Blog Posts From Jeanne Bliss' Blog Tagged With trust

Wegmans Food Markets Excels By Throwing Away The Rule Book

info@netpromoter.com — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 16:26:05 GMT

By Freeing Employees to Do What’s Right for Customers, No Customer Leaves Unhappy

Wegmans Food Markets is a privately held grocery store chain with 41,000 employees. The company generated an estimated $5.6 billion in revenue in 2010. What fuels Wegmans’s growth are passion, training, and trust. In traditional retailing, customer experiences can become stilted when the frontline staff has a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” regarding how far they can go to serve their customers. Wegmans wanted to eliminate the behind-the-scenes rules and the required permission from managers usually necessary in retail. So the company decided to let employees make their own decisions no matter what customer situation they encounter. At Wegmans there is no rule book. There is simply this: no customer is allowed to leave unhappy.

A Trained, Trusted Employee Will Do the Right Thing

CEO Danny Wegman believes in giving employees extensive training and experience to garner an understanding of the product and service experiences they are trusted to deliver. Wegmans invests over 40 hours per year on training to back up people’s natural instincts to do the right thing with the necessary skills to help them take action. This allows Wegmans to free themselves of management oversight. Instead, they simply trust in the decision making of the people on the floor working with customers. That could mean deciding to give away a birthday cake to a customer whose order was accidentally misscheduled. Or cooking a turkey for a frazzled hostess who bought a turkey too large for her oven.

Employees with decision making authority will want to stay

By giving staff control over their own decisions and believing in them, Wegmans can deliver what Danny Wegman calls “telepathic levels of service.” This makes employees want to stay. The low turnover of 7 percent versus 19 percent for comparably-sized grocery store chains enables Wegmans to redirect the money it would have spent on constant recruiting to the constant development of their folks. And with that, profitability has followed. Wegmans’s operating margins are estimated at 7.5 percent—double that of its competitors. And its sales per square foot are 50 percent higher than the industry average. By throwing away the rule book, Wegmans prospers both financially and in the spirit of the people who work in its stores. Whether they’re putting away cans of garbanzo beans or sweeping the floor, everyone there knows that their decisions with customers stick.

What portion of your rule book can you throw away? Is Your “Trusting Cup” Half Full or Half Empty?

Wegmans decided that no customer should leave unhappy. They trust the people serving customers in their stores to interpret what that means.

How would you rate your intent and ability to trust the majority of your employees? Or do you manage to the minority?
Can you identify just one rule you can throw away?
How would your employees say you are doing?
Do employees rave about how you trust them today?
How does your decision to free employees to deliver what’s best for customers compare with this beloved company?
Do your decisions for trusting your employees to do the right thing earn you “beloved” status today?
What do you need to do differently to move toward earning the rave of customers and employees?

The Container Store - Flames of Trust

info@netpromoter.com — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:30:40 GMT

The Container Store Grows Because they Trust their People

Trusted Employees Feel and Act Like Partners.

The Container Store, which provides storage and organization solutions through an “uber” friendly and helpful retail experience, is a privately held company. Over 3,300 employees work in 47 stores across the United States and in a distribution center and home office in Coppell, Texas. And every single one of them knows the company’s detailed financials. The Container Store’s hiring philosophy is “One great person equals three good people.” So once the company brings someone on board, that person is considered a partner. This partnership commitment with employees equals absolute trust. “The Container Store’s goal is to be able to provide all employees with as much information as the executives have,” according to Chairman and CEO Kip Tindell. To live up to this promise, two or three times a year its full proﬁt-and-loss status and all other financial topics are shared in a 30-page briefing given to each and every employee.

Open Communication Breeds Employee Passion and Partnership.

“The way to retain employees, to make them care, is to communicate everything to them,” says Tindell. Knowing the companywide impact of everyone’s efforts on business performance and how the overall business is doing bring an understanding of how each individual impacts the company’s growth and marketplace position. Distribution folks know their support to the stores means getting products delivered on time and in good condition. Store folks deliver the customer experience. People at the home office create and source the innovative products which pull customers into the stores. They all connect to fuel the growth of the company. Knowing the details of financial investments in each area and the overall business results connects the dots between each position and each contributor.

Trusted Employees Want to Stay and Grow the Company.

By committing to creating an environment of trust and nurturing in their employees, The Container Store has successfully built a retail experience that compels customers to come back for more. Their stable workforce, with less than 10 percent turnover rate, has contributed to the double-digit growth achieved by The Container Store every year since it began in 1978. Achieving $523 million in revenue in 2009, energetic and passionate employees stand behind the store they love. Can you sustain the excitement of your company for customers in this manner, by deciding to honor the intelligence of your employees?

The Container Store decided that all employees should know their sensitive financial information. Sharing information guides employees and elevates their purpose.

What actions can you take, or policies can you remove to show employees you believe in them?
How can you decide to honor the intelligence of employees?
Can you “skinny down” your rule book?
How would you rate you intent and ability to show your employees you believe in them?
How would your employees say you are doing?
Do employees rave about your trust in them today?
How does your decision to fan the flames of trust compare with this beloved company?
Do your decisions for creating an environment of trust earn you “beloved” status today?
What do you need to do differently to move toward earning the rave of customers and employees?
Can you identify one “stupid rule” and unleash power by removing it.
Beloved companies throw away the rule book. What actions can you take, or policies can you remove, to show employees you believe in them? Do You Fan the Flames of Trust?

CustomInk - Uncensored! Dare to Bare what the Customers Share

info@netpromoter.com — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:48:12 GMT

CustomInk Fuels Revenue Growth By Putting Uncensored Customer Reviews On Their Home Page

In this era of social media, companies who embrace customer feedback and “believe” the words of their customers earn the right to growth. They realize that customers turn to each other more than to advertising and campaigns. Here’s how one “beloved company,” CustomInk fearlessly listens to customers and how it fuels their growth.

Earn New Customers Through Past Performance.

CustomInk prints T-shirts for well over 100,000 groups and families per year. Each order is assigned a designer who personally reviews and inspects each shirt, because, let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than having your typing error printed on 1,000 T-shirts. For example, if you accidentally mistype the word “annual” as “anual” in your T-shirt design, someone at CustomInk who has reviewed your design will catch that typo for you, sparing the obvious pain and suffering you would have otherwise felt when you opened the box of 1,000 T-shirts for your “Anual Fun Run.” But CustomInk doesn’t want potential customers to take their word for the fact that they deliver this level of service—they want their customers to speak for them. So whatever a customer types in as his or her post-purchase online feedback appears word-for-word on the front page of CustomInk’s Web site. And, in this case, to show the authenticity of the comments, customers’ typos stay.

Customers Should Be Completely Informed.

Founder Marc Katz said, “We thought about cleaning customers’ reviews and making them more like testimonials, but we decided that doesn’t mean anything to the customer. Any company can pick a few great reviews. It’s the fact that we leave these uncensored and show all of them. It’s the 1 in a 100 few unhappy comments that show these are real.” So CustomInk puts its money where their customers’ mouths are. Customers tell other customers if they believe CustomInk is the place to trust for T-shirts for their charity event, or the T-shirts that their grandpa and entire family will wear at his 100th birthday party.

Revenue grew 77 percent from 2006 to 2009, fueled by customer feedback.

CustomInk believes and trusts customers to speak for the company. This brave decision to “bare” customer feedback has fueled significant double-digit growth every year since their inception. Revenue of $13.5 million in 2004 is now nearly $62 million in 2009. And this growth is largely organic, driven by customer love, and with no backing of venture capital. For its 284 employees, living up to customer accolades energizes them; people want to be part of a company that believes its customers. Consider giving your customers a forum to connect and convince each other to become your customers. It does take some daring, and trust in your customers’ words. But it is a powerful way to engage your company in customer feedback and to drive accountability in resolving the issues that customers bring up.

Do You Dare to Bare What Your Customers Share?

CustomInk decided to put uncensored customer reviews on its Web site because they believe in the truth of their customers’ words. They trust customers to guide potential customers.

- Do you trust current customers to guide future customers with their feedback?

- Do you censor customer reviews? Do you believe in the truth of your customers’ words?

- How would you rate your intent and ability to believe feedback?

- How would your customers say you are doing? Do customers rave about how you trust them today?

- How does your decision to believe and share customer feedback compare with this beloved company?

- Do your decisions for believing in the truth of your customers’ words earn you “beloved” status today?

- Consider one way to give your customers a forum to connect and convince each other to become your customers.