Treat Your Customers Thirty Lessons on Service and Sales That I Learned at My Family’s Dairy Queen Store By Bob Miglani Published by Hyperion, 2006 ISBN 1401301983 Introduction When Bob Miglani was growing up, he spent every summer working at his family’s Dairy Queen store. At the time, it was mostly just a fun summer job. Now, looking back, he realizes those summers be- hind the Dairy Queen counter were laying a founda- tion for his future in the corporate world. Mastering the techniques his family used to serve and sell ice cream provided him with indis- pensable knowledge on the value of exceptional customer service. And he picked up more than a few techniques that served him well as an execu- tive with a Fortune 500 company. Whether dealing with customers, suppliers, employees, peers or his managers, something from the DQ experience invariably came in handy. And he’s still growing, returning to the store many weekends to dish out ice cream and keep learning about customer service. Here are some lessons. 1. They’re Not Just Customers – They’re People On a particularly hot summer day, one of the DQ employees, Mike, was serving a man who looked as if he was in his mid-30s. The air conditioner was on high, but with all the serving windows open, the heat was seeping in. A car alarm went off in the parking lot and the noise continued for about 10 minutes. As Mike was putting some of the sundae cups into the customer’s bag, he mut- tered, “What’s up with that guy — doesn’t he know how to turn off his alarm?” The customer gave him a dirty look. “That’s my father and he’s having a little trouble with his car,” he said. Mike’s faced drained completely of colour. It was clear he felt terrible about making the com- ment. It could have been anybody’s father out there trying to turn off the car alarm. Too often we forget that the people coming into our store or business are more than just consumers who drive our revenues. They’re people with feel- ings, hopes and problems just like the rest of us. By labeling anyone who walks into our store simply a client or a consumer, we’re masking reality. By removing some of the words we use like “client” or “consumer” we remove the wall between “them” and “us.” Without a wall to separate us, we’re more able to treat them like real people. That results in their liking us even more, and hopefully becoming loyal customers. Treat them well. It’s not only good manners, it’s good for business. 2. Know Their Names and Their Favorite Flavors In some industries, customers who frequent the business are known as “big fish,” heavy hitters” or Buy the Full Book! www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.chapters.ca www.execubooks.com © 2006 execuBooks inc. execuBooks wisdom. wherever. Subscribe to execubooks.com: e-summaries of books for business people “whales.” At Miglani’s Dairy Queen they’re simply called “regulars.” Those regulars are important be- cause their purchasing habits make up a large percent- age of the business. Over the years, his mother has gotten to know many of the regulars. She knows their names, where they work, the ages of their kids and their favorite fla- vors of ice cream. “Karen likes to get three large lemon-lime Mr. Misty drinks, while Steve and his family prefer chocolate milk shakes every Sunday,” she’ll tell staff. That attention to returning customers has a direct effect on sales. For example, a woman in her mid-60s came into the store one day and ordered a small hot fudge sundae with mint chocolate chip ice cream. Over the course of three to four months, she would come in on Sunday afternoon every few weeks, allow- ing Miglani’s mom to become familiar with what she liked. One day, his mother saw the woman get out of her car and had the sundae ready for her before she even had a chance to order. After that, the lady began coming in once a week. Over time, his mother not only got to know her name, but those of her grandkids and their friends as well. The lady’s grandkids joined a soccer team that liked to celebrate when they won a game. Guess where they came? That Dairy Queen. Customers become regulars partly because you know their names and buying habits. Sure, they might be regulars because they like your product or your convenient location, but by remembering their faces and what they like, you get a little closer to them, mak- ing them more comfortable with you and your busi- ness. By taking the time to get to know your cus- tomers and treat them like human beings, you build a bond. That bond is rewarded with customer loyalty and frequent purchases. 3. Don’t Make Them Wait Today’s business environment is fast-paced. The typi- cal customer is harried and expects goods and servic- es to be provided quickly. The first thing Miglani’s fami- ly teaches each of their employees is that they should be constantly aware of a new customer walking into the store. The second is that no customer should have to wait to be served. Too often when you go into a coffee shop or a clothing store in the mall, you see lots of people work- ing but only one or two people at the checkout counter waiting on a long line of customers. The store’s man- agers are basically allowing customers who are ready to give them money to wait in long lines. That makes no sense. It’s annoying and frustrating, and most of the time it will leave the customer with a negative feeling towards the business. A favorite Friday-night ritual for Bob Miglani and his wife was going out for a pizza and ice cream. Liv- ing in New York City, they had many restaurant choic- es but preferred a small pizza place in lower Manhat- tan and an equally small ice cream shop near a university neighborhood. The people working in the ice cream shop were in their early 20s and blended nicely with the local students. The ice cream was great but the servers talked among themselves while they were serving customers. One night, as a young lady was scooping his ice cream, she was in the middle of a conversation with her co-worker, who was doing nothing. It took her longer to fill up the ice cream cup because she was fo- cused on the conversation instead of serving the cus- tomer. After having a few more similar negative experi- ences, the Miglanis stopped going there. Even though the ice cream was delicious, it wasn’t worth the time it took to get it. The primary job of a business is to sell something to its customers. Everything else — the cleaning, the organizing, the stocking, etc. — is also important but not the real reason you open your business. You open the door each day to serve the people who come into your store. Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani www.execubooks.com 2 A new feature topic every week Leading thinking by thought leaders. Join in at www.execuBooksBlog.com So do just that. Every employee should be capable, trained and ready to serve customers from the first day on the job. Sure, they’re training and need to be shown how to do it right. But don’t have five employees in the store and only two of them serving customers with a long line — have them all manning the cash registers to get the customers on their way. 4. Once in a While, Taste Your Own Ice Cream Before his family bought its own Dairy Queen, Miglani spent a summer working at a neighboring outlet. Bar- bara, the tall blonde 50-year-old owner, was teaching him how to make the strawberry topping one day. There really wasn’t much to it — you opened up the big red container of pre-made strawberry topping and added a touch of strawberry flavoring to give it a sweeter taste and richer color. When she asked him to get a spoon so she could try it herself, he didn’t know what to think. She said it needed more flavoring, so he added it. Seeing his puzzled expression, she explained that she liked to taste everything she made in the store, and sometimes even the things she didn’t make, like the hard ice cream or the milk shake. Her philosophy was that if it wasn’t good enough for the owner, then it was- n’t good enough for the customer. Once in a while, you’ve got to taste the ice cream — whether you make it yourself or not. Whether you sell food, clothing, pots and pans, cars, toothbrushes or services, you’ve got to sample your own products to make sure they live up to the promise you’re making to customers. And this isn’t just about the products. It’s also about the outward appearance of your store and the customer service provided by your staff. It’s good business practice to go on the front lines occasionally. It not only helps you get a flavor for the business, but also gives employees a sense that there’s someone in the corporate office who actually cares. Knowing the leadership of the company is in touch with the realities of the business also builds em- ployee confidence. 5. If They Ask for a Medium Cone, Give Them a Medium Cone While training employees at the Dairy Queen, the Miglani family has them weigh each cone for a short time on a small scale rather than just measuring the serving size by the height of the ice cream. A few weeks and a few hundred cones later, a server gets used to making a small, medium or large cone at the right weight without having to weigh it on the scale. It’s not a perfect science but it’s as precise as they can get with that kind of product. Customers don’t know about business policies or procedures and don’t really care how things are done behind the scenes. They just want the medium cone they ordered to look as close as possible to the one they got yesterday or the one the guy in front of them got. That’s it. Whether you’re operating a small busi- ness or a large one, you must satisfy customers in a consistent way on a daily basis. Business gurus preach about doing things differ- ently all the time and it is good to do things differently. But if you can’t deliver your product or service with the same consistency, what good is novelty? Don’t try to do something extraordinary that you can’t deliver each and every time. 6. Never Forget the Plain Old Vanilla In the early 1990s, the Miglanis started getting a lot of competition from new ice cream retailers such as TCBY and Ben & Jerry’s. Not only did those purveyors offer innovative flavors of ice cream, they also sold frozen yogurt, a new product that really took the market by storm. Flavors like chocolate chip cookie dough, fudge brownie and screwy strawberry were big hits. Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani www.execubooks.com 3 simple smart See page 4 for details Four out of 10 customers would ask for frozen yogurt or one of those wild flavors. And while Dairy Queen restaurants were well es- tablished and had been around for over 50 years, they just hadn’t kept up with the market as well as their smaller and much nimbler competition. They weren’t as inventive with their flavors as their rapidly changing customer base wanted. So they brought in frozen yogurt and some new treats like the DQ Bliz- zard, a blend of soft-serve ice cream and ingredients like candies or cookies. Although the Blizzard treat was a hit, they still weren’t growing as fast as the new guy on the block. Miglani’s youngest sister, being an impressionable teenager at the time, would drive the rest of the family crazy asking them to expand their variety of flavors to reflect what she thought were the hot new trends. They ended up ordering many of the hot new flavors that were popular with customers her age, and they sold well for a few months, but not as well as hoped. In fact, one summer weekend they had so much in- ventory of these new flavors that they simply forgot to order a new supply of plain old vanilla. And wouldn’t you know it — vanilla was the most demanded flavor that weekend. But they were out of it! No matter how “hot” a new flavor might be, most people just want vanilla. Nobody talks about those crazy flavors anymore. In fact, Dairy Queen has discon- tinued frozen yogurt from most of its stores in the Unit- ed States due to lack of consumer demand. Yet over the decades Miglani has been in the DQ business, vanilla and chocolate have never been out of the top five flavors served at Dairy Queens. You should never lose sight of the product or serv- ice that’s at the heart of your business. It’s what your business is known for and what people associate with your brand — and what brings in the most revenue. Sure, you’ve got to try new things based on trends and customer needs, but don’t forget about your cash cow: the plain old vanilla. Conclusion Although you may not be serving ice cream cones, each day you have the same opportunity to benefit your business by following the lessons Bob Miglani learned at Dairy Queen. e ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bob Miglani is senior director of public affairs for a Fortune 500 company. Related Reading How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, by Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School Press, 2003, ISBN 1578518261. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, by Paco Un- derhill, Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0684849135. Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results, by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen, Hyperion, 2000, ISBN 0786866020. execuGrow Learning Suite A simple, smart enterprise-wide learning solution, execuGrow Learning Suite (www.execugo.com/execuGo2/ suite.cfm) enables 100% of an organization’s employees to quickly learn and apply the world’s best business concepts at an unbeatable return on investment. execuGrow Learning Suite combines two of execuGo Media’s most popular product lines — execuBooks business book summaries and execuKits turnkey workshop toolkits — with a new col- lection of innovative inspirational tools called execuClips. It enables all employees to build competi- tive advantage by equipping each other with a world- class business education easily and effectively right where they work. Contact us for more information at clientcare@ execugo.com or 1-866-888-1161. Treat Your Customers By Bob Miglani www.execubooks.com 4 . www.amazon.com www.bn.com www.chapters.ca www.execubooks.com © 2006 execuBooks inc. execuBooks wisdom. wherever. Subscribe to execubooks.com: e-summaries of books for business people “whales.” At Miglani’s. percent- age of the business. Over the years, his mother has gotten to know many of the regulars. She knows their names, where they work, the ages of their kids and their favorite fla- vors of ice. the corporate office who actually cares. Knowing the leadership of the company is in touch with the realities of the business also builds em- ployee confidence. 5. If They Ask for a Medium Cone,