The Come Back Culture

10 Business Practices That Create Lifelong Customers

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781493436163
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

Everything equal, customers choose whether they will return based on the feeling they get when interacting with your brand. Research reveals that a high number of customers will go through the trouble of switching brands due to a bad customer experience. Great businesses know how to make a customer feel seen, understood, and valued. Those satisfied customers trust you more and come back--and they tell their friends. Backed by plenty of on-the-ground research and illustrated with real-life examples, The Come Back Culture shows you how to create an experience that keeps people coming back for more. It shows you how to - build a hospitable team
- know your guest
- create moments that impress
- recover quickly when things go wrong
- and more Whether you offer a service or a product online or at a physical location, you can use the principles in this book to turn your customers into raving fans of your business who not only spend their money but continue to spread awareness of your brand.

Nine
Choose Values over Policies

JASON

Daniel works live events at his organization, serving in the parking lots. He is intentionally placed in the parking lot where parents park. If you knew Daniel, you’d know why.

Each time you approach the parking lot, you’ll find Daniel wearing a lime-green vest and waving two light sabers (aka orange light wands) while safely parking cars and helping people walk into the building. The thing that sets Daniel apart isn’t necessarily his excellence at performing the task—though he is excellent. What sets him apart is his fun dance moves. He gets into it each time he works and has so much fun dancing that guests can’t help but smile as they find their parking space.

Daniel takes potentially aggravated parents—dealing with the stress of parking lots and preschoolers complaining in the minivan—and creates a great experience for them. His decision to let his personality shine creates a positive vacation from stress for everyone. In addition, it sends a small message that he loves what he does.

This is a visible embodiment of one of the values of his organization: the value of having fun.

Values, principles, priorities—whatever you want to call them—are far more important than policies, because they evoke responses from team members that you can’t manufacture. For instance, you could try to tell your parking lot attendants to dance. But for many, it would seem mechanical or uncomfortable. In Daniel’s situation, the “having fun” value allowed him to highlight his unique personality to create a one-of-a-kind experience. For another volunteer, this value might mean juggling or telling quick jokes to people when appropriate. For still another, it might just mean smiling because they truly enjoy their role.

Values are our filters that help us make decisions as an organization. They’re ideas, behaviors, and truths we embrace that determine what we do or don’t do. Values tell our team members what matters most. When we establish a set of values for our team, we are declaring the important elements of what we believe so we can do what matters. This is why we do what we do.

The power in values-driven business is that it makes decisions easy for staff members. When a situation or question arises, the team member doesn’t have to scroll through a list of policies in their mind or refer to a manual. They can simply reflect back on their organization’s values and see whether or not an action aligns with them. We value having fun in this organization, so how should I respond to this situation in a way that reinforces that value yet doesn’t make the guest feel uncomfortable?

The truth is, it’s impossible to have policies in place that cover every situation. Unexpected things always happen. Hospitality happens in the way you deal with the unexpected.

Think of it like this: Whenever new technology arises, governments have to determine whether they should create new laws to regulate the use of it. Consider cell phones in cars. A few years ago, many cities made laws to keep people from talking on their phones while driving. Recently many cities added texting to the list of banned activities. But what about when new technology arises that potentially distracts a driver? What about using the GPS on their phone? What about new head-up-display technologies? Virtual reality?

When you are a policy-driven organization, you have to make new rules each time a situation arises. In many cases, companies make rules before anything even happens, just in case. But in a values-driven organization, the values don’t change. The applications change.

In the situation of cell phones in cars, you could keep making policies:

• Don’t reroute your GPS while the car is in motion.
• No using virtual reality headsets while driving, unless the field of vision is at least 120 degrees.
• No applying makeup while the car is in motion.

The list of laws would become ridiculous, because situations keep changing.

Or you could simply say, “As a nation, we value distraction-free driving. Don’t drive distracted.” That covers texting, phone calls, reading your mail, applying makeup . . . the gamut. For each person, the value manifests itself in different actions and different ways. But one simple value makes it easy to decide. Will I be distracted by performing this activity? Then I won’t do it. The value covers thousands of different potential situations, and it takes the guesswork out of them.

Obviously, values-driven systems don’t necessarily work well for governments. But in an organization that is carefully crafting training and culture, values can help steer team members without the need for a fifty-page manual filled with policies for every potential situation.

Why should your organization be run by values instead of policies?

• Values last. They aren’t created at the whim of trends.
• Values keep you from having lists of constrictive rules. They provide freedom for individuality.
• Values help make things consistent across the organization.

Here are the questions for your business: Do you have a list of values? Does your team know the values? Do they know what to do with them? Values should be basic, but they are remarkable when integrated into the behaviors of the organization.

You can coach new team members from the values. You can let people go if they don’t adhere to the values. You can know what you do as an organization, and you can know what you don’t do as an organization.

Many organizations have a list of values, but if those values don’t permeate everything the organizations do, they’re simply nice statements. For instance, if you’re pleased with something someone does that contradicts one of your organization’s values, your values aren’t real values. Or if someone gets in trouble for doing something that aligns with one of your business’s values, again, your values aren’t real values.

Think of a waitress at a restaurant. She’s laughing with her customers, engaging them in conversation, and having a great time. If the organization values having fun but a manager gets upset at her for doing that, it shows that it’s not truly a value of the organization. The manager might even be upset that the waitress isn’t seeing other tables quickly enough, but if he doesn’t acknowledge that she’s accomplishing one of the values of the organization before encouraging her to speed up her service, it creates a dissonance between what the company says and what it celebrates.

This type of thing creates an unstable culture for an organization. People don’t really know what will make the leader or team members happy because whims seem to dictate proper behavior instead of values upon which everyone can agree.

It’s important to have a short list of values—three or four—that can bring everyone onto the same page when it comes to serving guests. They should be simple enough that people can remember them and actually do something about them.

Identifying the Values

JASON

I once worked at a church where attendance usually exceeded seven thousand people each Sunday, and we created a great set of values for the guest services team. They had four values: (1) show care, (2) have fun, (3) remain flexible, and (4) deliver wow.

The guest services team members especially excelled at value #3 (remain flexible). Depending on the weekend schedule and the season of attendance, the guest flow varied. Therefore, they paid attention to where the guest needed them—not necessarily where “my spot” was.

There was a lady who volunteered there who understood this need. She started out in one spot, moved to another, and then switched again to a different position, all within 150 feet of where she originally started. She did all of this in one hour. Why? She paid attention to where people were going and identified the optimal place for her to stand to help the guest feel the benefit. She was not focused on always being in the same spot each week. Her approach was, “I’ll go where I’m needed, and while there, I will be flexible to respond to the flow and needs of people.”

If a volunteer can do this, imagine how much more a paid team member could do!

That church allowed the four values to direct everything their guest services team did. But your business’s values might look a little different. Your value statements need to reflect what matters to your organization, to your leadership, and to the customers you’re trying to reach.

Different organizations use different methods to arrive at their list of values: online assessments, decks of cards that list different values, exploring what matters to the company, uncovering what matters to the leader . . . There are many different ways to discover your values, but one of the easiest ways is simply to work through some questions. For instance, if you’re the leader, start by creating a personal list of values for your family or life. You might work through questions like these:

• What makes me come alive?
• What makes me feel bad?
• What makes me happy?
• What makes me mad or sad?
• Where have I failed?
• What was it about that failure that made me still come alive and move forward?
• Where have I seen the greatest amount of movement or results?
• When people compliment me or critique me, what do I hear?
• What books do I read the most?
• What things keep me up at night?
• What things are natural for me?
• What are things I’ve learned from family members?

Then you simply combine those things into a list of words or phrases that reflect your personal values. Next, process those values with what your organization values.

• What matters to the company already?
• What does the team already do well?
• What do we already do for the guest?
• What things do we intentionally not do for the guest?
• What might the guest know they want?
• What might the guest want but not know they want?
• What can we do to make the guest feel ...

Table of contents

• 1Endorsements
• 5Half Title Page
• 7Title Page
• 8Copyright Page
• 9Dedication
• 11Contents
• 13Foreword
• 17Acknowledgments
• 19Introduction
• 23One Focus on Feeling as Much as Function
• 41Two Create a Culture, Not a Job Title
• 55Three Know the Guest
• 71Four Be Fully Present
• 87Five Think Scene by Scene
• 103Six Recover Quickly
• 121Seven Observe Details, Because Everything Communicates
• 137Eight Reject “Just Okay”
• 153Nine Choose Values over Policies
• 171Ten Build a Hospitable Team
• 189Appendix Sample Psychographic Sheet
• 193Notes
• 195About the Authors
• 197Back Ads
• 204Back Cover