Training from the Inside Out

Ever wish you could clone your 15 best employees?

Stop wishing. There is an effective way to increase your number of awesome service providers, and it doesn’t involve DNA at all.

Check out this great read about encouraging better customer service.

The author makes some outstanding points, but our favorite is #3 (“Champion Your Customer Champions”), as it perfectly mirrors our training philosophy:

“Who creates the best reaction from your customers in your business? Work out what they do, how they do it, what they say and how they say it! Replicate it! Get others to learn from them.”

That’s our training philosophy in a nutshell. Our typical process:

• Evaluate your staff’s performance using our in-house assessment tools
• Interview your customers to get their insights
• Identify your best people and what they do that makes them the best
• Train your staff on these best practices, using your best performers as live examples

Not only does this process improve training tremendously, but it’s a huge boost for morale, as employees LOVE being recognized for excellence.

Beware: “5-15” Job Recently Sighted! (Part 2)

In a recent post, we discussed this article and our belief that you cannot successfully script “random acts of generosity” without them seeming arbitrary –and consequently, irritating– to customers.

It’s really all about expectations. Now that the Hyatt has publically unveiled the program and a few of the “random acts,” customers are going to expect to receive these benefits. And companies don’t get bonus points for doing what customers expect.

Do you feel gratitude towards your local grocer for providing bags? Didn’t think so. You expect that benefit as necessary element of the service. So providing bags will never build loyalty.

But guess what happens if your grocer doesn’t have bags one day? You know it- anger, agitation, dissatisfaction, and all those negative feelings.

And that’s the danger the Hyatt is facing. The next customer that doesn’t get their dry cleaning tab picked up is going to feel cheated. If they know about this perk, they’re going to expect it, and be mad if they don’t get it.

Thus, this program is a 5-15 job set up for failure. Loyalty cannot be built, and in fact, it’s very likely to decrease due to customers who feel jilted after not receiving perks they know are available.

Obviously, I’m not a big fan of the Hyatt going public with the program (nor is the author of the Times piece). But that isn’t the program’s main downfall.

Even if they had kept the lid on this, word would have gotten out. Social media is skyrocketing. Customers are now interconnected like never before, and businesses that aren’t transparent are in for some hard lessons in upcoming years.

No, the main issue is the impossibility of trying to script random acts.

It’s true that unexpected acts of kindness and assistance DO greatly enhance customer loyalty. But you can’t script these.

Rather, you have to build a solid foundation of great employees, excellent training, and supportive supervision to create an environment where truly random acts of generosity can foster and grow.

And then you can build loyalty.

I’ll give some examples of truly random acts of generosity soon.

***Part 3 of this series now available.***