Category: Management

There are some experiences in life you just never forget. Having dinner with my good friends Kim Tucci and the late John Ferrara is one of those experiences. This was over 30 years ago. But like I said, some things you just never forget.

We were in Phoenix, Arizona and this dining establishment was a very nice one. John’s son Ben was with us. At the time, he was only 12 years old. When the server came along to take our drink order, we were curious to know what the daily specials were. When he mentioned a seafood dish, my friend Kim asked, “Is the fish fresh?”

This is the part that has stuck with me after all these years. He told her, “The fish is so fresh it hasn’t even thawed out.”

He was saying two different things, and I was a bit lost. The fish was fresh. But it was also still frozen? What could he possibly have meant? I wasn’t the only one who thought this was odd. Ben, although just 12 years old, was also looking at the server in complete confusion. It turned out that when he said fresh, he was simply implying that the fish hadn’t come from a freezer aisle in a grocery store.

In this case, our server gave the wrong answer to the question. That is the whole point. In every business, there are simple questions that customers are going to ask over and over again. Great employees will know the answers to these questions, because great employers will train them to.

Think about your business and your industry. What are the common questions that get asked time and time again? In a restaurant, a few of them might be about pricing, ingredients in the dishes, side items offered, or substitutions. As a frequent restaurant patron, here are some of the top questions that I regularly ask:

• What’s the soup of the day?
• Does this entrée come with a salad or side dish?
• How is the fish prepared?

That first question, the one about the soup of the day, is one that always puzzles me. It’s amazing to me (in a bad way) how often the server doesn’t know the answer to this. Their response is almost always, “Let me go back to the kitchen and ask the chef.” What blows my mind is how could they not know? What’s just as bad is, how could the manager have someone on the floor who doesn’t know the answers to these simple questions.

So, here is a little homework. There are three main steps to the assignment:

1. Come up with the top three questions your customers ask your employees.
2. Create the best responses.
3. Train your people to know the correct answers.

Once this is done, everyone in your company should be able to answer these questions, from the newest hire to the person who has been there the longest, from the lowest paid employee to the highest paid. Once all of your employees know the answer to these questions, train them on three more. Continually do this, as often as you see fit.

When your customers realize that your employees have the answers to their frequently asked questions, this will instill trust in your company. Trust turns into loyalty to your business.

We in the USA are so fortunate when we grocery shop. Our grocery stores have excellent quality and amazing selection.  Thank you “capitalism”.  Choice and a combination of competition and cooperation (capitalism) have provided this.  So, when we choose fruit, we can afford to be picky. If we want apples, we can afford to choose only “perfect” apples.  There is no reason to choose an apple with a bad spot, correct?

Apple just created their own bad spot and it caused me to pause and ask if perhaps I should pick a different “apple”.  They purposely slowed the iPhone processing on the older phones.  That decision alone is not the reason for my concern.  I am concerned because they didn’t communicate.  They didn’t ask.  They just did it and they damaged my trust in them.  I saw a bad spot.

Apple management claimed the positive intentions of saving battery life and avoiding unwanted sudden shut downs.  Class action suits were filed, and Apple management was forced to apologize. Some customers believed Apple intentions were not so positive.  These customers are upset because they believe the slowdown was timed immediately after a new product release to encourage upgrades.

There is no doubt the iPhone is an impressive product with very high standards and very high quality.  But, high quality and innovative technology does not cause people to disregard disrespectful communication or a lack of timely communication.  Apple’s lack of communication about this change was part of the reason their customers interpreted these decisions as manipulative in nature.

For us leaders, this is a great lesson.  There are basic leadership qualities people expect in all interactions. They expect to be treated like adults.  They expect to be treated with respect and integrity.  Customers are unwilling to compromise these.  They are especially less likely to forgive and forget when they are missing at the same time.

What could Apple have done?  Perhaps communicate respectfully before acting?  Even better, perhaps provide the opportunity for feedback, e.g. allow customers to take a survey or provide their opinions about viable solutions for the older batteries degrading? It doesn’t matter how great a product or service is.  If the company treats customers with disrespect and/or breaks in promises, loyalty will be damaged.

We can extrapolate this to employees.  No matter how brilliant an individual leader is, if he/she can’t treat constituents with respect and integrity, their willingness to trust that leader will be damaged.  Their willingness to follow the leader will suffer in ways that cannot be measured.

The actions by Apple management show a weakness in emotional intelligence skills. Technical skills are important, and Apple has an abundance.  But if they can’t predict how their customers will feel when they make major decisions, those technical skills will not save them from the damage to loyalty.

When shopping for apples, there is no reason to choose the one with the bad spot.

Check out the interview on C-Suite Best Seller TV to learn more about how to stop leadership malpractice and replace the typical performance review: https://www.c-suitetv.com/video/best-seller-tv-wally-hauck-stop-the-leadership-malpractice/

 

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

Take a moment right now and think about a company that’s known for providing an exceptional customer experience.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When I pose this question to my audiences, a handful of names are shared repeatedly: Disney; The Ritz Carlton; Zappos; Chick-fil-a; Nordstrom’s.  One of the keys to their success is Consistency.  Regardless of which location you visit, or whom you speak with, your experience is consistently excellent. Every team member is striving to deliver red carpet customer service, to every customer, at every touch-point, every single time.

If you want to create this level of consistent service excellence within your organization, there are a few strategies that can help you reach that goal.

1. Create a picture of what service excellence looks like in every area of your company. The senior leaders of each company named above created and communicate a very clear vision they are 100% committed to, and expect everyone on their team to be just as dedicated to carrying it out.

 

2. Align all the pieces of your organization with that vision. In other words, the way you hire people, onboard and orient them, train them, treat them, reward and coach them must be in alignment with those expectations.

 

3. Empower your team members at every level with the tools and training they need to deliver on those expectations.

While hiring people who have the innate qualities that are in alignment with your vision for customer service excellence, it’s still important to provide training. Good training will ensure the kind of consistency that will enable your company to become known for a red carpet experience. Remember, each employee a customer interacts with, makes an impression that formulates their total opinion of your entire organization. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page, and has had an opportunity to practice their skills in a safe setting.

As you create or search for the right customer service training for your staff,  here are seven skills that must be addressed in that curriculum. When it comes to interacting with customers, your team members must know how to:

1. Make Red Carpet First and Last Impressions. When a customer interacts with any team member, are they made to feel welcomed and wanted? Soft-skills such as smiling, making eye contact and calling people by name may seem simple, but when every team member genuinely seems happy to serve the customers, it makes a huge impression! When your customers are acknowledged, remembered and thanked it’s a first step in gaining their trust and loyalty. You may have innately friendly people on your team. However, they may need the confidence that skills-practice can provide to pro-actively show that friendly personality to your customers.

 

2. Use Confidence-Building Words and Phrases. While scripting can sometimes come across as fake and forced, teaching your team to improve their language skills can help them make a better impression. Words like “Yeah,” “Ok” and “Hang On,” can be replaced by “Absolutely,” “I’d be delighted to help,” and “Sally is the perfect person to answer that question for you. Would you mind holding for two minutes while I get her on the line?” Like anything else, getting comfortable using confidence-building phrases takes practice.

 

3. Adjust their Approach when necessary. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that every person is different. It takes flexibility to address the needs of your many customers. Your staff, however, may suffer from black-and-white thinking. It’s not their fault. They want to make sure they are following the rules and may not feel empowered to think for themselves when it comes to assisting a customer. Good customer service training will help your team members know how and when to adjust their approach for each customers, and when to check with a manager before going any further.

 

4. Be Responsive, Speedy and Efficient. In a world where the answer to almost everything is at your fingertips, responsiveness is key. Your customers will quickly move on if they aren’t acknowledged and assisted in record time. Learning to be efficient and deliver goods and services quickly while, at the same time, allowing the customer the space they need to have a relaxed and happy experience is a skill that must be developed in every service professional to succeed in today’s marketplace.

 

5. Handle and Turn Around Upset Customers. Remember the first few times you were faced with an angry customer? It wasn’t fun, was it? Especially if you weren’t equipped with the knowledge or skills to turn the situation around. Well, guess what? Your direct-line team members will undoubtedly face a disgruntled customer at some point in time. While that’s never a fun circumstance to be in, it becomes easier with tools and practice in a safe training setting.

 

6. Be More Knowledgeable about your Products & Services. The fewer people your customers have to go through to get the answers to their questions they better. It follows that the more your direct-line team members know about your products and services, the happier your customers will be. Incorporate product knowledge into your customer service training and your on-going communication with your entire team.

 

7. Personalize, Surprise and Delight. This is where the “red carpet service” comes in. Empower your team with a process for learning and noting customer preferences and train them to use that information to create memorable moments that will result in rave reviews online and elsewhere. These are the stories that get told and when everyone on your team is focused on created them, your customers will start telling them

When it comes to becoming known for customer service excellence, consistency is key. Have a clear vision, align your strategies with that vision and give everyone on your team time to practice these seven skills. You may find that when others are asked for the name of a company “known for exceptional customer service,” the name they give is yours.

Donna Cutting is the Founder & CEO of www.RedCarpetLearning.com., and the author of two books about customer service including her most recent, “501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers. Follow her on Twitter at @donnacutting, and Subscribe to www.theRedCarpetWay.tv