Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service Quotes

“5. Processes must be regularly updated to ensure they reflect customers’ ever-changing expectations for service. The top ten most important processes—those deemed to have the biggest impact on driving and sustaining customer loyalty—must be singled out annually for an “alignment check” and tune up. Today, customer expectations change at supersonic speed as customers are influenced by their service experiences with organizations of every type and effectiveness. Staying in touch with these ever-changing customer service expectations is crucial to an organization’s success. Just as you would expect a complete checkup from your doctor during an annual physical, so too should your most important processes undergo the rigors of an annual evaluation of their effectiveness at delivering or enabling service to customers in an appropriate fashion.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“When people know what to expect each and every time they do business with you—caring, knowledgeable, and competent employees that won’t let them walk away unhappy—they are more likely to return again with their funds and friends in tow. But if you’re seen as erratic and unpredictable—some days delivering on the service promise, and other days treating standards as “nice to” but not “need to” performance goals—it creates a sense of unease and distrust that has a corrosive effect on loyalty.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“1. It should be clear, concise, and understandable. Dilbert defines a vision statement as a “long awkward sentence that demonstrates management’s inability to think clearly.” Make sure you prove the notorious cartoon character wrong. 2. It should communicate, in actionable ways, the things you need to do to satisfy, impress, and keep your customers. 3. It should be consistent with other things you tell employees about the organization’s mission, brand promise, and purpose. 4. It should pass the employee “snicker test”: Reading it, whether on paper or out loud, should help your people better understand what to do, how to do it, and why to do it, not make them giggle, guffaw, and roll their eyes heavenward. It’s important that the service vision be ambitious yet grounded in reality, and not written as if it’s an advertising slogan.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“• Ask front liners to use it to evaluate your unit’s policies, procedures, and general “ways of doing things.” Are they consistent with the vision? Do they really help get things done for the customers? If not, where do they interfere with giving good service? And how can they be changed? • Hold “what’s stupid around here?” meetings. Use the vision statement to help identify outmoded practices, timewasters, repeated trouble spots, and customer-vexing aspects of your business that make you look dumb to your customers—and each other. • Set “stop, start, and measure” objectives. Perhaps once a quarter, ask every employee to come with a list of items under three headings: 1. Things we should stop doing around here 2. Things we should start doing around here 3. Things we don’t track or measure—but should”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. —Bill Gates 6 Little Things Mean a Lot It’s not the one thousand dollar things that upset the customer, but the five buck things that bug them. —Earl Fletcher Sales and Management Trainer, Volkswagen Canada”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“unanswered! 7. Don’t take sides. If you find yourself in the line of fire between the customer and your employee, take the high ground. Instead of choosing sides, your best approach will be to try to collect facts and make a decision based on the performance, not the people involved. Remember that win/lose situations leave losers (and negative”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“We are really anxious to do all we can to improve our service, and your feedback would be very helpful.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“tactics to help you get the most from those encounters. 1. When you have an opportunity to address a complainant face to face, listen. Work consciously at graciousness and control. Avoid becoming defensive or acting stern, cold, or judgmental. Especially avoid attempting to explain why the problem occurred. When they are levying complaints, customers are not particularly interested in your explanations for poor service, let alone what they should have done differently. They want to know (1) that they are being heard, and (2) that their comments are valued. Your explanations of why things work the way they do (“I’m just stating our policy”) will be seen as defensive and will only aggravate and irritate.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“• In some cases, we simply haven’t figured out how to effectively ask for complaints without sounding almost masochistic: “Please, tell us how bad we are.” • When customers do take the time to complain, but jaded or indifferent frontline employees discount the complaint by saying “we hear a lot of that” or “that tends to happen quite a bit here toward the end of the quarter,” customers feel their complaints aren’t taken seriously and are hesitant to speak up again. If it happens enough, they’ll simply pull up stakes for greener pastures.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship with a customer is the absence of complaints. Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an extended period of time. The customer is either not being candid or not being contacted. —Theodore Levitt Business School Professor, Harvard University”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“and “What can we do to help keep you fresh and renewed so you can better handle the challenge of dealing with customers all day?” Remember that focus groups can be virtual online, not just face to face.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“you unpack and settle in.” The program proved a major source of learning about the small, irritating “workarounds” that hotel customers faced, such as having to place the suitcase of a traveling companion on the floor because the hotel only provided one luggage rack, having to unplug and find a place for hotel-provided hair dryers when guests bring their own, and much more. By “listening with their eyes,” hotel employees found ways to enhance the customer experience that guests may never have suggested on comment cards.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“There’s an important middle piece to the puzzle: Listening means actively seeking to understand another person. That’s why we say it’s a contact sport. Listening without contact, listening without a dramatic connection, is like looking without seeing.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“as it sounds. Part of the challenge of listening is filtering out the noise of bias and defensiveness. When your frontline workers hear customers suggesting ways your business could do more for them, the instinctive response is to determine how much additional work that might mean. When service employees hear negative comments from customers about their or the organization’s service performance, they have a natural tendency to defend and protect. Their inherent sense of “possessiveness” about the delivery processes and their tendency to take complaints as a personal attack make it harder for people at the front line to listen in a nonjudgmental way. Although your people are up close and personal with customers on a day-to-day basis, as a manager you are in a better position to listen effectively. Being one step removed from the action, you should have less defensiveness and a broader perspective than the immediate moment.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“again. It’s an adjunct of the Rule of Psychological Reciprocity: If you don’t show interest in your customers, they won’t show interest in you. If you don’t trust them, they won’t trust you. And if you don’t care passionately, sincerely, and constantly about not just meeting but exceeding their needs, they won’t see you as being any better or any worse than any other organization they have done business with. They most certainly won’t fall in love with your organization. In short, “ya gotta love that customer”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“Study after study shows that employees leave organizations primarily because of poor relationships with managers, not because of pay, benefits, or other factors. How well you train, coach, empower, and support your people—and whether you show appreciation for the hard work they do each day in the trenches serving customers—makes all the difference not only in retaining your best employees, but also in creating memorable experiences for customers.”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service

“Wise organizations realize that by crafting processes, practices, and policies that play fair with customers, allow people to feel heard and respected when there are problems, and create the feeling that customers’ best interests are being looked after, they build the ultimate competitive weapon: the fervently loyal customer who evangelizes to all within earshot (or Internet connection) about their organization. More leaders are also being won over by”
― Chip R. Bell, Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service