Service Untitled

A strong business culture that is aligned with superior business goals outperforms their competitors by light years. These are the organizations who have figured out how to delight their customers and even make them smile. After all isn’t the Zappos’ motto “powered by service” incredibly motivational which delivers a message of trust and reliability? Zappos has worked hard to develop their culture resulting in a high percentage of return customers; a much more lucrative business model than having to find new clients.

Deciding on what a business wants to accomplish is part of its core values and related to its overall culture. Customer service should be one of the top priorities, and the commitment to pleasing customers and delivering “out of the box” services should never be discouraged. When building a culture all employees need to participate, all levels of management needs to encourage and inspire, and business owners need to place themselves as role models to encourage the process.

As businesses grow they may evolve and change since each employee brings their own values and practices to an organization, but the key is to search for employees who have the same passion for excellence and empower those employees to act on their own and go out of their way for the sake of their company. Think of the Ritz Carlton employees who are empowered and constantly encouraged to treat each customer as an individual and react accordingly with each situation – whether it be sending out for a bouquet of flowers for a couple’s private anniversary celebration to a new bed pillow if a guest complains about it being uncomfortable.

How employees act and what they do should all be written out and shared by all employees, but assuming a company strives to build a positive business culture the following culture elements should be considered:

• A commitment to employees which provides superior training to empower company personnel to do the right thing for customers on their own without having to refer to a manual and providing the employee with all of the tools needed to make their own decisions for the welfare of the organization.
• Building the company’s integrity by always following the Golden Rule and honoring return policies, special promotions, and treating both customers and other employees as if each person is truly treasured and respected.
• Effective leadership guides the basis for a strong culture and the motivational tools needed to help employees understand the company’s role as a positive business model.
• Having the company focused on customers and fulfilling their needs and wants without just focusing on the profit of each business exchange.
• Retaining valuable employees by rewarding them with higher salaries, bonuses, rewards and recognition for jobs well-done.
• Communicating with customers and displaying customer service phone numbers and email addresses on every page of their websites so customers know an organization is always willing to listen to a customer if there is a problem. Remember most customers won’t tell a company what went wrong; they just leave and go on to your competition. Make it convenient for an unhappy customer to find you, and act accordingly to resolve the problem.
• Don’t make customers go through a maze of automatic questions when they are calling for customer service or make customers wait for any extended period of time. Where IRS can take their time and really aren’t too worried about how taxpayers feel concerning the waiting time, their business is quite unique, but otherwise unpopular.
• Hire the best employees and don’t limit the time they should be on the phone or spend in person with a customer who needs help. Instead ask for public feedback and written communications from customers about their experiences. Grade employees on their service and what customers say about them – use rewards for the very best. Recognize employees to their peers which will then encourage other employees to excel.

Have pride in your organization and develop its culture to be synonymous with honesty, teamwork, communication, innovation and a leader in customer service. The examples set forth by the foremost leaders promise a successful and profitable business when we strive to be the best of the best.

A surprisingly high statistic from the Research Institute of America (RIA) states an average business will never hear a word from 96 percent of their unhappy customers whose complaints  range from poor service, rudeness, to discourteous treatment. These are the customers that silently move away from you and are welcomed with open-arms by the competition. These are the customers who tell their friends, co-workers, and family members about their bad experiences. Multiply the unhappy customers  who these people have told about their unsatisfactory experiences, and soon we realize that it’s not just one customer leaving us – it’s an army of lost consumers and a pocketful of lost revenue.

Statistics are not just for textbooks and graphs. For instance, in the animal rescue world for the control of the cat population, studies now confirm that 87 percent of cat owners have their pets spayed or neutered. It’s just staggering how one unspayed female cat and all of her offspring (assuming she has two litters per year and three kittens survive each litter) can produce 450,000 cats by the end of the seventh year.

Now let’s just imagine one customer being extremely unhappy and telling the average of ten other people. Most of us listen more to our friends’ recommendations and experiences than we do from television or print advertisements, and much like the game of “telephone” we played in third grade, by the time the story of an unpleasant experience gets to many of us, the story has escalated to be the worst experience to have ever hit the playground or of course, the business. And the tragedy of it all – lots of lost customers, clients, and business.

So what do we need to do as business owners to keep our customers? After all it’s much more expensive to find new customers, therefore doesn’t it seem logical that we step out of the box for everyone who graces the doors or  who clicks on a shopping cart for our organizations? Shouldn’t we deliver the best customer service  by providing the best training we can find? Shouldn’t we make our customers feel appreciated and special?

When something goes wrong, customers want an immediate response. They want the people in the company to fix the problem now – and want to be thought of as a person and an important one too, and it doesn’t matter if the customer spent $20 or $2000. That positive customer service experience can differentiate a company’s brand; the way a problem is resolved can make a huge impact on the customer and all of the people he tells about his experience. The customer service representatives, sales personnel, front desk receptionist and up to the CEO, who have developed and practiced their skills repeatedly are the reasons companies like the Ritz Carlton, American Express, and Zappos continue to grow and demonstrate outstanding customer relationships.

What has your business done recently to engage your personnel to help them deliver the best customer service ever?

It’s the Disney Institute’s 16th birthday, and as with all Sweet Sixteen parties, it’s a chance to celebrate successes and see how the pixie dust of enchantment mixes so effectively with the success of one man’s dream. Walt Disney stated,  “You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.”

The Disney Institute originally began in 1986 in Orlando offering “leisure learning” which entailed courses on fun topics like cooking and landscaping classes. By 1996 the organization offered business programs and currently sends representatives all over the world teaching Disney’s best practices of leadership, management, customer service, and loyalty. What the visiting families and tourist perceive as effortless daily operations is actually a well-trained, enthusiastic. motivated work force. Of course they are not without their trials and tribulations of union disputes, strict rules, and continuous growing pains, but to employ 64,000 people just in Orlando is a testament to the success of the operation.

What makes Disney so successful? After all, statistics state that 70 percent of Disney visitors make repeat visits. According to the Disney Institute, the top three expectations of cleanliness, friendliness and fun permeate the entire culture of the work force. No one walks by a piece of trash on the park’s grounds and doesn’t stoop to pick it up. Employees or “cast members” as they are called make the difference. Their opinions are heard, they contribute suggestions on how to improve service, and are motivated to do the best job they can.

From the moment a candidate applies for a job or as it is called a “casting audition,” the Disney University with its world class training helps employees to feel empowered by their own positions and work on exceeding guest expectations by paying attention to detail. Besides the training leadership and helping each person feel as if they are making a difference, Disney does employ the means to gather an amazing amount of information about their guests wants and expectations. For instance the organization collects data from constant surveys, focus groups, and opinion polls. The follow-up is phenomenal and compilations actually disseminate how often people travel to Disney, how long it takes for an average family to save the funds to make the trip, how much a family generally spends, and who drives or flies to the land of happiness and magic.

Of course I have never had the privilege of auditing the Disney Institute, and I do hope one day to experience the magical mystery behind the infamous brand, but there is definitely a finite connection between business success and the culture of respect employees seem to have for each other. In the Disney book called In Search of Excellence, it lends some interesting advice to applying some of the lessons to our own businesses – even if we don’t offer Magic Toad Rides or Mickey Mouse parades.

I recently finished reading The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business by Richard R. Shapiro who is the founder and President of The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR). Mr. Shapiro’s organization provides research, training, and consulting services to Fortune 500 corporations on how to improve customer service.

The book begins with a lighthearted description of four distinct categories of customer service personnel any organization is likely to have on their payroll:

• We begin with the Welcomer or “Doctor of First Impressions.” These are the customer service representatives we all want; these are the people who enjoy their jobs, enjoy working with customers, and these are the employees who should be appreciated and valued. Most likely these are the people who volunteer in our own communities and love working towards the welfare of others. These are the people who make a difference.
• Robots are the next classification and encompass the largest proportion of sales associates and representatives. Although they value and appreciate their positions in one’s company, they most likely view their jobs as exactly what is written in the employee manual and rarely step out of the box to do anything else than the obligatory customer interaction needed to get through the work day.
• Moving on to the indifferent sales and customer service representative, these are the employees likely to be chatting on their cell phones or those who scarcely acknowledge a customer as she walks through the door and begins to shop.
• And the final category are those we rarely encounter, however somewhere in our lifetime, we meet the hostile employee we hope never to meet again. That hostile employee can be rude and nasty and make you wonder why he even has a job.

The Welcomer Edge is divided into personal experiences and real business examples describing many of the author’s real world experiences applicable to either small or large organizations. The author presents examples in each chapter in order to highlight the advantages of nurturing customer relationships. Customers are not just seen as customers; skilled salesmen see customers as people first and remind all of us that good will, meaningful conversation, honesty and smiles go a long way when developing customer loyalty.

Good customer service is good for today. Having a welcomer provide good customer service wil make you return tomorrow. That’s a big difference.

So what makes a great welcomer? According to Mr. Shapiro, these are the people who are of course helpful, but in addition these are the people who show customers they care. A question is never just answered with a “yes” or “no” answer even though that one word would be correct for the circumstance, but these are the very people who understand that it’s not just “selling” a service or a commodity – it’s helping someone to find what they need or want. It’s what makes the difference in businesses like Zappos or the Ritz Carlton – it’s the attitude that some people have developed to make that initial contact with a customer the reason for that customer to want to come back.

Each of the eleven chapters of the book provides practical suggestions, specific examples, and addresses how business owners can connect the dots to better customer service. At the end of each chapter, “power points worth repeating” sum up the power of welcomers and how each missed chance can ultimately mean a missed opportunity in business.

Bottomline: Having a welcomer, or “Doctor of First Impressions,” are those employees who make customers feel important. From the moment a customer walks into a store the customer feels appreciated. By the time they get to the check-out experience, a connection should already have been made, and that lasting impression is what will keep that customer coming back again. The little things an organization does are the very elements that make the big difference in the ultimate customer service experience.

Pros: Mr. Shapiro’s book was well-written. He presents his experiences in a variety of different venues. The reader can’t help but smile at some of his personal experiences; many of them most of us can probably relate to at one time or another.

Cons: A few of the author’s examples might be a bit drawn out and not realistic for many people reading this book. For instance, I’m not sure how much time a business person would want to listen to his server’s vacation experiences or personal stories when often time is of the essence. That just might be all about one’s perspective though.

Interested in purchasing a copy? You can get it from Amazon.com ($11.90 in paperback) by clicking here.

Mother’s Day is coming, and with that comes the busiest day of the year for florists. Many of us order our flowers over the phone or the Internet, and since holidays are a one shot deal when it comes to flowers being at their required destination on time, we as consumers hold florists to a high level of “flower” responsibility.

This past Valentine’s Day, Washington Post’s Melissa Bell stated, “Love hath no fury like a flower customer scoffed.” It seems a popular wire service 1-800-Flowers failed to deliver bouquets for many customers creating a plethora of Twitter and Facebook complaints with the fervor of an inevitable doom. Boyfriends, husbands, and significant others complained about flowers not arriving, damaged products, hundreds of botched deliveries, and an acute shortage of customer service personnel. Only a few dissatisfied customers ever received an answer on that ominous February 14th.

The Bradenton Patch’s 2012 Reader’s Choice Award for Best Customer Service awarded Ms. Scarlett’s Flowers and Gifts thumbs up for customer service in a very consumer oriented industry. In an interview, the owner Ryan Bringman reminds us of many of the basic essentials of fine customer service – primarily to always match or exceed customers’ expectations.

So what are the most important issues when dealing with flowers and customers? Consumers want their arrangement to look like the picture, they want a competitive price, they want a quality product, and they want their orders to be delivered on time. During Valentine’s Day, 1-800 -Flowers, headquartered in Westbury, New York with franchises, owners, as well as  “order takers” were unprepared for the volume of orders and left sweethearts demanding apology notes and refunds.

Bringman says that customer service is what really sets his store apart from everyone else. He is careful about quality control, meaning he uses the best flowers to make his floral arrangements and has adopted the philosophy that the less time spent on talking to the customer about issues, the better the service will be. He claims to be committed to his clients which might mean some bizarre orders like dead flowers, black roses, or baskets for cats or dogs, but if his clients are happy, then Bringman is happy.

Middlemen like 1-800-Flowers may seem convenient, but Bringman says in terms of customer satisfaction it is better to order direct because not only will you get a better product, but the prices are often less costly. He suggests looking up a florist in the city or town you want the flowers sent, and either email or call the shop directly.

The last flower delivery I received from 1-800-Flowers spelled my first name incorrectly and wished me a Happy Birthday when the occasion was to congratulate me on a very difficult real estate transaction which finally changed title. While the flowers weren’t meant to be a “love connection,” I just can’t help imagining the damage a wrong name or occasion on the card could have caused.

In the midst of arguments on the Affordable Health Care programs, it is interesting to delve into this year’s Medicare push for improved customer service in the hospital venue. Beginning in October, Medicare will hold one percent of their regular reimbursements based on performance. With payments that will total more than $50 million, United States health-care is being forced to improve the quality of their care.

The survey is called Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health-care Providers and Services (HCAHPS) and contains 27 pertinent questions about a patient’s hospital experience. Here is just a sampling of what patients are asked:

• Did the nurses and doctors communicate well during your hospital stay?
• Was your pain well-controlled?
• Was your room clean?
• Was the hospital quiet at night?
• Was the food prepared well, and how was the menu?
• When discharged from the hospital, did you receive clear follow-up instructions?

Some hospitals are really taking the new Medicare initiative seriously. They are demanding the entire hospital staff attend customer satisfaction seminars. Where many patients remember a physician entering a patient’s room and treating that patient as if he were merely a medical object and showed little compassion – much less any bedside manner, that entire mindset has been changing. Although it is a subjective opinion of what a patient perceives is compassionate, no one can deny the hospital that implements programs such as massage therapy, reflexology, and music therapy.

Hospitals have even improved their menus and the way food is presented to patients. In Detroit based hospital Henry Ford, don’t be surprised to see such menu choices as tilapia and chicken piccata. Room service and VIP lounges have been introduced with the hopes that patients will give the hospital higher marks. Hospitals will be reimbursed based on 70 percent of actual patient quality care and 30 percent based on patient satisfaction.

So besides adding luxurious extras to enhance the rather scary and unsettling hospital experience for patients, besides employing extra customer service training, hospitals are now hiring patient experience consultants to help deal with complaints and add the more compassionate touch to serious medical care. Watch some of the commercials on television where the words compassion, treating the “whole” patient, and a completely new genre of gentle and personalized medical services are offered – often taking the place of the impersonal green and white walls of hospitals in the past.

What happens however, in the poorer hospital areas where massages and high paid chefs are not an option in the medical hospital budget? There comes the practical argument that the quality of care is the most important aspect of healing a patient. These facilities will lose money on Medicare reimbursement because even poor patients want to be treated as a “whole” person.

So far only 67 percent of the patients polled gave top grades to hospitals. Now that is food for thought.

This isn’t related to customer service as strictly as most of the other posts here on Service Untitled, but as I was typing this up, I figured I’d post it here because some folks might get some value out of it.

Like many people, I have a lot of respect for Steve Jobs and what he accomplished. I pre-ordered his biography as soon as it was announced and have read a lot about him and talked to people who have worked for him. When I saw this post on the Harvard Business Review blog, I liked that it summarized some of the more applicable leadership lessons and wanted to write some of them down.

Here’s my summary of the summary of what leadership lessons people can learn from Steve Jobs.

Focus:

• Minimize the amount of products / services you offer.
• Make three great products instead of 100 okay products.

Simplify:

• “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
• The best simplicity conquers rather than ignores complexity. In other words, true simplicity is more than removing clutter.
• Asking “Do we need this?” about everything, even the things that seem obvious, is an exercise worth doing.

Take Responsibility End to End:

• Seamless integration is an important part of simplicity.
• It can be difficult to have a truly exceptional user experience without end-to-end responsibility for it. In other words, take responsibility for “the whole widget.”

When Behind, Leapfrog:

• If you’re behind, make sure your next step puts you ahead instead of on par.
• If getting ahead means cannibalizing yourself, it’s better than someone else cannibalizing you.

Put Products Before Profits:

• Don’t compromise.
• If you make great products and are passionate about it, profits should follow.

Don’t be a Slave to Focus Groups:

• Customers don’t always know what they want
• Henry Ford said “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, a ‘A faster horses!”
• Jobs said “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

Bend Reality:

• Don’t accept what seems to be impossible.
• If you have to, push people to make the impossible happen.

Impute:

• Mike Markkula urged three principles: empathy, focus, and impute.
• People form an opinion about a product or company based on how it is presented and packaged.
• Packaging can be as important as the product.
• Similarly, design can send a message.

 Push for Perfection:

• Don’t be afraid to step back and ensure everything is perfect before launch.
• Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that it’s okay for it not to be perfect.

Tolerate Only “A” Players:

• Work with only the best to prevent “the bozo explosion”
• Hold those people to high standards.
• It is the founder/CEO/visionary’s job to be honest.
• If you expect great people to do great things, you can often get people to do great things.
• Loyalty has to be a factor if you’re going to be brutal.

Engage Face-to-Face:

• Spontaneous interactions can lead to great things.
• Jobs said “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

Know Both the Big Picture and the Details:

• Individual products make up a big picture and it’s important to know what that big picture is.

Combine the Humanities with the Sciences:

• Being a great technologist isn’t enough.
• Being a great designer isn’t enough.
• Being at the intersection of humanities and the sciences can be useful.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish:

• There can be a place for a rebel and counterculture streak in the business world.
• As one of Apple’s famous ads said “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Here in sunny South Florida, real estate is booming again, but there are definitely new rules when it comes to new construction. Builders who have been lucky enough to survive the economic real estate plunge are slowly emerging again with new and improved products. Home buyers are more concerned with advanced energy, the use of efficient materials, and builders who understand their desire to conserve the environment. Builders and realtors alike are concentrating on “Green” building using recycled and energy efficient materials, heat from the earth, recycled rain water and solar heat as alternative and environmentally friendly power sources. The best “Green” builders will welcome independent inspectors who rate energy efficient homes – the top rating “5+ Stars.”

Considering buying or building a home is one of the biggest financial decisions a person will ever make in their life, home buyers want to consider a builder’s mission statement committing themselves to building quality construction, a builder’s reputation, and more than ever now customer testimonials assuring home buyers the builder will deliver the best product for the amount of money a consumer is able to spend.

So what does customer service look like in the home building business? Customers want a builder to take the time to understand their wants and needs, the builder to ask the right questions, to understand a buyer’s style and to be responsive, understanding, and considerate through the entire experience. Builders now need to exceed the needs and expectations of a customer and focus on building a rapport so as to tailor a new home to fit within the monetary budgets while delivering a beautiful product.

Nowadays successful builders work on maximizing area, creating a modern openness in the living space, upgrades in such areas as the kitchen cabinetry, appliances, trim, and landscaping. Home buyers want their builders to be quick to respond and to provide them with timely updates. Consumers want the builder to be there with their realtor to sign the contracts, to understand the deposits needed, to be assured that the same contractors used by the builder are dependable, reliable and have been with the builder for years – a profound indication that a builder is respected and fair in all of his professional relationships.

And finally – when the big day arrives and the builder proudly hands over a set of house keys to the new homeowners, the after care service will never be overlooked. What was once an industry wide issue of builders neglecting follow-up care after the check had been cashed is no longer tolerated since buyers have so many options to choose from and so many builders who want to consistently be asked to build another home.