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60 July | 2023 Business my manager" tells customers that you don't trust your employees' discretion or decision making. And if you don't trust the people you hire, why should your customers trust that they will have a consistently great experience? e Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company gives each employee a stipend of $2,000 to immediately remediate any customer service issue without having to ask a manager. You don't have to go that far, but this is definitely a policy that you should employ. c | 8 | c CELEBRATE Everybody loves a winner, and nobody wants to be on the losing team. Customers want to feel like the money they spend is making the world a better place. Publicly celebrate your wins, your anniversaries, your employee accomplishments (both at and outside of work), your growth, your community engagement, your awards and your achievements. Did one of your employees just earn a master's degree? Have a baby? Compete in a triathlon? Whatever it is, celebrate it. is Commandment has the added advantage of developing employee loyalty as well as customer loyalty. c | 9 | c RAISE THE STAKES Service innovation inherently means that you are challenging the assumptions of traditional expectations. On the flip side of this coin is the realization that doing something new is also a new opportunity to fail. Fortunately, studies show that customers value your effort nearly as much as the result. As such, they are incredibly forgiving of failure so long as every effort was made to succeed. So, challenge your team and yourself. Raise the stakes. Go big. Consistent yet average is still unimpressive. c | 10 | c HAVE A MISSION People are not motivated by "what"; people are motivated by "why." If the goal is to make tons of money and eventually go public, as an example, then you have missed the point of this exercise entirely. Where one spends one's money is a major part of one's identity. Customers align themselves with organizations that mirror who they are or, at least, who they'd like to be; therefore, the motives that drive your organization also drive your customers' loyalty. Without a mission, you and your customer have no "why." Embrace these 10 commandments. Carve them into stone, and bring them down from the mountain. If when you arrive you find your team obsessed with the Golden Calf of immediacy, tell them this: In today's world of instant gratification, do not worship speed. When speed becomes the only metric by which you judge service, then true service becomes irrelevant. Instead of conjuring new ways to complete a transaction faster, make the experience so amazing that the customer will never want it to end. Tra Williams is a speaker, business consultant and author of Boss Brain: Unlock Your Entrepreneurial Instincts. He is a nationally recognized thought leader in small business, franchising, leadership and entrepreneurship. Williams works with people, professionals and organizations to help them define success on their own terms and build the framework required to sustain it. For more information, visit trawilliams.com.

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