A Culture of Creating Raving Fans

“Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better...

Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans." 

That’s the premise behind Ken Blanchard’s revolutionary approach to customer service.

Customer feedback is gold. But if you don’t have processes in place to collect that input, then you’re coming up short. In his book Raving Fans, Blanchard identifies three steps to creating raving-fan customer service:

1. Decide what you want. What kind of customers are you looking for? What type of relationship do you want to build with them?
2. Understand what your customers want.
3. Deliver plus-one. Whatever it is that you do—perfect that—and then add 1% more: It’s the extra push that will set you apart. 

At Shamrock, Raving Fans isn’t a theme—it’s part of our culture. It has helped establish a framework for our customer-service directive. We use an internal auditing system that tracks how we exceed client expectations, and identifies areas where we can improve, and address and prevent problems before they impact our customers.

Shamrock is feedback fearless: While our team asks customers to tell us what we can do to improve, it is equally important that we share that same raw feedback with our customers. For Shamrock, feedback is a two-way street; if our customers aren’t open to that exchange, then it’s not the right match for us. In 2016, Shamrock’s fulfillment operations had a 99.95% accuracy rate—that stems from continuously tweaking and refining our processes based on customer feedback.

In order to deliver world-class customer service, you have to put systems in place to receive constant feedback. Further, you have to have people on our team who welcome and embrace that input. It ties back to culture: Can that open exchange work for you? Can you operate in a feedback-fearless mode? The results will blow you away. Feel free to contact me directly at dfechter@shamrockcompanies.net or 440.250.2157.

Good luck,

Dave Fechter

Dave Fechter will celebrate his 20 year service anniversary with Shamrock in May 2017.  He started as Plant Manager and worked his way up to his current role as COO. Dave is a devoted Notre Dame fan and proud alumnus. He is a huge sports fan in general because he loves competition of any kind, including the intellectual - he aspires to be a contestant on Jeopardy! When he's not absorbing every new bit of information he can, he's absorbing music. He does more than listen - he enjoys the history, technology, coordination and execution.  He even plays a little guitar.