Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, customer service and experience expert, author, and speaker, explains the true meaning of being "helpful", why it takes one to say yes, but two to say no, finding moments of magic, misery, and mediocrity, and the handy index card trick for your staff.
Transcripts
Host:
This man is incredible. His name is Shep Hyken. He's the
Host:
chief amazement officer at Shepherd presentations. And I'm
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telling you, this guy is one of the very, very best out there in
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the world, talking about customer service. He's a New
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York Times and Wall Street Journal, Best Selling Author and
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Hall of Fame speaker, yep. Thank you for being on the show,
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brother.
Shep Hyken:
It is an honor, a pleasure. I'm flattered, you're
Shep Hyken:
too nice.
Host:
You've got all these great books on customer service. And
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what's different?
Shep Hyken:
Well, I said, What if I found one company to use
Shep Hyken:
for the entire book as a role model, and looking for a company
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that's a rock star, but not recognized as a rock star, and
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that was Ace Hardware Business Week recognized the top 25
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customer service brands. Rich was rated number 12, and I love
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the Ritz Carlton, one of my favorite, favorite hotel change.
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Guess what? Eight hardware was rated number 10. That opened my
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eye. The World Headquarters is a multi billion dollar
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corporation, but if you're a small entrepreneurial business,
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they have 4600 stores owned by 3000 different owners, and
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that's Mom and Pop. And here's what they've done. They've
Shep Hyken:
managed to operationalize the word helpful. They want to be
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the most helpful stores on the planet, especially in their
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industry, which is home improvement and hardware, and
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they have to compete against some pretty big companies, I
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mean, and the Home Depot or Lowe's or Menards go up right
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now and be big. Big Box stores is who they had to compete
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against. It was David versus Goliath. And you know, who wins?
Host:
What are the things that customers really want today in
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terms of being helpful? How do we demonstrate? Or do you have
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any examples?
Shep Hyken:
First of all, what customers want is they decide
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what it is that they want. Do they want the lowest price in
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town where they need help with something, or do they need
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support, or they want value? And by the way, there you can get a
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hybrid. You can't always get the lowest price and the best
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service, though, helpful means in the in the case of a target,
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where it means very knowledgeable, because you walk
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in with the part and they go, Hey, I need this. Can you help
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me and tell me what to do with it? And their people are very
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knowledgeable. They're trained well, that's part of their their
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whole thing. Cluster staff extremely well. You're not going
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to have to go walking around, you know, the aisles, looking
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for someone to help you. That's important. So I think
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convenience staff properly, without having to wait a long
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time, knowledgeable people, all that goes toward helpful and
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then, you know, having principles in place, like one of
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the ideas that one of the retailers told me is that we
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have this idea that it takes one to say yes, but two to say no,
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which means that that frontline person has to figure out a yes
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solution for the customer, or he's got to get permission to
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say no to the customer from a manager, and the manager really
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doesn't want to be bothered. But when's the last time you act for
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something and to get approval, someone said, Hold on, I have to
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check with my manager.
Host:
So okay, so here's a question. So one of the things
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you talk about is moments of magic, and you also talk about
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moments of misery. What separates moments of magic from
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moments of mediocrity.
Shep Hyken:
And mediocrity is my term for average, satisfactory,
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just okay, and a moment of magic is and it's not necessarily blow
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me away. Wow me, it's just better than average. And so if
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you just take that moment, that interaction, and you bump it up
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just a notch, and by the way, once the while, you bump it up a
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lot more given an opportunity to do so, but it could be just a
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consistent positive attitude, something that's better than
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average. And when you spring the moments of magic along, and
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they're they're consistent, that puts you in what I call the zone
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of amazement. Shall be fun. Words, amazement, mediocrity,
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misery, you know magic. So really, the big difference
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between mediocrity and magic is just being a little above
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average, because anybody can be average, and anybody could
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create a moment of magic some of the time, but the goal is make
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it happen all of the time. That's the key consistency. If
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you go into your Nordstrom department store, what you get
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is very consistent. People engage you, they help you, and
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they have some pretty good, I call lack of policies in place,
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meaning that the salesperson can go from one department to the
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next with you and help you throughout the entire store. You
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know, take, you know, I'm a man, and I want to buy my wife
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something that guy will take or the gal take me upstairs the
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women's department. You don't get that in other stores. Now,
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that's consistent throughout their entire organization. And
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you know what? They don't blow me away. They're just
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consistently really good, better than average. Sometimes, you
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know, and that by itself, makes them way above average. So you
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hire the right people, and you train them to your system, and
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then you say, Now go out there. And you know what is it? Go
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forth and multiply. Go forth and prosper.
Host:
Brilliant. Brilliant stuff, this kind of coming back.
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Here's my question for you. You know, as far as providing
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amazing customer service, how do I get my front line to care
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about customer service? In other words, if I'm the entrepreneur,
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I'm the owner or I'm the manager, how do I get the people
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on the front line to care about this, right?
Shep Hyken:
Well, first of all, recognize. Is that if they
Shep Hyken:
aren't willing to care, they shouldn't be hired to begin
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with. So it starts at the hiring process. You know, do the
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background. One of the people that I interviewed for the last
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book was American Express. I interviewed their senior VP of
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World Service, and one of the things he talked about, it's,
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rather than hire people from the call center industry, he looked
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for people that had hospitality background, people that work in
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a hotel or a restaurant, because he says those people know how to
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take care of people. If that's important, look at the right
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kind of person that you're hiring. Nordstrom talked about
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how they don't really train their people to be as good as
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they do the parents train them. They didn't take what they
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already know and they make it work for their system. I mean,
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isn't that great? And so same thing with ace. They hire the
Shep Hyken:
right people and then they train them. Training is so important,
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it's really difficult to throw somebody into the fire there and
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say, Okay, now get out real quick without any kind of
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training.
Host:
Let's say I'm a small, medium sized business, and I'm
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just trying to get get people fired up and jack up about the
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idea of providing amazing customer service. So there, you
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know, what are some simple things that we can do pretty
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quickly that don't cost a lot, that are going to improve my
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customers experience immediately?
Shep Hyken:
All right, give everybody an index card and tell
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them that at the end of the week you want them to write down an
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example when they've created a great service experience, either
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for a customer, or their internal customer, someone they
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work with. Okay, then you compile these cards. Somebody
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gets them, they compile them, they look through them, they
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pick the best of the best, and they share these. And what you
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also try and do, and I use that word, operationalized a little
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earlier. Operationalize some of these good, positive
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experiences. Why can't they be happening all the time? Now the
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next thing I want them to do is I want them not to just do this
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once. I want them to do it once a week for like, the next six
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weeks. And what happens is, at the end of the week, people are
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going, Okay, what should I write about? And after about week
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three or four, they're going, Oh, this is a great one. This is
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what I want to write about. So instead of reflecting back,
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they're caught in the moment of giving that great service to
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experience.
Host:
Oh, I love that. Shep, thanks for joining the show, my
