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It makes good business sense: happy employees lead to happy customers. On this episode of TELUS International Studios, Evelyn Doyle, HR Director EMEA at Patagonia talks to us about how empowering employees to be a part of something bigger is the secret that’s stitched into Patagonia’s fabric.

Culture, purpose, and being part of a change is something that Patagonia has taken very seriously since day one. By encouraging team members to take part in climate action protests, and supporting them on their path to learning about sustainability, this mission-driven organisation understands that great employee engagement cultivates a great customer experience.

To learn more about TELUS International and our digital CX solutions, contact us today.

Intro: TELUS International Studios where customer experience meets digital transformation.

Patrick Haughey (PH): And welcome back to TELUS International Studios. An original podcast series about world-class customer experience and the people who shaped it. Brought to you by TELUS International. I’m your host, Patrick Haughey, and in this episode I am joined by Evelyn Doyle, HR Director EMEA at Patagonia. Patagonia is a company that is world-renowned, not only for making high quality, sustainably produced clothing but also for the courageous decisions it makes in order to do the right thing. Whether that is investing heavily in sustainability or empowering team members to take part in climate action protests. And empowering team members will be a key theme of this episode I think. Culture, purpose and being part of something bigger is something that Patagonia has taken very seriously from day one. And the company has a deep understanding of how great employee engagement can lead to great customer experience. And to hear more about all of this, I am delighted to welcome Evelyn Doyle to TELUS International Studios.

Evelyn Doyle (ED): Thanks a lot, Patrick. Good to be here today. Thank you for having me.

PH: You’re very welcome. Of course, because Patagonia is one of those companies that has an incredibly strong brand and is incredibly well known. So maybe just before we get into the meat of our conversation, so to speak, just describe what Patagonia is. And I guess what the main thrust of business is today.

ED: Sure. Yeah. No, again, back to your statement there. Just very proud to work for such an organization as Patagonia. First and foremost, we’re a mission-driven business and organization. Yes, we make clothes and outdoor equipment for people who love wild spaces and to play and work in the outdoors. But more importantly, and it has been our, you know, DNA for 40 years of our existence, forty-plus years, is that we are in business also to inspire others to come up with solutions to the environmental crisis. We’ve always had the environmental crisis and the environmental concerns at the forefront of our mission. So we believed always and still do that we’re not just in business to make something and extract from our planet. We’re also in business to take care of the community and the planet that we live in, which is planet Earth. Yeah.

PH: And you mentioned being a mission-driven company there. And I think today and over the last couple of years, we’ll hear a lot of companies saying this and, you know, not to disparage any companies at all, but I think there’s an expectation that you know, to do business today, you kind of have to have a mission and, you know, let’s spend some time and put some real investment into crafting something that sounds good. And, yes, that’s aligned to our new company values. But I think what’s interesting about Patagonia is this has been there from the very start. You crafted your very first mission statement as far back as 1991. Let’s say before maybe it was cool to do so. And I think that’s quite significant.

ED: Yes, it’s true, it’s funny how you put it that way before it was cool to do so. I think we’ve always been before it’s cool to do. I think, you know fundamentally, Yvon Chouinard, who is one of the owners and founders alongside his wife, Melinda Chouinard, both, you know, one hundred percent still own Patagonia. You know, it’s a privately held organization. We were the first benefits corporation also within the state of California. Yvon Chouinard and Melinda both have a love of the outdoors and a love of nature and a love of protecting wild spaces. And that has always been part of Patagonia’s mission. So when Yvon many, many years ago first started off Chouinard, you know, what is Patagonia today? Making equipment for climbers because he loved the mountains and he was a climber himself. When he realized, you know, the harm that the pitons that he was making and creating and selling to Patagonia were actually harming the place where he played in i.e. the mountains. When he realized that, he went back to the business. And this is back 40 years ago and realized that “Hey, we’re going to have to change course here, which is financially burdensome and is going to create complexity and challenges.

But it’s doing the right thing because I don’t want to harm the place where I play and then the place where we make things for.” So fundamentally, they’ve never shied away from doing the right thing, even if doing the right thing means having either financial consequences to the business and making very tough decisions. Which we all know, that’s where a lot of companies shy away from that because perhaps they’re shareholder driven and they have other, you know, things that they have to kind of take care of or take account of. But that still doesn’t mean, and I don’t also believe that fundamentally, I think you can still do good business.

Even as a shareholder driven organization there’s many, many, big organizations really trying to go towards there now. But fundamentally, we have never shied away from, you know, doing good business and doing the right thing. And doing the right thing means that you have to look at things holistically. You’re part of the community. You’re extracting from planet Earth. And that’s also why Yvon Chouinard feels from, again, one of the very first companies to pay, you know, in the one percent for the planet. So we believe, and Yvon Chouinard has publicly stated, that that’s our Earth tax. So he believes that if you’re a business and, you know, you’re extracting something from the planet in order to make something and we believe that we do make the best product that causes the least amount of harm. And I think that line in our original mission statement is very important because I think saying that we want to cost the least amount of harm acknowledges the fact that we do cause harm. We cause harm because we make stuff. You know, we have an industrial element to our business and to our organization. And that recognition is saying that, hey, hands up, we know and recognize that we cause harm, but we will constantly strive to make things better in our organizational set-up and systems and processes to cause the least amount of harm because that’s our job. That’s our duty. That’s our role as citizens of planet Earth. And Patagonia has never shied away from that again. Bit like the start of this company with the pitons and changing course on that, we also switched our full line to organic cotton as well in the 1980’s time and again, this was when, you know, many organizations felt that that was too burdensome, too complex too much work, probably to do that. But again, I think if we look globally and don’t quote me exactly on this, you know, there’s very few companies like ours in where we’re making fabric, we’re making clothes and we’re making equipment that has made that fundamental switch to organic cotton and all of their lines, you know, full stop. I think it’s between one and three percent globally. So that just shows you that if we can do it and, you know, we’re a medium-sized business in terms of we’re not medium size in terms of our message or our mission. But, you know, if we can do that in our product lifecycle and supply chain, I think that many other organizations can do the same. It does require work. It does require you to be nimble, and it does require you to recognize that you have to make that shift in how you do your business to take care of something more than just your financial growth.

So Patagonia has never been a company as well that is overly concerned about looking just at the figures and the cash flow and the financial numbers, it has always believed it’s in business as part of the community, as part of, you know, sort of the business, as a citizen of the world. And, you know, we have a duty of care to take care of our community, the people within our organization, the resources that we avail of. So it’s always been a holistic approach and a circular economy approach to business. And, you know, we’re not in the business of taking quarterly calls on financials and that’s, you know, the be-all and end-all. Of course, we do manage our cash and our finances. You know, we’re a business at the end of the day, but it’s not fundamentally the overriding thing. The overriding thing is, you know, any key decisions we make in a business, is this the right thing? Are we doing the right thing? And that’s been our DNA from the start, which is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use our business to inspire others to solutions for the environmental crisis.

PH: And of course, and as you say, taking this approach does require some tough decisions sometimes. And when you’re going to be making these kinds of decisions that maybe go against what we’re used to in business, you know, more profit-driven mindsets. Then, am I right that it’s extremely important to have the right people on the bus? You have to be very careful about who you bring into the organization because they need to be very much on board and believe in this way of doing business as well.

ED: Yes, absolutely, and I mean, again, I think it’s even more significant for us as an organization, I mean, as recently as last year, this the original mission statement was changed to just one line by our owner and founder, Yvon Chouinard to ‘We’re in business to save our home planet’. And he specifically mentioned home planet because, you know, he doesn’t sort of buy into this concept that, you know, if we don’t fix this, well we can live somewhere else. And another one sort of concept is it’s the sense of urgency as well around, you know, the climate emergency and the fact that we’re heating up and that we have like literally only nine years as Greta said we want to act like the house is on fire. And I think by Yvon making that mission statement change, it’s sort of centered us and focused us on even more internally as well as externally, that we are fundamentally a mission-driven organization that is in business to save the home planet and do whatever we can ourselves and to inspire others to do that. So the people that we take into our organization and I want to come in and join us, it’s very, very important that fundamentally, whoever you are, and from whatever community you come from, that you have that in your heart, that you fundamentally believe there’s more than just doing a job. That you want to participate in a purpose and in a mission because, you know, people are talented, young graduates, et cetera, et cetera. They can go anywhere, do anything these days, you know. So we want people who really want to come to us because we are a business that wants to cause the least amount of harm in an authentic way and that we exist for more than just business alone and that we want to create the purpose, save the home planet and be inspiring to others.

So I guess the people that we’re looking for are inspirational people. I mean, a love of the outdoors and a love of nature, I think is fundamental if you want to join Patagonia. And also having that mission-driven part to you and to be passionate and to come to us with this intellectual curiosity as well, because I think what we have as a bunch of team members here in Patagonia, we have a lot of mavericks. We have a lot of people who want to ask questions. You know, we don’t really like to take in people who, you know, just sort of want to play the line or, you know, not ask the hard questions. And, you know, we kind of try to ensure that we’re not in any way a hierarchical company and that you can come into this company and bring your human self to work. We have people who come to us. They bring their dogs to work. And here in Europe, we have in our Amsterdam office, we have a dedicated parents room where, you know, parents can come in with their kids and also mothers with those who need to breastfeed so they can remain connected to work. So we have a very different sort of office set up.

And in our retail community, within our retail employee base, these are the people who we see in our retail, the bricks and mortars of our retail stores, as members of the community within the space and the country we operate in. We are a community hub, we’re an activism hub and the people that we bring into our retail sector, also within our organization, are people who are passionate. You know, when customers come in the door, they know that they’re going to meet somebody who loves the mountains as much as they do, who loves to surf as much as they do, who loves to trail run as much as they do, who loves to ski as much as they do. And they can speak to the technicality of our design. They can speak to that customer about, you know, saving planet Earth and environmental endeavors, because the people who generally want to buy our product are concerned about these things. They want to protect wild spaces. They have a love of good quality products. They have a love of good technical design and that’s what Patagonia is known for. So the people who we recruit within retail are truly passionate brand ambassadors, internal ambassadors and external ambassadors for what we do as a business. And I think it’s also important that we recruit people who want to really be ambassadors of our organization internally and externally, and to understand that they whatever their role is, whether it’s the accountant or someone in HR like myself, that we have a voice and that our voice and our role makes up everything that is to do with Patagonia. You know, if I take, for example, our accountancy team, we have accountants currently working, trying to change the banking system from within Patagonia, are working with us in HR trying to change the pension system. So looking at things from a systems thinking point of view and seeing how it is that Patagonia can be a platform and use their voice for change in all sectors and all industries by making banks accountable and saying, look, we don’t want you to invest in fossil fuels anymore. So the accountant is thinking about that and thinking about ways to partner with banks and talk about, you know, how can we change this internally in Patagonia. So, I think people who want to come and explore, be mavericks, ask hard questions, be passionate, have intellectual curiosity, a love of nature and the outdoors and protect this planet, they’re the kind of people we’re looking for. And of course, we love and we’re very inundated as well, thankfully, with people who are very talented and very skilled at what they do, because we do also need specific expertise.

PH: What it sounds like, what shines through there is that you’re looking for and in a very broad sense, a certain amount of bravery within the people within Patagonia. They need to have the courage to challenge, you know, accepted norms around systems and processes. They need to have the courage to make tough decisions. And it strikes me that that’s something that needs to be shown from a top-down perspective. And it brings to mind something very interesting from last year, a very brave decision where Patagonia essentially distanced itself from, you know, this sort of tech CEO, fossil fuel company. You know, the sort of the gilets or the vests and kind of made it very clear that we don’t want the Patagonia brand to be associated with people who are maybe incredibly focused on pure capitalism or things that don’t align with our purpose.

ED: Yeah. So making bold moves and challenging the status quo, that’s definitely part of the Patagonia DNA and it’s definitely part of something that we want to bring in to nurture and continue to develop within Patagonia with the people that we bring in that make up, you know, the culture that we have here. So I think, yes, being open to challenging that status quo and, you know, taking risks and making decisions that, you know, sometimes can be a lonely path for people.

That’s the thing that we want to do. Like we really nurture here the activism sort of spirit in people.

We feel, we ensure that our folks know it’s OK to bring your human self to work, to bring that passion to work. And this is seen like not only in that I think that move that, you know, our former CEO, Rose Marcario, had a big hand in playing in. But just like if we take it back to Greta Thunberg. She really, you know, shone a spotlight on the climate crisis and Extinction Rebellion, is another sort of what’s seen sometimes as a radical movement in the climate, challenging, you know, organizations and governments on the climate crisis. I think we’ve partnered up with the Extinction Rebellion here in Europe, whereby we have allowed our employees to participate in Extinction Rebellion events, marches. We have set about a bail policy so that if you get into trouble on environment, on basically marching or having activism about environmental campaigns or marches or protests and you end up arrested or in jail, we have a bail policy. We will pay that to get you out. We also have conducted last year with basically a criminal lawyer, you know, what it means if you got arrested. Tips and tricks in terms of, you know, how you can manage to stay safe.

We’ve also, you know, put together a civil disobedience training and, you know, to make sure our employees stay safe when they want to protest on important causes that are close to our hearts. So, we allow them the time of work to do that. So these, you know, the people that we have here are not afraid to question the system. And we try to also instill this system thinking approach. So system thinking means that you have to go to the root cause of the problem and not look at it just from the surface. And that means, you know, challenging the status quo like we’re doing with that piece about how we don’t want to be associated with just pure capitalism. We want to partner with people who want to really make the change, you know, that’s whether it’s partnering with others who run the B Corporation journey where, you know, you believe in the sustainable development goals. You believe that you’re part of a system that has to give back to society. And that’s the kind of culture that we try to nurture here. It’s OK to be an activist. It’s also OK if you don’t want to be on the front lines, but we’ll support you in your role, you know, to support others who perhaps do want to be on the front line for the causes that are close to our hearts.

PH: Very, very interesting. I really have to say that. From a very practical perspective, Evelyn, I’m sure you get thousands of applicants for every one role going in Patagonia. And I know you have an extremely popular internship program where you got 9000 applicants for you, only for just 16 positions. And from a very practical perspective, that’s tough. It’s really tough for somebody like you and your team to try and find the right people within a group of so many applicants. So from a practical perspective, how are you doing that? How are you trying to find the people who will most closely align with those values you’ve just spoken about?

ED: Yeah, that’s a good question, Patrick, and I mean, I think there’s there’s sort of two strands here because I also want to be careful and acknowledge, you know, in these times of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, I think it’s also important to say that while we welcome, you know, we want to bring people into our organization that are mission-driven. We also realize that, you know, sometimes there can be barriers to that as well within our own organization. And while we want to build a certain culture, we also have to take into account that we don’t want that to become a cult. And that’s also a fine balancing act. And, you know, part of the sort of the balancing act you have to create with the diversity is really embracing that diversity and culture add rather than culture fit. So, really acknowledging that person for the whole of themselves and what they can bring to the organization. So that’s one strand of it, I think. Yes. Thankfully, unlike many other organizations, I’ve worked as somebody who oversees recruitment and attraction. I’ve never really had to sit down and have long debates about employer branding because sort of Patagonia’s is by word of mouth.

It’s just recognized for what it is. And we do have a hard time with really getting around to everybody who applies to roles like, for example, we had an Environmental Leader role about five years ago when I first started in Patagonia that had 1,800 applications right across the world. It’s very difficult. And these people would have given the right hand, you know, to take on that role. And we had to narrow it down to 20 to find, you know, the Mahallah that we did find to be our Environmental Leader in Europe. But that takes a lot of work and effort. And we have a referral system in Patagonia because we like to also we feel that, you know, our ambassadors here internally, they have a network of friends, colleagues, families, that they may want to refer to Patagonia because, you know, they’re either playing with them in the outdoor space or whatever, or they’re joining forces with them on protest with regards to the environmental crisis.

So I think we use the referral system. We do use agencies and headhunters when we have niche roles. But honestly, we were just inundated most of the time with applications. And most of the time, it’s just hard work for me and our HR team and recruitment team specifically to get through all of that. To the point that you know, on our careers webpage, we do have to write out now to say that, look, we unfortunately, cannot get around to everyone. And that’s a pity. But like, you’d want a lot of people on the team sheet to get around to every single individual that applies to us. All I can say is that I encourage people to continue to knock on our door and we’re very, very informal in this. I, I don’t know. I spend a lot of my time meeting people informally for coffee who want to join us, but maybe we don’t have the position. But we also feel that that’s important to us as Patagonia, that we meet people informally for that coffee chat because we want to make sure that, you know, we’re connecting people to us. And we also share with them that, look, right now, we may not have a position for you, but you can be connected to the journey to Patagonia, Zombi, coming to our lunchtime talks, by coming to our evening events, by participating, you know, in maybe some of our campaigns. So, you know, we already, semi onboard wannabe candidates with us by making sure we involve them in the community that we’re in and the community we’re in is campaigns. It’s taking action. It’s partnering with people like Extinction Rebellion, but also, you know, save the rivers and, you know, in our Blue Heart campaign, we partnered up with many people who wanted to save the last free-flowing rivers in Eastern Europe. So, we actively advocate for and ensure that, you know, we stay connected to people who do want to join us, but maybe don’t have that opportunity yet because that role is not there.

But everyone plays a part in our story and in our journey as Patagonia. And that’s why we also have a lot of external ambassadors who want to join forces with us as well.

PH: And as well, you know, we obviously have a very strong focus on the customer experience on TELUS International Studios. And I’m curious about your thoughts on how having such a strong internal culture and, you know, being so clear about what you want and who you want on the Patagonia team, driving everything forward. The impact that has on customers as well, in a way, do you feel that your customers are also brand ambassadors? They’re wearing Patagonia clothes, not just because they’re high quality, but also because it makes them a part of this movement and this campaign, just like your internal teams?

ED: Oh, absolutely. Patrick, I mean, we are, you know, absolutely linked to and connected up to our consumer, to our customer, and, you know, we cherish that and we put a lot of time and effort and focus within our customer service’s teams, right across Europe and globally, to ensure that we remain connected to our consumer. And it’s very important that we converse with and tell stories with our consumers. And our consumer, you know, we have a platform called Patagonia Action Works. And, you know, that’s again, I think unique to Patagonia in that that platform connects up a myriad of NGO’s and other businesses to each other via this platform who want to, you know, either get advice or build capabilities together or volunteer their time, you know, to good causes. And those causes are fundamentally around, you know, making this planet a better place. You know, how can we reduce, reuse, recycle? You know, how can we really bring about accountability and sustainability? And Patagonia Action Works is also where our consumers interface with us as well. Another example of how we interface with our consumers in a real, authentic way is our Worn Wear story and concept. Our Worn Wear tours are, you know, we basically can repair anything for you for free. And that includes other peoples, other companies goods. You know, we have vans going around to the spaces we play in and are situated in, whether it’s our retail stores, our offices, the mountains or the surfing venues or the activism spaces, our vans, we have Worn Wear vans kitted out with people who can repair our clothes. Some of those are even our own people internally and people that we bring into our community who have that expertise. And, you know, we connect with our consumers sharing their stories about their best love, better sweater, or vest that they have had from Patagonia and climbed the mountains and, you know, there’s a few rips or tears in it and they’d like us to repair it. And we repair it for them. And we listen to their story and we listen to their feedback. And, you know, that’s again, it comes back to what we talked about earlier in our discussion. This storytelling element, and that everybody connected to us and how we interface with our consumer. We also believe our consumer is our ambassador because these are people who really want and have a passion for our technical expertise for causing the least amount of harm because they love and take pride in the spaces that they play in.

And they don’t want they’re not your average consumer. As in, they think about their consumption, generally speaking, our consumer, as we do, of course, think about our production. And, you know, generally speaking, they want to share in that story and wear that sweater for something more than just, you know, buying that sweater. So, I think we have a very conscious consumer, just the way that we’re a very conscious organization in how we lead and how we produce. And I think it’s all connected.

PH: Well, I think it feels at the moment that we’re in such a world driven by fast fashion and, you know, a race to the bottom in terms of the price of cheap clothing that’s so disposable. And it seems to me that there are so many people out there who want to actively and visibly differentiate themselves from that and show the world that I am not on board with this fast fashion movement and everything that comes with it. And in a way, brands like Patagonia kind of empower them to do that in the sense of, you know, bringing them into a community that you are creating and allowing them to show and quite a visible way that they are different in the same way that Patagonia is different.**

ED: Absolutely, and I mean, I think that people genuinely who buy and want to wear our brand, you know, carry that definition with them. And I think that what we, you know, a good few years ago, you know, I think you probably have researched this as well, we brought out that famous ad in the paper saying, “Don’t buy this jacket,” and it created the kind of furore at the time, you know, oh, is that Patagonia?

You know, what kind of sort of consumer mind tricks is it playing? You know, it really just wants to sell more stuff. And it’s putting out this ad to say, don’t buy this jacket. And, you know, again, I think this ultimately led us to the journey we’re in today that we’ve been in from the start. And, you know, we keep having to make inroads . This is to say that we consume and we recognize also that we are producing something and selling it to a consumer and, you know, that that has an impact. What we’re really fundamentally, I think, trying to achieve now with our mission is really through our customers getting people to think carefully about how they consume. And this inspires then other organizations to think about how they’re producing because, you know, people want to spend their money now more and more with thinking about, you know, what is this company doing with regards to fair labor, ensuring good supply chain practices, ensuring that they’re not just producing for production, say, sake.

I mean, there are many things, especially in the apparel sector, where we’ve seen a lot of with the fast fashion. People really having to be, you know, brought to the mires in public relations and in the media as well.

And consumers really boycotting these companies because they’re not treating either the workers in a fair manner or, you know, they’re not treating the Earth in a fair manner because they’re just, you know, it’s just fast, fast industry let’s say, never mind, just fast fashion. So, consumers now are really putting it up to companies about how they make things and how they produce things. And I think also in this period of time during COVID-19, I think we’re even seeing that more and more. You know, people have really started to take a reset and a rethink about what’s valuable to them. And I think, you know, I think a lot of companies are saying now that people have really taken stock of what’s important in this in this life and ensuring that, you know, you’re living your life as a good citizen that, you know, is also having a voice in changing industry or changing government as point of view and how we do business.

PH: Well, look, on that, one of my final questions to you, to Evelyn. If there are anyone, you know, in a HR Directorship position or a Customer Experience Lead position, listening to the podcast who feel that, you know, maybe this is a time that we maybe take a little tweak or approach a little bit and maybe double down on doing good, so to speak, on trying to do things better maybe than we have been. And, you know, we can all we can certainly all do that. What would your advice be? Would you say to them that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you can always sort of do good and try and not give back to the world as much as you’re taking, so to speak?

ED: No, absolutely, Patrick. I fundamentally believe, and I really have learned and been on a learning journey myself with being part of Patagonian, a mission-driven organization. I fundamentally believe any company or any industry can go on the path to do good business. And I also believe now, especially with the planet on fire, it’s also a moral obligation on leaders.

And I think first and foremost, while it is a ground-up, it’s both a ground-up and a top-down approach to tackling this in any organization. I fundamentally believe that as a leader in a business, you have a certain entrepreneurial license. And that means that you’re not trying to, you know, change a governmental bureaucracy. You know, you have a business, you have a live living system. And I think it’s becoming on leaders to think through the prism of systems thinking change, to have intellectual honesty, you know, with their employee base and with their shareholders and really bringing about, you know, what’s the right signal and all this noise happening right now. And steering the organization, the key leaders in that and employees in the right direction. And making the fundamental business case that, you know, happy employees who are given a voice, who feel that they have a purpose and that their own organization is involved when they go home at the end of the day to their children or to the places that they love to visit for their sports, are the nature in itself that we all inhabit, that if their organization is playing an active role in, you know, ensuring that there are fair practices for all involved in their business, that, you know, there is some return to employees for being involved in that business and that they’re treated fairly and with respect, and that we are doing something also to give back to the planet because we’re extracting from the planet.

I think it makes business sense to the consumer that you want to engage with because, you know, most companies are not going to get away from the consumer voice on this topic going forward. So I think they have to stand up and acknowledge that, you know, they do authentically have to become more compassionate and more conscious as leaders because happy people within your community and within your organization really does lead to that, you know, better engagement. And ultimately, you know, you’re going to have the best diversity and the best inclusion in terms of your employee base within that organization. And you’re going to have talent who really wants to, you know, make change and have a win-win for you and your business and the consumer. And I think, you know, this is really, really a time now in the world and in society that I think really it fundamentally stops with the leadership. And I think, you know, signing up to one percent for the planet, really aligning yourselves with the fundamentals of the B Corporation movement, which means that you stand for more than profit alone because, at the end of the day, we all make something from this planet Earth. So, therefore, we have to give something back to her. And I think our employees want us to do that. Our consumers want us to do that. And it’s becoming us as shareholders, as leaders to ensure that that happens.

PH: Well, I know Patagonia has many interesting plans and innovations in place to stick to stay true to this mission, such as, you know, moving towards carbon neutrality, using only recycled products in the manufacturing process along the way. So we’re going to watch with interest how you continue to navigate that course over the next few years Evelyn. And having spoken to you and you are very persuasive and you’re very clear about this.

And I’ve already just emailed you my CV because I now want to work for Patagonia as a result of this, as I’m sure our listeners would as well. So Evelyn Doyle, HR Director EMEA of Patagonia, it’s really has been fascinating speaking with you. And thank you so much for taking the time to share your story and share your message with us today.

ED: No, no, thank you, Patrick, for listening. And also thanks for the good questions. And I’ll just leave you with someone also who, you know, I think a lot about in terms of Joanna Macy, you know, she wrote a book called Act of Hope. And, you know, I think this is something also that, you know, Yvon Chouinard, Melinda through Patagonia is, you know, this is something you know, you asked me that question - can any industry do this? You know, be on the journey to do good business. And I think this is something we do rather than, you know, it’s a must-have. You need to be clear about, Joanna Macy says; “An act of love is something we do other than have and be clear about what we hope for.” And essentially that means, you know, your intention to act.

So I think, you know, for all companies out there, what’s your intention? What’s your authentic intention? But it’s no good to just have that intention. You must act. And I think Patagonia fundamentally has proven it through its actions. And I think that’s where we need to go. So thank you for your time today.

PH: Thank you so much, Evelyn. And continued success for Patagonia. All the best. Thank you. And I really enjoyed that interview. And thanks to you for tuning in. We will be back with a new episode of TELUS International Studios very shortly.

If you like what you hear, make sure to hit that subscribe button or follow button so that you do not miss an episode. And if you’d like to find out more about TELUS International and the global and disruptive brands with whom we work, check out telusinternational.com. Until the next episode, take care.

On this episode of TELUS International Studios, Evelyn Doyle, HR Director EMEA at Patagonia talks to us about how empowering employees to be a part of something bigger is the secret that’s stitched into Patagonia’s fabric.

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Customer experience analyst and best-selling author, Matt Dixon, sits down with TELUS International Studios to share insights from his new book, The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision. Dixon takes us through the bane of every salesperson’s existence: a long customer courtship that ends with an “I’ll think about it.”

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The JOLT Effect: How high performers overcome customer indecision is available for pre-order now.

Intro: TELUS International Studios, where customer experience meets digital transformation.

Patrick Haughey (PH): And you are very welcome back to TELUS international studios. I’m your host Patrick Haughey, and on this episode I am delighted to be joined by someone who I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with at a few TELUS International events over the last couple of years. Matt Dixon is a CX and sales expert, he has written many best-selling books — one of the best known is The Effortless Experience, but he’s joining us on this episode to talk about his newest book, currently available for pre-order. It’s called The JOLT Effect: How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision. To prepare for this book, 2.5 million documented sales conversations were studied using machine learning. So get ready to hear some very interesting insights from this first of its kind study. So I thought an interesting jumping off point with Matt might be a line that jumped out at me from the book’s description when I was reading it. And that line reads: “In sales, the worst thing you can hear from a customer isn’t ‘No,’  it is ‘I need to think about it.’ And I started by asking Matt why this is.

Matt Dixon (MD): Yeah, it’s a great question. That’s the beginning of the whole tale. And I love that line, too. Well, I don’t love it: I hate it — it’s terrible, it’s really bad news actually, for sales people. But it speaks to what the whole story is about. You know, I think if I’ve been out there engaged with sales people, I know, obviously, Patrick, you and I have spent a lot of time talking about customer experience, customer service, the effortless experience, etc. The other hat I’ve worn as a researcher is really focused on business to business sales and commercial effectiveness, and how is buying behavior evolving and so on and so forth. And one of the things I’ve been struck by over the years is that when you ask a roomful of salespeople to think about the deals they’ve lost over the past quarter or the past year perhaps, and you ask them to categorize that into two different buckets. On the one hand, deals you lost to a named competitor. So the customer ends up buying but they didn’t buy from you, they bought from somebody else. Versus customers where you lost, but you didn’t lose to a competitor, you lost to no decision — you lost to the customer doing nothing. What you find is, in organization after organization, by far more hands go up around the latter, that salespeople feel like they’re much more likely to lose to the customer doing nothing than buying from a competitor or, as you said, even just saying no.

MD: In fact, I think sometimes in sales we can feel like our sales people are heavily influenced by the last sales call they had, you know the product is too expensive, this competitor is eating our lunch, whatever it is. But in this case, our salespeople are actually onto something. We studied this with data and we’ll talk more about the research that went into the book, but I’ll pull forward one finding, which is that anywhere between 40 and 60% of all deals are actually lost to no decision, to the customer doing nothing. And we studied this across 2.5 million sales conversations. We used machine learning to study it. And what we found is exactly what you said. If you look at all of the I would say hundreds of thousands of things that are said in sales conversations, both on the salesperson side and the customer side, by far in our analysis, the worst thing that can be uttered by the customer is I need to think about it. And the reason it’s so bad is that, you know, the old adage in sales has long been that as a salesperson, you don’t want to you don’t want to chase garbage trucks, right? You don’t want to pursue opportunities that have no chance of closing. So in many respects, for a salesperson, it’s far preferable — it may be painful — but far preferable to be told no. The worst outcome is where you go through the entire sales process with the customer. For many companies that can be months or even years, and think about all the resources, the time investment from the salesperson side, the resources from their organization, not to mention all the resources from the customer side. These are customers who go through the demo, they go through multiple iterations of the proposal, they talk to your reference clients, they talk to your subject matter experts, you talk to all of the sales prevention departments inside the customer organization like legal, finance, procurement, etc., only for the customer to get cold feet late in the game and end up doing nothing. And so that is such a deadweight loss for the average salesperson, for sales managers and teams and for entire sales organizations. We do think that how to overcome that ‘no decision’ phenomenon, how to break through and pull more deals across the finish line is the thing that separates great sales organizations and great salespeople from the rest.

PH: We’re going to come to those traits of a great salesperson who can manage to overcome the hurdle in a few minutes’ time, because it’s a fascinating area. We’re looking at something very psychological here called omission bias. Is that right? Which you cover a little bit in the book. Just briefly explain what omission bias is and what kind of mistakes customers are looking to avoid.

MD: Yeah, perfect. So I think the conventional wisdom in sales has always been that if the salesperson starts to get cold feet, if they start to backpedal, wring their hands a bit, waver, waffle, straddle the fence, whatever term you want to use, that it must be that we’ve not we haven’t put to rest the status quo, because we all know, even as human beings, we are predisposed to stay the course. We’ll pass up on better options just for no other reason than we’re lazy and we don’t like to change. And for salespeople, that’s a really powerful obstacle. But I think salespeople have always been taught that that is your only enemy in sales. And what we found was that in our analysis of 2.5 million sales conversations, when this customer starts to show signs of hesitancy, when they start to show those signs of cold feet, by far, three-quarters of salespeople we found go back and they kind of hammer the status quo. They either try to re-convince the customer that ‘you must not really understand the value that our solution is going to deliver.’ ‘You must not really understand how wonderful it is, the ROI projections and how amazing things are going to be on the other side.’ Or, when the customer doesn’t respond to that, what do we do? We put away the carrot and we break out the stick. And what we try to do is show the customer the cost of inaction. And we do that by dialing up what’s called FUD in sales: fear, uncertainty and doubt.

And what we’re really trying to do is make the customer squirm a bit, make them feel the pain of what they’re going to miss out on if they don’t if they don’t buy the solution. We actually found in the analysis, surprisingly, is that that approach, while it’s commonly practiced, actually makes it 84% less likely you’re going to get the customer out of no decision. So you actually increase the odds of the customer doing nothing by using some of those tactics designed to beat the status quo. And to your question, what we actually found, we realized that we wrestled with this quite a bit because it’s been the conventional wisdom in sales for a very long time. In fact, we wrote about this in the Challenger Sale that the best salespeople are gifted at showing the customer that the “pain of same,” the pain of the status quo is actually worse than the pain of change. And that is one of the things they do really well. And so it came as a big surprise to us that that strategy, that approach backfires so often. And so we took a step back and what we realized was we were asking the wrong question. The question that we were asking was, what’s the best way to beat the status quo? Maybe it’s just not being done well. Maybe high performers have figured out a different technique that’s really effective today. But the question we should have been asking is a bit different, which is not how do we beat the status quo, but rather why do customers make no decision? And it turns out the reason they make no decision is exactly what you talked about, Patrick, actually if you look at the psychology research and this is actually backed up in our own analysis, that there are really two reasons the customer will choose to do nothing. The first reason is that they’re committed to their status quo, they just prefer the status quo. It could be that they don’t believe your solution is superior to what they do today or they may just believe it’s superior, but they believe their current approach is good enough. Right? ‘It’s just not worth it for us to change.’ But there’s a second reason that the customer will choose to do nothing. It’s not commitment to the status quo, it’s indecisiveness about changing the status quo. And I think when people hear that, what they immediately ask is, how are those two things different? You’re telling me that customers choose to do nothing either because they prefer what they do today or because they don’t want to change what they do today. And what we explain in the research is that those two things are massively different. And it’s something that high performers get an average performance don’t.

MD: So if we go to the psychology research, what we find is that there are really two types of loss that people in our customers are worried about. On the one hand, there are what are called errors of omission, which are mistakes and losses that we incur because we choose to do nothing. One of the old stories to illustrate is you’re in a tennis tournament and your competitor has a peanut allergy and you sit down to enjoy a lunch before your match and you know there’s something on the menu that has peanuts in it. The omission bias is when your competitor orders the dish that has peanuts in it and you don’t say anything about it. And so they get sick and they have to drop out and you win. The opposite is an error of commission. Now, an order of commission is when you incur a loss because of something you did, not because you failed to do something right, but because you actually did something wrong. So the same metaphor uses you’re sitting across the table from your tennis competitor and you proactively suggest they order the thing that has peanuts in it because you want them to get sick. Now, with those two scenarios, the outcome is exactly the same, your competitor has gotten sick and had to be rushed to hospital, etc. But by and large, everyone was more comfortable with the first one because I didn’t have anything to do with it. The second one is ‘a thing I did.’ ‘I did something wrong.’ And what we find with customers is that when they’re facing two different options, whenever something could go wrong by me not choosing to buy your solution, we could not capitalize on an opportunity, or I could buy your solution, and then something bad could happen as a result, they will choose to do nothing far more often than they’ll choose to do something and run the risk of getting something wrong. Now, the three types of things they’re worried about getting wrong are:

MD: One, I picked the wrong option. We think about all the options we put in front of our customers. So often they start to wring their hands about, ‘I’m not sure if I’m picking the right contract length’ or the right scope of the agreement or ‘I’m buying the premium version — should I really just buy the basic version?’

MD: The second thing is they start to worry that they haven’t done enough research and think about all the content out there about every vertical, every technology out there. And they start to fret over the fact that it’s the next white paper that they would consume that will have all the answers that they need to be a smart consumer.

MD: The third source of indecision is what we call outcome uncertainty. This is where the customer, before they sign on the dotted line, starts to worry that they don’t have any assurance that they’re going to get the benefits they’re paying for. And despite your rosy ROI projections, despite the great demos and proof of concept trials you did, despite the wonderful reference calls and the great analyst reports they read about your company, the customer is worried that they might be the one company for whom this whole thing goes sideways and if that happens, somebody’s head is going to roll. And the person who is going to roll first is the person whose name is on the contract.

MD: So those three things: I’m picking the wrong option, I didn’t do enough homework, or I’m going to be left holding the bag (if you will) and not getting what I’m paying for, are the sources of indecision, which interestingly have nothing to do with the customer’s preference for the status quo. And so it helps explain why we see this phenomenon that salespeople who are taught that every indecisive customer, every waffling and wavering customer with cold feet, must be struggling with a preference for the status quo. So you go back and, you know, your ‘beat the status quo playbook’ is like a hammer, every indecisive customer looks like a nail. But in fact, if they’re worried about something else, then going back and trying to convince them of the loss that might result from inaction only gives them more to be worried about when they’re actually worried about something quite different. So we found in the research that high performers have figured out a different playbook, a companion playbook not just for beating the status quo, but for laying to rest or overcoming these sources of customer indecision.

PH: And does this take us to the JOLT effect?

MD: Absolutely, yeah. So what we found is, there’s again, there’s two playbooks. We’ve all got ‘the beat the status quo’ playbook. We wrote a book about challenger selling; we happen to think being a challenger is one of the best ways to beat the status quo. But as I said before, it’s only part of the story. If beating the status quo is all about showing the customer the cost of inaction, overcoming indecision is getting them more comfortable with the action you’re asking them to take, making them feel like you’re making a good choice, don’t worry about the other options, you’re picking the right thing. You’ve done enough research, you’re in good hands. I’m your subject matter expert, your trusted advisor, and don’t worry, you’re not jumping out of a plane without a parachute. There are some assurances we can give you that this is going to actually work out well for your organization, etc. So if the beat the status quo playbook is about dialing up the fear of not purchasing with the customer, then the playbook for overcoming indecision is about dialing down the fear of purchasing, right? It’s making the customer more confident and comfortable in the decision you’re asking them to make, which they are quite anxious about, right. I didn’t do enough homework. I’m picking the wrong thing. I don’t have any assurance this is going to work out for me. And so JOLT is a set of four behaviors, and I’ll just explain what they are really quickly, that together form this playbook for overcoming indecision:

MD: The J is judging the level of indecision. And what we found is that high performers are quite good not just at assessing opportunities and customers on their ability to buy their solution, but also on their ability to make a decision. So not just the ability to buy, but the ability to decide. And they do that through active listening, probing questions, and powerful requests they make that elicit responses from the customer that tell them, ‘Is this person somebody who can actually make a decision and do so in a reasonable amount of time?’

MD: The O: offer your recommendation. So salespeople have been taught for a very, very long time that it’s all about diagnosing the customer’s needs, understanding what they want. And the hope is that by asking good questions, the customer will figure out on their own what they really want or what they need. But what high performers know is there’s a time for asking and letting 1000 flowers bloom, and then there’s a time for telling and making a recommendation, because with too many options on the table, the customer again will get wrapped around the axle about what they should choose and they’ll fear I’m going to choose the wrong thing, and that will become an irreversible decision.

MD: The L is limiting the exploration. So in a world where customers want to continue to consume content, they always feel like they’re not enough of an expert on the technology or on the platform or on the competitive landscape or on the decision they’re being asked to make. They will consume information endlessly, and there’s no way that they could possibly develop the level of expertise that we as salespeople have. And so we’ve got to put a limit to their exploration, and the way we do that is we’ve got to earn the trust, the trust and credibility, if you will, the customers trust, and we’ve got to establish our credibility as trusted subject matter experts who have the customer’s best interests in mind, and that we can guide them through this learning journey and that they don’t need to consume all the content because we’ve already done that. And we are their trusted advisor.

MD: And then finally the T: this is about taking risk off the table. So when our customer’s hand is hovering over the contract and they’re worried: ‘boy, this is a really big investment, it’s a really big decision for our organization and what if this goes sideways on us?’ We’ve got to provide some assurance that we’ve got their back, that things are going to go fine. And sometimes it comes down to additional professional services support, not that we give it away for free, but proactively suggesting that starting smaller, getting the customer to not bite off more than you can chew, or creative contract structuring that gets us in a place where the customer feels like they’ve got a safety net if things start to slide, if they start to go sideways. So that is the JOLT Effect. And we like it because it’s memorable, but it also speaks to what’s happening here, right? It’s about jolting our customers out of their indecisive state toward action.

PH: It’s really, really interesting. And actually everything you’re talking about there, there’s a couple of words that are shining through to me, which are customer success, it’s not just ‘make the sale and that’s it.’ It’s not a new area, but it’s certainly been more in focus in the last few years that we come out the other side of the funnel with a whole new funnel, which is making sure that the product is used properly, that we keep we keep them educated, that we’re there for them. Is there an element of this in all of that?

MD: 100%. We talk about actually in that T chapter, taking risk off the table, that one of the best things that that salespeople can do is pull forward some of those customer success engagements, laying out the roadmap for how we’re going to work together, the project plan, here are the key milestones, here are the metrics. Let’s get the quarterly business review meeting set up now, let’s get all of this lined up because we know from working with companies who get a ton of value out of our solution, this is the roadmap for success. So it sends the customer the impression that you’ve done this before. You know where the pitfalls are, you know where the landmines are, you’re going to start thinking one step ahead and you’re going to make sure that we’re going to end up in a good spot — this is a huge confidence giver for the customer.

PH:  And on that note, and again, in relation to customer success, is that the area where a lot of this is about the sale and the salesperson, but when it comes to CX professionals, customer experience professionals, what are the lessons here as well?

MD: Yeah, for others who support the sales organization, whether that’s marketing, it’s customer success, I think understanding that when our customers start to waver, it is more often than not, in fact, I didn’t mention this before, but what we found is if you divvy up losses to no decision by losses to the status quo versus losses to indecision, you find that indecision actually encompasses more of those losses. 56% of the losses are because the customer is indecisive, it’s not because they’re in love with the way they do things today. And for all of us in the organization to understand the sources of that indecision so that we can work together to get our customers over the hump and get them across the finish line, again, whether that’s customer success, articulating the plan to work together, even proactively introducing you to your customer success team members, and maybe sharing roadmaps and project plans that have been successful with other clients and talking openly about the risks and the pitfalls and the landmines you want to avoid. Or it’s marketing perhaps, figuring out what are, what are the configurations that we should pre-package into, kind of, if you will, “Happy Meals,” because we know when customers buy this configuration, they’re really, really happy. So let’s package those up, let’s market around those and let’s train our sales people to actually advocate for those solutions because we know when people buy it that way or buy that configuration, they’re much more happy with the results. Or lastly, it might be finance, it might be thinking about some of those ways to do creative contract structuring, terms and conditions that provide that assurance to the customer, instead of making salespeople go and ask for permission every single time they want to grant an exception or flex a term or condition in a contract.

PH:  It feels like everything we watched and learned from Glengarry Glen Ross ‘always be closing’ is actually wrong. It’s turned on its head, Matt.

MD: Although I will say I will say Alec Baldwin did have a point. You do want to get the customer to sign on the line, which is dotted.

PH:  Just a couple of final questions, Matt. Are these same techniques that we’ve just talked about, do they apply to securing contract renewals with existing customers?

How Patagonia's employee engagement leads to great CX

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