Mixing Business with Customer Service
Debbi knew that she would continue to strive for the highest standards for her product while still understanding what her business was about. “I am in the feel-good feeling business,” she said in her speech. “My job makes people feel good.”
Mrs. Fields consistently delivers a top-notch product and is one of the best service providers around. By keeping her eye on these goals, Debbi developed a highly successful business model, one that has been studied and copied by many other companies.
In addition to employing the hour-by-hour management process discussed earlier, Mrs. Fields was one of the first companies to use technology to jump-start its retail growth. Debbi Fields led her company into the technology age, enhancing operations and production with a state-of-the-art computer system. Her program is used as a model for business efficiency at Harvard Business School. Today, it is still used as an example of combining sound business practices with technology.
Sound business practice notwithstanding, Debbi Fields today will share her most valuable tip to describe her success. “The secret ingredient has always been love. I mean, that’s what, you know, I put in the product.” (Marilyn Sadler, “Baking a Name for Herself,” Memphis Magazine, June 1999.)
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The Mrs. Fields Standard: Very few companies reflect the ability to both create a customer-friendly atmosphere and do business as well as Mrs. Fields. Imagine having customers call in sick! What does that say about their treatment? Making customers feel important enough that they think they will be missed is the absolute elimination of indifference in a workplace and perhaps one of the most sincere compliments that a company can be paid. The Mrs. Fields Challenge: Are your customers calling in when they are sick? I don’t mean this literally, but do you make your customers feel so important to your company that they feel they would be missed if they left you? If the answer to this is “No,” you’re just renting them; you don’t own them. When some other company makes them feel important, they’ll drop you and go to where they feel important—where they’ll feel like calling in when they’re sick. |