One of the great benefits of blogging is that you get to connect with people you would never meet in real life. David Burkus of the LeaderLab is providing this blog with his second guest post. If you want to read more from David, check out his previous guest post Lost in Definition or visit his website at the LeaderLab  So for the second time around, I am proud to introduce David Burkus this time eating buffalo wings….

My Buffalo Wild Wings Rant

(or, on the folly of rewarding A while hoping for A).

“Do you guys have email addresses?” our waitress asked. It was Thursday, and I was partaking in 60-cent Boneless Wings Day. After delivering a sarcastic “No” I asked why she was asking. She wanted us to enroll in the Buffalo Circle Loyalty Program. No, she didn’t want us to…BWW did. Most restaurants have some variation on “offer a free $4 appetizer on your birthday in exchange for attacking you with spam” programs. Our waitress didn’t seem too interested in gaining our email so I asked, “What do you get out of it?”

“I get a ticket for each person enrolled, and every week we have a raffle. The winner gets out of clean up duty.”

Suddenly, I figured out why she wasn’t interested.

In a perfect world, employees would be perfectly matched to their job. Every manager would be a leader and leaders would inspire and engage their employees by reminding them how their job ties into a larger mission. But sometimes you just need wings delivered to table eight. Those jobs call for transactional leadership, a.k.a., incentives. It’s a standard rule of organizational psychology: that which gets measured gets done; rewarded gets done better (or more often). Expectancy theory tells us incentives work when task performance is easily related to the reward, and the reward is desired. But if you make the incentive too complex, or one no one cares about, the system falls apart.

You get waitresses who don’t care if I become a member of the hallowed Buffalo Circle.

So what should Buffalo Wild Wings do? Pay for performance: a dollar for each enrollee. Or force rank employees: everyone gets a percentage in tip share equal to their percentage of enrollees. There are many different incentive solutions that would simply tie performance to reward.

A raffle tickets is not one of them.

David Burkus
editor | LeaderLab
http://theleaderlab.org

Have you ever visited a friend and when you are about to leave he grabs hold of your feet and begs you to stay. He even offers you another free beer or cake, or promises to behave. He didn’t mean to be rude or ignorant. He would even give you money to stay a little longer. He won’t let go of you, hide your jacket and cling on to you as hard as he can. He follows you down the driveway begging you to stay.

I bet most of you have not experienced this. Most of you have probably received a hug, a thank you for your visit. Please do come again, I am looking forward to seeing you soon. If you have experienced a friend that won’t let go, did you want to come back? No? How do we part with friends and family? (Well the loved ones) Then why are most businesses acting like the first example?

Depart as friends

Binding contracts, following the rules, arguing about small amounts of money, refusing to give further service because the customer is leaving. All this is creating a negative impression confirming the customer’s beliefs that leaving was the right decision. How many of your old customers would like to return? How many are you losing for a lifetime? 

If a customer leaves, help them, find solutions for them and even try to recommend a preferable competitor whom might meet the customers’ demands. Thank them for doing business with you and wish them the best. Inform that they are welcome back at any time. Make sure that leaving you is such a pleasant experience that they are amazed. This is your last chance to give a good impression of your company. Make sure it is a good one. Who will your customer think about when their next business partner is messing up? What if you call them in about a year and they say we left because of… and you can reply with; “Yes we knew that was a problem; however we have fixed those issues now”. If you let your customer leave you as a friend, he might return as well. And that is the ultimate goals in farewells. Make sure you leave an impression that will help your customer to return.

Behold the future

Do you want customers that might return or customers who will never return? This is your choice. Your customers might need your services for a lifetime, if you cut the lifeline you might end up with moving your unhappy customer to your competition. If they hate you they will be happy with mediocre service from the competitor and never return to you even if you manage to change your customer service level to amazing. Because they have become locked in a principle: I will rather stay here eating shit from A then ever going back to B. Customers who are leaving you have been willing to do business with you. They might leave for a bunch of reasons. Make sure that they will leave with a positive experience in the end and they might come back.

The Evangelists

Amazing customer service might create evangelist that spread the good word about your company and draw new customers. But evangelists do not need to be happy as with so many things in life there is grades of passion. Hate is a feeling that can grow strong. If you can’t make happy evangelists, make sure not to make unhappy evangelists that will do whatever to bring you down. Today it is easy as well. Twitter, Facebook, blogging and other social media can spread news about your company fast. It is more important than ever to part with a smile and good wishes. – And welcome them back later on.

If you decide to leave my blog that is ok.
I wish you the best of luck in your search for the best content on the web. I hope you find what you are looking for. I would recommend Google Blog Search or this list of the top 150 leadership blogs I am at #130 and this should imply that there are better blogs out there.

But if you feel like coming back in the future, please do, as I really appreciate your company. I write in order to share my knowledge and to help you improve. If you come back in the future I might have better content suited for you as well. I am always in need of ideas so feel free to contact me, and I might write a blog post just for you. I would appreciate if you subscribe to my blog.

Thank you for spending some of your valuable time at my blog! You Rock!

Providing good customer care is not enough anymore. Any company can huff and puff together a good customer service, but to be able to stand out in the crowd you need to go for more. You need to surprise your customers. You need to make your customer EXPERIENCE amazing. How do you do that? How do you go from good enough to outrageous great? I want to write about customer care today, but I need to tango with some other topics as well to make my point.

The Changing World of Economics

We need to start with human behavior in history, and I hope you will enjoy this journey. I want to take us back to 11.000 B.C. all people of all continents where still hunter-gatherers. Their motivation where deeply linked to providing food, shelter and protection, their motivation where about producing safety and avoiding danger. We started trading about 9000 – 6000 B.C. And money came along in form of shells about 1000 BC in China. There were suddenly more to life than survival, all this change motivation a bit. Now you could grow wealth and riches. Before you knew it, we where dependent on money to survive.  What is happening now? A lot of people are making enough money, so the need to make money for the sake of survival is no longer present. (This is sadly only true about our part of the world)

The Changing World of Needs

As we developed from the stone age our needs also changed accordingly. We went from pursuing our basic needs of survival. As we moved up the Maslow pyramid we also change our cravings, goals, needs, motivation. Today we are getting close to the top of the pyramid we care about self-actualization. We care about knowledge and higher learning, or going back to basic farming. People are intelligent and seek other joys and money is not a driving force any more. Money is still very important but we do not need all the money we get so this leaves room for choice. There is no necessity that drives us, but choice.

Algorithmic vs. Heuristic Industry

We are also on the same time moving from mostly algorithmic routine work, do this, get that to heuristic dominance in the business world. This means that we are changing from doing routine work in factories to doing more and more thought based jobs. Even customer care is no longer routine work. Open markets and competition change routine customer care to creative and imaginative customer care. Everybody can make a product, price a product, ship a product, fix a product, this is the algorithm. But since we are moving away from buying out of need and now act out of choice or fun the algorithm of customer care fails. Customers now shop for experience. I have still not experience any of my friends explaining to me the necessity and functions of an iPhone. But they have showed me the cool stuff on it. (I am still in the practical need behavior jungle of cell phones, does it get me connected? Well I am happy.)

The Changing World of Human Behavior

Even the way we look at work change. I do not need to take you back to the Stone Age now. Think about your great grandparents. Think about your grandparents. Think about your parents. Think about your kids. They all seek out different needs. My great grandparents were given a piece of swamp land, and needed to turn this land into fertile grounds. My grandparents followed this life quest and ran a farm at first with no electricity and no machinery. They experienced an extreme change of living standard and my grandmother is still alive and 91 years old. She is still doing her best at everything she does. Her generation managed to save money and assets so their kids could inherit. They had high work ethics and still driven by necessity so they do not replace stuff because it is not cool anymore. They replace or even fix things if it is broken. So our parents were born into a higher living standard and could focus more on education taking it one more step up the Maslow pyramid. And today we are raising kids in a consumer driven market where you need to replace stuff that work fine with things that are cooler and more fashionable. Kids move out of their homes having parents being able to buy them a place to live or at least give them good financial aid. Young kids expect to move out and obtain their parents high living standard at once, neglecting the fact that this was build over generations. They get a flying start with no true financial hardship. The work force of today is born and placed on the top of the Maslow pyramid.

So What Challenges do CEO’s Face Because of This?

Imagine being a successful business man all your life, you work hard for the money you became CEO at the age of 57 or you have been CEO for thirty years. This means that you educated yourself when modern behavior psychology where at a toddler state. All the generations you have been leading where different than those of today. Some of your new employees might be fresh out of school and already financial secure! They work with you for other reasons than money. What good will bonuses do? Why don’t they work as hard as you once did? Their motivation is different. They want fun, challenges and meaning. They need to feel appreciated and they need to feel that they evolve. They are heuristic workers and they dread routine work.

The Challenge of Excellent Customer Care

So now you know more about history and human behavior. What does this do with customer care? Humans shop for experiences and feelings today. What rational thought explain buying an iPhone? What rational thought explain the need of a 60” LCD flat screen when your old Sony 29” 90 kilo huge box from the mid 1990’s still work? Your need is to watch television, your experience is to make the movie theater feeling at home and you raise your status amongst friends as well. Why does not every single person in the world use the cheapest telecom provider? Why do you not shop grocery at the nearest store? Why do you go to the megastore? Experience and freedom of choice!

Now you know what your customers crave, how do you provide this kind of service to your customers? If you fail to motivate your staff, do you believe that they can provide good customer care? Companies need to realize that their employees are just as evolved as their customers. The employees look for meaning, experience and challenges in their jobs, they need to be proud as well. This raises a need to care about their employees. The paycheck is no longer the ultimate force of motivation. They can get equal or better pay with competitors, they even go to competitors who pay less if they feel more appreciated.

I am happy to see that google is displaying the shift necessary in business by providing:

425.000 hits on Employee Retention Programs
420.000 hits on Customer Retention Programs

But if you remove the word program from your search you will get

892,000 hits on Employee Retention
1,830,000 hits on Customer Retention

Is there still more focus on the customers? When will you change? When will your competition change? Do you want to be first?

The Needs of your Employees

Your employees need love, they need appreciation, they need friendship, and they need to evolve. They need to feel respected. They need a career plan; they need space and freedom to think for themselves. They need to be provided with the tools and trust to provide excellent customer care. You need to make sure that your employees are happy. Carrot and sticks does not work, bonus payments do not work. Meaning and Purpose is the main driving forces when it comes to employee retention. Visionary leaders that can create meaning and purpose are the once that will succeed now and in the future. Think about this: Why are people drawn to non-profit organizations? Why are people willing to work for free? Why are free open source programs dominating? Why are people willing to develop advanced computer programs on their spare time for non-profit open source companies? It is rewarded with a purpose and meaning, it is fun and challenging. Create purpose, meaning, fun and challenges in your business and motivation will flourish, customer care will go thru the roof.

More fun stuff to do at my blog:
If you like to read about customer support, check out my customer support category. If you like to read more about motivation, take a look at the motivation category. Do you like my blog? Check out all subscribtion options here. And if you like to donate to fight world hunger, you can! And you can find an index of all my blog posts here.
Thank you for spending time at my blog. Enjoy! You rock!

Every achievement ever made started with one single person. Every motion starts with one person deciding to move forward. You got a lot of power to change the world around you and I want to explain how it works. It is actually quite simple. All we need to know is some basics. When it comes to changing the world (or your world) it can just as well start with you. Are you feeling down, does your job suck? Is your personal life chaos? To clean up the mess, start with you.

The Power of One

Fact: You have the power to change and influence other people. Bad news, this does not make you a superhero. It is just basic psychology. If two people interact they will influence each other in some way or another.

”With great power, comes great responsibility” – Uncle Ben to Peter Parker (Spiderman)

Make a Decision

It is your choice to be great. There is no reason for you to sit still, even if the rest of the company is. What does your dream job look like? Do you know how to amaze your customers and your fellow employees? If you radiate with positive energy, positive things will start happening to you.

“Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice. My friend Harry taught me that. He chose to be the best of himself. It’s the choices that make us who we are, and we could always choose to do what’s right.” – Spiderman

Your energy is like a bouncing ball against the wall

If you shoot out a pounding negative ball into your environment your will achieve one of two;

1) You will influence someone else in a negative way, making their day darker.

2) You will get the ball right back in your face and people will think negative thoughts about you.

Think about your career in the long run, you want to keep those positive balls bouncing.

So what will happen when you are radiating with positive energy and comments?

1. People will be happy around you
2. You will surround yourself with happy people
3. People will like being around you
4. People will like you
5. People will smile around you, and make you happy in return.

How You Can Influence Results

Take a good look at the picture below. What team do you think produce the best results? At what team do the employees have more fun? What team has the most experienced employees? What team do you want to work for?

Now ask yourself:
What skills are important in Team Positive Energy?
How can you contribute to creating this team?
Think about all your interactions during the day, how many has a negative message or tone? How many positive? Your job is to reduce the number of negative and increase the number of positive.

The Power of Many

As you influence the people around you, and teach them this philosophy you will after a while experience the power of many. Now imagine these two teams being a part of the same company. Your job as a team is to influence the other teams. How should you interact with other departments at work? How should you greet someone visiting your department to spread the power of positivity?

In the same way as you will influence other, your team will also influence other people only this time in a larger scale. Now imagine that this spreads around the entire company. Do you think this will influence the customer service? Do you think you will get more satisfied customers? Do you think this can influence the company’s’ result?

You should feel obligated to do your best, to think in this way no matter where you work. If you are dissatisfied with your salary you work at Team Negative Energy. If you think your equipment is old you work at Team Negative Energy. As long as you work for Team Negative Energy it will take longer before the company can pay better, before the company can upgrade equipment. You are after all hired to get results. And when your day is over, it is very nice to know that you are contributing to Team Positive Energy. And if everything else fails, you will get a good resume and get hired at another Positive Inc. Either way, you win.

I have one last question for you? “Every achievement ever made started with one single person.” – do you agree?

One last thing…
Remember to subscribe to my blog And remember to share this post with other people. Share it with your co-worker or click on any of the options below. You are Amazing!