Making Your Service Ethic Contagious – Guest Blogger
That’s right – customer service is contagious like the common cold. It can spread faster than pink eye at a day care center. Improved customer service comes from spreading a passion for interactions with our customers. And in today’s hypercompetitive world, customer service can be a true point of competitive advantage (Mike writes about that point constantly). So how do you make service contagious?
I didn’t catch it until I was 16. I was working in a real honest to goodness Mom & Pop store. Murray Logan and his wife Del were the founders of Logan & Sons, a small grocery store specializing in high quality meats and produce and delivering great customer service.
If you are involved in managing customer service you know it gets infinitely more difficult to treat the customer the way they want to be treated when you add employees to your business model. When it’s your store and you are the workforce you don’t have to worry that the customers will get treated well. But from the moment you add your first employee, your work gets much more complicated. Now you have to define excellence, teach it, observe it and re-teach it constantly.
How did the Logans do it? Simple.
Murray Logan was a master and he taught his sons, Murray Jr. and Don who would take over the business and keep his traditions. There are lots of authors out there publishing books on customer service, satisfaction and loyalty that are making tons of money off what Mr. Logan and his boys made to seem easy and natural. But it wasn’t.
I was running the cash register on a busy Saturday afternoon. Mrs. Rowlands, a very loyal and regular customer, was doing her regular grocery run. Her order filled two good sized old-fashioned paper bags. Looking at the line of people, she started hefting her bags. I asked her if she needed help getting to the car and she quickly responded, “No, I’m alright. I can get it.”
The rush died down and Murray came up front and casually asked about how things were going. I responded, “It has been a bit busy, but that’s what we’re here for isn’t it?” Then, just as casually he asked “ I saw Linda Rowland carrying her bags out. Why was that?”
I recounted the fact that even though it was busy, I had asked her if she needed help and she had declined. Using the same questions I’m sure Murray Sr. had used to teach him the business, Murray asked “So, you asked her if it would be OK to give her poor service? Of course she said yes. What else could a kind person do?” I could feel my face turning red with embarrassment.
There was no harshness in Murray’s tone. No anger, even though in one quick second I had jeopardized a relationship his family had worked so hard to cultivate. He pulled a leg up and sat on the counter. The store was empty. As was his style, Murray would never try to correct an employee’s behavior in public.
Murray explained that service was a differentiator in our business. That if people didn’t care about receiving a friendly Hello with their name right behind it, if they didn’t care if their grocer picked a cut of beef for them because he knew they had family in town, if they didn’t mind if they slogged their way through the parking lot carrying their own groceries and fumbling for their keys, then the big fancy impersonal supermarket down the street would be good enough.”
“But that’s not how we work here at our store. Our customers get the best service we can provide.” A great lesson for me then as an employee. A lesson that still rings in my ears today, as I am called on to work with our associates and our customers to teach their workforce “the family business.”
It’s rare today to encounter a small business owner who will take the time to teach and develop their staff the same way my leaders did when I worked at Logan & Sons. That doesn’t mean we can’t inspire our people to deliver legendary service. It just means we have to work harder at it and that we might need help.
Creating the experience your customers want means training some of the skills we might take for granted. Sometimes we romanticize the loss of great customer service skills as a result of changes in our culture. I’d argue that we always had to learn it.
Once you’ve defined your brand and communicated it you have to teach it, check on the quality and coach that great group of people you’ve assembled. You have to tell them what great service means in your “family.” Teach them with examples and model the behavior. Be ever vigilant for coachable moments like the one Murray found for me.
Find your stories and share them. We get caught up in the demands of our jobs and we fail to recognize opportunities happening every day. Start small, keep coaching and soon you’ll see the customer service benchmark rising and rising.
Use stories to define legendary. By telling them we are teaching our people that searching for ways to make experiences better is something we value, something we must do to keep the relationships we’ve worked so hard to build.
How are you making customer service contagious in your organization?
– Ray Taylor is an accomplished sales and customer service leader focused on innovation. He is a brand ambassador for Ethos3, a presentation design and storytelling company. Ray serves on the executive committee of Ohio University’s Sales Centre. Write to him at ray@ethos3.com.
Outstanding post, both in teaching what service excellence is AND how to coach employees productively. Nicely done.
Dave,
Thanks for the feedback. After reading your coaching story about “Darren” http://21stcenturyhr.blogspot.com/2008/09/employee-engagement-part-2-exceeding.html
I see that we are likeminded when it comes to coaching.
-Ray
This is a great story. Your story illustrates a particular value.
I have always found that “doing something to delight the customer” is the most simple “value” that drives all customer retention.
Over the centuries, the businesses and enterprises that were successful in customer loyalty were organizations that practiced this value and had it ingrained in their culture.
We now live in a reality where we find customers via viral marketing and sell using web to customers across the flat world — our globe. I think all of us know that it is even more critical in this environment to practice this value repeatedly, or else you lose brand incumbency and market share.
The big question to you Ray — is how do we promote this completely secular value and ingrain it in our employees?
I would like to hear your thoughts.
Rini,
Thanks for the great comments. To answer your question about promoting the value and ingraining it I have two suggestions.
First you have to hire associates who value what you value. Communicate your values in your recruiting process. Tell stories. Being clear about your values will attract people who share your passions and screen out some who do not.
To select those who align with your values build behavior-based questions into your interview process. Probe with requests like “Give me an example of a time when you went above and beyond to delight a customer?” and “Give me another example” will let you see if the applicant is sensitive and creative in handling customer interaction.
Once you have the right staff you can proceed to part two. Teach customer service all the time. Our global economy has increased the diversity of our employees and our customers. New services raise the bar. We cannot assume that what delights one will even satisfy the next. To infect your associates with the customer service ethic do 3 things:
1.Define
Define the relationship you desire with your customers.
Delivery over expectation equals value. The kind of service that might delight a customer at McDonalds is very different from the expectations for a fine dining establishment. Decide which are you going to be – because you can’t be both.
2.Train
Train using all the channels available to you today, from a formal on-boarding process, to on the spot coaching to electronic learning. People learn in different ways. Continuous training in smaller chunks is more effective than the multiple day events done less frequently.
3.Reinforce. Offer continuous training on your value. Use face to face training, newsletters, blogs, and web-based training. Celebrate publicly when someone goes above and beyond. That’s how it spreads to others.
What are your thoughts? How are you influencing customer facing associates?
Great story that illustrates a real live example of what is truly great customer service. In this environment only the very best are going to survive, and customer service is a key factor
Great post Ray!!
Wow, you know the business that I’m in and how “hyper”-sensitive I am to customer service/experience. It still amazes me that companies spend millions on upkeep for equipment that eventually breaks down, needs replaced or upgrading software packages – but spend next to nothing on their most valuable assests (their people).
Investing in people virtually always elevates their value and self-esteem. By teaching them customer service skills you can reap huge dividends all while gaining a competitve edge. Thanks for the great topic!
J
Thanks for all you comments. How will you make customer service a key differentiator in your business these challenging times?
-Ray
Thanks for all you comments. How will you make customer service a key differentiator in your business these challenging times?
-Ray
Ray,
Your story about Murray teaching his brand of customer service to his sons reminded me of an experience I had a few years ago.
For the record, I have never been a big fan of mowing my lawn. I would agree (sort of) that there is a sense of accomplishment to gaze back at a neatly trimmed yard…to both see, and smell, the fruits of your labor. I guess my problem is I simply got my fill of this when I was young and made a silent vow that someday, I would be able to afford to pay someone to do this for me.
Back in the late 1990’s I got my wish and took the plunge. I signed up for lawn service with one of those brand name companies. You know, the ones with the giant, extreme monster machines, with the jet propelled engines, that sound like rush hour on the runway at O’Hare? Every week, during the mowing season, you could hear them swarm through the neighborhood, the noise growing to a din, until they landed like bees returning to the hive, and seven minutes later, with grass cut, trimmed, bagged and blown, left as quickly as they arrived. The problem was that while they were fast, quality was lacking as they missed spots and gouged the yard with their equipment. More importantly, no one ever taught the jet engine jockeys about customer service. It simply wasn’t their job and they didn’t have the time to listen anyway.
My solution was to do what I should have done in the first place. Check with the neighbors (especially the most finicky ones) and find out who they used. I found the perfect fit.
Jim had a small lawn mowing service that he ran to supplement his income from his normal day job. Jim knew about customer service. He knew it would differentiate him. He knew what I considered to be a ‘good’ job because he asked me. He knew certain yards could only handle smaller equipment (no jet engines please…). If I happened to be there, after mowing the lawn, he would ask what I thought. Was his effort meeting my expectations?
Early on, it was clear to me that Jim took tremendous pride in what he did. The best example occurred one Saturday, when his pick up truck pulled in my driveway and he got out and rang my doorbell. I asked what was wrong since he had just mowed my yard a few days prior. He pointed to his truck and said, “Oh nothing. I was just driving around in the neighborhood with my daughter, showing her some of the yards I cut. Would you mind if she got out and walked around with me? I’d like her to see the back and how good it looks.” He wanted to begin teaching his daughter that same sense of pride. After clearing the lump in my throat, I said, “Of course!”
We all know you lead by example. The man I hired to cut my grass was teaching his daughter, the value in doing a good job, the importance of taking pride in what you do, and the real meaning of delivering customer service. It was a life lesson for her that was just in bred into her father’s work ethic. It was a life lesson for me too.
Like I said, the perfect fit.
Ken
@Ken Renker – wow! Thanks so very much for the great story. That comment is worthy of a blog post in and of itself. I love the part where he hands down that sense of pride to the next generation. Wonderful example. Thanks for reading and for sharing.
Great story, but it makes delivering great service seem much simpler than it really is. If you had carried the bags and I was stuck waiting in line I would have been an unhappy customer.
This beautifully written story reminds me of times when I trained employees at a doctor’s office. Everyone, from the doctor on down, was expected to operate according to the Golden Rule. And that simple rule naturally fostered kindness and courtesy toward patients, purveyors and fellow employees. The respect shown at all levels of that business was contagious – and the practice flourished for 28 years. You are so right about good customer service being contagious. Thanks for sharing your stories and your insights.
Anonymous,
Murray had an answer for that too. Just as you did, I asked him "What about the other customers?"
His response was look down the line and say "This will just take a minute, I'll be right back. When you do return, thank them for waiting."
Logan & Sons had defined their experience. It was high quality and personal service. Keeping Mrs. Rowlands, who valued the experience, was more important than losing a customer who would be upset because we took the time to live up to our brand.
Spreading the customer service virus is simple. That doesn't mean it is easy. The more people you have on your team the more difficult it is. It requires discipline to do the simple things to have a lasting effect. the really hard work is defining your version of customer service so that your team has a compass.
Anonymous,
If you are having trouble with this in your organization there are some great customer service training organizations that can help. I used to work for one of them. Email me directly if you would like some referrals.
Thanks for your post.
Nina,
Thanks for the great example. Our family dentist is focused on service as well. He asked me once, “Have you ever had a receptionist on the phone when you walk in actually turn their back on you to finish their conversation?’ He went on to say “Well, that won’t happen in our office!” And it doesn’t.
His entire staff is trained to greet you by name and make you feel like a VIP from start to finish. He starts with good talent selection and reinforces his customer service expectations constantly.
Just as the medical group in your example, he has a thriving practice.