Make it easy for your people to serve customers.
They shouldn’t have to say, “Don’t tell anyone I did this for you.”
Instead, be the Ritz-Carlton. Each employee is given an individual, daily budget to create a wow experience for a customer, or for “service recovery.” (That’s to fix, or even over-fix, an error or problem for a customer.)
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
Hi Becky,
Great advice. Simple, succinct and right on target. Plus you brought back memories, because much of my early understanding of what makes great customer service came from a one-month (temporary) stint at a Ritz Carlton hotel. From how to answer the telephone to closing the loop on every customer request, the Ritz Carlton way gave me a deep awareness of what it means and what it takes to do customer service right.
Hope you’re having a great weekend,
Daria
Daria, I’m so glad you shared your experience with Ritz Carlton. More of us need to take action on these ideas!
Daria added another thought on Twitter:
“I had to learn that it’s OK from customer service POV to check that task was done. Instinct was to assume it was… but if it isn’t, the customer’s unhappy and the brand suffers. It required culture change for me to recog. okay to verify.”
As a former waiter in a 3-star restaurant chain called Papa Razzi, I remember when the manager grouped us one morning for a pow-wow.
To paraphrase:
“The customer is always right. Anything the customer asks for, the customer gets unless we can’t do it. You can yell at the chef, you can yell at me, but never yell at the customer.”
Something like that. It stuck with me. Easy customer service.
Ari, I love the part about “Never yell at the customer.” I’ve known some folks who need to learn that particular lesson.