Free Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization by Leonardo Inghilleri, Micah Solomon, Horst Schulze Page B

you from providing a rapidly-answered email address as well. Note that some who approach your company online don’t want to talk on the phone, no matter how friendly and well trained your ‘‘operators standing by’’ may be. Some are not even able to: The Internet has become an important tool for people with disabilities, including those with limited hearing, as well as for the inevitable stealthy at-work shoppers.
    Fear Not: Don’t Be Deterred from Collecting
    Information—Thoughtfully
    Don’t be deterred from collecting information—in a sensitive way, for respectful uses. There is little that’s more important to your growth as a company. Indeed, effective tracking of what is important to customers—specific customers, not just customers in the aggregate—is a hallmark of all the excellent organizations we have worked with. It makes it possible for new staff to continue customer relationships built by departing or promoted colleagues as your company grows. It builds high, sustainable levels of customer loyalty.
    It works for us.
    We recommend it for you, too.

    CHAPTER SIX
    Building Anticipation Into
    Your Products and Services
    Putting Processes to Work for You
    Has Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz read Catch-22 ? Probably. What seems less likely is that Mr. Schultz has ever signed up for his own in-store Internet service.
    Micah explains:
    I had some work to do while out of town, so I headed to
    Starbucks to try their new free WiFi.
    First step: I had to get a Starbucks card in order to sign up for free Internet. Okay, I guess. I purchased the card and filled in all of my personal information via my laptop. But then I got a message from AT&T/Starbucks Internet telling me to check my email account for an access verification code so I could complete the login process and begin using my new
    Internet account.
    Of course, I didn’t have email access. That’s why I
    bought the card and went through the sign-up process in the 59

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    first place. So in effect this message was telling me to drive home, check my email, click a link to get an access code, and then drive back to Starbucks.
    We find a lot to admire in Howard Schultz. (One example: He’s made it his personal mission to provide health-care benefits even to part-time workers.) But in this particular case, his company overlooked the following straightforward principle: A business needs to think like a customer. It needs to put in place processes that will mercilessly search and destroy anything that might inconvenience or disgruntle a customer. It must systematically incorporate procedures and build in product features that improve the customer’s experience.
    Let’s look at how you go about this.
    Get Your Company to Think Like a Customer
    As a company, how do you learn what your customers are likely to appreciate—even before they arrive? You can start by making it clear throughout your company that it’s your goal to learn. Then you can work with your employees to think systematically about particular groups of customers and what they are likely to want or need.
    For example: Consider the plight of someone eating alone at a restaurant. Surrounded by chatty couples, groups, and families, the lone diner can feel socially awkward and a bit, well, lonely. Time passes more slowly. Food seems to take longer to arrive. What might make things less stressful for a guest in this situation?
    Well, one thing you may notice is that those dining alone often bring, or hungrily grab, any available reading material. Bill Bryson recalls getting to the point of ‘‘reading restaurant placemats, then turning them over to see if there was anything on the back.’’ 1
    Therefore, a thoughtful restaurant might establish as procedure to offer a choice of reading material, perhaps a newspaper or newsmaga-

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    zine, to everyone who comes in to eat alone. That’s a simple,