In the ever-evolving landscape of today’s business world, titles and roles frequently change to reflect the dynamism of the marketplace. However, my friend, Jack Miller, the General Manager of the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, has taken a step that resonates far beyond mere semantics. He has rebranded himself as the “Chief Inspiration Officer.”
I wrote extensively about Jack and the Scottsdale Princess in my book, “ICONIC,” as a shining example of distinction. Jack is a leader who understands what it takes to be not just the best IN the world but the best FOR the world. This latest move is a profound testament to his commitment to leadership that inspires.
Leading Through Inspiration
The traditional view of leadership often involves guiding, directing, and managing. For some, it may even (unfortunately) mean ordering and dominating. But the truly transformative leaders are those who inspire. Inspiration fuels passion, sparks creativity, and nurtures the courage to innovate and take risks.
The Chief Inspiration Officer
Jack Miller’s title change is more than a novel moniker to which other leaders should aspire. It symbolizes a shift in focus from managing to actively inspiring a team. This isn’t about overseeing operations and finances; it’s about creating a culture where every team member feels driven to excel and contribute their best.
As the Chief Inspiration Officer, Jack embodies a leadership style that motivates his team through shared vision, purpose, and enthusiasm. He recognizes that his role is not just to tell people what to do but to help them discover why they do it and what they can achieve while simultaneously delivering an Ultimate Customer Experience.®
A Culture of Inspiration
This shift in leadership perspective fosters a culture where inspiration infuses every level of the organization. It encourages employees to think creatively and to strive for more than just meeting quotas or targets. It creates an environment where innovation thrives, and success is measured not merely by numbers but by the positive impact and distinctive contributions made.
When my favorite bartender, Jaimie Werling, announced he was moving from Indianapolis to Scottsdale, I suggested he contact the Fairmont. He’s now been there for several years – and tells me constantly that he continues to be inspired by Jack and his fellow leadership team. This resort attracts the best – like Jaimie – because they inspire.
The Ripple Effect
When a leader like Jack Miller emphasizes inspiration, it sets a precedent that extends beyond his immediate team. It conveys to the entire industry that leadership is not about maintaining the status quo. It’s about challenging it, growing, and constantly finding new ways to stand out and create distinction.
The Takeaway: Be the Best FOR the World
Jack Miller’s evolution from General Manager to Chief Inspiration Officer is more than just an interesting anecdote. It’s a lesson in how leadership can—and should—evolve to meet the unique challenges of today’s world.
If we want to lead teams that are not just efficient but exceptional, not just productive but passionate, we must lead through inspiration.
Jack’s example serves as a beacon for any leader aspiring to create distinction within their team or organization. It’s a reminder that titles and roles are flexible, but the core principles of leadership remain. Leaders inspire, elevate, and bring out the best in those around them.
May we all strive to be Chief Inspiration Officers in our respective fields, for it is the path to true distinction and enduring success.
What I Discovered – and How it Impacts You – at the National Speakers Association Convention
I’m returning home from Orlando after attending the National Speakers Association’s 50th annual convention. (I frequently make the joke that it’s a conference with more than 1,000 speakers but no listeners.)
While it was a remarkable experience that allowed me to renew friendships with many of the top content creators and thought leaders worldwide, it also got me to consider a crucial issue: Why should a business owner or leader seek advice and input from someone outside her company?
It can be tempting to think that you have all the answers and that you can handle every aspect of your business on your own. You work in the business every day, and an outsider will never have the level of detailed knowledge of your specific business as you.
However, listening to outside expertise can provide valuable insights and help you make informed decisions that will ultimately strengthen your business. Here are five reasons why an outside consultant, author, or speaker can help you grow your business:
One of the main benefits of listening to outside expertise is that it allows you to gain a fresh perspective on your business. You may be too close to the day-to-day operations of your business, making it difficult to see areas for improvement. An outside coach, consultant, or speaker can bring a new set of eyes and a different perspective, helping you identify areas that you may have overlooked.
Industries are constantly evolving, and it can be challenging to keep up with the latest developments on your own. Outside expertise can help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in your industry. An author, consultant, or seminar leader may provide you with valuable insights into what is working and what is not, helping you stay ahead of the competition.
Making better decisions is yet another advantage of seeking out outside knowledge. It is challenging to make choices that will impact the entire company when you are a business leader, as you have many responsibilities. An outside specialist may offer you data-driven insights and recommendations based on best practices in your sector, assisting you in making decisions that are best for your company.
Engaging outside expertise can help you improve your leadership skills. A business coach or mentor can provide you with guidance on how to motivate your team, communicate effectively, and build a positive company culture. They can also help you identify areas where you may be struggling as a leader and provide you with strategies to improve.
Finally, coaches, consultants, and speakers can help you increase your confidence as a business owner. When you work with an outside expert, you can rest assured that you’re getting the best advice and guidance possible. This can give you peace of mind and increase your confidence in running your business successfully.
Outside expertise is essential for building a stronger business. There were many experts at the National Speakers Association convention who could help you gain a fresh perspective, stay up to date with industry trends, make informed decisions, improve your leadership skills, expand your network, and increase your confidence. Don’t hesitate to seek out outside expertise – it could be the key to taking your business to the next level.
And, please remember – if you seek the insight of a consultant or coach, or if your next meeting needs a speaker – I’m here to help you create distinction and deliver an Ultimate Customer Experience.®
Unfortunately, many businesses still fall short when it comes to delivering an Ultimate Customer Experience®. Because of this, they not only suffer in terms of retaining customers, but they also lose out on the referral business that can group their company. I’ve been on a crusade for over two decades to move organizations to this high standard – yet the vast majority still are not hitting the target.
Even as businesses all over the world are currently spending billions on enhancing consumer experiences, there are still several reasons why this is the case.
The top four are as follows:
Lack of training: Many team members are not properly trained on how to interact with customers. This can lead to misunderstandings, frustration, and even anger.
Automated systems: Automated systems can be helpful for simple tasks, but they can also be frustrating when customers need to speak to a human being. The challenge is that when it’s difficult to hire quality employees, and the cost of good team members has risen, more organizations are shifting to this approach.
Long wait times: Customers do not have the luxury of waiting for hours on end. If they can’t obtain assistance right away, they’ll probably go somewhere else to do business. Wouldn’t you?
Unhelpful employees: Some employees are simply not interested in providing good customer service. They may be rude, dismissive, or even incompetent. And some of younger generations may not expect the types of experiences we want them to deliver. We can’t presume our team can deliver an experience they cannot relate to receiving.
When customers have a bad experience, research shows that they are likely to take their business elsewhere – even if it’s only been a single negative encounter. They may also share their negative experience with others, whether in person with friends or online with the world, which can damage a company’s reputation.
What can businesses do to improve their customer experience? Here are four tips:
Train your employees: Make sure your employees are properly trained on how to interact with customers. This includes teaching them how to be polite, helpful, and understanding.
Use human beings: Don’t rely too heavily on automated systems. Customers appreciate being able to speak to a human being when they need help.
Keep wait times short: Customers don’t have time to wait on hold for hours. If you can’t resolve an issue quickly, offer to call the customer back as soon as possible.
Hire helpful employees: When hiring new employees, look for people who are friendly, patient, and eager to help.
In addition to the above, businesses can also improve their customer experience with these three steps:
Making it easy for customers to do business with you: This includes having a clear and easy-to-use website, offering multiple ways to contact customer service, and providing clear and concise information about your products and services.
Personalizing the customer experience: This means understanding your customers’ needs and preferences and tailoring your interactions with them accordingly. For example, you can use customer data to send personalized emails or offer special promotions.
Going the extra mile: This means going above and beyond what is expected to make your customers happy. For example, you could offer a refund or replacement if a customer is not satisfied with their purchase, or you could send a handwritten thank-you note to a customer who has made a large purchase.
By following these tips, businesses can improve their customer experience and boost their bottom line.
The goal of my forthcoming book, “The Ultimate Customer Experience® — Five Steps Everyone Must Know to Excite Your Customers, Engage Your Colleagues, and Enjoy Your Work,” is to provide in a concise and compelling form the primary steps that EVERY employee must integrate into every customer reaction.
One major automotive company just purchased over 1000 copies to present to frontline employees. This is the book that each team member should read to provide a baseline for every customer interaction.
“The Ultimate Customer Experience®” will be released in two weeks – but you can pre-order now! Go to https://UltimateCustomerExperience.com for all the information.
In my first business book, “ALL Business is Show Business,” I wrote about the importance of emotion in creating and delivering the Ultimate Customer Experience.®
Emotions are powerful drivers of behavior–and they have been since the beginning of time. It seems that we’re hardwired to feel certain ways when we encounter certain stimuli: we feel happy when we see beauty; we become sad when someone close passes away; angry when someone does something unfair or wrong; and fear activates our fight-or-flight response when faced with danger.
When you think about it, emotions are what causes customers to fall in love with your product or service — and emotions keep them coming back time and again.
Emotions drive people to share their experiences with others, which will grow your business by increasing awareness and word-of-mouth referrals. If your customers are experiencing strong emotions when interacting with you — whether positive or negative — they’ll be more likely to remember those feelings later when making purchase decisions.
This means that a focus on emotional design is an important part of the customer experience. It can help you create a positive image and improve the overall experience for your customers.
Emotional design helps build trust by creating a heightened emotional connection between you and your customers, making them more likely to purchase from you. This connection can also help increase loyalty among existing customers by reinforcing their positive feelings toward your company or product line.
Research shows that consumers who feel positively about a company are more likely to recommend it on social media platforms as well as through word-of-mouth recommendations. This would mean there is less need for advertising expenses because your emotional design increases brand awareness without additional marketing investment required!
The future of emotional design for you and your organization is in your hands. Start by using data as a tool for understanding what people say they feel and how their emotions affect their behavior and decision-making processes. Once you’ve got that information at hand, use technology (like chatbots, for instance) to improve how customers interact with each other and with businesses like yours — then measure the results.
If you want to deliver an Ultimate Customer Experience® so your organization gains more repeat and referral business, consider the importance of designing how you can enhance the emotional engagement that a customer has with you with as much passion and precision as you seek to delineate their customer journey.
Pre-order my new book, “The Ultimate Customer Experience ®” for your company and receive some extraordinary benefits! Contact us for more information.
Southwest Airlines halted all their operations this past Tuesday morning, citing “intermittent technology issues.” By 1 PM/Eastern, 43% of the airline’s schedule was delayed.
The airline released a statement saying that an issue with a “vendor-supplied” firewall (I’d hate to be that vendor) caused data connection problems within its operations teams. An internal message seen by the frequent traveler website, The Points Guy, noted several computer systems that had lost connectivity.
Any and every business will have IT problems at some point – ranging from what Southwest experienced this week to a solopreneur uncertain of how to run a credit card. And, following their holiday debacle over the old scheduling technology that Southwest was using, “Southwest executives have said that they were accelerating plans to modernize the airline’s systems and doubling down on investments in new infrastructure improvements,” according to The Points Guy.
They had better be doing that. Because as I state in my forthcoming book, “The Ultimate Customer Experience,” the first level of customer interaction is “Processing.” In other words, there are some aspects that are non-negotiable from the customer’s point of view. If you fail to deliver at this first level, none of your other activities to drive customer retention will succeed.
Customers do not want us to “make it right.”
Customers want us to “GET it right!”
For Southwest, keeping the planes moving safely and on time is part of the deal. Certainly, there will be issues out of your command, but passengers understand those. Wednesday afternoon, my friend, Mark Sanborn, was delayed for several hours on his United flight to Denver. He wasn’t upset at United – the delay was because of an ice storm at their destination. However, if I’m on the tarmac and can’t take off because of a software issue – or another aspect, such as crew scheduling, that I perceive to be under your control – now I become an upset and dissatisfied customer.
The primary question is, “What do we have to get EXACTLY right…every time…for every customer?” Another that my new book encourages you to ask is: “What do our customers have a RIGHT TO EXPECT from us every time they do business with us?”
Have you had a conversation with your team about those questions? One study indicated only 16% of businesses even HAVE THE LIST of what customers have a right to expect!
You cannot expect your team to deliver what your customers have a right to expect…if you have failed to identify and train your employees to deliver on those expectations.
My research and experience have identified five steps you must make certain every employee knows and executes as he or she interacts with your customers. This is the first one – “Don’t make it right; GET it right.”
However, if the employee doesn’t know what “getting it right” means – or if they haven’t been trained properly or exposed to what an Ultimate Customer Experience® is – you have no right to expect them to deliver it for your organization.
Start with this first step: Make a list of what every customer has a right to expect from you every time they interact with your organization.
(Want to be certain every member of your team knows the five steps to an Ultimate Customer Experience? We have special offers for bulk purchases of the forthcoming book –some even include a virtual presentation from me to kick off your UCX efforts! Contact us for details.)
If your goal is to provide an Ultimate Customer Experience®, here are five ideas that could help you achieve your target. However, there are always reasons NOT to take action – so I’m going to go a bit backward and present “Cons and Pros.” First, you’ll see a reason why you should not take the recommended step, followed by an incentive to overcome the potential objection.
Implement a personalized experience: Customers want to feel special and recognized, and using their data to personalize their experience can go a long way. This includes personalized recommendations, customized offers, and tailored communication.
Cons: Personalization requires access to customer data, which can raise privacy concerns if not handled properly.
Pros: Customers feel valued and appreciated, leading to increased loyalty, spending with your organization, and enhanced engagement.
Offer a seamless omnichannel experience: Customers expect to be able to interact with your company through various channels, from social media to email to phone. Ensuring a seamless experience across all channels can improve customer satisfaction.
Cons: Maintaining consistent messaging and branding across channels can be challenging and requires investment and commitment.
Pros: Customers will be able to interact with your brand in a way that is most convenient for them, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction. How can it be an Ultimate Customer Experience if it’s difficult for customers to connect with you in the manner they desire?
Continuously gather feedback and improve: Customers want to know that their voice is heard and that the brand is listening to their feedback. Continuously gathering feedback and using it to improve the customer experience can lead to a better overall experience.
Cons: Gathering and analyzing feedback can be time-consuming and resource intensive.
Pros: Customers feel heard and valued, leading to repeat and referral business – the lifeblood of profitability.
Create a community: Customers want to feel like they are part of something bigger than just a transaction. Creating a community around your brand through social media, events, and other initiatives can foster a sense of belonging and connection.
Cons: Creating and maintaining a community can take a lot of effort and monitoring. You need to have team members ready to respond when your customers provide input.
Pros: Customers feel a sense of loyalty to the brand and are more likely to advocate for it. If “word-of-mouth marketing” is truly impactful, this is a dynamic way to stimulate more of it.
Deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience®: Customers now expect quick and effective solutions to their problems. Providing support, offering multiple channels for customer service, and empowering employees to make decisions can all contribute to a positive customer service experience. It’s your primary opportunity to improve retention and referrals – and create the kind of organizational culture that inspires productivity from your team.
Cons: Providing this level of high-quality customer experience can require additional training and investment.
Pros: Customers feel heard and valued, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business…and profit!
You can always find a reason not to do what needs to be done to deliver an Ultimate Customer Experience.® However, for every action, there is an ROI. As I’ve written before, ROI can mean what we customarily assume – Return on Investment – or it can have another impactful meaning: Return on Inaction.
What if your competition decides an investment in the Ultimate Customer Experience® is worthwhile – and you do nothing? What if your customers become attracted to your competition because they are serving them at a higher level where they feel known, heard, and valued?
The “pros” of the Ultimate Customer Experience outweigh the “cons” – and by a significant margin. Now the question becomes, what action will you take?
My new book is about eight weeks from release – and it’s titled (as you might expect) “The Ultimate Customer Experience: 5 Steps Everyone Must Know to Excite Your Customers, Engage Your Colleagues, and Enjoy Your Work.”
This book is NOT about theories, complex strategies, or customer journey maps. It’s about the five steps that every organization must ensure that each team member knows in order to create the kind of customer experience that ensures repeat and referral business.
It’s available for price-protected pre-order from Amazon and other retailers now:
