The Amazement Revolution Read online

  Praise for The Amazement Revolution

  “Practical, tactical and hands on, this book will push you to initiate the customer interactions you should have been doing all along.”

  –SETH GODIN, author

  Poke the Box

  “In reading Shep Hyken’s The Amazement Revolution, I applaud his approach. At American Express we view service not as a cost, but an investment in building customer relationships. Through Relationship Care—our overarching service ethos—we strive to emotionally connect with our customers and add value to every interaction. The seven strategies outlined in this book are exactly how we operate.”

  –JAMES P. BUSH, Executive Vice President,

  World Service, American Express

  “The true measure of Shep Hyken’s success as a communicator is simple. His books always exceed the readers’ expectations. The Amazement Revolution is no exception!”

  –J. KIM TUCCI, Co-Founder,

  The Pasta House Co.

  “The Amazement Revolution will serve as a guide for many business operators as they pursue paths towards developing and communicating an effective mission, as well as establishing the strong culture needed for success. The book is a demonstration of the importance of attaining effective team leadership.”

  –J RONALD E. HARRISON, Retired SVP, PepsiCo, Inc.,

  Currently member of the Board of Managers, RE/MAX, LLC

  “We have a retail store that competes with other stores who sell exactly what we sell. Why do our customers do business with us? It’s not because of our prices. It’s because of our service. We give our customers a better experience. The Amazement Revolution reveals many of the secrets that give us a competitive advantage over our competition.”

  –KEITH BAIZER, Mayor of Creativity,

  Artmart, Inc.

  More Praise for The Amazement Revolution

  “Our family has been in the roofing business since 1929. How have we been successful for so many years? All you have to do is read the first chapter of this book to know. We just do the right thing.”

  –BOB FREDERIC, President,

  Frederic Roofing

  “In The Amazement Revolution, Shep not only inspires but provides a clear path for moving from a service culture to an Amazement culture and backs it up with real world examples. Whether a sole practitioner or a corporate giant, if you desire to create Amazed customers you need to read this book!”

  –BARRY G. KNIGHT, President

  NEXT Financial Group, Inc.

  “What is your trademark? Why do your customers want to return? My good friend Shep Hyken is a mirror image of successful repeated business. After all, this is his ninth book! This Cowboy knows his stuff.”

  –JEFFREY W. HAYZLETT, best-selling author of

  The Mirror Test, Celebrity CMO, Cowboy

  “It takes more than just great technology for our customers to think of us as more than “just another software vendor.” The chapter on cultivating partnerships is exactly what we do to create value and build customer loyalty.”

  –RON CAMERON, President

  KnowledgeLake

  Honored as Microsoft Partner of the Year

  BOOKS BY SHEP HYKEN

  Moments of Magic: Be a Star with Your Customers and Keep Them Forever

  The Loyal Customer: A Lesson from a Cab Driver

  Only the Best on Success (co-author)

  Only the Best on Customer Service (co-author)

  Only the Best on Leadership (co-author)

  The Winning Spirit (co-author)

  Inspiring Others to Win (co-author)

  The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Experience that Turns

  Satisfied Customers into Customer Evangelists

  The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create

  Amazing Customer (and Employee) Experiences

  For information about the above books contact:

  Shepard Presentations, LLC

  (314) 692-2200

  [email protected]

  www.hyken.com

  Copyright ©2011 Shep Hyken

  Moments of Magic®, Moments of Misery™, Moments of Innovation™, and The Amazement Revolution™ are trademarks of Shep Hyken, Shepard Presentations, LLC. All rights reserved.

  For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Shepard Presentations, LLC at 314.692.2200 or [email protected].

  Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press

  Austin, Texas

  www.gbgpress.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: This publication is designed to provide authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. The publisher and author make no representations or warranties with respect to accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought out. The publisher or author shall not be liable for any loss of profit or other damages.

  Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group LLC

  PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100

  Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group LLC

  Interior design and composition by Jerry Dorris, AuthorSupport.com

  Content editing by Brandon Toropov

  Line editing and proofreading by Lauren Manoy, Ambitious Enterprises

  Indexing by Carol Roberts

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Hyken, Shep.

  The amazement revolution : seven customer service strategies to create an amazing customer (and employee) experience / Shep Hyken. -- 1st ed.

  p. ; cm.

  Includes index.

  eISBN: 978-1-60832-135-3

  1. Customer services. 2. Customer relations. 3. Communication in organizations. 4. Interpersonal relations. I. Title.

  HF5415.5 .H956 2011

  658.8/12 2011920528

  Part of the Tree Neutral® program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART ONE: What Is Amazement?

  CHAPTER ONE: The Right Thing to Do

  CHAPTER TWO: How We Got Here

  PART TWO: The Master Class

  CHAPTER THREE: The Master Class: American Express

  PART THREE: Role Models for Amazement

  CHAPTER FOUR: Strategy #1: Provide Membership

  CHAPTER FIVE: Strategy #2: Have Serious FUN

  CHAPTER SIX: Strategy #3: Cultivate Partnership

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Strategy #4: Hire Right

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Strategy #5: Create a Memorable After-Experience

  CHAPTER NINE: Strategy #6: Build Community

  CHAPTER TEN: Strategy #7: Walk the Walk

  AFTERWORD

  PART FOUR: Create Your Own Amazement Revolution

  APPENDIX A: The ART of Amazement To-Do List

  APPENDIX B: Amazement Brainstorm Worksheets

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX BY SUBJECT

  INDEX BY COMPANY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I use t
he word “customer” in this book, please understand that I mean the whole range of people who do business with, and rely on, your organization. This could be someone you are presently calling a customer, client, patient, guest, member, etc. As we go through the book, you will see the phrase “customer” used most frequently to describe the members of this group. This is just a “catch all” term to describe someone you do business with. Whatever the label, I’m always talking about the same group of people.

  PART ONE

  WHAT IS AMAZEMENT?

  amazement (noun) 1. overwhelming surprise or astonishment.

  —Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.

  Amazement (proper noun) Service that is consistently and predictably better than average. Amazement is not necessarily about “Wow!” levels of service, although sometimes it may be. It is about an all-of-the-time, I-know-I-can-count-on-it, better-than-average experience. Most organizations can be better than average some of the time. Very few, however, are consistently better than average. That consistent experience is what sets apart an average organization from one that is Amazing! —Shep Hyken

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE RIGHT THING TO DO

  From the time I could write, whenever I got a present, my mom would say, “Write a thank-you note. That’s what you do when you receive a nice gift.”

  That simple-sounding instruction was really about a whole lot more than writing a note. It was part of my parents’ larger philosophy about what was right and what was wrong in life. There were certain things you did, and certain things you didn’t do, in your relationships with others.

  Although this wasn’t a customer service principle, it was a life lesson, and it was a lesson that eventually had profound implications for me, my business, and for a whole lot of people who read my book The Cult of the Customer. What I eventually came to call the Amazement Revolution—the strategic decision to remake your organization or your team based on the principle of amazement—was actually rooted in my parents’ philosophy. The Amazement Revolution is all about doing what’s right by the important people in your life.

  I believe that if you do what’s right, then things like customer service and marketing and sales have a way of looking after themselves. If you don’t, they become very difficult.

  This book is about the seven specific strategies that amazing service organizations consistently do right when it comes to relationships with their customers and their employees. These seven strategies also serve as declarations of principle for the organization as a whole. If you build these seven Amazement Strategies into your organization, lots of important things—like writing thank-you notes—become second nature.

  I think we all know what doing the right thing for customers feels like when we experience it in our own lives as customers. It’s much harder to identify the principles and processes that make “doing the right thing” on a consistent basis possible for an organization, but I know it can be done. Let me give you an example from my own childhood.

  I’d been practicing magic—card tricks, rope tricks, and so on—since I was about ten years old; around the age of twelve, I experienced something totally unexpected. A brave mother asked me to perform a magic show at her son’s birthday party. I remember getting paid $15 for that forty-five-minute show, which was a pretty big deal.

  Suddenly I was a professional magician! At dinner one night, after that first show for my first paying customer, my mom said, “Don’t forget to write a thank-you note.” Other “command performances” followed. These were birthday party magic shows, and every one I did resulted in a payment from a grateful parent. I always worked hard on my routines, and I made sure at the very end that I “magically” produced enough candy for the kids, so that even if the show had left something to be desired, the audience would still love me.

  I did as my mom said—and more important than that, I followed the spirit of what she’d said. I wanted to do right by the families who had invited me to entertain at their parties. Following my mother’s lead, by the ripe old age of twelve I had learned to develop some “do the right thing” processes for my little business:

  A week before the booking for a birthday party or magic show, I called the parent to confirm the time I would be showing up and to get any last minute details.

  I showed up early. This, my dad told me, was even better than being on time.

  I did the best job I could possibly do.

  I made sure I left a little late. I gave people more than they expected.

  I sent a thank-you note the very next day.

  A week later, I would call to make sure everyone loved the show and to say thank you once more. (By the way, these conversations sometimes lead to booking another party.)

  When I look at those six steps, I realize just how important they were—and are! My business today operates using precisely the same processes: show up early, stay late, do your best, always say thank you, give people more than they expect, and follow up. There are many other processes now, of course, but these are still in place for me. And they all arose out of this core desire to do the right thing.

  I didn’t go to school to learn how to execute those processes. I didn’t go to customer service training seminars to learn how to talk to people who wanted to work with me. I didn’t go to a marketing class to learn how to write the thank-you notes. And I didn’t go to a sales training class to close the additional bookings that arose when I made that follow-up call. My parents taught me those skills and reinforced the core principles, which all came down to the single core principle of doing the right thing. Everything else followed from that. The activities may have looked simple, but executing them properly every single time took discipline.

  It’s the same with the strategies and principles in this book. They are not simplistic, but they aren’t rocket science either. They are easily understood, but they take time to get right. What matters is not just that you understand them, but that you integrate them into your overall business strategy and your overall life strategy—into what you and your team do every day.

  The Amazement Revolution is about indoctrinating yourself and your team in the phenomenon known as amazement. The book is built on my own observations, based on over twenty-five years of research and working with clients, about the seven core strategies that an organization of any size can use to instill and reinforce the desire to do the right thing by both customers and employees. And yes, those two groups are linked. The first are your external customers; the second are your internal customers. External customers, of course, are the people who pay money for your products, services, or solutions; internal customers are the people who work for your organization.

  To keep external customers happy, you must make sure your employees know that you care about doing what’s right by them, day after day after day. Your employees will in turn care about doing what’s right by the customer. There are lots of lessons and processes in the pages that follow, but they all proceed from the first principle of doing the right thing by your internal and external customers. You have to care about that first. Amaze your employees, and they’ll spread the amazement!

  After we do the right thing, we can classify what we have done as customer service or marketing or sales or employee relations or whatever. In the moment, though, as my parents would surely agree, it’s just what you should do. And if you do it consistently, you amaze people.

  If you believe, as I do, that it makes sense to do the right thing by both internal and external customers more often; if you want to build a world-class service organization, starting at the bottom, the middle, the top, or at any part of the enterprise, regardless of your current title or level of experience; or if you are simply curious about what this Amazement Revolution is all about—read on!

  CHAPTER TWO

  HOW WE GOT HERE

  This book could almost be considered a sequel to my earlier book, The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Customer Experience that Turns Satisfied Customers i
nto Customer Evangelists. I say “almost” because you don’t have to have read a word of that book to put the principles of this book into practice. However, you will want to read what follows in this chapter, whether or not you’re familiar with the first book. (If you’ve already read The Cult of the Customer, please consider this chapter a brief but essential refresher.)1

  CRITICAL POINT #1:

  YOUR ORGANIZATION HAS A CULTURE

  Every organization has an operating culture. Right now, your organization’s operating culture either focuses on creating an amazing experience for both internal and external customers…or it doesn’t.

  Accepting this much is the essential starting point. Whether your organization is large or small, whether you are the founder of the company or a front-line employee, whether you work with customers on the front lines or somewhere deep within the enterprise, your organization has a culture that determines the quality of the experience you provide for employees and customers. Your organization’s culture falls into one of the following categories:

  It is at the level of amazement, and people are striving to stay at that level.