February 2, 2012

BE DiFFERENT on the Threes - Dazzling Customer Service

THREES - Dazzling Customer Service
THREES - Strategic Planning
BE DiFFERENT on the Threes

Creating maniacal, loyal, “sneezing”, loyal customers is NOT about price. It’s NOT about products and services that actually work to specifications. It’s NOT about what you produce and how you price it. People expect things to work and they expect to pay a reasonable price for it. That’s the price of admittance. That’s what any organization must do to play the game. If you can’t provide stuff that works all the time at a price people are willing to pay, you don’t have a business. Period.

If your quest is to attract a band of loyal followers that will do business with you FOREVER, you must create a dazzling experience for her whenever she“touches” you. . You must focus your attention on How she FEELS when she engages with you as opposed to What she GETS from you.

So how can you create an environment that is capable of creating Dazzling Service Experiences?
1. Recruit people that have an innate desire to serve their fellow human beings. Customers can’t be delighted if a frontline person really doesn’t want to serve. And you can’t train people to like people. They either DO or they DON’‘T. You can train them to “grin” (to have a smile in your voice) but you can’t teach people to love others. Dazzling service experiences are delivered by individuals who actually want to make the customer feel important. To make them feel listened to. To honor them. To do whatever it takes to see their eyes light up. 80% of your recruitment budget should be dedicated to this task.
2. Design your Rules, Policies and Procedures to serve the customer. Every organization has Dumb Rules, rules that make no sense to customers. Rules that annoy and infuriate them and drive them to leave kicking and screaming to others. Rules have a legitimate management control purpose but if they drive business away because customers are unwilling to abide by them what ‘s the benefit? The issue is the customer element in Rule Design is missing. Management Control drives the process. Give the customer an equal say in Rule Design. Engage them to help. They will be impressed that you are open enough to involve them AND you will be on your way to Dazzle.
3. BE Flexible. Empower people to bend the Rules on the customer’s behalf. Even if you have designed a Rule System that optimizes on the Customer Experience, you will still have Control-driven ones that remain. Empower your frontline to bend them when it makes sense to serve a customer. Trust them to do the right thing to preserve the Dazzle objective. The end game is to deliver a mind-blowing service experience NOT to enforce the Rules that get in the way.

Dazzle = Serving People + Rules that Serve + Empowerment

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 2.2.12 at 05:59 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2011

If I’m Cross, Everyone’s Cross

180 Degree Thinking
Slim Down Your Middle
3 Steps to BE EaSY
A happy, friendly and engaging restaurant server in Paris in my experience is a fairly rare occurrence. I’m not saying that great service CAN’T be found here, but I will say that service here has fallen short of my expectations more often than they have been met.

In a recent trip there, however, I discovered a GEM who was DiFFERENT from the Restaurant Serving Herd.

His name is Sam. He is a Parisian. He works in Le Coliseum restaurant on Rue Tripoli, across from Le Louvre.

In a rain downpour my wife and I dashed into Le Coliseum to first, escape the rain and second, to have a light lunch. Sam was unique. I watched him dashing about his tables engaging in warm conversation with all of his customers. He had an amazing energy level and was extremely outgoing and delighted in having fun with his local and out-of-town patrons.

One woman who wasn’t even dining there, but was walking by looking for the subway station, asked Sam for directions. Without missing a beat He quipped “Follow me.” and, with serving tray over his head to protect
himself from the rain, he led her out of the restaurant around the corner to where she had to go. Stunning Care for her needs. Not even a customer!

Finally I had to ask him the question that was on my mind: “Why are you so happy?” His answer was brilliant in it’s honesty, vision and simplicity: “If I’m cross, everyone’s cross.”

He recognized that HIS attitude had an amazing influence on the feelings and attitudes of his customers, and that if he were in a bad mood then everyone would be as well. His disposition made being in Le Coliseum an absolute delight.

His “up” attitude made the torrential downpour we were experiencing a veritable sunny one. What a great lesson for all businesses trying to deliver superlative service.
Recruit Sam. Lots of them. Look for smiles. Look for humor. Look for energy.

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 12.12.11 at 05:00 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 5, 2011

3 Steps To BE EaSY

Slim Down Your Middle
Performance Mis-Management
Go Fish
Most organizations seem to be on the hunt to “exceed customer expectations” and provide remarkable customer service.

If you had the energy and capacity to do only one thing to advance toward this goal it would be, in my view, “TO MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS TO ENGAGE WITH YOU”.

Sounds reasonable and straightforward doesn’t it?

The problem is it rarely happens. Organizations put people through hoops and inconvenience just to have the “pleasure” of doing business with them.

Ever stood in a lineup for 20 minutes before being served? Waited 30 minutes on the phone before a Call Center Rep answered your call? Tried to navigate through a Voice Response System to get to the right person? Had to repeat your story to 4 different people after being transferred among
several departments?

We’ve all been there. When this happens to us it is impossible for any business to claim they care about wanting to serve us well.

How does it happen? Well, it boils down to being an Operations issue. It’s related to systems and processes. And it’s also about costs.

The common theme, however, is that the company designs it’s Operations to suit ITSELF rather than serve the customer in an easy way. “Cost efficient systems and processes” drive what the customer transaction looks like.

If you REALLY want to reverse this and take a giant step to BE EaSY, follow these 3 Steps:

1. Involve the customer in process design. Ask a panel of your Fans if the process is easy. Customer-driven re-engineering, rather than having internal process management experts lead the way, would produce huge benefits. Also as a major side benefit, your customers will appreciate
that you invited them in to help you. They will tell others of your “openness”.

2. “De-complexify” your processes. Make them simple. Remove steps. Minimize the number of times the customer is required to do something.

3. Never pass a customer around. Take responsibility for the customer and YOU deal with your internal world to sort it out for them. YOU deal with your inefficient processes. Don’t force your customer to do it.

These steps won’t make you perfect overnight but they will put you on the right path.

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 12.5.11 at 04:50 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 14, 2011

Who Sets The Rules?

That’s What Friends Are For
Efficiency is the Enemy of Humanity
FREE is The Way to Riches
All organizations have Rules, Policies and Procedures. All intended to impose order and control in an unruly world. Credit policies. Accounting procedures. Collections rules. Sales processes. Customer Service manuals replete with instructions on how to deal with a customer, take their order and fulfill the transaction.

Most Rules in one way or another impact the customer. Are meant to control her. To make her behave a certain way that produces a favorable outcome for the Company. Rules to CONTROL.

What if we took a different perspective and created rules to ENABLE? ENABLE someone to engage with us on terms THEY dictate? Terms that make their experience with us enjoyable and stress free?

Contradiction: we want to create memorable experiences for our customers when they deal with us, but WE set the Rules of Engagement.

BE BOLD. Let THEM architect the Rules. Let THEM control their own destiny with you. Enable. Serve. How about asking a group of your Fans to critique your Service Policies and suggest changes? Same with Sales and Credit.

What not? Are we afraid what they will say? Afraid they will point out the stupidity of some of them?

Open up. Allow your Fans to control YOU (they do anyway. Why not make it official?)

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 11.14.11 at 05:01 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)