The following excerpt is from Glenn Llopis’s book The Innovation Mentality. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Editor’s Note: With competition growing increasingly harsh, business owners can no longer offer “bare minimum” customer service. Find out why “exceeding expectations” is the new order of the day with customers everywhere.
Leaders and employees are trained that the most important person in their ecosystem is the customer or client, and they strive to have a team that’s reflective of the guests who walk into their stores or want to do business with them. But even when they aren’t reflective of that guest, they can evolve to see their job as more than just a responsibility to do what needs to be done and instead have the expectation to get their hands dirty and help.
Consider how a few Target team members went above and beyond to help one customer. The story serves as a lesson on expectation to leadership and employees at any level of any business.
Yasir Moore, a 15-year-old boy from Raleigh, North Carolina, had landed an interview at a Chick-fil-A for his first job. His mom told him to wear a tie, but he didn’t know how to tie one. So he went to Target to find a clip-on and couldn’t find one. That’s when a team member on the floor, Cathy Scott, spotted him. She walked over and asked Yasir if he needed help. Yasir said he needed a clip-on tie, and Cathy explained they didn’t have any.
At that point, Cathy’s basic responsibility to the guest ended. She could have just said, “I’m sorry, can I be of any other assistance?” and walked away if Yasir said, “No.” But Cathy had an expectation to do more. She said, “We don’t have any clip-on ties, but why do you need a tie?” Yasir told her about the interview and that neither he nor his mom knew how to tie a tie. Enter Dennis Roberts, another floor team member. Dennis, the father of four grown sons, had plenty of experience teaching teens to tie ties. He proceeded to show Yasir how to do it and stayed with him until he could do it on his own.
The story doesn’t end there. As Yasir worked on his knot, Cathy and Dennis gave him interview advice: Talk slowly, sit up, have a firm handshake. Dennis told him, “It’s time for you to raise the roof, tell these people exactly who you are, what you’re made of and that you’re the right person for the job.” Yasir listened and nailed the interview. He was called back a second time and got the job.
I learned all this not through my client, Target, but from CNN and ABC News. ABC even made Dennis, Cathy and Yasir their “People of the Week.” But it wasn’t because Target pitched them. There were no cameras rolling in the store that day. In fact, the only reason anyone learned about this was a…