Be Different or be dead

March 10, 2012

How stories are an excellent way to execute your customer service strategy

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How stories are an excellent way to execute your customer service strategy.

One of the best ways to make your customer service strategy come alive is storytelling.

Many companies use storytelling to breathe life into their vision of service and are effective in getting the message across.

Ask an employee to tell a story about how a customer was dazzled when they were served by someone in your organization.

If they can’t (and for most it is a challenging question) then you either haven’t defined your service strategy in enough detail to clearly understand what is to be expected by employees in delivering it, or there is not enough action around your strategy to be able to observe it and tell a story about it.

Remove the barriers to storytelling and treat telling stories as a fundamental responsibility of your leadership team.

If your leaders can’t describe in vivid terms what is expected of people in serving customers employee won’t get it. Or they will each have their own definition of what the strategy is and will deliver it accordingly with the resulting mosaic of service experiences being delivered to customers with little consistency with respect to the intended strategy.

Get storytelling on the performance plan of your managers and hold them accountable for doing it.

Develop and implement a storytelling development program to:
—  first, remind people what your service strategy is;
— second, what it looks like when it is being pristinely executed (i.e. what behaviors do you expect to see from your employees who are in customer serving roles?) and
— third, what storytelling objectives each manager is expected to achieve in their annual performance plan.

Remind your management team that compensation will have a storytelling component and make it matter!

Finally, provide the opportunity for managers to practice storytelling.

This is about effective communication around a critical part of your overall business strategy so it’s important. It’s about painting a picture for people to see what is expected of them and what the desired outcome is. It’s about providing a way for your leaders to be able to fulfil their fundamental leadership role.

Who are the storytelling champions in your organization?

Who do it well? Find them and ask them to help put together and run your storytelling development program. Use them to show others how it is done. Recognize them for the type of behavior expected. Reward them as an example to others.

Once you have storytelling established as a strategic tool to reinforce your service strategy you can use stories as an integral part of how you communicate your value proposition to the market.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.10.12 at 11:31 am by Roy Osing
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February 27, 2012

6 mind-blowing lessons to learn from The Grateful Dead

6 mind-blowing lessons to learn from The Grateful Dead.

The Grateful Dead were unbelievably focused on their fans. these are six valuable lessons we can learn from them.

1. Mix it up — Constantly innovate. Give your Fans a different look (value packages, promotions, events, fun) as often as you can. The Dead decided what songs to play when they began each concert - songs on the run. Risky? Yes. Original? Yes. Did their Fans love them for it? YES!

2. Enable your customers to fulfil themselves — Do what THEY want. The key here is the serving mentality. Find out what they want and desire and take them there. The Dead created a bubble for their Fans and allowed them to reach emotional highs.

3. Focus on the experience not the product — The Dead did not try to sell records. They wanted to create mind-blowing experiences for their Fans. And guess what? (They sold lots of records).

4. Save the best deals for your best customers — Using special promotional deals to entice people away from their supplier is a fool’s game in any event. What makes you think that if someone takes your Special Offer they won’t leave you in a heartbeat if someone else gives them one as well?

You can’t grow your business by catering to the promiscuous crowd of constant switchers. Furthermore, what will your loyal customers say when they find out that you are not offering the special deal to them? (I can see their taillights already).

The Dead always saved the best ticket prices, seats and deals for their Fans. The result? The most successful touring band in history.

5. Do the opposite of what your competitors are doing — Observe ‘em and do a 180. You can’t stand-out if you copy. The Dead allowed their Fans to record their music in concert. No other band did. The 180 strategy created uniqueness and remark-ability that made them unforgettable.

6. Communicate with your Fans incessantly—and figure out how to make it easier for them to communicate with one another.

The Dead were fanatics when it came to having conversations with their Fans before Social Media arrived. Their Fans responded by not only attending concerts and other Dead Events, but also by talking up The Dead to their friends. The Dead virus spread…

You can learn a great deal about business from the most interesting and surprising sources.

Check out The Dead.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.27.12 at 08:10 am by Roy Osing
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February 20, 2012

Awesome leaders always ask employees these 10 surprising questions

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To build an organization that stand-out from others, leaders need to start asking different questions

Awesome leaders always ask employees these 10 surprising questions.

It’s not…

1. It’s not how do we compare to the competition, BUT… How are we different? What makes us stand-out from the crowd?

2. It’s not do we have products with feature-sets like the market leader, BUT… What is different about our offerings that will get us noticed?

3. It’s not how How our products appeal to the masses, BUT… How will it be relevant to the individual customer set we are trying to take care of?

4. It’s not what will make us #1 in the markets we serve, BUT… What will it make us the ONLY ones  that do what we do in the markets we serve?

5. It’s not what are we doing to match best in class, BUT… What are we doing to go the opposite way?

6. It’s it what new technology do we plan to introduce, BUT… What are we doing to leverage the latest technology available to create unique value for our customers?

7. It’s not how do we match the prices of our competitors, BUT… What value do we have to add to our basic offering to justify premium prices in the market?

8. It’s not what marketing programs are necessary to attract new customers, BUT… How can we show our loyal customers that we care for them and convince them to refer us to others?

9. It’s not how many products did we sell last quarter, BUT… What have we done to deepen the long term relationships we have with our customers?

10. It’s not how do we fix the mistakes we made when responding to our customer’s demand, BUT… How can we fix the mistake fast and then blow the customer away by doing something for them they don’t expect?

Leaders: write these questions down. Commit them to memory. Rehearse them. Ask them often.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.20.12 at 08:08 am by Roy Osing
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January 23, 2012

11 great questions to know if you are hiring the right person

Source: Pexels

11 great questions to know if you are hiring the right person.

You are about to interview a candidate for a job with your organization; doesn’t matter what job.

Here are 11 questions you should ask to determine if they have what it takes to help you build a unique and distinctive organization.

1. Tell me about a project you led where your execution was brilliant. What did you do to make it so? The words passion, clear vision, shared purpose, recognition and relentless focus on the goal should be sprinkled through their answer.

2. Define marketing. Make sure their answer contains the following principles: providing value, focusing on loyal fans, providing personalized solutions, market segments of 1, customer wants and desires. Give them the heave-ho if they constantly reference marketing 101 stuff like the 4 p’s and satisfying customer needs.

3. What does leadership mean to you? Listen for the concept of serving people. If you don’t hear it, wave to them as they leave your office.

4. How much experience do you have in eliminating stuff that is no longer relevant — CRAP —  in your past experience? If they don’t understand the question, you could be looking at a good candidate for someone else.

5. Do you like human beings? Watch for a confused look on their face. They know it’s a trick question but don’t know where you are leading them.

6. As a follow up, tell me a story that would prove that you love humans. They will either leave you cold with their answer or they will give you goosebumps. If you get goosebumps you have a winner.

7. How would you go about developing a strategy for service for an organization? What would it say? Listen for words like experiences, memories, WOW! and dazzle. Then ask them how they implemented it.

8. Define sales. If they talk about selling products and nothing about building deep relationships, throw them out.

9. Have you ever worked for a company that had “dumb rules”? - Rules or policies that made no sense to customers? What did you do to help eliminate them? If they don’t say how they were instrumental in changing them stop the interview. It’s over.

10. What would you do to help you make your organization remarkable, unique, distinctive and gaspworthy? Look for stuff done to serve customers. Ignore technology answers.

11. How are you different? What makes you special? If they can’t define how THEY stand out from the herd, what makes you think they will be able to help your organization stand out?

Anyone who gives thoughtful answers to these questions is a keeper. Send the others packing.

There are no questions on education — formal learning credentials are a given.

If the person across the table answers these 11 questions reasonable well, perhaps they deserve a shot at the job. If not, send them packing.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.23.12 at 10:00 am by Roy Osing
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