Chapter 2

 Service: It’s a Mission

“The customer is King.” “We love customers.” “The customer is always right.”

There’s no shortage of lip service concerning customer service. Everyone seems to know the right words to say.

So why does it seem that you actually encounter great service so rarely?

Too many organizations that brag about their service do so because they think they should (it is the rage, you know). Or, just as dangerous, they really believe they already give the kind of service that creates loyal customers—even though their customers don’t think so.

A great experience leaves a customer wanting more. It leaves a customer eager to have an interaction with your firm again.

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 Watch It!
Companies can fall in love with concepts and forget why the latest craze was appealing in the first place—to improve and increase business! Remember to focus on the job of creating loyal customers.

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And, as discussed in the previous chapter, profits come from repeat business. The more repeat business you get, the more profits you get.

Remember: your business is not your physical assets, your stock, or even all your employees. Your business is nothing more than the collection of interactions you and your colleagues have with your customers. Period. Without those customer interactions and transactions, you have nothing.

Mission: Mission

It’s fashionable for companies of all sizes to have a Vision and Mission Statement. Mission Statements should:

• Express why the organization exists.
• Give employees and customers alike a clear sense of what the organization stands for.

If you don’t yet have your Mission plaque on the wall and you want to scrap the current one and start from scratch, here’s a simple process you can use to create a meaningful Mission and Values Statement.

Think about the big questions: Why does the company even exist? Why is it in the business it’s in? What does it hope to accomplish?

1. Get input on these issues from people significant to the company’s future: customers, owners, employees, suppliers.
2. Review the ideas. Combine them. Shape them.
3. Begin drafting a few simple sentences:

   Our firm exists to ____________ .

   We are committed to _________________ . (This might be several items, for example, what products you’ll make or services you’ll offer, the kind of customers you’ll serve.)

   We will distinguish our company from others by ______________ .

   We will achieve our objectives by ________________. (Here you describe the values your company stands for: such as product innovation and quality; opportunity for all employees; fair value for customers and profits for your company; and so on.)

4. Get feedback from people on the draft:

   Does it really sound like your company? Does it capture the true personality or sound too ideal, abstract, or “textbook-ish”?

   Is it specific enough?

   Can you envision the company really living up to the statements?

5. After incorporating the comments, revise the draft. Create a final. Adopt it.
6. Publish the statement. Widely. To your employees, owners, suppliers, customers.
7. Commit to living by the Statement. Truly incorporate it into how your company does business:

   Use it as a guide for daily operations.

   Use it as a touchstone for difficult decisions the way the U.S. Supreme Court uses the Constitution.

   Make it part of your training program.

   Refer to it when using it as a basis for policies and decisions.

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 Tales from the Real World
Publix Super Markets, a ten-billion dollar-a-year employee-owned chain in the Southeastern U.S., has won numerous awards for its caring customer service.

 

Its mission statement is wonderfully ambitious and succinct: “To be the premier quality food retailer in the world.”

 

And likewise its promise to customers: “Where shopping is a pleasure.” And Publix customers think it is!

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Proof Is in the Paging

One of our favorite Values Statements is from Ram Mobile Data, an aggressive nationwide paging company owned in part by BellSouth. The statement was created by a group of employees from various parts of the company, and reads as follows:

A copy of the Values Statement sits on every desk at Ram Mobile Data—a constant reminder to employees as to what the company is all about.

Involve Employees

Get your employees to participate in creating the Mission Statement.

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 Watch It!
Getting employee involvement in the Mission Statement creation process is great. But don’t try to have every employee working away at it in meetings (as we have seen some well-intending but naïve companies do). That can create a communication and logistics nightmare.

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Here is a suggested process:

• Invite employees to volunteer to serve on a Mission task force of ten or fewer employees (if you need to involve more, create subgroups at your various locations and have them submit idea summaries to the main steering group).
• Ask all employees to submit ideas for the Mission Statement to the task force.
• Have that task force work closely with a top management group to create a Mission Statement that reflects top management strategy and employee insight.

Involve a wide cross-section of employees in the Mission Statement cooking process. Top management needs to set the strategic direction for the company. But employees from all areas and at all levels can make a significant contribution in defining how the company achieves its Mission.

Keep the Faith

Reciting or pledging allegiance to the ideals on the wall—like “serving customers beyond their expectations”—isn’t the same as behaving in a way that assures your customers of a satisfying experience.

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 Watch It!
News flash: customers don’t care what your Mission Statement says. They care about how you treat them. And how you treat them should spring from your organization’s core values—if those are clear enough, and felt deeply enough by everyone in the organization.

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Put It to the Test

Answer these tough questions to test whether you are putting your Mission Statement to work for your customers:

• Do all your employees know, really know, what your organization stands for?
• If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating a Vision/ Mission/Values statement, can you honestly say it guides day-to-day behavior of most (any?) of your employees?
• How many of your employees even know what it says?
• Could they recite it, or at least capture the essence of it?

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   At Your Service
  Make your firm’s mission and values clear to your employees so they know what the organization’s true priorities are. (And if it’s only to make the most money possible, at least be honest about it.)

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• Would they say they work in harmony with it day-to-day?
• Are the principles integrated into their job descriptions and part of their performance evaluations?

If your Mission Statement doesn’t score well on this test, scrap the darn thing and replace it. Or get about the business of making those words meaningful in guiding on-the-job behavior (and your assessments of it).

Prove It!

Meaningful customer service is about demonstrating your appreciation for the people who placed their trust and confidence in you. And we mean demonstrating in very fundamental ways that you truly care about what the customer values.

If you have a poorly designed and unreliable product, being nice to customers won’t make them believe that your Yugo is a Porsche.

And even the fanciest of talk and the slickest of slogans about customer service doesn’t impress any customer. Do you think a sports team boasting about its commitment to winning convinces fans to overlook its losing record?

Yeah, Right

Don bought an electronic gizmo that was supposed to come with a rebate coupon in the box. Only it didn’t. He discovered the coupon was missing on a Sunday afternoon. Even though he figured it was a total waste of time to do so, he called the retail store, an electronics chain in the Northeast U.S. called Nobody Beats the Wiz.

The helpful salesman explained that the store didn’t have the coupons on hand, but their customer service center—available through a toll-free number—could likely send it. Don experienced one of those “yeah, right” moments. Still, he tossed caution to the wind and dialed the “800” number.

To his surprise, not only was it staffed on a Sunday afternoon, the call was answered in just a couple of rings. The helpful person at the other end promised to locate the rebate coupon, even if she had to contact the manufacturer. And she’d have it in the mail within a few days. Another “yeah, sure” moment?

Don thought so. Until three days later when the coupon arrived, as promised.

The store backed up its customer service slogans with real (and fast) action. Since that experience, and in light of the chain’s 7-day no questions asked return policy, as well as its 30-day price guarantee policy, Don has purchased thousands of dollars of equipment from Nobody Beats the Wiz.

Acid Test

Here’s one way to test your company’s commitment to customers. Ask any of your colleagues you hear preaching about how much the organization values service, “When was the last time you actually had a meaningful interaction with a customer?” Like talked to one, not just eavesdropped on the customer service department’s phone monitor, or watched a customer from a distance, or through the glass at a focus group interview.

Organizations that truly care about customers have:

• Management that is in close contact with customers.
• Compensation for management based on the level of customer loyalty (which is more than just a simple percentage of people who say they are satisfied; see Chapter 15).

If you know that your top management hasn’t really been face to face with a customer for many a moon, suggest, gently, that they get back in touch with the reason your firm exists.

While it’s best to interact with customers where they purchase or use your product or service, consider this alternative. Set up an event that has customers and your senior management group interacting. It could be something like a lunch discussion where an independent moderator helps customers and managers discuss items of mutual interest. Of course, this isn’t ideal. But it could be the first step in easing ivory tower management back down to the trench level—where they really need to be on an on-going basis.

Beyond Greed: Why Service Gets Bad

When your employees give bad service, or less than great service, which is nearly the same as bad service today, they probably do it for one of the following reasons:

1. They don’t believe that giving good service is really expected by management.
2. They don’t know how to give good service.
3. They aren’t service-oriented people (and really shouldn’t be in a service job).
4. Your organization is not set up to support providing good service. (You have flawed policies, inefficient procedures, inadequate support systems, unclear priorities, confused employees, excessive bureaucracy, etc.)
5. Your organization treats its employees with little respect. Employees who feel like they are a necessary evil, who don’t feel valued or respected, tend to treat customers the same way.

All five reasons can and must be addressed by management. Each of these service-squashers is addressed fully in this book. None are solved by putting up a poster or circulating a memo declaring “The customer comes first.” Bleccchh!

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 Quote, Unquote
The cheapest way to run a business is to provide the highest-quality customer service. The resulting referrals bring in customers that cost you nothing to generate.
—David Steinberg, president, Sterling Communications, a Cellular One retailer, Silver Spring, MD

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Some managers say they can’t afford to deliver good service. Horse feathers! This is a self-deceiving trap. Good service isn’t any more expensive than bad service. The award-winning, and lesser-known, organizations we feature in this book don’t pay their people far more than competitors. And they don’t make less profit than their less enlightened competitors. In fact, they tend to make more. Delivering great service is not about either spending more money or saving money. It’s about profiting from leadership.

Small Ambition

Suppose you say “amen” to all the stuff above about a company-wide commitment to great service. Then in the next breath you say, “This all great. But you guys don’t understand. My bosses do not get it! What then, smarty pants?”

Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to have wrestled with this problem. Here’s our advice:

1. Don’t get discouraged. At least you know what needs to be done. And that’s a good start.

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    Quote, Unquote
   Across America, the bulk of businesses look at customer service as an expense. If you establish a tradition that views customer service as an expense, every good manager knows what to do: minimize it. But if you see service as an asset, it takes on a completely different aspect.
   —George Heilmeier, president and CEO, Bellcore

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2. Do everything you can to create The Service Difference in your domain, your corner of the organization, no matter how big it is.
3. Control what you can control. Influence what you can influence.
4. You can always buy another copy of this book and secretly slip it onto the Big Cheese’s desk with a cryptic inscription on a sticky note: “JB, Great stuff. How about a copy for all managers?—R.” That’ll do wonders for your company’s progress and our kids’ college funds.

Not Just a Department, a Way of Life

Concern for the competitive impact of customer service has encouraged its evolution from simply managing “customer contact tasks,” like responding to customer inquiries or complaints, to a company-wide, consuming passion for pleasing customers.

Naturally, reading this book helps you to build a superb customer contact/customer service function in your organization. But just as importantly, it presents you with many ideas and techniques for building the Customer Service Organization where the whole company is thinking about and organizing work to make great customer service the top priority.