Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
—Jack Welch
retired CEO of GE
A good service vision statement involves customers and employees. It takes on tangible shape and form when you actually put it on paper where everyone can see and use it. As you work to define your vision, it’s important not to overlook two key resources:
• Customers are not only highly qualified, but generally willing to provide input that will help a company figure out what it wants and doesn’t want, how it does and doesn’t want it delivered, and what elements of the service experience could be changed, improved, or removed for the business to serve them better.
• Frontline employees are armed with an incredible amount of untapped information about customers and the types of service that leave a lasting, positive impression on them. And they know from firsthand experience where the weak spots and fail points are in even the most meticulously designed service delivery processes.
A service vision statement should be able to pass four quick tests:
1. It should be clear, concise, and understandable. Dilbert defines a vision statement as a “long awkward sentence that demonstrates management’s inability to think clearly.” Make sure you prove the notorious cartoon character wrong.
2. It should communicate, in actionable ways, the things you need to do to satisfy, impress, and keep your customers.
3. It should be consistent with other things you tell employees about the organization’s mission, brand promise, and purpose.
4. It should pass the employee “snicker test”: Reading it, whether on paper or out loud, should help your people better understand what to do, how to do it, and why to do it, not make them giggle, guffaw, and roll their eyes heavenward. It’s important that the service vision be ambitious yet grounded in reality, and not written as if it’s an advertising slogan.
Remember: Knock Your Socks Off Service is mostly a person-to-person activity. If your statement of service focus doesn’t make it crystal clear how you want customers to feel (happy, entertained, secure, cared about, or like they’re dealing with professionals), it isn’t complete.
When you see a service vision statement done well, you just know it makes sense and helps in everything from measurement to motivation. Consider, for example, Ritz-Carlton Hotels, a two-time winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The company’s service vision was put into words before the first property opened in 1983, almost thirty years ago. Horst Schulze, then president and chief operating officer (COO), and his senior managers believed that employees couldn’t be expected to deliver first-rate, five-star service if management couldn’t define it.
A good part of what Schulze and his management team came up with is embodied in the sixty-three-word statement of the Ritz-Carlton Credo and the twenty “Ritz-Carlton Basics” that define Knock Your Socks Off Service at the Ritz (Figure 9-1).
Figure 9-1. Ritz Carlton Credo.
The service vision is captured by their credo: “We pledge to provide the finest personal service and facilities for our guests who will always enjoy a warm, relaxed yet refined ambiance. The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.”
The hotel also found it useful to craft a sound bite as a pneumonic—”We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen”—to help employees remember the experience they consistently want to create for guests.
Notice how the Ritz-Carlton service standards—the twenty Basics—are aligned with the credo. For example, the vision describes creating a “warm, relaxed yet refined ambiance,” which is made actionable for employees with the service standard, “use proper vocabulary with our guests.” At the Ritz-Carlton, casual language like “okay” and “no problem” is replaced with a more refined vernacular like “my pleasure” or “certainly” to match the environment. The idea isn’t to come off as stuffy or aristocratic, but rather to match the luxurious and professional setting. As Horst Schulze was fond of saying, “Elegance without warmth is arrogance.”
Three steps are integral to formulating the service vision:
• Identify your key customers. For Courtyard by Marriott Hotels, it’s the business traveler, a group that accounts for most of the hotel’s business. That doesn’t mean Courtyard won’t jump to serve other customer groups. It just means the hotel’s service vision—”we make it our business to know business travelers”—and delivery processes are designed and managed in a way that ensures that the key customer group receives the customized care and amenities (e.g., high-speed Internet access, ample work space in rooms, big continental breakfast to start the day) to keep it happy and returning again and again.
• Identify your core contribution to customers. For airlines, it’s moving things from point A to point B, on time, safely, with luggage intact and ideally on the same plane as the passenger who brought it to the airport. For a printing company, it’s meeting the customer’s need for high-quality documents that are produced on time and within budgets. In essence, your core contributions are the things you absolutely have to perform well to stay in the business you’re in.
• Decide what you want to be famous for. A service vision ought to have some “jump start” component that makes you distinctive and exciting in the eyes of customers. Nordstrom is well-known for its return policy, Zappos.com for how they personalize the buying experience for repeat customers, and outdoor gear store REI for its interactive, “try before you buy” sales approach and customer education. Typically, this is where there can be a clear and distinguishable difference between you and your competition.
Once you’ve formulated your service vision, you must communicate it over and over again. Just as 20/20 vision doesn’t help the person who won’t watch where he or she is going, your service vision will mean nothing unless you and your employees can articulate, translate, and act on it.
To help you craft your own service vision statement, we offer several examples. Notice that they come in all lengths, styles, shapes, and sizes. Yours may resemble several, one, or none of them. What matters is that your statement fits your business strategy, culture, and customers.
If brevity is the soul of wit, it’s worth measuring the words you use carefully and making them count, not mount up. Here’s how some companies, including a convention and exposition management company, an auto auction wholesaler, a restaurant, a large hospital, a university, a senior living company, and a consulting firm, “cut to the chase.”
Freeman
“To support exhibitors, show managers and event professionals in the successful marketing of their products and services by providing highly personalized, proactive solutions delivered through a valued relationship with trusted, accessible experts.”
Do it right. First time. Every time.
Manheim
“We are a team of success-makers—for customers, partners and each other. Our integrity and passion fuel us; our values and legacy guide us, and our commitment to proactive and personalized service unites us.”
Fueled by employees; driven for customers.
Quaker Steak and Lube
“Our guests will have fun, feel the energy, experience unique tastes and know we care.”
It’s more fun to eat in a saloon than to drink in a restaurant.
Aurora St. Luke’s
“We are committed to setting the standards of excellence in our profession and our markets. Our innovative technology and progressive attitude attract patients, staff and physicians. Our personalized care and service ensure they return and recommend us to others.”
National Hispanic University
“We are driven by the transformational power of education. Focused on student success through a professional and personalized approach, our passionate and culturally rich familia inspires those we serve to lead.”
¡Creando Líderes! (We create leaders!)
Arbor Company
“As a community of care givers we are here for one purpose: to engage and enrich the health and spirit of our residents. We honor individuality and celebrate each person’s unique life through deep connections with our residents and families. We create delightful surprises and meaningful moments within a safe and caring community.”
We listen, we respond, we care.
Banco de Finanzas (Nicaragua)
“We are a dynamic, entrepreneurial team and passionately committed towards building long-lasting relationships with our clients, by making the way easy so they can reach their dreams. We put every effort in exceeding the expectation of those who we service, by valuing their time and making sure their experience with BDF is reliable, transparent and pleasurable.”
Chip Bell Group
“The service vision of The CHIP BELL Group is to provide selected clients with relevant service wisdom they experience as incredibly empowering and surprisingly simple that is delivered through a valued partnership.”
Sometimes articulating the whats, whys, and wherefores of your service strategy seems almost painfully simple—only after, of course, you’ve completed the often arduous process of crafting it.
As short and simple as many of the best service vision statements are, many companies abbreviate them even further as a means of helping embed them in employees’ minds. Walk through Dell Computer’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, for example, and it’s hard to miss one phrase adorning conference rooms and hallways: “The Customer Experience: Own It.”21 Consider creating your own service vision “sound bite” to help guide and inform employees’ everyday actions with customers.
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
—Ecclesiastes