Tom Roberts, Director of the Travel & Tourism Department, Pace Institute, says: “If you believe in the old sales axiom as I do, that ‘the best prospects you have for new sales are customers or clients you already have,’ then SNAP is an excellent training tool for sales as well as customer service.”
There are two main reasons to read this book. First, you may want to improve how you deliver exceptional customer service. Second, you may want to reduce stress associated with customer relationship management.
How would you rate your overall service level today? Fair? Good? Great? Excellent?
Rate your service level. Select one.
Excellent — Great — Good — Fair — Poor
How would your customers rate your service? Select one.
Excellent — Great — Good — Fair — Poor
Consider this: What actually matters is how your customers rate your service — not how you rate it. And, your customers don’t rate your “overall” service level — it doesn’t matter what we want to believe, they rate each separate, individual experience. They talk about each separate experience. Unfortunately, they talk more about the negatives ones.
Check out this link. A musician sings about his flight experience.
This is a YouTube video posted by a former United Airlines passenger who experienced less than satisfactory service. Yes, it happens. He tells his story by writing and posting a song about his experience. The lesson for us here is: this video has received over 11,000,000 views — yes, you read that correctly, over eleven million views. I have yet to find an absolutely positive message a customer posted about an absolutely fantastic customer experience that has received anywhere near this amount of viewership.
So, even if you think your service standard is good enough, or if you think it is great — all it takes is one poor experience and a story told by one dissatisfied customer. No matter your current level of service, focusing on improving your service will give you a competitive advantage. Improve your service level all the time.
Maybe you are interested in SNAP because you have read or heard about companies, large and small, that are continually improving their customer experience.
For leaders and professionals at all levels in today’s competitive work place, this is especially true. It doesn’t matter if you sell shoes, provide human resource services, work in the financial market, write software, sell rifles, coordinate volunteers for a church, sell pharmaceuticals, or repair mufflers.
If you are in business, working for yourself or a boss, you have customers. These customers are external, perhaps people that pay your company money for products or services. Or, they are internal, people in other departments of your company who rely on what you do so that the company can sell products or services.
Books, such as, “From Good to Great” by Jim Collins, “Winning” by Jack Welch, “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey Liker or “Smart Trust” by Stephen M. R. Covey, all tell us about the value of exceptional customer service. You have probably read one of these books, or others like them. These are all exceptional books, and I highly recommend them. If you are like me, it is easy to get motivated for a short time after reading these books. Then what?
Many of us buy and read the next book to keep the “momentum” going. We want to improve. The stories in these books are motivational. We say, “Wow,” reading through real world examples of executives at mega-corporations leading service turnarounds, which result in the saving of failing companies or dominance in a market sector. I have to admit, I read many of these books and they motivate me — at least for a while.
Great. However, you may be like me and hundreds of thousands of others; we are not all senior executives leading multi-billion dollar enterprises. I am a human resources professional supporting leaders and employees. You might be a director or manager at a hospital. Or an IT professional. Or a pharmaceutical representative. Or an owner of an auto repair shop. Or an activities coordinator for a church. Or you own your own gun shop. Or you are a financial planner.
So, what do we do? We are all busy. I don’t have the luxury of delegating to teams of others. I have to deliver, busy day after busy day.
We want to provide the best customer service possible. I want to do this in the simplest way possible. Our jobs are already too busy. Some would say, way too busy to add more to the list of things we do.
What then is your bottom line? So, then, what is SNAP?
“If you’re accustomed to thinking of the bottom line only as it relates to financial matters, then you may be missing some things crucial to you and your organization. Instead, think of the bottom line as the end, the take away, the desired result.”
…from Thinking for a Change, John C. Maxwell
SNAP neither assumes nor cares what your bottom line is. It can and will support a variety of needs and outcomes you may have.
If you own your own business, you might be motivated by increasing your profits.
If you earn a bonus or commission based on job performance, you might be motivated by adding to your paycheck.
If your job is just a j-o-b, then you might be motivated by making your job easier.
You may be motivated by increasing customer satisfaction in order to get any number of other outcomes beneficial to you.
If any of this resonates with you, continue reading to learn more about SNAP.
© 2012, Philip Espinosa. All rights reserved.
