Achieving Customer Delight

John Paul
http://www.associationworks.com
jpaul@associationworks.com

800-986-8472
Association Works – Dallas, Texas

© Association Works, 2001

 Not Customer
Satisfaction, but...

Customer Delight
 Redefining The Business
• Saturn
• Amazon.com
• Titanic - The Musical
• Palm Pilot
• FedEx
• Your Organization?
 It Starts At The Top
• Who is the champion for the
Customer Delight initiative?

• Organizations have:
 Visionaries
 Leaders
 Managers
 Adequate Is Not Acceptable

• Most of what we do is adequate

• People talk about Customer Delight
• People talk about bad service
• People don’t talk about adequate service
 Where Are We Now?
1-5 (5=No Improvement Needed)

1) This organization is focused externally

2) Staff are fully empowered to delight customers
3) We are constantly looking for better
ways to delight our customers
4) We listen to what our customers are
telling us and act accordingly
5) We know who our customers are
6) We know what our customers want
7) We have an ongoing process to monitor
how delighted our customers are
 Where Are We Now?
1-5 (5=No Improvement Needed)

8) Our staff are trusted to do the right thing

9) All of our policies make sense
10) We are actively engaged in building long
term relationships with our customers
11) Our plans are current and regularly updated
12) Training is important to this organization
13) Training is relevant to what we do
14) We realize that the smallest things can have the biggest
impact
15) We treat every customer the way they want to be treated
The Truth About Customers
Ten times more expensive to
acquire a new customer than to
keep a current customer
- Bain & Company Research
Customers are lost primarily due
to indifference (66%) versus
dissatisfaction (14%) - WSJ
 The Best
• Woo – the ability to win others over
• Empathy – the ability to understand the mood
of others
• Discipline – the ability to work systematically
and consistently
• Command – the ability to control a situation
through communication
• Responsibility – the ability to own a problem
until it is solved
Gallup Survey of Best Customer Service Representatives
Donors, volunteers, and
Program participants
relate to people

Not to organizations
 The Problem
The problem is never how to get
new innovative thoughts into
your mind, but how to get the
old ones out
Dee Hock,
VISA
You do not merely want to be
considered the best of the best….

You want to be considered the

only one who does what you do

Jerry Garcia
 Standing Out
When we did it right it was still
pretty ordinary
Barry Gibbons, Burger King

We defined personality as a market

niche - we seek to amuse, entertain,
surprise
Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines
Create A Life Changing Experience

What we sell is the ability for a 43 year

old accountant to dress in black
leather, ride through small towns and
have people be afraid of him.

Harley
Davidson Executive
 Story Telling
Do people tell positive stories about your
organization?

Mayo Clinic
Volvo
Firestone Tires
Rolex

Perception is reality
What Should We Be Doing…
To stand out in the crowd?

To create a life changing experience?

To create stories about us?

 Know Your Participants

• The Golden Rule doesn’t apply

• It is now the Platinum Rule
• When was the last time you asked your
participants what were their
expectations?
• It doesn’t need to be complex
“Men and women don’t think the
same way, don’t communicate the
same way, don’t buy for the same
reasons.”

“He simply wants the transaction to

take place. She’s interested in
creating a relationship. Every place
women go, they make connections.”
Faith Popcorn
 Quick Quiz
• By 2005 ____% of all firms will be
female owned
• A woman opens a new business
every _______
• Women influence ____% of all car
purchases
• Women own ____% of all stocks
 Quick Quiz
• By 2005 40 % of all firms will be
female owned
• A woman opens a new business
every 60 seconds
• Women influence 90 % of all car
purchases
• Women own 53 % of all stocks
Opportunities For Customer Delight

• What happens when you first

interact with a customer?
• What occurs to build a relationship?
• Do you spend more to get new
customers than on enhancing the
relationship with current customers?
• What makes you unique?
 Relationship Continuum

First Next Moments Customer

Interaction Interaction Of Truth Delight
Entry into Proactive
System or Reactive
 Customers
• Who are they?

• What do they want?

• Are we meeting their needs?

Why Should We Be Concerned?
In the average business, for each
customer who complains there are 26
who feel the same way and don’t
speak up.

The customers who feel poorly served

will tell between 8 and 16 people about
their negative experience.
» Technical Assistance Research, Inc.
Staff And Volunteers Are Partners

• Different needs exist

• A partnership isn’t always 50 - 50
• Who are your internal partners?
• What do they want?
 Internal Focus

When the organization has its

face focused internally it has
its butt toward the customer.

Paraphrased from Funky Business

 Partners
• Who are they?

• What do they want from me?

• What do I want from them?

 Empowerment Environment

Empowerment is the
“What”

not the

“How”
 Why Empowerment Fails
 The Past
 No one knows what it means
 Abdication
 Perfectionism
 Lack of trust
 Espouse Theory Y – Practice Theory X
 More time spent on structure instead of
behavior
 Lack of commitment
 Notes On Empowerment
 Empowerment rests on trust
 Don't play games
 Practice “no surprises”
 Hug the messenger
 Decision making
 Who can solve problems?
 Notes On Empowerment
 Be a coach not an expert
 Fix the problem - not the blame
 No more "father/mother knows best"
 Empowerment must be in everything
 The test: How are mistakes treated?
 It encourages change & communication
 Actually
Customer expectations are typically not
very high

Your job is to surprise them

Customer Delight is doing what they haven’t

even imagined

What will cause them to say WOW!

You know what you can do - they don’t

Making Customer Delight A Core Value
Staff Meetings
Board Meetings
Define and visualize the ideal experience
Make a part of each agenda
What did we do right?
Missed opportunities?
Recognition
Who is the “champion” for Customer Delight?
How are we treating customers now?
 Creating Customer Delight
• What’s working?
– How can we do more?

• Any barriers?
– How can we overcome them?
 I Will
Identify crimes committed against
Customers, Donors, Program
Participants and Each Other

……and do SOMETHING
 Two Things I Will Do…

1)

2)
The greatest danger for
most of us is not that our
aim is too high and we miss
it, but that it is too low and
we reach it
Michelangelo
 Achieving
Customer
Delight

John Paul
http://www.associationworks.com
jpaul@associationworks.com
800-986-8472
Association Works – Dallas, Texas