Tell your users to take a hike.
Before 1959, little girls played with baby dolls to prepare them for motherhood and caregiving. But Ruth Handler knew girls needed a doll that could challenge their imaginations to dream bigger. And so Barbie was born. Whether she’s rocking an astronaut’s suit or a business power suit, the infamous Barbie is always confident and poised to take on the world. With over a billion Barbies sold, her confidence has empowered millions of children over the past 60 years to go after their dreams.
Giving our customers confidence is one of our most important charges as CX leaders. Barbie’s makers at Mattel knew this, and so does Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails. He and his team work to empower everyone, from “indoor people” to outdoor enthusiasts, to take on the outdoors. What can we do to harness that empowering energy for our own customer experience? Let’s find out.
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"The key is using technology to find the right trail for you, then to go out and explore with confidence." - Ron Schneidermann
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) The unmatched impact of Barbie
* (8:13) The beauty of AllTrails
* (12:06) Handling virtual trail upkeep
* (14:59) A terrifying board meeting
* (19:09) How to best connect with your users
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This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
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Narrator: *Sigh* Here we go again. Ruth’s son and daughter were in a fight. Her daughter Barbara kept stealing her son’s action figures. For the 30th time that week, Ruth tried to explain that he had to share his toys with his sister. She watched as the words went in one ear and out the other, and he ran off. In an effort to avoid more of these interactions, Ruth decided it was time to get her daughter some new toys.
Making her way through the toy aisle at the local store, Ruth was disappointed in the options for girls. The only dolls they had were babies, meant to teach girls how to be mothers and caregivers. But Ruth’s daughter Barbara was drawn more to the toys her brother played with. She liked playing with firefighters, doctors, and astronauts, and there just weren’t any options like that for little girls. Lucky for them, Ruth wasn’t just another mom wandering around FAO Schwarz. She happened to be married to the co-founder of the Mattel toy company.
It took some convincing, but eventually Ruth got the higher-ups at Mattel on board. Throughout all the back and forths, Ruth’s message stayed the same: little girls need toys that give them the confidence to be something other than a mother or a caregiver. Research shows that by age 5, many girls start having self-limiting beliefs that they can’t be as smart or capable as boys. Ruth wanted to create a doll that would counteract those beliefs. So Mattel got to work...and just like that...Barbie was born.
Now, just to acknowledge the elephant in the room...do we know that Barbie’s body was based off a questionable doll sold in tobacco shops in Germany? Yes. Are there a myriad of controversies surrounding the impact of her proportions on self esteem? Also yes. Those things are known, and acknowledged, but even with the harm that has been done by Barbie, there is also *a lot* of good.
Ruth wanted Barbie to look like an adult and have a career. So, the first Barbie doll was marketed as a “Teenage Fashion Model.” She wore a black and white zebra swimsuit and had that classic Barbie ponytail. With her eyes looking a little off to the side, she was chic and ready to play. Barbie was the first-ever toy to have an entire marketing campaign based on television ads. At a price point of $3 when she debuted in 1959, Mattel sold 350,000 Barbie dolls in the first year.
In the next few years, new molds and designs for different Barbies came out, and the empire we’re familiar with today was born. In the early 1960s, Mattel started releasing Barbies that were nurses, astronauts, flight attendants, and business executives. Suddenly, by creating a doll with adult features and careers, Mattel was empowering little girls to see a future that wasn’t based on child rearing. They were gaining the confidence to live whatever life they wanted. Whole new parts of the world were being unlocked.
In 1962, Barbie's Dreamhouse was released. Little girls had a doll that was unmarried, living alone, had a job, and was fully independent (///can’t stress enough how big of a deal this is!). That’s four decades before Beyonce sang about all the women who independent and all the honeys who making money. (Throw your hands up at me.) It was an eye-opening play experience that was enabling girls to dream bigger. Think about this hypocrisy: At that point, Ruth—who had revolutionized the play experience for girls around the world and raked in tons of money for Mattel—*still* wasn’t allowed to have her own bank account. But she was determined to create a world where little girls could hope for a life of independence.
With women’s liberation on the rise, Ruth kept looking for more ways to empower her customers. One of the last decisions she made before leaving the company was for the infamous 1971 Malibu Barbie. Up until then, Barbie dolls all looked off to the side. They were demure and unassuming. But in the 70s, women were reclaiming space...and so was Barbie. Malibu Barbie was the first doll to have her eyes looking straight ahead, ready to take on the world.
Ultimately, that’s what Barbie does. She gives the children who play with her the confidence to see the world differently. And the courage to dream big. Inspiring our customers in that way can be challenging. But at the end of the day, it’s one of our most important responsibilities.
/// So today we are talking about confidence. And how the best CX leaders figure out a way to give confidence to their customers.
So hop in your pink convertible, leave Ken at home, and remember….life in plastic...it’s fantastic.
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is about giving your customers confidence. How Barbie revolutionized the toy industry by empowering girls to dream big, and how you can do the same. In this episode, we’ll hear from Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails. He talks about how they’re empowering entire groups of people to take on the outdoors. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
As we look back at Barbie, we can see her as a series of snapshots of American history. She acts as a representation of gender identity, race, career, and other stereotypes of the times. Barbie paved the way for the doll industry as we know it today. Over a billion have been sold in the last 60 years. It’s estimated that at least 3 Barbie dolls are sold every second. And with that level of impact, modern Barbies have pivoted to a more inclusive play experience. Representation matters, and Mattel has adopted a fierce dedication to diversity. Nowadays, Barbie comes in over 35 skin tones, 94 hairstyles, and 9 body types. Barbie plays a role in giving children confidence, and Mattel takes the responsibility seriously.
When it comes to giving customers the confidence to pursue the unknown, Mattel led the way. Barbie opened up the eyes of entire generations of girls, to a future they never thought possible. Our friend Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails, is doing something similar. He’s helping make the outdoors friendly and accessible to everyone. AllTrails creates products and content that help people spend more time in nature. They provide maps of local trails you can hike, mountain bike, or ski. They provide comprehensive information about difficulty levels, accessibility, views, and much more. Whether you’re a novice hiker or an experienced mountain biker, we can’t recommend it enough.
At the core of the product, Ron says they’re working to give customers the confidence to get outside and explore their surroundings. Especially people who might not feel like they’re the most outdoorsy.
Ron: really where we make the biggest impact is, um, you know, it's easy to take for granted, uh, someone like me who grew up on the trail, it's easy to take for granted, you know, how comfortable I feel going out on the trail. And there's a place I've never been before, but that's especially as an and you know, to be fair as.
As a white male, especially like, I've definitely come to appreciate that back too. Right. Um, there are a lot of barriers that keep people from heading out there. And, and we think the two biggest ones that keep people from spending more time outside are lack of information and lack of confidence. And so we try all Chels tries to help with both of those, right.
On the information side. That's where we can curate all of our tow guys. So it's not just a big dump of user generated content and it's not just static lines on a map, right? Like all of our trailers. They have a starting point. They have an end point. They have a red line on a map of exactly where to go.
They have a total elevation. They have a difficulty, they have what activities you can do. So is it just hikers? Are you going to see mountain bikers out there? Are you going to see off-road drivers out there or horseback riders out there? What you're going to see out there? Is there a waterfall here? Is this trail known for wild flowers?
Are you going to see wild? And then accessibility, which is a huge piece. Is this, is this trail, um, wheelchair accessible? Is it, is it dog friendly? Is it, um, stroller friendly or kid friendly? So you really know exactly what you're getting into. And I think that that helps, right? So that people don't feel like they're going to get in over their skis, get out there on something that they aren't comfortable with.
They're ready to handle it. So that's a big part of the information. And on top of that, we have one tap driving directions, right. To the trail head. So just physically, like how do I actually get. And then the confidence part, you know, part of it is knowing exactly what you're getting into. Part of it is our Ontario mapping features, so that blue GPS dot on your phone that actually it's satellite, it actually works when you don't have a data signal.
So being able to see exactly where you are at any given time, exactly how to backtrack and get back to your car. I mean, the other safety features too. Um, you know, so all of this is really trying to lower the barrier so that more and more people. You know, regardless of age, regardless of gender, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of socioeconomic background, um, can feel confident and comfortable spending more time on.
Narrator: AllTrails has worked tirelessly to make their product helpful to as wide of an audience as possible. And once people get into AllTrails, there are a couple ways they go about using it.
Ron: there's a few different patterns. We see there's a few different patterns. We see. One is progression, you know, so you get folks who, who maybe have been doing it for a while.
Or are new and you see them taking on, uh, you know, more mileage on the weekend or progressing from easy trails to moderate trails or from moderate to hard trails. You know, you kind of see it's not necessarily like a straight line, but sort of this, this linear progression. I think that that's great.
There's another court where you see people who maybe started hiking, but then start trail running or start mountain biking and doing more different types of activities on the trail, which is great again. And that's just part of it. As your confidence goes up, you just want to try different ways. Of experiencing more increase the speed and velocity again, whether running or biking or horseback riding, whatever it is.
the key thing is, is figuring out how we can use technology to just make it dead, simple, to find the right trail for you, and then go out and explore with confidence.
Narrator: AllTrails has oveer 40 million registered users in over 150 different countries. Getting 40 million people to gain confidence is no small feat.
And think about it. Let's say you are brand new to hiking. You don’t know where to go, or what the hike is like.
You can log on to AllTrails, and find a beginner hike near you. For example, the Leona Canyon trail near my house is 2.8 miles out and back, it features 489 feet of elevation gain, it is dog friendly, and Oswald left a review on AllTrails saying that it isn’t too crowded on a saturday afternoon and there is lots of shade when it is hot out.
That sounds doable right?
But what about safety? Ron thinks about that 24/7.
Ron: Our number one priority all the time is the safety and security of our users and really validating that our content is as up-to-date as humanly possible. And I think, you know, all of the, the product and functionality stuff aside, like really the, the core of all Charles is our trail content.
And there's kind of two, two components to that. One is the trail creation. Right? So how we add new trails around the globe, you use that exam. Um, and I think that's spot on. Like, we want to map every trail around the globe. That's ultimately our goal, but the flip side of that coin, there's the trail curation.
And that's making sure that it is as up-to-date as possible. And again, whether it's fire, whether it's flooding, whether it's snow, whether it's development, whether it's. Close for maintenance. We have to get that stuff, right. Especially if people are driving super far out or planning a backpacking trip or whatever, it's very high consequence.
So our biggest areas of focus over the last few years, aside from elevating the product experience itself is tightening our feedback loops so that we can keep our content as up-to-date, as humanly possible. And so we've been building out a ton of them. Um, some are active. Like our users are actively helping us curate content report issues, add new trails.
We're in constant communication with them. We have features to communicate with us directly in the app. Uh, we have inbound customer support. Obviously we get this qualitative feedback from app store reviews. Um, so that's fantastic. And then there's ways that we passively are able to ingest GPS, location, data anonymously.
It's completely anonymous. You can start pattern matching and doing clustering analysis and things like that. Um, and so the two in tandem ended up being pretty powerful and again, like as well. And then when you layer on top all of the AI and the ML and the clustering algorithms and everything else that we're building on top of this and you couple that with a massive human ops part of it, I mean, it's, it's definitely the most complex part of our business.
Um, but I think our commitment to that. And our users recognize the commitment to accuracy that we have, uh, is why there's so much trust on the platform. And I think why we're seeing that in term of.
Narrator: For AllTrails, confidence starts with accuracy. A bad customer experience is that you show up for a hike with your dog and it turns out it isn’t dog friendly. An even worse experience would be if you got lost on the hike. Thank goodness for AllTrails GPS feature.
Their users are empowered with the most accurate representation of local trails, even the most hesitant users are ready to hit the ground running. But it wasn’t always that way. There are some lessons Ron had to learn the hard way.
Ron: when I took over, um, back in 2015, before I did anything, I just spent the first couple months getting my hands on as much qualitative and quantitative feedback as possible. And again, reading all of the app store reviews, reading every blog, post every Reddit thread, finding whatever Facebook groups I could find.
And it was shocking how much people hated them. And it's because, you know, we weren't committed to the accuracy of the data at that point. You know, we, we were kind of a little loose with, with what kind of content would go live and, you know, people would have really bad experiences. And at first my first reaction is like, oh my God, what did I just get myself into?
Right., and, and the more I thought about. I realized that there's actually a blessing in disguise here. You know, if, if all of these users who we did wrong by, they tell them a trail is dog friendly and they get a ticket telling them a trail head is here and they get lost, whatever it is, all these users who we did wrong by if they were apathetic.
That would have been scary. We would have been in trouble. Right? Because that just means that they're able to find a need somewhere else. And we're just irrelevant at that point. But the sheer amount of rage and frustration and anger that they had meant that we profoundly let them down, they had high expectations and we let them down.
But the good news is we could fix that. Right. And we, we committed hard. A hard pivot to trail, uh, you know what we call data integrity internally. We had to pull down like 80% of our trail content because it just wasn't good enough. And for an SEO driven business, that was terrifying. That was absolutely terrifying.
And having to, you know, make the case to the board and everything, um, you know, but it was the right thing to do and we really needed to rebuild it from scratch through this lens and knowing again, like how high context. It isn't how much our users expect of us. And I think that's why as we've gotten it better, as we, as we've improved, obviously the quality and quantity of our data and improve the product experience.
I think, I think, I think people appreciate it. I think they, they, they recognize, you know, the effort that we're putting in and the importance it is to us to get this stuff. Right.
Narrator: Taking down 80% of your content is a bold pitch to make. That board meeting does not sound fun. But ultimately, it has made AllTrails into a more robust product. Now it’s an app that has loads of features that users can confidently trust.
Ron: We have this navigator feature within our app that, um, I think is the biggest game changer, right? Like that's where you have, you're able to load a map and then. Uh, see your blue gps.to exactly where you are and it'll be your log for how far you're going and your mileage and your elevation, your stats, things like that.
And it's a great way to, to share with brands, right? So this way, like Ian, if you want to come and do, uh, you know, this, this mountain bike trail that I do all the time, I can just share my recording with you. You can take it and download it and go out. And it's as if I'm showing you around, even if I'm not there to take you out there, right?
Like. The, the discovery piece around this and really making it simple for people of like-minded interests and fitness levels and risk tolerance is to go out and share these experiences. Um, I think, I think that's one of the neatest things
Narrator: Adding the social component to the app is a game changer. Being able to share those stats with friends and family increases user engagement and makes things more fun. And the more your customers share with the people in their lives...the more feedback you’re opening yourself up to.
Ron: you need to put your ego completely aside. It's easy. When, when, when, when, or it's not easy, it's hard when you, when you've built something, when you've invested so much time and energy, you know, sometimes you, you take this stuff personally or you want to hold onto it, but nothing good is going to come from that.
So if you're able to completely park your ego and really listen to. And be empathetic towards your users and, and truly hear them and then work with them towards a path towards resolution and improvement in everything else. I think, I think that's the unlock. I think that's the key because a lot of users they want to be heard.
Um, and they want to know that like, things are, are going to be improved or resolved or fixed, but they. Most most users, most customers are really, uh, they're. They, they understand it's not going to happen overnight. And it's, it is, it's a relationship that you have and it's, it's ongoing as a, you know, you got to think through the sort of long-term relationship with each of these users and customers.
And I think so long as they, they feel heard, they feel validated and then they see the improvements you're making that, that carries a lot of weight with them.
Narrator: With 40 million registered users in over 150 different countries...that’s a lot of long-term relationships to manage. But for Ron, lowering barriers to entry and increasing people’s confidence to get out and explore nature is worth a hit to the ego.
As we work to give our customers confidence, regardless of what issues come up, Ron reminds us that the end result is worth it. We want customers who feel empowered to take on the unknown and pursue something great. Whether it’s a first-timer strapping on a new pair of hiking boots, or Astronaut Barbie inspiring the next generation of female space travelers, confidence makes all the difference.
If you haven’t checked out AllTrails, I highly recommend you download it and find a trail near you. Enjoy your hike and listen to the sounds of nature. Or listen to often imitated while you walk. I am confident you will enjoy both together.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
This is your host, Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell one friend. This podcast was narrated by me, Ian Faison, and produced and edited by Mackey Wilson, Ezra Bakker Trupiano, and Jon Libbey. You can learn more about our team and check out our brand new awesome website! at CaspianStudios.com.