Today is the official launch day for my friend Stan Phelps’ new book What’s Your Purple Goldfish? 2 weeks ago I did a fantastic video interview with Stan to share with you today. Murphy’s Law being what it is, only Stan’s half of the audio was recorded. So rather than give you Stan answering questions you can’t hear, I read my own lips, typed them up, and added Stan’s responses, to provide you with this transcription of our conversation.

Before I share the interview, I wanted to share something: I didn’t believe Stan would ever find 1001 Purple Goldfish for his book. That’s not like me to not believe someone, but I really thought it was too ambitious of a goal. I implored Stan to stop at 200 or even 500, but thankfully for you, he didn’t listen to me. And I couldn’t be more proud of what he accomplished in finding 1,001 purple goldfish, of which he distilled down the lessons into this fantastic book. And if you buy the book, there’s an extra secret code in there that will allow you to read all 1,001 stories.

This interview (and Stan’s book) offers tips and insights to help small businesses create a consistently outstanding customer experience for their customers, one worth talking about to everyone, online and offline.

Now on with the interview.

Interview with Stan Phelps, author of What’s Your Purple Goldfish

Phil: What is a purple goldfish?

Stan: A purple goldfish is giving a little something extra to your customer at the time of purchase. It improves your customer’s experience with you. It differentiates you from your competition. And most importantly, it gives your customers something to talk about, online and offline.

Phil: What is lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap)?

Stan: The concept has acdtually been around since 1840s. It’s creole (French and Spanish). La Nappa is Spanish for the gift. Twain wrote about it in Life on the Mississippi. He said lagniappe was a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get.

Phil: What were some of your favorite Purple Goldfish?

Stan: AJ Bombers and Pizza Shuttle are 2 of my favorites from Milwaukee that you submitted. (NOTE: Links to these stories can be found at the end of this interview). But rather than use those, I’d like to share 2 or 3 others.

First, I love Double Tree Hotels. They give you a wonderfully large and warm chocolate chip cookie as soon as you check in.

Another of my favorites is the restaurant chain 5 Guys Burgers and Fries, which is not everywhere yet, but it will be soon. When you walk in, there’s a huge vat of ballpark peanuts to nosh on. Also, when you buy fries at 5 Guys, you not only get the fries in the cup, you get some “bonus fries” which is another handful or two in your bag.

Southwest Airlines is a final example with their “Bags Fly Free” program. And Southwest really does a lot with many little added values.

Phil: It seems to me that creating Purple Goldfish starts with the culture. Would you agree?

Stan: I wholeheartedly agree. A Purple Goldfish is what I call a beacon. It attracts people to it, it guides the way when things are tough, and it shines a light on the entire company.

A Purple Goldfish is really an unexpected extra without any expectation of return. It’s just that little extra. Great companies get this, and companies that are struggling don’t.

Another thing to remember: Happy employees create happy customers. Do a little extra for your employees and help them do a little extra for your customers. The more you can empower your employees to do the little extra, the more you can make all the difference to your customers.

Phil: What similarities did you see between all the companies you caught in your Purple Goldfish net?

Stan: In collecting 1001 purple goldfish, it became clear there were 2 major categories:

1) Value Examples – the tangible type of goldfish where you give extra value to your customers, like extra fries.

2) Maintenance Examples – All about the little things you can do to make it easy for the customer to deal with you. One of the categories is from the convenience perspective.

What do you do when your customers are waiting? Waiting is inevitable, so find a way to do something extra. Another one is how do you recover from a mistake?

My favorite example of service recovery is an elder care company from Canada called Nurse Next Door. When someone at Nurse Next Door screws up, they apologize and send a fresh baked apple pie (think of this as humble pie) as a sign of “Hey, we screwed up. Sorry about that.” They’ve been able to track this down to customers they’ve retained, and customers that have come about as a result of these accidental screw ups – and recoveries.

Phil: Why do you think more companies deliver Purple Goldfish to their customers?

Stan: Mainly because of this fact: 90% of customers don’t complain out loud – they complain with their wallet and go somewhere else with their business, so there’s no opportunity to do service recovery. There can be no other explanation.

Phil:What’s one easy way to provide your customers a purple goldfish?

Stan: Unfortunately, there is no simple thing. Find what your company does that’s signature and find a way to add a little something extra to that.  Think about what one thing you can do to stand out, and be sticky – to make folks love you and want to tell your story to a few friends – or a few thousand friends.

Something else: I think the biggest myth in marketing is MEETING EXPECTATIONS. Just like being on time. It’s a myth – either you’re on time, or you’re late. It’s just like that for expectations. Either you exceed expectations, or you fall short. There’s no middle ground.

Meeting expectations is like playing prevent defense in football. It only prevents you from doing one thing – winning.

Phil: How can we find more about you and the Purple Goldfish book?

Stan: The book site is easy to spell and remember: http://purplegoldfish.com. If you want more examples and marketing insights, here’s one that’s harder to spell, but is my main site, http://marketinglagniappe.com.

Some final thoughts from Stan: The best businesses don’t just do one signature thing – they have a whole school of Purple Goldfish to exceed their customers expectations, each and every time they connect.

What are you waiting for? Go buy Stan’s Book What’s Your Purple Goldfish? NOW!

A Purple Goldfish from Stan and Amazon.com

From 1/11/12 until 1/15/12 you can get the Kindle version of What’s Your Purple Goldfish? book FREE – if you’re an Amazon prime member.

Additional Purple Goldfish Resources:

• Follow Stan Phelps on Twitter

Read about the 2 Purple Goldfish I submitted to the project:

• 1st post about AJ Bombers
• 2nd post about AJ Bombers
• Read about Pizza Shuttle’s purple goldfish

From Phil: What follows is an outstanding guest post from Lou Imbriano, author of the outstanding new book Winning the Customer. This is a fantastic article with a HUGE lesson for all businesses. Hope you enjoy it!

I think most people would agree that there is much more bad or mediocre than exceptional customer service out there. Considering that everyone typically agrees that customer service is important, why is this the case? What factor influences the decision to lean more toward mediocre than spectacular when customer service is delivered? I’m here to tell you why customer service fails so often: it can be summed up in three letters ~ C.F.O.

It’s that plain and simple. CFOs are the assassins of great customer service. I know you may be scratching your head right now because in most organizational structures, the CFO is not responsible for the Customer Service Department. Although that thought is most likely true, they do have control over the P&L statement. CFOs and their team of customer happiness bandits quite often strike in extinguishing the perfect customer service experience. The problem is that exceptional consumer treatment takes time, resources, and money. To do things to the utmost and provide the “royal treatment”, money has to be spent on structure, training, staffing, retraining, and a list of things that do not appear to add up to profits in black in white on a spreadsheet.

When I was with the Patriots, we had quarterly budget meetings and I sat at a long table across from ownership, a team of accountants, and lawyers; they grilled me on how we would reach our budget goals. Because we were not selling necessary products like paper and pens in the stationery business, or pills and vials of medicine in the pharmaceutical industry, there was no real equation that could be applied to satisfy their questions. As an example: “X” number of hospitals with “Y” number of patients, each month needing “Z” amount of medication for pain calculates potential sales of their pain pharmaceutical. There is a need for the product, and the only thing in their way is the competition’s offering. Still challenging, but because there is a need, there is a buyer. With the Patriots, nothing my group sold was an absolute necessity to the customer; it was even a luxury at times.

We sold signage, media, and hospitality; although these items could be very useful to brands and for doing business, it was not a “lay up” for our group to know who wanted to engage with us. There was no concrete equation to project sales numbers, which made our accountants scratch their heads. I told them that I did not have a formula stating that three dinners, one invite to a game, and sending their kid an autographed football would equal an end zone sign and three tailgate parties. There was no equation to closing business, just a constant, relentless effort to build relationships in order to determine what our clients needed to help them separate their brand from their competitors. Invariably, our first and second quarter budget meetings were grueling because of the lack of equation for the close, but as we got closer to the season, we always surpassed our numbers to the bewilderment of most of the bean counters.

Customer Service falls into a similar bucket. Although there is definitely an equation or roadmap to provide exceptional customer service, there is nothing you can input to a spreadsheet in black and white that shows if you take the steps necessary to provide exceptional customer service that it will lead to growth in revenues. Yet, every company that provides memorable customer service typically experiences long-term growth and sustainability.

Each year, when budget time comes around and cuts have to be made, it’s easier to make the slash in areas that do not appear on paper to be revenue generating departments. In addition, because they are not viewed as revenue producers to the organization, when customer service departments are being formed, they are typically under-funded, pay less to their staff, and skimp on essentials. That thought process is not only wrong, it also kills any maximization of long-term revenue generation and sustainability. Customer Service is a revenue generating part of an organization; CFOs need to resist the urge to cut in these areas and must properly support departments that build relationships with customers. The CFOs who can understand this principle will be the CEOs of tomorrow.

About the author: Lou Imbriano, the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the New England Patriots football team from 1997-2006, is President and CEO of TrinityOne, a marketing company specializing in creating strategy for corporations to maximize revenue generation through building customer relationships and custodians of the brand. Formerly a radio and TV producer, he has appeared on numerous radio and television programs. Lou has been profiled on Forbes.com as one of their “Names You Need to Know” and has written multiple columns for the Sports Business Journal. Lou, who teaches sports marketing at Boston College, is based in Boston, MA and is the author of the newly released Winning the Customer. Lou can be found at LouImbriano.com

Is your company looking to create better experiences for your customers, one that’s more creative and takes better care of your vital customers, and ultimately grow your bottom line? You’re in luck: Joseph Michelli, author of The Zappos Experience, and I had a talk about how your company can recreate the Zappos Experience for your company. Read on for details!

Phil Gerbyshak: What is the Zappos Experience?

Joseph Michelli: In a nutshell, I consider The Zappos Experience to be the ability to make any product or service a personal experience and, as such, even defy odds (initially by selling shoes on-line) to forge connections with customers that illicit trust and garner loyalty.

PG: How did the Zappos Experience start?

JM: Zappos was not initially an experience provider. Rather, they were looking to be a product distributor where their selection (having more shoes available than someone would encounter in a shoe store) was their competitive advantage. In the beginning the web-based company believe they would have a pricing advantage over traditional shoe stores by not having to have product in inventory and simply rely on shoe manufacturers to “drop ship” shoes in fulfillment of customer orders. Quickly Zappos leadership understood that selection was insufficient to draw customers to their website or call center for ordering. As such, Zappos stepped-up their commitment to service excellence (buying inventory directly, locating a warehouse near the UPS global shipping hub for expediency of product delivery, and developing a culture where the emotional experience of staff and customer mattered).

PG: Why is the Zappos Experience unique?

JM: Because most business leaders talk about creating “craveable customer experiences” but often fail to invest in their people (the experience creators) or the infrastructure of the business that is essentially for experience delivery. Zappos approach to the creation of their core values, the levels upon levels of screening of prospective employees to assure they fit the companies culture, the resources provided for training and employee growth, and a playful workplace dedicated to longterm business performance all summate into the unique Zappos Experience.

PG: How can other companies use what Zappos does in their companies?

JM: Throughout the book I have call out sections which I refer to as “try these on for size” which take the key lessons from each section and turn them into challenge questions. Examples of areas in which you can use Zappos is a benchmark include the degree to which your core values truly reflect what it takes to be successful in your company or how much do you really trust your employees to use their discretion to forge authentic relationships with customers?

PG: How much does it cost to create a Zappos Experience?

JM: I love the way this question is posed. Zappos pays staff at the median level but enriches their experience by short-term, mid-range, and long-term pleasure generating activities. For customers, Zappos charges full-value for their products and enriches the service experience through expedited service delivery, liberal return policies, and well-trained/engaging staff. All this leads me to answer your question almost like a Mastercard commercial – Investment in the experience nominal = benefits of the experience priceless!

PG: What’s the most important takeaway from Zappos?

JM: Know who you are, articulate that knowledge through a statement of your values, select and make all major business decisions filtered by those values, execute operationally to the best of your ability, make the customer experience as easy as possible, encourage your people to authentically care, and watch your business grow.

PG: How can we learn more about you and your work?

JM: Thanks for asking! The Zappos Experience is my 6th book so much can be learned about me through my prior works like The Starbucks Experience, The New Gold Standard (about the The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company) or When Fish Fly (about the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle). Beyond my books you can learn more concerning my consulting and speaking services at my website www.themichelliexperience.com

NOTE from Phil: What follows is a guest post from Joseph Michelli, author of The Zappos Experience, among other books on the customer experience. It’s great advice for all businesses, large and small.

When Products and Services Aren’t Enough

Just a generation or two ago it was enough for employees to arrive early at the mines, factories or farms offering their hard labor and sweat equity. As the whistle blew at the end of the day, workers would clock out and leave work behind. Then came the service economy, where we were all expected to meet the expanding desires and wishes of the customer – as technological advances made us increasingly available. The more available we were, the higher expectations for service became.

Increasingly, the line between work and home began to blur. Today we have electronic leashes that make us accessible 24 hours a day and customers have come to expect immediate gratification. Worse yet our immediate responses aren’t enough, since satisfied customers frequently move on to others who can more fully engage them.

In today’s world, employers are looking for their people to not only master customer service transactions but to produce the complete “customer experience.” Moreover, they are asking their people to not only put their physical effort tirelessly into the work but to invest their ideas and creativity to make the business better. Business trend analysts have talked about these changes as a fundamental shift from the service economy to the innovative/experiential economy.

In an experiential world, pure commodities, and even quality goods or services lose value as people seek complete emotionally engaging experiences.  Let’s take Tony Hsieh and other leaders at Zappos as our example.  Zappos is a revolutionary business that garnered success by focusing on the “happiness” of employees, vendors, customers, and other stakeholders.  The Zappos “happiness” experience is at the heart of my new book The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW and essentially operates from some key business truths.

Here is a quick list of 10 truths that drive extraordinary employee engagement (Zappos is ranked in the top 10 of Fortunes Best Place to Work) and customer loyalty (over 75% of Zappos purchases made daily are from repeat customers)

1. In the age of the internet consumer information and choice make brand differentiation extremely difficult
2. No product or service is flawless
3. Employees often feel like they are nothing more than fulfillment objects tasked to perform a function
4. Many consumers are cynical about the product and service claims made by businesses
5. Leaders who authentically care about their people and live by a core set of values will increase the emotional engagement and loyalty of their people
6. When you inspire people to see that they can do more than simply “execute a job” you can inspire staff to engage a transformational calling which translates into the creation of engaging experiences for customers
7. When work and play are integrated at work, conversations about work/life balance often become less relevant
8. Customer who are cared for by engaged employees tend to become customer evangelists (despite the occasional service breakdowns that will occur)
9. More money spent on customer experiences often decreases the money needed for advertising
10. Consumers can be “customers for life” not just short term sales numbers, when operational excellence and emotional engagement are built into service experiences

In The Zappos Experience, I spend a great deal of time looking at how Zappos leadership developed their core values and how they use those values to build a family spirit at work.  There is also a considerable amount of attention dedicated to how leadership selects staff that fit the companies values, onboard those staff into the Zappos culture, and ultimately charge each employee to be a defender of culture and a champion for delivering happiness and wow at every turn. Ultimately, Zappos – like many other great businesses – understands that all business is personal. People are looking for a complete personal experience that engages them, attends to the details, wows them, listens to them, and makes a memorable difference both within and beyond the walls of the business. Have you elevated your products and services in direction of the ultimate staff and customer experience?  If not, you might want to take a lesson from the Zappos Experience!

Pick up your copy of the Zappos Experience today and learn more of the insights that can drive YOUR customer experience, and stay tuned for an interview with the author next week Tuesday!

My wife and I love great customer service! She manages a team of people who talk to medical professionals and support staff who are frequently very stressed out, and she works hard to help her team understand the impact of great customer service with their ultimate customers, the residents who are serviced by her customers.

Customer service can suck

All too often we get horrible customer service, and together, we dissect what happened and talk about how we would do things better if it were us. Sometimes we share it (in a nice way) with the manager of where we got service from, and sometimes we just walk away.

Great customer service matters

And when we get outstanding customer service, we always take the time to write up a comment card or leave a message for the manager to let them know the awesome stuff that happened. What happened to us a Lush store recently is worth sharing.

We’re frequent customers at the store near our house. If you’ve never heard of Lush, it’s a handmade cosmetics store that sells great smelling soaps, lotions and the like. Yes, they even have guy stuff

The service we received was nothing short of amazing, and it is each time we go to the store. Every staff member, especially Lexi and Jenna, are product experts, and extremely helpful, pleasant, and, dare I say, genuinely happy. Yes, that’s right: folks who work in a retail establishment are HAPPY! I love it!

Diane took a few minutes to share our extreme satisfaction on the feedback from on the Lush website, never expecting an answer or anything to happen.

A mere 30 hours later, she received a personalized response from a customer experience representative (yes, that’s her REAL title), including a thank you for her feedback, and included that they’ll be sharing the feedback with the store.

It’s clear customer service matters to Lush, whether it be in store or online (where we’ve also bought plenty of products)!

AWESOME job Lush! You’ve got a customer for life in my wife and I!

And your business can do this too! Keep reading for how!

4 Steps to Providing Great Customer Service

1) Train your staff – If your staff doesn’t have adequate training, they can’t provide great customer service. Not one person we’ve ever talked to at Lush has ever not known a question we’ve asked.

2) Empower your staff to make decisions and help customers – this is a no brainer to me, but some companies insist on not letting this happen. My wife asked “What happens if we don’t like the product? Can we bring it back?” And every employee consistently said “Absolutely. Please bring it back.” And of course, what would we do? We’d get more of a product we LOVE! Sounds simple right? But SO MANY companies get this wrong. Think of the flip side: If we try your product and we hate it, and we don’t bring it back, then we stop buying ANYTHING from you, or worse, we tell our friends about how crappy your product is.

3) Make it easy provide feedback – The Lush website is super helpful. They have live chat available, a phone number AND a contact us link on their home page, in addition to connecting to them on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel. And their contact us page is dead simple. No CAPTCHA, no delays, just enter your info and hit submit. Awesome!

Last but definitely NOT least…

4) Respond to feedback promptly and personally – I wasn’t expecting Diane would get a response. She wasn’t either. And yet, within 30 hours, we got a personal response. Outstanding! Even an automated “we got your message, thank you” would be better than nothing, but if you want GREAT customer service, PERSONALIZE your response!

I hope your business is doing this. If you are, please leave me a comment and let me know so I can do business with you.

If not, what’s holding you back? Leave me a note.

Are you listening to what your customers need or are you just “hearing” what your customers need?

You hear they need:

• Your services
• Your time
• Your talents
• Your products

But is that what they really need?

Deep down, I think they need more than that.

They DESERVE more than that!

Your customers need and deserve your full attention!

They need you to tune them in, and tune the world out.

They need you to:

Turn off your iPhone, your Droid, your BlackBerry, your cell phone.

Ignore anyone who walks by and to focus on the one person in front of you right now.

If the phone rings and it’s a customer, shut off your TV, your instant messenger, your Skype, your Google Reader, your e-mail.

Close your Dell laptop, your Macbook, your Netbook.

If it helps you to listen better, close your eyes.

Tune your customer in and find out what they really need.

Then you can give them:

• Your services
• Your time
• Your talents
• Your products

Are you listening or merely hearing what you want to hear?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keela84/41713155/

I was looking up what customer service meant to me, and what it means to others.

Here’s what I discovered:

"Customer service is the ability to provide a service or product in the way that it has been promised"

"Customer service is about treating others as you would like to be treated yourself"

"Customer service is an organization’s ability to supply their customers’ wants and needs"

"Customer Service is a phrase that is used to describe the process of taking care of our customers in a positive manner"

"Customer Service is any contact between a customer and a company, that causes a negative or positive perception by a customer"

"Customer service is a process for providing competitive advantage and adding benefits in order to maximize the total value to the customer"

"Customer Service is the commitment to providing value added services to external and internal customers, including attitude knowledge, technical support and quality of service in a timely manner"

"Customer service is an organization’s ability to supply their customers’ wants and needs."

What does customer service means to you?

Customer service is really simple. It’s all about you.

No, not you, the person giving customer service. YOU the customer.

Focus on YOU, and you’ll delight your customers. What is YOU?

Y – Yes.

Every customer likes to hear yes. Say yes more than you say no.

O – Outcome focused.

The desired outcome is a successful transaction of the product or service your customer needed.

U – Unique.

No two customers are exactly the same. What delights one might hack off another. Treat each customer uniquely.

Can you focus on YOU for just a little bit longer?

Thank YOU!

One of the most obvious, yet overlooked, points about customer service is to use your common sense when you’re making decisions. The immediacy of social media makes it even more obvious that this is overlooked.

In honor of Customer Service Week, here are my 9 Ways to Deliver Common Sense Customer Service.

1. First impressions matter (a lot!) – The first thing your customer sees or hears is REALLY important, and it sets the tone for the rest of the transaction. Take some time to make this a good one. Smile, comb your hair, take a deep breathe, and smile some more.
2. Tune the customer in and the world out – When your customer is talking, listen to what they’re saying. Turn off your iPod, don’t answer your cell phone, don’t play on Twitter, just tune your customer in and tune the rest of the world out.
3. Please and thank you still count – Remember those manners your parents taught you? Use them…ALL THE TIME!
4. You don’t know everything (but you better still find the answer) – When you read it, you know it’s true. You can’t possibly know everything…but some customer service people think they do. If you’re in customer service, admit it when you don’t know the answer…and then do what you can to find the answer as fast as you.
5. Customers aren’t always right (but they are always the customer) – Customers may not always be right, but that doesn’t mean you should stick it up their butt that they’re wrong. Customer service reps do NOT need to be right to make the point. The customer is ALWAYS the customer, and if you force your desire to be right, you may make your point…and lose the customer forever after. Treat the customer with respect and find a way to let them win if you can…or at least save face. 
6. People’s names are like gold (learn them fast) – The sooner you can find someone’s name, the sooner you can begin using it to create rapport with the client. Dale Carnegie was right: The sweetest sound anyone will ever hear is the sound of their own name. Learn the name and use it and your customers will be much happier.
7. Your name matters too – Take a few moments to introduce yourself too. Tell your customers your name, so when they have a question, they can use your name to ask the question.
8. Complaints are great– Complaints are an opportunity to fix what’s wrong. If folks don’t complain, you can’t make things better. Let your customers know you welcome their complaints and appreciate the opportunity to make things better.
9. Service recovery matters (a lot!) -  If you screw up (and you probably will if you work in customer service for more than a day), you need to practice your service recovery. How you recover from a mistake is often MORE important than the actual service delivery. I’ve had many places where I had something done wrong, that when they finally fixed it, they made it GREATER than if they had never messed up in the first place.

What are your best ways to deliver common sense customer service?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kasthor/93217483/

PS: Join me TODAY (October 8th, 2009) at 12 noon central for a customer service week webinar where I talk in depth about some of these tips. I just found out you don’t have to be a member to attend, and it’s F-R-E-E!

This week when you go to your favorite coffee shop, get your hair cut, talk to your cell phone or cable company, or even go grocery shopping, pause for an extra second and thank those who serve you.

It’s Customer Service Week and all week over at Slacker Manager, I’m going to be sharing my best tips on making a GREAT customer service week.

If you want a little inspiration this week, I’m doing a webinar this Thursday called Recession Proof Your Customer Service, along with 4 other great sessions from:

• Rich Hand, Executive Director of Membership for HDI
• Chris Dancy, Founder of ServiceSphere
• Brandon Caudle, Author of Customer Service Voodoo
• Pete McGarahan, President of McGarahan and Associates

If you’re a member of HDI, all 5 webinars are complimentary. There are many levels of membership for HDI, so if you’re an IT service and support professionals, I encourage you to sign up and join us for the webinars!