Is service a buzz word tossed around your
C-suite like a Nerf football? Or is service something that your business
values? If you value service, do all of your employees know how to provide
uncommon service? Do you provide training on a regular basis so that your
employees know what is expected of them when it comes to providing uncommon service?
In a new book by Frances Frei and Anne
Morriss, “Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your
Business,” an unusual business model is presented: “Companies must be bad at
something in order to be great – companies must choose strategic ways to
underperform while fueling a winning service advantage.” Are you willing to
make this type of a sacrifice in order to win happy customers who become brand
evangelists?
As Frei and Morriss explain, “Here’s what
we learned: uncommon service is not born from attitude and effort, but from
design choices made in the very blueprints of a business model. It’s easy to throw
service into a mission statement and periodically do whatever it takes to make
a customer happy. What’s hard is designing a service model that allows average
employees, not just the exceptional ones, to produce service excellence as an
everyday routine.”
According to Frei and Morriss, there are
four service truths that act as the foundation for delivering uncommon service:
[1] You can’t be good at everything: How
do customers define excellence in your product or service offering?
[2] Someone has to pay for it: How will
you get paid for delivering excellence?
[3] It’s not your employees’ fault: How
will you prepare your employees to deliver excellence each and every day?
[4] You must manage your customers: How
will you get your customers to behave in ways that improve their service
experience – without disrupting anyone else’s?
With examples from famous companies and
lesser known companies, Frei and Morriss showcase how this challenging business
model can propel service into the stratosphere of happy customers. Companies including
Apple, Amazon, Southwest Airlines, BBBK, Zappos, JetBlue, and IKEA are some
that provide proof that this model works.
Consider Southwest Airlines: The
airline’s advantage is low fares. This means that all employees need to pick up
the slack and do everything necessary to turn planes around safely and quickly
– so no fancy meals, no ambassador class or other special VIP section on the
plane for frequent fliers. Everyone is the same on Southwest Airlines, and this
suits its customers just fine.
Consider IKEA: you can walk around the
store as if it were an amusement park and also spend time at the restaurant.
Kids can play in a child-friendly play area with supervision. The company sells
build-it-yourself furniture but also creates a unique purchasing experience.
But it doesn’t sell furniture that will last a lifetime.
Have you deduced what stands at the core
of providing uncommon service? If you were thinking culture, then you’re
correct. If you create a culture that centers around the four service truths,
your business will excel in ways you never dreamed possible.
Again, in the words of Frei and Morriss,
“Culture guides discretionary behavior and picks up where the employee handbook
leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service
request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas,
and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions
on their own every day, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do
when the CEO isn't in the room, which is of course most of the time.”
________________
To learn more, visit: http://uncommonservice.com
Watch “How Starbucks Trains Customers to
Behave” on YouTube:
Follow Anne Morriss on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/annemorriss
Read more about culture on the Harvard
Business Review Blog:
Have you experienced uncommon service? Participate
in the survey. Take yourself back to a great service encounter and try to
remember what choices you made, what choices the company made, and how you felt
along the way.
What a beautifully written post Debbie! Businesses need to undergo a cultural revolution, and revolutions are usually messy in the beginning and face opposition. Hopefully we can fuel the fire and push companies to undergo the culture change.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your insightful frame on the book. We're thrilled the ideas resonated, and I love the Nerf football metaphor. In our experience, it really can be that casual in some organizations. A big part of our message, call it the anti-Nerf part, is this: how would your company behave if it approached service as a deadly serious source of competitive advantage?
ReplyDeleteAnne