Dunkin’ Donuts has more than 7,000 restaurants in the United States and District of Columbia and another 10,000 restaurants in 33 countries. Their products are also sold in grocery stores and other specialty shops thus giving them a much broader shot at international brand recognition through a larger variety of different venues.

So what makes “Ameica Runs on Dunkin’” so popular? Most Dunkin’ Donuts are franchises, and their core values include honesty, transparency, humility, integrity, respect, fairness, and responsibility. Franchise applicants are required to have liquid assets of $250k and a net worth of $500k. Experts in the field provide extensive learning and training opportunities. Much of the organization’s success has been attributed to the dedication of the franchises and their ability to create an outstanding customer experience.

Perhaps the hardest part of meeting customer expectations however, lies with brand value and delivering the product to customers to make them happy. Actually the superior guest experience happens when customer expectations are exceeded. The company’s Dunkin’ Donuts Perk and Rewards program translates into free beverages as well as emails informing customers of the latest news, special offers and new store openings. Every year a participant receives a free medium beverage on their birthday. People remember – and couple the marketing with fast service, a smile from the person behind the counter, and 100 percent Arabica coffee beans, a recipe for success seems to have been achieved.

You may be a loyal fan of Starbucks where customers contemplate a more comfortable setting, a wider array of coffees, frappucinos and smoothies, having an employee inscribe your name on the cup and that small convenient table for sugar and spice – but “America Runs on Dunkin’ ” is less expensive and still makes the consumer feel as if they are appreciated.

In a company that serves more than one billion cups of hot coffee and iced tea annually, clever marketing has made people feel more engaged. The company’s green policy began in 2008 when the first green store opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, and on January 20, the second green store opened in St. Petersburg using eco-friendly LED lighting, recycled water for landscaping, coffee grounds for area farmer composting and even an electric car charging station.

The company supports veterans and donates coffee to the USO and provides grants for the welfare of the hungry.

When Nigel Travis, president and CEO of the organization was asked how he saw his company’s menu evolving in the next ten years he replied:

“I think we’ll be selling a lot of doughnuts. I think we’ll be stronger in our beverages, because that’s continued to grow steadily over time. We’ll continue to test things. We have more ideas than we can cope with.”

photo credit: craigemorsels

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You can read part one of the interview here and part two here. To read this part, click “read more.”

Service Untitled: Interesting. Do you have something equivalent to personal service level stats or email employees or live chat since it’s kind of a different way to track it than phones?
Rob: I mean we’re mostly looking at their production of how many emails they’re responding to over a course of an extended period of time. We don’t look at it as like today they only did this many but this day, they did that many because some days you just get a mix of emails that are very different. But they have to have an expectation of doing on average, a certain number of emails an hour. And we have some people that are just very prolific with doing emails and others that are not but there is an expectation and they have to meet it.

Service Untitled: And something similar for chat probably?
Rob: Yeah. Chat is more like the phone. Now it’s easier with the phones because the phones that are on the hardware have specific statuses that you utilize to do all of the measurements. And so it’s slightly different for live chat but it’s basic in terms of the way we monitor it. But it’s roughly the same thing. We’re looking at production and we’re looking at people’s efficient use of time and making sure they’re customer–facing. And I think that’s the key thing for us is that people are customer–facing. It’s not necessarily how much time they’re spending there per interaction. Well some person may take ten calls an hour, another person may take six but they’re both on the phone the same amount of time and that may just be the average of how it works out because some people are just a little chattier than others and that’s fine. And it’s the same thing with live chat. There’s subtle differences in individuals.

Service Untitled: So empowerment is obviously critical to customer service. How do you empower customer loyalty to your members?
Rob: I mean that’s pretty easy. We don’t restrict their decision making. If they have something that they need to get to done for a customer, they don’t have hoops to jump through to make a decision. They make the decision and if there’s something they need help with, we’ll provide them help but we’re not going to stop them from making the decision and we want to make sure that people feel comfortable making the decisions without second–guessing themselves. Do what’s in the best interest of the customer. You know if you do something and you’re unsure about it but you wanted to take care of the customer, maybe talk it over with your team lead afterwards but don’t slow down the process of providing the best service you can to the customer. So I mean we don’t have like a bunch of system restrictions that they can’t do x you know. They can’t upgrade the shipping or they can’t upgrade the customer into a VIP or the can’t refund the customer for something that was a service issue or they – they can do whatever they need to. They can make whatever request they need for UPS to get a package delivered to a different address or have something picked up from a house. I mean every type of situation where we could possibly be interacting with the customer, we take the barriers away from them being able to do their job and provide as much of a trusting environment as possible.

Service Untitled: So by doing that, have you guys kind of avoided the bureaucracy that tends to occur if companies get bigger?
Rob: I mean yeah I would say so. I mean when you put a bunch of people together, there’s always going to be a little bit of people stuff you know with just relationships and stuff but I mean in general, it’s such a flat organization in terms of the way we interact with each other. And we’re not control freaks you know.

I’ve always thought about it this way. If you don’t trust your employees, then you’re not hiring the right people. And so we have to trust them. We have to put that in their hand and we want to you know – I go more on the whole thing of you know trust someone until they proved themselves that they can’t be trusted and then just to put them in an environment where you immediately, it restrict them from being themselves. So we just work in a different way I guess.

Service Untitled: How does Zappos handle escalations to managers? If someone calls up and they’re really angry and they demand to talk to a manager, how do you guys handle that? Is it like every other call handles it or do you do it differently?
Rob: I don’t know how other call centers handle it really. I mean it depends. The first thing that we would want to do is first find out before you transfer it to the managers, well who the person is and what their issue is so that you can – you might be able to resolve it and they don’t know that. I would be really interested in knowing the data on this but sometimes we have people who call and demand a manager or supervisor because they don’t think that the person they’re going to get on the phone can help them. You know their experience I guess in other places is that what they want can’t be done by the first person that answers the phone. It’s different here so sometimes it happens when someone demands a manager or supervisor, they quickly find out, “Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought.” Some are escalated and sometimes it’s our own fault and so if they really want to speak with a manager, we’ll absolutely get them on the phone with the supervisor or manager as quickly as we can and have it resolved. I guess I kind of don’t know what else there would be to say about that one. I mean what do other call centers do that make it – do they make it complicated? I don’t know.

Service Untitled: Some call centers work pretty hard to escalate calls
Rob: Then what does the manager do? I mean that’s one of your functions of your job.

Service Untitled: Exactly.
Rob: The thing is we’re all accessible. Our CEO’s email is readily available. We all have the same mission. We’re here to provide the best possible customer experience and if they need to speak with somebody who they believe is more relevant to their problem, then we owe them that.

Service Untitled: I think that’s fair. So how do you compensate employees for going above and beyond? Obviously people want to be happy at work but they also have bills to pay and extra money helps that. What are some things that agents can do to earn additional money?
Rob: Well I touched on it earlier. The only program we have in place for earning more money in our department is by learning new skills and pursuing different opportunities that we constantly are promoting to be available for them. And we have rotations so that these skill set jobs is never stagnant, it’s never the same group constantly. There may be slower periods of churn within those groups as we have people learn those skills but there’s plenty of opportunity for them to go out and earn more pay and we do our very best to promote those opportunities and coach new employees when they get in so that they can be able to take advantage of those opportunities and learn those skills and then also as a side benefit, you get further training, more skills, and you also get paid more.

So that’s how we do it. And this is kind of around the company like we don’t have like a bonus program. We don’t have you know, at least in the call center, we don’t have like sales goals or you know stuff like that. We don’t have commissions or anything like that. We looked at other things, but I would rather discuss what we have than things that we don’t have.

Service Untitled: That makes sense. So what are some of the training opportunities like? Is one, for example, learn how to do email support? Learn how to do live chat? Or is that smaller than that or bigger than that?
Rob: It’s both. It’s all of the above. It could be smaller than that. Email and live chat are two of them. And each one depending on the length of the rotation and the skills required and the difficulty of the job are paid differently. So some are a little bit more difficult and you get paid more for learning that skill and excelling at it. So it varies from team to team.

We have like mentoring which is when new employees come in and they go to their four–week new hire training process. They come in to the call center and they sit with employees and listen to phone calls, and they have a mentor who helps them out, who takes the calls and then talks about it and gives them a little training. So that’s another one – it’s kind of a very soft skill, people–to–people training thing that they do not very frequently. It’s fairly infrequently so that’s a pretty popular one for people when they’re brand new. They want to pass on learning.

And we have an ambassador program. It’s another one which is pretty popular because it’s interacting with new employees. It’s kind of like a big brother–big sister kind of a thing. New employees get assigned to a veteran employee and they give them tours of the office to introduce them to more people in the call center and they help them with the studying for some of the test and quizzes that they go through when they’re new employees, and help just kind of talking them through questions that maybe they might have been nervous to ask someone else or whatever may be the case. But just to introduce a new friend and a new connection in the call center. So that’s another one.

And then they just run all over in little areas. And you know for the most part, the concentration of these different skills and functions obviously are built around business needs of what we’re trying to do to accomplish with our customers and to provide them the best service. And that changes too over time. So we’ve had new ones. Like right now we have, our live chat one has been a hugely popular skill set to learn recently. We have almost 70 people on the team and two years ago, we didn’t have a full time team. So it’s created a huge amount of opportunity for people to learn something new and that team so far has no signs of stopping growing. So it’s going to be growing at the same time people are rotating through and learning it. So it will end up being able to provide a lot of experiences for people. And who knows what the next one will be.

Service Untitled: So if I was a phone person and I got live chat training, I can do live chat for maybe a month or two and then go back to phones? Or you want to stay in live chat or whatever I want to do?
Rob: You would stay in live chat for longer than that. The minimum rotation for a team like live chat would be roughly four months and it usually would be a little longer – especially when we’re growing a team like that, we can’t rotate people out as quickly because if we rotate people out and say, “This is the day you have to rotate out,” we may not yet have somebody who’s ready to take over. And so it’s a balancing act of all of that movement because we have to have a specific number of people working the job to meet customer demand. We don’t want rotations to mess up the customer demands part.

So it’s kind of an art and science at the same time of that piece. And it’s different for a growing team. Like for other groups, we have a team that handles all of the customers that call through on the mobile phone number so they’re on a mobile app and they call a phone number that gets routed to people that have specialized training and handling confusion on the mobile app or whatever may be the case that the customer is calling about. It could be about a shirt. But that team is very small. And so if we were doing something on that team, we would probably hire a new person in, make sure they have the training and then one person, when the person that was rotating off would rotate off afterwards. So that’s an example of how it would work there. For the live chat team, it would be a little different than that.

Service Untitled: And so if someone does something like mentoring, does that result in an hourly pay boost or is that a one–time bonus after it’s completed? How does that work?
Rob: The whole skill set progression program is all an hourly pay increase so they all have whether it be from 25 cents on up to 75 cents maybe for certain skill sets that they could earn an hour, a per hour pay increase. And now, one of the things that goes with that is they could be asked at any time to actually come back and do the job in a time of need and they will be asked to share knowledge and answer questions and be a further presence of sharing that information wherever they go after that. So they’re an advocate for that skill set wherever they go, and they can use that in many different ways, and we find that very valuable to mix the workforce like that. It shares a lot of knowledge and it helps people provide better service experiences by continuing to circulate that knowledge and information.

Service Untitled: And it also makes itself, if someone is out sick on live chat, you can take someone who knows about it that might be on the phones and help out.
Rob: Absolutely. If we need to do that, we absolutely will do that. And they’d be happy to do it. They know that and they would love to help out. It’s great to be able to have that option available.

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1. Spend Time Talking to Employees
Senior leaders should use a structured process for interacting with employees so front-line issues can be discussed. This is important for both leaders and as well as employees in that it makes workers feel valued but also helps senior management better understand the things staff are dealing with.

I experienced a great model for this which in an organization which invited employees to eat lunch with the organization’s president on their milestone (5, 10, 15 year) anniversary dates. A monthly lunch with front-line employees was hosted by the senior executives and employees were encouraged to share ideas and work related challenges. The model worked extremely well, helped facilitate quick problem resolution and was an encouragement to the employees. It’s pretty amazing to see how quickly some problems can be resolved when an engaged senior executive gets involved.

2. Collect and Analyze Performance Data
Collecting and analyzing performance data is a fundamental management practice for any size organization. Every organization should identify measures of success and monitor them on a monthly basis. Senior leadership is responsible for interpreting the data and responding to data trends.

3. Manage by Walking Around
Walking around and mingling with employees is a great way to better understand operations. This tactic works well because employees interpret leadership presence as an indication that they care and walking around allows the manager to observe behaviors, customer response and potential issues that may not be reported by data.

4. Test the Service or Product
Senior leadership should always be familiar with products or services offered by the organization. Whether it is surfing the company website, sampling the food in the kitchen or watching the printing process in operation, the senior leader should experience what the customer experiences so they can help influence improvements.

The current economic environment demands that issues affecting products and services affecting the customer experience be identified and resolved quickly. Customers today don’t have the patience to wait around for needed improvements, so neglecting to break the Iceberg of Ignorance may very quickly affect the bottom line.

Do you know what your employees know about issues affecting the organization?

Patricia is the President and CEO of The Thriving Small Business, a business performance consulting company. Patricia helps small businesses develop and grow by helping them create infrastructures that support increased revenues, decreased costs and improved customer experience.

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The Iceberg of Ignorance is based on a study that was done by Sidney Yshido in 1989 which indicated that senior management often fail to understand business operations from the perspective of the customers and employees. The interesting finding of this study was that this can affect a company’s profits by as much as 40%.

The study revealed the following:

• Issues known to senior management were 4%.
• Issues known to managers were 9%.
• Issues known to supervisors were 74%.
• But front-line employees were aware of 100% of the issues that affect the product or service that was being delivered to a customer.

How can senior management be so clueless?
The art of recognizing and solving problems is essential for leaders. Senior levels of the organization should strive to be in tune with day-to-day issues confronting employees. Unfortunately, if there is not a structured process for gathering and analyzing performance data, executives can fail to see what is affecting employees and sadly their customers. Whether it is a broken purchasing process, faulty manufacturing equipment or an aging facility – senior leaders need to be aware so they can help resolve issues.

What is troubling about these findings, is that the very people with the ability to affect positive change for the organization, are the ones who are not aware of the issues that employees or customers are dealing with.

Four ways that senior leads can be aware of customer issues will be covered in another post this week.

Patricia is the President and CEO of The Thriving Small Business, a business performance consulting company. Patricia helps small businesses develop and grow by helping them create infrastructures that support increased revenues, decreased costs and improved customer experience.

photo credit: Jenny Varley

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Back in July, the Apple Store in the Hong Kong IFC building presented parts of their five-day course in employee training. It is called “Core Training.” On the first day, new employees learn about the company, gain technical training, learn how Apple systems work and the importance of the Apple culture. Days two, three and four teach employees how to interact with customers, teaches about inventory and progresses to the “complete solution” which is finding out what the customer needs, asking them what they need it for, and then proceeds to presenting the product that will satisfy their needs. Day five summarizes the past four days of training and shows employees how to access Apple systems.

So the rap video seemed a bit immature as compared to what Steve Jobs would ever consider acceptable no less proper, but the message came across as far as calling customers “promoters” which simply means happy and satisfied customers are the ones who promote one’s business by recommending, returning and thereby acting as the best word of mouth advertising there is. The “rap stars” spelled out APPLE as the following:

• A – Approach (how to approach a customer when they walk into the store)
• P – Position, Permission, Probe (initial questions and follow-up to best help a customer find what they really want and need)
• P – Present (solution)
• L – Listen
• E – End

Perhaps the rap soundtrack could be seen as mildly offensive to some, but it presented an energized and interesting approach to teaching some very important principles of customer service. If one needs an acronym like AAA to remember “Acknowledge, Align, and Assure” to help recognize and handle acceptable standards and procedures that really work when an unhappy customer approaches or calls, and it happens to be chanted, rhyming lyrics that help employees to remember and do their jobs well – maybe it’s just not so bad.

photo credit: matsuyuki

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There are approximately 500 employees, and Amazon is planning through a job fair to immediately hire 200 more innovators and problem solvers. The company states they look for candidates that know what needs to be done and then acts upon those tasks. Products sold and supported at the Huntington facility will be Amazon’s retail Kindle, Amazon Instant Video, and Amazon Prime. Service representatives will be handling phones, emails, and chat contacts.

Customer service representatives are recognized as valuable partners in the company’s success also. Creature comforts such as a quiet reading areas, game room with television, pool tables and ping-pong tables are available for some downtime.

So what makes Amazon so successful? After all the company is rated as one of the favorite online businesses customers want to use. The answers are obvious – Amazon makes everything easy. The company offers low prices, vast selections, fast delivery, and convenient buying and returning. The focus is on the customer experience and having everything the customer wants.

Amazon’s innovative ideas have resulted in price guarantees, alerts to rising and dropping prices, and through this builds consumer confidence – enough to be labeled as one of the “most reputable” businesses. Their product reviews have surpassed most other sites, and more people continue to use Amazon as a research tool. Even the company’s technological advances such as the Kindle e-reader, the Android app store and movie streaming service has set them apart from their competition.

In my own experience, my son just purchased a Kindle for my birthday recently, and not more than two-weeks later, the Kindle Fire was announced. I had already thrown most of the packaging away, but wrapped up the original one, sent it back, no questions asked and I am eagerly awaiting the new one when it is released on November 15.

When once asked what founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos thought about on his own time, he responded he was obsessed with customers and felt driven to become the most customer-centric company on the planet.  It looks as if that might be happening.

photo credit: Chrysaora

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Almost every organization from animal shelters to zoos has to be aware of public opinion. With 500 million active Facebook users, logos and pictures and carefully thought out postings create and maintain serious platforms businesses depend on in the social media world. Facebook can spot out the latest trends, behaviors, and what the most influential customers are buying.

So how can a business use social media such as Facebook effectively? To begin, the efficient use of Facebook is not a hit or miss exercise. An organization will want to think carefully about who will handle this – from getting the company profile created, the gathering of data, posting, creating content, and even approval of content. Social media responsibilities can be a full-time job, and an intimate knowledge of the company and its brand and culture have to be serious contemplations when deciding who will be in charge of the day-to-day maintenance of either Facebook or Twitter – or both!

Remember where word of mouth has always influenced your friends, family, and co-workers, it’s not unusual for “friends” meeting up with new “friends” on Facebook and having hundreds and hundreds of consumers and potential new customers visiting your “page.” Fast and friendly personal responses can be very influential. If a business has a social conscience which reflects a particular responsibility, perhaps a local or national charity, social media can launch a company’s approval index substantially. Customers with complaints, for instance expect a fast response; if not there is likely to be more complaints thus creating a poor company perception. On the other side of the spectrum, however compliments from happy customers do a lot for a company. It’s almost as good as sitting at the local pub praising an organization personally.

But no successful Facebook campaign is random. It must be carefully orchestrated so an organization can present itself with a superior product, a welcoming personal message, well thought-out posts, timely responses, and a carefully educated and trained staff whose job it is to deliver great service and do it with pride.

photo credit: Rubber Dragon

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The tour was really interesting. Unsurprisingly, the Zappos offices don’t resemble a typical office or call center. And the employees working in the Zappos office also don’t resemble the people you see in an average call center. The main difference? They seem very happy to be working at Zappos. I think you’d have a difficult time finding a call center with as many happy people as I saw walking around the Zappos headquarters. The place looks like a fun place to work and as followers of Zappos (and readers of Service Untitled) know, they clearly do things very differently than a lot of companies.

Some interesting tidbits from the tour:

• All employees go through Customer Loyalty Training and are taught how to use the company’s various systems. That way, when the holidays come around, every employee can pitch in during their down time or if they want, work some overtime, and help out. Cross training helps make it so Zappos doesn’t have to hire as many temporary service employees.
• Employees move cubicle locations every six months.
• Customer service employees are divided into teams by mediums (phone, live chat, and email) and then each team is further divided into groups of about 15 or so with a team lead. Team leads sit at the end of each row on a larger desk. Live chat has been the company’s fastest growing medium.
• There are no offices at the company and everyone, including the CEO, sit at a cubicle. I also didn’t see any executive conference rooms.
• Zappos gives tours to approximately 100 people per day, sometimes way more.
• Most employees are paid hourly, but all have access to the cafeteria that has free light meals and snacks and hot meals available for $3.00. The vending machine is $0.25 and proceeds are donated to charity. There are also unlimited free drinks available.

I’ve included a bunch of pictures after the jump. I’ve also included comments and further information with each picture. Click “read more” to see the gallery with photos and comments. To see a larger version of a photo with comments, just click on the photo. To see the full size version, click on it again.

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