Creating Devoted Customers with Imaginative Service

Twenty Things Today’s Customers Want

1.      Make me smarter…it helps me keep up with my ever-changing world.

2.      Help me do it myself…I enjoy feeling self-sufficient.

3.      Make the response fast … but don't sacrifice quality—quick and rushed aren't the same.

4.      Help me customize the experience like I want it.

5.      Anchor your offering to a cause I believe in.  Good works sell.

6.      Entertain me.  Make the experience bright, shiny and memorable.

7.      Don't invade my privacy; never let me worry about whether you know too much about me.

8.      Respect my time by making your offering super easy to deal with.

9.      Anticipate my needs…it tells me you really understand me.

10.   Treat me with respect when things go wrong … not some cheap, generic atonement unmatched to the incident.

11.   Never take me for granted.  I will drop you in a heartbeat.

12.   When you make a mistake, tell me the truth and show you care.

13.   Link me to a professional team, not a single person who may leave.

14.   My time is just as important as my funds … maybe more.

15.   Help me integrate …link stuff together to increase the efficiency of my life.

16.   Life is complex:  Make your service simple.

17.   Life is harried:  Make your service calm.

18.   Life can be shallow:  Make your service have resonance and depth.

19.   Life can be painful:  Make your service joyful.

20.   Life can be lonely:  Make your service a valued connection.

 

 

Imaginative Service: Keeping the Light On for Customers

Customers are attracted to spirited people!  And, today’s customers are frustrated with indifferent service---not bad service, just boring, comatose service.  They witness service people sleep walking through the workday. And, as they guard their ever diminishing dollar, employee spirit is one component of value they carefully watch.  When they witness employees who act like there is no light on inside they are fast to flee with their funds.  

Smart organizations nurture spirit.  It is not about organizational loyalty anymore.   We know the days of employees saluting the company flag are long gone.   It is about employees showing aliveness and enthusiasm while at work.  Most organizations today would rather have a fired up employee for a couple of years than endure an uninspired one who stays for the gold watch.

However, the very nature of spirit is to be unpredictable and untidy.  The heart is more unruly than the head.   And, “organization” can become the enemy of spirit.  While there must be a balance between enthusiasm and efficiency, the rational side of enterprise has always had the upper hand. 

Are logical processes rendering your employees apathetically automatic?   If mechanical wins over inventive and robotic replaces zealous, then the excitement customers adore will be wrung out of the organization.  Where are the spirit leeches in your organization?  How can they be exorcised? 

Imaginative Service: Keeping the “And” in Brand

Which is more important---looking good or being good?  If you ask a teenager, you’ll get the former; your mother will pick the later.  But, wise people in charge of creating and sustaining customer loyalty will advocate a blend of the two.  Looking good might attract new customers but being good is what keeps them coming back.

The word “brand” is associated with “looking good”—image, logo, signage, promotion, etc.  Brand has always been an important tool for corporate identification and customer trust.  Let a new hamburger enterprise opt for silver arches as its icon and even a clown named Ronald will have something to say about it.  Try mass marketing your homemade lemonade that your daughter named Pepsi and see if you don’t get a unhappy lawyer knocking on your door.  We protect brands with the same fervor we guard patents, trademarks, and company secrets.  But, that is just one side of brand.

Being good is all about the experience you create for customers.  We might hardwire quality into our products or services, but if customers do not judge them as “good,” all the QC and guarantees in the world are not likely to change their opinion.  Being good means understanding how customers perceive what they receive from your organization.  It also means safeguarding the quality and consistency of that experience with the exact same commitment you use on the other half of brand. 

What are you doing to keep the “and” in your brand—looking good and being good?

 

Imaginative Service: Turning an Oops into and Opportunity

We all know it when we experience it.  Things go wrong...the never-wear-out jeans wear out, the steak is too rare, the knock in the engine comes back...we feel let down, or just plain furious. We all have experienced service failure...and judged the culprit by how well they responded.  Customers who have had a problem and had it spectacularly solved can sometimes end up more devoted than customers who have had a problem.

Great service recovery starts with an expression of humility.  A simple “I’m sorry that happened to you” can communicate caring in a way which can calm even the angriest customer.  Customers need to hear words that communicate you understand how they feel—that you appreciate why they are upset.  Customers need to experience some urgency—words of momentum—which let them know you are working to correct their problem quickly.  It may be important to provide some gesture which tangibly telegraphs your sincere regret the disappointment occurred.  Finally, follow-up with customers after a problem has been fixed to telegraph to customers you sincerely care.

Remember, the difference between a good service operation and a great service operation is not how they perform in normal times; it’s how they perform when the customer is disappointed. 

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect; but, they do expect you to care.  Is your service recovery process one of your service distinctions?   

Imaginative Service: How to Decorate a Service Experience

Walk into the lobby of a Westin Hotel and your nose knows the scent suddenly shifts from the “smell of the street” to a signature fragrance called “White Tea.”  Reach the checkout counter of Dallas garden center Nicholson-Hardie and you can pet a big calico cat sprawled across the counter complete with business card with the title “House Cat.”  Stroll around a Bass Pro Shop and take in the sporting goods displays amplified by such visual desserts as a giant fish tank and museum quality wildlife dioramas.  An upscale jewelry shop has employees wear formal evening attire. 

What’s happening in these pictures?  Enterprises magnifying the power of the five senses to augment their customer’s service experiences.  When realtors suggest baking an apple pie before holding an open house, when cookie shops pipe their kitchen aroma onto the sidewalk, and when upscale retail stores put a pianist at a baby grand on the sales floor, they all are declaring the common sense of uncommon senses.

Take a close look at the “touch me” features of your unit or organization?  Customers enjoy a tactile connection.  What does your enterprise sound like?  What do customers hear in the background when they call?  Is your parking lot interesting?  Does your unit’s entrance “welcome” in an obvious and positive way?  Have a friend “shop” your facility and count smiles.  

If you turned your five senses loose to audit your service experience, what would they come back and recommend?

Imaginative Service: Reawakening the Nobility of Service

“You make me want to be a better man.”  These were the most quoted lines in the hit movie “As Good As It Gets.”  It was Jack Nicholson’s awkward “terms of endearment” directed at new girl friend Helen Hunt.  The words capture the nobility of service—helping customers source their higher self.  And, in challenging times when so much in customers’ lives pulls them down, imaginative service can help them pursue their best. 

How do you reawaken the nobility of service?  Model giving your very best to all around you.  Show customers what great patience looks like.  Service is defined as “giving another person assistance.”  That means staying ever vigilant for opportunities to help.  Proactive service is not reactive; it is anticipatory--thinking ahead of the customer’s requirements.  It means caretaking—keeping customers out of the weeds and worries of their service encounters.   

Nobility is about trust—showing confidence in customers and optimism regarding their fulfilling their end of the service covenant.  Trust bolsters self-worth.  It empowers.  And, it communicates a special commitment to the importance of your customers’ contributions to your bottom line.  Nobility comes from caring beyond the transaction.  Customers feel valued, not when their needs are met, but when their humanity is affirmed in the process.

We live in an era of grey—more pessimism than hope; more worry than joy.  Imaginative service can be the light at the end of dreariness if it targets the customers’ hearts, not just their wallets.   Does your service lift spirits?  What can you do to make you customer “want to be a better person?”

Imaginative Service: “Fingering the Goods”

“Fingering the goods” was a 1950’s Southern expression for “shopping in a store.”   Except for the Sears Roebuck catalog, store shopping was the only means for acquiring merchandise.  Today, we go on line in seconds (without trying to find a parking space).  We can go directly to the item we’re seeking (without getting lost or trying to find a sales clerk for directions).  Up-selling is done without pressure (“People who bought this item also bought…”).  And, if the item fails to please, we simply put it back in the package, slap a pre-printed label on it, and put it out front for the postal person to pick up.  There’s no returns clerk to cross examine us about the missing original receipt.

Why would anyone ever go back into a store with such on-line convenience?  And, the in-store versus on-line competition is daily being fought with such formidable foes as Amazon.com and Zappos.com. Some retailers have countered by offering their merchandise on-line.  But, stores don’t need to throw in the towel.  On-line shopping does not let you “finger the goods.”  In-store service can give you an experience that can take your breath away.  The warmth of the super-helpful clerk, the sound of the soothing music, the smell of the perfume counter, the opportunity for a tactile connection with the product, are all features completely missing from the on-line buying experience.

What are you doing to help your customers “finger the goods”?  What is your customers’ buying memory beyond the parking, product and price?  What steps can you take to make “fingering the goods” more valued than “point and click”?

Imaginative Service: The Magic of the Outcome after the Outcome

Watching a skilled magician is an exercise in awe.  Try as we might to see through the sleight of hand, we come away amazed.  We know there is a rational explanation.  But in our hearts we aren’t so sure. It leaves us with a feeling of enchantment.  Imaginative service––service that takes customers breath away--is strikingly parallel to fine stage magic.  

One service magic technique underutilized is focusing on the “outcome after the outcome.” It means thinking about what the customer will be doing with the service outcome after you’ve done what the customer expected.   “We try to guess what is beyond our customers’ purchase,” says John McClesky of the men’s suits department at the Dallas Nordstrom’s store.  “Recommending a tie with a new sports jacket is typical sales talk. But if you learn your customer is buying the jacket for a cruise, you might explore dressy shorts, an ascot, or a Panama hat.” 

Consider the possibilities of what customers might be doing, thinking, or feeling after you have met their presented need.  What small gesture would make your customer swoon? A bit of subtle conversation about life after the met need can often surface opportunities.  

Instead of asking, “Would there be anything else?” ask, “What have we not thought of that would make your hotel stay really special?”  Make your queries reach into the future for clues ripe for imaginative service. What do customers’ outcomes after the outcome teach you about ways to surprise them?

 

Imaginative Service: Serving Unconditionally

Ramen is a traditional Japanese noodle dish that, well prepared, is a highly desired delicacy.  That is the back story for the new movie, The Ramen Girl.  A young woman finds herself in Tokyo and wants to understudy a master ramen chef who speaks no English; she speaks no Japanese.  He’s impatient and demanding; she works hard to be perfect.  The climax of the movie (without giving away too much) happens when the frustrated chef takes the equally frustrated protégé to visit his mother, the person who taught him to be a great ramen chef.  

Creating ramen, the mother tells the young women, is not about mixing ingredients in the proper proportion and cooking the broth at the right temperature.  In order to make a dish that connects your heart to your customer’s heart, you must put your soul into the preparation and presentation, not just your smarts and sweat.  It was a turning point.  The woman let go of her pursuit of precision and embraced the “from the heart” expression of spirit.  Imaginative service is like preparing ramen.

Learn the fundamentals of your quality service.  Bank customers want accuracy; hospital patients desire cleanliness, and airline passengers expect safety.  Then, without loosing sight of “the right ingredients in the broth,” put your energy into your customer’s needs and hopes. 

Service is not about you it is about assisting another in a way that makes a difference while making an impression.  Would your customers judge their experience with you as “unconditional service?”

Imaginative Service: Adding a “Jack-in-the-box” to the Experience

There is something magical about a jack-in-the-box.  First, the toy is always colorful.   Most make happy music as you wind the crank.  But, the coolest part is the fact that you never know exactly when the “jack” is going to pop out of the box.  What makes this toy such an alluring novelty is the element of surprise.

Imaginative service is like a jack-in-the-box--colorful service punctuated by a joyful surprise.  Like the toy, imaginative service is service with novelty.  And, the root meaning of the word “novelty” is “new,” as in fresh and original.

A colorful gumball machine sits on a small table at the entrance foyer to Miller Brothers Ltd., an upscale men’s clothing store in Atlanta.  Beside it is a large bowl of pennies.  Guess where Junior goes while daddy is trying on trousers?  Novelty at it’s finest.   A dry cleaner in Charlotte gives a candy kiss to every customer.  But, the familiar chocolate candy has a surprise—an almond in the middle.  Novelty!  Compliment Mama Cole’s awesome banana pudding pie at Cole’s Café in Washington, DC and Mama just might surprise you with a copy of her secret recipe!

Customers love novelty, especially in a time of dreary and worrisome news.   What “new” can you add to your customer’s experience?  How can you deliver service with an imaginative surprise?