CHAPTER 8
Connection How to Help Customers Feel Like Partners

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

Donald A. Adams

How many times have you looked at a product or service and said to yourself “I wish I’d thought of that”? Today’s winning organizations—the ones with the endearing and enduring products and services—design them “with” customers rather than “for” customers. The “for” group creates a product or service and then conducts market research, including focus groups to get customers’ reactions for refinement. “I prefer the blue one over the green one” or “I would like it better if it was sweeter or faster, or whatever.” The customer is viewed as judge and jury, not as partner.

The “with” group, on the other hand, views and treats customers as true partners in the product or service life cycle. Their work starts with customers: they learn about their customers’ hopes, habits, fears, and aspirations and then go to work designing. They spend time trying to get into the customer’s mind—thinking deeply about the life of the product or service through their customers’ lives. They include customers at early drawing-board stages, get reactions to possible product or service variations, and keep customers posted on progress from idea to implementation. They ask customers for advice on all the tough decisions. And when the product or service is finally launched, it feels to the target market like “our product.” Think beta groups on steroids!

Customer connection starts with a partnership philosophy, a partnership approach, and, more important, a partnership practice. Whether you are a frontline employee serving a colleague down the hall, a department head supervising call center reps, the owner of a mom and pop enterprise, or the CEO of a large company, embedding partnering into the DNA of your work dramatically alters how you serve. Customers are influenced by a partnering outreach; their concern changes to calm, their fickleness to loyalty. Let’s examine a unique and unlikely example.

How could you improve on a product as simple and pedestrian as a baby bottle? Playtex, Evenflo, Similac, Dr. Brown’s, and ThinkBaby have all tweaked the hundred-year-old design with better nipples, easier handles, and ways to minimize uncomfortable air intake. But, inventor-entrepreneur Jason Tebeau took the baby bottle in a completely different direction. He created a hands-free bottle that left baby independent during feeding time.

It all started when Tebeau’s mom asked him, “How do you feed a baby while in a car seat or stroller?” His inventive brain went to work thinking through the mind of the user. Assembling a group of 40 to 50 babies with parent in tow, Tebeau observed babies interacting with bottles in various stages of the design process as he solved assorted product challenges—how to work with the physics of liquid moving up a tube, how to capitalize on babies’ tendencies to put everything in their mouths and treat every object as a toy, how to design an accordionflex tube that babies could not remove, how to use a valve to retain liquid in the pacifier-style nipple so babies would not lose interest if they stopped sucking and the liquid sank back into the bottle.

The end result was the wildly popular Pacifeeder, one of several products from Tebeau’s company Savi Baby. Sold at such retail outlets as Target and Amazon.com, the bottle has been so popular that many older babies prefer it over the traditional “lie in mommy’s lap” variety. The customers—babies and their parents—were intimately involved throughout. Tebeau even used parents to help determine the appropriate price for his creative product, knowing retailers might see it as “just another baby bottle.”

Photo courtesy of Savi Baby

As customers, we all get told a lot that we are important and valued. Yet, the proof of our worth too often is little more than PR noise and advertising taglines. Customers know actions speak louder than words; the tangible evidence of worth lies in what an organization does, not in what it says. Customers as partners mean finding ways to treat customers so they know they are valued, not just testifying that they are. And, the epitome of partnership is inclusion.

So, what is the main take-away from a “with” approach versus a “for” approach? Whether tangible product or intangible service, embedding the customer into the DNA rebalances the service covenant with connection. But as central as inclusion is to partnering, the success of collaboration requires other ingredients to make it work and ensure it lasts.

What Makes Partnering Work

We have moved our respective families many times. Chip’s most recent cross-country move was in the last five years. One of the first initiatives in the new locale was to assemble “the team.” His family researched to find an array of professionals—a carpenter, dentist, painter, doctors, plumber, electrician, roofer, and landscaper. They also selected a favorite grocery, dry cleaner, hairdresser, hardware store, and other product/ service providers.

WHAT PARTNERSHIP IS NOT!

• Partnership is not a passenger in luggage claim seeking their own baggage. It is about the alliance.

• Partnership is not a raging bull. It is having a long fuse.

• Partnership is not being a news anchor. It is about keeping secrets.

• Partnership is not an accountant balancing the books. It is about forgiveness and floating reciprocity.

• Partnership is not for quitters. Partners are tenacious and stay on purpose.

Zachery Kail Adapted from a wedding sermon

Over the first few months, some of Chip’s family’s providers are fired and replaced as they refine the team, all with great customer service skills, easy access, responsive attitudes, and a commitment to a partnership relationship. Standards are high. And, the pace with which the family replaces a failed relationship is rapid. However, the rewards for being on the team are worthwhile—Chip is a generous tipper (why wouldn’t you tip your plumber?) and the family’s loyalty to the team is unfailing. Chip does not shop the competition each time he needs a sink replaced or a tooth filled. He is their advocate to others seeking a resource.

Take a quick look at the most recent “Best Companies for Customer Service” lists.¹ The same cast of characters makes those lists year in, year out. What do Publix, Wegmans, Ace Hardware, Nordstrom, and Starbucks have in common? They are brick-and-mortar companies that deliver service largely face to face. What do L.L. Bean, Amex, Chas. Schwab, and USAA have in common? They deliver service largely ear to ear. And, what do Zappos, Dell, and Amazon have in common? You know where this is going. They deliver services largely on the Internet.

Now, what do they all have in common? Regardless of their primary channel of service delivery, they have built a powerful bond with customers by bringing partnership principles to the service experience. They all have unmistakable features that bring back into their service covenant with customers those elements that have been stripped out or convoluted by many service providers. Their bottom-line performance is part of the payoff. But, the biggest benefit is the huge collection of loyal fans who buy more, buy more often, forgive more, and advocate more.

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and…

The Delta regional jet was packed. As the flight backed away from the gate, the flight attendant began her ritualistic safety spiel about seatbelts, sudden turbulence, and smoking. She ended by saying, “The flying time to Grand Rapids will be two hours … no, it will be an hour-and-a-half … no, actually, I don’t know.” The cabin erupted with laughter and applause.

What jolted the half-asleep plane-full into cheering? Unscripted, raw truth-telling. We all loved her total candor and confident authenticity!

We all grow up hearing “Honesty is the best policy.” As adults we hear half-truths portrayed as honesty. Politicians keep secret the number of paramilitary civilians fighting in a trouble spot to disguise the true size of the military engagement—a number they know the public would not tolerate. The super-low price loudly advertised comes with fine print describing a rebate paid only after submitting a pound of paper work. And, when we hear the radio ad end with a fast-talking guy rattling off all the exceptions and disclaimers, we know we are not hearing raw honesty.

Customers love honesty, especially when circumstances might have others shading the truth or withholding the facts. JetBlue went from joke material to exemplar status after the super-long tarmac delay in Denver because the company CEO hid nothing. Toyota got hammered because they seemed to do the opposite when a malfunctioning accelerator was sticking and causing wrecks. Both had sterling reputations before their visits to PR hell.

Car dealers are rarely on the “most honest industry” list. Yet, Manheim, the largest wholesale auto auction company in North America, has a phenomenally positive reputation because integrity is more than a corporate value engraved on the wall (as Enron had at their corporate headquarters). Integrity is a way of life engraved in the hearts and habits of employees. Since we have consulted with Manheim for several years, we have repeatedly witnessed that “the right thing to do” always trumped “the most profitable” or “least difficult” or “most convenient.”

Honesty shortens the distance between people. It frees customers from anxiety and caution. It triggers a connection with the humanity in each of us. In that space we are quicker to forgive, more tolerant of error, and much more accepting of “Actually, I don’t know.” Honesty is not a “best policy.” Honesty is a “best practice.”

Be As Fair As Your Mother Taught You to Be

“When Business Week picks Amazon.com as the #1 best service company—an online fulfillment company—it is proof good old-fashioned service is dead.” The comment sounded like a “kids are going to the dogs” statement someone’s grandfather might make. But, it was coming from a non–computer savvy physician in one of our client focus groups.

Suddenly others in the room jumped into the discussion with jubilant praise for Amazon.com. “Their website is so easy,” “I always get what I order,” “Their prices are the best,” and “Returns are a breeze.” Their comments reflected excellence at the basics—the core expectations, all the shoulda’s and oughta’s. But then someone told the story of a customer ordering a used book through Amazon.com, not getting the book expected, with zero success contacting the used-book company. Amazon not only refunded the customer’s money before the flawed book was returned but also took on the rogue used-book dealer on behalf of the customer. “Maybe I was wrong,” said the nay-saying doctor quietly. “I didn’t know there was fair play still playing in the-business world these days.”

All service begins with an expectation of fairness. Read that sentence again—it is vital to understanding customer partnerships. Customers enter the service experience with preconceived ideas about what should happen. When the experience approximates the expectation, the customer is in emotional balance. In the past, customers assumed the service world would treat them fairly.

Today’s customers are twice burned. The problem is not that they completely lack trust that things will turn out well, or at least okay. It is that their experience has warned them that a more cautious, guilty-until-proven-innocent stance is wiser. As the old adage goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Fairness is what we teach little leaguers, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the neighborhood soccer team. “It’s not whether you win or lose,” we tell them, “it is how you play the game.” Little tikes just learning to throw or kick the ball get an end-of-the-season trophy just for being on the team. Our marriage vows are filled with fairness words—“in good times and bad times; in sickness and in health.” Fairness is doing the right thing for both parties. It is a governor on greed and the control on conceit. It keeps us engulfed in consideration when all around us entices us to be selfish.

Build Shock Absorbers into the Relationship

Great partnerships are highly elastic and adaptable. Elastic customer relationships have built-in shock absorbers. They expand and unfold in their acceptance; little bumps in the road of service interactions are absorbed without throwing servers off their game. A partnering spirit is about affirming relationships more through ebb and flow than give and take. It encourages elbow room rather than close inspection; it seeks ways to open rather than a means to close. Instead of nitpicking details, great partners work to roll with anticipated imperfections, or unexpected waves of discontent.

“Thank you for being my customers,” the shop owner said to a group of prospects who seemed to be loitering in his small store at the mall. What was unique about his statement was that it was directed at three teenagers, each with a very loud disposition, extremely baggy pants, and earphones hooked up to an iPod. Out of earshot of the owner, one young man remarked to his buddies, “Man, we gotta buy something!” As they left the checkout counter, the store owner shot point blank one last blast of benevolence: “Please visit me again.”

Service with soul is service that is elastic enough to give new depth, meaning, and substance to the encounter. It reflects a commitment to respect and generosity. It is an assertion, not a response; an attitude, not a tactic. We get a glimpse of the tone when we witness a “random act of kindness.” Except elasticity is not random, it is continual. As with those teenagers at the mall, it causes customers to act their best. It can tame hostility, enrich the ordinary, and deliver real value in the service experience.

Since most customers come into the encounter expecting disappointment, how can we surprise them in a fashion that says “This is different”? What is the anatomy of service value? It is three things: being really good, eliminating the hassles, and adding a surprise.

Fly Your Customer’s Flag

The tall, rugged Russian wholesale auto buyer could barely speak English. But, his passion for his export business was glaring to anyone within a block. We were consulting with a large auto auction company to help them create a new service uniquely crafted for wholesale buyers who purchased vehicles at U.S. auctions specifically to ship them overseas to be sold by auto retailers. Our interviews were conducted at particular auto auctions that had a large customer base of exporters.

“Why do you like this particular auction?” we asked the Russian buyer. “They fly my flag!” he proudly announced. Later we visited the auction lanes where buyers and sellers gathered around several seemingly never-ending rows of cars with an auctioneer at each lane refereeing the auto marketplace. Along the upper wall of the giant warehouse flew a United Nations-like row of national flags, one for each country represented by the customers present at the auction.

“Flying your customer’s flag” is more than a symbol of personalization; it is a sign of deep and obvious respect. Respect can come in the form of honesty and fairness. It can be a compassionate deference to a customer’s unique circumstance and special interests. But, its liveliest form is found in the exceptions that are grounded in customer understanding and fueled by generosity. “We don’t normally, but in your case,” “I went ahead and took care of that,” or “I comped the charge since I knew.…” are all the sounds of customer-centric exceptions.

Exceptions tell customers you are there for them, not just for you. Customers want you to be successful and profitable; they do not want you to be miserly or greedy. Rigid commerce fails to accommodate the humanness of serving. Exceptions telegraph to customers there is a partnership governing the rules of engagement, not a programmed computer or frontline employee.

Give More Than Customers Expect

Great partners give without condition; giving is a selfless act. For the service provider, it is service emanating from the inner joy of serving, not a calculated decision. It requires a focus, not on short-term financial benefit but on long-term relationship value. While transaction costs are not irrelevant, they can become destructively dominant. Of course, there are some fickle customers on the prowl for a cheap “one-night stand” they can brag about as a financial conquest. But effective partners know that such customers are a tiny minority and it’s folly to distrust the balance of clients because of the few who seek to “game” the system. They understand that by seeking win-win solutions and avoiding nickel-and-diming customers to death, their organization will be rewarded with grateful and devoted customers who return again and again, often with friends or family in tow.

Bob Miller, manager of the First Watch Restaurant in Kansas City, purchased a large supply of umbrellas for his customers. Attaching his business card to each one, he put them in a large container at the front door along with a sign that read: “If you need an umbrella, please take one. If you bring it back, we’ll give you a free cup of coffee.”

Freeman, a company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, provides services for exhibitions, conventions, and corporate events. Attend any large trade show around the country and odds are Freeman has supplied much of the furnishings and merchandise you see around you. Freeman developed Concierge Elite as a way to service their customers from the comforts of their booth rather than requiring them to leave the exhibit floor to visit the Freeman Service Center. The Freeman concierge visits customers on the show floor with a mobile device to assist them by looking up freight information, placing new orders, and submitting service requests for all vendors. Customers receive a text message alerting them when their requests and/or concerns are resolved, allowing them to focus on their booth and their customers.

Freeman customers liked Concierge Elite but Freeman elected to give them more. For example, customers wanted a mobile solution so they could be more interactive with Freeman. Concierge Elite now offers customers the convenience of self-service from their smart phone, mobile device, or PC. Exhibitors can sign up to receive text alerts when their freight has arrived, view current booth orders, submit service requests, and find out when empty containers are returned after the show closes. At the close of the event, customers can also request shipping labels (which Freeman hand delivers to them!) and submit their paperwork for shipping their materials back without ever spending time walking to and waiting at the Freeman Service Center.

The pursuit of generosity exemplified in Freeman helps service providers think differently about customers; connections are more personal, communications more attentive. It also causes employees to think creatively about every aspect of their role, not just those related to serving the customer. Finally, when people are a part of a culture that strives for generous service, there is a greater sense of passion conferred on customers who reciprocate with their affirmation, gratitude, and devotion.

And, Never Take the Customer for Granted

We checked into the Lake Lure Inn. Built in 1927, the antique North Carolina hotel served as command central for the making of the movie Dirty Dancing. You now can stay in the Patrick Swayze Suite or the Jennifer Grey Suite. Furnished with exquisite period furniture and meticulous attention to detail, the surroundings make guests feel elevated, enchanted, and enriched.

We had dinner in their Veranda Restaurant overlooking the lake, only a stone’s throw away from our table. The staff was all locals from the small mountain town. They reached way beyond their plain heritage in a noticeable effort to create a sense of elegance and worth. After seating us at our reserved table, the maitre d’ presented the menus and wine list, and then graciously said, “Hope ya’ll enjoy”—not a phrase you’d hear at a five-star restaurant in Boston or San Francisco. There was an earnest effort to take the experience much, much higher than you would get at Nettie’s Diner down the street where the wait staff simply performs their tasks.

The difference between the Lake Lure Inn and Nettie’s Diner came primarily from a deliberate attempt to not take the customer for granted. Someone decided that this classy hotel setting should come with an equally classy guest experience. Knowing they could not afford to import a Ritz-Carlton Hotel—trained wait staff, they entrusted their valuable reputation to young people recruited from the local Burgers and More. Then they trained them to not take the guest for granted but make their experience consistently and perpetually as elegant as the old hotel.

The next morning we were in too much of a hurry to wait for the hotel’s Sunday brunch, featuring eggs Florentine and fresh mountain trout. So, we stopped at Nettie’s for scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits. The food was just as we expected—completely routine, plain vanilla, nothing out of the ordinary. As we looked at the Lake Lure Inn in the distance, we suddenly realized that, had we stopped at Nettie’s first when we came to town, the diner might not have seemed so plain vanilla. The Lake Lure Inn had altered our service expectations and Nettie’s would never be the same again—nor would any other service provider for that matter.

Do customers want every service experience to be a Lake Lure Inn moment? Maybe not, but they do want something special. Customers in 2010 research by Convergys, for example, registered their preferences for knowledgeable people, first-call resolution, and web chat capability, to name a few.² When the data was sliced and diced by segments—gender, age, and so forth—insights deepened regarding the way customers prefer to connect with a service provider.

Go to

This is the most important chapter in the book. It outlines the core of connecting like a partner. It is likely all the content will not be new. We hope all is renewal. In Part Three: Favorites, “Twenty Things Today’s Wired and Dangerous Customers Really Want” may enrich your thinking about customers as partners.

For the two of us, the most fascinating tidbit teased out of the data implied that the path back to loyalty was to rebalance the service covenant. The most loyal customers (about 15 percent) were very different from other customers. Super-loyal advocates favored human-based interactions with live phone agents and live chat with web agents. In return for their revenue-generating loyalty and advocacy, they expected easy, rapid access to agents.³ Even in an era of Internet-driven, fast-moving, automated service, the most loyal customers still want a service covenant that lets them co-create the experience on an equal footing with the service provider. It’s not that they want to be treated as we were at Lake Lure. It’s that they long for a partnership.