The Million Dollar Greeting. Dan Sachs

backward and focused on a “top-down,” hierarchical management style, where managers outlined expectations and demanded results, with an emphasis on short-term financial gain.

      In fact, even now—in a climate where there are extraordinary demands on profitability—many organizations still have this mentality baked into their culture. For many years, the American automotive industry was a good example of this shortsighted attitude. It’s no coincidence that the industry is now a shadow of what it once was. Ignoring quality during previous decades adversely affected sales, and this choice still affects the industry’s reputation today. Consistent progress is being made in the American auto industry, but the memories linger.

      The Dawn of Customer Service in America

      In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, urbanization expanded in the United States at a remarkable rate, from one out of four Americans living in cities in the 1870s, to two out three Americans in the 1960s. As a result, the need for services rather than goods also increased exponentially, and American companies began to recognize the significance of the shift from a manufacturing-based economy to one that was (and remains) service-driven. This shift in the economic landscape led companies to rethink their organizational approach—not to mention that at that point, the Japanese manufacturing success story was a clearly defined marker for success. Finally, American companies also began to heed Deming and Juran’s advice and rethink their organizational structures, since it was becoming glaringly obvious that the relationship between managers and workers directly affected outcomes such as job productivity, job satisfaction, and employee retention. During the 1990s, companies realized it wasn’t enough to just mass produce consistent products. They also needed a more holistic approach, with the entire organization acting as one team to ensure consistent products and offering great customer service to complement them.

      Even though it may be hard to believe, the concept of “quality customer service” has only existed for about forty years. As companies realized it wasn’t good enough to simply engineer a good product, the best organizations recognized that offering quality services, or the idea that the organization would meet or beat customer expectations and remain economically competitive, would distinguish themselves from their competitors. This opened up a whole new conceptualization of the relationship between businesses and their consumers and ultimately forced companies to rethink their internal and external relationships. Relationships between managers and line employees, managers and the company culture, and the company and the public were seen as equal parts of a triad.

      This being the case, some creative business leaders from firms as large as Hyatt Hotels Corporation and as small as Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan, understood that in order to excel they had to make sure that employees had the right tools and training to communicate with their customers in a different way. At an early stage, they figured out that the emotional connection between the customer and the brand was the key to differentiating themselves from the competition. Effectively, these companies reimagined customer service as a more emotional connection between provider and consumer.

      Take Steve Hindy, who revolutionized the craft beer industry through his company, Brooklyn Brewery. Though he had no hospitality background, he inherently understood the importance of training his sales team and creating a culture around the brewery that has sustained his business from 1988 to today. Although he focused on building brand loyalty through a great product, he quickly realized that customer service could be a defining characteristic of a great company. Steve Hindy is not alone in this belief, as you will see.

      Meeting Rising Expectations

      As customer service delivery became more sophisticated and more American businesses sought to build loyalty by offering better service delivery, consumers developed higher expectations about the brands themselves, which, in turn, directly affected brand identity. The growing challenge for companies was to ensure that there was no gap between the consumer’s expectation and the company’s product and delivery (or, if a gap occurred, it was as small as possible). While that might sound intuitive today, it was still a work in progress less than thirty years ago. (And even today, as my earlier example about the nonresponsive mattress company made abundantly clear, it is still a work in progress.) If anything, a kind of arms race ensued as companies began to work harder and harder to exceed expectations, knowing a disconnect between their brands and their service delivery could be disastrous.

      To demonstrate what this means, let’s think about airline travel. After scouring the internet and spending hundreds of dollars on an airline ticket, the average flyer knows the flight won’t necessarily be relaxing or pleasant, but she does expect it will take off and land at approximately the prescribed time. However, if there is an extended delay, she will become annoyed, and it becomes the responsibility of the airline to recognize and apologize for the inconvenience, even in cases when it’s beyond the airline’s control. If an airline does not have a service recovery protocol in place, the airline will lose customers and tarnish its image; the damage to the airline’s brand will be long-lasting and expensive. What to do? For just a small cost, the airline can mitigate the gap between expectations and reality by offering an incentive or compensation for the delay (free snack, or travel voucher with compensation determined by the length and severity of the delay). Equally important, the airline can make sure the employees are well trained to handle unexpected flight delays with empathy and a smile rather than apathy and a snarl. All of us constantly reevaluate brand choice based on the gap between expectation and reality. If the airline meets our expectations, or comes close to meeting them, we will fly with them again. If they fail to meet our basic expectations, we will be a lot less likely to.

Organizations with strong service recognize that individual consumers have an established “zone of tolerance,” a term defined as “the range of customer perceptions of a service between desired and minimum acceptable standards.”6 In essence it is the range of service performance that a customer considers satisfactory. One solution organizations have adopted to address individual zones of tolerance occurs at the onset of the service experience. It is based on the one-on-one relationship between an individual company employee and the customer. One familiar image we have of this type of relationship is expressed in TV commercials advertising financial services consulting. Picture an investment advisor and her clients: as the clients confess their different dreams—such as to retire early, to send their children to college, or to start a business—the smiling advisor listens to each person individually and offers sage advice to all of them.

      The goal of the commercial is to demonstrate the value of strong relationships in personal finance, and it does this by showing how each and every person is valued by the company, no matter how small or large her portfolio. Even if this isn’t true, the message of caring and empathy resonates and is the reason this individualized approach works and with appropriate training can be a successful customer service model.

      Unfortunately, conveying this message is never as simple as we would like it to be. Most organizations struggle for a variety of reasons with delivering on the promise of exceptional service. One of the biggest is a lack of accountable, consistent leadership that, in turn, drives the focus on exceptional service.

      In fact, consistency is probably the most important aspect of quality customer service delivery. Many companies spend an enormous amount of time and resources trying to ensure their brand identity remains consistent through advertising, slogans, and even mission statements, but give relatively little thought to the consumer’s direct interaction with that same brand, a significant disconnect between the importance of product and service. The value of ongoing training that emphasizes an appreciation and understanding of outstanding service cannot be underestimated. Even in the best cases, long-term employees can become jaded over time, forgetting or dismissing the brand promise for expediency.

      Over the next nine chapters, you will be introduced to some exceptional leaders. They have all developed tools that have reshaped the organizational landscape of their companies. As you will see, this process often starts with hiring and training, but that merely scratches the surface. Whether consciously or not, they have embraced the true meaning of hospitality to help their organizations frame their core vision and values. The results provide insight on new ways to think about every aspect of the employee experience. In turn, these leaders have found that their