Latest / Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders / 224: The Six Components of a Five Star Experience
Transcript
- 0:03Welcome to the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
- 0:06I'm Denise Thompson, and I'm here with my co-host, John DiJulius Today, we're diving into a framework that separates good companies from iconic brands.
- 0:17To create customer evangelists, the kind of loyal fans who come back, refer others, and defend your brand, you must excel in six key areas of the customer experience.
- 0:28Physical, atmosphere, functional, technical,
- 0:33operational, and hospitality.
- 0:36John, you've spent decades studying world-class organizations and training leaders to elevate every touch point.
- 0:42In this episode, I'd like you to break down each of those components, give us some real-world stories and practical steps for auditing and improving the customer's
- 0:51experience.
- 0:52So whether you run a small team or a global brand, these six categories are going to be your roadmap to building loyalty that price can't touch.
- 1:02Today's episode is brought to you by the Customer Experience Executive Academy.
- 1:07This is a part-time year-long academy likened to a master class in developing leaders to design and manage the customer's experience.
- 1:15For information on how you can enroll, visit cxeA.org, that's cxeA.org, or schedule a call at tdg.click forward slash Claudia.
- 1:31Done.
- 1:32How you doing?
- 1:33How wonderful.
- 1:35Hey, you've said before to create customer evangelists, companies must operate at a high level in six areas of business.
- 1:44Why isn't it enough to just focus really hard on one or two areas?
- 1:49Well, cause when we're talking about the customer's actual experience, there's so many things from, you know, where you're located, if you're brick and mortar, you know, you
- 2:02think about different things that you can complain about or why you choose to do business with it is I don't go to that place because the parking, there's no parking or, you know,
- 2:17we've
- 2:18had one of our salons, uh you couldn't turn left to get into the streets.
- 2:27You couldn't turn left or right, left to get out.
- 2:31So it was just so frustrating besides parking or where you place it.
- 2:39there's literally six things that encompass a total customer experience.
- 2:48when you're doing business with someone.
- 2:51And when you look across industries, which of the six components do you see leaders consistently undervaluing?
- 3:00And what does it cost them in terms of brand loyalty?
- 3:03Yeah, you know, it's hard.
- 3:06They're all, um you know, very important, as I think you'll see.
- 3:12I think the the sixth one, and it's not sixth because of the ranking, you know, importance, but the hospitality side um is is how you make someone feel.
- 3:24um You know, so when you go into other businesses, I think, uh you know, banking or uh
- 3:33legal or professional services or manufacturing.
- 3:37I don't think people think that they're in a hospitality business, but that's a component of how I make you feel.
- 3:44And I think that's the least, uh, you know, trained, uh, new employee, uh, you know, doesn't get trained.
- 3:52Now, a lot of these other things, you know, an employee, you know, employees don't get to decide the building.
- 4:00which is physicals first, right?
- 4:02Brick and mortar building, uh freeway access, parking, signage, that's not physicals.
- 4:10That's something you could change today, right?
- 4:13mean, moving or knocking walls down or anything like that, um that's obviously from uh a planning, um that's not in the employee's hands, leadership hands, CEO's hands, CFO's
- 4:28hands.
- 4:30But a lot of other things are controlled by the employee.
- 4:35So you just talked about the physical experience.
- 4:38So physical excellence often gets overlooked until it's a problem, whether it's paint chipping on the walls or just things that we overlook because we see them every day when
- 4:50we're working in that environment.
- 4:52What are some subtle physical details companies miss that send the wrong message to customers?
- 4:59Yeah, you know, like you just said, uh allowing your place to uh decay.
- 5:07ah You know, my own salons, when I visit them, mostly for haircuts now, you know, I'll walk in and.
- 5:17You know, I don't know why I'm I'm light sensitive, but I can tell immediately when a light is out.
- 5:25you know, and I look up and it's like, why, why is it darker in this spot?
- 5:30That drives me crazy.
- 5:31So, you know, that's where, um, you know, or, or, or, uh, you know, something is, is not working or shipped or, you know, all the little things, uh, that, uh can, know, just send
- 5:47a message of uh poor attention to detail.
- 5:50The other thing about physical now, I don't want people to think that
- 5:53This is only for brick and mortar.
- 5:56Where you're located, B2B, where Amazon has its storage places centrally located to make sure it could get to any customer same day or within 24 hours or whatever it is.
- 6:16If customers come to you from a B2B or you got to go to customers, it's where it's located and things like that.
- 6:28So and then when we go beyond physical and we look at atmosphere, you've said everything speaks.
- 6:35So can you share a story of a company that mastered atmosphere so well that it transformed the customer's emotional connection to the brand?
- 6:45Yeah, I mean, the first thing I think of is Chick-fil-A.
- 6:48When you go there, um they, you know, from how they orchestrate their drive-throughs, and they'll have two people out there and running two lines with an iPad.
- 7:02And, you know, that's part functional and part atmosphere.
- 7:08But when you walk in, um they pump the smell in to as soon as you open the door.
- 7:14and there's like that double door, you start smelling and all of a sudden you're hungrier than you realized.
- 7:23And what the surroundings look like.
- 7:27Negative cues, they remove negative cues and negative cues could be signage, it could be stupid signage and can't use the bathroom unless you paid for something or if you bounce a
- 7:40check.
- 7:41But there's also other negative cues that Starbucks works really hard at reversing.
- 7:47Starbucks years ago, their new machines were so tall that you couldn't see the barista.
- 7:57And that's a horrible experience that they had to reverse, an expensive uh investment they had to reverse.
- 8:07We talk about negative cues a lot of, you
- 8:11you know, what you're doing physically, what you're wearing, but it's also going into the bathroom and there's no toilet paper or the garbage is overflowing.
- 8:22Like just being all over that.
- 8:27Too much clutter at the front desk, sign it, sign it, sign it.
- 8:31And the signers might be not negative cues, but it might be, you know, 10 different promotions.
- 8:37ah that they're trying to tell a sign up for our membership rewards thing and you can get two for one on this and this it is and listen if you have More than three signs probably
- 8:51more than two signs.
- 8:52You have no signs It's just it's just billboards.
- 8:56I'm not reading any of them
- 8:59I love that what you brought up in the beginning about the smell of Chick-fil-A.
- 9:03I associate even hotels, um different brands with a smell and there's that connection to it.
- 9:13Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 9:14And Apple is so good at this and the clean, the cleanliness and everything's just sharp and the way they, they, uh, does, you know, design, you know, I had to run the Lululemon
- 9:27yesterday and Apple's next to it.
- 9:29And I wanted to go into Apple so bad.
- 9:32I didn't need anything, but I, I, I made a good decision not to cause it's just, it's just a toy store for me, but it's the way they merchandise and
- 9:42isn't there?
- 9:43Is it out?
- 9:44I probably should have But Nordstrom's compared to Macy's, Dillard's, all those things.
- 9:53Macy's and Dillard's, in my experience, you can't even get things off the rack because there's so many products shoved in there.
- 10:03And you can't walk between the racks because they're so close to one another.
- 10:08And then you go to Nordstrom's and they have probably
- 10:12one twentieth of the product.
- 10:17And, you know, it seems like there's only a few, uh you know, they're merchandise.
- 10:24You can see them.
- 10:25can, you, me and someone else can walk next to each other in between the racks.
- 10:31You know, it's just laid out and it's so, uh you know, easy and attractive.
- 10:39Does merchandising fall under atmosphere or functional or where would you put that?
- 10:45Um, that's a good question.
- 10:46That's a really good question.
- 10:50I would.
- 10:51don't think you have to be high end like Nordstrom even.
- 10:54I mean, if you walk into Target, Target I think does a great job of merchandising.
- 11:00You want to buy things because of the way they're displayed.
- 11:04Yeah, I would lean towards uh atmosphere.
- 11:08know, atmosphere is the five, six, I don't how many senses there are.
- 11:13How many senses are there?
- 11:14Smell, know, taste, you know, all that signage, you know, and your merchandising and, you know, all that and the look and the feel.
- 11:26And so then when you go to B2B, that's might be over the phone or on your website.
- 11:31You know, same stuff can happen when you go to a website and it's so noisy and crazy and like, you know, I've left websites just because it's overwhelming versus, you know, you go
- 11:45back to Apple, go to Apple's website.
- 11:47It's simple, you know, and it's clean and it's easy to navigate.
- 11:54And again, you probably want something that that's not why you went there, but
- 11:59you know, now you're looking at the headphones or whatever it may be.
- 12:06The next component I want to talk about, functional, is all about that, the ease of doing business.
- 12:12Where do most companies unintentionally make things harder than they need to be?
- 12:18So I just uh heard this this week, someone was complaining that they're trying to get one of their children into a specialist because they need a specialist.
- 12:35We'll just leave it at that.
- 12:37And these specialists are only available like nine to three.
- 12:41It's when kids go to school.
- 12:46You know, how inconvenient is that for you to take your kid out of school?
- 12:51It might be one of the reasons why they need a specialist ah to get them in with a specialist.
- 12:56So it's the hours of operation.
- 12:59It's how easy are you to do business?
- 13:01um know, it's it's um you know, how well are you staffed?
- 13:07It's policies and procedures and and you know, payment options and.
- 13:13you know, all those different things.
- 13:15It's just how, basically it's how easy are you to do business and do you make it harder or easier for people to work with you.
- 13:25And the next one, technical.
- 13:27Customers expect competence as a baseline.
- 13:31How can technical excellence be a differentiator rather than just a requirement?
- 13:36Well, the first thing that's obviously huge now is all the technology and are you on the cutting edge and self-serve kiosk.
- 13:49I don't need to call and wait and hold.
- 13:52You go to Apple and I'm having something wrong with my computer and literally I believe it's 90 seconds I can book an appointment with a genius.
- 14:05um If you go to the Apple website, I that's awesome.
- 14:10Now I need to speak to someone when I bring it in and transfer my pain and you don't understand what I do and I need my computer and blah, blah, blah.
- 14:20But the technical that that that's that's the great.
- 14:24So it's your it's your software.
- 14:27It's, know, the your your ability uh speed of technology.
- 14:31You're sitting waiting, waiting state of the art.
- 14:35uh going to their website, but it's also the uh level of expertise of your employees.
- 14:43They're technical and that's huge.
- 14:45I mean, that is so huge.
- 14:47And you know, when you're dealing with someone that doesn't really know and is kind of, know, uh fumbling, um can't answer certain things or, my God, I got the smartest person
- 15:02I've ever met.
- 15:03uh around this topic or thing.
- 15:06So all those things fall under the technical side.
- 15:14All right, and now let's talk about details that happen behind the scenes, operational.
- 15:20So cleanliness, prep systems, how do you help leaders see these invisible details through the eyes of the customer?
- 15:29Yeah, and operational and a lot of stuff is being brilliant at the basics.
- 15:34um I actually think this is the one that uh of the six that they probably spend the most time on.
- 15:43And for good reason, you got to be brilliant at the basics.
- 15:46um And, you know, it's, know, the cleanliness, the dress code, the tasks, uh inventory, ah the processes.
- 15:59And that's very, very important.
- 16:01um The functions of the job, duties.
- 16:05uh The problem with operational is the only time it's memorable is when they failed.
- 16:15So if you call up to make a doctor's appointment for next Thursday at 1 p.m.
- 16:23and you walk in at five minutes to one,
- 16:27and check in and they have you down for your one o'clock.
- 16:31You're not like, oh my God, you're not calling Ken and saying they had me, right?
- 16:37That's operational.
- 16:38The only time that's memorable is if you walked in at 12 55 and they say you're an hour late or your appointment was yesterday or you're at the wrong location.
- 16:50You know, we booked you downtown, not, you know, East side, West side.
- 16:55And so that's with a lot of things.
- 16:58It's being brilliant at the basics, but most companies, you know, focus exclusively on those.
- 17:08And you got to be brilliant at the basics, ah but you need the other things that by itself, uh your competitors are doing very well.
- 17:17ah And so that by itself, you're not differentiating.
- 17:22You don't have a signature experience.
- 17:26You know, when we talk about operational, makes me think there are um certain titles, certain positions that really lead some of these components, but maybe not all of them.
- 17:41So it's one of those things that companies have to delegate probably who is accountable for this component.
- 17:49Well, mean, operations comes to mind because you have somebody generally speaking that's in charge of your operations, right?
- 17:55yeah, yeah.
- 17:56But you may not have somebody, or you probably have somebody who's in IT, but atmosphere, who takes care of the atmosphere, who's looking at physical, who's looking, big one,
- 18:08hospitality.
- 18:09You started off with that one saying most companies are weakest in hospitality.
- 18:13um
- 18:16about all the others so far, we've dove a little deeper on physical, atmospheric, functional, technical, and operational.
- 18:27None of those talk about how you made me feel, right?
- 18:33There was parking, I could get in and out of your, I don't know, strip center, um you know, the atmosphere, you know, was attractive, um you're easy to do business with, your
- 18:50employees are smart, um you know, the inventory's there.
- 18:57That's all fine.
- 18:58And that's all really important.
- 18:59But none of that talked about if your employees are nice, um you know, if they like what they do and they make it obvious, they build a relationship.
- 19:11And that's where the hospitality comes in, the customer engagement, how you make them feel that you build a rapport, that you have compassion and empathy, that you have uh the
- 19:20ability, the want and the permission to make a brilliant comeback.
- 19:28if we drop the ball, right?
- 19:30That's all in the soft skill and uh the experiential and the above and beyond opportunities.
- 19:41So that one, as you mentioned, a lot of people are weak in a lot of organizations.
- 19:46So why do companies struggle to train for hospitality?
- 19:51And what's one step to start closing that gap?
- 19:54So hospitality is behavior and the rest are just task oriented.
- 20:01When you come in, make sure you come in 30 minutes before we open, turn all the lights on, put music on, get the cash register up to speed.
- 20:13Those are tasks.
- 20:15Important.
- 20:16ah But that behavior is the hardest.
- 20:21um
- 20:24you know, it goes back to the service aptitude.
- 20:27Most people don't have the service aptitude ah that a good company expects and requires.
- 20:37So, ah good companies know that and, you know, they'll interview it hoping, you know, that there's certain soft skills that they look for.
- 20:48uh But they also know that a lot of the soft skills ah
- 20:53can be trained and will be trained in their new employee.
- 20:58But I always ask, I love asking this question and I'm using Bo, my son Bo in all my presentations, because he's 23, right?
- 21:08So I say, if you're a higher Bo, who's a senior at John Carroll, to be in a customer facing position, on the phones, checking people in, checking people out, whatever your
- 21:19business model is, how much training would you give them?
- 21:23before you allowed him to working with your customers.
- 21:29And some people say two days, two weeks, two months.
- 21:32All right, great.
- 21:33That's not the answer I'm really looking for.
- 21:35Of the 4,400 or 4,000 hours you're gonna put Bo in, how much is technical, operational, processes, how to ring someone up, how to book, how to get their insurance, how to take
- 21:49multiple payments, all those things, schedule it.
- 21:53correctly fulfill the order blah blah blah and how much is soft skill the service aptitude skill that He greets the person the way you want that person to be greeted.
- 22:07He uses their name to a martyr here reduces himself He says is there anything else I can do for you today?
- 22:12uh Miss Thompson before you know the interactions done uh He has compassion and empathy and understands
- 22:21what you might be dealing with, you know, as a customer and why you need both his presence that he's, he's, you know, making you feel seen and heard and his expertise that if he
- 22:35doesn't, you know, give you the right product or recommendation or booking with the right person, the impact that could have on what you're trying to accomplish in, in, in, in your
- 22:47job or in your life.
- 22:49and most people,
- 22:52And I hope all our people listening and watching do this math.
- 22:58Most people, whatever it is, 40 hours, 400 hours, 4,000 hours, it's way over 90 % operational processes.
- 23:08And the less than 5 % soft skill is just like, hey, Bo, our mantra here is we're customer obsessed.
- 23:17We go above and beyond.
- 23:20Go do that.
- 23:22If you tell 500 people that any of those, you're going to get 500 personal interpretation.
- 23:27So world-class customer service companies remove personal interpretation.
- 23:33They define what that looks like.
- 23:36And so the answer or solution is not it needs to be 50-50.
- 23:40If you're training them on 400 hours, it doesn't have to be 200 on soft skill, 200 on technical operational.
- 23:47And that obviously...
- 23:50industry specific that can get a lot more, you know, that can change.
- 23:54But there has to be a strong representation of soft skill training that they have to be certified.
- 24:01The best companies certify them.
- 24:04Just like you would never allow someone to apply to cook at your restaurant, chef, whatever it is.
- 24:12And, you know, do you know how to cook this, this, this?
- 24:15Yeah.
- 24:15Okay.
- 24:16You wouldn't do that.
- 24:17You'd say, all right.
- 24:19This is how we prepare our steaks or fish or hamburgers or fries.
- 24:25And you'd make them do it and you'd test them out.
- 24:29Great companies test their employees out on the soft skills, the non-negotiable reoccurring things, and all the things we just talked about.
- 24:41important stuff.
- 24:43Yeah, yeah.
- 24:44Yeah.
- 24:44Well, how do you close the gap when you're weak in hospitality?
- 24:49Yeah, yeah, it's making sure that you have a representation.
- 24:53So do the math.
- 24:56You're gonna hire someone when you hire someone, how much training do you give them?
- 24:59And then of that training, how much is soft skill versus hard tactical?
- 25:06And I think you're gonna be disappointed uh in how heavy the technical operational is and how little.
- 25:15And so just raise that, crawl, walk and run, raise it.
- 25:20Make them read a book, make them know you're non-negotiables, have your nevers in all ways.
- 25:25Ideally, if you're listening and you have been listening, you have a customer experience action statement, make sure that's clear and they know what that means and the pillars and
- 25:35your signature experience of what should happen at each touch point.
- 25:41And if you don't have those things, um it's a good time to join the Experience Revolution membership.
- 25:47And you can go to our archive where creating your signature experiences in there.
- 25:55Service Vision is in there, I believe.
- 25:57If not, it's coming up.
- 25:59em I believe Service Vision is in there though.
- 26:02And you actually can workshop.
- 26:06Thank you.
- 26:07service vision, if it's not, ah shame on us.
- 26:12Let's look at the, uh if it's not coming up, do they get access if we did it already?
- 26:17Yes, they do.
- 26:18Yes, they do.
- 26:19With your membership, you get access to all past workshops and you receive a year's worth of live stream workshops live with Dave and John.
- 26:30All right, so I'm looking up December uh 1st.
- 26:35Our next live stream workshop is creating an onboarding experience.
- 26:40So this is, you know, from the moment you offer and they accept the job, you know, for the first 90 days and how important that is.
- 26:51uh Q1 of next year, March uh 9th is breaking down silos, cross department.
- 27:01Yeah, cross-department collaboration, clarify handoffs and promote empathy and teamwork.
- 27:06uh June 2026 is a day in the life of a customer.
- 27:11Oh, there you go.
- 27:12September 2026 is creating a customer experience action statement.
- 27:17What each employee should be intentionally doing every time they interact with another human being, whether it's a customer, coworker, stranger, vendor.
- 27:29And then the fourth quarter of 2026, December, is building and developing future leaders.
- 27:37Great topics, great topics.
- 27:38So register now at thedjuliusgroup.com forward slash membership.
- 27:44You can find that link in the show notes as well.
- 27:48John, I want to go back to um the components here.
- 27:52So there is a lot of overlap within these six categories.
- 27:56Can you give an example where a failure in one area hurt the others or where Harmony across all six created a true wow experience?
- 28:08Going back to.
- 28:20So, you know, lot of overlap is in functional, operational, and technical.
- 28:33Atmosphere and physical, there's more of a, what I always say, you know, how to distinguish if it's physical or atmosphere is if it could be fixed, resolved today, it's
- 28:48probably more of an atmosphere.
- 28:51physical is the building, the parking lot, the access, all those things that isn't something you can get someone out here and fix today.
- 29:10But, all right, so you're saying the overlap and ask me again, I'm sorry.
- 29:15So because they overlap, do you have any examples of where maybe you're bad in one and it hurt the others or where someone has harmony across all six and it creates a true wow
- 29:29experience?
- 29:31Yeah, mean, think if you look at the best retailers, they really master these.
- 29:39Whether it's Apple, Starbucks, and back in the day, Lululemon, all these great retailers are gonna make sure they're in the best shopping centers that have abundance of parking.
- 29:57When you walk in, you
- 30:00restaurants, great restaurants are good at this.
- 30:03They're easy to do business with.
- 30:05They make sure their employees are, you know, brilliant technically and that they have the uh equipment to do their job.
- 30:20I mean, there's nothing more frustrating.
- 30:22That's why, you know, we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about I was afraid some of our
- 30:29consultants and employees needed new laptops.
- 30:35And, you I never want, I don't know, budgets or whatever to impact that because, you know, that's their tool.
- 30:45And when you have to wait or reboot, you know, it'd be like a plumber not having, you know, the latest and greatest to get the job done.
- 30:57You have to, you
- 30:59There's nothing more frustrating than not having the equipment tools to do your job and then have someone looking over you or trying to ring someone out and the computer's slow
- 31:11or the software sucks and it's outdated.
- 31:15You feel stupid.
- 31:17And the customer thinks it's you.
- 31:20And that happens all day, every day.
- 31:24You don't want to work there.
- 31:25Your boss is cheap.
- 31:27you know, and the company's cheap.
- 31:29um But, you know, and the operational, but they're nice.
- 31:35And that's the surprising thing.
- 31:37that's the, you know, the frosty on the cake that these people are nice and they know, you know, you know, how to help you and guide you and they educate versus sell, you know,
- 31:50those, those key little things.
- 31:53I know recently you had a significant experience at NemaColon and you talked about how great their service is right now and they're doing everything right.
- 32:05How would you rate them across the six components?
- 32:11You know, five or six years ago, well, it was my favorite place.
- 32:17They they their physical atmosphere.
- 32:23was behind.
- 32:24I it's such a massive place, but you can tell that as nice as it is, they they're getting a little outdated.
- 32:31You know, I remember uh speaking there one time in the room I speaking with, you know, had, uh you know, the ceiling stained from leaks, you know, and it's just stuff that you
- 32:44didn't want.
- 32:45They have literally put in a half a billion dollars into the place in the last couple of years.
- 32:51And so I've gone and
- 32:53They're nailing it everywhere.
- 32:55Like it's beautiful.
- 32:57It's mind boggling.
- 33:01Their customer experience, their young kids, uh kids, like they're all in college that are working bartenders, waitress, know, whatever thing you go to is just, uh they're so nice.
- 33:16And if they don't know, tell you, I just started, but I'll find out, which
- 33:22I don't know about you, like makes me want to help them even more.
- 33:26And like, you know, no, you know, but I've always loved, I've always thought a good idea is, you know, if you have a name tag, you know, Denise, um, it should say in training.
- 33:39And some people think that's like over sharing.
- 33:41I don't cause like, I know what it's like, and I remember how that sucked.
- 33:47And so like, I'll have so much more pay.
- 33:49Oh, don't worry.
- 33:49Don't worry.
- 33:49I think it's that button.
- 33:51here that you're supposed to press.
- 33:53But if it doesn't say in training and you're clueless to me, I just think I got the dumbest employee that works here.
- 34:02And I'm like, Jesus Christ, how do you not know how to process this order?
- 34:09I love, because I think most people are understanding and.
- 34:14and have empathy for new employees and they want to help them be successful.
- 34:18Right now, sixth, Nema Colon is crushing it in every category.
- 34:25I the physical is just mind blowing, everything.
- 34:30I don't think there's a weakness right now, at least my most recent experience.
- 34:38In the past, there's been...
- 34:41there's the weaknesses in all of them, but they've really upped their game.
- 34:46How do you recommend companies audit themselves across the six categories?
- 34:52So if we can put the, uh there's a blog, if you have it, if we can, that really breaks down the, not only description, but what to look for, like technical, employee level of
- 35:07experience, speed of your technology, computer, state of art of technology, ability to use your website, equipment, phone system, software.
- 35:14So each of the six categories have lists.
- 35:19And I think you just do an audit.
- 35:22And someone should own each of these.
- 35:25And if you're big enough, you probably have someone that owns each of these.
- 35:29And just first, what's glaring?
- 35:33What needs attention?
- 35:38This is a great checklist audit report card to see where you're at.
- 35:44And constantly, just don't do it one time, right?
- 35:46Constantly, ah this is what your...
- 35:50location managers should be auditing and, you know, the CEO should never walk into a location and why are there six lights out?
- 36:02Why is the, you know, the water cooler broken?
- 36:06Right?
- 36:07I mean, you know, we should be on top of it.
- 36:09Now it's fine.
- 36:10I sent you an email, you know, they're coming out tomorrow.
- 36:13That's fine if, but no leader should be surprised.
- 36:18they should know what they're walking into.
- 36:23So we'll put that in the show notes, links to that blog.
- 36:26um We can make that a download for people.
- 36:31So you can look for a link for that to download the six components of the experience and your own little checklist to go through and audit your company.
- 36:42um If there are listeners, leaders, let me start that over.
- 36:50If a leader is listening today and they could only improve one of these six areas right now, which would give them the quickest lift in customer loyalty?
- 37:04Well...
- 37:07It's hard
- 37:10Assuming they're good at everything, that's easier.
- 37:13I mean, if they have something glaring, right?
- 37:17Like that's bad, that's exposed.
- 37:19They have to sew that up.
- 37:22You can't have a, you know, coming in and you're building as, you know, old carpeting and old desks and old furniture and technology isn't working.
- 37:35I mean, first you have to make sure you don't have any
- 37:40real weaknesses in any area.
- 37:43um assuming that you're good, assuming that you feel good about most of your areas, um I would do a hospitality audit and see uh what new employees mandatory, what they're getting
- 38:03trained on, and not only just getting trained on the soft skills.
- 38:08how to build a relationship, how to show compassion and empathy, your non-negotiable standards, your nevers and all those things, but that they're being tested on it.
- 38:19um And then, then existing employees, right?
- 38:24You just don't train someone one time.
- 38:26um So that's where the micro learning, have we talked about micro learning yet?
- 38:32We can do that for another podcast.
- 38:34Yeah.
- 38:35So that's really popular today.
- 38:37Micro learning is think TikTok, think YouTube Reels, less than a minute video that, all right, you've been working here, know, two years, five years, 29 years, but each day or
- 38:49each week you're getting just a little quick thing to remind you.
- 38:54And it's a quick video reminding you of the five E's, you know, and then ideally, you you have to answer.
- 39:01ah
- 39:02what the 5Es are or what Ford is.
- 39:05um So it's just a quick hit in an environment of like, don't have to come in.
- 39:12It's sent out to everyone's phones, iPads, computers, however they work.
- 39:21And those are madly popular.
- 39:24I think that's great, especially as employees come and go.
- 39:28Having something like that for ongoing training to keep everyone on the same page is really important pertinent to.
- 39:36that's different.
- 39:36That's different than the initial training, right?
- 39:39That's gonna be longer.
- 39:41That could be, know, days, hours, whatever, but this is just a Toma, top of mind awareness, making sure we're hitting you, you know, weekly with something short, quick to,
- 39:53you know, keep, you know, the experience you're delivering uh in the forefront of your mind.
- 40:01All right, and finally, what's one thing our listeners can do this week to move closer to creating customer evangelists?
- 40:10You know, it's probably the same answer, but it's getting your team members, asking them about their best experience.
- 40:18I love starting workshops with this, is asking what's a brand you can't live without?
- 40:25If I had the authority to say you could never do business with a brand.
- 40:34um
- 40:36again and you had to listen, listen to me, what is one brand you would be nervous I would take away from you?
- 40:42And even going to front lines, they have brands.
- 40:45uh They may not be as, you know, the same brands as executives have, but there's a reason.
- 40:53you know, nine times out of 10, has nothing to do with price, but they're loyal to Dunkin' Donuts or they're loyal to Amazon or they're loyal to, you know, Target.
- 41:04um
- 41:05you know, whatever it may be or their local dry cleaner.
- 41:09Why?
- 41:10Why are you loyal?
- 41:11know, I'm sure you can get it cheaper somewhere else.
- 41:14That's not even near your house.
- 41:17Why do you drive three extra exits?
- 41:19And when they explain what those things are, oh, well, how can we be those things?
- 41:27How can you be those things to a
- 41:31how can we create the same thing?
- 41:33So you're getting them and they're buying and them seeing the connection to it.
- 41:38that.
- 41:40Thank you, John.
- 41:42Thanks listeners for joining us on this episode of the customer service revolution podcast.
- 41:47Is John explained?
- 41:49Brand loyalty doesn't come from one magic tactic.
- 41:52It's the result of six interconnected components working in harmony.
- 41:56The physical environment, the atmosphere you create, functional ease, technical expertise, operational consistency, and most importantly,
- 42:06hospitality that makes customers feel valued.
- 42:10Here's your challenge for the week.
- 42:11Choose one of these six areas.
- 42:13Take a hard look at how your company is performing in it.
- 42:16Where are you delighting your customers?
- 42:18Where are you unintentionally driving them away?
- 42:21For more tools and strategies, don't forget to go to our show notes.
- 42:27For more tools and strategies, don't forget to go to our show notes.
- 42:31Download the free white paper on the six components at thedjuliasgroup.com.
- 42:37You'll find the link for that in the show notes.
- 42:39And until next time, remember, customer service is not a department, it's your brand.
- 42:45Thanks, John.
- 42:46Thank you, Denise.
- 42:47See you later, revolutionaries.