Business Coach: Make Them Feel Special

In this following transcript, Lee Cockerell (former VP of Operations of Walt Disney World Resort and business coach) talks about customer service training on Thrive15.com!

Lee Cockerell:    Number one. Make me feel special. I think about that every time I come in contact with someone. Pay attention to people. Listen to them. That makes them feel special. Get back to them quickly. It makes them feel special. Tell them how much you appreciate their business. Thank them. These make people feel special. Learn from an expert business coach.

Be available when they want to see you, not when you want to see them. The customer, make yourself available, Saturday, Sunday, two o’clock in the morning. You’re going, “What? Are you crazy?”

I know it’s hard. It’s hard to be a leader. It’s like having children. They do things in the middle of the night. You can’t send them away at five o’clock in the evening.

As my son told me when he was fourteen, he said, “Dad, you have to develop me. You can’t fire me.” Yep. He told me, too, once, when he was fourteen, he said, “When you come home at night, you should sit in the hot tub and relax for fifteen minutes before you talk to us. Everything was fine until you got here.” Stress. We had a cat. It ran away when I came home. Yeah.

Make me feel special.

Number two. Treat me as an individual when I do business with you. Get me what I want. Don’t tell me about your big policy. You can’t do this, and you can’t do that, and you can’t do this, and you can’t do that. All these rules and regulations. Treat me as an individual, and that’s what every one of your customers wants. I guarantee you, companies who can learn to personalize and individualize service are going to win. They’re going to win, and the companies that don’t are going to lose. A business coach knows.

Look at Amazon. Do you have Amazon here? They don’t let you have it here. Let me tell you what, United Parcel Service and Federal Express comes to our house every day, because my wife buys a lot of things on Amazon. They take care of business. They treat you as an individual.

One time we ordered a set of china. One bowl came broken. It was a $65 bowl. My wife sent them a note. The lady called back in one minute. “Can I help you?” “Yes, we ordered this. The bowl broke.” She said, “Okay. I can send you a new bowl, or I’ll send you a check, or I’ll put a credit on your credit card.” My wife said, “Whoa. My husband’s writing a book about customer service. How are you able to do that?” She said, “We have full authority. Whoever answers the phone, we have one policy at Amazon. Make the customer happy. I don’t have to check with anybody.”

You think that’s a pretty good deal? We just buy more and more and more stuff. They always take care of it. It comes in two days or one day. It’s unbelievable, because they treat people as individuals. They treat you with respect. They don’t say, “Well, you know, we’ll have to check on those. We’ll get back to you in a few years. I mean you know. I’m sure it’s your fault. You probably broke it when you opened it.” Do you ever deal with companies like this? It’s everybody else’s fault. It’s never their fault.

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Make me feel special and treat me as an individual, and you got me in a pretty good place. I want to do more business with you, because now I trust you.

Number three. They said show respect to me and my family when we come to Disney World. You think that’s important? Show respect to people, no matter where they’re from, what background, what color, what sexual orientation, what religion. You think that’s important? It’s everything. Show respect, take it from a business coach.

Let me tell you what, this is a big problem in the world. I grew up in Oklahoma in the 40s and 50s. 1944 I was born. I grew up in Oklahoma. A lot of discrimination there. You think I ever heard anything inappropriate about certain people? Oh, yeah.

But my wife and I made a decision. Our son never heard on of those things in our house, and guess what? He doesn’t have a discriminatory bone in his body, and then he married a French girl, and I can’t even tell French jokes anymore. Seriously. I know some good ones, too.

Don’t tell any jokes, let me tell you, because you’re just going to get in trouble. If you have a good joke, go in your closet. Tell it to yourself. Laugh. Come out. No witnesses. Don’t record it. Don’t put it on Facebook, because it will bite you, and it happens every day. Stupid people saying stupid things about other people that are disrespectful. Show respect to everybody.