Ross Shafer

Ross believes you should stop training customer 'service'...and start coaching customer EMPATHY. Let him show you how!

Programs

Grab More Market Share: The Take-Aways

The world's best economists are predicting 1-2% average organic growth through 2015. So the only way to grow your organization is to take market share away from your lazy competitors. Ross will show you how other companies are getting 15-25% growth even when their markets are stagnant or declining.

Broadband connections and sophisticated e-commerce sites have conditioned your clients and customers to believe they can buy anything (and everything) they want "on demand." Urgency and Empathy are more important to them than what we used to consider "service." In fact, if you don't respond at Internet Speed, your customers and clients will consider you lazy, substandard, and undeserving of their business. Ross can coach you how to deliver more urgency and empathy in order to retain current customers...and attract new business.

While economic turmoil debilitates some companies, it unleashes creativity in others. Uber-savvy businesspeople know the "old school" ways are gone forever - so they have learned to embrace unconventional wisdom. You'll hear inspiring ideas (and rationale) like, "Discounting is over" "Quality dictates the new economy" "Don't follow predictions, follow the science" "Social networks can't just be our chat room. They have to be our knowledge base." Ross will unveil specific 'contrarian tactics' and show you how these outliers are trailblazing new channels for profiteering.

The Customer Empathy Solution Part 1

While this is a high energy Keynote on its own, many of our clients often want to expand this topic into a Break Out. There is plenty of great material to accomplish that.

The evidence is clear. "If you want lifetime loyalty, stop training customer 'service'...and start coaching customer EMPATHY." This dramatic attitude shift goes straight to the heart of the customer experience. Ross defines Customer Empathy as, The ability to identify, interpret and appropriately respond to the customer's emotional state - before, during, and after the transaction.

After 14 years of writing, researching, and producing Human Resource training films, Ross unveils frightening case studies of organizations that ignored the customer because they were blinded by fantasy sales goals, outdated operational procedures, and frozen mission statements. Then, he reveals the smart (yet humble) teams who gobbled up market share by responding to their customers' evolving emotional state.
The Take-a-Ways

1. Learn why your customers/clients/patients feel so vulnerable, helpless, anxious, and out of control, today.
2. Customers want you to provide Empathy...NOT "service."
3. When people love you, they will give you more money
4. Why the iPod, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have made it vitally important that YOU must create a "personal brand" with your customers.
5. Learn why Customer 'Evaluations' can do more harm than good.

The Customer Empathy Solution Part 2

This is a great follow up to Part I - Same point of view but with - Tons of New Stories - Interesting New Case Studies - More Inside Customer Psychology. Funny and Plenty of Audience Interaction.

This is the deep dive material we use in our full day Customer Empathy seminars and workshops.

Speaker Information

Ross Shafer grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington where he studied business management and played varsity football (linebacker). After college, he took a job as a training manager for a department store (Yard Birds) and was able to save $10,000. He took that money and launched his life as an entrepreneur. His first venture was as the owner/manager of America's only Stereo and Pet Shop in the small town of Puyallup, Washington (population 5,000 at the time).

Cleaning pet cages wasn't as appealing as it sounded to Ross, so after 3 years he closed the store and took a job as an advertising manager for the 28 store Squire Shops retail clothing chain in Seattle, Washington. Writing ad copy and concocting campaigns paid the bills, but at night Ross haunted local comedy clubs in search of a career in joke telling. After years of slogging around the comedy circuit, he won the Seattle International Comedy Competition and immediately became an opening act for performers like Crystal Gayle, Eddie Rabbitt, Nel Carter, Neil Sedaka, and Dionne Warwick.

In l985, Ross pitched a TV show idea to the NBC affiliate in Seattle (KING). It was a risky idea to emulate a local Letterman-like comedy talk show. Regardless, ALMOST LIVE was born and for the next 5 seasons Ross hosted the show while he and his team collected 36 Emmys. They won the Esquire Magazine dubious Achievement Award one year for attempting to change the Washington State song to Louie, Louie. During those years Ross also hosted an afternoon drive radio show on the 50,000 watt KJR-AM.

In l988, Ross was wooed by the Fox network to take over The Late Show. The Late Show was a nightly talk show that competed with The Tonight Show and David Letterman. The show lasted a year and Ross next found himself in New York co-hosting Days End on the ABC network. It was here that he sat beside Matt Lauer and Spencer Christian as they interviewed the movers and shakers of New York and the world. Dick Clark told Ross, Always have a back up plan, my boy, TV is terminal and predictably Days End was cancelled. Ross always wondered what happened to Matt Lauer? Ha!

The next stop for Ross was hosting the revised Match Game on the ABC network. Love Me, Love Me Not followed and numerous TV pilot projects.

By this time, Ross was headling all of the leading night clubs and casinos. He produced a highly acclaimed comedy album about the Clinton administration titled Inside The First Family. He also wrote a comedy cookbook that became a best seller; Cook Like A Stud - 38 recipes men can prepare in the garage with their own tools.

By l994, Ross heard Bill Gates give a speech where he said, Someday you will all be watching television on your telephones. Ross took that message to heart and he made the decision to leave TV and get back to his corporate training roots. Human nature and the human condition were always fascinating to him because that's what comedians do. They study the laughter and tears business. To date Ross has produced (14) Human Resource training films on Customer Service, Motivation, Leadership, and Peer Pressure. He has authored the business books, Nobody Moved Your Cheese, Customer Empathy, The Customer Shouts Back, and his newly released Are You Relevant? 12 Reasons Smart Organizations Thrive in Any Economy.

Today, Ross is one of the most sought after Keynote speakers and seminar leaders on the subjects of Customer Empathy, Personal Motivation, and Business Relevance. The father of two grown sons, Adam and Ryan, he lives in southern California with his wife Leah and their daughter Lauren.