Why should you come to Austin at the end of January?
On Tuesday and Wednesday, January 29th and 30th, I’m teaching a new class about Shareworthy Customer Service at the 21st Century Business School known as Wizard Academy. It’s a magical place in the hill country just southwest of Austin, Texas. This week, Vice Chancellor Michele Miller asked me three questions about the class so she could promote it in the newsletter that goes out to thousands of alumni. Here are my answers. Tomorrow, I’ll share my fellow instructor’s answers.
Michele: How did you two come up with the idea of teaching this class?
About a year ago, two things happened in the same week.
One – one of my clients said to me, “Tim, I’m a liar.” He was becoming aware that his employees weren’t living up the promises we were making in his ad campaign. Since then, his customer service scores (measured by the same Net Promoter Score system used by Amazon, Apple, Trader Joe’s, and countless others) have risen to twenty points higher than Apple’s.
Two – Best Buy made my mom cry. Well, the CEO didn’t make her cry, but one of their Geek Squad members was so rude and condescending to my 76-year-old-non-cryer mother that I couldn’t sit idly by. I did what lots of people do: I took to the Internet and blogged about it to a couple thousand people, and I put it on all my social media outlets. Now, Best Buy’s stock is tanking. Is Trish the reason? Not specifically, but it got me wondering if something systemic was causing company’s like Best Buy to miss the proverbial boat.
Michele: We see lots of workshops on creating good customer service. Your course description looks intriguing – what is one thing that sets this course apart from others out there?
Is our course different? I think so.
For one thing, it’s not just about “being nicer to people,” but rather it’s about building a system that measures and rewards customer delight. It’s about budgeting for it. It’s about where that budget comes from and how to implement it and how to build a culture of ownership among your employees.
Additionally, we went through hundreds of accounts of delightful customer experiences from the very best companies – large and small – in the world, and we deconstructed what made them great. Turns out their are only fourteen different defining characteristics to customer delight, and you can tune them to suit your business.
Michele: What is the most important thing students will walk away with?
They’ll have a customized plan to build and implement a program that’s currently working for every one of our clients that began using it this year. They’ll begin to spend less in advertising. They’ll create a culture where employees love coming to work BUT aren’t working longer hours or particularly harder while they’re working. They’ll be the one company in town where the best specialists in their business category WANT to work.
Not a bad way to spend two days, huh? Come join us in Austin.
I happen to live in Panama where customer service is not something to “write home about” ever. But – our Costco equivalent here is a company called Price Smart. On two separate occasions I have called their HO is San Diego and on both occasions I have been treated with such over the top courtesy and responsiveness that I tend to talk about it all the time. Those two encounters made me extremely loyal to the point where I even bought shares in the company. And yes they even went up 🙂 Yes folks – make sure you deliver what your sales and marketing efforts say you will.