jeanne bliss- chief customer officer : getting past lip service to passionate action (unplugged)

8/7/2019 Jeanne Bliss- Chief Customer Officer : Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action (Unplugged)

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CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER : GETTING PALIP SERVICE TO PASSIONATE ACTION (Unplug

A conversation between Jeanne Bliss & Moe Ab

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Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Jeanne Bliss with Moe AbdouService to Passionate Action (Unplugged)

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About Jeanne Bliss & Moe AbdouJeanne Bliss

Third of seven passionate Italian kids raised in Chicago, Jeanne Blisslearned first-hand at her family owned shoe store, Buster Brown, abouthumility and grace in business. In the early years of her career, she feltfortunate to be at Lands End, working for founder Gary Comer, whereshe developed her passion for the customer and be a CustomerCrusader. Bliss went on to be Senior Vice President of FranchiseServices for Coldwell Banker Corporation and was Chief Officer at AllstateCorporation.

Moe AbdouMoe Abdou is the creator of 33voices a global conversation about thingsthat matter in business and in life. [email protected]

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I think it doesnt take long when somebody picks up your book and reads itto really know that 1, the personality of the individual who wrote thisbook immediately comes across. Number 2, were inundated with customerservice books, you know, how do you provide the customer experience andso forth. I think what you hit upon is really something thats completelydifferent than the practical theory thats out there. You really have hit achord of here is how it works in action and here is what you can do. Iminterested in just diving in with you and trying to explore some reallyimportant things that Ive uncovered in here that I think will be veryvaluable for everyone else.

Terrific, Id love to do that

Lets take this love letter. In the beginning of the book you say that thecommon denominator amongst the successful and beloved companies is

that they consistently find their way to weave their humanity into the waythey make decisions. I stopped when I read that. I said, you know thatmakes so much sense but yet, its so difficult for people to do especially alot of these businesses out there. Since Ive read your book, Ive just beenmuch more conscious of how the services in the world that were living intoday. Im just curious as to your perspective, why when its so simple andit makes so much sense, why is it so difficult for companies small and largeto implement?

Think about your day. Think about all of our days are not comprised of thinking

and considering the lives of the people were introspecting with. Instead, ourdays are comprised of tasks and actions lists. Those tasks and action listaccidentally cut out the people on the other end of those tasks. Weve becomeso focused on getting the action done that we block ourselves from the overallimpact or effect of the action its supposed to have. Even in small business.

I love the small entrepreneurs and even the medium sized companies that areconstantly in contact with their customer because its a constant reminder thatthere is a human being, a person at the other end of these decisions. Itbecomes more difficult inside of large corporations because a lot of times the

people in the middle of the company who are making the engine and thewheels of the engine turn are so far from the people at the end of those wheelsthat they lose sight of why they are doing the work theyre doing.

Lets assume were at the top of the pyramid now and were dealing withthe executives of a company whether its a small company or whether itsa larger company. This is really more of a common sense decision from thestandpoint. When I ran my organization, it wasnt significant by any means

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but I had about 550 financial advisors. One of the first things that I felt isthat as a leader of an organization, the lives of these 550 people andeverybody that they touch is really critical for me. So how I treat themcertainly is going to have an impact on how they treat their people. Sofrom the top of the pyramid, do you see that thats still not a commondenominator?

I dont think it is a common denominator. Youve got two ways of thinkingabout how you can grow your business, you can cost cut and try to drive profitinto a business that will earn you fast top line growth or you can makedecisions that are right for your customers and employees that you know longterm will earn you a sustainable pack of profitability and growth. Its adifferent kind of decision. It takes a more specific deliberate and reallyconscious choice to say, Im going to grow my business by understanding at theend of the day, Im here to serve customers.

And prior to that, at the end of the day, I need to hire people, honor them, andenable them to serve those customers versus how can we do it cheaper, faster,better, and not think about the people who need to deliver it and thecustomers youre delivering it to. So thats why I connected it back to thehumanity because its about being sure and constantly being passionate aboutthe fact there is people at the end of the each of those processes that we needto help and support.

If no one gets anything other than that one sentence out of the book I think

its paid for itself right then and there. I want to dive into the formulahere in a second. I want to give you two specific examples since I read yourbook that have come up in my life that really has continued to really getme to think how critical a topic youre addressing.

About a month and half ago, my transmission went out on one of myMercedes. It only has 60,000 miles on it. Im going to just cut to the chase;I had just paid a lot of money to get it serviced prior to the warrantyrunning out. After every service, Im dealing with this dealer for the last 5years since I moved to Southern California, the first thing they want me to

do is; somebody is going to call you, please give us 5 stars because itsreally important. I feel, you know what, Im going to do that and as a wayto these service managers dont make a lot of money and if I can helpthem, Ill help them and I always do. When it came time to serve me, one,they wouldnt cover it. Number two, they sent me over to Mercedes ofNorth America. It took me three weeks to have two conversations with

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somebody there. Their number one objective is to be rated number one byJD Powers.

Its Pavlovian. What we have done to people has driven bad behavior.

And thats Mercedes Benz.

Thats so sad because the brand erosion thats occurred because were all with all of these surveys and all of these things that have been created to tryto so-call improve the service experience of customers, what it has doneinstead is reinforce and drive bad behavior. We create these inadvertent scorespeople are going against and then we ask our customers whether weve earnedit or not to give us these scores because its tied to whether our kid gets braceson their teeth or we go on vacation or put in a new roof on our house.

Absolutely. Here is a specific example. Let me give you the second one andthen well kind of get to the tangibles of the book. The second one is atAT&T a week ago. Im on a waiting list. I guess Im scheduled to get myiPhone, the new one, on the 7th or 8th of July. In the meantime, my wifesbattery on her Blackberry, I guess died so her phone died. So I went intoAT&T the other day and I said, Im on the waiting list. Can I get abattery? Ive been with these guys for literally over 20 years. Imscheduled to get my phone on the 7th.

Do you guys have a battery just so my wife can use her phone until we get

our iPhones? They huddle up and they say, No, we dont sell batteries. Isaid, Okay. So I left to go find another place and they ran back at me tomy car and they said, Come back in. We think we found one and well sellit to you. Well sell it to you for $49. I said, Forty-nine dollars for abattery for three days? Twenty years, Ive been with these guys and Isaid its easier for me to just buy her a new phone and ditch the phonewhen her new one comes.

And ditch you?

Is that remarkable?

It is so silly because companies are so short sighted. Thats what this whole badprofit is about. Instead of thinking about you are a 20-year customer, theinvestment youve made in their company and the investment that you canmake to ensure that you continue to do work with them and tell other peopleabout your experience. They could have turned you into an advocate by

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bending over backward. And instead, youve now got a negative story youretelling to hundreds of people right now.

The cool thing about it is we can now help everyone who is going to belistening to this podcast and reading the text of this on how not to do whatthese two examples have done.

I dont know what youre thinking process was when you came up withthese decisions but they are fabulous. That deciding to believe, decidingwith clarity of purpose, deciding to be real, deciding to be there anddeciding to say sorry are so simple that ever since I read your book, I havethem on a little index card that just gives a trigger for me. I know you gota lot of cool things coming out but I felt what we could do is tackle eachone of those and talk about, you know, there is a lot of things to rememberin a book and a lot of stories.

What is maybe one thing that we want people listening to this to notforget when it comes to this particular decision? And then I want to sharewith you the companies that have stood out to me and maybe you can kindof dive into it a little bit of what you learned about these companies witheach one of these decisions.

I would be happy to do that.

I believe in you, means I trust you. Yet, trust is very, very difficult these

days whether its with whats happened in our country and whatshappened in the world economy but it seems that thats a very difficultword. What you say in there with those three words, we honor therecipient. In your experience, what makes people, companies believableand others not?

This starts with being deliberate about hiring people who share your values.And then first of all knowing what your values are. Many companies are inbusiness without being clear. So thats why clarity connects. I always say thisisnt blind belief. This is around hiring the right people then training them and

developing them so that they can bring the best version of themselves to workand then getting out of the way and believing that they will do whats right.

So the beloved companies believe their employees and they also believe theircustomers by getting rid of all of these as much as possible; extra rules,regulations, and policies and procedures. They create this wedge betweenourselves and their customers where we got our shoulders hunched up beforewe call into our financial advisor or we call our insurance company or we do

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something as simple as returning a blouse to a store because we know thatthere is a gotcha somewhere on the other end of the line of some rule or policythat we didnt know about.

There are fabulous examples in your books, fabulous examples foranybody to learn from. The one that jumped out to me was Wegmans FoodMarket and their decision to say that no customer will leave here unhappy.

Thats true.

Do you have some triggers there that you can share with us?

You mean examples of why they got to that?

Yes.

Its interesting that you picked at one because that goes directly to what I justmentioned which is Wegmans is so deliberate about who they will and will notselect to go into their stores. So because they are a food store, they will hirefirst, people who are passionate about food and then they give them three tofour X the amount of training that other grocery store folks might have.

So for example, you could walk into Wegmans and go up to a guy stockinggarbanzo beans and ask him if he knew how to poach a fish. The guy comesdown off his ladder and will tell you how to poach a fish. Or, if you walk into

Wegmans and ask someone a question, there is not that back and forth whichyou just encountered at the AT&T store. The guy on the floor lets say thereis a true story in the book about a woman who bought a turkey too big for heroven, nobody asks permissions, he just says, Hey, bring the turkey in. Wellcook it for you in the back here for you.

Its fabulous.

So they get rid of the rule book and just say, No customer can go awayunhappy. Weve hired you for who you are. Weve trained you now go dowhats right.

Is the layer of bureaucracy as the companies get larger a problem that Imean, I cant imagine a business who wouldnt want a very simple rule likethat; No customer will be unhappy. Im just wondering is it perhaps thelayer of bureaucracy that starts to emerge as the company increases insize that makes these things so difficult?

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Well, you know, Wegmans is a 67 billion dollar grocery store chain now Ibelieve. Theyre the fourth and fifth largest grocery store chain and retailer,one of the largest retailers in the world. Theyre just huge. These aredeliberate decisions. The whole concept behind this book is you cantaccidentally become a beloved company. You have to be deliberate. Whatsinteresting is a lot of companies that started out being beloved have to look atthat as an inheritance that needs to be nurtured, developed and defended withtheir life as they grow because as you grow, you bring in people from lots ofdifferent companies that havent had those same principles in purity in termsof decision making.

So these companies lose their mojo as they grow because they forget what gotthem there in the first place and they stop defending those things. They stoppounding their fists on the table. And it gets lost in the silos, in thespreadsheets, in the chasing after the survey scores etcetera. Thats why you

know, big companies that are beloved even though they are large, they retainthat passion but they have to be operational to do it. Thats why this book isnot Kumbaya, pie in the sky. Its look, you know, believing is not blind belief.Its creating operational processes for hiring the right people. Its creatingdeliberate training and development. Its being specific about who you will andwill not hire. But then after that it is believing.

The happiness and the culture that develops within a company becomesvery obvious when you walk in or even if youre an observer.

Its true because wouldnt you rather be in a company where youre trusted?Because once youre trusted, here is what happens, that hunch of yourshoulders goes down. You look forward to going to work everyday because youknow youre part of something greater than yourself. You know, one of thegreat joys of my professional career was being at Lands End. I got there in1983 and it was basically okay, lets sit on the floor and figure this thing out.We were believed to make the right decision based in our corner of the worldall guided by the fact that everything we sold and every experience wasguaranteed and so we all have to had to live up to that promise to customersand to ourselves.

I observed that first hand with several companies. But more importantly,last year, I had the opportunity or I guess now its almost two years ago,to attend President Obamas inauguration. It was really a fabulousexperience. A friend of mine, during one of the sessions, he said, I wantyou to lead a group of people who are just very special. I think it wasCollin Powell speaking. I said, Well do it after the speech. It turned out

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to be Tony and his group at Zappos. It takes literally like a minute to seehow this young group of people who is so passionate about life and aboutbeing together and so happy and smiling. I had no idea who Tony was and Ihad no idea who they were. When we met and he started to see throughoutthe whole event, this is a special group of people. Its not a faade whatthey do in the company. This is how they live.

Well yeah, you know, I mean, youre in a place where I call it congruence ofheart and habit. We learn things about how we want to treat each other, howwe should be treated when were young. Then we take all that, the goldenrule, we strap it to our back and we try to take into business. The companiesthat encourage, enable, and defend our ability to be congruent between theheart, what we learned when were kids and the habit, the operationaldecisions we make in business are the companies where there is energy, orinnovation is the highest, and where employees want to stick around. And then

it becomes magnetic force for customers then because they feel that and theywant to be in interaction with those people again. Its self-fulfilling in terms ofwhat I used the word prosperity. Its prosperity financially, yes, but alsoprosperity of the human spirit. Who doesnt want to be there?

When I start to think of entrepreneurs and small businesses in particular,this does not seem to be a difficult task. To say that you believe in acustomer and you believe in the people you work with because there arenot a lot of them.

And if you want to get financial about it there is another example in the bookwhich people have really gravitated towards called Zanes Cycles. Zanes is asmall business. They sell actually interestingly about 15 million dollars of bikesand parts from a single store. But what really guides their decision making isthat they know the lifetime value of their customer.

So if AT&T for example, knew how much you would bring or have brought tothem in your lifetime, they might have made that decision differently. AtZanes theyre very deliberate about knowing that. So when you go into Zanesfor the first time to take a test ride of a bike. Lets say even a 6-thousand

dollar bike. They just say have a nice ride. They dont ask you for your keys orID or anything else because they dont want to jeopardize that long termpotentially fruitful and prosperous financial relationship by questioning yourintegrity at your first interaction with them.

Funny that you bring them up because I selected them for the seconddecision about purpose and the importance of understanding first andforemost who youre not going to be and then understanding who youre

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going to be and that was my choice was Zanes. Can you talk a little bitabout their sense of purpose and what guides their decision to say, Heyyou know what, were not going to ask you for your keys. Havingobserved that that must have been very refreshing for you.

It really is. Their margins are higher. Their profitability is higher. They havebeen deliberate about being the place in a bike lovers life where you willalways be an island in a storm. From the time you buy the bike if there is anypart less than a dollar or whatever that breaks, they have a deal no matterwhat. Anybody comes in, theyll always give that away; simple little things.They guarantee the rest of the experience because they dont want a nickeland dime you.

Zanes and like other companies, they recognize that those inflection pointswhere you need them and they have a choice to either deliver or not. Based on

how they respond to your needs at that time has everything to do with whetheryoure going to come back and the story youre going to tell people. We knowmore than ever that the story customers tell each other is more important thanyour own marketing messages.

No question about it.

The customers are talking to each other more than reading and paying heed tomarketing materials.

I think there is another example too here with clarity and purpose thatjumped out at me was Lush Cosmetics about hiring a hundred products ayear. I think thats a fabulous strategy for anyone to consider especiallynowadays.

Lush is a store, it was a UK based store. They make all natural soaps and otherthings. You walk in there and the cacophony of smells is just remarkable.Driven and grown by a very passionate guy Mark Constantine. Previously tostarting to Lush in very successful other bath and body works kind oforganization that started to lose the principles from his point of view. So he

began Lush.

The draw of Lush is always going in to see whats new and how fresh theingredients are. They are deliberate. Again, these are purposeful deliberatedecisions. They hold something I love the name of this called the MafiaMeeting every year, and they kill because they kill a plan where its nottheirs, its not mine they kill a hundred products a year. Even some thatcustomers defend with their life that they love because they always want to

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make sure that their customers will come back for the new. Thats their way ofconstantly refreshing and making sure that theyre not resting on their laurels.

I love that. Thats a fabulous idea. I had a little mastermind group meetingabout a week and a half ago and I brought this very point up when Ibrought your book up to this group of entrepreneurs, I had mixed signals.Some people kind of set my passion and thought this was really, reallycool. Others say, what if we had products that people really love as youjust mentioned. Are we chasing away customers when we get rid of thoseproducts? How would you respond to that?

I would say this isnt just about products. So they took it very literally. Its alsoabout services. Its also about your experience. Its also about how you deliver.For example, if you are a software company, how do you do installation? This isaround letting legacy practices and processes guide you because youve always

done it that way. Its also about making sure you know what business youre in.

For example, when I tell the story of this book in speeches I talk about drinkingCup Company. So lets say youre in the business of making drinking cups forchildren. A traditional drinking cup company, an everyday company in myparlance, would first of all get their product development guys together andsay, Okay, we need to create three prototypes of cups. Then they bringwomen together, usually moms and say, Tell us which cup you would pick?Pick a cup. Maybe the mom needs a cup with a little indent on the side or astraw. The everyday company is selling cups. The beloved company starts with

the mom is supporting parenthood.

So they start with the mom and talk to the mom about the day she has howmeal time should be and use how customers live their lives to inform theprocesses, the policies and the procedures that are developed. So if youreselling cups, your operations processes cost cutting. If youre supportingparenthood, youre going to do things differently and approach thingsdifferently and invest in different ways to earn the right to that long termloyalty because its not just the mom then you become a grandmother, thenyou become an aunt. Its all of that they know they need to earn the right to.

So that clarity grows the business.

Well doesnt that also move to your next point about being real? I mean, tome being real is being you and this should be one of the most fundamentaldecisions as human beings we make. Yet, again, when I look at theexamples, you know now, Im very fond obviously of what Tony is doing atZappos, its just their openness and the ability to say, you know what, we

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all have Twitter accounts, were going to share our lives with you. It saysa lot.

Well it does. Here is the thing; everybody is jumping on the bandwagon ofTwitter, Facebook, you know, any of these media accounts. If you haventpreceded that with an honest relationship, it will feel like a campaign. Thereason why Zappos exploded the way they did was because they already earnedthe right to honest genuine relationship. So this was an extension of it. Youknow, gosh, yeah, we already feel like we know the phone reps because theyencourage us to call in. They give those phone reps, you know, it starts withbelieve. They give them enough training. They hire people who are passionate.They dont put talk time so when you call them in, Zappos actually looks at thecalls as an investment in the future of the relationship not a cost to manage. Soyeah, I know Mary, Sue and Bonnie and Joan and all those people and it wouldbe fun to follow them because theyre real people.

Is there a common denominator that you see in the companies that you feelare more real than the others specifically during your research for this?

I think there is humility around the leaders in the organization. They take thebusiness seriously but they dont take themselves seriously. You look atSouthwest, Zappos, Trader Joes, The Container Store, the biggest awardpeople love at The Container Store is being Gumby. They are very specific anddeliberate about doing whats right for their customers but there is no pompand circumstance. They dont see themselves as big muckety-mucks, too big

for their bridges. I would say thats the big common denominator is the leadersnever loss site of who they were as a person even as they grew or they guidepeople toward that path.

You give a fabulous example when you talk about Rack space and the techsupport individual. I think I believe his name was Simon. Who on a datewith his intended or future wife, his fianc, he received a call from acustomer who was panicking because of server issues and you talk aboutthat whole process that in four hours, he did what ordinarily takes 24hours in the middle of the date with his fianc. I mean, thats a fabulous

example. You rarely ever hear about anything like that.

Well and that was again, a very deliberate and expensive potentially set ofdecisions that Rack space made actually around the decision of being therewhich is they align their teams of people to the client not down the operationalsilo or area of expertise. So when Simon got that call, there was none of that,Oh, Im busy. I cant help you that normally exists sometimes inside ofbusinesses, the little competition. He knew he could call in an IT guy. He knew

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he could call in a backup support person, a systems person, whatever heneeded to meld together with him to serve this client because they were allrewarded, recognized and their prosperity was directly linked to this clientprosperity. So if their client was done and he wasnt growing and prospering,they had a role in that.

Where does the decision start for a company? Again, I want to focus moreon the entrepreneurial companies to be there. Does it become part of thevalue system? Is it inherent to say that especially as an entrepreneurialcompany or an emerging company, this is a huge element especially in theenvironment we live in today?

I think that growing companies have this wonderful opportunity to think aboutthe different points of contact they have with their customers. We call themtouch points. So if for example, your dry cleaner lets say, lets do something

very simple. We know that there are several points of contact that you havewith your customer and you can be deliberate about orchestrating anexperienced and an emotional connectivity at each of those touch points.

So lets say, the first time someone comes into your dry cleaner, we knowthats a wonderful opportunity to start the relationship off right and so theremaybe certain things that you could do to punctuate that and have your firsttime customer feel great. But if you dont identify the opportunity of the firsttime customer, its just going to be the vanilla transactional experience. Thenwhen you pick up your dry cleaning, what if something is late? What if

something is damaged?

Its around really being deliberate and thinking about those opportunities andthen creating processes and operations inside your business to deliver on those.If you dont think about it that way, our interactions with our customers arejust collapsed down to our action item and task list. That may not be deliveringan experience, its just doing what we think needs to be done to run a good drycleaners or to open the door, or to close the door or the get the clothes in apile.

Thats so commonplace. I think when you mentioned that, it really takesme back to when you are a first time customer at least in a reliablebusiness youre treated terrific. As you become more of a loyal customer,they kind of lose sight of how important it is to still almost continue to actlike youre a first time customer. Its like when were first on a date andwhen you get married there is a certain level of passion and then 50 yearsinto a lot of marriages, that doesnt exist. Its like, You know I love you, Idont need to say it anymore.

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I agree a hundred percent.

Its very interesting. You mentioned Thread-less and Zip-car. Zip-car inparticular for me is fabulous. But Ive watched the evolution of Thread-less and Ive watched their passion, which is really, theyre completelyredefining an industry. Everybody can be a fashion designer.

Yes, I agree.

Do you see that type of customer participation accessible to mostbusinesses out there that you deal with?

No, I mean, I think this whole idea around involving and engaging yourcustomers, whats interesting is it kind of connects all the way back to belief.If you believe and honor your customers that they know their mind enough that

you can participate them and give them a seat at your table at designingwhats important to them then of course your customers are going to beinvested in that and buy more of your products and services.

Again, it goes back to, are you an everyday company selling cups or are you abeloved company supporting parenthood or creating peace of mind if you arean insurance company or delivering on the American dream if youre a homebuilder or, creating customer escape if youre a spa. Whats your higherpurpose and then bring your customers in to help you deliver on that. Youknow, its not rocket science but its hard to be deliberate about implementing

it.

It is not rocket science but I also start to think when you think about thewhole customer experience piece and getting your customers involved.How much interaction do you think becomes too much for a small businessor an entrepreneur? Do you get to a point to where youre bombarding yourcustomers and asking for too much advice?

I think you got to use your good judgement. I think you got to use your goodjudgment. You dont want to ask for too much advice and I dont think itsadvice as much as, Gosh, we know you love the company. Weve done thingsthat are really wonderful. For example, well bring customers in for a cocktailparty and well layout the stages of the customer experience. Well say,Heres what weve been thinking about. Here is kind of how you movethrough the relationship with us. Is this right? Theyll be like, Yeah, but itsmore like this and that.

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So its this conversation. I much rather have it be conversations. Im not a bigfan of always doing the mirror behind the scenes, old fashioned focus groupthing. I want to talk to you face to face and talk to you and have aconversation because I want to see the emotion in our eyes. I want to feel thepain behind your words because that emotion is what drives innovation. So youknow, you just pick different people. You dont have to turn into this bigproduction. And dont forget to reward your best customers for example. Havea party in honor of you best customers. People love that.

Give me an example of that. Like identify your top, you know, 5% of yourcustomers and just unsolicited party?

Or have them come in to help you figure out how to continue to improve. Asmuch as having a party, they also want to have a seat at the table helping youdevelop new products and services because they are the ones who are

passionate about you.

The other thing that companies dont do enough of and we get so muchattraction from this. I can tell you, more than looking at a million customersatisfaction or net promoter surveys or whatever which are very helpful, callcustomers who left you or have stopped doing business with you. You need tohave the voice of that person in your ear to jog you out of what you mightthink youre doing or delivering to help you take it to the next level or reallyfix something that you may not know was driving people out the door and itmaybe something little. Like you should be open until 2 oclock on Saturday

instead of 12 oclock, you know, who knows.

But thats also I think a fabulous idea that will lend an element ofappreciation to the loyalty that whether its a one time customer orrepeated customer, certainly, its sending the right message.

And then if youre nervy enough, post some kind of thing on the front of yourbuilding or send it to your customers saying, Hey, weve been callingcustomers who left us and here are the things that bother them the most andwere working on these. Here is what weve done to improve this and improve

this and let us know. Now youve got a real dialog going. That says, Wow,this company cares. A, theyre being transparent enough to tell us, to show ustheir worth, and B, theyre working on it and C, theyre letting us know. Andtheyre asking me to tell us how its going. Thats fundamentally different thancall me up and give me five stars.

Yeah, slightly different. First of all, I love your passion. It seems like theexecutives at BP forgot to read your last chapter. Do you want to talk a

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little of that? Why is it so hard for people to apologize especiallycompanies?

I dont profess to understand the rats nest of legal mumbo jumbo and fingerpointing thats going on over there. But those people should have their motherssitting in the room when theyre making these decisions. Again, I know thesepeople are under tremendous pressure but how do you explain your decision toyour children? I dont know, its very disappointing to watch.

A lot of executives still fear being wrong especially the higher you go up inchain, the more important it is to be certain than to be right and to speakproperly. Sometimes, thats really the kiss of death. They have some very,very serious reputation damage work to do.

You know what, heres the deal. At the end of the day, I dont care how high

up the food chain we all become, if were king or muckety-muck of the world.Were still at the end of the day, a person. The companies that are loved themost are the ones that when they make a mistake they face up. Because,remember growing up, we make mistakes but what happens is do you havebrothers and sisters?

Yes, two - one brother, one sister.

So you know, when you were a kid and your brother or your sister punched youor pinched you, your mom or dad would take that kid by the shoulders and say,

Say youre sorry! Well, you know, the response you got with that would beumm Im sorry. But you knew you would be pinched and punched anotherday. These hollow apology letters going out or even these kind of sorry but notreally sorry shrouded over legal layers of conversation and talk and paperwork,dont get to the root of the problem and dont say to the people affected, wemade a mistake, we admit it and were going to fix it. At the end of the day,thats what people want; humility and swiftness.

You give a terrific path and blueprint for people to follow in your book inthat chapter about saying Im sorry where you talk about delivering a

swift response, you talk about making sure that it shows humility andempathy, accepting responsibility, give them an honest explanation andextending, I think you called it, the olive branch. Thats a fabulousformula for anybody who wants to send the right message to be able to doso.

Its interesting. We have all kinds of IT recovery systems for our businessesnow. Why dont we do for example what Southwest does and know everyday on

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an ongoing basis, you have to have deliberate processes for this. Whatcustomers lives did we interrupt in the wrong way? How are we going to rescuethem? What are we going to do when X happens or Y happens or Z happens?How do we get things in place?

There is a company in the book, I dont know if you were going to highlightthem, but I just love this example. Its a company in Vancouver called NurseNext Door. Theyre a small growing company. Theyve become the largesthome healthcare company in that area. Like any small startup company, everyonce in awhile, youre going to make some mistakes. What they did issomething that is wonderful. It shows humility. Theyre swift in their response.They have partnered up with a company called Acme Humble Pie. When theymake a mistake, they send to their clients a freshly baked apple pie that comesin an Acme Humble Pie box saying, We are so sorry we made a mistake. Hereswhere we stepped in it. Heres how were going to fix it. Please accept our

humble pie. You know, they spent $1500 on pies and saved a $150,000 inbusiness.

I love that example and I think its a fabulous concept. Ill tell you, the onethat really rang a bell with me was the next one where again, the ZanesCycles where the guy volunteered a week of his pay to save a customer.Thats real. You want to elaborate on that a little bit?

What happened was Zanes frequently would help women, men, whoever withgifts. In this one incident, one woman was buying a bike for her husband. It was

on a down payment so she couldnt deliver it to him on hisbirthday but theyhad agreed they were going to put the bike in the window so the woman couldtake the husband past the window and there was going to be a happy birthdaysign and all these other stuff.

The young whose job it was to put the bike in the window must have gottenthat busy that day and he just forgot to do it. So there was this whole group ofpeople going to the window for his birthday to have a celebration, champagneand they got there and there was no bike in the window. So Zanesautomatically forgave whatever balance was due on the bike and the deliver

the bike free of charge to the customer the next day. And then the young manwhose responsibility it was to do this went to Chris Zane, the owner, and said,Look this is my responsibility. I am going to give up a week of my pay to payfor that balance you just gave that customer and wrote him a personal check.

That is fabulous. It reminds me of one of the mottos of Rich Carlton wherethey empower each one of their employees to spend up to $2500 I believe

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on a customer to try to enhance the experience. You would never everthink of buying another bike from anybody else.

Its true. Of course Chris never cashed this young mans check. This is thefolklore of these companies. They have all kinds of folklore that surroundsthem. The one thing Id like to leave folks with especially as your growing abusiness is that you have an opportunity to deliver memories. Memory creationis really your currency. So think about with each interaction or the mostimportant interactions, what are you going to be deliberate about and whatdecisions are you going choose to make so that you can leave your customerwith a memory about who you are and what you value.

Well, speaking of leaving everyone, your last chapter is a tremendousblueprint of exactly how people can take and implement each one of thesedecisions. How would you recommend literally, a small, large, medium

sized, any business out there who is going to be listening to this, how dothey use Chapter 7 as a guide to not let any of these stuff slip through thecracks?

Thanks for bringing that up because I really wanted the book to be a resource,not something you read and put down. So what I did in Chapter 7 was everysingle one of the way the book is organized is that its 8 to 9 case studies ineach of the decision chapters, each of the five decisions and then a challengequestion after each case study. So that you can hold a mirror to yourself andsay, this is how this beloved company made the decision, how would we make

it?

What I did in the last chapter is I summarized the case studies in just a coupleof sentences and then the challenge questions. So you can actually workthrough your organization, decision by decision or you can in your dailyhuddles, or your weekly or monthly meetings, bring these different questionsup and start challenging yourself on how to operate to these decisions.

In addition, what Ive done is I really wanted to make this accessible so on mywebsite, www.CustomerBliss.com, funny, I married a man named Bliss. It

kind of all turns out in a great way www.CustomerBliss.com, there is abutton on my website called Customer Culture Audits. For free, its ananimated wonderful, its got a lot of animation, it goes through each of thesefive decisions and asks you those questions and then you can kind of evaluatehow youre doing.

And then finally, one of the things that I also did was turn the book into a deckof cards. So that these challenge questions actually have the questions on the

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front and then guidance for how to hold a meeting around each of thosechallenge questions. So its 45 cards to help change your culture and you canbuy those on my website.

I know that this is a beginning. When I start to think about this whole issueof service and experience this is a beginning. Its the beginning of afabulous conversation that could completely reinvent any business whodecides to at least explore some of the concepts that you have. Ipersonally am so excited about the opportunity to collaborate with you, tospread your message and to also try to engage others out there to tell uswhat it is that they would like somebody like yourself with the talent thatyou have to help them thinkthrough because I think thats how great ideaswill evolve. This is an issue that in my opinion certainly defines a business.

Thanks. Its just been a joy to write it. Its so hard to straddle the Kumbaya

what it feels like, the soft with the hard. You need to be deliberate aboutmaking operational decisions to earn the right of your employee and yourcustomers feeling that youre worth doing business with. So hopefully that willhelp people with that formula on how to get there. Thank you so much. Itssuch a pleasure to spend time with you.

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jeanne bliss- chief customer officer : getting past lip service to passionate action (unplugged)

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