loyal fan | Shep Hyken | Customer Service Expert

Customer-Focused Concept

Tom Glenn, a second-generation owner of a chain of Ace Hardware stores, tells a wonderful story about his father, Elder Glenn. One day an agitated customer came into the store and walked up to Elder and stated, “I have a problem.” It turns out the customer bought two items that each had a $5.00 rebate. The customer claims he did exactly what he was to do to get his rebates, which was to mail the receipt and the code on the package to the manufacturer. The rebates never showed up, and the customer was upset. Now, it wasn’t Elder’s fault. It may have been lost in the mail, or perhaps the customer did make an error. However, it became Elder’s problem – a problem he planned to solve. And, he did so quickly, easily and with no hassle to his customer. Elder simply went over to the cashier and asked her to take two five-dollar bills out of the cash register. He handed them over to a surprised customer, who had obviously expected a confrontation. From that point on Elder had a customer – and a friend – for life. Every time the customer came in the store he would seek out Elder to just say, “Hello.” Elder would go on to use this example in one of his team meetings. He shared this story and referred to it as the “Five Dollar Lifeboat.” The lesson to his associates was that for just five dollars he turned an unhappy customer who might never come back that might be worth hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars into a loyal fan of the store. He gave permission to his employees to use the Five Dollar Lifeboat whenever necessary to take care of a customer. There are plenty of companies that have similar Five Dollar Lifeboat procedures. The Ritz-Carlton comes to mind with their Two Thousand Dollar Lifeboat. Okay, they don’t call it a lifeboat, but similar to Elder Glenn’s concept, an employee of the Ritz-Carlton has the ability to spend up to two thousand dollars to take care of a guest who has been wronged. Both Ace Hardware associates and the Ritz-Carlton employees train to understand how and when to put this tool into action. In order for this, and just about any other customer-focused concept to be effective you must:

Properly train employees.
Empower, which means trust, the employees to do it right.
When they do it right, celebrate the success. If they do it wrong, make it a teachable moment that doesn’t erode their confidence and trust in the system.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn. (Copyright ©MMXIII, Shep Hyken)

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