Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Magic or Misery, with Shep Hyken (Customer Service, Business, Management, Leadership)

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REMASTERED: Magic or Misery, with Shep Hyken (Customer Service, Business, Management, Leadership) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Host: This man is incredible. His name is Shep Hyken. He's the
• 0:03
  chief amazement officer at Shepherd presentations. And I'm
• 0:07
  telling you, this guy is one of the very, very best out there in
• 0:11
  the world, talking about customer service. He's a New
• 0:13
  York Times and Wall Street Journal, Best Selling Author and
• 0:16
  Hall of Fame speaker, yep. Thank you for being on the show,
• 0:20
  brother.
• 0:20
  Shep Hyken: It is an honor, a pleasure. I'm flattered, you're
• 0:22
  too nice.
• 0:23
  Host: You've got all these great books on customer service. And
• 0:26
  what's different?
• 0:27
  Shep Hyken: Well, I said, What if I found one company to use
• 0:30
  for the entire book as a role model, and looking for a company
• 0:34
  that's a rock star, but not recognized as a rock star, and
• 0:37
  that was Ace Hardware Business Week recognized the top 25
• 0:41
  customer service brands. Rich was rated number 12, and I love
• 0:45
  the Ritz Carlton, one of my favorite, favorite hotel change.
• 0:49
  Guess what? Eight hardware was rated number 10. That opened my
• 0:52
  eye. The World Headquarters is a multi billion dollar
• 0:55
  corporation, but if you're a small entrepreneurial business,
• 0:58
  they have 4600 stores owned by 3000 different owners, and
• 1:03
  that's Mom and Pop. And here's what they've done. They've
• 1:05
  managed to operationalize the word helpful. They want to be
• 1:10
  the most helpful stores on the planet, especially in their
• 1:13
  industry, which is home improvement and hardware, and
• 1:16
  they have to compete against some pretty big companies, I
• 1:18
  mean, and the Home Depot or Lowe's or Menards go up right
• 1:21
  now and be big. Big Box stores is who they had to compete
• 1:25
  against. It was David versus Goliath. And you know, who wins?
• 1:29
  Host: What are the things that customers really want today in
• 1:32
  terms of being helpful? How do we demonstrate? Or do you have
• 1:34
  any examples?
• 1:35
  Shep Hyken: First of all, what customers want is they decide
• 1:38
  what it is that they want. Do they want the lowest price in
• 1:41
  town where they need help with something, or do they need
• 1:44
  support, or they want value? And by the way, there you can get a
• 1:48
  hybrid. You can't always get the lowest price and the best
• 1:51
  service, though, helpful means in the in the case of a target,
• 1:55
  where it means very knowledgeable, because you walk
• 1:57
  in with the part and they go, Hey, I need this. Can you help
• 2:00
  me and tell me what to do with it? And their people are very
• 2:03
  knowledgeable. They're trained well, that's part of their their
• 2:07
  whole thing. Cluster staff extremely well. You're not going
• 2:10
  to have to go walking around, you know, the aisles, looking
• 2:13
  for someone to help you. That's important. So I think
• 2:16
  convenience staff properly, without having to wait a long
• 2:19
  time, knowledgeable people, all that goes toward helpful and
• 2:22
  then, you know, having principles in place, like one of
• 2:25
  the ideas that one of the retailers told me is that we
• 2:28
  have this idea that it takes one to say yes, but two to say no,
• 2:31
  which means that that frontline person has to figure out a yes
• 2:35
  solution for the customer, or he's got to get permission to
• 2:38
  say no to the customer from a manager, and the manager really
• 2:42
  doesn't want to be bothered. But when's the last time you act for
• 2:45
  something and to get approval, someone said, Hold on, I have to
• 2:48
  check with my manager.
• 2:50
  Host: So okay, so here's a question. So one of the things
• 2:52
  you talk about is moments of magic, and you also talk about
• 2:55
  moments of misery. What separates moments of magic from
• 2:59
  moments of mediocrity.
• 3:01
  Shep Hyken: And mediocrity is my term for average, satisfactory,
• 3:05
  just okay, and a moment of magic is and it's not necessarily blow
• 3:10
  me away. Wow me, it's just better than average. And so if
• 3:14
  you just take that moment, that interaction, and you bump it up
• 3:17
  just a notch, and by the way, once the while, you bump it up a
• 3:20
  lot more given an opportunity to do so, but it could be just a
• 3:23
  consistent positive attitude, something that's better than
• 3:26
  average. And when you spring the moments of magic along, and
• 3:29
  they're they're consistent, that puts you in what I call the zone
• 3:33
  of amazement. Shall be fun. Words, amazement, mediocrity,
• 3:36
  misery, you know magic. So really, the big difference
• 3:40
  between mediocrity and magic is just being a little above
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  average, because anybody can be average, and anybody could
• 3:45
  create a moment of magic some of the time, but the goal is make
• 3:48
  it happen all of the time. That's the key consistency. If
• 3:52
  you go into your Nordstrom department store, what you get
• 3:56
  is very consistent. People engage you, they help you, and
• 4:00
  they have some pretty good, I call lack of policies in place,
• 4:03
  meaning that the salesperson can go from one department to the
• 4:07
  next with you and help you throughout the entire store. You
• 4:09
  know, take, you know, I'm a man, and I want to buy my wife
• 4:12
  something that guy will take or the gal take me upstairs the
• 4:15
  women's department. You don't get that in other stores. Now,
• 4:18
  that's consistent throughout their entire organization. And
• 4:21
  you know what? They don't blow me away. They're just
• 4:23
  consistently really good, better than average. Sometimes, you
• 4:27
  know, and that by itself, makes them way above average. So you
• 4:30
  hire the right people, and you train them to your system, and
• 4:34
  then you say, Now go out there. And you know what is it? Go
• 4:37
  forth and multiply. Go forth and prosper.
• 4:40
  Host: Brilliant. Brilliant stuff, this kind of coming back.
• 4:42
  Here's my question for you. You know, as far as providing
• 4:46
  amazing customer service, how do I get my front line to care
• 4:50
  about customer service? In other words, if I'm the entrepreneur,
• 4:53
  I'm the owner or I'm the manager, how do I get the people
• 4:55
  on the front line to care about this, right?
• 4:58
  Shep Hyken: Well, first of all, recognize. Is that if they
• 5:00
  aren't willing to care, they shouldn't be hired to begin
• 5:03
  with. So it starts at the hiring process. You know, do the
• 5:06
  background. One of the people that I interviewed for the last
• 5:09
  book was American Express. I interviewed their senior VP of
• 5:13
  World Service, and one of the things he talked about, it's,
• 5:16
  rather than hire people from the call center industry, he looked
• 5:19
  for people that had hospitality background, people that work in
• 5:22
  a hotel or a restaurant, because he says those people know how to
• 5:26
  take care of people. If that's important, look at the right
• 5:29
  kind of person that you're hiring. Nordstrom talked about
• 5:33
  how they don't really train their people to be as good as
• 5:36
  they do the parents train them. They didn't take what they
• 5:39
  already know and they make it work for their system. I mean,
• 5:41
  isn't that great? And so same thing with ace. They hire the
• 5:45
  right people and then they train them. Training is so important,
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  it's really difficult to throw somebody into the fire there and
• 5:51
  say, Okay, now get out real quick without any kind of
• 5:53
  training.
• 5:54
  Host: Let's say I'm a small, medium sized business, and I'm
• 5:57
  just trying to get get people fired up and jack up about the
• 5:59
  idea of providing amazing customer service. So there, you
• 6:02
  know, what are some simple things that we can do pretty
• 6:05
  quickly that don't cost a lot, that are going to improve my
• 6:08
  customers experience immediately?
• 6:10
  Shep Hyken: All right, give everybody an index card and tell
• 6:13
  them that at the end of the week you want them to write down an
• 6:15
  example when they've created a great service experience, either
• 6:19
  for a customer, or their internal customer, someone they
• 6:22
  work with. Okay, then you compile these cards. Somebody
• 6:25
  gets them, they compile them, they look through them, they
• 6:28
  pick the best of the best, and they share these. And what you
• 6:31
  also try and do, and I use that word, operationalized a little
• 6:34
  earlier. Operationalize some of these good, positive
• 6:37
  experiences. Why can't they be happening all the time? Now the
• 6:40
  next thing I want them to do is I want them not to just do this
• 6:43
  once. I want them to do it once a week for like, the next six
• 6:46
  weeks. And what happens is, at the end of the week, people are
• 6:49
  going, Okay, what should I write about? And after about week
• 6:52
  three or four, they're going, Oh, this is a great one. This is
• 6:55
  what I want to write about. So instead of reflecting back,
• 6:58
  they're caught in the moment of giving that great service to
• 7:01
  experience.
• 7:01
  Host: Oh, I love that. Shep, thanks for joining the show, my
• 7:05
  friend.
• 7:05
  Shep Hyken: Thank you, great to be here. Hope we do it again
• 7:07
  soon.