The DiJulius Group's Innovations

The X-Commandments

• I. Service Vision
  A clear purpose of why the business exists.

• II. Create a World-Class Internal Culture
  Attract, hire, and retain only the people who have the service DNA.

• III. Nonnegotiable Experiential Standards
  Experiential standards everyone must follow.

• IV. Secret Service Systems
  Utilizing customer intelligence to personalize their experience, and engage and anticipate their needs.

• V. Training to Providing a World-Class Customer Experience
  Systems and processes that remove variation and provide a consistent customer experience.

• VI. Implementation and Execution
  How to go from ideas on a paper to being consistently executed.

• VII. Zero Risk
  Anticipating your service defects and having protocols in place to make it right.

• VIII. Above and Beyond Culture
  Constant awareness and branding of how to be a hero.

• IX. Measuring Your Customer's Experience
  What gets measured gets managed.

• X. World-Class Leadership
  Walking the talk.

What's the Secret and Why is it a Secret?

Secret Service uses hidden systems to deliver unforgettable customer service. These systems obtain customer intelligence and utilize it to personalize the customer’s experience, leaving the customer to ask themselves, “How’d they do that? How’d they know that?”

Secret Service employs behind-the-scenes systems that employees use to anticipate and deliver on the unexpressed needs of the customer, by using a system of silent cues, visual triggers and visual aids.

Customer intelligence is customer data (i.e., buying habits, purchasing history, referrals, personal preferences, where they live, or work) that fuels secret service. Secret Service systems allow the front-line employees of your organization to consistently deliver a memorable experience through:

• Engaging the customer.
• Personalizing their experience.
• Remembering their preferences.
• Distinguishing between new, returning, and VIP customers.
• Anticipating and delivering on their unexpressed needs.

As a result of providing Secret Service, companies:

1. Create stronger relationships with their customers.
2. Build emotional capital and brand equity with their customers.
3. Turn their customers into brand evangelists.
4. Make price less relevant to their customers.

To effectively deliver Secret Service, your employees need to act as detectives by collecting customer intelligence and then using silent cues that alert their coworkers and allow them to personalize the customer’s experience. It should be more obvious now why it is called Secret Service, it has:

• Hidden systems
• Customer intelligence
• Silent cues
• Visual triggers
• Detectives

After seeing a few examples of Secret Service actions, you will quickly realize why it can make your company a world-class (secret) service organization. Secret Service systems should not add cost or complexity to your organization. Secret Service systems are what we call low-hanging fruit.  They must meet the following criteria:

1. Low or no cost
2. Simple to execute consistently
3. Zero impact on productivity
4. Make an immediate impact on the customer

The following are simple examples of how easy, yet powerful Secret Service systems can allow companies to create memorable experiences:

• Distinguishing between new and returning customers: This Secret Service system identifies new from existing customers. For instance at John Robert’s Spa, returning customers are draped in black capes for haircuts, and new customers are draped in white capes. Every team member throughout the salon knows this fact and can address our guests ac- cordingly. Thus, the color of the cape is the silent cue and visual trigger.
• Anticipating and delivering on customers’ unexpressed needs: A customer purchases a gift card for his spouse for Valentine’s Day and the receptionist pulls out several Valentine’s Day cards and offers him one to give with the gift card to save him a trip to another store.
• Personalizing the customer’s experience: In the restaurant industry, by simply asking the question, “What’s the occasion?” at the time of reservation, you can trigger a multitude of responses: We are celebrating a promotion, a graduation, an engagement, an anniversary, a reunion. When the customer arrives, the greeter presents him with a special occasion greeting card and several employees congratulate the customer throughout their experience.
• Remembering their preferences: Another one of my favorite Secret Service systems is where a restaurant kept preprinted labels of their top VIP customers. Anytime they came in, their favorite bottle of wine would be waiting for them at their table, with a label on it that read: “From the Private Stock of Tom Smith.”

Terms & Definitions

• Above-and-Beyond Opportunities
  Random acts of heroism providing legendary service to the customer.

• Customer Experience Cycle (CEC)
  A group of “stages” of how we interact with our customer.

• Customer Intelligence
  Customer data (i.e., buying habits, purchasing history, personal preferences).

• Customer Service Vision Statement
  The true underlying value of what your organization brings to your customers, that provides a meaningful purpose for your employees.

• Experimental Actions
  A personal engaging experience delivered to the customer, by an employee that makes them say “WOW,” a delightful surprise that the majority of your competitors do not provide. It could be a standard or random (above and beyond) action. It is the reason why our customers return, refer others and become brand evangelists. Examples of experiential actions include using a customer’s name, remembering their preferences, or having their order ready before they placed it.

• Nonnegotiable
  Standards that team members absolutely must deliver, regardless of the circumstances.

• Operational Actions
  Actions that team members must execute to assist in the efficiency of the day-to-day transactions with our customers. Examples of operational actions include cleanliness, dress code, inventory, and lighting. They are unnoticeable to customers and are not the reason customers return.

• Secret Service
  The ability to obtain customer intelligence and utilize that to personalize each customer’s experience, leaving them to ask, “how did they know that, how did they do that”.

• Service Aptitude
  A person’s ability to recognize opportunities to exceed customers’ expectations, regardless of the circumstances.

• Service Defects
  Obstacles and challenges that can occur at any stage of the CEC and that can ruin the customer’s experience.

• Stages
  The individual contact/interaction points within the Customer Experience Cycle, such as a phone call, greeting, or checkout.

• Zero Risk
  A customer has no risk in doing business with your company because you have service recovery protocols. Regardless of any circumstances, in the end the customer knows your company will always make sure they are happy.