by Shep Hyken
Everyone can be a leader when it comes to customer service.
THE DRILL
What does it mean to “Treat employees the way you want your customers to be treated—maybe even better”? Share an example.
DON’T TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT
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“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile.”
LOTS OF PEOPLE CLAIM to have been the first to say the quote that appears above—I like to attribute it to the late Zig Ziglar—but regardless of whoever said it first, it means the same thing: Don’t take the easy way out.
This principle could correspond to a number of important relationship goals with the customer. For instance, being helpful, learning to say “Yes” instead of “No,” creating customer evangelists, building and sustaining long-term loyalty, and so on. Those are all outcomes. Ultimately, I think the most important reason to instill this principle is that it reminds your organization how important it is to capitalize on the precious opportunity to create a Moment of Magic with each specific customer request.
Many of your competitors won’t do that. They’ll miss that precious opportunity, and probably not even recognize it in the first place. That’s human nature. They may even see a customer’s special request as a nuisance. Most of the time, they’ll take the easy way out and find some way to get out of having to deal with that request.
If you do business the way Ace does, though, you’ll build a culture that never takes the easy way out, whether internally or externally.
This may all sound a little abstract, so let me show you exactly what that kind of culture looks like in action. What you’re about to read is a verbatim email from a happy Ace customer. Notice that the email is extremely long and detailed, and that the customer who took the time to write it is now an evangelist for Ace!
SUBJECT: Outstanding Customer Service
It seems that too often nowadays, the only time a business hears from a customer is when there is a complaint. But that’s not why I’m sending you this message. Instead, I’d like to let you know how pleased I am with service that I recently received from your employee, Josh.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that my 9-year-old lawnmower had seen its better days. My daughter and also my brother-in-law had both recently purchased Toro personal pace lawnmowers. One was from Ace Hardware in Apple Valley; the other from a Minneapolis Ace Hardware. They seemed pleased with the mower so I thought it would be a good model for me as well.
I called Pellicci Ace Hardware and talked with Josh. He was very informative, and even though there were no Toro personal pace mowers in the store, he quickly made a call to the local Toro representative. And if I recall correctly, I had a new mower within one day.
Now, I have a small car, so there’s no way I could have transported the mower. But Josh delivered it—no charge. Talk about fast, excellent service!
However, we soon discovered that the mower that had been delivered wasn’t a good fit for me. I am 4 feet 11 inches tall, and the handlebars were just way too high, and on that particular model, the handlebars cannot be adjusted. I mentioned this in the call I made to the Ace store. Josh came by and picked up the mower. Again, at no charge.
Back to the drawing board we went. He called me within a short time and informed me of another Toro model personal pace that had three adjustable heights for the handlebar. And the next day, Josh called to say that he had received the mower in the store and would deliver it that afternoon and again, no delivery charge.
Josh was ever so patient with me throughout the entire transaction, and he politely answered all of the questions I had. And if he didn’t have an answer, he offered to find out and get back to me—which he always did in a timely fashion. It’s been a long time since I’ve received such superb customer service. Not only did Josh respond quickly, but he followed up after I had used the mower to ensure everything was all right.
So because of my recent experience with Josh’s service, let’s just say I’m convinced: Pellicci Ace Hardware is the place! Thank you to Josh for his outstanding customer service attitude!
Sincerely,
Judy
Of course, there were multiple opportunities for Moments of Magic within this remarkable story, and it’s easy to get excited about how well Josh capitalized on them all. The willingness to deliver the lawnmower, not once, but twice. The no-hassle exchange. The follow-up to make sure everything was all right. Yet, what I want you to notice is that it all began with one fateful moment: The moment when the customer called and asked whether or not the store had a Toro Personal Pace lawnmower.
Think about it. Nine times out of ten, if you called a store and asked them for an item they didn’t sell, you would probably hear something like, “I’m sorry, we don’t stock that item. You might try a different store.”
It’s easy to say “No” to a special request. It’s more convenient to not take extra time and effort to take care of a customer. It’s easy to be like most everyone else, nothing special. It’s easy to create average Moments of Truth—also known as Moments of Mediocrity. In other words, it’s easy to take the easy way out.
The best and the brightest, like Josh in the example above, are different. They don’t take the easy way out.
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
Capitalize on the precious opportunity to create a Moment of Magic with each customer request.
A customer’s special request is not a nuisance; it is an opportunity to show how good you are.
The best and the brightest don’t take the easy way out when a customer asks for help!
THE DRILL
Think of a time when you could have told a customer that you couldn’t help, but you chose to make the effort—even though it might have been a little inconvenient—to take care of the customer. What did you do, and what happened as a result?
THE AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY
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To the customer, you are the company!
CUSTOMERS DON’T DO BUSINESS with a company. They do business with the people who work for the company. Perhaps a better way to say this would be that customers interact with the people who work for a company.
One day I took my kids to breakfast at a fast-food restaurant. The moment we walked in we were greeted by a wonderful woman who welcomed us and took our order. As she completed the transaction, she talked to my kids and asked them about school. She came back with our food, thanked us, and told us to have a great day. On the way out of the restaurant, my daughter said, “The people at this restaurant are so nice.”
What did she mean when she said the people? We only interacted with one person! However, that person, at least to my daughter, represented the entire restaurant—all of the employees and the brand.
Think about it. People will sometimes say, “I love doing business with them …” In reality, they may be talking about a he or a she—just one person. And, here is the point. At any given time one person represents everything about your organization. It’s an awesome responsibility!
Every employee in your company carries an awesome responsibility: being your company. To the customer, that employee doesn’t just “represent” your company. He or she is the entire company, every working moment. Any interaction that affects a customer, consciously or not, forms an impression. That’s the Moment of Truth we covered in chapter five. Hopefully that interaction isn’t a Moment of Misery or a Moment of Mediocrity. You want it to always be a Moment of Magic, better than average.
An Ace owner, Mark Schulein from Southern California, told me that his store was only as strong as the “weakest link” employee in the building. Why? Because the interaction that any given customer has with that weakest link employee forms the customer’s impression of the entire store. So if the weakest link is in a bad mood when the customer happens to ask a question, and the customer picks up on that, the whole store was rude to that customer. In that scenario, it doesn’t matter how good everyone else is when it comes to interacting with custome
rs. The weakest link undermines everyone else’s work. That’s why Mark’s ongoing training goal was to make sure that the weakest link point of contact in the store still delivered an amazing experience, every time.
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
At any given time, one person represents everything about your organization. It’s an awesome responsibility!
To the customer, an employee doesn’t just “represent” your company. He or she is your company.
In amazing organizations, even the employee who is the “weakest link” should still deliver amazing service.
THE DRILL
Think of a time when you interacted with a customer in such a way that the customer developed a positive impression about not just you but the entire company. What did you do to make that customer “love” you and the company?
DEFEND THE CULTURE
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You are part of a team that delivers amazement. Intervene tactfully with colleagues who inadvertently take down that culture!
A WHILE BACK, I was speaking at a conference in Texas. Although I had already checked out of my hotel room, I wanted to take the hotel’s shuttle to the airport, which was less expensive than taking a cab. The trouble was, the recently hired front-desk clerk was hung up on the “operations” part of her job. According to the employee manual she’d been given, the shuttle was only for guests of the hotel. Apparently, they’d had a problem with people who weren’t guests of the hotel taking advantage of the service. The hotel’s solution was to make sure the person on the shuttle was also a registered guest, and the best way to do that was to charge the fee to the guest’s room. Unfortunately, I had already checked out of my room, and therefore I no longer had a room to charge to. Technically, that meant I was no longer a guest at the hotel.
I tried my level best to explain to the clerk that I really was a guest—I just happened to be one who had checked out of the hotel, apparently a little too early for my own good! She could only repeat what the manual told her: If there was no room account open to charge to, she couldn’t let me on the van. There was nothing in the manual about letting me pay cash for the ride, so in her mind, she couldn’t do that.
Clearly, this was a Moment of Misery in the making. Fortunately, there was another hotel employee observing this interaction. He tactfully helped his newly hired coworker by telling her that it was okay to accept cash. In the process, he taught her to change her “operations” outlook to a “customer” outlook. A customer-centric culture rewards using your own best judgment in delivering a Moment of Magic, every time!
I got my ride to the airport!
There are a number of amazement lessons that could come out of this story. It could be about common sense, about using your best judgment, about how policies should be considered guidelines and not rules, or any number of other critical principles. What’s more, she obviously had not been exposed to Tool #29: One to Say Yes, Two to Say No.
Here’s the main thing I want you to notice about the story. When the new front-desk clerk’s veteran colleague stepped in, he was doing more than just teaching his colleague that it was okay to accept cash. He was also teaching her to get out of a by-the-book “operations-centric” mindset. He was defending a customer-centric culture.
This story shows how one employee intervened to help another employee, and in the process, helped protect the hotel’s customer-focused culture. Sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes it’s more than just teaching or mentoring. Sometimes you have to “tactfully intervene” when there is a need to defend the culture.
Art Freedman is an Ace store owner in California. In addition to his day-to-day responsibilities, he is also one of Ace Hardware’s go-to guys for training and consulting. Art travels all over the world helping other Ace retailers, and he shared a great example of how he once had to defend the Ace culture.
Art noticed a customer who had walked into an Ace store and tried and failed to catch the attention of one of the associates. The customer gave up and headed down the aisle to try to find whatever he was looking for—all because that associate had been busy socializing with another employee.
Art saw it all, and he knew that the associate had failed at a lot more than making eye contact. He had failed to greet the customer, and worse yet, had failed to ask how he could help the customer. He was taking down Ace’s culture!
Art quickly intervened. He took that associate aside and tactfully talked to him about what had just happened. He let him know in no uncertain terms that the store, his job, and all of his fellow associates’ jobs depended on him executing his responsibility, which was to greet customers when they come in the store, interact with them, notice when they needed help, and deliver on the helpful promise.
Art’s a great coach, and when he was finished with his lesson, not only did the employee not repeat his mistake, he also became a defender of Ace’s customer-centric culture!
The culture your organization lives by depends on the willingness of you and every one of your employees to live it and defend it.
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
An operations-centric culture is all about following instructions to the letter, even when that means delivering a Moment of Misery.
A customer-centric culture rewards using your own best judgment in delivering a Moment of Magic, every time!
Coaching and mentoring are great ways of tactfully intervening to “defend” the company’s culture.
Praise and reward the people in your company who defend your customer-centric culture.
Give people permission to intervene when they notice a colleague inadvertently taking down your customer-centric culture.
The culture of your organization depends on the willingness of every employee to not just live the culture but also to defend it.
THE DRILL
Was there ever a time when you witnessed a colleague doing something that seemed to you to undermine your company’s positive culture? What did you do? Or, looking back, what do you wish you had done?
SHIFT YOUR VOCABULARY
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Sometimes changing the words you use can change your attitude—and your company’s culture.
WORDS HAVE TREMENDOUS POWER. Whenever we choose to change the words we use, we can also change the service culture of the entire organization. We can change the reason we show up for work in the morning. We can change the way we look at our relationships with customers. We can change our business outcomes. We can change everything!
My business coach, Dan Sullivan, doesn’t have “clients.” Instead, he refers to me—and everyone else who pays to work with him—as a “Multiplier!” This is a conscious choice of Dan’s. He calls us “Multipliers” because he has a “Multiplier Mindset” when it comes to me and everyone else he coaches. He tries to multiply our free time, our business results, and lots of other things that he knows we want to have abundantly in our lives. Dan’s pretty good at multiplying!
By the way, he also views us as Multiplier on his behalf—advocates who can evangelize for his services and bring him in more business. And you know what? He’s absolutely right about that. We get great results from our relationship with Dan, and we really are more than happy to serve as his Multipliers!
How can you change your vocabulary? You might start by looking closely at the way you refer to customers. There are plenty of companies out there whose employees make a habit of referring to the customer as “Boss.” I love that! What a great way to remind yourself, and everyone in your company, about who’s really paying your salary, paying your insurance, and keeping the company running. And did you notice that, when you go to one of the Disney theme parks you’re never referred to as a “customer”—you’re a “Guest,” with a capital G? The people who take care of you aren’t “employees,” either—they’re “cast members”! These word choices are not accidents. They are conscious choices that affect the customer relationship and the customer experience in a positive way. In the same way, referring to Ace employees
as “associates” changes the dynamic in a positive way.
It doesn’t stop there. Like a lot of Ace retailers, Smith’s Ace Hardware in Princeton, New Jersey, makes a habit of calling the people they serve “our neighbors.” What a game-changer! This one simple vocabulary change totally transforms the relationship. What’s the difference between a neighbor and a customer? Well, neighbors look out for each other. Neighbors keep an eye out for each other’s best interests. Neighbors care about each other beyond a one-time transaction. Remember the old advice to “love thy neighbor”?
I’ve had people tell me that this kind of vocabulary change doesn’t make a difference. That’s true if the terminology change is just the “theme of the week” and doesn’t stick. But, if it represents a long-term commitment that helps to define the culture, it works. If you think calling someone a “neighbor” rather than a “customer” during team meetings, strategy sessions, and store encounters is a superficial change, a piece of “happy talk” that can’t possibly be expected to affect the bottom line, please permit me to disagree. Once you make a habit of it, this one simple change possibly can transform your business and your career.
Language changes behavior! What we say affects what we think, and what we think affects the way we treat each other. When we call someone across the counter a “neighbor” rather than a “customer,” we’re sharing something special. Is it crazy to call that special something “love”? Not if your customers return the love! The ones out in Princeton, New Jersey, do. One of them wrote this online about Smith’s Ace Hardware: “BEST hardware store EVER. ABSOLUTE BEST SERVICE. If it’s possible to LOVE a hardware store, I LOVE this store!”