Associate Program Customer Relations Delivering our Customers a perfect pizza Delivering it fast and safely Being knowledgeable about our products Keeping a clean, friendly image EVERYTIME EVERYTIME ALL THE TIME ALL THE TIME
Customer Relations Developing outstanding customer relationships is one of the most important aspects of our business model. Customers who receive our Gourmet Right Away treatment feel like they have made a good decision to purchase our product. Of course if they were not treated with this excellent customer service, the opposite is true. As a matter of fact, studies show that 60% of all consumers will not go back to their favorite restaurant if the service was not excellent. Our goal is to WOW the customer every single time! It is a simple formula to master: Great customer service, backed up by superior products yields great customers that in turn drive great business. The relationship between our Team Members and Garlic Jim s management is equally as vital to our successes in customer relations. Without a good working relationship and great communication, the Garlic Jim s team would be unable to both attract and keep our customers coming back. Relations and communications between the staff and leadership will directly affect the dealings with the customers. Great Team Relations = Great Customer Relations. Learned Skills How to answer the phone with a smile and close the customer with a smile. Learn about the 10 benefits of smiling and why it s good for your health. How to make sure our customers get the best of Garlic Jim s. Learn the 5 steps to dealing with difficult customers. Learn how to retain your customer base and create loyalty. Extra ideas for discussion. Gourmet Right Away! Every pizza delivered in 25-30 minutes is our goal! Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 2 11-30-15
Philosophy Garlic Jim s company philosophy is to create more than just customer and employee satisfaction. We want to foster an atmosphere and working environment which will create both customer and employee loyalty. At Garlic Jim s we believe in open and honest communication between owners, management and all team members. We believe that a well-trained, motivated crew with management that listens and communicates well will hold themselves to the highest standards. Team members will feel a sense of pride and be accountable to Garlic Jim s customers - not just their managers. Our employees are our greatest asset. These team members will help us grow to be the best pizza chain in the world. The 10 benefits of smiling and why it s good for your health! Smiling is a great way to make yourself stand out while helping your body to function better. Smile to improve your heath, your stress level, and your attractiveness all while doing your job! 1. Smiling changes our mood. Next time you are feeling down, try putting on a smile. There s a good chance your mood will change for the better. Smiling can trick the body into helping you change your mood. 2. Smiling makes us attractive - we are drawn to people who smile. There is an attraction factor. We all want to know a smiling person and figure out what they are so happy about. Frowns, scowls and grimaces all push people away but a smile draws them in. 3. Smiling is contagious - when someone is smiling they lighten up the room and are able to change the moods of others and makes things happier. A smiling person brings happiness with them. Smile often and you will draw people to you. 4. Smiling relieves stress. Smiling helps to prevent us from looking tired, worn down and overwhelmed. When you are stressed, take time to put on a smile 5. Smile boosts your immune system. Smiling helps the immune system to work better. When you smile your immune system improves because you are more relaxed. It s even possible to prevent the flu and common cold by smiling. 6. Smiling lowers your blood pressure. When you smile there is a measurable reduction in your blood pressure. 7. Smiling releases endorphins, a natural pain killer, and serotonin. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 3 11-30-15
8. Smiling lifts the face and makes you look younger. Don t go to the doctor for a face lift! All you have to do is start smiling through the day and you ll look younger and feel better. 9. Smiling makes you feel successful. Smiling people appear more confident and are more likely to be approached. 10. Smiling helps you stay positive. Try this: Smile. Now try to think of something negative without losing the smile. It s hard. So keep on smiling- it is contagious. How to Answer/Close the Phone with a Smile Did you know that smiling is like eating 2000 chocolate bars? That s right, we have been drawing attention to the fact that smiling increases happiness both in yourself and those around you. Scientific research has shown that a healthy smile can improve your confidence, help you make friends and help you to succeed in your career. What we all must realize is that each team member has direct contact with our customers everyday and the way we promote great products and services is to show them our big smiles! A great big smile will not only brighten their day but will uplift your spirits as well. So, we want every team member to remember that they must smile on the phones every time and use the proper Garlic Jim s phone script: Thanks for choosing Garlic Jim s Famous Gourmet Pizza in (store location), my name is. How may I help you? A smile in your voice will make the customer feel comfortable and enjoy their buying experience. Before you complete the call with the customer, always end with the proper phone script and remember to smile and convey your thanks for their order tonight. Thank you for choosing Garlic Jim s tonight, your total is going to be $27.45 and will arrive in 25-30 minutes. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 4 11-30-15
How to ensure our customers get the best of Garlic Jim s Our great products need to be backed up by our great service, but sometimes team members forget that being extremely knowledgeable about Garlic Jim s products and services can be the difference between a great dinner experience and a bad one. Our commercials and advertisements don t inform the customers completely about our lineup of tremendous and unique specialty pizzas or quality gourmet side items. The CSR or Driver that takes an order needs to possess a great working knowledge of what to offer customers. For example, you can help the customer through a potentially confusing process of ordering pizza for the big game if you ask questions. Some examples to suggest are: How many people will be eating tonight? You might be able to get away with 2 large Ultimate s and throw in a medium cheese for the kids? In case you didn t know, we can do half and half pizzas! Our Large Pizza feeds typically 4-5 people, but you might try our X-Large as it definitely feeds more people! The best way to make sure that you are helping the customer to the best of your ability is to put yourself in their shoes while taking an order - the rest will come naturally. When a disappointed customer is impressed by the way you have handled the situation, repeat orders jump to 50% by that same customer. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 5 11-30-15
5 Steps to Dealing with Difficult Situations No matter how much you smile on the phone and how much you try to be nice, customers sometimes just are not in a good mood. Occasionally their mood may or may not be our fault. The best way to handle a customer concern is to prevent it from happening in the first place. However, everyone on your staff is human and is bound to make a mistake. If we are lucky enough to have the customer call us to complain we need to treat this like a second chance. Below you will find 5 steps to deal with difficult customers: 1. Give the customer the chance to vent their concerns. When you feel the customer is done venting you need to make sure you ask for their name, phone number and address. It is important you do not cut them off - let them express their concerns. 2. Ask yourself- what if this happened to me? How would you like to be treated in this situation? Say something like I understand this would upset me as well, and I m going to take care of you today. 3. Say I m sorry - sometimes this is all they want to hear, NEVER place blame on someone else, the customer doesn t want to hear about who made the mistake - just take care of them. 4. Do whatever is necessary to fix the problem. For example, if a pizza was made incorrectly, first try this; ask the customer if they would like a credit for their entire order now or say, I can make the pizza immediately and get it out to you as soon as possible. Give them two choices - sometimes the mistake has messed up their entire evening and they just want to eat. 5. Follow the problem home. Once you have hung up the phone with that customer you have to make sure the customer receives everything you promised them. If you don t follow through with your promises, you will never get a second chance with that customer. Remember our Timely Delivery Assurance Policy- Out the door in 45 minutes or it s free! Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 6 11-30-15
Learning How to Retain Your Customer Base and Create Loyalty Properly greeting your customers and taking care of their needs will go a long way in ensuring that our customers will order from us again and again. Sometimes though, we have times where our business will slow down and we will have to begin to Increased customer loyalty = increased sales! market to new customers and try and inspire old customers to try us more frequently. We can accomplish these tasks in many ways such as database mailings, holding free sample nights at the local movie stores, constant door-hanging and visiting local businesses. What must remain is a dedication to your basics of sales building: Answering the phone with a smile, being knowledgeable about the products offered, making a great pizza, delivering pizzas in 25-30 minutes every night and doing this over and over again. This is single-handedly the best way to ensure that your marketing efforts will be helpful and not end up hurting you in the long run. Great service or internal marketing is the most powerful form of marketing that there is. Information from the CREST Study The CREST study is a Consumer Report on Eating Share Trends. As you can see, even all the other reasons combined add up to less than the top reason which is that the customer had problems with the level of service provided. 60% Poor Service, Rudeness, Lack of Service 16% Food Quality Issue 9% Did Not Like Food Style 6% Moved Out of Area 9% Misc. Other Reasons When most customers just go away we do not get a chance to hear their complaint. They just quit ordering and we never know why sales go down. This is why it is so important to treat every customer who calls in with an issue or complaint with the appropriate responses discussed in this module. Since the customer called in, we now have a chance to correct and improve the situation to take a customer who is about to It costs 6 times as much to EARN a new customer as it does to keep one, so our goal is always to WOW the customer! change to a past customer into a loyal customer because we WOWED them with our response. You need to and should treat this as a golden opportunity, because that is exactly what it is! Statistics show that a happy customer will tell 3 to 5 people about Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 7 11-30-15
Good experiences tend to be communicated to 4-5 friends, while bad ones are shared with 10-12 others! their experience and that each unhappy and unsatisfied customer will tell 10 to 12 people about it. And unfortunately and most times inaccurately in graphic detail. So if we can take the unhappy person and change their experience with us they will tell the same 10 to 12 people about it and it will do nothing but help Garlic Jim s image and reputation. Always strive to be a winner in the customer relations game. Here are some differences between the winners and the losers when it comes to customer service. Winners make a mistake and say I was wrong Losers make the same mistake and say It wasn t my fault. Winners charge at their commitments with optimism Losers never get past their pessimism. Winners make commitments Losers make promises. Winners are looking to be of service Losers are followers looking to be served. Winners are constantly in training mode improving their chances of winning Losers shut their mind to training moments and therefore shut off the opportunity to grow. Extra Ideas for Discussion Have Your Manager or Trainer teach you about the following: What to say and what not to say when dealing with an angry customer. Never place blame, instead figure out how to make the customer s issue your own. Always apply the Golden Rule Treat others the same way you would like to be treated! What are keys to success when dealing with customers? Keep them happy but do not patronize them, get to the root of the problem and make them feel as if they are your only customer at that moment. Learn why it is important to retain customers. Customer retention is obviously the key to future visits. But more importantly customers who are frequent visitors are great Word-of-mouth marketing tools. Learn the actual monetary value of each individual customer. If one customer orders an average of $25.00 per week then that equates to over $1300 in a year. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 8 11-30-15
Expectations Exceptional customer service is when the order is accurate, on-time, hot and delivered with an optimistic attitude and a smile! Garlic Jim s Customer Promise At Garlic Jim s we want to produce happy pizza eaters. If any Garlic Jim s pizza does not live up to the promise of a happy pizza experience we will do what is necessary to remedy this. To treat every single customer as if they are the most important person in the world at the moment. Our objective is that all of us as a team will live by this goal 100% of the time while on the job. Case Study 1. Learn how to fill out the Customer Callback form. This tool can be found in the Management Tool section of this book and is a great tool for finding out how a customer s experience was as well as to let them know that we are serious about following through with customer service. 2. Talk to a manager or training supervisor about different examples from the past in which service was poor and discuss how they learned to resolve the conflict and promote another opportunity to try their location. Action Exercises 1. Complete at least three Customer Callback forms with the Manager-in-Charge for the evening. 2. Go on a ride along with a driver to check their door approach and customer service skills are adequately up to Garlic Jim s standards. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 9 11-30-15
Customer Relations Part II Test Name Date 1. How do we properly answer the phone at Garlic Jim s? What is the most important thing to do while answering the phone? 2. Describe how we can WOW the customer every time. 3. What is the first thing we should do when dealing with a customer complaint on the phone or in the lobby? 4. Describe how to properly finish your order with the Delivery customer on the phone. 5. Give two examples of suggestive ideas to help inform customers about our products. Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 10 11-30-15
6. Explain the Timely Assurance Delivery Policy at Garlic Jim s. 7. What is the number one reason customers do not visit the same restaurant again, according to the CREST survey? Associate Program- Team Leader Customer Relations Confidential Page 11 11-30-15