Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Customer Service Training, John DiJulius, Patient Experience, Secret Service, Secret Service Summit
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2012 Secret Service Summit Highlights
2012 Secret Service Summit – The summit is over, and it was incredible! As a result of enormous success for 2011 Secret Service Summit, we moved the event to a larger venue to accommodate the increase in demand. However, due to the amazing lineup of speakers and companies represented, it still sold out, over 400 attendees! The hype didn’t disappoint, as you can see by a sampling of feedback we received (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 came to find out how to raise hospitalityand customer experience to the next level. The passion in the room was indescribable, and many people were sad the conference ended.
Whether you were there seeing it unfold live or you were unable to get a ticket, we now have it available for you to hear and share with your entire organization. We captured the amazing content offered by all the brilliant leaders, authors, and motivational speakers of the 2012 Secret Service Summit Audio Series.
Recapping some of the major takeaways from each of the presenters:
Mikki Williams - Author of Mikki Mouth
“Just loved her presentation! She used great stories to bring home her points. She will be aspeaker that I will never forget throughout my career. I’ve already used her theory of “Ask. Ask First. Take Risks” at work with my boss. The only way it could have been better would have been to hear more from her!”
Rory Vaden - Author of Take the Stairs “Fantastic presentation – great engaging speaker. Enjoyed his insight on procrastination and discipline. Only wish he could have spoken longer and covered more of the Take the Stairs book.”
So the next time you are in front of a set of escalators and some stairs, Take the Stairs because success comes from doing things we don’t always want to do.
Arnie Malham - cj Advertising
“I mean WOW!!! What an inspiring leader. I wanted to relocate to Tennessee just to have achance to work for this man. In all honesty, to me this is how secret service is successful, by having poignant, inspiring, caring leadership. Secret Service can only truly work if you first as a leader care about your people. I thought he did an amazing job at showing everyone that this was the way to have the best and most efficient employees. Honestly amazing!”
Make your culture intentional and align with your goals. My top moves that aligned well for me included…
John C. Morgan - George W. Bush impersonator “Do you have a score of “12″ for this guy? How great was it to see him come and shake hands! People really thought he was the real deal. Not only did he look like the former President – he also spoke like him. I laughed so hard I almost cried. What a way to start off the conference! Loved him!!!!”
Dr. David Moffet - Ultimate Patient Experience
“I enjoyed that he benefited from using Secret Service and how it changed his practice. He was
Alan Lovelace - RPM Domino’s Pizza “I thought it was great how he incorporated secret service into his family’s life. I enjoyed that Alan truly exemplified the commandments for World-Class Service at home and at work.”
1. World Class Leadership at Home is key before you can lead successfully at work
2. Treat your Team Members the same way you treat external Customers
3. Don’t rush the rollout process. Maintain standards at the same time.
Michael Coburn - Nestlé USA “I loved that he took us from bad to great. He took us on the journey and let us see how change can happen when you get the right people to lead it through!”
Roy Bivens & Darryl Greene - authors of Experiencing Improvement “I loved the chemistry between Roy and Darryl. Enjoyed their relaxed humor and real world experience.”
2. When caregivers are allowed a chance to experience improvement, they are able to see value for themselves and patients. They can connect what they are doing with what they consider important, which enables engagement. High customer satisfaction follows.
3. Experience Improvement -> Enable Engagement -> High Customer Satisfaction
Denise Thompson, Chief Xperience Officer - The DiJulius Group ”Denise was a great speaker. She did a nice job of introducing all the speakers and giving a quick synopsis of their backgrounds. She was energetic and kept the crowd going on their learnings/takeaways. She’s so friendly – like you are just talking with one of your best girl friends.”
John DiJulius - The DiJulius Group “John always does a great job! His content was amazing and significant to the group and to getting the point across.”
How to be a Zero Risk Organization
1. Make sure you are extremely easy to do business with by making policy invisible and eliminating negative cues. 2. Create a better systems and processes to reduce service defects. 3. Create World-Class service recovery and protocols, actions and tools for when they do occur so your front-line employees can execute and create even more loyalty from your customer as a result. 4. Find an alternative to every “NO” you have had to say in the past.
Watch the highlight clip from the 2012 Secret Service Summit
While you may feel like your client is demanding, your competition won’t |
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, John DiJulius, Secret Service
MAKING PRICE IRRELEVANT: Based on the experience your customer’s consistently receive, they have no idea what your competition charges.
THE SMOKING GUN – Business leaders are finally realizing that Customer Loyalty is every company’s greatest asset in any economy! No longer is an investment in customer service considered an expense, but now is considered an asset. Several studies have compared the top 20% customer satisfaction companies versus the three major markets over six years (a period where the stock market had both ups and downs). The results were astonishing. You may know the importance and benefits of providing consistent superior customer service, but I doubt you realize how significant it really is. The top customer satisfaction companies beat the Dow Jones by 93%, S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%. The results conclusively show that customer satisfaction pays off in up-markets and down-markets. When the stock market dropped in value, the stock prices of firms with highly satisfied customers seemed to have benefited from some degree of insulation.
A CUSTOMER SERVICE REVOLUTION: A radical overthrow of conventional business mentality, designed to transform what employees and customers experience. This shift produces a culture that permeates into people’s personal lives, at home & in the community, which in turns provides the business with higher sales, morale, brand loyalty – making price irrelevant.
JOIN THE REVOLUTION - The #1 Customer Service Conference ever produced, the Secret Service Summit, will be held this November 5th & 6th in Cleveland, Ohio. This is a two-day international seminar dedicated exclusively to world-class customer service. There will be more than 10 presenters over two days sharing their different expertise at this year’s event. The lineup includes respected authorities, authors, consultants, and top-brand executives who run world-class customer service organizations. They know how to provide superior customer service while still operating a growing and profitable business in today’s economy.
I guarantee that the 2012 Secret Service Summit will the best ROI of any professional development training/seminar you have experienced. The Secret Service Summit will enable your management team to return with a solid plan to take your company’s customer experience to the next level and make price irrelevant.
Click here for early bird registration and receive $50 OFF per ticket.
“It is not enough to be considered the best at what you do,
rather the only one that does what you do.”
Announcing the 2012 Secret Service Summit Lineup
A SOLD OUT conference 3 years in a row, don’t miss this opportunity to join the best and learn how to increase retention, referrals, repeat business and brand evangelism, insulate your company from any economic climate, and “change the world by creating a customer service revolution.”
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Reon ShutteSpeaker Author Inspirational speaker Reon Schutte shares his epic personal life journey with audiences around the world, holding listeners spellbound with his incredible story of survival and overcoming inconceivable adversity. At the same time, he inspires his audience members to break out of their personal prisons of fear, hate, anger, blame, lack of forgiveness, self-doubt and attachment to material possessions or status.
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Darryl GreeneExecutive Director of Continuous Improvement -
Cleveland Clinic, Author Darryl is responsible for helping the Cleveland Clinic Health System achieve excellence in patient service and managing performance towards goals. He and his team partner with clinicians and non-clinical employees to identify and address opportunities to improve the delivery of care for both administrative and clinical processes. As well, he is working collaboratively with physician leadership to implement and consistently use an integrated business model to help manage the business side of healthcare.
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Roy BivensConsultant, Author Roy specializes in working with senior executive teams in customizing and deploying performance management and continuous improvement methodologies to create world class performance driven organizations. An experienced entrepreneur, Roy has helped leaders craft strategic plans for a number of diverse businesses and disciplines, with industry experience that includes banking, insurance, healthcare, oil and gas, and several financial services enterprises.
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Mikki WilliamsSpeaker, Author
Mikki Williams, CSP (certified speaking professional, an honor bestowed on less than 600 speakers worldwide), has been named one of the top speakers in the country by Meetings and Convention magazine along with Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Colin Powell, Lou Holtz, and Mike Ditka.
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Arnie MalhamFounder, CEO – CJ Advertising |
Rory VadenCofounder Southwestern Consulting, Author
Rory Vaden is a Self-Discipline Strategist, Cofounder of the multi-million dollar international training company Southwestern Consulting, and New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success. |
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John DiJuliusTHE Authority on Customer Service |
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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.
Filed under: Customer Experience, implementation and execution, John DiJulius
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Walking the Talk
There are five things all great leaders have in common, which has enabled them to overachieve personally, and more importantly get their people to overachieve.
If you dislike your job, you have to work every day for the rest of your life; if you love what you do, you never have to work again.
1. Live Your Dream There is a high percentage of people that do not like what they do, in traditional jobs, and they dread going to work. Not enough people go after their dreams. Fear and other people’s lack of vision hold them back. This is why I share the story of my childhood. I tell people all the time: You will find millions of people smarter than me, who came from more wealth, have higher degrees, or better genetics. But you won’t find many people who have the passion for what they do, like I have for what I do.
I think the number one reason why I might be more successful than others is because many people give up too easily. In nearly everything I have ever attempted, I have found myself in over my head, but I always do whatever it takes to figure it out. Too many people quit once they hit a wall. Determination is a pretty vital quality to posses. You can count on facing obstacles; it is those few, who no matter what they are faced with, remain focused and persevere. Think of how different our world would be today, if the people mentioned in the “Guess Who” trivia had given up.
3. Sell Your Dreams Name me a great leader and I will show you a person who had an incredible vision, a person who got the people around him to buy into this vision, and a person who proceeded on a mission to make it happen. The idea is to get people fired up about being a part of a great purpose, something they can have an impact on, versus punching in and out and collecting a paycheck. Great leaders make their vision their people’s vision and they run with it as if it were their own. Leaders need to wear their vision and dreams on their sleeve, so that everyone can get excited about it. This is where many leaders struggle. Not only do they stop wearing their vision on their sleeve, but they stop being inspirational leaders. Leaders need to bring their “A” game to work every day. This is difficult, especially since the higher a person gets in management, the more responsibility and pressure they get, and the more people they have to answer to: employees, bosses, stockholders, customers, spouse, kids. They tend to come to work with the weight of the world on their shoulders, yet still point at the people around them who don’t have the right attitude. When they are asked, “What about you?” they say, “I am fine.”
The highest honor I receive is the privilege of helping others achieve their dreams. 4. Be a Dream Maker This is truly one of the best privileges we have as leaders. I have found that when leaders have the ability to help others get what they want, they end up getting what they want sooner and more often. This applies to employees, coworkers, bosses, family, friends, and neighbors. It is so easy to do. Find out what other people around you want and help them get there. Many times it doesn’t even cost money. It is just knowing what it is your people truly want and connecting them with the right people. Is there any better legacy than helping people accomplish things they never thought possible? The leaders that learn this gift, are always the most successful and fulfilled.
See a man for what he is and he only gets worse, look at him as if he were what he could be and then he becomes what he should be.
5. Believe in People There is not one great world-class leader who won’t tell you there are two reasons why they have accomplished so much: (1) because someone believed in them when they weren’t easy to believe in and (2) they themselves believed in people around them that helped make their vision and dreams a reality. The key is: Believing in people when it isn’t easy to believe in them, when they don’t even believe in themselves.
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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.
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The Danger of Linking Pay to Customer Satisfaction- The major new trend is incentive compensation. When done correctly, it can reinforce the company’s values. However, as Rob Markey, co-author of The Ultimate Question, points out, when it is done poorly, it can be devastating. Here are some examples of what can go wrong: once compensation depends on improving a particular score, people tend to focus on the metric rather than the customers’ needs. Instead, employees focus more time on criticizing the metric itself.
Gaming- Markey also points out that the creativity that should be focused on improving the customer experience and wowing the customer is instead channeled at gaming the system. For
instance, front line employee could only encourage customers they know are happy to share feedback and bury the negative responses, as well as pressure customers to give unauthentic feedback. We have all purchaseda new car and have been told point blank by the car salesman that they need “all 5′s” on their customer satisfaction survey. There are also stories of some employees writing down the wrong phone number of unhappy customers so the surveying companies couldn’t reach them.
Get over It!Management’s mentality is sometimes the leading cause of a company’s inability to deliver superior service. So many people thinktheir situation is unique and use this as the reason they cannot provide better service. Don’t have tunnel vision and think, “some of the examples don’t apply to my business,” or “we are business-to-business,” or “my industry is totally different.” A great example is a great example, whatever your business and whoever your customer. I have found that the exact same principles apply in any industry for providing world-class customer service and creating a world-class culture internally. The application may slightly vary, but the formula is always the same.
I do an exercise that illustrates how similar all business situations are when it comes to dealing with customer service. When people from different businesses/industries share with each other their unique obstacles, it is remarkable how everyone realizes that they all share the exact same barriers. I have yet to come across a company that isn’t trying to do the following:
*Differentiate itself from the competition *Make price irrelevant *Find talented, service-minded people in a limited talent pool *Get their employees to buy in, be enrolled, and do the right thing *Create consistency in the service delivered by front-line employees *Have protocols in place to recover when someone drops the ball *Create anabove-and-beyond culture.
Southwest Airlines & Indianapolis 500 Pit Crews – If you look at some of the best customer service organizations, they went outside their industry to break old paradigms. For example, Southwest Airlines was looking for a way to improve the turnaround time of its aircraft and gate arrival to decrease push back for the next flight. Reducing this time would help the company stay on time and save a great deal of money. Did they study the airline that had the leading turnaround time in their industry? No! They studied Indianapolis 500 pit crews, who complete a similar process in only 15 seconds. As a result of adapting such techniques, Southwest Airlines reduced its turnaround time by 50 percent and became a leader in their industry.
Johnism
“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
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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.
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.
Filed under: Customer Experience, implementation and execution, Jim Collins, John DiJulius, Secret Service
Consistency and Continuity
The two most important words in the success of implementing systems are consistency and continuity. Nearly every company has more ideas than it knows what to do with. Here’s a scenario familiar in every company: Some executives attend a fantastic seminar, get dozens of great ideas, and return to work all fired up and eager to start executing all those ideas. A month later, not even one idea is being executed even 10 percent of the time. The managers are either preoccupied with a crisis or have moved on to a new focus.
Have you ever attended a seminar so great that six months later it had dramatically changed the way your company does business?
Probably not!
The real problem is that more ideas are the last thing companies need. Managers are not short on ideas; they are short on an implementation strategy that will result in those ideas being successfully implemented. This chapter will enable you to implement those great ideas. Better yet, it will raise the standard for your organization-and for your competition.
After being deluged a number of times with great ideas, employees realize they don’t need to panic or actually start doing what their managers tell them. If employees just wait long enough, these newest ideas will also pass. This syndrome has been called Flavor of the Month, or management by bestseller.
There are two big rules for implementation:
Rule 1: Select a Path, Train on It, and Stick with It
I can’t tell you how often I hear the same thing from many of the companies I speak or consult for: “A few years ago, our theme was ‘Fish’. Last year our theme was ‘Raving Fans’. And this year our theme is your book, What’s the Secret?”
It’s no wonder nothing sticks! No systems are created. There’s no enrollment or buy-in by employees. There’s no continuity from one generation of employees to the next, because they joined under a different theme, and it has very little correlation with your training program.
There is nothing wrong with using any of those books and concepts as themes. They are all fantastic. What I am saying is, “Pick a path.” The world-class customer service companies focus on one concept and build their training program around it. They create their own internal terminology as it relates to customer service. Over the years, every new employee goes through the same training, learns the same underlying concept and theme, reads the same book, and hears the same message.
In Good to Great, part of Jim Collins’ formula for success is that people need to hear a few messages constantly. That doesn’t mean the training doesn’t evolve-every year, your current training should make last year’s training program pale by comparison. But you have a consistent foundation on which everyone has been trained. And it can’t just be new employees who go through intensive training; existing employees need to be retrained and reenergized on at least an annual basis. Beyond that training, the world-class customer service companies advertise superior customer service to their employees on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis; everything from pre-shift huddles to departmental meetings to re-orientation. If I could sum up this process in one word, it would be continuity: continuity of theme and continuity of training.
When you have developed your terminology, make it an integral part of the training you give your employees.
Rule 2: Implement Slowly and Properly
Let’s assume you have just successfully completed the Customer Experience Cycle Workshop. You should now have the “buzz”- 
everyone who attended the workshop is pumped up, and you have numerous sheets filled with ideas for each stage of your customer interaction. The workshop was a home run, your team got the concept and the message, they shared and debated ideas, and they are now totally pumped to go back to work and start being world-class to their customers.
Stop! This is when the train wreck so often happens. The workshop was easy; the hard part is implementation. Yes, you are excited about the buy-in to being world-class. Yes, you want to maintain the enthusiasm and the momentum. But now you must crawl before you can walk or even think about running.
A company cannot rush the implementation process. A “worst practice” is to allow managers to roll out the implementation on their own or to introduce 12 new concepts next week. If you do either of these things, in about 45 days all those great ideas from the workshop will be a distant memory because not one of them will have stuck. The only result will be a loss of credibility with your employees and with your customers. Employees will feel that all their work at the workshop was just a bunch of rah-rah and hot air, because nothing ever came of it. This will result in your employees feeling like the workshop and all their efforts were a waste of time. Customers will be disappointed by the inconsistency between your promises and their experiences.
Having said all that, I recommend you visit Chapter 10 in What’s the Secret? where the entire chapter is dedicated to the steps necessary for a proper implementation process.
Manage the Experience
It is imperative that every manager is uncompromising about the execution of your standards. Your standards have to be truly nonnegotiable. Your employees have to know that they cannot pick and choose, that every standard has to be delivered to every customer. That is why it is very important not to have a dozen standards for every stage of interaction. Keep it realistic to achieve.
As soon as employees start to think no one is really paying attention, or cares, the standards go from nonnegotiable to optional. To avoid this, managers have to routinely do audits of the standards and recognize when they are being executed and immediately coach when they aren’t. You can have the greatest customer experience on paper, but it is the leadership’s responsibility to make sure every employee is well aware of the importance of the execution.
Johnism
“Too many people use the term “I gave my best” as a crutch to when they fail. The problem is, it’s not the effort that is in question during the event, it’s what you put into it leading up to it. Whether you win or lose, get the sale, or ace the test, it is all determined in the effort giving in preparing for the event. Every battle is determined long before it is ever fought. So the next time you fail, before you want to make yourself feel better by saying, “I did my best”, consider if you had given your best in the preparation. The actual effort given in the event has the littlest to do with the outcome.”
~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.
