The Love Guarantee

The members that constitute a business community drive the bus and create demand. Providing an innovative product is only half the battle. Sustained success lies in keeping customers happy and coming back for more. Any company can claim superior customer service, but can they walk the walk?

I Love Rewards has been wildly successful in this, and we have the raving fans to prove it. Here’s why every company should develop their own version of our Love Guarantee:

Clients don’t have power, end users do. Clients won’t keep buying a product the user isn’t happy with. Dedicate a team to manage member happiness, and not only will that keep members happy, but clients loyal.

Customers are brand ambassadors. Marketing dollars buy presence and are essential, but reputation and credibility in the business community trump when it comes down to closing a deal. Keep customers happy and they’ll go to bat for you when you call on them for prospect referrals.

Competitors offer a viable alternative (and are trying to do it better). Competitors are well versed in your strengths and weaknesses, so don’t grant them an opportunity to fill a gap in your customer service. Establish a guarantee that is open ended and maintain a stop-at-nothing attitude to take satisfaction to the ultimate level: loyalty.

An I Love Rewards member, Michael McNamara, recently redeemed points to surprise his wife with a night at the Horseshoe Resort for a birthday, wedding anniversary, and Mother’s Day celebration. Unfortunately the redemption certificate was slow to arrive and upon booking his stay the reservation was refused based on a new two-night minimum policy.

His call to Member Support brought a happy ending. Within minutes one of our representatives found the problem, and an above and beyond solution. The bad news was that the vendor had failed to communicate the resort’s policy change. The good news was that they offered to cover the cost of the second night. We took an extra step to have flowers delivered to the room. In response, we received these words of praise from Michael:

“As a manager for front line Call Center employees I can be very hard to impress as my expectations are extremely high. I am very happy to say you not only met but exceeded every expectation I had”

The Love Guarantee Lesson: The Love Guarantee is our secret ingredient, ensuring that clients and their members love everything about their interaction with our company. Our promise to customers is, “We’ll stop at nothing to make sure your program members love everything about their experience”. We convert system hiccups and member concerns into opportunities to exercise the outstanding service and make continuous improvements. We welcome and challenge you to borrow our idea to do the same.

When it comes to paid vacation, the U.S. and Canada don’t get it.

Giving two weeks paid vacation to employees says you’re a mediocre employer, at best.

In fact, most people would never work for someone for years if they knew they only got two weeks of vacation.

Two weeks of paid vacation is particularly hard to swallow if you characterize your company as being “like a family.” Really? You call that family.

Would you really want your siblings or parents only getting two weeks of vacation? You know that would really suck. So, don’t do it.

European and Australian employers give five to six weeks’ vacation.  The argument in the 1980s used to be, “Yeah, but look at the productivity of Americans—they only give two weeks of paid vacation!” But we can’t in good faith argue that point anymore. Productivity has declined because we give our employees less and expect more, and that has to change.

The companies attracting and retaining the most qualified employees all give more vacation than their mediocre counterparts.

If you really want to be a great employer, here is one easy way to do it that doesn’t cost you any more money that you spend on people today: Give all of your full time employees five (yes, five) weeks’ vacation. Include sick days in those five weeks off.  In addition to those five paid weeks’ vacation, they obviously still get the other statutory government holidays like Christmas, New Year’s Day and so on.

Why does this work? Vacation time that includes sick days means employees won’t come into work as often when they are sick.  They know they have enough time off to cover those days, so they won’t come in and infect everyone else.  The number of sick days per year for your company will drop. You are also going to find that the only people who don’t love this are the people who smoke or are unhealthy and perpetually sick.  Well, you don’t want them on your bus anyway.

No one is going to quit.  Why would they?  Where else can they get such a great vacation package?  With lower attrition rates and increased retention of employees, your employee training costs drop.

Everyone knows that the most productive day at the office is the day before vacation.  So the more vacation you give people, the more days they’ll have those “before vacation” productivity gains.

Give all employees the same vacation time, too, otherwise if you give tenured staff more vacation time you’re saying, “we like them more than we like you.” Not a good move.

pic: Wayfaring

Greig Clark, my good friend and founder of College Pro Painters, used to say that in order to build a truly great company, it has to be slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion. It has to be a cult.

The cult-like culture starts with people who have a fantastic cultural fit, who are strong leaders, have proven ability to perform their roles, and will do it at one hundred miles an hour.

To build a cult-like workplace find new employees that raise the average skill set of the entire group.

A business’ hiring process is just like when you’re rebuilding a sports team.  You need to get rid of the wrong players and bring in those that raise the average of the team. A sports team never considers bringing in a bunch of C players – they obsess about bringing in better players to win the cup.

All champion teams have a cult-like environment.  Your company should be structured the same way.  And in our lifetime, the Toronto Blue Jays will win the world series again.  My dad says so!!!

This question of the week is from CEO Jamie Scarborough of Sales Talent Agency.  He asked “A lot of companies seem to focus heavily on collecting “logos” like “Fastest Growing Company”, “Best Employer” etc…

I’ve covered the rest of his question & answered it here for you…

A cool lesson from the movie ‘The Secret’ is ‘like attracts like.’ It also repels the opposite of like, too.

So, if you’re building a company with a really fun, entrepreneurial culture with a great work/life balance, you’re going to repel boring useless lazy people cubicle drones who have no life (good they’re boring to hang out with).

Herb Keller, founder of Southwest Airlines, got a letter this letter from a customer:
“I need you to stop telling jokes on your airline or I won’t fly with you anymore!”

Herb Keller sent a letter back: “We’ll miss you!”

The practices of Southwest Airlines are so aligned with the vision of their future that they publicly say, “Customers are not #1, our employees are.” And they put it in writing!

Just like offices, communication needs to be open as well. What does that mean? For starters, no hidden agendas and share more than ‘the bare minimum’ of confidential information with everyone.

The more open the communication is across individuals and departments, the more trust that will be built within the company and its teams. Since these steps are an effort and fostering real communication, let’s discuss what staying “positive and open” means for achieving that end.

Communication has to flow top-down, bottom-up, and between peers and business areas, but it’s not always easy to make this happen. However, one of the most effective ways I’ve been able to maintain this flow of communication is to have an “open door policy.” In fact get rid of the freaking door, we know you’re watching porn.

Even though technically, if you have no walls, you won’t have doors, the phrase encapsulates the approach all leaders should take to fielding people’s thoughts and concerns. It shows everyone that leaders are willing to grab some time to listen to the concerns, fears, frustrations and ideas that are percolating throughout your organization.

“Town hall” style meetings also helps with the flow of communication to large numbers of people and back to you. These communication extravaganzas can be set up as an open forum, usually with a few beers being passed around to get people relaxed, and they allow for a top-down, bottom-up flow of information.

Most importantly, leaders have to walk the walk here—you have to be prepared to show people you’re working to resolve issues, or shine a spotlight on the areas that need one. That’s what it means to lead.

Fostering outstanding communication in your company need not be relegated to large-scale efforts like tearing down walls and having town hall style meetings. One of the most impactful things we did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and then later at companies I mentored and coach like I Love Rewards & Nurse Next Door to foster great communication is running the “daily huddle”

The power of sharing good news each day, the key numbers, missing systems and getting updates from different business areas really allowed everyone to get on and stay on the same page.  Everyone knew what everyone else was doing, and why it was important.

Stop surfing porn, and get rid of your doors.

pic Cartoon Stock

Years ago, my friend and brilliant speaker, Jack Daly, pushed me to ask myself, “What one thing did I do today to raise the energy level of my team?”

When I think about it, it makes sense.  The speed of the leader is the speed of the group.

One of your jobs as a leader, no matter where in the company you are, is to raise the energy level of your team. On the flip side, also ask yourself what you did to destroy the energy of the team?

I distinctly remember the times I’ve taken an entire team and destroyed their energy and passion for days by saying the wrong thing or by publicly coming down on them.  I’d even feel myself doing it and didn’t stop.  I had to learn how to listen to my conscience and let it guide me.  Trying to slow down before I’d say something would help, but it was hard for me.

In the must read book, The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard nailed it when he stated, “Two strokes for one poke.”  Others call it a “shit sandwich,” which basically means that if you give constructive criticism, try to sandwich it between things you are happy about and can praise the employee for doing.

By being a better communicator, you’ll produce employees that understand your goals and communicate well to others on the team.

As you walk into the office each day, think about the things you can do to raise the energy in your workplace.  Be yourself, but find ways to stir the Kool-Aid every day.

As my mentor said, if you want and awesome company culture “focus on building something slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion.”  To really build that cult (culture) you have to always be looking to raise the energy of the group.  Find a way.

I’d love to hear what you do in your company to raise the energy level of your team.

Who made this sign ? Seriously ?

Fire them…

I never understand why some employees do tasks that they know are stupid, pointless, useless, redundant etc. just cuz “we’ve always done it that way”.

Make today Waste Less Wednesday. Ask your employees to find one thing that the company does that is stupid or a wastes time. And stop doing it. Forever.

Facebook’s new office in Palo Alto

If you’re interested in showing people you’re committed to a work environment, as a business coach and mentor, I can say that the easiest way to do that is by getting rid of your private offices. Seriously. While this isn’t the only way to show your committed to the free-flow of information, I believe it’s a powerful way of setting the stage—so to speak—for your employees to pick up on the importance of free-flow information, feedback, and ultimately, success.

When I was a little kid in Winnipeg, Canada, I attended the first “open concept” school, which meant that there were no classrooms, no walls, and lots of great buzz. Sure, there were lots of distractions, but also lots of absorbing what others were doing, too. From this experience, I learned how to focus when I had to, and also how to filter out what I could learn from others around.

Building an open office doesn’t mean that the employees work out in the open and CEO and other senior staff can retreat to private offices. Everyone has to be out in the open—and I mean everyone. Of course, you can still have groups of people with glass walls between some areas. For example, why not create the “Finance Fishbowl” and put all the finance people in one area and give them a glass wall if needed. You can also go radical and have the only barriers be forty-two inch high work stations–that’s only three and a half feet, so you really aren’t blocking much at all.   Everyone can see everyone, which means no hiding.  If you aren’t working, it’ll be obvious.

The benefits of an open work space are numerous. For starters, open offices teach you to filter out the noise and still concentrate on your work. They also allow everyone to hear what’s going on, which means they’ll understand others’ roles better. Best of all? You’ll feel the energy and togetherness grow within the company because you can see everyone more than when they are hiding out in walled offices. Obviously if you want to have private work areas, spots to take confidential phone calls, or little places for private discussions, you can still have lots of small meeting rooms. But whatever you do, get out of your offices!

pic Chill Out Point

Sarah Robinson, the famed Escaping Mediocrity blogger, interviewed me, asked my side, as a business coach and mentor, about Building an Awesome Company Culture.

No need to really say more – it’s worth the 1 hour listen -

Download it here… http://bit.ly/crhpHM – only takes 45 seconds…

It should really be called Dagney & Hank…