Filed under: Customer Service | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service consulting, customer service process, Nicole Flesher, revolutionist, secret service, the customer service blog, The DiJulius Group
Because of my 5 year old, I have become very familiar with this question. For the last two and a half years, I have been asked WHY about every possible thing there is. After about a year I realized how effective the question really is. It really gets you the answer you want! If you start thinking like a toddler, you’ll get your answer.
As a service provider I started asking my guests WHY. (My way of incorporating Secret Service into their experience.) I would ask questions and I would get answers. It is important in building a relationship with a guest. It became an effective tool in getting to know my guests. Vacations are a perfect example of where you can ask WHY? 
WHY they chose that destination is always so interesting to me. It tells so much about them. For example, if a guest tells me she just got back from Hawaii and I respond with how exciting that had to be; I then ask her WHY she choose Hawaii. She tells me it was her honeymoon spot. A simple question opens the door for so many more opportunities to build the relationship and deliver Secret Service. Then wedding talk comes, and it’s a whole web of information. I then record that info. I know when she got married, and where she went on her honeymoon. By recording that info into our database, it gives other service providers the opportunity to deliver Secret Service as well. It’s a great start to building a relationship and a loyal guest. It makes the guest feel very special.
I started to notice I was doing this in all parts of my life. It wasn’t intentional –it just became my way of thinking.
One of my favorite WHY stories took place during a haircut with a new hairdresser. It was my first visit with Brian and during a very normal conversation I asked WHY he chose this industry? He gave me an answer he was so sure of!! It was refreshing to hear for two reasons.
- he really knew exactly what it was about this industry that he loved, and
- because he reminded me WHY I love this industry so much.
Brian’s answer: “Nicole, ya know what? I love this industry because of the opportunity we are given to change a life!” It most definitely was not what I expected to hear coming from a 22 year old guy who rides a crotch rocket and has only been doing hair for a few years. I didn’t have to ask WHY after that because he just kept going.
He touched on the relationship building part of our business, and how important it was to him. He told me he built a steady clientele within his first year on the floor.
Everything he said was impressive to me. It was a reminder of WHY I loved this industry and it was a reminder of how crucial it is to build a relationship with people. He gave me a wonderful hair cut, but the reason I will continue to get my hair cut by Brian is because of his passion for what he does. I don’t mean his passion for cutting hair. I mean his passion for changing and impacting lives. It’s his purpose.
My service ended, I started to ask myself a few questions. WHY being one of them, big shock coming from me right?
Brian didn’t build that clientele in his first year because he gave a good haircut. It sure helped, but it wasn’t WHY his guests returned. (You can get a good haircut a lot of places.) He built that clientele because of the way he made people feel. He is passionate, and he makes each guest aware of that passion. He comes to work and works from his heart. He is compassionate and empathic toward each guest, and he does everything he can to make sure they know they are the only thing that matters to him at that moment. When a guest leaves a service provider who provides those qualities, their outlook changes. They walk away looking good, but they also walk away with a feeling of importance. He truly cares about making a difference in people and their lives. That is what this industry is about. It’s about changing a life, changing the way people look, changing the way people feel, and giving others the confidence to do whatever their heart desires. We all become a little robotic at times: we come to work and we do our thing. Sometimes our “purpose” can get away from us. Asking Brian WHY got me out of that robotic state and back to my purpose.
Ask yourself WHY. Ask others WHY. WHY can help you deliver an experience that keep your guests coming to you, and WHY is sure to help you get out of a rut we all get in. It is also an effective question to ask yourself when things are going well. Ask yourself WHY are things so perfect right now. Answer that question and you now know how to keep things that way, or how to get them back if things happen to go the other way. Making the WHY game part of your everyday life is sure to get you what you want, and where you want to be.
Filed under: Customer Service | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, customer service conference, customer service consulting, customer service process, John DiJulius, secret service, the customer service blog, The DiJulius Group
Without execution, systems in manuals are nothing more than ideas on paper. This is where most companies fail – the execution of these systems.
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 to start executing. A month later, not 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. Managers are not short on ideas; they are short on strategy that will result in successful implementation.
Select a path and stick with it
I can’t tell you how often I hear the same thing from the companies I consult: “A few years ago, our theme was ‘fish,’ last year our theme was ‘raving fans,’ and this year our theme is your book.” It’s no wonder nothing sticks. There’s no continuity from one generation of employees to the next because they joined under a different theme. There is nothing wrong with using any of those books and concepts as themes. 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. 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. That doesn’t mean the training doesn’t evolve. 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 re-energized on at least an annual basis. Beyond that training, world-class customer service companies advertise superior customer service to their employees on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.
Implement slowly and properly
Let’s assume you have just successfully completed the Customer Experience Cycle Workshop with your entire organization. You should now have the buzz. Stop right there. 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. A worst practice is to allow managers to roll out the implementation on their own or to introduce many new concepts every week. If you do either, in about 45 days, all of those great ideas will be a distant memory because not one of them will stick. The only result will be a loss of credibility. Employees will feel that all their work was just a bunch of rah-rah and hot air because nothing ever came of it. Customers will be disappointed by the inconsistency between your promises and their experiences.
Both your front-line managers and employees already have too much on their plate to digest and manage the execution of more than a few things at once. You need to create a roll-out calendar of new customer service systems. Never introduce more than two or three things per 120 days to any one department. This may sound like a slow process, but wouldn’t you be doing cartwheels if I told you that a year from now, you will have introduced 10 new initiatives that are all being executed consistently?
Manage the Experience
It is imperative that every manager is uncompromising about the execution of your standards. Your employees have to know that they cannot pick and choose. That is why it is very important NOT to have too many standards for every stage of interaction. Less is more, so 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 consistent, continuous execution.
Filed under: Customer Service, What's the Secret? | Tags: client experience, customer experience, customer loyalty, Customer Service, customer service conference, customer service consulting, customer service process, non-negotiables, secret service, The DiJulius Group
The Fourth Commandment for creating a world-class customer experience is creating Secret Service systems that allow front-line employees to engage and interact with customers. This enables them to personalize the customer’s experience by anticipating their needs and 
delivering satisfaction.
Customer intelligence is customer data (buying habits, purchasing history, referrals, personal preferences, where they live or work) that fuels secret service.
Many companies leave Secret Service driven by customer intelligence to chance: typically a few long-term employees create relationships with regular customers and this naturally happens. You have a high degree of inconsistency when it is only contingent on long-term employees and regular customers. The best customer service companies train all their employees, even their newest employees, to collect and utilize customer intelligence. A good system with the proper training allows even the newest employees to personally engage and recognize even those occasional customers.
Here’s how it should work: When a customer calls in to place an order, within seconds the call center representative should be able to pull up the database and historical information and be able to personalize the experience, citing things such as, “I know you like your orders to arrive at the beginning of the week,” or “How’s the weather in Portland?” Thus, all your customers feel like they are your only customer. None of these ideas cost anything or hurt the productivity of your front-line people.
Additional “non-negotiable” standards that businesses rarely implement but can be considered ‘low-hanging fruit’ are:
- Warm-call transfers – The best customer service organizations answer their calls in the following manner.
- (Receptionist) – “Thank you for calling TBS Enterprise. This is Susan. May I assist you?”
- (customer) “Can I please speak to James Burns?”
- (receptionist) – “Certainly, may I tell him who is calling and your company?”
- (customer) “Bruce Wells, from Wells Supply.”
- (receptionist) – “My pleasure, Mr. Wells”
- (James Burns) – “Bruce!!! Great to hear from you, and tell me, how did your son’s soccer team make out at nationals?”
- How do they take their coffee? As simple as that sounds, that is a perfect example of Secret Service. When making a sales call and you are meeting with the decision maker, (aka – CEO), how impressive is it when you walk in to your 15 minute meeting with his Venti Skinny Carmel Latte?
Altruistic Secret Service
John DiJulius
My favorite Secret Service is when the customer service that is provided has no apparent hidden agenda, meaning it’s done with no expectation of the act directly benefitting the giver. For example, my accountant, Mike Trabert, from Skoda Minotti & Company, Cleveland, Ohio, out of the blue one day dropped off an autographed picture of Notre Dame football legend, Rudy, personalized to my oldest son, Johnni. I don’t recall telling him, but somehow he remembered that because of his size, that was my son’s nickname when he played youth football.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
On the lead sales call with a CEO, he mentions to you how his company’s focus this year is improving their customers’ experience. The next day he receives a gift from you: a new copy of What’s The Secret? To Providing a World-Class Customer Experience with a note saying, “I know how important customer service is to your organization and thought you would enjoy this book.”
Don’t you think that would make you stand out from every other business person who’s making pitches, asking for orders, trying for more business and never finding out what is important to him and his business? And you simply send him a gift that has nothing to do with what you do or can do for him, but demonstrates you have genuine concern for helping him hit his business goals. Powerful!
Secret Service creates an emotional bond between customer and company that transcends the product or service. That bond, that feeling, becomes sought after again and again. It requires a personal connection between customer and employee, and often the lowest paid and least appreciated employee is the best source of this bond.
~John DiJulius is the Chief Visionary officer of The DIjulius Group
