Today’s interview is with Alan Williams, who is the Founder & MD, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL, and helps service sector organisations to deliver significantly better business performance and a service excellence culture through values-driven organisational alignment. He joins me today to talk about his new book: “The Values Economy, How to Deliver Values Driven Service for Sustained Performance”, what we can learn from it, how values can impact better service and experience and World Values Day.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Customer service: The most important job in the company – Interview with Fortuné Alexander of Pega — and is number 406 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Alan:

• Experience as we normally think about it is no longer enough for people.
• Despite the prospect of a great customer experience, customers are increasingly making choices about who to do business with based on their values and the behaviour of businesses.
• We’re making those choices based on what is important to us.
• However, so much of the work done in the value spaces is so vanilla, it really doesn’t matter, and it’s a total waste of time.
• There are so many organisations out there that do not put their officially stated values into practise and because they’re not making decisions and choices based on what they say is important to them they would be better not having them.
• A much better approach is to ask yourself the question: What is really important to us at our core and what sets us apart from the others?
• That’s how you can start to understand what your real values are.
• But, you need to concisely define what those values mean to give people the chance to be able to live them.
• One approach is help employees co-create a set of very concrete behaviours that they all sign up to and deliver on a daily basis. Doing that will gives your values a chance to live.
• The SERVICEBRAND framework – There are three fundamentally important aspects for any business. The first is the brand identity i.e. being crystal clear about your personality and character as an organisation and that’s where values and purpose sits. The second part is employee engagement – what do we do to inspire our people to represent the organisation in the way that we’ve defined within the brand identity. And then, thirdly, the customer experience – how can these ambassadors for our brand deliver a customer experience which is consistent, irrespective of time, geography or channel. Those are the three fundamental parts, and then there are two supporting elements: systems and processes and measurement and insight.
• Hotel example:
  • London’s Favourite Hotel and Country club was our brand identity – property was 25 miles outside of London with brilliant residential conference facilities and a championship golf course. In the employee engagement space, rather than having an employee of the month recognition programme they had the Golden Apple Awards because we had orchards in our 200 acre estate and championship golf course. On the guest side of things.… given that the hotel is a five star hotel then when you leave, you know your bill is going to be large. Like many hotels they did a lot of work to make the arrival experience great. But, they also worked on the departure to make it more of a good experience rather than just the pain of paying this big bill. They came up with the idea to hand over with the bill a small sachet of poppy seeds with a message from Tom, the head gardener, saying, “For you to remember your stay with us. Signed Tom Angus.” They received brilliant feedback from guests for this small gesture.
• “It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” – Mother Theresa
• The experience you deliver must not be in a vacuum or sterile. To achieve the best impact, it must be connected to what you stand for and your values.
• World Values Day is on October 21st and is an annual campaign to increase the awareness and practice of values around the world.
• Go to World Values Day to find out more and how you can get involved.
• The automation of service for convenience is something that can be really, really good. But, how do you create and develop a meaningful relationship with your customers if there is no human connection?
• Alan’s Punk CX word: Irreverent (or “We don’t care”)
• Alan’s Punk CX brand: Uber

About Alan

Alan Williams is the Founder & MD, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL and helps leaders of progressive service sector organisations, internationally and in the UK, to deliver significantly better business performance and a service excellence culture through values-driven organisational alignment. He is a published author and international speaker whose projects have delivered measurable business impact across a balanced scorecard of measures and been recognised with industry awards.

His co-authored books about values “THE 31 PRACTICES: release the power of your organisation’s VALUES every day” and “My 31 Practices: release the power of your values for authentic happiness” have received international critical acclaim. His latest book, “The Values Economy, How to Deliver Values Driven Service for Sustained Performance” was published this year.

Alan is the Founder of the Global Values Alliance, a Steering Group member of the UK Values Alliance, non-executive director of BQF, a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality and was a global train the trainer for the Marriott International Spirit to Serve programme.

Check out Alan’s new book” “The Values Economy, How to Deliver Values Driven Service for Sustained Performance”, find out more about World Values Day and how you can get involved, say Hi to him on Twitter @ourSERVICEBRAND and feel free to connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay