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Raving Fansbook summary

Providing good service on time every time isn’t goodenough, claims management guru and best sellingbusiness author Ken Blanchard. He insists that youcan only be guaranteed to beat the competition if youcreate ‘Raving Fan Customers.’ In this exclusive articlefor Customer Management, he reveals who they areand how you can get them.

‘Customer satisfaction’ may be all the rage, but here’s thestark truth. If your customers say they are ‘satisfied’ with theservice you offer then your service isn’t good enough. Asatisfied customer isn’t going to tell everyone what a great experience they had withyour company. They won’t make sure they don’t do business with anyone else butyou ever again. A satisfied customer may not complain and may not quibble aboutpayment but you can bet your bottom dollar they will try and get a better deal at abetter price somewhere else next time. So forget about satisfying customers becausesatisfying them won’t help you make it in the increasingly competitive business world.To do that you need to create ‘Raving Fan Customers;’ customers who are sodevoted to your products and services that they wouldn’t dream of taking theirbusiness elsewhere and will sing from the rooftops about just how good you are.

It’s rather a hackneyed phrase, but this is only possible if you believe genuinely thatthe customer is “King” and focus on the customer in everything you do, from planningyour company vision to developing business strategies and setting goals. Initiating acustomer service programme is a doomed exercise if you haven’t already done this. Isuspect this is why a recent survey by this magazine showed that 60% of us thinkcustomer service is getting worse, despite the fact there is more media andmanagement attention focussed on this subject than ever before. If organisationalculture and vision isn’t intrinsically customer-focussed and if customer servicesystems work against rather than in favour of the customer, no amount of talk ormoney put into a one-off ‘customer service initiative’ is going to change anything.

Creating this kind of organisational culture starts with the realisation that everybody

in a company has a customer. The Personnel department may not deal with anyoneoutside an organisation but they still have ‘customers’ and need to turn them into‘Raving Fan Customers.’ How we treat our colleagues or internal customers has ahuge impact on how an organisation treats its external customers. When people aretreated badly internally, ripples spread through the chains of command and poisonthe whole organisation. If the Chairman is criticised by shareholders and the pressand takes it out on his directors, they blame their managers who take it out on thefront line staff. And who are the only people they have left to whack? The customers.

It’s not easy being at the customer interface day after day and it’s almost impossibleto get excited about serving customers if you do not feel valued. Often, the first placebusinesses need to look if front line staff are not performing well is at the

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relationships these colleagues have with their managers. The golden rule is: treatpeople the way they want to be treated, so they will treat you and others well.

Rapid technological innovation is also partly to blame. Failing to live up to its promiseof making our lives easier, demands on our time have actually increased and sentstress levels soaring. In the old days we would write a letter and not have to thinkabout it for three or four days at the most until we got a reply. Now we have voicemail and email, people expect us to be on call and open for business twenty-fourseven.It reminds me of the story of a little girl who asked her mummy why she hardly eversaw daddy. “It’s because daddy can’t finish his work during the day so he has to worklate,” she was told. With childlike wisdom she continued: “Why don’t they put daddyin a slower group then?”

The reality is there are no slower groups in our workplaces. Our work/life balancecan easily shift in the wrong direction and organisations that care about customerservice need to wise up to this. Our workplaces need to support and valuecolleagues in environments that enable them to do their job well, free fromunacceptable pressure or bullying. When companies commit to creating this ethos inpractice, the process of creating Raving Fan Customers by using the three secretsfirst revealed in my book Raving Fans, written with Sheldon Bowles, can begin.

The first secret is to decide what you want. This requires a clear, customer focussedvision. When Sheldon was running a petrol station in Winnipeg, he realised that noone chooses to go a petrol station and aimed to make the experience as swift andexciting as possible – rather like a Formula One pit stop. Staff dressed in red jumpsuits and raced towards the cars as they came into the forecourt. One pumpedpetrol, another checked tyre pressures and another cleaned windscreens. It was atthe time when everyone else was going self-serve and Sheldon had no competition!

The second secret of creating raving fans is discover what the customer wants.Sheldon had great feedback on his original vision but soon discovered customerswould also like to buy coffee or a newspaper. By listening to their suggestions, heincreased revenue and provided a better service.

Many people don’t listen to their customers because they fear the consequences. Butthere are two parts to listening. The first is to understand what the customer issaying; the second to decide whether or not you want to do what they suggest.Complying with requests isn’t compulsory. If their request doesn’t tie in with yourvision, you don’t have to meet it.

For instance, a McDonald’s franchisee in Illinois wrote to me explaining how oldercustomers had asked for tablecloths and full service. He originally and correctly ruledout this request as it was out of line with the company’s original vision. However, byturning three outlets over to full service once a week, he has reaped a surge ofinterest from people who don’t want to stand and queue but need to eat on a budget.It’s your decision whether to listen or act or listen and not act. The point is always tolisten.

The third secret to creating Raving Fan Customers is deliver the vision, plus one

percent. This means deliver what you promise and look for ways to improve thatdelivery. This is where good leadership comes into play. The visionary, directionalpart of leadership has to come from the top. But good leadership implementationoften means turning over power to those closest to the customers – often those who

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are at the bottom of the organisational hierarchy. This is unbelievably simple andobvious; yet many businesses refuse to take this ‘risk’ and end up denying their frontline staff the right to bring their brains to work or use their common sense in order toimplement organisational visions and values.

When I forgot my ID when checking in for an internal USA flight I was relieved to beable to buy a copy of a book I wrote with the legendary National Football Leaguecoach Don Shula from the airport bookshop because it had my photograph on thecover. I figured this was pretty good proof of identification. The first airline I travelledwith, Southwest Airlines, was fantastic. Staff at the check in desk yelled, “Hey, thisguy knows Don Shula!” and came with me to the security inspectors to explain thesituation. Having been given the power to make common sense decisions, they gavegreat customer service that I still rave about! The next airline forced me to visit fivedifferent levels of management and listen to long lectures on company policy beforegrudgingly allowing me on board. It’s no surprise to me that they are now facingbankruptcy while Southwest are one of the few airlines still making money inAmerica.

When front line staff are given the freedom to use their brains at work the results canbe astonishing. Ritz-Carlton gives staff a $2,000 ‘empowerment’ fund to solvecustomer problems. They can spend it entirely at their discretion, without fear ofreprimand, and Ritz-Carlton has won countless Raving Fan Customers as a result.One company I’m working with at the moment, Yum! Brands, is a quick-service foodchain with 850,000 employees worldwide in 100 countries. They are aiming to createa ‘customer mania environment’ with a similar policy. Their empowerment fund is tendollars and while that might not sound a lot compared to Ritz-Carlton’s $2,000, it is asum that will go a long way towards resolving customer problems in the quick-servicefood business.

My best advice is don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Someone else can alwaysbeat your price however hard you try, or they can offer a similar service. What theywill find hard is trying to match the exceptional relationships you have built up withyour customers. Invest in this area first – financially and practically. Put all yourcustomers first, be they internal or external; turn power over to your front line staff;ensure that your organisation values its people and you will get those Raving FanCustomers you deserve.

Ken Blanchard is a best selling business author and the founder and Chairman ofinternational training and development consultancy

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