Allow me to take you on a journey of love. On this journey, you will discover what leads someone to love doing business with a company and what benefits are derived from such a love.

To prepare for this journey, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and consider the one company you absolutely love to do business with. This is a company you love to do business with because their people live the brand every day. When you interact with employees from this company, it is clear that they know what their company is and what the branded experience is all about.

Employees in this company not only know the branded experience but consistently act in conformity with it. This company you are thinking about is “out-behaving” the competition, which leads to incredible customer loyalty. Customers (like you) buy more, and more often, and are less price-sensitive.

Employees in this company also seem quite loyal. Employees recognize their company as a great place to work. They are productive and happy.

This company you are thinking about is managing an experience. You love to do business with it so much that you’ve probably rewarded it with the ultimate compliment—your referral. Perhaps your confidence in the experience you received led you to suggest that others should try this company. Or maybe you tell others about the company because it just feels good to do so. In essence, you’ve become an unpaid member of this company’s marketing department.

After reflecting for a few moments, make a list of all the companies you love to do business with and note why. What is it that they do to deliver that experience to you?

Leaders in these companies understand that knowing the brand and doing the brand lead to a stronger work culture and more profitable customer relationships. That is why these leaders do what it takes to define and manage the experience. Employees in companies you love doing business with recognize that they are on stage, orchestrating an experience. They appreciate that they have the ultimate responsibility and opportunity to deliver an experience that makes customers happy. And in most cases, it makes them happy too.

Here is an example of a company that consistently delivers great customer service and out-behaves the competition, leading to stronger business results.

On a Tuesday morning last month, I arrived at Detroit Metro Airport—stressed and very late. Delta had canceled my flight the night before, and I had been re-booked on a 6 a.m. flight. I was scheduled to speak to an audience of senior executives at 9 a.m. It was 8:15, and my drive to the event was estimated to be 40 minutes. I had speaking engagements in the surrounding area over the next several days, so grabbing a cab wasn’t an option.

There I stood—anxious and panicked—waiting for the Enterprise Rent-A-Car shuttle to pick me up and take me to the rental car facility. I am about to share with you a completely orchestrated experience that employees love to deliver and customers love to receive.

The shuttle pulls up, and out steps Bill.

“Hi, folks. Welcome to Detroit. We are glad you are here. My name is Bill, and I will take you to get your car. Does anyone need help with their bags?”

I took my seat along with several other passengers.

Bill continued with his speech: “We appreciate your renting from Enterprise. I will have you safely to the rental car facility in about 4 minutes. When you get there you will find fresh coffee and snacks waiting for you.”

Four minutes later we pulled up to the facility. I rushed off the shuttle and was first to walk into the facility. There I was greeted by Wendy.

“Hi, I’m Wendy. Welcome to Enterprise. What’s your name? Welcome, Gregg. Step right up to the counter. Elisha is ready to help you get your car.”

Elisha introduced herself, and I shared my dire situation. She was sympathetic, and less than a minute later she was leading me out to my car. She helped me carry my bags and did the walk-around to check for unreported damage while I got situated for the drive.

At this point—because of the friendliness of Bill, Wendy and Elisha—my trust in Enterprise was high enough that I didn’t think twice about not doing the inspection myself. I was confident Elisha would take care of it for me and act in my best interest, which she did.

At the exit, I had to stop to hand over paperwork to the gate attendant, Sandy. We had a quick dialogue about customer service.

“Hi, I am Sandy. How was our customer service?”

“It was great.”

Sandy handed back the paperwork: “Terrific. Thank you for renting from Enterprise. Have a great day.”

I responded, “Sandy, what if I had told you that the customer service was not good?”

“Well, I would have asked you what happened,” she said, “and if it wasn’t something I could have resolved for you, I would have connected you to one of my managers who would make it right.”

When I returned to Enterprise two days later, I had equally positive experiences with the drop-off attendant and shuttle driver. They were friendly, helpful and attentive—clearly demonstrating the brand.

Enterprise employees recognize that they are performing in front of customers. They have been trained to orchestrate an ideal experience at each point of interaction by playing the role of host. In doing so, they realize they are performing an experience—from the shuttle driver to the gate attendant and everyone in between.

This managed experience is created by a system for living the brand, an approach to defining an experience that employees can orchestrate at critical points of interaction—and an experience that will create customer love.

Recently published in the Rochester Business Journal.

If we want to be accurate about how we lead people, and how we manage the experience, we have to admit that we can’t actually “get” anyone to do anything. But we still need our workforce to produce, to deliver, and ultimately to help us obtain and keep customers.

So if we can’t get them to do it, what can we do?

We can provide clear, strong leadership that sets our people (and our business) up for success, both internally—among employees, and externally—among customers.

The Leader’s Role

Here are three critical ways leaders can set their people up to do “it”—that is, to deliver on customer experience promises:

1. DEFINE AND SET EXPECTATIONS FOR WHAT “IT” IS

Start off by determining what you want your business to be known for. Define one or two basic beliefs to inspire each employee’s behaviors every day. For example, “We believe every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to offer a friendly, engaging experience that makes us the best place to shop.” If an employee doesn’t believe every customer truly deserves a friendly, engaging experience, that employee will have difficulty providing that experience.

Beliefs are critical because they drive behaviors. But beliefs are invisible. We can’t “see” or “do” a belief, so we can’t measure its effectiveness. Behaviors, on the other hand, are visible—and therefore, measurable. Behaviors drive the experiences that lead to a business result—more or less productivity, loyalty, and/or sales.

Determine specific behaviors that all employees can do consistently to provide the kind of “wow” experiences that not only satisfy customers, but instill the kind of loyalty that leads to referrals (the ultimate compliment).

Document these beliefs and behaviors. Make sure beliefs are simple, easy to understand, remember, and repeat. Make sure behaviors are actionable and visible.

Here’s an example of a basic, non-negotiable behavior every employee can and should do every day.

“Help customers find what they need.” (Good, but not great).

“Approach customers in the store and ask ‘Can I help you find something?’” (Much better! Why? Because it’s specific and visible).

2. COMMUNICATE

After you define and document the behaviors that make up the desired customer experience, COMMUNICATE them to all employees and set clear expectations.

In weekly staff meetings and informal huddles, on break room bulletin boards, and in staff newsletters, focus on one key behavior at a time, such as, “Acknowledge every customer with eye contact, a smile, and a sincere greeting.” Frequently mention “the experience” you want to deliver to customers, and remind employees of the specific behaviors that have been defined as “mission critical” to the company’s success.

Better yet, catch your people doing the right behaviors, and share those successes with the entire workforce. Recognizing people for doing the right things is the best way to educate employees on the company strategy, generate commitment, and stimulate positive actions that will be replicated by others.

3. HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR DOING “IT”

Measure the consistency with which those behaviors are delivered on a day-to-day basis, and link those measurements to key financial results.

Make “the experience” part of every performance review. Have employees complete a non-confidential self-assessment once a year to rate themselves on how consistently they do the non-negotiable behaviors. This can be a great starting point for a conversation between you and your employee. Find out if they’re unclear about expectations – what to do, or how to do it. Identify areas where the employee might be struggling, resources or additional training they may need, and reinforce their crucial role in impacting the company’s financial results.

Good employees will try hard to meet performance objectives if they understand what good performance is. It’s your job as the leader to DEFINE good performance, clearly COMMUNICATE expectations, and courageously HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE for delivering “it.”

With a little forethought and a lot of commitment, travel sellers can make outstanding customer service an integral part of a winning brand.

No big concepts are needed; no fancy formulas – just basic common sense, said Gregg Lederman, author of Achieve Brand Integrity: Ten Truths You Must Know to Enhance Employee Performance and Increase Company Profits.

So whether you’re known for checking in with clients while they’re on vacation or following up with them afterwards, these are your branded behaviors that customers come to expect.

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In my last article, titled “Any monkey can survey; start building relationships,” I described the benefits of a fully operational customer experience management program and its key differences from traditional satisfaction surveys. I cautioned readers not to annoy customers by seeking feedback about their experience if they are not prepared or motivated to act on it. I also shared the fundamental mistake that companies make when they are irresponsible in surveying customers: Bombarding them with an endless list of questions using oversimplified-yet affordable-tools like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang.

Since then I’ve learned an astonishing fact. According to research by MarketTools Inc., 98 percent of companies collect feedback from their customers, yet only 8 percent follow up with customers to do something about it.

Sending out a survey is easy. Inviting customers to give feedback and then effectively following up to uncover opportunities is much more difficult. I can only assume that is why such a small percentage of companies do it.
  
When I speak with business leaders about the importance of customer follow-up, they get it. They know it is critically important and will lead to terrific opportunities. Yet they still fail to do it the majority of the time. Why, especially considering it will lead to at least one of four opportunities to improve or grow your business? Those opportunities:

Resolve an issue. Learning about challenges or problems from the customer’s perspective and then taking action not only helps you improve operations but also shows that you care, which in turn makes customers happy and more loyal.

Up-sell or cross-sell products and services. Following up with satisfied and extremely satisfied customers provides instant permission and positioning for the “what else” question. For example: “Hi, Mr. Customer. Thank you so much for sharing feedback about your experience with our company. We are pleased you are so happy. We love to do business with you too. Just out of curiosity, what else might we be able to help you with?”
 

Get referrals. Again, you have instant permission and positioning for getting a referral or at least planting the seed that referrals really are the greatest compliment. “Hi, Ms. Super Loyal Customer. Thank you so much for sharing your feedback. … Who else do you know who might benefit from having a great experience with our company?”



Recognize and appreciate employees. Happy customers quite often have a story to tell about an employee who went above and beyond in delivering a great experience. Capture those stories and best practices, and share them. Doing so motivates employees by clearly connecting them to the difference they make for customers and your company.

Again, why is effective follow-up with customers done so infrequently, and what can you do about it? Here are four strategies to ensure your workforce is successfully equipped to execute a customer experience management program that will build stronger relationships with customers, drive sales and engage your workforce to become more customer-centered than you ever imagined possible:

1. Make sure employees have the knowledge about your company’s products and service offerings. A customer follow-up call-whether the customer is extremely satisfied, extremely dissatisfied or somewhere in between-is a unique and hard-to-regenerate opportunity to connect and build upon a relationship. Employees taking these calls should be in a position to answer (or find the answer) to any question related to your business offerings.
  
A dissatisfied customer may ask, “Why did it take so long for your company’s support representatives to answer the phone?” or “Why do your accountants charge so much for preparing personal tax returns?” Inability to address questions of this nature during the call can make even a satisfied customer reconsider his opinion of your company.


2. Empower employees to make things right. In many situations, there is an opportunity for immediate action to improve the customer’s experience. In these instances, customers want to see tangible results-especially considering they spent time and energy to provide feedback.

3. Use technology to automate “triggers” and track customer follow-up. Having the right technology is a must to manage customer follow-up. Employees responsible for following up need to have:

• Trigger alerts, automated messages indicating an opportunity to contact a customer.
 Access to customer scores and comments to help them prepare for the conversation.
• Ability to document information about the call (during and after), including specifics of the conversation and their perspective on the situation.
• 
Ability to record the status of the follow-up call and, once completed, its outcome.

In essence, your trigger and tracking system becomes a case management work flow that tracks in-progress activity and results. For instance, does someone else need to follow up with the customer next? If the case is closed, did the employee prevent the customer from dropping you as a preferred supplier? Did your employee establish new contacts in the account? Did he or she manage to identify a new sales opportunity?

4. Establish accountability by measuring and reporting on outcomes. What gets measured gets done. Determine which measures the employees who are responsible for customer follow-up should be most accountable for. A few metrics to consider include the time interval between feedback and initial follow-up, average time to “close the loop” with customers, and ratio of favorable to unfavorable outcomes.

A customer experience management program can seem overwhelming at first. Employees may initially react with an attitude of “Oh no, not another thing I need to do.” Ask yourself whether following up with customers to resolve issues, build relationships and uncover new opportunities is just another thing to do or the thing you should be doing.

Today we have access to a plethora of technology and tools that allow us to do amazing things with respect to connecting with customers. Don’t use technology to annoy customers with survey requests. Invite them to provide feedback, and follow up with them through a program that is specifically designed to build relationships and increase sales.

~Gregg

Hold on. I’m used to dealing with zombies here. They don’t smile. They don’t know my first name and they certainly don’t say nice things. They grunt, growl, and devour my transaction to get to the next customer. Did the CDC finally find a cure to avoid the apocalypse? No time to think about that…Intrigued by this change in behavior, I found myself actually wanting to partake in a brief, somewhat meaningful dialogue. Then as my receipt completed its voyage through the dark underground tunnel, the teller, now quite human, said “I hope you don’t mind, I dropped a few pieces of candy in your envelope. Just a small token of our appreciation. Hope you have a great night and thank you for being a customer with PNC.” Nice touch.

Still cynical, I thanked her back and drove away with this new “experience” top of mind knowing full well this little game changer was not done by accident. You see, at the time, PNC was just a few months into their acquisition of National City and let’s just say they were nowhere near my list of companies that provided great customer service. As far as I was concerned it was a relationship beyond repair and I was ready to take the painful steps toward taking my business elsewhere.

Then as weeks turned into months of consistently good experiences, I thought about changing banks less and less. The last of the zombies were replaced by engaged humans and they continued to take pride in their front line duties. Fast forward to today, because of their consistency, this local branch still calls me a customer.

So there you go. With all the horror stories posted on Halloween about scary customer service encounters, I thought it was time to write about one banks’ local branch that woke up, became human again, and actually got it right.

In closing, I hope this post serves as a reminder that even the most well-designed customer experience strategy is worthless if your front line employees aren’t engaged and aligned to consistently deliver on your brand promise – treats or not.

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On Performance
Rochester Business Journal

September 2, 2011

Recently I stayed at a Marriott hotel on a business trip. Three days later, as expected, I received a request to participate in a “short” online survey. My inbox gets several of these a week. They’re annoying and usually end up deleted at a glance. But this time my Marriott experience had been particularly troubling, and the survey invitation specifically stated that my feedback would be acted upon. So I decided to participate.

After a few minutes I realized that “short survey” was an understatement. It would not be a small investment of time. Rather, I had to walk through the entire stay and pinpoint what actually worked and what went wrong. About 20 questions in, I so badly wanted to drop out, but I kept going as the progress bar indicated I was almost done. Finally, after nearly 10 minutes (which felt like 20) of intense memory recall, I finished, having rated the Marriott very low on topics including “responsiveness of staff” and “cleanliness of room” and even providing direct comments about the poorly functioning amenities. I even answered all the profiling questions about age, occupation and reason for staying.

As I write this article, it has been more than three weeks since my stay. Do you think I’ve heard anything back from Marriott? This is an illustrative example of over-surveying and under-acting, which is why I can confidently say that most companies’ survey approaches are annoying!

Don’t annoy your customers by seeking feedback about their experience if you are not prepared or motivated to act on it. A fundamental mistake that companies make is being irresponsible in surveying customers. Bombarding customers with an endless list of questions using oversimplified-yet affordable-tools like SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang has become a popular and simple but less-than-strategic way to try to engage with customers. However, when it comes to truly engaging with customers and taking real action on their feedback, initiative leaders tend to move on to other priorities or simply admit they are not sure what to do with the massive amounts of data collected.

Your customers don’t want to be surveyed. But most customers do want a relationship with your company and want you to take their feedback seriously-especially since they know they are doing you the favor by providing feedback.

There is a significant difference between a “monkey” survey and a fully operational customer experience management program. For starters, any monkey (that is why they call it SurveyMonkey, right?) can lay out questions of various types and invite thousands of customers to participate. Here are the key differences between monkey surveys and fully operational customer experience management programs:

Objective: Have a single, clearly stated and well-communicated objective, such as “measure the overall customer relationship” or “track drivers of customer satisfaction.” A strong focus will align your company’s decision-makers and provide the necessary support to act on customer feedback and keep the program going. On the other hand, a monkey survey can have multiple objectives, but the results are less accurate, less actionable, more biased and simply limited in their use.

Design: Use a short, very accurate and focused set of questions that follows the clearly defined objective. Like the Marriott survey, monkey surveys can include dozens of questions over lots of pages, collecting information on scattered topics. And it’s OK, because nobody cares about the results.

Sampling strategy: Ideally, solid customer relationship programs are implemented twice a year at most. This allows your company to actually study, incorporate and act on customer feedback. Monkey surveys don’t have a sampling strategy. They are drafted every day, and nobody seems to care enough about the consequences. Customers are simply data points.

Action plan: Customer relationship management begins when data has been collected. The most important component is what you do with customer feedback-how you incorporate ideas for improvement, address issues of poor satisfaction and act both strategically and tactically to bring about change. Your customers expect you to follow up with them. They expect to see change happening. Conversely, a monkey survey is considered almost complete when feedback has been collected. Analysts tabulate or visualize it, present it and then go home.

Let’s face it: Getting feedback from customers is a selfish act. And it’s perfectly OK! Just accept the fact that you want feedback because you want your customers to like you more, buy more from you and recommend you to friends and relatives. You want to learn and improve so you can outbehave and outperform your competition. Another wonderfully selfish reason to reach out to customers and follow up the right way: You can regularly share the feedback (good and bad) with employees and dramatically improve engagement. Quite often employees are too far removed from the reality of the customer experience and how they positively affect a customer’s life.

Companies that do the best job of building customer relationships use four questions in designing survey instruments. Each question is distinct and captures a different aspect of customer loyalty.

• Likelihood of recommending to others: This measures the customer’s propensity to overtly praise and endorse a company to friends or colleagues. Studies have found this question to be the best direct gauge of loyalty currently known.
• Satisfaction with overall performance: This measures the degree to which customer expectations were met, based on a particular experience.
• Likelihood of choosing again: This measures the degree to which a customer would choose to do business with you again, based on experience with your company over a specific period of time.
• Likelihood of continuing to buy: This measures company performance based on initial expectations and actual experience over time. It can also indicate if customers are “trapped” because of high switching costs or for other reasons.

Customer experience management is the most effective way to start and enrich direct relationships with your customers. Every time you have the opportunity to interact about the customers’ experience, you stimulate potential referrals and upselling opportunities. But there is much more to it than simply getting the survey out. That’s the easy part. Asking the right questions and following up in an effective manner are what it takes to turn customer feedback into company profits.

“Customer Service” has become an overused, hyped and abused buzzword. Business leaders everywhere have become obsessed with the concept of customer service. The problem is, very few leaders have been able to put the concept into practice. That’s why today we have what I’ll call the Customer Experience Chasm and at the heart of the chasm are disengaged employees responsible for delivering the brand experience.

Companies with strong brands and cultures don’t need proclamations from bureaucrats to engage their employees and customers. They are companies that have built their entire businesses around delivering consistently great customer service – they are large, medium and small businesses alike. To them, customer service IS the business. It’s not an initiative, project, or rah rah event that comes and goes, it’s a mindset and belief system that all employees share and consistently think, speak and behave.

Employee Pathway to Buy-in

• Denial. The denial stage results from a lack of understanding about
  the business reality and branding as a viable strategy.
• Employees think: “I don’t understand what we’re trying to accomplish.
  This brand strategy is a flavor of the month. Stop wasting my time so that I can get
  my work done today. Or tomorrow. Or whenever I get to it since I define what success
  looks like because you have not.”
• Resistance. This is caused by strong beliefs about obstacles that
  will prohibit successful execution of the brand strategy.
• Employees think: “Our company doesn’t have the right people or
  operational processes in place to really do the brand strategy — we won’t be able
  to keep the promises our leaders want to make.”
• “Since we’re doomed to fail because of the people we have, this
  branding initiative will only increase my workload. Ugh!”
• Exploration. This signals a desire to learn more.
• Employees think: “Okay, the company might be onto something meaningful
  after all. What can I do to bring the brand to reality?”
• Commitment. This is generated from the belief that change is desirable.
  • Employees think: “Leadership seems pretty committed to this. They’re
    still talking about it. Wow! This might not be a flavor of the month after all. The
    leaders seem to be aligned around this cause.”

Leaders must be careful not to try to take employees from denial straight to commitment.
The steps of resistance and exploration are important in helping employees make the
brand personal and create meaning out of the brand-building process.

In helping employees down the pathway of buy-in, it’s important to acknowledge that
“Rah Rah” kickoff events, T-shirts, mouse pads, and posters won’t be nearly enough.
It will take more than a motivational speech or a training class to ensure that employees
understand the power your brand can have in stimulating cultural transformation and
business results.