Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius | Tags: b2b, British Airways, customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, customer service consulting, Customer service in airlines, customer service process, customer service revolution, customer service teleseminar, Jobs Stanford Address, John DiJulius, Michael Caito, Restaurants on the Run, Secret Service Summit, Steve Jobs Apple's CEO, the customer service blog, The DiJulius Group, TravelCenters of America
| Changing the World by Creating a Customer Service Revolution…
Competition on the Run – ROTR is a very aggressive company that excels in implementation and execution (Chapter 6 of What’s the Secret?). They recently introduced a service recovery program designed to focus on loyalty and retention processes, which forced them to take a much longer look at what they do when things do not go according to plan. This What America needs is more Jobs…Steve Jobs – Last week Steve Jobs officially removed himself as Apple’s CEO. This may be the end Secret Service by an airline – I get dozens of RSS feeds on customer service stories everyday, but rarely do I get a positive story of an airline. British Airways Using iPads TA making price less relevant – TravelCenters of America, a long time consulting client of The Quote of the week -
“We started off hoping to change a business, ended up changing an industry, community, people’s lives, and the way other companies do business”
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Secret Service Certification by John DiJulius
This last class of the year, will provide new insight into the customer service systems used by the top organizations in the world and show you how to use them at your company.
12 candidates will be selected to be a part of this train-the-trainer class taught by best-selling author, keynote speaker, consultant and THE Authority on delivering a world-class customer experience John DiJulius.
This class is tailored to: · Corporate trainers · Consultants · Leadership teams · Small business owners
For details and selection process call Denise Thompson at 440-443-0023 and mention secret phrase “I’m a member of the customer service revolution” for early bird pricing.
Few seats remain available!
“Any company in the world can do what you do, except deliver world-class customer service.” |
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FREE Teleseminar September 14, 12 PM EST This September 14th join John DiJulius in the first of a NEW series of FREE Teleseminars based on the X-Commandments of world-class.
The first teleseminar will expand on The State of Service in America. Why are companies realizing poor service is a sure way to go out of business? How the top service companies endure all economic climates? How do you compete on experience not on price?
To register follow these 2 easy steps:
Add this teleseminar to your Facebook or LinkedIN calendars so you don’t forget:
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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: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius, What's the Secret? | Tags: customer experience, customer intelligence, customer service process, customer service training, service aptitude, service defects
“Changing the World by Creating a Customer Service Revolution…
CUSTOMER SERVICE, THE SECRET WEAPON FOR DRIVING REVENUE – Companies spend millions creating and advertising their brands, yet the customer’s experience is what drives customer perception. A recent study reaffirmed what every customer knows, but too many leaders continue to bury their head in the sand and ignore what research shows: that a great experience not only influences where they chose to buy, but also…
- 82% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company as a result of a negative experience
- 55% became the customer of a company because of their reputation for great customer service
- 40% began purchasing from a competitive brand simply because of their reputation for great customer service
- 85% of consumers said they would be willing to pay more over the standard price in order to ensure a superior customer experience
Are you competing on price or the experience? Consumers aren’t only demonstrating power with their wallets, but they are influencing those around them as well. Whether consumers have a positive or negative experience, their friends, family, colleagues and networks are sure to hear about it; and what they are saying carries weight. The top three factors why consumers recommend a company:
- 55% because of its customer service
- 49% because of the product
- 42% because of price
Read the entire report Customer Experience Report North America 2010 – RightNow
Full Disclosure – I have been getting more and more impatient with businesses’ lack of respect for my time. I hate to be kept waiting. Recently I went to a local diner with my family for Sunday breakfast, and upon arrival the hostess warned us saying, “I apologize. We are so busy today, our kitchen is really backed up. It may take a while before you get served.” We all responded with something along the lines of, “We are in no rush.” The waitress eventually got us our drinks, our order and kept stopping by during our wait to refresh our drinks and apologize for the long wait. Each time we kept reassuring her that we understood. The food finally arrived and we left happy.
What was funny was afterward, when I thought about the length of time between order and delivery of the food, it was significant. However, with her being upfront and apologetic, none of us were even the slightest bit upset. It is like when you see an employee nametag that says “In Training” underneath the name. You automatically feel for this person, are more patient, understanding, and sympathetic. You want to help them out so they do not feel so overwhelmed. Disclosing the inevitable service defect upfront is a powerful tool to getting your customers to be more understanding and patient. It is when they are not told about the delay or why or how much longer that people feel taken advantage of and are less forgiving.
Exercise of the week – A few weeks ago I shared the FORD exercise, which measures your employees’ customer intelligence. Another great exercise is the FORD exercise for your management team, asking them to fill in the following FORD on each of their employees. How well do they know the people that report to them on a daily basis? This will demonstrate how well they retain employee intelligence:
- Family
- Occupation
- Recreation
- Dreams
Quote of the week -
“We are not for everyone, nor do we want to be. We are for the 1% who want to
emerge as the best of the best and are not afraid to work hard and challenge themselves
to see how much greatness they actually have inside.”
Receive a “Johnism” of the Day – join me on http://twitter.com/johndijulius
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO 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 | Tags: Carmine Gallo, customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service process, the customer service blog
“Changing the World by Creating a Customer Service Revolution…”
Reverse Secret Service – While reading The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, by Carmine Gallo, I came across an innovative initiative by the Westin Hotels, designed to encourage deeper relationships between hotel employees and guests: New employee name tags, which included this phrase, “My passion is ___________.” Westin executives said that the passion tags opened a dialogue between the company’s staff and its guests, and when guests start talking, they are much more forthcoming about any issues that might concern them during their stay. A simple phrase on a nametag encourages guests to talk and engage, and find out similarities and common interests, thus helping to break down barriers and create emotional connections.
Call Center & Cast Members – Do you have employees in mundane roles, doing the same task over and over again all day long, answering the same questions, dealing with frustrated customers, whose problems and issues where not your fault? Well guess who else has the exact same scenarios, maybe even worse? Walt Disney World! Disney is and always will be the leading example of world-class customer service. Even though you have heard numerous examples, if you really think about it, they apply to any business. I swore I would not share another Disney story until just recently when I heard someone say, “Our customer interactions are not as romantic as a theme park, where people are excited to be there. It is not apples to apples.” I disagree!
I took my three boys to Disney World this past August — the absolute worst time to go. The temperature was in the mid-nineties, and the average wait time for an attraction was about 60 minutes. It was miserable. Like everyone else, we waited, baking, all while the kids are whining, “How much longer.” I observed the Disney cast members who stood there the entire time, in costumes, as uncomfortable as we all were. The only difference is that eventually we got to enjoy a ride, while they just ushered people on and off. I saw them being asked the same stupid questions hundreds of times, “how much longer,” “my child has to go to the bathroom,” etc. They had to deal with frustrated customers who were literally losing their cool because of the anxiety of waiting in the heat with an impatient child. And I was amazed at these young 18-24 year olds and how well they kept their composure. They acted like the questions were unique, they kept smiling, and I watched as tour guides returned with a new group, reloaded another dozen people and they had to start the script all over again. They said it fresh and enthusiastically like it was their first tour of the day.
There is something to be learned from this about making sure our employees understand the importance of their roles in our customer’s day; and while it may be our 100th same old interaction of the day, it is our customers only one with us. We owe it to them to provide an experience saying they were the only customer we contacted that day.
Adding theatre to your job – Just like call centers, receptionists, and cast members managing wait times, flight attendants’ jobs can get very monotonous by performing the same duties and saying the same scripts flight after flight, day after day. You have to watch this video of how a Southwest flight attendant changed it up, making it a memorable experience for the passengers and himself, and breaking out of the same routine.
Resource of the Week – The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, by Carmine Gallo. I am a huge Steve Jobs fan and found this book excellent. So much so, I had everyone at The DiJulius Group read this book.
Quote of the Week -
“Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. As a leader you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between what is and what could be burns you, stirs you, propels you forward.”
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO 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 | Tags: client experience, customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service aptitude test, customer service training, secret service, service aptitude, The DiJulius Group
I have this niece who is 20, and I have been bugging her for years to come work for me. I’ll even send her to beauty school! She is one of those bright, bubbly cute girls who lights up a room. She has a great personality and any business would love her working for them at the front lines as a receptionist, hostess, or any customer contact position.
I got to see her over the holidays and asked her what she was doing. She said she has been working for a while at a Café and enjoys it. I asked her what it was like and what her responsibilities were. As she explained them, one of the jobs the owner has given her was to make sure people who are not paying customers do not use the bathrooms. My eyes lit up. I said, “Really?” She replied, “Yes, we even have a sign on the door that says so. Just today I saw someone who wasn’t buying anything headed to the restroom, so I ran after him and made him leave. My owner says if they can’t pay for things, they don’t get to take advantage of our facilities because he then has to pay me to go in and clean up after them.”
I was shocked! This is my sweet adorable niece with the same family DNA. How could she think like this? You are probably thinking how wrong I am about my niece, and that I shouldn’t want an employee like that.
Well, for starters, each of us has plenty of employees currently working for us, and I would love for her to work for me– with the proper customer service training, of course. Her mindset is not unusual. It is more the norm.
It all goes back to Service Aptitude. No one is born with it; it is not innate. People’s Service Aptitude comes from two primary places: 1) life experiences and 2) previous work experiences. Think about that. That’s it! No one is born with high service aptitude. Most life experiences before the age of 25 don’t afford the know-how of what world-class service looks like. And considering that nearly 80% of businesses out there are Average at best at customer service, that means employees have previously worked elsewhere. Not only were they not trained on what excellent service looks like, but they were poisoned with a policy-driven iron fist that teaches them that customers are out to take advantage of businesses and must be caught and stopped.
We all agree that the experiential side (how our customers are treated and cared for) is just as important as the technical/operational side of what the customer receives. However, our training contradicts that. We would never think of having an accountant, lawyer, nurse, doctor, hairdresser, or technician perform work without the proper technical training, certification, and licensing. Yet most companies have little to zero customer service certification. To my knowledge there is no degree or even a college course that prepare our youth.
Action Plan
Don’t be discouraged. This is the majority of our workforce. Keep reminding yourself that it is not their fault; it is our responsibility as an organization and as leaders to improve their Service Aptitude to a level that is acceptable before we allow them to interact with our customers. Make sure you re-evaluate what your soft-skill service training looks like, how well your existing and new employees know and understand your Service Vision, and how they impact it. Be sure they know your Customer Bill of Rights, your Always & Nevers, the Secret Service Systems, what your service recovery protocols are, how they can easily go Above & Beyond, and that they have the permission and autonomy.
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. John DiJulius is the innovator of a methodology called Secret Service a customer service system which consistently enables organizations to deliver World-Class Customer Experiences. Find out more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, the #1 National Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, John DiJulius, What's the Secret? | Tags: client experience, customer experience, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service training, the customer service blog
You can make the argument that in business, achieving Zero Risk is as important as consistently achieving delivery of your non-negotiable service standards. Zero Risk addresses an intimidating array of issues such as service defects, lack of concern about the customer’s experience, and incidents or emergencies that aren’t a company’s fault.
“These all produce unhappy customers.”
But what does Zero Risk look like from the consumer side? As a customer, Zero Risk means you have a sense of security knowing that when you deal with a company, if something goes wrong, that company will make it right. There’s no risk (Zero Risk) on the customer’s part to deal with that company or business.
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 looks at you like a deer in your headlights. At best, that employee may say “Sorry” — but that’s it. The employee isn’t allowed, or required, or trained to fix the problem. It’s obvious that nobody at the company cares whether you are disappointed, and you realize it is a waste of time and energy to try to do anything about it. So you just stop reporting your displeasure, and more importantly, you stop going back. Dealing with a company like that is High Risk and the opposite of Zero Risk.
Today, we expect very little from companies. We feel it is a waste of time to complain because companies will be defensive and will not take responsibility for the problem. By now you probably have heard the urban legend about a customer who returned tires to a Nordstrom store and Nordstrom refunded the money even though it has never sold tires. It doesn’t matter whether or not the story is true. What does matter is that Nordstrom has an almost mythical status for its “no-hassle” customer service.
I admit that I love to shop at Nordstrom. They have made price irrelevant for me because they provide great service, and I know they are a Zero Risk company. I don’t have to worry about returning an item within 30 days or saving my receipt because Nordstrom just doesn’t haggle over these details.
I have a personal “tire experience” story with Nordstrom. One day, as I put on a nice pair of shoes, I noticed that the tongue was damaged in one of them. At first I thought nothing could be done about the situation because the shoes were nearly a year old. But then I remembered that my wife had purchased them at Nordstrom. I decided to put Nordstrom’s reputation to the test. I took the shoes to my Nordstrom in Beachwood, Ohio, and asked for the general manager. Fran Broda introduced herself to me as the general manager and asked how she could assist me.
“My wife purchased these shoes here nearly a year ago, and one of them is now defective.” Fran looked at the shoe. “I don’t believe Nordstrom has ever sold this brand of shoes.” I firmly disagreed. “I am pretty confident my wife purchased these here. She buys all my shoes from Nordstrom.”
“Regardless, let me see what we can do. We should be able to repair it. Can you leave it with us for a few hours?” she replied. I have to admit that I was a little surprised.
At first I felt that she was trying to get out of fixing the shoe. (Maybe the tire story really was a myth.) Could their customer service be overrated? I was sure I would have to pay for the repair, especially as Fran wasn’t admitting to having sold them in the first place. A few hours later, I returned to Nordstrom. The shoe was fixed and as good as new. Better yet, to my great surprise, at no charge!
Driving home, I thought, “That was Zero Risk. They stood behind their product and fixed it, even though my shoes were nearly a year old.” I gave them a 9 on a scale of 10, losing 1 point because Fran tried to say Nordstrom’s hadn’t sold the shoes to me. When I got home, I told my wife the story. She immediately told me that Fran Broda was right! My wife remembered buying the shoes someplace else. So Nordstrom scored a perfect 10. At no charge they had repaired a used shoe that they hadn’t even sold!
“Nordstrom is truly a Zero Risk company.”
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. John DiJulius is the innovator of a methodology called Secret Service a customer service system which consistently enables organizations to deliver World-Class Customer Experiences. Find out more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, the #1 National Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius, What's the Secret? | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, customer service aptitude test, customer service consultant
Think about the last several times you had an experience less than spectacular. You left a business frustrated or hung up the phone more stressed than before you called. Unfortunately all of us can remember several probably in the past 48 hours. Next, think about contacting the company management about your dissatisfaction. If you are like most people, you don’t bother to waste your time. I never do. But then the customer service consultant voice starts talking to me on my way home.
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Voice in my head: |
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? |
| Me: |
“I don’t know, I just didn’t, leave me alone” |
| Voice: |
“But why?” |
| Me: |
“Because they don’t care” |
| Voice: |
“How do you know?” |
| Me: |
“Just a feeling I got, no one there seemed to care. I would have had to wait for a manager to come out, then explain my story to him, and I know he would have thought I was trying to get something for free, and he probably would have been defensive. I would have preferred to talk to him 20 minutes sooner than waste my time.” |
| Voice: |
“Maybe, but how often do you think this happens with your customers and clients in your businesses?” |
| Me: |
“Uhhhhhhh, good question! How about minding your own business while I turn up my radio!” |
Ouch! This happens all the time. We do it as customers, and our customers are doing it to us!! If we are not making it easier for our customers to give feedback, then it is happening to us more than any of us realize. Our customers have better things to do with their time than hunt us down and complain.
Management Service Recovery Training
It is difficult to expect your front-line employees to handle service recovery when they have poor role models. Service Management Group (SMG), headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, who measures the customer experience for multi-unit businesses, found some startling information when tracking customer complaints. SMG discovered that managers were the main cause of the very worst problems. These were the situations in which a customer complained directly to the manager. But the manager made the original problem worse by being defensive or unwilling to solve the problem. One-third of worst problems-the ones where customers called into the company’s headquarters to complain-were about the manager’s failure to resolve the original complaint!
Give Permission, Make it Easy
There are several ways to give permission for our customers to communicate with us. Now I am not talking about satisfaction measurement devices that ask customers their level of satisfaction and how likely they are to refer. That is very vitally important, I spent an entire chapter on it (13) in What’s the Secret?. This is something totally different. I’m talking about giving your customers permission to communicate easily, in a non-threatening way; and not only giving them permission, but asking for their advice, their feedback, both positive and negative. Few companies ask their customers for praise, and lose the opportunity to celebrate and perpetuate that type of outstanding performance. However, very few companies have the courage to ask their customers for feedback if their experience was below what they were expecting.
How Accessible Are You?
Here’s a refreshing approach. When you shop for a car at Motorcars Honda/Toyota in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, you will notice a red phone in the middle of the showroom with a sign that reads: “Hotline to Owner Chuck Gile.” Customers know that if any issues arise, they have the power to talk to the top executive in the organization. That provides great peace of mind and a zero risk of doing business with a company. On top of that, the red phone sends a message to all employees, demonstrating the lengths Motorcars will go to make the customer happy.
Grillsmith Restaurant, a Tampa-based chain, posts a sign that says, “I want to hear from you” with the GM’s picture on it and all the contact information, including the cell phone number.
Got Service? Prove it!
John Robert’s Spa rolled out an Experience Guarantee, where guests can pay what they think is fair if they were not totally satisfied with their experience, no questions asked. Did JRS get burned? Hardly. Any time John Robert’s got “short paid” it was deemed justifiable by the Salon Coordinator. It gave JR great feedback on who were the employees not providing the experience promised and more than 80% of the guests who didn’t pay full price, returned again. John Robert’s retained 80% of their dissatisfied customers! I would say it is working.
It is so simple: it is just marketing to your customer on everything: invoices, orders, at checkout, on the website, even in bathrooms. Here are some examples of what companies have used:
Please tell us about your experience.
It is very important for us to know how we can be the best
We want your advice on how we can be better
Did we hit the mark today? Tell us
Did we miss? Tell us, please!
Was someone a hero for you today?
We want to recognize them.
Were we the best part of your day?
If you can’t answer yes, that is unacceptable to us.
Please share with us why we were not.
Action Plan
How easy are you making it for your customers to share their experiences? Do you give them the impression you care, that you want to know, that exceptional experience is the only thing you will accept? If you are not getting enough complaints, that may be telling you something.
Filed under: Client Services, Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius, Malcolm Gladwell, Patient Experience, Patient Services | Tags: Customer Service, customer experience, client experience, The DiJulius Group, customer service consulting, customer service process, John DiJulius, customer service consultant, the customer service blog, Client Services, Patient Services
If you ask managers of any business how important their customers’ experience is to customer satisfaction (i.e. engaging, memorable, personalize, relationships, etc.), along with the quality of service or product they deliver, nearly every manager would say that the customer experience is critically important. Yet they contradict themselves by their actions.
Managers get frustrated because their employees and professional service personnel think it is all about the expertise. ‘Wowing’ the customer consistently takes a back seat. Why? Because it is just lip service by management! Want proof? Think about most professions; nearly all the degrees, licensing and on-going education is spent on the technical expertise of the profession. Now compare that with how much customer service training is put into a new employee and how much on-going training is put into an existing staff? How many colleges offer Customer Service as a major, a minor, or even a class?
How many companies require their professional service providers to have certain levels of customer service training and/or licensing before they are allowed to work with customers, patients, or clients? Hardly any.
Medical brilliance is a Commodity
A recent study found that, of the doctor’s surveyed, most seemed to overrate the patient service they provide. The following results are from research conducted in 2010 by The Management & Business Academy, sponsored by CIBA Vision and Essilor.
- 97% of practices rate the quality of the service they provide as above average or higher.
- 32% rate their service as “outstanding” – the best in their community.
- When patients rave about the service of an optometric practice, they most commonly mention the quality of the human interaction that occurs during an office visit rather than the technical quality of the exam or the technology used in the practice.
- The most frequently mentioned comment from highly satisfied patients is that “staff is friendly.”
This study presented research of highly satisfied patients, and rarely did the highly satisfied patients ever mention the technical competence of the doctor or staff, the technology used by the office or thoroughness of the exam.
What does this mean?
Patients expect excellent medical treatment and trust they will receive it at most professional medical practices and hospitals. As a result, medical brilliance by itself is a commodity and unacceptable today as a single measuring tool.
Want more evidence of how important demonstrations of caring and compassion can be in the medical world?
Consider the following findings from the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
- The risk of being sued for malpractice has very little to do with how many mistakes a doctor makes.
- Analysis of malpractice lawsuits shows that highly skilled doctors get sued. In nearly every single malpractice case, the patient was quoted as saying something negative about how the doctor made them feel.
- At the same time, the overwhelming numbers of people who suffer an injury due to negligence of a doctor never file a malpractice suit at all. Why? Because of the bond they had with the doctor. They would never consider suing the doctor or his practice, even though there was negligence on the part of their doctor.
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
Patients don’t file lawsuits because they’ve been harmed by shoddy medical care only. It is how their doctor treated them on a personal level. People don’t sue doctors they like.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service conference, customer service consultant, customer service consulting, customer service process, the customer service blog, The DiJulius Group
In order to create brand loyalty and customer evangelists, you must operate at a high level in six distinct areas of business and 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.” 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 website |
| Technical
Employees level of expertise Speed of your technology Computers State of the art technology Ability to use your website 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.
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.
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. John DiJulius is the innovator of a methodology called Secret Service a customer service system which consistently enables organizations to deliver World-Class Customer Experiences. Find out more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, the #1 National Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius, What's the Secret? | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Service, customer service conference, customer service consultant, customer service consulting, John DiJulius, Secret Service Summit, the customer service blog, The DiJulius Group
John DiJulius - Presenter at The 2010 Secret Service Summit
Recently a survey was conducted in the US and eleven other countries exploring attitude and preferences customers have toward who they spend their money with based on the customer service they experience (read the entire article).
Here is a summary of the findings.
- The majority say customer service is even more important to them in today’s economic environment
- 61% will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service
- Only 37% feel businesses have increased their focus on providing better customer service
- 27% feel businesses have not changed their attitude toward customer service
- 28% say companies are now paying less attention to good service
- 91% consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company
- 81% of consumers are likely to give a company repeat business after a good experience
- 52% will never do business again with a company after receiving a poor experience
- The three most influential factors when deciding which companies they do business with include:
- Personal experience (98%)
- A company’s reputation (92%)
- Recommendations from family & friends (88%)
- Just about half of consumers use online postings/blogs to get others’ opinions about a company’s customer service reputation
World-Class Customer Service Companies recognize the value
“Customers expect superior customer service especially in this tight economic environment,” says Jim Bush, Executive VP, World Service at American Express. “Many customers say companies haven’t done enough to improve their approach to customer service, yet it’s clear they’re willing to spend more with those who deliver excellent service, suggesting substantial growth opportunities for businesses that get customer service right. It’s important to see service as an investment, not a cost.”
“We know that luxurious touches don’t matter to guests unless the service surpasses the setting,” said Simon Cooper, president, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company LLC. And Susan Reilly Salgado, managing director of Danny Meyer’s learning business, says, “Service is about the technical delivery of the product, while hospitality is about how guests feel during that transaction.”
How Service is Valued Globally
The report found that consumers from different countries feel that customer service has become more important to businesses in the current economy.
Consumers feel that companies have increased their focus on providing good customer service
Best
- India 65%
- Japan 49%
- Mexico 47%
Worst
- Australia 29%
- Germany 34%
- Canada 35%
- Italy 35%
In summary, customer loyalty is the strongest asset a company can have in any economy. There are significant growth opportunities for companies that want to compete on the experience they deliver versus getting caught up in the price wars. There are fewer players competing in the experience arena. Customer Service must be viewed as an investment, not an expense!
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. John DiJulius is the innovator of a methodology called Secret Service a customer service system which consistently enables organizations to deliver World-Class Customer Experiences. Find out more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, the #1 National Customer Service Conference.
Filed under: Customer Experience, Customer Service, John DiJulius, What's the Secret? | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service conference, customer service consulting, customer service training, John DiJulius, The DiJulius Group
John DiJulius
Quality training must include systems and processes that remove variation and provide a consistent customer experience. A common misconception is that the only way to get better people is to pay more than everyone else. There are many great examples of world-class companies who do not necessarily pay better than their competitors. In fact, employees at Disney, Starbucks and Nordstrom are hired from the same labor pool every other organization uses and are paid the going rates. The real reason why Disney employees are so good at customer service is how well they are transformed into Walt Disney Cast Members, which occurs in their training. In most cases, the most recently hired, least trained, lowest-paid employees deal with the customers the most.
What determines the consistency of delivering the experience is the quality of the systems and training that every new and existing employee goes through. Just like in sports, the contest, match, or game, is decided long before the actual event takes place. It is won in the practice and the preparation leading up to the event.
Inadequate training is definitely the biggest underlying reason for the inconsistency and scarcity of great customer service. Companies skimp on training because it costs money, but companies that invest in customer service by training their new employees reap great financial benefits.
To be a world-class customer service organization, your training should include the following:
- A company orientation that covers company policy and the company’s history.
- The functional components of the specific job.
- The operational procedures of the job.
- All technical training, including product knowledge, use of equipment/tools, software and other technology, plus scope of services.
- Experiential training on soft skills (especially how to create relationships and personalize encounters), preventing customers from feeling like transactions, and customer recovery techniques.
- On-the-job shadowing.
- Testing and certification, including extensive testing on experiential skills.
Map the Customer’s Experience Journey
Identify all the significant points of interaction, called “stages,” that your customers may have with your company. Once you have mapped out your customer experience stages, you need to get your employees involved in helping to create what those stages should look like. You then break each stage down into four individual components:
1) Service Defects – All the things that can ruin the customer’s experience at this stage.
2) Operational Standards – All the tasks or jobs for each stage.
3) Experiential Standards – The actions that will create an exceptional experience and a raving fan.
4) Above-and-Beyond Opportunities – Common situations that we want our front-line employees to recognize and be prepared for in order to make a customer’s day.
Let your team help create this experience. Once you have your final version of service defects, standards, and above-and-beyond opportunities, you can create a training manual that all new employees get trained and tested on during their first two weeks with your company.
Action Plan
It is imperative for companies to ensure that every employee – new and existing – truly understands the organization’s Customer Experience Promise. The Customer Experience Promise is what the organization is supposed to deliver to their customers, consistently, at every stage of interaction. Every employee needs to understand the importance of each point of contact, what to avoid, the company’s non-negotiable standards that every customer must receive, and the potential opportunities to really “wow” them. Organizations need to make sure their Customer Experience Promise is structured in such a way that all employees learn, understand and execute it.
~John DiJulius best-selling author, consultant, and keynote speaker, is the CVO of The DiJulius Group, the leading customer experience consulting firm in the nation. He blogs on customer experience trends and best practices. John DiJulius is the innovator of a methodology called Secret Service a customer service system which consistently enables organizations to deliver World-Class Customer Experiences. Find out more about The DiJulius Group or The Secret Service Summit, the #1 National Customer Service Conference.
