In today’s competitive marketplace extending excellent customer service is essential to the survival of any business. I hope by now most of us understand the importance of taking care of the customer and exceeding their expectations.  If some of you are like me, you spent your leisure time reading books like “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, or “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters. I read these books and took them as gospel because they offer sound principles for creating a vision of what excellent customer service should look like.  I truly believe that these books and a selection of others really help us to delve into the principles for taking care of the people and maintain our customer’s loyalty.

          We have great examples of companies that live by the customer loyalty principle by constantly trying to be on the cutting edge of services and products. Such companies that come to mind are Starbucks, Nordstrom, Pike Place Fish Market, The Four Seasons, and Apple. These are companies who set the mark for creative and enlightened organizations that are always finding ways to make the customer say “wow”.  Consumer brag to others about the services they receive at these customer centered organizations and therefore create a word of mouth buzz that creates exponential growth and success.

          As managers you have probably tried to instill certain campaigns or slogans at your company. You made sure your employees understood and practiced the following procedures:

·         Greeting the guest with a smile and a salutation.

·         Looking for the “moment of truth”, the opportunity to make an impression on your customer with each interaction.

·         Soliciting feedback from the guest or customer.

·         Employee empowerment.

·         Taking care of the “internal customer” (teamwork)

The list goes on, but in our organizations I am sure we have all dealt with the above initiatives at one time or another.  If your organization is a progressive one, then many of the above initiatives are common practice and part of the expected norm.  By the way, have you ever walked into one of the national video store franchises?  You walk through the familiar doors in search of the newest “Rambo” movie on the way you plan to drop off your last rental – “P.S. – I love You” (My wife’s idea). As you walk in the door, you are hit with “hello” from two or three employees.  Rather than be impressed by their great service you are actually annoyed by their forced salutation. They are not sincere and it shows. Some executive at that company decided long ago that all of the video store employees will greet the guest as they walk in the door.  Forget about greeting me from across the room as I walk in the door. Instead, try not to ignore me the rest of the time I am in the store. Say “Hello” to me when we are face to face or passing in the aisles. Give me an opinion about a movie that I should see or ask me if I found everything ok. The point is that when something seems scripted or forced then it is not going to work on the customer, instead it will cheapen the customer experience. “Do you want to supersize that?”

              Ok! We all know the importance of customer loyalty because it costs less to get a customer to come back then to create a new one. We all know that the customer is king because they pay our bills and paychecks. We all know that our employees have to be friendly and have good attitudes or the customers won’t come back. We all know that an unsatisfied customer will tell far more people than a happy customer.  So how do we make our employees follow these initiatives and constantly work toward improving their services? It is easy. You be good leaders and managers. Huh?  “No, it’s the employees fault.” “It’s hard to find good people now.”  I say B.S. (Bogus Sandwich).

To the people that truly know; the philosophy of customer loyalty and constant improvement were studied, researched and taught by an American statistician. Dr. Edwards Deming is the man who helped industry leaders in post-World War II Japan rebuild and become the dominant force for quality and innovation in the world. That’s right! The father of the modern Japanese industry is an American. His teachings have been carried out by such companies as Sony, Fuji, Toyota, Honda and a multitude of others. In fact every year Japan still honors the most innovative or successful company with the Deming Award. Deming’s teachings were so simple yet they are still some of the most powerful management philosophies today which Deming referred to as “profound knowledge”. Some of the points from his 14 point list from his book “Out of the Crisis” are:

·         Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs. (1)

·         Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs (5)

·         Institute training on the job (6)

·         Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers (7)

·         Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (8)

·         Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service. (9)

·         Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force. (10)

·         Remove barriers that rob the hourly paid worker of his right to pride in workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. (12)

·         Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement  (13)

·         Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.  (14)

As you can see, the father of quality and improvement says that quality begins in the boardroom with the leaders and managers. This especially counts for service companies as well.  Leaders, owners, and manager make the rules and the procedures. They can create the empowerment in the employee or tie their hands and have them afraid to make a decision. They are the ones that decide how much should be spent on training and what objectives are important. The owners are the ones that decide if they are going to share part of the profits with the employee and make them feel like part of the company. The leaders and owners are the ones that decide how they are going to treat the employees on their interactions. Are they going to set goals and work toward helping the employee to achieve the goal or are they going to leave them alone and just dump all over them when the employee does something wrong.  The leaders decide if an employees or customer’s idea will be implemented or not. So you can keep blaming the line employee for the bad customer service or you can take a deep look at the root cause of it all, leadership and owners.

We want our people to treat our customers with warmth and respect. How do we treat our people? We want our people to constantly improve their work standards and output. Do we provide the on-going training and listen to their feedback?  We want our people to be able to serve the customer to the fullest without making them wait and go through hoops. Are they afraid to try anything without your approval because they know if they screw up you will be all over them? Look at yourself and see.

Your store, restaurant, factory or office is like an engine. Then you the leader are the ignition switch. Your people are the spark plugs, pistons and other moving parts of the engine. If the spark (behavior) you provide is weak or surges then the engine will sputter. If you don’t provide oil (training, goals, feedback, and support), then the engine will quickly burn and the engine will seize up. The parts of the engine all have their function but without the spark the engine will never run. Now go take a look at yourself, your other managers and the system itself. Can you improve something to ignite maximum performance from your employees? Always.

YOUR COMPANY SHOULD CREATE MAGIC LIKE THE BEATLES

By Donn Kirst

            A thriving company should create a vision of “MAGIC”. Magic means to be a legend in their field by spreading joy, harmony and love. “Love?” you say. Your people must love what they do, and the customer must love what your company is offering.

To describe best the attributes of a legendary company, let’s go back more than 40 years to the birth of the Beatles. John Lennon said to Paul McCartney “Do you want to join me band?” Both John and Paul were school kids who loved music and wanted to perform, yet neither one could possibly comprehend at the time their colossal future.

            Like many companies, the Beatles did not begin with instant success. They played small British pubs, and clubs in Hamburg, Germany. It was common to get bottles thrown at them while performing, or get jumped by gangs after the show. They also had personnel issues, like many beginning operations who can’t seam to get the all players to mesh and be in harmony. It wasn’t until the FAB FOUR joined forces; John, Paul, George and Ringo that the magic began to take hold. In an identical way, companies that want to create magic must have the players be in harmony with a common vision.

            They grinded out many a nights at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and worked to create a first album, then the word spread like wild fire. They created what the world famous authors and management experts Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, call Raving Fans. Raving fans means that the people will buy anything that is associated with you, because they believe in you because they know you are thetr to make them feel good and they eventually will love you. “All you need is love.”  By the time the Beatles were ready to break into other markets, i.e. the United States, the word had already spread across the Atlantic and millions awaited their arrival to the U.S. with breathless anticipation.  Screaming women fainted as they performed live on the Ed Sullivan show and they sold so many records on their first tour, that even Elvis was jealous of their success. In a similar way like IBM became jealous of the rising APPLE COMPUTER.

            Every where they performed to sold out concert halls. They released new subsequent albums, and would beat their own sales records. At the beginning The Beatles were infallible and the public would buy anything they produced. Like all fast growing companies, the Beatles soon had their share of controversy and problems. When a company or band grows too fast, there are a ton of critics ready to pounce on every wrong move.

The leaders of a fast growing company or band, tend to get exploding egos and believe their own press of their greatness. Infallibility is never true of any person, any band or any company. Mistakes will always be made and sometimes devastating mistakes that can nearly take a company under. John Lennon made an off handed comment about being more popular than Jesus, and those “raving fans” were burning their records in the streets, while many DJ’s refused to play their albums and record sales dropped.  Exxon suffered tremendous losses when deciding that the extra cost of putting reinforced hulling in the oil tanker Valdez was not worth it. The consequent oil spill created billions of dollars of damage to the Alaskan wilderness. Exxon received years of bad press coverage which effected income. The government is still trying to force Exxon to pay for the clean up. The effects of this tragic ecological event are still evident in the Prince William Sound 19 years later.

The Beatles like leaders of an organization also had their share of tension between each other. Most in the band were upset about John’s girlfriend, Yoko Ono getting involved in their music, and the effect she had on John. The others in the band felt like Paul was becoming bossy and egocentric. George and Ringo often felt that they did not get as many writing credits as they should have and did not feel that they were equally compensated for their contributions. Each time a new album appeared, the magic emerged again. Each album carried with it, groundbreaking sounds and lyrics that influenced an entire culture. They were able to set aside their differences enough time to be in the studio and compose masterpieces. The Beatles ignored the controversy and hard feelings in order to maintain true to their vision of changing the world with their music.

The Beatles finally disbanded in 1970, but their music has been eternal. The magic they created has transcended generations, countries, and cultures. In 2008 there are Las Vegas shows built around their music, world class impersonators playing their covers, and world wide cinematic production that incorporates their songs into the entire musical storyline. The Beatles created magic, much like Disney or Microsoft create magic. The magic was created by the forging of four talented individuals into one collective force. A company must strive to forge their individual talents into one force. Like the Beatles, they must always be changing and improving. They must always be looking for ways to reach their audience and express themselves through their work. Like the Beatles, “you gotta get by with a little help” from your fans.