52. Lessons from Zingerman’s Guide to Giving Great Service: Treating Your Customers Like Royalty | Business Book Club

Our business is nothing without our customers so I think it's time we deep dive into a great book about customer service.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Janice: Welcome back to Your Win-Win Teacher Business. In this episode of the Business Book Club series, I'm sharing my takeaways from the Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service: Treating Your Customers Like Royalty.

A deli that put customers first. Owners that saw growth and had to dream bigger about the impact they could make in the world based on the success they were seeing at that small deli. When you hear the author talk about the pride in this business, I invite you to stop and reflect on your own [00:01:00] teacher business.

What was the plan for your store when it started? What did the market and the data encourage you to add to it or subtract to it along the way? Was there a moment when pivoting made sense? If you were wrapping up the story of your store into a preface chapter or an elevator pitch, how would you summarize the impact?

What do you do? Who are you? Why are you here, and who are you here to serve? So why am I sharing this book? I learn so much from taking my brain outside of the teacher business space when looking for clarity, perspective, and inspiration and this book is a great example of that. Teachers Pay Teachers at its core is about service to teachers and to students.

We didn't have what we needed as teachers, so we made it ourselves. Teachers still need additional resources and they want [00:02:00] high quality ones made by their colleagues. So this marketplace allows us a place to share our time and talents with a service heart. And when we keep that mission at our core we always win.

When you look at your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly plans, do you deeply feel service to teachers and students at the core? That's the reflective question I offer as you read this book about customer service. Look at how you currently gather feedback from customers, respond to it, and act upon it and ask if you are giving a world-class customer service experience that would make someone share about your store to others.

Customer service isn't just about handling complaints and concerns. It's about truly engaging with the guests, learning about their pain points and wishlists, and understanding what they do with your products after they purchase them. [00:03:00] Reflect on how you build community around your brand and see if there are some fresh takeaways that the owner of this deli can bubble up for you in this book.

While I usually groan at the exercise of creating a mission statement, one that is written well, like the one shared in this book, really can bring feelings and clarity about the brand forward as you read it. I can feel the commitment to high quality ingredients and top-notch customer service as I read the mission statement for this deli, and it works as a magnet to make me feel excited to visit.

If I was in a staff role, I would feel so clear on what was important to this business and know how to show up as the best possible version of myself while handling ingredients, the physical space, and the people I interact with each day.

I can't tell you if your teacher business needs a mission statement. Either for the first time or as a refreshed version, but I can invite you to [00:04:00] get curious if every team member who joins your brand knows what truly matters most to you. I can invite you to reflect on your store banner and your website copy to see if you are communicating that mission internally and externally in that first few touch points.

This book offers the idea that most businesses make a wrong turn when they see customer service as a means to reaching their end goal of financial success. The mindset shift offered in this book is that the measurement of a high quality product, high service standard, and the financial health should all be tracked separately because a strong business needs to ensure they are hitting the target in all of those areas at all times.

I'm gonna go ahead and repeat those three areas. High quality products, high service standards, and financial health, all being tracked [00:05:00] separately. What might that look like inside your teacher business? How can we ensure that every product we make represents our brand well and stays current and relevant and polished over time?

How can that be measured? How do we know we are delivering a great service experience and how could we measure that? I'm sure we all have financial goal tracking top of mind, but if you're like me, your wheels are turning about how to measure all three of these areas with equal passion. I feel like I understand how to set good, better, best goals financially, but what might that look like for high quality products and for high quality service?

What does a product look like when it's good enough to be live in your storefront? If you're a service provider who wants to launch a new offer, when is an offer ready to go live? What does a better version of that product or offer look like?

What elements could you add to [00:06:00] not only meet the expectations of your customer, but truly surprise and delight them? Having clarity on when something is ready for Showtime can help with those moments of decision fatigue and imposter syndrome for sure. When do we go on and create something new? And when do we treat our existing products as a spiral curriculum, going back to optimize and improve them so they truly serve our customers at the highest level.

I think having clarity on what good, better, best looks like in more detail for our brand can help us know when a product is ready to be left alone and it's time to turn our attention to something new. And on the topic of goals, I'll be taking a long walk today to reflect on the concept of O pud versus U pod, which is over promise and under deliver, versus under promise and over deliver.

I think customer expectations are a huge piece of the puzzle when we're diving into the topic of [00:07:00] service. I had a favorite quote in this book. I'm gonna share it today. My favorite quote is, "Face the facts. We need customers more than they need us." I know you're weary and tired, and running a business pulls you in many directions.

Customer service isn't one more thing to think about. It's the most important thing, and that's why I think an entire book to guide us through a reflection on how we can do better in this area is a worthwhile use of time. After all, teachers can make their own resources. They can turn to a shortcut tool for support.

They can look for something free that feels close enough, or shop in a wide variety of other stores. In the book, the author uses the phrase economic criticism to remind us that a customer sharing feedback is a gift because they could have simply taken their business elsewhere [00:08:00] rather than to offer us insight and the opportunity to improve.

 What a powerful mindset shift to take into your customer service inbox tomorrow. How we treat our customers and make them feel will be our opportunity to stand out and differentiate ourselves in the market. And this book also delivers an important reminder that getting customer service right often saves the business time and money in the long run.

If you get big feelings when A TPT Q and A rolls in and don't like handling customer service, it's likely because you've experienced the pain of trying to fix a mistake once something has gone wrong for a customer, repair the relationship, and make amends. When we focus on customer service as something measurable and just as important as our sales graph, we can lessen the time we spend cleaning up messes and speaking with unhappy customers overall.

And a word for those working as a team. As a leader, [00:09:00] our team members pay attention to how we treat customers and how we treat others in general. So if we say customer service is important, it's very important that we also show that how we treat others creates a ripple effect, and that's true at all levels of the organization.

But how a leader treats team members and customers alike will have an incredible impact. I'm so glad the book mentioned this because you know how strongly I believe in a win-win hiring relationship and team members getting frequent feedback, praise, and input. If you don't already have a copy of my free hiring guide, you can grab it anytime at cook family resources.com/hiring-guide.

And if you're looking for me this week, I'll be reflecting about the code red and code green frameworks offered in this book to see how I can apply those gems inside my own business.

So maybe you'll read this book and maybe you won't. But either way, thank you [00:10:00] for letting me share this small story from my bookshelf and from my heart. I first listened to this book on Libby, borrowing it through my library, and while tracking down a physical copy wasn't easy, it was worth it. I enjoyed listening to this book even more with the physical copy and the whimsical illustrations in my hands.

Remember, you don't have to run your business alone. Read books and talk about them with business besties. Share about this book on Instagram and tag me at teacherjaniceva. Slide into my dms on Instagram anytime to talk about the ups and downs of running a business. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share a takeaway from the book with others to help them on their journey. [00:11:00]