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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems
Legendary Service is about ICARE Guest was Kathy Cuff
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems
Note: This is a transcription of a podcast. It has not gone through a professional editing process and may contain grammatical errors or incorrect formatting. Transcription of the Podcast Joe Dager: Welcome everyone! This is Joe Dager the host of the Business901 podcast. With me today is Kathy Cuff. She is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies and co-author of Blanchard’s Legendary Service customer service training program. Kathy joined the Blanchard companies and seemed to have done just about every job in the place and most interesting to me created or helped create many of the custom products for their clients. Kathy thanks for joining me in the wee hours of a California morning here. Kathy Cuff: I’m so glad to be here Joe. Thanks for having me. Joe: You’re new book, Legendary Service, you focus on telling a story about the Blanchard ICARE principle. If people aren’t familiar with that, could you just start by just briefly describing it and framing ICARE? Kathy: Sure that’d be great. Well when we were, my coauthors and myself, thinking about writing this program years ago we just kept coming back to the question, “Why is customer service so important?” Obviously we all need customers to stay in business. So when you think about keeping those customers that you have and creating that loyalty, what do you want your customers to know? Well, you want them to know you care about them. Just everything kept coming back to that word care and caring and feeling cared for. We thought why not take that ‘ICARE’ philosophy and teach the concepts about how to deliver Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems legendary service so that you can have that customer loyalty; not only attract or keep the customers you have but also attract other ones by showing that you care. We took that and that’s the framework, the model that we used. The I in ICARE stands for ideal service. That’s thinking about those customers’ needs on a day-to-day basis by acting on the belief that service is important. In everything that you do and every single person in their job, what do they do to show others they care about them and focus on that customer in the moment so that we’re delivering the best service possible. Then the C stands for culture of service. So it’s about organizations having a culture of serving others. We even teach organizations how to have a service vision as well as in our training we take people through a process to come up with their own personal service vision. It’s all about having that culture. The A is attentiveness. The R is responsiveness. It’s about being attentive and responsive. So with all sorts of things you look at your customers and profile them in a good way, thinking about what are their different nuances, their preferences, their likes, their dislikes. Getting to know the different customers that we serve so that we can meet those individual needs and be responsive to those and act quickly and focus on some of those skills that we know around being a good listener and just showing that you care for your customers. The last one empowerment which even though comes at the end of the model, we’re teaching people all throughout our workshop and in conversations when we’re talking with organizations, “How do you empower your employees in their jobs?” They are the face to your customers. They’re it. The more that we can empower people in their jobs to make decisions, to be able to answer those questions, to take the action, that’s when we’re also going to create more of that loyalty with our customers. The big thing with this is for everybody in the organization to understand customer service is everybody’s job. Does that kind of give you a flavor for what ICARE stands for? Joe: Oh you seem to come across very intense about it. It’s something you truly believe in. You can tell that. You just grab a hold of it. Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Kathy: I have such a passion for this. One of the reasons I love teaching this and I wanted to write the book was that we are all customers as we live our lives. So we’ve experienced either, if we’ve ever had great service, probably mediocre and poor service. So when we can take those learnings and then apply it where we work and say “Boy, what do we want to look like? Who do we want to be? Or what do we want to be known for?” That’s about being legendary. Joe: One of the things you mention there and culture is a big word and everybody loves to grab on to that. You’re saying is that the service should have, not necessarily a culture of its own, but a culture of itself, and then even its own vision that of course follows the main company’s vision I would hope that they’re aligned. Is that important to create that identity down let’s say the chain for the lack of a better word? Kathy: Oh. Let me give you a perfect example. We worked a few years back with Taylor Made, the golf company, and we helped them come up with, or they probably did some work right as we were coming on, during which we rolled out Legendary Service training throughout their organization. But they came up with this kind of a tagline if you will. You can call it whatever you want. Some people call it vision, mission, whatever. Honestly I just go with what resonates with people. And so they have something called a tagline and they say ‘it’s everyone always.’ It’s everyone always. Simple, but let me tell you, the whole idea there – and Mark King who is the CEO wanted everyone to understand whether you work internally in the organization and you never see the external customer who is buying your products, or you’re a sales rep out there visiting those golf pro shops and your different resorts across the country, it’s everyone always. In that mindset when you think about that in their organization, whether you’re sitting in a meeting and even in their meeting rooms, they put red chairs. They have a red chair in every meeting room to represent visually the customer. So that culture, part of the culture is you never lose sight of why we’re in business. Ultimately it’s to exceed those expectations and deliver legendary service to the external customer. However we need to focus internally just as much because if we don’t get it right internally, Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems we’re not going to get it right externally. So that’s where that culture has to be present always. Joe: I have to agree with you because I always use the saying – I don’t know where I got it from – is that the customer experience makes the employee experience. Kathy: Absolutely. Love that. Joe: That ties into that word empowerment. But to empower people we can’t just empower them, can we? What do we do to empower people? Kathy: You’re absolutely right. I’m glad that you’re asking that because we have some training that goes along with our new book Legendary Service. We as an organization offer and work with clients on training. And we’ve broken it into two different workshops. So we have one workshop that we say everybody in the organization should go through. Whether you’re a manager or individual contributor, it doesn’t matter because everybody has customers. However, we also setup a half day workshop just for managers because to your point, years ago when that whole buzz came up about empowering employees, I think that the downside of that was nobody knew how to do it. It sounded like a great term and everybody jumped on the bandwagon because who wants to say no. “We don’t believe in empowering people,” right? Joe: Right. Kathy: But they didn’t understand how to do it. There wasn’t training so we have a half day workshop where the focus in that is for managers – it’s a manager workshop. Their customers, their focus in that half day workshop are their direct reports, their team members. It’s not even focusing on the external customer. But we want mangers to think about what is your role and responsibility in this whole service initiative? What do you need to be doing to empower your employees? So we have one activity they do and they’re called playing field. If you think of any sport, especially with the World Cup going on right now, if you’re watching that or the Stanley Cup, the hockey that just finished, and NBA; heck we have lots Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems of things. When you think about any sport out there, you know it’s inbounds and out of bounds. Well people need to know that at work as well. Then once we define the parameters, they also need to know “when is it okay sometimes to go out of bounds?” If something doesn’t make sense, a policy, a practice, use your head. Hopefully that’s why we hired you. So if something doesn’t make sense, bring that back to our attention, whether your manager within the organization. Question things. But also we teach leaders how can you empower people more and get the consistent behavior and performance that you’re expecting from folks so that you’re not frustrating your customers with that inconsistency. That’s where some employees sometimes – I won’t even use the word empowered, they feel entitled. So they think they can make whatever decision they want, take whatever action. That’s not always the best thing either. You want to make sure that you’ve trained, you’ve educated your employees what they can and can’t do and then allow them to do it. And that’s where they’re going to feel valued by the organization. They’re going to be more engaged in what they do because they have ownership to what they’re doing. We’re known for leadership and all sorts of things at the Ken Blanchard Companies. We’ve worked for years with organizations knowing that as well that you’re going to get more of what we call that discretionary effort from employees when you let them own things, when they feel like they are in charge and have that responsibility. That’s where that comes with the empowerment. Joe: So much of service anymore is in the digital world. Can we take these ICARE principles and digitize them? I mean do they work? Kathy: I think that they’re even more important now with our digital world, with technology, because you know what, technology is fabulous and so many things have gone computerized or digital. I hope we never get away from the human touch. Things are going to go wrong. I was conducting a virtual training yesterday with a company back in New Jersey and I’m in San Diego. We were on the phone for four hours together. Well in the midst of our virtual training their power went out in New Jersey and they lost power for their computer. So guess what, we had to make do with a different way. Luckily we still were connected via the telephone. But human to human here and we had to, God forbid, we had to do Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems something manually. They literally were looking at their materials. I still had power. There was another gentleman on the phone from Connecticut, he was still fine and hooked into the WebEx. So we still conducted it with him that way. The other folks we stayed on the phone. But it is still about that human touch and how we can come across. And even if you think of when we talk about our training so much work isn’t even done face to face anymore, to your point. Maybe it’s over the phone. You have call centers. You have all sorts of organizations that do a lot of their work over the phone or the internet, ordering online, via emails. To even just think about emails and how that comes across to people if you put all caps versus smaller case versus all the little pictures you can do. So I love technology, this digital world. I mean what would we do without our cell phones and all sorts of things? But we never want to get away from that human touch. Joe: And how do I get a human touch? I mean is it just voice? Do I have to recognize it when I’m let’s say at a call center and I’m helping someone on the phone? There’s a difference there that I need to make more of an effort maybe than even in person. Isn’t there? Kathy: Well there are a few things that we say. What happens is there’s some statistics out there that kind of show what’s the percentage of the message when you’re saying the words over the phone versus your tone of voice, how that’s coming across. Since you can’t see somebody face to face it takes out all of the body language which is a huge part of our messages to people whether it’s intentional or not by the way. Even simple things like rolling our eyes or crossing our arms. We don’t even know sometimes we’re doing that but it could be sending a message. When you take that out and you’re just over the phone, like you said even a call center, now we have to think about how we’re saying something. I have clients. I worked with WestJet Airlines which is Canadian airline and they took Legendary Service and they embedded it in all of their training for their employees. We talked about with them putting mirrors by their reservationists, or the people at the call center taking reservations, so that you can see yourself how you’re coming across to that person. I know Southwest Airlines has done that as well. They have mirrors there when people are on the phone. You can visually see how you might be coming across to that person. Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems But I’ll tell you Joe it goes a little deeper than that. We teach this under the ‘I’ in ICARE for the ideal service. We talk about on that day-to-day basis when you’re delivering service by acting on the belief that service is important. We want to start right in the very beginning when we’re working with organizations getting people to understand “What are your beliefs about customer service? Do you have that service mindset?” or we might call that being a servant leader. If you do then it’s going to show up in all the different ways you’re interacting with people, whether it’s on the website, whether it’s emails, whether it’s face to face on the phone because you’re consciously thinking about how you are saying something, typing something in, presenting something, positioning something. It’s all about those beliefs about serving others. And why we focus on beliefs is because beliefs drive our behaviors. Just like our individual values do as well as values for a company. That’s why organizations we work with them a lot if they don’t have them already. “What are your values?” I worked years with Vail Resorts – owns Keystone and Breckenridge and Vail and Beaver Creek, the different resorts. One of their top values is safety because you don’t want to go and ski or snowboard at a resort if they don’t have a great safety record. Their top value is safety. The whole idea is that guides their employees’ behaviors. Everything we do we want it to be around safety. Values guide the behaviors in an organization. We have personal values as well. But our beliefs, those guide our behaviors too. You can change your beliefs easier than you can values if you can see the reason, the rationale why. So what we try to get is people to understand “Why is customer service so important? What do you believe about it? And can we get you to understand and start believing that it is important to show your customers you care?” Does that makes sense? Joe: It makes perfect sense and you brought up a great point there because in Lean we talk about servant leadership and things like that. And earlier in this conversation we talked about the customer experience and mimicking the employee experience. But also could I say that the employee experience will mimic the leadership experience? Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Kathy: Oh absolutely. So that goes back again where we talk about when we’re working with managers, your job is to role model. Your job is there to serve your team members. We talk about the traditional structure of most organizations, that pyramid if you will, and top leadership, the executive team, board of directors, the president or whatever at the top, and as it cascades down that frontline employee. But on the day-to-day basis, how do you turn that pyramid upside down so now the employees are at the top? I work with many organizations that have incorporated Lean and you need to think in those times how do we get the best out of people still watching the budget, still watching those resources? I mean most organizations are running pretty lean just to use that term loosely there anyway. But when they try to incorporate those concepts into process improvement who knows better than the frontline where the waste is, where they could tighten things up, how we could make things better? And so for managers to be role modelling that and also listening to their employees and asking them and including them, especially when in organizations that have gone to the Lean methodology, we need to have that partnership with our team members. And it starts with managers being great role models and they themselves being servant leaders to their team so that it’s a win-win all the way around. Joe: I have to ask you – the book is a fiction story – why did you choose that method to deliver this message? Kathy: Well Ken Blanchard, gosh he’s written over 60 books or so now. It started way back with one of his first books; the one that kind of made him famous, The One Minute Manager. And he and Spencer Johnson, the co-author of that book when they wrote it they decided to write it as a story, as a parable. It’s funny because they looked at different books out there and realized that a lot of times people will pick up a book, but if it’s too thick, if it’s too theoretical, if it’s just too much, people might get through the first chapter and that’s it. So they decided why not write a book that’s just a chapter and easy to read and capturing. And they knew it before that storytelling is so powerful. There are even workshops on storytelling and all of that now. But years ago they got that early on the idea that a story can convey the message so much better sometimes than other things can. So they decided to write the book, the One Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Minute Manager in a story, a parable format, and it just took off from there. So almost all of Ken’s books have been that parable format. When we first started writing this book we weren’t taking that approach. I’ve been with the organization, it will be 27 years in September. Vicky has been around a long time as well. Ken obviously is the owner of the organization. We were starting with sharing our stories of working with companies and what’s worked or what hasn’t. And then we just kept coming back where it just wasn’t catching enough. It was great stories but we weren’t able to teach the ICARE model in the way we wanted to. And when we put our heads together and we thought about what’s going to resonate with people. And we wanted to hit different levels of the organization, different generations if you will. So that’s where we came back to tried and true, we know the parable works, people love it, they love a short easy read; better way to convey the concepts. That’s why we went with that format and wanted to try to hit on as I said those different generations. Kelsey, the main character in the book is just finishing her college degree and learning the principles of ICARE in her last semester of college through the professor. And then as she lives her life she experiences great service and poor service in the different ways. She’s working at a Target, Wal-Mart a store called Fergusons and just seeing that they’re not focused on service. So we wanted to hit that generation, the millennials, just coming out of school, entering the workforce, we know they like to make a difference and wanted her to see “Boy can she make a difference in what she does?” We also wanted to hit at management level and get managers to start recognizing “What do you need to be doing to support your employees? How important is your role? You just said it before for leaders to be mimicking the service that you want, the expectations you have of your employees?” We wanted to look at it from the framework of the organization overall. How is your organization setup to serve your team members? What are those policies and practices you have in place to support your people and your customers or not? And so that was our intent to tell the story but hopefully get organizations to have it resonate with them at all different levels. Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Joe: I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the fact that you had a checklist at the back of it that I could rate myself to see where I stood. Kathy: Oh good. I’m so glad. Now that definitely was Ken. That was one of those additions at the end. He said, “We need a little survey in there.” I’ll let him know you like the survey. Joe: When I look at the ICARE model, I break it down and I say I need to work on empowerment. I need to work. Or is it a step by step? Do I have to go by letters? Can I work on certain areas there and improve on it? Kathy: Oh absolutely. In fact we put together a whole one year sustainability toolkit that we have for organizations once they go through the training to think about “Where do you need to start?” So for instance I was just back in New Hampshire last week working with a company called Planet Fitness and they are the third fastest growing franchisee in the country according to Forbes. I just found that out by them last week and it’s just an amazing organization. Their whole philosophy is they want to make fitness affordable to everybody and they wanted to have it in a place where nobody would feel intimidated to come and work out in their gyms. And so as they look at that, and they’re in such a fast growth mode, they’re using Legendary Service. One of the things that they see is to use this as a catalyst as they’re going out to the company-owned locations. But they mostly have franchisees. They want to go and see boy how can we have a consistent culture? Like they looked at that piece, culture and empowerment that you just hit on knowing that they’re doing a lot of the other things. They’re doing a great job and service in a lot of ways already. Now as they keep growing and adding locations, they want to make sure that they have a consistent culture. So now they’re messaging. They want to go out and use and say what is our vision and do people know it well enough? They realize you know what, in this growth mode, they need to make sure that they’re getting that out and sharing that and people know what that looks like and what the values are to Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems take away from them is what can they do to highlight C a little bit more and also the empowerment with that. How do they want to empower their franchisees even more and then their employees? As you learn these concepts that will resonate with people either in an individual level-. I think a lot of times when people go through the training, the one day workshop, what we want them to think about is again at the company level there are things that the company should be and will be doing to keep service front of mind. Individually service is everybody’s job. So take that ICARE model and we in the training have what we call a passport and it’s at the end of each section. Like you just said you love to rate yourself. We have a little of that survey in the class as well. It’s a little bit more robust than what is in the book. Then we have them pull out their passport that serves as their action plan. In there we have them think about what they want to start doing that they’re not currently doing to serve their customers. What do they want to stop doing that’s getting in the way and anything in particular that’s serving them well? Then at the end of the day we say “Where do you want to start?” You can’t tackle everything at once. So look I-C-A-R-E; where’s your weak spot? Or where could you get the biggest bang for your buck if you focus in on here? It goes back to organizations that focus on Lean. What do we need to be doing to tighten things up? The process improvement. How is that going to impact our customers? So it’s the same idea. Joe: It sounds like a never-ending story. Kathy: Well you know what customer service shouldn’t be ending. That’s the thing that I always chuckle if I walk into a store or whatever and I’ll see a banner ‘Customer Appreciation Month.’ I know the intention was good but it’s like okay, are you going to focus on finances next month? Joe: I better do it this month because next month I have to bring it back next month or I’m in trouble. Kathy: Yeah. Or thank God we don’t have to focus on those customers next month. Customer service is Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems something that you can never stop focusing on because just when you do that’s when the competition is going to do something differently to attract customers. We look at three things that attract customers to you. And the first two will flip flop depending on the importance of the consumer. Some people look at the product quality and what it is they’re buying or purchasing, whether it’s a software program or whether it’s a refrigerator or car. So the difference is the quality that you want for that product. Other people will look at price. So they’re price points and some people will never pay a certain amount for something or just their budget allows or whatever. But what we know is that if those first two things are pretty competitive then what’s going to be the differentiator is service. We can even charge more for your products if you have the quality product and you have the service that goes along with it. That’s that kind of Nordstrom philosophy for years. They had quality products buy you can get a lot of those same things at other high-end, nice stores. But what was that differentiator is you had the service to go along with it. Joe: I think it was great. I thought it was a great book. I already read it twice. And that says a lot for the short stories and the messages that are in it. Kathy: I’m so glad. Joe: Is there a website for the book? Where would someone learn more on the web about it? Kathy: Well Amazon is a great place to look for it there. Then you can also go on the website for my organization which is The Ken Blanchard Companies. If you go on to our website we also have that book and all the other books and products and services if you wanted to learn more even about the training program Legendary Service, you certainly could do that. We have an 800 number 800-728-6000 in the US. Then we also have offices worldwide. We have an office in the UK, in Singapore, in Toronto; lots of different ways to get it. But certainly Amazon or looking on our website at The Ken Blanchard Companies. Joe: I had the One Minute Manager of course from the original publication I have and a few others of his books like Putting the One Minute Manager to Work is still on my back bookshelf. Will Employee Experience Mimic Leadership Experience Copyright Business901
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems Kathy: That’s so great. Joe: All of them I do re-read. It’s one of those books, because it’s a nice short, easy story, and there’s so much messages in them that can be reinforced. They do seem to be books that have a lot of longevity to them. I mean customer service doesn’t go away. Kathy: That’s right. That’s what we’re hoping. I love that you enjoyed and you re-read it and we’re hoping that people, like the One Minute Manager, it will be one those books that you’ll pass along for others because it is a short read. But you know what everybody has customers in what we’re doing. And it’s even bigger than that. I mean I hope that people will get out of this that it’s the whole pay it forward. So even in our personal lives, when you show people that you care about them, that it comes back at you. And that’s the symbol we use in there is a boomerang because when you throw it’s supposed to come back at you. The whole idea is that you’ll keep your customers coming back and it pays it forward. So Joe I just thank you so much for this time that you’ve given me this morning. Joe: I would like to thank you very Kathy. It’s well appreciated. The podcast will be available on the Business901 iTunes store and the Business901 blog site. So thanks again Kathy. Kathy: Great. Thanks Joe, have a great day.
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Podcast Transcription Implementing Lean Marketing Systems
Joseph T. Dager Business901 Phone: 260-918-0438 Skype: Biz901 Fax: 260-818-2022 Email: jtdager@business901.com Website: http://www.business901.com Twitter: @business901
Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies it through Lean Marketing and Lean Service Design. Visit the Lean Marketing Lab: Being part of this community will allow you to interact with like-minded individuals and organizations, purchase related tools, use some free ones and receive feedback from your peers.
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