Know When To Break The First Rule: Creating A Culture Of Can Do In A Can'T Do Environment - Softcover

Mcconnell, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 149690849X ISBN 13: 9781496908490

Verlag: AuthorHouse, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Know When To Break The First Rule will teach you ways in which you can elevate your organization and gain a competitive advantage within your industry. You will read first-hand accounts of how organizations, such as yours, have created amazing client loyalty without adding additional cost or impacting productivity. These easy to understand strategies are designed to assist you in exceeding client expectations through the building of air-tight customer experiences. Learn how to recognize, motivate and reward your organization's most valuable asset: employees who possess the Service Gene. You will also learn how to manage these high-performing, results oriented personalities. Learn about the three gifts that all customer-centric employees crave: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Know When To Break The First Rule will change the way you look at your business, yourself, your employees and your customers.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

As the Founder and Principal Consultant of The McConnell Group, Joe McConnell has built and realigned customer service divisions for many organizations, large and small. He's a strong proponent of creating a seamless environment where all employees enjoy and take part in providing a superior client experience. Joe believes, and has proven, that a total customer service experience is achievable and essential in building and enduring organization.

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Know When To Break The First Rule

Creating a Culture of Can Do in a Can't Do Environment

By Joe McConnell

AuthorHouse LLC

Copyright © 2014 Joe McConnell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0849-0

Contents

Introduction—Can Do versus Can't Do, 1, 
Chapter One —The Birth of a Service Vision, 7, 
Chapter Two —Creating a Nonnegotiable Service Vision, 20, 
Chapter Three—Establishing Nonnegotiable Hiring Standards, 33, 
Chapter Four —Re-Recruiting Your Best Employees through Ownership and Empowerment, 50, 
Chapter Five —Leadership: Holding Yourself to Nonnegotiable Standards, 62, 
Chapter Six —"Can You Believe This?" Utilizing Everyday Experiences to Enhance Your Brand, 68, 
Chapter Seven —Avoiding Self-Sabotage, 79, 
Chapter Eight —Putting Your Clients First, 86, 
Chapter Nine —Remaining True to Your Vision, 95, 
Final Chapter—The Beginning, 99, 

CHAPTER 1

The Birth of a Service Vision

I was fortunate enough to learn the value of a superior customer experience early in life. My first formal job was delivering newspapers after school. I quickly noticed that the guys making the most money all did the same thing when it rained: they purchased plastic bags for their newspapers. This was an additional cost that most of the delivery boys didn't wish to incur. I quickly learned that dry papers led to bigger tips. The bags cost a penny apiece and were sold in one-hundred-piece lots. A dollar was a lot of money (the newspaper itself only cost seven cents), and it took an additional half hour to fold and insert the papers into the bags before loading up the bicycle baskets and heading out, but the rewards of providing a superior service were substantial. I had taken over a route from someone who apparently never thought to keep his papers dry on rainy days, and by exceeding expectations, I found myself being well tipped. I also began receiving referrals. As I advanced to jobs where I had to punch a clock and work within established rules, I was amazed to see that most companies took their customers for granted.

At the age of seventeen, I was offered a job at Bloomingdale's where my rudimentary understanding of the power of service was validated. I quickly learned about Bloomingdale's generous return policy. My first introduction to the policy was early in my tenure, when a customer asked to return a swimsuit. This occurred in September, and the swimsuit was faded by months of sunshine and chlorinated pool water. When I approached my manager with the customer's absurd request, I was surprised when she instructed me to take it back and issue a full credit. When I protested and pointed out that the swimsuit had been used for the entire season, my manager repeated her instruction and suggested that I not keep the customer waiting.

Later that same day, my manager invited me to join her for coffee in the employees' cafeteria. Over a cup of coffee and a slice of pie, she explained the Bloomingdale's policy. In essence, Bloomingdale's was focused on the "customer's reality." That reality, she explained, is Bloomingdale's brand. Some customers take advantage of the liberal return policy, but by and large, most customers are honest and straightforward when it comes to returning merchandise. It wasn't worth risking Bloomingdale's brand by arguing over a $37.50 credit.

I immediately saw the value in this policy. Years earlier, when I had absorbed a cost in order to keep my customers' papers dry, I had been rewarded with bigger tips and additional customers. Without knowing it at the time, I had established my own brand, which was built on service and care. Bloomingdale's was enhancing its brand by absorbing the cost associated to returned merchandise. The store's customers had grown to expect superior service and Bloomingdale's remained committed to those standards long after the original purchase.

Those positive experiences helped establish the foundation of my own nonnegotiable standards. Equally important were the negative experiences, which, I quickly came to realize, outnumbered the positive experiences. By paying attention to your competitors' weaknesses, you can look for ways to exceed client expectations. This is the good news if you're looking to differentiate yourself within your marketplace. The field of play quickly shrinks when you become a customer-focused organization. Your competitors' weaknesses are the soft spots that you can exploit. Let's take a look at a few common customer service failures that represent much of what we experience every day.

I will take these real-life examples and dissect them so that you can see ways in which you can take both your own and your competitors' service voids and fill them with memorable customer experiences. Within your marketplace, your customer base is underwhelmed by similarity; they have grown accustomed to a bland experience, and it won't take much to differentiate your organization from the competition. However, you must be resolute in maintaining those differences.

The first two examples involve long-term client/vendor relationships. Many organizations tend to forget long-term clients in their effort to capture new clients. Although it costs, on average, five times as much to secure a new client than it does to keep an existing one, most organizations confuse customer loyalty with customer complacency. They assume that a client will remain a client strictly out of habit and convenience. While this, can be true at times, do you really want your clients to feel begrudged and resigned?

My first example involves a local dry-cleaning service. For twelve years, I have utilized a small dry cleaner in my neighborhood, and like most people, I've experienced a few disappointments, but I chose to ignore those occasional failures in favor of convenience—this shop is only two blocks from my home. On this particular day, I removed the plastic wrapper from my shirt and noticed that the color had been bleached out on both sleeves. I should point out that this was one of four golf shirts that I had bought the previous year, and I spent a higher than usual amount on these shirts because they fit me well and were well constructed. Usually, I would wash a golf shirt at home, but because I considered these shirts special (they were, by my standards, expensive), I decided I would do my best to extend their lives by having them professionally laundered. A few days later, I returned to the dry cleaner with my ruined shirt and spoke to the owner. Here's how the conversation went.

Me: "I'd like to show you something. Considering that you've laundered this shirt before, I have to assume that too much solution was used. What do you think happened?"

Owner (after inspecting the shirt for about thirty seconds): "The fabric is not good and the dye did not hold. I can't be held responsible for this."

Me: "But you've laundered this and three other identical shirts at least a half-dozen times. How is it that this flaw was only exposed now? What about the other shirts? They're made from the same fabric and they haven't been affected by this supposed defect."

Owner: "The dye did not hold. I did nothing wrong."

Me (slightly agitated): "Here's my ticket for clothing I'm picking up today. Let's take a look at the identical shirt, which you just laundered, and we can do a side-by-side comparison. Hopefully the shirt I'm picking up today didn't suffer the same fate."

Owner (after opening the newly laundered shirt and noticing no...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: AuthorHouse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 149690849X
• ISBN 13: 9781496908490
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 114
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland