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273: How do I create a turnkey system for consistency? · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

0:46
What happens to your customer experience when your best employee calls off?
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Or when you open another location,
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hire 10 new people, acquire another company,
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or suddenly double your customer volume.
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If the experience changes depending on who happens to be working that day,
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you don't have a customer experience strategy.
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You have a talented group of people compensating for the absence of a system.
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And some of the biggest companies in the world are dealing with this exact issue
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right now.
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Today we're talking about how organizations create a turnkey system that allows them
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to deliver a consistently great experience without turning employees into robots.
1:24
Welcome to the Customer Service Revolution Podcast.
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How are you, John?
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I'm great, Denise. How are you?
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~ fabulous. You're in town.
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You look like
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I'm in town. You're not in town.
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I'm not, not today. hopefully I'll be back in town soon because this is
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a great time to be in Cleveland,
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as we always say.
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Yeah, ~ Florida weather, is it still hot?
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It's really hot, yeah. It's high eighties,
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low nineties.
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Yeah, we're in the sixties. That's a high.
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That sounds lovely right now. ~
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Yeah, yeah.
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And we're and we're enjoying baseball season still in Cleveland.
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Yes,
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we made the playoffs. Yeah.
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Woohoo. That was great to see.
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It was so good.
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Yeah.
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Goat Guardian.
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And my
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son is in the October issue of Vogue magazine.
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That was amazing. He looks like a model.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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You know,
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such a such a good looking kid and the story ~ with the his wedding jacket
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is just fabulous.
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Yeah, his suit was made from his late mother's wedding dress.
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So yeah, yeah, so Vogue featured it.
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So special. Yeah. So you know what?
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I'll put a link
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to that in the show notes because I'm sure anybody listening to this is gonna
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be a bit intrigued on what that must look like and it's spectacular.
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So I'll put a link in the show notes to it.
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Yeah, it was gorgeous. It was
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so cool. But anyone that knows Cal,
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that doesn't surprise you.
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You're right. The cow would be in vogue.
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Not surprising.
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Right.
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All
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right, John, let's get into this week's topic.
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Starbucks announced this week that it's closing about 250 North American coffee
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houses where it says it doesn't believe it can consistently deliver
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the experience it wants for customers and partners or achieve acceptable financial
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performance. And at the same time,
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they're rolling out green apron service as a defining service standard across
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the company.
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When a company has thousands of locations,
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hundreds of thousands of employees,
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how do you make an experience repeatable without making it feel scripted?
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Well, I mean, we we talk about this all the time.
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And my new favorite quote is the enemy of of of a brand's customer experience
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reputation is employee roulette,
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department roulette, location roulette,
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franchisee roulette. And that is I mean,
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that is a major issue. I don't care if you're if you're literally a mom and pop,
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you ha can have employee roulette where if they don't get you and they
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get someone else.
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And I think we all every business has unicorn employees.
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You were a unicorn employee, ~ still are,
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but thirty years ago that just got it,
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bought into whatever we told you,
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but you know, you didn't need as much direction,
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you know, as maybe others do. And then we rely on thinking everyone's gonna
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be like you and then everyone's not,
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and you got these inconsistencies.
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the other one with this is rapid growth.
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~ we say it, we have a white paper on it,
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that nothing will ruin your experience faster than rapid growth,
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your customer and employee experience.
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And it's what every business leader wants.
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It's what I want, ~ rapid growth,
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but man, it comes at a cost, right?
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You just, you know, can't be as it's harder to be as vigilant with all the systems,
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training, hiring to ensure that.
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You're getting the type of person that maybe you were getting when
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you know you first started and you you were so picky.
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But Starbucks is another example.
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We would I think we talked about Nike a a couple weeks ago and they
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got away from their core customer.
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Starbucks did that too. and there's still,
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I can't believe I I just hung up with a a a client ~ that said that.
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they still haven't recovered from the adjustments they had to make during
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the pandemic. She goes, I know that
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Wow.
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sounds so silly, but I'm like,
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no, you don't you have no idea.
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Like, like that's so common. That's what Starbucks did,
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right? Starbucks became obsessed with getting away from their core customers,
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getting away from the third place,
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which made them unique, which made us want to go there and have coffee
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and community and
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conduct an interview, read a book,
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clean up our our inbox, get away from our family,
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get away from the the the physical part of our job.
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And then they went all in on drive-thru and to go orders,
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started opening up just locations that were only those,
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removed in those locations, or in all locations,
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removed or reduced the seating.
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and you know they they lost their way.
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So they're still feeling now they're getting back to Starbucks.
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and they're you know they closed all those to go drive through only locations.
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But you can't you can't s you know turn the the the ~ yacht in
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a bathtub that quickly or easily.
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So
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Did I answer your question?
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Yeah, I think. But let me I have a follow up for you.
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So
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when we talk about systems that these companies should have in place to
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to make it easier for the employees to provide a great service,
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what should be standardized of those and where should employees have freedom?
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So you you gotta have ~ you know,
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to reduce employee roulette, you gotta have a signature experience or or not,
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but it's the customer journey of so whether it's ten or a thousand employees doing
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the same job, at any at any touch point,
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they know what it's expected of ~ And so I I I one of the best things that's built
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the D DiJulius group from literally
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25 years ago is our we call it the customer experience cycle,
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which is also known as journey mapping,
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which we also now call creating your signature experience.
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And that is, you know, looking at each touch point that you have.
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And this could be digital, this could be,
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you know, a human inexperience.
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This could be on the phone. This could be.
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In person, it could be an email,
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it could whatever, it does not matter how you're interacting.
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But you're looking at from the customer's vantage point,
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and we break it down into three primary places.
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What are the service defects, the most common service defects that will ruin
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the experience from the customer's vantage point that we,
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your business, and our industry can be guilty of?
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And
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We want to make employees hyper aware.
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You know, Denise, if you're gonna work here and you're gonna answer phones,
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check people in, check people out,
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sell, whatever the business model is,
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you know. I want, you know, you have to be hyper aware of you're not gonna
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be guilty of these four or five things.
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Now, there there could be 20 potential things,
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but at the end of the day, the 80% of the time when we're frustrating in
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customers or things are going wrong,
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friction, it's it's really in those 20%.
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So I really don't have to teach you all,
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you know, all 20. I teach you the most common things that can happen.
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Don't rush the customer. Don't ignore them.
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Don't, you know, whatever whatever that is.
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And then the the middle one is the non-negotiable standards.
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That's a blend of the operational that you have to do and the experiential that
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is different. That starts creating your signature experience.
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Operationally, yeah, we have to get your name and your order and your credit card
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and you know, blah, blah, blah.
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But every one of our competitors have to do that.
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And operational is only memorable when it's not done.
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If we walk in tonight for dinner reservations and hi,
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I'm here, party of two, DJus, and they have us.
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We're not like, my God, you know,
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and calling people and texting on Facebook,
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you know, you wouldn't believe.
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If we walk in at, you know, six o'clock and hi,
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I'm here for party at two, D DiJulius,
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you're like, We have you next Friday,
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or we don't have you. Or that's the only time operational is memorable.
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So so that's the middle piece.
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So service defects don't do, middle non-negotiable,
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gotta do. I don't care if everyone else is called in sick and you're running
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20 minutes late or an hour late.
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This is the experience we charge for.
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And then the third piece is the above and beyond component.
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You know, how can we train frontline customer face employees what to look for?
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~ because a lot of times it's gonna go right over their head.
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you know, so you know, ~ you know,
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w wh if it's a a brick and mortar and you have a ~ an elderly woman or
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a woman with a stroller, you know,
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that get out, open the door for her.
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Now, you can't do that every time for every person that walks in.
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Today, but you don't need to for maybe a hundred and ninety seven of
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the two hundred customers coming in.
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But you might have a few elderly,
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you might have a few ~ people that have disabilities,
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you might have a few people that have,
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you know, three kids hanging off their arms.
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So whatever that looks like, your above and beyonds don't typically have
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to cost anything, but it's training your employees what to look for.
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So
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Absolutely don't do, have to do,
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and look for these opportunities.
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Okay,
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I like that you brought up about exceeding expectations and the above and beyonds.
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Companies love talking about the wow moments that occur.
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But is consistently delivering the basics at a high level actually more valuable
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than just occasionally creating something extraordinary?
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Yeah, yeah, I mean so much. We gotta be brilliant at the basics.
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Right. We've you know, our businesses,
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~ a lot of businesses we work with,
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you know, have these unbelievable heroic stories,
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and they knock the ball apart,
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but they just screw up the basic.
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You know, if you can't trust a company to get it right,
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you know, the right food, the right,
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you know, order, the the consistency,
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that is so important.
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~ so yeah, being brilliant at the basics is is is is is so so it's everything.
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Now once you get that, now you could start adding some things,
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but I don't care that you had rose petals all over my room at the hotel
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for my anniversary. but every you know
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When we checked in the the it was screwed up,
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there was a smoking room. I don't even know if they still have smoking.
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I think they do in some states.
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Yeah, I got a smoking room or a two double beds,
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like just just they just can't get the basics right.
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There's nothing more frustrating than that.
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And that erodes the trust. An above and beyond doesn't build trust.
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It's a wild story. It might, you know,
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go viral, whatever, but you know,
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the the the the the consistency.
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The lack of employee roulette is is what builds trust.
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There's businesses that I can't really tell you a great story that they've done,
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but I'm loyal. Because just every time I go in,
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it it you could just, you know,
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bank on the trust factor that it's gonna be like the last time.
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And I like the last time. That's it's a you know,
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I'm not looking for bells and whistles necessarily.
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Yeah. That's a I think that's a great statement.
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Above and beyond doesn't build trust.
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Yeah. And it also in our methodology,
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He does.
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we have ten com commandments. and the order is important and that's
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why above and beyond is eight,
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number eight. You know, it's it's good,
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it's it's a nice to have when you've gotten everything else,
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you know, in in a row.
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But if it yeah,
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~ maybe
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silly example, we have a Zoom call today and I'm ten minutes late and can't
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get it to work and whatever. The the the the the the but I remember it's your
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i i it it's your birthday. Right?
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That's that, you know, or I remember that you're in Florida or that
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you just came back or or whatever.
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That's nice, but you're frustrated because I wasted your time and this
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was the third time we had to reschedule because
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whatever I had not going on correctly.
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it's my assistant Denise. She she's screwing up my books and all that.
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Whatever.
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She's like that.
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She is like that. Every time I think I catch Lindsay at doing something wrong,
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it's I'm I'm like I'm so I don't know why,
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I'm so excited. And I'm wrong.
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It wasn't it wasn't her. Yeah.
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She's so good. She's incredible.
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Yeah.
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She
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talked about she's brilliant at the basics,
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but she also is just yeah. You can have high expectations
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And she's a duck.
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of Lindsay because she's yeah.
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She has so much stuff being thrown at her by so many different people.
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You'd never know it. And,
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But you would never know it. No.
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you know, I would I should be enough.
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But she also is handling customers and,
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you know, vendors and everything else.
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And you'd never know it.
13:50
Yeah,
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she's everyone should have a team of Lindsay's.
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Lindsay.
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Yeah. McDonald's just announced its next strategy,
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which includes simplifying restaurant operations and equipping employees
14:02
to create what the company calls a better,
14:05
more consistent experience. Its new Make It Golden initiative will focus
14:11
on the system, will focus the system on food and hospitality.
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~ but here's a paradox. Hospitality is human and personal.
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Systems are standardized. How do you systematize hospitality,
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which I know you are really good at,
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without killing the humanity that makes it valuable?
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Yeah, I need to really look into this more about this next strategy.
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transparency. I I I I I haven't done enough research on it,
14:41
so I can't really I just know ~ McDonald's is probably the number
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one used example for systems.
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You know, and I don't know I the terminology I've always used and heard
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for 30 years is is McDonald's it,
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right? Love or hate the food.
14:56
love or hate the customer experience,
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you know what you're gonna get.
15:00
Right. So that they're they're brilliant at the basics from a standpoint
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of the the the product they put out there.
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It's usually gonna be accurate,
15:10
it's usually gonna be within a certain amount of minutes,
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you know, they're efficient from that standpoint.
15:17
but they struggle with anything more.
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Their food isn't great.
15:21
or historically hasn't been. they serve a different market that wants
15:25
it cheap and fast. And and and and and then then that's okay.
15:29
they did about five or six years ago create these what they called experience
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of the future and it was it was all kiosks in their stores
15:39
They were trying to reduce the bottleneck at the cashiers and probably trying
15:45
to reduce payroll and having people order.
15:48
I haven't been into McDonald's in in five or six years,
15:51
so I don't know if you know if they took off or they worked.
15:55
But we were working with them at the time trying to help them with it.
15:59
And this some of the things, you know,
16:01
that that that we ran into.
16:03
So when we went to ~ their corporate office in Chicago.
16:07
In that building, it's all McDonald's.
16:09
In the bottom is a McDonald's restaurant for the public.
16:13
And they weren't doing it there.
16:15
I thought that was so odd. I'm like,
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I would think that
16:17
you
16:17
you know
16:18
would be the store that would get that would be the game page
16:20
beta test.
16:21
for everything. Yeah.
16:22
Well, this was their excuse. And and it nothing,
16:25
none of this makes sense. Their store,
16:27
so McDonald's, every franchise or parent company has corporate owned stores,
16:32
you know, to proof proof of concept,
16:35
right? It could be ten percent of all their locations are corporate owned stores.
16:40
It's how you
16:41
get your franchisee ~ business off the ground.
16:44
You proof of concept, this is how it works.
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You got Proforma. This is, you know,
16:49
it it proved that it works and it it could be profitable.
16:52
And then you start selling it.
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And then, you know, maybe, you know,
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you have a hundred or a thousand locations and 90% of them are franchisees.
17:01
That that's pretty typical. Well so I was asking why ~ why are they doing
17:06
it at their home office? And they're like
17:08
This is a franchisee.
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I'm like, why is your home office a franchisee?
17:12
And their next thing was, and they don't like any franchise or franchisee location,
17:18
relationship, you don't have control.
17:21
You can't dictate it. Now, there's some things you can up front.
17:24
If you're signing this contract,
17:25
you have to, you know, you have to use our colors and you have to
17:28
do this and whatever, you know,
17:29
something, but but after that kind of initial thing,
17:32
you can't force your franchisees.
17:35
to do things that wasn't in and so it just was so screwed up.
17:40
I I just it was just it baffled me that their obviously marquee store
17:44
or l appears to be their marquee store.
17:46
So that that, you know, didn't work.
17:49
And they just they they make a lot of excuses for the,
17:54
you know, why McDon why why Chick fil A and why Starbucks can do it.
17:57
you know, Chick-fil-A has you know,
17:59
the the
18:00
Starbucks is in a franchisee location.
18:02
they're all mostly franchisers except for some of them Magic Johnson locations that
18:08
he had, I think in inner cities.
18:09
So they're able to control all their stores.
18:12
And then Chick fil A doesn't have near,
18:14
you know, nearly the amount, which is to me a bunch of excuses.
18:18
So I don't know.
18:19
Chick-fil-A
18:19
also their franchisees don't own a lot of stores either,
18:24
right? Aren't they more focused on like one or two,
18:27
maybe three locations they don't
18:28
Yes. Yeah.
18:30
get where most franchisees can have not only 20 different locations,
18:36
but 10 different brands too, right?
18:38
Exactly.
18:39
Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, y you you you you have an easier chance
18:43
of winning the lottery than you have of being accepted as
18:46
a franchisee at Chick-fil-A. I mean,
18:49
they're just so which then now they're able to,
18:52
you know, enforce and build into their franchise agreement that you have to,
18:57
you know, do the things that, you know,
18:59
we say. That's why all their customer service is so good.
19:02
Chick-fil-A doesn't have franchisee roulette.
19:05
like everyone else. So
19:08
Yeah.
19:08
Yeah. All right. So you said McDonald's is really good at the system part.
19:13
How how do you how do they or any other franchisee,
19:18
multi unit location, get their people to follow the systems without killing
19:23
the humanity? How do you keep that spirit?
19:27
Well that's always
19:28
you know, that's why in our customer experience action statement,
19:31
the three pillars stand for the first one is operational excellence,
19:35
right? Expertise. the second pillar is how you make someone feel,
19:40
the emotional connection. And that's really what you're talking about,
19:43
balancing those two. You know,
19:45
usually people are pretty good and this could be doctors,
19:49
lawyers, consultants, anyone.
19:51
really smart at their job, but maybe their ego gets in the way of you know,
19:55
being a human and and relating and not looking at you as just a 201B,
20:01
which is a room number in bed,
20:03
a 1030 zoom call, you know, the the cheeseburger and fries and diet coke.
20:09
You know, that's the transactional side.
20:11
So that's why we always say you have to make sure you have
20:16
the service aptitude skill training,
20:18
along with the technical operational training.
20:21
And we we say it doesn't have to be 50-50,
20:24
meaning if I if I have to train an employee,
20:26
you know, 200 hours before I'm gonna let them,
20:29
or it might be 2,000 hours, whatever it is,
20:32
before we let them get on the floor and work with.
20:35
customers, clients, guests, patients.
20:37
~ there has to be a a a a better representation of the service aptitude,
20:42
soft skills, compassion, empathy,
20:45
curiosity, listening, being able to make a brilliant comeback,
20:48
problem solving, all those things.
20:51
and it doesn't have to be 50-50,
20:53
but it has to be a strong representation that gets certified and tested.
20:57
Otherwise you're always going to lean towards the
21:00
~ operational because that's usually what gets the the focus and
21:04
the you know attention you know after hey listen our our average call times
21:10
on our in our call center you know went above the two minutes and
21:14
15 seconds you have to get that back down right and and and that's
21:18
all the technical right our average drive through from the moment they place
21:22
the order to the pickup is you know
21:25
three minutes and ten seconds.
21:26
You know, that's above, below,
21:28
and and that's the only thing that gets people's attention.
21:31
Yep.
21:33
~ you talked ~ at the beginning about employees that just get it.
21:37
Every company has employees who just get it.
21:39
They know what to say, what to do,
21:41
how to recover when a something bad happens with a customer,
21:46
and when to break the normal process.
21:48
How do you reverse engineer what those people naturally do and turn
21:53
it into something the rest of the organization can consistently execute?
21:57
Yeah. Well, first don't lose And and and and you're at risk for losing them because
22:03
those employees are so good they don't want to work with,
22:06
you know, B and C players. and they may gravitate to those if they do stay,
22:12
right? We we are our employees are the average of the five employees they work with.
22:16
So, and that's where you using them in the customer experience cycle in the
22:21
Creating your signature experience is,
22:24
you know, maybe if you haven't gotten there or it's not as sophisticated
22:28
as you want it to be. It's like,
22:29
all right, what does Denise do?
22:30
Why does everyone like Denise?
22:32
Why does Denise have a a waiting list and everyone else,
22:36
you know, has openings and and we can't get Denise's customers to go to anyone else?
22:43
You know, it i i it's things like that.
22:45
So it it it's using, you know,
22:47
your unicorn employees as, you know,
22:49
the model and how do we train everyone?
22:53
Because you know, I always say Disney,
22:55
the Ritz-Carlton, Chick-fil-A's,
22:57
Apple, Amazon, whoever you wanna deem a world-class customer experience
23:02
organization, they didn't find 50,000 employees born to serve,
23:06
which is the unicorn, right?
23:08
I don't think there's 500 human beings walking planet Earth born to serve.
23:12
But what Walt Disney says we don't put our employees in Disney,
23:16
we put Disney in our employees.
23:18
So so that's what you know we're talking about is all right,
23:22
how can we replicate Denise's?
23:24
This is what Denise does, this is how she does it.
23:26
You know, boom, boom, let's create the customer experience that allows each let's
23:31
train, let's hire people that
23:34
have the potential. They don't have to come as the Denise,
23:37
the unicorn. they have to have some qualities,
23:40
right? They have to like people.
23:41
They have to, you know, you know,
23:43
~ be a happy, positive person,
23:45
you know, all enthusiasm. If they have any of the other ones,
23:49
empathy, curiosity, listening,
23:52
you know, all that, that's great.
23:54
That's frosty on the cake. But we can train and move the needle on that.
23:58
So now we get, you know, the the the more right fit people that have
24:02
the potential to now absorb and and and execute the service aptitude skills
24:07
we want them to. And then you know,
24:09
we put them through that training of these are the journey points
24:13
of interaction you own, and don't do this.
24:15
You have to do this, and ~ look for these opportunities.
24:20
And they need to know the why.
24:21
The biggest thing is execution consistently comes from you if if
24:27
you have their their hearts and minds bought in.
24:31
And they have to understand the why behind,
24:33
you know, why do I have to, why do I have to use their name two,
24:36
you know, two or more times? Why do I have to introduce myself?
24:38
Why do I have to say, is there anything else I can do for you today?
24:41
You know, Mrs. Jones. So that all has to be taught the why.
24:46
And once the why is taught, which too many leaders underestimate that purpose,
24:52
you know, you give their hearts and minds bought in,
24:54
they'll execute.
24:55
If
24:55
a CEO came to you tomorrow, John,
24:57
and said, I don't want our customer experience dependent on certain people anymore,
25:02
what are the actual components you'd put in place?
25:05
The customer experience action statement and
25:08
Yeah, mean, well, it starts with,
25:09
you know, what's your hiring process look like?
25:11
Are you reactively hiring? Are you,
25:14
you know, filling s ~ jobs of high turnover with just anyone?
25:19
Are you looking the other way on poor performers because you don't want
25:24
to have to hire fifteen people?
25:25
You know, you already need ten.
25:27
You know. You know, it's it it's it's so important.
25:30
I say this all the time and it's it's probably the easiest thing to
25:33
say and the hardest thing to do in and for my three brands as well.
25:37
It's better to lose the sales than the reputation.
25:41
And, you know, if we just had one more consultant,
25:44
God, we could, you know, we we have a waiting list of clients.
25:47
We could, you know, increase revenues by twenty-five percent.
25:52
If we just had, you know, three more hairdressers,
25:54
two more nail technicians, whatever the business model is.
25:57
and and and so we just hire we wouldn't hire them under normal circumstances,
26:01
but because we have such demand,
26:03
we need to hire Just hire We'll get And then they're bastardizing their employee
26:08
roulette. They're not a representation of what made us who we are today.
26:13
And now people are doing brand terrorism.
26:16
about us and it would have been better to you know we we can't ever
26:20
get that reputation back from those customers.
26:23
we could have probably gotten their sales down the road by turning them away today
26:27
or saying that we can't, you know,
26:29
start with you until, you know,
26:31
the ne beginning of next quarter when some clients,
26:33
you know, are ~ contracts come up,
26:36
whatever. That's hard to do. That's really hard to do.
26:40
So that was step one is the hiring,
26:43
the onboarding, the ever boarding,
26:45
which is after 90 days, constant reminding,
26:48
constant. ~ another great thing that a great quote of mine that came
26:54
up this morning with a client was Umboarding's so good,
26:59
but six months down the road, they're not doing it.
27:01
the customer experience. And there's two things to that.
27:04
One
27:05
Your onboarding is a fire hose.
27:06
They are learning so much. Technically,
27:10
soft skill. And we think, you know,
27:12
what the hell's wrong with Denise?
27:14
She's not doing, you know, all these things.
27:16
We trained her on her third day six months ago on,
27:21
you know, 200 things. And I can't believe she doesn't,
27:25
you know, remember those 200 things.
27:27
That's one where you get into the everboarding,
27:29
where, you know, you gotta constantly keep on reminding.
27:32
all your employees of the things that they've been trained on and
27:35
and micro learning and and just keep on toma top of mind awareness.
27:40
That's one thing. But the second thing that people are gonna cringe when
27:45
I say this because it it's so painfully true.
27:47
What new employees learn in orientation.
27:50
gets trumped by what they see their existing coworkers doing.
27:56
And, you know, so I learned that we have to put the white cape on
27:59
new customers and white cape on new new customers,
28:02
black cape on existing returning customers,
28:05
that we collect people's Ford.
28:06
We do the five E's, eye contact at the whatever the all these things are.
28:11
But also I'm working and no one else is doing those.
28:14
And then they're making fun of me for doing them.
28:15
the new bar, the kiss ass, whatever.
28:18
I say, hey, aren't we supposed to no,
28:19
we don't do we have time for that.
28:21
And that's why in six months they're not doing it.
28:24
Because you fire hose them and you're not holding
28:28
the existing employees accountable,
28:29
or you're keeping those existing employees who aren't bought in.
28:33
And they ain't doing it. So that's gonna erode your culture.
28:36
Back to my earlier quote.
28:38
You become the average of the five coworkers you work with the most.
28:42
Yeah, training by osmosis. Every you know,
28:45
whoever you're around, you pick up,
28:47
you learn from, good or bad.
28:49
Yeah.
28:49
You just you just hope the one they're sitting next to is good.
28:51
All right, so if you're at home or in your car or going for a walk listening
28:56
to this, and you're realizing your customer experience depends
28:59
too much on individual employees rather than a repeatable system,
29:03
that's exactly the kind of work that the DiJulius Group helps organizations solve.
29:08
We help companies identify what a world-class experience should look like,
29:12
build the standards and systems to make it repeatable,
29:15
and develop leaders who can sustain it.
29:18
Visit thedijuliusgroup.com.
29:20
To learn more about our customer experience consulting and
29:24
the customer experience executive academy,
29:26
or schedule a call at tdg.click forward slash call.
29:33
Okay, John, I know you were affected by this.
29:35
This week's FAA disruption gives us another way to think about systems.
29:40
A primary communication circuit failed,
29:42
and the backup fiber line was also unavailable.
29:45
The result was
29:46
Hours
29:47
of disruption and roughly 7,000 delayed or canceled flights.
29:51
Most companies build a process for when everything goes right.
29:54
Should a truly turnkey system actually be dis be designed around what happens when
30:00
something goes wrong.
30:01
Yeah, you you build your customer experience around perfect world circumstances
30:06
and you're gonna be screwed because perfect world is usually less than
30:09
two percent of the time, meaning there's no weather problems,
30:12
there's no call-offs, right? You know,
30:15
there's you know, human error,
30:16
there's technical errors, and that just it just shocks me.
30:19
So so it this takes us to our zero risk commandment,
30:23
which is how do you be a zero risk company to to work with?
30:27
Amazon's zero risk.
30:29
you know, Apple's zero risk, Chick-fil-A zero risk.
30:32
It doesn't mean that they don't screw up.
30:34
It means they screw up less than their competitors,
30:37
which is the trust factor. They still screw up.
30:40
maybe the average in their industry is five or seven or ten percent,
30:45
and they're down to two and a half percent or three percent.
30:48
That's great. But, but, but it's still happening.
30:52
So the second part of that is what do we do when it happens,
30:55
and why do we act like a deer in headlights when it happens?
30:58
There's predictable things that are gonna happen in all our businesses.
31:02
We don't want them to, but we know that someone this week is,
31:06
you know, there's ~ six things that almost every business we work with when
31:11
we do this, we say what are the the the most common complaints
31:15
or buckets or categories.
31:17
They're gonna come in and hopefully I'll remember them off the top of my head.
31:21
one is delays, schedule, whatever.
31:23
You, you know, in any business,
31:25
whether you thought your appointment was at this time or you thought that
31:30
you were gonna get it sooner, or you were gonna be out of here sooner.
31:33
That's a legitimate delay. price.
31:36
It's most of the time the price isn't
31:38
That they were ch ~ cheaper or they're not willing to pay it,
31:41
it's like it was ambiguous. You didn't weren't clear to them why it's not,
31:45
you know, on your website, it says this cost,
31:49
you know, a hundred dollars or more.
31:52
And we're not telling them why or more is.
31:54
you know, so so so you know, they felt like there's a bait and switch.
31:58
Response time. You haven't gotten back to me.
32:01
You haven't, you know, kept me updated.
32:04
there's uncertainty. That's a huge one.
32:06
they don't like what they got,
32:07
the product or service, the quality of it.
32:10
They don't like it. That's a you know,
32:13
another one is the professionalism or attitude of the person they're dealing with.
32:16
Right? They were indifferent, they didn't care,
32:18
they had an attitude, they, you know,
32:20
made me wrong.
32:22
I'm missing a couple, but but but but but you get the the the gist.
32:25
So so you know now you create okay two sides.
32:30
What how can we reduce these things from happening?
32:32
They're still gonna happen, hopefully significantly less.
32:36
And then what do we do about that when they happen?
32:39
So you're they're more impressed by how we recovered than maybe if it didn't happen,
32:44
but just
32:45
Acting like a deer in headlights.
32:46
It's not the frontline customer facing employees' fault.
32:49
They weren't trained. They just got hired yesterday,
32:52
last week, and now they got someone screaming at them.
32:55
So, but but let's go to this specific one.
32:57
This is huge. Take it to any business.
32:59
What if our power went up today?
33:01
That's gonna happen, you know,
33:03
you know, anywhere. A couple times a year,
33:06
maybe in certain areas a lot more than a couple times a year.
33:09
But whatever your business is,
33:11
what if your computer system goes down?
33:13
What if the Wi-Fi goes? You know,
33:15
whatever those those things are that put you out of business for the next
33:20
few hours or day, what is your backup plan?
33:23
And that just blows my mind that,
33:26
you know, these airlines or the FAA don't didn't have ~ backup plans for these.
33:32
~ all right, I my next question for you is back to consistency.
33:37
Can a company get so focused on consistency that it actually becomes average?
33:43
Where's the line between creating standards and creating sameness?
33:47
Yeah. Well, you know, we gotta we we said we gotta be brilliant at the basics,
33:51
but if that's all we're doing,
33:53
you you're not creating a signature experience.
33:56
And so we wanna, you know, consistency is a a critical key element.
34:01
But we you know, that's where the signature experience comes in.
34:06
can you think of signature experiences?
34:08
I know when I don't know if I haven't been into an Ortram's in a while,
34:11
but
34:11
you know, when they first opened and for decades,
34:14
you know, one of their signature experience was when you paid,
34:18
they'd walk the package around,
34:20
hand it to you, thank you, shake your hand,
34:22
maybe give you their business card.
34:23
That's a signature experience.
34:25
You have to have a signature experience at every touch point that
34:30
has people talking about it later on,
34:32
that is memorable, that when one of your competitors are trying to
34:37
knock it off. You can tell that they're trying to,
34:40
you know, I remember when when Nordstroms opened up in Cleveland and then
34:44
all of a sudden you saw you saw Dillards sometimes try to do that.
34:47
and you knew why why they were doing it is because Nordstrom's it just opened up.
34:51
So creating a signature experience that's memorable.
34:54
There's some, you know, car dealerships that,
34:57
you know, when you buy the car it,
34:59
you know, bring it through the showroom and it's a whole,
35:02
you know,
35:02
Hoopla and all the employees line up and you know it's a proud moment.
35:07
You know, it it it's you know,
35:09
you ca so you gotta have your signature moments,
35:12
experiences that are memorable,
35:14
that ~ you know, competency doesn't create conversation.
35:19
you know, you know, again, people aren't gonna talk about that.
35:22
I place an order for, you know,
35:24
two cases of books and I got them the next day or two days later,
35:28
right? Like you were supposed to.
35:29
That's not creating you better do it.
35:31
But now having a note in there saying,
35:34
hey Denise, thank you. And because you've been a VIP and this is your third book
35:38
order, we threw in John's newest book as a courtesy,
35:42
and actually I got him to sign it.
35:44
Right? That's a signature experience,
35:47
or whatever that may be, you know.
35:49
~ you know, there's a signature experience at,
35:51
you know, Lindsay. Lindsay on our team,
35:54
you know, does accounts payable and receivables.
35:57
So she sends invoices. That's you know,
36:00
and you're if you're the accounts payable person at that company,
36:03
that's all you get all day is invoices.
36:06
So
36:06
What's her say sh she'll write on there?
36:08
~ it's not hard. We know where you're headquartered,
36:11
right? You know, let's say you're you know,
36:13
we're sending you an invoice and you're in Nashville,
36:15
you know, and and she usually knows,
36:18
doesn't know personally the person,
36:20
probably, right? She's sending invoices and and that person's paying them,
36:24
but she might, you know, she knows who she's sending them to,
36:26
Denise at NashvilleCreative.com.
36:29
All right. You know, Denise, I hope you're enjoying the fall,
36:32
you know, this time of year in Nashville.
36:35
And ~ you know, ~ may or or the Tennessee Titans won a big game or
36:40
and then there's always a quote,
36:42
like a motivational quote.
36:44
Yeah, that's a signature. I I guarantee you no one else is doing that.
36:47
So, you know, when she opens it and she gets a little personalized note from
36:52
~ Lindsay, I it it might give her a nice surprise and delight.
36:56
And maybe our invoices get paid before anyone else's.
36:59
Yeah, so it's still a personalized signature experience,
37:03
yet it is something that can be systematized,
37:06
which is great. Yeah.
37:06
Correct. Yes. Yes.
37:09
~ god, awesome. Again, Lindsay.
37:11
Consistency doesn't mean every employee sounds the same.
37:15
It means every customer can count on the same standard of care regardless
37:20
of the employee, location, channel,
37:23
or day.
37:24
The goal isn't to remove people from the experience.
37:26
It's to build a system that allows more people to consistently deliver your brand
37:31
promise. You can find the Customer Service Revolution wherever
37:34
you listen to podcasts or visit thedijuliusgroup.com forward slash
37:39
the Customer Service Revolution podcast.
37:42
John, thanks so much for joining us today.
37:46
Thank you, Denise. Enjoy the
37:47
Good to see you in town.
37:49
eighty degree weather. Yes, I'm so excited.
37:51
I think I'm in town. Yeah. I'm in town for a
37:51
Enjoy the sixty degree weather.
37:53
Thanks, listeners.
37:55
little bit.
37:56
We'll see you next time.