ALIGNMENT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING Begin by Defining POS for YOUR Organization “The fish stinks from the head” First, leadership must define and align an organization’s service expectations. Second, align your departments, (in a larger organization). Third, create alignment in your hiring practices to the organization’s service expectations. … [Read more...]
PET PEEVES
Our Periodic Riff on Behaviors That Really Bothers Us! Clearly not Positively Outrageous Service! “There is a certain degree of patience and impatience in everybody. How to balance patience and impatience, and when to show which of them is the very thing everybody must endeavor to master.” ― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah Hiding behind the uniform, kiosk, or desk? Your first duty is to serve! Use your position to engage, deliver what's needed, and love your customers and … [Read more...]
Experience AMAZING-ly Bad Customer Service
REALLY? Tell me this didn't happen... It Did!!! "Although your customers won't love you if you give bad service, your competitors will." - Kate Zabriskie, Founder Business Training Works Boasting about your great customer service is NOT a good idea! “Pride comes before the fall.” You also take away a key principle of Positively Outrageous Service: “RANDOM and UNEXPECTED. Andrew’s real-life scenario gives us three valuable lessons that we can all learn from. … [Read more...]
Engagement: Get the Customer to Play or Get Involved!
Positively Outrageous Service – Principle #3 “Unless you love everybody, you can’t sell anybody.” – Dicky Fox (Jerry Maguire) The third fundamental principle of Positively Outrageous Service: Create engagement by either getting the customer to play or get them involved in other ways. A service experience that is fun makes it highly memorable and lends itself to positive word-of-mouth. Your customer can't help themselves but to tell others! For more on this listen to our 15 minute radio … [Read more...]
Out of Proportion to the Circumstances
Positively Outrageous Service - Principle #2 "I'm in the service business. I mean, our sandwiches are pretty good; I don't know if they're extraordinary. But our service is." "Jimmy John" Liautaud The second key principle of Positively Outrageous Service is creating a service experience that is "out of proportion to the circumstances." It heightens the intensity, engagement and memorability of customer service, or in reality, any relational engagement! For more listen to our 15 minute … [Read more...]
Thank you. Thank you! Thank you!!!
Thank you. Thank you! Thank you!!! Thank you… I so appreciate you! We like to be thanked, don’t we? But there’s a big difference in being thanked through a text or an email or a simple handwritten thank you card? When was the last time you received a handwritten thank you card? How did that make you feel? Probably valued, precious … that person took the time to hand write a thank you card to appreciate you. When was the last time you did that for someone else? It makes a big … [Read more...]
A Simple Touch So I Know Where I Am!
For the first time in my life, I spent twenty-two hours in a hospital. Some of the touch points were fantastic, some mediocre and some average. But what irritated me the most was the lack of communication. When you’re in an ER or actually admitted into a hospital, there’s a lot of uncertainty – especially when it’s an undiagnosed illness or infection. Communication is paramount. A week later I’m talking to my friend, Sandi, who spent some considerable time with their child at Texas Children’s … [Read more...]
A Lazy Man’s Load
When I was a kid my mom seemed to have a saying for nearly every occasion. Maybe that's because we were from Kentucky. I like to say that Kentucky is the only state in the Union where socks and underwear are totally optional. (Don't worry. I have my socks!) If mom caught me trying to carry an oversize load of dirty laundry or groceries or lawn clippings in an obvious attempt to avoid a second trip, she would call out, "Lazy man's load! Lazy man's load!" Inevitably I would prove her right by … [Read more...]
Smell that Positively Outrageous Service
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTC4rh5tN9Y Theatre owners actually have a name for it. It’s called “blow-by.” Believe it or not there are human beings capable of ignoring the compelling smell of, you guessed it, popcorn. What once was a tiny seed of hybrid corn eventually winds up with the power to bring this full-size man to a dead stop and drag me by the nostrils with the promise of an unexpected sample of what is little more than salt and hot air. Customers who stray too close will … [Read more...]
Hospitality from the Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab8dziDZnNo Guess what I found? It’s an old fashioned box camera. I also bought a new camera and the specs on it are absolutely killer. Which of the two cameras do you think take the best picture? Which of the two cameras take the best photograph? All right that was unfair. Me asking you this way is really is a trick question because a picture and a photograph are two entirely different things. A picture is a record of what actually happened. But a … [Read more...]