Podcast appearances and mentions of Jan Carlzon

In Part One, we talked about Jan Carlzon's insights into the importance of consistent service  being provided to clients.  The buyer mantra is know, like and trust in sales. We also talked about the basics of sales – prospecting and closing. Now are we going to continue the errors, shortcomings and mistakes of last year into the new year or not?  Are we going to just continue doing what we have always done year in, year out or are we going to improve?  We tend to get into a groove in sales, which is perfectly fine, if it is the correct groove.  We start again this year, but are we adding years of sales experience or are we just duplicating the same dubious experience of last year?  We have to make the decision that we are going to become better in all aspects of the basics of selling and build a professional career. As mentioned in Part One, a big element of sales success revolves around our communication skills. These days it is made even more difficult, because we are probably doing this, while selling remotely.  How do you like someone you have never met before in person and only interact with on a small screen during an online call?  In this environment, what we say and how we say it become vital.  Did you know that we lose about 20% of our pep when we are on screen. We have to lift our energy just to get back to parity, let alone start to impress the client with our energy and passion to serve them. You will have noticed what dead dogs a lot of people are when on screen.  They are lifeless and low power. If you are the buyer, they are probably not the type of person you want taking care of your business.  You want a powerhouse who will run through brick walls for you, who will leap tall buildings in a single bound to do the best deal, someone who will take a bullet for you on the pricing. This means the same old, same old, year in, year out sales boogie doesn't function properly and we will lose the customer and the sale.  We have to refine our onscreen communication skills further just to tread water, in order to stay where we are right now. These are the new basics of sales.  However, are salespeople leaping out of bed ready for the day and seeing it as a new day in sales, that requires a set of different skills from last year?  How are we doing with understanding and mastering the new basics for this coming year? Understanding clients seems the most obvious basic skill, but that is a rarity.  You have to wonder how that could be the case?  In Japan, the reason is simple. The communication flow is one way.  The seller is trying to “convince” the buyer to buy.  To do that they trot out their widget catalogue and describe it in vast detail. The problem with this “no questions asked” approach is you don't know enough information. Does the buyer need that widget in pink or blue?  Waxing lyrical about the bountiful aspects and many wonderful attributes of your blue widget is ridiculous and pointless because the buyer needs the widget in pink.  You need to know that and the way to find out is to ask the buyer questions, rather than blindly pitching into the dark. The Japanese client is a problem too.  Over time, they have trained salespeople to offer up their pitch, so that they can cut it to shreds.  They do it this way in order to satisfy themselves this is a low risk purchase.  They prefer the “smash the walnut with a sledgehammer” approach. Risk aversion is fair enough and nobody wants to make an incorrect purchase or waste resources.  Pitching is a total waste, however salespeople and buyers haven't woken up to that fact yet.  A Japanese salesman who came to see me promptly sat down and immediately went through his entire slide deck adding his commentary.  He didn't ask me one teensy-weensy question about my business or what was the problem I was trying to fix.  I teach sales, so I was amazed and wondered how long it would be before he would ask me a question.  Well he didn't.  He just pitched and pitched and pitched.  We wasted twenty five minutes of that meeting going through stuff of no value or interest to me the buyer.  I wanted pink but he kept talking about blue the whole time. If he had taken a few moments to ask me some questions, he could have zeroed in on the two slides that were pertinent to me, in that whole massive deck. We could have had a much more meaningful and fruitful conversation.  He didn't get the sale and no wonder. Whether we are selling online or selling when person to person, we need to ask questions.  Japan being Japan, we need that mezzanine step of first getting permission to ask questions and that is not difficult.  Are you or your colleagues asking for permission?  Salespeople in Japan need to start the new year with a new realisation that pitching is inefficient and basically self-defeating.  Let's start the new year reflecting on the true basics of selling.  Then we can put those basics into practice, in order to get the results we need.  The equivalent of football blocking and tackling is what we need in sales.  If we salespeople don't get it, then this will be another year of opportunity which has slipped by, eluding our grasp.  We simply cannot afford that year in, year out business anymore.  

Journeymen salespeople are starting another year of selling.  Maybe their financial year is a calendar year or maybe the year wraps up in March.  It doesn't matter, because there is a mental trick we play on ourselves that January 1st represents a new start, a new year.  Sales can be exhausting and 2025 will not go down as a bumper year for the vast majority of salespeople.  Yet, here we go again.  How do we get ourselves back up into the saddle on that bucking bronco that is the sales life?  In Japan, very few salespeople are basing their livelihood on full commission sales.  Here we have either a base and bonus or a base and commission system.  That means that if we don't sell much we can still eat.  So the economic pressure here is less intense than in other markets.  It is also tricky to get fired for poor performance in Japan.  The courts expect the employer to reassign the sales failures into other jobs more suited to their lack of talent.  So the downside of not selling is not that cut throat here.  Also, the vast majority of salespeople are amateurs, not properly trained in the profession.  Rank amateurs bumbling their way along is the norm here, so no need to feel any social pressure either. In these circumstances it can be as if everyone in sales in Japan is sitting in a lukewarm bath – not too hot and not cold, but also not very exciting either.  “Blocking and tackling” was the basics of winning football games according to Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers.  So with sales, prospecting and closing are the basics of sales.  We have to be farmers and hunters.  Finding new buyers and treasuring our existing buyers, looking for the reorder sequence to kick in.  Know, like and trust are the basics of sales.  The buyer has to know who we are.  If they have never heard of us or never met us, then they won't be buying anything from us.  The internet is a godsend because buyers can find us to solve a problem they are having and we didn't lift a finger.  All that finger lifting was done by the marketing department spending dough and presto, we get the leads.  Okay, we get the lead but so what?  Will the buyer like a total stranger and even more importantly, trust a total stranger.  What did you parents tell you – don't talk to strangers!  Therefore the initial touch with the buyer is critical.  It isn't a one and done thing though, because there is bound to be numerous touches on the way through.  Jan Carlzon's book “Moment of Truth” is a must read on the importance of every part of the organisation taking ownership and accountability for the customer.  This sounds simple enough. In my experience, Japanese businesses don't teach accountability to the entire team.  Salespeople are expected to be accountable and bend over backward to meet the buyer's requests. The person picking up the phone though didn't get the email about first impressions, accountability or ownership.  They got the email about if they transfer a salesperson through they will get severely scolded.  Because they don't know who is calling, they have found it is best to treat everyone as guilty until proven innocent and be as cautious as possible with strangers.  If the buyer calls for you and you are not there, the person picking up the phone is not helpful.  They say stuff like “they are not at their desk now” and say nothing more.  This forms a negative impression about your company and its care for the buyer.  Your own team are killing the like and trust bit for you with the customer.  This was what Carlzon found.  You have to educate everyone to think differently about keeping the sense of ownership high and the like and trust part powerful. Another part of the like and trust component are our communication skills.  If we sound like we don't know what we are doing, then the client won't like that.  If we say one thing but the truth proves to be something else, buyers definitely won't like that either. I had a person I know here in Tokyo call me up about some animation sales tools.  I was interested and we had a conversation about it.  It turned out he was actually just fronting for the American firm and my next conversation was with someone from the headquarters.  What the local guy told me was different to what the American rep told me.  I immediately lost trust in both sides. I never went any further with the deal and I would never do business with the local guy ever again. This is another Carlzon nominated fail point.  As the conversation moves around through the organisation, there has to be integrity, consistency and truth.  In Part Two we will continue to look at the other key basics, the blocking and tackling of the sales process.  

Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice.  Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well.  I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel. One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery.  For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.    So back to my story.  As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working.  After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on.  There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room.  Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me.  Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service.  You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization.  After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't  you?  But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand?  Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed.  As leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again.    First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically.  We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.

Great service is so fleeting and  illusive. You encounter it and then like the morning mist, the next minute it is gone.  One company representative is so spectacularly helpful and then next one is seemingly possessed by evil spirits and demonic. As companies how do we get the angels inside our staff to engage with the clients, rather than having reputation destroying devils intrude.  Good service, consistently delivered, is no accident and so it has to be made to occur.  How can we do that? Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  Carlson's insights flooded back to me when I checked into a hotel in Singapore.  By the way, the drive in from Changi Airport is a credit to the Singaporean Government, who spend millions every year to develop and maintain their landscaped, leafy, green, tropical thoroughfares.  This is smart.  You are already in a pleasant mood just getting into town.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice.  Singapore is very humid and trust me, after a long flight, that ice cold beverage went down very well.  I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel. One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery.  For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answering your call in a pleasant, helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy, disinterested and unfriendly. Instantly,  your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.  How do you feel when you are given the run around from department to department? So back to my story.  As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working.  After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on.  There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room.  Actually, I discovered the same system in the elevator, when I unsuccessfully tried to select my floor.  Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant, busy young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two salient facts to me.  Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan.  When you call just about any organization here, you get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese ,“XYZ company here”.  You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then you are abandoned to stone cold motherless silence.  The “may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back” bit is rarely offered.   Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem buddy and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call.  Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand.  In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and consequently I had a good impression of the whole organisation.  I was projecting that positive vibe to the entire company. The person taking the call has just put that positive image of the brand to the sword. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service.  You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization.  After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't  you? But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand?  Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed.  I heard one of my recent hires in the sales team answering the phone with an unhelpful tone in his voice.  He actually sounded like he was angry.  He was in his fifties, so no boy, but obviously that had been his standard, ugly phone manner throughout his entire working life.  A perpetual brand killer, client alienating, reputation destroyer right there.  We have an open plan office, so I could hear this. If you are encased in the dark wood paneled corner executive crib with a tremendous view, then maybe you will never know what is going on in the engine room and therefore be unable to do anything about it. Leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that nobody on our team gets it about the preservation of the brand and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again.  So how about this for a starter for educating our staff to do a better job protecting and enhancing the brand: Answer the phone with a pleasant, happy voice. Be helpful and offer your name first, so the customer won't be embarrassed that they didn't recognise your voice.  It also gives the caller confidence that a real person is going to take care of their needs. If you take the call and the person they are calling isn't there, proactively offer to ensure they get a call back as soon as possible and guarantee you will get their message through to them. End with thanking them for their call and again leave your name, in case there is anything further the caller may need. First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically.  We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up. Action Steps Draw your spiders web of client touch points and identify who needs training, including non-regular staff. Design the experience you want the client to have and train everyone around the content. Look at your systems for moving or transitioning the client through the organization, to make sure the client experience is consistently good. Always check to see what you think is happening is actually the case.  

Managers manage.  That means they make sure everything runs on time, to cost and to quality.  The leader does all of that, plus some additional important things. These include setting the strategic direction for the team and building the people's capabilities.  Part of the leader's role is to unite everyone behind the direction they are setting for the team.  There can be a lot of detail at the micro level about how to make the strategy a reality. One key component which needs to be set at the start is to re-clarify the purpose of the team.  You would think that was pretty obvious. However, if the leader doesn't work on defining it, there could be 10 people in the team and eleven different purposes. Here is a simple six-step guide to setting the purpose. 1.         What is meaningful about what your team does, from the perspective of the organisation as a whole (such as in relation to the stated purpose and vision)? The team operates within the framework of the firm, but the leader must break that down to the team level and create a local version which matches the team's reality in the field.  How does your team fit into the big picture?  Which colleagues from other departments are key partners and where is the coordination most required? There is often a firm wide Vision Statement which can be a good starting point and the task is to take that and create your own local version for the team. 2.        What is meaningful about what your team does from the perspective of your clients?  We know what we sell, but sometimes we forget what the client is buying.  They are not always the same things. For example, we might think we are selling leadership training, but what the client is buying might be succession planning or greater productivity.  It is always important that every person in the team has a clear understanding of the client's needs. Jan Carlzon's book “Moment of Truth” was an excellent guide to the importance of making sure the entire series of contact points with the client were aligned and operating at the same quality levels.  An example would be the person who answers the phone is pleasant and professional, but the person the client is then transferred to is rude or grumpy. The firm brand went from heavenly clouds to depths of hell in one second. 3.        How should your team members behave as they are delivering what matters? This comes back to what are the team and organisational values?  The leader will always have a wide spread of values scattered across their team and their job is to unite everyone behind the core values of the team.  The value set defines how everyone thinks about the clients and that, in turn, defines how they interact with the clients.  There is also the issue of how the team members interact with each other? Is there a strong level of mutual respect or we are in a pit of vipers with corporate politics run amok?  4.        What are the expected results for the team and what are we doing when we are acting according to our purpose? We are establishing KPI, goals, targets etc., to make the outputs needed clear to everyone.  Does each individual have a target or are there team based goals?  In the latter case, do people within the team understand their role in delivering the team result? 5.        What actions do you, as the leader, need to do to help fulfill the purpose? Taking care of the logistics, resources, permissions, interdepartmental cooperation are common leader roles.  There is also the key role of coach to the team members to bolster their motivation and skills.  Often though, as busy, busy leaders, we transition from coach to mad pirate captain barking out orders and making people walk the plank if they don't perform.  We set the tone for the team and we set the role model of how we are going to operate in this team.  6.        Who do you need to be as a leader to fulfill the purpose (characteristics/ qualities? We should never forget that every single member of our team is a ninja level “boss watcher” and they are constantly scanning us for any signs of crumbling between what we say and what we do.  We set the pace and the quality levels for the team.  That means we have to be lifetime learners, very well organised and totally professional in our work.  It also means we have to be calm in the midst of the raging storms which hit our team from time to time and be the rock around which everyone can shelter. Use these six prompts to create the purpose for your team, either for them or with them.  I would recommend “with them”, because the team who designs the purpose together has the best levels of ownership of the outcomes and is more likely to execute well on what they have produced.  

Discover the transformative power of 'Moments of Truth' in this week's episode, drawing lessons from legendary leader Jan Carlzon and Scandinavian Airlines' remarkable turnaround:   Elevate Patient Interactions: Uncover how every 15-second interaction can be a 'Moment of Truth', profoundly enhancing patient loyalty and satisfaction in your dental practice. Differentiate with Personalized Care: Learn actionable strategies to make each patient visit memorable, setting your practice apart in today's competitive landscape. Team Empowerment for Excellence: Explore how empowering your staff can turn routine appointments into opportunities for exceptional patient care, driving growth and reputation.   Tune in to "15 Seconds to Success: Crafting a Stellar Dental Practice" for insights on leveraging brief interactions for lasting impact. Transform your practice with the philosophy that appreciates the magic of moments.   Subscribe, rate, and review, and share this episode with peers who are just as dedicated to cultivating a high-profit, mission-driven dental practice.   P.S. Reveal the hidden potential in your dental practice. Take the Dentists Ascend Quiz for your customized results.

(NOTAS Y ENLACES DEL CAPÍTULO AQUÍ: https://www.jaimerodriguezdesantiago.com/kaizen/180-modelos-mentales-20-liderazgo-exploradores-puertas-de-embarque-y-snafu/)Hacía demasiado tiempo que no dedicaba un capítulo al tema de los modelos mentales. Claro que después de diecinueve, tampoco te creas que es fácil, uno se va quedando sin ideas. Pero estos días, preparando el Programa de Desarrollo Directivo y Liderazgo del Instituto Tramontana del que te hablé hace unas semanas, me di cuenta de que habíamos hablado de modelos mentales procedentes de muchas disciplinas y útiles para muchas cosas diferentes, pero que nunca los habíamos vinculado a eso, al liderazgo y a la gestión de personas. Y había que ponerle remedio, porque hay unos cuantos y son muy útiles. Y por el camino se nos cuelan: 

Sommarrepris med Jan Carlzon. Detta avsnitt sändes första gången 30 sep 2021, och här får du lyssna till Jan Carlzon, företagsledare, investerare och författare till den banbrytande boken Riv Pyramiderna, när han pratar med Arash om sin då nysläppta bok Se människan och om att man som människa styrs av antingen kärlek eller rädsla. Missa inte detta avsnitt – och missa heller inte att prenumerera på Arash nyhetsbrev där du, en gång i månaden, får det senaste inom marknadsföring, ledarskap, tech och AI.

Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice.  Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well.  I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel.  One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery.  For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.  So back to my story.  As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working.  After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on.  There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room.  Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me.  Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service.  You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization.  After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't  you? But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand?  Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed.  As leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again.    First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically.  We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.

Creating Amazing Experiences that Make Customers Come Back (Again and Again)  Shep Hyken interviews Dominic Constandi, client services and customer success leader and Chief Customer Officer at ZoomInfo. He shares what customer service professionals can learn from their own experiences and use to create lasting value at every point of their customer's journey.  Top Takeaways:    The first impression is not necessarily the first time you meet somebody or do business with a company. It's what sets the tone for what's to follow. The last impression is what you remember that hopefully brings you back.    The Moments of Truth concept goes all the way back to the 1980's when Jan Carlzon, former president of Scandinavian Airlines, came up with the idea to help his employees create a better customer experience. He defined it as whenever a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, they have an opportunity to form an impression. That impression can make or break the experience.    First impressions are Moments of Truth that set the tone for the customer's journey. For example:    Hotels spend a lot of money on their lobbies to create a great first impression. They spend resources to train staff on how to make customers feel welcome the moment they walk in.    How a salesperson answers the first few questions a customer has often determines if they would do business with that company or not.    There is a window of opportunity when customers are ready to purchase a product or invest in a service. It is up to the companies to use data to know the who, what, and when. Who are we talking to? With what message? When is the best time to deliver that message?    Customer experience is more important than ever. Customers are more critical, in this economy, in evaluating what's giving them the most value when making purchases and investments.     You have heard of FOMO or Fear of Missing Out. In this episode, Shep and Dominic discuss FUMU, or Fear of Messing Up, and how it affects customer success. Tune in!  Quote:   "Good decisions made from bad data are just bad decisions you don't know about yet."    About:    Dominic Constandi is the Chief Customer Officer at ZoomInfo, overseeing client service that ensures a seamless experience for his customers.   Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Desde los momentos de la verdad del legendario Jan Carlzon pasando por la metodología Blueprint hasta el Customer Journey Map, de lo que hablamos al fin y al cabo es de enfocarnos en esos instantes en que una empresa u organización es puesta a prueba por el contacto y la demanda de atención y servicio de un cliente, potencial o actual, primario o secundario. Entender esto es clave en los procesos de marketing relacional, de ahí que la exploración 720 por el Planeta Marketing nos atrape en esta temática: “CONTACTO CON EL CLIENTE”. El cometido primordial de esta nueva misión, pasará por cómo identificar esos momentos, desde la concientización y atracción de personas, hasta su retención, desde que alguien entra a la tienda física o virtual o quizás desde que nos busca en internet, hasta conocer sus niveles de satisfacción, y sobre todo, cómo diseñar y estandarizar la forma ideal de reaccionar a esas interacciones en que los consumidores buscan conexión con las marcas. Quédate con Rodolfo Guerrero y Denisse Melero a interactuar en el tema.

SAS går en osäker framtid till mötes när pappa staten klipper banden. Men samtidigt som de statliga bolagen blir färre, så blir de kommunala allt fler. I vissa kommuner finns det ingen som vet hur många det är. Programledare: Hanna Malmodin Gäster och röster i programmet: Andreas Bergh, docent i nationalekonomi vid Lunds universitet och Institutet för Näringslivsforskning IFN Kristian Åström, ekonomikommentator Ekot Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson (S), näringsminister Jan Carlzon, tidigare vd SAS Mikael Damberg (S), finansminister Annika Wallenskog, chefekonom SKR Jan Ohlsson, flygindustriexpert John Johansson (S), kommunstyrelsens ordf Örebro Eva-Maj Mühlenbock, partner på Cirio advokatbyrå  Björn Ljung (L), ordf Stockholmshem Martin Lindgren, ordförande i SAS-sektionen på Svensk pilotförening Karin Nyman, kommunikationschef SASProducent: Claes AronssonTekniker: Christer Tjernell

Improving customer service is a vital part of growing any business. After all, the lifeblood of any company is repeat customers. As many as 70 percent of customers say they'll spend more with companies that provide excellent customer service. In a market where it's easier than ever for customers to take their money elsewhere, how can you improve your customer service?   In this episode, we talk to Shep Hyken, CSP, CPAE. He is the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. As a professional speaker and author, Shep works with companies that want to develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Amazement Revolution and The Cult of the Customer.   Shep shares about his journey and how he started his personal and professional development, the common mistakes organizations make with their customer care services, and some of the steps you can take today to make great customer service culture in your organization.   Key Highlights [00:42] Shep's views on Spectrum's customer service experience [01:16] How Shep connected with Jason Selk [02:05] Getting started in personal and professional development [04:15] What has changed in the world of the customer care department [08:59] Why organizations overlook customer service [12:32] Customer service is not about the frontline people [16:23] Dealing with unhappy employees [20:13] Becoming a destination employer [21:29] Dealing with already upset customers [26:12] Customer service solutions [34:31] Creating a customer-focused culture [36:37] The power of gratitude [39:44] The only fans inquiry: The magic trick [43:59] Connect with Shep Notable Quotes My best coaches and mentors were actually my parents. Customer service is not a dep[artment. It's part of the culture. Every single person in your company, no matter how big or small your organization is, has some impact on that end experience the customer has. If you take care of people on the inside, they're going to take care of people on the outside. Herb Kelleher, the first CEO of Southwest Airlines, when he was asked which is more important, your shareholders who invest in you? Your passengers who pay money? Or the employees? He said the employees. Because “if the employees are happy, then they will take care of the passengers who will fly on the airline again and will then make the shareholders happy. You can't wow a customer but you can amaze them all the time. Most of the clients that call me, don't need help. They want sustainability. Leaders have to demonstrate what they want everyone else to do. Resources Connect with Shep Hyken Customer Service Speaker | Shep Hyken Keynote Speaker Shep Hyken: Customer Service & CX-Expert - YouTube Mentioned Resources I'll Be Back Book | Shep Hyken Customer Service Expert How to Master the Art of Selling: Hopkins, Tom Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon

Service provision should be linear but it isn't.  We receive great service followed by bas service.  Why is that and how do eliminate the inconsistencies revealed?   Salespeople are always trying to assure their buyers that they and their firm are trustworthy and reliable.  The follow through component of the sales process is when these two claims are tested.  The salesperson can be doing a splendid job, but what about the rest of the support team?  Are they backing up the salesperson's efforts with their protection of the brand and are they bolstering the salesperson's strong customer focus?   Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  I was reminded of Carlzon's insights when I was checking into my hotel in Singapore.    One of Carlzon's observations about customer service was the importance of consistency of delivery.  For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.    Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan.  You call just about any organization and you will get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese “XYZ company here”.  You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently at a networking event. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then stone cold silence.    The “may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back” bit is rarely offered.   Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call.  Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand.    In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and had a good impression of the whole organisation.  The person taking the call has just put that positive image to the sword.  This is what happens to us in sales.  We do the right thing but elsewhere in the organization, someone else is sabotaging our good efforts.   We should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that we all need reminding of the importance of good customer service for the image and credibility of the company.   First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically.  We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.    

Jan Carlzon has for decades been a visionary in business and leadership; he emphasized the importance of the customer-oriented and employee-empowered company before anybody else. Still a popular speaker, an active investor and the author of the most successful Scandinavian management book to date by a CEO, he is still influencing people. When the management magazine Chef named the hundred most important events in Swedish management history, publication of Carlzon's book Moments of Truth (1985) topped the list. It has been translated into 22 languages and is required reading in many companies.Follow Vonheim on Twitter and YouTube:YouTube: Christopher VonheimTwitter: @chrisvonheimThe BYNN LetterJoin The BYNN Letter to receive first hand insights from us: eepurl.com/htJXsTSponsorQuartr is the new way of doing company research. Their first mission is to enable access to conference calls, investor presentations, transcripts and earnings reports as frictionless as possible – straight to your pocket. Their second mission is to create a completely new way for companies to reach their investors, and vice versa - to change the way people look at Investor Relations. Our initial core product is now available for both iOS and Android, and stay tuned for additional features during the coming year. Quartr is 100% free, include companies from 12 markets today, and plan to add more during the year. Download the app here: https://quartr.se and follow them on twitter here.Support us on PatreonOver the last years we have tried to give our community the best possible content on business, investing and entrepreneurship. If you have enjoyed this free content over time and find it valuable, it would be amazing if you want to support us in making more in the future. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jan Carlzon has for decades been a visionary in business and leadership; he emphasized the importance of the customer-oriented and employee-empowered company before anybody else. Still a popular speaker, an active investor and the author of the most successful Scandinavian management book to date by a CEO, he is still influencing people. When the management magazine Chef named the hundred most important events in Swedish management history, publication of Carlzon's book Moments of Truth (1985) topped the list. It has been translated into 22 languages and is required reading in many companies.Follow Vonheim on Twitter and YouTube:YouTube: Christopher VonheimTwitter: @chrisvonheimThe BYNN LetterJoin The BYNN Letter to receive first hand insights from us: eepurl.com/htJXsTSponsorQuartr is the new way of doing company research. Their first mission is to enable access to conference calls, investor presentations, transcripts and earnings reports as frictionless as possible – straight to your pocket. Their second mission is to create a completely new way for companies to reach their investors, and vice versa - to change the way people look at Investor Relations. Our initial core product is now available for both iOS and Android, and stay tuned for additional features during the coming year. Quartr is 100% free, include companies from 12 markets today, and plan to add more during the year. Download the app here: https://quartr.se and follow them on twitter here.Support us on PatreonOver the last years we have tried to give our community the best possible content on business, investing and entrepreneurship. If you have enjoyed this free content over time and find it valuable, it would be amazing if you want to support us in making more in the future. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Näringslivslegendaren Jan Carlzon har ständigt verkat efter samma motto: Utgå alltid från människan. Det var kärnan i den ledarskapsfilosofi som gjorde boken Riv pyramiderna! till en banbrytande bästsäljare. När han vid 80 års ålder summerar liv och karriär är det med samma enkla budskap han sammanfattar sin livsfilosofi: Se människan! Hör Jan Carlzon i ett samtal med Cristina Grenholm, professor och kyrkosekreterare för Svenska kyrkan. Medarrangör Volante 

Jan Carlzon kan blicka tillbaka på en framgångsrik karriär där han kan titulera sig som vd, investerare och författare. När han 1985 skrev boken Riv Pyramiderna så var det en banbrytande bok som allt sedan dess har inspirerat människor över hela världen. En bok som än idag säljs i tiotusentals ex och används fortfarande som kurslitteratur på flertalet ledande universitet. Jan fortsätter vara aktuell genom att skriva en ny bok Se människan som släpptes nu här under 2021, där han delar med sig av sina tankar och lärdomar från ett händelserikt liv. Anmäl dig till Arash nyhetsbrev och få koll på det senaste inom ledarskap, tech och marknadsföring.

On this week's episode of Scale Up Radio we hear from  Celia Felgate of Fresh Nous, which is a customer experienced-led marketing agency.   They're a little different from your regular marketing agency in the fact that they look more closely at the customer experience  or their journey - and help the client understand, plot and target that more effectively.   Don't worry if that description doesn't make too much sense - I promise you that Celia explains it all full during the course of our conversation.    It was fascinating to hear Celia's story - from the formation of their business, through the growth from just Celia and her business partner to the current team of 7, and onto the future of the business. As always, we covered a lot of ground, including:     - The elements needed to make a retainer model work with some of your clients - and recognising that it doesn't work for all of your customers.  -  Why you shouldn't worry if you're not completely sure about the details of what your business is in the beginning. Celia talks about the challenge of discovering the core direction  of the business, over the course of their first few clients.  - The realisation that, even if you have managed people in your previous careers, the challenge of managing people within your own business is far greater.  - The importance of helping the team create a more fulfilling work / life balance     Celia can be found here:   linkedin.com/in/celia-felgate   https://freshnous.com/     Monday - https://monday.com/   Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy - https://www.waterstones.com/book/eat-that-frog/brian-tracy/9781444765427   You Inc by John McGrath - https://www.waterstones.com/book/you-inc/john-mcgrath/9788180566509   Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon - https://www.waterstones.com/book/moments-of-truth/jan-carlzon/9780060915803   Ted Talks Daily Podcast - https://www.ted.com/about/programs-initiatives/ted-talks/ted-talks-daily   ScaleUp Radio cannot be held responsible for the content of third party websites   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.   You can get in touch with Kevin here: kevin@biz-smart.co.uk

Företagsledaren Jan Carlzon gästar Framgångspodden och delar med sig av sitt liv som en av Sveriges främsta ledare. Efter sin utbildning på Handelshögskolan i Stockholm fick han i ung ålder tunga positioner i näringslivet. Många känner honom som ”SAS-Janne” efter sina år som koncernchef för SAS, och han ligger bakom en av de bäst säljande svenska böckerna i världen – ”Riv pyramiderna”. Nu, efter 37 år, kommer han med uppföljaren – ”Se människan!”. Vi pratar om hans otroliga resa och hans viktigaste lärdomar för att lyckas i en ledarposition. Vi pratar om vad man ska göra när man väl nått sin vision, vikten av att lyssna och hur man får folk att säga vad de egentligen menar. Dessutom får vi höra hans analys av samtidens utmaningar, hans syn på framgång och processen med nya boken. Ett givande samtal om att leda andra människor och lärdomarna längst vägen. Tusen tack för att du lyssnar! Besök Framgångsakademin: www.framgangsakademin.se Beställ "Mitt Framgångsår": https://bit.ly/3jGuZyJ Alexander Pärleros Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexanderparleros Bästa tipsen från avsnittet i Nyhetsbrevet: www.framgangspodden.se I samarbete med Convendum: www.convendum.seJan Carlzon - Se människan: https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/se-manniskan-min-berattelse-om-framgang-besvarliga-personer-och-konsten-att-lyssna-9789189043565 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Företagsledaren Jan Carlzon gästar Framgångspodden och delar med sig av sitt liv som en av Sveriges främsta ledare. Efter sin utbildning på Handelshögskolan i Stockholm fick han i ung ålder tunga positioner i näringslivet. Många känner honom som ”SAS-Janne” efter sina år som koncernchef för SAS, och han ligger bakom en av de bäst säljande svenska böckerna i världen – ”Riv pyramiderna”. Nu, efter 37 år, kommer han med uppföljaren – ”Se människan!”. Vi pratar om hans otroliga resa och hans viktigaste lärdomar för att lyckas i en ledarposition. Vi pratar om vad man ska göra när man väl nått sin vision, vikten av att lyssna och hur man får folk att säga vad de egentligen menar. Dessutom får vi höra hans analys av samtidens utmaningar, hans syn på framgång och processen med nya boken. Ett givande samtal om att leda andra människor och lärdomarna längst vägen. Tusen tack för att du lyssnar! Besök Framgångsakademin: www.framgangsakademin.se Beställ "Mitt Framgångsår": https://bit.ly/3jGuZyJ Alexander Pärleros Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexanderparleros Bästa tipsen från avsnittet i Nyhetsbrevet: www.framgangspodden.se I samarbete med Convendum: www.convendum.seJan Carlzon - Se människan: https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/se-manniskan-min-berattelse-om-framgang-besvarliga-personer-och-konsten-att-lyssna-9789189043565 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Få svenska företagsledare har samma ikonstatus hyllad världen över för ledarskapet och klassikern "Riv pyramiderna!". Nu fyller Jan Carlzon 80 år och har skrivit uppföljaren Se människan. Varför?

Jan Carlzon tog examen som civilekonom från Handelshögskolan 1967 och fick 1969 rollen som produktchef för Vingresor. Efter att ha arbetat som Marknadsdirektör mellan åren 1971–1973 fick Jan 1974 rollen som VD för hela verksamheten. Mellan åren 1978 och 1993 arbetade sedan Jan som VD för Linjeflyg, Vice VD, Chef för flygverksamheten och senare Koncernchef för SAS. Parallellt med sin VD-karriär grundade Jan 1984 investeringsbolaget Ledstiernan, och han är bland annat medgrundare till internethandelsbolaget CDON. Jan har dessutom en lång erfarenhet av styrelsearbete som ledamot i bland annat Continental Airlines, International Tennis Federation och Företagarna. Han är dessutom hedersdoktor vid Pepperdine University i Los Angeles och Pacific Lutheran University i Tacoma, mottagare av 12:e storleken i serafimerordens band, nr 1 i Kairos Future/Chef-undersökningen bland 1700 företagsledare som ställde frågan; Vilken ledare har inspirerat dig i början av karriären, och 2016 fick han ta emot Chefsgalans stora hederspris. Redan 1985 kom hans uppskattade och ikoniska ledarskapsbok Riv pyramiderna. .   .   . Häng med i snacket på poddens sociala kanaler: Chefssnack på Linkedin Chefssnack på Instagram

Jan Carlzon tog examen som civilekonom från Handelshögskolan 1967 och fick 1969 rollen som produktchef för Vingresor. Efter att ha arbetat som Marknadsdirektör mellan åren 1971–1973 fick Jan 1974 rollen som VD för hela verksamheten. Mellan åren 1978 och 1993 arbetade sedan Jan som VD för Linjeflyg, Vice VD, Chef för flygverksamheten och senare Koncernchef för SAS. Parallellt med sin VD-karriär grundade Jan 1984 investeringsbolaget Ledstiernan, och han är bland annat medgrundare till internethandelsbolaget CDON. Jan har dessutom en lång erfarenhet av styrelsearbete som ledamot i bland annat Continental Airlines, International Tennis Federation och Företagarna. Han är dessutom hedersdoktor vid Pepperdine University i Los Angeles och Pacific Lutheran University i Tacoma, mottagare av 12:e storleken i serafimerordens band, nr 1 i Kairos Future/Chef-undersökningen bland 1700 företagsledare som ställde frågan; Vilken ledare har inspirerat dig i början av karriären, och 2016 fick han ta emot Chefsgalans stora hederspris. Redan 1985 kom hans uppskattade och ikoniska ledarskapsbok Riv pyramiderna. .   .   . Häng med i snacket på poddens sociala kanaler: Chefssnack på Linkedin Chefssnack på Instagram

Jan Carlzon wrote a fascinating book called Moments of Truth on how to maintain the trust in your brand, through the many changing touchpoints the company has with the consumer.  Today we look at what happens when we get it wrong and the damage is does to our brand.   You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed.  Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients.  Brands are there to decrease the buyer's sense of risk.  A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level.  Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise.  Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”.  At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains.  They have global footprints and they want clients to use them whereever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality.  There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand.   When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice.  The plane from Haneda to Taipei was delayed because of weather conditions, we sat on the runway for 90 minutes waiting to take off and so I finally arrived at the Taipei Westin Hotel at 6.00pm.  At the check-in was told there were no rooms ready.  Okay. That set off a warning buzzer in my head because the check out time for the Hotel is 12.00 noon.    Things happen though, so maybe there is some reason for this lack of expected service, but doubt has begun to arise in my mind about this Hotel's management team.  I asked when a room will become available.  The second buzzer goes off immediately, when the young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn't know.  How could they not know that information, when there is a lobby full of punters like me, all frustrated about not having their room available?   My immediate thought is that this hotel is obviously not being run very well.  I ask her for the name of the General Manager.  This is where it gets very interesting.  Her response - stone motherless silence.  Not one word in reply.  Nothing!  Now we have identified there is a serious training and leadership issue with the way this Hotel is being run.  I am the client speaking to the staff member and waiting for a reply, but absolutely none is forthcoming.  Unthinkable.  So I asked again.  More total silence.  I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response.  More pure silence.  This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone.   I keep going and I finally get an inaudible name offered up.  I ask to hear it again but louder because I can't catch it.  We go through this slapstick three times until we can now identify the name “Andrew”.  Great, so what is Andrew's last name?  More pure silence.  We are now back to where we started. The client is asking the staff for information and cooperation and they are not getting either.  I repeat this process a few more times, digging for the surname and we finally get a whispered “Zou”.  Andrew Zou.  Finally. So what am I thinking now?  Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained.    There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar.  I tell them I am going to be in the bar and when my room is ready please let me know. Did they contact me as promised? No, I asked the barman go find out what is the status of my room.  Another brand promise destroyed right there.  A full two hours later after waiting in the bar, I am in my room.   While I was waiting in the bar, I went on to the Westin site to try and find their headquarters, to complain about the service here in Taipei.  I had a lot of trouble finding who to contact, but did manage to send an email into the system.  An answer came back the next day, helpfully telling me I should talk to the staff in the hotel about the service.  While in the bar, I rang the Hotel switchboard and ask to speak with Andrew Zou.  He had gone home already.  How about the Duty Manager?  He was busy and will call me back on my cell phone.  I never did get that call back from Andrew Zou or the Duty Manager.  I did get a note from the person in charge of rooms and an email from the Duty manager the next day.  Was I satisfied?  No, I wanted to hear from the General Manager.   Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service.  We all understand that.  The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues.  Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them.  This would have to be a key area of training in that industry.  The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership.  If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well.    That evening there were a large number of guests in the same boat as I was – no room and no information.  The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia.  The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels.    From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company.  Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise?  How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide?  Can people get to me easily if there is a problem?  Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling?  The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job.  We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations.  We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly.  We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients.  That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.

In Part One, we talked about Jan Carlzon's insights into the importance of consistent service  being provided to clients.  The buyer mantra is know, like and trust in sales. We also talked about the basics of sales – prospecting and closing. Now are we going to continue the errors, shortcomings and mistakes of last year into the new year or not?  Are we going to just continue doing what we have always done year in, year out or are we going to improve?  We tend to get into a groove in sales, which is perfectly fine, if it is the correct groove.  We start again this year, but are we adding years of sales experience or are we just duplicating the same dubious experience of last year?  We have to make the decision that we are going to become better in all aspects of the basics of selling and build a professional career.   As mentioned in Part One, a big element of sales success revolves around our communication skills. These days it is made even more difficult, because we are probably doing all of this, while selling remotely.  How do you like someone you have never met before in person and only interact with on a small screen during an online call?  In this environment, what we say and how we say it become vital.  Did you know that we lose about 20% of our pep when we are on screen. We have to lift our energy just to get back to parity, let alone start to impress the client with our energy and passion to serve them.   You will have noticed what dead dogs a lot of people are when on screen.  They are lifeless and low power. If you are the buyer, they are probably not the type of person you want taking care of your business.  You want a powerhouse who will run through brick walls for you, who will leap tall buildings in a single bound to do the best deal, someone who will take a bullet for you on the pricing. This means the same old, same old, year in, year out sales boogie doesn't function properly and we will lose the customer and the sale.  We have to refine our onscreen communication skills further just to tread water, in order to stay where we are right now. These are the new basics of sales.  However, are salespeople leaping out of bed ready for the day and seeing it as a new day in sales, that requires a set of different skills from last year?  How are we doing with understanding and mastering the new basics for this coming year?   Understanding clients seems the most obvious basic skill, but that is a rarity.  You have to wonder how that could be the case?  In Japan, the reason is simple. The communication flow is one way.  The seller is trying to “convince” the buyer to buy.  To do that they trot out their widget catalogue and describe it in vast detail. The problem with this “no questions asked” approach is you don't know enough information. Does the buyer need that widget in pink or blue?  Waxing lyrical about the bountiful aspects and many wonderful attributes of your blue widget is ridiculous and pointless because the buyer needs the widget in pink.  You need to know that and the way to find out is to ask the buyer questions, rather than blindly pitching into the dark.   The Japanese client is a problem too.  Over time, they have trained salespeople to offer up their pitch, so that they can cut it to shreds.  They do it this way in order to satisfy themselves this is a low risk purchase.  They prefer the “smash the walnut with a sledgehammer” approach. Risk aversion is fair enough and nobody wants to make an incorrect purchase or waste resources.  Pitching is a total waste, however salespeople and buyers haven't woken up to that fact yet.  A Japanese salesman who came to see me promptly sat down and immediately went through his entire slide deck adding his commentary.  He didn't ask me one teensy-weensy question about my business or what was the problem I was trying to fix.  I teach sales, so I was amazed and wondered how long it would be before he would ask me a question.  Well he didn't.  He just pitched and pitched and pitched.  We wasted twenty five minutes of that meeting going through stuff of no value or interest to me the buyer.  I wanted pink but he kept talking about blue the whole time. If he had taken a few moments to ask me some questions, he could have zeroed in on the two slides that were pertinent to me, in that whole massive deck. We could have had a much more meaningful and fruitful conversation.  He didn't get the sale and no wonder.   Whether we are selling online or selling when person to person, we need to ask questions.  Japan being Japan, we need that mezzanine step of first getting permission to ask questions and that is not difficult.  Are you or your colleagues asking for permission?  Salespeople in Japan need to start the new year with a new realisation that pitching is inefficient and basically self-defeating.  Let's start the new year reflecting on the true basics of selling.  Then we can put those basics into practice, in order to get the results we need.  The equivalent of football blocking and tackling is what we need in sales.  If we salespeople don't get it, then this will be another year of opportunity which has slipped by, eluding our grasp.  We simply cannot afford that year in, year out business anymore.

Journeymen salespeople are starting another year of selling.  Maybe their financial year is a calendar year or maybe the year wraps up in March.  It doesn't matter, because there is a mental trick we play on ourselves that January 1st represents a new start, a new year.  Sales can be exhausting and 2020 will not go down as a bumper year for the vast majority of salespeople.  Yet, here we go again.  How do we get ourselves back up into the saddle on that bucking bronco that is the sales life?    In Japan, very few salespeople are basing their livelihood on full commission sales.  Here we have either a base and bonus or a base and commission system.  That means that if we don't sell much we can still eat.  So the economic pressure here is less intense than in other markets.  It is also tricky to get fired for poor performance in Japan.  The courts expect the employer to reassign the sales failures into other jobs more suited to their lack of talent.  So the downside of not selling is not that cut throat here.  Also, the vast majority of salespeople are amateurs, not properly trained in the profession.  Rank amateurs bumbling their way along is the norm here, so no need to feel any social pressure either.   In these circumstances it can be as if everyone in sales in Japan is sitting in a lukewarm bath – not too hot and not cold, but also not very exciting either.  “Blocking and tackling” was the basics of winning football games according to Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers.  So with sales, prospecting and closing are the basics of sales.  We have to be farmers and hunters.  Finding new buyers and treasuring our existing buyers, looking for the reorder sequence to kick in.    Know, like and trust are the basics of sales.  The buyer has to know who we are.  If they have never heard of us or never met us, then they won't be buying anything from us.  The internet is a godsend because buyers can find us to solve a problem they are having and we didn't lift a finger.  All that finger lifting was done by the marketing department spending dough and presto, we get the leads.    Okay, we get the lead but so what?  Will the buyer like a total stranger and even more importantly, trust a total stranger.  What did you parents tell you – don't talk to strangers!  Therefore the initial touch with the buyer is critical.  It isn't a one and done thing though, because there is bound to be numerous touches on the way through.  Jan Carlzon's book “Moment of Truth” is a must read on the importance of every part of the organisation taking ownership and accountability for the customer.  This sounds simple enough.   In my experience, Japanese businesses don't teach accountability to the entire team.  Salespeople are expected to be accountable and bend over backward to meet the buyer's requests. The person picking up the phone though didn't get the email about first impressions, accountability or ownership.  They got the email about if they transfer a salesperson through they will get severely scolded.  Because they don't know who is calling, they have found it is best to treat everyone as guilty until proven innocent and be as cautious as possible with strangers.    If the buyer calls for you and you are not there, the person picking up the phone is not helpful.  They say stuff like “they are not at their desk now” and say nothing more.  This forms a negative impression about your company and its care for the buyer.  Your own team are killing the like and trust bit for you with the customer.  This was what Carlzon found.  You have to educate everyone to think differently about keeping the sense of ownership high and the like and trust part powerful.   Another part of the like and trust component are our communication skills.  If we sound like we don't know what we are doing, then the client won't like that.  If we say one thing but the truth proves to be something else, buyers definitely won't like that either. I had a person I know here in Tokyo call me up about some animation sales tools.  I was interested and we had a conversation about it.  It turned out he was actually just fronting for the American firm and my next conversation was with someone from the headquarters.  What the local guy told me was different to what the American rep told me.  I immediately lost trust in both sides. I never went any further with the deal and I would never do business with the local guy ever again. This is another Carlzon nominated fail point.  As the conversation moves around through the organisation, there has to be integrity, consistency and truth.    In Part Two we will continue to look at the other key basics, the blocking and tackling of the sales process.

Great service is so fleeting and  illusive. You encounter it and then like the morning mist, the next minute it is gone.  One company representative is so spectacularly helpful and then next one is seemingly possessed by evil spirits and demonic. As companies how do we get the angels inside our staff to engage with the clients, rather than having reputation destroying devils intrude.  Good service, consistently delivered, is no accident and so it has to be made to occur.  How can we do that?   Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  Carlson's insights flooded back to me when I checked into a hotel in Singapore.    By the way, the drive in from Changi Airport is a credit to the Singaporean Government, who spend millions every year to develop and maintain their landscaped, leafy, green, tropical thoroughfares.  This is smart.  You are already in a pleasant mood just getting into town.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice.  Singapore is very humid and trust me, after a long flight, that ice cold beverage went down very well.  I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel.   One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery.  For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answering your call in a pleasant, helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy, disinterested and unfriendly. Instantly,  your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.  How do you feel when you are given the run around from department to department?   So back to my story.  As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working.  After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on.  There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room.  Actually, I discovered the same system in the elevator, when I unsuccessfully tried to select my floor.  Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant, busy young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two salient facts to me.  Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand.   Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan.  When you call just about any organization here, you get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese ,“XYZ company here”.  You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then you are abandoned to stone cold motherless silence.    The “may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back” bit is rarely offered.   Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem buddy and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call.  Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand.  In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and consequently I had a good impression of the whole organisation.  I was projecting that positive vibe to the entire company. The person taking the call has just put that positive image of the brand to the sword.   When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service.  You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization.  After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't  you?   But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand?  Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed.    I heard one of my recent hires in the sales team answering the phone with an unhelpful tone in his voice.  He actually sounded like he was angry.  He was in his fifties, so no boy, but obviously that had been his standard, ugly phone manner throughout his entire working life.  A perpetual brand killer, client alienating, reputation destroyer right there.  We have an open plan office, so I could hear this. If you are encased in the dark wood paneled corner executive crib with a tremendous view, then maybe you will never know what is going on in the engine room and therefore be unable to do anything about it.   Leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that nobody on our team gets it about the preservation of the brand and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again.    So how about this for a starter for educating our staff to do a better job protecting and enhancing the brand:   Answer the phone with a pleasant, happy voice. Be helpful and offer your name first, so the customer won't be embarrassed that they didn't recognise your voice.  It also gives the caller confidence that a real person is going to take care of their needs. If you take the call and the person they are calling isn't there, proactively offer to ensure they get a call back as soon as possible and guarantee you will get their message through to them. End with thanking them for their call and again leave your name, in case there is anything further the caller may need.   First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically.  We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.   Action Steps   Draw your spiders web of client touch points and identify who needs training, including non-regular staff. Design the experience you want the client to have and train everyone around the content. Look at your systems for moving or transitioning the client through the organization, to make sure the client experience is consistently good. Always check to see what you think is happening is actually the case.

How Good Are Your Key Touch Points In Sales?   Jan Carlzon's book “Moments Of Truth” should be standard reading for everyone in business and particularly those of us in sales.  He talks about taking over as CEO of the Scandinavian Air Services (SAS) airline when the company was failing and had terrible consumer reviews, regarding their service.  With his team, they identified every touch point on the customer journey with the airline, to discover where the gaps were located.  We should be doing the same with our business.   Now you might be thinking that is the CEOs job, not the work of a humble salesperson. You would be wrong!!!  The client sees you as their guy or gal inside your company and they expect you to fix everything for them.  That includes fixing things before they even become a problem.    The marketing department takes care of the website, the social media, the advertising, the collateral materials, etc.  As a salesperson, you won't have much input into that degree of detail.  Nevertheless feedback what you are hearing from clients, so that marketing can do a better job of representing the firm to the buyers.  As a salesperson, you can take care of your own social media and make sure that any materials you present to the client are up to date and in pristine condition.   Clients do a lot of shopping on-line before they meet us today and that includes looking at our own social media.  What are they going to find?  You in a club doing the limbo dance, dressed in board shorts and a T-shirt, totally off your face and looking outrageous?  Or you in a business suit, looking professional and plausible as a business partner?  You can't control marketing's activities, but you can control what you put up on social media and therefore you can control your own professional image.    For example, I have two Facebook accounts – one for business with around 5000 people connected to me and one for my karate mates, with about 30 people on it.  I have 24,000 followers on LinkedIn and the content is always professionally related to subjects around leadership, sales, communication and presenting, because that is what we sell. I try to control what buyers see of me before we ever meet.   When people call your company, what do they hear? In Japan, in 99.999% of cases, the person answering the phone won't venture forth their name, is not pleasant, happy you called or excited to do some business with a possible new commercial partner.  They are guarded, cautious, stiff and sound like they hate their job.  First impression management in Japan is a concept that hasn't hit these shores as yet.  Well now, how do you answer the phone yourself? Are you very “business-like”, that is, you sound serious, terse and unfriendly?  Get your phone Voice Memo app ready and the next time you answer the office phone, tape yourself and play it back – you might be shocked at how unhelpful you sound forming that vital first impression with your initial greetings.   When you send emails do you have a signature block bursting with contact information so the client doesn't have to do any work to find your contact details?  How do you start the email?  Are you straight down to business or do you try to build some rapport?  Japan has some set pieces here, but that is the problem, everyone uses them, so people's eyes glaze over and they don't bother reading the first couple of sentences.  I have disciplined myself to make the first word of every email I send start with the word “thanks”, whether it is outbound or in reply.  I never get these types of greetings myself, so I know it is differentiated and not common.  That is good.  I want to stand out in a crowded field of people selling to my buyers.   We can't go through every touch point in this piece, but at least let's start thinking about how many touch points we have with clients and what is the current quality level like?  Look at how can we improve the current reality and how to maintain a consistent professional level of interaction with buyers.  When your competitors are just doing the same old, same old, you win.    

Många vill locka duktiga medarbetare med löften om en härlig företagskultur. Men hur gör man och vad finns bortom värdeord och floskler? Roller inom HR får allt oftare tillägget "people & culture". Många strävar efter en starkare företagskultur, inte minst för att attrahera talanger. Men också för att det kan hjälpa oss att fokusera och samarbeta bättre. Redan på 1980-talet gjorde SAS-chefen Jan Carlzon succé med - på den tiden - nytänkande idéer om att se människorna i företaget, riva hierarkier och fokusera på mötet med kunderna. Många kämpar fortfarande med att få till samma saker och det verkar inte vara så lätt alla gånger. Värdeord - har de något värde? Att företag vill jobba med sina värderingar är i grunden något bra och kanske något vi borde göra mer och oftare. Men allt för ofta stannar arbetet vid att välja ut några värdeord som ska säga något om kulturen och hjälpa till att forma den. Ord är trots allt bara ord. Det är inte alltid tydligt vad de där orden betyder i praktiken och i vardagen. Och om man inte kan säga emot värdeorden, har de verkligen någon betydelse då? Vem kan till exempel säga att nej, ansvarstagande och omtanke är inget jag vill jobba med? Det börjar med beteenden I slutänden är det våra beteenden som utgör vår kultur, hur vi är mot varandra och vilken social miljö det bygger. För en kultur har vi, antingen vi pratar om den eller inte. Eller som någon klok människa sa: en kultur har man inte, den gör man. Stress, kortsiktighet, otydlighet och intern tävlan föder en sorts kultur, där det blir svårt att se och uppmärksamma varandra och där både samarbete och fokus blir lidande. Arbetsmiljöforskningen talar sitt tydliga språk och visar på faktorer som psykologisk trygghet. Några viktiga beståndsdelar i en stark företagskultur är: 1. Tillhörighet och trygghet När vi känner att vi hör till, hör ihop och behöver varandra slipper vi lägga tid på att fundera på vad andra egentligen tycker om oss, vem som är vän eller fiende. Det frigör en massa kraft som vi istället kan lägga på det vi egentligen är på jobbet för att göra. 2. Sårbarhet Med tillhörighet och trygghet på plats kan vi lära oss tillsammans, dela både med- och motgång och i förlängningen göra riktigt bra saker för oss själva och våra kunder. 3. Syfte En stark gemensam berättelse som sätter fingret på vad vi strävar efter och vad arbetet ska leda till, skapar delade mål och värderingar. Om de här beståndsdelarna är på plats spelar det ingen roll om man har värdeord eller inte. Möten - en kulturmätare Möten är starka kulturbärare som visar i praktiken om de värderingar vi vill ha faktiskt finns på plats. Stäm av i de möten du har om det här gäller eller inte: Många får komma till tals Alla blir sedda och hörda Deltagarna är nyfikna på vad de andra tycker och tänker Där har du en första viktig indikation på om ni tillhörighet och trygghet på plats. Om inte: grattis. Då finns det något att förbättra! Vår samarbetspartner Twitch Health har hämtat rön från forskningen om vad som skapar framgångsrika hälsosatsningar. I det här inlägget listar de sju framgångsfaktorer. I korthet: satsa brett och inkluderande och lägg tid på att skapa delaktighet. Överlag är det mer effektivt med insatser som innehåller flera komponenter än att bara göra en och samma aktivitet eller insats. Vår samarbetspartner Firstbeat vill att vi månar om vår återhämtning. De pekar på forskning som visar på flera fördelar med en välmående personal. Bland annat bättre stresstålighet, produktivitet, effektivitet och uthållighet. Här är några enkla, konkreta knep som hjälper: Kom ihåg pauserna under arbetsdagen Ta promenadmöten utomhus Motionera med kollegorna Möjlighet till distansarbete Flexibel arbetstid (om möjligt). Planera arbetsdagen. Lägg gärna krävande uppgifter på morgonen.

Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the the world of manufacturing and industrial markets. Join Tony and me as we discuss disruptive new trends in the digital-industrial world: how we design, source and manufacture products, and also the new ways in which industrial companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and customer experience.Episode 6In this episode, Tony and I start off by discussing how there is substantial increase in software products and services in the industrial marketplace – and how software companies really need to focus on customer success. He says he openly will throw rocks – and live in a glass house at the exact same moment.Tony says that in the spirit of eating their own dog food, Thomas has completely reconfigured over 400 seats of Salesforce and added a completely different order entry system. He says they also ripped out the entire financial software backbone – and installed several other systems to support the financial process.He talks of Regis McKenna, who was a hugely influential figure in Silicon Valley. He was responsible for a lot of the things we think about in modern marketing and positioning – including Apple and Compaq. And he talks of Jan Carlzon, who resuscitated SAS airlines in the 1980s. He’s written a book called “Moments of Truth."I mention the remarkable and unexpected changes taking place in the software world, such as the budding BFF relationship between former rivals Microsoft and Oracle. In the interest of driving more value for customers by helping them integrate software from Microsoft and Oracle, Larry Ellison went so far as to say the two companies now have a "great partnership." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Well this is the time everyone is driving their results over the line, with the approaching financial year end looming on the horizon.  I hope it is all on track!  Today we are talking about do we really have a clear idea about the first impressions we are providing for our customers.  Are the support teams delivering services after the sale, really reinforcing the brand and the customer's commitment to using us again and again?  Today, we cover some simple check points to make sure that what we think is happening, is in fact the norm of our customer interaction.  We look at how to apply Jan Carlzon's “Moments of Truth” insights into our own operation, to make sure we don't drop the ball when we hand off between different sections.   Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo. Why the Cutting Edge?  In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan.  We want to help advance everyone's thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market. Before we get into this week's topic, here is what caught my attention lately. Japan is set to become a major food supplier.  Agriculture, forestry and fisheries exports in   2018    grew twelve point four percent, buoyed up by Asian demand.  Japan has targeted one trillion yen or nine billion US dollars in farm exports by    2019   and is on track to make it.  Agriculture Minister Takamori Yoshioka said, “To achieve the one trillion goal, we need an annual growth of more than ten percent”. Hong Kong is the largest buyer, China second and the USA is third. Beef exports increased twenty nine percent and sake was up forty one percent.  These sectors in particular will benefit from reduced tariffs under the Trans Pacific Partnership and Japan-EU agreements coming into force. In other news, Goldman Sachs has been promoting stocks in Riso Kyoiku a cram school.  They recognize that the shift to one on one tutoring away from classroom style, has been a forte for Riso Kyoiku.  Goldman's Yukiko Nonami said, “we expect education spend per child to continue increasing in line with the trend toward fewer children per household”. The stock trades at forty one times earnings, a multiple three times higher than the average for companies in the Topix index.  Finally, some elementary and junior high schools are trialing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) games to help children confront their everyday problems. CBT works by changing attitudes and behaviors by focusing on the thoughts, images, beliefs and attitudes that are held and how these processes relate to the way a person behaves, as away of dealing with dysfunctional emotions. The program was created by the Research Center for Child Mental Development at Chiba University. This is episode number seventy one and we are talking about  Create Great Customer Service Every Occasion  Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   Know, like, trust is a well known mantra in sales.  Salespeople are always trying to reassure their buyers that they and their firm are trustworthy and reliable.  The follow through component of the sales process is when these two claims are fully tested.  The salesperson can be doing a splendid job, but what about the rest of the support team? Do they share the vision of the leadership, toward the firm's commitment to the customer? Are they backing up the salesperson's efforts with their protection of the brand.  Are they bolstering the salesperson's strong customer focus?   Jan Carlzon, many years ago, published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”.  I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was checking into my hotel in Singapore.    By the way, the drive in from Changi Airport is a credit to the Singaporean Government, who spend millions every year to develop and maintain their landscaped, leafy, tropical thoroughfares.  This is smart.  You are already in a pleasant mood just getting into town.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice.  Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well.  I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel's management.   One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant, helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand.  The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression of the establishment immediately plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.    So back to my story. As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working.  After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the cause – the power is not on.  There is a card slot next to the door, that initiates the power supply to the room.  Actually, I discovered the same system in the elevator, when I unsuccessfully tried to select my floor.  Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me, that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two key facts to me.  Sustainability of good service has to be the goal, if you want to protect or grow your brand.  How are things down at your shop?  Can you put your hand n your heart and tell me, “don't worry, we have nailed it?”.   Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan.  You call just about any organization and you will get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese “XYZ company here”. The voice is greatly lacking in pleasure to hear from you.  The person picking up the phone is the most junior person in the section, yet represents the brand to the world.  You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently at a networking event. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then stone cold, motherless silence.    The “may I take down your name and phone number so that I can make sure she calls you back” bit is rarely offered.   Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call.  Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand.  What is the cost of a helpful intervention by the person answering the phone to help you on your quest for the talented, if elusive, Ms. Suzuki?  If I call your office and ask for you, and you are not there, what will I be told?  How will I feel about your company after my interaction with the person answering the phone?  What can we do? Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backIn this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and had a good impression of the whole organisation.  The person taking the call has just put that positive image to the sword.  This is what happens to us in sales.  We do the right thing but elsewhere in the organization, someone else is sabotaging our good efforts.  Internal silos and internecine warfare between rival fiefdoms don't help. Leaders trying to coagulate their lot, by dissing everyone else, may make them and their ilk feel good, but it destroys the engagement of the people in the company   The senior leadership of companies, sitting in their gorgeous offices on the upper floors of the building, presume that everyone in the company “gets it”, about representing the brand. They imagine that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service. They expect that the whole team is supporting the sales and marketing departments' efforts to create an excellent image of the organization.  After all, the company have been spending truckloads of money on the sales and marketing effort, hasn't it?   But are all the staff supporting the sales team's effort to build the brand?  Perhaps some of the other team members have forgotten what was said about the importance of consistent customer service in the past. Maybe they are a new hire who didn't get briefed properly.  There is one thing about leadership. That is you have to constantly beat the drum loudly about the culture, philosophy and style of service you believe in.  An email, a framed Vision, Mission, Values statement, an ancient rousing speech to the troops won't suffice.  You have to be banging on about these things constantly.   We should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with.  We should expect that we all need reminding of the importance of good customer service, for the image and credibility of the company. So how about this for a starter: Answer the phone with a pleasant, friendly voice, be helpful and offer your name first, so the customer won't be embarrassed that they didn't recognise your voice. If the person they are calling isn't there, proactively offer to ensure they will get a call back as soon as possible. End with thanking them for their call and again leave your name, in case there is anything further the caller may need. First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers.  Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically. We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up. THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show is here to help you succeed in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues, become a regular. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button.  Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Please leave me some feedback on YouTube, I would love to know how this show helped and what other topics you are interested in for me to cover.  Remember I am here as a free resource to help you, so just tell me how I can help you best. In episode seventy two we are talking about How To Meet And Connect With New People  Find out more about that next week. So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

One of the more memorable books in my library was published in the summer of 1987. It was written by the Jan Carlzon, CEO of SAS Group, owner of the airlines Scandinavian Airlines and Scandinavian Airlines Ireland. I had been reading of him in the business press so I was anxious to read the book … Are You In Touch With Your Business’s Touchpoints? (313) Read More »

Shep Hyken interviews Jim Tincher. They discuss journey mapping and how it can be used to improve both the employee experience and the customer experience. The Interview with Jim Tincher:What is a journey map? A journey map is a graphic representation of every interaction a customer has with you and your business. Journey maps can be used as effective tools to drive change and improve the customer experience.It is important to make the journey map highly visual. This will help people remember the key points and takeaways, which will help drive the positive changes that are needed in your organization.Jan Carlzon coined the phrase “Moment of Truth,” which is any and every interaction the customer has with an organization that gives them the opportunity to form an impression. These points of contact can come in many varieties, and they all form part of the customer journey.One of the biggest touchpoints is actually Google, which allows customers to form an impression of your company before interacting with it directly. This is a good reminder that much of the customer journey may not directly involve your company, but it still forms an important part of the bigger picture.Before you begin journey mapping, there are five questions you should ask and answer:What’s the problem you want to solve?What’s the right journey for your customers/business?Who is the customer?How do you get customer feedback?Who is on your team?It’s crucial to obtain feedback and get your employees to listen to the customer. And once you get that feedback, you must do something with it. If you don’t, you will betray your customers’ trust and ruin the relationship.In addition to mapping the customer journey, it’s also advisable to map the employee journey. The employee journey behind the scenes has direct impact on the customer.Quote: “You can spend all your time focusing on the customers, but if you don’t enable (empower) your employees to create a great customer experience, it’s going to be a long road.” - Jim Tincher About: Jim Tincher is the founder and Mapper-In-Chief at Heart of the Customer. He co-authored the recent book How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This CX Mini Masterclass explains customer "Moments of Truth". Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares where the concept came from, and how you can use your understanding of Moments of Truth to improve customer journeys and foster loyalty. These moments can make or break a customer journey, so if you’ve heard this term used as a buzzword, but want to learn how to translate jargon into business results, then this episode is for you.     Moments of Truth Just like the term “touchpoint”, "Moment of Truth" (MOT) is another one of the super popular CX buzzwords. I hear it used to describe all sort of things, often incorrectly. (Check out Episode 16 for an overview of what touchpoints really are!) The good news is that the concept of the Moment of Truth is one that has been around for a while and has a pretty clearly documented meaning. This concept was coined by Jan Carlzon, the former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines. He spoke of these as “any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression.” Within this broad definition there are especially crucial moments of truth along the journey. These crucial moments happen when a customer has invested a lot of time, energy, money or emotion in a particular outcome, and that outcome is about to come to fruition. MOTs have a significant impact on customer sentiment or satisfaction. We can even think of them as a sort of “tipping point” for the journey. Within the airline example, the check-in counter experience is a quintessential crucial moment of truth. There are so many steps that lead up to the day of travel. From booking tickets to packing bags, customers typically invest a lot of time, energy and money in their trip before they even get to the airport. All this time, expectations and emotions are mounting. If the customer is greeted at check in with a friendly smile and a complementary upgrade because they are a frequent flier, they’ll be floating on cloud 9 all the way to their final destination. If, on the other hand, the check in agent scowls at the customer and informs them they've been bounced because the flight was oversold, it would set a horrible tone for their trip. The interactions at the check in counter take just an instant, but it’s so much more than that to the customer.   Identifying the MOTs Journeys can have multiple moments of truth. To identify the most important MOTs, start by mapping the customer journey and evaluating the accumulation of customer effort along the way, searching for those points when the effort crescendos into an outcome. Another way to look at this is in terms of “jobs to be done”. Most customer journeys involve little achievements along the way to fulfilling some greater need. Look for these smaller achievements, and you’ll also probably find the moments of truth. In the airline travel journey there are a good handful of key MOTs. Arriving in your seat on the plane and retrieving your bags upon arrival are two other examples of key moments of truth. Each of these moments presents an important emotional fork in the road. The outcomes could reaffirm the customer's brand loyalty and make their effort seem worth it, or it could leave them upset and erode their relationship with the brand.   Designing key memorable moments Once CX professionals identify those crucial moments of truth, it’s time to define what good looks like. Organizations should assess the moments through the lens of what they know customers like or dislike, as well as through the lens of their brand’s aspirations. The Virgin branded airlines have really nailed this balance. Their check in experience is seamless, modern and highly digitized with friendly service staff on hand to assist. These are the building blocks of a good check-in experience, but they’ve also added great branded touches like sleek kiosks, red carpets and mood lighting to all of their check...

We Give Added Value. No You Don't!   The chocolate on the pillow, the fruit bowl or the wine bottle and glasses in your hotel room are often cited as examples of good service, adding extra value to the client. We may be doing something similar in our business, from our side for free, that we imagine is adding extra value to the buyer.  The idea is cute but the thinking is a bit fuzzy.  I am on a diet, so I don't appreciate the chocolate. I don't drink, so I can't enjoy the wine. Perhaps I have an allergy to certain fruit, so I can't eat the fruit provided.   Value is perceived value and also is only value when it corresponds with the interests and desires of the buyer.  There is the rub.  We need to know more about our buyer rather than just shotgun the possibilities.  We need to laser beam around their interests. In the hotel example, we have to book and often we do this on-line.  Our preferences could be plumbed right then.  Or we have to turn up and go through a check-in process. Our desires could be plumbed then and there.  Yes, it takes away the surprise factor, but an unhelpful surprise isn't adding very much value is it?   The secret is how can we know our buyers better, so that we can surprise them or at least delight them? Today, there is so much information floating around about us on the internet.  I have a Facebook account (in fact I have two), a LinkedIn account, an Instagram account and a Twitter account.  If you take a look at my Instagram account, I often post photos of empty wine bottle's labels and few short comments about what I thought of that particular wine.  So you could not only anticipate that I like wine, you could even provide me with one of my favourites.    My LinkedIn account has my profile and also over 1460 blogs, each with a Bio that talks about what I have done in my career and a bit about my background.  You would know that I do traditional Shitoryu Karate, so I have an interest in martial arts.  The hotel may have some martial arts themed movies in their line up.  A small note in my room pointing this out would be a simple, but nice touch and may get me to buy the movie.  “Welcome Greg, there is a great Jackie Chan movie playing in our movie lineup, which you may enjoy to watch while you stay here with us.  If there is anything else we can do to make your stay a truly great one, please let me know.  Jan (ext. 4077)”.  Now that is not hard to do, but it only works if you bother to know something about me.   Now to be fair, it is always easier to point out the shortcomings of other suppliers than our own. Hotels do their thing and we have our own clients and customers to serve.  What can we do for them?  The great book “Moments Of Truth” by Jan Carlzon, describes how he went through all the touch point that SAS Airlines had with their customers.  He and his team looked for ways to make sure at each touch point the experience was excellent.  We all need to be doing the same.     I have an open office plan layout, so I sit amongst the troops.  My desk is easy to find, it is the one with all the papers piled high upon it! Anyway, I can hear my team on the phone. Sometimes I can hear that the quality of the staff's voice toward the client isn't friendly enough.  They sound very “business like” but I want them to do better than that.  I want them to sound happy, upbeat and friendly, even if none of those things apply in reality on that day.  It doesn't matter if you kicked your toe this morning, you have to come across to the client as a positive, helpful friendly person.  This is especially so if the client is not sounding like any of those things themselves.   Another pet peeve of mine is when I call companies.  The style in Japan is to only say the company name and not your own name. So I call the number, ask for Suzuki san and get “This is Suzuki”.  How do I feel?  Am I really happy I got Suzuki san on the first go?  No. I feel guilty and bad because I didn't recognize Suzuki san's voice. I teach my staff to always answer the phone by stating the company name and then their own name and do it in a friendly voice.  This eliminates any potential embarrassment to the client of not remembering our voice when they call us and starts the conversation off on a positive note.  What is the cost of this?  Nothing. However, we have to be thinking about these things in the first place and in a busy life we can get stuck in doing things in a certain way without any time taken for reflection.   In a few days we will be having an internal systems audit.  We have many, many  systems in our company, but we have not really looked at them altogether in total, with a mind to making them more efficient or more client friendly.  I am sure when you look at your own business, you will realise “wow, we have a lot of procedures around here”.  Are they the best procedures, does technology now allow some of these to be automated, how is the client's impression of your company as a result of being on the receiving end of these procedures?   So break down the touch points with your buyers and look at where can you make this interaction more efficient and more friendly.  We accumulate systems without thinking about them as a whole.  By the way, as the boss, it is always a good practice to call yourself and see how it feels to a client when they call.  How do your staff stack up on making that great first impression. By exploring the details, we can come up with improvements for certain.  Once we get to that point then we can start brainstorming how we can add additional value to the buyer and exceed their expectations.    

Han skrev sin managementbok för 33 år sedan – men tjänar fortfarande stora pengar på den. I dagarna kommer Jan Carlzons bok ”Riv Pyramiderna!” i nyutgåva. ”SAS-Janne” är gäst i veckans Förnuft & Känsla. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Las notas completas del episodio aquí: https://carlosiglesias.info/e002 Únete a la comunidad en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/En-el-Mundo-Real-2007606316176508 Contáctame por Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarlosTheSailor Conéctame en Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosiglesiaspichel/ Suscríbete a mi canal de YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarlosIglesias-CarlosTheSailor Suscríbete al podcast en iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/es/podcast/en-el-mundo-real/id1329076851 -------------------------------------------a- En el episodio de hoy, hablaremos de momentos de la verdad, de pain points, de touchpoints… profundizaremos en estos conceptos que ya tocamos en el episodio anterior. Sumario: - Contexto histórico - Diferencia entre Momento de la Verdad, de Diferenciación, touchpoint - Círculo Vicioso / Círculo Virtuoso - Momentos WOW - Qué podemos hacer en el mundo real? Qué son los Momentos de la Verdad? El término apareció por primera vez en el libro "Service Management" (1984), escrito por Richard Norman. Para este consultor finlandés, los Momentos de la Verdad en un servicio podían compararse con el "Momento de la Verdad" en las corridas de toros. Ejemplo SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) Norman fue contratado por el CEO de SAS, Jan Carlzon. Pasaron en un año de estar al borde de la ruina a tener millones de beneficio: eliminando Momentos de la Verdad negativos y sobresaliendo en positivos. Las notas completas del episodio aquí: https://carlosiglesias.info/e002

Las notas completas del episodio aquí: https://carlosiglesias.info/e002 Únete a la comunidad en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/En-el-Mundo-Real-2007606316176508 Contáctame por Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarlosTheSailor Conéctame en Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosiglesiaspichel/ Suscríbete a mi canal de YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarlosIglesias-CarlosTheSailor Suscríbete al podcast en iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/es/podcast/en-el-mundo-real/id1329076851 -------------------------------------------a- En el episodio de hoy, hablaremos de momentos de la verdad, de pain points, de touchpoints… profundizaremos en estos conceptos que ya tocamos en el episodio anterior. Sumario: - Contexto histórico - Diferencia entre Momento de la Verdad, de Diferenciación, touchpoint - Círculo Vicioso / Círculo Virtuoso - Momentos WOW - Qué podemos hacer en el mundo real? Qué son los Momentos de la Verdad? El término apareció por primera vez en el libro "Service Management" (1984), escrito por Richard Norman. Para este consultor finlandés, los Momentos de la Verdad en un servicio podían compararse con el "Momento de la Verdad" en las corridas de toros. Ejemplo SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) Norman fue contratado por el CEO de SAS, Jan Carlzon. Pasaron en un año de estar al borde de la ruina a tener millones de beneficio: eliminando Momentos de la Verdad negativos y sobresaliendo en positivos. Las notas completas del episodio aquí: https://carlosiglesias.info/e002

Pure as NY snow! Årets näst sista quiz är en snabbis som tar oss halvlångt tillbaka i tiden – tillbaka till Kim Carnes, Gösta Bohman, Jan Carlzon, MTV, Ubåtar, Ford, ormar och en hel del annat vi fann lämpligt från året vi söker på fråga 6. Lyssna tillsammans, tävla, vinn! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Varmt välkommen till avsnitt 18 av Idrott-och ledarskapspodden. I detta avsnitt får du möta en av Sveriges främsta ledare genom tiderna; Jan Carlzon. Jan är nog mest känd för sina år som VD på SAS och för sin bok Riv Pyramiderna som är mer aktuell än någonsin. Jan förespråkar och har skapat ett ledarskap som heter "Love Management" eller Det kärleksfulla ledarskapet och i det här avsnittet får du höra vad det innebär och hur du kan skapa det. Kärlek och Rädsla är två starka krafter och om det är rädslan som styr i en organisation så hämmas alla viktiga kriterier som behövs för att skapa framgång. Om däremot kärlek med struktur får leda så kan du nå hur långt du vill. Jan berättar också om sin bakgrund, om lärdomar av misstag, nycklar till framgång, sina tankar om nutid och framtid och du får lyssna till en mängd härliga historier! Trevlig lyssning

Jan Carlzon skrev RIV PYRAMIDERNA! 1985 om strategiskt ledarskap och hur fokus på kundmötet var en nyckel till framgång. Pyramiderna som skulle rivas var de chefshierarkier och beslutsnivåer som stod i vägen för medarbetarens egna initiativ i mötet med kunden. Idag har många organisationer blivit en aning plattare med något färre chefsnivåer (även om skillnaden gentemot 1980-talet är ganska liten). Men dagens pyramider har växt sig större än någonsin, med en enorm byråkrati som begränsar medarbetarens möjlighet att självständigt agera gentemot kunden eller medborgaren. Dagens pyramider är den mängd kontrollsystem som växt fram inom organisationer – verksamhetsledningssystem, kvalitetssystem, portföljstyrningssystem med mera. Vi kallar dem för pyramiderna 2.0. I detta avsnitt av Sonderpodden (KC-podden) diskuterar Love Lönnroth och Marie Froment hur man kan riva pyramiderna 2.0. I avsnittet diskuteras även ett blogginlägg som Love skrivit som finns på http://karlofconsulting.se/blogg/nyheter-och-ovrigt/riv-pyramiderna-2-0/

Shep Hyken Show Notes  Shep Hyken is a Customer Service and Experience expert and Cheap Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. He is the New York Times best selling author and has been inducted in the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement in the speaking profession. Shep works with companies and organizations who wants to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. His articles has been read in hundreds of publications and he is the author of 5 books, he is also the creator of The Customer Focus, a customer service training programme which helps clients develop a customer service culture and loyalty mind set. Question Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey What is your view of customer service and customer experience, what do you think is the number 1 reason why it’s not consistent across all industries both private and public sector? If you could describe the most amazing customer experience that you’ve ever had, what would that be and why? How do you stay motivated every day? What is the one online resource, website, tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What is one thing in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are working on to develop yourself or people? Where can our listeners find your information online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity?   Highlights   Shepard Hyken stated that his first education on customer service and experience was when he was 12 years old. He was doing magic shows for parties and he came home and his mom said, “Make sure you write a “Thank You” note.” He thought that was a great idea but little did he know that that was customer service. His dad said, “Follow up a week later and thank them again with a phone call and also ask what they liked about the magic show and find out what was their favorite tricks and how they felt about the show.” And that was also a sales tactic because soon as they said, “Hey you were great” and he would ask why and say, “I notice that little Johnny had a sister, does she need a magic show too?” That was all helpful but what he was learning was: 1 – Show appreciation to customers, 2 – Ask for feedback. His dad actually told him that,“When they tell what tricks they like, if they aren’t mentioning certain tricks as you go and do more and more shows, see if the parents aren’t mentioning the same tricks or are mentioning the same tricks and then you’ll know what tricks you might want to pull out and replace to try and make better because nobody is talking about them.” And he goes, that’s great feedback and isn’t that what we do in business today and that’s why he jokingly say but it’s really no joke that his customer service experience started with common sense that was taught to him by his parents and that’s really where a lot of customer service falls in the world of common sense. There he was age 12 doing that and he worked in Gas Stations when he was a kid and he was in a self serving station when he was in college at a gas station where you pump your own gas but it was a cold day and an elderly woman came, jumped out of her car to pump gas and he said, “Mam, get back into the car, I’ll pump your gas, it’s too cold.” And he pumped her gas and the manager at the gas station as he was a low-level employee, got upset with him for pumping her gas and he said, “This is the right thing to do, the woman could slip, she could break a hip.” She had to be 80 may 90 years old and he thought it was the right thing to do, once again common sense. He believes in all of that and he eventually in that retail organization was a region manager for the convenient stores and gas stations that they had and eventually the station’s operations manager and when they sold their company, he didn’t have a job and he decided to get into the world of professional speaking and he had a little entertaining background and he had some business background, plus he had gone to college, got his degree and he felt he could write a speech and within a very short time, all the research that he was doing and his favorite topic was in that world of customer service, so that’s what he gravitated toward right away and that was over 30 years ago. He was hired back in the early 1980’s by companies like IBM and General Motors and Enterprise Rent a Car, these were his first clients and he’ll never forget because to him IBM was one of the greatest companies and is still a great company but back then they were the ones that really bring customer service on the map, “We want to be so good at what we do that price doesn’t matter.” And of course price always matters at some point but when it becomes less and less relevant, it’s because of the value that you offer and many times that value is because we have a reliable product, we have unbelievable response time, that’s customer experience.   Shepard Hyken stated that what amazes him, he read that customer service they spend about 1/10th of what they spend on marketing and at the end of the day, customer service is the best marketing you can have because if you do a great job, people go out and talk about you. Customer service used to be where the value was and then it slowly shifted to something they call customer experience and experience for a long time was just another word for service. Steve Jobs figured it out and he use him as an example of the Apple products he has, obviously you walk into an Apple store great service, you call their support line, you get great service but really what he figured out is the experience is more important than just the service, although service is a big part of it, when you get your new Iphone or Ipad or your Mac computer, the way it’s packaged alone is a great experience. So all these different touch points the customer has with you and it’s not just people to people touch point, it’s what you experience. He stated that he always quote Jan Carlzon, when he’s doing a speech, he talks about this concept called a “Moments of Truth” and he came up with it and primarily he focus on the people to people experience but he called the “Moments of Truth” in business whenever a customer came into contact with any aspect of the business, they form an impression. Jan Carlzon ran Scandinavian Airlines so his customers were passengers, so there were main impressions that were formed when a customer call to make a reservation, today we go online and do it but back in the early 1980’s when he was running Scandinavian Airlines, you pick up the phone and you made the call, you check your bags at the curb, you make check in at the ticket counter, all of these are major touch points but if you think about it, you sit down in the plane and is the seat comfortable? And he used to joke that if the tray table doesn’t work, the passenger might worry that the landing gear might not work. So it’s like, “They can’t keep the tray table from falling down.” But what is the user experience in addition to the customer service experience, so you combine thoseand that’s the total experience. All of his work for the first three quarters of his career was based on customer service, now a chunk of his work that they do, he is brought in to talk about what is the experience going to be? What can we do to enhance that? Which he emphasize that customer service is a big part of that.   Shep stated that he talks about a cab driver in many of his speeches and it seem to be like a normal cab but when he got in it was spotlessly clean, it had 2 newspapers to chose from waiting for him, he gave him a soda and this was back before bottled water. He had a dish of candy, he asked if he needed to use his phone, he was great and he send him a thank you note because he asked him for his business card because he said he collected them from people he drove. He sent him a thank you note after a ride; think about that, that’s amazing. Every time he goes to Dallas he calls him but he’s retired now. The interesting thing was that has he got to know Frank, he would tell him things like he used to wait at the airport like every other cab driver 2-3 hours in the long line and now he just goes and parks the car and walks and waits 10 minutes for his next customer and he’s managed to make back in the day more than USD $100,000.00 a year as a cab driver because he figured it out, he figured out the average cab drivers making 3 or 4 decent trips a day that are making them money and he’s making 15 or more because he’s not waiting in line, he’s waiting for his customers and he figured it out because it’s customer service and the lesson is there is a big difference between satisfied customers and loyal customers. There is statistics and facts that will prove that satisfied customers don’t always go back to places that satisfy them because the moment they have a chance to do business with somebody a little bit better, a little more convenient, they will do that and that’s the difference and the loyal customer’s a mind set, it’s an emotion, you feel connected, so he felt truly connected with Frank, when he sent him that thank you note, that was it. It was like in that movie with Tom Cruise where he plays a sports agent, Jerry McGuire, “You had me at with the thank you note, you owned me at that point.” Shep stated that he has a lot of stories like that but he really loved that one because of the ordinariness of the job of being a cab driver and taking it to a whole level of being extraordinary and anybody can do that if a cab driver can figure it out, we can do it virtually in any business.   Shep shared how he stay motivated, he stated that he is an optimistic guy and sometimes you’re just born with the luck of thinking that way, some of it has to do with the way you are brought up by your parents. He stated that he has this optimistic outlook, at a very young age he surrounded himself with the right people and even as a teenager, he had great mentors and these people drove him to be more successful because maybe they made him feel good, maybe telling him he’s doing a good job like a coach telling you, “Go out there, you can do it, you did it, that’s great” pat you on the back but he over came fears, he did the magic shows and you would think a kid at age 12 doesn’t have fear, he was scared to death of those little kids staring at him. Even in his mid 20s, he started his speaking business and if the audience was under 100 people, he felt comfortable but as soon as it got bigger than that, he was scared, when he got in front of an audience of 1000 or 10,000 so he’s still nervous but he gets over it because mostly anxiousness than, “I’m scared to get out there.” How do you get motivated? You have to over come things and feel really good about what you do so that drives you. He reads a tremendous amount of good things, one of the things he doesn’t do anymore, he doesn’t watch local news and even the national news, national news keeps you inform of many things but local news, they are showing car accidents, crime scenes and other than the weather and sports, he doesn’t need that negativity in his life, he needs to know the big picture things. He also works out quite a bit and he has fun. He shares that he has a really good balance, he works very hard but he has a really good time, he takes advantage of things when they are in front of him, he has a great wife, great kids. If he’s going to a sporting event, he soaks it all in and he just loves having fun. He works a tremendous amount of hours but when it’s time to have fun, he knows how to do it.   Shep stated that one of the apps that cannot live without in his business is Outlook, he also mention that he loves a good travel app because he travels so much and he’s using TripIt but it feeds into Flight Update Pro and so that way he can track flights coming into his gate, if they are going to be late many times he knows before the gate agent, so because he travels a lot and that’s great. He stated that for email, he just signed up for Sanebox so if you want to check out Sanebox you can put his email address or his name and you can get a free month. What Sanebox is doing is everything that’s coming into his inbox, it recognize when he’s getting a newsletter and puts it in the newsletter box that he can get to it later on. It is actually learning his routine, it is putting his best emails in his inbox and putting everything else in another box and it’s unbelievable accurate, they say it will essentially save you up to 12 hours a month. There is a feature on it called the Saneblack hole, if somebody subscribe you or you start getting on somebody’s promotional email list of a company and you don’t know how you got on the list, you just put it in the black hole and you’ll never see it again. They give you a trail period to play around so that’s a cool app for a reasonable price. He just got a Slingbox at home so now he can watch TV on his phone and where that counts is when he’s traveling on the other side of the world and his favorite sports teams are playing in the USA and he wants to watch them, so that’s a cool app. Another app is BombBomb, if he wants to take a short video that say, “Hey thank you for having me on your show” and then send it to you, he can do it with the phone but what happens is that attaches the video to the email and if the video is too big, it may get block by your email system, so what BombBomb does is allows you to create a cool template that’s custom to you and then you shoot your video and then you send the email and the person just pushes the button and actually plays if they are connected to the internet, it’s a very cool thing and that’s the most basic use. You could have a list of people and you want to send everybody a video message.   Shep shared that he mentioned Jan Carlzon book, Moments of Truth was written mid 1980’s and the first time he ran across Jan Carlzon was in an article but he eventually went on to write the book about Moments of Truth and it’s a thin little book that would take an hour to read. Shep stated that to him one of the greatest customer service books of all time. However, his favorite book is called The Experience Economy by James Gilmore and Joe Pine, what a great concept and they used Starbucks and that book has been out for maybe 10 or 20 years and for a company like Starbucks to maintain its relevancy in the experience base is really cool. He stated that Thomas Peters co-author a book back in the 1980’s called In Search of Excellence and he believes he had 50 companies that he considered most excellent companies in the world and if you look at it 25 years later he doesn’t know if half of them made that list anymore. For Starbucks to stay relevant and he predicts that Starbucks will stay relevant, their module is all about the customer not just about coffee and that’s why Amazon has been so successful and when Jeff Bezos says, “We are trying to stay a step up ahead of our competition, we’re trying to stay ahead of the customer” meaning what are we giving the customer more than what they thought they were going to get, get them something they didn’t know and that’s what Steve Jobs did too with Apple, give them something they didn’t know they needed and create this need or discover the need the customer didn’t realize they needed then deliver on it. To put another book, in the latter part of the 1980’s a guy name Harvey Mackay wrote a book called Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition, we have anyone out there with entrepreneurial type businesses or anybody that’s in a business to build a relationship with your customer, this book is unbelievable, it’s filled with so much great information, common sense information from a guy that was really doing it at the time.   Shep shared that there are 2 or 3 things, number 1 is they have an amazing online group of courses based on the work he has put into his books and what they do with their training programmes and speaking programmes in person, so he’s very excited about how over the years it has been revolving into a major part of their business. He is just finishing up a book called Be Amazing or Go Home, so that’s kind of fun, you got a choice in life, if you want to come to work, be amazing otherwise why show up for work. The other book that’s coming out next year is a book all about creating convenience, they talked a little bit about that’s a part of the experience, how convenient and easy can you make it for a customer because today you walk into a business, you expect a certain level of customer service and that’s table stake and for the last 30 years he has been talking about the table stakes and now he thinks it’s becoming common when companies get it and understand it, whether they execute on it is another thing, so what’s the next level of delivering amazing service and that is be more convenient than your competition.   Shep shared that listeners can find him at - Shep Hyken Twitter www.hyken.com   Shep shared some of the quotes that inspire him in times of adversity. He loves Jiminy Cricket who said, “Let your conscience by your guide.” In business when he’s up against somebody who is upset about pricing or maybe he’s upset that something is a little more expensive than he thought it was going to be and he always remember Aldo Gucci said, “Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.” so when he thinks about business in general, it’s not just the quality product, it’s the quality service and experience and even though he didn’t write it, he thinks it’s a mantra we should all subscribe to, we deliver the best part of the quality, an experience, everything does what it’s supposed to do, great people, people aren’t going to be so concern about the price.  Links Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon The Experience Economy by Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Running Companies by Thomas Peters Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition by Harvey Mackay

Creating Consistently Great Customer Service   Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service. He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”. I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore.   By the way, the drive in from Changi Airport is a credit to the Singaporean Government, who spend millions every year to develop and maintain their landscaped, leafy, tropical thoroughfares. This is smart. You are already in a pleasant mood just getting into town. While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice. Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well. I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel.   One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand. The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer.   So back to my story. As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working. After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on. There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room. Actually, I discovered the same system in the elevator, when I unsuccessfully tried to select my floor. Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me. Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand.   Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan. You call just about any organisation, get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese “XYZ company here”. You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then stone cold silence.   The “may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back” bit is rarely offered.   Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call. Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand. In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and had a good impression of the whole organisation. The person taking the call has just put that positive image to the sword.   When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service. You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization. After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't you?   But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand? Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed.   I had one of my recent hires in the sales team answering the phone with an unhelpful tone in his voice. He actually sounded like he was angry. He was in his fifties, so no boy, but obviously that had been his standard phone manner throughout his entire working life. A perpetual brand killer and reputation destroyer right there. We have an open plan office, so I could hear this. If you are encased in the dark wood paneled corner executive crib with a tremendous view, then maybe you will never know and therefore be unable to do anything about it.   Leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with. We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again.   So how about this for a starter for educating our staff to do a better job protecting and enhancing the brand:   Answer the phone with a pleasant, happy voice. Be helpful and offer your name first, so the customer won't be embarrassed that they didn't recognise your voice.   If you take the call and the person they are calling isn't there, proactively offer to ensure they get a call back as soon as possible.   End with thanking them for their call and again leave your name, in case there is anything further the caller may need.   First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers. Consistency of good experiences doesn't happen automatically. We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.   Action Steps   Draw your spiders web of client touch points and identify who needs training, including non-regular staff. Design the experience you want the client to have and train everyone around the content.   Look at your systems for moving or transitioning the client through the organization, to make sure the client experience is consistently good.   Always check to see what you think is happening is actually the case.     Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.     About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.   leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.      

"SAS-Janne" är en av världens mest välkända ledare, med boken "Riv Pyramiderna" som ligger till grund för oerhört många bolag. Redan vid 32 års ålder var han VD Ving - yngsta någonsin i branschen, sedan vidare till Linjeflyg och SAS. Ett fullmatat avsnitt med spännande historier till hur man blir en bra ledare och verkligen lyckas med sina livsmål.

"SAS Janne" är en av världens mest välkända ledare, med boken "Riv Pyramiderna" som ligger till grund för oerhört många bolag. Redan vid 32 års ålder var han VD Ving - yngsta någonsin i branschen, sedan vidare till Linjeflyg och SAS. Ett fullmatat avsnitt med spännande historier till hur man blir en bra ledare och verkligen lyckas med sina livsmål.

Han vände tre krisande storföretag från förlust till vinst och blev SAS-Janne med hela folket. Men framgången hade en baksida också. - Jag har varit med och förändrat världen. Det är klart att jag är stolt, säger Jan Carlzon. Efter att ha vänt tre krisande storföretag höjde han statusen för de som jobbade med service och skickade personalen på charmkurs. Janne Carlzon blev själv nästan omåttligt populär. Men hur upplevde Jan själv framgången? Och hur kändes det att lämna SAS 1993? I Svenska Ikoner berättar Janne Carlzon hur en musikälskande slarver från Nyköping kunde hamna i vd-stolen på SAS och bli en av Sveriges mest framgångsrika företagsledare. Programmet är gjort av Micha Arlt, produktionsbolaget Munck.

Hör delar av möten med före detta statsministern Göran Persson och systembolagets förra VD Anitra Steen, Hollywoodfruarna Maria Montazami, Anna Anka och Agnes-Nicole Winter, diplomaten Hans Blix, författaren Jan Guillou och förläggaren Ann-Marie Skarp, Förbundskaptenen Erik Hamrén, artisttrion Siw Malmkvist, Barbro Svensson och Ann-Louise Hansson, statsminister Fredrik Reinfeldt, före detta SAS-chefen Jan Carlzon, Expressens krönikör Cecilia Hagen, författarna Mark Levengood och Jonas Gardell, förlagschefen Eva Bonnier och kriminologen och författaren Leif GW Persson.