【Background】

Acknowledge the Humanity of Your Customers, with Anne Morriss, Chief Knowledge Officer, Concire Leadership Institute

Sometimes you have to be bad in the service of being good, say coauthors and cofounders Frances Frei (a professor at Harvard Business School) and Anne Morriss. To research their book, Uncommon Service: How to Win By Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business, they conducted a study of companies large and small around the world. The number one obstacle that organizations were coming up against time and time again? Trying to be great at everything at once.

Frei and Morris’ advice: rather than trying to do it all, pick one essential thing and do it really well. Take, for example, Commerce Bank. They chose to focus their efforts on customer service, and within that bucket to compete on friendliness and convenience.

今天我们请到了安妮·莫里斯，她是咨询公司贡赛尔领导力学院的首席知识官。今天的课程中，她将为我们讲解企业该如何把握自己的服务策略，以在行业里建立自己的优势。

安妮·莫里斯和她的合伙人弗朗西斯·弗雷认为，有时候，要想在某方面表现出众，你就不得不放弃自己在其他方面的追求。弗雷是哈佛商学院的一名教授，她还与莫里斯合著了《客户至上，服务制胜》一书。为了收集书中的案例，她们对世界各地的大小企业展开了调查研究。莫里斯与弗雷发现，一直以来，这些企业试图攻克的最大难题就是：怎样才能做到样样都好呢？

莫里斯与弗雷给出的回答是：与其要求自己样样都好，还不如先定个基本目标，再尽力把它做到最好。克莫斯银行就是个绝佳的正面例子。它选择在客户服务上建立自己的优势，致力于向客户提供优质服务，并在营业时间上尽力给客户提供最大的方便。

【Course】

Acknowledging the humanity of your customers is an essential part of delivering service excellence. Commerce Bank started by tapping into a very persistent pain point in its market, so everyone, I mean; banker’s hours were a term of derision for generations. I mean the fact that banks would be open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in time for bankers to be out on the golf course, is something that made everybody crazy. Commerce looked at the obvious and said, “All right, we’re going to compete on convenience. And we’re also going to compete on friendliness,” because the other thing that made people crazy was how imperialistic and ornery all these bank employees were. So, the fact that it was so hard to get a loan and you walk into the bank and it was deeply intimidating and it felt like no one was on your side. I mean, that’s something that, I mean, an entire market of retail banking experience.

要想为你的客户提供优质服务，那么最基本的要点就是，你得关照到客户的人性需求。举个例子，克莫斯银行是如何打开市场的呢？答案是，它针对银行业在营业时间上的沉疴痼疾进行了精准打击。一直以来，我们都拿“银行工时”当作一句讽刺的玩笑话。银行总是十点开门，四点下班，难不成是为了让老板有时间出去上高尔夫球课？总之，这种营业时间真的很让人抓狂。克莫斯银行自然很容易注意到这一点，于是，这家银行决定在以下方面建立自己的优势：一，便利的营业时间；二，热情友好的服务态度。这第二点也是出于银行业的另一个普遍现象：工作人员老是用鼻孔看人，脾气还差得要死。你要是想去银行申请个贷款，都能给那氛围吓死。这帮人仿佛是在脸上写着“不想借钱”四个字。总之，从市场整体来看，零售银行的客户体验基本都这样。

You know, customers, they were essentially were making customers miserable, but customers didn’t have an option. And so Commerce Bank walked in and said, all right, we’re going to compete on friendliness, and we’re going to compete on convenience. And then what do we have to do to be able to build a sustainable organization that can deliver on those two things? And they realized that they needed to charge a little bit more, but they had to do it in a way that was palatable to their customers.

虽然体验是真的很差，但是客户们其实也别无选择。因此，克莫斯银行就决定，它将提升工作人员的服务质量，延长银行的营业时间，以此在行业内建立自己的优势。因为克莫斯银行首先得保证自身运营的可持续性，所以，为了达成这两项目标，它需要向客户多收取一些费用。那么，克莫斯银行就得让客户理解并接受自己的收费行为。

They couldn’t charge for teller visits, the industry had tried that, customers rebelled; they had to pay more to talk to a human being. No one wanted to do that. And so they decided that they would just, the rates on their savings accounts would be, would just be a little bit worse. And you know, a little bit is probably understating it. They declared that they would have the worst rates in every market they went into, but in return, they would give you convenient and friendly service. And convenient and friendly service meant people were excited to have you walk into the door, you know, you got free coffee, if it was raining; they would walk you to their car. And you know what? They were open when you actually wanted to go to the bank. So they were open on weekends, they were open nights, they were ready to serve you at the time when you had a service need. And that was, shockingly, that was a radical departure for this industry.

首先，人工业务办理是没法收费的，以前有银行这么做，客户就去抗议了。花钱才能让工作人员帮忙办理业务，这事搁谁身上也不乐意。因此，克莫斯银行决定稍稍调低本行的存款利率。不过，“稍稍调低”这种说法还是含蓄了些，实际上，克莫斯银行提供的利率在市面上是最低的，但作为回报，它将向每位客户提供最大的便利、最好的服务。这意味着什么呢？这意味着，作为客户，每当你踏进克莫斯银行的门槛，都会得到极其热情的接待，比方说，工作人员会为你提供免费咖啡；要是下雨了，他们会打伞把你护送到车边。还有一点就是，你甚至可以随时随地前往克莫斯银行办理业务，无论是周末还是夜晚，工作人员时刻待命，为你提供所需的服务。克莫斯银行推出的举措可以说是在整个行业都前所未有，令所有人都大吃一惊。

Another tradeoff they asked customers to make is that they give you a very simplified product set. So, essentially, in an industry where you can get, you know 50 different checking accounts, Commerce gave you one. And one of the reasons they did that was it allowed them to hire people who did not come from the industry, who did not necessarily bring a deep skillset around financial planning, and so they could just hire fantastically friendly people. The rule of thumb they used was, do you smile in a resting state? And you know, walk around and look at most people in the world, most people do not smile in a resting state. Most of us, it takes a little bit of energy to smile, but Commerce Bank employees, they’re part of this special breed of human being that smiles in a resting state.

除了低利率之外，克莫斯银行的客户还需要在产品选择上做出妥协。克莫斯银行仅仅提供一种内容简单的产品套餐，这也就意味着，在别家银行可能有50种类型的支票账户供你选择，而在克莫斯你根本没得选。这样做的部分原因在于，克莫斯在招聘工作人员时会少去许多限制，不需要自己的员工有银行业或金融业的工作经验，也不需要特别擅长财务规划，只要他的亲和力超出常人就行。克莫斯银行在招人的时候，通常会遵循如下经验：你在放松状态下会不会微笑？大家可以出门走一圈看看，世界上的大多数人在放松状态下都不会微笑。对他们而言，微笑是要花费一点精力的。而克莫斯银行招来的员工就恰恰是这样一种体质特殊的人群，他们在放松状态下甚至都会不自觉地微笑。

And so they hired a couple and they said, you guys know how to find each other, here are cards. If you get great service anywhere, if it is at McDonalds, if you are at a restaurant, if you are at a book store and you get great service, tell that person to come to Commerce Bank because we want them for our team. And that’s what they do. You know, people would show up. And these are the congenitally friendly people in the world came to work at Commerce Bank. And it didn’t matter that they couldn’t speak finance, it didn’t matter because they were happy people and they make other people happy to be around them. And that’s what the bank was competing on.

因此，克莫斯银行是这么操作的：先招进来几个符合条件的员工，告诉他们说：“你们都知道在哪里能遇到和自己相似的人吧？带上我们银行的名片，无论你在哪享受到优质的服务，在麦当劳也好，餐厅也好，书店也罢，告诉那个服务员，克莫斯银行需要他。”就这样，许多求职者主动找到了克莫斯银行，克莫斯也因此召集了许许多多生性友好乐观之人为自己工作。即使这些人对金融术语一窍不通也没关系，因为他们都是极具感染力的乐天派，能给周围人带来许多快乐，而这些特别的工作人员就是克莫斯银行在市场竞争中建立的优势。

You have to set your employees up to be able to be responsive to that humanity. And one of the ways to do that is to limit the complexity of the job, the frontline job they have to do. So, it’s very difficult if you’re in a call center looking at eight different screens of information to respond empathetically to the needs and anxieties of that person on the other end of the line. And that’s part of the system that you have to drop your employees into. You have to create the space for them to respond to the humanity of your customers.

我给大家的建议是，你需要给自己的员工创造条件，让他们有足够的精力去关照到客户的人性需求。那么你可以采取的措施之一就是给一线工作人员减负。设想一下，如果你是个接线员，同时要处理8个屏幕上传来的信息，要是客户在电话那头跟你抱怨、提诉求，你觉得自己能有足够的精力来对对方表示同情吗？答案是否定的。因此，作为领导者，在给员工设置工作机制的时候，你就得为他们留出充分的空间，让他们有精力去关照到客户的人性需求。

【Summary】

In this lesson, Anne Morriss walks you through their strategy. By the end of it, you’ll have a framework for rethinking your own customer service strategy.

• Practice friendliness, convenience, and respect.
• Make trade-offs that make your customers happy.
• Service with a smile is the most important service there is.
• Hire employees who get it, then create a space for them to give it.

在这节课中，安妮·莫里斯为我们讲解了一些有关客户服务的策略。相信在听完课程之后，大家心里都有了一个基本的框架，可以重新考虑一下自己公司的服务策略了。

提升员工的亲和力，给客户提供方便并充分给予对方尊重；
让客户在其他方面做出妥协，但必须提供优质的回报；
微笑是服务的要诀；
招一些爱笑的员工吧，但你得为他们留下空间，令他们有足够的精力对客户笑脸相迎。