When the people on your team feel they are surrounded with people who believe what they believe in, then they are more confident to stretch themselves and take risks.

Topic – Creating ‘sticky’ customer service

Mentor – Jaquie Scammell

• People don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it
• Prioritise purpose and profit will follow
• Practice behaviour – not skill

Transcript:

Kevin Turner: We have so often in this show talked about your why. We’re gonna look at it in a different way, and maybe get you to see just how important that is, because in her book, Jaquie Scammell has written a book called Creating a Customer Service Mindset, she describes it not as the why but as the purpose. Good morning, Jaquie. How are you?

Jaquie Scammell: Good morning, Kevin. I’m great. Thank you.

Kevin Turner: I think a great lead into this is in the book where you say, it’s no page 136, I think, where you say, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” That’s probably one of the best descriptions I’ve heard about why you need a why and you need to understand what it is, Jaquie.

Jaquie Scammell: Yeah. And Simon Sinek, who created the movement Start with Why, he really brought this to life years ago now, and I think any organisation that’s really wanting to shift the dial in creating a high quality service culture, this is I reckon the best place to start. Get really clear about why do we get up in the morning, what do we actually care about, what do we stand for, and get clear on our purpose beyond making dollars and cents.

Kevin Turner: It goes way past making the dollars and cents. You go right past it. The purpose of your organisation, “Prioritise purpose and profit will follow” is something you’ve said in the book, and I think that sort of takes the focus off the money. In other words, do the good stuff and the profit will come?

Jaquie Scammell: Yeah. I think we would all love to have a group of employees that bring discretionary efforts to their work, and so much of that discretionary effort that we want from our staff really comes from things that are much greater than just turning up and doing our job. So, our job as leaders is to connect employees to meaning, so think about a jigsaw puzzle. If you go and try and put all the pieces together of a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the picture on the front of the box, you kind of don’t really know the bigger picture. You don’t really know where this is all going. You don’t know how all the pieces fix together and you don’t know how each piece contributes to a bigger picture.

And I like to think about that in terms of how we communicate as leaders. If we’re asking them to show up and be better at serving, we need to connect it back to what’s in it for them and why should they care, and how does that contribute to the greater good of this business beyond making dollars and cents. So, if a company cannot articulate their purpose, it’s a great place to start and then once you have your purpose, it could be just a simple statement like, for example, some of the more famous ones that are around there that are US based but they’re famous is Zappos, the online shoe store. Their purpose is delivering happiness. Or Google. Their purpose is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

If you define your purpose, then the next part is you’ve got to communicate it and you’ve got to keep communicating it and making sure that it shows up in all those communication touch points where employees are reminded daily, “This is what we’re doing and this is why we’re here.”

Kevin Turner: Here’s another small example taken out of your book, and it’s for a coffee shop. I just want those listening to think about what your … how you would feel if you went into a coffee shop and you were always greeted with a smile, if they greeted you with your name, how would that make you feel, and then also making sure that the coffee is nothing less than perfect, just the way the customer likes it. So, they know you, it’s a personalised customer experience. You’d have to feel pretty happy. That’s one of the reasons why people keep going back to the same coffee shop.

Jaquie Scammell: That’s right. And a coffee shop example like that, their purpose could simply be, “How do we make someone’s day?” Or “How do we leave people better than we found them?” And then those three points that you just suggested, make sure people leave smiling and laughing, make sure that if you know their name, use it, and then make sure the coffee is nothing less than perfect. All of a sudden, those sort of trade standards, if you like, connect to a greater purpose, and this is how we start to define what best practise looks like in our own individual businesses. Simple stuff.

Kevin Turner: You also make the point and we’ll do this as we round this series, it’s been great talking to you too, Jaquie, but practise behaviour, not skill. I mean, it is, it’s so obvious, but it’s just not something we think about.

Jaquie Scammell: I think humans are very good at following rules, and let’s face it, here in Australia, there’s a lot of rules we have to follow. If you can bring a culture where you’ve got leaders leading less from the rules and more from values, and the way you can have a more valued sort of alignment culture is talk behaviours, not skills and rules. So, if I wanted to really enforce an employee to wear their name badge when they came into work, but for whatever reason, they kept not wearing their name badge, and if I defined a really important value to us in a company with respect, then I would talk about the behaviour of them disrespecting me and their fellow team members by not wearing their name badge.

So, you can just feel how that’s got a lot more depth to it, and would probably make an employee wake up a little bit if you spoke about disrespect versus, “Why don’t you wear your name badge?”

Kevin Turner: Yeah, it’s the difference between attacking the person and … Not so much attacking, that’s the wrong word, but debating with the person about their behaviour.

Jaquie Scammell: Behaviour, yeah.

Kevin Turner: I guess if you take nothing else away from this series, if you’re talking to your people, one great statement that you make in the book, you’ve made many of them, Jaquie, but this one, “Good is no longer good enough,” and that’s the measure, I think, you know? Being good is just no longer good enough if you’re out to exceed everyone’s expectation on customer service.

Jaquie Scammell: Yeah. I mean, mediocre customer service is at an all time high in Australia and I think that we’ve got much work to do. We’ve got to think more about the unexpected, because really what we’ve been talking about is simple and if all of us just shifted what we’re doing by even one percent more, it would probably be great compared to some competitors and what else is out there.

Kevin Turner: Yeah, so easy to stand out. So, so easy to stand out. Hey Jaquie, it’s been fantastic spending this time with you this week. I really appreciate your time and the fact that you wrote this book, that you sent it to me to review, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I spent a full weekend just going through it and pulling out notes, so I found it very inspirational. I’m sure anyone who gets the book will feel exactly the same. It’s called Creating a Customer Service Mindset written by Jaquie Scammell. S-C-A-M-M-E-L-L. Jaquie, thank you so much for your time.

Jaquie Scammell: Thanks for having me, Kevin, and all the best.