The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Raving Fans’

Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service by Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles is a great book for mentoring because it offers some great tips on how to deliver impecceable customer service through a fable.

I first reviewed Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service by Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles five years ago for my newsletter Ambeck Edge, but I decided to post it on my blog because customer service is so critical. Some of the most successful companies have excelled because of impeccable customer service, and it’s one way for organizations to shine and differentiate today.

Shortly after I started reading this book, I had to shut up my inner critic and open myself up to the lessons. Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles present Raving Fans as a parable. The book starts off with the president of a company telling the new area manager that the company was built on customer service, and that the three preceding area managers didn’t understand that, and that’s why they were no longer with the organization. Each of those three preceding area managers lasted less than a year in the job. This fact made it difficult for me to understand why the new area manager, knowing this, would take off with his Fairy Godmother, Charlie (a man) to play golf.

To succeed in business, you have to create Raving Fans – satisfied customers are no longer enough. To deliver Raving Fan Service, you have to look after the customers’ needs whenever possible, be consistent in delivering the service, promise more and deliver more than you promise, and be ready to change direction when the vision changes because customers’ need and want change all the time. There are three secrets to creating Raving Fans – Decide what you want, discover what the customer wants and deliver the vision plus one percent.

Decide what you want: When you decide what you want, you must create a vision of perfection centered on the customer. This is your perception of perfection. You do this by visualizing the entire customer service experience. What does perfection look like? You live out your business fantasy by deciding what you want, and creating a vision of perfection centered on the moment the customer uses the product.

Discover what the customer wants: To find out what your customers’ vision is, simply ask them, and listen to what they say and don’t say. Understanding your vision allows you to better understand your customers’ vision. And if your customers’ vision is very different from yours – that is, the gap is too wide, you may have to stop servicing that customer. You cannot be everything to everybody.

Deliver the vision plus one percent: Be consistent – consistently meet expectations. To be consistent you must have systems in place within your organization. Every organization that delivers excellent customer service has systems in place, and a training program to entrench those systems into the heart and soul of the company. These systems are only guidelines, and you have to be flexible enough to alter the guidelines to better serve your customers. Once you are able to deliver consistent service, ongoing improvement is a must. The plus one percent is to keep you moving ahead and focused beyond your vision.

Cover via Amazon

Five+1 Great Ideas

1. All good customer service is a result of nifty systems
2. Constantly strive to improve what you have decided to achieve
3. Most customers have a focus – you have to find that focus and then mine it for information
4. Customers count on you to do what you say you will do
5. You can make big changes in almost anything, or achieve great things in your life by improving or changing by one percent. Things can’t help but improve if you keep at it one percent at a time
6. Customers have needs beyond the need of the company’s product, whether it comes in a box or is a service. People need to feel like they belong to a group – they need to feel that they are important, and that what they do, think, and say truly matters

I recommend this book because it’s an easy read – it takes less that two hours to digest the information. Suppress your inner critic if you are a logical person and allow the parable to unfold so that you can learn the simple lessons.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Photo Credit: Google via Apture

Note: Based on research, this is my attempt to get into the head of Estee Lauder, a truly remarkable woman and a pioneer. Estee would have been a great blogger and Invisible Mentor. The steps she took to achieve success can still be applied today. As an innovator and marketing strategist, she created many techniques for promoting her cosmetic line, which many believe are novel today. These promotional techniques include “Tell a Woman” Campaign, known today as viral marketing, get others to talk about your products, known as raving fans.

When reading today’s post, read actively, and think of ways you can apply the information to your unique situation. As I was reading up on Estee Lauder, my creative wheels were spinning rapidly inside my head and I have ideas on how to better promote my products. When we study the past we are often better able to understand the present and the future.

Influence: Uncle John Shotz, a chemist

Big  Break: Came in 1946 from Saks Fifth Avenue and paved the way for product entry into other retail stores such as Neiman Marcus and Marshall Field’s

Regret: Not balancing work and family

Quotable: “Measure your success in dollars, not degrees.”

Estee Lauder’s Success Tips

1. Pay close attention to the quality of your products
2. Offer a gift with purchase
3. Send samples by direct mail
4. Think creatively instead of thinking competition. Which non traditional market could benefit from your product or service (How about tapping hotels to purchase business books for their executive guests as a welcome)
5. Carefully recruit and train all sales representatives on how to give excellent customer service (Have product demos)
6. After you achieve success with your product, expand the product line and brand
7. Have raving fans: Give your friends who have influence samples of your products to carry around
8. Use viral marketing (Similar to “Tell a Woman” Campaign)
9. Trust yourself and your instincts
10. Focus, be aware of the world around
11. Know your customer, know your niche
12. Persist and have ambition

Which success tip can you apply? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Resources

Builders & Titans: Estée Lauder by Grace Mirabella

Encyclopedia of World Biography on Estee Lauder

Estee: A Success Story, Estee Lauder

Estee Lauder Beyond The Magic , Israel Lee

Estee Lauder by Sara Alpern