Giving service to someone is not something you do or deliver; it is something you are, and it is in you. It needs to start at home. I want my three boys, Johnni, Cal, and Bo, to have not only high service aptitude, but also human aptitude. Not because they will someday make a better living, but because it is who they are — an intuitive part of their being. I teach them that there is no such thing as a stranger (obviously this applies when they are with an adult). I want them to be natural “daymakers.” In order to do so, we play games and have contests all the time in public. Here are a few examples:
- Beat the Greet – Who can smile and say “hello” to the most strangers while walking down the street, or in elevators, malls, and airports?
- Show appreciation – Thank everyone, not just the people who serve us, but policemen, TSA security and especially men and women in military uniform. It is so cool to watch a TSA security person’s face change from serious to surprise and smiles that someone actually thanked them for the job they are doing. My kids go out of their way to make sure every military personnel who comes within 50 feet of them is thanked.
- Engaging – I have taught my sons how to find out about other people’s F.O.R.D. (family, occupation, recreation, & dreams). For instance, when we are at a restaurant or in a taxi, my boys try to see who can get the most personal information out of the service provider. Rarely do people ask cabbies questions about their job or personal life. They love to share, and it keeps my boys focused on other people versus talking about themselves. It also teaches them the value of showing interest in others, and how easy it is to get someone to go from transactional to enthusiastic.
Surprise & Delight – One of Starbucks’ mantras is to try to “surprise & delight” their customers when the opportunity presents itself. Here is a great example of one of their partners (employees) truly going above & beyond for a customer. Starbucks has a team member whose role is to respond to customer comments made on Starbucks’ Facebook and Twitter pages. This team member came across a tweet stating that they needed their Starbucks. The team member called the nearest Starbucks to this person’s location and asked if they could fulfill Minnie Rose’s request. The partners at that particular Starbucks jumped all over it, and shortly there after delivered coffee personally, making even more of a raving fan.
Johnism -
then I have done a poor job with the rest of my life.”
~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.
Perfect world circumstances are rare, and the exception: you can count on human error, call offs, customers being late, technology breakdowns, service interruptions, out of stock items, and undependable vendors. Is your company prepared? Is your frontline employee trained and ready? If these things are normal daily occurrences, then tell me why most employees act like a deer in headlights, when they do occur?
Zero Risk: having all your employees fully aware of the potential common service defects that can arise at each stage of the customer experience cycle and trained and empowered to provide great service recovery when defects do arise, so your company is known to be zero risk to deal with.
Everyone’s service aptitude appears strong when things are going smoothly, but employees’ and the company’s true service aptitude is revealed when things don’t go as planned and service defects arise.
What does zero risk look like? As a customer, you have a sense of security when you deal with a company that if something goes wrong, they will make it right. Thus, that business is zero risk to deal with. Zero risk addresses an intimidating array of issues that can produce unhappy customers: service defects, lack of concern about the customer’s experience, and incidents or emergencies that aren’t your fault. Zero risk is essential in order to create a Wow! experience and make the customer yours for life. If and when you become zero risk, you will indeed be in very exclusive company.
How many zero risk companies do you deal with? The following scenario happens every day: You are unhappy with your experience as a customer. You express your displeasure to a front-line employee, who sometimes, but not the majority of times, may say, “Sorry,” but that’s it. The employee isn’t allowed, required, or trained to fix the problem. You can tell that nobody at this company cares whether you are disappointed, and you realize it is a waste of time and energy to do anything about it. Because of this, you stop telling the company about your displeasure, and even worse (for the company), you stop coming back. That is the opposite of zero risk.
Don’t Ask If You Don’t Want to Know
Many companies have their front-line employees ask, “How was everything today?” but no one teaches them how to respond. It is a canned question that they are supposed to ask. I was checking out of a hotel and the front desk employee asked the customer in front of me, “How was your stay?” The guest said, “I had no hot water in my shower.” The front desk person’s response was, “Oh, ah, sorry about that, I will make sure maintenance gets right on that.” A lot of good that does the customer now, after he is checking out. If you are going to ask, then be ready to rectify the situation. It could be as simple as; “I apologize for that Mr. Smith. For your inconvenience, I am going to credit you the movie you rented in your room last night, would that be okay?”
I admit that at John Robert’s Spa, we drop the ball as much as any other company. However, we train our employees to know how to pick up the ball and make things right. We know the most common areas where problems will arise, and have set up protocols to make those problems right. We teach every new team member how and when to use these protocols. In other words, we empower all our team members to fix these problems, on the spot, by themselves. Our goal is to make sure all guests leave satisfied.
Fine or Okay Is Unacceptable
Why do we drop the ball so much? There are two main reasons. First, we see about 5,000 guests a week, so even if we do it right 99 percent of the time, which I know we don’t, then we will upset at least 50 people each week. Second, we aggressively identify guests who are less than thrilled with their experience. We train our guest-care personnel to ask a guest, “How was your experience today?” when the guest is checking out. If the guest answers, “It was okay,” or “Fine,” that is unacceptable. I know a lot of businesses would be happy with “Fine” or glad that the guest didn’t complain. I say that “Fine” is unacceptable. I would hate it if anything I did was “Fine.” “Fine” really means, “Let me pay and get out of here so I can tell people how disappointed I am with this experience.”
When a guest says, “Fine,” our team member asks, “What about your experience wasn’t excellent?” Typical answers are, “My stylist ran 25 minutes late,” or “I felt rushed,” or “This look isn’t exactly what I wanted.” Now we have an opportunity to fix the problem and, more importantly, to prevent customers from leaving disappointed and possibly engaging in “brand terrorism,” which is to tell everyone they know about their horrible experience with your company (brand).
Know how to serve in terms of the customer. They don’t care about your situation; they only care about their situation.
Johnism
“While they may complain about the service defect,
they will rave at how well we handled it.”
~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
I have always said, “Don’t just tell me about how a Nordstrom salesperson made a quick trip to a competitor to purchase the pair of shoes you wanted because Nordstrom was out of them. Tell me how I can get all my employees to think and act that way.” Does their behavior depend on whether the management is present, or does it depend on which employee you get, or if that employee is having a good day? While I like to think we have always had an “above-and-beyond” culture at John Robert’s Spa, not all of our employees were providing that kind of experience. When we asked, “Why don’t you go above and beyond more often?” the typical response was, “The opportunity never presents itself.”
Now, the truth of the matter is that everyone gets the same number of above-and-beyond opportunities; the only difference is some employees see the opportunity and act on it, while others fail to see it. We had to proactively create an above-and-beyond culture. When we did that, we started to see a dramatic increase in the incidence of above-and-beyond stories and in the percentage of service-minded team members who were making those stories happen.
Five Steps to Creating an Above-and-Beyond Culture
1. Empower employees with autonomy and confidence that they can aggressively go above and beyond without being second-guessed by management.
2. Train employees to be able to consistently recognize above-and-beyond opportunities that occur.
3. Inspire them on how to think outside the box and go above-and-beyond for the customer.
4. Acquire and document all above-and-beyond stories that happen in your organization.
5. Advertise and recognize those stories and employees throughout your entire organization.
Here is the crazy thing: You only have to do three of the five steps. Steps 4 and 5 actually take care of steps 2 and 3. When you put systems in place to catch all the above-and-beyond stories (step 4) and then continuously celebrate and advertise them to everyone in your organization (step 5), you start teaching your employees where all the opportunities exist (step 2), and how to deliver above-and-beyond service (step 3). The more that happens, the more that gets recirculated and it can become self-perpetuating, as long as you keep documenting and celebrating.
The above-and-beyond culture starts with documenting every above-and-beyond story that you hear from someone in your company. You can’t just hope you find out about these stories; you have to solicit them. First, at every John Robert’s Spa location, our close day report, which gets sent to our corporate office, includes these stories. It’s not at all unusual for one location to forward several great new above-and-beyond opportunities in a single day. We also ask our customers. We have signs where guests check out that read:
and you will be entered to win a day of pampering.”
We encourage our employees to submit stories about themselves and each other.
All the stories we collect from guests, employees, and managers get added to our above-and-beyond document, that today has over 2,000 stories in total. We 
then recirculate the top stories in orientation, in customer service training, and in our employee newsletters. Every day we end each preshift huddle with a recent above-and-beyond story, hoping to inspire our team members to recognize similar opportunities that may present themselves. We also adopted a concept from Cameron Mitchell Restaurants; every time a guest sends us an e-mail, letter, or voicemail with a positive story about an experience, we prominently display that item, with the team member’s name, so all team members can see it.
And finally, at our annual awards event, we give out the Secret Service Award, an award determined by employee vote, to the team member who performed the best above-and-beyond story of the year. This honor meets two objectives. First, it’s a great way to recognize the individual for outstanding heroic service, and second, we are educating our employees about all the different opportunities for them to deliver world-class service, since all employees review all the top above-and-beyond stories to cast their vote.
~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, John DiJulius, Secret Service
The term Secret Service and what it represents has evolved and today, Secret 
Service is no longer just a book title or a term but a concept, a strategy that thousands of businesses incorporate as their value proposition, to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make superior customer service their point of difference.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the definition of the Secret Service that operates under the government, and I was shocked at how its definition is so very similar to the customer service version:
Absolutely nothing to do with my version of Secret Service, as it relates to customer service, right? Actually, by substituting just three words, it fits my meaning of Secret Service perfectly:
Secret Service uses hidden systems to deliver unforgettable customer service. These systems obtain customer intelligence and utilize it to personalize the customer’s experience, leaving the customer to ask themselves:
- “How’d they do that?”
- “How’d they know that?”
Secret Service employs behind-the-scenes systems that employees use to anticipate and deliver on the unexpressed needs of the customer, by using a system of silent cues, visual triggers, and visual aids.
Customer intelligence is customer data (i.e., buying habits, purchasing history, referrals, personal preferences, where they live, or work) that fuels secret service.
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.
As a result of providing Secret Service, companies:
- Create stronger relationships with their customers.
- Build emotional capital and brand equity with their customers.
- Turn their customers into brand evangelists.
- Make price less relevant to their customers.
To effectively deliver Secret Service, your employees need to act as detectives by collecting customer intelligence and then using silent cues that alert their coworkers and allow them to personalize the customer’s experience.
It should be more obvious now why it is called Secret Service, it has:
- Hidden systems
- Customer intelligence
- Silent cues
- Visual triggers
- Detectives
After seeing a few examples of Secret Service actions, you will quickly realize why it can make your company a world-class (secret) service organization.
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; and
- Make an immediate impact on the customer.
Secret Service systems is where a restaurant kept preprinted labels of their top VIP customers. Anytime they came in, their favorite bottle of wine would be waiting for them at their table, with a label on it that read: “From the Private Stock of Tom Smith.”
By executing Secret Service consistently, it is possible for your organization to make price irrelevant: Based on the experience your customers consistently receive, they have no idea what your competition charges.
Secret Service is a strategy that thousands of businesses incorporate today as their value proposition, differentiating themselves from their competitors and making superior customer service their point of difference.
Filed under: Customer Service, Customer Service Training, Dan Pink, John DiJulius | Tags: Domino's Service, Nestle
New Year / New Focus – Kick off the year with the right frame of mind, and make it the year of reaching #1 Unfair Competitive Advantage status by creating a customer service revolution and making price irrelevant. It is also a great time to set up a measurement and reward program that keeps everyone focused on that mission. Nestle is repeating their 2011 Above & Beyond contest that produced great results internally. They are rewarding the top customer service reps who displayed amazing customer service, with an opportunity to attend the 2012 Secret Service Summit! What is your commitment to becoming a world-class customer service organization?
Customer Service Naughty & Nice List- Consumer Reports recently came out with their “Naughty & Nice List” of companies who make it easy (nice) & difficult (naughty) for their customers to do business. This two-minute clip is worth watching!
Prove you really do care – Author Daniel Pink blogs about his shock at a recent personal experience (Call my cell) where a restaurant owner advertised his cell number to any customer willing to share his or her experience. How accessible are you? Are you 100% positive your customers will tell you about a negative experience versus 400 of their Facebook friends
iPay - Apple is at it again, making life easier for their customers. Now you can avoid the crowds at the Apple store by using your iPhone or iPad to check yourself out using an App, or order and pay before you arrive and just pick up your item.
iPizza - I love Apps, especially ones that make your traditional service model into a true experience. Domino’s Pizza now has an App that allows you to monitor to the second, where your pizza is in creation process, from being in the oven to the driver walking up to your front door.
Quote of the week -
advertising campaign ever could.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius | Tags: walmart layaways paid
Above and Beyond: Holiday Style
Have you heard about the recent rash of “Layaway Secret Santas?”
“A secret Santa has paid off about $8,800 in layaway bills for 23 Walmart customers in Ohio.
The manager of the store west of Cleveland tells The Chronicle-Telegram that the man, who wished to remain anonymous, said it was too hard to pick just one or two accounts to settle. He paid for the toys, iPods, TVs and other merchandise with a credit card on Saturday.
Secret donors have been paying off strangers’ layaway accounts nationwide to help struggling families.
A few of the Walmart customers in Ohio said they didn’t have the money for their items when the store contacted them Friday about payments coming due. The manager says they couldn’t believe it when told on Saturday that their holiday presents had been paid for.”
It’s not clear where it started, but it’s being repeated around the country. Sharing stories inspires others to get involved. An Above and Beyond culture grows the same way, through story-telling. There is a sense of purpose, accomplishment and fulfillment one gains by going above and beyond for their fellow man that is difficult to define, yet easily felt.
The following story was shared with us by one of our clients who excels in not just going above and beyond, but in sharing and celebrating their stories. Their location manager writes:
“I’m not sure my colleague wants me to share the story below, but it’s a neat story that should be told. I love it when the lights go on for people to see beyond themselves and they do something for someone else and not expect anything in return. When a person thinks they are doing something good for another person and yet they end up getting just as much joy out of it as the person they helped.
Makes me proud to be a part of a company that not only encourages above and beyonds, but in fact, celebrates them. It is life catching and makes our company not only a better place, but our communities a better place. “
“So I’m super pumped right now so I had to share it! You told me to do something good with my bonus, so I did. I asked all my employees if they knew of anyone that did not have a tree this year. One guy’s cousin just moved here and is a single mom with two kids. She did not have a Christmas tree for her and her children, so I went and got her one. Ornaments and hot cocoa for the kids and delivered it to her house with her cousin in tow! Wow it felt amazing, I mean truly different. I have always done charity things with my Masonic Lodge, but for some reason this felt different. She started crying and the kids were so happy! Sorry I know I am ranting but wow talk about the energy! Ok ok I am done just had to share. Have a Merry Christmas!”
In the spirit of the season, we’d love to hear your stories! Please share your holiday above and beyond stories on our Facebook Page Wall for others to read and share.
You never know who you’ll inspire.
joy, peace, and prosperity!
Filed under: Client Services, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, John DiJulius, What's the Secret?
The 2011 Secret Service Summit was one of the highlights of my professional career. It started with selling out 10 days before the event due to the amazing lineup of speakers and companies represented. The hype didn’t disappoint, as you can see by a sampling of feedback we received, and we received hundreds of similar comments. Best of all was the energy in the room. A world-class customer service conference is unlike any other. Everyone is coming there to find out how they can raise their hospitality and customer experience to the next level. The energy in the room is indescribable — people were literally crying when the conference ended.
Whether you were there seeing it unfold live or you were unable to get away, we audio tapped it and have it available for you to hear or relive the amazing content shared by all the brilliant leaders, authors, and motivational speakers. 2011 Secret Service Summit Audio.
Recapping some of the major takeaways from each of the presenters:
Michael Caito President & CEO, Restaurants on the Run
Disciplines for growth – People, Strategy & Execution
1) People – We use a job matrix to create clear expectations for each position and all new hires get a 90 day training plan.
- selection
- purpose
- service
2) Strategy – We built a strategy statement which defines our objective and strategy for the next 3 years.
- hedgehog principal
- advantage
- strategy statement
3) Execution – We create accountability in the company by using Vital Factor Team Meetings, quarterly planning sessions and 1-1 “mops” with our direct reports.
- vital factors
- performance management
- aligning resources
Jack Mackey VP of Sales for Service Management Group & Professional Speaker
Anyone can still make it in America when they bring a spirit of creative discontent to the challenges of winning and keeping loyal customers.
- All business is personal, it goes where it is invited and stays where it is appreciated
- Your operation is your customer service
- People only talk about what’s remarkable
- You can market all you like, but people believe what they experience
- Customers own your brand
- Even loyal customers like to try new things
- Innovation is how we compete for the future
Craig Russell, Senior Vice President, U.S. Store Operations Services Starbucks
Craig reminded us to always do the right thing for the customer.”
- Know your current state of employee’s understanding of what customer service is in your company – go to the front line and ask.
- Know your current state of customer service by observation – go to where the customers shop or engage with your company and observe, ask questions, and really try to not be an informed insider — but be a customer.
- Validate that you have a customer service vision and if not, BUILD one!
- Ensure the pillars that support the vision are actionable, simple to remember, resonate with the front line and are observable and measureable behaviors.
- Cascade your vision in a way that connects to your company’s core mission and culture. (At Starbucks it was the apron.)
- USE the model (The 10 Commandments) and continuously improve by benchmarking with other great companies!
Michael Coburn Director of Customer Service, Nestlé USA
At Nestlé we needed to change our mindset from being merely transactional to experiential
- You’re never too good to get better – continuous improvement in the area of how you interact with your customer is critical to being world class. In the Business to Business world, take care of your clients who in the end take care of your consumers.
- Involve your employees in the solution so that they are the ones driving it forward. They will take it further than you might have even envisioned.
- Daily Huddles – A great way for your teams focused on delivering World Class Customer Service. Don’t be afraid to force the issue and soon this will be a way of life that the employees could not imagine starting their day without. Make sure management has a huddle as well, to model the way.
Matt Stewart CEO, National Services Group
The “Inner Marketer©” is what tells us we can do what others think we cannot. It is what causes us to invent better, faster, cheaper ways of doing what we do today. It is THE driver of change and improvement. It should also be controlled. We can savor the “Inner Marketer©” while we savor the utility of contrarian opinion:
- When addressing customer complaints we can look for the truth in every complaint and look to learn (we should never write off even the most ridiculous complaints.)
- When dealing with co-workers we can identify what is useful in even the most non-constructive feedback.
- When working with suppliers we can identify means of growth for our organization even when opposing a bad deal.
Applying this to customer service specifically… even the most ridiculous complaints contain some validity. There is truth in ever rumor. If we spend time identifying the valid, getting to know the complainer, and looking for improvement we can cease attacks from clients that will severely damage our brand and company. Even one angry customer can cause incredible damage due to the power of the Internet today. Beware of those looking to build Pinocchio websites that harm your company.
David Wagner Author of Life as a Daymaker
- Talent without passion is a job. Passion without talent is a hobby. Being passionate about what you are talented at is your calling.
- Giving with no strings attached to customers, coworkers and people in general takes less energy than giving with expectations of what’s in it for you.
- How will you live your dash? Everyone has one; how will yours be defined? 1959 - ?
Mark Moraitakis Director of Service Innovations, Chick-fil-A
- Guests will remark about their experience – let’s do what we can to be sure the experience is REMARKABLE.
- Use what you’ve got. For Chick-fil-A that is “craveable” food, our COWS, and our people.
- Food: we freshly prepare our products – no freezer- to- fryer approach at Chick-fil-A
COWS: they are on a self-preservation campaign – they can be unexpectedly fun
People: we want our guest to feel cared for by going above and beyond. This happens when we teach our team to offer world-class hospitality.
- Be genuine: serve from the heart to show honor, dignity, and respect
- Be proactive: anticipate the needs of others
- Be personal: connect in a way that create fond memories
John DiJulius The Authority on World-Class Customer Experience
7 Rules to Creating a Customer Revolution in your Industry
- Superior Quality
- Simplicity
- Easy to do business with
- Employee Evangelists
- Educate versus Sell
- Experience Epiphany
- Customer Engagement
Dick Hoyt Motivational Speaker, Author, Father of the Century
- Yes You Can
- Yes You Can
- Yes You Can
2011 Secret Service Summit Audio
2012 Secret Service Summit November 1st & 2nd. Tickets are on sale now. Before the 2011 Summit was over, we had a rush of people buying for next year. We believe the 2012 Summit will sell out well in advance. Make your reservations now!
~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, Customer Service Training, John DiJulius, Patient Experience, Patient Services, What's the Secret?
Making Price Irrelevant…
How to get to “Benny” – One of my consulting clients is a large professional service firm, trying to differentiate themselves from all the other firms competing with the exact same services offered. There are the typical challenges when helping an organization transform into what we like to call a Customer Service Revolution. It starts with the top executives truly focusing and committing long-term to demonstrate this is not flavor of the month, program of the year or management by best seller. In some industries it is changing an old paradigm, a stale stubborn mindset that screams: “We are not in the hospitality industry. I am a professional who brings a highly-valued skill set and intellectual capital that my clients desperately need.”
This organization is guilty of the same, which is what the key decision makers recognized and why they determined to change their culture. After the first year, everyone was excited about the momentum that the “Project Client Xperience” had produced. Yet there was still a great deal of work to be done. A percentage of the professional service providers, including partners, had not totally bought in. At one of our regional workshops, I had one of the more influential partners (let’s call him Larry) ask if he could share a story with the group. His story was about how one of their largest long-term clients had recently changed their CEO. Any time an organization changes a CEO, all vendors are in danger of being replaced. So Larry went on to share that he knew he had to quickly demonstrate to the new CEO (let’s call him Greg Benedict) how valuable and how brilliant they were, before it was decided to start shopping their services.
Larry admitted it was a struggle; every meeting they had that the CEO attended was short and very transactional. Every time Larry and his associates tried to make small talk, share advice or demonstrate their expertise, Greg, who is known by his close friends as “Benny,” was not interested in engaging in anything more than the facts. He just wanted bottom line answers. Larry knew that once their current contract was up, they were going to lose this large long-term client.
That is when Larry started thinking about all the “Project Client Xperience” training, systems and tools they had been going through. He admitted while he didn’t put much stock into it, he decided he had nothing to lose. So the first thing he did was figure out what Secret Service he could do on Greg. He realized that there was very little customer intelligence he had learned in the few meetings. He remembered about F.O.R.D. (family, occupation, recreation & dreams), but figured it was virtually impossible to find any of this out until he started doing some research online, especially via social media. Through that, he discovered (most notably) that Greg was an avid triathlon competitor and was a big supporter of MS causes.
At the end of their next meeting, Larry briefly mentioned that he was aware that Greg competed in triathlons and how it was a “bucket list” item of his own to compete in one. Larry said, “Greg’s eyes lit up like cannon balls! Next thing you know, we are in his office and he is showing me pictures on his walls of different events that he was in and telling stories. He told me that if he could do it — anyone could. Over the next few weeks he was sending me advice, books and articles on how to train. I also found he has a daughter who is challenged with Multiple Sclerosis and that is why he is such a big supporter.”
Larry said several months later he was competing in his first triathlon with new buddy, Greg. Additionally, he has since become a supporter of the annual event Greg holds every year for MS. Larry went on to tell the group how Greg’s company renewed their annual contract with Larry’s firm, but best of all, Larry said, every note or email he gets from Greg is signed “Benny.”
How well do you truly create emotional connections with your clients?
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, John DiJulius
Making price irrelevant…
It is bad service when your customers need to read the fine print -
An article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review (6/07) titled “Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them,” talked about how companies need to create less company-centric and more customer-centric policies. If customer satisfaction creates loyalty, and loyalty produces profit, then why do so many companies infuriate their customers with contracts, hidden fees, fine print, and unnecessary penalties? The article’s authors, Gail McGovern and Youngme Moon suggest it is because companies have found that confused and ill-informed customers can be the most profitable.
It should be called “find [the] print” - Perfect examples of these companies are cell-phone carriers, banks, and credit card companies that profit from customers who fail to understand or follow the rules about minutes used, minimum balances, overdrafts, or payment deadlines. It has been estimated that 50 percent of U.S. cell-phone carriers’ income is derived from penalizing fees. These strategies may be profitable in the short term, but in today’s technology age, public sentiment spreads like wildfire, damaging a company’s reputation in blogs and company-specific hate sites.
Punish the Customer - What many of these companies have in common is that, even though they appear to take their customers for granted, their customers have little choice but to deal with it. Want to change your cell-phone company? Be ready to pay a hefty penalty to break your contract. Want to dump your Internet provider? That may be difficult when one provider monopolizes your area.
Hole in the Boat - Standard customer turnover in the cell-phone industry is 25 percent a year, which is shocking, especially considering most have their customers sign contracts. This heavy turnover increases the amount of money that needs to be spent to replace these customers through aggressive marketing and advertising. In 2005, the U.S. cell-phone service industry spent more than $6 billion on ads. Which begs the question, how much better would their customer retention and satisfaction be if they took half that $6 billion and put it toward customer service training of their call centers, technical support agents, and retail associates?
Great opportunity for Revolutionaries - Welcome Virgin Mobile USA onto the scene, which entered the industry in 2002 with an unusual customer-focused strategy: a pay-as-you-go pricing plan with no hidden fees, no time of day restrictions, no contracts, and straightforward reasonable rates. With an advertising budget one tenth that of the larger players in the industry, Virgin Mobile USA, in only a few years, already had exceeded 5 million subscribers and a retention rate considerably higher than the industry average, even though its customers can leave at anytime without any penalty. They have a 90 percent customer satisfaction rating, with more than two-thirds of their customers reporting they would recommend Virgin Mobile to friends and family.
Forced to play fair - The banking industry is not much better. Profits from American banks have increased so dramatically from consumer fees and overdraft penalties that Congress had to reintroduce the Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act. When the customer service bar is low, that means there is a great opportunity for someone to come in and steal the market. And that is exactly what the online bank, ING Direct, has done, offering savings accounts with no fees, no tiered interest rates, and no minimums. ING Direct is now the fourth-largest thrift bank in the United States, adding 100,000 new customers per month, with total assets of more than $60 million.
Danger, Danger - The HBR article offers warning signs to recognize customer unfriendly practices in your company:
- Are your most profitable customers those who have the most reason to be dissatisfied with you?
- Do you have rules you want your customers to break because doing so generates profits?
- Do you make it hard for customers to understand or abide by your rules?
- Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?
What goes around comes around - Deteriorating customer service is not only the customer’s issue. Eventually shareholders feel it the worst. For years video rental chains profited on late fee penalties. Which gave way to companies like Direct TV, On Demand, & Netflix to enter the market and run video rental stores out of business.
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~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, Customer Service Training, John DiJulius, Patient Experience, Patient Services, What's the Secret?
I have worked with several hospitals and medical facilities over the years and I don’t think there is any tougher or more important jobs out there than taking care of people’s health. Their Service Vision, however, is one of the easiest and clearest to figure out, yet I have found that the medical industry typically does a very poor job in connecting the roles of their employees to that Service Vision.
The Ritz-Carlton Group Hospital
This is an exercise I do when working with hospitals and medical centers: Imagine The Ritz-Carlton has decided to open and manage a hospital. What would that look like? How would they approach things differently? Let’s look at some of the titles hospitals use for their employees: (1) tray passers, (2) receptionists, (3) nurses, and (4) patients.
The person who is in charge of delivering food to the patient is a Tray Passer. I asked why are they called that, and the response was, “That is what they have always been called.” How proud would you be if someone asked, “What is it that you do?” How difficult is it to get Tray Passers to realize the part they play in the company’s Service Vision? I found that Tray Passers are pretty important in educating patients on proper nutrition for the most rapid recovery. If this person’s expertise can have a big impact on a patient recovering fully and sooner rather than later, they play a major role in any hospital’s Service Vision. How about we rename Tray Passers “Chief Nutritionist Officers” or “Directors of Patient Diet”?
Upon arrival at a hospital, the person that you go to for information and directions is called the “Receptionist.” And most of the time they act like receptionists, by providing the least information they can, and only when asked. What if we changed their title to “Director of First Impressions”? Wouldn’t that title make them rethink the role they play in the experiences of all the visitors to the hospital?
Let’s talk about the toughest job in the world, nursing. Most hospitals today will tell you how nurses are underpaid, understaffed, overworked, and as a result, many are burned out. What if we called them “Daymakers”? Because that is what they actually are.
If they were constantly referred to as Daymakers and they had to introduce themselves as Daymakers, wouldn’t that make them reconsider their role and the sensitivity they must have with every patient and family member they come in contact with? Who do you think are happier with their jobs, nurses or Daymakers?
And finally the customers, who are the people who come to us for our services, whom we have always called “Patients.” Why? Probably because the first hospital that ever opened called them that and since then everyone else just did the same. Any employee of a hospital will tell you that after dealing with hundreds of patients per day, over time, the employees can become desensitized and numb. Especially when dealing with a new patient that has, what a nurse considers a minor, temporary condition, compared to the patient down the hall, who may only have a few days left to live. However, it is all relative to the patient and the “minor,” temporary condition may be the worst thing that has ever happened to that person and has him or her scared to death. Most nurses and doctors will also admit that instead of referring to patients as “Ms. Daniels in room 201,” they just refer to them as “201b” (meaning room 201, second bed). With that perspective, it can make it more difficult to provide a world-class patient experience.
Any good hospital will tell you that they have two external customers: (1) the patient and (2) the patient’s loved ones. Again, what if we thought outside the box and renamed patients, “family members,” and the loved ones “relatives”? In many situations, hospital customers are like hospital family members and hospital relatives, where the employees get to know them very well, even if it is just for a few days.
Like anything else, just giving new titles doesn’t change the culture, it is an aid in reminding that person of the role that comes with his or her position. But it is ultimately management’s daily responsibility to constantly demonstrate how each department supports and impacts the Service Vision of the organization, which drives the customer’s experience and level of satisfaction.
If you can’t change the people, change the people
Afraid your Service Vision will be met with some “rolling of the eyes”? You can’t let that stop you. One hospital that was committed to changing their culture was met with resistance by their 15 receptionists. So they asked all 15 to reapply for their existing jobs. Only three members of the original crew survived.
