Here’s How to Get Customers to Say, “I’ll Be Back!” by Shep Hyken

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Many companies think they have to compare themselves to their competition. They want to know what the competition is doing that they are not. And when they figure it out, you know what they do? They copy them.  

It’s not a bad idea to do that, but it’s not the best idea either. If all you do is compare yourself to your competitors, you may be missing your best opportunities to create the best experience for your customers. 

In my newest book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, I cover a six-step process to getting your customers to say, “I’ll be back.” I’m going to summarize the process here. It’s not complicated. It’s actually pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. So let’s jump right into it. 

 Start by calling a meeting. In all, it will probably take at least two or three meetings. Leadership should be there, along with other employees with varied responsibilities, from sales, support, finance, and more. 

Step One: Ask yourself and the team, “Why should people do business with us?” Answers like, “We have great customer service” are too vague and also something the competition is likely to say. Get specific and think of what you offer that makes you unique. 

Step Two: Check out the competition. What do they do that you don’t? Is this something you could be doing? Look for ways they differentiate themselves from what you do. 

Step Three: Keep pace. If you discover things that the competition is doing that you’re not, and you decide you want to do something similar, don’t just copy their ideas. Give them a twist and make them your own. If you copy them, you’ll be just like them. And if all you are is a copy of the competition, you are a commodity. 

If all you are is a copy of the competition, you are a commodity. 

Step Four: Move beyond your industry. Ask the team, “What companies, not including the competitors, do you like doing business with the most, and why?” Any type of company counts small, big, recognizable brands, and more. List reasons you like them and get ready for the next step. 

Step Five: Borrow from the best. Looking at the reasons you like the companies listed in Step Four, make note of what these companies do that you don’t, but could. This is a powerful way to create even more distance from your competition. 

Step Six: Revisit your value proposition. After you’ve built the ideas in Step Five into your customer experience, go back to the question you started with in Step One: “Why should people do business with us?” You should have some new answers. Even better answers will help you create a better customer experience. 

Repeat customers are gold. Loyal customers are sacred. Do it right and your customers will come back again and again. Put this six-step process into action, along with other ideas, strategies, and tactics from the book. This is exactly what it takes to get your customers to say, I’ll Be Back!

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling business author. His latest book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again is available for preorder at www.IllBeBackBook.com. For information, contact 314-692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken. This post originally appeared here on Shep Hyken’s Customer Service Blog.

Your Best People Are Leaving…and I Know Why by Sam Silverstein

Your organization is in crisis. A key person—or maybe a bunch of people—just left, and now you’re struggling to deal with the consequences. 

Before you talk yourself into believing that you’re the victim here, let me suggest some tough questions. Please answer them honestly. 

• Are you personally committed to telling your people the truth? How does your team know for sure? What evidence do they have to the contrary? 

• Are you personally committed to standing by your people, even when all hell breaks loose? How does your team know that for sure? What evidence do they have to the contrary? 

• Are you personally committed to making sure your word is your bond? How does your team know for sure? What evidence do they have to the contrary? 

I work with a lot of leaders. One of the things I find consistently is that when key people in the organization leave unexpectedly, this has less to do with the employee’s level of commitment than it does with the leader’s level of commitment—usually in one, two, or all three of the areas you just read. 

Consider: When someone doesn’t tell us the truth about problems that are holding back their team…whose fault is that, ultimately? Who is supposed to model the commitment of telling the truth, even when the truth hurts? We are. 

When someone walks away from the organization when all hell breaks loose, whose fault is that really? The leader’s, of course. That’s who’s supposed to show what total commitment during tough times looks like. 

When someone says they want to stay on as a contributor in a key position long enough to finish a strategically important project…and then walks away in the middle of that project to go work for a competitor, whose fault is that, ultimately? Well—who hired that person, or set the process for hiring? Even more importantly, who is supposed to live the commitment, day in and day out, of one’s word being one’s bond? Obviously, it’s the leader. 

Your key people are leaving because of a lack of accountability. And that starts at the top, with the way the leader thinks about the people in the organization. Accountability is the highest form of leadership. When it isn’t there…the best people leave.  

Key people leave because they don’t enjoy the people they work for—meaning the leadership. They leave because they don’t enjoy the working environment—which is the responsibility of leadership and which connects directly to leadership’s perceived willingness to be personally accountable for fulfilling important commitments. And they leave because they can’t achieve the mission they’re supposed to achieve—because they’re constantly being undermined by leadership that doesn’t tell the truth, won’t stand by them, and doesn’t live by “my word is my bond.” 

Those are all things that the leader can and must control. 

When the leader is personally committed in each of these three areas, as well as others just as important, guess what happens? People bust their humps to avoid letting the leader down…even if the competition offers them more money and better benefits to jump ship. 

So, consider. Maybe it’s not really about them lying to you. Maybe it’s not really about them walking away from you when things get tough. Maybe it’s not really about them failing to honor their word. Maybe it’s actually about the quality of the relationship you were committed to. Maybe that relationship wasn’t strong enough for them to want to stay on your team, for them to believe they had a future with you. 

If that hurts to read, then that probably means this article is worth reading again. When you’re done, e-mail me at info@samsilverstein.com for some ideas on how to turn things around. 

This article originally appeared here on www.samsilverstein.com. 

Sam Silverstein is dedicated to empowering people to live accountable lives, transform the way they do business, and create a more accountable world. He helps companies create an organizational culture that prioritizes and inspires accountability. Pick up a copy of his most recent book in the No More Excuses series, No Matter What: The 10 Commitments of Accountability. You can follow Sam on Twitter @SamSilverstein,  Facebook @SilversteinSam,  Instagram @samsilverstein, and YouTube @samsilverstein. 

Are You Accountable to Your Customers? by Sam Silverstein

Accountable leadership cares less about the short-term bottom line…and more about the long-term relationship. 

 A key test of accountability comes in the form of two tough questions:  

• Can your customers count on you to act in their best interests? Do they know you’ve always “got their back”?  

• Do they know you are accountable to fulfill a commitment to provide them with full value…and to give them all the information they need to make an informed decision?  

A recent PBS NewsHour story is making customers think twice about whether their most trusted providers are offering the right answers to those questions.  

Gretchen Liu, 78, went online and paid her insurance provider’s chosen supplier a copay of $285 for a 90-day supply of some medication she needed. The price seemed high, but her condition was serious, so she simply paid the bill and trusted that her insurance company was pointing her toward the best available price. Time passed, and Liu needed a refill of her medication before going on a trip. She headed to the pharmacy at Costco…where she learned that she could have gotten the very same medication there for only $40 if she had opted to pay for the same (generic!) drug out of pocket, instead of using the online copay arrangement provided by her insurance company! 

Let’s be frank. Something went very wrong here, something that needs to be noticed not just by online pharmacies and insurance companies, but by companies operating in all industries. When we don’t tell our customers how to make the very best choice, we let them down…and we don’t fulfill our accountability to them to look after their interests and deliver full value. 

There are two places where accountability needs to show up in this kind of situation. First, the online vendor for these medications should prominently inform customers when they can get a substantial price break by not using the copay option. The online pharmaceutical vendor, and by extension the insurance company, failed this test. 

Second, the pharmacists we visit in person should also make sure we get the best price possible. The Costco pharmacist passed this test. Guess which supplier Liu trusts more? Guess which she is more likely to recommend? 

One relationship with the customer—Costco’s—was based on accountability. The other wasn’t. Can you blame Liu—or any of us who need prescription drugs—if we start assuming that we need to watch out for our own interests, rather than trust our insurance company’s chosen suppliers? 

News flash: If you’re my insurance company, I’m your customer! That means you should be looking out for my best interests. 

That’s true for any company, of course, not just companies that sell insurance.  

If a company is more concerned with its immediate bottom line than it is with the customer’s best interests, that is a short-term decision, and a poor one. That company is maximizing a short-term profit in exchange for a long-term loss. When that company stops looking out for its customers, it might maximize its profits that month, that quarter, or maybe even that year—but there are going to be long-term problems down the line…and if the company ignores those problems for long enough, its survival will eventually be at stake! 

So: How committed is your organization to always do what’s best for the customer? How likely are you to tell a customer, “You know what? You can save some money and/or time if you do it this way instead of that way”? How committed are you and your team to giving customers all the information they should be able to expect from you? 

If you hesitated before answering any of those questions, consider that the problem you just uncovered begins with your company leadership’s commitment to employees.  

When leadership is only focused on the short-term bottom line and is not looking out for the best interests of customers, that sends a message to the employees in the organization that leaders probably aren’t looking out for their best interests, either! All too often, that message is part of a corporate death spiral—poor employee morale reinforces poor customer service, which reinforces poor employee morale, and on and on. This cycle is a hallmark of unaccountable leaders—not bad employees! Wherever there is a customer service issue, that points toward an accountability issue internally in the organization…usually at the very top.  

The flip side is also true. If the people in the organization know that the leader has their back and is personally accountable to uphold a commitment to help them achieve their full potential and be the very best they can be, then that leader is building a culture based on accountability and commitment—and those employees are going to be accountable to fulfilling a commitment to the customers to deliver full value, time after time after time. 

Rest assured: If you care about the long-term relationship more than the short-term bottom line, you will build a marketplace advantage based on accountability…and you will turn your customers into passionate advocates for your brand. 

Sam Silverstein is dedicated to empowering people to live accountable lives, transform the way they do business, and create a more accountable world. He helps companies create an organizational culture that prioritizes and inspires accountability. His most recent book in the No More Excuses series, No Matter What: The 10 Commitments of Accountability, is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, 800-CEO-READ, and other fine retailers. You can follow Sam on Twitter @SamSilverstein, Facebook @SilversteinSam, Instagram @samsilverstein, and YouTube @samsilverstein. 

Spring Training for Organizational Success by Sam Silverstein

While visiting and working in Florida, I had the opportunity to attend the St. Louis Cardinals’ home opener spring training baseball game. Spring training is a great time both for the players and the fans. Everything starts new in spring training. Fans have renewed hopes of their team winning the World Series. Young players have renewed aspirations of moving up in the organization and possibly even making the Major League team.  

But a lot has to be accomplished before decisions are made on who will make the Major League team and who will continue to play in the Minor Leagues. 

There are many goals that need to be addressed in spring training. The players are working to get in everyday playing shape. Management is evaluating talent. Pitchers are developing new pitches that they are willing to try when the games don’t really matter so that they are ready when the games do matter. And, even though the games don’t count in the regular season standings, the organization’s leadership is working to develop the drive to win. Winning is a habit that has to be nurtured inside of everyone and inside the team as a whole. In essence, they are learning how to compete.  

During drills, the players have a lot of mini competitions. They discover momentum. They learn what working together as a team feels like. This is the time to master what happens between the players and their relationships in addition to the physical skills involved in playing the game. One without the other will leave the team short of reaching their potential.  

Leadership is looking at how players interact in relationship to each other; evaluating if the values of different players line up with each other and if they will fit together on a team. Teamwork isn’t created by assembling the best players on a single team. Teamwork is about assembling a group of people who share a common set of values and who commit to living those values with each other. That is not only teamwork but accountability in action. 

It is the same in any business or organization. There are the skills necessary to perform the tasks, deliver the service and create the products, and there is the environment where everyone works. That environment, or organizational culture based on a set of values, will determine the level of performance that everyone is able to achieve.  

You can assemble people with the best skills, but if you don’t put equal time into creating a winning organizational culture, you come up short. It’s the transactional side of businesses, the skills, and the relational side—the teamwork, camaraderie, trust, and respect—that when focused on equally, allow an organization to be at its best because people are then positioned to be at their best. 

Sam Silverstein is dedicated to empowering people to live accountable lives, transform the way they do business, and create a more accountable world. He helps companies create an organizational culture that prioritizes and inspires accountability. His most recent book in the No More Excuses series, No Matter What: The 10 Commitments of Accountability, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, 800-CEO-READ, and other fine retailers. 

Why Training Fails: The Shocking Truth That Most Leaders Don’t Even Know by Shawn Doyle, CSP

I have been involved in training, speaking, and consulting for 28 years, and the same issues have been present all along. In this article, I want to share with you the 11 main reasons why training fails. The shocking truth is there is a lot of money spent but tons wasted because of the barriers organizations have in place around training. 

1. No one tells them why they are doing the training. When I am facilitating a training program and I ask people why they are there, the No. 1 answer by far is “because my manager told me to be in the training.” In the majority of the cases they are not told why. Solution: Mangers should tell people the reason why they are in the training.  

2. Training is as boring as watching paint dry. In today’s world of instant entertainment, if they are not entertained they check out quickly. People tell me all the time that most training programs are  very boring. Solution: Train internal people on how to facilitate great training or hire an outside expert. 

3. Training is a legal requirement or is policy driven. Many organizations have certain training programs that are required like safety training and sexual harassment avoidance. Because they are mandatory, people feel like they are being punished and resent being there. Solution: Each manger should explain to their team how the training will help them and the company. If people understand why the training is important, they are much more likely to go along with it. 

4. There is not enough time for training. When I am talking to a client about training and they ask me how long a program is and I say “a full day,” they want me to do it in a half day. If I say “a half day” they want me to do it in two hours. There are no effective shortcuts to effective training. Solution: Budget the time as an investment to help people learn. 

5. There is no training at all. I am simply amazed that there are so many organizations that don’t train people at all. They use the world-famous “just follow Fred around for a week” and rely on other people to show new employees the ropes. Solution: Every new employee should have an initial training program for orientation.   

6. The company uses a subject matter expert for the training. Just because someone is a SME does not mean they can teach the subject to others. Solution: Be careful whom you select for training. They need to be both a SME and an expert at training. 

7. The company thinks that education is training. Education is learning about something. Training is learning how to do it. I can learn all about feeding lions at the  zoo, but if I’m going to do it I need to be trained on how to do it or I will face dire consequences. Solution: Make sure the outcome of training is that people can do what they need to do. 

8. The company thinks that training has to occur in a classroom. There are many different ways to train someone, and it doesn’t have to be in a classroom. We can mentor, coach, have on-the-job training; we can rotate job assignments to cross-train; or someone can study a how-to guide. Solution: Find other creative ways to train people. 

9. The employees find the training to be goofy. I have seen some activities in training that, to me, belonged in a Kindergarten class. When training exercises are too juvenile, people will stop learning. Solution: Know your team, and don’t have exercises that are too childish. 

10. There is no follow up. Many people attend training, and then they are done. Their manager doesn’t meet with them to see how the training went and discuss what they learned. The retention or information goes way down when they only talk about something once. Solution: Every manager should talk with their direct reports within two weeks of the training to discuss what they learned and develop an action plan. 

11. The employees think that training is an event. Many people think of training as an event. The reality is that great training should be a process, with many elements involved. This helps organizations implement changes as a result of the training. Solution: Have better training plans and know how they all relate together.  

Thinking about all of these elements and how they fit together will make sure that you don’t waste your training dollars.  

For more business and personal development insight from Shawn Doyle, check out his titles from Sound Wisdom, including his Jumpstart Series, The Sun Still Rises, The Leadership Manifesto, and Two Months to Motivation.