by Shep Hyken
PERHAPS YOU’VE HEARD THE FAMOUS STORY of the Nordstrom’s employee who gave a customer a refund on a set of tires. Nordstrom’s return policy is very liberal, but it has never sold tires! Even so, the employee still refunded the customer’s money. Or maybe you’ve heard the story of how the call service representative at Zappos.com helped a customer order a pizza. Zappos.com doesn’t sell pizza … but that didn’t stop the call center rep from finding a restaurant in the customer’s city that would deliver a pizza.
The story behind the Nordstrom’s story is that the gentleman returning the tires insisted that he’d bought them from that store. Actually, he had—before it became a Nordstrom’s. Right location, wrong store! You can agree or disagree, but this was enough of a reason for the employee to give him a refund on the tires. So a customer service legend was born.
There’s a story behind the Zappos.com pizza story too. It was a test. Zappos.com sells shoes and fashion accessories from a website, and is famous for its customer service. CEO Tony Hsieh wanted to see just how customer friendly his call center reps were. So he had someone call and ask the rep to help find him a place to get a late-night pizza. The Zappos.com employee passed with flying colors, giving the “customer” three different restaurant options.
These stories—and companies—are now classics in the customer service world. Admittedly, these stories have been overused, but there is a reason for that. They make their point. They are extreme examples of core values of a company that have turned into legends and help to drive the culture of these companies.
You don’t have to have publicly recognized stories or legends to put this tool to use. However, using true above-and-beyond stories that you get from a customer’s letter or an online review can help create an internal legend that gives employees something to aspire to and emulate, while helping to shape your company’s culture.
That’s exactly what Ace Hardware has done. Once you spend some quality time behind the scenes, you realize that the whole enterprise is driven by stories. Specifically, it’s driven by true stories of helpful encounters with customers.
I’ve already shared many of the awesome “tribal narratives” from Ace, but I saved a special one for this chapter, a true story that perfectly illustrates what Ace is all about and what helpful is all about. Here it is.
Joe Rutter, an Ace manager from Knoxville, Tennessee, tells of a visit from a favorite loyal customer whom I’ll call Mrs. Wilson. Now, Mrs. Wilson was in her mid-80s at the time she made this visit to the local Ace store. She made that visit during an intense heat wave, when the heat index had climbed above 110 degrees. Even though the media posted warnings about the dangers of going outside, Mrs. Wilson still ventured out to the store.
She took a taxi. When she walked in the door, Joe noticed right away that Mrs. Wilson didn’t look at all well. She seemed flushed, she was sweating, and she was disoriented. She didn’t seem to know what she was doing. She couldn’t seem to remember why she had taken the cab to get to Joe’s store.
Joe and a couple of associates sat her down on a nearby bench just to let her collect herself, and sat with her, hoping to help her reorient herself. After just a few minutes, though, it became obvious that she was still confused. What to do?
Mrs. Wilson had no ride home, and no family in the area that anyone could call to have her picked up. Joe’s best guess was that the heat had gotten to her, and that she just needed to go home and rest. As it happened, he knew where she lived, because he’d made several deliveries to her house.
Joe offered to drive Mrs. Wilson home, and she accepted the offer. Whatever it was that she had meant to buy at Ace could wait until next time.
Joe drove Mrs. Wilson back home—but he had to make a detour. As they were approaching her neighborhood in his nice, cool car, she regained some of that composure she had lost in the heat—and remembered that she needed a loaf of bread. Would Joe mind stopping by the store so she could pick that up?
Joe didn’t mind at all.
Now, you could put up all kinds of posters about helpful, and circulate all kinds of memos about helpful, and share all kinds of slogans about what helpful is supposed to be—but none of those things would have anything like the same impact that hearing (and sharing!) that true story would have. Once you’ve heard that story about Joe and Mrs. Wilson, you know that helpful is not about closing a sale, not about selling products, not about anything that happens to the cash register. It’s about people helping people. This is a true story that perfectly captures the essence of the Ace brand promise. And as the store management shares these stories with the employees, it sets the example and shapes the culture.
Make it your goal to create—and share—your own great tribal narrative that supports your company’s customer-centric culture!
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
Past customer service stories can be a great training tool that creates best-practice examples for employees to learn from.
Your own above-and-beyond stories can demonstrate your core values and help to drive the culture of your company.
Make it your goal to create and share the next “tribal narrative” that supports your company’s customer-centric culture.
THE DRILL
Think of a time that you created an amazing customer service experience for a customer. (This can be either an internal or an external customer.) What happened?
BE A COMMITTED LEARNER
* * *
Knowledge is powerful and helps to create trust and confidence.
EARL NIGHTINGALE ONCE POINTED OUT that if we committed ourselves to reading one book a week in a chosen area, each of us could become an authority on that topic. Within five years we could become a national authority. Within seven years we could be an internationally acknowledged expert. Think about that one for a moment!
You can become an authority in anything you choose by pursuing your own personal commitment to learning. And guess what? You can do it in a lot less than seven years. Here’s my point: The more you know, the more value you can add to others, including (but not limited to) your customers.
Here’s the cool part: In our day and age, the knowledge that allows you to add value is ridiculously easy to come across. You can access what you want to know in a traditional book, or in an audio course, or in a video on YouTube, or in any number of other inexpensive or free formats. Yes, you can download an audiobook on virtually any topic of interest, and yes, you can usually finish listening to that audiobook within a week if you choose to make that a priority. But the one thing you can’t download is commitment. You have to supply that commodity on your own!
Being a committed learner is all about choosing the field you want to be an expert in, and then leveraging your excitement about that topic to learn everything you possibly can about that field, in partnership with your employer. Being a committed learner is all about being self-motivated to improve yourself and raise your own game in an area that excites you. It’s all about learning what you love and living what you learn.
Pick your passion! Pick something that connects to your world of work, something you could talk about for hours on end if need be, and never think of as “working.” At first, you might not think there are any subjects like that waiting for you in your workplace. I’m here to tell you that if you look hard enough and energetically enough, if you look as part of collaboration with an employer who wants to develop and hold on to good people, you will find the subject that inspires you.
Finding that subject, and pursuing it with everything you’ve got, is a win-win-win. It benefits the customer, it benefits your employer, and it benefits you! Demonstrating knowledge and expertise is a credibility builder—and a career builder too. According to a classic speech from Zig Ziglar, the average American reads fewer than two books a year. Most people don’t read purposefully in support of their career. If you do, you will place yourself at a significant career advantage over most of the people in this country.
Make the choic
e to be a committed learner. Make it a point to learn at least one new thing a day. What you learn may be in an article you come across in a trade publication. Or perhaps you take a few minutes to learn about a product you aren’t that familiar with yet. What possibility excites you most? You might sign on for an in-house training session on a new product, a new piece of software, or a general business lesson that’s covered during the weekly meeting. Or maybe your company—like Ace—is already deeply committed to continuing education on both the corporate and the store level. Find out what the options are!
Be on the lookout for continuing education programs that are already in place, programs that support both the employee and the company. See what they have to offer. Kramer Ace Hardware, in Mason City, Iowa, for instance, sponsors 20 credit-hours of continuing education per year for full-time associates, and 10 credit-hours per year for part-timers. The subjects are chosen collaboratively by management and the associates. That kind of program is a good start, but it’s only a start. Keep the momentum going! Become a committed learner: begin every working day looking for new ways to continue your own personal journey of learning.
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
You can become an authority on anything you choose by pursuing your own personal commitment to reading.
Demonstrating knowledge and expertise is a credibility builder—and a career builder too.
Expanding your own knowledge base makes you more valuable to customers and to your employer.
Begin every working day looking for new ways to continue your own personal journey of learning.
THE DRILL
How do you plan to continue your own personal development?
MENTORING
* * *
Get a mentor. Be a mentor.
A MENTOR IS A “wise and trusted counselor or teacher.” One of my most important personal aspirations in life is to be a good mentor to others—to help others get and achieve what they want.
This is not a business-oriented goal; it’s a goal on the charitable side. I always want to find new ways to help others get what they want from life, to make some kind of inspiring progress on their own journey through life. I want to help people get where they feel they need to go next in their own mission, and I want to do that without getting anything in return from the person other than to know that they have succeeded. I’ve made this a goal of mine because I have been lucky enough to have several great mentors in my life, including my close friends Bud Dietrich, Kim Tucci, and the late John Ferrara, who were all very helpful when I first started my business.
That’s the way it works with mentorship. First you must be mentored, then you must become one.
It didn’t surprise me much to learn that mentorship is woven deeply into the culture of Ace Hardware. Shannon Carney, whose family owns Ace stores in Southern California, actually starts the “mentoring process” before the person is hired! A favorite interviewing strategy of Shannon’s is to take a promising applicant out onto the floor and to assign an Ace associate to stay close to the potential associate and serve as an instant source of information. Shannon and the mentor watch how the applicant interacts with customers. They are especially looking to see whether this new applicant has what it takes to be helpful! If you have a strong face-to-face interview and do well during the “instant mentorship” exercise, you have a good chance of getting the job.
The mentorship process doesn’t stop there, of course. Over the initial weeks and months of any new associate’s time with Ace, Shannon makes sure that the new hire is “shadowed” by a mentor associate who can provide guidance, feedback, and support. The “shadow mentor” continues to help the new hire until he or she settles in, feels comfortable with the job, and owns the necessary skill set. The beauty of this system is that it doesn’t limit mentorship to the executive ranks. Eventually, everyone in the store can (and should) play the role of mentor. Even if you were just hired a few months ago, you may find yourself “shadowing” a new hire at Ace once you’ve developed a strong skill set. That makes you a mentor!
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
Once you have been mentored, you have an informal obligation to be a mentor to others.
Consider an “instant mentorship” during interviews with promising applicants. Watch how they interact with customers.
Consider a “shadow mentor” program that assigns an experienced employee to guide and support each new hire.
THE DRILL
Who have been the most important mentors in your life, and why?
Do you have an example of a time when you taught or mentored someone?
STARTING OVER
* * *
No matter how great our reputation is for amazing service, we’re only as good as our last customer.
ONE OF MY FAVORITE restaurants in my home town of St. Louis is Tony’s. It’s a local institution, and I couldn’t even begin to list all the honors, awards, and accolades it has received for fine dining and fine service over the years. I was talking with owner Vince Bommarito about some of the secrets he’s accumulated over the years for delivering great service, and he was kind enough to share one of them with me: A refusal to rest on his laurels.
“We never rest on our reputation,” he told me, “because we know we start over with each meal, every night. We earn our reputation anew each time a guest is seated. We treasure the letters we receive from guests from around the world. Our guests are our family. But we don’t let their praise fool us into thinking that anything we accomplished yesterday changes what we need to accomplish today.”
Just about every day, Vince gets phone calls, emails, and letters offering heartfelt praise about the restaurant, the food, and even specific employees. Every night, just before Tony’s opens, he calls an all-employee meeting during which he shares these accolades with the staff by reading the latest expressions of customer love right out loud. There are usually several new pieces of fan mail to read at each of these meetings, and hearing them makes everyone in the room glow. Then Vince tells everyone, “These are great, and we should all be proud. But guess what? In five minutes those doors will open and we start over!”
Then they do!
I was reminded of Tony’s ritual when interviewing Ace Hardware’s Tom Glenn. He and his family own over a dozen stores in Tennessee. Tom’s managers hold team meetings throughout the week during which they share some of the accolades they have received for the great service and help that associates have provided to their customers. The managers also share some of the store’s sales numbers. Tom says that giving associates access to this sales information makes them feel closer to the company, and I think he’s right. How does he end some of these meetings? With a reminder that gets repeated on a regular basis: “We’re only as good as yesterday’s numbers.”
We all could take a tip from meetings like these. We all could use an ongoing reminder that no matter how good we may think our reputation may be, or how successful we are, we need to earn it all over again with each and every new customer interaction. We’re only as good as our last customer and yesterday’s numbers. Every day is an opportunity to start over.
YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX
No matter how great our reputation for amazing service is, we’re only as good as our last customer.
Share the fan mail and other expressions of love you get from customers, but remember to start from scratch with each new customer.
Earn your company’s reputation for good service, all over again, with each new customer interaction.
When it comes to delivering amazement, every day is an opportunity to start over.
THE DRILL
What experiences and lessons from yesterday can you use to deliver amazement today?
How can you do even better?
CHAPTER EIGHT
ONE-ON-ONE
* * *
“Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is al
l there is!”
—TOM PETERS
I HAVE USED THE term “one-on-one” to describe this interaction in its broadest sense. It can be in person, over the phone, via email, texting, or any other form of direct communication.
It is your direct interaction with your customers, both internal and external, that will ultimately determine your own success and that of your company. Managed well, these interactions will succeed in engaging, amazing, and winning the loyalty of your customers. The next sixteen Amazement Tools (#s 23–38) help you to manage Moments of Truth and create Moments of Magic.
One-on-One Tools
23. It’s Showtime!
24. Treat Customers the Way They Want to Be Treated
25. Focus on the Customer, Not the Money
26. Manage the First Impression
27. Engage!
28. Ask the Extra Question
29. One to Say Yes, Two to Say No
30. Cross-Sell and Up-Sell!
31. Last Impressions
32. Be Accountable
33. The Customer Is Not Always Right
34. Bounce Back
35. Master the Art of Recovery
36. Manage the Wait
37. Avoid Loyalty Killers
38. Seize the Moment!
IT’S SHOWTIME!
* * *
Put on the show of your life, every single time you walk onstage!
AS MENTIONED IN TOOL #14, Shift Your Vocabulary, Disney has very cool terminology for the people who work at its theme parks. If you are employed at one of the Disney properties, you’re not known as an “employee.” You’re a cast member! And the people who pay to visit and enjoy the park? They’re your audience! This vocabulary serves to remind everyone that every interaction with every single Guest isn’t just a job. It’s a performance, and you’d better be ready for your moment in the spotlight when it comes around!