Book Review by Andy Sheehy
Raving Fans (Author: Ken Blanchard)
A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service is a book on providing excellent service in your business. It follows the career of an “Area Manager” and his fairy godmother Charlie. Charlie has a knack for mentoring business owners and managers to providing service so well that their fans become raving fans.
Charlie introduces the area manager to four companies that he uses as examples of service, and gives him three concepts to guide his decisions.
These concepts are:
1. Decide what you want
2. Discover what the customer wants
3. Deliver the vision plus one percent.
Success requires that we have raving fans and the concepts defined will help you create a company that creates raving fans.
In conveying the concept of “Decide what you want”, Charlie introduces the area manager to two service companies: a department store and a grocery store. The department store has a greeter at the door that pins a flower to your shirt, the book he wanted to purchase was out and the attendant went to another store to purchase it for him and was back within 15 minutes. The owner (Leo) has his office at the center of the store so that he can see down all aisles and is approachable by all the customers. The grocery store is owned by Sally and it has valet parking. A grocery consultant that will enter your list into a computer and organize it by the rows, give nutritional value and sales.
All of these enhancements that these companies implemented have been done by their managers/owners first “creating a vision of perfection centered on the customer”. This detailed vision encompasses every detail of the experience that you want the customer to have. It is the model that you can strive for, that will show you the changes needed in your organization, but this model is not static and must be adjusted as we combine it with the other concepts.
For illustrating the concept of “Discover what the customer wants”, Charlie introduces the area manager to one more company. A manufacturing company managed by Bill. “The key is to discover the customers vision for your company and then alter your vision if need be.” Your vision provides the framework for you to understand the customer’s vision, to fill in the gaps in the customer’s vision and to help you to know when to ignore the customer’s vision. It is challenging to get this information from customers for three reasons:
1. Customers say one thing and mean another
2. Customers are disappointed in your service but they do not want to go to the effort of telling you so they just say “fine”.
3. Customers are silent. To get this information you need to always be listening
Lastly, in conveying the concept of “Deliver the vision plus one percent”; Charlie introduces the area manager to two more companies. A Taxi Cab driver has one cab and a gas/service station. The gas station is a Full-Service station where the attendants pump gas, wash windows, check fluids and their gas price is the same as Self-Serve.
The key to delivering service is to do it consistently, every time! Consistency creates credibility in the eyes of the customer. As we implement changes do them in small increments. For example, he started by cleaning the windshield first even though his vision was to have all windows cleaned. It is better to find a smaller service that you can implement 100% of the time than to strive for too much and under-deliver. Meet the customer’s expectations first and then exceed their expectations.
*Meet first, Exceed second*
The only way to be consistent is to have systems and training in place. Systems are the core to a successful, consistent delivery. The purpose of systems is to ensure consistency. The rule of one percent reminds us that all we have to do is improve in one percent increments. This guides us to make small manageable changes that we can deliver consistently.
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