There I am… along with a few other lucky folks getting a rare, behind-the-scenes tour of the famous Dorchester Hotel in London. (I’m in town to present at the European Conference on Customer Management and my fellow speaker and a long-time Dorchester advisor, Christopher Daffy, graciously arranged this amazing opportunity. Thanks Chris! ) While in London, I’m staying at the conference hotel – the Royal Lancaster, a few blocks away – but one of my pals on the hotel tour, customer experience expert and author, Lew Carbone, is a guest at the Dorchester.

Our guide has just toured us through the Dorchester’s impressive culinary facilities including the staff dining area. As Lew and I leave this area, a staff message board catches my eye. “Lew,” I call out with amazement, “There’s your picture and bio!” Lew stops dead in his tracks, stares wide-eyed at the message board and with a big, knowing smile, replies, “So that’s why all the staff here seem to know me!”

Loyalty Lesson: What untapped tools can help your staff deliver exceptional customer experiences? What readily available customer information, shared with front-liners, can mean the difference? Make this a brainstorm topic at your next staff meeting. And get ready for some ‘ah-ha’ ideas to surface!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 12:06 pm | 1 comment

“Know whose new coffee drinks beat the heck out of Starbucks? … Good ole McDonalds!” she said. “That’s good news. I can’t afford Starbucks anymore!” said another. “Well, I never liked Starbucks coffee anyway. Too strong,” replied another.

This was the start-up conversation in a cancer center’s tiny waiting room as a handfull of patients, all strangers, awaited radiation treatment. While the group conversation started with McDonalds coffee, it soon progressed to other topics of shared interests. I had tagged along with my best girlfriend who is battling blood cancer, and this unlikely setting gave me yet another lesson in the ubiquitous power of word-of-mouth. But it also reminded me that our tendency to give and receive information is “hard wired” into our DNA.

Human beings have an innate hunger for information and are designed to be ‘infovores’ reports Dr. Irving Biderman, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, whose studies on brain activity suggest humans experience real pleasure in acquiring (and sharing) information. This waiting room’s powerful transition from weighty, depressive silence to energized discussion was a testament to infovore behavior! For nearly an hour (the radiation unit was running way behind) we talked, we learned, we shared. The pleasure grew and the time flew. When the long-delayed technician finally came calling, a blanket of good cheer seemed to follow each patient out the door as her name was called. And although the cancer center did not directly orchestrate this ‘event’, the center sure benefitted. No doubt, we all felt better (or, at least, no worse) about that hospital after our “infovore fix.” And that’s despite the fact we had almost an hour wait!

Loyalty Lesson: Want to enhance your customer’s experience and deepen engagement with your brand? Get your customers interacting! For example, savvy firms are establishing online customer communities that enable customers to help other customers. Advises Microsoft’s general manager of community support services, Sean O’Driscoll, “How do you get users to want to stay at your site and engage with others? The only way is peer-to-peer discussion, in their own voices, rather than the company’s voice.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 am | 1 comment

I spent the summers of my college years on the coast of South Carolina as a waitress. I learned a variety of skills including how to balance and carry out five steak platters on my arm, how to gracefully dive under a table to retrieve a baked potato when it rolls onto a customer’s shoe, and how to pacify a table of anxious, hungry diners who have already waited 30 minutes for their meal when I’ve just been advised by the kitchen that their order ticket is missing.

Sure, there were some hair-raising times, but for the most part, I loved every minute I spent waiting tables. Why? Because it was a fast-paced, customer-intensive job that provided instant gratification (by way of tips and smiling faces) when the customer experience was well delivered. Perhaps my biggest education was learning the art of the “customer dance” – recognizing when to lead the customer and when to follow. Over time, I learned to pick up subtle signals that helped clarify the customer experience I needed to deliver. Were they there to eat and run? Did they want to linger over coffee and dessert? Were small kids at the table in need of a fun distraction? I watched for the customer clues and then tailored my services accordingly.

Ace Hardware has taken the delicate dance of “lead and follow” to a whole new level with its addition of “customer quarterback” positions in its 4,600 U.S. stores. This technique was born out of the $3.8 billion hardware cooperative’s year-long initiative of analyzing ways to best serve customers, during busy stores times, without adding extra staffers. When store traffic is heavy at the Cape Coral, Florida store, for example, customer coordinator, Linda Gillard, gears up to “call the play.” She talks to incoming shoppers, analyzes their body language and then alerts store staff on how to best serve them: Mission shopper with no time for small talk? Browser? Shopper gearing up for a big project? Gillard makes the assessment and then, using an earpiece, radios ahead to staff so they are ready in the aisle to help, when the customer arrives. Gillard knows the danger of too much contact too early and is quick to warn the team, “Browser entering Housewares. No immediate assistance needed. Give them at least 5 to 10 minutes before you approach.”

Loyalty Lesson: Customers come to us with a mindset shaped by a host of factors. We must learn to read their clues and then sculpt our service delivery accordingly. Often times, this will invove a number of staff members. That’s why systems, such as the one Ace Hardware mobilized, provide important pathways for helping frontliners “lead” and “follow” in the all-important customer dance.

Now, about that baked potato that landed on my customer’s shoe…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 am | 1 comment

April 19, 2007 was a red-letter loyalty day. I got to stand with my fellow Luby’s board members and close the trading session at the New York Stock Exchange. Luby’s, Inc. (LUB) celebrated 25 years as a public traded company, with a closing stock price of $10.13 for the day. This year, Luby’s also celebrated its 60th anniversary as an established “Texas Restaurant Institution” having opened the first Luby’s in San Antonio, TX in 1947. But five short years ago, it was a different story. Massive debt from zealous over-building, declining sales, sliding food quality, tired cooking and dining facilities and an aging customer base were just a few of the problems that had derailed the stock to a share price as low as 99 cents.

What drove Luby’s turnaround? A talented crew led by Houston restaurant legends, Chris and Harris Pappas, who have a brilliant eye for ‘first-things-first’. From the addition of healthy-eating menu items and a new menu board system to better communicate with guests, to short-batch cooking for improved food quality, to aggressive team-building and family-friendly marketing – the stores’ people, product and processes were aggressively over-hauled to serve today’s casual dining customer.

Amidst our four year turnaround, I learned plenty of loyalty lessons. The biggest? Patience pays. As a board director, I experienced first-hand the torment of knowing “all the right things were in place” but seeing no major shifts in customer counts, same-store-sales and bottom line revenue improvement. Here’s what I learned: There’s a tipping point to a turnaround and waiting for it requires faith and patience. And when our tipping point arrived, it didn’t disappoint. Week-after-week, quarter-after-quarter, revenue numbers got stronger and stronger. Luby’s was back!

Loyalty Lesson: “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and the best executed loyalty plans don’t always produce immediate results. Keep the faith. Be patient. Do the right things. Your rewards will come.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 10:04 am | no comments

Last week, Mack and I had to put down our beloved, “amazingly loyal” 14 year old Welsh Corgi, Scooter. And with that came the reminder of a loyalty truth: the deep heartfelt connection that loyalty can create between two parties comes with a price. When your time together is over, your heart can suffer a huge, inconsolable loss. And it hurts.

Ever notice how life has a way of merging events so you can “get” a lesson at multiple levels? Amidst the grief of losing Scooter last week, I began preparation for a loyalty keynote for a multi-national, b-to-b manufacturer. During a fact-finding conference call, I asked my executive sponsor why his troops (mainly engineers) should actually care about customer loyalty. (He had previously admitted that the company’s “siloed” performance metrics conspired against the building of customer loyalty by driving an “every-division-for-itself” work mentality.) He paused for what seemed like a very long moment and then replied, “To build true loyalty, you must make a real, noticeable difference for the customer. You go the extra mile to get results. And there’s a huge personal satisfaction and pride that can come from that level of customer work.”

So true. Building deep loyalty requires you to own your customers’ problems. It moves you from the “Me Zone” to the “We Zone”. You stick your neck out. You put your heart in it. Your customers’ successes become your successes. And alas, their hard times become your hard times, too. Yes, there is a price to pay for this level of commitment. And there is risk, as well. The daily grind of navigating your way through corporate war-fare (both inside the firm and out) and cut throat competitive market spaces can make “doing the right thing” for the customer feel almost like an after-thought.

Yet, hidden deep in every employee’s soul is a yearning to make a real difference. To courageously serve a customer. To put some skin in the game. To make work life count for something. Loyalty Leader companies know this and constantly work to help, not hinder, their employees’ natural affinity to make a difference for customers. Indeed, their customer-first corporate cultures attest to what Scooter’s passing so aptly reminded me: the loyalty rewards of the heart far outweigh their price.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am | 2 comments