C-Suite Network™

Menu
Search
Close this search box.

Author: Donna Cutting

Donna Cutting, CSP is an Organizational Culture Consultant and the Founder & CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Worldwide. She and her team work with executives and career professionals in service industries to help them create cultures of happy, engaged employees who deliver red-carpet customer service. She's the author of three books including "The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service" (Wiley, 2008), "501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers" (Career Press, 2015) and the forthcoming "Employees First! Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization," (Red-Wheel Weiser/Career Press) which will be released in March, 2022.

Donna has been named as one of the Top 30 Gurus in Customer Service (2020 & 2021) and in Organizational Culture (2021), and is a Certified Speaking Professional and Certified Virtual Presenter.

Her customers include mid-sized to large service-based companies, healthcare organizations, senior living and elder care organizations, and call centers. She's helped them increase employee engagement, improve customer satisfaction and reviews, shorten sales cycles, and demolish workplace silos. She's a frequent keynote speaker on the topics of Company Culture, Employee Engagement, and Customer Service.

Donna has been featured, quoted or published in a variety of media outlets including Forbes.com, Investor's Business Daily, The Globe & Mail, & McKnights and has appeared on television news shows as well as been a frequent podcast guest.

She lives in Asheville, NC but in 2022 she intends to be hitting the road for full-time RV Living with her husband Jim and their two rescue dogs, Moxie and Tonks.|Donna Cutting, CSP is an Organizational Culture Consultant and the Founder & CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Worldwide. She and her team work with executives and career professionals in service industries to help them create cultures of happy, engaged employees who deliver red-carpet customer service. She's the author of three books including "The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service" (Wiley, 2008), "501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers" (Career Press, 2015) and the forthcoming "Employees First! Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization," (Red-Wheel Weiser/Career Press) which will be released in March, 2022.

Donna has been named as one of the Top 30 Gurus in Customer Service (2020 & 2021) and in Organizational Culture (2021), and is a Certified Speaking Professional and Certified Virtual Presenter.

Her customers include mid-sized to large service-based companies, healthcare organizations, senior living and elder care organizations, and call centers. She's helped them increase employee engagement, improve customer satisfaction and reviews, shorten sales cycles, and demolish workplace silos. She's a frequent keynote speaker on the topics of Company Culture, Employee Engagement, and Customer Service.

Donna has been featured, quoted or published in a variety of media outlets including Forbes.com, Investor's Business Daily, The Globe & Mail, & McKnights and has appeared on television news shows as well as been a frequent podcast guest.

She lives in Asheville, NC but in 2022 she intends to be hitting the road for full-time RV Living with her husband Jim and their two rescue dogs, Moxie and Tonks.|Donna Cutting, CSP is an Organizational Culture Consultant and the Founder & CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Worldwide. She and her team work with executives and career professionals in service industries to help them create cultures of happy, engaged employees who deliver red-carpet customer service. She's the author of three books including "The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service" (Wiley, 2008), "501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers" (Career Press, 2015) and the forthcoming "Employees First! Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization," (Red-Wheel Weiser/Career Press) which will be released in March, 2022.

Donna has been named as one of the Top 30 Gurus in Customer Service (2020 & 2021) and in Organizational Culture (2021), and is a Certified Speaking Professional and Certified Virtual Presenter.

Her customers include mid-sized to large service-based companies, healthcare organizations, senior living and elder care organizations, and call centers. She's helped them increase employee engagement, improve customer satisfaction and reviews, shorten sales cycles, and demolish workplace silos. She's a frequent keynote speaker on the topics of Company Culture, Employee Engagement, and Customer Service.

Donna has been featured, quoted or published in a variety of media outlets including Forbes.com, Investor's Business Daily, The Globe & Mail, & McKnights and has appeared on television news shows as well as been a frequent podcast guest.

She lives in Asheville, NC but in 2022 she intends to be hitting the road for full-time RV Living with her husband Jim and their two rescue dogs, Moxie and Tonks.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

Can’t Find Employees? 3 Actions to Take Now

The world has gone through some major shifts since the pandemic started and now we’re all going through a  collective values readjustment. Everyone is reassessing what’s important to them and that includes your employees. People are rethinking, readjusting, answering critical questions like; Do I want to stay in the same career? Would I rather be an entrepreneur? Do I want to work less? Is it time to retire? Your staffing levels are most definitely being impacted by this type of self-reflection. 

So, what do you do? Well first let’s talk about what not to do. 

Don’t whine about not being able to find people

Recently, I’ve noticed a trend on the doors of restaurants or retail outlets. Many have them have signs posted that read: “Please be kind to our staff, we’re running short of staff and doing the best we can”. I’m good with that. Personally, I believe and strongly wish we all could be a little kinder to the people who serve us. Right?

But in addition to the “Be kind, we’re Short-staffed” signs, some go a bit further and say “Nobody wants to work” or “It seems nobody wants to work anymore”. If I were looking for a job and I saw such a sign, I would keep walking right on by. There’s nothing in such a message that tells me why I should want to work for you. In fact, it does just the opposite. Who wants to work for a bunch of complainers? 

Yes, it’s hard. I get it. The world is changing rapidly, it’s affecting your business, and there’s a lot to complain about. No surprise employers are frustrated, but the exasperated messaging isn’t going to help. They won’t attract your best employees. So, let’s talk about what will. 

Revitalize your messaging

Start thinking about your desired employees as customers. You would never post a sign that read “Please be kind to us or be patient with us. We can’t afford enough help because it seems nobody wants to buy from us”. You would never say that, would you? No. You would be thinking about what messages would attract new customers. So, think about potential team members as customers. 

Here’s what I mean.  If you were trying to bring in new customers you might answer questions like; “Why do I want your product?”, “What’s in it for me?”. So, when you’re thinking of your desired team your messaging should start from this point; what’s in it for them? Why should they come to work for you? What are the benefits? Is it a flexible schedule? Is it that you have a really great workplace culture? How much are you paying? Do you have a plan for mentoring and helping them grow within your organization, or out in the world? What are they getting if they work for you? 

Even better, how are they making the world a better place by working at your company? What is the thing that they’re going to be doing that is bigger than your product or service? Stop complaining and start focusing on putting a message out there that will attract outstanding people.

Create a culture where people want to work

Ever wonder why so many people are resigning from jobs and reluctant to go back to work? Maybe they are stressed, exhausted and they don’t feel valued. Maybe they want to go somewhere where they know they’ll make a bigger difference. Maybe they don’t want to work three jobs to feed their families. Perhaps they spent a year free from harsh criticism from customers, co-workers, and bosses alike and have decided not to go back to that environment. 

The question isn’t, why doesn’t anyone want to work anymore. A better question is how do we create a culture where people want to work? It takes more than pizza parties and taco bars to make people feel appreciated. Leaders must go deeper and do the work to ensure a safe and respectful work environment, where everyone feels included, valued for their contribution and like someone cares about them as individuals. 

It’s time to get out of our heads and into our hearts. Employees are not human capital – they’re human beings. 

Look somewhere different

We tend to have our go-to places to look for talented people and we rarely deviate. Let me challenge you to write down 10 new places where you could start looking.  Perhaps you’ve been recruiting people from the same school down the street. Start looking at the other schools in your area. What about churches? Clubs? On social media? There are also retirees who would be open to a new challenge. Yes, continue to place your ads on Indeed and other sites, but expand your vision of what recruitment looks like. 

The more you put it out there, the more places you’re looking, the more likely you’re going to find people. Also, when you start looking in other places, you’ll attract a more diverse population which will only make your team stronger. 

If you want to keep up with the changing world, it means it’s time to change the way you’re doing things and that includes team member recruitment. Think about your potential (and current) team members as customers and you’ll soon be saying “You’re Hired!” 

(Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com)

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Fact Check: Is the Company Culture You Have the One You Think You Have?

The first step in every large project I begin for a customer is Discovery. I spend days, or even weeks, sitting down with employees at every level of the organization just to listen to what they have to say about the culture, their customers, and their ideas. Often enough, the conversations are very different depending on who’s talking to me.  There are times where senior leaders and managers paint a compelling picture of their company culture. “We really believe in our mission!” “We collaborate across departments” and “We care about people.” Sometimes, the conversations I have with the frontline staff align with those statements. Other times, when I speak with the hourly employees, it’s like we’re talking about an entirely different organization. In those cases, the picture is a workplace where people are stressed, overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated.

Is it possible that the culture you want to have, and you think you have, is not being felt by your employees? Here are a few tell-tale signs that your company culture may not be as great as you think it is.

  • Employee turnover is high, especially within the first six months. Perhaps you got people excited with your mission, your vision, and your values. Maybe your employee orientation is stellar. However, if people are dropping like flies within the first few months on the job, chances are the experience you promised them is not the one they’re getting.
  • Team members aren’t referring new people to your company. Your employees are talking about their jobs outside of work. If you have a distinctive culture that values people and fills them with purpose, they will tell others. As a result, people will be lining up to work for you. On the contrary, when you are not delivering on your cultural vision, you may find that employees drive away your new hires with their horror stories.
  • Leaders are the only ones using your favorite buzz phrases. You know the ones I mean. Those cute little sayings you use to describe what it’s like to work in your organization. If your hourly workers aren’t using them too, they aren’t feeling it.

So, what do you do about it? The first step is always to acknowledge that there’s a disconnect. Then, once you’ve admitted the problem, it’s time to align your vision with reality. Here are five steps you can take to get you started.

  1. Listen. It’s time to listen to your hourly workers. Go beyond the annual online or paper survey. Have “penny-for-your-thoughts” sessions with groups of employees. Talk less and listen more. Host lunch with the boss days. Set aside days just to have video chats with employees. Get an accurate pulse of what the people who are closest to your customers are thinking.
  2. Ask for Help. It’s important to let people vent, but then you also want to ask for solutions. Acknowledge that there are some issues and let them know you hope to work through them together. Encourage suggestions. Put together a team of people at ALL levels of the organization. Ask them to work through some of the challenges together.
  3. Act. Take immediate action on the items that are easy to fix. Identify suggestions you can implement, but that may take time. If they share ideas that are not a good fit right now, be transparent with the reason. Give them the whole picture and better equip them to offer do-able suggestions.
  4. Co-Create. Pull together team members and re-envision your culture. Ask, what kind of workplace do we want to have? What behaviors align with that culture? What will it take for us to get there? The more you involve them in creating the vision, the more likely they will buy into it.
  5. Include. Involve hourly workers by making them ambassadors for your mission, vision, and values. Develop them so they can become facilitators of your company culture curriculum and mentors to new hires. What about including hourly workers in leadership meetings occasionally to represent their peers and learn from the experience? Ask your hourly workers to develop rituals and celebrations to keep your desired culture front and center.

Here’s a bonus. Carefully select and develop your leaders. Promote people who have a natural inclination to care about others and a gift for inspiring those around them. Provide education on coaching their team, encouraging diversity & inclusion, and creating a better employee experience.

It’s not easy to admit that your team members may not think your organization is as great as you think it is. However, by listening, asking, and co-creating, you’ll get closer to speaking the same language of company culture.

Donna Cutting is the author of “Employees First! Inspire, Engage, and Focus on the Heart of Your Organization” (Career Press, 2022) and “501 Ways to Roll Out the Red-Carpet for Your Customers” (Career Press, 2015). She’s the Founder & CEO of Red-Carpet Learning Worldwide and works with organizational leaders to help them co-create cultures of happy, caring people who deliver red carpet customer service. For more tips visit www.theredcarpetway.tv

Categories
Growth Management Operations Personal Development

7 Skills Your Staff Needs to Deliver Consistently Excellent Customer Service

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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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.

 

  1. 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

 

 

Categories
Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Want to Deliver Red Carpet Customer Experience? Here Are 3 Areas of Focus

Have you heard the phrase, “Customer Experience is the new marketing?” In a world where your customers have more choices and louder voices than ever before, providing an exceptional experience is certainly key to building a brand that attracts new and loyal customers.

A study by McKinsey shows that 70% of all buying decisions are based on how the customer feels they are being treated. Gartner found that by 2018, more than 50% of organizations will implement significant business model changes in an effort to improve customer experience.

It’s not new that people like doing business with people and companies they like. What is new, in the past decade and going forward, is that in this age of social media and review sites, word of mouth has taken on a whole new meaning.

There’s no doubt that in order to ensure “word on the street” is positive when it comes you to your business, it’s imperative that you pay attention to delivering a red carpet customer experience. So, what does that mean and where do you start?

When it comes to improving the customer experience, there are three specific areas of focus:

  • Technical
  • Warmth and Hospitality
  • WOW!

The Technical area of focus centers on the quality of products and services you deliver, and the processes that enable you to provide a seamless experience across all channels. To improve this area, consider the following:

  • Do you deliver exceptional products or services?
  • Do your customers feel they are getting their money’s worth?
  • What’s the speed of delivery?
  • How responsive is your team?
  • How many interactions (with technology or people) does it take to get an answer to a question or a resolution to a problem?
  • How knowledgeable is your team? Is there enough information at the customer’s fingertips?
  • How well trained is your staff?
  • How up-to-date are your systems?
  • How many times do customers have to repeat information?
  • How easy or difficult do you make it for a customer to do business with you?

Are you rolling out the red carpet, or the red tape? This is the question the leaders of the city of Ball Ground, GA asked themselves several years ago. At the time, they had a 3-page list of items that had to be completed before someone could establish a business in their city. They culled the list down to those procedures needed only for the safety and well being of their citizens. As a result, they’ve not only attracted new business to their community, but Hollywood as well. The Tom Cruise movie American Made was partially filmed in Ball Ground. Says city manager Eric Wilmarth, “Instead of charging them huge fees, we asked that the crews be fed locally, use local businesses, and work with the businesses to ensure they’d be made whole if they lost money during the filming process.”

How are you making it easy…or difficult…for your customers to do business with you?

The Warmth and Hospitality area of focus is all about your people. As self-sufficient as customer interactions may become in the future, at some point your customer will engage with a human being. In fact, many may prefer to work with a person and you may be making it difficult for them. (Red carpet? Or red tape?)

When they do, you want to ensure those interactions are warm, welcoming and helpful. Red-Carpet customer service is about making the person in front of you right now feel important. This comes down to the basics of genuine smiles, eye contact and learning and using customer names. You want each person they meet to exude friendliness and a sense of really wanting to be helpful.

To improve the hospitality area of focus, here are a few questions to consider:

  • Are you hiring people with empathy and an innate desire to make others feel important?
  • Are you training your team on customer service skills? While you may not be able to teach empathy or friendliness, you can train people on ways they can better show empathy or friendliness.
  • Are your team members 100% present to your customers?
  • Are your team members empowered to solve problems for your customers and go the extra mile to make them happy?
  • How is employee morale? Have you spent some time building a service culture that lifts your team up, so they are ready to lift up your customers?

Remember, each person your customer interacts with is a reflection of your brand. Ensuring those interactions are consistently positive is critical to the overall customer experience. When you’ve created a place where your customers feel important and warmly welcomed, you’ve created a place where your customers return and bring friends.

The WOW area of focus is last for a reason. While it may be fun to think of ways you can go over-the-top and delight your customers, those WOW moments don’t matter if your products aren’t up to par, your processes bog things down, and your people are surly.

However, if you’re providing a pretty seamless experience and your people are consistently warm, friendly and helpful, then you may want to look at adding some of the WOW Factor!

This is about going deep to really get to know your customers and using that information to deliver unexpected moments of red carpet awesomeness!

To improve this area of focus, consider the following:

  • Do you have a process for recording the preferences of your customers?
  • How can you add a touch of personalization to each point in your customer’s journey?
  • Are your team members encouraged and empowered to surprise and delight customers?
  • How far can a team member go to make a customer happy?
  • What tools can you provide your team so it’s easy to add a little delight to the mix?

The WOW-factor happens when you’ve got your entire team engaged and excited about making memorable moments for your customers. For instance:

  • Ruby Receptionists empowers their entire staff to send surprise cards and gifts to their customers. They even have a station with notes, wrapping paper and access to a gifting account.
  • An employee at Tampa International Airport found a stuffed tiger left by a little boy. They took the tiger on a little “airport adventure,” documenting it in photos along the way. When the child and his parents were reunited with their stuffed friend, they were also presented with a photo album of all he had “done” while they were separated.
  • ScanMyPhotos.com sends bouquets of flowers to customers on a random basis.
  • An auto mechanic noticed a customer dancing along to the music playing through their sound system. After hearing her say it was one of her favorite recordings and she had lost hers, he pressed the track on a CD for her. It began playing through her sound system as she started her car.

These are the moments that make people want to talk about, write about, and post about your business in a very positive way.

As you think about upping your game when it comes to customer experience, consider each of these three areas. Decide on the most impactful strategy you could employ from each area of focus, and implement. Keep repeating and you’ll be able to look back and see great improvements in your customer’s experience. Why bother? Because when you roll out the red carpet for your customers, they run out and tell everyone they know.

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