The Darling CEO

Money, Business, and Life Tips for the Working Mom

Top 8 Employee Engagement Books

The Top 8 Employee Engagement Books

Employee engagement is likely something that you have been hearing a lot about, but why is it important? And why should you invest the time to read employee engagement books?

KFC and Chick-Fil-A.   Two companies that sell essentially the same thing, chicken.  However, these two companies have drastically different success.  Chick-Fil-A outearns KFC by almost 4x the amount of revenue with only a fraction of the stores.  And to top it off, they are only open 6 days a week.

Why is there such a notable difference in the performance of these two chicken companies?  Chick-Fil-A has a culture that focuses on people.   They work hard to make sure that their employees are happy in order to make their customers happy.

Just think about any successful business- their success is likely enabled by engaged and empowered employees.  Apple?  They have enabled and empowered developers to bring revolutionary products to market.   Starbucks? They have engaged and empowered employees to deliver an exceptional experience to their customers.   Tesla? They have engaged and empowered engineers committed to revolutionizing the automobile industry.   Engaged employees make the difference.

Great leaders understand this secret to success and work hard every day to engage and empower their teams.

So how can you develop the skills necessary to achieve this type of success? Check out these employee engagement books that can help you build your leadership skills and grow your business.

 

The Truth About Employee Engagement: A Fable About Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery

This is a wonderful story about how engaged employees can make or break a business.  It also provides very practical advice on how to engage and empower your employees.  It’s a an easy read that any leader can benefit from reading!

 

Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT

There is a lot of misconception about how to engage employees. For example, many companies focus on getting ping ball tables in their breakrooms or hosting weekly Zoom cocktail hours.  These things will not make an empowered and engaged workforce.   This book does a great job of breaking down what employees truly need in order to be engaged and is a must-read employee engagement boook.

The Non-Obvious Guide To Employee Engagement (For Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else)

There are significant generational differences in what employees want and need in the workplace.  Great leaders understand these differences and work hard to respect these differences.     This book will walk you through these generational differences and provide practical ways to enable them.   This book also does a great job of dispelling engagement misconceptions that will help you take your leadership to the next level.

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People

The 5 Love Languages is a bit of a cult classic.   It has helped people in marriages and relationships for years understand what their partners value. This book does the same for leaders to understand what their employees need in the workplace. It’s an easy read that sheds light on what employees really appreciate to help empower and engage them.

The Seventh Level: Transform Your Business Through Meaningful Engagement with Your Customers and Employees

Employees experience a lot of noise. This book looks to cut out the noise in order to genuinely connect with your employees. This book is a quick read and provides easy strategies to help form connections and deepen employee engagement. As an added bonus, it also covers customer engagement so you can tackle both holistically.

 

Fish!: A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results

This was one of the first “business books” I read out of college and it has paid dividends.  At the end of the day, people spend more time with their coworkers than they spend with their family.   Employees that are able to have fun and enjoy their time together are far more likely to be engaged and have better overall well-being. This easy read reinforces the need for fun in the workplace and provides some great strategies and tactics to make your workplace more enjoyable and engaging.

 

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

‘Start with Why’ is a must read for any leader.   One sure-fire way to inhibit your employee’s engagement and performance is to not tie their work back to a purpose.   Working towards a greater good can help inspire the most curmudgeon of employees.  Once you are able to enroll employees in “the why”, you will unlock a new level of success. This book helps you do just that.

It’s the Manager: Moving From Boss to Coach

I’m a big fan of all of Gallup’s employee engagement work. They have unprecedented research of what contributes to employee engagement and drive success of organizations.  This particular book is great because it helps manager move beyond the archaic style of management to the style that resonates best with today’s workforce. This is a great read for new and tenured managers looking to deepen employee engagement.

 

These employee engagement books will certainly help you improve your leadership skills, better connect with employees, and enroll them in the greater purpose of the organization.

Do you have a favorite employee engagement book?   Leave a comment below and share!

 

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Service Delivery Fundamentals

Service Delivery Fundamentals

Providing a good customer experience is not just “nice to do”, it is a must-do. Whether you are a solopreneur with a handful of customers or a large corporation with thousands of customers- service delivery fundamentals are important to understand and put in action.

Lucky for us, most customers fundamentally want the same things. They want things to be easy, simple, and personalized.  Customers want things done quickly with minimal effort on their part. They also want to feel in control and empowered to do business how they choose to do business.   Finally, they want all of this with a smile 🙂

Just think of yourself.  What companies are you loyal to?  Why are you loyal to them? Likely, because they make you feel empowered, special, and make things easy for you.

Let’s take a look at some service delivery fundamentals to help you improve your customer experience and create loyal customers.

 

Make it Easy to Find You

Your interactions with your customers begin well before they ever talk to you.  By ensuring that it is easy for customers to find you and contact you, it sets the experience off on the right foot.

This also means knowing where your customers are and ensuring that you are there too.  For example, if you have a lot of millennial customers you will want to make sure that you have a good Facebook or Instagram presence.  Whereas Baby Boomers may rely on contacting you via phone more so you would want to have your phone number visible and easy to find. if you don’t know where your customers are hanging out online, ask them.

 

Make a Great First Impression

You have just a few seconds to make a great first impression with your customers.  In fact, some studies show that customers can start to form an impression of you within milliseconds. That is not a lot of time so you better make that time count!

You can make a great first impression by making sure that you set a professional and personal tone. Smiling (even if you are not in front of the customer) and offering a warm greeting helps you accomplish this.

A quick tip is to pretend that every customer is a friend that you haven’t seen for a while. It seems silly but it will help you be more excited and committed to helping them.

If you are helping customers in person, making sure that your physical location is clean, clear of clutter, and professional is a necessity. You must also pay close attention to your own physical appearance, making sure that you are appropriately dressed and wear a warm, welcoming smile.

 

Be Knowledgable

One common myth when it comes to customer service is that you need to “wow” your customers in order to provide a good experience. In most cases, that is not the case. The customer simply wants to get their needs met quickly and accurately.  If you can’t provide the basic needs the customer is looking for, trying to “wow” them will only further annoy them.  Being knowledgeable and knowing how to help your customer is the most basic service delivery fundamental.

An exercise that will help you become knowledgeable quickly is to write down the top 5 customer requests that you tend to struggle. Ask yourself what interaction do you dread? What do you have the most complaints about?  Once you identify those issues spend some time researching the issue and identify the steps to complete the request. Not only will researching help you but this can also serve as a quick reference guide.  Sometimes we just need to take a step back and recognize where our opportunities are.

 

Be Clear

Another service delivery fundamental is to be clear.  This can mean a couple of different things.   For one, being clear means that you speak slowly and clearly so that the customer can understand you.  This is especially true if you are on the phone where the customer can’t see you.  You should also avoid jargon and slang that customers may not be familiar with.

Being clear also means that you make it clear about the process.  What does the customer need to do? What are you supposed to do? When should they expect to hear from you?   A lot of customer frustration comes from not understanding the process so the more clear and upfront you are, the better it will be for everyone.

 

Reduce Customer Effort

The more effort that a customer is required to put in to do business with you, the less likely they will come back.  We live in a world of one-click shopping. Requiring a customer to jump through hoops just won’t work anymore.

Look for ways that you can take some of the effort away from the customer.   It can be as simple as walking as writing down information for a customer instead of having them write it down, transferring a call instead of having the customer call, or contacting a customer instead of having them contact you.

 

Ask For Feedback

Finally, always ask for feedback on how you can make the experience better for the customer.  Customers will tell you what they like and dislike about their experiences if you ask them.

You also don’t have to wait until the end of the interaction to ask them.  if you are going to be working with a customer longer than one interaction (for example, if you are helping them purchase a home), ask them throughout the process. For example, at the end of a call you can casually ask them “Mr. Smith, would you prefer more or less communication from me?” or “Am I contacting you the right way/right times?”.  Many times a bad experience is simply uncommunicated expectations so give them a chance to communicate them to you.

Each industry and each type of interaction surely has its nuances but if you follow these service delivery fundamentals you will surely win loyal customers over time.

Want to learn more? Take our Make Your Customers Love You course! This course will walk you through how you can improve your service delivery to create more loyal customers. Whether you work in customer service or own your own business, this course will walk you through all of the steps that you need to do to improve your customer service.

Make Your Customers Love You Course 

What service fundamentals do you value as a customer?   What annoys you?  Leave a comment below!

 

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Make Your Customers Love You

Make Your Customers Love You

Customer service is one of the most transferable skills that you can possess.  In almost every role, in every company, in every industry, you will have customers that you need to make happy.   Luckily, it’s pretty easy to make your customers love you!

Let’s take a look at some simple ways to improve your service delivery and make your customers love you.

It Starts with Mindset

Providing excellent service starts before you ever interact with a customer. In order to provide excellent service, you must have the right mindset. One that is focused on helping the customer, providing solutions, and ignoring any negativity thrown your way.

One quick exercise to get in the right mindset with even the most difficult of customers is to imagine that every customer is having the worst day of their lives.  This will help you meet each interaction with empathy and a focus on providing help.

What the Customer Sees Matters

Customers begin to assess the interaction within milliseconds. Everything they see from the moment they begin interacting with you begins to influence their perception. Meaning every little thing that the customer sees matters.

If you are in a brick and mortar location- everything from the parking lot to your own appearance needs to be paid attention to. If you are helping customers online, your website and online banking should be simple to understand and on-brand.

 

Positive Language Creates a Positive Interaction

Customers are looking to work with people that are confident, knowledgeable, and willing to help.  You can convey this by using positive language.  Ensure that the words and phrases that you use with customers are easy to understand and convey your willingness to assist them.

One way that this can come to life is always to look for a way to say yes. Even if you can’t provide a customer with what they need, provide an alternative solution that will help them.

For example, if you don’t offer a particular product the customer is looking for, offer to help them find something that could fit their needs. If that is not possible, offer the name of a competitor that may offer it.  Seem strange to send your customer to a competitor?  it may seem counter-intuitive but I guarantee the customer will remember your willingness to help and will come back to you for their future needs.

Know Where Your Customer Prefers to Do Business With You

Customers are looking to do business with companies where they prefer.  They want choices.  You can make your customers love you by knowing where your customers like to do business and having a really strong understanding of how to do business there.

For example, more and more customers are turning to social media for help. However, very few companies provide training around how to deliver a good experience there.  Knowing how to show up for customers will go far in improving your customer service skills.

A Complaint is an Opportunity

Every time a customer complains, they are giving you a gift.  Wait, what?!  A customer complaining certainly doesn’t seem like a gift. But hear me out…

For every customer that complains, there are 25 others out there that won’t. These silent unhappy customers are dangerous because will just leave without ever giving you a warning. Therefore, every time a customer complains, it is actually an opportunity to learn about how you can improve the experience for not only the complaining customer but for everyone else.

Not only that but when a customer has a problem and you fix it, they become more loyal to you.  They have trust that if something goes wrong, you will make it right.  This loyalty will pay off in increased retention, lower costs, and increased sales.  Sounds like a win-win to me!

Note: I’m not saying handling complaints is easy, check out these affirmations for stressful days!

These are just a few ways to deliver an exceptional customer experience and make your customers love you!  If you are interested in learning more, check out the Make Your Customers Love You course. This comprehensive self-paced course will provide more detail on developing the right mindset, learning what the customer expects and how to provide it, as well as identifying and helping upset customers.

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER LOVE YOU COURSE

 

What are your customer service tips?  What makes you love a business as a consumer? Leave a comment below!

 

Grow Your Business by Focusing on Customer Experience

Course: Grow Your Business by Focusing on Customer Experience

According to a study conducted by American Express, 33% of customers say that they will never do business with a company again based on one poor experience.  That is nearly one of out of three customers!  Just imagine if you lost a third of your customers today, your business would be significantly damaged.

Customer experience is a critical area for a business because our customer’s expectations are increasing at a dramatic pace. Every time they have a great experience with a company like Zappos or Apple, their expections increase for all companies that they interact with.

Luckily, small businesses have an advantage over these customer experience giants.  Small businesses have proximity to the customer and the agility to quickly and easily make enhancements to the experience.

This course will walk you through how to do that quickly and easily.  We will walk you through and provide you resources to effectively develop and start executing an effective customer experience strategy. This approach will work whether you are a solopreneur or have a large team of people working with you.

The goal is to help you grow your revenue and increase customer loyalty by easily developing a customer experience strategy for your business.

What you will learn:

  • Why customer service matters to you and your organization
  • How to create a positive experience for you customers
  • How to use language to improve the customer experience
  • How to improve your digital experience for your customers
  • How appearance matters to your customers and how to improve appearance to improve the experience
  • How to manage your online reputation
  • Learn how to develop a customer complaint system
  • Learn where and how to effectively respond to customer complaints
  • Learn to identify coaching and recognition opportunities to help improve your team’s performance

Who is perfect for this course:

  • Managers or business owners that are looking to improve their customer experience and develop a customer experience strategy
  • Those that are interested in learning more about customer experience
  • Any employee that wants to improve the customer experience and deliver a better experience

What will I receive?

  • Over 20 Lessons with over 2 hours of video
  •  9 downloadable worksheets/resources

How do I sign up?

Sign up using this link –> Grow Your Business by Improving Your Customer Experience

5 Ways to Improve Your Website Customer Experience

5 Ways to Improve Your Website Customer Experience

Your website is a major part of how your customer’s experience your business.  As more and more customers prefer to do business digitally, businesses need to pay close attention to the journey that your customers go through with your website.

Below are 5 ways that you can improve your website customer experience.

Check out the Customer Experience for Small Businesses course for customer experience tips, strategies, and resources. 

Unclutter Your Site

Have you ever been to a business that was completely cluttered with products, signage, and marketing material?  How did that experience make you feel?  If you are like me, you were probably anxious to get out of that environment.  Your website is no different.  It should be free from clutter and unnecessary components.   Customers should be able to quickly identify that they are looking for in an aesthetically appealing way.

One way that you can unclutter your website is to increase the use of white space. White space is essentially just empty space on your page.   White space allows you to direct your customers attention to exactly where you would like them to focus.   They don’t have to wade through a bunch of irrelevant information to find what they need which greatly improves their customer experience. A perfect example of this is Google’s homepage.  Their homepage is about as uncluttered as possible and their search (which is what customers are looking to find) is right in the middle of the screen.

Google's homepage is uncluttered and filled white space. Customers are able to get exactly where they need to go.

Ensure Your Site Matches Your Brand

Branding is so important for your business because it builds trust with your customer. It helps your customers identify your business and feel comfortable doing business with you.   Everything that you put out in the universe should work to build your brand identify.   However, you would be surprised at the amount of businesses that have websites that don’t match their brand.   They don’t work to incorporate their brand elements into their website at the detriment of the website customer experience.

Luckily, you can easily ensure that your website is “on brand“.   For starters, your website should contain your logo, brand colors, and fonts.   It should also match the tone of your business. For example, if you have a fun and lively floral shop, your website should be fun and lively. If you own a funeral home, your website should be more subdued and professional.  The more that your website matches your brand, the better their experience will be and the more they will trust the information provided.

 

Responsive

Quick poll, are you reading this article on a mobile device or a computer? Consider this, mobile internet usage has grown 504% in daily media consumption since 2011. Furthermore, almost three quarters (72.6 percent) of internet users will access the web solely via their smartphones by 2025.   So the moral of the story is that you need to ensure that your website is responsive to all screen sizes and orientations.

Having a mobile responsive website ensures that your website is easily readable without requiring zoom, there is adequate space for links and buttons (no fat finger issues allowed!), and there is no horizontal scrolling.  Not only does having a mobile responsive website improve you website customer experience, but it also ensures that your website is found in the first place.  Mobile responsiveness is one of the factors that Google uses to rank searches. Meaning if you don’t have a mobile responsive site, you will likely be pushed down in the search results.

Speed

Another important factor that Google uses is website speed. The reason that they weigh site speed so heavy is because it can make or break the website customer experience.  Humans are incredibly impatient. In fact, 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.  You have THREE seconds.

Google has a free site speed checker that you can see how your site is doing.  Google will then provide you with specific things you can do to improve your site speed.  You should take some time to use this speed and incorporate some of their recommendations. You should also reach out to your hosting service to see if they have any recommendations to improve your site speed.

Intuitive

Another thing you can do to improve your website customer experience is to make it as simple and intuitive as possible.  Having an intuitive website means that your customers know exactly what to do on your site. They know exactly where to go to get the information that they need or achieve whatever they are trying to achieve.

The first and most critical step in making your website intuitive is to really understand your customer.  What are they are looking for? What knowledge do they have? What is their experience level? The more detail that you get here the better.  Next, ask yourself what type of websites is your customer interacting with?  For example, if you are an online clothing boutique your customers are likely using sites like Amazon and Target.  Try to ensure that your website is mirroring those sites as much as possible.    If you are still wondering how to make your website more intuitive, do some usability testing.   Ask to watch a friend or family member (hopefully someone that matches your ideal customer’s demographics) navigate your website. You can even give them a list of tasks that yo would like them to accomplish.  Watch where they click, have them describe their experience, and see how quickly they can accomplish the task.   Try to take that feedback and make your website easier to navigate.

What questions do you have?  How steps have you taken to make your website easier to navigate?

 

 

 

Why You Must Focus on Customer Experience

Why You Must Focus on Customer Experience

If you have at least ONE customer, you should be focusing on customer experience. Customer experience matters whether you are a small micro-business or a Fortune 500 corporation.

Let’s take a look at the reasons why you should focus on customer experience.

Check out the Customer Experience for Small Businesses course for tips, strategies, and resources on how to improve your customer experience. 

Customer Expect a Great Experience

One of the main reasons that you should focus on customer experience is, simply put, customers expect it.  Your customer’s expectations are being shaped by all of the experiences they encounter. You are competing with companies like Apple and Starbucks, whether you realize it or not.   The more you focus on customer experience, the more likely you will be in meeting your customers expectations.

Happy Customers Stay Longer

Customers that are satisfied with you, stay longer.  Makes sense, right?   As a customer you are likely very committed to companies that provide a consistently positive experience.   This is called customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is beneficial for companies because it greatly reduces costs. For example, it costs companies 6-7 times more money to attract a new customer rather than to retain an existing customer. So often we focus on attracting new customers, when sometimes it pays to focus on the ones that we have.

Happy Customers Buy More

Not only do happy customers stay longer, but they buy more. Companies with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience. I don’t know about you but I would take a 5.7 times increased in revenue!

Happy Customers Refer More.

Happy customers not only buy more themselves but they refer more. I’m sure you can recall a time when you were really happy with a company. You likely sang from the rooftops and encouraged your friends and family to also do business with them.  With social media, more and more customers are basing their purchasing decisions off of recommendations from friends and family.   By focusing on customer experience you are encouraging your customers to do your marketing for you.

Engaged Employees

Companies that focus on customer experience don’t just see an increase in happy customers but they also see an increase in happy employees. Research from the Temkin group shows that companies that excel at customer experience have 1.5 times as many engaged employees as do customer experience laggards.  Generally, if you are doing the right thing for your customers and get to have pride in what you are doing, that will naturally lead to higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement.

There are many reasons why you must focus on customer experience. What is nice about doing so, is it doesn’t always require a big budget or investments in technology. There are always things that you can do to improve the customer experience by reducing the customers effort, making it easy for them, and providing them with options.

If you look to improve a little every day, over time you will notice that you are much better off than where you started.

Why do you feel you should focus on customer experience? What challenges are you facing as a business owner or employee?
Are you a blogger? Check out how you can improve your blog customer experience. 

Improve your Blog Customer Experience

Your blog is your business. Like any other business in the world, your job is to keep your customers happy and coming back for more.  Luckily, it is pretty simple to create a positive customer experience for your reader and keep them coming back!

Make It Easy to Find You

Your readers should be able to easily find your content. Keep your URL as short and simple as possible, using a .com address if possible.  You also want to make sure that your content is properly linked from your social media accounts.  Your reader should only have to click once or twice to get where they want to be.  Every so often, you should conduct a click audit where you click through your entire site and make sure that everything is working properly.

Make Your Blog Clean & Inviting

Think of your blog like a storefront  Do you like shopping in stores that are cluttered and disorganized?   Or,  would you rather shop in stores that are clean, inviting, and make it easy to find what you need?  You want to ensure that your theme is clean and uncluttered. Are your images and content front and center or is it crowded out by excessive ads and clutter?   A great way to assess this is to have someone visit your blog and let you know the first thing they notice.   If it isn’t your content, you will want to clean up a bit. While you are doing your click audit, assess all aspects of your page.  What does it look like ? How does it make you feel?   Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Add Value

All businesses need to provide value to their customers. The key to providing a great customer experience is to make sure that you are providing value over and beyond what your competitors are offering. This will make your blog memorable and keep them coming back to your site.   In addition, customers LOVE tangible goodies.   Look for ways that you can provide something that your customers can keep. Things like printable planners,  checklists, and e-books provide such value.

Make it Easy to Contact You

You want it to be as easy as possible to get in touch with you.   You should have a very clear CONTACT ME page with a couple of options to get in touch with you (email, phone, social media. smoke signals, whatever works!).    You should also make it super easy for readers to comment on your posts.   A huge pet peeve of mine is when you have to jump thru hoops to engage with an author.  I simply lose my patience and move on and I’m sure others feel the same.   I highly discourage requiring readers to enroll or subscribe in order to leave a comment.

Engage with your Readers

Always encourage engagement and dialogue on your blog. People love to talk about themselves so ask them thoughtful and entertaining questions about them or their businesses to get the convo started.   Most importantly, RESPOND to them when they do comment!   Communication should be a two-way street.  Reply to all of your comments and social media mentions within 1-2 days.  You should also ask them for feedback as often as possible.  What do they like? What do they want more of?   What are they struggling with that you can help them with? Use this feedback to tailor your content to suit your audience.

Resolve Problems Quickly

 If your customers encounter a problem,  fix it quickly.  Maybe they are unable to download a product that they purchased or your site isn’t loading properly.   Whatever it is, own it and make sure the customer is happy with the resolution.  A good goal for problem resolution is to leave the customer a little better off than before they had the issue.  Fix it right and you will have a customer for life!

 

What other tips do you have for fellow bloggers? What types of customer issues have you encountered and how did you resolve them?   We would love to hear, drop a comment below!

 

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Improve your blog customer experience, Build your blog through customer experience by DarlingCEO