Shareworthy Service – either good or bad – has two main components: Professionalism and Kindness. Each component has seven facets.
After studying countless examples of shareworthy customer experiences, I’ve yet to find a shared situation being praised or condemned that wasn’t among these heavy sevens.
Kindness (or its absence) makes a world of difference, but it’s relatively meaningless without first rocking Professionalism. Kindness is the sexy component but these seven facets of professionalism drive the bus.
1. Appearance
Whether it’s never seeing trash at Disney or your heating and air conditioning technician slipping floor savers over his shoes, we notice the look, sound and smell of the persons, places and things with which we do business.
Even if the coffee house hipster barista sports her skinny jeans and Residents t-shirt, we still expect a certain degree of cleanliness and order to her rumples. The same holds true for your parking lot, your service vans and your bathroom.
2. Attentiveness
Look me in the eye. Acknowledge you’ve seen me and are preparing to engage with me. When it’s my turn, don’t excuse me for the person calling on the phone.
In his latest book Entreleadership, Dave Ramsey tells the story of the pizza delivery driver who watched his tips increase when he began jogging from his car to the door. Make us feel like we matter. It’s really not that hard. We have to do business with each other anyway, so the quicker you can help me, the quicker I’ll be out of your life.
3. Dependability
I wrote about this last week. Can we count on you to do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. Typically, an absence of dependabilty becomes shareworthy.
4. Consistency
I wrote about consistency in the same post last week. Consistency is the dependability of your dependability. You need systems, policies and procedures to deliver dependability, umm, dependably.
5. Focus
A customer at hand isn’t just an important thing – it’s the only thing that matters at any given moment. The best servers in restaurants have this down, don’t they? She might have fifteen tables, but you’d never know it.
Restaurant owner Laura Harbaugh called it “The 3-Second Rule.” I may only be speaking with you for three seconds, but for those three seconds I’m locked in. You are the only thing that matters to me in the world. It’s harder than ever amidst the growing distractions. It’s also more important than ever.
6. Proactivity
I originally had nine facets of each main component, but I realized a couple were really pretty much the same. I originally had both ‘proactivity’ and ‘authority.’
What I mean is – for example – that any Ritz Carlton employee can comp up to $100 worth of services to make something right on the spot. The best business owners train their employees, then give them the authority to make decisions the owner will support even when they don’t necessarily agree with it.
Read Carl Sewell’s Customers For Life if you want to learn more about this.
7. Simplification
Technological, ahem, advances have helped companies build walls in the name of ‘customer convenience.’
Please. Did any customer ever ask for an automated phone tree? The layers of complexity in today’s work and world increase friction. We’re faster, busier, multi-tasking, aggressive, noisy creatures that demand attention NOW.
Shareworthy service providers have a gift of being able to evaluate a complex situation and quickly distill it down and remove any tension or friction. You can just feel tense situations deflate at Apple’s Genius Bars when a 22-year-old uses common language to describe an otherwise technical problem to a 75-year-old laptop owner. Watch a great guest services manager in Las Vegas hear a problem, understand a problem and fix a problem quickly and quietly.
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There you go. Those are the first heavy seven.
How does your company rate with each? Do you actually have systems and policies in place to point these facets in your favor, or are y’all just winging it?
I hope I can help. This week, we’re building toward a presentation and e-book that you can use to begin to define, build, measure and reward a program of your own.
Tomorrow? Professionalism’s party doll: Kindness.
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