Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, implementation and execution
You Can’t Afford Not to Invest in
Customer Service Training
Expense or Investment - The leading excuse for why companies either do not train at all on soft-skill customer service, or train very little, is budget. However, when you see low satisfaction scores, low loyalty, increasing customer defection, and businesses needing to engage in the price wars to keep customers, you realize that customer service training is not an expense but an investment.
Can you afford not to train on Service Aptitude? - A few months ago an employee of a popular restaurant chain, instead of entering the customer’s name on the receipt label that gets taped to the order, typed in “lady chinky eyes.” You can imagine the media and social media coverage this incident got, and the negative PR this restaurant chain received, not to mention the insensitive insult the poor customer experienced. Today, with the power of social media, this is something that every business fears the most. And it certainly could happen in any business. That is why it is so critical that organizations have strong customer service training for every employee. Not just the new ones, but every employee on an ongoing basis. Annual customer service training is like deodorant, it wears off, and if not refreshed, the smell comes back. Increasing employees’ service aptitude needs to be done daily, constantly priming your employees’ minds of what world-class hospitality looks like, regardless of the industry you are in; restaurants, professional services, or manufacturing.
Hospitality Mindset - I think the two most powerful words needed for constant reinforcement to every employee are Compassion & Empathy. When you genuinely serve with compassion and empathy, your customer service is on a completely different level. The question is, how do you teach compassion and empathy? How do you make them more than just buzz words and platitudes? The top world-class customer experience organizations constantly put their employees in the shoes of the customer. When your employees really understand the plight of the customer, (what the customer is going through, their daily battles) it starts to crystallize how critically important the experience your employees deliver becomes.
Making the customer apologize - An amazing technique, that is so rare, is when an employee cannot fulfill a customer’s request or has to deliver bad news to a customer, the employee demonstrates such empathy that the customer actually feels bad for the employee.
Superior Service Vision – Superior Glove, a leading manufacturer and wholesale supplier of work and safety gloves headquartered in Ontario, Canada, is a client of The DiJulius Group. They have committed to dramatically improving the experience the customer service teams delivers to their customers, who are other businesses that use their products either to resell or for use by their employees. As with every consulting client, The DiJulius Group starts by helping them create a Customer Service Vision. This is the true underlying value of what, and how, your employees need to deliver to each and every customer, providing a meaningful purpose for your employees. This is Superior Glove’s service vision statement and pillars:
Since rolling this out in February, Superior Glove has seen a significant improvement not only with buy-in of this new service culture by their customer service reps, but also with a spike in customer satisfaction scores. They have used several methods to roll out their Service Vision to theirentire organization, including making a iconic glove with the Service Vision on the back of the hand and the pillars along three of the fingers, every employee received one.
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Client Services, Customer Experience, Customer Service, implementation and execution, Patient Experience, Patient Services
World Class Starts at the Top
There are two primary reasons why many companies will never dramatically improve their customer service levels:
1) Executive Sponsorship, and 2) Service Aptitude at the top.
Executive Sponsorship - It is a proven fact that any big initiative, project, 
or revolution has to have the support of the senior leadership team, otherwise it is flavor-of-the-month or management-by- bestseller. The senior leadership team has to provide the necessary resources to create long-lasting change and move the dial. That isn’t just writing a check or increasing the budget for customer service. It is having someone in charge of the project, i.e. a CXO (Chief Xperience Officer), who is dedicated and loses sleep at night over the customer experience program and the results. The customer experience is a staple that is talked about every time the CEO/President speaks. People know they mean business.
Service Aptitude at the Top - Typically when I get done speaking at a conference, I get two types of questions from attendees.
1) Can we really get our front-line employees to buy into this and treat customers better? I respond with, “Absolutely. If you follow the 10 Commandments, you will create a world-class customer experience organization. It takes time, but be relentless.”
2) How can I get my boss, my president, my CEO to buy into this? And I respond with, “Have him or her come to my next presentation, and get them What’s the Secret?“. But what I am really thinking is, “You are sunk.” If the top people/person don’t passionately believe in service, the company will never embody it. Yes, every CEO preaches service, incorporates it somewhere in their annual address, but that is just lip service. There is a reason why their customer service is poor; many CEO’s do not make it a priority, only focusing on sales and operations and they truly do not understand the magnitude of the competitive advantage that being World-Class at service provides (see smoking gun article).
Worst of a bad bunch - The CEO of Spirit Airlines is a perfect example. Spirit Airlines leads the airline industry when it comes to customer complaints. That is tough. We are talking about the airline industry, and very few like their airline (except Southwest & Virgin passengers). You have to be pretty bad to be the worst. And worse than that, Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza said, “That’s an irrelevant statistic”!
The Customer Service Hall of Shame - Spirit reached a new low a few weeks ago when a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran and former Marine tried to get his $197 back after learning his esophageal cancer is terminal and being told by his doctor not to fly from Florida to Atlantic City. Airline officials told him to forget it, and Baldanza reaffirmed the company’s hardline in an exclusive FoxNews.com interview. “A lot of our customers buy that insurance and what Mr. Meekins asked us to do was essentially give him the benefit of the insurance when he didn’t purchase the insurance,” Baldanza said. “Had we done that, I think it really would’ve been cheating all the people who actually bought the insurance … and I think that’s fundamentally unfair.”
The Customer Service Hall of Fame - Restaurants Unlimited Inc (RUI), a client of The DiJulius Group, is headquartered in Seattle and owns 20 different brands in 46 locations. They are a great example of a true commitment to creating a customer service revolution. It starts with executive sponsorship and high service aptitude at the top, which is exactly what President/CEO, Chris Harter, demonstrates better than most. Chris Harter, who was the former President of Levy Restaurants, was named President of a 44 year old restaurant chain in the past year. In 2011, under different management, RUI had 117 strategic action plans. In 2012, under Harter’s leadership, RUI has ONE: to become a World-Class Customer Experience Organization, from top to bottom. At their annual GM conference in Phoenix, AZ, in April, I had the pleasure of helping them launch their new Service Vision — TO MAKE EVERY GUEST FEEL LIKE OUR ONLY ONE. This is supported with their Pillars and Never and Always, non-negotiable list.
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, implementation and execution, Patient Experience, Secret Service
There is definitely a challenge when companies are trying to improve their customer experience. Yet most companies are running thin, not wanting to add complexity to the front-line employees’ jobs, not wanting to add expensive new technology or additional staff. While there definitely are times when those things are necessary, The DiJulius Group, when working with our consulting clients, has criteria for determining when to add Secret Service Systems. First, let’s revisit what Secret Service is:
The ability to obtain customer intelligence and utilize that to personalize the customer’s experience, leaving the customer to ask, “How’d they do that, and how’d they know that?”
Secret Service uses hidden systems to deliver unforgettable customer service. Customer intelligence is customer data (i.e., buying habits, purchasing history, referrals, personal preferences, home address, or work place) that fuels secret service.
Secret Service Test - Choose which of the following scenarios IS considered Secret Service.
- Roses for every female client on Valentine’s Day
- Asking how his/her son is doing in college
- Umbrellas for any guest who needs one
- How their job at Progressive Insurance is
- Water in every car provided by valet
- Bringing your client a Venti Soy Latte
If you chose #2, 4, & 6 as Secret Service you were correct. While #1, 3, & 5 are great customer service actions, they are NOT Secret Service – personalizing a customer’s experience. It is great that every woman gets a rose on Valentine’s Day, but there is nothing personalized about it. It is mass. Same with the valet putting a fresh water bottle in every car they bring around. Exceptional — but not personalized.
Secret Service System Implementation Criteria- Secret Service systems should not add cost or complexity to your organization. Secret Service systems are what we call low-hanging fruit; they must meet the following criteria:
- Low or no cost
- Simple to execute consistently
- Have zero impact on productivity
- Create an immediate WOW for the customer
Secret Service systems allow the front-line employees of your organization to consistently create a memorable experience through:
- Engaging the customer
- Personalizing their experience
- Remembering their preferences
- Distinguishing between new, returning, and VIP customers
- Anticipating and delivering on their unexpressed needs.
Look at your customer experience stages and see where your Secret Service system opportunities are.
Johnism
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, implementation and execution, Patient Experience
Have you had an Experiential Physical this year?
Have you done one in awhile? Have you audited your customer experience stages to ensure you are not just delivering on operational standards to your customer? Companies who only focus on operational standards are delivering a commodity, just like everyone else.
Let’s visit the difference between Operational and Experiential, Commandment 5 in What’s the Secret?
Operational Standards are the “service” portion of the interaction. Employees have to execute these in order to complete the transaction. Your competitors do it, and it is unnoticeable by the customer unless it is not done.
Experiential Standards are actions that team members do not necessarily have to execute (even though it may be a company non-negotiable standard). It is what makes the customer say, “WOW!” It’s a delightful surprise such as knowing the customer’s name, company history, personal history, and preferences, before they even ask. It is the reason why our customers return, refer others and become brand evangelists.
Here are a few examples of Operational vs. Experiential.
Scheduling an appointment at a salon and dealing with the reservationist over the phone:
Operational Standards
- Receptionist answers phone
- Finds out:
- Service wanted
- Time
- Service provider
- Location
- Schedules appointment
Experiential Standards
- Genuine, welcoming and personalized greeting
- Use customer’s name 2 or more times
- Deliver at least 1 Secret Service (something about them, ask how their last visit was in January, where they work, live, personal notes, etc.?
- Ask if there is anything else we can do for you today
Checking in at a hotel at the front desk:
Operational Standards
- Receptionist greets you
- Asks for name on the reservation
- Asks to see your driver’s license & credit card
- Has you initial the room rate & day of departure
- Hands you your room keys
Experiential Standards
- Receptionist executes the 5 E’s
- Eye contact
- Enthusiastic greeting
- Ear-to-Ear smile
- Engages
- Educates
- Asks how your trip in from Chicago was (from your driver’s license)
- Ask if there is anything else we can do for you today
Operational Standards are critical to world-class customer service; however, they are what everyone is doing, and alone, they make your experience a commodity. The only time operational is memorable is when it is not done correctly. If the customer arrives and the salon has the appointment done correctly, the customer is not impressed. Every company needs to have Experiential Standards that elevate the experience, sweetens the interaction, and makes it memorable.
Johnism
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Service
Are your employees fearless?
So often leadership is disappointed with front-line employees’ lack of above & beyond efforts and actions. Employers don’t understand why employees do not capitalize on “low hanging fruit,” when great opportunities present themselves to “wow” the customer. The key reason? Your employees are scared! This is the number one reason, and I have yet to meet an executive/leader who was not in denial about their team’s lack of confidence in going above & beyond for their customers without fear of getting in trouble. I don’t care how many stories you tell, how many times you stand up and preach that there are no limitations on what your employees can do. I guarantee a higher percentage of your employees are hesitant, reluctant, even scared they could get in trouble — maybe for going against a policy.
Above & Beyond Fearless Test - Those of you reading this and saying, “no way, not my staff,” should take the Above & Beyond Fearless Test (below). But before you do, write down what percent of your employees you think will answer that they are afraid of going above & beyond for a customer (i.e. 10%, 25%, etc.). Here is how you do it. It is quite simple: do an anonymous survey with as many front-line employees as possible asking them one question -
- Do you have any fear at all that you could get in trouble (by management) for going above & beyond for a customer?
I am willing to bet you will be surprised by the actual percentage of those who are. Now, how to fix it? How to make your employees fearless?
- Service Aptitude- Employees are not trained on what above & beyond really looks like and how to anticipate their customers’ needs and empathize with them and their situation.
- Prime their minds- Companies need to create constant awareness of the type of above & beyond culture they want. World-Class customer experience organizations do this
daily, yes daily, through numerous vehicles, story telling, collecting above & beyond stories, and re-advertising them back to the employees through pre-shift huddles, internalcompany newsletters, and above & beyond quarterly and annual recognitions. - Remove the word “policy”- Companies preach that their employees need to be heroes for their customers, yet they always remind them of ”policy.” Then employees use policy as a crutch and hide behind itwhen a customer complains, which further upsets your customer. “Policy” is an outdated word that needs to be removed from any customer service company. Replace it with guidelines. Guidelines are there to help employees navigate, but are not black & white, and employees need to know that when circumstances call for it. They then can make exceptions.
Johnism
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Client Services, Customer Experience, implementation and execution, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
I just finished this 600+ page book. I wish it were 1,000 pages. I couldn’t put it down. As most of you know, I have always been a huge fan of Steve Jobs as an entrepreneur, visionary and world changer. This book stirred up every emotion I had from disappointment, dislike, fear, inspiration, admiration, and sympathy. I strongly recommend reading it, and I feel I learned a lot from both his unbelievable strengths and weaknesses.
For those of you who will not get a chance to read the book, Isaacson just wrote a fantastic article in April’s addition of Harvard Business Review that does an incredible job of summarizing Jobs’strengths, entitled “The Real Leadership Lessons (14) of Steve Jobs” (must read):
- Simplify – Jobs was a master at eliminating unnecessary components from his day-to-day life, the company focus, and from products they produced and sold. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Focus – When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was close to going bankrupt. He found them making over 30 different computers. He immediately stopped all production and forced them to make just 4 — that’s it. On his annual strategic meeting, he would force his people to come up with the top 10 priorities for the coming year. He then would slash the bottom 7 from the list and state, “We can only work on three.”
- Take responsibility end to end – Many call it controlling, others called it his passion for perfection. Whichever you call it, Jobs and Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the entire customer experience, from producing the hardware, to the software, and the devices. He didn’t trust, or want to be dependent on, another company ruining the user’s experience.
- When behind, leapfrog – Like every company, Apple couldn’t be on the forefront of every product. After they did create a revolutionary product, they then would focus on what they had been neglecting. For example, their focus on creating the Macintosh meant they fell behind when dealing with music. Instead of playing catch-up, they transformed the music industry with the introduction of the iPod.
- Put products before profits – Jobs was not driven by profit and money, rather making insanely great products. Focus on making the products great and the profits will follow.
- Don’t be a slave to focus groups – Jobs felt customers didn’t know what they wanted until you showed it to them. Caring deeply about what the customer wanted is different from continually asking them.
- Bend reality – Jobs was famous for pushing people to do the impossible. This was called his “reality distortion field.” He wouldn’t accept hearing that things couldn’t be done, regardless if they had never been done before. Those who worked with him admitted this trait pushed them to perform extraordinary things.
- Impute – Be obsessively detailed about your brand being represented in everything you do from marketing, to product design, to packaging.
- Push for perfection – Jobs was fanatical, and in every product or movie his companies ever made, he would hit the pause button and go back to the drawing board until it was perfect.
- Tolerate only A players – “I learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby sit them,” said Jobs. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.
- Engage face-to-face – Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions,” Jobs would say.
- Know both the big picture and the details – Typically leaders are either visionaries or detail oriented. Jobs some how was both. While he was developing products that would change the industry and the world, he was also obsessing over the screws and buttons on the product.
- Combine the humanities with the sciences – The theme of Jobs’ life was that he stood at the intersection of technology and art.
- Stay hungry, stay foolish – Jobs thought of himself as a rebel, building a company that was going to put a dent in the universe. “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training
It’s how you HANDLE what happens
This was never more evident than the problem Jet Blue Airlines faced recently when one of its pilots had a psychotic event during a flight from
New York to Las Vegas. The pilot, at 35,000 feet in the sky, had a breakdown and began babbling in a frightening manner, then left the
cockpit and entered the flight cabin where passengers had to subdue him until the co-pilot could land the plane in Texas. Now this would be devastating to most airlines, and since they are all publicly traded, one would expect their stock to fall dramatically on the heels of this news.
Instead, Jet Blue’s stock soared from a close the day of the event of $5.07 a share, to $5.25 by 10:20 the next morning. Why? Because the company’s CEO, Dave Barger, immediately went on the morning talk shows – prior to the opening of the exchange – and explained exactly what had happened, gave updates to the public about how they were handling the situation, and gave compliments to the Jet Blue crew AND the passengers for how appropriately they handled the dramatic events. He was completely transparent about the airline’s stand on the situation and met the questions from the press with what appeared to be full disclosure.
His courage in facing the public and press head-on and his willingness to face the tough questions, paid off for the company by the show of confidence the stock market reflected. You can’t always keep bad things from happening in you business, but you can definitely control how they are handled.
Experience First and Product
Recently an article that appeared in Fast Company interviewing Stanley Hainsworth, who has been a catalyst for two of the greatest brands of modern times: the creative director at Nike, and V.P. of global creativity at Starbucks. Stanley made some great points about how brands can emotionally connect with consumers. First he sites that the best brands are those that create something that consumers didn’t even know they needed. His experience working with Nike & Starbucks taught him this lesson (Read entire article here):
What I observed working with both companies is the rigor and unfailing attention to the product and unbelievable energy spent on creating the brand experience. I describe it as experience first and product second, because no one is going to pick up your product and try it if they don’t want to buy into the experience. This experience comes through advertising, the retail environment, and the online experience — every single brand touch-point. There is a very intentional effort to inspire people to get caught up in that experience and say, “I want to try that.”
How Mystery Shopping helped Office Depot
focus on creating a customer service revolution
HBR Article – The 10th Commandment of Creating a World-Class Customer Experience Organization is Measuring the Customer’s Experience. Not only is it critical, but what you measure is also just asimportant. Office Depot was measuring customer service using metrics such as bathroom cleanliness, clean windows or the cleanliness of their floors. Those things ultimately didn’t drive repeat business and customer loyalty. Engaging the customers was not being measured and thus was not a priority of their associates. So Office Depot changed their measurements and training to focus on building relationships with the customers (see diagram of how to engage customers). (Read entire article here)
Johnism
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, implementation and execution
But It Is Still Our Problem
After an exhilarating day at Disney, your family is leaving Magic Kingdom Park. It is 8:30 pm and you are in the parking lot. All of you are exhausted and impatient to get back to your room to shower and hit the sack. You look at your spouse and ask, “Where did we park?” She looks at you and says, “You’re kidding-right?” Neither of you remembers where you parked. So how hard can it be to find your car? Like 20,000 other people, you came here in a rented white minivan. There are miles and miles of white minivans in the parking lot. Your only option appears to be to wait until the park closes at 11 pm and see what white minivans are left.
Whose fault is this: Disney’s, yours, or your spouse’s? Should Disney be responsible for reminding you where you parked? Disney, however, is aware that the average family visiting today traveled four hours, they arrived in a white minivan, and before the driver put the car in park, the kids opened the door and were running for the entrance. The parents are too concerned about catching up with their kids to stop and think about where they parked. Disney already knows that tonight a number of families will return exhausted to the parking lot, not remember where they parked, and just want to get back to the hotel.
What does Disney do? They anticipate a major service defect. And they solve it, even though it isn’t their fault. They have people drive around the parking lots in golf carts in search of families that look lost.
A Disney Cast Member pulls up to your family and says,
”Did you forget where you parked?”
You nod and say,
“We’re driving a white minivan. Does that help?”
“Do you remember when you arrived? A ballpark time will do.”
“About 11:15 to 11:30 am.”
The Disney Cast Member checks his clipboard and says,
”Between 11 am and noon we were parking in the Goofy section. Jump in! I will take you to that section, and we can find your car with your remote key.”
And it’s done.
This is a great example of what being zero risk is all about. Being zero risk applies regardless of whether your company is at fault. World-class service companies create protocols to proactively handle their most common service defects, and they train their employees how to extinguish small flames long before they turn into a raging fire. Even if a defect is not your fault, your customer will associate the issue with doing business with you. This is a critical issue for all businesses, at all levels, because when these situations arise, in the vast majority of instances, the employee immediately and instinctively becomes defensive and responds, “It’s not our fault.” Managers and front-line employees alike are shocked that the customer expects the company to be responsible and make it right.
Sorry, but Your Credit Card Was Declined
While I was working with The Melting Pot restaurants helping them become zero risk, I discovered that one common service defect that occurs 
often is that a guest’s credit card gets declined. Ouch! Who wants to tell Mr. Vice President, when he is entertaining two of his best clients, that his credit card was declined? Yes, he’s the one who maxed out his credit card. Is it world-class service to risk embarrassing him by pointing this out in front of his guests and asking for a different card? No! It’s not necessary. To avoid this exact situation from happening, The Melting Pot Restaurants’ Secret Service project team, made up of their top franchisees and corporate executives created the courtesy card.
Johnism
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, implementation and execution, John DiJulius, Patient Experience
In order to create brand loyalty and customer evangelists, you must:
(1) operate at a high level in six distinct areas of business
and
(2) constantly evaluate your company’s customer service across each category, separately, and as categories overlap
1. Physical: Deals with the actual brick-and-mortar component of your operation. These are the physical elements that are more permanent or long term, that cannot be changed daily.
2. Setting: Refers to the controllable setting you create daily. As Disney says, “Everything speaks from the doorknobs to the dining rooms sends a message to the guest.”2 The setting communicates a message about what you can provide your customers. This isn’t always visual, it may be the music your customers hear when they call and are placed on hold or the mood your web site creates. The setting reveals the characteristics of your business as they appeal to the five senses of your customer: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
3. Functional: Refers to the ease of doing business with you-return policies, hours of operations, and other factors. Functionality has nothing to do with human interactions, such as being pleasant or saying please or thank you.
4. Technical: Refers to your staff’s level of expertise in their particular skills and in the company’s systems and equipment, such as product and job knowledge. Again, this has nothing to do with whether they are nice.
5. Operational: Refers to the actions that team members must execute behind the scenes before, during, and after a customer’s experience. These actions assist in the day-to-day transactions with customers, the tasks, compliances, and duties of our jobs.
6. Experiential: Refers to the actions that team members execute while interacting with the customer. Those actions that make the customer say “WOW!” The customer is delightfully surprised. Experiential actions are the reason why customers return, refer others, and become brand evangelists. These include Secret Service, personalization, anticipating customer’s needs, and others.
Let’s look at some real-life examples of these components:
- Your server is the most incompetent waitress (technical) you have ever met, but she is trying her hardest and being extremely nice (experiential).
- The place needs a good paint job (physical).
- The store where you shop is always out of what you want (operational).
- Your favorite store is difficult to get to and has barely any parking (physical).
- This salon has high energy and always smells great (setting).
- The quality of the food (technical) is unfit for human consumption.
- An associate overheard that you really wanted a diet drink and ran across the street to the drugstore to get it for you (experiential).
- At the diner, everything is themed 1950s style (setting).
- It is impossible to get a human being on the phone. No matter what you try, you cannot get out of the company’s voice-mail maze (functionality).
- The company has a 24-hour answering service and guarantees a call back within 60 minutes (functionality).
- My sales rep always screws up my order (technical).
Specific examples of each of these six components are:
Physical:
-Brick and mortar
-Building
-Structure
-Architecture
-Location
-Accessibility
-Parking availability
-Design
-Décor
-Public areas
-Floor coverings
-Signage
-Spaciousness
-Handicap accessible
Setting:
-Ambience
-Candles
-Theme
-Lighting
-Acoustics
-Grounds
-Furnishings
-Comfort of chairs,
beds, etc.
-Mood
-Signage
-Sound system
-TV placement
-Noise level
Functional:
-Policies
-Hours of operation
-Ease of doing business
-Accessibility to a human being
-Product selection
-Design of your web site
-How well you are staffed
-Reliability of vendors
-Security
-Payment options
-Phone number on web site
Technical:
-Employees level of expertise
-Speed of your technology
-Computers
-State of the art
technology
-Ability to use your web site
-Equipment
-Phone system
-Software
-Product knowledge
-Quality of product
-Timeliness
-Knowledge
Operational:
-Daily tasks
-Cleaning
-Dress code
-Preparation
-Answering the phone
-Duties
-Checking people out
-Processing orders
-Functions of the job
-Compliances
-Paperwork
Experiential:
-Hospitality
-Customer engagement
-Personalization
-Above and beyond
-Using the customer’s name
-Remembering preferences
-Presentation of food
-Verbiage/vocabulary of staff
-Congeniality
-Willingness to help
-Anticipating needs
-Service recovery
-Soft skills
An example of physical excellence would be the beauty of Disney parks or how The Cheesecake Factory restaurants are designed. Starbucks has mastered setting, from the comfortable, inviting furniture to how well they merchandise their cafes, just as Disney has mastered how well they theme their parks and hotels. A couple of great examples of Functional excellence are Nordstrom department stores and Zappos.com who have simplified the process of returning merchandise.
Cleanliness is a great example of operational excellence. When you are considering your customer’s experience, you need to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Consider a hospital room, or massage or facial room. Because patients and customers are lying down for extended periods of time, they may notice the condition of areas of the room employees never look at.
As for the sixth component of the customer’s experience, experiential excellence, there is no need to provide specific examples here because the rest of this book is focused on experiential standards.
Keep in mind that it is important to constantly review how customer friendly your company is in each department. With regards to training of new and existing employees, the majority of your training will deal primarily with technical, operational, and experiential.
The vast majority of companies focus their training on the technical with very little if any emphasis on the experiential. Having been fortunate to work with some of the best customer-service companies in the world, I have both learned and helped create some amazing training that truly prepares new employees to be able to provide a world-class experience, regardless of their backgrounds.
“People don’t remember what you said
as much as how you made them feel“
Are any of the components more important than another? No, all are critical and all need to be reviewed and tweaked on a regular basis. The components differ significantly in terms of required people skills training. Physical, setting and functionality have little to do with training or people skills, but the other three components absolutely do involve people skills and training. There is a difference, however, in the training required for each component. It is much easier to train employees on technical and operational skills; they are job-specific, and they include easy-to-train subjects, such as product knowledge, and checklists. Also, technical and operational skills tend to be present and thorough because of prior education, degrees, licensing, certifications, and trade schools. Many industries today mandate continuing education credit hours. The vast majority of companies are weakest in the experiential category.
Filed under: Customer Service, Customer Service Training, implementation and execution, John DiJulius
Constant awareness and branding of how to be a hero
World-class service organizations create an awareness of the most common opportunities that employees can really deliver heroic service for the customer, which creates an above-and- beyond culture.
Are your employees empowered and inspired to exceed customer expectations? Do you have mechanisms in place to collect and re-distribute above-and-beyond stories to constantly remind your employees of the Service Vision?
Many times, when a customer complains about the price, it isn’t because they are cheap or not willing to pay it, it is because the experience didn’t warrant it.
Creating Loyal Customers
In 2005, John Robert’s Spa took a hard look at our VIP guests and what made them so loyal. We are lucky to have well over 100,000 guests in our database, but only the top 2,000 guests are labeled VIP (Silver, Gold, Platinum). One day, while reviewing the lists of VIP guests, we realized that in many cases we had dropped the ball with them, in some cases drastically or repeatedly. We wanted to figure out what we did that resulted in many of these people being so loyal and forgiving, so that we could do it with more of our guests.
To accomplish this, we arranged focus groups with our top VIP guests. We asked them point-blank, “Why are you so loyal to John Robert’s Spa?” We received basically two answers: About 20 percent said something similar to, “I have been coming to John Robert’s Spa for many years now, and it always is upbeat and friendly, and I can always count on getting a great haircut, and I get plenty of compliments from family and friends.” Everything you possibly would want to hear from your clients.
The other 80 percent of our VIPs told us a specific story about how someone at John Robert’s Spa went above-and-beyond for them. One guest told about the time she called to cancel her day of pampering. Our guest-care person could tell she was upset and asked if everything was okay. The customer responded, “No, my husband and I are opening a café, and we are 90 days late and thousands of dollars over budget. He purchased this day of pampering for me at your spa because he knows how much I enjoy it. I have had it on my calendar, counting down the days until today. I just locked my keys in my car, and I think I am having a nervous breakdown.” Our employee said, “I see that you live just 15 minutes away. I would be happy to come pick you up, so you don’t have to lose your day of pampering.”
Another VIP told us a story about the time she walked into one of our salons for her 1 pm manicure appointment. The receptionist said, “We have been trying to contact you all morning because the nail technician who was to do your manicure went home sick.” The VIP responded, “You had better find me someone who can do my nails because I have an important meeting this afternoon and my nails look horrible. I don’t care who it is, but you had better get someone.” A few minutes later the receptionist returned and said, “I apologize. Unfortunately we have no one available to do your nails, but we called the salon a few doors away. They have an opening now, so we booked and paid for a manicure with them.”
More than 80 percent of our VIP guests had specific above-and-beyond stories to tell. After these focus groups, we realized that we are not good enough to give a dozen flawless experiences in a row to make someone loyal. Nor do we want to wait until a customer has had a dozen appointments with us. I would rather have one of our team members shock the customer by going above-and-beyond during one of her first few visits with us. That way the customer will be more loyal and, if and when we do drop the ball, more forgiving.
JOHNISM
John R. DiJulius III best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the President of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. Learn more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, America’s #1 Customer Service Conference.
