Dave Baumgartner likes to say that working at Signature sometimes feels like you’re holding a winning lottery ticket. The energy, confidence, and overall sense of purpose here is, at least in my professional experience, totally unique. Certainly there is nothing like it in the world of long term care.
Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re perfect; even lottery winners get the blues (or so I hear).
I had lunch with a young stakeholder recently who told me that while he loves his job, he sometimes wonders how the work he is doing fits into the “big picture.”
“What am I personally doing to radically transform the landscape of long term care forever?”
On the one hand, that is exactly the kind of question you want every stakeholder to be asking. On the other hand, you hope that they know the answer!
One of the projects the customer experience team is working on is what we call a “Corporate Personality Study.” We have looked at the attributes of established customer service leaders in a variety of industries: airlines (Southwest), hospitality (Ritz Carlton), fast food (Chic-Fil-A), rental cars (Enterprise), retail (Zappos) as well as the native attributes here at Signature to try to find common themes. What is it about these companies–or more accurately, these cultures–that makes them so focused on their customers? Bear in mind, we’re not looking for policies and procedures so much as for “personality traits.” Policies and procedures are thin gruel. You have to have the heart for service.
Another way of putting it is: “What are the elements of a customer-centric personality? What attributes do I need in order to help make the Mission/Vision a reality?”
While this is an inherently subjective process, we found 6 key characteristics. Here they are:
1) Empathy. At each of these companies, stakeholders display a high degree of empathy. They are able to put themselves in their customers shoes, and they follow the Golden Rule: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.” Case in point: a pilot who had just joined Southwest from a traditional airline was rude and condescending to the desk staff and tarmac crew. He was warned about it, and when the behavior continued, he was politely asked to leave.
2) Curiosity. Joe has often told us that we need to learn our residents’ stories. The pre-requisite for that is curiosity…childlike curiosity. At companies like Southwest, people are not content to just “do their job” and get lost in their own workflow. They want to understand how they connect to the bigger picture. They want to learn more about their coworkers and customers. The stories of our residents are incredible, as the Hall of Fame Cafe attests. We need to know more than just our residents’ names and medications. We need to know who they are. Linda Howe tells a great story about the power of curiosity in the clinical setting. Apparently, one of our facilities was having trouble with a resident who was falling every day. Like clockwork, the CNAs would find him on the floor each morning next to his bed, uninjured apparently comfortable. Because he was unable to speak and had advanced dementia, nobody could figure out what was wrong…until a CNA asked his family about the problem. It turned out that the resident used to be a mechanic, and he spent a lot of time lying down on the floor of the garage. It was where he felt most comfortable. Our resident was falling at all…he was going to the place he felt safest.
3) Innovation. Enterprise has become the most profitable rental car business in the world, surpassing Hertz, Avis, Budget, and a host of more established companies. One way they did it was through their famous “We’ll pick you up” program, in which they will pick up customers at their homes and drive them to rental locations. Valet service! And how did that program come about? A clerk at one of their outlets listened to customers who complained about the hassle of finding parking and having to drive to the location. At Signature, I think of the Concierge program that was created by Kara Plaks and Holli Jones. It’s having a big impact, and it came out of the spirit of innovation from two of our stakeholders who had the courage and vision to think differently.
4) Empowerment. Innovation without Empowerment is meaningless. What if that Enterprise clerk had been told: “nobody asked you?” What if Kara and Holli had not felt empowered to launch a test of the concierge concept for fear of being scolded or told that they didn’t have the authority? I heard a story at the Pioneer Conference that reinforced the link between Empowerment and Innovation. At another long term care company, a CNA expressed frustration at the way sanitary wipes were packaged. Every time a CNA tried to pull one out of a box, they got a handful instead. The waste was enormous. So this CNA engineered a way to attach the box to the wall. That helped, but it still wasn’t a great solution. Ultimately, because she was Empowered by her Administrator, she ended up meeting with the head of operations for the company that produced the wipes. He invited her to their plant, and based on her feedback and ideas, changed the entire way that the product was put together in the packaging. Problem solved. Millions of dollars saved. At Ritz Carlton, every single employee from housekeeping all the way up to the general manager is empowered to spend up to $2,000 per day to solve guests’ problems. Few of them ever spend anything close to that, but the message of Empowerment comes through loud and clear. The company puts its money where its mouth is.
5) Quirkiness. The age of robotic efficiency as the “gold standard” in customer service is over. Customers want authenticity and personality. They want to know that they are dealing with an actual human being, as opposed to an unthinking machine. In our work lives (especially in healthcare), so many of us have learned to suppress our personalities, our unique qualities. We do ourselves, our co-workers, and our customers a disservice when we do this. If you’ve ever flown on Southwest and listened to one of their pilots or stewardesses on the intercom, you know what I’m talking about! Zappos, where stakeholders are known as “Zapponians,” is probably the king of Quirk. But Quirkiness doesn’t necessarily mean freakiness. It just means being real.
6) Integrity. None of the other attributes matter without integrity. There is a great story from Southwest airlines about a new VP who was negotiating with a large municipality to get more gates allocated to the airline. The negotiations were not going well, so the VP in his overeagerness made a verbal commitment to fund the prelminary design work on a new airport the city wanted to build. It ended up costing over $400,000…way more than Southwest had budgeted for the deal. When the CEO found out about it, he asked if the deal had been signed. “No,” came the answer, “but Bob (the VP) told them we would do it.” Rather than rant and rave, fire Bob, or back out of the commitment, the CEO said: “If Bob told them that we would do this, then we will. If one of our employees commits Southwest to doing some thing, we stand behind that commitment–even if it is a bad business decision.” Think about the impact of a story like that on Southwest’s culture…the sense of purpose and Empowerment it creates. That is certainly worth more than the $400,000 Southwest had to spend to keep Bob’s word.
So as we develop our training programs for customer service, we will focus on bringing out these chraracteristics as opposed to scripting and communication protocols. The good news is: we all have them. Some of us may just need an extra nudge to start expressing them!