A WBR Author Story, By Gavin Scott, edited by Ivan Meakins
Gavin Scott (Gav to those who know him) is a customer service expert. He helps the employees of his clients (BMW, Cinch) to have great conversations with their customers and teaches them how to turn every customer interaction into an exceptional experience.
He is a keynote speaker, bestselling author of Finding Gold Dust: How To Create Exceptional Customer Experiences, and host of the Customer Service Gold Dust podcast
This is his story.
Before March 2020, I had a goal of being known as the “Vidal Sassoon of customer service” after discussing how to increase my profile as a Customer Experience Expert with Kevin Hall, my Business Coach at the time.
That’s right. Gavin Scott, family man, semi-professional football ref from Doncaster, UK was going to be a noun associated with the customer service industry.
I just didn’t know it yet.
You see, I had been helping companies create five-star customer experiences for some years before my epiphany, but Sassoon-level status is a whole other level.
The road to customer service fame – trying and failing
My problem, like many entrepreneurs out there, was that only a few people in the industry knew the name Gavin Scott. That was about to change.
My first attempt at fame was to attend as many speaking engagements as possible to build that authority. As you can imagine, success didn’t exactly happen overnight…
I tried whatever I could. I even once paid £500 to be a judge at the UK Complaints Handling Awards with Awards International to gain some exposure.
I still remember that day now, sitting at my table with ten other tuxedo-clad judges watching the awards, thinking:
“I can do more in this space.”
I wanted to be the keynote that everyone was excited to hear speak.
I wanted to be the one presenting the awards to these businesses.
I wanted to be the host of the whole thing.
Searching for a solution
The thing is, I LOVED helping businesses have great conversations with their customers. Every interaction a business has with its customers, even the complaints (especially the complaints), is an amazing opportunity to create a memorable experience, which is like gold dust for organisations.
But so many companies out there let these moments fall through the net. I knew, if I had a platform, I would be able to help them find this gold dust and leverage it.
Though I wasn’t quite there yet.
For example, I still used other people’s material in my talks. My favourite one was a book called The Effortless Experience by Matthew Dixon and Rick Delisi. These guys were the big players in the customer service world, and I wanted to be on their level.
If I could get close to that, I’d be kicking some ass in this space.
That was where I was before March 2020, when I met Georgia and the team at Write Business Results.
Taking a new tack – with a book
My hope of speaking on stage and attending events unravelled to say the least, during the pandemic, but my desire to be recognised in this space was stronger than ever.
I just needed to take a different tack.
When I met Georgia and she explained the Write Business Results process of creating, publishing and promoting content (books, blogs and podcasts) and how it can elevate your personal brand, I was sold!
After that, everything started slotting into place.
In six and a half weeks, and over several interviews with the WBR team (12 hours in total) we had over 30 chapters of content for the book and a completed draft!
And so Finding Gold Dust was born, thanks to the WBR team and John Montgomery, the genius behind the title and the great visuals in the book.
With Write Business Results’ book launch campaign, it hit a bestseller in three categories on Amazon in the first week of the launch – not too shabby!
I remember the point when the book hit the No 1 spot. It was Saturday 12th December just after 7pm. I was watching “Strictly Come Dancing” with my wife and kids and boom, Finding Gold Dust hit No 1 in Customer Service. There was no excuse not to dance now, and I did a little Dad dance in the living room. It was a great night for all of us!
But better than that, when the reviews started coming through, I knew I was onto something big:
It’s like I was in the room with my readers
And if I was nervous about having someone else write the book for me, I didn’t worry for long. Georgia and the WBR team knew how important it was for the book to sound like I was speaking directly to the reader, and the results spoke for themselves…
People who I had worked with started coming back to me with feedback like, “It’s like you were in the room with me the whole time Gav,” and “I could hear you on every page”.
WBR captured my voice in a way I hadn’t thought possible from just 12 hours of interviews.
Shortly after enjoying the success of the book, I launched my podcast Customer Service Gold Dust with Write Business Results to keep a regular stream of new content flowing and to generate maximum exposure…
… and the combination of the book and the podcast changed the game.
Game-changing results
Before March 2020, two questions that clients asked themselves before they worked with me were:
Is this person credible? And do I trust him?
Now, with the book and the podcast working for me, those two boxes are ticked straight away. I’ve got the credibility of being a bestselling author, AND I’m the host of a top customer service podcast, the proof is in the pudding!
These days I’m so busy with new business, trying to get hold of me is like catching the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.
I’m busier than I have ever been, and the business has never been more profitable, thanks to Finding Gold Dust and the podcast that inspired it.
And If the story ended there, I would have been a happy man.
But then, only a few months ago, I got a message from someone I never expected to hear from.
Rick Delisi. The co-author of the book I used to reference back in my earlier talks contacted me asking, “Can I come on to your podcast?”
I was stunned. Since then, the podcast has been a magnet for new opportunities, and every week I’m speaking to some fantastic guests, talking about what I love to do!
Hitting fame in your niche
It took a little while to get there, and there was some hard graft in the beginning, but now it’s spun around 360!
People are looking at the show thinking, “This guy from Doncaster is kicking some ass in the customer service space!”
I would imagine that a lot of people who are looking to produce a book or a podcast may think that they’ve got to come up with all the ideas themselves. But if you can get a diverse team, like the one at Write Business Results, you get so many different ideas that the process feels seamless and effortless.
You get the power of many minds put together, which helps massively with creating great content.
I knew that I didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to be able to produce this content alone. So I brought in the experts in content creation and just focused on what I loved – telling stories about customer service – and they did the rest!
WBR are now a big part of my content power team, and I would recommend them to anyone out there looking to create content that gets results!
Oh, one more thing…
In February 2022, I was invited to be the host of the UK Business Innovation Awards! I’ve gone from paying to be a judge to hosting the whole thing!
Thanks to my book, my podcast, and the WBR team who helped me create it, becoming the customer service version of Vidal Sassoon is one step closer to reality.
Do you have a book idea that needs to get out? Been thinking about creating content that gets you noticed in your industry? The team at Write Business Results are always up for a chat about how we can help, so get in touch with us today – like Gav, you too may be sitting on gold dust!