it's it's been completely normalized. If you ask me that, yeah, you say, oh, 1500 people are gone from this company, 1200 to this company, right? And, you know, you're left. And I'll look at these things and just go, well, who's doing the work? And it's the people who are left there doing the work. And so it becomes very challenging to keep your service levels up, right? And there's a certain degradation of service that goes along with not having as many people doing the same amount of work. It's kind of like the laws of physics, right? It's you can't. I mean, the amount of work is still there, and I know, okay, there's technology in ways that we're trying to to make it more efficient, but sure, for the most part, that's an incremental process, and the work's still there, and the relationships are still there. And you you know, the more you pile on someone's plate, the less time they have to do it well or do it right, right? And so in this type of industry, in this type of business, it gets harder and harder to to maintain that. And that's when it becomes a challenge in the employee experience becomes very frustrating for some Right? And, you know, and people like me, their goal is to keep everybody on track and focus and try to keep a little positivity and keep your eye on the goal right, and keep your eye on the prize, so to speak. So, you know, I think that's that's a really, really big challenge right now.

Rick Denton: 13:13

And it's not just in the financial services space that you're describing when you're gonna have asset management, asset servicing. We are seeing it all over. I was in a conversation with someone where, or actually, I think I may put it on LinkedIn, where we have become numb to some of these numbers. When we see 1500 we see 2000 because we often see 1% of the company, 7% well, but to that person, it's 100% of them. And that really does impact the the the the overall employee experience, both for, sadly, being the former employee, and then those who are left behind to continue to try to deliver the experience that the brand promise has been putting in place. Can we go back to something that you you did mention, and I took you straight to offboarding, because it just caught me in a way that I wasn't expecting. Onboarding is a pretty is a more traditional point of awareness that that's where an experience and the cementing of a relationship to take place. Yet you probably experienced, I know I have. There's a wide divergence in how good it is in your past. How have you seen it done? Really well. What does it take to onboard, especially when we're talking about client experiences like the size you're describing what does very well look like in onboarding. It's

Gary Marra: 14:26

a lot of preparation and coordination and discipline to a set process and processes and communication between the teams. You know, make, I know we love the term silos in the in the world of CX, I just refer to them as your teams, right? Because I understand the breaking down the silos, things and every and everybody's always screaming, break down the silos. Well, you have the silos for a reason. And, you know, I took a class, and it was none other than Bruce Temkin quote, pouring Bruce Temkin. If you don't have the silos, you have chaos in these organizations. So you need the teams, and you need you need to think specialized functions, but you need them working together and communicating. And that's really like what someone like me does, is bring those folks together. And so when you have an onboarding like this, you have to, one is the experience you need to have gone through it, Number Number one, but number two, you you're working with a project manager and multiple teams internally and multiple teams externally, and you have to have that process down and have a regimented meeting schedule, task list and set of tasks and deliverable dates that are reasonable. Don't just try to impress them. But don't you know, I hate, I hate the saying under promise and over deliver, get a reasonable deadline. I just promise to deliver right that you need, that you need to meet, and the the expectations of the client need to be set accurately, because they need to be part of that process. Yeah, and it is a lot of time and effort on their part. And you know, my wonderful colleagues in marketing and sales will tell them, we'll make it as seamless for you as possible, which we'll do, but there's a lot of time and effort on their part and their teams to do such an event. It's a three to six month process quite often, and it's, it's, it's a lot of work, so you have to be honest about that, and get your focus and on your your your task list, and make sure you're meeting those goals. And if you're not, you got to do something about it. Raise your hand, raise the flag, or whatever you're going to do. But it's just a constant communication, the constant monitoring of the correct goals and and and tasks. Gary,

Rick Denton: 16:52

we're going to take a little break here. We are going to stop down and go in the first class lounge. I was thinking about you, you and I talked about how you live there in Massachusetts, in the Boston area, and you have the client that you mentioned out in California. You probably have clients all over. Well, there there were virtual moments. I'm sure there were some travel moments, either business or personal, in your past that I guarantee you have appreciated the value of a lounge, especially if you experienced a Boston Logan winter, as I would imagine that you have. Oh, yeah, so it's not winter here. We're not in a travel delay, but I still think let's stop down here in the lounge and have a little bit of fun. We'll move quickly and have some fun. What is a dream travel location from your past? It's

Gary Marra: 17:32

funny. Actually, we mentioned California. I wasn't even, you know it is in California and with business and I am a golf nerd. I'll admit I'm even a golf architecture nut. In recent years, for anybody doesn't know that's the design and build of the course. And you know, an architect that built a course 100 years ago and it's still playable today, like I played yesterday with with my friends from work, actually? Yeah. Well, so my destination is Pebble Beach, California, and this time I will actually play the course, because I have been there. We did 17 mile drive. We did the whole thing, but I went to the course. Didn't play, because just after college, and I was with my girlfriend the time and her family, and I was just getting back into golf, but I was there, and it's just, it is spectacular. There. It is just absolutely amazing.

Rick Denton: 18:23

Not much of a golfer myself, and even here's kind of almost the barometer to know how special a place is. If someone like me knows of it, has seen it, and can agree with you and say, Holy crap. Yeah, no, it's beautiful. And I didn't realize the architecture element to it, yeah, Gary, we're gonna stop down. We're gonna do like a lounge stop down. It's kind of meta. You've got a podcast about golf.

Gary Marra: 18:45

I do a video of a YouTube channel. So I'm a YouTube creator, where I talk about I actually also manage an online society for a golf game. And okay, it talks about golf. I design courses in the game. So there's a lot of online golf architects, and they're my age, about my age, I'm not kidding. So it's not like, you know, an audience of 20 year olds. They're pretty into the golf architecture, and so you can design the course on your own. And so what I do is I review them, and I talk about courses I don't have in my society, and I teach them how to do it, because it's, it's a tool in the game that if you don't know how to do it, it gets very frustrating. Yeah, and your courses don't look good and the lighting is terrible, and so I teach them how to do it, yeah,

Rick Denton: 19:28

imagine what it is. So that is definitely gonna get the show notes. You know, not only is the Pebble Beach the dream travel location, that's gonna be we're talking to a guy who's got a YouTube channel about designing courses, which is really cool. Now we're gonna get back to the lounge here. Gary, what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet? All right?

Gary Marra: 19:46

Now, it's not gonna shock you that the dream golf vacation is Scotland and St Andrews, and he's loathing the coast. And yeah, I say this. So my family's not a family of golfers. My wife's not a golfer. The kids are not into golf, so it is a dream vacation, because I don't know that that's gonna happen, because I'm not dragging them there for two weeks if they don't play golf so well,

Rick Denton: 20:10

everybody deserves a solo vacation. It's all right, you know,

Gary Marra: 20:13

two weeks in Scott, I don't know, but it's, it's amazing. I mean, it's, um, it is a magical place. If you just look at the look on people's faces when they go there and they take a picture on the on the bridge, or even the pros go there. And, you know, the women played their open there for the first time. And just, you know, it just the way people talk about it. It's just a great place. And I heard there's some distilleries and castles and fairs there as

Rick Denton: 20:41

well. Get me on the island I lay and I'm a happy man for sure. Well, let's let similar space. What is a favorite thing of yours to eat?

Gary Marra: 20:51

I'm going to go. I mean, the easy answer would have been steak or something like that on the weekends. But I'm gonna go. I'm actually from New York and come from an Italian heritage, so I'm going with pasta fazul, okay? And it's not, it's so mostly it's, if you go to a restaurant, you'll see it's pasta a faggioli. It's in New York, and I've learned this actually, from people from around Naples. It's pasta fazul, okay? And it's pasta and beans. And you can make it in a whole lot of different ways, different types of beans. Some people make it more like a meal. Some make it more like a soup, but it's a comfort food. You make the pasta, the beans, obviously got the garlic, the onions, the whole the whole thing with a little pancetta or bacon, and I put extra pasta in it. That's just the way my family made it, because that's just the way they they rolled. And it's just a great comfort food, like this time of year, yeah? And pretty easy to make, even I can make it,

Rick Denton: 21:49

yeah? Well, there you go. Okay, is that the threshold? If Gary can make it, we all can, all right, Gary, yeah, so let's go the other direction. What is something growing up that you hated as a kid, but you were forced to eat. So

Gary Marra: 22:03

flounder, my dad, well, my unique one, okay, well, my dad, so my dad was the fish fry guy, and so on Fridays we still did, and this is, this is kind of the Catholic thing. People have realized, you know, people know no no meat on Fridays for Lent, and that's kind of even gone by the wayside. But in the old days, it was no meat on Fridays. It's the reason the philia fish was in bed. You got it. So he was the fit. They didn't have much. He grew up in the Depression, and so he was fish fry guy. And, you know, his father passed away when he was young, so the kids had to help. And so that was his job. He every day cooked one of the kid cooked every day, and he did the fit. And founder was available, and it was cheap, I think, and he kept he would do that on Fridays, but we would alternate filet of fish and pizza on every other Friday. So when it was fish Friday, it was not a good thing, because I, you know, I'm looking forward to the pizza Friday. So it's not a good it's just a very the texture of that fish is very mushy. You know, if you're not

Rick Denton: 23:01

into that kind of fish, no way. And especially as a kid, no pizza or fish, I

Gary Marra: 23:07

guess. Yeah, we love fish. We still do the front, you know, Friday fish occasionally and flounders not on the foundation

Rick Denton: 23:14

is blocked from the list. Gary, we're gonna have to leave the lounge here. What is one travel item not including your phone, not including your passport, that you will not leave home without. Gosh,

Gary Marra: 23:25

I you know, in the sake of TMI, I'll give a public service announcement. Unfortunately, it's my CPAP machine. So if people don't know sleep apnea, snoring is not necessarily normal, and what happens is your your airway is obstructed, and you're you're not getting oxygen, and so your heart is working overtime, right? And so, you know, when you go to the doctor, you they put the little oxygenation thing on test, and every time you go in, and it's usually 9899 but mine was down to 78 Whoa, while I was sleeping, which, which means your heart is working. That's what happens. Yeah, so your hearts, you're not resting, your heart is working overtime when you're supposedly resting and sleeping. It's, it's, it's not good. That thing comes with me everywhere.

Rick Denton: 24:21

Gary, I like the the PSA along with the answer to the first class lounge. It's important, so I'm glad that we did that. Yours, your first class lounge was the most kind of unique and different, rabbit holey one that I think I've had, and I like. So that's good and helpful. Let's I want to go back to CX a little bit here. What is it? We talked about a lot of things that are going well or things that to focus on. But in today's world, what are companies missing in customer experience, and how can they improve on it? Yeah, I

Gary Marra: 24:48

think it goes back to what we're just talking about in the in the ex and, okay, the it's exactly what I was talking about before. Where you may I feel like, and this is a very general statement we're making. Tougher on folks by trying to do less with more. The kind of layoff of mania that we talked about and the kind of focus, maybe on short term goals over long term success for your employees. And I know we're making strides in a lot of places, a lot of companies, and we do things, and great, there's surveys and things. And I don't want to, you know, get into the pros and cons of surveys, but, you know, it's it is getting harder out there in this past year, just looking at, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, as I know you do, and just some of the comments I see and the stories I see out there really at home. So I, you know, it's also a very difficult, you know, kind of candidate experience time out there, and the recruiting stories I see in here are kind of crazy. So, you know, really, I think that focus on the employee and the employee experience translates over to the customer more than a lot of people think. And I know people talk about it all the time. It's almost cliche in the CX world to say so, but I've seen it, yeah, every day when somebody's frustrated in their job and they're just just got too much to do and too little time to do it. It comes across. It really does. And it is a it's a challenge, and

Rick Denton: 26:30

I forget it's all there's a cliche about cliches but, and I'm not going to get it right, but in essence, it's, well, if it weren't true, it wouldn't be a cliche in a lot of cases. And so, you know that the fact that we heard it a lot doesn't change the fact that there's so much truth to the fact that employee experience is a direct influence to customer experience and does a direct tie to business results. How can you, and I know this is a hard answer, because we're talking about sort of a macro thing, but how can you, Gary, help companies improve on what you're describing, which is that employee experience? Yeah, I

Gary Marra: 27:04

Well, it's tough, right? Because you can't control. You can only, well, let's think of it this way. You can only control what you can control, yeah, and what you can control is keeping the teams positive, your coworkers positive and focused on the goals and focus them on the right goals, the right customer centric goals, help them to understand why certain things are important to the customer and the client and your business. And that's really what someone with my background does all day every day. It's really just about aligning those teams and getting those you know, and I'll use the CX word, those silos to be working together and cooperating and trying to keep them energized and a little bit positive. And the other thing is make sure you don't you're complimenting them and giving credit, and, you know, telling their managers what a great job they're doing because you're doing so many cross functional, collaborative things and tasks you get a first, first row seat on. Are they doing their job well or not? Your intern colleagues. So, you know, one of the things I always remember to do is, especially at year end with that time, is to make sure I told folks, you know, what a great job Person X is dead, or were they a great job they did on this project for client y, you know, make sure you're including that positive feedback in the equation. So that's the best way a customer focused professional can can contribute to that is to make sure everybody's aligned and keeping their eyes on the road ahead.

Rick Denton: 28:41

I like what I love about how you answer that one ending, you know, being positive, and how you can be positive towards the others. And is that idea there's not the woe is me, right? The macro thing is there. It's real, it's hard, it's difficult, it's a challenge. But then what can the individual do? And that's right. So what's next for you, as you are looking for that next great thing, what's next for you with customer experience?

Gary Marra: 29:03

Yeah, good question, and I'm certainly keeping an open mind, but I just want to take that background that I have and apply it to something new and interesting, maybe a little bit more entrepreneurial than I have in the past. I'm absent MBA, so the entrepreneurial thing kind of goes, goes with it, but that could mean fintech. It could mean private wealth and financial planning, which is an interest of mine. It doesn't have to necessarily be financial services, but I think taking that background and applying it somewhere that's going through transformation like those two areas, is a great place to think about and I have been everybody talks tech and fintech, but don't forget the financial planning aspect of it and wealth management. You know, in the old days, people think of wealth management and things like that as high net worth people, you know, people with 10, $20 million in net worth, well, they need financial planning for certain reasons, you know, tax and things like that, but they're not going to worry about paying for college or. Most people need to have a financial plan, yeah, plan for college and retirement and things like that. And so I think there's a big push to that. I believe they call it the mass affluent market, to get people the planning they need and think, realize that they could use a financial plan and things like that. So that interests me as well, but it's especially,

Rick Denton: 30:23

especially given how that specific one there at the end customer experience, because that can be somewhat easy to switch, right? And so if you're not, if your advisor is not delivering the experience that you want, or you're off to the next one. So see That's right, definitely right. Definitely applies there. So Gary, it has been a delight having you on the show. I excited to talk to another podcaster. What is the podcast? If folks want to get a know a little bit more about that podcast,

Gary Marra: 30:49

yeah, oh, thank you for the opportunity to talk about it is going to be, basically the focus of my career is customer experience and customer success, really, because my role has been more of an enterprise customer success manager. So it's tentatively called, your customer your success. And we're going to talk to, we're not going to talk about just CX, we'll talk about, really, how you're building these experiences, and people who have had success building them in other areas. And it's not going to be just financial services, but it's going to, you know, it's there to really educate people, help people. Maybe some people that are newer to this world than others, and maybe, you know people that are listening to your podcast. It's, there are a lot of people out there that still don't know much about the CX world, believe it or not.

Rick Denton: 31:36

Oh yeah, no,

Gary Marra: 31:37

I believe it's, yeah, there is a maturity level index scale. I meant to look it up before I talked to you, but from Qualtrics that it's, it's astounding, and that's just, you know, the people that they've surveyed, there are people you know that just don't know much about it. So I think to be a little bit newer audience, educate people and ways to make the not only the customer experience, but I think a big focus on the employee experience and the candidate experience as well, because I think that's a little bit of an area where we're all struggling as well. Yeah, recruiting, yeah.

Rick Denton: 32:11

I'll definitely get that in the show notes. Folks can click on that and get to that Gary once that's out and published. I also want folks to be able to know if they want to get in touch with you, to learn a little bit more about your customer experience approach, or your new podcast or the golf video series, or any other way that they might want to get to know you, or get to know a little bit more about you. What's the best way for them to get in touch?

Gary Marra: 32:37

Yeah, so certainly there's LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn constantly, but I have my own blog. It's mariscx, hub.com, and so there's a blog out there. And the other the golf thing on YouTube. It's GeForce 41 is my handle, so love to see you there as well.

Rick Denton: 32:55

Awesome. Well, you know, folks, I'll get all of that into the show notes, and it's an easy link for you to click and head over to get to learn a little bit more about Gary and connect with him and explore more Gary. It's been a treat having you on the show. I hope that there is never a flounder in your future. I do hope that you get an enjoy, certainly, that you enjoy and enjoyed all of the golf courses that you have had an opportunity to be a part of and that someday you get to see St Andrews as well. Gary, thank you for being on CX passport.

Gary Marra: 33:27

Thank you so much for having

Rick Denton: 33:33

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. If you liked today’s episode I have 3 quick next steps for you Click subscribe on the CX Passport youtube channel or your favorite podcast app Next leave a comment below the video or a review in your favorite podcast app so others can find and and enjoy CX Passport too Then, head over to cxpassport.com website for show notes and resources that can help you create tangible business results by delivering great customer experience. Until next time, I’m Rick Denton and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.