When you set foot in the kinds of high-energy customer-focused businesses I study and write about in my books, what you invariably discover is that theirs is a "fix the whole way we operate" approach. These "flashpoint businesses" (where employee motivation and customer satisfaction fuel each other in a flashpoint of contagious enthusiasm) usually don't provide any customer service training to their employees whatsoever. Yet workers in these places routinely deliver the kind of customer service everybody else is constantly trying to figure out how to imitate.
What's so different in a flashpoint business? What has turned the employees in such businesses into customer service dynamos?
The Big Difference can be summed up in a single phrase: employee involvement and ownership. These businesses get employees coming up with their own ideas for delighting customers—and then allow positive feedback from happy customers to motivate the workers, inspiring them to continue their efforts to continually improve the customer experience. This is how the chain reaction of contagious enthusiasm gets started, and this is how it's sustained.
What would such a process look like in its early stages? The trick is to get employees generating ideas around three powerful Customer Focus Principles.
First Customer Focus Principle: Exceed the customer's expectations every step of the way.
Shoppers at Ireland's Superquinn supermarkets experience the wow-factor at every turn. When they first arrive, they encounter a supervised play area for young children. In the aisles, they encounter a multitude of signs encouraging them to report "goofs" (such as fruit that has over-ripened), in return for which they're given free lottery cards. They discover bags of free vegetables they can bring home for their pets ("Make Your Hoppy Happy"). At checkout, the store provides umbrellas to keep shoppers dry while they watch attendants transfer their grocery bags from cart to car. This is an example of enhancing every step of the customer experience with a service element—and it explains why this chain of supermarkets continually trounces the competition.
Set up a brainstorming session in which your employees break a typical customer transaction down into its individual steps: where does the customer experience begin, what typically happens next, and so on. Record each step as a separate heading on a flipchart or whiteboard. Then challenge the group to focus on each step one at a time and to uncover ways to add a wow-factor element of delight to each step. They'll naturally come up with many more ideas than you can implement, but afterwards you'll let them choose the best ones and help them implement these ideas successfully.
Second Customer Focus Principle: Make the customer feel important.
It's just common sense, right? Maybe—but it's certainly not common practice. Ever see the sign that says, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"? Or the cartoon of the four little men rolling on the floor with laughter, over the caption, "You Want It When?" How about the sign that reads, "Prices Subject To Change Based on Customer's Attitude"? Some might argue these are just "harmless little jokes." But are they really harmless? Aside from the message they're sending customers, what message are they sending employees, in terms of how they should feel about the customers they interact with every day? I collect photos of such signs, and reproduce them in my books and lectures. Signs like these are easy to find—and they make it painfully obvious that the business in question considers its customers unreasonable intruders, potential criminals, annoying interruptions of the "real work" the business is trying to get done.
In your employee brainstorming session, get the group thinking about ways to make customers feel welcome and appreciated in each step of the transaction. The ideas that emerge often cost nothing to implement (like smiling more or addressing customers by name), and yet these are the little things that can make such a big difference from the customers' point of view.
Third Customer Focus Principle: Tailor the experience to fit the customer.
Where one supermarket invests in metal barricades to prevent the theft of shopping carts, its customer-focused competitor chooses instead to invest in carts that are even more appealing. Mothers with infants can use carts outfitted with a baby seat. Shoppers with older children can use a cart designed like a toy car, so the kids can pretend they're driving while the parent proceeds along the aisles. There are even self-powered sit-down carts for the elderly and the disabled.
Flashpoint businesses recognize that they deal with different categories of customers, and each category can have unique expectations. These businesses abandon the one-size-fits-all mentality and look for ways to provide something special for each major customer category.
Invite your brainstorming employees to list the major customer categories in your business and to come up with ways to wow each category individually. These are often the kinds of "personal touch" ideas that deliver the biggest impact. Even customers from different categories will be impressed with the efforts your business is making to improve the overall customer experience.
Try applying these three principles in a brainstorming session with your own employees, and discover for yourself how creating a customer service culture really can be as easy as one-two-three.
About the Author
Paul Levesque is an author, seminar leader, and public speaker with two decades of experience as an international customer focus consultant. For over 10 years he served as an executive consultant with the Achieve Group, (later part of Times Mirror Training International, and today known as Achieve Global). He is a senior consultant with Boston-based Novations, Inc. and is also founder and CEO of Customer Focus Breakthroughs, Inc. in California. Paul is the author of five books. Learn more at www.customerfocusbreakthroughs.com.
