MIAMI BEACH, Fla.–Succeeding in the current marketplace, one rife with sophisticated digital offerings, can be made easier by listening to the original business consultant: your mother.
That’s the advice of Jeanne Bliss, the former chief customer officer with Land’s End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate, as well as the author of “Would You Do That to Your Mother?” who shared her perspective with the CO-OP THINK 19 Conference here on how the “lessons we learned as kids are also the most important lessons for growing your business.”
According to Bliss, there are four pieces of advice/strategies from moms everywhere that every organization should heed:
- Be the person I raised you to be
- Don’t make me feed you soap
- Put others before yourself
- Take the high road
Be the Person I Raised You To Be
Every organization needs to enable people to thrive if they wish to thrive themselves, Bliss said.
“What all the best companies do is hire the best people first,” she said. “These companies enable the best people to thrive. What happens to all of us in our lives is very good people do specific jobs, probably well. But we inadvertently don’t wire the human into our processes.”
She urged credit unions to adopt the “no passing” rule of the Cleveland Clinic, which means no passing people around from one employee to another. The Cleveland Clinic also changed each employee’s title to “caregiver,” even though it had previously been reserved for doctors. “What this does explicitly is give everyone permission to fluff someone’s pillows,” Bliss said.
Bliss said what makes the best companies different isn’t who they hire, but how they hire. She pointed to one CEO who takes people out to breakfast to see how they treat service personnel.
“Find a way to find the human behind the resume,” Bliss advised.
Bliss added that “memory creation is the currency of your brand. Who you hire is your brand. Do you put the right focus not just on who you hire, but how you recruit? Enabling people to thrive is a growth strategy.”
To execute on being the person your mother raised you to be, Bliss offered these three actions:
- Implement a no passing role
- Unique hire the human
- Know the difference between heroes and heroics
Don’t Make Me Feed You Soap
Bliss urged credit unions to build respect into their delivery systems.
“You impact customers by building a respect delivery machine,” said Bliss. “When you respect people, you are saying, ‘We honor you and know what you are going through.’ One of the most important things to do is respect people’s time.”
As an example of respecting people’s time, Bliss pointed to Amazon’s two KPIs: Do we have what they need, and we will get it to them when they want it.
There are other aspects to respecting people’s time, as well, she said.
“’Know me please’ is a sentiment we all have. Instead of thinking of AI as a data project, instead think of it as respect, and then it grows in priority,” Bliss observed.
Eliminating soapy moments is a growth strategy, according to Bliss, who offered these three KPIs for doing so:
- Simplify the KPIs/metrics
- Blend high-tech and high-touch
- “Build not only your engine, but your trust engine”
Put Others Before Yourself
This is all about helping consumers to achieve their goals, said Bliss.
“Having customers’ best interests at heart is paradoxical at first, but to achieve your goals you have to help your customer to achieve theirs first,” said Bliss. “At the end of the day, are they united?”
Bliss urged credit unions to “think about your hello.”
“Does your hello focus on people and emotion? This creates memory creation,” said Bliss, adding that companies that master the hello are three times more likely to be recommended and see an 85% increase in sales.
Bliss said one medical company vastly improved its hello by training its representatives to make eye contact. “Often, we’re not welcomed, we’re processed,” she said. “What’s the memory and emotion your customer has when they walk out the door, hang up, finish online? Is it, ‘We Honor your life?’”
She noted Alaska Airlines has created a “We Trust You Toolkit” for its employees that empowers them to make life better for passengers.
“Do you know your customer vulnerability moments?” asked Bliss. “Have you wired responses into your operating model to enable people to act?”
Bliss reminded credit unions they can grow their businesses by understanding lives, but said while lots of credit unions do surveys, there’s a problem.
“When you ask people, ‘How did we do,’ what you are going to get is backward feedback and no insight into their lives and what they need,” said Bliss.
To put others before yourself, Bliss summed up these three actions:
- Rethink your hello in every single one of your channels
- Build out your proactive “We Trust You” tool kit
- Understand: Don’t just ask
Take The High Road
Taking the high road may be good advice from mom, but it requires bravery in leadership, according to Bliss.
“The most successful companies are choosing to walk away from practices that create a chasm between them and their customers,” Bliss said. “This can’t happen without leaders and leaders who dare to be brave.”
Trust is a critical component in taking the high road, according to Bliss.
“We trust financial institutions with our money and doctors with our health, but sometimes we wonder, do they trust us back?” she related.
Bliss said when trust is given it grows the business. And that can mean removing a lot of the little things, such as petty charges, that seem to indicate a lack of trust, according to Bliss.
“Do you do any nickel and diming with customers? Are you charging for the if’s, ands, and buts? Is your apology your finest moment?” Bliss asked.
She urged credit unions to borrow from the Four Seasons hotels and conduct ongoing “glitch audits.”
To take the high road, Bliss offered these three actions:
- Do your own version of a trust audit. “Read every piece of paper and policy, not just for members, but also for employees, and ask yourself is there language in there that could be removed?”
- Nix opportunistic pricing
- Focus on the why, not the who
“Our responsibility is simple--it is to improve lives,” said Bliss.