Crack the Customer Code

With so many options on the market, it is easier than ever for customers who've had a poor dining experience at one restaurant to take their loyalty and hard earned cash to a different venue. That's a lot of pressure on restaurant staff to create positive customer experiences, every time. So, what is the key in the dining industry to keeping customers loyal?

Expectations of Excellence

The short answer is that everything in customer experience is an expectations game.

Almost everyone has eaten out at one point or another, and in each case, we come in with certain expectations for the dining experience.

This is contingent on the type of experience the customer is seeking, which often dictates where they choose to dine. Linen tablecloths, for example, tell a different story than a drive-through window.

With so many moving parts and human touchpoints occurring in a very short time frame, one interaction with a rude sommelier within a three hour event may ruin the entire evening.

How can the restaurant industry tackle customer service triggers, exceed expectations, and beat the competition?

Tune in!

Related Content

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360 Connext—Customer Experience Webinar

Join us each month for an informative customer experience webinar. After hosting webinars and courses for PopExpert, Word of Mouth Marketing Association and others, 360Connext is now offering webinars to our community. Sign up to explore different topics each month, like how to measure customer experience success, how to write your customer experience mission, and other important and actionable ideas. Register at www.cxwebinar.com.

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Shep Hyken, the Customer Experience Expert and Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, joins the podcast to talk about fusing disparate elements of customer service into one holistic whole.

Realistic Customer Amazement

Shep’s advice for a stellar customer experience? Foster moments of customer amazement grounded in realism.

Any company can do this, Shep says, and you don’t have to create clever, fantastic, or over the top productions. “The amazing companies are just a little above average—all of the time.”

In his book The Amazement Revolution, Shep outlines some of his favorite strategies to create those ‘wow’ moments. Want a taste? Shep’s favorite strategy is to foster a membership mentality, like a gym or country club membership.

Create loyalty, Shep says. Create that VIP experience for your customers. Know who they are. Call them by name. Add personalization and connection. This will bond your customers to your brand and create loyalty.

How can you shift the culture of your company to a customer-centric model? Want more strategies, case studies, and tools to create a dynamic customer experience?

Tune in!

Shep Hyken: The Man, The Myth, The Legend of Customer Experience Experts

Not only is Shep the Customer Experience Expert and Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations— he's also New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author, and an inducted member of the National Speakers Association’s Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the Speaking Profession.

Shep works with companies and organizations of all sizes who want to build loyal relationships with customers and employees.

His books include Moments of Magic, The Loyal Customer, The Cult of the Customer, The Amazement Revolution, and Amaze Every Customer Every Time.

He founded Shepard Presentations in 1983 and since then has been known for his high energy presentations that always include humor and a little bit of magic.

Connect with ShepLinkedInTwitterwww.shepondemand.comwww.hyken.com

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Shep's books:Amaze Every Customer, Every TimeThe Amazement RevolutionThe Cult of the CustomerThe Loyal CustomerMoments of Magic

Be Your Customer’s Hero: Real-World Tips and Techniques for the Service Front Lines is a one-stop training guide for anyone who works with customers. Be Your Customers Hero covers customer service from beginning to end. In HERO, you will learn some of Adam’s favorite tips and tricks for winning the mental game of service, for communicating in ways that set you up for success, and of course, for working with difficult customers. Get a copy for yourself or for your whole team. Bulk discounts are available. Learn more here.

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Superior customer experience is a non-negotiable facet of maintaining a thriving customer base. But how can you deliver an exceptional customer experience without an exceptional budget?

Keeping Costs In Line

Do you know what you want the experience to deliver? Do you have the team in place, and are they empowered to do the right thing at the right moment?

Adam and Jeannie recommend connecting with your team on the front lines to ensure that they are able to communicate effectively with customers and create “small wow moments.”

Allowing your customers to feel ownership in your brand doesn't have to involve distributing merchandise or other gifts heavy on the budget. Try crowd-sourcing or other options to reach out to loyal customers, turning them into willing ambassadors for your brand.

Especially if you have a customer base already, efficiently tapping into that resource will induce low costs and high benefit.

Listen in to hear how a historic soccer club in Argentina used clever experiences to build loyalty in new ways.

Want to learn more about creating a fantastic customer experience on a budget?

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Adam's blog post, Sometimes WOW Only Takes 5 SecondsJeannie's blog post, Focusing on Customers: Lessons from MedellinJeannie's blog post, How to Turn Customers Into FansVideo and article of River Plate team members delivering jerseys to fansKarma GoBetabrand, crowdfunded clothing communityWhat's Your Purple Goldfish, by Stan PhelpsEd Debevic’s Diner in Chicago

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Customer Experience Webinar

Join us each month for an informative customer experience webinar. After hosting webinars and courses for PopExpert, Word of Mouth Marketing Association and others, 360Connext is now offering webinars to our community. Sign up to explore different topics each month, like how to measure customer experience success, how to write your customer experience mission, and other important and actionable ideas. Register at www.cxwebinar.com.

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A Superstorm of Change

Shel’s latest book, Lethal Generosity, borrows its name from the concept that when a company is incredibly generous to their customers, competitors’ efforts to hijack the customer are preempted.

Customers have more power than ever. Technology has put customers “in their rightful place at the heart of an organization, rather than on the outside”, and has created, as Shel puts it, a “superstorm of change”. Social media has empowered consumers to demand the experiences they desire.

What does this mean for the future—of companies, communication, and the world?

The future belongs to millennials, says Shel, and it is in their hands to make reparations and "fix the world." They are the first generation of ‘digital natives’ coming of age to a planet that has a lot of problems, and the technology at their fingertips will be the tool they use to network and solve problems.

Shifting Business Models

This limitless power of connectivity and communication offers millennials seemingly infinite resources for collaboration. Shel introduces the topic of Keiretsu, a Japanese practice of forming and sharing networks and resources to gather power and problem-solve.

Many companies around the world are now building keiretsus, and these teams are going on to shift the traditional business model to a newer, more sustainable format. This phenomenon is evident in cause-marketing efforts from brands like TOMs, Warby Parker, and more.

Shel Israel, Cross-Disciplinary Communicator

Shel Israel is a best-selling author concerned with technology and the impact it has on business and life. He has been a keynote speaker “on all continents not covered by ice” and a contributor to Forbes, Fast Company, Business Weekly, and Business Insider. He began his extensive career as a newspaper reporter, then moved on to become a PR executive in Silicon Valley; he rounded out his career by working as a publicist. He currently writes and speaks full time. He brings his cross-disciplinary viewpoint to the podcast today to discuss the future of company identity and branding.

Connect with ShelLinkedInTwitterwww.shelisrael.comRelated ContentAdam's blog post, Age of Context, Future of ExperienceLethal GenerosityAge of Context Naked ConversationsKeiretsuBe Your Customer’s Hero: Real-World Tips and Techniques for the Service Front Lines is a one-stop training guide for anyone who works with customers. Be Your Customers Hero covers customer service from beginning to end. In HERO, you will learn some of Adam’s favorite tips and tricks for winning the mental game of service, for communicating in ways that set you up for success, and of course, for working with difficult customers. Get a copy for yourself or for your whole team. Bulk discounts are available. Learn more here.

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We all know that customer service is an essential aspect of customer experience can often be disconnected from profit. How can you improve customer experience while maintaining the health and profitability of your organization?

Three Dimensional Customer Experience

Everyone loves profit; the point of having customers is to have a viable, thriving organization or business. But the math behind how customers feel about your organization is often messy and doesn’t always make sense.

It may be hard to judge why you have a high percentage of customers dropping off, and if you focus on the numbers alone you may miss the intuitive element of customer experience.

You must take into account both the human, emotional aspect and the critical data when designing and delivering a customer experience strategy.

“Identify the pressure points,” advise Adam and Jeannie, "and invest resources into the ones that matter, the ones that drive retention or defection." Bear in mind that these may become long term strategies.

And it’s not just the negative points in a process you should pay attention to. What positive aspects of your customer experience could be amplified? These often get overlooked and thus stay isolated, pleasing only a small amount of customers instead of improving retention, loyalty, and profitability.

How can you improve customer experience today instead of exclusively focusing on fixing the numbers? There’s a lot that can be done within the confines of regulations and profit restrictions.

Tune in to find out more.

Related Content

Adam's blog post, All Customer Service Is Subject to the Abuse Exception

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Customer Experience Webinar

Join us each month for an informative customer experience webinar. After hosting webinars and courses for PopExpert, Word of Mouth Marketing Association and others, 360Connext is now offering webinars to our community. Sign up to explore different topics each month, like how to measure customer experience success, how to write your customer experience mission, and other important and actionable ideas. Register at www.cxwebinar.com.

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While you may think of call centers as a customer service vehicle of the past, new and improved ‘contact’ centers are alive and well. As technology trends direct customers and businesses to mobile, email, and chat platforms, how are these contact centers evolving to best suit both client and customer needs?

Can You Hear Me Now?

Call or contact centers are an essential customer service arena, but they tend to have a bad rap. The offshoring of call centers has had a negative impact on many centers’ reputations; but with updated technology and more robust, multidimensional offerings of communication, contact centers are weaving cultural understanding into customer experience.

Jeremy’s company, FCR, operates entirely from onshore customer service locations based in Oregon. By approaching the work from a standpoint of culture, Jeremy has created a capable team that is fully equipped to tackle tough customer issues, and to fight for the customers that they work with.

FCR prides themselves on their ability to match their own mission and identity with that of their clients. Understanding the culture of the organization allows them to match the customer service appropriately. This creates identity and excitement among his own service team.

Speaking of service teams, Jeremy’s rule of thumb for top notch customer service? Train and value your colleagues and employees. Create meaningful work where they are able to solve problems in real time and see action being taken. This will create a culture of empowerment where colleagues feel that they and their work are valued, which in turn motivates team members to create those ‘wow’ moments for customers.

Speaking of service teams, Jeremy’s rule of thumb for top notch customer service? Train and value your colleagues and employees. Create meaningful work where they are able to solve problems in real time and see action being taken. This will create a culture of empowerment where colleagues feel that they and their work are valued and they will seek to create those ‘wow’ moments for customers.

Want tips to ensure your customer service team is operating like a well-oiled machine? Tune in to learn more!

About Jeremy Watkin

Jeremy Watkin is the Head of Quality for FCR, the most disruptive and respected outsource provider.  He is also the co-founder of CommunicateBetterBlog.com; a blog dedicated to observing both good and bad customer experiences with the intent of providing awesome customer service.  He has been recognized by ICMI, Huffington Post and MindTouch as a top customer service influencer and thought leader. He joins the podcast today as one of Adam and Jeannie’s favorite bloggers in the customer service blogosphere.

Connect with Jeremy

LinkedInTwitterwww.CommunicateBetterBlog.com

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As customer experience experts, we have to focus on innovation in ways that others don’t. Our Customer Hero today has created a fantastic model to evolve, innovate, and better suit customer needs.

Customization with Innovation and Ease

Based in Brookline, Massachusetts, Pantry Market borrows the model of the curated meal from their online counterparts such as Blue Apron and Plated. However, Pantry shifts the principle to a brick and mortar location.

They provide a recipe card and grocery list for a “curated shopping experience” in which ingredients are pre-portioned and pre-selected—and each recipe comes with suggested wine and beer pairings.

This reveals fantastic innovation around tailored customer experience. Many of us want to cook and eat healthier meals and Pantry Market is filling this niche as well as considering ease, time, affordability, and creating less waste.

So what is the intrinsic value proposition that gives Pantry Market an edge against their online competitors?

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www.PantryMarket.com

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High Expectations

Customers are getting more and more savvy about what loyalty means to their preferred businesses, so expectations are high. What can businesses do to ensure that they maintain their most loyal customers and win the loyalty of new ones?

First, Jill encourages companies to identify how their specific customers define value and then setting up products and services in those terms. This is not as easy as it sounds because customer value definitions are in constant flux, however, Jill points out three types of value:

Basic ValueExpected ValueUnanticipated ValueIf you are unable to deliver on the first two of these value promises, you will have trouble hanging on to customers. In fact, advises Jill, unless you incorporate all three of these value systems into your business identity, you will be unable to engender long term customer loyalty.

In today’s world, not only do you have to take into account a customer’s definition of value and their mindset, you must spark some emotion in them. It’s this combination that bonds a customer with a brand.

Need some readily actionable tools to boost your brand’s conscious implementation of customer loyalty practices? From Jill’s “Worth It” test that customers can use to evaluate your brand, to her spot-on advice for creating lasting customer loyalty, this episode has it all.

About Jill

Known as “The Loyalty Maker”, Jill Griffin is an Independent Public Board Director, an internationally published Harvard “Working Knowledge” Author, a noted Corporate Advisor on Customer Loyalty, the author of a series of customer loyalty videos on www.Lynda.com, a recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Alumna award from the University of South Carolina where she earned her Bachelor of Science and MBA degrees, the founder of a Loyalty Consulting Firm, and the author of four books with a new one out soon. Jill has been working in the field for over 20 years and she joins us today to share her expertise on maintaining customer loyalty.

Connect with JillLinkedInTwitterwww.theloyaltymaker.comwww.publicboarddirector.com

Related ContentJill Griffin on Lynda.comJill's booksJeff Toister on Lynda.com

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Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards establish the Global Benchmark for Service Excellence. Developed by Service Strategies, in cooperation with approximately 50 leading service and support organizations from around the world, the Service Capability & Performance Standards have enhanced the capabilities and performance of service and support operations worldwide since 1998. Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Success Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which brings together leaders from companies like Cisco, Dell and others to discuss the challenges of a changing service landscape. Visit servicestrategies.com to learn more.

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While it may be fun to be a disrupter, it’s not so fun to be the disruptee. What happens to organizations that have their entire industry shaken up? What can these businesses do to prepare for and respond to disruption?

Jeannie and Adam tackle industry disruption, customer experience, and loyalty.

We've Got a Remedy for That

Having a happy, loyal, dedicated customer base is one of the best remedies to industry disruption. While customer loyalty alone won’t save a brand from sinking, coupling it with infrastructure and technological improvements may, and this strategy is better in the long term than seeking legislation to hold onto your once glory days (we’re looking at you, cable).

Your competitors are setting customer expectations in your industry. If your business can’t deliver on the newly-formed expectations stemming from innovation in the industry, you will find customers increasingly more likely to defect.

If your industry is being disrupted there are many things customers do to keep competitive advantage, but cultivating customer loyalty is the strategy that lasts.

So how can you implement customer loyalty strategies to protect your business from industry disruption?

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Sponsor Message

Capability & Performance (SCP) Standards establish the Global Benchmark for Service Excellence. Developed by Service Strategies, in cooperation with approximately 50 leading service and support organizations from around the world, the Service Capability & Performance Standards have enhanced the capabilities and performance of service and support operations worldwide since 1998. Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Success Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which brings together leaders from companies like Cisco, Dell and others to discuss the challenges of a changing service landscape. Visit servicestrategies.com to learn more.

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Good customer service can give your company a competitive financial edge. Lori Jo Vest, co-author of Who’s Your Gladys joins the podcast today to identify key customer service strategies to take your company from simply stable to thriving and prosperous.

Customer Service Gives You a Cutting Edge Advantage

The key to growth through customer service, says Lori, is referral and repeat business. By creating an exceptional, thoughtful experience for your customers, those people will make sure that they reward your efforts by making you their go-to for repeat business. They will also encourage their friends and family members to support you based on their experience, creating dedicated zombie loyalists, if you will.

Thus, instead of stable sales, your business will experience an increase in sales. But how do businesses make customer service a part of their company identity and manage this advantage long-term?

Join Adam, Jeannie and Lori to find out.

About Lori

In addition to being the co-author of the best-selling, Who’s Your Gladys, Lori Jo Vest is a Customer Service Expert, a Sales Master and Coach, an Emmy award winning television producer, a Social Media Specialists, and a consultant. She joins the podcast today to shed some light on the macro view of handling customer interactions and how this can be a competitive advantage to companies large and small.

Connect with Lori

LinkedInTwitterFacebookwww.lorijovest.comwww.whosyourgladys.com

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Clear Vision Optical, referred to in the episode.

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Customer Experience is hot… but are you taking advantage of its huge potential to make your services business more prominent and profitable? Join Service Strategies for an informative Customer Success Workshop in San Diego on October 27th. You will learn how to create customer success while generating profitable revenue for your services business. The workshop is part of the Service Industry Summit event, which brings together leaders from companies like Cisco, Dell and others to discuss the challenges of a changing service landscape. Visit servicestrategies.com to learn more.

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