There are many ways for a business to 'stand out from the crowd'. One approach is to give your customers more of what they ask for. If others are fast, you go faster. If others are clean, you be cleaner. If others are cheap, you can discount deeper. If your competitors offer a lot, you offer even more.
This approach has obvious problems. First, your top position can be overtaken by anyone else offering 'even more'. Second, the cost of escalation can become overwhelming. You need happy customers but healthy profits too.
A different approach is worth your time and effort: Find completely new and different ways to surprise, intrigue, support, nurture and delight your customers.
For example, international airlines compete on big seats, quality service, good wine and movies. But Virgin Atlantic was first to offer neck and shoulder massages on all long distance flights. they stand out in the airline crowd.
Most quick-service restaurants provide clean counters, fast delivery and low prices. But McDonald's put enormous, colourful slides for children inside their restaurant buildings. McDonald's French fries are made from potatoes, much like everyone else's. Their play space stands out in the fast food crowd.
How many times have you left your tube of toothpaste wet, wrinkled and gooey on the bathroom sink? Proctor & Gamble helped solve the problem with the first stand up toothpaste tube. Their toothpaste container stands out from the crowd.
The Garden Café in Dubai serves many customers who are bachelors, always on the move and short of time. So the Café provides a lunch and dinner buffet of good food and drinks, but also irons your shirts and shines your shoes while you eat.
You can do this too, stand out from the crowd. Anyone can compete by doing 'more' of what's already expected. But there is another way to be distinctive: Be different!
Make a list of all the 'usual ways' your organisation offers good customer service. Now think of totally different ways you could surprise, intrigue or delight.
Sunday, 11 January 2015
Saturday, 10 January 2015
Uplifting service champions
Uplifting Service Champions choose a different approach, taking responsibility for difficult situations- and taking action to improve them. They solve problems that arise everyday, and then look for more problems to solve. When a customer is dissatisfied, they say, " I will fix this for you." If a project is running late, they take ownership to make it right. Instead of blaming or shaming inactive colleagues, they empower and inspire them to action. Service Champions don't blame circumstances; they look for steps forward. They create empowering perspectives in positive experiences each day.
Uplifting Service Champions build teamwork, increase pride, improve communication, and make our world a better place by serving others. They are people, just like you, who take responsibility and make real improvements. When you see something that could be better, you recommend it. When you see an opportunity to step up and serve, you don't hesitate- you take it.
Service Champion take personal responsibility for other people's experience of the service they provide. This point of view recognises that service is not only what you say or do, it is what someone else values from your actions. Service champions modify their style to suit the other person and the situation, using the 5 styles of service.
1: Direction: Direction is telling other people exactly what to do, giving them clear instructions and expecting them to follow.
2: Production: This style of service focus on getting the job done efficiently and quickly. It's common between colleagues who are both familiar with the work. It's also the right style to use when someone is in a hurry. But to some customers this can appear robotic and bureaucratic- more focused on your procedures than on the experience you are creating.
3: Education: This style of service teaches and informs. It helps people learn more about what is happening and appreciate why you are serving them the way you do. The education style of service makes other people information-rich. It empowers them to become better customers for you. You may not be a teacher, but consider how many opportunities you have to serve others well by helping them understand a range of products, prepare for steps in a process, or get more value from the choices they have made. In any arena where products are commoditized and prices are easily matched, the service provider who teaches and informs can earn a competitive edge.
4: Motivation: This style of service is an acknowledging pat on the back. It is also a style to use to make an upset customer feel right, even when they are wrong. Sometimes customers mix up the facts, don't understand the policy, or have exaggerated beyond belief. These responses make your customer feel right without making you wrong. By actively agreeing on the importance of what someone else values, you give them an emotional pat on the back. This makes him or her feel better, and makes it easier for you to work together too.
5: Inspiration: It is a style of service that makes a genuine person-to-person connection. It lets people know you are interested in their well-being, not just in their wallet. This style sets the tone for caring about others, welcoming others into your world, and appreciating the opportunity to enter theirs. This is the heartfelt human spirit that uplifts other people, in the process uplifts you.
The style you use will depend on the situation. Who are you serving, what do they want, and what style will they value? People in hurry want production. The curious customer appreciates education. Someone who is confused may value clear direction. Those who are just learning will enjoy a shot of motivation. And everyone from time to time simply wants to be seen and heard as a unique or special person, a service you can provide with a moment of inspiration.
Uplifting Service Champions build teamwork, increase pride, improve communication, and make our world a better place by serving others. They are people, just like you, who take responsibility and make real improvements. When you see something that could be better, you recommend it. When you see an opportunity to step up and serve, you don't hesitate- you take it.
Service Champion take personal responsibility for other people's experience of the service they provide. This point of view recognises that service is not only what you say or do, it is what someone else values from your actions. Service champions modify their style to suit the other person and the situation, using the 5 styles of service.
1: Direction: Direction is telling other people exactly what to do, giving them clear instructions and expecting them to follow.
2: Production: This style of service focus on getting the job done efficiently and quickly. It's common between colleagues who are both familiar with the work. It's also the right style to use when someone is in a hurry. But to some customers this can appear robotic and bureaucratic- more focused on your procedures than on the experience you are creating.
3: Education: This style of service teaches and informs. It helps people learn more about what is happening and appreciate why you are serving them the way you do. The education style of service makes other people information-rich. It empowers them to become better customers for you. You may not be a teacher, but consider how many opportunities you have to serve others well by helping them understand a range of products, prepare for steps in a process, or get more value from the choices they have made. In any arena where products are commoditized and prices are easily matched, the service provider who teaches and informs can earn a competitive edge.
4: Motivation: This style of service is an acknowledging pat on the back. It is also a style to use to make an upset customer feel right, even when they are wrong. Sometimes customers mix up the facts, don't understand the policy, or have exaggerated beyond belief. These responses make your customer feel right without making you wrong. By actively agreeing on the importance of what someone else values, you give them an emotional pat on the back. This makes him or her feel better, and makes it easier for you to work together too.
5: Inspiration: It is a style of service that makes a genuine person-to-person connection. It lets people know you are interested in their well-being, not just in their wallet. This style sets the tone for caring about others, welcoming others into your world, and appreciating the opportunity to enter theirs. This is the heartfelt human spirit that uplifts other people, in the process uplifts you.
The style you use will depend on the situation. Who are you serving, what do they want, and what style will they value? People in hurry want production. The curious customer appreciates education. Someone who is confused may value clear direction. Those who are just learning will enjoy a shot of motivation. And everyone from time to time simply wants to be seen and heard as a unique or special person, a service you can provide with a moment of inspiration.
Friday, 9 January 2015
The joy of customer complaints
When things go wrong, customers complain. And that can be good for you and constructive for your organisation because complaints can:
- highlight area where your systems require improvement
- identify where your procedures need to be improved, updated, or revised
- reveal information that is lacking, is erroneous, or is simply out of date
- identify team members who need more training or closer supervision
- help highlight inconsistencies among shifts, departments, or locations
- get important news and information straight to the top
- educate everyone what your customers experience and expect
- help prevent complacency in a successful organisations
- help focus your attention, priorities and budgets
- work as a trigger for new action, catalysing positive change
- keep you in touch with emerging trends and changing customer expectations
- present new opportunities for raising revenue and solving problems
- provide competitive intelligence by telling you what others are doing
- identify which customers to invite into pilot runs, focus groups and beta tests
- give you content and current case studies for your service education programs
- provide feedback for you to publish, with your replies and actions steps
How to attract and recruit the right service talent
Start by making it easy for candidates to consistently see, hear and understand what your organisation thinks about service. Those who align with your vision and values will be drawn closer and want to learn more about your spirit and purpose. Those who think, feel or believe differently won't be attracted, and will naturally select themselves out. Both are positive outcomes for your culture and your future.
1: Share your engaging service vision
Use every opportunity to explain your engaging service vision to prospective candidates. Place an uplifting message about your company culture on the website, in your employment ads, and in all the literature. Stress the importance of your service vision with your staff when you ask them to make new employee referrals and recommendations.
When job seekers apply, ask them to share in their own words what your service vision means to them. You can quickly check if candidates are aligned with your service vision by asking good questions and listening carefully to their answers.
2: Involve your culture leaders
As the service in your organisation grows stronger, some of your team members become culture leaders. These people are like tuning forks- vibrating strongly, keeping everyone else in key, and helping your symphony of employees, managers, and departments serve more smoothly and skilfully together. In a recruitment situation, these tuning forks can easily assess who will resonate with the culture and should be hired, and who is far off key.
3: Ask your candidates to get to know your service
For real insight into your applicants' service mindset and understanding, ask them to experience your service, evaluate your competitor's service, and then make suggestions to improve your current service. If they can't see anything you might do better, you might be happy with their performance for awhile. But if your candidate comes back with constructive ideas, or suggestions for a new practice, you will be more successful- and for much longer when that person joins your team.
4: Involve all of your staff as recruiters
Your people already know and understand your service culture. Ask them to make recommendations of people they know, or who they worked with in the past, who would be great additions to the team.
5: Be patient
Having a staff position vacant can be uncomfortable and costly. But don't let the "empty seat syndrome" drive you to fill that position with the wrong person too early. The impact of a misfit climbing onto your bus can make the ride unpleasant for everyone. And when that person ultimately quits, or stays on and others quit in frustration, you will go through another round of disappointment. You only want to hire the people who make your service culture even stronger.
1: Share your engaging service vision
Use every opportunity to explain your engaging service vision to prospective candidates. Place an uplifting message about your company culture on the website, in your employment ads, and in all the literature. Stress the importance of your service vision with your staff when you ask them to make new employee referrals and recommendations.
When job seekers apply, ask them to share in their own words what your service vision means to them. You can quickly check if candidates are aligned with your service vision by asking good questions and listening carefully to their answers.
2: Involve your culture leaders
As the service in your organisation grows stronger, some of your team members become culture leaders. These people are like tuning forks- vibrating strongly, keeping everyone else in key, and helping your symphony of employees, managers, and departments serve more smoothly and skilfully together. In a recruitment situation, these tuning forks can easily assess who will resonate with the culture and should be hired, and who is far off key.
3: Ask your candidates to get to know your service
For real insight into your applicants' service mindset and understanding, ask them to experience your service, evaluate your competitor's service, and then make suggestions to improve your current service. If they can't see anything you might do better, you might be happy with their performance for awhile. But if your candidate comes back with constructive ideas, or suggestions for a new practice, you will be more successful- and for much longer when that person joins your team.
4: Involve all of your staff as recruiters
Your people already know and understand your service culture. Ask them to make recommendations of people they know, or who they worked with in the past, who would be great additions to the team.
5: Be patient
Having a staff position vacant can be uncomfortable and costly. But don't let the "empty seat syndrome" drive you to fill that position with the wrong person too early. The impact of a misfit climbing onto your bus can make the ride unpleasant for everyone. And when that person ultimately quits, or stays on and others quit in frustration, you will go through another round of disappointment. You only want to hire the people who make your service culture even stronger.
Thursday, 8 January 2015
12 Building Blocks of Service Culture by Ron Kaufman
Widely understood and frequently used by service providers throughout the organisation, a Common Service Language enables clear communication and supports the delivery of superior internal and external service.
2: Engaging Service Vision
Eagerly embraced and supported, an Engaging Service Vision energises everyone. Each person sees how the vision applies to his or her work and takes action to make the vision real.
3: Service Recruitment
Effective Service Recruitment attracts people who support your service vision and keeps out those who may be technically qualified but not aligned with your vision, spirit, and values.
4: Service Orientation
Service Orientation for your new staff members must be welcoming and realistic. New team members should feel informed, inspired, and encouraged to contribute to your culture.
5: Service Communications
Vibrant Service Communications inform and educate. Creative communication channels reach everyone with relevant information, timely customer feedback, uplifting service stories, and current challenges and objectives.
6: Service Recognition and Rewards
Service Recognition and rewards motivate your team to celebrate service improvements and achievements. Acknowledgment, incentives, prizes, promotions, and praise- all help to focus attention and to encourage greater results.
7: Voice of the Customer
Voice of the Customer activities capture your customers' comments. compliments, and complaints. These vital voices must be shared with service providers throughout your organisation.
8: Service Measures and Metrics
Measure what matters to focus attention, design new actions, and create positive service results. Your people must understand what is being measured, and why, and what must be done to hit the bull's eye.
9: Service Improvement Process
A strong Service Improvement Process ensures that continuous service improvement is everyone's ongoing project. Keep your methods vibrant and varied; keep participation levels high.
10: Service Recovery Guarantees
When things go wrong, bounce back. Effective Service Recovery and Guarantees turn upset customers into loyal advocates and team members into true believers.
11: Service Benchmarking
Discover and apply best practices from other organisations inside and outside your industry. Service Benchmarking reveals what others do to improve service and points to new ways you can upgrade yours.
12: Service Role Models
Everyone is a Service Role Model. Everyone is watching. Leaders, managers, and frontline staff must walk-the-talk with powerful personal actions everyday.
7 rules of Service Leadership
Leaders can't just tell people how to serve; everyday they must show people how to serve and teach them why it's so valuable. But how it works? People in every level of an organisation will not engage in making a service vision come alive unless their leaders are living it.
In my experience working with leaders in a service organisation, I have discovered 7 essential rules these leaders always follow. Some leverage the power of one rule more than another, and you may do the same. But each of these rules is essential to lead your team to success.
Rule 1: Declare Service a Top Priority
Declaring service a top priority means senior leaders understand that focusing on service improvement leads to commercial results. Profit is the applause you receive for serving your customers well. When middle managers declare service a top priority, the message to everyone is clear: procedures, and budgets surely count, but creating value for others counts the most. And when frontline employees declare service their top priority and delighting others becomes their goal, they uplift customer satisfaction- and job satisfaction too.
Rule 2: Be a Great Role Model
Leaders are the people who others choose to follow, not those who simply tell other people to do. By their own example, leaders inspire others to do what they do, too. It can be a small gesture but it could make a big impact that held them together.
Rule 3: Promote a Common Service Language
Everyone talks about better service from a perspective that makes perfect sense to him or her. What's missing is a common language to enable listening and understanding, clear distinctions to appreciate what other people want and value. To build a culture of uplifting service throughout an organisation, leaders must promote a Common Service Language everyone can apply. Asking your team to upgrade service without enabling language is unwise and inefficient. Giving them a Common Service Language but not using it yourself would be foolish. If you want everyone on your team to deliver uplifting service, you must speak fluently and frequently about it. You must demonstrate your understanding and commitment with observable admirable actions.
Rule 4: Measure What Really Matters
Many people get confused when it comes to measuring service. This is understandable because you can measure so many things: complaints, compliments, expectations, levels of engagement, relative importance, recent improvements, performance to standards, customer satisfaction, retention, intention to repurchase, referral, share of wallet, share of mind, etc. A service leader cuts through this confusion to measure what really matters. Start by recalling the definition of service: Service is taking action to create value for someone else. The ultimate objectives in business is revenues, profits, market share, reputation, shareholder value and growth. One way to achieve these: when satisfaction scores, loyalty scores, share of wallet scores, and employees engagement scores are all improving, your ultimate objectives will improve, too.
Rule 5: Empower Your Team
Empowerment is a buzzword in business, and many leaders and employees seem to fear it. What they really fear is someone who is empowered making a bad decision. If a leader is not confident in her people, she doesn't want to empower them with greater authority of a larger budget. And if an employee is not confident in his abilities and decisions, he often does not want the responsibility of being empowered. In both cases, what's missing is not empowerment, but the coaching, monitoring, and encouraging that must go with it. If you knew your people would make good decisions, you would be glad to give them the authority to do so. And when your people feel confident they can make good decisions, they will be eager to have this freedom. Empowering others cannot and should not be decoupled from the responsibility to properly enable those you empower.
Rule 6: Remove the Roadblocks to Better Service
Most frontline staff members are taught to follow policies and procedures. Often they are hesitant to "break to rules". Yet some rules should be broken, changed, or at least seriously bent from time to time. What roadblocks to better service lurk inside your organisation? What gets in your people's way? What slows them down? What prevents them from taking better care of your customers? What stops them from helping their colleagues? Service leaders ask these questions and remove the roadblocks they uncover.
Rule 7: Sustain Focus and Enthusiasm
It's not difficult to declare service as a top priority. What's challenging is keeping service top of mind when other issues clamour for attention. It's not hard to use a new language for better service; what's hard is using language day after day until it becomes a habit. It may not be hard to track new service ideas and actions, but it can be difficult to keep them top of mind in the thinking of your team. Sustaining focus and enthusiasm for service is vital when building an uplifting service culture, and world leaders seize every opportunity. It is also critical- in business, in life, and in service. This is not something leaders should view as a soft and therefore less important rule. Nor should it be entirely delegated to others.
In my experience working with leaders in a service organisation, I have discovered 7 essential rules these leaders always follow. Some leverage the power of one rule more than another, and you may do the same. But each of these rules is essential to lead your team to success.
Rule 1: Declare Service a Top Priority
Declaring service a top priority means senior leaders understand that focusing on service improvement leads to commercial results. Profit is the applause you receive for serving your customers well. When middle managers declare service a top priority, the message to everyone is clear: procedures, and budgets surely count, but creating value for others counts the most. And when frontline employees declare service their top priority and delighting others becomes their goal, they uplift customer satisfaction- and job satisfaction too.
Rule 2: Be a Great Role Model
Leaders are the people who others choose to follow, not those who simply tell other people to do. By their own example, leaders inspire others to do what they do, too. It can be a small gesture but it could make a big impact that held them together.
Rule 3: Promote a Common Service Language
Everyone talks about better service from a perspective that makes perfect sense to him or her. What's missing is a common language to enable listening and understanding, clear distinctions to appreciate what other people want and value. To build a culture of uplifting service throughout an organisation, leaders must promote a Common Service Language everyone can apply. Asking your team to upgrade service without enabling language is unwise and inefficient. Giving them a Common Service Language but not using it yourself would be foolish. If you want everyone on your team to deliver uplifting service, you must speak fluently and frequently about it. You must demonstrate your understanding and commitment with observable admirable actions.
Rule 4: Measure What Really Matters
Many people get confused when it comes to measuring service. This is understandable because you can measure so many things: complaints, compliments, expectations, levels of engagement, relative importance, recent improvements, performance to standards, customer satisfaction, retention, intention to repurchase, referral, share of wallet, share of mind, etc. A service leader cuts through this confusion to measure what really matters. Start by recalling the definition of service: Service is taking action to create value for someone else. The ultimate objectives in business is revenues, profits, market share, reputation, shareholder value and growth. One way to achieve these: when satisfaction scores, loyalty scores, share of wallet scores, and employees engagement scores are all improving, your ultimate objectives will improve, too.
Rule 5: Empower Your Team
Empowerment is a buzzword in business, and many leaders and employees seem to fear it. What they really fear is someone who is empowered making a bad decision. If a leader is not confident in her people, she doesn't want to empower them with greater authority of a larger budget. And if an employee is not confident in his abilities and decisions, he often does not want the responsibility of being empowered. In both cases, what's missing is not empowerment, but the coaching, monitoring, and encouraging that must go with it. If you knew your people would make good decisions, you would be glad to give them the authority to do so. And when your people feel confident they can make good decisions, they will be eager to have this freedom. Empowering others cannot and should not be decoupled from the responsibility to properly enable those you empower.
Rule 6: Remove the Roadblocks to Better Service
Most frontline staff members are taught to follow policies and procedures. Often they are hesitant to "break to rules". Yet some rules should be broken, changed, or at least seriously bent from time to time. What roadblocks to better service lurk inside your organisation? What gets in your people's way? What slows them down? What prevents them from taking better care of your customers? What stops them from helping their colleagues? Service leaders ask these questions and remove the roadblocks they uncover.
Rule 7: Sustain Focus and Enthusiasm
It's not difficult to declare service as a top priority. What's challenging is keeping service top of mind when other issues clamour for attention. It's not hard to use a new language for better service; what's hard is using language day after day until it becomes a habit. It may not be hard to track new service ideas and actions, but it can be difficult to keep them top of mind in the thinking of your team. Sustaining focus and enthusiasm for service is vital when building an uplifting service culture, and world leaders seize every opportunity. It is also critical- in business, in life, and in service. This is not something leaders should view as a soft and therefore less important rule. Nor should it be entirely delegated to others.
Thursday, 1 January 2015
Service Star
There are hundreds of thousands of stars out there, but we need millions more! All of us can be stars. There are some very specific things we can do that will help us become a Service Star. And we can help our team be viewed as a real service-oriented team that stands out from other organisations and other businesses.
You all have them in your organisations. What they have in common is an intense desire to exceed the customer's expectations. They want their customers to walk away dazzled. Stars give everyone else goals to shoot for and a benchmark to be measured against. It's important to remember that everyone can become a star just by taking on the challenge of being exceptional.
Characteristics of a Service Star:
You all have them in your organisations. What they have in common is an intense desire to exceed the customer's expectations. They want their customers to walk away dazzled. Stars give everyone else goals to shoot for and a benchmark to be measured against. It's important to remember that everyone can become a star just by taking on the challenge of being exceptional.
Characteristics of a Service Star:
- All Service Stars share motivation- actually a passion- to serve and help others. Stars realise the great personal satisfaction and reward from serving. They feel a genuine need, want, and desire to help others.
- Flexibility- It is the key to being able to manoeuvre through all the craziness, all the customer demands, and all the challenges that get thrown at you everyday. Customer Service Stars seem to be able to rise above negative situations and adapt their behaviour based on the events going on around them.
- Energy and Enthusiasm- No matter who the are, they just plain fun to be around. Service Stars seem to radiate energy and enthusiasm. If you are having a bad day or are down in the dumps, just being around these people gives you a shot in the arm. Imagine the impact you could have on your customers by radiating energy and enthusiasm.
- Ownership- Service Stars take ownership of customers, situations, and problems. They use every bit of the power and authority they have been given by management. They make you feel like you are the only customer they have helped all day, even though they may have seen hundreds before you. empowerment is a word that's a bit overused. But the meaning behind it is very powerful, especially as it relates to customer care. Stars take the power that they have been given to serve customers and to take ownership of their problems. In fact, true Service Stars find ways to help customers even when the letter of the law or policy prevents it.
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