Shep Hyken

Consistency Isn’t Part-Time

It’s the same every time, never changing. Day in and day out, it’s always the same.  Sound boring?  It’s not when it comes to consistency in delivering customer service – especially if it’s good customer service.  It should always be the same.  The customer should be able to count on it,

Customer loyalty is based on this concept. If you want to build intense customer loyalty, in addition to all of the customer service you deliver, you must also be predictably consistent.

Brand loyalty depends on three...

Empower your people to come up with a solution.

It’s easy to say, “I’m sorry, we don’t have that… We can’t get it… We can’t do that… It’s not our policy” Blah, blah, blah.  In other words, it’s easy to say, “No.”

But, that is not what amazing companies do.  Amazing companies empower their employees to find solutions for their customers.  They train, motivate, and praise their employees for coming up with“Yes” answers for their customers. 

At Ace Hardware, the role model for my upcoming book Amaze Every Customer Every Time, one of the...

Key to a Customer Service Culture

In a customer service culture, trust is of the upmost importance in the customer and employee relationship.  In the perfect setting, management must trust employees, employees must trust management, and the customer must trust the company.  This is the “Three Legged Stool” theory in action.  For those not familiar with this concept it is simple. If you have a three legged stool and one of the legs is taken away, the stool falls over.  If any one of these groups mistrusts any of the others, there is no chance for customer loyalty.

So, what is mistrust?  A lie, of course, would cause mistrust, but this is more about confidence.  Can people...

Start by Focusing on Employees, Not the Customer

How do you turn a good idea for a corporate culture into reality? By building an employee-centric workplace.

An amazing customer service culture begins by first amazing the employees.

Ace Hardware, the chain of retail stores known for their helpful service, is a perfect role model for this. Their tag line is The Helpful Place. They have truly operationalized the word helpful into their culture. That is their version of customer service. Helpful is what gives them a competitive edge. They want to be known as the most helpful hardware stores on the planet. And, they are. That’s...