11.

The Power of Thrilled: Six Ways to Infuse Your Business with Jet Fuel

What we are talking about here is nothing less than an entirely new way of looking at business. It’s a way that reverses the traditional hierarchy of actions, issues, and goals and replaces them with a vastly superior order of strategies and tactics that ignite a positive chain reaction with the combustion, the torque, the horsepower, and naked appeal capable of wildly surpassing the norm.

The standard Business 101 textbook order of priorities for building or fortifying a business is to:

1. Create a business plan focused on operational and financial issues.
2. Arrange for adequate financing.
3. Develop or restructure an organization chart and recruit against it.
4. Establish financial goals.
5. Develop an operational process.
6. Create a marketing plan.

All of these are important, even indispensible steps. But the most vital initiative, the Monster Differentiator, is missing. And that oversight is a recipe for failure, third-rate status, or worse. To wit, you must begin the formation or turnaround of your business with a challenging but critical question: How are we going to thrill customers or clients by offering a truly unique experience?

If this question is omitted at the start, if the answer is knee-jerk or superficial, the company is doomed to mediocrity and suffers a high risk of underperformance—or worse.

Thinking about the thrill at the outset is imperative because of a simple but damaging facet of human behavior: we all say (in what has become a tired and shopworn cliché) that we want to think “outside the box,” but we make that pledge with both feet firmly planted inside it, the cover taped tightly over our heads. Once we enter the confines of a constricted (and therefore limited) space, we have to seek to break down the walls in search of fresh air. Once we recognize that the box is always filled with clichés, yesterday’s news, stale thinking that’s made the voyage from been there/done that and back, we are forewarned to develop ideas that are provocative, dangerous, refreshing, edgy, even impossible—and then work our way back to reality. Starting off with blah means we are usually doomed to stay there—but by launching our thinking, our route to thrilled, with wild-eyed impossibilities strewn across our path—well, that’s how we get to thrilled.

This first highly imaginative, no-holes-barred leapfrog toward thrilling customers ensures (and there are few other absolutes in business) that those customers will:

• Be loyal to you as long as you maintain the Thrill Factor.
• Share their advocacy for your business with others.
• Reject the invitations of competitors to switch their allegiance.
• Be willing to pay higher-margin prices.
• Actually share a vested interest in your success. They want you to thrive. You thrill them! The traditional us vs. them in business becomes a mutual admiration society. Even more—a virtual partnership. A love affair.

Remember Marilyn!

Six Ways to Thrill Your Customers

1. Give them an experience they would never expect from your business. Clients call on me, at my firm, for advice on marriage, children, personal finances, divorce—even painful psychological issues with which they are grappling. They seek this advice because they know that they are more than clients and I am hardly limited to the role of business advisor. And equally important, they know that the responses they receive from me will be thoughtful, heartfelt, and deeply genuine.
2. When customers ask for service or sales outside of business hours, tell them, “It is always business hours for you.” How many times have you approached the door of an establishment, only to have the proprietor flash the “Closed” sign in your face? You can read their expressions like a book: Too bad. You missed your chance. We’re going home for the day. Wow, that is a sure sign of a company that sucks. And when the proprietor at a similar establishment opens the doors after hours and warmly invites you in—well, that carries the kind of thrill factor you can’t touch with a Memorial Day sale.
3. Find out their passions in life and cater to them. When my dad (a nonstop conversationalist) happened to inform a furniture store that he was a fly-fishing addict, the merchant took note and a week later sent a box of handmade flies as a thank-you gift. After that, Dad would never, ever buy from anyone else.
4. Reinvent your industry’s model. This need not be more than a subtle but compelling change. My favorite haircutter sells cufflinks on the display counters instead of hair products—bold and unusual links. I buy a pair almost every time I visit. It turns the haircut into a multifaceted experience.
5. Let the “dangerous minds” in your business loose to act and make waves. Challenge them to come up with thrilling options. At MSCO, we advertise by challenging prospects with the question, “Does your marketing suck?” We even buy print and billboard space with the simple but proactive message: yourmarketingsucks.com. Some don’t like what they see, many find it right to the point, no one can ignore it.
6. Appoint a Chief Customer Officer (CCO). This role can be filled by the owner or manager who is dedicated to raising the bar continuously on the joy of doing business with your company.

Let’s explore number six in greater detail. For starters, does your company have a Chief Customer Officer? If not, why not?

Imagine giving the customer a voice. Is that too revolutionary for you? At the vast majority of companies, that appears to be the case. Although virtually every major business has a CEO, CIO, COO, CFO, CTO, CMO, the CCO (the voice of the customer) is nowhere to be found.

For companies that live by the rule of the thrill, the Chief Customer Officer/CCO should be at the top of the corporate hierarchy, reporting to the CEO, but with dotted line responsibility to the Board as well. Why? Because just as the CFO must have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, so, too, should the CCO be empowered to identify and protect the customers’ interests. And what a difference it makes when the business—ask Southwest Air—puts the customer truly on center stage.

Why do so many companies suck? Because very few companies really think about the customer at the outset or lose their enthusiasm for doing so somewhere along the line. As a result, they never get off the ground in a meaningful way or they endure a slump in the course of their lifecycle. If there was a CCO who really understood the customers’ needs:

• Retail establishments would have clean restrooms.
• Interacting with an insurance brokerage firm would be far more satisfying than enduring 18 minutes of telephonic non-human prompts that leads to a dead end.
• Websites would make it easy to navigate, find the information you want, and consummate a transaction.
• When a hotel honors member checks in and asks for an upgrade in a near-empty hotel, they wouldn’t be told, “It’s against policy.”
• You could buy tickets from movie sites without having to remember your password.
• You wouldn’t be locked into a two-year contract with cell phone companies and be penalized if you wanted to change carriers.
• Airlines wouldn’t have to hold you hostage with points—you’d want to fly with them.

A Thrilling Night’s Stay

Last year, I was walking through the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Paris, bags in hand, scouting out a seat in the lounge bar. A thoughtful member of the staff approached me, suggesting that a Bristol guest should not be carrying bags. Although I thanked him and assured him that the luggage was light and all was fine, he insisted on checking the items so that I could focus on a chilled glass of champagne.

He would not take no for an answer. And with the seat on the suede sofa beckoning, I happily conceded. My bags were whisked away, I slipped into Parisian happy hour, and it was all as close to perfect as you can get. Think about it:

• This staff member took what others could easily view as someone else’s concern and owned it.
• A grand hotel, a reigning member of the Parisian elite, takes responsibility for the comfort of each of its guests as if we were family members.
• The rulebook doesn’t enumerate the steps the staff should take to exceed guest expectations. They do everything to accomplish that.
• No one is too important to serve as a bellman.
• No one is too busy to perform “menial” tasks. At the Bristol—and the special class of businesses that don’t talk service but live it—nothing is considered menial.

The staff member who went out of his way to take my bags deserved recognitfion from the boss, so I brought that suggestion to the front desk. That was when I learned the staff member was the boss—the Bristol’s general manager. He is what I call The Human Ignition Switch—the leader who, through action more than words, provides a standard for the team to emulate.

What he did is a sure sign of a true leader, one who inspires every employee to raise the bar. To go beyond. To create the kind of goodwill and loyalty you can’t win with gimmicks, offers, sales, or loyalty points. That’s reserved for the thrill.

It’s positively deafening.

Think of the “we can’t make an exception for you” no because it crystallizes the issue. It freeze-frames it, makes us look in the mirror and understand why our companies are falling short of our aspirations for them.

The willingness to make exceptions is precisely what thrills the patrons and prospects of every great business and infuriates those who patronize companies that muddle through (though usually not for long, because they depart for the competition), hold to rules that please themselves, and often take pride in chanting no, no, no.

One of the great secrets of companies that thrill is that management eliminates, eradicates, decimates the roadblock, the turnoff word no from their business lexicon. Everyone in the company is taught to find a way, to be creative, to problem solve, in order to turn a potential no into a yes. And that yes often translates into making an exception for the most important people in the world.

Every year, I stay at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. In my opinion, it is the best hotel in the United States. Yes, it is beautiful, the food is amazing, and the rooftop pool is a wondrous oasis. But what truly makes the Peninsula extraordinary is that they just don’t say no. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The hotel has a wonderful policy that if you go out to dine within the confines of Beverly Hills, a hotel car will whisk you off to dinner and fetch you when you are ready to return. Note the fine print of the offer: to enjoy the luxury of the hotel car, you need to dine within Beverly Hills proper. But every time I have asked if management would make an exception and provide the car service outside of the city limits, because the restaurant of my choice that evening was further out in Brentwood or Los Angeles proper, the answer has always been unequivocal: “Absolutely, Mr. Stevens. What time would you like the car, and what time will we be escorting you back?”

Saying “Yes” to the Little Things

Once again, turning no into yes does not have to play out on a grand stage, with private cars and five-star hotels. Although it is counterintuitive, the smaller the gesture is, the greater the impact it can have.

Recently, a clothing store opened up in the general vicinity of my home. I live in a semi-rural, historic town, one (albeit an hour away from Manhattan) with meager choices for high-end apparel. So when I ventured over for my first visit, well, let’s just say I wasn’t expecting to be blown away. No Bergdorf Men’s anywhere near quaint old Bedford Village, where you can buy a nice English saddle but where there is nary a suit to be found.

But (surprise, surprise) I could tell from the store window, this shop had genuine promise. I was greeted warmly; the clothing was eclectic and universally interesting. The piece de resistance was about to reveal itself. As I was browsing through shelves of cashmere and silk sweaters, I was holding them up for a good look and then seeking to refold them, one at a time, to return them to their proper place.

A saleswoman, who I later discovered was the owner, would have none of that.

“No folding,” she declared. “Make a mess. We love messes. Have fun. Try on everything that catches your eye. Leave the rest to us.”

And then she sealed the deal (making me a customer and a raving advocate). “If you don’t have fun here,” she said, “I’m in the wrong business.”

We all know way too well what it feels like to have a salesperson tidy up behind us. I think of it as silent scolding: “No. No. No. Please don’t abuse our precious merchandise.”

This boutique said, “Yes, yes, yes,” and ever since I have returned over and over again.