The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty (13 page)

You’ll recall from Chapter 2 that before hiring an employee some Apple managers ask themselves, “Could this person go toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs?” The second question they ask themselves is, “Can this person provide Ritz-Carlton quality of customer service?” I’ve had the opportunity to interview The Ritz-Carlton leaders, and I learned that, like Apple, empowerment is one of the fundamental building blocks of The Ritz-Carlton experience.

For over two decades, “The Ritz-Carlton Basics” guided every interaction between employees and guests, and these twenty rules dictated everything, from exactly what to say (Never say “Hello.” Use more formal greetings like “Good morning”) to actions (Never let a guest carry his own luggage). But as the world changed, so did the typical Ritz-Carlton hotel guest, and it became time to rethink service values by empowering employees to think and act for themselves, but still in accordance with The Ritz-Carlton vision.

Senior leaders conducted dozens of internal focus groups, meeting personally with thousands of employees around the world to develop a new set of service values. Frontline employees were asking for more flexibility in the way they were allowed to interact with guests. They wanted to be “empowered” to do what they knew was right.

In a service environment like Apple or The Ritz-Carlton, the goal is to create an emotional engagement with the brand so strong that a Ritz guest will not consider staying anywhere else and an Apple customer would never consider buying a PC. At The Ritz-Carlton, the quality of the beds, furniture, or flat screen TVs are all part of the experience, but in a luxury hotel those things are expected. Once basic luxury standards are met, the emotional engagement comes through the experience guests have with employees. Nobody has an emotional experience with an object.

In 2006, The Ritz-Carlton introduced its new service values, guidelines for employees to follow during guest interactions. Among the values: “I am empowered to create unique, memorable, and personal experiences for our guests.”
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(Service Value 3); “I understand my role in creating The Ritz-Carlton mystique.” (Service Value 4);
“I own and immediately resolve guest problems.” (Service Value 6); and “I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me.” (Service Value 9).
I am involved
. These three words hold the key: invite your employees to participate in the creation of the brand, listen to what they have to say, act on their feedback, and they will walk through walls for you.

Every day at the nearly a hundred Ritz-Carlton hotels around the world, in each department, on every shift, employees are called in for a “lineup,” a staff meeting. The lineup is a fifteen-minute pep talk where wow stories are shared with everyone on the team. Wow stories feature The Ritz-Carlton hotel employees who create unique, memorable, and personal experiences for guests. A housekeeper who shows up for the evening shift in Shanghai will hear the same story as a doorman had heard in Hong Kong an hour earlier or a waiter in New York the next morning. In my book
Fire Them Up!
, I included some real wow stories. Here’s one example:

Today’s wow story is from The Ritz-Carlton, San Juan Hotel, Spa & Casino and demonstrates today’s “Service Value 1 in building strong relationships to create Ritz-Carlton guests for life.

A married couple had been repeat guests at the hotel for the past few years. This year, a suit the wife was wearing was stained due to a spill on the counter. It was a very expensive suit and it was sent immediately to the laundry to be dry-cleaned. The stain, however, would not come out. The guest was very disappointed when she checked out, as nothing could be done to restore her ruined suit. Harold Rodriquez, Laundry Supervisor, called her home to apologize and asked if she was willing to FedEx her suit so that another attempt could be made to remove the stain from the suit. The guest agreed and Harold contacted an external laundry company for their assistance. Harold called the guest every day to keep her informed on the progress of the suit cleaning. Unfortunately, the outside laundry company was unable to remove the stain.

Harold wanted to turn the situation around and build a relationship for life with the guests. He therefore proceeded to get the cost of the suit reimbursed, took the check, got on a plane to New York, drove to their home, and rang the doorbell. When he introduced himself, the couple looked surprised. Harold received smiles and hugs. Their gratitude was priceless. He had created a memorable experience for the guests by turning a problem into an opportunity to “wow” them with genuine care and service excellence. His belief that nothing is impossible: when you do something from the heart everything in life can be accomplished.
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If you find this story hard to believe, rest assured, it is true. The hotel employees, the “ladies and gentlemen” of The Ritz-Carlton, are empowered to do what’s in the best interest of the guest and what they believe is required to nurture a long-term relationship between the guest and the brand.

In
Drive
, Daniel Pink analyzed dozens of studies in the area of human motivation. Pink believes that most businesses fail to understand what motivates people. “Too many organizations still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science.”
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Companies that pursue outdated methods of motivation are quick to create pay-for-performance incentives like commissions or free gifts to get employees to work harder. Yes, people have to earn a living. Wages, salaries, and benefits are what Pink calls “baseline rewards.” If those baseline rewards are not adequate, then employees will focus on the unfairness of the situation instead of delivering exceptional customer service. “But once we’re past that threshold, carrots and sticks can achieve precisely the
opposite
of the intended aims,”
⁶
writes Pink. Carrots and sticks can extinguish motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, encourage shortcuts and unethical behavior, and foster short-term thinking.

Pink discovered that for routine tasks that do not require a lot of creative thinking, external rewards can provide a small motivational boost. But for higher thinking creative tasks, the best approach is to motivate employees with a combination of praise, positive feedback, and the feeling of autonomy and empowerment.

Returning to Apple, store Specialists are paid an average of $11.25 an hour. The salary ranges from $9 to $16 an hour, comparable to wages at other retailers. The technicians who operate the Genius Bar can make anywhere from $32,000 to $50,000 a year, the equivalent salary for an assistant or store manager in another noncomputer retail store. This salary range meets Pink’s criteria of a baseline reward. So how then do you explain the fact that Apple employees are passionate, friendly, and motivated to create a superior customer experience? Intrinsic motivators make the difference.

An analysis of intrinsic employee motivation wouldn’t be complete without examining the importance of the twin pillars of purpose and praise. Pink says that Motivation 2.0 centered on maximizing profits. Motivation 3.0 seeks to reclaim an aspect of the human condition that most corporations have overlooked: the emotional catalyst of working for a grander purpose beyond just making money. Pink quotes former McDonald’s executive Mats Lederhausen who says, “I believe wholeheartedly that a new form of capitalism is emerging. More stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, and the larger community) want their businesses to have a purpose bigger than their paycheck.”
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The feeling of purpose relates to the discussion of vision in Chapter 1. Vision attracts evangelists. Steve Wozniak was wooed by Jobs’s vision to put a computer in the hands of everyday people. People want to know that their work is adding up to something great. Steve Jobs once said, “Being the richest man in the cemetery didn’t matter to me. Going to be bed at night saying, ‘We’ve done something wonderful,’ that’s what matters.”

Instill your employees with a sense of purpose beyond making money. Google specifically states that monetary incentives are
“secondary to career growth, work environment, and engaging work opportunities.” By focusing on these qualities Google seeks to develop motivated and collaborative employees who pursue achievements not for the money but for the sake of innovation, progress, and accomplishment. One offshoot of the Google philosophy is its well-known policy of giving engineers 20 percent time: one day a week when employees can work on any project of their choosing even if it has nothing to do with their day-to-day assignments. The social media site LinkedIn has a similar program. I was invited to speak about communication skills, and it was open to any employee who wanted to attend. The presentation was held on a Friday, and I noticed other speakers as well, representing a wide variety of interests, including a yoga instructor. On one Friday a month, the company devoted the day to personal growth and learning. Employees were even encouraged to shadow peers in other departments who perform different functions. The more you show that you care, the harder employees will work for you and the more creative they will be in moving your brand forward.

I had the opportunity to speak with Google’s vice president Marissa Mayer. She told me that one of the keys to motivating young people especially is to give them a sense of empowerment and purpose. She said that employees want more than a paycheck. They want to feel as though they are contributing to the growth of the company. Mayer holds office hours each day to help people feel that sense of purpose. Office hours begin at 4:00 p.m. each day and last for about ninety minutes. Employees add their name to a board outside her office, and she gives them about fifteen minutes of time. Sometimes project managers need approval on a marketing campaign or just a few minutes to pitch their idea. According to Mayer, many of Google’s most interesting projects got their start during office hours. It gives employees a voice. They are heard, and sometimes that’s all they’re looking for.

Zappos is another company considered the gold standard when it comes to customer service. When I visited Zappos headquarters in Henderson, Nevada, I was hit with a wave of fun, enthusiasm, and employee engagement the likes of which I’ve rarely seen in corporate America. Trust and empowerment is the name of the game.
Every employee I met was happy—really happy. It starts during the hiring process. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh told me that one of the questions he asks of new recruits is, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?” Someone who answers
1
might be too uptight for the Zappos culture. Someone who answers
10
might be too nutty!

Just as Walt Disney believed every cast member should reflect the brand, so too do Zappos employees reinforce the brand’s culture. My first taste of the culture started with the driver who picked me up from my hotel. The driver said she shared time as one of the receptionists. When I asked why she picked me up when I could have taken a cab, she said, “We do this for all our guests. We treat you as family. If your family is in town, you’d pick them up, wouldn’t you?” I was beginning to understand how Zappos grew from a start-up in Tony Hsieh’s apartment to a billion-dollar-a-year customer service champion. During the Zappos tour I noticed the office of the Zappos “goal coach.”

“What’s a goal coach?” I asked a lady sitting in the office.

“We help people reach their goals,” she responded.

“Oh, you mean teach them leadership skills or other skills related to their work?”

“Leadership is part of it, but we literally help people achieve their dreams, regardless of whether those aspirations are work-related or not. For example, one person came in this week and wanted to learn to play guitar. So we helped him find lessons. Another woman was procrastinating on the book that she wants to write, so we sat down and developed a schedule together.”

“What does that have to do with Zappos?” I asked.

“It has everything to do with Zappos,” she said.

Tony Hsieh will tell you that Zappos is not in the business of selling shoes. It’s in the business of delivering happiness—to customers and to employees. Happy employees equal happy customers, and happy customers equal big profits. It’s a simple equation that works for Zappos. It works for Apple. It will work for you, too.

When people receive genuine praise, their doubts diminish and their spirits soar. Apple employees who make a mistake are not reprimanded harshly in front of their peers. They are simply pulled aside, asked to try harder the next time, given a high five, and put back on the floor. When they do well, they are often praised in front of their peers.

Sometimes praise comes in the form of encouragement when a person messes up. Years before former GE CEO Jack Welch earned the nickname “Neutron Jack,” he almost blew up a factory for real. In 1963, early in his career, Welch was sitting in his Pittsburgh office when he heard a tremendous explosion outside. The blast blew the roof off the factory across the road. Nobody was seriously injured, but Welch admitted it was entirely his fault and drove a hundred miles to explain the incident to a corporate group executive. Welch figured he would be fired. Instead his boss was more concerned that Welch had learned something from the accident to prevent something like it from happening at his factory or any other factory, for that matter. “When people make mistakes, the last thing they need is discipline. It’s time for encouragement and confidence building,”
⁸
Welch said.