“It’s not just what we do, it’s how we do it”
When I was growing up, all gas stations were full-service, with attendants pumping your gas and doing whatever else could be done at a gas station. One of the main brands brought out a television ad with a catchy tune. It showed a small army of gas station attendants flashing bright smiles and descending on your car like a Nascar pit crew to top up the gas, wash the windscreen, check the engine oil and coolant level, and the air pressure in your tires. The catch phrase was the quote above: “It’s not just WHAT we do, it’s HOW we do it” (Caps mine).
A fairly well-off gentleman was in the market for a luxury vehicle. He went for test drives, looked up specifications, found his favorite colors, and ended up choosing a BMW. After he collected the vehicle, the salesperson from Audi called him up to check if he was still interested, and he informed the Audi person that he had in fact chosen the BMW. The Audi person wasn’t offended, and like all good reps, wanted to find out what drove the decision, and what the experience was like.
The buyer told the salesperson about the specifications and colors and pricing, but also mentioned that when he got home, he saw that the BMW toolkit was missing, and that that was the only disappointing part of the whole experience. Around 8pm that same night, there was a knock on his door, and standing there was the Audi salesperson with a BMW toolkit. One guess as to what vehicle the BMW driver bought the next time..
If our culture is not focused on aligning all we do around providing excellent customer experiences, we are doing something fundamentally wrong. It goes much further than an obligation, it’s a moral imperative. Nothing builds trust like doing something we said we were going to do, but nothing builds loyalty like providing an awesome experience. (Sidenote: If our internal culture is not great, this is hard to do for our customers).
Anyone that’s worked in one of my teams will know one of my favorite sayings: “For us a customer engagement may be one of ten, or a hundred, or more. But for them, it’s one of one.” We should always remember that our customers are people too, and that our engagement may be the one that builds their reputation, positions them for promotion, and also provides them with the same joy and satisfaction that we get from a job well done.
How do we do this? I use a very simple framework (with a lot of detail under the covers). The framework is only 4 high level steps:
- The promise – how does our solution align with an expected set of outcomes, and what is the effort to get there?
- The plan – what is the set of specific tasks, people, and other resources, at what time, and to what specification, to meet or exceed the expected outcomes?
- Execution – how do we work with our customer in the most efficient and empathetic way to perform the tasks laid out in the plan?
- Outcomes – how we measure and improve the outcomes to ensure we delivered what was promised in step 1?
In addition, underlying the 4 steps is a set of behaviors that everyone who serves another should display. To borrow loosely from the excellent book “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team”, the same principles can apply in a customer relationship. With a customer, the steps of building trust, handling conflict in a constructive manner, committing to mutually beneficial outcomes, holding each other accountable, and focusing on a joint result require hard work, harder than building that type of culture in our own teams. Timelines are shorter, people are not as familiar with each other, and there may be distinct differences between the two organizational cultures.
It’s up to us to cross that chasm and quickly establish trusted relationships, in addition to doing what we do really well. Everything else builds on that. We know there will be bumps in the road. And I have plenty more to say about how we position and sell, and the types of experiences customers have with our teams.
Be nice, understand the joint commitments, deliver and overdeliver, and make it right.
After all, if a gas station crew can do it in a few minutes, what stands in our way?