Amaze Every Customer Every Time

by Shep Hyken

  The good people at Ace have learned precisely the same lesson. The minute they step into the store they know they’re about to make contact with an “audience.” That means they’re in a heightened, prepared state of mind—and they’re ready to perform. You’ll notice the moment you walk into an Ace store that the associates are there to amaze you.

  This sense of being ready for the show, ready for prime time, simply means being prepared to engage with customers the moment the “curtain” goes up and they walk into the store. It means embracing the fact that you really do have an audience—in the form of your customer. And it means being committed to please that audience. Here’s what Lucinda, an Ace customer in Encinitas, California, had to say about the quality of that performance:

  “I am very impressed by this Ace Hardware store. I was in there twice this week, and both times, staff was very helpful. The first time, I was guided through the store as the staff member helped me locate each and every item on my list. The second time, I had questions about drywall repair, and a different staff member gave me lots of helpful advice, which worked beautifully … Prices seem to be comparable, yet the service here is light-years ahead.”

  That’s what a great performance looks like. Every day that you show up for work, your goal needs to be the same: to give the performance of your life, to raise the standard of your performance above the one you gave yesterday. That’s what showtime is all about! It’s a command performance. You leave whatever problems you may be experiencing in the dressing room. You’re totally professional. When you show up for your entrance, you’re on!

  A colleague of mine, Mark Sanborn, is an amazing speaker on leadership. He once made a comment to me about how he wanted to be so good for the audience he was speaking to that day that he “cheated” the audience he had spoken to the day before. That comment was brilliant. He actually attributed it to an article about renowned therapist Michele Wiener Davis, who mentioned how she tried to “cheat” yesterday’s patient by being better today. Could Mark Sanborn, recognized as one of the top business speakers in the nation, be better than he was the last time every single time he presents to an audience? Having seen Mark in action, I wouldn’t bet against him. The point is that he tries to be.

  Call it a Showtime Moment. It’s the moment when you make a personal commitment to raise your own standards, seize the spotlight, and deliver the performance of your life. Give yourself a Showtime Moment every day, right before you hit the stage. That’s what can make the difference.

  YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX

  You’re in show business, and your customers are your audience!

  Each interaction with a customer isn’t just a job, it’s a performance. So be ready for your moment in the spotlight!

  Commit to raising your service standards, every single day.

  Seize the spotlight and deliver the performance of your life for every customer every time.

  THE DRILL

  What interaction with a customer do you wish you could have videotaped so that you could have shared it with others as a “best practice”?

  What happened that made it so special?

  How could you repeat that great performance, or even improve upon it, next time?

  TREAT CUSTOMERS THE WAY THEY WANT TO BE TREATED

  * * *

  Approach customers on their own terms—the way they like to be treated.

  IN TOOL #10: To Be the Best Place to Buy, Be the Best Place to Work, we covered my twist on the classic Golden Rule, which I turned into the “Employee Golden Rule.” Well, here is another twist on this popular “rule.”

  Many people have said that following the Golden Rule is a great customer service strategy. It seems to make sense to treat people the way you would want to be treated. However, my friend and colleague Dr. Tony Alessandra disagrees. In the world of customer service, he wants us to follow what he calls “The Platinum Rule”: Treat people the way they want to be treated.

  I can illustrate the difference for you very easily. Let’s suppose that you’re a sociable person, someone who genuinely likes interacting with others and enjoys learning about what’s happening in someone else’s world—even if you’ve just met that person. I realize that may not be your first instinct, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. Let’s say that every new individual you meet is exciting, because that person is an opportunity for you to share new experiences and bond.

  Well, when you walk into a store, how do you like to be treated? If you’re like me, the odds are that you enjoy a little small talk with the salesperson at the counter. That’s how you want to be treated. Now, let’s suppose you have that personality style, and you’re working the counter for Ace, and your very first customer of the day is a gentleman who comes across as more of a “just the facts” kind of person. This guy is in a hurry and just wants to get his merchandise and pay for it. He’s not interested in small talk. If he has a question, he just wants the answer, period. Nothing else. Certainly no socializing. He might come across as curt, short, and deeply uninterested in how great a time you and your family had at the ballpark last night. That’s just his way of interacting with people.

  Are you going to treat him the way you want to be treated, and ask him half a dozen questions about his family and friends that he doesn’t want to answer? Or are you going to adapt to his style and keep it “all business”?

  Obviously, the right thing to do is to adapt to his communication style, his priorities, and his agenda. That’s part of your job in the world of customer service. He’s not there to adapt to you. You’re there to adapt to him!

  Without getting into a long dissertation about behavioral styles, let me just say that this responsibility to adapt to the customer is both a personal and an organizational issue. As you’d expect, Ace trains its people in quickly adapting to the customer. Ace associates are trained to recognize both the key personality priorities and the key task-driven priorities. Both kinds of priorities are important if you plan to follow the Platinum Rule.

  Accordingly, Ace has broken its customer base down into five major subgroups to help associates quickly identify the reason the customer is most likely coming into the store. Different types of customers have different needs. Those subgroups are:

  Mission Shoppers: customers who know exactly what they want

  Browsers: customers browsing for certain items or pricing

  Project Shoppers: customers working on repair, maintenance, and home improvement projects

  Business Customers: schools, churches, local businesses, general or subcontractors who buy materials for their business or organization

  Service Customers: customers bringing an item in for repair

  Someone who’s on a mission to replace a single outdoor patio light, for instance, probably has a different set of objectives than someone who’s trying to get in-store service on a screen door that their pet cat has scratched to bits. The associates can confirm their initial “diagnosis” about the purpose of the visit with just a few simple questions. Recognizing the objective and adapting to it is just as important as recognizing the communication style and adapting to that. That means you have to pay attention!

  Which brings us to a key takeaway here: The more attention you pay to your customers, the better you will be at following the Platinum Rule!

  YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX

  Dr. Tony Alessandra says that to follow the Platinum Rule: Treat people the way THEY want to be treated.

  Customers have different communication styles. Determine how they like to communicate and adapt to that.

  Customers are not there to adapt to the way you like to communicate. You’re there to adapt to them!

  Understanding your customers’ different buying behaviors allows you to adapt to the way they want to do business.

  THE DRILL

  Have you ever had a customer who had a very different expectation of something than you did—or a very different communication style? What was different? Were you
able to adapt?

  FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER, NOT THE MONEY

  * * *

  The function of your business is not to make money. It is to get and keep customers.

  WHAT IS THE FUNCTION of your business? Most of the time, when I ask people this question, I hear this answer: “To make money.” But you know what? That really isn’t the function of your business.

  Whenever people tell me that the function of their business is to make money, I ask them to tell me the difference between the function of a business and the goal of a business. Yes, the goal of a business is to make money. (If your organization is a nonprofit, the goal is to fulfill the mission.) But the function of a business is something very different.

  Consider these important and wise words from Dr. Theodore Levitt, senior professor at Harvard Business School:

  The function of every business and organization

  is to get and keep customers.

  You can’t confuse the function, getting and keeping customers, with the goal. The bottom line is that without customers, you can’t make money. This is what leads us to a key best practice at Ace:

  Focus on the customer, not the money.

  This is an extremely powerful concept.

  Do you remember the example I shared with you back in chapter three, when the Ace associate took care of fixing the bike for the cyclist who had been in an accident? That Ace associate was more interested in taking care of the person than he was in making money. Heck, the cyclist wasn’t even a customer, only a potential customer! But the outcome was powerful. He became an evangelist for Ace Hardware that day!

  You might think this kind of thing is a rare occurrence for Ace, a special kind of incident that headquarters talks about just to win some good PR, but you’d be wrong. In researching this book, I came across dozens of Ace stories like this, situations where Ace employees went WAY above and beyond the call for people who hadn’t even bought anything from the store!

  The key is to put the customer first. The money follows. This really is how they do business at Ace: They focus on the people, not the money! That’s how they get and keep customers.

  There were far more of these Good Samaritan stories about Ace than I could possibly have included in this book. I’ll share just one more with you so you can get a sense of the powerful loyalty these incidents create in the base of current and prospective Ace customers—and can create in your base of current and prospective customers too.

  Maria lives in Mesa, Arizona. Her eight-year-old daughter, Lisa, saw one of those color-changing mood rings in the mall, got her mom to buy it for her, pushed it onto her finger, and fell in love with it. Unfortunately, the ring wouldn’t come off. Try as she might, Maria couldn’t get the ring off Lisa’s finger once they got home, and after an hour of effort, the poor little girl was starting to have some circulation problems.

  What did Maria do? She and Lisa hopped in the car and went over to the local Ace Hardware store, where she asked the staff if they had any ideas about how to get the problematic ring off. Floyd, an associate, had an idea. Out came a special pair of pliers, which Floyd maneuvered very carefully to avoid hurting Lisa. After a few minutes of focused attention from all concerned, Lisa’s finger was free again.

  Maria took a picture of Lisa showing off her newly liberated finger at the Ace store; she was smiling broadly. She posted the photo on Facebook and told everyone exactly what had happened. The post got a great response! “Score one more for the locally owned small business,” one person wrote. “Everyone go and give them some love (business)!”

  Did Floyd sell anything when he got the ring off Lisa’s finger? Nope.

  Did he stand out from his competition? Absolutely!

  Did he win customers for life, and evangelists? You bet!

  Sure, those are extreme examples. Yet every day there are opportunities that, while far less dramatic, put that principle into practice. A customer may be looking for an item that is out of stock. Rather than just send the customer away, the Ace associate may call a competitor and ask them to hold the item for the customer.

  Taking it a step further, maybe the associate actually goes to a nearby competitor, buys the item and then comes back to the store, selling it to the customer for the same price he just bought it for. (I heard of more than one instance of this happening at Ace.)

  In both of these examples, the customer is more important than the profit. But customers reciprocate with loyalty, and when they do, profit follows.

  Put the customer first! Remember that the function of every business is to get and keep customers. The goal is to make money. Confuse the function with the goal, and you don’t always reach your goal.

  YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX

  Focus on the customers, not the money!

  Dr. Theodore Levitt said, “The function of every business and organization is to get and keep customers.”

  Don’t confuse the goal of your business with its function: getting and keeping customers.

  Put your customers first, even before the sale, and they will reciprocate with loyalty.

  THE DRILL

  Think of a time when you or a colleague helped a customer even though you didn’t make a sale. What did you do, specifically, that made the customer feel that you cared more about him or her as an individual than just another sale?

  MANAGE THE FIRST IMPRESSION

  * * *

  The first impression sets the tone for whatever is to follow!

  IN A RECENT CUSTOMER service survey, 48 percent of respondents said that the most critical time for a company to gain their loyalty was when they make their very first purchase or begin service.3

  That’s a pretty big number! It serves as a powerful reminder that first impressions count. Yet everywhere we go as customers, we see evidence that many companies don’t seem to care very much about the first impression they make. The customer’s initial encounter with those companies is many times a Moment of Mediocrity—average at best—and sometimes even a Moment of Misery.

  My take on first impressions is that they are much more than the very first time you meet or decide to do business with someone. First impressions can be the first time or the 500th time you interact with someone. The first impression is any initial interaction you have with someone that sets the tone for whatever is to follow.

  This can be the first impression you make when walking into a room. What messages are you sending with your body language or your facial expression? Are you dressed for success, which means dressing appropriately for whatever situation you’re in? A first impression can be conveyed in the way you answer the phone. Do you welcome someone into the conversation with the words you use and your tone of voice, or do you make the caller feel as if he or she is an interruption? All of those decisions go toward making either a positive or a negative first impression. This is a basic Moment of Truth.

  If you’ve ever been inside an Ace Hardware store, you already know that they’re quite good at this first impression tactic. I won’t say it’s impossible to walk into one of these stores without being greeted within ten seconds in a friendly and authentic way, by a real human being who genuinely wants to help you find what you’re looking for. It could happen, but not very often. Try it yourself and see.

  City after city, store after store, visit after visit, Ace customers notice that they’re greeted on an individual basis, warmly and helpfully, each and every time they enter the store. Their first impression is that they are made to feel welcome in the store, made to feel as though they’ve come to the right place. They aren’t made to feel like they’ve broken up a private party. That positive initial greeting—a core best practice—sets the tone for the helpful experience Ace aims to deliver to every customer every time.

  YOUR AMAZEMENT TOOLBOX

  Manage first impressions. They set the tone for everything that follows!

  The first impression can be the first time you meet or work with a customer or the 500th time.

  St
rive to make every customer’s first impression a Moment of Magic, every time.

  THE DRILL

  What do you do to manage the first impression? How do you greet people? What do you wear to work? Do you shake hands? How do you answer the phone?

  Is there an opportunity for improvement?

  ENGAGE!

  * * *

  Use open-ended questions to launch a strong dialogue with the customer.

  PERHAPS ONE OF THE most asked questions in the world is “How are you?” The standard answer you typically receive is, “Fine,” even if the person isn’t fine. It’s just how most people answer the question. In the retail business, there is a similar question that elicits the same type of automatic, lackluster response. The question sounds like this: “Can I help you?” Of course, the standard response is something like, “No. I’m just looking.” Once in a while you’ll get a good response from a customer, but usually it’s an opportunity for the customer to avoid interacting with a salesperson.

  One area in which Ace Hardware flat out excels in its marketplace is in creating and sustaining quality conversations with customers and prospective customers. If you’ve spent any significant amount of time at a well-run Ace store, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Store after store, you will see the associates interacting with the customer in a way that is comfortable, nonintrusive, and totally appropriate to the individual. People who drop by an Ace store genuinely like talking to the folks who work there. Not every retailer can claim that. In fact, very few can.