Unleashing The Power Of Customer Care

What is it that forward-thinking companies want these days? Customers who are loyal advocates and employees who are excited, enthusiastic, energetic, and empowered to make decisions that benefit both the customer and the company. They want commitment from people who love and take pride in their work and will represent the organization in the best possible light.

Companies want people who care about who they are, what they do, and what kind of contribution they’re making to the world. Companies such as Starbucks, Rosenbluth Travel, and L.L. Bean know that people who care will deliver a quality level of service in a heart-felt and even effortless manner, and require very little 'managing' from the organization.

Every organization has a few of these people. But we all need more of them. What percentage of your workforce is made up of people who resemble that description? Is it 3%, 10%, or perhaps 50%? Can you increase the numbers of people who care? What can a manager or supervisor do to create an environment in which caring becomes the culture, the norm, and the driving force of a high quality service effort that flows seamlessly?

The answer isn’t rocket science: create an environment in which people feel cared about and valued, that encourages and nourishes their personal growth, and that helps them build self-esteem and self-worth — and customer caring will abound.

It’s ludicrous to believe that we can deprive people of those basic human needs and then expect that they’ll care for customers. And caring is what customers are looking for! Study after study has found that more than two in three (68%) dissatisfied customers leave a company because they believe the business doesn’t care about them. Customers buy with their heads and their hearts. All other things being equal (price, quality, availability, and so forth) they prefer to buy from people they like and trust.

Every customer seeks value. Some find it in the lowest price and shop at warehouse clubs; others look for the most convenient access and like me, phone catalog companies at 1 a.m. Still others find value in a particular combination of features/benefits such as breadth of product line, availability, product quality, security, reliability, courtesy, money-back guarantee, and potentially dozens of other reasons, both logical and emotional. Value is an equation. We weigh the price we pay against things and feelings we get. Make no mistake about it: value carries a high emotional content.

Although many customers would have a difficult time enumerating precisely which factors led to their buying decision, they do know how they feel. Good, bad, or indifferent, they have an emotional opinion about the exchange. In studies on customer loyalty, respondents who were asked why they stay with a particular company replied simply 'because they cared about me.'

How can we give our customers this experience of caring that will keep them happy and keep them coming back? First by creating an environment in which caring happens naturally — where employees (internal customers) are treated as well as we want them to treat external customers. Second, by reframing the notion of what it is we’re here to do. Although companies keep telling employees that their job is to provide customer service, few take the time to specifically understand what service means in terms of belief and behavior. Too many companies don’t define or describe to their employees the 'brand' of service for which they’d like to be known. That’s one reason much of the service delivered today is mediocre at best.

Another reason for mediocre service comes from negative definitions of the term in the minds of those who deliver it. Language structures our experience and forms our reality. Our definitions of ourselves and our jobs determine our job performance. Walt Disney was brilliant in using the word 'guest' to describe a customer and 'cast member' for an employee. A number of firms today use the terms 'associates' or 'partners' to describe the role of their employees.

How do we use the word 'service' in everyday life? We bring our cars in for service, we often have strong opinions about those who work in public service, many people were drafted into the service, and so forth. 'Service,' like 'servant' and 'servitude,' derives from the Latin servus — which means 'slave' — a highly loaded word.

What’s more, the term 'service' is defined in a way that actually prevents people from delivering the customer caring experience. For the past five years I’ve been asking my audiences, 'When do you go to the customer service department?' The answers are always the same: 'When I have a problem,' or 'When I have a complaint.' My next question is, 'Where do you find the customer service department?' Again, consistent answers, 'In the basement or in the back.' My next challenge to the audience is this, 'How many of you have children getting ready to go to college next year?' Invariably a few raise their hands. 'How many of you are advising them to choose customer service as a career?' No response.

First, we define service as reactive: something that happens after something else goes wrong. Second, we don’t think of the delivery of service as a career worth even mentioning to our kids. There’s food for thought here.

If we see service as a negative term that evokes a reactive response, we’ll never be able to provide the 'proactive customer service' managers are clamoring for. Will 'servicing' the customer get us where we want to go? Will it engender the kind of emotional bonding that will keep the customer coming back and bringing friends? I think not.

So, our first attempt to change old, negative associations with 'service' is to reframe what we’re here to do. Imagine that you’ve just accepted a position with a 'customer-caring' company. During your extensive orientation process, learning about the company’s vision, mission, and values you hear something new: 'Here at the C-C Co. we don’t have a customer service department. In fact, we don’t do customer service! We see the customer as the reason for our existence — our sole focus is to create and keep happy customers. To help us achieve this goal, we’d like you to see your job as customer CARE^{3 sm:} Creating A Relationship Enthusiastically, Energetically, with Every customer.'

Do you think this introduction might set the stage for delivering a high quality of customer care? I do. And so do plenty of companies that enjoy high retention rates and customer loyalty. They’re deeply committed to relationship building with their workers, their customers, and their community. Instead of 'closing sales' they 'open relationships.' They’ve moved from being transaction-based businesses to being relationship-based businesses.

They’ve found the secret to nourishing relationships, honing interpersonal as well as technical skills, slowing down long enough to listen to what customers and staff members are saying — and putting many of their ideas into practice.

I’d like to share my view of business with you. Imagine that a business sits atop a tripod. Each of the three legs of the tripod represents a different set of relationships: External, Internal, and the Inner relationship of the individual. I call this the Working Relationship Tripod.^sm

External relationships involve your customers, your suppliers, your community, your stockholders, the families of those who work for you and yes, even your competitors. Internal relationships concern your employees and managers. The Inner relationship focuses on the all- important interaction that an individual has with her/himself and with the company.

Fostering the interaction among these three relationships provides the opportunity to create a business environment that breeds success across the board: physically by providing an ample living and good working conditions; emotionally and intellectually by offering challenges and opportunities; and spiritually by empowering the self-development of the individual.

As the nature of work continues to change, more and more 'knowledge workers' will insist on environments that suit their lifestyle. Although the traditional pursuit of upward mobility still drives many young workers, others focus on achieving a more balanced, more honest life. They’ll be the ones who wholeheartedly support a company (and its customers) when the firm offers them the opportunity to meet their physical, emotional/intellectual, and spiritual needs.

In today’s working environment, it’s essential for managers to reexamine their fundamental beliefs about people. It’s no longer acceptable to pay lip service to workers as your 'most important asset.' Unless you back up this verbal commitment in your daily management, you won’t reap the maximum benefit from each person you’re paying to help you grow your business.

Even if you manage only three people, you’ll need to direct how and where they focus their emotional energy. This will require asking core questions about each leg of the Working Relationships Tripod:

1. External. Who are your customers? What are they buying from you? What do they need or desire? What keeps them up at night? Does everyone — including your customers — understand your Customer Care standards? How can you measure your success in the areas that count?

These are the kinds of issues that you pay outside consultants to raise. So why not go through the process — the discipline — of asking these kinds of questions yourself? Ask your employees 'What questions should we be asking ourselves in order to keep improving?' If they know your request is sincere, you should get plenty of helpful feedback.

Ask yourself about relations with your suppliers. Do you consider them as partners, working together to attain common, win/win goals? Are you using them as part of your consulting team — as they should be doing with you? Are you learning from them? If not, why not?

It can be fun to keep refreshing your list of questions for each of these relationships. The more empowering questions that you and your 'team' can develop, the greater your know-how and self-confidence.

2. Internal. Everyone in your company should be responsible for serving and caring about customers — even when those customers are each other.

Internal suppliers and internal customers form a 'value chain' that reaches out to your external customers. Although every team supports an overall vision, it’s critical to the success of each team to create its own vision in alignment with that of your company. What links your teams with each other and with customers? Do team members know what they can expect from each other? Do they trust each other? Do they tell the truth? Do they pay attention to each other? Do they listen with empathy and concern? Do they have common goals? Do they celebrate together? Are they, as a team, dedicated to providing a high quality experience for themselves and their (your) customers? Are they committed to learning from each other’s ideas and creating new possibilities?

Co-create a vision that can be personalized to have meaning for every person in your system.

3. Inner. This relationship focuses on the interaction of an individual with her/himself and with your company. Fostering inner relationships is the key to creating and maintaining an enthusiastic, energetic, and motivated work force.

We’re still dealing with the consequences of a business model that encouraged people to leave their heads and hearts at home and just bring their bodies to work. When we tell people to keep their emotions at home we’re asking them to detach from their passion. But that’s exactly the emotion we need to fuel the efforts that will keep us globally competitive in the future. In the end, it’s emotion that drives success in business. We’re finally acknowledging a fact that intuitive managers have known from the get-go: there’s a direct correlation between employee happiness and loyalty, customer happiness and loyalty, and investor happiness and loyalty. Score one for common sense.

Good managers have always known that they influence more by modeling their values than by just mouthing them. They will ask themselves 'What am I doing (saying, training, being) on a daily basis that provides a model for people on how to build healthy relationships?' How can I build on what’s already working? Do I embody what I ask of others? Am I positive and optimistic about the future? Do I like what I do? Do I bring all of myself to work every day? Do I walk the walk, not just talk the talk?

The real energy in the tripod of relationships comes from the individual. The inner relationship drives the dynamic of the other relationships. Positive, knowledgeable, and optimistic workers who know what they’re there to do and are motivated by the caring they feel from the organization — its culture and its people — will take it upon themselves to take good care of customers and go out of their way to delight them! Companies in which nourishment and growth of the individual are integral to the culture, strong values are articulated in word and deed, and people are truly valued as assets benefit from extraordinary innovation and accomplishment, along with higher levels of customer loyalty.

In the end, it’s your employees’ commitment to use these 'moments of truth' to create and add value that results in positive customer interactions and service delivery. It’s a conscious decision to make a choice — in the moment — to build and affirm the relationship or to treat it with indifference and negate it.

It’s up to managers and leaders to inspire individuals to make a difference in the myriad 'moments of opportunity' that arise every day.

The process of shifting a business built on transactions to one built on relationships challenges everyone involved. It takes patience and persistence and passion on the part of the manager/leader.

To create a customer-caring culture, it’s your job, and that of your managers, to create an environment in which people gravitate in the direction of caring, participate because they know they’ll be heard, and enjoy rewards for the positive changes they create without punishment for their learning experiences.

To create a truly customer-focused company that encourages and rewards people for pleasing the customer before pleasing the boss and for doing the 'right' thing (even if it means they occasionally make mistakes while they’re learning) you need to foster a safe emotional environment in which people can feel free to share, learn, and experiment. Remember, 'responsive to the customer' means offering a wide range of responses to their needs — a goal that calls for drawing on the individuality and creativity of all those smart people working for you.

We need the courage to look at things differently. We need to move out of our own comfort zones before we can ask people to move out of theirs. We need the willingness to be vulnerable as we learn. And we need to sacrifice our old ideas about customer service and wholeheartedly embrace the idea of Customer Caring.