The Pow Wow Effect on Customer Service
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
I’ve got a totally fresh approach for teaching customer service. I’ve actually invented a bulletproof way for your entire team – from the entry level on up – to instantly start improving your customer experience. A bold statement, right? Well, I’ve written and produced (14) HR training films on this subject and written books on Customer Empathy and Customer Urgency. And over the years, I’ve seen the formulas for building a “customer centric culture” get more and more complex. Yet service has continued to decline. Why is that? Because if we want to retain customers, we need to simplify the experience not make it more complicated.
A year ago I came up with a very simple – and what I think is a revolutionary customer retention approach…and I’m happy to say that my clients are having phenomenal success with it…it’s an easy approach where EVERYBODY in your organization, starting with the young entry level employee on up, instantly knows what to do – and what not to do to improve your customer scores. I call it the POW-WOW culture.
Now, before you go all PC on me, let me start with what you think you know about the phrase POW WOW. I’m part Blackfoot Indian and in the Native American Culture, a POW WOW is a gathering of tribes to heal old wounds and celebrate new alliances. And it’s the perfect language and behavior to describe how we should cement our customer retention. First, I want you to suspend your conventional thinking about the customer experience. For example, We’ve all been told we are supposed to “WOW” the customer. Go “over the top” to impress the customer. The WOW moments are nice but WOW’s don’t build loyalty. We need to be far more careful of the POW moments. POW moments are the mistakes you make…Mistakes that knock the air out of a customer. A POW moment is when they get anxiety over a possible confrontation with you. A POW moment happens when you don’t deliver on your brand promise. A POW is blaming THEM for a problem. POWS are so powerful that our research shows that 5 WOW moments can be completely erased by ONE POW moment. Your customer scores skyrocket when you Eliminate the POW moments. Eliminate the POWS and loyalty has a chance to grow.
Let me give you two real-world examples of the POW WOW effect…and the first one involves YOU. For you women, look at this list. If you have a man who does all of these things…holds your hand, tries to understand you and works hard, you would probably think he was a WOW kind of guy. But if he has ONE POW moment like this…holds your hand but notices a woman walking by…all of his WOWS disappear. Here’s another very recent POW crushes WOW example. This is Ryan Lochte…superstar Olympic swimmer – with 8 gold medals (arguably 8 WOW moments) and his winning image has brought him $10million dollars in corporate sponsorships. (That’s 10 million more WOWs) Yet, when he was caught in ONE lie in Brazil, THAT was a serious POW moment. That single POW moment erased all of his WOWs…the Gold on his medals was instantly tarnished and all of his sponsors dropped him. POWS can literally be deadly to your existence.
That’s why I am so excited about the POW WOW culture approach. Having a POW WOW culture strikes at the heart of the customer’s emotional connection with you. No POWS makes a customer feel safe and respected. No POWS creates a culture of trust and loyalty. And the POW WOW culture is so simple to teach – I mean, You’ve just heard about it but now, you will never forget it. My job as a keynote speaker and consultant is to articulate this message, identify your customer’s POW moments and determine how you can turn them into WOWS…OH, and there is one more twist to having success with the POW WOW approach. I’ll help you Pinpoint the behaviors that you think are WOWs…but that your customers perceive as POWS. I’ve got some pretty interesting case studies that will convince you that the POW WOW culture is truly revolutionary approach to retaining customers. I’m Ross Shafer and I can’t wait to talk to you about evolving your culture into the POW WOW revolution.
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Ross Shafer is the author of (9) popular business books and (14) human resource training films. In a former career Ross won (6) Television Emmy awards for his work as a TV host, writer, and producer. Today, Ross is a sought after keynote speaker and consultant for Fortune 500 companies worldwide.
WOW. AMAZING THOUGHT. I NEVER KNEW ABOUT POW MOMENTS WHICH WE MUST TAKE CARE