Southwest Airlines and Chick Fil-A are iconic brands known for kindness and courtesy toward patrons and peers and also for enduring success. Just as Colleen Barrett lived and led by the Golden Rule, Chick fil-A Founder Truett Cathy also built a business anchored in serving and loving others. Few people understand that more than original Chick Fil-A Pioneer and former Marketing Executive David Salyers. For the months of October and November, the CCB Institute is delighted to share his words of wisdom in the realm of Servant Leadership. You are going to LUV this values-driven, practical action piece—don’t miss it!
3 Steps to Remarkable Service
Discover Second Mile Service
Truett Cathy, the Founder of Chick-fil-A, used to talk about the fact that sometimes 10% more effort yields a 100% better result. While I don’t know if that’s true in every area of business, it certainly is true in some aspects, and we discovered one of those for Chick-fil-A when we developed what we call the Second Mile Service program. We identified the first mile as being about doing things customers expect with excellence. And so we would ask ourselves, “what are all the things that customers expect of a fast food restaurant?” and try to do those with excellence. We had a lot of surveys which would tell us where we were disappointing customers, and we would work on fixing those problems. But the Second Mile was completely different. For the Second Mile, we asked ourselves, “what are the things people would not expect from a fast-food restaurant and how could we do those with excellence?” That’s the realm in which 10% more effort yields 100% better results.
In fact, I got a glimpse into the actual metrics behind this. A company called Forrester does what they call a Customer Experience Index. In the 2016 index, they interviewed 120,000 customers across a wide range of industries.
And what was fascinating is they kind of compared doing things that customers didn’t expect, to doing things that customers did expect, or to use the Chick-fil-A vernacular, First Mile versus Second Mile Service. What they found was that the return on investment for Second Mile Service was 9 to 1. In other words, there was nine times as much return doing things that were beyond what people expected, than just doing what they did expect with excellence.
I think the problem for most corporations is that the things that we’re not doing well show up on all the surveys, so we tend to spend all of our time and effort fixing those. And it’s not that we shouldn’t do that (we certainly need to fix problems that have been identified), but it’s that we get so engaged and so immersed in fixing what’s wrong that we don’t take time to think about doing things to ‘wow’ customers. Things that would be Remarkable and go beyond what they were expecting. Read more.
And so literally, the math works! If we would just spend 10% of our time thinking of and executing things that people didn’t expect, we might get a 9 to 1 return on those so that 10% more effort could yield a 100% better result in that area of the business. At Chick-fil-A , we challenged ourselves to do just that; instead of spending 100% of our time fixing problems, we put 10% of that time, effort, and money toward things that our customers wouldn’t expect. That focus on Second Mile Service has certainly resulted in a 100% better result in the end.
Create Remarkable Moments for Customers
Along the way, one of the things I’ve discovered is that life is measured in time but valued in Remarkable moments. If I was sitting down with you and asking you about your life, you probably wouldn’t give it to me as measures of time, you would talk about important moments along the way. One of my favorite things I did when I was interviewing people for Chick-fil-A is say, “OK, you have 20 minutes – imagine somebody is making a documentary of your life. Walk me through what would be in that documentary as it relates to the things that molded and shaped you into the person I see sitting here today.” And inevitably, what would happen during that 20 minutes is that person would share about moments along the way; that could be successes, failures, challenges they had to overcome… it could be a teacher or a coach that spoke into their life or about a parent or friend. But what all those things had in common is they were rooted in moments that had a disproportionate impact on their life. While we tend to celebrate the passage of time through things like birthdays and anniversaries, what we truly value is in fact, moments. And when you realize that, you also realize not all moments are created equal – some moments have disproportionate power and influence on our lives.
In psychology, they talk about a thing called the peak-end rule which says that there are two moments in all of our experiences that disproportionately shape our memory and the impact of those experiences. One of those is the peak moment of the experience (its most intense point) and the other is the end, or last, moment. Those two moments disproportionally shape our memory and have tremendous power and influence.
What most businesses miss when they’re spending so much time trying to fix the problems is creating those Remarkable moments that will outweigh all the other problems they’ve fixed across the day. If all we do is fix problems we might end up with a 5 rating – we’ve got to create some “10 moments” along the way. Fascinatingly, it’s not just about singular experiences.
We have to create remarkable moments throughout our relationship with customers.
We might only have a 10 moment once every couple of years, but it’s so important to create those because that’s what’s going to stand out in that customer’s mind (not the time you forgot to put ketchup in their bag!). It doesn’t have to be every moment of every visit, but we do have to create a 10 moment along the way for them to look back on their experience with us and give the relationship a high rating.
Focus on Creating Raving Fan Employees FIRST
At Chick-fil-A, we often said that we were in the business of creating raving fans, and raving fans were customers that would do three things: 1) they’d be happy to pay full price, 2) they would come more often and 3) they would tell other people about us. So, in doing that, we created raving fans who became our greatest ambassadors to recruit new customers for us. Well, you’ll never have raving fan customers unless you’ve first created raving fan employees! The level of excitement, energy, and enthusiasm behind the counter will dictate the level of excitement, energy, and enthusiasm over the counter. It’s almost like the level of excitement and engagement you create with your own employees is the level to which your customers will rise; you’re creating a lid of sort. If your employees aren’t excited, there’s no way your customers will be, so we have to focus on creating raving fans behind the counter.
In the same way that we’re trying to give Second Mile Service and create Remarkable moments for customers, we need to do that internally for our employees.
How are we not only fixing the problems for them, but also creating these Remarkable moments along the way? Chick-fil-A is intentional about creating those moments for employees, whether that’s the Vision and Values tour that new employees embark on over their first 12 months (more on that in a future newsletter!), or celebrating a birthday, baby shower, wedding shower or work anniversary. The same way you do with your family at home, you can create those Remarkable moments that mean more than the day-to-day when an employee reflects back. What are those Remarkable moments that people will look back on and remark about years later?
A major consulting organization did a massive study of several hundred thousand people in which they examined the difference between what employees are looking for now in a career opportunity versus what the previous generations looked for. The study revealed that today’s generation is less about product and profit, although that’s part of it, but it’s more about purpose and growth. The younger generation wants to do something meaningful and they want growth, which has a double meaning; they want to be part of a growing organization and they want to grow personally as part of their experience with an organization. So, the employee value proposition is migrating over time as well, from product and profit to purpose and growth. What are we intentionally doing to add to the purpose of the business and enable people to grow personally and professionally (at an organization that’s also growing)? That idea of growing personally and professionally is the Second Mile service organizations can now offer their employees. What are we doing to enable people to grow personally and professionally? How are we taking a more holistic interest in people’s lives?
If you are more interested in all aspects of their lives, employees are more interested in all aspects of your business.
In turn, they will be more capable of contributing to the organization in ways you wouldn’t have imagined. Employees in that kind of culture are more dedicated, more loyal, and have more passion to help the company succeed that’s helping them succeed. That’s how Remarkable Service toward your employees can result in Remarkable Service for your customers.
