Tag Archive for: customer service
Tim Harris, owner of Tim's Place, is the country's only restaurant owner with Down's Syndrome,. The joy he gets from serving people good food carries over into his diner's most famous export: hugs!
Being well entrenched in the Digital/Internet Revolution we are in today, one thing has become more important and paramount than ever before in history... TRUST. The other name for this period of time we are in is "The Customer Revolution"... and for the same reasons. If your customers don't trust you, you are at high risk of extinction in the not too distant future.
TRUST has become the ultimate prize for businesses today. If your customers trust you, they are choosing to work with you over anyone else in your industry... even if they have to pay a higher price. And one of the biggest reasons Trust is so critical to people is because of TIME. As I have talked about in several earlier posts, Time is the most valuable asset for people today (according to Forrester Research and others). People don't feel they have enough of it and they can't afford to waste it. Those that can help them keep more of their time are more trusted and become the winners in the new Revolution.
If your customers Trust you, they don't have to spend the time searching around and checking out other options... they can simply buy from you. And they are proving this by their willingness to pay more for the same products/services. This is a HUGE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE for businesses today.
But how do you create more trust with your customers?
The underlying core of this answer is very simple... yet many businesses seem to ignore this simple message. The underlying foundation of Trust is PROMISES MADE = PROMISES KEPT. While this is an easy concept to grasp and understand, it appears to be an incredibly difficult formula to execute on a consistent basis throughout one's business. I refer to this often as playing the "Whack-a-Mole" game... where you have a bunch of holes in front of you and a different mole pops up randomly out of each hole... when you hit one, another one pops up. This is the same situation many companies face on a daily basis... having several things under control but another one pops up for you to deal with.
This isn't any more evident than in the area of CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. One of the biggest challenges businesses face today is delivering a CONSISTENT AND REPEATABLE customer experience. Look at your own business and you can see exactly what I am talking about. There are areas that seem to be doing OK and areas that area a disaster when it comes to delivering an awesome, incredible, amazing experience. I can almost guarantee you that there isn't consistency in your customer experience throughout your company... and if there is, you are in a very small minority today.
The CUSTOMER JOURNEY is the collection of customer experiences throughout your company... all working together to deliver an "overall experience" to your customers. The Journey is the "sum of all experiences" you offer to your customers. This includes the experience from your call center, sales, accounting, shipping, marketing, distribution, and every other area of your business. The customer touches each of these areas to some degree at one point or another throughout their overall experience with you when purchasing and/or using your products/services.
So here's the big problem for the majority of companies and why TRUST becomes an issue.
There are usually areas in your business that do better than others when delivering a customer experience. Some might knock it out of the park where others cause great pain for your customers. A good example of this is the Sales group vs. the Accounting group. The Sales department is usually the most "customer centric" in how they treat their customers... it is usually required as part of their role. Accounting, on the other hand, probably doesn't even have it as part of their job description/processes. Their role is to get the bills out, pay the invoices, and make sure all the money is accounted for within the company. Providing an awesome and incredible experience to the customer when they call isn't probably high on their list even though it should be. Regardless of how they treat the customer, they are part of the CUSTOMER JOURNEY inside your company.
When you deliver an awesome and incredible and remarkable CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE... demonstrating how much you care about helping your customers... you build TRUST. When you don't deliver this level of an experience you erode the trust you have with your customer or don't establish any if it is the first interaction.
And when you make PROMISES to your customers through your marketing and advertising, in addition to what your employees tell your customers... and you don't keep them... you lose/erode TRUST. When this happens over and over, your customers lose TRUST IN EVERYTHING YOU DO... not just the few areas that are causing the issue. To the customer, it is a JOURNEY OF TRUST.
Customers don't segregate out the departments in your business... they view their entire experience as a Journey. When different departments don't deliver this incredible experience and don't keep their promises the customer simply says, "They promise things they can't or won't deliver... I don't trust them or anything they say or do." This is even the case when you have one or two departments delivering a experience. The ones that aren't delivering this experience are the ones that bring the company down to the lowest common denominator... a low level of trust for the entire Customer Journey.
If you want to INCREASE THE TRUST OF YOUR COMPANY, YOU HAVE TO DELIVER ON YOUR PROMISES AND DELIVER AN AWESOME CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THROUGHOUT THE COMPANY. This is the core behind building trust with your customers.
Change the JOURNEY to one where every area of the company is honoring and delivering the promises they make and give your customers a WOW Customer Experience and you will change the level of TRUST. The concept is simple... the execution isn't. If it was, everyone would be doing it. The research wouldn't be telling us that customers don't feel they get an awesome experience. The customer is telling us loud and clear what the answer is to EARNING THEIR TRUST... the question is whether or not we will listen and change our CUSTOMER JOURNEY to one that creates TRUST rather than erodes it.
I would encourage every leader to take inventory of their company's customer experience and how consistently they are delivering on the Promises the employees are making every day. If the experience isn't awesome and you see promises being made that can't be delivered, you have your answer as to how much your customers really trust your organization. This is one of the most valuable "audits" of an organization a leadership team can do to truly understand the level of trust they have with their customers. Give me a call if you have any questions and I would be happy to steer you in the right direction.
Author: Blaine Millet
If you found this helpful, please share it with your friends so they can also learn from the material. It not only means a lot to me but it helps other people see the story. And if this resonated with you, please visit my http://www.WOM10.com site and read more posts like this one.
We used to get excited about moving our companies from being GOOD to being GREAT... but today, being GREAT isn't good enough... it's a commodity. Today, if you aren't on a path to move your company from being GREAT to being REMARKABLE and MEMORABLE, you don't get talked about.
My PASSION and MISSION is to help INSPIRE, GUIDE, and HELP you move your company from being GREAT to being REMARKABLE... and create Word-of-Mouth on STEROIDS so you get talked about... a lot.
I have a model that helps get you to REMARKABLE. In the core of the model is creating unbelievably incredible amazing and awesome Customer Experiences... you can learn about it in my book, "Creating and Delivering Totally Awesome Customer Experiences." With this as a foundation, you are well on your way to being REMARKABLE.
I get to SPEAK about it, WRITE/BLOG about it, and HELP leaders understand it, aspire to it, and achieve it. There are four key components to help get you to being REMARKABLE... getting talked about in the market... and ultimately letting your CUSTOMERS DO YOUR MARKETING FOR YOU.
Are you ready to become REMARKABLE? Shoot me a message... we'll have an awesome conversation!
It was a stormy night many years ago when an elderly couple entered the hotel lobby on the outskirts of a mountain resort area and asked for a room.
"I'm very sorry," responded the night clerk. "We're completely full and so are all the other hotels in the area, but I can't imagine sending you out into the storm again. Why don't you stay in my room?" the young man offered with a smile. "It may not be a luxury suite, but it's clean. I need to finish my bookkeeping here in the office."
The distinguished-looking man and woman seemed uncomfortable, but they graciously accepted his offer. When the gentleman went to pay the bill the next morning, the clerk was still at the desk and said, "Oh, I live here full-time, so there's no charge for the room. You don't need to worry about that."
The older man nodded and said to the clerk, "You're the kind of person that every hotel owner dreams about having as a staff member. Maybe someday I'll build a hotel for you." The hotel clerk was flattered, but the idea sounded so outrageous that he was sure the man was joking.
A few years passed and the hotel clerk was still at the same job. One day he received a registered letter from the man. The letter expressed his vivid recollections of that stormy night, along with an invitation and a round-trip ticket for the hotel clerk to visit him in New York. Arriving a few days later in Manhattan, the clerk was met by the distinguished gentleman at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, where a magnificent, new building stood.
"That," exclaimed the man, "is the hotel I've built for you to run! I told you at the time that it might happen and today you can see that I was serious."
The clerk was stunned. "What's the catch? Why me? Who are you anyway?" he stammered. "My name is William Waldorf Astor. And there is no catch. You are the person I want managing this property for me."
That hotel was the original Waldorf Astoria, and the name of the young clerk who accepted the first managerial position was George C. Boldt.
This is a true story, and there's a personal message in it for us. Why do we need a benefactor to come along and make us believe in our dreams? How is it that an outsider can perceive more potential in us than we can sometimes see in ourselves?
Usually, we hold ourselves back because of a little voice from the child of our past that recalls foolish mistakes we made or rejections we experienced. Don't listen to those doubts and fears.
This week, don't put your big dreams on layaway. Focus on believing you are worth the effort.
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Reproduced with permission from the Denis Waitley Ezine. To subscribe to Denis Waitley's Ezine, go to www.deniswaitley.com or send an email with Join in the subject to subscribe@deniswaitley.com Copyright 2005 Denis Waitley International. All rights reserved worldwide.
“Aim for service and success will follow”
Albert Schweitzer
A powerful and key component of an organization is great customer service.
It is about building relationships and caring for people. Regardless of your job or position within an organization we can all make a difference if we have the courage to try.
The movie, The Simple Truths of Service, shares an inspiring story of service.
The beautiful story of Johnny, the grocery store bagger truly captures the essence of service.
It takes only 3 minutes to watch it, and it brings service and life into perspective.
As flight cancellations and delays wreak havoc on weary travelers, and planes are fuller than ever, the Wall Street Journal has managed to find a bright spot - United Airlines Captain Denny Flanagan.
On a flight headed your way, there is a pilot who is literally a gift from the heavens. For 21 years now, Flanagan, a former navy pilot, has put the friendly in friendly skies.
With his sense of humor and personal touch, he individually welcomes aboard every passenger on his United Airlines plane.
A father of five, Flanagan has also been known to buy food for planeloads of passengers on delayed flights. He snaps photos of dogs in the cargo hold to show owners their pets are safe and calls the parents of children traveling alone.
"I want to treat them like I treat my family and it works. It's like hospitality. You stand at the door and you greet people when they come in and you say goodbye on the porch and wave to them," said Flanagan, who is 56 and lives in Ohio.
His unique brand of hospitality includes sending handwritten notes to frequent flyers and raffling off bottles of wine.
"How 'bout that? A bottle of chilled chardonnay from a pilot," said a delighted Paul Schroeder, a lucky United passenger.
He has developed quite a following in the air and online. One of the many posts on FlyerTalk.com about Flanagan read: "His effort rubbed off on the crew too, they were great."
Attitudes are truly contagious, and Captain Flanagan's is certainly worth catching!
Denny Flanagan is a wonderful example of customer love. In the book, you can read his, and 24 other great customer service stories. Its goal is to have you read them, have your team read them, and talk about them together. In fact, you may be inspired to write your own customer love stories while making your service culture all it can be.
For more information or to look inside the book, just click here.
Customer Service Week 2010 is October 4th-8th. This national event is devoted to honoring the people who serve and support customers. Give back to them this week to let them know how much you appreciate their kind efforts that keep customers feeling special, build customer loyalty and affirms your dedication to support their efforts to provide top notch customer service.
“Aim for service and success will follow”
Albert Schweitzer
A powerful and key component of an organization is great customer service. The movie, The Simple Truths of Service shares an inspiring story of service.
It is the beautiful story of Johnny, the grocery store bagger that truly captures the essence of service. It brings service and life into perspective. It takes only 3 minutes to watch it, and I truly hope you’ll share it with every person in your organization.
Gifts for your customer service team ~
Thank your teammates that work each day to provide the very best customer service by giving them a framed inspiration to inspire them and remind them daily that you appreciate their efforts and dedication.
Affiliate Framed Inspiration page link ~ 
Today, technology is enabling new capabilities and I see three trends which are recreating customer service in a new, more responsive, and economically efficient manner: transparency, tribes, and talent.
From the reviews
Is the customer always right?
According to Danny Meyer, one of America's leading restaurateurs, the answer is no--but "they must always feel heard."
In this landmark book, Danny shares the lessons he's learned while developing the winning recipe for doing the business he calls "enlightened hospitality."
This innovative philosophy emphasizes putting the power of hospitality to work in a new and counterintuitive way: The first and most important application of hospitality is to the people who work for you, and then, in descending order of priority, to the guests, the community, the suppliers, and the investors.
This way of prioritizing stands the more traditional business models on their heads, but Danny considers it the foundation of every success that he and his restaurants have achieved.
He hired "genuine, happy, optimistic" people.
They shared their good feelings with customers.
And customers felt liked and valued.
They became regulars --- and if the secret of a successful long-term enterprise
