CMI's Loyal Customers

CMI strives to create Raving Fan customers through excellent customer service, quick response time, and quality programs.  Over the next couple months we will highlight some of our client's testimonials and case studies.  Feel free to leave comments below; we look forward to hearing from you!

Satisfying the Customer

Another valuable lesson of Stupid Games is they can teach groups about great customer service.

I worked with a client that was focused on improving its customer service. This company hired a firm to survey its customers. The survey results indicated that the company’s customer service was below average. The company decided to focus on improving its service and its relationships with customers. I was brought in to help the company leadership group develop action plans for improving customer service and customer relationships.

To start the session, the group played one of CMI’s classic games: lower-the-tent-pole-to-the-ground. (See the end for a full description of this game. Is this article valuable or what?) The participants had played this Stupid Game in the past and were confident they would be successful.

As a precursor to the exercise, I said, “The marketplace has changed, so don’t be fooled by these tent poles. They’re super-duper and way different than before.” After pausing for effect, I added the instructions: “I’m the customer. I want you to lower this tent pole to the ground while balancing it on your index fingers. None of your fingers can ever lose contact with it. All fingers must be under and perpendicular to pole. No other body parts can touch the pole. You have three minutes to do this. The faster you can get the tent pole to the floor the better.”

The activity started. The pole went up instead of down. Fingers lost contact with the pole. People yelled, and blamed each other. (That is how this activity typically goes.) Then the groups calmed down. Everyone focused on completing the task. The participants started listening to each other and eventually lowered that darn pole to the ground. They felt good about it and gave each other high fives. They had collaborated and worked as a team. Good stuff. However, throughout the exercise, no one talked to me, the customer. This was very sad. I, the ignored customer, was sobbing quietly in the corner while sucking my thumb. How did this happen? Why was I so … neglected?

 After the game, we discussed the task of lowering the pole and defined good customer service. We agreed that the team worked together. Then we talked about how the neglected customer in this Stupid Game actually mirrored what was happening to customers “back at the ranch.” The group completed the task but they did not make me a raving fan customer. They did not update me or give me attention of any kind. If I used them again I would definitely want to talk about price. I asked the group whether they displayed good customer service during the exercise. The answer: no.

“How could the customer have been more involved in the process?” I asked. “Did you clarify his expectations prior to undertaking the task? Did you ask for any feedback during the task? And after completing the task, did you thank this customer for his business or explore with him what other services he might need?”

The answer to these questions, too, was no.

I asked, “When you saw that you were going to be late, did you tell the customer?”

“No,” they said.

“Does that ever happen at the office?” I asked. “Is the customer always notified of late arrivals and deliveries?”

“No,” they said.

“How does the customer feel about this?” I asked.

“It’s been a complaint,” they admitted, shooting one another looks of realization. Their looks also communicated that they were finding me quite annoying and might want to hurt me.

I said, “Fixing the communication problem and keeping the customer in the loop during this game will help you find ways to keep your customers better informed once you are back at your business.”

Therein, beloved reader lays the method to my madness. There are similarities between what happens during Stupid Games and what happens in the participants’ businesses. Playing Stupid Games provides the group a practice field and allows them to discover obstacles to successful work. They can take what they learn from our discussions back to work and use to implement solutions to problems.

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Great Service: A Bottle of Water at The Right Time

Fifteen years ago, I experienced the pinnacle of great customer service. On a hot August day, after running for hours in Central Park, I entered my hotel really sweaty. As I walked in, gasping, the doorman at my hotel offered me cold water and a towel. I was taken back, taken in and delighted by the service. For years, during presentations, I have used this story as an example of great customer service. It totally delighted me the customer and it was cheap. You have got love that. 

This year, the day after Thanksgiving, I was in California at a resort. It was 80 degrees. I went out running and as I left the entrance I was offered water. No biggy you are offered water a lot these days. So off I went. As I was jogging back, panting my way up a hill, a resort van driving down the hill approached me. The van stopped right by me, the driver leaned out and said, “Hey you! Want a bottle of water?” I was impressed. I got the feeling that at this resort vans always carry water and that I was not the first jogger to be offered it. Offering water to runners had reached to a whole new level.

These stories exemplify a basic tenant of customer service; it never stays static and can always improve. Remember how continental breakfasts at the Hampton were at best comprised of some hard rolls? Now free breakfast at the Hampton is at least two hot entrées, an assortment of bread, bagels, cereal, fresh fruit and more. In addition now Hamptons are offering breakfast to go pre-packed in bags at the front desk. What will they come up with next? I see more and more dogs in hotels; I think hot breakfasts for the dogs are next on the service frontier. There could also be a canine turndown service - now there is a visual!

Recently, I also noticed that after checking in at swanky hotels, the clerks come around in front of the desk, greet you and give you your key card in a very personable way. Apparently this was adopted from Nordstrom’s. In my fantasy the next step for this customer service strategy is that the receptionist will cry tears of joy as they come around from behind the counter, hug you and welcome you to your hotel. I can hardly wait……..

So as I said service does not say static. Great service is appreciated and makes customers loyal. What can you do to add value to your service proposition? Remember these service innovations do not have to be costly. Heck great service can be just a bottle of water – timing is everything.
For more information about developing great customer service, click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Points to Remember

Customer-focused teams and victims (people who refuse responsibility and accountability for their behavior) don’t go together. Members have to want to make the team successful. You cannot create a team with a group of victims.

Enemies and customer-focused teams do not go together. Team members must have a basic regard for each other. They do not have to love each other, but at minimum they should have mutual professional respect.

Expect conflict. Because performance standards are high, team members will have differing points of view for how to achieve performance standards. Open dialogue and discussion are useful to moving things forward. Remember that it does not matter who is right, but that the customer is served in an extraordinary fashion.

Finally, do not be afraid to experiment. Customer service strategies need to be planned, but it helps to be flexible and try new ideas that will make your organization indispensable to the people it serves.

Let us know what you think.  Leave a comment below or email us.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Developmental Stage Movement

In time, Stage 1 teams arrive at Stage 2. Stage 2 teams will either get stuck in Stage 2 or move on to Stage 3. Stage 3 teams can slip back into Stage 2 or move on to Stage 4. Progress or slippage depends on whether the team builds on its momentum or rests on its laurels. In Stage 4, the team can move on through consistent improvement or slip back by becoming arrogant and overconfident. Keep in mind that none of these stages are good or bad. They are necessary stepping-stones in the process that leads to high performance.

In the process of development, teams most often get stuck in Stage 2. In order to move to Stage 3, the team must hammer out the performance standards and commitment to achieving them. Also, team goals must become more important than personal agendas, which need to be congruent and in alignment with the group agenda.

 In Stage 3, the group starts to take on a life of its own and begins to aggressively move in the direction of its performance standards.

Stage 4 is where teams come into their own and truly create customer loyalty. If the team becomes relentless in providing superior products and anticipating the changing needs of the customer, it becomes possible to become indispensable to your customers. Equally important to customer focus is internal responsiveness for employees and shareholders who directly benefit from high performance with increased earnings. This is the win/win/win stage of development.

Stage 5 is a bit tricky because it can occur at any phase of development and can be triggered by any change that significantly alters the team. Examples include gaining or losing a member, altering the performance standards or receiving a new coach. Similarly, a major change in the internal or external environment will impact the team’s progress. Examples of this type of change include new products or services, new customers or a change in rules and regulations.
For more information about moving through team stages click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

A Normal Process for Team Development

Like people, teams go through different phases during their development. This is normal. A two-year old human is very different than a 16-year-old. Likewise, a team that has been together two months behaves very differently than a team that has been together 16 months.

There are five stages of development for customers focused teams, each with its own distinct characteristics:

Stage 1 - Getting to Know You

• Feeling that this customer service stuff could be fun combined with some anxiety about how to do it
• A degree of excitement about the concept of team
• Figuring out who is in charge
• Clarifying the rules and developing standards
• Dependence is on the coach/leader
• Coach/leader uses a directive approach

Stage 2 - Wish We Weren’t Here

• Feeling that this is not fun
• Leadership and/or members are all screwed up
• Feeling that “something is definitely wrong here”
• Feeling uncertain and incapable
• Performance standards not being met and a lot of finger pointing
• Little agreement among team members regarding standards
• Customer focus is rhetoric only
• A lot of internal strife and no sense of mutual accountability
• Task driven but a lot of individual agendas
• Performance standards are not agreed upon

Stage 3 - Getting Behind the Game

• Performance standards hammered out
• Increasing ownership of those standards
• Decreasing hostility as the team begins working out personal differences
• Focus on customers
• Starting to like and feel comfortable with mutual accountability
• Positive feedback from customers starting to come in
• More honesty among team members
• Failing forward -- learning and improving from trial and error, with rapid recovery from mistakes
• Enthusiasm and energy levels increasing
• Support for each other evident
• Small wins bring large smiles

Stage 4 - High Performance and Raving Fan Service

• Customers are consistently overwhelmed by the service and product
• Team standards are met and moved outwardly by the team
• Members feeling good about consistency
• Shared leadership
• Open and honest communication
• Meetings are full of straight talk
• Results are recognized by customers as high performance
• Members feel deep concern for each other’s personal growth and success
• The team outperforms all reasonable expectations
• Team members are having a lot of fun

Stage 5 - The Times They Are A-Changing

• A major change occurs, such as members joining or leaving, a new coach, new performance standards, etc.
• Confusion
• Uncertainty regarding the implications of change

 For more information about Team Stages click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Customer Focus, Feedback and Service Strategy

To create customer-focused teams, employees must understand that they win when the customers win; there is more to this positioning than meets the eye. The customer win has to be defined so that the company also wins. If you ask customers what they want they will tell you I want the service and product for nothing. Typically companies cannot stay in business by doing this. So the raving fan service strategy needs to be designed so that the company and its employees can deliver. Back to Apple, their products are easy to use and their informed employees can teach consumers how to use their products. All this conspires to make many raving fan Apple customers. Every service strategy needs to be designed so that this concept is constantly reinforced. 

The front line (people who directly impact the customer) has to get feedback so that they can:

• Know what it is doing right in creating raving fan customers
• Know what it is doing that is not working 
• Coordinate and fix problems with other departments that impact the delivery of raving fan customer service
• Ensure that the customer consistently perceives great value from the product and service that they are getting.

Two challenges exist in creating successful, high performance, customer focused teams. The first challenge is getting the voice of the customer clearly delivered to the front line regarding the service or product. Therefore, it is important to create forums and opportunities for the front line to listen to the customer. The other challenge is to make sure everyone understands the standards by which customer service is measured.

For more about creating customer focused teams click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

Why are Raving Fans a good thing?

Ask Zappos, ask Southwest Airlines, ask Apple, ask Jimmie Buffett and ask CMI (that is us). What companies do not have competition? When you earn raving fan customers you have a strategic advantage over your competition. You have customers that are going to buy from you no matter what. In essence your company becomes a monopoly. This is the ultimate positioning from a business perspective. One frequently sees this with Apple’s iPhones. Apple customers are disdainful of any other smartphone product and are absolutely loyal to Apple - no matter what - even when Chinese workers might be suffering. Apple Customers say “Heck, Apple might need to change some Chinese employment tactics, but no way am I giving up my iPhone!”

For more information about creating raving fans click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

What is a Raving Fan Customer?

I first saw this term used in the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard. A “raving fan customer” is a customer that is excited about the company’s service delivery and product way beyond normal. Raving fan customers remain loyal given price pressure from a given service’s competition. These customers would go through a lot to get the company’s service. Even a price increase would keep these raving fans loyal buyers. Raving fan customers would wait in long lines; pay extra shipping fee; all for the service or product that their favorite company offers.
For more information about creating raving fan customers click here.

Raving Fan Customers: Creating Customer Focused Teams

What is a Customer Focused Team?

The word “team” is overused in business; it gets applied to any group of humans in a work setting. However, when you define a team as everything, you end up with nothing.

The best and most concise definition for corporate teams I have found comes from The Wisdom of Teams by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. They define a team as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” The crucial words are “common purpose” and “mutually accountable.” Without these, you don’t have a team.

In addition, for a team to exist there has to be adversity, challenge and tension between the team and attaining a common purpose. No adversity and challenge means no team. You do not need teams for easy tasks. Tough challenges and high performance standards, such as those associated with customer service, quality and profitability are essential for teams to come together and coalesce. Having customers consistently be raving fans of the company’s service is certainly a challenging and lofty goal.

For more information about customer focused teams click here.

Teams: the 2nd Cornerstone of Performance Oriented Cultures

Have High Performance Work Teams throughout your company.

Teams are powerful constructs, and high-performance ones do not spring up by magic. By the same token, business teams are not the answer for every performance issue.

In corporations, while the talk is about teams and working together, there is actually a focus on individual performance. For the most part, there is no formal practice designed to enhance or improve group performance.

High-performance teams are “a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and a working approach in which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” This definition of real teams comes from the article “The Wisdom of Teams”, by Katzenbach and Smith. Real teams are basic units of performance, and members of the team are mutually accountable for the results. This is quite different from how most of the work world is organized.

When a group takes on mutual accountability for customers’ experiences, it can generate real customer-focused actions. From this, tangible and positive business results will occur. At my favorite restaurant, for example, the waiter greets me with my preferred glass of wine, letting me know that Chuck, the chef, has a special dish waiting for my beloved wife, Leslie. Then the bus boy appears and pours Leslie’s water without ice because that is the way she likes it. Everyone is clearly into giving us a personalized, pleasant experience, and we have not even ordered yet.

I have found that having a team design its structure allows the team to develop and perform more quickly. This is because in doing so, the team has to confront the performance issues it will encounter. The process allows for those issues to come to the fore sooner than later, which speeds up the overall process. Once this process is complete, it is important that the team honors and walks the talk that it designed.

Looking to build your team work and customer service skills? click here.

Building a G.R.E.A.T. Company

Components of a G.R.E.A.T. Company IV

A: Attitude. While “entrepreneurial” and “generous” speak to this type of attitude, great companies also exhibit plenty of spunk, vim and vigor. They have attitude with a capital A. This may mean going the extra mile for the customer. It may mean being on time, no matter what. It may mean that top executives double up in hotels to cut costs and contribute to their profit. Whatever the context, great companies exhibit an attitude and view of the world that clearly sets them apart.

Want to change your company's attitude?  Visit the CMI website.

The fourth rule of planning

By far my favorite rule is el grandote numero quarto. Start big by creating a vision of the future of the company. Then narrow the focus as you get back to present and address what to do immediately and how to implement.

Establish where you want to be in the next five years. As the Bible says, “without vision the people perish” The Bible does not say that you have got to attain the vision. It is saying that people need one to live into. This is critical. When you have a vision you are creating a future for the company that the employees can live into and fulfill on.

It is important that the breakthrough guessing/planning process allows for dreaming, visioning and looking at what is needed for a bright future to be realized. Typically we do this by asking the group to go three to five years into the future and recording the results on a flip chart.

The following questions need to be asked to arrive at a future vision. If you were already standing in 2016, what would the world look like? What are the important trends affecting your industry? What is your industry dealing with and what does it look like? Once a futuristic scenario has been developed, the group then looks at what they would like the organization’s image to be.

The planning team then asks what customers are saying about the organization. Why are customers loyal in 2016? What goods, services and new products have you brought forth? The team speculates on how big the organization is and how many employees are there.

This part of planning can be used to run growth scenarios. Have at least one for aggressive, medium, sluggish and no growth. Play with the numbers and have some fun with what could be. The planning team should get familiar with the possible territories and futures.

For more information about CMI's planning process visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com 

Can You Hear Me?

Listening is what will make the difference. Once a group is listening, anyone can lead. Once ‘listening’ is present, understanding and problem solving occur naturally. People can focus and work together. Prior to this there is reaction and yelling. Listening, the power of listening is one of the lessons I have seen groups get from utilizing stupid games.

Another lesson that groups learn from stupid games is the value of practice. For many groups it is a revelation to discover that to improve a group’s performance will take conversations, learning and practice. When people realize that practice is necessary while playing a stupid game, the drama suddenly ends and people relax. They get that it is ok to make mistakes and learn from them. That is what happens when you ‘practice.’ We learn that we can be safe with each other.

Learning about failure is still another lesson that can be learned in stupid-game land. There is failure and then there is failure. Whenever humans learn and develop, there is failure. There are failures from not doing something that needs to be done as well as from doing the wrong thing. The problem is that there are real consequences for failures during real business.

I have seen corporate groups play the same game over and over again and yet still get value from them. The standards can change, the parameters can change, what people learn can change, and it still is all training and development.

In business, when a group alienates a customer there are consequences. With a stupid game when the group alienates the customer (who is really the bozo facilitator pretending to be a customer) there is learning and development. This goes back to the games as a practice field that is safe and in which members of the group can learn and develop. There are no long-term consequences on the practice field.

For more information about CMI's team building events click here.