3 ways to help your employees thrill customers

[Welcome back to our Word of Mouth Marketing Lessons newsletter. This is text from the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using this handy form.]

It’s one thing to teach your employees to do their jobs well — it’s another thing to give them the tools to thrill your customers. This goes beyond “service with a smile” and creates opportunities to make people say “wow.”

Here are three ways companies are showing their employees how to be remarkable at their jobs:

1. Give everyone an opportunity to surprise and delight
2. Set them up for customer service success
3. Adjust to what your customers need

1. Give everyone an opportunity to surprise and delight

Word of mouth isn’t limited to the marketers and PR folks on your team, or even your customer service reps. Going above and beyond to make people smile should be everyone’s job. For example, Disney’s famous attention to detail extends to how they train every employee. Did you know their janitors are taught to draw famous Disney characters with their mops? This artwork draws crowds of people just to watch someone mop the floor.

2. Set them up for customer service success

Chipotle puts a lot of emphasis on company culture and the people they hire. They often train and advance employees from within the company instead of hiring managers and team leaders from the outside. They also focus on scheduling the right staff at the right times: They have an “expeditor” who takes your card between the employee wrapping your burrito and the cashier. They have a “linebacker” who makes sure everything stays stocked so no one has to turn their back to a customer. And they have their “aces” who are their best servers scheduled during lunch rush hours. It seems simple, but it’s that customer service-based culture that sets them apart from their competitors.

3. Adjust to what your customers need

When GoDaddy realized over half of their customers use WordPress, they trained their call center representatives in WordPress too so they could better answer customers’ questions. It’s not GoDaddy’s fault when WordPress breaks, but when they can help their customers with those issues, it earns them that much more love. GoDaddy found this opportunity to help customers because they were focused on customer problems, not just software or tech issues.

Tags: Chipotle, culture, customer service, Disney, employee, employee wom, GoDaddy, internal wom, janitor, referral, WordPress