A keynote on customer service culture that opens with Southern manners and cartoon voices, then pivots to hard numbers: 82% of customers leave after one bad experience, and employee turnover hits 82% within 20 months. The speaker argues that purpose, respect, and recognition keep people, and that saying "My pleasure" consistently can boost profit margins.
Chapters
Well, good afternoon. I couldn't help but hear something in the very beginning that I thought was powerful because I want to share a quick story with you. I remember before my first job at the catering company at 11, I was about 7, and we had just moved to Georgia. From Massachusetts. Anybody here from Massachusetts? You're a damn Yankee too, right? Absolutely, you came and stayed. So I remember coming in, and back then, I mean, I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but children were to be seen, not heard, and preferably not seen either, right? And so I came in from playing, and my mother's on the couch with a very strange man I've never seen before, and he's got this accent that I mean, he was just about as southern as you could get. And he was sitting on the couch talking to my mama, and I was hiding in the kitchen listening. He said, "Now, Mrs. Gould, if you're going to live in the South, you're going to have to learn how to be nice." Now, I didn't know what nice was, but I caught on a little later that that it meant nice, that this man actually believed that because we were from the North, we didn't even know how to be nice. We had to be taught. We had to learn to be nice. How many of you got employees like that, huh? Right now, right? You got some of those? Well, we're going to work on some things today hopefully that will help you with that. So how many of you seen the movie Liar Liar? Okay. That scene is where Jim Carrey has picked up his car from the impound and there's a big scratch on it. He says, You scratched my car. And he says, right here. And he goes, that was there when we got it. And he says, you're a liar. And then he talks about how, you know, oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to sue you. I'm just going to take it because you're not going to show up anyway. And it's, you know, and that's just the way we are, right, as customer service. We've just kind of gotten to the point where we just take it. How many of you read the book Good to Great, right? We had companies that were good to great to gone in less than a couple of years. Circuit City is a great example of that because customer service is so vitally important. Now what you're probably thinking right now is, is, "Okay, what is this guy gonna say to me that's gonna make any difference today? Why am I here? Why am I listening to this? What could he possibly have to say?" Well, hopefully today what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna share some of that with you. I hope today in the short period of time we have together that you're gonna have some fun. Are you up for fun? Seriously? Because I find some people in my audiences are fun-challenged. I like to call them out, so please don't be a fun-challenged person because we'll have fun with you, right? I'm going to also give you some terrible warnings. Some very, very, very terrible warnings. And then finally, I hope to give you something that you can do about it. And you can take some action, and you can leave here today with stuff that you can use. Is that fair? Are you willing to play along? Okay. So, computer one, there we go. So, first of all, I think it's important for me to kind of interrupt your pattern a little bit because everybody right here is listening simultaneously to a simulcast right now on the radio. It's WIIFM radio, right? What's in it for me, right? Everybody know that station? You also are listening to WSIC, why should I care? And that's what everyone's doing right now. I don't want to listen to you. I got things of my own. I'm wondering how I'm going to get out of here. I wonder what the kids are doing. I wonder what my wife or husband's doing. I wonder if I'm going to be able to get back to the office and get anything done today because I blew a big 2-hour hole in my day coming to this annual meeting. Right? OK. So we're going to break that a little bit. We're going to give you an opportunity to break that right now. I'm going to ask you to please— you promised you would play along. Everybody please close your eyes. I promise I'm not going to come around stealing your wallet or anything. Close your eyes. I can see you, so if you're not closing your eyes, I can tell. Okay, as you've got your eyes closed, please don't fall asleep, you had chocolate cake, that ought to help. I want you to think about your favorite or the most familiar to you cartoon character. Now this is where we find the fun challenge, people. Don't worry, everybody's eyes are closed. If you don't have a cartoon character in mind, please raise your hand. Okay, so we're gonna give those folks a little bit of help. Cartoons are those things that you see on Saturday morning with kids. They're animated TV shows and things, but sometimes they're just in the papers, in the funny pages. Do y'all have one now? Everybody have a cartoon character, some kind of cartoon character in their mind? Okay, quietly open your eyes. Please look at your neighbor and speak to them in their cartoon character voice. Do it now. Please do it right now in your cartoon character's voice. Okay, this is where I run the risk without a microphone of losing you all. So if I could get you to come back just for a second. Somebody tell me who you were. Anybody? Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny. How many Bugs Bunnies in the room? Yeah, what's up, Doc, right? We love Bugs Bunny. Who else? Fat Albert. Fat Albert. Hey, wait a second. Was that about me? Because it's all about me. Fat Albert. I loved Fat Albert when I was growing up. He was a riot. Hey, hey, hey, right? Who else? Roadrunner. How many Roadrunners you got? You guys like to do things really, really, really fast? Yeah? Is there anybody in here that was Wile E. Coyote? I've not yet once found anybody that wants a safe dropped on them. It's amazing. The only— I mean, all of you had different cartoon characters. I want you to not miss this point. It's really, really important, okay? Because this is vital to everything you're going to learn today and for the rest of your life, in an instant, you were somebody else. Don't miss that point. At a moment's notice, you could be somebody else. Now why is that important? Because you see, when you're dealing with a customer or an employee that perhaps has gotten right on your last to last to last nerve, You can choose. You can choose how you respond. You can choose what you do about it. And I think that it's really, really important for you to stop for a moment and realize just how important that is in your everyday life, because let me tell you something, things are harder than they've ever been before. We're working longer for less, and we're getting less fulfillment out of it. We're going to talk about that a little bit today. But remember that you're in control. You can choose what you want to do. I want to tell you that with customer service, stakes have never been higher. I think that you probably know the stakes are pretty high, right? But I'm going to explain to you just how high they are because it's an amazing thing that's going on. You know, when I was growing up— by the way, how many of you are younger than me? Raise your hand. Well, see, you don't know, right? But you know what? There's always people who raise their hand right away. I got to be younger than that guy. Right? I got— look at him, he's old and busted. So no, the fact is, how many of you are younger than 50? Okay, a lot of you, right? Many of you will not relate to this, some of the stuff I'm going to tell you today. But back when we were growing up, if you gave good customer service, you could rely on having 2 or 3 people be told by the person that got it. You could also rely on the fact that if something went wrong, they would probably share that with about 20 people. And that was the ratio. Everybody agree with that that's older than me or is my age, right? You heard that before. What happens today? Facebook, thousands of people. How many of you have ever heard of Dave Carroll? Dave Carroll is a young man, you've heard of him? A young man who was on a United Airlines flight with his band Sons of Maxwell. Anybody here starting to ring a bell now, right? He was on a United Airlines flight in 2008. They broke his guitar. I'm not gonna play the whole song today, but he wrote a song called United Breaks Guitars. 12 million people saw it. 12 million people heard that they broke his guitar. You know why he wrote the song? Because they said it wasn't their fault. Because there's a limit to how much liability they have. You know what the limit is? 10% of their stock value, $180 million for a $3,000 guitar. This is what you're dealing with today. This is what you're dealing with. Today you're also dealing with this: 82% of the people that you serve will leave with a bad customer service experience. That's a recent survey that I found on the internet the other day. 82% of people are leaving because of bad customer service. Here's another number. Oh, it's 82 again. You know what that is? 82% of your employees in the next 20 months will change jobs. 20 months. Do you know why? Because we've been in a bad economy and people are taking what they can get. But the economy is starting to turn around and they're also finding that they have other opportunities. You want to know one other thing that's happening? I've lost my earphones. This is important. You know what else is happening? By 2015, we will have the biggest single shift in human capital in history. Because by 2015, Generation Y will dominate the workforce. There'll be more Generation Y in the workforce than there are any other. 10,000 baby boomers a day are retiring. And that means that the largest percentage of the workforce will be in their 20s, which means say hello to the people you're counting on. Yeah, you know why I got my headphones on? I got my headphones on for a reason, because I ain't getting old. These people believe, believe, The technology is equal to as important as freedom and air. Air. Yeah, air. I'd rather do without air before I do without technology. Do y'all miss the problem here? I mean, they're not going to do without it for long, right? But the fact is, is that if you're telling them they can't have their headphones, if you're telling them they can't have their smartphone, if you're not letting them go on Twitter and talk about your business, if you're not letting them do all of those things, You are starving them. You are killing them. And it's important for you to know that. Because in 3 years, you'll be relying on them for all your business. Probably already are. Which probably means you feel about like this. Ahh! That's why my hair's spiked. You know, 2 reasons. I'm trying to look cool. And the other reason is because I pull it all day long going, "Oh my gosh!" Right? It's almost unbearable. So what do you do about it? What do you do? Well, you're going to have some change. You're going to have to do that. I can guarantee you that there's going to be a lot of change. Has there been a lot of change in the past 4 years? Past 6 years? Wow. Since 2011, or 2001 maybe? Tons of change. Just unbelievable what's happened in our world. But I asked a question, and that is, what do you do? I thought we got rid of that, so let's get rid of it now. What do you do? And what I mean by that is not what do you do about this problem. I mean, what do you do? What do you do? What do I do for a living? Absolutely. I teach dance. You teach dance. I do. You do. Sir, what do you do for a living, sir? Public affairs officer. A public affairs officer. Sir, what do you do? Book bands. Book bands. And what do you do, ma'am? I'm office administrator. Office administrator. I asked this question to a group of Subway managers. What do you think they said? I make sandwiches, I run a Subway store. I explained to them, no, no, no, no, you don't seem to understand. You manage a unit of the largest international franchise in the world. Is it different? Is that a little different? You said you book bands, right? You bring joy to hundreds of thousands of people a year through the gift of music. I mean, that's on the fly, I'm sure you could do better, but we have to start thinking about what we do as a much more important cog in what happens in the world. We have this tendency to get very pedestrian in what we talk about and how we do. You don't seem, I don't think that most audiences understand the incredible impact they have in the world today. So I'm gonna ask you a question. In what you do, what's your purpose? What is it that really happens? What's the product of the product when you serve somebody? Because the fact is, is that you've got to know why you're doing it. When one of those days comes along and you've got one of those people that you know you wish you didn't have— have you ever fired a client? Seriously, you ever fired a client? Do yourselves a favor. Go back to the office today and fire that joker you've been wanting to fire for 15 years. I'm not kidding. It feels so good. I used to have this thing. I owned a chain of dry cleaning stores, and in the month of October, I had this conversation 6 times with 6 different people, and this is no reflection on you because you're very nice, but I'd say, ma'am, I have a policy here. I only deal with nice people, and unfortunately, you're not very nice. But here's the thing, Dolphin Cleaners over there, they take clothes from not nice people like you. And so if you'll just pick up your clothes and take them to Dolphin Cleaners, they'll be happy, you'll be happy, I'll be happy. It's a triple play. And that's really the most important thing is I'll be happy. Bye-bye now. Now, I mean, you can't do that for long, so I'm not saying fire more than one, but go back and fire somebody today. You'll feel great about it. Really, I mean, seriously. You gotta start thinking about the impact you're having on people. So what is the purpose for what you're doing? Why are you in the business that you're in? Who is it that you want to impact? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? And some— for most of us, it's very simple. I got a lot of bills and I gotta pay 'em. Some of us, it's I wanna show those jokers that I'm better. Some of us, it is I got 3 kids and I plan on feeding 'em. Some of us— it doesn't matter. You gotta start somewhere with why are you doing this? Because you gotta have that basis of why you are doing what you do every single day because money isn't enough. There's not enough money in the world to make people do things they don't want to do for very long. They'll do it for a while, but not for very long, and that's why 82% of the workforce is gonna turn over in the next 20 months. It's time for some self-reflection. You need to look in the mirror because here's the thing: if things aren't going well in your business, If your customer service is down, we just heard some numbers today, a little disappointing, right? By the way, I'm just gonna throw this in, this wasn't part of the presentation, but part of the problem is people come here expecting Southern hospitality. Who built that expectation? Well, y'all did, but who really did? The movies did. Could y'all ever be as good as they are in the movies? That's only for an hour and a half, for goodness sakes. You're there 24/7, right? I mean, the expectation people have. See, value is determined by a combination of price, expectation, value, and I mean quality and service, okay? So customer service is one of the 4 pieces, but the most important piece is what did I expect for customer service, right? So you got to look at yourself in the mirror because here's the thing, if you're seeing some customer service problems, I'd be willing to bet you're doing them. That hurts, but it's a fact. We've gotten to the point where what's acceptable is much lower than it used to be. Come on now. You're the leader. Are you not? Are you not responding? I mean, really, in all honesty, here's the thing. I could give you all the customer service tips in the world. We could talk about how to answer the phone properly. We could talk about how to engage somebody. We could talk about eye contact and spending a lot of time making sure that we're face-to-face and with the customer right and all of that. We can do all of those things. Guess what? You already know it. I don't need to teach you that. Everyone in here already knows what customer service is all about. It's how you would treat somebody if your life depended on it. It's how you would treat somebody if their life depended on it. It's as simple as that. It's about being a human being. It's simple stuff. But to lead at customer service, that's not so simple. And it starts with the way you act every single day. It starts with how you walk in in the morning. I was at a business the other day and the boss walked in and I said, "Good morning, Mrs.," and I'm not gonna say her name because there's a chance y'all might know where I was and might know her, and "how are you today?" And she said, "It's Monday." Great, another great day at work, right? I'm just dying to work for her. Yeah, it's Monday and you're screwing it up, lady. Okay, so it's important. You've got to stop for a second and think, okay, really, if I've got some customer service issues, number one is am I emulating it, or are they emulating me rather? And number two is if I do, have I stopped long enough to say, "Hey, guess what? We need to have a chat." This isn't working. You need, you need to understand, and I owe it to you to help you along the way. So now the question is, I asked you about what your purpose is, what's your employees' purpose? Why are they there? We're talking about those Gen Yers, right? A lot of those young people that are working now, they're working for you. They came out of college. They need a job. They need to pay back that student loan. They need to feel successful. They need to to have a big part in their lives where they've been out on their own already. They don't want to go back home to mom and dad. You have to understand what's motivating them. Why are they doing what they're doing? And the reason that is, is because their purpose is what will motivate them. A purpose is just something that will make people act. And a need or a motive is an action. So you folks that go to work every single day, you have a reason. You haven't thought of it in a while probably, right? We got into the mix and we just kind of go. But the fact is, is you've got to have a reason to go. You do when you show up every single day. You ever seen those bumper stickers, "Aye, oh, aye, oh, so off to work I go," right? If that's your motive, boy, it's tough right now. I understand. I live there too, right? But we've got to get beyond that. We've got to start taking some action so that we have some experience. Because what's missing with your employees is they aren't competent and confident in what they're doing. If they're switching a lot, if they're coming into a job that they don't really love, if they don't know that they're loved, they're probably not real confident and competent in what they're doing. The only way to get to competence is experience. By the way, I got this little piece right here. You could have negative experience and that's where procrastination comes in. I started to have a bad experience, I don't want to do it anymore. A good example, simple example of this is if I asked you to go and put your hand on the stove, You're going to do it very, very carefully because you have an experience somewhere in your life where it was hot. And so you're not going to do it quite as easily. If you're not having success, you may, in fact, be a little nervous, and that's where your employees are. But once they start to have an experience that makes them competent and confident, they'll become enthusiastic. How many of you would love to have enthusiastic employees? Seriously. Ones that show up and they go, "Gosh, they're excited." There's this kid that works at the BJ's Wholesale Club in our town. I know that he couldn't make minimum wage. I got news for you. As soon as I got a job, I'm stealing that kid because he's amazing. He's always in a good mood. He's always excited. He's always saying hello. He's always engaging us. If you have those people in businesses that you see them around town, steal those people. I'm serious. You know, it's about— I'm not saying from each other, but I'm saying like, you know, right? But, you know, there are people that aren't represented here, right? Okay, but that will give you the experience and enthusiasm, and that's what really we need today. Folks are looking for 3 things. They're looking for respect, recognition, and a return on investment of their time or their energy or their talents. If you're not giving them these things, they will leave. And here's the bad news: if you're not giving them these things, they're thinking about leaving already, and that's reflective in what they're doing, right? It's almost like, gosh, I wish they would leave, because you know they're giving lousy service, but you don't dare fire them because you don't know if you can find anybody else. I'm going to show you real quickly a way to increase your profit by 17 to 22% with two words. Is that fair? Okay, so here it is. Anybody here from McDonald's? Good. McDonald's has a wonderful chicken sandwich meal. It costs $4.99. I'm loving it. Have you— anybody ever had it? They have a good chicken sandwich. Fries, we know that they're great. And McDonald's has the same Coke that everyone else does, right? If you go to Zaxby's, they've got a little bit different sandwich meal, a little bit different fries. It's very tasty too. It's $5.29. A little bit more money. Same Coca-Cola. Go to Chick-fil-A. $6.09. From $4.99 to $6.09 is 22% increase in price. Now, yeah, their chicken sandwich is good. Don't get me wrong. I love Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches. We had Chick-fil-A on the way up here. But is it 22% better? The two words you'll hear there that you won't hear anywhere else? My pleasure. Why is my pleasure brilliant? It's not because you heard it as a customer. It's because every time they serve somebody, they say, "I enjoyed doing this. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure." They're constantly telling themselves all day long they enjoy doing what they're doing. Think about that. How can you incorporate something like that? How can you make something in your culture to where every day your employees are reminding themselves, They love doing what they're doing. Let me tell you, the impact you're having is far greater reaching than you can ever possibly imagine. I am telling you things here today that I learned from the 8 bosses that I've worked for in my lifetime. One of them was that catering manager long, long ago, and one of them is the one that I work for today as the president of a chamber of commerce. The fact is, is that we're— you're impacting the people you're working for. You're having an impact one way or another. And so I want to share with you just a real quick video and then we'll wrap up. But I think that this will kind of demonstrate to you what— and I'm hoping we can hear it— what we're talking about today. We're hoping. How many of you have ever seen this before? Okay. So don't share. Don't spoil it for the folks who haven't. This was Oprah's 24th celebration, 24 seasons. Black Eyed Peas were pretty big then. How many of you ever just heard the song but not seen this video? Now, I don't know if you notice or not, but there's a young lady in the front And they show the— she's— you see her arms every once in a while. She's just loving it. But apparently the rest of the crowd isn't, right? And they're trying. Boy, they are trying. Okay, they got a few more going. Oprah's going, that's strange. ¡Hola! Okay, as you can see, it is now really spreading. This is in a park in Chicago, and there was an estimated 20,000 people in the audience. It's kind of hard to see on the screens at this point, but it has now expanded to the entire crowd. 20,000 people doing the same dance. Come on, admit it, you'd have loved to have been there, wouldn't you? I mean, every single one of us. I don't dance, I would have been dancing that day. Now, I want to tell you that I'm not a big Oprah Winfrey fan. I wasn't. And I was never a Black Eyed Peas fan. I mean, my only experience prior to this with the Black Eyed Peas was a song called "My Humps." I don't know if y'all— And I gotta tell you, my kids were 6 and 8 or something, right? And it's just— and I had that whole Christian thing going on, and I still do, don't get me wrong, but I just really had a problem with that. But that changed everything for me. And the reason it did is because I can't watch that without getting emotional. Think about the impact. That you have. How did they do that? 20,000 people dancing and screaming in unison. Did they hand out the tickets and go, shh, don't tell anybody, we're gonna do this really cool thing. Here, it's gonna be like this. Did they? There's no way. Can you imagine the logistical problem of all of this? You think you've got a tough time booking a An event for 400 people. Whew! 20,000. Now here's the story. They taught 200 people who taught 2,000 people who taught 20,000 people. The first 200 learned it before. The rest learned it on the fly. You're the 200. You see, you have this opportunity that they don't have. You've got this great opportunity to lead a revolution in your city. Think about that. Could that get you fired up? Think about the difference you can make. Think about the generations that will come to Macon and will say, "I don't know who did this, but wow!" That's cool. The way they treat people, it's unbelievable. How'd they do that? And you'll just sit quietly smiling and nodding and going, "Yeah, I did that." That's what you have today. That's the opportunity that I hope you'll take advantage of. I could have spent 20 minutes teaching you about customer service, but customer service is about leadership, and you're the leaders. So today, when you go back, share the dance with your people and teach them the dance every single day. Say, "Hey, we're going this way this week. This week we're doing this one. Next week we're doing this one. But every week I'm leading you." I hope you'll do that. I want to thank all of you today. I want to thank Stephanie Robinson. I will tell you this, by the way. I dealt with Stephanie setting this up And she's obviously one of many that work for the CVB, but she did an amazing job. She was so efficient, and I mean, it was never a question of what was going on. And if she treats me like that, I know she treats the other clients that are coming to Macon like that. But the whole staff did a great job. Please give them a round of applause. And I hope you know that round of applause was for you as well. I look forward to hearing great things about how customer service that Macon is the customer service capital of the world. I'd love to talk to you about it again. Thank you so much for your time.
