Forget About Customer Service! Create Exceptional Customer Experience
Forget everything you hold dear about customer service
because it's not enough anymore.
When my mother grew up and it was her birthday, her mother
went to the store and bought flour, sugar, milk, and eggs;
came home and baked a birthday cake. When it was my
birthday, my mom went to the store, bought a cake mix and
baked me a birthday cake.
When my kids' birthday came, I did neither of those things.
For about ten bucks I went to the store and bought a
pre-made cake complete with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on
top. However when parents prepare for their children's
birthday today, a cake is not enough. There must be a party
with games, prizes, balloons, and a clown.
This is what Harvard researchers Joseph Pine and James
Gilmore call The Experience Economy. It is a fundamental
shift in the marketplace where "work is theater and every
business a stage."
In other words, people come to businesses today with
dramatically different expectations than they did even a
few years ago. They don't want an ordinary product or
run-of-the mill service, they want an experience.
And it is the experience that keeps customers coming back
again and again and again, or the lack of it that drives
them away.
THREE ESSENTIALS TO EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Here's how you can make every customer's contact with your
business an exceptional experience:
1. Cast Your VISION
It's a quaint, yet insightful story told of a Londoner
taking a walk downtown at the turn of the last century. He
came upon laborers working on a construction project and
asked one of the men, "What are you doing?"
He answered, "I'm layin' bricks."
Continuing down the block a bit, he asked a second worker
the same question, and the man answered, "I'm buildin' a
wall."
To a third a bit further down he posed the same question.
The man stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and
looked to the sky saying, "I'm building a great cathedral!"
Getting very, very clear about the vision of your work, the
great cathedral that you are building, has a powerful
effect on people. It transforms ordinary, routine jobs,
like laying bricks, into a cause. And when people are
committed to a cause, nothing can stand in their way.
In short, vision creates passion. And passion for one's
work is what delivers exceptional customer experience that
is so critical to succeeding in this experience economy.
2. Empower Your PEOPLE
The carrot and the stick have proven to be poor motivators
in the workplace because they do not move people from
within. Positive input, encouragement, and genuine
appreciation, however, communicate to people their value
and worth and motivates them from the inside out.
When provided on a regular basis, work becomes a place
people enjoy coming to instead of just putting in their
time.
"Because of its power, ridiculously low cost and rarity,
praise and recognition is one of the greatest lost
opportunities in the business world today," write Gallup
researchers in 12: The Elements of Great Managing.
In other words, your employees are your internal customer.
When their experience working for you is affirming and
energizing, that positive emotion overflows to your
customers creating the exceptional experience you seek.
3. Live Your VALUES
One of the most infuriating customer experiences is to be
told by someone that your reasonable request cannot be met
because, "It's not our policy." Many companies develop
policy manuals as a rule book to keep people in line and
keep customers from stepping out of line.
Leading companies, however, do not do this. They teach
people values and how those values apply to the many, and
varied, situations that may arise with customers.
Visit any Marriott® hotel and you will experience this
phenomenon. "Do whatever it takes to take care of the
customer" is their mantra and they live it every day.
The heroes at Marriott® are frontline employees who give
money out of their own pocket to help with a guest's cab
fare or take special care of a package so that a traveler's
child receives it on their birthday. Talk about exceptional
customer experience!
Not surprisingly, this also impacts the bottom line.
Marriott® consistently stands as one of the most profitable
businesses in the hospitality industry and in 2005 won an
award for best customer service for any hotel chain in the
United States.
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PAYOFF
When I visit Washington, D.C., there is only one hotel I
will stay at, The Willard Intercontinental.
Why?
Not because of the complementary bottle of wine that was in
my room. Or because when I arrived bleary-eyed from the
west coast in the dead of night, the manager came out to
greet me. All nice touches!
It is because of a cleaning lady.
I conducted a leadership seminar at The Willard
Intercontinental and took off without the power cord from
my laptop. Replacing one of those is a pain in the neck,
not to mention living with a dead computer until you do.
But on my way to the airport I received a call from, you
guessed it, the cleaning lady who found it and took the
time to figure out that it was my power cord. She then
OVERNIGHTED the cord to me and I had it to use the next day.
What an exceptional customer experience!
Yes, there are much cheaper hotels in Washington D.C., but
the experience I had there was unmatched. Why would I want
to stay anywhere else? You see, that's how the experience
economy works.
Now pass me a piece of birthday cake.
----------------------------------------------------
Bill Zipp, President of Leadership Link, Inc., is a
seasoned small business specialist. Bill has spent
thousands of hours working with hundreds of business
leaders, and his proven program, The Business Fitness™
System, provides a step-by-step plan for building a strong,
self-sustaining small business. For a FREE Special Report,
The 3 Biggest Killers of Small Businesses Today (And What
YOU Can Do About Them!) visit http://www.LeadershipLink.net
.
