Podcast

3 Ways to Deliver Value and Delight Your Customers

Interview with David Salyers

Episode Description

[Listen to this episode on iTunes]

Have you ever struggled to keep your customers coming back? Most of us do.

But Chick-fil-A doesn’t. They’re the most popular fast food chain in a wildly competitive industry.

Which is funny, because the food and service there are so extraordinary that most of us don’t even think of it as “fast food.”

In today’s episode of the Building a StoryBrand podcast, I got to talk to Chick-fil-A’s VIP of Brand Activation, David Salyers.

He unpacked their three strategies for dazzling their customers. Give this episode a listen and three things will happen: you’ll boost your business’ customer loyalty, you’ll look at your finances differently, and you’ll have an unbearable craving for waffle fries.

Ask yourself how you can deliver more value to your customers, not get more money from them.

Ask yourself how you can deliver more value to your customers, not get more money from them.

Yes, your business needs to maximize profitability. But if that’s all you strive to do, you’re setting up an adversarial relationship with your customers. If you’re trying to get their money, what are they going to do in response?

They’re going to try and keep it.

Instead, focus your thinking on ways to create more value for your customer.

“How can we improve the story of the people we do business with? That’s our goal every day. If we do that well, the financial end of it tends to take care of itself.”

When you focus on what customers get instead of what they pay, your customers will notice the value more than the cost. Everybody wins.

Find the pain points in your customer’s day-to-day life, and figure out how to solve them.

Find the pain points in your customer’s day-to-day life, and figure out how to solve them.

So, how do you create value?

Here’s what David suggests:

Look for the current sources of aggravation people experience when doing business with you.

Do they have to wait a long time to get their product? Do they have to fill out a bunch of paperwork? Is there too much back-and-forth when scheduling an appointment?

Identify one of those points of friction, and then gather a few staffers to brainstorm solutions.

Have you seen or used Chick-fil-A’s new mobile ordering app? That’s exactly how it came to be. With it, they’ve eliminated the painful experience of waiting in a long line to get your delicious waffle fries. Instead, you place your order on your phone and skip the line at pick-up.

I love this strategy because it clearly makes your customer the hero. That’s the cornerstone of our StoryBrand framework. You’re considering their story, their problem. And you’re the guide that helps them solve it and win the day.

Treat your company culture like the ultimate competitive advantage.

Treat your company culture like the ultimate competitive advantage.

I know you think your product or service is a beautiful and special little snowflake, but here’s the harsh truth: most everything on the market can be imitated.

Salyers admitted that someone out there, if they really wanted to, could probably reverse-engineer their chicken sandwiches and start selling them.

But they can’t replicate Chick-fil-A’s remarkable company’s culture — how its team members treat one another and their customers. And that’s why they strive to bring out the best in staffers at every level of the organization.

“So many things can be imitated, but a culture is one of the hardest things to create. That’s what makes it such a competitive advantage.”

“So many things can be imitated, but a culture is one of the hardest things to create. That’s what makes it such a competitive advantage.”

Most companies fail to get the best from their employees because they look at the employee-employer relationship as a transaction. Hey, you do this stuff for me, and I’ll give you a paycheck in return.

At Chick-fil-A, it’s more than a transaction. It’s a relationship where they serve their team members.

As David says, “What I tell people when I hire them at Chick-fil-A is, ‘If the least important thing you ever get from Chick-fil-A is a paycheck, I’ve done my job well. I want you to get huge paychecks, lots of paychecks, ever-increasing-in-size paychecks. I just want that to be the least important thing.’”

There are many more nuggets (chicken pun alert!) of wisdom in this episode, including an idea about advertising that’s making me lose some sleep.

Give it a listen if you’re serious about customer service. You’ll be on your way to more repeat business and better word-of-mouth.

Did you miss last week’s episode? You can check it out here. We’ve loved hearing your thoughts on Twitter — keep sharing what you’re learning!

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Podcast produced by: Tim Schurrer
Additional editing by: Nick Jaworski

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