Issue No. 495 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting includes a confession! John thought he could quickly sail through a new customer experience book. Not! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #20 below.)
Oh, my! Every chapter (honest!) packs a punch in this hot-off-the-press customer experience toolkit, From Impressed to Obsessed.
I Must Confess!
Yikes! I got carried away in the previous issue with my long (but fascinating!) review of Becoming Trader Joe. My penance: today’s short review!
I MUST CONFESS. While the title intrigued me, From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans…really, would there be any new or fresh thinking in yet one more book on the customer experience?However…an endorsement from Horst Schulze of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is high praise. (Ditto endorsements from Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith, and Chester Elton.) And the wheelchair story from the hotel’s Dubai property is a stunner! Their mantra “radar on and antenna up” will be your next weekly staff meeting sermon!
I MUST CONFESS. I’m fairly well read. I know about Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Hyundai…so really, I thought, I can speed-read through this book.
However…I’ve never linked those customer stories to actual principles. The author, Jon Picoult, just gifted me with a new mental filing system—12 slots for his 12 memorable principles. I switched from speed-reading to speed-learning.
I MUST CONFESS. I skipped the intro, looked for the most interesting chapter title—and thought I could judge the book by that chapter. One and done, I thought.
However…Chapter 17, “Deliver Pleasant Surprises,” hooked me in the first line! (No spoiler alert, but after you read it—you’ll share this “hook” and the principle with your colleagues dozens of times!) Pastor Picoult practices what he preaches!
I MUST CONFESS. Okay, I thought, I’ll read just one more chapter. No author on the planet can deliver 18 must-read chapters.
However…I was wrong again. Every chapter packs a punch:
• Chapter 9: the Expedia story in “Make It Effortless.” (“Answer questions before they’re asked.”) Plus, my favorite line:
said no one, ever.
• Chapter 18: the “Maggots on a Plane” incident in “Recover with Style.”
I MUST CONFESS. Honest. I tried to skip a few chapters. No crime in that, right?
However…the “Putting the Principles Into Practice” bullet points at the end of each chapter were just too much. I had to read the full chapter! Add in the “Key Takeways” (more bullet points!)—and Picoult ensured his book would be read. I mean, devoured. So don’t skip any chapter—especially Chapter 7—“Create Peaks and Avoid Valleys.”
I MUST CONFESS. I went back and did a proper read—even starting in the intro.
However…I should have read page one first (what a concept!). The first sentence of this powerful book is convicting: “If you’re aspiring to satisfy your customers, then you are aspiring to mediocrity.” Yikes!
I MUST CONFESS. After a very unsatisfying customer experience earlier this month, my wife and I labeled the 90-minute torture session, “From Impressed to Distressed.” I sent Jon Picoult’s book to the company’s CEO! (Maybe you should order two copies: one for you, and one ready to send to the Chief Offender of your next disappointing customer experience!)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans, by Jon Picoult. Are you a listener? Listen to the audio book on Libro.fm (pre-order for January delivery).
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Pop Quiz! Write down 12 principles for converting our customers and employees into lifelong fans. You have 12 minutes. Go!
2) In the chapter, “Keep It Simple,” the author notes that Trader Joe’s made a conscious decision to limit the number of products it carries. Compare 4,000 SKUs (stock-keeping units) vs. the average grocery store count of 50,000 SKUs. Why might less products, programs, and services help create raving fans—versus adding more, more, and more? Read my review of Becoming Trader Joe.
3) Bonus Idea for Your Team. Offer a Chick-Fil-A gift card (free lunch!) to the team member who will read and report on the customer service stories in Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath. (Read my review.)
Ruth Haley Barton: “Like so many of us as leaders, Moses’ natural gifting was at the mercy of his unresolved past and the unexamined emotional patterns that drove him.” (See Mistake #20 in Mastering Mistake Making.)
Mistake #20 of 25: Trying to Fix Workaholism on My Own
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned
John’s Mistake #20: “I did not understand—nor address—my workaholism and the harm it inflicted on my family and coworkers. I should have asked a counselor for help much, much sooner.”
Read this chapter to discover what John learned and how and when he got help. A gifted therapist was instrumental in walking John through what drove his workaholism, often called “the addiction that America applauds.”
For Mistake #20, John recommends this book:
• Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, by Ruth Haley Barton (Read John’s review of his 2009 book-of-the-year.)
• Order the 10th anniversary expanded edition of Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership.
Ruth Haley Barton writes, “Like so many of us as leaders, Moses’ natural gifting was at the mercy of his unresolved past and the unexamined emotional patterns that drove him.”
"MISTAKES ARE LIKE TUITION." Read the blog by Dr. Richard (Rick) Goossen, Chairman of The Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization (The ELO Network), "Have You Mastered the Craft of Making Mistakes?" And listen to George P. Wood's interview with John Pearson, "“How to Make Mistakes Well” on the Influence Podcast. And, if you missed John's half-day board seminar on Nov. 18, 2021, hosted by The Barnabas Group/Orange County, “The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board – How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance," you can now order the 107-page workbook on Amazon. Click here.
___________________________________________________________
JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Beware the “Lampshade Effect,” warns Jon Picoult in From Impressed to Obsessed. This is “the tendency for people to take a small error or oversight in the customer experience and infer from it that something bigger may be amiss.” (See also Ball #5 in “The Printing Bucket” chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets—a dozen typos in the airline emergency row’s safety chart! Yikes!) Are you overlooking your “small errors?” How would you know? Is it time for an objective assessment of your small and big errors? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
Comments