It’s not enough to say you care about your customers – you must PROVE it on every interaction!
One of my favorite questions to ask business owners is, “Why do your customers buy from you?” Despite the diversity of my client base, there isn’t much diversity to the answer: It’s always some variation of “great customer service,” or “our people.” (Which is pretty much the same answer.) The trouble is that the answer is almost always OUR PERCEPTION of the issue, rather than the CUSTOMER’s perception. Which do you think is more important?
If you said, “The customer’s,” you’re right. The truth is that most of us don’t really know why our customers buy because we don’t ask. We simply rest on the knowledge that our people care, but we seldom verify that or justify it. Let me give you two radically different examples of companies that say “our employees care,” and you can decide which company means it.
The first example is from the hotel I’m staying at this week: The Outrigger Reef on the Beach in Honolulu. Now, I haven’t been to Honolulu for 17 years, and I’m definitely not a regular at the Outrigger. In fact, my travel agent helped me find this hotel. Who’s my travel agent, you ask? I’ll tell you – Kim Shannon at All About Travel in Mission, KS. She really cares, too, but I’ll save her story for a future HotSheet. But I heartily recommended her.
My experience at the Outrigger has been unique, and I have stayed at a lot of high-end resort hotels. Let’s start with the parking valet. In my experience, there are two kinds of valet parking operations at hotels – the Vegas kind, which is free, cheerful, and lightning fast, and the other kind, which is pricey, mandatory, impersonal, and slower than Charlie Sheen heading to a sobriety clinic. In other words, thanks for your money, and we’ll get you your car when we darn well feel like it. Call this the “everywhere other than Vegas” model.
The Outrigger was different. There is a not insignificant charge for valet parking, but I knew in advance, so it’s OK. I pulled up to the valet parking stand, and a smiling young man wished me “Aloha” and asked my name. I gave it to him, and – this is new – he quickly found my name on the list of reservations. He got our bags, and then spent a few minutes orienting us to the resort and explaining some of the features. Very nice. I should point out that when I went to get my car the next morning, the service was Vegas-quick and Vegas-cheerful. I hereby do not mind the extra charge.
Then there was the check-in. We all know about hotel check-in, right? You walk up to a desk and stand there while the person behind the desk (hopefully) finds your reservation, then spends quite a bit of time creating your documents and keys. Not here. Checking in here, you actually sit down and speak to a desk clerk who is also sitting down. You give him your name, and he pulls out a file of pre-made documents and keys. Two signatures, and we’re on our way to the room. I commented to him that this was the smoothest check-in I’ve ever seen. The clerk smiled and responded, “Most of our guests have been traveling six or more hours to get here (we traveled a total of eleven hours). We don’t want to keep them from their vacation any more than necessary.” Nice touch, wouldn’t you agree? There are more examples, but suffice it to say that the Outrigger cares about their customers. Yes, it’s a luxury resort, but I’ve stayed at a lot more high priced resorts that couldn’t approach the service here.
Now, for the other extreme, I will pull back the mask a bit. I do the cooking at our house, and I’m darn good at it. Not the most manly thing in the world, I suppose, but it’s one of my skills. My wife bought me a very nice set of cookware about a year and a half ago, and recently, the bottom plate of one of the pans separated from the main pan. No problem, these pans are lifetime warranty, so I’ll just take it back to where I bought it and get a new one.
When it comes to lifetime warranties, my best experience is with tools from Snap-On and Craftsman (for those of you keeping score at home, this is where I get my man-card back from the cooking issue). When you have a broken tool, you take it back and they give you a new one. No exceptions, no worries. They don’t ask for receipts; they don’t even particularly care where you got the tool. My dad once bought a ratchet that was made by Snap-On in the 1920s. The mechanism didn’t work. The tool man said, “I’d happily swap you for a new one, but as rare as that is, you’d probably rather have it rebuilt.” One week later, he returned and the ratchet had been rebuilt and polished to look new. Turns out that they had to specially cut a new gear for it since they no longer stocked parts for it.
So this is my frame of reference. Armed with these expectations, I walked into the store and to the housewares department. I explained my issue to the lady at the counter, and she began peppering me with questions about what I did to it, did I have a receipt (no), and finally the statement that “we don’t carry this style anymore.” I explained patiently that lifetime means lifetime, and I expected the situation to be made right. Cue the call to the manager.
The manager came out and first observed, “Gee, that’s been exposed to a lot of heat.” I fought the urge to respond in a Bill Engvall “here’s your sign” manner and instead said, “Yes, I cook with it and that involves heat.” Again I told them that all I expected was something comparable since they didn’t carry the product line. The manager went back to the “we need a receipt” stance. This is when I got a bit assertive. I explained that, lifetime means lifetime, and if I have to leave and get a receipt, I’ll simply leave and purchase a replacement somewhere else, and in the process continue to buy elsewhere. It’s simply not worth my time to return. Finally – after 35 minutes of deliberation – they decided on a replacement and a course of action, telling me multiple times how they were “violating store policy” to do so.
So, which company cares about its customers? More to the point, look at the two situations – which one is more exemplary of the experience that YOUR customers receive? Sometimes the truth can be painful, but it’s still the truth. How can you show your customers that you really do care, instead of saying so? It’s the total customer experience that counts.
