Creating Devoted Customers with Imaginative Service

Imaginative Service: Serving the Cocooner

It probably started with the Sears Roebuck catalog.  A farmer hundreds of miles from the nearest store could order a new pair of long johns and never leave the farm.  Today the internet has transformed the concept into one with a new label—cocooning.  NetFlix sends me DVD’s, I can download albums with ITunes, Office Depot brings me office supplies and now my grocery let’s me order groceries on-line and then delivers them to my back door, putting the cold stuff in the small fridge in the garage for a fee if I’m out of town.

Some might see cocooning as the start of a new “customer as hermit” movement.  But, perhaps it has less to do with isolation and more to do with independence and freedom.  It clearly puts pressure on stores to make the buying experience so wonderful that customers will drive there in their cars, find a parking spot, search store aisles, wait in line for check-out, and be cross-examined if something must be returned. 

What are you doing to make your service as easy as Amazon.com or Zappos.com?  What can you do to make cocooning with your organization a memorable experience?

Imaginative Service: How warm is your service hospitality?

We arrived at the new Springhill Suites in Athens, GA on the way to see our daughter play soccer for the University of Georgia. We were on our way to our traditional pregame tailgate event so in addition to my fatherly pregame jitters I was in a hurry to check in and get to the soccer stadium. Rick, the front desk clerk offered a warm hello and asked if I was checking in. I replied yes and provided my name. Rick seemed perplexed and I began to develop a severe case of service anxiety! “I don’t have a reservation for you” he replied with courtesy and grace.

My wife brought me the printed confirmation which Rick studied carefully. “This is for last weekend Mr. Patterson.” Now in addition to my increasing service anxiety, I felt like an idiot! Rick said he wood get Jan to see what could be done. Jan appeared instantaneously, offered a warm greeting and said she would look into it but not to worry they had plenty of rooms. She quickly found my old reservation and changed everything to the correct date. With her best hospitality spirit she told me they had one more room on the first floor. When I replied we preferred higher floor rooms away from the elevator Jan responded immediately by showing me a diagram of the top floor and asking if room 524 would be ok. I responded with an enthusiastic perfect! Jan completed our check in with supersonic speed noting we were in a hurry which was easy to see since we were in our “team gear”.

We went up to our wonderful room dropped our bags and quickly headed out. On the way out Jan asked if our room was ok and we replied; “it is fabulous!” After the game we returned to the hotel. Rick was still there and inquired as to how our evening went. We responded; “great a 3-0 victory!”

Jan and Rick displayed a high level of service hospitality; they made us feel welcome and cared for. They also took an interest in our reason for the visit. And best of all they turned my mistake into a wonderful and warm service experience! How much hospitality are you displaying in your customer’s experience? What can you do to warm up their service experience?

Imaginative Service: Why Not Add Elegance?

We checked in to the Lake Lure Inn.  Built in 1927, the antique North Carolina hotel served as command central for the making of the movie Dirty Dancing.  You now can stay in the Patrick Swayze Suite or the Jennifer Gray Suite.  Furnished with exquisite period furniture with meticulous attention to detail, guests feel elevated and enriched. 

We had dinner in their Veranda Restaurant overlooking the full moonlit lake only a stones through away from our front-row table.  The staff was all locals from the rural small NC mountain town.  They reached way beyond their plain heritage in a noticeable effort to create a sense of elegance.  After seating us at our reserved table, the maitre de presented our menus, wine list and graciously said, “Hope ya’ll enjoy”--not a phrase you’d hear at a five-star Boston restaurant.  Nevertheless, we felt very special.   There was an earnest effort to take the experience much, much higher than Nettie’s Diner down the street.

Why can’t every service experience be a Lake Lure Inn moment?  The difference between the Inn and Nettie’s Diner was a deliberate attempt to upgrade the experience.  Someone decided that the classy hotel setting should have a classy experience.   Knowing they could not afford to import a Ritz-Carlton Hotel trained wait staff, they entrusted their reputation to young people recruited from the local Burgers and More.  And, it absolutely worked.  What are you doing to add elegance to your customer’s experience?

Imaginative Service: Don’t Let Your Fear Make You Act Stupid

We take a local newspaper.  For the last two weeks we’ve gotten phone calls on both land lines every few hours.  If we didn’t answer the phone in two rings, when we did answer it, there was total silence.  When we called back, we got a far away call center operator asking us to subscribe to the local newspaper. 

“Why do you hang up after two rings,” we asked.  “That’s not us,” the operator replied.  “It’s the computer.  If you don’t answer quickly, it automatically goes to the next number.  “But, we already take your newspaper,” we persisted. “Why do you keep calling us several times a day?”  “Oh,” she said defensively, “The computer calls everyone in the phone book.”  Our final answer:  “One more call and we’ll cancel our subscription!”

We live in challenging economic times.  Many industries (like newspapers) are struggling to stay afloat.  Don’t lose your good customers because your fear makes you do stupid things!  Even if you feel scared, help your customers experience your confidence, not your anxiety.

Imaginative Service: Hosting Customers

We were en route to a meeting and stopped for lunch.  We are major fans of McDonald’s French fries—the best on the planet.  We also enjoy the Chick-fil-A salads.  Luckily the two fast-food restaurants were right next door to each other.

We parked between the two and walked first into Mickey D’s for the fries.  It was like a human vending machine—fast and functional.  But, the Chick-fil-A experience was completely different!  You could feel the upbeat warmth as opened their door.  The counter person smiled and greeted us with, “Thank you for being our guests; what can I tempt you with today!”  Every employee had the same hosting spirit.

As we were leaving, we asked an employee, “How come this is so different than over there.”  We pointed at the golden arches.  “Oh,” she said with a grin, “Over there, they serve customers; but here we are host to our guests.”  We pushed past the labels.   Spotting our bootlegged fries, she continued: “Over there you just get the fries.  But, here we give you a great experience.  You may not remember those fries tomorrow; but we hope you will remember your visit with us, even if you forget what you ordered.”  Are you serving or hosting?

Imaginative Service: When IDK Becomes TMI

Having it your way has been the mantra of many service providers.  Such a competitive advantage requires comprehensive customer intelligence.  Customers enjoy “we know you” personalization and abhor repeat engagements when the service provider treats them like a stranger. 

A luxury hotel chain had a process that tracked guests’ preferences.  Even housekeepers entered input into a PDA to be later considered for the guest’s profile.  Order a fruit plate a couple of times through room service and leave the kiwi on the dish, and your third fruit plate will come sans kiwi.  Guests enjoyed getting a tailored experience at each of the chain’s properties.  But, a point came when guests worried their privacy was being invaded.  Luckily, the hotel chain found clever ways to balance personalization with a respect for guest privacy.

Social media has ushered in tools for service providers to go way beyond “I don’t know” (IDK) anything about my customers.  Integrating social media input with traditional customer relationship management can make possible the “Have It Your Way” experience customers enjoy.  However, it is vital service providers avoid “Too Much Information” (TMI) sending customers to competitors.  As you focus on tailor-made service, how can you avoid invading your customers’ privacy?

Imaginative Service: Making the Customer Your Partner

Who’s your banker, your insurance agent, or your mortgage lender?  If your answer is an institution, not a name, you are dealing with an enterprise that has replaced an important bond with a clerk or a call center. All that might be just terrific until your need is unique or your problem outside their script.  Then, you are left on your own and finding yourself cursing your way to the exit.

People don’t buy products and services; they buy the expectation of benefits and solutions they deem valuable.  Bundled with that value today is a long-term relationship, not a short-term transaction.  Customers as partners are more forgiving of error.  With a vested interest in your success, they spend more, purchase a wider array of stuff,  assertively advocate you more and offer suggestions for how you can get better.  What are you doing to make your customers feel like partners?

Imaginative Service: Service as a Tattoo

My nephew came home after his first semester at college sporting a brand new tattoo—the Greek letters of his new fraternity!   His parents were less than amused.  We teased him with the question—“How would you feel today if that tattoo said VBS?”  “VBS?” he asked with a puzzled look.  “Yes, you were crazy about Vacation Bible School ten years ago?!” 

“Oops!” he responded rather pensively, “Guess I better always really like Sigma Chi.”

Tattoos come in many forms—some are works of art; some are body graffiti.  Some are dark and scary; some are colorful and happy.  However, unless you have the money of an Angelina Jolie, tattoos are permanent. 

Service is like a tattoo.  Once you make a mark on your customers, they tend to remember it a very long time.  And, their experiences can be as varied as tattoos.  What picture are you engraving in the memory of your customers?  If your service was a tattoo, what would it look like?

Imaginative Service: Hitting the Culture Change Wall

Culture change is fun!  It always starts with lots of exciting meetings, colorful new posters, really cool buttons to wear, and even new screen savers reminding you to “Thrive on!” or “Right First Time Every Time” or “We Break for Breaks” or whatever the code name is for the super important, this-is-the-big-one culture change effort.  People get to leave their regular jobs and go to special training.  And, there is always the awards banquet with its banter, banners, and big deal speeches from the folks at the tippy top of the food chain. 

We have seen major culture change implemented with great success (our bailiwick happens to be customer loyalty).  Visit the winning organizations five years into their culture change effort and you would not recognize the place.  People actually have embraced new practices, responded to new policies, and demonstrated new enthusiasm for the prescribed new change. 

Culture change is not fun!  Typically, about one year into most major culture change efforts, the organization hits the proverbial wall.  The shiny wears off and the struggle begins.  Happy about the merrymaking, employees are now faced with the discipline of change. And, discipline for most people, is not the funniest thing in their lives.  We all enjoy being physically fit and appropriately thin.  But, most people don’t “TV watch” their way to health, they rely on the un-fun run on the treadmill and passing up dessert.

Culture change is more like a marathon than a dash.  In a marathon race, runners are initially propelled by the thrill of the race, the cheer of the crowd, and the exhilaration of being prepared.  But, at mile twenty, many runners are suddenly dealing with the depletion of carbohydrates and glycogen to a reliance on fatty acids.  Easy strides now feel like giant weights have been attached.  Many marathon runners simply drop out as running becomes “just too hard.”

Culture change is just like that.  “The Wall” in culture change is discipline.  The necessary discipline of change involves solid accountability for new practices, inclusion of those practices into performance management, and strong leadership dealing with resistance from employees more comfortable with the old ways that made them successful.  Discipline involves hard choices and tough conversations. It entails compliance and consistency, not just fun and games. 

You hear signs of “The Wall” in a culture change effort when normally good employees complain about it being “too hard” or “we are overworked.”  The most recognizable sign is leaders pleading to “go slower” or “let’s delay this” or “we have so many other initiatives we are dealing with right now.”  The emotional pain of running on sheer adrenalin signals them to “drop back” or “drop out.”  Obviously altering the momentum of the change effort risks other initiatives passing it by and consuming attention.

Great marathon runners don’t focus on “slowing down” when they hit the wall; they attack their struggle.  When Yogi Berra comically said “Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical,” he was referring to the wall.  Charlie Garfield, a sports psychologist and coauthor of the book Peak Performance maintains that 60 to 90 percent of success in sports can be attributed to “mental factors and psychological mastery.”  The same is true for culture change.  It hangs on leaders with the mental toughness and unflappable passion to stay the course.

Employees read commitment to any change effort by what happens in the middle of the race, not at the beginning.  The beginning is always the easy part.  When leaders are tested by the culture change race, true believers attack the pain.  Few leaders today have extra time on their hands or room on their plates.  Leaders show the priority of culture change by what the change effort replaces, not by whether it is added to an already overloaded “to do” list.  When leaders stand up and say, “We can do this” or “Get over your whining” they begin to move reluctant performers to the other side of the wall.  If culture change were easy, it would have already happened. 

An interesting statistic is the difference between the medal winners and the “also ran’s” in the last Olympics.  It came down to less than one percent!  That is what successful change leaders deliver.  When a culture change succeeds, it is due to leaders willing to give the “one percent” more to make it a winner.