When consumers interact with your brand in any way, whether it be at the vineyard on a tour, in the tasting room, the vineyard restaurant, or in your retail store, you have a responsibility to maintain a certain level of customer service. These five points will challenge you to rethink how your customers perceive your brand and how you can improve your customer service.

1 – Make Them Feel Appreciated

Think about the experience your customers get when they purchase from you. What encourages them to keep coming back to your winery as opposed to trying the new winery next door? You might think it’s the service, or the atmosphere, or the events that you hold. Perhaps it is, but do your customers know that they’re appreciated? I suggest demonstrating this in the form of a promotion on your website, or an event geared as an appreciation night. Even the smallest initiatives can make the biggest differences in how your customers feel.

2 – Exceed Expectations

Think of the times you’ve been blown away by customer service. I can bet you that the underlying theme in most of those situations has been that the business has exceeded your expectations. When you throw in something extra and give more than what’s expected, you leave your customers in awe. They’re so excited by it that they’ll remember your name, recommend you to their friends, and they’ll keep coming back over, and over, and over. It can be something as simple as a coupon for a future discount with their purchase that you haven’t advertised or maybe it’s a sincere hand-written thank you note sent out to each club member for being such loyal customers. The question to ask yourself is, “what can I give my customers that they cannot get anywhere else?”

3 – Be Personable

It’s hard to think of a business I’ve called recently that doesn’t have some sort of automated response – it’s frustrating, isn’t it? This doesn’t just apply to phone calls. When someone enters your tasting room, the attendant should be personable, not an automated machine. Try to ensure that the tasting room attendant engages in conversation with your customers rather than just pour wine and swipe credit cards. As Andrew says, don’t forget the personal service. Learning your regular customer’s first names and using them when you see them or talk to them on the phone will make them feel valued and important.

4 – “It’s My Fault”

I once read a story of a man who needed an extra set of keys for his apartment and, on his way to work, stopped at the locksmith around the corner to have keys cut. After going back to his apartment to check the new keys, one didn’t work. He returned to the locksmith where a new copy was made and when he returned home it still didn’t work. Now being 30 minutes late for work, he returns to the locksmith for a third time in a place of rage, ready to unleash his anger on the locksmith. After looking at the key again the locksmith says “ah. It’s my fault,”; and the man’s anger evaporated. Taking the blame when appropriate can make the difference between inspiring a customer and bad publicity via word-of-mouth. Keep in mind that word-of-mouth spreads much faster than it used to with the use of social media.

5 – Conduct Mystery Shops

Having mystery shops conducted on your winery is a great way to measure your quality assurance because it’s cost effective, unbiased, targeted, and the data is current and relevant. Mystery shopping is assessed by finding Customer Service Opportunities (CSO) and each industry has different areas for their CSO. For example, McDonald’s has monthly mystery shops that measure speed of service, food quality, restaurant cleanliness, order accuracy, and friendliness. The luxury hotel industry is very serious about this as well and even has a company that provides comprehensive benchmarking data from conducting audits. Companies such as In Short Direct Marketing, WISE Academy, and TexaCali Wine Co. provide mystery shopping for wineries and are worth taking a look at for the services they offer.

As we careen through 2011 and the influence of social media continues to grow, it is important to remember the potential reach that your brand has. By finding ways to impress and inspire your current customers, you not only retain their business, but you gain new customers when these inspired customers share the experience with their friends.

Now that you have new insight on how to improve customer service, what will you consider changing?

Love Me:

My new job as a customer service rep (and recently also project manager) at Vin65 is going well. It seems I have more than enough work to do every single day and I get to do the things I love. I still miss the crew at Netgenetix a ton, but I’m slowly getting used to the new one here at Vin65 too.

On the other hand, I have my weekend job at McDonalds, still ongoing. For a long time, despite the things that frustrate me, I’ve considered McDonald’s a fairly smart corporation that teaches its employees better work ethic as well as leadership and customer service skills. Recently though, it feels like they’re going downhill.

A new type of service technique called Global Front Counter has just been introduced at my restaurant and is being rolled out to many restaurants across the nation. Part of this new service technique involves having one crew member simply taking orders and a second crew person just gathering the food – the order taker is never allowed to move away from their till so that they are always ready to serve customers when they come in the door. This DOES make serving customers faster, no doubt, however there is one small flaw for low-volume restaurants. This has to be implemented at all times.

So this means that even when there are no customers in the restaurant the order taker cannot move from their till, not even to stock up or clean where they still have the front counter in view. This means they have only one small area to clean, which is within arms reach of their till. Trays are to be cleaned in the lobby and not be on the counter, so that scratches that secondary duty as well. This past weekend the girl on front counter was bored to tears and was not allowed to do anything away from her till (or the other managers got mad at her) – her receipt printer was sparkly clean and everything within arms reach had been cleaned 10 times over. Even if I am working drive thru by myself and have 10 cars waiting for food and front counter has no customers in sight, she is not allowed to help me because she would be abandoning her till.

What kind of work ethic does that teach? Learn some practicality here people.

Love Me:

I saw this video quite a while back, however I just remembered it now. Simon Sinek’s points and his theory of the golden circle make total sense and I wish more businesses followed this rule. It would be nice if products or services were marketed as something for a cause or a ‘why’ rather than just because it’s new and the consumer should want it. What’s the why? – for Apple, I would say it’s innovation and growth in technology.

Here’s the video, I strongly recommend you take a few minutes to watch it. It’s 18 minutes long, but even if you only get 5 minutes into it, you’ll understand.

I wish I could say that today’s blog post was brought to you by an iPad 2…. but I can’t, because it wasn’t. (Dear Santa…)

Love Me:

We’d all like to think that we’re worth a certain amount of pay and perhaps for different reasons. It’s hard to tell how much you’re really worth sometimes when there’s nothing to challenge your thinking and perception. For the longest time I figured I was worth a good salary because, although I might not have as much experience as the next candidate, I’ll put my blood, sweat, and tears into my work along with loyalty and doing anything that will help the company grow and prosper. Most of all, because I work hard and I do whatever I can to exceed your expectations.

So if I’m not worth as much as I believe, then what am I worth? And how do we go about finding out what our true worth is? And the ultimate question too, who’s willing to pay for it?

Love Me:

My Little Impressions makes a replica of a child’s unique hand and footprints. These precious statues are then mounted in a choice of a shadow box or on granite. I redesigned and rebuilt this website using Wordpress so that the pages and pictures can be easily added and edited. Below you can see the before and after screenshots of the website design. I’m not that great of a designer (I think I just don’t have the patience for it), however I still think this turned out pretty good and it’s a huge step up from what it was before!

BEFORE

AFTER

Love Me:

Taken from: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/02/how-should-you-treat-your-best-customers.html

Here’s what most businesses do with their best customers: They take the money.

The biggest fan of that Broadway show, the one who comes a lot and sits up front? She’s paying three times what the person just three rows back paid.

That loyal Verizon customer, the one who hasn’t traded in his phone and has a contract for six years running? He’s generating far more profit than the guy who switches every time a contract expires and a better offer comes along.

Or consider the loyal customer of a local business. The business chooses to offer new customers a coupon for half off—but makes him pay full price…

If you define “best customer” as the customer who pays you the most, then I guess it’s not surprising that the reflex instinct is to charge them more. After all, they’re happy to pay.

But what if you define “best customer” as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals, and who sticks with you through thick and thin? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your best marketer instead, it might change everything.

Love Me:

One is definitely blogging, I’m going to do my best to keep it up as often as possible again. The other is mostly just skills in everything I know how to do. I’m keeping up with things by finally finishing a site I did for my sister, which should hopefully be launching this week sometime if I can get all the new hosting figured out (her old host’s website was copyright 2002 and has a max of 40MB storage space… EEK).

Of course, my other side project would be updating this website, perhaps doing a design of my own and getting rid of this old creeky thing. I love how illustrations look and I think it would be cool to be do an illustration of myself to put somewhere in the new design. Unfortunately for me, my patience needs a little more work to take on a project that large – illustration is so time consuming! Perhaps I should just try an hour a day to start out and see where that gets me…

Love Me:

I would have loved to stay in Vancouver however the prospects of finding new employment at the time weren’t looking very good and Employment Insurance just wasn’t going to pay the rent AND allow me to feed myself on anything other than canned soup and peanut butter sandwiches. So in an effort to save money I moved back to my hometown of Chilliwack and picked up my old job at McDonald’s as a Swing Manager while I continue the job search.

I can’t say working at McDonald’s is my favourite thing in the world, however I learned a lot of things about leadership and customer service there and since going back I have been reminded of many of them. I’ve also been reminded of what that kind of work environment is like (like how that hot guy from Chem class totally dumped that chick from English class by text message on her birthday, like OH EM GEE) and how much I appreciate my career.

One of the most important lessons I think I learned from McDonald’s is “Give ‘em the Pickle“. The basic principle is going the extra mile for your customers. It looks different to every business, but the customer feels valued and will continue to return in nearly every situation. At McDonald’s it could be as simple as replacing food for a dissatisfied customer and adding in an additional free meal or dessert to show you actually care about the business they’re bringing to you. Giving the customer the pickle means not arguing. If they say they ordered something and didn’t get it when you are 100% sure you gave it to them already, it doesn’t matter – give them another one.

So folks, for Pete’s sake give ‘em the pickle!!!

Love Me:

I for one, though, will not take internet metering lying down.

The CRTC just decided to let your Internet Service Provider put a meter on your Internet.

Bell Canada and other big telecom companies can now freely impose usage-based billing on independent Internet Service Providers (indie ISPs) and regular consumers. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

This means we’re looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay more for less Internet.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP INTERNET METERING

Love Me:

I find that there really are two starts to every year – the obvious traditional January 1st and the start of Fall. With the beginning of fall we get not only the back-to-school frenzy, but also the return of your favourite TV shows, Thanksgiving, and HOCKEY!

Seeing as that I had a few extra moments of time this Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to combine two of my loves to create a masterpiece. My love of Apple comes together with my love and loyal dedication for the Vancouver Canucks in this lovely iPhone wallpaper (which I’m more than happy to share I might add). If you click on the image you’ll be able to save the actual size version for use on your own iPhone.

On my travels this weekend I’ve also found another great gem in the city of Vancouver. The following house is quite amazing the way it’s been built and designed. I’d live there! Every time I drive past it I half-expect to see some dwarfs filing out the front door. Come on, can you blame me?

Love Me:

• • Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays
  • 8 Personal Video Message Terminals
• • BC Canada Pavilion
  • 3D Immersive Theatre in the Green Room
  • 3 Glass Touchwalls in the Green Room
  • 2 E-Postcard Terminals in the Green Room
  • Introduction Touch Screen Content for the Green Room
  • CIRS Building Touch Screen Content for the Green Room
  • Project Management of the New Media Room (with interactive touch screen cubes)
• • Canada’s Northern House
  • 2 Personal Video Message Terminals
  • Green Screen Interactive Terminals
• • Robson Square
  • “Front Page News” Newspaper Kiosk

Personal Video Message Terminals are kiosks you walk up to and record a video on. The ones on the torch relay were used to record videos in each community on the relay that would be played in Robson Square during the Games. The e-postcard version used at the BC Pavilion took a snapshot of you in the Pavilion that you could add a message to and send to family and friends via email with a message. If you were there, you probably saw one – so, what did they look like? or, I have a close up sexy photo.

The 3D Immersive Theatre showcased the fun things you can do in BC as the viewer follows a family on their vacation in the province. The theatre included not only 3D visuals, but wind effects, rumbles, and scents.

The Glass Touchwalls showcased four energy efficient companies in BC in a fun game-like format. The touchwalls are approximately 8ft tall clear glass with the interactive space at about chest level (for touch usability).

The Introduction Touchscreen simply showed you the different areas of the Green Room and a little bit about each area. For example, it would tell you where the Glass Touchwalls and the 3D Immersive theatre was. We supplied the illustrated graphics and text content.

The CIRS Building Touch Screen simply allowed you to view videos on how the CIRS Building was conceptualized and how it would be environmentally friendly. We supplied the illustrated interface to navigate these videos.

The New Media Room is the area of the pavilion which featured 3 large multi-touch cubes which allowed the visitors to wipe away layers of animation for such products as the Need for Speed video game as well as watch behind the scenes clips from movies like District 9. We provided the project management for this room. Watch the video featuring “The Curious Tree” cube.

A Green Screen Interactive Terminal is a booth you can walk into and record fun videos in front of a green screen to send to friends and family. It’s great fun and the videos to choose from can be customized by the venue or client using it. Watch a video of someone using it.

The Newspaper Kiosk was a fun free way for people in Robson Square to have their photo taken on the zip line, with the Olympics mascots, or in front of the GE Ice Plaza. It uses the same green screen technology as the Green Screen Interactive Terminal except it takes a snapshot as opposed to a video and presents you with a print out of your picture on the front page of the news. See some cool people in the Vancouver Sun.

Needless to say, we were quite busy and there was a lot of overtime worked, however it was quite the experience and I wouldn’t take it back at all. I loved being involved and working on something that was for a bigger cause.

In December, we had our annual Christmas banquet for Toastmasters and I performed speech project #10 – “inspire your audience”. So, in case you missed it, you’ll find the text version on my Speeches page under “Attainable Dreams”.

Now that the Olympics are done and my year of being President at Burrard Toastmasters is coming to an end, it may be time to take a step back and look at what’s coming down the path next.

Until next time, adios.

Love Me:

I went to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s Music of the Night performance on Friday night and was that ever amazing! If you’re in Vancouver, or are from Vancouver, and you’ve never been to a VSO performance, you are missing out! It’s unbelievable that you can get tickets for $25 a seat (and the sound quality is just as amazing as it would be from the $150 seats) and witness that kind of talent. It was definitely a time that I was thankful for my sense of hearing.

On Tuesday I finally got the rest of the pictures for one of the freelance projects I’ve been doing. Once I make some more last minute tweaks and add the new photos, then prepare to be amazed by the photography of Brendan Robinson! My other freelance project which consists of my first attempt at theming Wordpress, should be up soon too – so stay tuned!

This weekend I was house-sitting/dog-sitting for some people I know that live in the Dunbar area of Vancouver. Last time I stayed at their house in June I discovered something seriously cool and I forgot about it until today when I happened to drive by it again. I give you the darn coolest looking elementary school I’ve ever seen. Who WOULDN’T want to go to school when it looks like this?!

Okay so, the orange pylons kinda take away from the whole ambiance, but still pretty darn cool right? I’d go to that school! I didn’t get a good photo of the playground, however it looked pretty awesome too. That was until I discovered what made this whole thing not so cool. Deal-breaker = no swing set and no merry-go-round. WTF?! Why are playgrounds so boring and “safe” these days? Lame.

As a side note, I was gonna do this whole awesome post about the new Google Street View here in Canada, but then I got too busy and the rest of the blogosphere beat me to it. So instead, enjoy this cool post on things spotted in Toronto with Google Street View.

Love Me:

This upcoming week at Toastmasters we have our Club Table Topics and Humorous Speech Contest. Originally it was so hard to get people to sign up as contestants and I even threw myself in as a contestant hoping to get the ball rolling. So now I am participating in the Table Topics contest and we have over 14 contestants between the two contests. Oh, of course some may drop out as they realize there’s no time to prepare a speech and such, but overall that’s still a good number!

I also need to get going on my regular speech projects again as I’ve only completed three and I’ve told myself I will have my CC and CL status by the end of the executive year. That means I have to do at least seven more speeches to get the CC and a few other projects for the CL as well. Writing a speech isn’t really a big deal for me, not really. It’s more about the topic to choose – what can I write a speech about that will keep others interested?

On the web side of things, I’m doing another set of demos for our hockey pool website, PickupHockey.com. The downside is I’m terribly equipped in the audio department, so my next mission is to excellently equip myself and do those demos again, with better audio. I’d also like to find a way to make them more interesting, cause they’re pretty boring to watch. There’s got to be a way of doing them in a more captivating and fun way.

With the return of Autumn, comes the return of more time indoors – meaning that hopefully more work will get done. Despite the increased time indoors, I really do love Fall. Today I went for a bike ride around Stanley Park and what a lovely Autumn day it was. With that, I leave you with a photo of Siwash Rock along the Stanley Park Seawall.

Love Me: