Creating A Singular Service Experience

The older I get, the more I realize I’m not all that unique. The services I offer — communications training, strategic planning facilitation, motivational speaking — are provided by competent people across the globe. I’m not the only one who does this work. I’ll bet whatever you do isn’t so unusual, either. If we’re providing services and products similar to those of our competitors, how can we differentiate?

There’s really only one way: make your customers feel something about you. Not your product or process, not your price, not your fancy building. YOU. If you want more clients, make working with you a truly singular experience. Six basic principles apply.

Recently I went to an “eco-urban lifestyle market” in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a facial. I was a new client. From the first telephone conversation with Andre, I was completely and utterly delighted. Within 30 seconds, he and I were like old friends. (Principle #1: use your voice and words to make clients feel comfortable quickly). I looked forward to meeting him in person. This is definitely not how most of us feel when booking an appointment anywhere.

Andre was expecting me when I arrived (Principle #2: be ready for your clients, not surprised by them). He knew who I was without my telling him and said “Hello, Melinda! We’re so glad you’re here!”. He was genuinely warm and welcoming. (Principle #3: Express your gratitude and joy to customers). Before I could sit down, Andre had poured me a glass of tea, telling me all the while how terrific I was about to feel and what a fantastic facial I would receive from Kevin. (Principle #4: shine a spotlight on your co-workers’ abilities).

Needless to say, the facial itself was terrific, as I expected it to be. (Principle #5: customers always expect your service or product to be good, so your technical skill will rarely be a differentiator). However, I’ve never before felt as special and welcome as this team made me feel. It was impossible to imagine that they had other clients, because they looked right at me and said “We do all of this just for you.” (Principle #6: make every customer feel as though they’re your only one).

As you can imagine, they do have other clients. Plenty of them. It’s likely they say something similar to every single one. Does that make them less than genuine? No. They love their work and truly enjoy their clients. It’s obvious. It’s authentic. It’s singular.

Take a few minutes to look around your business and reflect a bit. Then take a look in the mirror and consider the six principles above.

What are you and your team doing to give your customers a singular experience? What are you doing to make them feel something about you? Whatever you do, make sure your actions and interactions come right from the heart. When they do, know that your competitors who create only neutrality with their customers will have a really tough time catching up to you.

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Five Steps Up the Corporate Ladder

With the economy still in the doldrums, those of you who have jobs are among the fortunate. Here are five steps you can take to keep your job and thrive, wherever you are professionally.

1. Know your company’s power structure. Find out as quickly as you can who’s who and what’s what in your firm. Determine very quickly who’s in your corner and who wants you to disappear. Do everything you can to work on projects with those who support you.

2. Get face to face with the organization’s leadership as often as you can. You’ll probably have to initiate the effort on this one. Only by having individual relationships with leaders (and as many other team members as possible) will you build a base of support. People do business with people they like and trust; it’s no different between you and your company. So get out from behind your desk and go talk to people.

3. Develop a succinct response to two questions: What do you do here? What are you working on? You need to be able to describe your role, your current activities and how they contribute to the company’s success.

4. Communicate more clearly than anyone else, and don’t be afraid to ask the same of others. Many people aren’t skilled communicators, so you have to take that responsibility. For example, have you ever been hit with something to be done “ASAP”? Ask the ASAP people to give you a specific time and day when they need the project. They won’t fire you because you asked for a deadline; they’ll know when to expect the work, and you’ll be able to set priorities.

5. Keep everything in perspective and laugh often. Life can be pretty funny when you step back and take a look at it. So laugh a lot. You’ll like your life better, other people will enjoy your company, and you’ll be more successful in the long run.

The Truest Way to Build Your Credibility

How many promises have you made that you haven’t kept? How many times have you let yourself off the hook?

Every time you commit to an action and do not act, you lose credibility. Every time you end a conversation with “I’ll call you next week for lunch” and you don’t call, you lose credibility. Every time you agree to champion a task for your company and you drop the ball, you lose credibility.

The consequences of lost credibility are significant at both an individual and an organizational level. Humans are generalizers by nature; I’m convinced it goes back to our cave man days. Each time one of your employees or partners makes a promise to do something and fails to deliver, it’s not just that person whose credibility suffers. By extension, your organization also runs a risk of losing credibility.

This problem can seem insurmountable, but it isn’t. You can improve your credibility and, by extension, your company’s, by changing your own behavior. Now that I think about it, any change you want must begin with you (Gandhi said as much, more eloquently).

You can start today. Just for today, keep whatever commitments you made. If you vowed to exercise and eat right, do it. Just for today. If you promised Mary in accounting that you would have your expense reports done by close of business today, do it. Just this once. See how it feels at the end of the day to have lived credibly.

Build on small achievements until you are consistently credible, both in the commitments you make to yourself and those you make to others. Don’t get crazy and try to change everything at once. Start small. Meet a commitment every day. Pat yourself on the back when you do. Kick yourself in the behind when you don’t. Rectify your lapse immediately.

Then, and only then, can you ask others in your organization (or in your personal life, for that matter) to keep their commitments.

Annual Employee Reviews: So 20th Century

Remember when correspondence took a couple of weeks? Now it happens in seconds. Remember the glory days of printed newsletters: the writing, the printing, the stuffing, the stamping, the mailing? Pretty much gone. And how about returning phone calls “as soon as possible”? Now, it’s within a specific number of hours (if you’re savvy).

Yet companies that practice business at 21^st century speed are still doing annual employee evaluations. You really have to wonder why. The data on young employees show that their strong preference is to receive regular and rapid feedback on their performance. So why are managers waiting a year? How is this a good business practice?

The Millenials have it right on this issue: annual emploee reviews are worthless. Baby Boomers like me can tell war stories all day about enduring employee evaluations from both sides of the desk. As employees, here’s what we were thinking during the evaluations:

1. I hate this.

2. Why didn’t my supervisor tell me I screwed up on that project six months ago?

3. I wonder if that mistake is going to cost me a raise.

4. How much raise will I get, anyway?

5. I hate this.

As managers and executives, here’s our thought process:

1. I hate this.

2. I can’t remember anything this employee did all year.

3. This evaluation form is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. How can I assign a number to someone’s work for a whole year? Should I use decimals?

4. What if I give him a bad evaluation? Will he quit?

5. Seriously. I’m going to speak to our HR director as soon as this evaluation is over.

6. I hate this.

None of this is productive. It’s a much better use of time to evaluate employees by project or task. Debrief after every major effort. Tell the employee straight up what you think they did well and what might have gone better. And if you’re really brave (and, again, savvy), you’ll ask them what they think of your performance. Then, together, line up your mutual expectations for the next project.

If you think you don’t have time to evaluate employees after a project or task, think how much time it takes to recruit, hire, and train a new one after the old one quits because she wasn’t getting the right feedback at the right time.

We're Not Crazy After All

Affirmation is a wonderful thing. The 5/28/10 edition of the New York Times, in which Stephen Sadove, chairman and CEO of Saks Inc. (yes, the Saks), is interviewed, did just that for all of us who understand that culture is the foundation of business success.

Mr. Sadove cites the need to build relationships with a diverse set of people as a guiding principle in his philosophy of running Saks. Further, he says he now spends more time working on people issues than on any other part of the business. He says: “I tend to care a lot about the people and the relationships that they have, how the team is operating, the culture.”

CEOs, leaders, and managers, ask yourselves: How much time am I working on the business (cultural and other non-billable matters) rather than in the business (billable work)?

Sadove says: “Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.” He notes that Wall Street never asks him about the culture of Saks, about leadership, about the ideas that drive the numbers and the results. He’s working hard to teach people that, while numbers are certainly important, they’re not the critical success factor. Only culture serves that role over the long term.

Now, ask yourselves another question: What do I spend most of the time discussing with my partners and colleagues: quarterly revenue or corporate culture?

When asked about Saks’ hiring practices, Sadove stays with the cultural theme when he says”…you want somebody who has the intellectual capacity, strategic thinking and the skill sets. But I’m looking for a cultural fit with me. How collaborative are they? How inclusive are they? How willing are they to listen to lots of different points of view? Do they have diverse interests?”

And one more time, ask yourselves a question: “Which is more important in hiring: grade point average or attitude?”

It’s by asking questions like these – and acting on the answers – that sucessful corporate cultures are created.

Customer Service Is All About Your Employees

Steve Wynn, owner of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas, knows a little something about customer service. I know, because whenever I go to Vegas, I stay at the Wynn. I stay there mostly because of the terrific customer service the hotel offers. From the moment I step inside the lobby to the moment the doorman helps me into a cab to the airport, my experience is sheer perfection.

It’s taken me several visits to the Wynn to figure out an important aspect of great customer service. But first, the obvious:

1. Great customer service costs money. You can’t give great service if you’ve cut into the muscle of your organization. In the Wynn’s case, you have to have enough people polishing the marble, vacuuming the carpet, and changing the flowers every morning, or the entire environment will suffer.
2. Great service requires training. You have to teach employees to smile, look customers in the eye, and respond promptly to requests. Wynn’s got that training down to a science.
3. Great service has to be recognized and rewarded. This, of course, is the case with any behavior you want to encourage.

But Wynn demonstrates a third element, and it’s both less obvious and more magical than the first two. Wynn’s stellar service is a function of authenticity, where employees willingly and without inducement say great things about where they work. Wynn employees talk openly about how much they appreciate Steve Wynn’s efforts to negotiate a tough economy without laying people off. They say how great he is work for. They say it’s a privilege to be employed by Wynn Resorts.

At least from this outsider’s perspective, it looks like Steve Wynn is working hard every day to give his employees the respect, dignity, and optimism they deserve. It’s just not possible to script the positive comments they make. Clearly, they are speaking from the heart.

If you want delighted customers, make sure you have delighted employees.

Emotional Solutions

New York Times columnist David Brooks sparked interesting thoughts this week. In his May 25 column, he says:

“People are born with natural desires to be admired and to be worthy of admiration. They are born with moral emotions, a sense of fair play and benevolence. They are also born with darker passions, like self-love and tribalism, which mar rationalist enterprises. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and politics should not forget that.”

In the last sentence above, we could easily substitute “business” for “politics”. It would still be true. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and business must not forget that. When things aren’t going right internally, look first at the emotions involved. Very likely, that’s where the problem lies. And very likely, if you address the emotions, you will find the solution.