Category Archives: OTM Service Strategy

Ball of Light, Customer Service, Denis Smith, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, Life Plan, life success, OTM Service Strategy, Passion, personal development plan, Personal Vision, personal vision plan, plan for personal success, Professionals, Service Excellence, Success, What Really Matters, yes for success

Passion and Success

 

Passion is the first principle that underpins the Yes For Success Platform. Several years ago Denis Smith held a high pressure sales job, was drinking too much and suffering from depression.

His life lacked passion despite all the trimmings of a successful sales career.

Published with permission

Fortunately he knew ‘something’ was missing from his life and he went on a search to discover his passion. He quickly found photography and realised that he was somewhat of a natural with the camera. Upon uploading his photos to sites he discovered that his ‘good’ photos were the same as everyone else’s. But he didn’t want to be the same as everyone else.

So his evolving passion took him on a journey of discovery where he came across the concept of ‘light drawings’ through photography. With passion comes innovation and he decided to ‘play’ with the concept, creating surreal ‘Ball of Light‘ images in his photographs.

Today Denis has turned his passion into a business. More importantly he is living a life full of positivity and energy. View this short video to learn more about Denis’ story.

Personally I feel energised when I hear about stories such as Denis’ and I thank my good friend Andrew Scott (an amateur photographer himself and a friend of Denis’) for sharing the story with me.

How present is passion in your life?

Learn about the Yes For Success Platform here.

Gary Ryan enables organisations, leaders and talented people to move Beyond Being Good.
Lance Armstrong, Market Communication Gap, matt Corby, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Service Gaps, skepticism, Subway

Will Lance Armstrong’s Admissions Heighten Consumer Skepticism

Watching the Lance Armstrong interview I couldn’t help but think of the classic saying, “If it seems too good to be true it probably is.” This also caused me to consider how often ‘sayings’ seem to be accurate. Maybe it is because sayings arise from collective wisdom over time.

It is this idea of collective wisdom that then caused me to wonder about the ripple effect of Lance’s admissions. Will consumers become more skeptical of corporate behaviours?

This morning I noticed this article in The Age Newspaper, Subway, where a foot is a step back.

Matt Corby’s 11 inch ‘footlong’ sub. Photo: Facebook

Perth teenager Matt Corby posted a photo of his ‘foot-long’ sub on Subway’s Facebook page. It clearly indicated that his sub was only 11 inches long.  That’s 91.67% of a 12 inch sub. Imagine if you only received 91.67% of most things that you buy. Collective wisdom suggests to me that most people expect a Footlong Sub to be pretty close to 12 inches long. I don’t know about you but I’ve always thought that a foot long sub meant that it was supposed to be 12 inches long. Given they also have a ‘Six Inch Sub’ this perception is reinforced by other items on their menu.

I quite like Subway and this article isn’t about them. Rather, it’s about their response and what it represents to consumers. This is what Subway Australia posted on Facebook in response to Matt’s photo.

“With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong, ‘Subway Footlong’ is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length.”


Hopefully Matt’s sub is an aberration. But what if it isn’t? Personally I’m not going to pull out a measuring tape every time I buy a sub and if I really think about it, ‘nearly 12 inches’ would be good enough. But 11 inches is not good enough. Skeptically do you think that people will be posting images of 13 inch subs? I don’t think so. (Hmmm some skepticism slipping in there…)
Which brings me to my point. The Lance Armstrong admission is going to make consumers more skeptical of what they are being sold and the intentions of organisations. It will also make them more skeptical of the responses that organisations provide, such as the response provided above from Subway. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if your product is only 91.67% of the size that the market expects, but you are ‘getting away‘ with selling it at the smaller size then your cost savings go straight to your bottom line. People aren’t stupid. They can work these things out and social media makes it easy for them to provide this feedback.
The problem that Subway may have is that their Footlong Subs may in fact only be 11 inches long. In other words, over time their system may have been changed so that is what they produce. Despite the name being ‘Footlong’ they may have created a system that creates a gap between what they are marketing and what they are actually saying. These decisions may have been made a long time ago with the benefits of those changes going to Subway and not their consumers. No doubt many organisations have made similar decisions – but these decision create a Market Communication Gap. What the market perceives they are going to get is different to what it actually gets. Ultimately this creates poor service.

What are your thoughts? Will Lance Armstrong’s admissions drive consumer skepticism and what does this mean for organisations?
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, great service, Organisations That Matter, OTM Service Strategy, Podcast, Service Excellence, service stories, service strategy, WRMFPD Podcast

Explaining the OTM Service Strategy® Audio Version

Gary Ryan from Organisations That Matter provides an overview of the six key elements that underpin the OTM Service Strategy®.

Please visit http://orgsthatmatter.com/service-excellence.html for more information or subscribe to the What Really Matters For Professional Development Podcast here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Fiji, OTM Service Strategy, Outrigger Resort, Outrigger Resort Fiji, Respect, Service Excellence, Teamwork, Values

Great Service The Fijian Way

Recently I had the great pleasure to take my family on a vacation to Fiji to celebrate a relatives wedding. We stayed at the Outrigger on the Lagoon which is located near the small town of Sigatoka on Fiji’s main island.

The resort is on land that is owned by the two local villages and the vast number of staff have been recruited from those villages. From the moment we arrived until the moment we departed the resort we could not have had a more wonderful time. My wife and I, our five children and nearly 60 relatives and friends were not only impressed by the physical standards of the resort, but more importantly the staff who were always smiling and happy to please.

The talented Erami leads a water aerobics class

Despite talking about ‘Fiji time’, a reference to taking time to get things done, our experience was that requests of staff were always met by prompt responses and action, something that service and hospitality organisations here in Australia could learn from.

The culture of teamwork and the desire to create a wonderful experience for guests was self evident for our entire visit. Due to the genuinely friendly nature of the staff you could not help but make ‘friends’ with them. One of the staff with whom I had the pleasure to speak with at length was Moses Saukalou, one of the hospitality managers with vast experience who managed a large team of staff.

When I asked Moses about what drove the staff to be so friendly and willing to work, despite their relative poor pay (by Australian standards) he told me that the answer lay in their culture of respect.

“Respect is something that we value and it is taught to our children from a very young age. That is why it comes across as being genuine – because it is!”.

The staff work six days per week and many of them were multi-talented, being able to speak several languages, do public speaking, take water aerobics, weave baskets and hats and serve incredible cocktails as well as singing. And what I have just described is the skills of a single employee!

Singing good-bye on our final morning

When the staff heard of our imminent departure during our breakfast on the final morning of our visit, they gathered in front of us and sang us a good-bye song. While the staff were singing to us another team member came forward and explained the meaning of the words to us. We were being thanked for visiting their land and they were wishing us a safe journey home. It was very moving and once again was not contrived – it was genuine. We really felt like we were leaving special people. My brother, who was with us with his family mentioned how emotional he found the experience, a comment that was uncommon from him.

It was really us who should have been saying thank you, or as they do in Fiji, “Vinaka!”.

There is a lot that can be learned from the Fijians with regard to how important it is to have respect for other people at the heart of your approach to delivering service excellence.

And ‘deliver’ is exactly what the staff at the Outrigger on the Lagoon in Fiji certainly did!

Gary Ryan saves you time by helping you to know what to do to raise service standards in your organisation

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Communication, Customer Service, effective communication, Feedback, Leadership, listening, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Virgin Australia

Virgin Australia Listens and Responds

When I ask people if they are proactive with providing feedback to organisations a common response is, “What’s the point? They won’t listen to me anyway so I don’t bother doing it. If I can, I just take my business elsewhere.”

You may have been following my recent experience with Virgin Australia. You can review the story here if you like. While it took some time from start to finish, Matt Dixon from the Office of the CEO at Virgin Australia did a wonderful job in recognising the seriousness of my issue, respecting his fellow Virgin Australia team members by investigating their side of my experience and even exploring my issue beyond the boundaries of Virgin Australia.

My original purpose for contacting Virgin Australia was to ensure that poor passenger behaviour be managed appropriately.

The outcome of my feedback is that the crew involved in the flight have been re-trained in following existing Virgin Australia procedures as they relate to managing unruly passengers. In addition, by the end of July all Virgin Australia crew will have received re-training on this issue.

A final outcome is that the passenger at the centre of my experience is now known to all domestic airlines and the relevant authorities. It is safe to say that this person will not be flying in Australia for some time.

The point of sharing this story with you is to highlight that it is worth providing feedback to organisations when the issue is one that really concerns you. No doubt Virgin Australia does need to improve on its systems and processes so that issues such as mine don’t require the intervention of the Office of the CEO for them to be resolved. Ultimately that is one of the purposes of such an office and I give Virgin Australia credit for having a system where issues such as mine can be resolved at that level when the rest of the system fails.

Hopefully passengers will not be at risk of having a similar in flight experience to myself. That is the outcome that I had hoped would be achieved and Virgin Australia have proved, ultimately that they were prepared to listen and credit should be given where it is due.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability Skills, Leadership, Market Communication Gap, marketing, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Tagline, Tuppy's Riverside Convenience Store

A genuinely great service experience!

If you travel a lot for business or pleasure you may be able to relate to that annoying feeling that you have forgotten something important, only to have it dawn on you as your plane is about to land at your destination that you have forgotten your phone charger (again!!!).

As your brain scans quickly for solutions you scamper off the plane only to discover that the airport is effectively in shut down. It is, after all after 8.30pm and you are in Australia. So the opportunity to purchase a charger isn’t going to present itself to you at the airport.

Catching a taxi to your destination you ask the driver if, by any chance does he have the same phone charger that you require? “Sorry, I don’t have that type of phone”, is the reply.

“Damn!”, you think yo yourself.

“I’m up here for two full days and my phone won’t last that long. It’ll be lucky to see the morning. Oh well, maybe I’ll get lucky at the local corner store.”

If you’re wondering why I haven’t suggested that you check if reception has a spare charger I need to explain that the particular hotel in which you are staying doesn’t have a reception service after 7:30pm, so you have accessed the key to your room via a secure key lock.

You look at your clock and notice that it is nearly 9pm. What are the chances that the local convenience store will still be open? “Hmmm, I might be able to make it it if I’m fast”, you think to yourself.

So you quickly race down the stairs and walk to the corner store that you discovered on your last visit. It’s still open, but they are bringing all the signs inside in preparation for closing. You pick up a few things for breakfast in the morning and search around for a phone charger, all the while thinking that it is a ‘long shot’.

You get to the the counter and say, “I’m not expecting your answer to be yes, but it can’t hurt to ask. Do you sell iPhone chargers?”

“No we don’t.” comes the reply.

 “But I can lend you mine if you like?”

 “Are you serious” I said, I mean you say (yes if you hadn’t guessed this whole story is about a real experience that I have just had!).

 “Yes I am serious. You are obviously away on business and I guess you would really need your phone. I have two phone chargers so you can borrow this one.”

What a wonderful gesture. I had never before met Andrew from Tuppy’s Riverside Convenience Store, (85 Deakin Street, Kangaroo Point Queensland Australia, just down beside the Storey Bridge) yet he was willing to help me out, for no other reason than he could. What was also wonderful about his gesture is that it was made both genuinely and purely. He made the offer with no expectations of me doing anything in return (except of course to return his charger.).

Great service experiences are characterised by little things. In that moment when Andrew heard my question, his response was to a fellow human being in need. Wow that made me feel good.

I explained to him that I write a lot and asked if it was okay for me to write about this experience and he gave me his permission. So if you are ever in Brisbane, check out Tuppy’s Riverside Convenience Store, I’ll certainly be going back – and that’s a promise!

By the way the ‘tagline’ on its simple brochure says, “More than a convenience store!“. Well, unlike many taglines out there, I can say that my experience of this one is that it is an accurate expression of the experience that you will have a Tuppy’s Riverside Convenience Store.

Thank you Andrew for providing a simple, yet genuinely great service experience for me. I genuinely appreciate it.

What are your genuine service experiences?


How do you bring genuine service experiences into the work that you do?


And finally, how do you bring your ‘tagline’ to life, just like Andrew did?

Visit here for information on how you can bring the OTM Service Strategy to life inside your organisation.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Communication, Conversation Starter, Customer Service, High Performance, High Performing Teams, Leaders, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Conversation Starters Catalyse Conversations That Matter®

Conversation Starters are generally single page documents that are designed to catalyse Conversations That Matter.

Through using a combination of text and illustrations, Conversation Starters provide focus for conversations that otherwise might not be able to occur.

Through enabling people to focus on something other than another person, Conversation Starters allow people to talk about things that matter to them without fear of offending anyone – after all it is the document that can be blamed rather than a person.

Access a complimentary Conversation Starter ‘Who is the Customer’ here and please let me know how you have used it.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Business strategy, Customer Service, Employability, Employability Skills, Leadership, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Strategy

Is your People Strategy aligned with your Service Strategy?

Your organisation’s People Strategy includes everything from recruitment, to development and the way people exit your organisation. People are fundamental to the implementation of your Service Strategy so the way that you approach your recruitment, development and exit processes are examples of that strategy in action. 
How do you recruit, develop and exit people from your organisation? 
Are these activities performed in a way that reflects a service approach toward your people?
Copyright Gary Ryan 2011
Research Participant
The way people are exited from an organisation is a true test of its approach to service. When the company had to reduce staff numbers through no direct fault of its own and it did everything it could over a 12 month peeriod to help to prepare the exiting staff for their next job, I thought to myself, “This company really cares about people. I hope that their next company cares as much.”
Why not use this article as a catalyst for Conversations That Matter® within your workplace.
 
The OTM Service Strategy includes 7 key elements and 50 attributes that provide synergy for an effective service strategy. Find out more here.


Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Leaders, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Does clutter detract from the services you offer?

Clutter creates stress and creates a sense of disorganisation. What systems do you have in place to keep both front-of-house and back-of-house areas free from clutter?

If you ‘sweep your mess under a carpet’ rather than clean it properly, your back-of-house systems and processes will eventually let your front-of-house operations down.

Would you be comfortable letting the public see your back of house operation? If not, why not?

What could you do about this situation?

Copyright Gary Ryan 2011

 Research Participant
Our back of house operations had always been a shambles. But we seemed to keep getting away with it. Until one day we didn’t. And the company nearly went broke because of it. Luckily we survived and we cleaned our act up. Literally!


Why not use this article as a catalyst for Conversations That Matter® within your organisation.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, Safety, Service Excellence, Workplace Safety

OHS&E, Privacy and Risk are all about Service Excellence

A service approach to occupational, health, safety, environmental, privacy and risk management issues means that your underlying approach is not one of compliance, but one of creating an environment that is safe and productive for your staff, and one that is safe and respectful for your customers.

A service approach means that you proactively schedule reviews of these aspects of your work so that you are never out-of-date. This means that you may go over and above standards set out by the law. Sometimes they just aren’t what the standard should be.

What is your organisation’s approach to these aspects of service excellence?
©Copyright Gary Ryan 2011
Research Participant
I used to get quite stressed about safety compliance issues. Once I shifted my thinking and recognised that safety isn’t about compliance but about being able to deliver great service, it somehow made it easier.
Why not use this article as a catalyst for Conversations That Matter® within your workplace.
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com