Creating Devoted Customers with Imaginative Service

Keeping the “R” in “CRM”

CRM has been hot for a few years.  But, IT wizardry and the push to cut costs by un-humanizing the service experience has too often removed the “relationship” from “customer relationship management." The by-product was aptly characterized by a friend of ours describing her bank. 

“They installed this new customer relationship management system so all my correspondence from them is now tailored––they even knew my son was heading off to college this year.  Now, when I call and give them my account number, they comment on the fact that I have a new Buick, financed by their loan department.  But all that is just mechanized.  When I walk in any branch no one acts like they know me or even wants to get to know me!  Give me back old fashioned personal service, not this customer-ized baloney.  It’s no more genuine than the ATM.” 

Attitude is the fuel of imaginative service and an attitude that clearly shows the spirit of greatness can provide the energy as well as the magnetism needed to deliver an imaginative service experience. It is a contagious attitude!  Customers love to be served by people whose spirit to serve is unmistakable in its strength and commitment.  And, it is the consistency and sincerity of attitude that causes customers to tell friends about their imaginative service experiences.

Most of us like tailor-made service.  We enjoy a service provider that knows our preferences and caters to our unique needs and expectations.  But, we still want the service provider to treat us like an important and valued person.  We want to know that inside customer service is a human, not a program.

The Business Case for an Imaginative Service Culture

1. Fosters a style of communication and an attitude of consideration that promotes higher employee morale.  Research shows that the number one impact on customer relations is employee relations.

2. Encourages leaders to treat employees in the fashion they expect employees to treat customers thus yielding greater employee commitment (lowering turnover costs), more creativity (increasing breakthroughs) and larger contribution (boosting productivity).

3. Promotes sensitivity to barriers that inhibit customers from getting their needs and expectations met.  This bureaucracy-busting perspective leads to enhanced efficiency in all areas of operation, not just those experienced by customers.

4. Cultivates partnering skills that produce better teamwork, greater synergy and interdependence.

5. Enables employees to anticipate customer needs and requirements thus enabling them to eliminate activities and actions that create limited or no value in supporting customer loyalty.  This lowers overall operating costs.

6. Encourages an open-minded and inquisitive mind-set that advances diversity, learning and creativity.

7. Cultivates assertive employee pride that leads to the attraction of more customers to serve and better talent to employ.

8. Provides the ability to charge a higher price because of greater customer value.  Some industries can charge as much as 15% higher prices if their service is noticeably remarkable. 

9. Saves the world, eliminates hunger, and promotes well-being throughout the planet!

Imaginative Service: Rx for Growing Customers in a Tough Economy

A large brokerage company added a twist to their toll-free telephone cue—“...punch 6 if you’d like to hear a duck quack!”  Word of the playful feature spread and soon millions of people were weekly calling to hear the duck.  The company had to remove the unique feature because it overloaded their phone system and ran up a huge tab!  The story communicates just how bored customers have become. 

Something else has happened to your customers.  They’ve been getting way over-stimulated.  Television has become both high definition and multi-media.  The nightly news shows the weather report, ball scores, stock market numbers and a crawling headline simultaneously on the TV screen.  That steady stream of sensory arousal risks making a trip to your unit or organization seem humdrum and plain vanilla. 

What’s an organization to do?  Imaginative service!  Want a small taste?  The service techs at Sewell Lexus in Dallas program in the radio stations for a new car buyer from their trade-in and let customers discover it.  Miller Bros. Ltd in Atlanta, an up-scale men’s clothing store, has a large gumball machine in its entrance.  Beside it is a large bowl of shiny pennies.  Guess where junior gets to go while daddy is trying on trousers?

At a time when value-added service has gotten way too pricey maybe it is time try value-unique. Customers recall, return, and refer others to those experiences that engage them emotionally and leave them with a positive memory.  Creating a place of joy can help your unit or organization become the customer’s “oasis of choice.”  And, imaginative service can take their breath away.

We always like to hear other stories of imaginative service as well as your comments on our ideas. Hope to hear from you soon.

Chip Bell and John Patterson

Attitude: The Foundation of Imaginative Service

Welcome! Thank you for visiting our Imaginative Service blog. 

Our blog mission is to share cutting-edge information helpful in decision making, learning, and improving your organization’s ability to create devoted customers through imaginative service.  We also want to take your breath away so you’ll want to return for another visit!!

In today’s tough economic times, delivering imaginative service that takes your customers’ breath away is the prescription for providing incredible care and service to your most important asset – your customers! Great customer service gives us an experience to remember; imaginative service gives us a magical story to tell. 

We have helped many organizations alter their view of their service experience from “pretty good” to the kind that takes customers breath away.  Dissecting the take-their-breath-away experience reveal many important parts.  However, attitude is the one part that must always be present for imaginative service to work.  Without attitude, imaginative service risks being viewed by customers as manipulative, mechanical, or counterfeit.

 Eighty five percent of success in life, according to a well known and often cited Harvard study, is due solely to attitude. An attitude that shows the spirit of greatness provides the energy and magnetism needed to deliver an animated experience for customers and drawing devotion from them. While customers like dealing with employees who are committed, they absolutely love being served by someone whose spirit is unmistakable in its passion, pride and commitment. Occasional demonstrations of a spirit of greatness are not sufficient. It is both the consistency and sincerity of attitude that brings customers back and causes them to tell their friends about their experience.

The most important thing to know about attitude is that it is something one selects. No normal person comes into the world with a particular attitude. It is chosen (or not). The second important thing to know is that a spirit of greatness attitude can be contagious. When we are around happy upbeat people it is much easier for us to join in the spirit – especially if the invitation to join is coming from someone who clearly prefers we enroll. An unbridled spirit has a magnetic power on employees and customers. It draws out their higher self.

The first step is your own animation—choosing to demonstrate the attitude you seek from others.  Remember – people (employees and customers) can hear your smile and they can see as well as feel your attitude very quickly!

Imaginative service is sourced in joy and fun.  It comes from the same part of the soul that plans a prank, organizes a party, or does a favor for a friend.  When that part is used regularly, it raises employee self-esteem, increases their resilience, and improves their morale.  And, high employee morale in challenging economic times makes depressed, gloomy customers want to come back more, spend more, and recommend more.

Please send us your feedback and share with us examples you experience of great connections created through imaginative service.

We hope you will visit again!  You will be amazed at what you will find on your visit!

Chip Bell and John Patterson