Magic or Misery, with Shep Hyken – Episode 13 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, customer service and experience expert, author, and speaker, explains the true meaning of being “helpful”, why it takes one to say yes, but two to say no, finding moments of magic, misery, and mediocrity, and the handy index card trick for your staff.

About Shep:

As an Award-Winning Keynote Speaker and World-Renowned Keynote Speaker in Customer Service & Customer Experience, Shep has worked with the world’s best brands to help them build a culture centered around the customer. His presentations consistently get rave reviews for being engaging and informative. The National Speakers Association inducted Shep into its Hall of Fame for lifetime achievement in the professional speaking industry.

Shep Hyken has been at the forefront of the CS/CX Revolution for decades. His experience runs the gamut from helping notable companies like Disney and FedEx to improve their already outstanding customer service, to helping small and mid-sized organizations transform poor customer experience into a highlight of the organization.

Shep has seen it all. While his experience is long, and his books are legendary in the industry, Shep continues to be laser-focused on the biggest challenge facing every organization — making the customer come back.

Shep has worked with companies and organizations renowned for building loyal relationships with their customers and employees for decades.

His in-depth focus allows him to assess what’s really happening at the best organizations and how to fix what isn’t working.

His books have been read by millions, and his articles have been featured in hundreds of publications.

He is the author of Moments of Magic®, The Loyal Customer, The Cult of the Customer, The Amazement Revolution, Amaze Every Customer Every Time, Be Amazing or Go Home, The Convenience Revolution, and I’ll Be Back.

Learn more at Hyken.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
This man is incredible. His name is Shep Hyken. He’s the chief amazement officer at Shepherd presentations. And I’m telling you, this guy is one of the very, very best out there in the world, talking about customer service. He’s a New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Best Selling Author and Hall of Fame speaker, yep. Thank you for being on the show, brother.

Shep Hyken
It is an honor, a pleasure. I’m flattered, you’re too nice.

Host
You’ve got all these great books on customer service. And what’s different?

Shep Hyken
Well, I said, What if I found one company to use for the entire book as a role model, and looking for a company that’s a rock star, but not recognized as a rock star, and that was Ace Hardware Business Week recognized the top 25 customer service brands. Rich was rated number 12, and I love the Ritz Carlton, one of my favorite, favorite hotel change. Guess what? Eight hardware was rated number 10. That opened my eye. The World Headquarters is a multi billion dollar corporation, but if you’re a small entrepreneurial business, they have 4600 stores owned by 3000 different owners, and that’s Mom and Pop. And here’s what they’ve done. They’ve managed to operationalize the word helpful. They want to be the most helpful stores on the planet, especially in their industry, which is home improvement and hardware, and they have to compete against some pretty big companies, I mean, and the Home Depot or Lowe’s or Menards go up right now and be big. Big Box stores is who they had to compete against. It was David versus Goliath. And you know, who wins?

Host
What are the things that customers really want today in terms of being helpful? How do we demonstrate? Or do you have any examples?

Shep Hyken
First of all, what customers want is they decide what it is that they want. Do they want the lowest price in town where they need help with something, or do they need support, or they want value? And by the way, there you can get a hybrid. You can’t always get the lowest price and the best service, though, helpful means in the in the case of a target, where it means very knowledgeable, because you walk in with the part and they go, Hey, I need this. Can you help me and tell me what to do with it? And their people are very knowledgeable. They’re trained well, that’s part of their their whole thing. Cluster staff extremely well. You’re not going to have to go walking around, you know, the aisles, looking for someone to help you. That’s important. So I think convenience staff properly, without having to wait a long time, knowledgeable people, all that goes toward helpful and then, you know, having principles in place, like one of the ideas that one of the retailers told me is that we have this idea that it takes one to say yes, but two to say no, which means that that frontline person has to figure out a yes solution for the customer, or he’s got to get permission to say no to the customer from a manager, and the manager really doesn’t want to be bothered. But when’s the last time you act for something and to get approval, someone said, Hold on, I have to check with my manager.

Host
So okay, so here’s a question. So one of the things you talk about is moments of magic, and you also talk about moments of misery. What separates moments of magic from moments of mediocrity.

Shep Hyken
And mediocrity is my term for average, satisfactory, just okay, and a moment of magic is and it’s not necessarily blow me away. Wow me, it’s just better than average. And so if you just take that moment, that interaction, and you bump it up just a notch, and by the way, once the while, you bump it up a lot more given an opportunity to do so, but it could be just a consistent positive attitude, something that’s better than average. And when you spring the moments of magic along, and they’re they’re consistent, that puts you in what I call the zone of amazement. Shall be fun. Words, amazement, mediocrity, misery, you know magic. So really, the big difference between mediocrity and magic is just being a little above average, because anybody can be average, and anybody could create a moment of magic some of the time, but the goal is make it happen all of the time. That’s the key consistency. If you go into your Nordstrom department store, what you get is very consistent. People engage you, they help you, and they have some pretty good, I call lack of policies in place, meaning that the salesperson can go from one department to the next with you and help you throughout the entire store. You know, take, you know, I’m a man, and I want to buy my wife something that guy will take or the gal take me upstairs the women’s department. You don’t get that in other stores. Now, that’s consistent throughout their entire organization. And you know what? They don’t blow me away. They’re just consistently really good, better than average. Sometimes, you know, and that by itself, makes them way above average. So you hire the right people, and you train them to your system, and then you say, Now go out there. And you know what is it? Go forth and multiply. Go forth and prosper.

Host
Brilliant. Brilliant stuff, this kind of coming back. Here’s my question for you. You know, as far as providing amazing customer service, how do I get my front line to care about customer service? In other words, if I’m the entrepreneur, I’m the owner or I’m the manager, how do I get the people on the front line to care about this, right?

Shep Hyken
Well, first of all, recognize. Is that if they aren’t willing to care, they shouldn’t be hired to begin with. So it starts at the hiring process. You know, do the background. One of the people that I interviewed for the last book was American Express. I interviewed their senior VP of World Service, and one of the things he talked about, it’s, rather than hire people from the call center industry, he looked for people that had hospitality background, people that work in a hotel or a restaurant, because he says those people know how to take care of people. If that’s important, look at the right kind of person that you’re hiring. Nordstrom talked about how they don’t really train their people to be as good as they do the parents train them. They didn’t take what they already know and they make it work for their system. I mean, isn’t that great? And so same thing with ace. They hire the right people and then they train them. Training is so important, it’s really difficult to throw somebody into the fire there and say, Okay, now get out real quick without any kind of training.

Host
Let’s say I’m a small, medium sized business, and I’m just trying to get get people fired up and jack up about the idea of providing amazing customer service. So there, you know, what are some simple things that we can do pretty quickly that don’t cost a lot, that are going to improve my customers experience immediately?

Shep Hyken
All right, give everybody an index card and tell them that at the end of the week you want them to write down an example when they’ve created a great service experience, either for a customer, or their internal customer, someone they work with. Okay, then you compile these cards. Somebody gets them, they compile them, they look through them, they pick the best of the best, and they share these. And what you also try and do, and I use that word, operationalized a little earlier. Operationalize some of these good, positive experiences. Why can’t they be happening all the time? Now the next thing I want them to do is I want them not to just do this once. I want them to do it once a week for like, the next six weeks. And what happens is, at the end of the week, people are going, Okay, what should I write about? And after about week three or four, they’re going, Oh, this is a great one. This is what I want to write about. So instead of reflecting back, they’re caught in the moment of giving that great service to experience.

Host
Oh, I love that. Shep, thanks for joining the show, my friend.

Shep Hyken
Thank you, great to be here. Hope we do it again soon.