PGB’s focus is on two things: customer service and a great product. That sounds so simple and yet is complicated and hard, because “service” includes everything from catering to our giving back program, and “product” involves ever-changing ways to bake and package cupcakes and cakes.
Recently I decided to invest in the customer service we provide in the 3 retail stores by installing “Happy or Not” terminals by the cash in each store. You may have seen these terminals in Loblaws or airports here in Canada; the company is from Sweden so they can be found around the world.
We’ve just received one week’s worth of reports and the results are so interesting! I am really happy (haha) that overwhelmingly, customers selected the green face with a big smile – but each store had from 2 to 6 less-than-most-happy faces during the week.
Carly and I decided that we needed to set actionable parameters,otherwise every Monday we will be reviewing the last week’s reports and deciding the same issue over and over: when to act and what to do.
We landed on the following:
- If a store had 100% of the happiest green faces all week long we will celebrate that in the team newsletters and make a big deal of it;
- If a store had more than 10% faces that are the “other 3” faces (ranging from mildly happy to super unhappy) we will review these results privately with the team members on duty at the time and see where they may not be adhering to the customer service policies we have in place. For example, the customer service manual talks about always greeting a customer when they enter the store, never having a personal phone when on duty, saying please and thank you at each interaction, and giving customers our undivided and friendly attention.
Praise in public; coach in private is a saying that makes a lot of sense to me.
As the first week went by, more and more customers took a moment to indicate their thoughts: by Friday, hundreds of customers used the terminals – much more feedback than we ever receive. Clearly the simplicity of the method makes it appealing to busy people.
I am very interested in seeing the ongoing daily and weekly reports…stay tuned
