Episode summary 

There's nothing like healthy competition. And monitoring the way your competitors do business and approach their customers can make you a stronger player. 

But if you want to stay on top of the game, sometimes you need to look beyond your competition. In this episode of CX Education, our host Sunny Dhami welcomes Bill Eveleth, the COO/CFO of GoLive. They talk about the importance of staying ahead of the competition, why text messaging is still an effective communication channel and the benefits of creating a high-quality customer experience. 

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Guest-at-a-glance 

💡 Name: Bill Eveleth 

💡 What he does: He's the COO/CFO of GoLive. 

💡 Company: GoLive 

💡 Noteworthy: Bill has also founded a consulting company, The Fractional CFO. Before that, he held CFO roles in multi-billion-dollar companies. He's also authored four books, ranging from business and operations to stories and life lessons. 

💡 Where to find Bill: LinkedIn 

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Key insights  

⚡ Look beyond the competition. Having competition is a natural part of every business - it can help you stay on top of the game while keeping customers happy. But sometimes, you need to go beyond the competition to win in business. Bill explains, "If you're going to really win in business, you've got to be out front. You've got to be on the leading edge of where you want to take your business, and that's what I do as COO of GoLive; we really spend a lot of time thinking about where are the blue oceans, where are the fields that people haven't gone to yet, and that's where we really want to compete. If you jump into the competitive mass and you try to do anything there, you can just get gobbled up in marketing expenses. So, we focus on the future and where we want to take the business." 

⚡ Text messages are still an effective communication tool. Despite what some people think, text messaging is still one of the best ways to reach customers and prospects. Bill explains, "One of the things we really like about text messaging is that 90% of the messages received are read within five minutes. Text messaging, we see as a very efficient and effective form of communication, whether it's in marketing or whether it's in employee communication or patient communication." 

⚡ Put your customer's needs first. To build a long-standing relationship with customers, you need to put them first – a high-quality customer experience can make all the difference in business. Bill says, "If somebody comes to me and says, 'Okay, I have a situation, and I want to know if you have a solution,' then yeah, absolutely. You can say, 'Well, I hear what you're saying, and we have a product that I think will solve this problem for you.' So, it's a little different when you're selling a product or a service than when you're selling consulting services. It's okay to have the answer being your product, but you want to understand what their needs are first. Put your prospect's needs or your customer's needs before you make recommendations to them." 

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