Excellent Customer Service: The Secret Ingredient
As a lifelong entrepreneur, I’ve developed the basic habits for frugality and stuck by them. Travel is a big expense in my business – both for me and my clients. So I focus on keeping my own costs low and skipping out on costly amenities. In fact, I use priceline.com so much that William Shatner once dropped by my office just to give me a high five (ok, that’s not true, but actually I had a dream that he did).
Of all my travel expenses, I’m consistently satisfied with the value I get for flying Southwest Airlines. I’m sure you can guess why – relentless pursuit of low costs, highly efficient boarding and superior customer service. It’s this last point – superior customer service – that has me most amazed. If you were planning an airline business, would you imagine that combining low costs and superior customer service would be sustainable? I wouldn’t. How would you do it? While flipping through the SWA magazine before take off today I think I stumbled on a secret ingredient that any of us could add to our business and it costs almost nothing. It is simple and effective. Are you ready?
Energy.
The Southwest management team simply puts some of their energy into reinforcing the importance of customer service. Here is a synopsis of what I read in the SWA magazine:
Every month the CEO of Southwest, Gary Kelley, personally reads a handpicked group of letters from customers that write about the good experiences they’ve had with Southwest. Then Gary personally figures out the name of the employee, which is rarely contained in the letter, and makes sure that person and their manager both receive a framed copy of the letter as well as a personal letter from him. The article goes on to share some of the letters. I would guess this probably takes Gary about a day of time per month; maybe less if he’s really in touch with the organization. The material cost is nearly zero and what do you think the result is? I’ll bet the motivating effect across the organization is huge. If you worked for Southwest and the CEO recognized your co-workers, would it inspire you? No doubt this is only one thing out of many that Southwest does, but how many of us do even this much? The beauty of this program is that its effects are far reaching and they reverberate for years. How many of those letters are probably hanging in the homes of Southwest employees? How many proud parents show them to their families for years? Or what about when a co-worker comes over to visit, do you think they see Gary’s letter? One act of recognition continues to motivate and inspire over and over again.
Southwest is celebrating their 40th year in business in one of the world’s roughest industries. Customer retention is certainly one of the lynch pins that gives them competitive advantage. If you could improve your customer service by just adding a little energy to recognize the positive interactions for your own team, do you think it would positively affect the whole organization? Do you think that customer retention would go up? What if you had 20% more repeat business? What if you lost 15% fewer customers per year?
Add the secret ingredient and see what happens to you.
- David
David Ewing is the president and CEO of SFCG. He leads the Customer Relationship Management practice and has a passion for the things that drive revenue, like sales, marketing and customer service. He wrote the first draft of this blog from 30,000 feet while flying on a Southwest flight from Oakland, to Orange County. The flight arrived 20 minutes early.
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