(Time to read this Blog is about 4.5 minutes)

Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:

1. My Biz Quote of the week:
   “Confidence is the #1 factor in people’s decision to buy, or not to buy, from you.  Anything that destroys confidence and creates doubt about your products or services, your value, knowledge, integrity or sense of urgency cannot be tolerated and must be eliminated immediately.”                                                                         
   …Donald Cooper.

2. Quick Biz Tip:
   The importance of ‘process’:
   In business, everything that happens between intent and delivery is ‘process’.  Process ain’t sexy…but I don’t want to fly on an airline that doesn’t have it.  It’s process that stops those planes from falling out of the sky.  Which of your processes need improving?  Sit with your Team, make a List and get to work. 
    
3. The world’s first flying car crash. During an Air Show rehearsal in Changchun, China last week, two flying cars – developed by Chinese electric vehicle giant Xpeng – crashed into each other, fell to the ground and burned.  This is believed to be the world’s first flying car crash.
    
4. Defining ‘Success’.  Have you clearly defined ‘success’ in your business and your life?  Most people have not.  It’s tough to get what you want, if you don’t know what you want.  To download my insightful ‘Defining Success’ Biz Tool that has been helpful to so many of our Biz Coaching clients, Click Here.  It’s e-fillable for your convenience.
    
5. Fun Travel Fact: We’ve heard a lot about how many of the world’s top travel destinations are over-crowded….and how upset, and in some cases, hostile, the residents of those places are becoming.  Here’s the statistic behind those stories.  ‘80% of travelers visit just 10% of the world’s tourism destinations’.
    
6. AI update. We keep hearing that AI will change almost everything we do in business.  But most of the business owners and managers I speak with have very little understanding of  what this really means…and how to embrace AI.  So, each week, I’ll deliver a few examples to spark your creative juices.
   2. AI-powered translation tools are revolutionizing virtual meetings by offering real-time translation of speech and text, making communication more accessible and inclusive across languages.
   3. In a global first, Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, announced that an AI bot called Diella will take on the Cabinet post in charge of all public procurements.  Albania has long struggled with corruption, and Rama believes that putting a bot in charge of public funds is the solution.
   4. AI will reduce the time to create full-length animated movies from 3 years down to 9 months, and cut the cost from $150 million to under $30 million.

Now, to this week’s important topic:

Cooper’s 12-step process to create & deliver world-class customer experiences…important lessons from Viking Cruise Lines:

We’ve just returned from a 2-week adventure cruise from Bergen, Norway, through incredible fiords, over to the Faroe Islands (way north of Scotland) and then circumnavigating Iceland counterclockwise to end up in Reykjavik.  We went with Viking Cruise Lines, because we figured they knew the neighbourhood.  The Viking Saturn carries 930 passengers and 470 crew.

Our Viking crew was outstanding!  They were the best staff of the 20 or so cruises that we’ve done with many different cruise lines.  They were welcoming, kind, helpful, proactive, resourceful, cheerful, joyful and animated.  Many of them were downright funny…even when English was not their first language.  To be ‘funny’ in a 2^nd language is a special gift.  The result was an extraordinary customer experience!

When you think about how challenging it is for you to attract, engage and retain top-performers in your business and how challenging it is to create a Team that delivers world-class customer experiences, consider what we discovered on our 12 days on the Viking Saturn:

1. The 470, mostly young crew members in their 20s and 30s, come from 46 different countries and cultures around the world. And yet, they get along and work together as a world-class Team.
    
2. All guest interaction is in English, although English is NOT the 1^st language for almost all of these amazing people.
    
3. They sign 6-month Contracts, live in cramped quarters, work long hours, 7 days a week, with no days off, and at the end of 6 months they get to go home for 4 months, without pay, to be with their families.
    
   Many of the female crew have husbands and children at home in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, South America, Africa, China, India or Eastern Europe.  And many of the young men have wives and children at home. So, they don’t see their families for 6 months at a time.
    
4. Once we interacted with any Crew member a few times, they knew our names and our preferences.  And every 12 days or so, they have to learn hundreds of new names and preferences, when a whole new batch of passengers embark.  

Compared to the employment and life experiences that you offer in your business, this probably sounds like a terrible gig.  But for these folks, it’s a dream job compared to the work and the wages they could get at home.  So, they line up to get jobs on cruise ships.  Many of them move up the ranks to more senior positions on board, and some eventually decide use their shipboard experience to stay home and take a job in the land-based hospitality industry.

As a business guy, I got to thinking about the process required to create such a diverse Team that delivers extraordinary world-class customer experiences under these difficult circumstances.  Based on my conversations with several of the senior officers on our cruise and my own observations, the process looks like this…and it will be very insightful for your business.

Beside each of my 12 Steps listed below is a box in which you can honestly and courageously rate your business on a scale of 1 to 10…with 10 being excellent.  This is best done as a Team exercise with some of the best minds and hearts in your business.

Cooper’s 12-step process for creating a Team that delivers world-class customer experiences:

1. Understand your target customers…better than your competitors.  You can’t delight people that you don’t know a lot about.  What do they value, what do they fear, what are they really trying to do, how do they want to feel…and what do they expect at every touch-point? 
    
2. Clearly define and constantly communicate to your Team the experiences you commit to deliver at every touch-point, every time. Experiences that with will deliver your Brand promise, ‘grab’ your target customers, clearly differentiate you from your competitors, make you famous…and grow your bottom line.  Experiences that will turn customers into ‘raving fans’.
     
3. Clearly state and constantly reinforce your standards of performance, appearance and behaviour required to deliver the customer experiences you promise to deliver at every touch-point…and to contribute to the employment experience of the rest of the Team.
     
   Always explain to your Team why you have high standards…but never apologize for them.
    
4. Create the Culture required to attract, engage, challenge and reward the people required to deliver the customer experiences that you promise.
    
   Important Note about Cooper’s 2 sides of the ‘Culture Coin’:  Creating a business culture that attracts, engages, challenges and rewards top performers, while also encouraging world-class operational effectiveness and efficiency, is key to your success.  These are what I call the 2 sides of the ‘Culture Coin’.
    
   The 1st side of the ‘coin’ is about creating a Culture that attracts, nurtures, engages and encourages the talent you need to amaze customers, grow the business and generate a sustainable bottom line.  This side of the ‘coin’ is about creating a culture of integrity, learning, opportunity, fairness, diversity, inclusion, listening, empathy, respect, acknowledgement, passion and joy.
    
   The 2nd side of the ‘Culture Coin’ is about creating a culture of world-class operational effectiveness, efficiency and profitability. This side of the coin is about clarity, empowerment, commitment, accountability, performance measurement, urgency, excellence, efficiency, and profitability.
    
   To download my Biz Tool #B-18, ‘How To Create A Winning Culture’, Click Here.  It’s e-fillable for your convenience.   
    
5. Create the leadership, management and supervisory Team and the organization structure required to create and deliver the Culture that you commit to create.
    
6. Develop, implement, communicate and constantly improve the systems and processes required to deliver the customer experiences you promise to deliver at every touch-point. 
    
7. Develop an effective screening process to filter out the job candidates who can not or will not deliver the customer experiences you commit to deliver, or who are not a great fit with your culture, standards and values.
    
   Note:  Smart businesses use various pre-employment tests for screening potential employees, including Skill Assessments, Job Knowledge Tests, Cognitive Ability Tests, Personality Tests, Integrity Tests and Physical Ability Tests.  Other types of tests include Emotional Intelligence Tests, Work Simulations and Drug Tests. 
8. Effective onboarding and ongoing training, coaching, mentoring and encouraging.
    
9. Empower each member of your Team to quickly and proactively do what is necessary to deliver the customer experiences you promise at every touch-point.
    
10. Communicate effectively, honestly and often.  Communication is a two-way street. Develop a ‘listening culture’.  Your front-line people know stuff and they hate it when you don’t ask.  When you don’t ask, they assume that you don’t care.  And, if you don’t care, why should they?
     
    As part of that 2-way communication, meet with each Team member at least once a year to ask them what they want their career and their life to look like in 3 to 5 years and how you and the company can help them achieve that.  We want their help to achieve what we want in the business, so we should also them achieve what they want. 
     
11. Create a wage, benefit, career opportunity and employment experience package that makes you a ‘talent magnet’ for top performers. Treat recruitment, engagement and retention like a marketing challenge. Get your employment ‘product’ right and then effectively communicate the benefit and value of being part of your Team.   
     
12. Measure performance. Celebrate, acknowledge and reward success…and deal quickly, effectively and fairly with non-performance.

So, how do you score on each of these 12 Keys to creating your world-class Team…and what do your individual scores tell you about what needs improving?   For those items that need work, specifically what will be done, by whom, by when, at what cost, with what outcomes, measured how and rewarded how?  As a business owner, leader or manager, this is the stuff that you’re actually paid to do.

That’s it for this week…

Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!       

Donald Cooper 

Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability.  He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.