Professional Skills

Posts Tagged ‘Customer service’

New York restaurateur Danny Meyer defines a “51 percenter” as an employee who brings job skills that are 51 percent emotional and 49 percent technical. Having worked in the hotel industry for 10 years, I share Mr. Meyer’s contention that the art of delivering true hospitality often comes from your heart more so than from your head.

Meyer goes on to say that service is about meeting the technical expectation, while the “hospitality quotient,” as he calls it, surpasses mere technical requirements to the ability to demonstrate a sense of being on the customer’s side. This is something I look for when hiring for customer-focused roles too. In my own case, when I seek to delight customers by anticipating and meeting needs they didn’t even realize they had, I get as much joy from that process as they do in the outcome, if not more so. Meyer calls this the “jazz level,” or the extent to which those 51 percenters are “jazzed” by coming to work in an environment that calls for them to deliver outstanding hospitality each day. Rain or shine, pleasant customers or surly, Meyer’s definition of a hospitality orientation is a core behavioral requirement for everyone he hires to work in one of his 12 restaurants. No jazz…no job.

Now, here are my three questions for you:

How would you define the hospitality quotient in your office?

Do you consider yourself a 51 percenter?

If not, what would it be like for you and your customers if you showed up this way, starting today?

You don’t have to work in a restaurant or hotel to bring the art of hospitality to your workplace. You don’t even have to work directly with external customers who pay you or your organization a fee. Most of us have at least one internal customer in another department that we have to serve at some point in our careers. Being a 51 percenter does require that you operate from a point of view that puts you firmly on the same team as your customers, however. Customers know better when this isn’t the case. One trip to the Returns and Exchanges counter at your typical department store will show you the difference.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or time to bring a higher hospitality quotient to your office, either. The next time you are working on a customer request, challenge yourself to think three steps ahead of your customer. What else is possible beyond the initial inquiry or request they have made? What else can you do or say to demonstrate that you have their best interests at heart? Try it out, and tell me about your success!

For more about Danny Meyer and his philosophy about the art of hospitality, check out Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business (2006, Harper Collins).

When you say the term “customer service” people in organizations usually think of a
department, or work group.

In fact, you are also in customer service, no matter what your job. Here’s how:

Think of an organization as a group of people who interact to take some kind of input and
create some kind of output. No one can do it alone, so hand-offs are necessary. Maybe
you collect data, analyze it, prepare a presentation based on it, or deliver the presentation
that will result in someone saying “yes.”

Each of the players in this process is handing off a work product to someone else, and
that other person is called a customer (the first is the supplier).

When you get the concept that the organization is full of internal supplier-to-customer
relationships, you realize there is such a thing as internal customer service, as well as
external. How well you collect, analyze, prepare or present the information are all
examples of customer service. If you collect the data poorly, it doesn’t help whoever is
supposed to analyze it (or anyone else down the line). This is bad customer service.

There are lots of ways you can find out how good your customer service is. A 360-
assessment is one; asking for feedback is another.

One final point: An organization cannot support a level of external customer service that
exceeds the level of internal customer service. The value chain breaks in the above
example. Whenever you’ve heard the phrase from someone in the organization in the role
usually thought of as customer service, “They shouldn’t have told you that,” you’re
hearing about an internal breakdown in customer service.

Service providers often think good customer service means giving the consumer more:
more choices, more time, more options.

Customer service isn’t how much you provide, it’s how you provide it! 

On a recent trip to Illinois, I took passage on one of our financially-challenged major
airline carriers.  Although it was a relatively short hop from DC to Chicago, the airline
was willing to give those of us in the “cattle car” one of their few remaining perks-a
pop (deferring to the colloquial term for “soda”) and a snack.  Because I was sitting near
the tail of the aircraft, I was last to be served.  Fortunately, the plane was only half full, so
snacks were plentiful.

After asking me if I preferred peanuts or trail mix and then handing me my snack, the
flight attendant stared at me for a few seconds and asked, “Where’s your money?”  I
apologized for not knowing the snack wasn’t free.  She tersely responded, “Snacks
haven’t been free in three years.”  Really?  On a flight just two months ago, this same
carrier tossed snacks about the cabin like the government handed out TARP funding,
never once asking for payment.  I gave back my trail mix, saying that I really didn’t need
it.  After walking away, the attendant stopped, turned with snack in hand, and decided to
give me a freebie.  However, it wasn’t free at all; it came with a follow-on lecture about
how she didn’t have to do this and how much the airlines are struggling financially.  I sat
there not quite knowing how to respond, so I didn’t.  I just took the snack, thanked her,
and went back to my Sudoku puzzle.  But the more I thought about what happened, the
angrier I got.

No, I don’t believe this is a poor reflection of the airline’s service.  I’m smart enough to
know that not all airline employees act this way.  In fact, the flight attendant’s co-worker
was clearly uncomfortable with her comments.  I also know that a flight attendant’s
primary role is to ensure safe passage for everyone on board; the fact that she helps
provide refreshments is a bonus.  But conducting this secondary duty with such poor
grace has a profound impact.  A 2007 global Nielsen survey found that consumer
recommendations were the most credible form of advertising among 78% of the study’s
26,000 respondents.  And more recently, a 2009 Econsultancy survey showed that 90% of
consumers trust recommendations from people they know and 70% trust the opinions of
unknown online users.

There are several choices for the DC-to-Chicago route, all similarly priced.  Providing
snacks isn’t a selling point for me.  Attitude is!  In the future, I will choose to work with
flight attendants who very politely tell me that snacks aren’t free, and who leave it at that. 
You can take my pillows, you can take my blankets, and you can take my snacks.  But
what you do, you’d better do exceptionally well-or I will choose another airline and tell
others about it.

Whether you are conducting your primary duties or “other duties as assigned,” how you
do them means so much more than what you choose to do or not do.