I love Campo restaurant in Reno. I’ve tried both their lunch and dinner menus; the food is excellent and the service is very good and at times brilliant. Campo’s owner, Mark Estee, is more than a chef in the restaurant – he is also an active and visible leader in his business.

I have not always loved Campo. My very first visit to Campo did not go well, and I blogged about the experience in my post entitled “The Cycle of Service Starts at Your Website.”

Since finding my blog about his restaurant through a mutual friend on Facebook, Mark has left three separate comments in response to both my original observations and the thoughts shared by some of my readers. In all honesty, I was very indifferent about returning to Campo; however, Mark’s comments on my blog motivated me to give his restaurant another chance, and I’m glad I did. Mark’s responses on my blog were exactly what they should have been.

Mark gets his social media and inbound marketing advice from Abbi Whitaker of Abbi PR. Mark is fortunate to get solid advice from someone that practices what she preaches – something all too rare in social media marketing and PR. And frankly, Abbi is fortunate to have a client like Mark because he is willing to blog at his website, post simple but effective videos to Youtube, and personally participate on Facebook. Together, I think Abbi and Mark are creating the foundation for what could become one of the most effective social businesses in Reno.

I would much rather spend my money with business people that I recognize and trust, and I like what Mark is doing through his employees with his business in Reno. The next time you are in Reno, I highly recommend you give Mark and his folks an opportunity to impress you with their continuously improving operation.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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My daughter and I just returned from lunch at Rose’s Café. As always, the service was fast and extremely friendly, and the food was delicious. I’ve never had a bad experience at Rose’s.

But Rose’s is not where we planned to eat lunch today. We walked in and right back out of Campo at about 11:08 today.

My daughter’s 18^th birthday is fast approaching, and she wants to celebrate by hosting a special dinner with her friends. She asked me for recommendations, and I suggested Campo. I’ve never eaten at Campo, but I’ve heard great things about it from one of my Facebook connections. We decided last night to have lunch at Campo today so she could check it out before planning her birthday event.

I checked the Campo website, and it clearly said they open at 11 am. I went to the gym early this morning and told my daughter to get up and ready earlier than usual so we could head downtown by 10:45 am. We parked in the parking garage and walked the two blocks to Campo. The doors were open when we arrived about 11:08, but when we got inside, we were told that lunch did not start until 11:30. I told the hostess the website says they open at 11, and she politely replied “sorry.” She invited us to have a seat and wait, but I felt the wrong information at the website had already wasted my time and I was not willing to let them waste another 20 minutes. As we left, we walked past the owner standing outside the restaurant. We don’t know each other, but I recognized his picture from his website. I once again said “your website says you open at 11” and he politely replied “sorry, we need to change that; we open at 11:30.”

At 11:30, we had already walked the two blocks back to the parking garage, driven to Roses, ordered, and were taking the first bites of our exceptional sandwiches.

A company website frames expectations and makes the initial promise of satisfaction to customers. Campo failed the cycle of service with me when their operations did not deliver as their website promised. It was reasonable for me to expect them to be open at 11 am because their website said they would be, and it was reasonable for me to be very unhappy when I was on time but they were not.

They made a mistake, but they could have easily recovered from that failure – if they had seen it as a service failure, which they clearly did not. To compensate for their mistake and our inconvenience, they could have simply offered us some complementary coffee while we waited or a complementary drink or dessert with our lunch. A large gesture was not necessary, but some gesture was. I’m sure they thought their polite apologies were enough, but I interpreted those to mean “we really don’t care.”

If you can avoid it, never let a customer leave your business unhappy, and never let someone that walks through your doors with the intention of making a purchase leave without spending money. Campo lost a good lunch ticket today, but they also lost a much larger dinner party sale and my free word-of-mouth marketing. They did not give me the opportunity to do for them what they cannot do for themselves – recommend them to my friends.

Check your company website right now and fix any inaccurate information.  Review your entire cycle of service and make sure you have procedures in place to meet or exceed your customers’ reasonable expectations and to recover impressively when you don’t. If you leave impressive customer service to chance, chances are it might not happen. Never forget that the cycle of service often starts long before the customer ever walks through your front doors.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I stopped by the Port-of-Subs (POS) restaurant on Sharlands yesterday at 9:02 AM hoping to by one of their breakfast grillers. I ate one a week ago and thought it was a great value, so POS was in the right place at the right time yesterday when I was hungry.

Unfortunately, even though this store advertises opening at 9 am, the doors were still locked at 9:02 and as I stood peering into the restaurant I did not see any sign of life. I got back in my car and drove a half mile down the road to Subway to give their breakfast sandwich a try. I’d seen them advertise serving breakfast sandwiches but had never tried one.

It was a winner. For just $3 I got a decent sandwich and a cup of coffee. That’s hard to beat.

If POS had simply done what they advertised they would do – open at 9 am – I would today still have no reason to ever eat breakfast at Subway. Because they were not open to serve me, I now know that Subway offers a similar quality product cheaper and faster. Oops.

If your business is in a competitive market segment, you simply must sweat the small stuff. By design, you need to intend to impress every single customer, every single time. Sure you will fail sometimes, but don’t lose because you got sloppy on a simple detail that was totally under your control – like hours of operation. When you do fail, make sure you have a system to learn how you failed and a system both to recover impressively and to fix the root cause of the failure.

Why help your competitors clean your clock? Wake up and spend your time retraining their customers that you are serious about earning the privilege to exceed their expectations.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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The 2011 Global Leadership Summit was the best event I’ve ever attended. I signed up just to see Seth Godin speak, and he was very good, but folks like Henry Cloud, John Dickson,  Corey Booker and Patrick Lencioni were to my surprise even better. Every speaker in the line-up delivered exceptional content.

Then there was Mama Maggie Gobran. She was not a master orator like Booker or Lencioni, and her content was very simple. While I may soon forget even the best of the speakers at this event, I will never forget the image of what Mama Maggie Gobran did during her time with us.

Mama Maggie Gogran was introduced with a short video showing her work among the children of Garbage City, Cairo, Egypt through Stephen’s Children Ministry. She has given her life to serve the poor, desperate, and vulnerable among us. These people and the leaders that serve them are to most of us, including me, practically invisible.

After the moving video about her work, Mama Maggie Gogran appeared on stage and was greeted with a standing ovation from the live audience. What she did next was something I feel privileged to have witnessed.

She wept. Then she dropped to her knees and kissed the stage. She spoke volumes before she uttered a single word.

Unlike the powerful oration of Booker, Lencioni, and the other speakers, we all knew that this act was not part of the theatrics of effective speaking. Mama Maggie Gobran’s behavior was a natural expression of her life, and it was a powerful testimonial that the leadership and service she sacrifices her life to provide those that can never reward her is radically different than the leadership most of us know. All of us admire what she does, but few of us would ever aspire to walk even a day in her shoes.

More than any other speaker at the conference, the simplicity, humility, and authenticity of Mama Maggie Gobran’s presence is challenging me to rethink everything I believe about my own behavior as a follower and a leader.

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I had a bad experience at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe when I stayed there in October 2010; however, as I reported then, they recovered quickly from their service failure by calling to try to understand my concerns then offering me a free room stay. I took them up on that offer a few days ago.

My return stay was excellent. The room they gave me for free was large, clean, quiet, comfortable, and had a great view of Lake Tahoe. Check-in and check-out were both fast and efficient. If you ever make a trip to South Lake Tahoe – and you should – Harrah’s is a great place to stay.

I found it interesting that I was once again advised at check-in that if I even touched something in the mini-bar it could result in a charge to my room. Since this is the second time that has happened to me, I think it’s safe to assume the front desk staff are formally trained to say that. Until they fix that design flaw in the rooms by removing those pesky mini-bars, the warning at check-in is unfortunately probably the right thing to do.

This is a great example of how a business turned a service failure into a good recovery and success story. Because of the way Harrah’s recovered from their failure, I’ll be back as a paying customer in the future and will not hesitate to recommend the property to others. If they had not been paying attention and responded to their service failure, it would be an entirely different story.

Overall a great stay. Well done, Harrah’s!

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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My favorite word in the world is DAD. I love when my children call on me because I love being a father. Being their father is both the greatest responsibility and the greatest joy of my life.

Leadership is a journey. Almost a year ago I wrote this:

I do my best to assume full responsibility for myself and to help others along the way so that I can be better prepared to teach my children and grandchildren how to do the same. If I ever do something for you, know that I am doing it for me, so that ultimately I can do it for them.

My own personal journey is to live long enough for my grandchildren to know me well enough to remember my face, my voice, my hug, my smile, and my words for the rest of their lives. My final act of service to my children will be to help them lay a solid foundation in the lives of their children. God willing, I hope I get that chance. The dream of seeing the children of my children invigorates my life.

My own father died of a heart attack when I was 24, but he left when I was about 12 so he had very little influence on me, with the exception that I knew I wanted to grow up to be nothing like him. I’m not bitter at all about that, but it is what it is. My mother died of lung cancer 6 months before my father. My only regret in life is that my children never knew my mother, and that she never knew them. They would have loved her, and she would have loved them.

I turn 50 this week, and since both my parents died in their early 50s of poor health, my genetic clock is ticking. I work hard to stay healthy because my personal journey depends on it.

I’m going for a run this father’s day. My kids won’t notice or think anything of it, but I’m doing it for them. Sometime today, I’ll also take a nap.

What are the most important things you do daily to serve your children? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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A few nights ago I was looking for a place to eat dinner near my hotel in Las Vegas. As I always do, after I identified a few places I thought looked suitable, I consulted Yelp! for reviews. I hardly ever eat anyplace new without first seeing what other customers have said about the place, and Yelp! is the best source for this kind of information.

I ended up eating at a place called Fresh Grill & Bar, and I was underwhelmed. Later the same night I stated my disappointment with the experience in a review on Yelp!

A few hours after I posted my review I got a direct e-mail from the manager of Fresh Grill & Bar. He apologized for my experience and asked for specific information. When I gave him specifics, he followed-up with the staff on duty the night of my visit and got back to me with a response. He then asked for my address and offered to send me some coupons in the mail.

That’s Yelp! done right! The only suggestion for improvement I would make is that he should have posted a public apology as a comment to my review. That would signal others customers that he is listening and responding. The manager addressed my problem, but he should have let everyone know what he did.

If you are not monitoring what is said about your business on Yelp! and other social sites, there is no way you can respond and recover when customers complain of a service failure. If a customer makes a complaint a social object, then you need to make your response and recovery a social object also.

This is an example of social business done well. If the manager had not responded the way he did, there is no way I would ever eat at Fresh Grill & Bar ever again. But because he made an effort to listen and respond – something most of his competitors are not doing – I will give his business another look the next time I am in Las Vegas.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Organizations need to support their teams if they want them to perform well. Organizational support can mean among other things proper staffing, team training, performance measurement, fair rewards, and good communication. Because the quality of support provided by the organization is subjective, how do disagreements between managers and their teams about support for the team affect team performance?

A study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (full citation below) of 154 teams in the banking industry over a 12 month period suggests that shared perceptions of support have a significant effect on team performance. According to the authors:

Agreement in perceptions was always better than disagreement, and outcomes were maximized when support was perceived to be high by both the team and the manager. In contrast, outcomes were at their worst when managers perceived their team to be well supported while the team itself reported low levels of support (p. 10).

Managers that are out of touch with the reality of their team do more damage than managers that agree with their team that organizational support sucks! The research showed that when managers and their teams agree, even about how bad things are, team members felt better about themselves and in turn felt better about their team performance.

If you really care about the performance of your teams at work, you will help your managers avoid playing charades with employees. One way to do this is to survey both managers and employees about perceptions of organizational support. This will give you information not only about how well they feel supported, but also about how well managers and employees agree about the level of support.

If you have a team that is not performing well, it’s highly likely that they are missing something they need to do their work. Ask both your managers and their employees how well they feel supported. If managers and their teams disagree, you better find out why and take action to fix it.

Full citation: Bashshur, M.B., Hernandez, A., & Gonzalez-Roma, V. (2011). When managers and their teams disagree: A longitudinal look at consequences of differences in perceptions of organizational support. Journal of Applied Psychology.

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People are talking. Ensuring they have something good to say about you and are motivated to share it with as many people as possible is very good for your business. The things your increasingly connected customers and employees say online not only last forever, they also spread farther, faster, and have greater impact than ever before.

The reputation of your business is path dependent. That means you have to earn it over time by the things that you choose and refuse to do. Reputation is a very valuable source of competitive advantage for your business because it’s hard for your competitors to imitate. Even if they can figure out what you are doing to cause so many people to say such good things about you, it’s going to take them time to catch up, and while they’re pursing competitive parity you’ll continue to build operational excellence.

Want to build a stellar reputation with customers?  Then you better be just as concerned about the reputation you earn as a place to work. Your employees make or break your business. But is your business making or breaking your employees? Gary Vaynerchuck articulates this concept well in his new book, “The Thank You Economy”:

Too many leaders invest insufficiently in their employees for fear of losing out when the employee leaves. Any investment you make in your employees will be safe if they believe that you really care about them and their future. Create a culture that rewards people who show that they care. Seek the input of people who have a tendency to take risks and share big ideas. Prove that you value your employees above all else by giving them the freedom to ask for what they want, to experiment, and to be themselves. (pp. 100-101).

Here is something else Gary says in his book that I really love: “I care more about my employees than I do my customers, and I care more about my customers than I do breathing.” (p. 91).  Cha-ching! Gary is loving his employees all the way to the bank.

Create a system that attracts and retains remarkable employees and then enables them to impress the socks off your customers. If from time to time an ambitious employee leaves for a different opportunity, don’t worry, because the system you’ve created to impress your employees will attract a steady stream of equally talented folks to replace them.

Underdeveloping and undertrusting your employees is the path to operational malaise. There are multiple paths to earning a reputation as a great place for great people to work, but they all head north, not south.

Which path are you and your company on?

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I’m speaking today about social business to the Northern Nevada Chamber of Commerce. This is only the second time I’ve given this talk, and today will be a larger but still very friendly audience. I’ve added some new slides based on experiences I had just yesterday, and also a few quotes from Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book “The Thank You Economy,” which I hope to review on March 8.

One thing Gary says in the book which I will emphasize in my talk today is that if your business has tried social media and reached the conclusion that it does not work, then it’s probably because of one of the following:

1.     Your product or service is not any good

2.     You are doing it wrong

If you have a remarkable product, and a remarkable team of people to share that product with customers, and you are truly practicing inbound marketing, then you will see results.  Here is something Gary says in his book:

I care more about my employees than I do about my customers, and I care more about my customers more than I do breathing.

If your competitor is operating like this, and you are not, then no amount of social media in the world is going to help your business. It’s just a matter of time before your business reaps what your unremarkable operations have sown.

Worry more about running an exceptional operation than about being found. If you are remarkable, your customers, suppliers, and employees will spread that word through social media faster than ever before. Social media can help you both monitor the promises your brand makes and continuously improve those promises.

“The risk that your business will die before its time grow bigger every day that you don’t use social media” Gary Vaynerchuck (2011).