Demystifying the Magic of Service

Service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.

Leon Gorman
L.L. Bean

I’ve Been Thinking…there must be a magical answer for consistently delivering unequalled, exceptional, out of this world service. Then, I remembered Walt Disney’s comment that, “There is no magic in magic, it’s all in the details.”

I love the story of the trucker who came into a truck stop café and placed his order. He said, “I want three flat tires, a pair of headlights and a pair of running boards.”

The brand new server, not wanting to appear naïve, went to the kitchen and said to the cook, “This guy out there just ordered three flat tires, a pair of headlights and a pair of running boards. What in the world does that mean?”

Chuckling, the cook said: “Three flat tires mean three pancakes, a pair of headlights is two eggs sunny side up, and running boards are two slices of crisp bacon.”

“Oh, OK!” said the server. She thought about it for a moment and then spooned up a bowl of beans and gave it to the customer.

The trucker asked, “What are the beans for, missy?”

She replied, “I thought while you were waiting for the flat tires, headlights and running boards, you might as well gas up!”

I marvel at the way the server quickly learned to see the situation from the trucker’s point of view. Three simple, brilliant service details evolve from this simple illustration.

First, treat every person you encounter as the most important person in your life. I mean everyone!

A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan. She asked the class, “If you saw a person lying on the side of the road with torn clothes, wounded and bleeding, what would you do?”

Visibly affected by the image the teacher described, one little girl softly responded, “I think I’d throw up!”

Some people are more lovable than others. Service excellence digs deep to treat “every person” special and over deliver the way you serve them.

Be so nice to people they won’t believe it. It’s much easier to build a good relationship, treat people with kindness and go out of our way to make them feel special than to struggle rebuilding damaged relationships.

Companies spend fortunes every year on market studies, product evaluations, and future projections. What if they invested equal time in determining from their customers what makes them feel like the most important customer the business works with?

Key Point: The people you make feel special will become special… And they will never forget the way they were treated and who treated them that way.

Second service consideration. Incredible service flows out of the brilliant mastery of small details.

Lee Cockerell, writing about his experience as executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney said: “It’s not the magic that makes it work; it’s the way we work that makes it magic.”

Service mastery means paying attention to the small stuff. Extraordinary results are not an accident. They flow out of consistent, robust, carefully orchestrated common sense practices that sincerely make people the priority.

It’s not the fancy stuff that makes the difference. . . It’s the fundamental stuff. The simple stuff. As W. Clement Stone has written, “Success comes from doing common things uncommonly well!”

Smile uncommonly well. Be interested. Affirm people. Be uncommonly personal. Show the highest level of respect. Be positive. Upbeat. Unshakeable. Uncommon professionalism and unmatched friendliness.

Understand feelings. Get results! Make “please” and “thank you” your favorite phrases. Look people in the eye. Display a contagious positive attitude. Spruce up your appearance.

These are your basic, essential, worth mastering “magic” details.

Key Point: Pay attention to the small stuff and you’ll get attention.

Third service detail worth mastering. Anticipate and exceed people’s expectations.

I’m increasingly convinced the purpose of an organization is to anticipate, identify and exceed people’s needs and expectations. That should also be the priority of every person working in the organization.

Hospitality expert Walt Disney said; “We’re in second place if we meet expectations. We need to exceed them. We’re convinced of that.”

Under promise and over deliver. Know your customer better than anyone else. Get close. Treat every situation as unique. Give personalized attention that meets personal needs. Do what you say you will do and don’t do what you say you won’t do. Eliminate stupid rules that make it impossible to go above and beyond.

Service is no longer about satisfaction. The expectation’s bar is continually being raised. What’s good enough today probably won’t be good enough tomorrow. We are involved in the unending challenge of leaping over the bar to delight a customer. Service standards are higher than ever. There are brief moments, and sometimes enormous windows of opportunity to exceed expectations by doing the unexpected.

Fix things, seek alternatives, and freely admit mistakes. Apologize, customize and individualize your approach. Deliver on your promises. . . Plus one percent.

Key Point: You don’t decide if you’ve exceeded expectations. The customer does.

Virtually every guest at the Walt Disney World Resort typically sees three very recognizable aspects of the magical service: the cleanliness of the park, the show and certainly the sincere friendliness of the cast.

Comments, surveys, focus group and letters affirm the business philosophy of Walt Disney, who said; “Quality will win out! Give the people everything you can give them. Keep the place as clean as you can keep it. Keep it friendly. Make it a fun place to be.”

This basic philosophy applies to every form of business. Demystifying the magic of service begins with treating every person as a V.I.P. Then determine how you can anticipate and exceed people’s expectations. Finally, pay attention every minute detail that makes the first two possible.

Sincere efforts to deliver excellent service are easy to spot. They are personalized, focused and leave the customer looking to their next experience.

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.

Peter Drucker

The Incredible Power Of Choice

“One’s philosophy is not best expressed by words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run - we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are our responsibility.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve been thinking. . . about how life is filled with changes, challenges, demands, pressures, and a host of other unavoidable dilemmas. That’s reality!

This, too, is reality. We can choose how to deal with these issues. Whining, complaining, moaning, and groaning are popular. In fact, pessimism has become a national pastime. It is the popular way to look at the world. It’s seems too painful or takes too much energy to do something about the undesirable events. Instead, we want others or the situation to change so life will be easier for us.

Choosing to rise above the circumstances is powerful and greatly affects the outcome of the day’s activities. It’s not the events that mold your life, determine your feelings, or guide your actions. Rather, it is the way you decide to interpret and respond.

We must be convinced that we actually have the ability to choose our responses. The value, power, and impact of any life event are determined by your response. Unfortunately, there are many who have conditioned themselves to practice just the opposite.

Internalize this simple yet profound truth. You alone make all of your life's choices and these choices determine the quality of your experiences, what you become and the destination you attain. The seemingly smallest choice, just like a gentle breeze, will set in motion the influences to dramatically affect your life.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi invested twenty-five years researching what makes people happy. He discovered that happiness doesn’t just happen. He was also intrigued to find that happiness had little to do with money, power or material possessions.

Csikszentmihalyi’s conclusion showed that “people who control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

Our present and our future are not a matter of chance but are intricately woven with the threads of our own choosing.

Be careful not to allow yourself to be victimized by the society in which you live. It’s not the culture, the times, the social circumstances. When we blame these elements for our conditions, we return to them for the answers and are continually disappointed. This is the fast track to “victimitis.”

Another roadblock to life by choice is assigning undue control to inherited traits. These people are convinced the quality of their lives have been predetermined through some “gene-o-matic” or DNA mixer. There is no doubt that our social and family conditioning impact each of us but I would be quick to contend each of us possesses the ability to rise above those influences.

Master motivator Og Mandino wrote in The Choice: “There is a better way to live. Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You don’t need to spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But, hold on! If this is true, why have so many among us apparently elected to live in that manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that they had any choices!”

“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

Arnold J. Toynbee