The Gold Standard in Customer Relations

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The Gold Standard in Customer Relations

• Susan Traver Sarah Howe
• UI Extension Educators

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The Gold Standard Means

• Doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
• Going beyond whats expected.
• Adding value and integrity to every interaction.

• Being at your best with every customer.
• Discovering new ways to delight those you serve.
• Taking care of your customer like you would take
  care of your grandmother.

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The Fundamentals

• Delivering service that makes a positive, lasting
  impression takes more than simple courtesy, much
  more.
• It starts with understanding what the
  relationship is from your customers point of
  view. What you do, how you do it, how well it
  must be done, and proving you can do it again!

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The Gold Standard in Customer Relations

• Anchored in hospitality
• Inspired by a vision of customer relations
• Laced with a sense of partnership between
  customers, managers, and employees
• Grounded in authenticity, sincerity, and trust
• Crafted around internal and external
  customers human needs
• Seeks and uses customer problems as opportunities
  for improvement and enhanced customer loyalty

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Why Customer Relations?

• What does the word service mean to you?
• Language structure our environment
• When do you go to the Customer Service
  Department?
• Where is the Customer Service Department
  usually located?

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Hospitality

• Hospitality is an attitude a focus on the
  customer
• Customers who experience hospitality feel valued
  not used
• Hospitality is the minimal basis of the customer
  service relationship

Hospitality
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Hospitality, defined
Service Standards

• Welcome
• Kindness
• Generosity
• Warmth

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Think About It..

• Hospitality
• Think of a business in your community that does a
  superior job of showing hospitality as we have
  defined it. What does it look and feel like? What
  are some of the special things that business does
  to make you feel welcome.\?

• Unfriendliness
• The antonym of hospitable is unfriendly. Now,
  think of a business that is unfriendly. What do
  they do that earns that title? Why do you shop
  there despite their unfriendliness? How does it
  make you feel to shop there, and if you had an
  alternative, would you use it?

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Customer Service

• Providing more than what is expected
• Providing what the customer wants faster,
  better, and the way the customer wants it.
• Getting the customer to say I wouldnt go
  anywhere else.
• Fostering partnerships

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Partnership BetweenCustomers, Managers, and
Employees

• What makes your business unique?
• The warm and fuzzy in providing the wow factor
  in the customers experience.
• Its not enough to service customers, you have
  to CARE about them

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Outstanding Wow Service

• Keep customers longer (50 longer)
• Lower sales and marketing costs (20-40 lower)
• Higher return on sales (7 to 12 higher)
• Better net profits (7 to 17 better)

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Vision

• A task without purpose is drudgery
• A vivid picture of an ambitious state connected
  to the customer
• Better than the current state

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Suggested Vision Basics

• Honesty and trust
• Innovation and creativity
• Openness and flexibility

• Customer concern and passion
• Proactive service and improvement

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Company Customer Service Vision Musts

• A vision of world class service must focus on
  employees and customers happy employees make
  happy customers!
• Happiness is contagious.
• Take care of the employees and they will take
  care of the customers.
• J. Willard Marriott.

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Defining Your Vision

• Why do we want customers to remember us?
• How do customers feel after dealing with us?
• What do we want customers to tell their friends
  about us?
• How do we want the experience of working here to
  look and feel?

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Internal and External Customer Needs

• Respect
• Reward
• Understanding
• Care

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Authenticity, Sincerity, and Trust

• Candor
• Openness
• Authenticity
• Realness
• Courage
• Compassion

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Truth From Customers

• Why arent customer Truthful?
• They dont know how to register a complaint
• They dont believe it will do any good
• They fear the service provider might retaliate

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Trust

• Makes customers feel valued
• Service Guarantee
• Trust customers, Employees, Colleagues, and
  Supervisors

• Empower (trust) employee to make decisions. I
  couldnt possible mix decaf and regular without
  my managers approval.

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Trust

• Declare a 60 day trust period. Identify areas
  where we dont trust you messages are sent to
  customers

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust
without reservations Elton Trueblood
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Customer Problems as Opportunities

• The acid test of service quality is how customer
  problems are solved.
• 3 Rules of service recover
• Do it right the first time
• Fix it if it ever fails
• There are no third chances

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Service recovery

• Plan a service recovery system
• Recovery oriented employees
• Selected, trained, empowered, rewarded and led in
  a manner that encourages and inspires them to
  listen emphatically to customers with real or
  imagined woes.

Problems as Opportunities
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Our Challenge

• Commit yourself to performing one ten-minute act
  of exceptional customer service per day and to
  inducing your colleagues to do the same.
• In a 100-person company taking into account
  normal vacations, holidays etc., that would mean
  24,000 new courteous acts per year. Such is the
  stuff of revolutions
• -Tom Peters

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In the Beginning

• Marketing
• Traditional
• Targeted
• Relationship Based

• Other Markets
• Counties / Cities
• Libraries
• Chambers of Commerce
• Non-Profits

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Laying the Groundwork

• Meet with manager prior to event
• Familiarization
• Buy In
• Relationship building
• Evaluation
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Mystery shoppers
• Sources books and videos
• Follow Up after the program

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Other Programs

• Conflict Management
• Team Building
• Diversity training (including generational
  diversity)
• Communication Skills
• Telephone skills
• Email skills
• Basic Hospitality
• On-going Gold Standard training

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Resources to Accompany Program

• Books
• DVDS

• Web Resources
• Team Building Games and Activities
• Personality Inventories
• Diversity Training and inventories
• Training from Sarah Howe and Sue Traver in your
  counties.

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Customer Relations Material

• Best Practices in Customer Service
• Customers as Partners Building Relationships
  that Last
• Developing the Leader Within )
• Knock Your Socks Off Service Recovery
• Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Follow
  Them and People Will Follow You

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Final Thoughts

• Fun
• Fun
• Fun
• Its not rocket science!