IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS
Good morning my friends and welcome to the Real Value Podcast Diamond Mining series. My name is Blaine and I’m honored to be bringing you this series of short stories, anecdotes, personal experiences, and valuable lessons from a variety of speakers, coaches, authors, and teachers from around the globe.
Have you ever had an experience that exceeded your expectations, or at least your preconceived notions of what you might be in for with a particular experience? Of course you have, everybody has. You may not necessarily remember it or have perceived it as having exceeded your expectations at the time, but we’ve all been to a restaurant, a store, a bar, or some other place where you maybe didn’t expect much more than you’ve received in the past from this, or similar places, but then you have an experience that changes your perspective on that type of experience and you think, “wow, I didn’t realize this level of service existed”, and then the follow up thought of, “why doesn’t everybody do this in their business?” If you’ve never had an experience like this, maybe it just means you’re not like me, or maybe it means you haven’t been on the lookout for these types of experiences like we always are. Being business owners and entrepreneurs, as well as business coaches, we’re always on the lookout for businesses and experiences that standout about the crowd with their product or service offerings. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been out somewhere and literally started making notes on what could be done to improve the product or service with little to no investment of capital. In fact, its almost always the little things that create a standout product of service experience that separates one thing, one business, one restaurant, or one service from another.
Over the course of this Diamond Mining Series, I intend to share these experiences and stories with you to give you a better idea of exactly what I’m talking about and then I’ll end the show with a few questions to get you thinking and maybe even brainstorming on how to take your business to another level, a level above your competition. Jolene and I just had an eye opening experience yesterday, which, by the way, happened to be Thanksgiving Day, that really stood out to both of us and, in fact, we had a discussion about and a note taking session that lead to this episode.
As I mentioned, yesterday was Thanksgiving Day and, instead of doing the traditional Thanksgiving Day gathering with family, which we’ll be doing on the weekend this year, we had been asked by some good friends to go to the Annual Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day football game in Detroit. Neither of us are big football fans, and if you know anything about the Detroit Lions, you’ll know that even if you are a big fan of pro football, its very difficult to be a fan of the Detroit Lions. They have a very, almost magical way, of losing almost every game they play. They can be up 2-5 touchdowns going into the second half of the game and somehow manage to lose the lead and lose the game by a touchdown or a field goal. Nevertheless, our friends asked if we wanted to go and it didn’t take us even 2 seconds to think about it and say yes because it sounded like the perfect non-traditional way to spend the day. Detroit is a 2 hour drive from my driveway to the stadium so we met our friends in a parking lot close by and made the drive together to Detroit. A delightful conversation packed ride into the downtown area and to a $10 parking lot at a business called the Anchor, which is a well known bar that fans go to pre-game and park their cars because they run a little shuttle from there over to Ford Field, which was maybe a mile or less from the bar. A great little extra service that cost zero dollars for people eating and drinking at the bar. Note number 1, a brilliant simple idea that I am sure many similar places around the country do if they’re close to a stadium like that. It gets people to park at their location, it gets them to come in an eat, drink and be merry, and it makes the whole experience memorable. An extra cost for the little bus, but easily made up by the number of people eating and drinking at their location before and after every game.
The next note we made happened while we were in the Anchor bar waiting to be served. The place was packed and it was Thanksgiving Day so we had no expectation of anybody being happy to be working, nor stellar customer service. In fact, I think we all had already made silent mental accommodations for what might end up being less than friendly service staff for having to work on that day with a packed crowd of fans from both teams playing that day. We were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a very nice staff saying good morning to every one of us as we passed them on our way to the back of the bar to the only free seating available. Not only were they friendly and saying ‘good morning’, they were all happily saying ‘Happy Thanksgiving!’ to us as we passed. They didn’t have to acknowledge us as we passed them, by the way, and the would not have gotten a bad mark in my book at all. How many places do we go to where you walk past the workers and they don’t necessarily acknowledge you because they’re not really expected to. Its nice if they do, but you can easily see they’re busy waiting on others, punching in orders into the computer system, cleaning tables, and running their tails off to take care of everybody. I can only imagine what it looked and sounded like in the back of the house where they’re making all the food. Nevertheless, mental note! Everybody is super friendly here and they don’t necessarily have to be. We’re going to eat and drink there anyways, everybody is and they know it.
Once we’re done there and ready to head to the stadium we make our way out into the streets and decide to make the walk over there instead of taking the shuttle. The streets are packed with people, theres a Thanksgiving Day parade going on, and why not. We’re all in good shape and we love walking so why not make the mile hike and take in a little bit of Detroit. Not to mention, its kind of a fun spectacle, if you’ve never seen true fans of a sport, to see how extensive they dress up, paint themselves, the chants and songs they sing, and just how happy they are to be supporting their team at that actual event. It’s just a fun and electric atmosphere. Even if you don’t like crowds, these kinds of events are fun experiences. So we make our way through the parade and into the stadium area where there is another level of bustle and activity going on. We’re an hour early so that we have time to make it in, get our seats, and enjoy the experience. As we approach one of the first outside gates to get into the stadium parking lot area we’re greeted by two gentleman guarding the gate. I’m not exactly sure what their job is because they’re not asking for tickets and they’re not security. As we’re about to pass them, the gentleman closest to me says, “stop! Wait! Question!”, I say “yes sir?”, he says, “Ham or Turkey?” It takes me a second to understand what he’s asking, and then I laugh and say, “actually, we just had this conversation on the ride here so that’s easy, Ham!”, he laughs and says, ‘have fun guys, enjoy the game, Happy Thanksgiving!” Mental note: I don’t know if this gentleman has been instructed to greet fans this way or if he’s just really good at making the best of his time standing in the cold. Whatever the answer, he succeeded in making our first experience with the staff at Ford Field, at a bare minimum, pleasant and fun.
So now we’re making our way around the outside of the stadium and parking lot and passing the throngs of fans, staff, and lots of Detroit law enforcement. Almost everybody we pass working in that capacity is saying hello and smiling, many saying “Happy Thanksgiving!” We pass an officer with a bomb sniffing dog doing vehicle checks to the cars and trucks parking the closest to the stadium and even he says hello as we pass, he doesn’t have to. Its not his job to be friendly, even cordial, and its not his job to be customer service. His job is to keep people inside and out safe. No big deal, must just be a nice guy. We move along. We walk half way around the outside of the stadium and find our entrance around back. There are 4 or 5 stadium staff standing around the stairwell leading down and into the stadium. Its not busy back in this area so they’re all just kinda standing around joking and having fun. As we approach they all yell out, “good morning everybody, Happy Thanksgiving!, have a blessed day, enjoy the game!” All of them. Not just one or two, but all of them had some kind of greeting and it was sincere. Every single one of these people was happy to be there, or at least they were really good at faking it. Mental note: I’m starting to think this might be a thing and that they actually train the hundreds and hundreds of staff working the games to be uber friendly and happy to have jobs. I don’t know and maybe never will, but so far, everybody has exceeded my expectations for friendliness in one of the toughest and roughest cities in the country and in a role they don’t necessarily have to be this friendly. I don’t expect to be treated rudely wherever I go, but I have no great expectation of what is likely to be a minimum wage gate worker at a stadium to go out of their way to make me feel better than before I met them. So far, this is exactly what is occurring! I can feel my attitude and joy increase as all of these happy people are injecting me with their joy.
We make our way into the stadium, into the security and ticket checking area, same thing! Greetings, ‘Happy Thanksgivings’, ‘enjoy the games’ being thrown around by people we have absolutely no expectation of delivering this kind of service. Again, we don’t want to be treated poorly or rudely, but we are not expecting to feel better after we pass people we may tend to somewhat dismiss in that role, a role I’m still not totally clear what it was. We’re inside the stadium now and looking for some vendors for food and drink. Same story and hopefully you’re getting the picture and the message. Every worker we encountered along the way, whether in a direct role for the stadium, or an ancillary role like law enforcement or an outside vendor, seemed to be the friendliest and most uplifting people they could have hired in those roles. Mental note: this must be part of the system of an operation like this and what must the constant message be at the meetings within each of the departments. Keep in mind, of course, this is a traditionally losing team that people make jokes about all the time. I had no expectations whatsoever that people would be this happy to be in these roles for a sport and a team that has done so poorly over so many years. Maybe that’s the impetus for such great service. Maybe the management and ownership says, “hey, we suck at the very thing that brings people in here each week so, at the very least, lets give them an awesome experience to pad their disappointment”, I don’t know. But the other thing we noticed was how welcoming all of the messages were for the opposing team and their fans. This was the Chicago Bears they were playing and they suck just a hair less than the Lions this season, but all of the messages from staff, on the Jumbotron screens, and all over the place were welcome, this is our home and we’re happy to have you here.
What systems do you have in place in your business to make those who are interacting with it, at any level, feel better about themselves?
Have you ever considered delivering that level of service, and, if not, why not? Maybe you operate a business, like an appraisal business, where you might laugh at the thought of making people feel better about themselves for doing business with you and my question would be, why? Who told you that your job does not include making people feel good? Where did you get the rules for how to operate your business when it comes to dealing with people? And the follow up question to that is, can you break those rules and/or rewrite them, and what would it take to do so? If a bunch of beer and hot dog vendors at a place that knows you’ll come no matter what can make people feel good about being there, how can you?
If a bomb sniffing dog patrol officer can make me feel better about having crossed his path, which is not his job, how can you, in your role, lift up those who cross your path?
And finally, what would it take to systematize that message and those behaviors up or down through every level of your company? What would it take for you to come up with a company policy and procedures manual for making people thrilled to have done business with you? In essence, what would you have to do to make people feel better, either for consciously choosing you and your company, or inadvertently for ending up with you and your company because somebody else chose you?
I’ll talk to you next week and we’ll mine some more diamonds together.
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