What's the Secret to Providing a World‐class Customer Experience?

Citation

Dietz, J. (2009), "What's the Secret to Providing a World‐class Customer Experience?", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 303-304. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760910965891

The “secret” of this book is that there is no secret. DiJulius reminds those of us in customer service some of what we have forgotten and sparks those of us new to it to reach the heights he says are possible. The book “employs behind‐the‐scenes systems that employees use to anticipate and deliver on the unexpressed needs of the customer, by using a system of silent cues, visual triggers, and visual aids” (p. vii). The secrets within are well worth reviewing.

When you finish this book, you will have a renewed enthusiasm for how your company can set and reach higher goals. You will have tools, websites, and charts to help you design and effect a program that can increase profits and decrease turnover. You will be better able to measure the areas of your business that are most important to your customers, from their perspective, not yours.

What's the Secret? is divided into two parts and 14 chapters. Part I, “The customer service crisis”, discusses why customer service is not world class when it could be. Part II, “The customer service revolution”, develops the importance of systems to notice, measure, hire and train for world‐class service.

I have spent my career in sales and customer service. I have read most of the books referred to in this book and used many of the examples in my classes. As noted above, there are no real secrets, but I recommend this book for exactly that reason. I do not care if you have been in a service occupation for twice my career, or longer. You will be reminded of something or get an idea that helps fix a problem. This is a “no‐risk” book.

The following outlines the book's parts and key takeaways.

Part I: The customer service crisis

1. The smoking gun

“It is conclusive that organizations that consistently deliver superior customer service generally enjoy more repeat business, less price elasticity, higher price points, more cross‐selling opportunities, greater marketing efficiency, and a host of other factors that usually lead to earnings growth” (p. 8). This chapter starts the reader off with the concepts that build evidence for the author's message.

2. The state of service

“Do you have rules that you want your customers to break because doing so generates profits?” (p. 16). This, and other statements, such as “Do you depend on contracts to prevent customers from defecting?” (p. 8) are signs that these companies are depending on the wrong measures to generate their profit engine. These companies do not realize that higher customer satisfaction generally creates higher profits. If the state of your service is sales by punishment, as DiJulius's examples show, perhaps it is time to rethink your policies.

3. World‐class sins

According to DiJulius (p. 47), there are “10 principal sins that prevent companies from delivering excellent customer service”. They include lack of service aptitude, decline in people skills, inability of connecting jobs to the success of the company, poor hiring standards, lack of experiential training, lack of employee input, lack of consistency, lack of a strong employee culture, lack of accountability, and focus on artificial growth. Doing a few of these is not good enough to make your company world‐class, which is why you should be reading this book! You will find yourself underlining a lot in this chapter.

4. Service aptitude/level

The reader can grade their organization based on the rubric presented in this chapter. The lists are not long and they are easy to use in pinpointing your level of service aptitude, from Unacceptable (Level 1) to World Class (Level 5). There is even a Company Service Aptitude Test on pp. 65‐73 to assist the reader in a self‐diagnosis of their company's service.

Part II: The customer service revolution

As the reader enters Part II, he or she has an idea of where that person's organization stands and how far it is from “World Class Service”. DiJulius spends the second part of the book detailing his ten commandments for world‐class leadership.

1. Commandment I: service vision

The service vision is the “rallying point across the organization by being the one thing that all employees have in common no matter what the individual job or title may be” (p. 87). I especially loved the question of whether you are buying expensive coffee or paying inexpensive rent at Starbucks – “Think about it, a living room for people to connect, hang out, and enjoy each other's company, all for under $10 to $15 is a bargain” (p. 94).

2. Commandment II: creating a world‐class internal culture

“The better the culture, the less pay becomes an issue” (p. 113). DiJulius gives several examples of companies such as Ritz Carlton and Disney, where the internal culture supports and strengthens the world‐class customer service for which these companies are known.

3. Commandment III: nonnegotiable experiential standards

By separating the customer experience into physical, setting (ambiance), functional, technical, operational and experiential components, DiJulius reminds the reader that all of these elements are “nonnegotiable” in terms of their importance to the customer's experience and repeat business. “People don't remember what you say as much as how you made them feel” (p. 140).

4. Commandment IV: secret service systems

“Secret service means using hidden systems to deliver unforgettable customer service” (p. 151), such as addressing an arriving customer by name and sending cards on important occasions. DiJulius’ company, John Robert's Spa, actually color codes their customers' cards so they can give the optimal amount of information to new customers.

5. Commandment V: training to provide a world‐class customer experience

“Customer loyalty is won or lost at the front lines of each individual location” (p. 183). The fact that consistent training is at the heart of superior service companies is repeated here with examples from companies such as Enterprise Rent‐a‐Car, Disney, Panera Bread, and the Cheesecake Factory.

6. Commandment VI: implementation and execution

The importance of consistency and continuity in the daily processes of all service companies are catalogued here with a system to monitor them.

7. Commandment VII: zero risk

“If you own the problem, you own the customer” (p. 227). With the example of Disney parking attendants in golf carts helping customers to find cars (because so many rental cars look alike and Disneyland is a big place), DiJulius imparts an important point that many other service books miss, that even a problem caused by the customer is the responsibility of the seller if they want the customer to feel “zero risk” in spending money with them. When restaurants and hair salons look at customer mistakes (in booking an appointment, ordering, etc.) as an opportunity to become a zero‐risk establishment, their training and service will improve accordingly.

8. Commandment VIII: creating an above‐and‐beyond culture

Empowering, training, and inspiring employees to think outside the box can lead to recognition and rewards as the accomplishments of team members are publicized for team members to celebrate. This, of course, leads to more accomplishments.

9. Commandment IX: measuring your customer's experience

“Too many businesses fail to realize that customers view all of a company's locations as equal – equally bad or equally indifferent. To a customer, one bad experience with a brand can be its death sentence” (p. 273). If you do not have an accurate method to measure what is working and what is not working, you may make mistakes. DiJulius will help you avoid faulty satisfaction measurements that can lead to a false sense of success while your customers are silently planning to defect.

10. Commandment X: world‐class leadership

The last chapter is mostly a message about living a dream, that some of our greatest statesmen and successful people came from humble beginnings, including the author. As a customer service wrap‐up, this part is a little weak, but I can understand the importance to DiJulius of giving the reader a glimpse into what makes him tick and how he is able to sustain the world class services at the John Robert's Spa and the DiJulius Group.

I think this book has a wide audience. As stated previously, even though I have read most of the books to which DiJulius refers, customer service is the kind of thing that you can never overdo when it comes to putting these principles into action. It should certainly be required of anyone in retail services or in sales training classes. The importance of an internal culture to an excellent company makes reading this book well worth it, even for the companies given top grades within it. The answer to What's The Secret? is not so secret, but many more of our service providers could benefit from embracing the principles in this book.