30 Seconds to Customer Greatness
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
Thanks for finding the Relevant Leaders Club, this is a resource for leaders who want to take away new ideas to boost your business and your career. It’s also a forum to help make everyone a better leader.
So, today’s lesson is this: Is it really possible to achieve a culture of customer greatness in just 30 seconds?
Let me put it to you this way. When you meet someone new how long does it take for you to size up that person? 15 seconds? 30 seconds? Or how about the reverse, how long does it take other people to form an opinion about you in 30 seconds? For those of you who say, “I don’t care what people think about me” then I’d urge you to consider the value of 30 seconds.
A few years ago I met a remarkable woman who truly knew the value of 30 seconds – and it revolutionized her brand – and the brand of her company. Her name is Maria Garcia. I met her ten years ago at the Orlando World Center Marriott. I had been traveling all week and arrived in Orlando at midnight…starving. I threw my bags on the bed of my hotel room and looked at the room service menu. What caught my eye was a delicious looking picture of a mushroom bacon cheeseburger. I ordered that burger accompanied by a Diet Coke. The burger arrived in about 22 minutes and looked better than the picture. Also on the plate was a pile of perfectly golden steak fries. The only glitch was that the server brought up a Diet Pepsi. She immediately apologized saying, “there is a big convention in the hotel and we are out of Diet Coke but I brought a lime because some people have told me adding lime makes a Diet Pepsi taste more like a Coke.” (it doesn’t) I thanked her and she left my room still apologizing.
I bit into the steak fry and it was perfect. Not a half minute later I hear a knock at my door and it was the same young woman; standing with an ice cold Diet Coke. Before I could say anything she said, “I found this in a machine four floors down and thought you’d like to have it.” I was blown away. She probably started on my floor and kept going down the tower until she found a vending machine with Coke. I thanked her. She left. But I couldn’t let this go.
I called room service and found out her name was Maria Garcia. I wrote a letter to Marriott International telling them about the incident. Maria had performed such a selfless act (that took time out of her shift) that I wrote a chapter about her for one of my books. We produced a human resource training film about her. I joke with friends that I have done everything except marry this woman. What impressed me most was that (without knowing it) she turned me into an unpaid advocate for her and the Marriott hotel. I’ve told that story thousands of times since then. I also found out that she was promoted from room service to food and beverage manager at a larger hotel. Last year we followed up to see how she was doing and discovered that Maria is currently the Vice President of a software company in Silicon Valley. And if you asked her how it happened, she would tell you, “I have no idea.” You see, she kept getting promoted because of the way she made people other people feel about her and her company. She made everyone’s day better….30 seconds at a time. Click the button below to watch the video.
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