Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

So maybe your strategy for building your business should be to go out and mess it up for all your customers!

Now, I’m kidding, kidding, I can see you now “Hey boss I got a great idea”  you no, no, no, don’t do that but what I am saying is when something goes wrong use it to your advantage and set it right now let me ask you a question about that young man the clerk do you think he woke up one day and said “I have a brilliant idea I’m going to give away socks!”no it wasn’t a clerk’s idea, somebody in the organization, someone in management, someone in a supervisory level made the decision that they were gonna build a strategy for service recovery.

So that whenever something goes wrong, you know you’re gonna get him back up high again yeah they were smart they thought it through have you? What did that pair of socks cost him 10 ringgit wholesale? maybe less you think they’re gonna make the money back with the next purchase of shoes?

Oh yeah. What about you? I want you to turn to your partner. I’m gonna give you 30 seconds. Do you have a strategy for service recovery that guarantees that when something goes wrong for one of your customers boom! you’re gonna bounce them back up if you do tell your partner what it is if you don’t tell your partner what should it be. You have 30 seconds..ready? Go!

All right maybe you’re wondering what I’m talking about now is no longer “customer satisfaction” everybody’s going for customer satisfaction! It’s a commodity today! “Oh we’re for customer delight” that’s cute so’s your competition the only thing that matters today is customer loyalty. Building up not only an excellent mindset but an excellent service relationship that builds up long-term with your customers, so that they say hey when it comes to that industry there’s only one company I want to be doing business with, the same company I’ve been doing business with …your business. 

In this program, ‘Service Encounters of the Third Kind’ I talk about how you shift from customer satisfaction to customer delight, from customer delight to customer loyalty,  that’s why it’s the third kind. Invest in these tapes and you get a lot, you can watch the video, you can listen to the audio while you’re driving or exercising, you can use the workbook. Important ideas, strategies, techniques and this pack goes to that young lady right there in yellow cuz she’s going in okay you win. Would you pass that back to her please all right for the lady and I love you too!

For the rest of you they’re gonna be available all along here just outside and you guys got good news. Somebody said Ron you got to give him a discount you got to give a really big discount, come on you got give em big big, good, big, discount Richard Towns going Boom! Boom! Boom! In my head. You guys got the biggest discount of anybody in the region, talk to you about it later but it’s just here, just today. 

Now, let’s go to the last one…

Does all this stuff make sense? isn’t it common sense? Yeah if it’s such common sense though, how come we don’t find more organizations that have excellent service?

Good question. Isn’t it? 

It’s a question that I always start by asking the frontline. I go into a new organization and I say “Uh how come service is better around her?” and you know what the frontline ways says to me “Are you kidding, with managers like we’ve got” They say “Do what I say not what I do, they say cut the budget, cut the budget, cut the budget”

So I go to the managers I go “Hey, hey managers how come service isn’t better around here?” You know what they always say to me? “Are you kidding? With frontline staff like we’ve got” Now what do you call this ‘finger pointing’ right? but I also learned in Asia we call it Taichi’’.

I’m an American I call it what I see it, I call it at the bottom of the barrel- B L A M E Blame!  Hey, I got a question for you “Does blame improve service in your organization, yes or no?  Does it make things worse? Yeah it does because you get people upset.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It demoralized everybody, nobody can do a good job so then people start to realize that every time I point my finger and I blame you there’s three fingers pointing back at me.

They go “Oh maybe I’m accountable for this, maybe it’s partly my fault” and then they start to realize “oh gosh, you know I made the same mistake twice, oh I didn’t work as hard as I could have, I knew I should have but I didn’t” and then I start to feel ashamed and one level up from blame is blaming yourself which I call ‘Shame’.

Does shame improve service in your organization, yes or no? No. Can you imagine trying to improve service in an organization where everybody’s walking around going “Oh yeah I so stupid, I’m a same mistake again uh-huh” Of course not, so then we gotta move up, move up we say I’m not gonna blame you”, you’re not gonna blame me, I’m not gonna blame me, you’re not gonna blame you, it’s not your fault, it’s not my fault, it’s the computers fault, it’s the system’s fault, it’s the budgets fault, it’s the schedules fault, it’s the policies fault, it’s the procedures fault, it’s the process fault”

Make an excuse. One level up from shame is ‘Justify’. Justification, Hey does justification improve service inside your organization yes or no? No.

There’s only one group of people that should operate below this blue line- Lawyers. I’m glad I ain’t one of them!

You go oh you got a problem with lawyers.. The only place that you can go, that you have to go if you really want to improve service in your organization or ladies and gentlemen if you want Malaysia Boleh you got to go above the blue line and that means that every single one of us, means we have to commit ourselves to take ‘personal responsibility’ and I choose my words real carefully I don’t say wait to be given personal responsibility,  I don’t say hang around to see it because I’m shows up I say you gotta take personal responsibility. 

Now what does that mean? That means that within your area of responsibility, your job, you will do every single thing that you can to do the best you can do you will follow through; you’ll go the extra mile; you will learn about your product; you’ll learn about your delivery system; you’ll study; you upgrade yourself; you’ll commit yourself to learn; improve and grow; you’ll take every action you possibly can within your area of responsibility; to be the best! It also means that you will reach outside of your immediate area of responsibility; you will extend your circle of influence.

If you see something coming down the pike that doesn’t affect you but you know it’s gonna affect your partner in another department you’re the one that picks up the phone and calls us said “Hey, I just noticed something I thought you ought to know” If you’ve got an idea to improve the whole organization, you’re the one that raises your hand and says I got a suggestion, I got a recommendation, could we have a meeting, let’s initiate a conversation here, I want to help make everything go better.

Take personal responsibility.