The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (14 page)

Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of
Freakonomics
, cautions, “One mistake a lot of people make when creating incentive schemes is thinking that financial incentives are the most powerful incentives going. In fact, social and moral incentives are often more powerful. The other thing to consider is what I sometimes call ‘local fame’; very few of us want to be (or will ever be) truly famous. What we want is to be famous ‘locally,’ if even for a short time—that is, known well among our peers, families, friends, etc., for having done something well and noteworthy.”
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Remember The Ritz-Carlton wow stories? Those stories are told at staff meetings so the person who played an important role in creating the customer experience is praised in front of his or her peers. Praising an individual publicly serves two purposes: it reinforces behavior the organization is attempting to replicate, and it gives the person “local fame” among peers. Praise and local fame touches people emotionally.

At Disney theme parks, leaders carry cards they use to provide instant recognition to employees who go above and beyond what is expected when serving a guest. On one half of the card, the leader
describes the employee’s conduct and hands it to the cast member, an action that is often enough to make the person’s day. The leader keeps the other half of the card with the employee’s name and turns it in for a prize drawing at the end of each month. The prizes, like iPods or movie tickets, are great, but it’s the public recognition that cast members cherish. I recently heard about a school that gives “character counts” cards. The cards work in exactly the same way as the Disney cards, but instead of a supervisor handing out the cards to employees, teachers hand out the cards to students. A drawing is held at the end of every month, but instead of material prizes, a student might win ice cream with the principal. This is a proven method to encourage the repetition of positive behavior and to give your employees (or students) a chance to shine in front of their peers.

Jim Thompson is the executive director of the Positive Coaching Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has sparked a movement of 200,000 youth sports coaches, training in the group’s mission: to use sports to teach character. Double-Goal coaches are those who want to win, but also aim to teach life lessons through sports. According to Thompson, there are an infinite number of teachable moments in youth sports that are overlooked by coaches and parents who are obsessed with winning. For example, if a kid strikes out, a First-Goal coach might have a conversation with the player about improving his mechanics. A Double-Goal coach covers the mechanics but also uses the moment to teach traits like resilience, bouncing back from setbacks, and giving it your best shot.

Effective praise is a key component of the Positive Coaching program. According to Thompson, the secret to effective praise is the “Magic 5:1 Ratio”: find five reasons to praise for every one thing to criticize. Thompson calls it filling a person’s emotional tank:

We all have emotional tanks like a gas tank in a car. If it’s empty, your car doesn’t run. If it’s low, you’re not going to perform well. You can get people to do something out of fear for a short term. But the very best coaches build up their athletes or employees so they are excited and can’t wait to go to work
and face the challenge. Constant criticism drains tanks. We’re not anti-criticism, but you need to offer receivable criticism. I may be right in my criticism, but if I’m draining their tank while I’m doing it, they may spend internal emotional energy resisting, arguing, and not embracing the criticism. Give receivable feedback.
¹⁰

According to Thompson, praise should be offered in what he terms a “criticism sandwich.” For example, a young basketball player keeps missing three-point shots due to a lack of follow-through. A criticism sandwich would begin by praising something the player is doing right. For example, “I like the way you bend your knees, that’s where you are getting your power.”
¹¹
The praise could be followed by a constructive criticism, intended to help the player improve in a specific area: “If you remember to follow through—do the gooseneck—you’ll make more shots.” This would then be followed up with more praise, like a sandwich: “I also like the way you keep your eye on the basket after you’ve thrown the ball.” With this approach, the player gets three coaching tips, with the criticism surrounded by two praises. It fills the player’s emotional tank and helps steer the focus on improving, not wallowing in frustration.

Thompson believes the average person feels underappreciated, and surveys of workplace morale agree. Most people work hard but do not feel acknowledged, leaving them demoralized and fed up. “But in an environment where people are noticed for good things—or even for taking their best shot if they fail—they’re more likely to be fired up!” says Thompson. A great coach can turn an athlete with a lot of heart and a little skill into a standout. Michael Jordan didn’t win a championship until Phil Jackson came along (who, by the way, is a proponent for the Positive Coaching program and serves as its national spokesperson) and helped Jordan become a champion (six times)! Jackson used the same technique to help the LA Lakers win five championships. He must have done something right. See yourself as a Double-Goal coach in your business relationships: Help your employees and colleagues master “the mechanics”—the nuts and bolts of their job—while encouraging them to reach their potential as champions in and out of the office. That’s the Apple way.

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson might have put it best when he said, “My approach to being a good boss is not different from being a good father. If you lavish praise on people, people will flourish. If you criticize people, they will shrivel up.” Building an empowered workforce means giving people permission to do what they believe is right for the customer. But it also means building their confidence and bringing out the best in them. You can build people up by sowing the seeds of encouragement. Recognize their greatness publicly and praise their accomplishments.

On September 5, 2005, Steve Jobs gave a stirring commencement speech to the graduating class of Stanford University. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,”
¹²
he said. “Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” Steve Jobs never placed limits on himself, and he certainly didn’t tolerate anything but excellence in the people who worked for him. You might not be surrounded by A-players at all times, but everyone (B-and C-players as well) is capable of rising higher if they believe in you, the vision, and themselves. Be the voice that guides others. Believe in people, encourage their potential, and inspire them to live their best lives.

T
hink back to a bad customer experience. If you’re like most people, you will not have to think back that far. Bad customer service seems to be the norm these days. Brands like Apple that are hailed as customer service champs do things differently. It starts with inspirational leadership on the executive and management levels. Leaders who fail to inspire their teams and to clearly communicate their vision will never build companies that are admired for their superior customer experience. How can they? Employees who are discouraged, dejected, and demoralized have zero chance of engaging customers and making them feel good about their experience with the brand.

The first secret to offering insanely great customer service is to make sure your employees are happy, motivated, and passionate. But passion and energy take you only so far. Step two is to master the skills required to make your customers feel special.
What
you say and
how
you say it will make all the difference. In this section we begin with the Apple five steps of service that all employees are trained to follow in every customer interaction. These steps are so important that I urge you to study them and promptly call a meeting to share the steps with your coworkers and staff. For your brand to succeed in this hypercompetitive global economy, every person in the organization must internalize these steps and live these principles every day.

W
alk into an Apple Retail Store, and you’ll be greeted with a warm, friendly, cheery welcome within seconds of stepping inside. Approaching customers with a warm welcome is the first of five steps employees are instructed to take to create an enriching and memorable experience for Apple Store customers. All employees know the steps of service as the acronym
APPLE
:

A
pproach customers with a personalized, warm welcome.

P
robe politely to understand all the customer’s needs.

P
resent a solution for the customer to take home today.

L
isten for and resolve any issues or concerns.

E
nd with a fond farewell and an invitation to return.
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These five steps are taught to every Apple Retail Store employee. The steps are also practiced by other brands in a variety of industries as the foundation to delivering exceptional experiences. Some brands like AT&T retail stores adopted and modified the five steps with direct input from Steve Jobs. Other brands copy components of the steps with slight modifications. This five-step approach is a proven winner, and since Steve Jobs once said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal,” let’s steal a page from the Apple playbook and review the five steps of service in more detail.

The key words in this first step are
approach
,
personalized
, and
warm
. Apple employees are empowered to interpret the greeting to fit their personality and to give the customer the type of attention the customer desires. Some customers just expect a smile as they walk toward the back of the store to buy new headphones, while others are there to buy a Mac for the first time and would like a deeper, more personalized and educational experience. The key is to make sure that customers are greeted by a friendly face that makes eye contact and is committed to creating a customized, unique, and meaningful experience
each and every time
.

Approaching customers with a warm welcome makes common sense, so it’s baffling to find so few businesses that adopt this strategy. It’s not that different from inviting someone to your house. When someone knocks on the door, do you simply open the door, walk away, and ignore that person? If so, please don’t invite me to one of your parties! How would it make you feel to enter a home only to find your friend or the host of the event sitting on the couch watching television without smiling or even acknowledging your arrival? You would turn right around and leave, wouldn’t you? It’s rude, obnoxious, and borderline abusive. Yet most of us, as consumers, put up with this treatment all the time from retail stores and companies of all sizes. If you call a company and you rarely, if ever,
get a live person on the line, then you are not receiving a warm welcome. If you leave a message or send an e-mail to someone at that company, and nobody calls you back or responds to your e-mail, you are not receiving a warm welcome. It’s time to take your business somewhere else.

On Black Friday, 2011, I conducted an informal experiment at my local shopping mall. It was completely unscientific but very instructive. As you know, Black Friday is when merchants offer steep discounts to get people through the door to kick off the all-important holiday buying season. The crowds are enormous, and some people, like myself, purposely avoid venturing anywhere near a mall on that day. But when my family expressed an interest in going, I reluctantly decided to take the opportunity to conduct my little experiment despite the stressful crowds. Oh, what I’ll do in the name of research!