Step

42

Don’t understand the secrets of great teams and great customer service

What’s the difference between a team of losers and a team of winners?

What do the winners have that losers don’t?

Why am I asking you all these questions?

What if the Hokey Cokey really is what it’s all about?

Asda, part of the Walmart family as they would put it, were one of my favourite clients. Many years ago I did a speaking engagement for them at Asda House, their HQ here in Leeds. Now have you ever had that thing where you visit somewhere for the first time and there is a buzz in the building? (And I’m not talking about faulty fluorescent lights.) There’s just something about the place and the people that make it feel special. Well, every time I visit Asda it’s always like that. So after that very first visit, I thought I want to work with them but I wasn’t exactly sure why apart from being able to say I liked the place, the people and the buzz. Well, from making the decision that I wanted to work with them, it took nearly three years before I got any business (see step 37 for the secret of how I kept going).

Eventually I find myself in a top-level meeting with the chief executive who I’d only talked to briefly a couple of times before. So you can imagine that from my point of view there was a lot at stake. Being a good salesman I’m practising the number one skill which, if you’ve read the second footnote on the previous step, you’ll know is to listen – or as Stephen Covey would say, I was attempting to ‘first understand before being understood’. Finally the moment arrives for me to speak and my opening question is, “Well thanks for that background. To get us started I was wondering which staff do you think will need training first?” at which point the CEO takes a deep breath, puts his hand up and says, “Steve, before this relationship goes any further, can I just point out we don’t have any staff.” At this point I thought, “Well who am I going to bloody train then?” He went on to say, “No, here we only have colleagues,” to which I remember thinking, “Oh no it’s the Walmart American effect.” Turns out it wasn’t that at all. It was explained to me that the cornerstone on how Asda did business was their values. The difference being they didn’t just say it but behaved that way.¹ ‘Respect for the Individual’ was at the heart of how anyone who worked for Asda could expect to be treated. They felt ‘staff’ immediately says ‘us’ and ‘them’, whereas ‘colleagues’ is just one way of expressing that, whether you stack the shelves or run the company, you are respected. There are loads of other ways Asda create a culture of respect, like, for example, referring to everyone by their first name regardless of their position in the company.

Cut to the second meeting with Asda and the top people person – not being into hierarchies they’re not big on titles either – says, “Eh Steve, have you read this book – we’re big fans of it?” Now as the consultant² I’m thinking, shouldn’t I be telling them which books to read? The book is called Good To Great by Jim Collins. Now if you can’t be bothered to read it, which I’m sure is the case, let me sum it up for you. Based on a 15-year research project, the book concludes that if you want to take your organisation from good to great, first and foremost you must focus on who is on the bus before you get too hung up on where the bus is going. What does that mean? Well, we’ve already touched upon the importance of vision, having a clear destination and a plan to get there. But destinations can change and so can the route. However, if you have the right folk on the bus, and they’re in the right seats (or in other words they share the same values and behaviours) it won’t matter. The secret of great companies, teams and relationships is that they are based on shared values. Just as importantly, those values are non-negotiable. In other words, if you are a manager at Asda, you can’t respect your people in the morning but then not in the afternoon. Also, people who can’t live the values will be asked to get off the bus. It’s unlikely this will happen very often anyway as the recruitment process is based around the values too.

“The secret of great companies, teams and relationships is that they are based on shared values.”

You may be thinking this is all fluffy pink bunnies,³ but Asda, and other value-driven companies back then, would tell you it also has a profound effect on the bottom line. Firstly, because people prefer working in an environment where they are treated with respect, you’ll find retention rates and performance much higher. (­Incidentally, the only way to make it into the annual Sunday Times Top 100 UK Companies to Work For, is to prove you are living and breathing the values and vision, and that your people can articulate what they are.) Secondly, customers like it too because what they want is consistency of behaviour from whichever bit of the organisation they touch. The idea being, whether you walk into an Asda in Leeds or in London, people act the same. It empowers folk to make brilliant decisions on behalf of customers because they are guided by their values. Unfortunately, since those happy, heady days, many of the big names seem to have lost their way when it comes to living their values with just trying to survive doing the best they believe they can do.

However, in the spirit of fairness, Asda aren’t the only supermarket that have impressed me in the past. Take a look at this letter:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing regarding an incident concerning your store which happened on the evening of Saturday 13th October.

I had sent my idiot husband shopping for some fresh chives, crucial to a recipe I had planned for a dinner party, and he returned with a pot of parsley which had been incorrectly labelled as chives.

Feeling quite cross, I telephoned the store and explained what had happened. I was pleasantly surprised when it was immediately agreed that someone would pop over to my house with some chives.

Unfortunately, when a very nice lady arrived at my house with the chives, they were the wrong kind. The recipe required fresh chives and these were dried. I must have looked very disappointed and the young lady was very concerned but I thanked her anyway and told her not to worry, I’d manage with what I had.

I was shocked, to say the least, when she reappeared some time later, with a pot of fresh chives. She had been so concerned about my dinner party that although Sainsbury’s had sold out of fresh chives, she had driven to, shall we say, a rival supermarket! Although it may sound trivial, the fresh herbs really made a difference.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the woman’s name, but I’m hoping you will be able to track down this wonderful member of staff and give her all the praise she deserves for her innovation and thoughtfulness. What an asset to the store.

Many thanks and best wishes

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Candy McDermott⁴

Yes, I was the idiot husband who doesn’t know his chives from his elbow. Thing is, how do you get staff, whoops colleagues, to behave in the exceptional manner of the lady above? In the book The Nordstrom Way, author Robert Spector reveals one of the ways Nordstrom create an incredible customer experience. He says that Nordstrom’s employee handbook is just a five-by-eight-inch grey card that reads: ‘We’re glad to have you with our company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them: Rule 1: Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.’

I love that because I can remember it. I know some companies that would need a wheelbarrow to cart their company corporate tosh around in. Hear their monotone chant: “Here are our eight customer values, ten colleague behaviours and six leadership traits that all our managers must know by heart and follow at all times.” Yeah right.

¹ I once had my car at the garage for a service and I told them that ideally I’d like it back for 4.00 pm. They said that would be fine and would call me when it was ready. Needless to say they never called, so I ended up having to call them. They said the car was ready and I could pick it up right away. I got a lift and told my ride they needn’t hang about as my car was ready. I marched up to the service desk and said, “I’m here for my car,” to which the reply was, “It’s not ready yet.” “But you said it was.” “Sorry, it’ll just be five minutes, why not enjoy a coffee?” So I go over to the coffee area (and by the way, why does the coffee have to be so terrible?) and there hanging on the wall in a gold frame, because it’s always in a gold frame, is the dealership’s customer pledge. It’s the usual guff about how they are prepared to crawl over broken glass for their customers. Now remember, I’m being forced to read this while experiencing awful customer care. Worst still, it was 40 minutes before I got my car. So if you really want to annoy people, put your values on public display then utterly fail to live up to them. Sweet. We also once did some work with a large financial institution who had a core value of ‘Open, honest communication’. Everyone we dealt with acted that way apart from the CEO who told nobody anything. Nice. The message this clearly sends out to both internal and external customers is that we are not serious about this.

² My favourite definition of a consultant is that it is a man who knows one hundred and fourteen different ways to make love BUT doesn’t know any women.

³ Fluffy pink bunnies. I use this expression a lot but have no idea what it means. Why don’t you decide for yourself.

⁴ They did make a fundamental mistake in that they never wrote back. It was only a few weeks later that my wife bumped into the same lady in the supermarket and asked whether the manager had thanked her on our behalf. He had, which was great, but they just hadn’t told us.

^* This step of the guide holds the record for the number of footnotes. Of course, you will only know this if you have read all the other footnotes. And nobody in their right mind would do that. Skim, skim, skim – that’s the way to get through a book. Don’t want to go in too deep. You might never get out. Don’t want to fill up your brain with too much new stuff otherwise you’ll have to empty out some of the old garbage. Of course, you might be one of those detail nuts. There are so many typo’s ypu’ll have a field day. You might be tempted to go back through the whole thing counting all the footnotes, but surely you’ve got other more productive things you could be doing? Like thinking, why don’t you ever get gruntled employees or guilty bystanders? What happens if you get scared half to death twice? If something goes without saying, why do people say it? I know you can be overwhelmed and underwhelmed but can you just be whelmed? Is there anything easier done than said? Are you still reading this . . .? Turn the page now . . . I said turn the page . . . look you can’t keep reading because the footnote stops here. OK . . . here.