Tag: strategy

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Customer service Marketing Training & Development

What Do You Notice About These Three Customer Service Stories?

In honor of National Customer Service Week (observed the first week in October), here are three amazing stories told by customers — all marketing professionals — who experienced and analyzed them. They represent different situations that share a common theme.

Customer experience #1:

“I walked into an Eckerd Drug Store to buy a sympathy card. Before the clerk even rang up the purchase, he took a silk rose from a display at the counter, presented it to me, and said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I hope this will cheer you up a little.'” Toby Bloomberg

Toby’s takeaway: “There were no dramatic gestures, no casts of thousands, no high cost involved. Simply an elegant approach to ‘service’ between two people. And when you get right down to basics, isn’t that what “legendary service” is all about — people who go the extra mile to connect to the customer?”

Customer experience #2:

“It was a Saturday around noon at the Hyatt Woodfield hotel in Chicago for an American Marketing Association chapter leadership meeting. Just as our people were sitting down to lunch, the first alarm went off. We were quickly hustled outside by the staff and stayed outdoors for the better part of an hour due to a water emergency.

“A couple of weddings were scheduled to take place at the hotel later that day. One of the brides arrived that morning and, not finding a closet hook high enough to hold her wedding gown off the floor, she hung it on a fire system water sprinkler. The weight eventually broke the sprinkler head, spewing rusty water all over the gown in her room and other rooms on the floor that were linked on that sprinkler water line. The water also leaked through to rooms below the bride’s floor. The hotel could have easily blamed the bride for her misfortune and the inconvenience caused to everyone else in the hotel. But instead they summoned a limousine, took the bride and her mother across to the Nordstrom’s at Woodfield Mall to buy a new dress.” Chris Bonney

Chris’s takeaway: “I don’t know if the hotel was insured for this kind of thing or not. But they knew that it was cheaper for the bride to get a new dress so that her wedding could proceed and worry about the details later. They recovered the situation without embarrassing the bride and her family.”

Customer experience #3:

“My husband and I were traveling to Boston to attend a conference for his work when I had a medical emergency on the plane. Upon landing at the airport, I was immediately taken off the plane in a special ambulance gurney and transported to the hospital. While filling out our medical forms in the ER, my husband and I suddenly looked at each other to ask, “What happened to our luggage?!” since we left the plane in such a hurry.

“While I was in surgery, my husband took a taxi to the conference hotel and explained our situation. The Marriott Copley Hotel front desk clerk called the airport to find and hold our luggage. The hotel also arranged for a staff member to drive my husband back to the airport to collect the luggage, drop him off at the hospital to be with me after surgery, and place our luggage in the hotel room for when my husband returned.” This is my customer service story.

Here’s my takeaway: “In our situation, we were guests who arrived at the hotel with a problem that had nothing to do with the hotel itself. Yet the front desk staff showed their compassion and concern by going the extra step take care of us.”

What these stories share

My colleagues and I had different customer experiences with a common theme: demonstrations of exemplary service by employees who were empathetic and responsive to their customers — all in situations where the service provider did nothing wrong. Nonetheless, front line employees went “above and beyond” to do everything right.

What’s equally impressive is that these experiences took place more than 25 years ago. Extraordinary customer service — good and bad — leaves a lasting impression.

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Engagement

Where You Lead From Makes a Difference

My recent post about Zoltan Merszei‘s message on organizational strategy included developing a “vision of what’s to come” as “the ultimate insurance of success.”

Articulating and sharing a well thought out vision certainly contributes to success, but it’s not enough. It also takes a leader who knows how to effectively engage and connect employees with the leader’s vision.

Professor Emeritus Stephen W. Brown, former director of Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership, describes this type of leader as one “who leads from the front, not the top.”

“Too often in traditional hierarchical organizations, the people who make the product never see the people ‘upstairs’ who manage. They can’t feel the passion of their leaders, understand their commitment to quality, or see their dreams for excellence because they’re not visible.”

I experienced such a leader earlier in my career. In my first job with a regional bank, the president, who came from outside the community, led from the top. He maintained an office on the sixth floor of the main headquarters/branch and was rarely seen by front line and operational employees. His contact with corporate customers took place mainly in executive offices and country clubs.

So it was culture shock for me when I changed employers to work at another regional bank whose president was much more visible. His office was on the second floor of the bank’s HQs, just off the escalator from the main branch lobby, where he was accessible to all customers and employees. He was also a major presence at all-employee meetings and social events. As a former teller who worked his way up to become bank president, he loved the bank, and his passion for the bank’s brand was contagious. This was an executive who led from the front.

You might think that the difference between these two CEO’s backgrounds — outsider vs. insider — might account for their different leadership styles. That was my thinking until I moved to a third regional bank where the president also had started as a teller, yet he led from the top. So being “home-grown” wasn’t the common denominator for leadership style.

All three CEO’s were professional and respected; all three banks were successful. Among all the banks, the most engaged and engaging corporate culture belonged to the second bank. It was also the most exhilarating and satisfying organization I ever worked in — all because I was caught up in the vision and success of a CEO and management team who led from the front.

 

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Engagement

“Protect People From Too Much Organization”

The yellowing, decades-old piece of paper I found in my files featured this striking advice from Zoltan Merszei, former executive at Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Dow Chemical Company. Merszei wrote it “as a reminder that we need to protect people from too much organization, while never destroying the organization itself.” His message is still relevant:

  1. Always have too few people. Always.
  2. Judge people carefully; if you choose well, everything becomes easier.
  3. Seek changes in business; don’t just accept change.
  4. Make sure decision making is centered where the action is.
  5. Remember that organization follows ability, not the other way around.
  6. Fit your organization to people, not people to the organization.
  7. Learn from the past, but invest in the future.
  8. Don’t just accept responsibility — usurp it.
  9. Don’t hope for excellence — demand it, of yourself and others.
  10. Develop a vision of what’s to come in this world. That’s your ultimate insurance of success.
    — reprinted from the March-April 1980 newsletter, “Oxy: The Occidental Report.”

So much has changed in business since it was written, and yet so much hasn’t. Effectively managing people and the organization they support continues to be a challenge.

 

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Engagement

What’s the Problem with the Next New Management Trend?

The answer depends on management’s attention span.

No matter how well intentioned, executives who are unable to keep their focus on doing what it takes to make a new approach work will move on when the initiative fails and go after for the next best thing — frustrating their employees in the process.

In this situation the latest greatest management trend might be new, but not the employees’ experience with it. So they shake their heads and roll their eyes – out of management’s sight – when executives launch their business strategy du jour to increase/improve:

  • innovation
  • productivity
  • engagement
  • collaboration
  • all, or any combination, of the above.

Employees are asked to ascend the roller-coaster of executives’ initial excitement, only to endure a steep drop in efforts to sustain the approach. Without sufficient investment in the necessary resources and follow-through, employees are left feeling cynical rather than invigorated.

Jumping on the management bandwagon isn’t the issue; what’s critical is how seriously a new approach is considered and applied. As Robert Bacal writes in his article, Management Fads – Things You Should Know:

“Because management fads do usually have substance, those who take the time to explore the possibilities usually come away from the experience as better managers. Those who do not take the time to learn, but adopt a management approach on only a superficial understanding of the techniques, become worse managers.”

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Engagement

Engaging Conversations with Volunteers

“Volunteers … work not for money but because they want to give back, make a difference, change the world.”  Sally Helgesen

While the need to give of themselves may motivate volunteers to get involved, it doesn’t ensure their continuing commitment. What keeps them involved is the quality of their experience with an organization.

The best way to understand your volunteers’ experience is to engage them in conversation. This can be done in individual conversations or, if you manage a large group of volunteers, through roundtable discussions or surveys.

Engaging conversation starters

Ask these key questions to learn what your volunteers think – and how they feel – about your nonprofit:

• What is it about this organization that appealed to you to get involved?

• What about this organization keeps you involved?

• What do you expect to give and get from your volunteer involvement?

• What do you enjoy most about your volunteer experience?

• What suggestions do you have to improve the volunteer experience?

• Would you recommend this organization to other volunteers?

What to do with volunteer feedback

Listen carefully and acknowledge your volunteers’ value – both in serving your organization and in sharing their thoughts with you. Collective responses to the first four questions provide important insight to reinforce volunteer engagement and may be used in your messaging to recruit new volunteers.

Responses to the last two questions will help you identify concerns that need immediate fixing and those that need to be addressed in the long term. Share and communicate any follow up to let your volunteers know that you heard them.

Volunteers are precious resources. Listen to them and treat them with the respect they deserve.

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

A Manager’s Guide on How to Cope When Team Efforts are Taken For Granted

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague who manages an internal service department for a medium-sized organization. She’s a supportive manager whose team takes pride in providing quality service to internal clients. However, she finds it a challenge to keep her employees at the top of their game when some internal clients are unappreciative of their efforts. Part of her dilemma is rooted in an organizational culture where administrative support is taken for granted.

She and her team acknowledge the situation and focus on how to work effectively within – and despite – the culture. She also encourages employees to rise to the challenge of working with unappreciative clients. Yet there are still occasions when team members find it hard to muster enthusiasm to serve such clients.

You can’t fake it and other important tips
How does she continue to motivate her team? She knows she can’t fake her own engagement, so she starts by staying positive. She also focuses on how she can best support her team and internal clients with the following actions:

  • Keep the “big picture” front and center by reminding employees how they support the department’s mission and contribute to the organization’s mission in the process.
  • Engage employees in sharing what works to keep them motivated, such as providing peer support and finding the humor in their experiences and ways to safely blow off steam. This is done regularly in staff meetings and when difficult situations arise.
  • Share and reinforce client service success stories with the manager’s boss as well as with the team itself.
  • Acknowledge those clients who are appreciative of staff efforts, while also diplomatically standing up for employees dealing with difficult clients.
  • Maintain a positive culture within the department that values both clients AND team members.
  • Continue to acknowledge and recognize employee efforts with little gifts, food, and ongoing professional development.

Just as importantly, she models and reinforces what Chip Bell describes in his new book, Kaleidoscope:

“We are what we serve to others. It is our signature that sums us up each time a customer is on the receiving end of our efforts. And your customers remember how you served long after they have forgotten what you served! How can you deliver service in a fashion that says, ‘This is me, and it is my very best gift to you?'”

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Are You Guilty of Treating Your Customers Like Chopped Liver?

The phrase “What am I, chopped liver?” is uttered when a person is made to feel that he or she is not special. It’s exactly how some customers feel as a result of neglect by companies.

I’m seeing this scenario play out in a membership-based company that’s constantly offering special discount pricing to acquire new customers while ignoring their current ones. Those in the latter group are questioning their customer loyalty given management’s attention on attracting new business while little investment is made to improve member services and facilities. Some customers are paying fees higher than those offered to prospective customers. However, they can get a few extra months of free membership IF they help bring in new customers.

Churn, churn churn
With little confidence in the company to take care of current customers, turnover continues … as does the search for new customers. The company may not realize it, but turnover would be much greater if it weren’t for customer inertia – whether their customers are locked into annual contracts or unable to find suitable alternatives. The reality is unhappy customers who stay don’t bring in additional business.

Heavily promoting to attract new customers at the expense of taking care of existing customers is the perfect recipe for making customers feel like chopped liver. It’s also a strategy that leads to continued high turnover and brand damage. Customer churn isn’t the only issue here – employee turnover is also evident.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are four steps companies can take so their customers and employees don’t feel like chopped liver.

  • Take the time to proactively engage with and listen to your current customers and respond appropriately. Consider formal customer satisfaction surveys, customer roundtables, or lost customer analysis. The latter can be as simple as asking why a customer left, although it’s better to learn of customers’ frustrations before they leave.
  • Communicate with customers. If improvements in member services and/or facilities are in the works, let them know about it. If not, let them know why and when they can expect a future fix. The absence of such transparency leads customers to speculate about the company’s health.
  • Also take time to proactively engage with and listen to your employees, and respond appropriately. Seek their input on signs of customer frustration.
  • Communicate with employees and equip them to be customer-focused. Ensure they know what’s happening so they can address customer questions and concerns. Provide with them with training to provide top-notch customer service, and in the event of a problem, equip them to deal with customer complaints and recovery.

NOT for customers only
Engagement and retention efforts shouldn’t be limited to customers — if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.

How does your company make its customers and employees feel?

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Engagement Training & Development

Sharing a Positive Message: Interview with Laughing at My Nightmare’s Sarah Yunusov

Shane Burcaw and Sarah Yunusov, LAMN

I am one of more than half a million followers of Shane Burcaw’s Laughing At My Nightmare blog. I’m also greatly impressed with the nonprofit organization he co-founded with his cousin, Sarah Yunusov, with the mission “to spread a message of positivity while providing equipment grants to those living with muscular dystrophy.” The popularity and growth of LAMN’s brand has Shane and Sarah giving presentations throughout the U.S., so I was thrilled when they planned to speak at a “hometown” event in Bethlehem, PA, where I could hear them.

Their presentation was phenomenal – filled with the candor, humor, and positive perspective that characterizes Shane’s writing. I met with both of them recently, and we spoke about the critical need to embrace a positive attitude. Since Shane is busy writing his blog and has a new book in progress, I asked Sarah to share her thoughts here.

QSM: How did you and Shane get into speaking about the topic of positivity?

Sarah: Shane and I grew up in a family that was always laughing. Big family dinners occurred about once a month at our grandparents’ house, and the signature activity at these gatherings was making fun of each other. Most of our family has a twisted, sarcastic sense of humor, and once the jokes would start, they would never stop. This was the case at weddings, birthday parties, and even funeral receptions (it sounds wrong, but what better way to celebrate a life than by remembering the best moments with laughter?).

At an early age, we learned how incredibly powerful humor was when dealing with adversity. Fast forward to Shane starting his blog. His blog was basically just an extension of the mindset instilled in us by our family. It’s about the hilarious and crazy experiences Shane has had living with muscular dystrophy, but more than that, it teaches readers that a positive attitude can help them effectively cope with stress and adversity.

Science has proved this idea to be true. Studies show that “happy” individuals not only experience better life outcomes (such as higher income, better rates of marriage, etc.) but they also tend to be more productive than “unhappy” people.

The best part is that advances in neuroscience and positive psychology are showing us that it’s totally possible to actively increase your overall chronic happiness. Our happiness is composed of three basic parts: set point, circumstances, and intentional activity. Set point is your genetic happiness level. It accounts for about 50% of your overall happiness. Circumstances are things like job, geography, income, etc. These are the daily realities that we “think” have a huge impact on our happiness. Interestingly, though, studies suggest that circumstances only account for about 10% of our happiness. The last slice of the happiness pie are intentional activities—all the thoughts and actions we “choose” to think and do. These activities, which make up 40% of our happiness, are the key to becoming happier people. By learning techniques to live and think more positively, you can quite literally change the chemical functions of your brain to become a happier person. We think that’s pretty freaking cool.

QSM: What’s the key message in your presentations?

Sarah: The key message of our talks is that we have control over our happiness, as per the science I just described. We use funny stories from Shane’s life of living with a disability to illustrate these concepts. We’ve also done talks about inclusion and diversity, as well as anti-bullying themed presentations.

QSM: Your speaking engagements involve two distinct types of audiences: schools that range from elementary to high school, and businesses that include private companies and pharmaceutical firms. How do the responses you get from these diverse audiences compare?

Sarah: There are definitely some differences and similarities between the schools we speak at compared to the businesses. With kids, our message is more about showing them that we have choices about how we respond to adversity. Kids are endlessly curious too, which we love, because it allows us to understand the preconceptions they have about disability and gives us an opportunity to educate them. Adult audiences are more interested in the science and the concrete methods they can employ to become happier people.

QSM: How can your message of positivity help people today?

Sarah: We live in a time when fear and negativity are attacking our minds often, and in a variety of ways. Now more than ever, we need to remind ourselves why being alive is so beautiful. We believe our message can change the world with that very simple idea.

QSM: An inspired message and important goal, indeed. Thank you, Sarah!

You can learn more about the story behind Laughing At My Nightmare, Inc., in this video and on LAMN’s website.

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Engagement

How Will You Honor Your Employees on Recognition Day?

Recognizing and affirming employee value is critical to creating and sustaining employee engagement. And while workplace recognition should be a no-brainer, Gallup research found otherwise. According to Gallup practice manager Annamarie Mann and researcher Nate Dvorak, ” … only one in three U.S. workers strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work in the past seven days. At any given company, it’s not uncommon for employees to feel that their best efforts are routinely ignored. Further, employees who do not feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year.”

For managers who need an extra push when it comes to recognition, get ready for national Recognition Day, Friday, March 3, 2017. This special holiday is observed annually on the first Friday in March that 1) serves as be a springboard for those starting to get serious about the importance of recognition, and 2) enables those who value recognition to do something extra for their employees.

Effective recognition is authentic and genuine — it doesn’t work if it’s forced. If you’re serious about recognizing your employees, have fun with it and know that it doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Your can find many great ideas here to celebrate Recognition Day and throughout the year:

Creative Ideas Abound as Recognition Day 2017 Approaches

51 Employee Appreciation Day Ideas That Won’t Break The Bank

Validation isn’t a once-and-done effort. Everyone needs to know that our work matters … that we matter.  How will you recognize your employees this Recognition day to let them know that they matter?

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

How to (Gently) End a Customer Relationship

good-bye blue-1477872_960_720When I asked other business professionals when it’s best to lose a customer or client, the reasons boiled down to the customer’s lack of respect and not being fully committed to the working relationship. Examples cited included:

  • difficult interactions with or mistreating customer-contact employees
  • being unresponsive and uncooperative
  • paying late or not at all.

The question then is how do you actually end such a business relationship in these situations? The best advice on “how to fire a customer” comes from customer-loyalty consultant and best-selling author, Chip R. Bell:

“Firing a customer is a bit like disarming a bomb; ‘very carefully’ is the operative term. The goals is to subdue animosity without scattering aftermath. Sometimes customers are so incensed at losing a favorite punching bag — even though it’s actually you who’s ‘lost’ them — they can move quickly from anger to vindictiveness, seeking opportunities to punish, not just put down. You can limit your chance of such backlash by handling firings in cool-headed but still sensitive ways.”

When terminating a business relationship based on the first two examples — when the customer has become abusive or difficult to deal with — Bell cautions against taking an angry, defensive, or otherwise emotional approach to avoid fueling the customer’s anger at ending the relationship.

” … a rational explanation for why a continued relationship will harm your business—how harsh treatment of service reps impairs productivity, or how a difficult relationship steals time from other deserving customers—should be your modus operandi here. The goal is to give the customer a signal that he or she is unwelcome if the unwanted behavior persists.  ‘Ms. Jones, I must ask you to leave. The morale of our associates is critically important to their well-being and to the well-being of our organization. While we are by no means perfect, our employees must not be repeatedly subjected to actions that demean them as people.’“

Bell also advises a rational approach when the issue is based on the bottom line, such as the client not paying.

“[Emphasize] how a continued relationship will negatively affect the business, not on how a parting of ways will make your long-suffering staff feel like it’s just won the lottery.  ‘Mr. Jones, we’ve greatly appreciated your business for the last year. We have elected to apply our limited resources in a new direction and will not be soliciting your business in the near future. Should you want to continue our relationship it will likely need to be at a (higher price, greater volume, faster cycle time, lower cost, etc.).’“

Granted, none of this is easy in a competitive and challenging marketplace. But it is essential to stand up for your employees and organizational principles. As Bell explains:

” … courageously ending relationships with customers who continually turn the blowtorch on the front line, or who over time siphon more funds from the bottom line than they return, sends a message about what you stand for as an organization.”

[Note: above excerpts cited with permission from Chip Bell’s book, “Wired and Dangerous,” co-authored with John R. Patterson.]