Terrific Trading

Is being invisible frustrating?

by Jurek Leon

Recently I had a fascinating discussion at a training session with franchisees from Xpresso Delight.

They install fully automatic coffee machines into workplaces.  The machines aren’t leased or sold to businesses.  They are installed free!  It’s done on a per cup fee and owner/operators come in and service and clean the machines each week.

Many of these franchisees have held good positions in their various fields before opting for this lifestyle business.  They commented on how different the relationship sometimes is now with office staff when they are viewed as cleaners or maintenance workers compared to their previous roles.  In some cases they are virtually ‘blanked’ by the staff.... particularly sales and marketing people!

There are two ways of dealing with this.  One is to treat it as a problem and respond by ‘blanking’ the people in the same way as they have ‘blanked’ you.  Get in there, do the maintenance quietly and efficiently and get out.  The other is to treat it as an opportunity.

Mobile Phone Frustrations on Public Transport

by Jurek Leon

1. Should talking on mobile phones be banned while on public transport?

A small percentage of people are totally inconsiderate. You just have to see them at the counter in a shop or cafe talking on the phone while some poor person tries to serve them. It is totally inconsiderate and demeaning to the service provider and holds up the queue. I’m not normally in favour of more regulation, but I would like to see talking on mobile phones banned on aeroplanes (get in first!) and at peak times on other forms of public transport when it is hard for other passengers to escape out of earshot of the ‘press and yap’ brigade.
 
2. Why are more and more people forgetting about manners and just speaking freely and often very loudly in the company of strangers who may/do not want their privacy invaded?

Some people treat their mobiles as megaphones. The microphones on most mobiles these days are very good. There is no need to shout.
 
3. What should the Perth Transport Authority be doing about this?

Posters asking people to be considerate of others should be a helpful reminder to the majority of people. There is a great poster on local trains of a baby holding a Stop sign to remind people to leave the ‘mother and baby’ seats free. Something humorous to promote courtesy would be great because it would be noticed by passengers
 
4. IPods are a problem too, what should be done about them?

Those who have their iPods blaring, deafening themselves and irritating those around them, should have them inserted deep into a certain part of their anatomy. Then they can listen to their music internally!
 
5. People say this could lead to road/bus rage...what do you think?

Perspective is important. Given a choice between standing on a train wedged between two people talking loud and long on their mobiles and dodging bullets and bombs on a war torn street in the Gaza Strip, I think we would realise it is no big deal.
 
6. What can be done to improve the situation?

Having said that (my answer to Q5), courtesy is a big deal. It says to the people around us, in this case fellow passengers, ‘you are important, you matter, I respect you.’ The best way to reinforce courteous behaviour is to catch people doing things right and thank them for it. We don’t have to leave it to the Perth Transport Authority to bring in more rules. Each time someone on a train or bus takes a call and is heard saying, “I can’t talk right now, I’ll call you back soon”, imagine if all the other passengers in earshot broke into spontaneous applause. Wouldn’t that be a buzz!?

Jurek Leon is a speaker, trainer and author of ‘Terrific Telephone Techniques. The ultimate guide to excellent service over the phone’.

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Great service is about wanting to hear

The following story was told by Phillip Van Hooser in his book titled, ‘Willie's Way’. I really like it and hope you will too.

The conversation was pleasant. Earlier in the day I had presented a service professionalism training program for the Georgia Club Managers' Association, a group of managers representing some of the finest city, athletic, golf, and country clubs throughout the state of Georgia. Now I found myself dining with nine of the most highly respected leaders in the field of club management. Somewhere between the appetizer and the salad, Manuel de Juan, general manager of the host, Capital City Club, spoke.

“Phillip, I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation today. I especially enjoyed the stories you shared to illustrate your content points. As a matter of fact, at one point during your presentation, I almost interrupted you to share one of my stories I thought you might enjoy.”

He said, “The occasion was Easter Sunday and the day found more than 500 club members and their guests crowded into the overflowing Capital City Club restaurant. As they waited to dine, a club member and his four dinner guests approached the bar where they were greeted by the head bartender, Bob, who quickly began to take and fill each drink order. Everything progressed as might be expected until one of the guests placed an order for a specialty drink.

'I would like a sazerac, please.'

Satisfied Customers are Disloyal and as for the Whingers!

If customer service is all it’s cracked up to be, how come customers tell us they are satisfied with the product and the service, but if it’s more convenient or a lower price, they buy from the opposition?

Ever asked yourself that question?  If so, you are not alone.

Does that mean that customers are disloyal or does it mean that we aren’t asking the right question?

Here’s an example of the service provider asking the wrong question. 

The Best Service Is No Service

According to the authors of this newly released book, we usually seek service from a company when something has gone wrong – the product doesn’t work, it wasn’t delivered on time, the bill is wrong.  If companies can get those things right in the first place, most customers neither want nor need customer service. Hence the title.

The authors of ‘The Best Service is No Service’ are Bill Price, a former Amazon senior executive and David Jaffe an Australian based customer experience consultant.

Achieving ‘no service’ status means that customers don’t have to invest time and hassle trying to sort problems out.  The company does not have to invest resources dealing with inquiries. This means less cost for both, and greater value for both.

If we accept the authors’ premise that the size of the company’s customer service operations is often in inverse proportion to the quality of its underlying operations, the way forward is to root out those underlying defects and improve operational quality so that, one by one, customers’ needs for a particular area of service melts away.

That is why, for example, Amazon obsesses about a metric that most companies do not ever use, contacts per customer order (CPO).  By working out why customers contact it and then eliminating the need for this contact to happen, Amazon has reduced its CPO by 90% over the past five years.

According to the authors’ research, customer contacts have four broad causes:

1. About one in seven is triggered by basic quality defects (it doesn’t work).  These must be addressed by underlying quality improvements.

2. About a quarter take the form of ‘How do I?’ questions.  Here, the company has failed to communicate properly or its processes are confusing to customers, so it must identify and deal with these defects.

3. About 40% of customer contacts are ‘Where can I get it?’ queries.  Customers should be able to answer most such questions for themselves via a web site or other self-service option that is easy-to-use.

4. The final 20% of contacts are from customers wanting to buy stuff.  The more the first 80% can be reduced, the more resources, the company can invest in helping customers when they really do need service.

David Jaffe’s website is: www.limebridge.com.au
Also read some of the reviews on David Jaffe and Bill Price’s book at Amazon.com, particularly the one by Don Peppers, by clicking on The Best Service is No Service .

Lessons from Britain's Most Loved Retailer

by Jurek Leon

At the 4-day 2008 European Conference in Customer Management, I attended in London, one of the most fascinating case studies was provided by Andrew Macmillan a senior executive with John Lewis department stores who shared some of his learnings from 28 years with the company, eight of them in charge of customer service.

What set this apart from other presentations by leading UK retail brands such as Marks & Spencer and Boots the Chemist is that the reality of the shopping experience seemed to match the rhetoric of the company spokesperson.  That’s one of the tough things about retail, there is nowhere to hide.  Customers, including the 400 plus delegates at the conference can test out the experience every day.  And from my own experience and that of many other delegates at the conference there was scepticism about Marks & Spencer and Boots recoveries and far more goodwill for John Lewis’ consistent performance.

There is more to back this up though. In November 2007, ‘Which?’ consumer magazine had 10,963 members of its online panel rate their satisfaction with and likelihood to recommend the retailers they use from a list of 77 well-known UK stores and independent retailers.  Shops were given scores for their service, in store experience, product, price and convenience. Waitrose finished top of the Which survey in 2006, and was second behind John Lewis in 2007.  Waitrose, the upmarket supermarket group, are also part of the John Lewis Partnership.

So, what is it that sets these companies apart?

How a Duck became an Eagle

'Stop complaining! Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don't be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd. The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm. '

Name Badges

by Jurek Leon

There are two questions I am often asked about name badges, one by managers and the other by staff.

Managers ask: How do I get my staff to wear their name badges?
Staff ask: Why do we have to wear name badges?

Should staff wear name badges?
Lets deal with the second question first. I agree with the wearing of name badges, not just for frontline staff in the public eye but also for all team members including managers, CEOs and owners of organisations. There should be one rule for everyone.

Name badges are great for customers, suppliers and anyone else who deals with an organisation. Why?

How's Your Day Been?

by Jurek Leon

“How’s your day been?”  Sounds like a polite, socially appropriate question, doesn’t it?  It happens every day in a whole variety of work related interactions.  Yet, it can be a most unfortunate start to a business related conversation if the person representing your organisation doesn’t know how to deal with the customer’s response.

For example, what if the response is, “Pretty good, how about yours?”

Inexperienced service providers, who haven’t attended ‘Tact & Diplomacy 101’, may give a quite inappropriate answer.

These are issues that we need to sit down and discuss with our team, exploring the implications of different scenarios.  Getting it right may seem like common sense to you but often we find that common sense is not common practice.

Should You Do Business With Friends?

by Jurek Leon

"Don't go into business with friends"; "an effective boss can't get too close to his or her employees"; "business is business". 

How often have you heard phrases like these?  Perhaps you have even given out advice like this yourself.  It's the sort of thing that prospective business owners and managers hear all the time.  But does it have to be that way?

Paddi Lund, that amazing Brisbane dentist and author of the book ‘Building The Happiness Centred Business’, sees it differently.  Here is a brief example of his philosophy on business and friendship:

“Often, we are not taught the warm fuzzy things of business life in business or professional school.  We spend a large amount of time learning how to perform arts skilfully, but much less in learning how to relate with the people we employ and with our customers.  Yet, it is these skills of relationship for which we have the greatest need if we are to run a successful business.

“We learn how to treat our friends and acquaintances with care and courtesy so that they like us and want to be close and friendly with us, but often we seem to have some trouble incorporating the rules we've learnt into our business life.

“From our peers, we learn a set of rules for business that are unlike those we use in our private lives.  These rules are more like that of modern warfare than cooperation:

Customer Loyalty – How Do You Get It?

by Jurek Leon

Customer loyalty.  It gets mentioned a lot, but who does it well? 

Think of your own buying behaviour.  Who are you loyal too?  What is it that makes you loyal to them?   How do you demonstrate that loyalty?  Do you come to the organisation’s defence when you hear others being critical of it?  Do you automatically buy from them or go to them without even thinking of alternative providers of the products or services?

It’s a topic that fascinates me, but I do often wonder about programs that get called ‘loyalty programs’ by financial institutions, retailers and many other organisations.  With most of them, where does the loyalty come in? 

Analyse the best
The world’s most successful loyalty program is run by Tesco, the UK retailer.  Tesco has more than 10 million club members – phenomenal given that the program has only been going at full strength since 1999.  They had other programs before, but it is only really in the last six years that their current program has made them a dominant force.

Four times a year, they send out six really highly targeted coupons to their members.  Four of these are for products customers have already been buying, which they are able to identify because they analyse all the data that they get from sales; and two are for products that the customer hasn’t bought but is likely to buy.

A coffee mug does more than just hold coffee

by Jurek Leon

In his book ‘Seducing the Vigilante Customer - 101 winning strategies to attract and retain happy customers and healthy profits’ author Graham Harvey includes some great tips and observations to help you impress and retain your customers.  Here is an edited version of just one of the 101 strategies explained in his chatty, easy-to-read style. 

“I'm not sure that Buddha was necessarily thinking about customer service when he said, "how you do one thing, is how you do everything", but the message could not be more relevant in today's business environment.

When visiting clients and prospective clients, I am often asked if I would like a cup of tea or coffee. I always say yes, not always because another cup of coffee is exactly what I need, but because it gives me an opportunity to learn a great deal about the company. How it thinks, what its values are, whether it is truly committed to customer service, whether it 'walks its talk' in regard to the words of the neatly printed 'mission' statement displayed in reception.

Mystery Shopping Reveals Unhealthy Secrets That Could Be Damaging Your Business

by Jurek Leon

In his best seller “Freakonomics,” renegade economist Steven Levitt describes the power of revealing difficult-to-obtain information.  Levitt says that when one party to a transaction uses information the other does not have, a condition of “information asymmetry” exists. 

Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?  And how does it have relevance to mystery shopping and the health of your business?  Stay with me, while Steven Levitt explains a bit more....with the help of the Klu Klux Klan.  Well, he cites the Klu Klux Klan as an example.  Here goes:

Customer Loyalty – How Do You Get It?

by Jurek Leon

Customer loyalty.  It gets mentioned a lot, but who does it well? 

Think of your own buying behaviour.  Who are you loyal too?  What is it that makes you loyal to them?   How do you demonstrate that loyalty?  Do you come to the organisation’s defence when you hear others being critical of it?  Do you automatically buy from them or go to them without even thinking of alternative providers of the products or services?

It’s a topic that fascinates me, but I do often wonder about programs that get called ‘loyalty programs’ by financial institutions, retailers and many other organisations.  With most of them, where does the loyalty come in?