Take Their Breath Away

How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers

Chip R. Bell, John R. Patterson

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470485323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

Praise for Take Their Breath Away

"Are you bored? We're so spoiled that when something is merely good enough, we just walk away. Chip and John explain that the surefire method for growth and customer loyalty is simple: don't be boring."
— Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and Tribes

" Take Their Breath Away shows how legendary customer service delivery can win and keep devoted customers for life. I LUV this fantastic book."
— Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus, Southwest Airlines Company

"No one knows more about creating profit through service than Chip and John. If you want to know the best way to do it, read Take Their Breath Away. The examples in this book will certainly start your creative juices flowing and help your organization take your customers' breath away.
— Howard Beharformer, former president, Starbucks Coffee International.

PART ONE

Twelve Take-Their-Breath-Away Strategies

What is it that makes people pay four bucks for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, hundreds of dollars to watch the Green Bay Packers play in subzero weather, or $20,000 to be placed on a waiting list for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle? The answer lies way beyond customer loyalty. These brands generate a devotion in their customers. How? By giving them an experience that isn’t limited to coffee, football, or motorcycles. To be sure, your unit or organization may not be selling a fragrant cup of steaming java, the legend of Vince Lombardi, or the freedom of the open road. But it is certainly possible to develop unique, customer-endearing practices that create a powerful experience and lead to a devoted customer base.

Customers who are devoted to your unit or organization act substantially different than the customers who are simply loyal. Devoted customers not only forgive you when you err, they help you correct what caused the mistake. They don’t just recommend you; they assertively insist their friends do business with you. They vehemently defend you when others are critical. Even if the reason for the criticism is accurate, they quickly dismiss it as an aberration or an exception.

Figure I.1 The Link

But there is even more to devotion. Some devoted customers of Harley-Davidson tattoo the company logo on their bodies. Devoted guests of Ritz-Carlton Hotels wear their logo-ed clothes and have Ritz-Carlton cobalt blue accessories in their home. Those connections become a part of the customer’s identity and life expression.

The title of this book Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers provides the structure for achieving the all-important goal of customer devotion (Figure I.1). In Part One, we will explore 12 strategies that help you deliver the kind of imaginative service that causes customers to be moved, motivated, and deputized as advocates. In each case, the idea is to create such an experience that it allures or draws the customer back time and time again.

Focusing on the delivery of imaginative service leads customers to having an experience that takes their breath away. The more frequently they get this effect, the more likely they will become devoted customers. And the unit or organization that took their breath away now reaps the rewards of customers who are more than simply loyal.

A HALF-DOZEN IMAGINATIVE SERVICE HORS d’OEUVRES

A preview of coming attractions can help whet your appetite for imaginative service. They are carved out of a menu of a dozen distinct strategies.

1. A family took a vacation on a Disney Cruise Line trip that began with a few days at Walt Disney World theme park. The morning they were to shift from their hotel to the cruise ship, they were instructed to leave all their luggage in their hotel room for pick-up and delivery. Imagine their delight when they arrived on board ship to discover that their luggage was already in their room with the same room number as the hotel—and the same hotel key opened the door!

2. A patient moved out of state and received a bill from Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that exceeded the amount it should have been. When the woman called the billing department, they confirmed they had overcharged her. Remembering the woman complaining about having to call long distance to correct their mistake, the billing department included a complimentary phone card along with her refund check.

3. Several hospitals around the country are celebrating the arrival of newborns with a quiet lullaby. First Tune, a program developed by Mark Maxwell, a classical guitarist from Athens, Georgia, allows parents in the labor and delivery unit of a hospital to press a doorbell-like button that plays a 20-second lullaby over the hospital’s public address system. The tune boosts the morale of patients, staff, and visitors as they share in the good news. Debra McKell, of Brandon Regional Medical Center in Brandon, Florida, says, “We are expecting to hear more than 3,000 lullabies at Brandon Regional Medical Center this year.”

4. Clinique.com’s tools help customers figure out their look and direct them to colors and product lines suited to their features. Once a Clinique.com customer fills out her color profile, it’s permanently stored at the site. Whenever she clicks on a product category, the page automatically suggests shades and product lines that compliment her coloring and skin type.

5. At Grace Presbyterian Village in Dallas, a reinvented environment plays an important role in the treatment of Alzheimer’s patients. Goodwin Dixon, Grace’s CEO and president, took stock of the facility’s physical look and feel: “We keep forcing residents to be in our reality, but they are more comfortable in their own, living in the past.” Grace did a renovation that restyled the facility in a way that emphasized the comforting memories of Grace’s residents. From posters of ’49 Fords to baking classes held in a 1950s-style kitchen to an old-time front porch with rocking chairs to a sound system playing music of the era, everything about Grace now is purposely constructed to evoke memories of an earlier era when residents had a more positive self-image.¹

6. Consider a common service experience: Taking a shuttle bus from the off-airport car rental lot to the terminal. A quintessentially unremarkable event? Not in Atlanta, at least not when Archie Bostick is driving the Hertz bus. After you turn in your car and go outside to catch the bus, the first thing you notice is Archie standing next to the doors with a big, welcoming grin on his face, and he’s having a great time reinvigorating this service transaction. Instead of a tip jar (baited with a handful of bucks to encourage reluctant tippers), Archie paper-clips dollar bills across the front of his shirt. Nothing subtle about that ploy—it’s an attention-getter that announces this is going to be a unique experience. Once on the bus, Archie delivers a stand-up comedy routine instead of issuing the standard warning about the consequences of forgetting to turn in the keys to your rental car. He uses any excuse to break into song. (“The next time you’re in Atlanta, maybe there’ll be rain, and you’ll be ‘Singin’ in the rain. I’m sin-gin’ in the rain. . . .’”) As Archie pulls up to the terminal, he announces, “Now that we’re at your final destination, I may never see you again. I want us all to say together, ‘I love Hertz!’” He invariably convinces a crowd of strangers to holler, “I love Hertz!” before they get off his bus. As customers exit applauding, they realize they have just witnessed a service innovator at work.

Archie Bostick

WALK ON THE INVENTIVE SIDE

The group of sales reps from a large after-market parts distributor gathered in a ballroom for the start of their annual sales rally. Excited to get their brand-new, four-inch-thick parts and price book, they largely ignored the CEO as he highlighted the company’s previous year’s wins and losses.

Then the meeting took an unexpected turn. The CEO introduced the opening keynote speaker, a business consultant who had entertained the audience the year before. But instead of opening with the expected clever joke, he walked into their midst and completely changed their view of their future with three questions.

If all your customers could at any time remotely look into your warehouse, find the solution or part they needed, and get it shipped overnight, what would they need you for?

If all your products were engineered to be “smart” and the part itself could alert the distribution center when it needed to be changed, replenished, or deleted, what would your customers need you for?

If all price shopping was driven by real-time, global comparisons via the Internet, and customers could request customized products and services, which in turn drove your production cycles, what would they need you for?

This is the type of mind-shifting perspective we have planned for you in the pages that follow. Our purpose is to completely challenge the manner in which you conceive of the service you provide. And the timing is crucial. “As globalization gives everyone the same information, resources, technology, and markets,” wrote The World Is Flat best-selling author Tom Friedman, “asociety’s particular ability to put those pieces together in the fastest and most innovative manner increasingly separates winners from losers in the global economy.”² Improvement will only take you so far; innovation is required to differentiate.

The skeptic might object: “I still have customers who expect quality products delivered on time. I still have shareholders who expect certain returns. I still have regulatory agencies that expect financial controls. I still have employees who expect to be paid.” Of course you do! Everyone does! But meeting those challenging demands is simply the price of admission in today’s business game. If that’s all you do, you may survive but you certainly won’t thrive.

Take-their-breath-away service can come from an array of random acts of service. However, sustainable reputations are best harnessed with a deliberately chosen strategy. A strategy is a spotlight or focal point that contains a set of tactics that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. An effective strategy reflects a keen understanding of the target audience for whom it is intended.

Consider the strategy used by a successful luxury hotel. Those that have stood the test of time did not do so by taking a page from the “How to run a good hotel” manual and simply ratchet up the service quality. Luxury has its own set of principles, fundamentally different from economy or moderate strategies. Luxury is a way of serving that consistently honors time-tested dos and don’ts. Understanding the luxury strategy enables its user to see actions, practices, and approaches that fit as well as those that do not.

The same holds true forall 12 take-their-breath-away strategies revealed in Part One: animation, reinvention, decoration, camouflage, concierge, partnership, cult-like, luxury, air, air defense, scout’s honor, and firefighter. Each has its distinct philosophy and tactics and its unique principles and practices—all aimed at creating its characteristic connection with the customer. Yet all have the exact same goal in mind: devoted customers. And as the stories and examples prove, all are within the reach of the unit or organization that truly wants to take its customers’ breath away.

CHAPTER 1

Animation

“My company created my role for one reason: to make you very happy, sir. And, the best part is that they picked me to do it!”

—Charlie, a doorman at Marriott Quorum, Dallas, Texas

We knew we had a treat in the offing when the answer to our “Where’s-the-best-lunch-in-town” question got escalated to “White’s is the best in the state!” We were almost out of earshot when the local on the street corner added, “Ask for Katie.”

The target of the local’s affinity was White’s Restaurant in Salem, Oregon. The restaurant had the look of a 1935 diner. The inside was neat and spotless; the atmosphere warm and upbeat. The hostess on the other side of the “Please wait to be seated” sign gave us a bright Steinway smile as we crossed the threshold.

“We heard Katie was the best in the house,” we announced. “We’d like her table.”

“Well, well, well . . . it’s your lucky day!” the hostess teased. “There’s is normally a two-hour wait to get Katie but we just had a cancellation,” she said with a wink and a grin. “I think I can squeeze you in.” The needle on our fun meter was already racing to the top.

White’s Restaurant¹

“We are so glad to have you!” said our waitress. Her words came straight from the frying pan of a zealous spirit. “I’m Katie, and I’ll check back with you in a minute. You know it’s Thursday. Don’s vegetable soup is already getting rave reviews.” We were beginning to feel like locals.

When we noticed the breakfast menu listed “Don’s Big Mess” as a headliner and the burger choices included a “Whoopee! Burger,” we began to think we’d walked into a comedy club. Our spirits registered another uptick.

People throughout the restaurant were engaged in warm conversation, noisily greeting people they knew as they came through the front door. An hour later, we were back outside with satisfied stomachs and very happy hearts. The meal was awesome, but it was the animated service that told us we were witnessing the spirit of “take their breath away.”

Animation is our moniker for the clear and present energy that reflects an unmistakable joy of serving. The label reminds us of what a great cartoonist does in turning stills into moving pictures—like the late Chuck Jones, who created such famous cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, and Pepe Le Pew. When we interviewed him a few years back, the then-88-year-old genius sat in his studio in Irvine, California, and reflected on his 60-plus years as a world-renowned animator. “The secret to making a character come alive,” he mused, “is not how you draw that particular character. Animation happens when everything in the frame moves with the character.”

The power of an animated service person is how that person helps everything around them move with them. Katie was an animator. But, then, so was everything about the restaurant in which she worked.

THE SPIRIT OF ANIMATION

We all know customers are attracted to people with spirit. And, today’s customers are frustrated with indifferent service; we’re not talking bad service, just plain old boring, comatose service. Too often customers witness service people sleepwalking through the workday. They long to interact with—even relate to—employees who act like there is still a light on inside.

The Bumblebee

Bumblebees are very useful pollinators, spreading the heart of the flower to other flowers, which enables them to reproduce. There is a popular urban myth that aeronautical engineers have claimed it was impossible for bumblebees to fly. This fueled the notion that it is the sheer determination of the bumblebee that enables it to fly anyway.

Think about organizations known for delivering over-the-top service: Apple, Ritz-Carlton, Southwest Airlines, Zappo.com, Chick-fil-A, Trader Joe’s, USAA, JetBlue, Amazon.com, and Lexus, to name a few. What do they have in common? While their products and offerings may make their prospects’ and customers’ heads turn, it is the experience they create that makes their customers’ hearts soar. They have cracked the code on managing the emotional connection with customers.

That connection has become even more critical in the digital age. Today,...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Also by Chip R. Bell
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• PART ONE - Twelve Take-Their-Breath-Away Strategies
• PART TWO - The Take-Their-Breath-Away Execution Plan
• Notes
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index