Don t Oil the Squeaky Wheel in VS .NET

Creator PDF417 in VS .NET Don t Oil the Squeaky Wheel

happy to put anyone up in a hotel Everyone, except the mom with the sixyear-old boy, camped out in the waiting area hoping for a miracle And the miracle came in the form of Amy, who cheerfully announced that she had ordered pizza and soft drinks for everyone I was amazed how much that seemed to cheer everyone up Just as the pizza arrived some 35 minutes later, Amy let us know that we had been given the go-ahead So Amy grabbed all the pizza boxes and soft drinks and told us, No problem, I ll get this served in route After we nally had taken off, Amy served us our preference of pizza Despite the late hour, Amy continued to be very pleasant and cheerful Actually, it felt more like we were at a ball game than in the air Amy maintained that level of positive energy even after she dropped an entire pizza on the oor, barely missing a passenger (me) She was even able to provide us with seconds and got all that done in the 14-minute ight When we nally landed at Washington/Dulles shortly after 1:00 AM, everyone thanked the crew for a job well done Mind you, for most passengers, the approximately one-hour ight took nine and a half hours And still they thanked the crew for doing a great job What are the lessons that you can learn form this Don t worry about service failures They will happen in any business It s not the failure that will cause you to lose customers It s how frontline service providers respond that will make or break your business After all, research tells us that unsatis ed customers are very talkative They have a habit of telling everybody more correctly, about 21 others about an unsatisfactory service experience Unfortunately, this is a very costly proposition because it literally destroys positive word of mouth, the only advertising that really works It is also extremely costly because it will cost you roughly ve times as much to attract a new customer compared with retaining a current customer In addition, research tells us that you can increase pro ts by 25 to 85 percent merely by retaining 5 percent more of your current customers3

It was mealtime, and the ight attendant asked the passenger if he would like dinner What are my choices the customer asked Yes or No, replied the ight attendant

Hire only people who have a service personality That is, hire people who are positive, enthusiastic, empathetic, resilient, resourceful, enterprising, and creative Treat all employees as if they are winners, adults, and team members At the Ritz Carlton, employees are told, We are all ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen Never forget that over the long run you get what you expect Provide every new team member with a comprehensive and fun orientation program Let s face it, you can t expect your team members to deliver consistently excellent service if you treat them like mushrooms Provide meaningful and ongoing job-related continuing education and training If you don t, your excellent employees will leave you because they know that unless they are learning and growing, they are falling behind, and if they do that long enough, they will become an endangered species Celebrate longevity You can t continue to sustain high levels of employee turnover (For the real cost associated with turnover see 10) Adhere to an aggressive internal promotion policy Help your team members to succeed and grow, and they will more likely stick with you for the long term Collect and publicly display detailed customer satisfaction data Do this in a manner that is understood by all team members Use graphs and charts whenever you can Everyone understands pictures better than numbers Tie rewards to performance Reward customer service champions differently than your average service provider