Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization (4 page)

No brand is complete until a brand-appropriate style of speaking with customers is in place at all levels of the enterprise. You should therefore work to achieve a consistent style of service speech.

A distinctive and consistent companywide style of service speech won’t happen on its own. You’ll need social engineering: that is, systematic training of employees. Imagine, for example, that you’ve selected ten promising salespeople for your new high-end jewelry boutique. You’ve provided them with uniforms and stylish haircuts and encouraged them to become your own brand’s versions of a Mr. or Ms.

Cartier, starting on opening day. But they’ll still speak with customers much the way they speak in their own homes: that is, until you’ve trained them in a different language style.

Happily, ‘‘engineering’’ a company-wide style of speech can be a positive, collaborative experience. If you approach this correctly, you won’t need to put a gag on anybody or twist any arms. Once everybody in an organization understands the reasons for language guidelines, it becomes a challenge, not a hindrance. The improved customer reactions and collaborative pride of mission are rewarding. As a consequence, our clients have found it to be a pretty easy sell companywide.

Here’s how to make it happen.

Create a Lexicon of Preferred Language and Phrasing

To help launch their Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel brand, initially, founding President and Chief Operating Officer Horst Schulze and his team decided on a set of ideal phrases for use in conversation with customers, then trained employees to use those phrases. The frequent use of certain phrases helped unify their employees around a shared identity and contributed to a distinctive ‘‘Ritz style’’ that the public could easily recog-

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Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

nize: phrases like ‘‘My pleasure,’’ ‘‘Right away,’’ ‘‘Certainly,’’ and—a personal favorite—‘‘We’re fully committed tonight.’’ (Translation:

‘‘We’re booked solid, bub!’’) The list of words and phrases to be avoided included
folks
,
hey
,
you guys
, and
okay
.

(It’s easy in the 21st century to miss the conscious choices behind this, because a Ritz-style vocabulary now pervades the hospitality industry. This occurred for a few different reasons: through imitation by competitors, because it entered the public consciousness when the late William Safire and others in the mainstream press covered the phenomenon, and because Ritz-Carlton alumni have dispersed to other companies, carrying their Ritz language with them consciously or as second nature.)

We recommend you take an approach similar to The Ritz’s, although not necessarily with their same English Country Manor over-tones. Study the language that works best with your own customers, and identify harmful phrases that should be avoided. Codify this for your employees in a brief lexicon or language handbook that can be learned and referred to on the job. In the lexicon, you’ll spell out which words and phrases are best to use and which should be avoided in various common situations.

Putting together a language handbook is a relatively simple undertaking. It doesn’t require an English degree. But it does require fore-thought, experimentation, and some pondering about human nature.

Here, for example, are some good/bad language choices Micah uses in the manual he developed for use in his business ventures (see Appendix for more examples and scenarios from his company Oasis):
Bad:
‘‘You owe . . .’’

Good:
‘‘Our records show a balance of . . .’’

Bad:
‘‘You need to . . .’’
(This makes some customers think: ‘‘I don’t
need
to do jack, buddy—I’m your customer!’’)

Good:
‘‘We find it usually works best when . . .’’

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Bad:
‘‘Please hold.’’

Good:
‘‘May I briefly place you on hold?’’
(and then actually
listen
to the caller’s answer)

Good lexicons will vary depending on industry, clientele, and location. A cheerful ‘‘No worries!’’ sounds fine coming from the clerk at a Bose audio store in Portland (an informal business in an informal town) but bizarre if spoken by the concierge at the Four Seasons in Milan.

Choose Language to Put Customers at Ease, Not to

Dominate Them

No matter what your business is, make it your mission to avoid recommending any condescending or coercive language in your lexicon.

Sometimes this kind of language is obvious, but sometimes it’s quite subtle. Here are examples:

Subtly insulting:
In an informal business, if a customer asks, ‘‘How are you?’’ the response, ‘‘I’m well,’’ is grammatically correct—but may not be the best choice. Hearing this very ‘‘correct’’ response may make your customers momentarily self-conscious about their own potentially imperfect grammar. It may be better to have your employees choose from more familiar alternatives like, ‘‘I’m doing great!’’ or ‘‘Super!’’

(Most important, of course, is to follow up with an inquiry about the customer’s
own
well-being: ‘‘And how are
you
, this morning?’’)

Unsubtly coercive:
We’re not likely to forget the famous steakhouse that trained staff to ask as they seated us, ‘‘Which bottled water will you be enjoying with us this evening, still, or sparkling?’’ We took that phrasing to mean we weren’t permitted to ask for tap water.

(In this situation, one that comes up in nearly every restaurant, what
is
a better choice of words? How about: ‘‘Would you prefer ice water or bottled water with your meal?’’ Or, considering that this question 18

Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

offers an early chance for the waitstaff to build rapport with guests, add some local flavor. In Chicago, a friend’s restaurant a few years back was asking, ‘‘Will you be having bottled water or Mayor Daley’s finest aqua with your meal?’’)

We believe a Ritz-Carlton style ‘‘Say
This
While Avoiding
This
’’

language guide optimizes customer satisfaction in most businesses and helps bind staff members into a team. But if it strikes you as too pre-scriptive (or too much work) to develop scripted phrases and specific word choices for your employees, at least consider developing a brief

‘‘Negative Lexicon.’’ A Negative Lexicon is just a list of crucial
Thou
Shalt Nots
.

We call the Negative Lexicon the Danny Meyer approach, after the teachings of the New York restaurateur and master of hospitality. Meyer feels uncomfortable giving his staff a list of what
to
say, but he doesn’t hesitate to specifically
ban
phrases that grate on his ears (‘‘Are we still working on the lamb?’’)
1

A Negative Lexicon can be kept short, sweet, and easy to learn. Of course, new problematic words and phrases are sure to crop up as time moves on. Ideally, you’ll update your Negative Lexicon as frequently as
Wired
magazine updates its ‘‘Jargon Watch’’ column.

Concentrate Your Language Efforts on the Key

Customer Moments: Hellos, Good-Byes, and

the Times When Things Fall Apart

Concentrate your language efforts on the most vivid, emotionally crucial points in your conversations with customers. Social psychologists, notably Elizabeth Loftus, have proven that human memory radically simplifies our emotional experiences when it files them away for storage; our minds normally retain only the most vivid aspects from each situation, letting go of whatever else might have
occurred.2

So focus your language efforts on moments that are known to remain vivid in memory: hellos (make yours unusually warm and per-

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19

sonal), good-byes (make them wonderful), and recoveries after service failures (yours should be more graceful than anybody else’s).

It’s Not You. It’s Them, Plus Their Background, Plus You
Psychologists find that two people listening to the exact same conversation can come away with completely different impressions of the people involved. You’ve probably noticed something like this in your workplace: You think your colleague Jim seems friendly and kind; Margaret thinks he’s a suckup.

Why does this happen?
Cultural differences
are a big part of the story. Culture is the set of assumptions, traditions, and values a community develops over time. Thus, members of a culture other than yours may interpret your behavior in ways that haven’t occurred to you, because of their community’s own assumptions, traditions, or values. Cultural differences can create particularly bad impressions when you interact with a customer from a different part of the world—or even a subculture within your own country. To manage this risk, we recommend becoming expert on cultures your company serves and expert at cross-cultural communication in general. There are some superb books that can guide you, such as Brooks Peterson’s
Cultural Intelligence: A Guide
to Working with People from Other Cultures (
Intercultural Press, 2004).

A caution: Be sure to apply your new expertise
flexibly.
Individuals don’t always subscribe to their culture’s assumptions, norms, or values: Personality or family background can be a more powerful determinant of an individual’s values. Over and over, you hear us recommend that you think about your customers as individuals rather than as groups. This core principle applies to cross-cultural communication, too.

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Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

Shut Up Sometimes: The Artie Bucco Principle

The tragicomic character on
The Sopranos
, Artie Bucco, starts the series as a successful restaurateur. Slowly, though, things begin to fall apart for him. Finally, his wife, Charmaine, has the painful job of telling him what is going so wrong: that his customers come to the restaurant to be with each other, not with him. Their special moments are for them, not for him, and interrupting them with what
he
thinks is important is driving them away. Artie never does get the message when he interacts with customers. If he had learned to listen between the lines, he could have picked it up, as his wife did.

She
was listening.

Align your organization to the value of listening. Learn to adjust the flow of your comments to match each customer’s interests and mood.

And practice shutting up sometimes.

Words Have Their Limits

Visual and physical cues can speak louder than words. Make sure your words aren’t being contradicted by nonverbal messages, such as:

? Employees who say ‘‘Welcome’’ while their body language tele-graphs ‘‘
Go away!’’

? First-point-of-contact employees whose chairs are oriented so their backs face arriving guests, or who, although oriented correctly, are so ‘‘efficiently’’ engaged in computer tasks that they may as well not be placed at a greeting location at all.

? An office building with obstructed ramps or heavy, hard-to-open doors. (What does that ‘‘say’’ to a customer who is in a wheelchair, has arthritis, or is pushing a stroller?)

? Small items kept under lock and key in a way that silently insults your customers: for example, a corkscrew that is locked down with a security chain to prevent its theft—at a four star hotel?!

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It’s true—when travelling, we recently encountered a corkscrew tethered to a bicycle-style metal security chain atop the minibar in a very upscale hotel room.
(See the gory visuals at
www.micahsolomon

.com.
)
Make sure you’re not similarly insinuating that your customers aren’t trustworthy. If you are, it’ll be hard to ask for
their
trust and loyalty in return.

Show, Don’t Tell (And Don’t Ever Just Point)

Don’t give customers verbal directions. Getting directions in words is confusing and hard to remember. It unsettles people. When a customer asks how to get somewhere, physically lead him there.

The private jet-setters who stay in Leonardo’s ultraluxury Capella resorts require a restroom as often as the rest of us. So, says Leonardo,

‘‘We don’t tell them ‘Go down the hall, turn right, walk fifteen feet, and then turn left.’ We walk with them until the last turn. Then we back away, for discretion.’’ Or, as the Capella service standard spells it out: ‘‘Escort guests until they feel comfortable with the directions or make visual contact with their destination.’’

This dictum has spread to other top service establishments. According to Phoebe Damrosch, formerly of Thomas Keller’s four-star restaurant
Per Se,
Rule ࠻20 in Keller’s guidelines is ‘‘When asked, guide guests to the bathroom instead of pointing.’’ (Phoebe also mentions a side effect we ourselves haven’t experienced: Some of the male diners, she says, seemed confused, perhaps mistakenly thinking that she planned to accompany them in and help. ‘‘The eighteen percent you will leave me, sir, I always wanted to say, would not cover
that.’’3)

Phone and Internet Language and Communication

Pointers

?
Here’s our advice about screening your calls:
Don’t do it
.

Just don’t! And do your best not to have anybody, anywhere in your business, screen calls.

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Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

This is perhaps our most wildly unpopular idea. When clients first hear it, they usually tell us we’re crazy. (You hate it too, right?) But our experience demonstrates that this single change can greatly enhance customer satisfaction—and as a fringe benefit, organizational effectiveness.

What’s wrong with screening? There is no faster way to alienate potential customers (and business allies) than to make them run a gaunt-let before you’ll speak with them. If someone wants to talk with you,
let him
. If you’re not the right person, you can quickly and politely transfer his call onward. How well this works will astound you.