Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world’s best
November 4, 2010Is your marketing sending out mixed messages to your customers?
November 6, 2010
I came across this video from Dennis Snow at his blog the other day and I thought I’d share it with you as I love its simplicity. Dennis’ background is that he worked (starting at the bottom and worked his way up) for the Disney corporation for 20years, has written a couple of great books on Disney World and customer service and now consults and talks to large corporations about how they can create more “magical” customer experiences.
Here’s my summary of what his four steps to creating a culture of customer service excellence and below is the video:
- One, it all starts when you define your service culture. What does that mean? Dennis suggests that if you answer the following question: “What are the three things you want your customers to say about your experience?” that will take you closer to defining the culture and customer experience that you want to create.
- Two, make sure that your recruitment process looks for the behaviours in people that can deliver Number 1. This is recruitment driven by what sort of customer journey or experience that we want to deliver.
- Three, implement a training process that builds on and reinforces those behaviours from Day 1 (induction) and repeats throughout an employees employment. We have to continually review and refresh the training that supports the development of our culture so that it stays fresh and front of everyones minds.
- Four, hold people accountable for those behaviours. Only when we hold people accountable to what we want to achieve, what we hired them for and then tie that to their performance appraisals, promotion prospects and rewards and incentives can we really start to build the culture that we want.
Here’s Dennis’ video:
Simple, don’t you agree? Many companies do try and do this and Dennis shows how there is a really straightforward way to create such a customer service led culture. So, where do many companies fall down?
Thanks to dawnzy58 for the image.
18 Comments
Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world’s best http://bit.ly/aHg6mq featuring @DennisSnow
Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world’s best http://bit.ly/ayP4yj
RT @adrianswinscoe: Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world’s best http://bit.ly/ayP4yj
I think much of the UK as a whole has still failed to make the mindset leap that effective marketing requires: under mature Capitalism you simply cannot get away with selling to people; you need to be problem-solving and creating possibilities with them.
Hi Malcolm,
I agree with you Malcolm but many companies are still driven by the ‘flog’ them as much as we can attitude.
In your comment you mention ‘mature Capitalism’ is that an age that you think we are now entering?
Adrian
RT @adrianswinscoe: Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world's best http://bit.ly/brEnTS
RT @adrianswinscoe: Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world's best http://bit.ly/brEnTS
RT @adrianswinscoe: Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world's best http://bit.ly/brEnTS
I just cannot get over that sculpture of Disney and mickey mouse. Too cool. But yeah Nice video tho.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I love that photo too. When I found it I had to include it in the post.
Look forward to seeing you around here again.
Adrian
RT @adrianswinscoe: Simple steps for building a customer service led culture from one of the world's best http://bit.ly/brEnTS
I think a lot of business folk overlook the link between wow service and the bottom line. I worked at Coca Cola for many years and learnt a lot about how focussing on how we serve our customers impacts on results. I simple process, as your post points out, can make a huge difference in any business.
Hi Ali,
Thanks for your comment and for sharing your experience with Coca Cola. I agree that it seems that the simple things can often be the most effective. Was there anything that Coca Cola did that you thought was simple but was hugely effective that impacted the bottom line and other results?
Adrian
Adrian,
I think one of the very simple things I learnt from Coke was that many businesses, large and small, think that customer service is something you do TO customers whereas what I learnt from Coke was that it is what you do WITH customers. What I mean by that is that Coke were big into collaboration. So we would work with customers on ways to improve service that were mutually beneficial to both parties.
It is a very simple distinction but I think an important one. What we think of as important might not be what is most important to the customer.
For example, many call centres have a customer service measure of how quickly phones are answered and the caller gets to speak to a person. Well that means didly squat to the customer if they then have to speak to a different person every time they call back about the same issue. In this example, ownership of problem until resolved by one person would be a better indication of customer service.
I guess the point I am making is wow service is defined by the customer, not the business. Coke knew this and that is why they focussed on collaboration, relationship building and listening.
Hi Ali,
I love the idea: “many businesses, large and small, think that customer service is something you do TO customers whereas what I learnt from Coke was that it is what you do WITH customers.”
I think that is a huge philosophical difference, an important one and one that will make any company stand out in the minds of their customers and community if they embrace this approach.
Thank you for sharing this insight and for adding an extra dimension to the post.
Adrian