The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Magic or Misery, with Shep Hyken (Customer Service, Business, Management, Leadership)
Tue, 14 Jan 2025
Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations, customer service and experience expert, author, and speaker, explains the true meaning of being "helpful", why it takes one to say yes, but two to say no, finding moments of magic, misery, and mediocrity, and the handy index card trick for your staff.
Full Episode
We have this idea that it takes one to say yes, but two to say no, which means that that frontline person has to figure out a yes solution for the customer, or he's got to get permission to say no to the customer from a manager. And the manager really doesn't want to be bothered.
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This man is incredible. His name is Shep Hyken. He's the chief amazement officer at Shepard Presentations. And I'm telling you, this guy is one of the very, very best out there in the world talking about customer service. He's a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author and Hall of Fame speaker. Shep, thank you for being on the show, brother. It is an honor, a pleasure.
I'm flattered. You're too nice. You've got all these great books on customer service. And what's different? Well, I said, what if I found one company to use for the entire book as a role model? And I was looking for a company that's a rock star, but not recognized as a rock star. And that was Ace Hardware. Businessweek recognized the top 25 customer service brands. Ritz was rated number 12.
And I loved Ritz-Carlton, one of my favorite, favorite hotel chains. Guess what? Ace Hardware was rated number 10. That opened my eye. The world headquarters is a multi-billion dollar corporation. But if you're a small entrepreneurial business, they have 4,600 stores owned by 3,000 different owners. And that's mom and pop. And here's what they've done.
They've managed to operationalize the word helpful. They want to be the most helpful stores on the planet, especially in their industry, which is home improvement and hardware. And they have to compete against some pretty big companies. And the Home Depot or Lowe's or Menards go up right next to them. And the big, big box stores is who they had to compete against. It was David versus Goliath.
And you know who wins. What are the things that customers really want today in terms of being helpful? How do we demonstrate or do you have any examples? First of all, what customers want is they decide what it is that they want. Do they want the lowest price in town? Or do they need help with something? Or do they need support? Or do they want value? And by the way, you can get a hybrid.
You can't always get the lowest price and the best service. In the case of a target, it means very knowledgeable because you walk in with the part and they go, hey, I need this. Can you help me and tell me what to do with it? And their people are very knowledgeable. They're trained well. That's part of their whole thing. Plus, they're staffed extremely well.
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