Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

Hello my name is Ron Kaufman, I’m the author of the New York Times bestselling Uplifting Service, the proven path to delighting your customers, your colleagues and everyone else you meet.

Now I want to talk to you right now about ROI and return on investment because my organization are specialists in building uplifting service cultures we’re often asked at some point “show me the money” , “how am I going to know that our investment in service is going to bring us a real return?”

Well, that’s an entirely legitimate and valid question anyone in business will focus at some point on what I call the ultimate business objectives- Profit, sales volume, shareholder value, market reputation, share of market.

Those are the ultimate objectives in business and that’s a valid measure but it’s not the first thing that happens when building an uplifting service culture what is a legitimate precursor what’s a leading indicator that you’re going to get those ultimate objectives is higher survey scores, higher scores on your customer loyalty index, customer satisfaction survey, net promoter score, share of wallet allocation.

Any index that you use including internal employee engagement, when those scores are going up it’s a leading indicator that the ultimate business objectives are coming.

Now what’s a valid precursor or a leading indicator to getting higher survey scores?

Well it’s compliments, positive feedback, customers and colleagues saying good things about the service experience that they are receiving.

When you’re getting a lot of compliments and lots of positive feedback you can be pretty sure that your survey scores are going to go up, and if your survey scores go up then the ultimate objectives are not going to be far behind.

So we have ultimate objectives, survey results, positive compliments and feedback now here’s the really important question. What is the precursor of getting a compliment? What is the leading indicator? What needs to happen before someone gives you positive feedback?

Well, it’s got to be some new action, some new idea to improve service, some action step that someone has taken to serve a customer or a colleague even better. It’s that action that leads to the compliment, that leads to the higher scores, that leads to the ultimate business objectives.

So the next time somebody asks to show me the money, what’s the ROI on this service improvement project or I’m building an uplifting service culture make sure they understand that the ultimate business objectives will come but those are lagging indicators, profit it’s the applause you receive for serving people well.

The immediate metric to focus on the point where the rubber meets the road is how many new actions, how many new ideas have you come up with and implemented to improve the service experience you create for the customers and the colleagues you serve.

Show me the money?

What’s the ROI?

Show me the ideas. 

Show me the action steps that you and your team have taken.