Shep Hyken's Blog, page 156

Strike One and You’re Out! Five Ways to Ensure Your Customer Service Is a Hit

Here is a sobering statistic. According to the Five9 Customer Index 2017 report, 77% of customers in the B2C space will not do business with you again if you give them bad customer service the first time they do business with you. This is huge. That means that more than three-quarters of your customers will not give you a second chance if you don’t give them the customer experience they expect the first time around. Now, while the survey is focused on retail and consumers, don’t be fooled into thinking someone in the B2B space is exempt. The numbers are different, but the concept is valid for any business in any industry.

Our customers are smarter than ever, at least as customer service is concerned. They know what good customer service is and they aren’t just comparing you to your direct competition. Anyone that has delivered a stellar customer service experience – in any type of business – to one of your customers has just set the bar higher for you.

Customer service is your competitive advantage. Numerous surveys are proving that customers are starting to shift toward service being more important than price. And, a large majority of executives have announced a major push toward creating a better, more competitive, customer service experience. Five9 surveyed 1,138 consumers and found that 89% said a “great customer experience” is a key reason that helps them decide which company to do business with. And, that reasons trumps price, product quality, and even recommendations from friends.

So, what is a company to do? Here are a few suggestions. By the way, I’ve written about these before, but after seeing the Five9 report, this is a perfect time to remind ourselves of some of these important strategies and tactics that will help us with each and every one of our customers.

Customer service doesn’t just happen on the front line. It happens throughout the entire company. It’s part of the company’s culture.
Be present in the moment. What are you doing right now – what kind of experience is the customer having at this moment – that is going to ensure that the next time he or she needs what you sell, they will come back to you?
No company and no person is flawless. You can’t deliver a perfect customer experience all of the time. So, when there is a problem or complaint, don’t just fix it. Restore the customer’s confidence. Assuming you handle the issue well, it validates the customer’s choice to do business with you in the first place and proves why they should come back.
Speaking of managing complaints, don’t argue with a customer. You’ll never win. There’s an old saying that says, “You’re not trying to win an argument. You’re trying to win a customer.”
Always show appreciation to your customer. Say “Thank you” over and over again. They want and expect to know you care.

Some of you may say that these five ideas are common sense. Yes, they are! However, it’s not always as common as it should be. Number one, which is focused on the culture, is strategic. It takes time and an effort that is never really finished. The other four concepts are tactics. They are easily carried out by any person on your team. So, take the time to share these ideas with your colleagues. As the Five9 statistic teaches us, most of the time you only have one shot at impressing your customer. Don’t strike out!

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Jim Steinberg

Meeting Your Customers Where They Are, Will Cause Them to Stay Where You Are                  
Shep Hyken Interviews Jim Steinberg, Senior Vice President of LoyaltyPlant  

How would you like a perfect way to reach your customers and keep their attention?

 

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Personalizing the customer experience is a hot topic. Shep Hyken sits down with customer personalization expert, Jim Steinberg, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships at LoyaltyPlant.

Top Takeaways:

There is an engagement crisis happening among marketers. Most marketers have the proper tools, but they aren’t using them properly. Sending something to a customer is all about when and where you send it. The crisis occurs when the wrong customer gets the wrong information, or when they get it at the wrong time or in the wrong place.
The four R’s of Marketing:

Get the RIGHT MESSAGE
To the RIGHT CUSTOMER
At the RIGHT TIME
In the RIGHT PLACE.

If this formula is properly implemented, the customer is going to be absolutely delighted. And, mobile is really the only medium that can do this properly.




Don’t confuse the concept of personal information with personalized information. Personalization is about one-to-one marketing. It’s getting specific and personalized message to a specific individual. Customers don’t mind sharing personal information in order to receive a personalized and relevant experience.

About:

Jim Steinberg is Senior Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships at LoyaltyPlant. He is passionate about transforming the face of mobile marketing for restaurant chains using the disruptive force of the LoyaltyPlant platform.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, “New York Times” best-selling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

 

“Today, millennials are your largest audience with the greatest buying power.” – Jim Steinberg

       

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

What’s the best way to reach my customers?
How can I use customer personalization more effectively?
What’s the best and most effective way to market to my customers?
How can I create a more personalized experience?

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of December 18, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

Customer Experience Mapping: How to Create Smoother, More Effortless Journeys by Hutch Morzaria

(Comm100) In this article, we’ll be exploring both the process of customer journey mapping and customer experience mapping, explaining the types of steps involved for each. First, let’s go through what a journey map is and how to complete one.

My Comment: Let’s start off this week’s Top Five by going back to basics with a short article on creating a journey map. The author has an interesting twist and discusses the move from a customer journey map to a customer experience map. The focus is on both the acquisition of a new customer as well as the retention of that customer.

The Customer Experience Effect: A Look at We Learned in 2017 and What’s Ahead by Liliana Petrova

(Jet Blue) With many startups and companies addressing this exciting challenge in brilliant and creative ways, we invited a group of innovators to our New York City headquarters on Customer Experience Day for a discussion on customer experience innovation. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of the top things we learned during this panel and how we will continue to apply them and inspire humanity in the year ahead.

My Comment: I love learning from the top brands that are known for customer service and experience. Jet Blue is one of those brands. Here is a short lesson, but let me warn you. It’s a tease. It’s just one of a number of lessons from Jet Blue that will be released over the coming weeks. So for now, read the first lesson and enjoy!

How Personalized Data Is Quickly Improving Customer Experiences by Lucas Miller

(The Next Web) If “the customer is always right” is the golden rule of customer service, then “treat each customer as an individual” should be the golden rule for brand marketing. Every consumer wants to feel as though the brands they support view them as a unique entity, rather than another customer identification number.

My Comment: This very short article is about personalization. This is big today. The premise is simple: Treat customers as individuals. I’ll go a step further and suggest that this is more about making customers feel as if they are being treated as individuals. Back to the article… the author mentions two iconic companies that have mastered personalization: Starbucks and Maybelline. Good examples to get us thinking about how to better connect with our customers.

The Current State of Customer Experience and How I would like it to Be by Vivek Jaiswal 

(Customer Guru) Customer experience is becoming more important with every passing year. Sadly though, even today there are brands that think that it is just a buzz that will die with time. I, however, believe that customer experience is becoming a part of the boardroom discussion in companies. Looking at the Google search trend also reinforces my confidence in the fact that customer experience will only become more significant and popular in the coming years.

My Comment: This is a robust article on customer experience, with something here for every type of business. Plenty of stats, facts and visuals to get your mind stimulated around the importance of delivering customer experiences that win new customers and gets existing ones to come back.

101 Reasons Why You Need To Embrace Live Chat by Megan

(Website Builder) Make no mistake, live chat is not just a way for the customers to get in touch with the seller. It’s much more than that! Live chat is the untapped potential that will help you build rapport with your visitors and boost conversion rates. More importantly, live chat provides immediate answers, thus building confidence in your brand and increasing customer satisfaction. 

My Comment: Wow! I didn’t realize there were 101 ways to use Live Chat to benefit your business. Here’s a great article – actually an infographic – with plenty of Live Chat ideas for us to think about.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs go to  www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: Voice of the Customer Begins with Voice of the Employee

This week we feature an article by Keith Schorah who states that in order to deliver an excellent customer experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before, and this begins with your frontline. As I always say, what’s happening on the inside of a company is felt on the outside by your customers. – Shep Hyken

Employee engagement is crucial for any organization striving to become more customer-centric. It is also just as crucial for organizations to adopt a strong voice of the customer programme. However, it is rare that the employee and the customer’s voices are aligned to create and build the perfect crescendo.

This is a common gap, or an oversight by many organizations, of how each can work in harmony to benefit and grow business by providing a much deeper insight. By integrating both customer and employee feedback different and interesting measurements can be uncovered, such as the link between customer satisfaction and employee KPIs and how this link is related to customer longevity; ultimately, this enables the organization to make better decisions.

According to a Walker study, with customer experience set to take over brand and product by 2020 as the key differentiator, organizations must communicate their consumers wants and needs to employees. Presenting customer feedback to employees needs to be part of any effective management performance programme.

Engaged employees drive improvement and in turn customers receive a better experience; customer feedback can then be analyzed to identify those engaged employees. On the other hand, customer feedback can also uncover disengaged employees and the effect they have on the customer experience.

So, how can organizations achieve this to align and analyze both?

Customer Experience is an organization-wide priority. It follows, then, that any CX platform should be widely adopted and easy to use across the organization. Employees must be able to focus on the customer information and analytics that matters to them most. For instance, frontline managers who are more likely to be interested in tactical actions and customer recovery will want to see scores from customer interactions. Whereas, executives interested in strategic decision making will want to see their organization’s global competitive positioning for customer loyalty.

A great CX programme should make it easy for staff from any department to customise and configure their own visual analytics and reports to monitor, drill down, and analyze the customer information that is most relevant to their role and objectives.

Employees who feel they are in control of their own customer experience outcomes are more likely to feel engaged with overall objectives. For example, a call center agent may have a bonus structure in place based on customer feedback automated after a call. While their team leader may have access to an overall view of feedback, each individual agent would be more committed to delivering a positive customer experience if they could see their own results in real-time. Highly engaged, enabled and informed customer-centric employees are integral to the success of any CX programme.

A report by the Temkin Group agrees for long-term success, organizations should create a structure for enabling and coordinating a distributed set of customer experience capabilities aligned with company-wide goals and standards. I am a strong advocate for organization-wide engagement with CX capabilities and platforms that democratize the customer experience.

Indeed, by devolving the operational aspects of a co-ordinated CX programme, and by enabling employees across a number of departments and functions with the necessary capabilities, a CX programme can be taken from good to great.

As well as employees engaging with the customer experience programme, productivity can also be increased when organizations audit the programme by setting targets and KPIs to monitor employee’s performance. When these pre-defined conditions are met, employees can be rewarded and receive recognition. Target setting can also help to highlight areas in need of extra training and upskilling to help staff improve.

This increase in employee engagement for a business has been proven to result in reduced staff turnover, fewer recruitment costs, greater staff productivity and above all, a reduction in customer churn and satisfied customers.

To conclude

Boosting staff morale and increasing productivity results in financial benefits. Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, conducted a study that showed companies with higher satisfaction see their stock returns outperform competitors by 2.3% to 3.8% per year.

Put simply, in order to deliver an excellent customer experience, you have to know your customers better than ever before, and this begins with your frontline – your employees.

If you would like to learn how to create powerful data visualizations that helps highlight both customer and employee voices to drive profitable action, visit the Maru/Syngro for a library of free downloadable Customer Experience resources.

Keith Schorah is the founder and CEO of Maru/Syngro, a customer intelligence organization providing world-leading customer experience reporting , analytics, and performance management software. Keith is a customer experience professional with a passion for helping companies prosper by putting customers at the center of their business to deliver winning customer experiences.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  Top Ten Business Books For 2017

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One Thing that Can Make Your Business an Even Better Place to Work

For many years, I’ve shared the concept I call the One Thing Question. The idea is to ask a customer, “What’s one thing you can think of that would make doing business with us better?”

I love this question because it’s all about how a company can improve in virtually any area. Some customers might suggest product improvements. Some might suggest a way to improve the system. Some might share an idea of how to deliver better customer service. Every time a customer gives a thoughtful answer to this question, they are giving you a gift. And, be sure to pay extra close attention to the customers who rate you highest. These people already think you are great, so their ideas are ways to improve on greatness.

With that in mind, I want you to consider using this question internally, asking your employees to answer a version of the question that goes like this, “Thinking back over the last year, what’s one thing you can think of that would make working here better?”

This is an insightful question that can give you the one idea you need to keep an employee from leaving, create a more fulfilling employment opportunity, create a more engaged workforce, and more.

This is not an employee suggestion box type of program. It is very specific, and shouldn’t be asked on a frequent basis. This is the type of question that demands the center of attention. Asking it just one time a year is good timing. It’s not too often and can give you time to work on some of the better and more useable suggestions.

By the way, that last sentence is important. Let me emphasize that you must work and use some of the better suggestions. It must be obvious to your employees that you are not only listening to their ideas but acting on them as well. It will be demoralizing to ask people to take the time to submit a thoughtful idea, only to find out that all of them fall on deaf ears.

Not all ideas will be good or usable. Be upfront about that. Let people know that while all ideas are being considered, your goal is to find just a few that will have the greatest impact.

I’ve written and spoken on the idea that before you can be the best place to buy from, you have to be the best place to work at. Customers can tell when they are doing business with amazing companies. What is happening on the inside of the organization, is felt on the outside by the customer. So, ask your employees for a gift, which is their best idea on how you can create a better place to work.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Shannon Bell

Know Your Customers. Understand Your Customers. Keep Your Customers.                
Shep Hyken Interviews Shannon Bell, Head of Product Management and Strategy at Amdocs

How are you using Artificial Intelligence to better understand your customers?

Shep Hyken interviews Shannon Bell, digital intelligence expert, discussing the importance of integrating AI into business and how it benefits the customers and the company long-term.

 

Top Takeaways:

Customers crave personalization. Who are they? What do they like? Can you suggest something to them? Stats show that customers buy more when the sale is personalized. It’s the ethical upsale.
In this day and age, generic promotions should no longer exist. Make sure you don’t give everyone the same blanket promotions. Create specific promotions based on the personal preferences of your customers, this not only can create an upsell, but customer loyalty.
Bots won’t understand 100% of everything. It’s critical that the transition from bot to human is seamless when this happens.
AI is best used to handle the generic queries. Within call centers, the questions that are asked most frequently are best answered by bots. These are the simple interactions. For the more complicated situations, this is where a human steps in.
The goal within AI is to get to a point where every interaction can be handled through digital channels. Then it becomes up to the company to decide which interactions get handled by humans and which by non-humans.
Know the customer. Understand the customer. Don’t recommend the wrong items.

About:

Shannon Bell leads product management, strategy, and go-to market for Amdocs’ digital, intelligence, and BSS portfolio as part of Amdocs Technology.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, “New York Times” best-selling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

 

“Jobs will change due to AI. But I don’t think it’s a mass elimination of jobs.” – Shannon Bell

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

How can I personalize customers’ sales?
Why is personalization so important to customers?
Will AI replace humans?
How can I better understand my customers?
Why do I need to be using AI?

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of December 11, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

How to Choose a Gift That Will Wow Your Customers  by John Ruhlin

(Business.com) Giving a gift? Waiting for inspiration to hit means you could easily strike out with the recipient. That’s why you need a methodology for selecting gifts that will help you grow your relationships consistently.

My Comment: It’s the time of year when we give gifts to the people we care most about, and for some of us that includes customers and people we work with. John Ruhlin is the corporate gifting expert, and in this article, he shares some of his best tips to ensure that the gifts you give will be meaningful, memorable, and wow your customers.

Top 10 Wow Customer Service Stories for 2017 by Shaun Belding

(Shaun Belding) With 2017 drawing to a close, we’ve gone through our notes to find what we felt were the top 10 Wow customer service stories of the year. It was a big task – there were a lot of great stories out there! Here are our winners, presented in order from number 10 to number one.

My Comment: This article is a fun read – the authors top ten picks for “Wow Service Stories.” And, he’s picked some great ones. While fun to read, think about which of these stories could happen in your company. Share them with your team and look for opportunities to emulate these examples and “wow” your customers!

How To Tackle Difficult Customers and Earn Their Trust  by Michael Spicer

(Martech Advisor) Michael Spicer, Director, The Website Group, guides on how to handle arduous customers and develop a bond with them.

My Comment: There is no simple answer on how to deal with angry or difficult customers, but if there was a quick way to get you started, then this article would be it. The author has assigned names to these difficult customers, which makes it easier to identify the proper response. Read this article and you’ll find some great tactics – and it’s fun to read!

The Top Customer Success Strategies Used by Successful Companies (Complete Guide) by Tyler Basu

(Thinkific) Today’s most successful companies are committed to understanding the desired outcomes of their customers, and they’re designing experiences to help their customers achieve those outcomes. In other words, they’re focused on customer success.

My Comment: Customer success is an important concept to just about any business. However, many people I talk to don’t quite understand exactly what it means and how it differs from customer service or satisfaction. This “guide” is a great resource as it gives a clear picture of what customer success is along with ten ways brands are using the concept to their advantage.

Why investing in employee IT is the first step to becoming a customer-centric company by Natalie Lambert

(HuffPost) Here’s a look at three benefits that come with investing in IT to create an employee-centric company.

My Comment: Companies invest a tremendous amount of dollars to create a better customer experience. They use technology and apps to make life easier and more convenient for customers. How about considering investing some of that IT and technology in your employees? This article shares three ways to do exactly that. The third idea is potent: Prioritize people. In other words, take care of your employees first, and they will, in turn, take care of your customers.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs go to  www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: Want to Excel in Customer Service? Transform your Contact Centers into Customer Engagement Centers

This week we feature an article by Mansi Bhatia who looks at ways organizations can transform contact centers into a customer engagement center. I like the idea of a customer engagement center. – Shep Hyken

Customer service has the power to make or break a company. Until recently, contact centers were playing a passive role in customer service by responding to basic queries, but not necessarily playing any major role in the strategy for customer experience (CX). Earlier, businesses used to see contact centers as cost centers. Organizations saw them as the necessary evil of the business. But, the industry landscape is changing, with CX becoming the new battlefield. There is a dire need to transform the passive deposition of contact centers into a more dynamic counterpart – Customer Engagement Centers (CEC). This shift will provide an opportunity to engage with the customer, gain useful insight and build brand loyalty. But how do we make this transition?

Let’s look at some of the ways in which an organization can transform its contact center into a customer engagement center.

Contact Customers on their Preferred Channel

In the era of omnichannel communication, where we have an array of channels – social media, email, messaging, voice call, companies need to identify the channels their buyer persona is most comfortable with and most responsive to. Also, a consistent message needs to be relayed across these channels. Monitoring these channels will help in identifying the channels which need more support. Based on that, if need be, customers can be contacted individually to increase customer engagement and create positive CX memories.

Use Technology for Self Service

Adopt a contact center technology which empowers the customers. For instance, IVRs and artificial intelligence enabled Chatbots can make the customer service easier and efficient. Chatbots which work like virtual agents can solve basic query and transfer a call to ‘live agents’ in case of escalation.

A good CRM tool can also be put in place. It is important to make the customer feel valued. This can only be done by not wasting their time and reducing their effort. Therefore, making use of state of the art could be a means to reach the goal of delighting the customer.

Acknowledge the Mobile Social Customer

According to a research, in 2015, 25 percent of the world population was using a smartphone and it was forecasted that by 2017, a third of the world population will be using it. These figures highlight the pressing need to focus on mobile users. Customers now reach out for support through these handheld devices. They are seeking convenience along with a quick response. Thus, companies should ensure a seamless customer experience for these users.

Retain the Human Element

There have been some great advancements in technology, especially, neural networking and artificial intelligence which is believed to reduce human touch. Having said that, we also need to understand that AI is, after all, a human invention. Technology may give a boost to CX, but a human touch makes it easier for customers to trust a brand and the company can further make the customer feel valued.

Employees should be trained in soft skills to better interact with the customers. They can even go a step ahead and be proactive in reaching out to customers on different channels (social media). Striking the right balance between the use of technology and live agents is the key to great customer service.

Be a Step Ahead of the Customer

The success of a company depends on how their buyer persona perceives it. If the perception is positive then it’s great, but if it isn’t, the organization needs to rectify it quickly. Gathering customer feedback, asking the right questions (soft skills) gives the brand an insight into the psyche of the customer. With so much data at its disposal, the company can accurately map the customer journey and identify all the relevant moments of truth, i.e. critical touchpoints to come up with a solution to potential problems. A customer-centric approach combined with a proactive attitude will work as a great strategy to improve customer engagement.

Conclusion

Having a proactive attitude, well trained and motivated employees who are also supported by the advanced technology will be the cherry on the cake. With all this, the brand will be able to provide excellent customer service and hence, build long-term loyal customer base. By putting customers’ needs first, an organization can ensure a successful transformation from a Contact Center into a sophisticated and customer friendly Customer Engagement Center.

Mansi Bhatia is a content contributor at Ameyo. She keenly follows the advancements and trends in the tech world. Apart from that, she aspires to be a customer experience evangelist. You can reach out to her on LinkedIn and Twitter.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  The Customer, Not Santa, Is Bringing You A Gift. It’s Called A Complaint

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How to Deliver Better Customer Service During the Busy Holiday Season

It’s holiday time! What a joyous time of year!

And, then there is the holiday shopping experience… This is how I see it. I get in my car. About a mile from the mall I begin to experience heavier-than-usual traffic. Not just a little heavier, but sometimes it seems like worse than rush hour. Is there an accident? No, there’s a traffic jam at the mall. Once I’m at the mall, I experience the search for the parking spot. Then there’s the crowded stores, the lines to check out, and then the reverse commute to get home.

Now, I’m not a curmudgeon who throws out the words, “Bah Humbug!” around the holidays. I really do love the holidays; I just don’t like going to the mall during the holidays. Yes, Amazon and other online retailers are my salvation.

All of this is a set-up for the lesson. Stressful times for customers means stressful times for employees. They must be more empathetic and patient as the stress of the holiday shopping experience causes customers to behave in abnormally strange – often referred to as rude – ways.

So, what is an employee to do? How should they handle these customers? What’s the secret to making it through the busy season with tact and diplomacy? In reality, it doesn’t matter if it’s the holiday season. It could be any busy overly busy time for your business.

Here are four ways that companies and individuals can manage the busiest and most stressful times…

Hire Right: As an employer, hire the right people, to begin with. If you are going to be hiring new people, realize there are people who love stressful customer situations. They thrive on it. They are resilient and love the drama. Yet they seem to be masters at “calming the storm.” If you plan to put people into positions of stress, be sure that you hire a personality that can deal with it.
Staff to Meet the Demand: This is obvious. Staff properly. If you’re a retailer, you know that holidays are busier than the rest of the year. So, plan for it. Same goes for any business that has predictably higher-than-usual volume than any other time of year.
Don’t Take It Personally: A customer who’s experiencing stress, inside or outside of your business, may take it out on you (or one of your employees). Don’t take it personally. If you are truly customer-focused and are doing everything right, then it’s not your fault the customer is having a bad day. But, it’s your opportunity to start to turn that bad day around. While you don’t take it personally, you do own it and do your best to deliver an experience that is frictionless and stress-free.
Let Good People Do the Job They Were Hired to Do: If you’ve hired good people, let them do their job. Don’t make them go to a manager to get approval for things they know will get approved. This causes stress for everyone; the employee who is uncomfortable bothering the manager, the manager who is going to approve the request anyway, and the customer who is forced to wait.

The holidays are intended to be a joyous time of year, filled with spending time with friends and family. This can also be the season that causes the most stress. As a retailer of any kind, be aware of this and go above and beyond at this time of year to make things easier for the customer. If you can please a customer during the busy times, which is hard to do, it’s likely that this same customer will be more likely to shop with you the rest of the year as well.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Terry Cain & Steve Church

Create a Culture Where Employees Come First
Shep Hyken Interviews Terry Cain and Steve Church, Co-authors of “The Pinwheel”

How would you like to create a culture and working environment that is better for your employees, which in turn is better for your customers?

Shep Hyken sits down with not just one but two guests, Terry Cain and Steve Church. The co-writers of “The Pinwheel” and partners in business, Terry and Steve discuss the importance of involving employees in creating a culture that is better for everyone: leadership, staff, and customers.

 


Top Takeaways:

Involve employees in the creation of values.
Employees must come first. When employees are happy, they treat customers well, which causes them to come back time and time again.
5 core values

Integrity
Customer Service
Accountability
Teamwork
Innovation


If employees aren’t part of the process, they may not want to buy into the values. This creates problems for the leadership.
Some companies have “heroes,” people who create an amazing experience for the customer. However, the next time that customer comes back, they could be dealing with a different employee and have a completely different experience. A good company will have consistency, and all employees will be great, eliminating the hero idea altogether.
The 7 Veins of the Pinwheel: These are required to create a culture where all employees understand the importance of delivering great experiences to each customer. Pick the one that seems most important to your company and work on that one first. Once you seem to have a good handle on that one, you can move on to the next. Never try to attack or take on all seven at a time. Go one at a time.

Vision
Attitude
Knowledge & Skills
Systems & Processes
Accountability
Passion
Integrity & Values

Terry Cain and Steve Church left long careers at Avnet to create their own company, Pinwheel Partners, which focuses on helping executive management teams create cultures that are better environments for the employees.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, “New York Times” best-selling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

“If you are working in an organization that’s trying to improve your customer experience, you won’t be successful without engaged employees.” – Steve Church

“Culture is the most powerful asset in our business.” – Terry Cain

 

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

How can I get employees involved with creating the company’s culture?
Why is an employee-centric culture so important?
How can I get my employees more engaged?
How can I create a company culture focused on customers?
How can I create a company culture focused on employees?

The post Amazing Business Radio: Terry Cain & Steve Church appeared first on Shep Hyken.