Customer Service Reader

Close to the customer

Excerpts from In Search of Excellence
Tom Peters & Robert Waterman Jr, Chapter 6: Close to the Customer

• The best outside analysis of the close-to-the-customer-through service concept that we have come across was performed by Dinah Nemeroff.
• Nemeroff finds three principal themes in an effective service orientation: (1) intensive, active involvement on the part of senior management; (2) a remarkable people orientation; and (3) a high intensity of measurement and feedback.
• As we have found over and over, it starts with senior management. Nemeroff neatly calls it “Service statesmanship". Senior executives exercise that statesmanship through personal example.
• Their commitment starts with a company philosophy. With service as their top goal, they said that “profitability naturally follows”.
• Nemeroff found that top management directly intervenes in decisions about service. These mangers have frequent regular meetings with junior professionals who respond to customer mail. They pen “marginal notes on customer correspondence.” And “engage in dramatic service delivery gestures to increase visibility to customers.” (And, we would add, to reinforce this service message throughout their own organizations.)
• Of another aspect of top management style, Nemeroff makes a crucial and surprisingly subtle point: “Interviewed executives believe they must maintain a long-term view of service as a revenue builder.” This point is all too often missed in big American companies.
• Profit objectives, while very necessary, are internally focused and certainly do not inspire people by the thousands way down the line.
• Service objectives, on the other hand, are almost without fail meaningful to down-the-line employees. A strong sense of personal accountability among down-the-line employees is crucial. And one knows that has been accomplished when someone in the field says “Each one of us is the company.”
• Nemeroff makes the important connection that “customer relations simply mirror employee relations.”
• Inseparable from the way the service-oriented companies manage their people is the intensity of measurement and feedback systems. Perhaps her most significant finding in this regard was that new rewards and incentive programs are in continuous preparation.
• This really struck us in all aspects of the work of the excellent companies. Programs for people - incentive programs, training programs, or simple hoopla - undergo continuous retuning, much as product development does. No practice is expected to have impact forever, and programs for people have life cycles just as products do, maybe even shorter ones.

Strategic advantage in retail

Excerpts from Retailing Management, Chapter 19: Customer Service
Michael Levy & Barton A Weitz

• Good service keeps customers returning to a retailer, and generates positive word-of-mouth communication, which attracts new customers.
• Providing high-quality service is difficult for retailers. Automated manufacturing makes the quality of most merchandise consistent from item to item. But the quality of retail service can vary dramatically from store to store, and from salesperson to salesperson within a store.
• It’s hard for retailers to control the performance of employees who provide the service. A sales associate may provide good service to one customer and poor service to the next customer.
• 73% of consumers attribute their best customer service experience to store employees. Conversely, 81% of consumers attribute their worst customer service experience to employees.
• Most services provided by retailers are intangible - customers can’t see or touch them. Clothing can be held and examined, but the assistance provided by a sales associate or an electronic agent can’t. Intangibility makes it hard to provide and maintain high-quality service because retailers can’t count, measure, or check service before it’s delivered to customers.
• The challenges of providing consistent high-quality service provides an opportunity for a retailer to develop a sustainable competitive advantage.

Training at Disney

Excerpts from Be Our Guest, Chapter 3: The Magic of Cast
Disney Institute

You might think that Walt Disney World pays a premium for extra-courteous and friendly employees. In fact, cast members are hired from the same labor pool as every other organization uses and are paid the going rates. The not-so-secret method by which ordinary people are transformed into Walt Disney World cast members can be found in the way they are trained.

• The first thing that new cast members do is begin learning how to deliver Walt Disney World’s brand of Quality Service. Walt Disney World uses a two-tiered approach to preparing the cast for service delivery.
• The first tier is conducted at Disney University and teaches concepts and behaviors that are common to every cast member throughout the organization.
• The second tier occurs on the job and encompasses the location-specific information that is needed to perform in the different business units of the resort.
• All newly hired cast members start their tenure at Disney with Traditions, a one-day orientation program taught by Disney University, the internal training arm of the company. The average class size is 45 people and there are about nine classes each week, with as many as 14 classes per week in peak hiring seasons.
• Traditions offers plenty of relevant and practical knowledge, and existing cast members serve in the role of training facilitators. Each year, a voluntary casting call is made for about 40 Traditions Assistants. It is considered an honor to perform in Traditions. Each year, those cast members who are chosen leave their daily jobs at regular intervals to teach the course. The extra depth of knowledge and refresher training acquired by the Traditions Assistants in the course of facilitating the program is an added benefit of using veteran employees to deliver training.
• The goal of Traditions is well stated by a veteran Disney Institute facilitator who says, “We don’t put people in Disney. We put Disney in people’’.
• Toward that end, the program utilizes a variety of training techniques, including lecture, storytelling, video, exercises, large and small group discussion, and field experiences.

Traditions is designed to accomplish four major purposes:

1. To acclimate new cast members to the foundations of the resort’s culture.
2. To perpetuate the language and symbols, heritage and traditions, quality standards, values, and traits and behaviors of Walt Disney World.
3. To create a sense of excitement about working at the resort.
4. To introduce new cast members to the core safety regulations.

Setting delivers service

Excerpts from Be Our Guest, Chapter 4: The Magic of Setting
Disney Institute

Setting is the environment in which service is delivered to customers, all of the objects within that environment, and the procedures used to enhance and maintain the service environment and objects. More simply, setting is the stage on which business is conducted.

• If you ask the typical businessperson how their company delivers service to customers, they will surely mention people and processes as primary delivery systems. But the idea that an organization’s setting can somehow deliver service is more obscure.
• Setting can deliver both the physical and psychological aspects of service.
• All organizations, knowingly or unknowingly, build messages to their customers into the settings in which they operate.
• Picture a luxury car dealership and a used car lot. Now, a theme park and a carnival. And now, a designer clothing retailer and an outlet store. In each pair, people are buying similar products—cars, entertainment, and apparel. But, in each case, the setting in which they buy these products is communicating a great deal about the quality of the products and services customers can expect, not to mention the price they are willing to pay.
• A good exercise to better understand the messages sent by setting is to visualize a store that you patronize or better yet, actually visit It. Drive up to the front entrance and look at the signage and landscaping. What impression do they convey about the business within? Enter the business. Look at the entryway. Is it clear how to proceed? Is it clean and orderly? What does it tell you about this organization? Continue to observe the setting throughout the process of making a purchase. At each step, think about what the setting is telling you. Now, return to your own organization. Approach it like one of your customers and repeat the exercise. What does your setting tell customers?
• The simple fact is that everything, animate and inanimate, speaks to customers. Not only does everything speak, it also acts upon customers. The messages delivered by setting change customers’ perceptions about the products and services that we sell.
• As R. Buckminster Fuller aptly said, “You can’t change people. But if you change the environment that the people are in, they will change.”
• The point of all of this is that setting is a critical element of the Quality Service Cycle and it is vital that settings be designed and managed to effectively communicate and deliver service to customers.

The Components of Setting

• Architectural design
• Landscaping
• Lighting
• Color
• Signage
• Directional design on carpet
• Texture of floor surface
• Focal points and directional signs
• Internal/external detail
• Music/ambient noise
• Smell
• Touch/tactile experiences
• Taste

Setting also includes the work of maintaining and enhancing the environment and the objects within it. Even the best-designed setting must be continuously maintained and improved. A poorly maintained setting is just as telling as a poorly designed one. Maintenance means more than just keeping the setting clean. It also means protecting it from damage, and repairing wear and tear.

A lot of work

• Telling a story through setting means getting the details right. An organization can’t send customers a believable message regarding Quality Service unless every detail of setting supports it. An overflowing trash basket or a dead plant can undercut a message about the quality of your product or the care for your customers in a single glance. A sign with missing letters or misspelled words tells customers something about you.
• If it all sounds like a lot of work, it is. For all of its success, the Disney theme show is quite a fragile thing. It just takes one contradiction, one out-of-place stimulus to negate everything. Put up a brown-paper-bag sign that says “Keep Out” . . . take a host’s costume away and put him in blue jeans and a tank top . . . replace that Gay Nineties melody with rock numbers . . . place a touch of artificial turf here. . . add a surly employee there . . . it really doesn’t take much to upset it all.
• What’s our success formula? It’s attention to infinite detail, the little things, the little, minor, picky points that others just don’t want to take the time, money, or effort to do. As far as our Disney organization is concerned, it’s the only way we’ve ever done it . . . it’s been our success formula. We’ll probably be explaining this to outsiders at the end of our next two decades in the business.

Service processes

Excerpts from Be Our Guest, Chapter 5: The Magic of Process
Disney Institute

• Take a process orientation to service delivery. Roughly three-quarters of service is delivered via processes. Processes are the policies, tasks, and procedures used to deliver service.
• Collect and analyze combustion statements. Combustion statements are indicators of service issues that need to be solved. Listen to and study your guests to identify and optimize those issues before combustion points become explosion points.
• Optimize guest flow throughout the service experience. Create the perfect service flow by optimizing the operation of products and services, allowing guests to self-manage their experience, and effectively managing unavoidable waits.
• Equip your cast to communicate with guests. Fielding questions immediately is an important component of customer satisfaction. Provide your cast with the right information in the right manner, at the right time.
• Create processes for guests who need service attention. Identify guests who need service attention, such as children, international customers, and people with disabilities, and implement processes to ensure they get a positive experience.
• Debug service processes continuously. Make an effort to continually improve your service processes at every opportunity. Fix design flaws and oversights. Adapt new technologies and techniques, and solve your customers’ problems before they ask for help.

Three elements of magical service moments

Excerpts from Be Our Guest, Chapter 6: The Magic of Integration
Disney Institute

There are three features of great service moments to keep in mind. They are high-touch, high-show, and high-tech.

• High-touch refers to the need to build interaction into the guest experience. For the most part, we humans enjoy connecting with each other. So, if we create service solutions that give guests a chance to participate, make choices, and interact with the cast, they will connect more intimately with the experience and the organization that is providing it.
• High-show refers to the need to build vivid presentations into the guest experience. When we choose service solutions that are high-show, guests enjoy colorful, memorable experiences - the kind that they will talk about to others for months and perhaps years to come. High-show is a quality that is closely aligned to the delivery system of setting. So be sure to think about how to build it into designs for your organization’s physical assets. 
• High-tech refers to the need to build speed, accuracy, and expertise into service solutions. When we do a good job of creating high-tech service, we give guests the gift of time, build products and services that approach the cutting edge of the possible, and often, maximize our own profits. Processes are particularly well suited to deliver high-tech, so as you create and improve processes, think about how they can be made more efficient and entertaining with technology.

Nordstrom’s #1 Customer Strategy

Excerpts from The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence
Chapter 5, Nordstrom’s #1 Customer Strategy – Hire the Smile
Robert Spector

• The qualities that Nordstrom looks for in its employees couldn’t be more basic. First of all, the company wants its salespeople to be nice.
• “We can hire nice people and teach them to sell,” Bruce Nordstrom likes to say, “but we can’t hire salespeople and teach them to be nice.”
• The Nordstrom corollary to that philosophy is “hire the smile, train the skill.”
• Learning that Nordstrom provides little in the way of a formalized training program, Robert Spector once asked: “Then who trains your salespeople?” Bruce's simple answer: “Their parents.”
• On being asked by competitors where Nordstrom finds its gung-ho people, former VP Betsy Sanders said: “We got our people from the same employee pool they did. The difference between Nordstrom and its competitors was that the Nordstroms didn’t go around talking about how wretched their people were. The Nordstroms thought they had great people. And look at the result.”
• To this day, the company has very high expectations “and if you don’t make it, you’re out of there”.

People come to work for the company for four reasons:

1. Opportunity for growth.
2. Freedom.
3. Feeling that you are part of something meaningful. (“Selling clothes isn’t what we do. It’s filling people’s needs and making them feel better emotionally.”)
4. Feeling valued. (“The more people are valued, the more connected they become. It perpetuates itself.”)

Keys to Success

• Previous industry experience should not be the determining factor.
• Hire people who enjoy people and who are excited about the job.
• Hire the smile, train the skill.
• Hire the personality and the confidence.
• Hire people who share your values.
• Involve potential coworkers or team mcmbers in the interview and hiring process.
• Treat employees with dignity and respect.
• Invest in the people who are cut out for service.

War on customers

Excerpts from Stop The War on Customers
Fred Reichheld

Company leaders realize that profitable growth is impossible without loyalty — yet they have failed miserably in their efforts to earn loyalty from either their customers or their front-line employees. After pondering this paradox for several years I finally began to realize the answer.

The first step is to set aside all that rosy rhetoric about customer focus. Most companies today are waging a war they cannot win — the war against their customers. They cut corners on product and service quality. They impose hidden fees and charges. They force customers to endure aggressive sales tactics, endless airport lines, and virtual or voicemail hell. They don’t tell the truth in their advertising and marketing, nor do they own up to their mistakes.

Ironically, this is a war most of the generals do not want to fight. CEOs spend countless millions of dollars on customer-focus initiatives, improved service quality, and enhanced customer experiences. They extol customer loyalty as the ultimate strategic advantage. Satisfaction surveys rain down on homes and businesses with implicit messages of care, concern, and promises of a better future.

Yet this undeclared war is escalating. Cellular phone providers trap customers in long-term contracts, and then abuse them with outrageous overage charges. Car dealers mislead and manipulate consumers. Banks charge unconscionable nuisance fees. Electronics store clerks flog extended warranties more desperately than their flat-screen TVs. Printer manufacturers price-gouge on refill cartridges. Computer companies make sure that calling their customer help-line is more painful than a trip to the dentist.

Yes, what is really going on is an undeclared war that is destroying corporate reputations, alienating employees, and decimating economic prosperity. It is the reason that nearly 80% of the world’s major corporations failed to achieve a modest 5% real, sustainable rate of growth over the past decade. This war is the reason why society has concluded that business ethics and good profits are both oxymoronic.

The reason I wrote The Ultimate Question was to expose this war and its full range of guerrilla activities. I hoped that I could provide a manual of the tools and tactics required to stop this war for good—and clarify how corporate leaders are unwittingly motivating their troops to book bad profits that destroy loyalty and growth. My goal is to help leaders revitalize good profits and true growth by showing them a practical path for holding organization members accountable for building good relationships and for standards of behavior that are consistent with the Golden Rule and respectful of human dignity (of customers, employees, suppliers and investors alike). We must all blow the whistle on bad profits.

See also:
Reichheld on "The Ultimate Question"
Reichheld on Loyalty
A Survey of Surveys

Service standards

Excerpts from
Unleashing Excellence, The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service
Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch, Ch 4 The Service Philosophy and Service Standards

Imagine telling 5,000 bank employees: “Go build life-enhancing relationships with our customers,” providing no other guidance. There are many ways to build life-enhancing relationships, some of which may not be appropriate for a bank. There must be behavioral guidelines that provide direction on how employees are expected to build these life-enhancing relationships. Providing that guidance is the role of Service Standards.

Service Standards are the rules of engagement for providing customer service. Service Standards provide the behavioral template that leads to consistent service. They help employees at the moment of truth; those times they have to make a service decision.

Developing the Service Standards

• Look for the no-brainers. In healthcare, for example, something like accuracy or safety better be pretty close to the top of the hierarchy.
• Use your research to discover dissatisfier themes. What are those behaviors, oversights, etc. that seem to irritate customers? Most industries have core dissatisfiers that are common to that industry. Identifying potential customer dissatisfiers and implementing processes, systems, and behaviors that eliminate them is a wonderful way to gain a competitive edge.
• Look for those behaviors that wow customers.

Disney guidelines

Excerpts from Be our Guest: Perfecting the art of customer service
Disney Institute, Chapter 3, The Magic of Cast

Disney University has spent a good deal of time defining courtesy in action and exploring how courtesy contributes to a positive guest experience. The result of these efforts is embodied In a list of actions called performance tips, which every Walt Disney World employee learns.

Performance tips are a set of generic behaviors that ensure that cast members know how to act courteously and respect the individuality of each guest. While the phrase “performance tips” may sound relatively innocuous, these tips pack a punch. At Walt Disney World, they have been translated into a set of behavioral actions called Guidelines for Guest Service.

The guidelines are summarized in seven sentences and serve a variety of purposes. First, they define behavior in terms of the guests. They create a common baseline for interaction with guests and demonstrate the elements of performance that perpetuate courtesy. Second, the guidelines communicate employee responsibilities. They make the company’s expectations for service delivery clear to new cast members and they provide a basis for accountability. Fulfilling the performance guidelines is a condition of employment at Walt Disney World. Cast members who do not use them are subject to progressive disciplinary actions.

Walt Disney World Guidelines for Guest Service

• Make Eye Contact and Smile!
• Greet and Welcome Each and Every Guest
• Seek Out Guest Contact
• Provide Immediate Service Recovery
• Display Appropriate Body language at All Times
• Preserve the “Magical” Guest experience
• Thank Each and Every Guest