Everyone likes to talk about delighting customers and how to create remarkable experiences. Only a few people get actually in a position when they have deliver these experiences. Paul Hemp, a senior editor at Harvard Business Review, stepped into the role of a Waiter at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and tells the story of his experiences when delivering world’s best service.

So what’s the key to the world-class service at Ritz Carlton?

Empowering employees […] is a sign of the respect with which the company vows to treat them. And employees are expected to treat one another the same way. Yet another Gold Standard is the corporate motto: “We are Ladies and Gentleman serving Ladies and Gentleman. In terms of human dignity, the argument goes, Ritz-Carlton customers and employees are equals. “You are service professionals, not servants,” a video we watch on company values tells us. “If you feel good about yourself, you’ll treat others, including colleagues, well”.

As I leave the hotel and walk across the Boston Common in the gathering dusk, I reflect on what I’ve learned about teaching and motivating employees to provide truly memorable service. On thing seems clear: Great customer service should be based on dynamic principles rather than a rigid formula. […]

For staff to delight customers, managers must do more than grant their employees freedom to do what is necessary, they must motivate employees to exercise that freedom.

Read the full article here or buy reprints here.

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Diego Rodriguez over at metacool has a nice post about his observations of Toyota Prius drivers. The key message is that there is certain behaviour of your customers regarding your product that you can’t control. But exactly this behaviour can have a serious impact on your brand and the related image.

These are chapters in building your brand (and spreading your idea) that can not be written ahead, but in a follow-up post, he comes up with a solution: rewarding brand-building behaviour.

In order to ensure that your customer are using your product in the right way or that the correct brand message gets delivered all you have to do is come up with incentives for rewarding brand-building behaviour. Diego comes up with a few examples for the Prius case and this exercise can be done for any product, service or brand.

Now the question is, how we can create ideas for rewarding brand-building behaviour? Let’s try it with these steps:

1. Identify “good” and “bad” brand-building behaviour situations
2. Identify situations, that would increase the status of your customers
3. Now mix them up and reward “good” brand-building behaviour and provide an incentive for not pursuing “bad”

The result would be a guideline (of course you don’t call it like that ), how to use the product or service and how to “life” the brand. The result is an “army of brand ambassadors” - which would open up countless new opportunities.

Posted in branding, checklist, idea worth spreading, thought in progress | Permalink | No Comments »