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?

As a Zappos Insights VIP Panel participant and host, I recently hosted the Webinar: “The value of Net Promoter Score” with Fred Reichheld.

Zappos is getting 80s and 90s in their Net Promoter Score system, which Fred said in our webinar together, are “in the stratosphere.”  So what I’d do in this post is give you a bit of background on how Zappos “Does” NPS:

Here’s how Zappos Asks The NPS Question

This is done in Two Different Situations; after an order, or after Speaking to a Customer Loyalty Rep:

On a scale of 0-10, 10 being the highest score, how likely are you to recommend Zappos to a friend or a family member?  If you had to name one thing that we could improve upon what could that be?

-OR-

During your last interaction with us, you contacted a member of our Customer Loyalty Team. On a scale of 0-1-, if you had your own company that was focused upon service, how likely would you be to hire this person to work for you?  Overall, would you describe the service you received from (insert name of customer loyalty rep) as good, bad or fantastic? What exactly stood out as being good or bad about this service?

Zappos Also Practices “Internal NPS” With Employees.

Every month, every employee gets a short survey asking how happy they are in their job. They’ve nicknamed this “The Five Second Happiness Survey.” There is a place (just like NPS) for open ended feedback, with every single comment personally responded to. The scores and feedback are emailed to all “Zapponians” and changes are made to the company and policies based on what employees say.

Their internal questions are the following. The questions are not exactly the same wording as NPS, employees answer with three choices: 1. definitely, 2. sometimes, and 3. not at all. But the discipline of follow up, identification of issues and making things right is at the heart of this practice. And at Zappos, it works!

1. I believe that the company genuinely has a higher purpose beyond just profits.
2. My role in the Zappos Family has real purpose – it is more than just a job.
3. I feel that I am in control of my career path and that I am progressing in my personal and professional development within the Zappos family.
4. I consider my co-workers to be like my family and friends.
5. I am very happy in my job.

Zappos Most Importantly Practices With Rigor, the Basics Net Promoter:

• They recognize the importance of NPS. The process of customer feedback is seen as mission critical.  It’s embedded in Zappos’ company values and culture. Fred said that “Net Promoter is a litmus test that means you have you lived up the golden rule and made your customers lives better.”
• A clear measurement process has been established. For Net Promoter to go beyond just another survey score that’s being chased because it’s on someone’s scorecard, this has to be about saving customers and improving customers’ lives.  This means systematically categorize the promoters and detractors with a measurement process that is understandable and reliable.
• They close the loop with detractors and with promoters. Zappos is passionate about connecting with detractors. They solve the problem. And they hold Promoters close, actively communicating, tweeting and engaging with them. You need a system for activity of engagement or response with the customer and internally. “Don’t let the data just sit.”

If there is a breakdown in the system, and these 3 elements aren’t addressed, then NPS strategy won’t be meaningful, effective or gain traction in driving business decisions. For example, if the executives of a company make bad choices that hinder the employees as they try to create promoters—the NPS scores will reflect that and it shows a lack of internal commitment to NPS.

Finding the Right Rating Scale for Your Net Promoter Effort.

In our Zappos Insights webinar, I asked Fred about the 0-10 scale. Zappos practices using a 0-10 scale, but you may be like many of my clients who are struggling in their transition from a traditional CSAT survey with a different scale. I have many clients transitioning over to NPS, and this is always a big conversation—and a bit tricky. Reichheld discussed the rating scale that’s best suited to the Net Promoter question. He said using a 0-10 scale (vs. a different rating scale) is ideal. This system is the easiest to use, the best way to measure and interpret data, and finally, to compare the results. However, Fred also said that beginning with a different scale is not a calamity – as long as you are practicing the basic principles that make Net Promoter successful. 
In a 0-10 point scale, there is a distinct difference and there must be a very deliberate intent to give a company a “Promoter” score (a 9-10) versus a 1,2,3,4. When the scale is lower, such as a 1-5 scale the perceived difference is more difficult for customers to discern and it’s harder to discern inside the company—those Detractors who need immediate closed-loop contact and those Promoters who should be connected with to keep their passionate connection with your company.

The Best NPS Practitioners Collect The Measurement In Two Ways – Just Like Zappos Does.

1. Measure NPS around transactions that are most vital (transactional NPS). Measure at one touchpoint for an operationally relevant measurement that offers feedback on performance at that key moment of truth.
2. Execute a top-down NPS. Set up an anonymous survey and contact existing customers to ask the NPS question—rating the overall customer/company relationship. At the same time, ask questions about the scores they would give to your competitors. This will give you a view from the highest level. Are you growing an army of fans? The results will also let you compare scores with your competitors.