I recently discovered that at least one employee at my local supermarket has no fear of consequences for his behavior at work.

The King Soopers employee who bagged my two gallons of milk and bottle of Mr. Bubble (don’t judge me…) said, “Damn! I’d need this whole bottle for my bath!”

After bagging the last item, he immediately began texting on his smart-phone (I’m being generous…). Bewildered by his behavior, I removed the gallons of milk from their respective plastic bags (I didn’t want them bagged—he didn’t know because he didn’t ask), grabbed the bag containing the bubble bath, and left the store.

There was no acknowledgment of any kind (“Sorry, I didn’t know you didn’t want your milk bagged” or “Can I give you a hand with that?”), no appreciation (“Thank you”), no farewell (“Goodnight”), no respect (I felt disrespected and devalued as a customer), and, worse, no fear of consequences from management (as his “Damn!” was quite audible and he was texting in plain sight).

Long ago, I bought into the management principle: Blame the process, not the person.

So it’s appropriate at this juncture to ask, “What processes are to blame for this employee’s boorish conduct?”

I can think of several:

• Employee selection
• Onboarding
• Employee training
• Development/communication of performance standards
• Behavior modeling by management
• Ongoing performance management (including feedback and recognition)

Certainly, King Soopers is not the only culprit. Until employers address these processes in meaningful ways, employees will continue to offend customers by their indifference—with no fear of consequences.

Illustration: Aaron McKissen

Earlier this month during a presentation, a participant posed the following question:

“What difference does it make if one customer leaves dissatisfied when there’s a line of customers waiting to take his place?”

Having worked in high-volume environments in New York City and Orlando, I’ve detected this sentiment—if not heard this same question—from frontline employees who took for granted that there would always be a line of customers waiting to hand over their money.

Some employees are fortunate to work in bustling environments where demand is strong and customer volume is high. Such operations often charge price premiums and realize solid profits.

Consider the hostess at a swank downtown restaurant requiring reservations. The entrance is standing room only and there’s a month-long wait to secure a table for dinner. And imagine the movie theatre employee working behind the concession counter, staring out at a sea of anonymous customers in the minutes leading up to the start of the latest blockbuster.

Because their products or services are in demand and profitable, employees in these establishments may rationalize that if they lose a dissatisfied customer, they will make up for the lost revenue on the next customer (or 10 customers) in line.

This rationale is flawed, fuels arrogance, and produces attitudes of indifference toward customers and entitlement to their spending.

What these employees fail to recognize is that, regardless of demand, individual customers are irreplaceable.

I first read this notion in the outstanding book, Exceptional Service Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon

Conventional thinking about customer retention is that customers are replaceable. That is, when one customer leaves, another customer will take his place.

But the authors are not talking about the anonymous masses. They are talking about the dismissed couple who was admonished by the condescending hostess because they lacked the foresight to reserve a table in advance at such a popular restaurant. And they are talking about the frustrated moviegoer who, after waiting a full five minutes in a line that failed to move, chose to skip the buttered popcorn and Coke so he didn’t miss the dramatic opening scene.

If the dismissed couple and the frustrated moviegoer are not satisfied with their experiences, they may choose to defect to other providers in search of more flexibility, responsiveness, respect, efficiency, or a number of other factors. And because a majority of customers do not complain—you may never know that they left or why they left.

And here’s the scary part: The admonished couple and the anonymous moviegoer are irreplaceable.

When they decide to quit doing business with you, they mean it. So, even if you attract a new customer’s spending, you won’t receive another nickel from these three individual customers ever again.

Recognize that when an individual customer defects, he or she is irreplaceable. And his or her lifetime contribution to your business—including future spending, feedback, and referrals—cannot be replaced. Never. Ever. Forever. And forever’s a long time.

How would you respond to the opening question?

I read a lot of business books—many of which pertain to customer service. When so many customer service books offer readers the equivalent of a simplistic 5-step approach to improving customer service that produces the acronym: S.M.I.L.E., Uncommon Service is a refreshing change.

Rather than patronizing readers with predictable stories about surly waiters and rude flight attendants and repeating overused customer service platitudes such as “The customer is always right,” authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss offer practical advice supported by dozens of contemporary and relevant illustrations and case studies.

After reading the book, I posed several questions to co-author, Anne Morriss:

1.) In your opinion, why is “uncommon” service so uncommon?

“In our work, we use a very specific definition of service excellence:  being great at the things your customers value most.  Excellence is rare because the path to getting there is not intuitive.  It’s not about trying harder or deciding that the customer is always right. It requires, among other things, being deliberately and strategically ‘bad’ at certain things. That’s an emotional barrier that’s often hard for Type A managers to get over.”

2.) If you managed a new group of people tomorrow, what is the first action you would take in order to inspire them to deliver “uncommon” customer service?

“One our favorite reviewers said that the first thing he was going to do after reading the book was to apologize to his employees.  It’s not a bad place to start.  The cost of trying to be great at everything is exhausted mediocrity, and it’s a price the front line disproportionately pays. 

But I like your question’s focus on action because it’s your actions that of course will get your team’s attention.  The first step we would take is to visit the front lines and talk frankly with your employees about the barriers to service excellence.  Ask your people to think about the last few times they haven’t been able to deliver the level of service they wanted.  What was getting in their way? The goal here is to identify systematic failure, so take it as a given that your individual employees are not the problem.”

3.) How do you motivate employees to deliver uncommon service when demand is high and there is seemingly always another customer lining up to buy?

“First, you have to convince yourself – really convince yourself – that it’s not about employee attitudes or motivation.  That’s not what’s getting in the way of delivering great service, and it’s not the solution to it.  The solution is to design a service model and service culture that allow average employees to deliver excellence as an everyday routine. The goal is to set people up to excel ‘casually.’   

One very common barrier to great service is that companies design jobs for ‘service heroes,’ with too much complexity and chaos for a normal human being to do well.  The right place for many service organizations to start is to redesign customer-facing jobs so that your people have a better chance of taking care of your customers.  Reduce the complexity that the front line has to manage. Both customers and employees will be happier.”

4.) How do you motivate a customer-facing employee to deliver uncommon service in a low-wage, high-turnover job?

“You design the job so that excellence is the only reliable outcome.  One fast-food restaurant we studied was using fifty-five different ways to ring up the same drink.  This happened over time, and for understandable reasons, but it meant that there was very little space left over in any given service interaction to address the needs of the person on the other side of the counter.”

5.) In your book, you address the frequently-asked question, “Where should I begin (to improve the quality of customer service offered)?” by advising readers to “believe in an alternate reality, where ordinary people create extraordinary value…” Given this, how would you respond to an ordinary frontline employee who’s motivated to provide “uncommon” service but his enthusiasm/improvement suggestions are dismissed/ignored by superiors who are more interested in today’s financial results (and conducting business as usual)?

“I would say that if the people at the top don’t share your commitment to service, then you should start looking for another job. In our experience, however, lack of service commitment and callous management are not typically the problems. The problems are usually bad design and a broken service culture, often in a context of very good management intentions.  But good intentions aren’t enough to succeed in service.  Sometimes – like when you’re trying to hit it out of the park on all service dimensions – they’re actually the things standing in your way.”  

Bottom line: The conclusions drawn and the suggestions offered in Uncommon Service will benefit any business leader who serves a customer. If that’s you, then you’re at a disadvantage until you read this book.

This is the final post in a series that has identified 10 different customer service advantages that have emerged from my analysis of customer satisfaction data. Maybe you have capitalized on one or more of these advantages in your own business? The tenth advantage is to recognize that exceptions require exceptional customer service.

How are exceptions ordinarily treated?

Consider the couple who arrive at a popular restaurant on a Friday evening without a reservation. Does the hostess work her magic to accommodate them or is she dismissive due to their nonconformance, presumption, and naivety? (“Can you imagine? Showing up here, on a Friday night, without a reservation, expecting an open table? The nerve of some people!”)

Just this morning, I flew into Denver International Airport and stopped by Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli for a sandwich. As I approached the counter, I heard the customer ahead of me ask if the bread for his sandwich could be sliced thinner than those visible slices that had been pre-sliced.

(Ordinarily, the employees at Heidi’s slice the sandwich bread off the fresh-baked loaves when preparing the customer’s order. At the airport location, due to the sporadic volume of customers, the bread is sliced in advance and stored in clear plastic tubs to keep them fresh. The pre-sliced bread behind the counter was quite thick and, as I learned, the customer had recently been diagnosed with TMJ syndrome—chronic pain that restricts how wide he can comfortably open his mouth.)

The employee responded that the bread had been pre-sliced and could not be sliced thinner. The customer moved down toward the register, content to simply order a drink and a bag of chips.

About that time, I noticed the open kitchen to the left where there were dozens of loaves of bread being stored on racks. I asked the employee behind the counter if one of those loaves could be used to accommodate the customer who required thinner bread slices.

At first she said no because, according to her, the automated bread slicer used produced slices of a standard thickness.

Then I asked her if she had a bread knife behind the counter.

At this point, she appeared to connect the dots and suggested that she may be able to honor the customer’s request after all.

The customer, overhearing our conversation, approached me and said, “Thank you. Now I can order a sandwich. By the way, what’s good here—besides the service?” *wink*

How many customers do you think will request thinner slices of bread at the airport location of Heidi’s today? Two? Three? Four? I’m not sure but I can say this with certainty: These requests will be infrequent. They will be exceptions. And exceptions require exceptional customer service.

Most employees don’t choose to deliver poor customer service; they just don’t choose to deliver exceptional customer service.

Instead, most service providers (like the restaurant hostess and Heidi’s employee depicted here) are content to simply occupy customer service job roles and execute a set of mandated job functions—blissfully unaware of the opportunities they forfeit daily to take initiative in the moment of choice to delight their customers.

What has your experience been?

This post is the ninth in a series that will identify 10 different customer service advantages that have emerged from my analysis of customer satisfaction data. Maybe you have capitalized on one or more of these advantages in your own business? The ninth advantage is to see customers as partners.

A few years ago I left a book in my seat on a United Airlines flight. I’m sure it happens all the time and in most cases the books are never reunited with their owners because, let’s face it, they’re relatively cheap and easy to replace. I bet most passengers don’t even contact the airline’s lost and found department to determine the fate of their books.

Even so, there are occasions when there is a bit more motivation to recover the book. Perhaps it’s a rare book that’s no longer in print. Maybe it’s a business book and the reader scribbled lots of notes in the margins. Or, possibly, it was an autographed copy that the reader picked up at a conference or book signing.

In the case of my book, I had purchased it in New York City together with about two-dozen other books in a limited edition printing of Barnes & Noble Classics. So, even though the book was easily replaceable, finding this particular edition would take a bit more work.

So, the next day I called the United Airlines lost and found department at Denver International Airport and learned that no book had been recovered from my flight. The employee I spoke with didn’t seem too optimistic that I would ever reconnect with my lost book. As I hung up, I was already beginning to craft a letter to United’s customer service department in my head.

Now, before you lecture me on the fact that it’s my responsibility (not the airline’s) to keep tabs on my personal property, consider that:

• I had upgraded on the flight in question and was seated in one of perhaps five or six occupied seats in first class. As we deplaned, we went out a door behind the first class cabin. This means that if the book was taken by a passenger, it would have been one of the handful of first class passengers who deplaned with me. Unlikely.
• I recall setting the book down in my seat in order to assist another passenger with her luggage in the overhead compartment. The flight manifest clearly indicates who sat in seat 4B where I laid the book. By simply looking at the manifest, the book could have easily been traced back to me.
• I have a habit of using boarding pass stubs as bookmarks. Since I was two-thirds of the way through the book, I bet I had a half-dozen stubs in it—each containing my name and frequent flyer number. By simply looking up my Mileage Plus account, the book could have easily been returned to me.

The tone of my letter to United Airlines was not one of avoiding my responsibility in maintaining possession of my belongings. I acknowledge my role here—really, I do. In my letter, I said that I viewed our relationship as a partnership. In a partnership, each party takes responsibility for the success of the relationship.

There are times, for instance, when I make allowances for the scheduling, staffing, or maintenance oversights of the airline. This usually results in a delayed or canceled flight. Sometimes the lapse involves the handling of my luggage and I have to wait in line to report my missing bag, complete paperwork, and then get by with the clothes on my back until my luggage finally arrives—assuming it does arrive…

These are examples of when I, the customer, make allowances for the service lapses of the airline. I’m not happy about the delays, cancellations, or mishandled luggage but I understand these are some of the unpleasant realities of frequent travel and continue flying United Airlines nonetheless.

Now consider United’s responsibility when partnering with its customers: Passengers should be able to trust that the airline will reciprocate and make allowances for customers who inadvertently leave behind books, cell phones, or other possessions. Customers shouldn’t have to accept that these items simply disappeared into a black hole—never to be seen again.

Although it’s clearly a lapse by the customer, the proper handling of lost and found items (whether found by a United Airlines employee or a contract employee whose job it is to clean the cabin) demonstrates the reciprocal nature of partnerships. The items should be catalogued and secured in the airline’s lost and found department and the airline should make every reasonable effort to reunite passengers with their belongings.

I pointed this out in a letter and United graciously responded with a sincere apology and a $50 AMEX Gift Cheque. In the end, United Airline’s customer service department did the best it could to remedy a situation that I honestly believe was avoidable.

Organizations that truly see customers as partners ask questions like:

• “How does the premise of a customer-supplier partnership apply to our business?”
• “What allowances do we ask—or even expect—our customers to make for our lapses in product or service quality?”
• “In what ways can we reciprocate with our customers to demonstrate that we recognize that partnerships require the sincere efforts of both parties?”

By addressing questions like these in advance, organizations demonstrate that rather than viewing customer encounters as fleeting transactions, they see them as opportunities to foster long-term partnerships where each party takes responsibility for the success of the relationship.

In what ways have organizations treated you like a partner?