Tag Archives: Guest Services

The Consumer in Your Mirror

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Does the word “consumer” bother you when used in the context of ChurchWorld?

If you view a consumer strictly in the language of business, it can be offensive when used in the context of church. Who wants to be a part of consumer mentality where the object is to satisfy the wants (both stated and unstated) of individuals? Who wants to focus on telling people what they want to hear? Who really enjoys enabling a selfish, me-first attitude. Not you, right?

Go look in the mirror.

Standing before you is a consumer – whether you like it or not. You are a consumer: you have daily or weekly food needs that are satisfied by the grocery store or a restaurant. You need clothing – provided by a variety of stores. You have cash coming in and going out, so you need the financial services of a bank. The house or apartment you live in requires maintenance and upkeep, so it’s off to the local home improvement store. When you have leisure time, it’s off to the movie theaters, or downloading the latest movie, or maybe taking in a concert. For birthdays and certain holidays, there are gifts to buy for your loved ones. Parents with kids in school have multiple occasions to buy this book or that resource in order to meet the requirements. And on and on and on… The fact is, we consume. (too much, but that’s another story altogether)

Guess what? The people coming to your church – for the first time or the fifteenth time – are consumers too.

Ignore that fact, and your guests will come once – and never return.

Recognize that fact, take appropriate actions, and you will soon have guests who become regular attenders who become involved members.

Are you ready for the journey to WOW?

Guest Services the Jesus Way…

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…demonstrated so simply – and so powerfully – with a basin and a towel.

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

John 13:3-5

Talk about a lasting impression! Jesus knew his time on Earth with his disciples was rapidly drawing to a close. What powerful teaching could he give them to help prepare them for the days ahead, and for a lifetime of discipleship? Only to serve them. Jesus is the most active one at the table. He is not portrayed as one who reclines and receives, but as one who stands and gives.

How will you serve your Guests this Easter Sunday?

Model Jesus.

 

Out of Site, Out of Mind

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It only takes a few seconds for a guest to your website to decide to leave – or stay.

Guest Services in your church is more than just a friendly face greeting everyone who comes onto your property – because increasingly, your Guests have “visited” your website before coming to your church facility. Mark MacDonald, a close friend and founder and Creative Director of Pinpoint Creative Group, recently had this to say: 

 85% of people visit a website before visiting a church. If your church doesn’t “feel” like your web; most of them will never return.

You can read the full article here, but note the close relationship between the digital and the physical: your digital “doorway” must match your physical doorway – at least in “feel.”

While you’re pondering that nugget, add this to the mix:  Evidence points to information from trusted sources getting a better hold on our brains than the noise from everything else.

Martin Lindstrom, consumer advocate consultant and best-selling author, recently elaborated on this topic in a Fast Company online column:

Let’s say that not that long ago you came across a fascinating article. But when you later try to verify some of the facts, you just can’t pinpoint exactly where you first read it. What you do recall is that the source was reliable and you trusted the message. This is a situation I find myself in quite regularly. So much so, that I’ve pondered the conundrum and come up with a theory: we store information according to how trustworthy we deem the source of the message to be.

I make no claims to being a marketing expert (see Mark if you need one) or to being a student of what consumers – including church consumers – are looking for (read more of Lindstrom’s work here).

But when I connect all of the above, it boggles my mind. If you are a leader in ChurchWorld, it ought to do the same to you.

Here’s the summary:

  • An overwhelming majority of Guests coming to your church have visited your website first
  • Your digital doorway must match the physical doorway or your Guests will feel a major disconnect
  • Brands (and that includes your church) that are trusted have a better chance of staying top-of-mind

What are you going to do about it?

 

 

Speed Reading Week, Day 3

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The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW, by Joseph Michelli

Zappos – the name has come to stand for a new standard of customer experience, and amazing online shopping experience, and the most impressive transformational business success story of our time. Simply put, Zappos is revolutionizing business and changing lives.

 CEO Tony Hsieh documented the Zappos story in his excellent book Delivering Happiness. I encourage you to read it to get Hsieh’s personal insights on the evolution of Zappos.

Michelli’s book The Zappos Experience takes you through – and beyond – the playful, off-beat company culture Zappos has become famous for. Michelli reveals what occurs behind the scenes at Zappos, showing how employees at all levels operate on a day-to-day basis while providing the “big picture” leadership methods.

Michelli breaks the approach down into five key elements:

Serve a Perfect Fit – create bedrock company values

Make it Effortlessly Swift – deliver a customer experience with ease

Step into the Personal – connect with customers authentically

S T R E T C H – grow people and products

Play to Win – play hard, work harder

When you enhance the customer experience, increase employee engagement, and create an energetic culture, you can’t help but succeed. Zappos has woven these five key components into a seamless strategy that’s the envy of business leaders.

The Zappos Experience is much too detailed to adequately treat in this short post.  Applications for ChurchWorld abound. Here’s one example for you to think about:

Zappos’ customer service is legendary for how it handles the huge volume of merchandise shipments. Members of the Customer Loyalty Team take a huge amount of pride in their customer interactions.

Could you apply the same principles in the Guest Services Team at your church?

  • What are the small and epic acts that make up your service story?
  • What do people remember about the way contact with your organization made them feel?
  • What are the stories circulating about your organization’s guest services practices?
  • How are you capturing and retelling large and small WOWS delivered by your team?

It works for Zappos; it can work at your church, too.

Beyond Customer Service

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Do you give up, clean up, or follow up?

The following comments were originally adapted from Zig Ziglar on Selling and Jeffrey Gitomer’s The Sales Bible for a business development audience. In terms of what churches need to do to think about the “customer” they are trying to reach, I think they are very appropriate for church leaders to consider. Remember, guests to your church are measuring the experience they receive from you not to other churches, but to other customer-oriented businesses. The days of “customer service” as the standard of excellence are long gone.

Today, everybody talks about the importance of “customer satisfaction.” In this competitive market the only way to get ahead (and sometimes the only way to survive) is to go beyond customer service to customer satisfaction. The best way to prevent a prospect or client from becoming unhappy is to provide excellent service before the problems are allowed to arise. The Norwegian word for “sell” is selje, which literally means “to serve.” Isn’t that a great sales strategy? Here are some ways you can “serve” your prospect or client:

  • Satisfactory customer service is no longer acceptable
  • Customer service begins at 100%
  • The customer’s perception is reality
  • A mistake is a chance to improve the company
  • Problems can create beneficial rearrangements
  • Make the customer feel important
  • Learn how to ask questions
  • The most important art – the art of listening

Customer satisfaction in the never-ending pursuit of excellence to keep clients so satisfied that they tell others of the way they were treated by your organization.

Is your church raising the bar on “customer satisfaction”? Or is it just the same old, same old?

 

Still More Disney Secret Words…

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Anticipation

Steve Jobs didn’t believe in market research or focus groups. He instilled the idea that Apple would create products that people hadn’t dreamed of yet. Jobs’ genius was to create experiences that people didn’t even know they needed.

Walt Disney had that idea before Jobs was even born.

Disney took the images, speech, and music from his film and created them in 3D at Disneyland in 1955. Ten years later he first imagined, then began to create, Disney World.

Though Walt Disney died before Disney World opened in 1971, his vision lives on 40 years later.

Even more remarkable, his team of Imagineers continue to anticipate – and deliver – remarkable experiences.

Walking around the Magic Kingdom at 2 AM this morning, there were continued signs of expansion. A cast member said that Disney World is “always being built”.

That’s anticipation.

The Disney Job Description

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It began with the opening of Disneyland in 1955, and has only been modified slightly in all the years since then.

All Disney cast members adhere to it, whether they are in a very visible role in a production – or in a just-as-important support role like maintenance.

What is that all-encompassing job description at Disney?

“Create happiness”

Does your organization have job descriptions with a common – even unwritten – role that everyone lives out?

More Disney Secret Words…

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Quality.

From the online experience setting up the trip, to the friendly check-in greeting by Tricia, to the cast members all wearing smiles, to …

I could go on all day but Indiana Jones is getting to make his appearance – and my daughter was picked out of the audience to be an “extra” for the filming!

There’s too much to go into now, but EVERYTHING Disney does is done with quality.

What about your organization-do you provide QUALITY in all you do?

Understanding Guests

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Disney doesn’t have visitors, or customers – they have Guests.

One word, powerful difference.

It’s always capitalized and treated as a formal noun.

What’s the difference between treating someone like a visitor, and treating someone like a Guest?

The obvious reason is in our mindset: we do things differently when we bring Guests into our homes. We clean up, fix up, and straighten up our house. We clean up and dress up. We prepare something special to eat – something we know our Guests will like. We host them. We take care of their real needs.

According to J. Jeff Kober, former Disney Institute instructor, Guests have five underlying needs:

  1. Be Heard and Understood
  2. Belong and Contribute
  3. Feel Stable and In Control
  4. Feel Significant and Special
  5. Grow and Reach Potential

I’ll break these down in future posts – now it’s time to head out to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and be treated like a Guest!

By the way – how are you going to treat those coming your way for worship this weekend? Like Guests?

Or …?

The Secret of Disney World…

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There’s undoubtably a lot of secrets to Disney World, but for me, it is simple:

Disney expects guests

I’ll be breaking this down over the next few days (and probably beyond), but a quick observation tells it all:

My wife, 23 year-old daughter, and I are visiting Disney World for the first time. Our daughter graduated from college in 3 years, so this trip is our gift to her (we’re having a lot of fun too!). Our first day at Disney World has been a blast: spending a lot of time in the Magic Kingdom, hopping on the monorail over to Epcot for a wonderful relaxing supper at the San Angel Inn at the Mexico pavilion, then back to our wonderful room at the Port Orleans Resort – Riverside.

It’s a typical Florida day – sun, clouds, and a few rain showers in-between. During one of those rainstorms, my wife and daughter were riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad while I was waiting on them outside. A sudden rainstorm came up, pouring down rain. In a few minutes, it stopped. Within 1 minute of that, a Disney cast member walked by my vantage post, using a squeegee to wipe the rain off of the trash cans.

That simple action speaks to the lengths Disney goes because they expect guests.

What do you do in your church to expect guests?