Make It Great! with Phil Gerbyshak

Learning from the Celebrity Experience Expert

Today I am delighted to bring you Donna Cutting, author of The Celebrity Experience, and someone I am pleased to call my friend! As she’s on a whirlwind blog book tour, I only had time to slow her down for 5 questions about her book and how managers can implement red carpet customer service!

 

 

 

 

 

Phil: What is red carpet customer service?

 

Donna: Red-Carpet Customer Service is demonstrated when a service professional has mastered the basics of service, adds the “and then some” and customers walk away feeling as though they’ve been treated like Hollywood celebrities.

 

 

Phil: Why is red carpet customer service so important?

 

Donna: From a business standpoint, there is no better way to differentiate your company in a competitive marketplace than by providing an exceptional customer experience. In today’s world, people are used to receiving poor customer service and they talk about it – with their friends, on blogs, on social networking sites. You can give them something else to talk about – an experience that is so uniquely positive, they can’t wait to come back and bring friends. Every company featured in The Celebrity Experience because of their extraordinary service has seen real bottom-line results because of their efforts.

 

 

Phil: What is 1 simple and inexpensive way companies can institute a "red carpet customer service policy?"

 

Donna: You can start by combing through the experience your customer has with you from start to finish, and eliminating any of the negatives from the process. For instance, John Wood, CEO of Hub Plumbing and Mechanical, Inc. in Boston, MA knew that his customers were worried about inviting strangers in their home and disliked getting voice mail. He developed a strict nametag and uniform policy, and sends each customer an email that includes a photo of their plumber so they know who to expect when they open the door. He also hired people for 24 hours a day to answer his telephone so customers always hear a live person on the other end. He eliminated the negatives with those simple changes and immediately differentiated himself from other plumbers in his area.

 

Phil: What's your favorite personal example of red carpet customer experience?

 

 

Donna: My husband and I recently stayed at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. This is a hotel which is included in my book and I am not surprised when their employees (or STARS, as they are called), who know me as the author of The Celebrity Experience, give me extraordinary service. They have been told to take excellent care of me and my guests, and they do.

 

However, one morning my husband and I went down to a little shop in the resort to look for coffee we could brew in our room. The woman in the shop did not know me or my husband from Adam.

 

Jim, my husband, asked if they sold coffee. They didn’t and the woman asked him, “didn’t you get coffee in your room?” “Yes,” Jim said, “but I drink a LOT of coffee.” We all laughed.

 

Without a word, the woman picked up the phone. When she hung up, she told my husband, “It’s all taken care of.” We got back to our room later that day to find no less than 20 packets of coffee sitting on the counter! To top it off, without our asking, the coffee was replenished daily. Now there’s an employee who’s been empowered to give her customers red-carpet service!

 

Phil: What is one thing managers can do to inspire greater red carpet customer service in their employees?

 

Donna: Treat your employees as you want them to treat your customers and reward them in tangible and intangible ways every time they “Make It Great” for a customer.

 

Thanks Donna for stopping by and helping me Make It Great!

 

This interview has been a part of Donna Cutting’s Blog Tour.

 

Yesterday, the blog tour stopped at these blogs

 

   
• Andrea Nierenberg's blog
   
• Dr. Sally Witt will conduct a book review on her blog.

 

Today, you can also read about the book at:

 

   
• Betty Lynch / My Country Kitchen
   
• Becky Wyatt / Becky Wyatt Online

 

And tomorrow the blog tour continues:      

 

   
• Wendy Piersall / CEO of Sparkplugging, will be hosting a guest blog by Donna about how to be a A-list customer.
   
• Heidi Richards/founder of WECAI and Virtual Women's Blog
   
• Carol Deckert will be interviewing Donna LIVE at 7pm on her Ladies In Business Today

 

Buy The Celebrity Experience to get your own copy of Donna’s book.

Change the Way You See Yourself Through Asset Based Thinking: Final stop of the tour

This week I'm honored to be the last stop on the tour for the amazing book Change the Way You See Yourself  Through Asset Based Thinking. I read the first book based on the strong recommendation of Johann Stossel, and I was NOT disappointed. When this book came out, I had hoped I'd be fortunate enough to get a review copy. In addition to a review copy, I got to connect with the authors. This book is now one of the top books I'll be offering folks who ask me for a book to help them get out of their "stinkin' thinkin'" and into the Make It Great! zone!

A little background on Hank and Kathy:

Kathryn D. (Kathy) Cramer, Ph.D. is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Cramer Institute in St. Louis, specializing in organization change consulting, leadership and team development, and executive coaching. She and her colleagues at The Cramer Institute have pioneered the development of Asset-Based Thinking  approaches to coaching, consulting, and training processes for more than twenty years. 

Hank Wasiak is a communications industry leader who has worked with the corporate elite of global business throughout his 40 year career. He is co-founder of The Concept Farm, one of today’s hottest creative development companies. Hank is an Emmy award winning producer and TV host, author, entrepreneur, and teacher.

Without further ado, what follows is my interview with Kathy and Hank. I plan to interview them for the Make It Great Radio Show soon, we just couldn't make our schedules match this week to get it ready in time for you today.

What follows is my interview with the authors, Kathy Cramer and Hank Wasiak. The book was well done, and the authors are just as engaging as the book.

Phil Gerbyshak Meets the Back of the Napkin

Recently I had the good fortune to spend 40 minutes with Dan Roam, author of the great new book The Back of the Napkin. It's quickly become one of my favorite books, for it changed the way I think about problem solving and helped me look at things in a new way.

GOOD NEWS: You do NOT need to be an artist to use Dan's great style of problem solving.

MORE GOOD NEWS: If you read on, you'll find out how YOU can win a copy of this wonderful book!

Go to http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/ for all the stuff that's been written about Dan, including cool videos, other audio interviews, and a few of the methods we talk about in this podcast.

For all my deaf and hard of hearing friends, I hope to have this transcribed soon so you can learn from Dan as well.

Enjoy Phil Gerbyshak Meets the Back of the Napkin. It's about 40 minutes long. When I get it transcribed, I'll post the raw MP3 file so you can download it for later. For now, head over to http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/ to learn a few of Dan's tips and tricks!

Win a copy of The Back of the Napkin Contest

Share your best way to solve a problem in the comments below, and I'll pick someone at random Thursday the 29th of May, 2008 and you can win an autographed copy of Dan's book!

Stopping the Clock for your Customers: Stop Watch Marketing

One of my favorite things about having a blog is that I get access to some of the most amazing people to interview and to share with you.

This week's interview is no exception. I recently spent 30 or so minutes talking with John Rosen and AnnaMaria Turano of MCAWorks, and authors of the exciting new book Stop Watch Marketing. I met John and AnnaMaria at the 800 CEO-Read Author Pow-Wow in December, and I LOVED the concept of their book that they shared with me. I knew when the book came out I had to share the ideas with you, so here you are. I'll be posting the interview in audio form shortly so you can listen in.

For now, read and enjoy the written words from my conversation with John and AnnaMaria about Stopping the Clock for Your Customers!

Phil Gerbyshak: For those who don't know, please give me an overview of your backgrounds.

Stop Watch Marketing: John and I started working together at another consulting firm from 1999-2000. In 2002, we decided, along with John Hawkins who is another partner, that we could do our own thing along. We decided to write a book. In running the Consultancy, we called a meeting three years ago ago and said we have to do other things to market and build the firm, and to build intellectual capital. rather than calling clients and asking for more projects. Each partner (there are now five) took on a specific assignment. They all picked something beyond consulting to help build the firm. The one that Anna Marie and John picked was to get a book out there. We know there are a lot of things that we don't think are sufficiently addressed in the marketing world right now. We took that one on as a project.

The result is Stopwatch Marketing. It's basic premise is that Marketers (Managers, Vice President of Marketing, or small business people), are all charged with same thing, creating a sale. Marketers give insufficient importance to the importance and power and implications of the customers time. A lot of clients, we have found, really believed that the consumer hangs on every word in a 30 second commercial, or reading the print ad from beginning to end. We found ourselves constantly telling them that our research tells them that during the 30 second commercial, the consumer goes to the refrigerator to get a beer, and the Marketer is lucky to get 5 seconds across to them. Think about the “time” the target customer is willing to give you to sell them. Then we developed this image that had a lot of power with our clients. Think of every customer having, figuratively, a ticking stopwatch in the back of head, counting down to moment they actually decide to buy. Your role as Marketer is to either slow that ticking down so that you can capture their attention and make the sale, or speed up and stop it right then and there, and close sale. It is a complex issue. You have to figure what time segment you are going to work with, speed or slow down, so you can capitalize on the moment the customer decides to buy.

What Marketers fail to realize is the level of risk that the consumer is willing to take, or not willing to take, in any purchase decision. This is something that the book talks about. There are lots of decisions people make, having lunch, buying a soda, etc., that have a very small level of risk. On the other hand, it might be a decision they might have to live with a couple years, some for the rest of their lives. They could be buying furniture, painting walls of their home, or deciding on a college for their children. These decisions are of a higher level of risk, when there might be more thought put into it and Marketers need to realize how important this purchase decision is in someone's life.

PG: Why don't more companies do this?

SWM: Companies today know how to do the blocking and tackling of marketing so they have the P's C's, and everyone is embracing the idea of consumer centricity. But they are not going a level beyond, not thinking of their own time and consumers time. In a way, it is very self- centric thinking. As a Marketer, we know this, because we probably experienced that as well. You think about your product 24 hours a day 7 days a week. No consumer is ever giving that much thought and time to thinking about your product the same way as you, the Marketer, are. So you really need to flip your thinking, walk the walk of your customers life, how much time they are going to spend listening to messages, sifting though information, weighing purchase options and ultimately making a decision.

Flipping that thinking is so important, when you're thinking of anything, thinking of it from the other persons perspective instead your own. You know your message, customers don't know or care. Customers have no imperatives to care, unless it is something urgent and important to them at this point in time. Otherwise, customers have other things to do. An example in the book is replacing tires. We drive around three or four years, the last thing you think is that you need tires. When the moment comes you need them, it is deeply emotional, and highly urgent to the customer. Their thoughts may be that they don't know about tires, don't have time for this, and don't want to make a mistake. How am I going to do this ? The risk is two-fold: The customer doesn't want the wrong tires, or they don't want to feel like their next door neighbor got a better deal. More psychological than marketing research, people think in relative and competitive terms. It's not so much in an absolute sense, “Did I pay less for...” , rather, “Did I pay less than my neighbor”.

The Dark Side of Phil Gerbyshak

This week I was hoping to have an interview posted for you with AnnaMaria Turano and John Rosen, authors of the great book Stop Watch Marketing. I'm almost done processing the MP3, and will have it for you NEXT Thursday morning.

Instead, this week I invite you to check out part 2 of my interview with Stephen Hopson, where he shares the "dark side of Phil Gerbyshak." He also asked me questions about my mentors, how I've dealt with adversity in my life, the defining moment in my life, and much much more.

Go check out Stephen Hopson Interviews Phil Gerbyshak, part 2. If you missed part 1, you can check it out as well.

Interviewed by the Professor of Adversity University

The interview is up, and if I do say so myself, it is FANTASTIC! Stephen Hopson nailed it with some great questions about me in an interview he posted today.

Questions included:

• What do I do for a living?
• 3-5 sentences you won't find out about me from reading anything here at Make It Great!
• The beginnings of Make It Great! and how I created the name
• Why did I start Make It Great!
• ...and many more!

So check out Stephen Hopson Interviews Phil Gerbyshak today. Then come back, and tell me what you thought :)

Class at Adversity University Begins Tomorrow

Recently my good friend Stephen J. Hopson asked me if I would spend a little time with him to be interviewed for his incredibly popular interview series Stephen Hopson Interviews. How could I turn down a guy who has overcome so much in his life, to be a pilot, a stockbroker, and now, a professional speaker. Now for any person, this would be darn amazing. But the fact that Stephen is deaf makes all of these feats even more amazing!

Don't believe he's incredible yet? Check out his first VIDEO post! Wow!

Check out Stephen's promotion post. It's done so well, it makes ME want to read our interview, and I know what the questions are going to be.

Tune in tomorrow to check out Stephen Hopson Interviews Phil Gerbyshak, over at Adversity University.

Valentine's Day Gift: An Interview with Karinna Kittles-Karsten

If you've been part of the Make It Great! community for any length of time, you'll know I love books. And I love people. So when I was approached to review a book about love and people, I knew I had to learn more about the author, and then share our conversation with you.

 

Karinna Kittles-Karsten is the author of the new book Intimate Wisdom The Art of Sacred Love, and of the Sacred Love blog. Her writing is from the heart and touched me in a very deep way. Maybe it's where I am in my life right now. I don't know.

 

When I got the book, I knew right away I needed to talk more to Karinna and learn about her philosophy on life, and on why she chose to write such a meaningful book.

 

I think you'll really enjoy the interview, as she is so deep and full of meaning. She's also got a very special offer for the month of February for us, so I encourage you to read all the way through and check it out.

 

And if you're nice, I just may have a copy of this wonderful book to give away to 1 lucky Make It Great! reader. You'll just have to read all the way to the end to see what I've got cooked up for you, dear reader and friend.

Chef Seth Godin: Coming soon to Make It Great!

I wanted to give you advance warning so you can tell all your friends: Seth Godin and I will be doing a podcast on January 15th, and we'll be discussing his new book Meatball Sundae. I'm also hoping to get the transcript up from our podcast shortly after our conversation, so please stay tuned for that.

What will we be discussing? Meatballs and Sundaes, of course. And a whole lot about marketing, story telling, and how to avoid creating a meatball sundae.

I've read all of Seth's books, and enjoyed them all. I reviewed his book All Marketers are Liars, and strongly recommend his books if you're looking to be more remarkable. If you want to be average, stay away from Seth!

Bookmark Make It Great! today, and come back every day, or at least come back the morning of January 15th so you can listen and learn from the master marketer, Seth Godin.

Or if you prefer, go pick up a Seth Godin action figure, yours for only $9.

Personal Brand Interview Up at Buzzoodle

If you'd like to learn more about the awesome Employee Evanglism Workshops I'm doing in January in Las Vegas, check out this Buzz Marketing Personal Brand interview I recently. Ron Buzzoodle McDaniel asked some great questions of me like:

• What do you contribute to the Employee Evangelism Workshops?
• Phil, you have a good full time job with a large company and you are not in sales and marketing. Why have you worked so hard building a great personal brand?
• What are the biggest advantages of having a strong, online personal brand?
• and a few others sure to help you understand branding more.

So check out the Buzz Marketing Personal Brand interview or register today to join Ron and I at the Employee Evanglism Workshops in Las Vegas January 23rd and 24th. Need more reasons to join us? How about 10 Excuses to Come to Vegas in January?