I get a fair number of calls, as a customer service consultant, that follow the pattern, like a game of Mad Libs®, of "Please turn my company into the blank of blank":
• "We want to become the Ritz-Carlton of car dealerships"
--or--
• "Turn us into the Zappos of retail banking"
--or even--
• “Can you turn us into the Nordstrom of septic system servicing?”
(not precisely a real-life example—though it's pretty close).
When I get such a call, I offer both encouragement and caution. On the one hand, it's powerful to benchmark a customer service great, either inside or outside of your particular industry. On the other hand, the consulting work that I – or any other reputable consultant – does can't be quite that cookie cutter if it is to be successful. Rather than becoming “The Ritz-Carlton of my industry,” it’s best to think of “what is the specific version of Ritz-Carlton methodology that service the needs and wishes of my particular market, and that ties into the branding and positioning of my own, unique, company?” Which is a rather different take on a similar idea.
However, I was intrigued to hear from a PR firm (North 6th Agency or “N6A," based in New York), that has settled on a different approach to their 2016 customer service initiative: They’re basing it on not just one great customer-centric company, but twelve: a different company each month. Each month, N6A will take a core customer service practice from one of the great customer-centric companies and apply it to their own dealings with PR customers.
For example, January’s spotlight brand will be Nordstrom, where the theme will be “responsiveness,” modeled after Nordstrom’s commitment to rapid customer response time. During ‘Nordstrom Month’ N6A will introduce new customer service practices modeled after Nordstrom, with guarantees to deliver industry-best response time on N6A customer inquiries.
During “Amazon Month” (September), N6A will pay homage to Amazon’s reputation for delivering highly personalized recommendations. During ‘The Body Shop Month’ N6A will integrate philanthropy into the customer service experience. During ‘
Staff members will be evaluated in their monthly N6A KPI metrics based on how successfully they’ve executed the customer service theme of the month.
(Picture sitting down with your boss at the end of the month, and being told that you got a 6 in the “Virgin America KPI," or being told in another month that you got a perfect 10 in the “
According to N6A’s CEO Matt Rizzetta, this was done intentionally to keep everyone in the organization focused on a different customer service virtue each month, and also to disrupt the monotony of being evaluated by the same performance metrics month after month.
“We studied brands that wrote the book on certain customer service themes – Disney with detail,
“Our goal is to give our customers a well-rounded experience without any holes, and to make sure they think of their relationship with N6A similar to how they view experiences with their favorite and most respected consumer brands.”
The full calendar of N6A’s ‘Year of the Customer’ program includes Nordstrom (Responsiveness), Disney (Detail),
Now, a couple more comments from me (you know I can’t resist) on this approach that N6A is taking. To me this seems like a fascinating internal exercise, more than it seems like something for public consumption. In other words, I have my doubts about trumpeting this program to the public – and, specifically, to their clients. Take May, the Ritz-Carlton month, when N6A will be emulating the Ritz-Carlton approach of providing frontline employees with nearly unlimited discretion to solve, avoid, or compensate for any customer problem encountered. When you publicize something like this, and just for a particular month, what kind of message does that send to clients? That their issues will be handled in a different, more generous manner that month only? Time will tell how this approach works out.
When I pushed Rizzetta on this, he stressed the importance to his company of transparency, and clarified that the monthly practices are intended to carry over throughout the entire year rather than being exclusive to the month in which they are in the spotlight. He also preferred the public nature of the program as a way to hold the entire N6A organization’s “feet to the fire.”
I’m looking forward to watching how it goes for N6A – and for its customers.
Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant, customer service consultant, keynote speaker, trainer, and bestselling author.
