Happiness Continues into the Afternoon

Judith Ferrell of Verizon gave a stellar presentation about the path her company utilizes to create customer advocates. She stated that customers can be Verizon's advocates and Verizon advocates for their customers. One interesting slide showed the 4 behavior approaches to getting online support. They are the Guidance Seeker, the Researcher, the Busy Multi-Tasker and the Problem Solver. I recognized myself quickly as the Multi-tasker - I don't care about the process - just solve my problem and do it quickly! Which are you? The goal of their online customer support is by not just improving but being innovating.

An authentic and experienced leader in the automobile industry, Mike Sachs of Volkswagon of America, shared about creating customer loyalty. A favorite moment of mine was as Mike read from The Last Lecture written by RandyPausch about the $ 100,000 salt and pepper shaker. One of my speeches is about the value of a lifetime customer and I will definitely include this story in future presentations. Mike shared that brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room and culture is what your employees say when you're not in the room. Vision of the leaders creates culture.

Melinda Parks from Sprint gave a presentation on Employee Engagement Through the Customer Experience. She also shared about how to drive loyalty with taking the time to experience what customers are experience and understanding what they value. Customers want to be known and greeted by name. They want to be protected and helped to save money. A personal thumbs up for me was to treat the customer better for staying loyal. Thank You Thursdays was an activity that grew at Sprint where employees take 90 minutes to write personal thank you notes to customers with a huge positive response by employees and the customers.

We wrapped up the day with an engaging and energetic keynote from Jasmine Y. Green, Chief Customer Advocate with Nationwide Insurance Company. A story-teller extraordinaire and a no-holds bar approach with her Board of Directors all the way down to front-line employees, Jasmine is all about the customer. She shared that the culture of her organization moved from be careful to be full of care with heart, mind and soul. One of the success methods contributed by Jasmine was a recognition program that includes peer-to-peer, boss selection and the CEO award. Recognition of employees created amazing and record-breaking Gallop Polls increases in employee engagement.