Revolutionizing Forms Processing With Richard Walker
- Quik! News Team
- 1 day ago
- 30 min read
Updated: 12 minutes ago
Richard Walker is the CEO of Quik!, a provider of forms automation and management solutions for companies looking to maximize efficiency and productivity. He started Quik! in 2002 to help people spend less time on paperwork and more time on what they do best. Before Quik!, Richard was a business consultant with Arthur Andersen. He is also a published author of two books and a father of three boys.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:31] Richard Walker shares how his first business selling water toys became a huge success
[4:45] How Quik! helps businesses by simplifying and automating form processing
[7:05] The benefits of using Quik! to streamline digital forms and reduce processing errors
[8:49] Richard’s journey from building Quik! for personal use to realizing its industry value
[10:51] The early struggles of selling Quik! and why scaling the business was challenging
[13:01] What motivated Richard to persevere through a decade of tough competition
[15:14] Key lessons learned from hosting The Customer Wins podcast
[19:54] Views on AI as a transformative tool and the power of proprietary data
[23:16] Advice on learning AI by mastering effective prompting techniques
In this episode…
Many businesses struggle with inefficient paperwork processes that waste time, frustrate customers, and introduce costly errors. Even as technology advances, companies often fail to streamline form handling, creating friction that can harm customer experiences and limit growth. How can businesses transform this outdated process into a seamless, value-driven customer interaction?
Richard Walker, an entrepreneur and process efficiency expert, shares how focusing on form automation can significantly improve both internal operations and customer satisfaction. He emphasizes the importance of eliminating redundant data entry by standardizing form fields across documents, reducing errors, and minimizing rework. He suggests that embracing technology, particularly digital solutions and AI, can expedite transactions and enhance the overall experience. Richard also highlights the importance of resilience, leveraging enterprise partnerships, and continuously improving solutions to meet evolving customer needs.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Chad Franzen of Rise25 interviews Richard Walker, CEO of Quik!, about creating smoother customer experiences through form automation. Richard shares his entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of scaling a technology company, and the strategies that helped him persist. He also discusses building industry partnerships, launching his podcast, and the importance of embracing AI to stay competitive.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
"We're empowering people to do their best work by eliminating the forms."
"Please don't take this podcast away from me, I love it."
"I just refused to give up."
"You're not going to lose your job unless you just don't learn the tool set."
"You have to be willing to understand the situation and be human with your customer."
Action Steps:
Standardize form fields across documents: Creating consistent field definitions eliminates redundant data entry, reduces errors, and saves time while improving customer experience.
Adopt AI tools to enhance productivity: Learning to effectively prompt AI tools can quickly improve research, decision-making, and customer interactions in a competitive environment.
Seek cross-industry perspectives to inspire innovation: Exploring customer experience strategies from unrelated sectors can uncover creative, transferable solutions for meaningful business improvements.
Prioritize the customer’s ease and convenience in every process: Reducing friction in paperwork and transactions creates faster, simpler, and more satisfying customer experiences that build loyalty.
Be flexible with rules to prioritize fairness and customer satisfaction: Adapting to individual situations instead of rigidly following policies fosters goodwill and demonstrates a customer-first approach.
Sponsor for this episode...
This is brought to you by Quik!
At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.
Using our FormXtract API, you can submit your completed forms and get clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate.
Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.
Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.
Go to www.quickforms.com to learn more, or contact us with questions at support@quikforms.com.
Episode Transcript:
Intro: 00:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and, in turn, grow their business.
Richard Walker: 00:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how they're focused on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Bennett Maxwell of Dirty Dough Cookies, Mark Gilbert of Zocks, and Cameron Howe of Investipal. Today's a special episode where I'm actually going to flip the script and get interviewed by Chad Franzen from Rise25. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms.
Instead, get Quik! using our Form Xtract API. Simply submit your completed forms and get back clean. Context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of a thousand submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. So, as I do with all my guests, I read a bio about the guest.
And since Chad is here to interview me, I thought I'd offer a little bit more about myself. Since you may not know my full background. At age 12, I started my first business selling a toy for water fights. I have since started over ten different businesses, including a product that got patented when I was in college and many, many failures. In the year 2000, I became a financial advisor and in 2001 I discovered the problem of forms, and then I launched Quik!.
Along the way, I've also published two books, launched this podcast in 2023, and my core purpose in life is to empower people to be their best version of themselves. With Quik!, we empower others to do their best work, which I believe helps them become their best version of themselves. So with that Chad, I'm excited to share my podcast episode with you. So welcome to The Customer Wins.
Chad Franzen: 02:00
Hey, thanks so much, Rich. Great to be here.
Richard Walker: 02:03
So for those who haven't heard my podcast before, I usually talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. And so I thought we could do that from my perspective. So, Chad, let's switch seats and have you interview me.
Chad Franzen: 02:21
Okay. Sounds good. Hey, I'm looking forward to understanding your business a little bit better and how your company helps people. But first I want to ask you, how did that toy for water fights work for you?
Richard Walker: 02:31
Oh my gosh, it was so much fun. A $300 investment that I had turned into over $1,100 in a single day of sales, and I took that money and I was able to buy my first car when I turned 16, four years later. So it was fantastic.
Chad Franzen: 02:48
How did you make that many sales in one day as a kid?
Richard Walker: 02:51
You know, I it started a year prior where I was selling these around my neighborhood and at campgrounds, selling a few here and there. And I knew everybody would want it. So my uncle got me a table, a booth at a 4th of July chili cook off. And so it was a hot summer day. Tons of people were there.
There were other booths selling whatever. They were selling chili, of course. And here I am showing them how to cool off. By 7 a.m. it was already 100 degrees outside, so everybody was looking for a great way to have a water fight and cool off. And so it was a hit, man.
It was just this viral moment at that campground. And it took off. It was amazing. Look, I'll also admit, I tried to run that business longer and longer. And while I made a few hundred dollars extra, the Super Soaker came out within the next year and put me out of business.
Chad Franzen: 03:40
How? What was the toy? What was it like?
Richard Walker: 03:44
So if you are familiar with surgical tubing, that latex rubber tubing, it was made from latex tubing. And you would take a ballpoint pen and take just the tip of the pen and stick it in one end of the hose, tie a knot in the other end of that hose. And then you'd get a cone shaped nozzle on your garden hose and stick the pen tip in there and blow up a long water balloon. So they were called water weenies. And back in that day, you had your choice of a squirt gun that went five feet a water balloon.
Maybe if you got the hose, if you were lucky. But nobody could squirt very far and the water weenie could squirt 30ft. So you could soak your enemies and not get hit. And I was just so much fun.
Chad Franzen: 04:22
Nice. That is awesome. How much? Per water weenie.
Richard Walker: 04:25
We were selling them for? I think $1.25. Upwards of 350 or something for a three foot one. And by the.
Chad Franzen: 04:32
Way, we sold a lot of them.
Richard Walker: 04:33
We did? Oh, yeah. I sold 1000ft of tubing in that one day.
Chad Franzen: 04:37
That is amazing. That's amazing. Well, fast forward to today. Tell me a little bit more about Quik!. How do how does your company help people?
Richard Walker: 04:45
You know, I kind of said it in my bio that we're empowering people to do their best work. But really, how is it that is possible? We're making it easier to process forms. Quik! is all about understanding the processes that depend on paperwork being filled out. I mean, especially revenue generating processes.
We have been focused on the financial services market for 23 years now, where financial advisors have to fill out the forms with their clients in order to open accounts, get insurance contracts in place, but also to service the accounts like change of address, change of beneficiary. So I recognized becoming a financial advisor. I recognized the problem of filling out forms that nobody wanted to do it. And I discovered that I could build technology that would do it for me. And then we started showing it to other people, and they kept saying, we want this, we want this.
So we launched it in 2002. We meaning my mom and I, she's my business partner. And we kind of look, we did everything wrong. I like to say we were the bumblebee that shouldn't fly. We kept trying everything and figuring stuff out.
But here we are 23 years later. We generate somewhere close to 1.2 million forms every month. We save more than a tree of paper every hour of every day by how many forms are being generated, but also because we plant those trees with the Arbor Day Foundation. And overall, we're saving advisors and their teams just hours and hours of time not having to fill out paperwork manually. But, Chad, you know what's even better in terms of how we're helping people?
We're delivering a better customer experience. So I bet you've purchased a house. You've gone through the process all the excitement and the optimism, and you give them the the earnest money, and you go through the whole 30 days of waiting and you're so excited. And on the 30th day, what do they do? They give you a stack of paperwork, and it's the worst part of the experience.
It makes you feel like I don't want this house anymore. But. But you do it anyway because you have so much commitment. So you have to go through that process. Why are we doing that to people?
Why can't we help them have a better experience? Do it faster. Make it easier. Make it a nicer experience, have fewer rejections, you know, just less friction in the process. So that's what Quik! is all about.
We're the forms company, and we're empowering people to do their best work by eliminating the forms.
Chad Franzen: 06:57
So if, if if I were to use Quik! in my next closing, how would my life change? I mean, what's the alternative to the stack?
Richard Walker: 07:05
Well, so a couple of things could be possible. Number one, you wouldn't be asked to enter data on any other form ever again, because the data would flow across all the documents the same way. So there's a problem. Everybody creates documents and they say, oh, there's a first name and last name and address, and then they build that document differently than the next one. Meaning the fields are defined differently.
So you even electronically get 4 or 5 pages that ask for your name, and you have to enter it over and over again. We eliminate that because we give a standard definition to all the fields. You know, here's another way to look at it. We're in the forms business, right. But we're really in the data business.
And what we're doing is we're helping standardize business transactions where lots of different documents come into play or complex forms come into play. But here's another way. So one we could help. Let's say your real estate agent or mortgage person or whoever's working on the paperwork. Pre-fill all those documents with all your data and get it right the first time.
That would result in fewer rejections and errors and, oh, by the way, come back and sign this missing document, that kind of stuff. But the other thing it could do is make it fully digital and therefore not have to sit there in person, do it all online. And I think more and more we're seeing that, especially with our partners like DocuSign and Synnex, we're seeing more of that. But I think we could even do better than that. I think we could represent it in a much more dynamic, responsive web application or web presence.
And you know what? With the advent of AI, I'd love to see all that be summarized more easily. Tell you what you have to pay attention to more directly, and just kind of take some of the mystery out of it.
Chad Franzen: 08:39
Sure. Yeah. We'll talk about AI and just a little bit. So you built this for yourself. How long did you use it before you realized this might be valuable for other people?
Richard Walker: 08:49
So here's a funny part of the story. I used it for three months by myself before my own partner and mentor in the business. Would use it. And I kept saying, Steve, use this, try this. He's like, no, I'll just do it my way.
By the way, he had perfect penmanship. Like the most perfect penmanship. And he just marveled. Loved doing it. Not that he loved the forms, but it took me three months to get him to actually try it.
And when he finally tried it, he looked at me and was like, why haven't I been using this for the past three months? And I'm like, exactly, I've been telling you. But realistically, I didn't want to bring a product to market. I was focused on being a financial advisor, and I just kept saying no to people who heard about the product and saw it. You know, I'd get the home office calling me, saying, how did you do this?
How'd you felt this clean, perfect paperwork in 2001? I'm like, oh, I just built this thing. And they kept saying, well, we want that. But Chad, I was like, no, I'm not giving it to you. I don't want to become a technologist again.
I left technology to become an advisor. And on top of that, it was built in Microsoft Excel. I mean, it was a hack. It really wasn't meant to be commercial software at that moment. It was just a utility for me to get my job done.
And I was looking at the problem of, oh my gosh, this is such a hard problem to solve. But what really kind of turned me is somebody I had worked with as a consultant, a top 75 producer for American Funds, meaning she does a lot of business. She called me and said, hey, I hear you have this. I will pay you for it, please. And it was one of those moments of like, wow, if she wants it and she sees the value, then the whole industry could see the value.
And that's what spurred me to say, okay, fine, let's build a commercial product and take it to market. So we did our install for her February 11th, 2002, and within two weeks, her full time assistant, meaning full time handwriting forms, called us and said, you're changing my life. I'm only filling out forms for four hours a week now instead of 40.
Chad Franzen: 10:42
Wow. That's incredible. So you took it to market then? What did that look like? Did the phone start ringing off the hook?
Did you have to make an effort to make sales? What happened?
Richard Walker: 10:51
Oh my gosh. It is so hard to start a company. Yeah. I mean, we thought we'd make lots and lots of sales and I would drive to advisors offices to do installs with them and train them how to do it, to make one user sale for 150 bucks a year. And that was not scalable.
So we immediately realized we got to build a website, we have to have electronic distribution. And in our first year we only sold six licenses of the product. You know, I think a lot of people would say, well, that's a failure. You should quit. And they'd be right.
I mean, that's a hard road. But we were optimistic and we said, no, no, no, we're going to go to the enterprise. We'll go to the broker-dealer, the firm that's employing all these advisors, and get them to buy it. They wouldn't buy it. They're like, oh, that's the job of the advisor.
They it's their job to fill out the paperwork. Why would we buy a tool for them? And I kept saying, because if they have more time with their clients, won't they make you more money? No. Let them do what they have to do.
You can sell it to them if you want. So then we started going to conferences that these broker-dealers would host and try to sell licenses, and we'd spend two days at a conference and sell four licenses. It wouldn't even pay for the trip. So it was a really, really hard road, to be honest. And we were up against a competitor who was always ahead of us in terms of the forms they had.
So, Chad, think of it this way. If you want to watch Netflix or sorry, if you want to watch Game of Thrones, but you only have Netflix and it doesn't show Game of Thrones, you're not going to use Netflix to watch it, right? Well, that's kind of how our forms library was built. If our technology was amazing, but if we didn't have the forms you needed, we just wouldn't make the sale. So we're always up against this barrier.
We talked to a firm and they're like, well, do you have these forms and these forms? No, we'd scramble to go try to get them. It could take months, sometimes years, to get the forms. And so it was this chicken and egg problem over and over and over again with customers for years. Frankly, it took us ten years to catch up to our competitor in terms of parity in the library, so that nobody could say that we didn't have the forms anymore.
We kept winning customers along the way, but it was really, really hard.
Chad Franzen: 12:52
So you went from not even wanting to take it to market to, you know, kind of struggling for ten years. What kept you going for those ten years when you started to not even want to do it in the first place?
Richard Walker: 13:01
You know, a couple of things. One, we would do consulting projects to pay the bills. And so that spurred us on. Me, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So I was just so focused on being an entrepreneur and building something successful.
We tried different things as well. We also had some successes. I mean, we after two years, we said, let's turn this into an API. Meaning let's take the engine out of the software, you know, the overall user experience. And what if we just sold the engine and let people build their own vehicle?
Well, our first customer doing that first three was MassMutual, Cambridge Investment Research, and MassMutual started with 5000 plus users. One sailed over 5000 users. Changed my whole mind. I said, this is how we're going to do it from now on. Not to mention they'd pay a big lump sum up front.
That helped fuel us for a while. So it was those types of things, and we were offering something our competitor couldn't offer, which is an enterprise API solution that they could customize and create a bespoke experience for their users. So we went to market selling that. It was slow. I mean, we'd make 3 or 4 of those sales a year, but they were enough to keep us going and growing.
And then, you know, in year 2011, we formed a partnership with Docupace, and they started selling for us through their platform. And by 2012 we had that library parity. So now it was just getting easier and easier to win enterprise customers. So you know, one aspect is we did make sales, and we had some wins. The other one is I just refused to give up.
Chad Franzen: 14:33
Yeah that's great. Well that resilience I'm sure that resilience has paid off for you in many ways.
Richard Walker: 14:38
It has. I mean, I'm really proud of the fact that my mom's retired from the company and she's not worried about money at this point. I'm proud that we're in a position we're in today. I'm more excited about our business today than I've ever been. And I don't think you can get that by just being 1 or 2 years into the company.
You have to be part of the industry for a long time. You have to really see the problems and understand them.
Chad Franzen: 15:00
Well, I'm sure there are many facets of the company that have kind of developed over time. One relatively new facet is this podcast, The Customer Wins podcast. What have you learned maybe from hosting this show over the last couple of years?
Richard Walker: 15:14
Oh man, I first of all, I tell people, please don't take this podcast away from me, I love it. What I've learned is that it's one of the best ways to connect with people. I'm being introduced to people I may not have had a reason to meet in any other way. If you think about going to conferences, trade shows, conventions, you meet a bunch of people. Maybe you get 10 or 15 minutes with one person, maybe a lunch with somebody, maybe have a good connection, and then you don't get to do that again for a year or six months with the podcast.
I get to do that with somebody new every single week, sometimes several people in a week, and I getting to spend that time with them really builds rapport and relationship, and it's helped me see more in our industry than I've ever seen before. But I'm also seeing, you know, patterns and trends of things that are going on. I mean, one of the things I'm really excited about, remember I was saying when I first started talking to companies about saving time for their advisors and what that would do for their company? Well, that whole mind shift has changed. Now they're talking about that.
They're the ones who are hiring people into roles to focus on that, to give advisors back their time. And we're seeing products enter the marketplace that are so focused on giving advisors their time back that they're seeing the benefits of it now. So I feel like I had a vision that this could be this is how it should be for advisors, and it's come true in their industry. I'm not taking credit for it. I'm just saying I see that shift, and having this podcast and interviewing people has made it more obvious to me that that's something that's happening.
Chad Franzen: 16:42
Yeah. That's great. Tell me a little bit about the perspective series.
Richard Walker: 16:47
So one of the things that I love to do in life is get a totally different perspective on something. My team used to make fun of me. My engineering team would make fun of me in the early days, because if I went on a flight, I'd get a magazine to some some industry that wasn't ours, like I'd read Psychology Today. I'd read about real estate or medical, and I would get ideas that they're employing in those industries and bring them back to us and say, how could we change ourselves? So with the podcast, I love talking to people in our industry, fintechs and advisory firms, etc. but about 20% of my guests are from outside the industry to give everybody a perspective.
So, for example, one of my favorite episodes was interviewing the CEO of a movie theater chain called Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas. And the reason I wanted to talk to her is because it's one of the best customer experiences I can even talk about as a human going to a movie theater that's adult only. They have no tolerance for noise and lights in the theater. You get amazing food and drinks. It's just one of the best experiences.
And they have very specific rules. So I had her on the show, and she helped me understand that giving people boundaries, giving your customers actual guidelines and boundaries, is one of the ways in which you create a better customer experience. So, I mean, I've also had a magician on the show, a custom suit maker. I've had a golf professional. I mentioned Bennett Maxwell of Dirty Dough cookies.
I mean, the guy makes cookies like crazy and it's a franchise. So I love getting this outside perspective and sharing it with the world that I typically live in, so everybody can see something new.
Chad Franzen: 18:27
Do you feel like you would have had access to these people were it not for the podcast?
Richard Walker: 18:31
Oh gosh, man, I've met so many people because I have a podcast that I don't think I would have ever been introduced to otherwise. The podcast is super valuable for that.
Chad Franzen: 18:41
Yeah, I'm sure that's interesting about the setting rules for the customers makes it a better, better experience. Kind of counterintuitive.
Richard Walker: 18:48
It is. And you know what? It resonates with me on a different level. My mom, before I had my first child, she kind of told me something about raising kids that has stuck with me. And that is a kid.
A child feels loved when you set boundaries for them, where they know where they stand, where they know what they can and cannot do. And it's maybe it's kind of like the same thing as having shelter when you know, you have a roof over your head and you're safe from the elements. I don't know what the psychology is, but there's something about knowing the boundaries that makes people feel safe and secure. Maybe it's the same thing with roads. Like we have lions and guardrails and lights.
We know the rules. Therefore we feel safe driving. Maybe it's that. But yeah, I it definitely struck me that if you don't set how you work with your customers and, and help them understand that, that you don't have a great experience.
Chad Franzen: 19:40
So I is a is all the rage. Everybody's talking about it now. I'm sure everybody can point to different things they've learned from using AI or trying to use it. What are some trends that you've noticed in artificial intelligence?
Richard Walker: 19:54
Well, you know, there's a couple of things. First of all, I've been running a series of my podcast called the AI series, and I've put an end to it because I think it's here. I think everybody's embraced it. I knew this because I was walking through the airport a month ago, and every advertisement at the airport had AI in it. Even companies like caterpillar, they're not developing software, they're not the AI engine, but everybody's talking about it.
And it reminded me that AI is a tool. And so some of the things I've learned talking to people on this show is that everybody believes that AI is a huge inflection point for humanity, but also our industry and what we're doing with our work. But they also believe that AI is not necessarily going to replace anybody's job. They believe and I believe that people who learn to use AI better are going to get better jobs than the ones who don't. And I look at it the same way back in the 80s.
If you didn't learn Microsoft Word going into the 90s, you were left behind. People left word perfect back then. Same thing with typing. So it's just another tool set. But I think that there's so much enamored.
People are so enamored with it, because there's still this green field of discovery of what we could and couldn't be doing with it. And also, it keeps changing so fast. So I would say, number one, is that concept that you're not going to lose your job unless you just don't learn the tool set. But there's a second one. And it's a question I've been asking but also hearing from others about.
Look, we all have access to the same AI technology. I can use ChatGPT just like you can. So what's going to make us different? What's going to differentiate my company from your company? And the answer is the data your proprietary data.
And so I think companies have to look at what data do they own uniquely. That could give them an advantage if they use that data with artificial intelligence in some manner to drive their business forward. And I had on my show, I had Patrick Hannon of Fidelity Labs, and he talked about this. I don't know if he said it on my show or just with me in person, but fidelity has over 40 years of data in doing advertising compliance. So an advisor has to write some kind of communication, has to go to the compliance team to say, are you saying the right things or not?
They have 40 years of that history and knowledge. So they took that, put it into an AI model. And now the AI can perform the job of advertising compliance instantaneously. And it does it exceptionally well because it has that 40 years of data. So imagine some, I don't know, some young person saying I'm going to start this company that does compliance reviews.
They lack the data. So I'm not saying they couldn't succeed, but they're so far behind what fidelity has with their data. So that's another trend is our data is so important to us. And you got to keep it private and unique to you so that you can build advantages for your company. We're doing it.
Chad Franzen: 22:53
Yeah. That's that's very interesting. So when you say, you know, people who learn and use AI will have a better chance of getting a job than than those who don't. There's so, you know, on my Google feed, it's like a new story, a new way to use AI, a new story. Try this AI for this different purpose.
Oh, yeah. I mean, where do you even start? Let's say you're like, okay, well, I agree, I need to learn some part of AI. Where do you even start?
Richard Walker: 23:16
I would say everybody should learn how to prompt. Everybody should be able to write a prompt to a ChatGPT to claw Gemini, whichever, so that they can enhance their ability to get information. I'm going to give you an example, Chad. I have built a lot of conversations in ChatGPT, and I've built a custom sales consultant where I have fed it hours of me talking to answer questions about my company and my product, etc. so I fed all this information just a few days ago. I spent 20 minutes and I mean only 20 minutes.
This is not an exaggeration, putting in a few things about a product that I have that we're coming out with. And it knows a little bit about it, but I gave it a little bit more. And then I asked it to do a competitive analysis of the competitors that would be similar to my product. I don't even know what the competitors are. But instantly it went out and searched and found all these great competitors.
And then I asked it to compare it, give us the strengths of the competitor versus mine, the strengths of mine versus them. Give me some understanding, give me some taglines of how to position my product, etc. in 20 minutes, I did a day's worth of market research. I mean, I eliminated days of market research. So if you can learn how to prompt to help you understand information better, start with your life. Like the simple ones we did in the beginning was I have these items in my fridge.
Write me a recipe. You'll start to see value. When you see value in prompting, you get more interested in it. And look, your job may not be just prompting. I mean, there's prompt engineers of course, but just understanding it from that standpoint is going to help you with whatever technology you use that is now leveraging AI to help you do your job better.
So the second thing is look at the skills that you have in your job and ask yourself, are there tools that I could make this easier, better, faster? Third thing, get rid of the fear that the AI is going to replace you, or because it makes your job easier, it'll eliminate your job. Guess what? You can do better things. There's more important work for you to do, I promise you.
So do eliminate that job or reduce it from 2 hours to 2 minutes and go do more, better things with your life, with your business and your role. Don't be afraid.
Chad Franzen: 25:30
That's great. Sounds good. Good advice. Hey, so this is The Customer Wins podcast. Let's reverse it a little bit and talk about maybe how you, in your experience as a customer, have maybe lost.
Like what are some customer experiences that weren't that great?
Richard Walker: 25:45
Oh man. Yeah, I think we all have some really, really bad experiences, whether that's a lost package with Fedex or UPS or calling an 800 number. But, you know, one that comes to mind for me, about a year ago, a company charged my credit card, and it was a product that we had used years in the past but weren't using. And I wrote to them and said, or I went, first of all, I wanted to go check my account to see did I not cancel it or something? I knew I'd cancel it.
Guess what? I couldn't log in. My account was canceled. So I wrote to them. I couldn't write to them because you had to log in to write to them.
So I wrote to their sales team and I said, okay, hey, I need help. I can't log into my account, therefore I can't send you a support message. You've charged my card, blah blah blah. They took a week to get back to me and after getting back to me, they said, oh yeah, your account has renewed. You didn't cancel, I said.
But you're not letting me log into my account. Yeah, but it's a valid charge. And this is like a week between interactions, and I'm trying to get them to say, hey, you won't let me log into my account to verify and cancel, yet you're charging me. I can't use it. Give me the refund.
Three weeks go by, Chad, and they finally write back. We've done our review, and according to our policy, we're not refunding your money. I mean, this is like six weeks where I cannot use the product, I cannot log in, and their support is just, oh, our rules say. And what for? For 200 bucks or something, right?
They're making an enemy out of me. For what? I mean, I am not making or breaking their revenue. I promise this is a big company. So the corollary is I contact American Express because that's where the bill was.
And I just simply go online dispute charge. Not even ten minutes later, we have reversed your charges. You win. We'll take care of it. Didn't ask for proof.
Nothing else. American Express is the opposite. They're an amazing experience. They went to my side of the table and said, we're going to defend you and help you. And man, I'm not going to name names of what firm that was because I don't believe in that.
But what kind of experience is that? If you stick to stupid rules that make no sense and you don't listen to what the customer is actually going through, it makes no sense to me.
Chad Franzen: 28:01
So based on your good experiences and that very terrible experience, what do you take from that as you as kind of somebody who runs his own business?
Richard Walker: 28:09
You know, I think that rules are there to help guide people and processes, but you have to be willing to understand the the real thing going on and break the rule if you have to. I've had a customer spend three months with us. They signed the agreement and enterprise customer. They signed the agreement. We start the implementation and I don't know, a week into the implementation, they start asking questions about what our product can do.
And I'm like, our product doesn't do that. But that's why we signed up and I said, I don't know how this was miscommunicated because we've had three months of talking, but this is not the right product for you. I'm going to tear up the contract. You owe us no money. Let's just part on good terms, because there's no point in me holding you hostage just because you signed an agreement you didn't understand with an expectation of a product that doesn't do what you want.
And I can't give you what you want. So let's just part ways. And I know other companies are like, contract's a contract. You signed it. You owe us this much.
And I just don't look at it that way. I think you have to be willing to understand the situation and be human with your customer and ask, how would I feel if I was in their shoes and what would I want done? And then do that for them?
Chad Franzen: 29:19
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Nuance. Nuance is always something.
Always something that's good to keep in mind in most situations. Hey, as I wrap this up, I have one more question for you. But first I want to help people connect with you. What's your website or the best way for people to find you?
Richard Walker: 29:34
So quickforms.com. You can spell it with or without a c, q u i c k forms or q u i k forms.com. We'll get you there. You can find all all about our our company and our products there as well. Even developer guides.
If you're interested in our APIs, I'm available on LinkedIn. But I'm going to give a caveat to this. My LinkedIn is Quik Forms CEO. If you want to go find me. I love to connect with people, but you have to imagine I get spammed a lot.
So write me a personal message. Tell me why you want to meet and I'll be very happy to meet with you. Otherwise my my email is great too. Our Quickforms. You can find me.
So I'd love to help people.
Chad Franzen: 30:12
Okay. Very nice. All right. Last question. You wrote a book on how to change.
It's called It's My Life! I can change if I want to. It's a methodology for improving yourself. Who inspired you to write the book? And how has this little methodology helped you change yourself?
Richard Walker: 30:28
Chad, thanks for that question. I, I don't get to talk about my book very often because it's not part of the financial services industry per se, but actually it is in a lot of ways because I think we all need to change. I wrote the book in 2007 because my sister and my former brother in law started the process of going through divorce. I didn't know at the time. They didn't know at the time.
But, you know, the rumblings were there and I was good friends with both of them. I had even started a business with my brother in law back in college, so I had great relationships and they both independently started talking to me. And they both also, through this process of talking for a few months, said, you should really write a book about this. But by Thanksgiving of that year, they tried to use me as the conduit to each other. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not the mouthpiece.
I'm not going to communicate for you. I'm just trying to help you change so you can communicate better. And I got frustrated. And especially on Thanksgiving Day, if you can imagine how family getting going, how that goes. So I went home that night and I said, I'm going to write this as a book.
And for the next, well, until December 23rd, I stopped watching TV and I was just super inspired to write the book and I wrote it out. I gave them hand-bound copies for Christmas, but it took me four more years to publish the book. I just couldn't reconcile how do I help people improve? How am I this efficiency expert and technologist? How do those go along together?
And what I realized is at the core of who I am is to empower people to be their best version of themselves. So I can do that with my book. I do it with software. I can do it with this podcast. But you know what?
This change methodology has been huge for me. It has helped me change all sorts of things in my life. Even most recently, I saw one of those memes that said, what did your 18-year-old self want for you when you got older? And my first thought was I wanted to be a fortune 500 CEO. And then I said, well, wait a minute, why did why did I give that up?
Well, I didn't give it up. The title is not the important part. I still want to be the highest quality and caliber CEO possible. And that that framed me to say, oh, well, how would I act if I was the hired CEO, hired by the board of directors and the shareholders? What would I do differently?
And I started asking myself questions and seeing the world differently. So I used this change methodology to shift my perception, see the world in a different way, really change how I experience reality. And even this shift to being the hired CEO versus the founder of my company has been so profound. We have just grown leaps and bounds this year. We've done some tough things too.
We've had to go through layoffs to shift resources and make hard decisions around it. But man, we're going so much faster and it's just so much more fun. So I truly believe that if you have the power to change yourself and you can use a tool set like mine or anybody else's and give yourself the opportunity to be better. Life just gets better. So personally, I'm just enjoying my job more and more because I've made this shift and I use my methodology for that.
Chad Franzen: 33:31
That's awesome. Great story. Great stuff. Hey, Rich, it's always great to talk to you. I really appreciate you having me today.
Richard Walker: 33:36
Oh, man. Chad, this has been so much fun. So let me give a huge thank you to Chad for being my host on this episode of The Customer Wins. Chad works with Rise25, which is the company that publishes our website, our podcast, and they're amazing. In fact, I had one of their co-founders, John Corcoran, on my show recently.
You can go check out their website at rise25.com, and don't forget to check out Quik! at Quickforms.com, where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Chad, thank you so much for joining me today.
Chad Franzen: 34:10
Thank you, Rich.
Outro: 34:12
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
Comentarios