Can I bring my dog? That's a question Amber gets asked a lot. It has nothing to do with a company that specializes in the placement and recruiting of healthcare professionals. But Amber gets that it really has EVERYTHING to do with being named one of America's fastest growing private company by INC Magazine.

Dwight Cooper, Co-Founder and CEO of PPR Healthcare Staffing, wowed the audience with stories of guts and glory. His goal was to be the Nordstrom or Ritz Carlton of nurse staffing, not a commodity. Nurse retention is key to their reputation, and if that means they need to find an apartment that will take a 40 pound dog, they will do it. It also means scoping out great restaurants in a new city before the nurse moves there and buying a gift certificate or having groceries delivered.

Training, accountability, and rewards are Dwight's secret to success.

In order to identify gaps between where they were and want to be, he decided to look internally at their culture. His internal NPS question was not whether or not the company was worth recommending (as an employer) but rather co-workers were asked if they could recommend each other. It clearly separated the pack from service leaders to those who needed "help moving onto another career." One of those people that rose to the top is Amber. She has a following. Serving is in her DNA. She now gets rewarded for cultivating that kind of loyalty.

Dwight is so serious about service as a retention tool that he has "institutionalized great service." We "met" Jenny. Her job is to look for ways to wow their client nurses and make them feel at home. She's the purveyor of all tchotckes and fun things that make people feel special. I want that job.

The coolest and simplest solution to creating wow experiences was what they call "Best Answers." They identified their 64 most common questions ("Can I bring my pet?" being one of them) and brainstormed on not just the right answer, but the best way to answer. With caring and enthusiasm.

Bigger is not better. Better is better. PPR may only own 3% of their marketplace, but the two competitors (that own 80% of the market together) cannot boast being SHRMs best places to work for four years running.

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It's not just a noise a dog might make, it's a consumer ranking website of everything you'd find in your local yellow pages. In San Francisco, if you search for credit unions, you will find San Francisco Fire Credit Union's loyal members. They are the highest rated financial institution in one of the noisiest markets in the US. This is not a ranking you can buy, you have to earn it. Every single day.

Diana Dykstra is the CEO of San Francisco Fire Credit Union and a self-proclaimed Net Promoter Score zealot. She HATES satisfaction surveys. Why? Because when she took over as CEO, her credit union had a 98% satisfaction rate. But she knew, just from interacting with employees and members that they were not "delighted."

So that became her goal. To delight her members. Banking is an errand. You get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. Members are satisfied. But it doesn't have to be that way. One of the first questions she asked, was of her staff. Would THEY recommend SF Fire as an employer? "Our employees ARE our business" said Diana. "If they are detractors, we breed detractors." Her first round of internal NPS yielded a dismal -19.5%. Within three years she was able to turn that score around to 64.39% today, which she admits, is still too low. "Leaders would NEVER tolerate a large gap between forecast and actual financial performance but seem to look the other way when service gaps exist" explained Diana. She knew that she had to build a culture where service was the responsibility of the entire organization, not just the front-line.

To show that she was serious about service, she added her face and email access 24/7 to her on the front page of her website. Diana admits it has created a true addiction to her Blackberry. If a member wants to "Ask Diana" anything, DIANA responds as quickly as humanly possible. She shared stories of calling members on Sunday morning and helping folks as far away as Africa when their debit cards weren't working. By focusing on team, listening, learning and innovating and more importantly recognizing they are not in the banking business - but the E-lationship business - they are proud to say their member NPS has risen from 52% to 74% in just three years. Her BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) for 2010 is to outrank USAA at 85%. One way she has decided to elate members is to eliminate all fees (except bad behavior fees).

"Members don't like fees" she explains. "If they've been doing business with us and want travelers checks or a notary, I'm not going to charge them." She also recognized that with two branches, she would never be perceived as convenient to most members, so they took the bold step to rebate all ATM surcharges for members. Extreme service is now a core competency of SF Fire Credit Union, not just a function. She's whittling away at the "brick" of policies, procedures, rules, regulations and compliance that used to drive her culture and has a goal to have employee's so engaged in elating that her employee handbook will be one statement:

"Just do the right thing."

That's a WOW!

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