How to use inspiring stories to grow your service culture

A customer walked into Nordstrom with two tires and asked for a refund.

Nordstrom doesn't sell tires, so the customer clearly didn't buy the tires from that store. Yet the associate gave the customer a refund anyway.

The story became a legend.

You need legendary stories of your own if you want to deliver legendary customer service. This guide will show you three things:

  1. What makes a great customer service story.

  2. Where to gather your own legendary tales.

  3. How to use stories to inspire your team.

We'll also break down the Nordstrom tire story to see why it works so well at Nordstrom, but probably won't work for your employees.

Photo credit: Mike Mozart

What makes a great customer service story?

Legendary customer service stories help employees understand the service culture. They connect at an emotional level to help explain the customer service vision and inspire action.

Legendary stories have three characteristics:

  1. About your company

  2. An example of the vision

  3. Authentic

Let's see how the Nordstrom tire story fits.

First, it's about Nordstrom.

The tire story is unusual, but nearly every Nordstrom associate can relate to serving a customer who needed help with a return or an unusual request.

Second, the story exemplifies Nordstrom's specific customer service vision:

Use good judgement in all situations.

The Nordstrom tire story is really a story about an associate following the vision.

A different store occupied the building before Nordstrom moved in. And that store did sell tires. The customer explained to the Nordstrom associate that he was told he could return the tires if they didn't work out.

The associate believed the customer's story. His good judgment told him he should try to help the customer.

The associate decided to call a nearby Firestone tire dealer to get the estimated value of the tires. He then gave the customer a cash refund for that amount.

The third characteristic of a great story is it has to be authentic.

What makes the Nordstrom tire story so great is it actually happened. I'll admit, I once doubted the authenticity, until I heard this episode of the Nordstrom podcast.

In the episode, Nordstrom president, Pete Nordstrom, interviewed Craig Trounce, the associate who gave the customer a refund for his tires. Trounce goes into detail about what happened and why he made the decision, which makes the story even more impactful.

Warning: the Nordstrom tire story only works at Nordstrom. It wouldn’t fit the three characteristics if you applied it to your organization. You'll need to gather your own legendary tales to inspire your team.

Where to gather legendary tales

When I advise customer service teams, they often get hung up on finding extreme examples like the Nordstrom tire story. You don't need extreme. Your story just has to be compelling.

Here are a few places to look for examples.

Team Meetings

Ask your employees for examples of things they've done or observed others doing that fit the customer service vision.

I asked a group of customer service reps at a medical device company for examples and learned how an agent went the extra mile to help save a patient's life.

Observations

Spend time observing employees interact with customers and you're bound to find some great stories.

I visited an apartment community to do research before I gave a keynote at the management company's leadership retreat. It didn't take me long to spot a great story.

An employee was cheerfully greeted by several dogs (and the residents who owned them). The employee had made friends with the dogs and residents by always carrying treats for the dogs.

Here's my step-by-step guide to performance observations: Observation Guide

Customer Feedback

You often learn about legendary stories directly from customers. They share tales via conversations, surveys, and even emails or letters.

All you have to do is listen.

I was helping a university's parking department analyze its customer service survey results when an unusual trend emerged. Several employees were repeatedly mentioned by happy customers.

A little more digging revealed these employees went out of their way to create personal connections with the people they served. They got to know people by name and customers got to know them as well. Each one became a legendary example.

Get help analyzing your own surveys: Customer Survey Resources

How to use stories to inspire your team

Customer-focused teams talk about customer service a lot. The Nordstrom tire story is so compelling because employees have heard it many times. They know the story themselves and they use it to inspire their own actions.

Think of situations where you discuss customer service with your team. That's a great time to share a legendary story.

  • New hire training

  • Ongoing training

  • Team meetings

  • One-on-one coaching

  • Team communication

Many Nordstrom stores have a sign near the employee entrance reminding associates of the tire story. It's another way to remind employees about the customer service vision, "Use good judgment in all situations."

Take Action

Remember, your stories don't need to be over-the-top to become legendary. The stories just need to help explain your service culture.

You can start building your legend today. Gather stories that fit the three characteristics:

  1. About your company

  2. An example of the vision

  3. Authentic

Once you have a few legendary stories, start sharing them with your team.

How your customer service pep talks can stay fresh

"My employees are tuning me out."

The customer service leader explained his company had a customer service vision that he talked about in every meeting. A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page.

Unfortunately, employees were starting to get bored. They'd heard the manager talk about the vision so many times that it had gotten repetitive.

The manager knew repetition was vital to making something important. Employees were more likely to remember the vision and used in it their daily work because it was discussed so frequently.

He asked me how to reinforce the message while keeping it fresh. The manager was surprised to learn the secret was hidden in the other conversations he was already having with the team.

What helps people learn important concepts?

Two things help people learn and remember something: repetition and novelty. Hearing or experiencing something often helps it move from our conscious to our subconscious brain. Novelty helps maintain our attention.

The manager was already getting repetition right by talking about the customer service vision on a regular basis. This signaled that it was important.

Unfortunately, our brains tend to tune out messages we've already heard. That's where novelty comes in. Our brains are fascinated by novelty.

We're wired to noticed something new, unusual, or unexpected. That's why we could pass a hundred people walking by us on the sidewalk without giving them a second glance, but a person dressed in a gorilla costume whizzing by on an electric scooter would make us stop and stare.

The challenge is novelty isn't always easy to find unless you're looking for it.

Novelty Exercise: Here's an exercise you can try that will help. You can do this while walking in your neighborhood, on your morning commute, or any other time when you're traveling along a familiar route.

  1. Try to notice something you've never seen before.

  2. On the next day, repeat the exercise and try to notice something new again.

I've lived in the same neighborhood for 20 years, yet I can still do this exercise anytime when I walk around the block. There's always something I hadn't seen before if I look carefully enough.

How can you add novelty to team meetings?

You don't need to go far to search for novelty. Remember when I told the manager that the secret was hidden in the conversations he was already having with his team?

Every day, there's a new challenge to solve. It could be an unusual problem, an exciting new discovery, or just a new member on the team who is still learning how to be successful.

These situations provide all the novelty you need.

The manager talked about these customer service challenges in formal team meetings, one-on-ones, and team huddles. Employees loved working together to solve these problems and always paid attention.

I suggested the manager try to solve those challenges using the customer service vision as a guide. This naturally creates novelty because the situation is new while adding repetition because you use the vision to solve the issue.

Want a great example?

Check out Jesse Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball club. He frequently shares examples on LinkedIn of doing just that: solving problems by using the club’s customer service vision (and other principles) as a guide.

One recent story involved rallying the team to entertain fans even when the game itself was rained out.


Conclusion

The best leaders talk about customer service a lot. The truly great ones find new and novel ways to share the same message while keeping it fresh.

You can learn more about building a customer-focused culture from The Service Culture Handbook, a step-by-step guide to getting employees obsessed with customer service.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access the video-based version.

How customer service leaders can make it easier to do good work

"Be more managerial, or you're fired!"

The director issued this ultimatum to his two managers. There had been some customer service issues within the department. The director wanted to see change, now.

The managers stared at their boss in disbelief.

I stared, too. The director had brought me in to meet with his leadership team and help create a strategy to improve the service culture. This was our first meeting, and it felt like a set-up.

The director looked to me for validation. What I said flummoxed him instead. "What exactly does 'be more managerial' look like?”

He didn't have an answer.

Leaders try all sorts of approaches to get their employees to do good work. Some try to be tough, like that director. Some try to be compassionate and let employees do what they want. Others offer incentives or try to make it fun with games.

Yet one strategy consistently works better than them all. The best customer service leaders make it easy. Here are three ways you can do that.

A frustrated employee is sitting at her computer.

Step 1: Provide clarity

Think of a company well-known for legendary customer service. Whichever one you pick, you can bet that employees know exactly what they're supposed to do to make your experience so exceptional.

Many employees don't have that.

A Customer Service Tip of the Week subscriber recently wrote to describe her struggles understanding what was expected of her. She sent me one of her performance goals so I could see for myself.

That single "goal" was multiple pages of nonsense and corporate-speak about productivity and efficiency. It was one of four similar goals she had to meet.

Like the director's two managers, this employee lacked clarity.

  1. What exactly is the goal?

  2. What behaviors are most likely to achieve the goal?

These employees are not alone. A recent poll on LinkedIn showed just 57 percent of respondents knew what they had to do to achieve the goals on their performance review.

Employees need clarity if you want them to do great work.

This starts by creating a customer experience vision—a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page.

Employees also need to know how they personally contribute to the overall vision. You can test this by asking any employees these three questions:

  1. What is the vision?

  2. What does it mean?

  3. How do you personally contribute?

You don't have clarity until employees can consistently and confidently answer those questions.

The director struggled to define what "be more managerial" meant. He couldn't explain it to his managers, no more than he could explain exactly what great service should look like.

Step #2: Empower employees

Think about a time when you had an unusual request or encountered a small problem with a customer-focused company. Chances are, a friendly and helpful employee was empowered to help you immediately.

It's not enough to give employees clarity by defining great service. Employees need to be empowered to actually deliver it.

Most people think of empowerment as giving employees free rein. The true definition of customer service empowerment is a bit more sophisticated:

A process of enabling employees to deliver outstanding service to their customers.

Empowered employees generally have three things:

  1. Resources: the right tools to do the job.

  2. Procedures: best practices to follow.

  3. Authority: the ability to do what's right when needed.

If you hire right, your employees naturally want to provide great service. That's exactly what they'll do if you empower them to do it.

The director didn't empower his employees or his managers to do a good job. Instead, he micromanaged, shot from the hip, and frequently contradicted himself.

Eventually, doing nothing became less risky than getting reprimanded for doing something.

Step #3: Be a role model

Think of a company you admire for great service, and you'll probably think of a leader who embodied what that company stood for.

You don't have to be a famous CEO to be a role model. Employees watch their manager carefully to see what behaviors are encouraged and what behaviors to avoid.

If you want your employees to do great work, you need to show them how to do it. (I can think of at least seven ways.)

This where the director really struggled.

He was a jerk to his employees, yet somehow he expected them to be kind to customers. And how could he expect his managers to "be more managerial" if he couldn't demonstrate the qualities of an effective leader himself?

Conclusion

Your job as a customer service leader is to make it easy for employees to do good work.

Employees need three things from you:

  1. Clarity: what does good work look like?

  2. Empowerment: are they able to do good work?

  3. Model: do you provide a good example to follow?

The director did none of these things. The best he could think to do was hire a consultant, which can be a surprisingly bad idea.

I felt fortunate when I left the meeting after pulling the director aside and making it clear we wouldn't be working together. I didn’t have to come back, but the two managers and their teams had fewer options.

How to make your vision focus on customers

The Service Culture Handbook helped popularize the concept of a customer service or customer experience vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding customer service that gets everyone on the same page. You can read more about that definition here.

One of the most common challenges when writing a vision is the final statement is too generic. Even worse, it doesn't focus on customers. Here are a few examples:

  • "We build trust with our customers through caring and prompt service."

  • "Fast, reliable, and knowledgeable customer service."

  • "World's best customer service team."

Notice these examples use generic words, such as "prompt," "fast," and "world's best." What they don't do is focus on the results they are trying to achieve for the customer or how the customer benefits.

Many leaders whose teams write these statements know something isn't quite right, but they can't put their finger on it. This post will clarify what went wrong, and help you avoid making the same mistakes.

A group of colleagues putting their hands together to signal commitment and focus.

How to write a customer service vision statement

It's helpful to see an overview of the vision writing process before diving into what can go wrong. I won't go into too much detail in this post, so here are some links if you want to learn more:

There are three key steps in the process:

  1. Survey all employees to get their input

  2. Gather a cross-functional group of 7-10 people to write the statement

  3. Check the statement with key stakeholders

I frequently see a problem at each stage in this process that can cause a vision statement to lack customer-focus. Let's explore each one in detail, and I'll explain how to solve each one.

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Mistake #1: Misinterpreting the survey results

The first step when writing a customer service vision statement is to survey all employees who will be covered by the statement. This could be a group of 10, 100, or even thousands of people.

The survey gives everyone a chance to provide some input that will later be used to guide the work of the small team writing the vision. Participants are asked to respond to one question:

“What do you want our customers to think of when they think of the service we provide?”

The survey answers are freeform. Responses can be used to generate a word cloud, which visually depicts which words are used most often.

A challenge occurs when the survey results are misinterpreted.

Here's an example from a team called the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP). They were part of a larger nonprofit, but this particular team helped customers who purchased hybrid or "green" vehicles get rebates from the state that were designed to incentivize consumers to buy these types of vehicles.

The word cloud represents the responses from our employee survey:

Word cloud representing the output from an internal customer service vision survey.

You can see many generic words right there in bold, such as "friendly," "like," and "helpful." Vision writing teams are often tempted to put these words directly into the vision statement, so it might turn out like this:

We provide friendly and helpful service that customers like.

Yikes! That's a pretty generic statement that's uninspiring and definitely not focused on customers. It seems to be focused on getting customers to like the team, which should be a by-product of doing a great job.

The solution to this challenge is to go one level deeper. Go past the generic words that are large and bold and look at some of the secondary words that come out in the survey.

In this case, look at the words under the large "customers" on the left side of the word cloud. Here are a few that stand out:

  • Easy

  • Process

  • Resolve

  • Contact

  • Rebate

These words are more focused on what the team actually does—helping hybrid vehicle buyers get rebates. Now we have some additional insight to share in the vision writing meeting.

Mistake #2: Avoiding the good vision criteria

A good customer service vision statement should meet three tests. During the vision writing meeting, it's essential for the facilitator to use these tests to guide the group's work.

The three criteria for a good vision statement are:

  1. It's simple and easily understood.

  2. It's focused on customers.

  3. It reflects both who you are now, and who you aspire to be in the future.

These criteria should be a failsafe against writing generic statements. For instance, let's imagine we completely whiffed on interpreting the CVRP's word cloud and came up with this generic first draft:

We provide friendly and helpful service that customers like.

Now let’s apply the three criteria to evaluate this draft:

#1 Is it simple and easily understood? No, the statement is overly generic. People who worked for this organization cared deeply about the environment. They saw the green vehicle rebate program as a way to get more people onboard with environmental issues, but the statement above doesn’t capture this.

#2 Is it focused on customers? Not really. The CVRP team truly wanted to get more customers driving "green" vehicles and knew the rebate program they supported was a way to do that.

#3 Does it reflect who we are now and our aspirations for the future? No, it does not. I like to ask teams to imagine the results they're achieving for their customers on a good day, when everything is going well. The vision statement should focus on doing more of that. A good day for the CVRP team would be getting more customers to invest in “green” vehicles.

It can sometimes required a skilled facilitator to bring out these issues in a vision writing meeting. This can be a compelling reason to hire an external professional.

Mistake #3: Ignoring your gut instinct

Customer service leaders often tell me they aren't happy with these generic vision statements that don't focus on customers. They getting a nagging feeling that something's not right.

The final mistake is ignoring that feeling and rolling out the vision anyway.

Part of the vision writing process is a final gut check. The idea is to share the finished statement with key stakeholders who did not help write it. These stakeholders can include executives, middle managers, and influential frontline employees.

A good vision statement will elicit an overwhelmingly positive reaction.

There are times when a draft statement doesn't get that reaction. Some organizational cultures discourage open criticism, but you can still tell there's a problem when people aren't effusive in their praise.

"It's okay," really means it's not okay.

As a facilitator, I like to ask probing questions to get to the heart of that feeling.

One group I worked with was a group of maintenance professionals who created a vision statement that read "We help you get it fixed."

The gut check didn't go so well. There was something about the statement that didn't sit well with stakeholders.

I asked them to share more about their reaction. Was it a particular word, for example?

It took a few questions to get to the heart of the issue, but finally someone spotted it. The word "you" in "We help you get it fixed" felt to employees as if they were putting too much responsibility on the customer.

The solution was taking out the word "you" so the statement became "We help get it fixed." The team loved it.

Don't be afraid to lean in if you write a vision statement that stakeholders don't love. Ask them to help pinpoint what they don't love about it and why. In my experience, it's usually just a word or two that needs changing.

Additional Resources

The CVRP team ultimately came up with a customer service vision statement that met all three criteria and everyone was passionate about.

Make it easy to join the clean vehicle movement.

They recognized that their customers might not be as passionate as they were, so the only way to get the masses to invest in clean vehicles was if the process was easy. So they re-focused their efforts on removing friction.

You can write a brilliant customer service vision statement, too. Here are a few resources to help.

You can also hear me describe the process in this short video. (You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to view the entire course.)

Who should write your customer service vision?

I could tell my client wasn't feeling great.

Her company had recently written their customer service vision statement, following the process outlined in The Service Culture Handbook. Everyone seemed excited about the rollout, but something didn't feel right to my client.

We talked about it a little to get at the source of that nagging feeling. It finally hit her, "I don't think we had the right people on the vision writing team."

Getting the right people on the team can be a challenge.

You need the right mix of people to represent your culture. Too many executives, too few frontline employees, or too many people who all think alike can cause blindspots.

This post will walk you through how to pick your vision-writing team while avoiding some common pitfalls. I've also included a link to my step-by-step process at the bottom.

Before you get started, check out this post if you want to familiarize yourself on the customer service vision concept.

A group of business colleagues are meeting via a web conference.

Top mistakes when selecting your vision writing team

Let's start by looking at a few common mistakes organizations make when selecting the team to write the customer service vision.

Mistake #1: Only executives

Some leaders write the customer service vision at an executive retreat. I've called this the biggest mistake when building a service culture.

That's because frontline employees and middle managers had no ownership stake in writing the statement, which makes it harder to get their buy-in. A statement written by executives usually excludes something important because executives have one perspective on the culture.

Put less politely, a customer service vision written exclusively by executives almost always sets off employees' bullshit meter.

Mistake #2: Involving customers

It might seem counterintuitive, but customers should not participate when writing your customer service vision.

There are many reasons for this (detailed here), but the gist is a customer service vision statement should reflect your organization's culture. Customers aren't really part of that.

Mistake #3: Too many participants

I’ve facilitated vision writing meetings with as many as 30 people when I first started refining this process. It was always too cumbersome having that many people in the room trying to wordsmith a single sentence.

Trial and error taught me that the ideal vision writing team consists of 7-10 people. (More on that in a moment.) Any more than 10, and there's too much noise in the room. Any fewer, and there’s not enough diversity.

Bottom line, when writing a customer service vision, it's important to follow the recipe outlined in The Service Culture Handbook.

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Who should be on your vision writing team?

My client hadn't made any of the classic mistakes. Yet she still felt her company didn’t choose the right mix of people to write the vision.

We talked about it and she revealed that people applied to be on the team. The leadership team got a lot of applications, which was great! But they hadn't created a selection process ahead of time.

In retrospect, my client realized the application itself was an issue. Employees were asked to describe their thoughts on the organization’s culture, and executives selected employees who most aligned with their own thinking.

The ideal team should reflect a diversity of thought within the organization, so critical perspectives are included. Here's how to build your team:

Team Size

The ideal vision writing team should have 7-10 members, plus a facilitator. The facilitator should be someone neutral, and you might want to consider hiring someone external.

If your team will be meeting virtually to write the statement, I recommend keeping the team size closer to 7 people. This makes the process easier to manage, though I've facilitated virtual vision writing meetings with 10 people.

Resource: How to write your vision in a virtual meeting

Team Composition

It's important that the group represent as many perspectives within the organization as possible. I like to start by adding three core people to the team:

  • at least one frontline employee

  • at least one senior leader

  • at least one mid-level manager

There's a few additional qualifications I'd suggest considering for each person.

Frontline employees:

  • Customer-facing

  • Someone who often "speaks for the group"

  • Unafraid to speak up in front of senior leaders

When possible, it's good to have multiple frontline employees on the team.

Senior leaders:

  • As senior as possible

  • Authority to implement the vision statement

  • Influential with the rest of the senior team

  • Willingness to listen to employee perspectives

Mid-level managers:

  • Positive relationship with frontline employees

  • Supervises at least one frontline employee on the team

I often find that employees and their direct supervisor bounce ideas off of each other during the vision writing meeting, so it's good to have them in the same room as long as they have a positive working relationship.

Once you've identified your three core people, here are some additional people to add to the team:

  • Additional customer-facing employees

  • Non-customer facing frontline employees

  • Support employees (e.g. human resources, training, finance, etc.)

I try to include a maximum of three senior leaders on the team. You want the vision statement to capture their big picture perspective, but you also don't want so many senior leaders in the room that other team members are less willing to speak their minds.

The bottom line for this team is representation. (See my interview with J. Israel Greene on why representation is critical to your culture.)

Keep in mind that if you follow the entire process, you will have already surveyed everyone in the organization to ask for their input prior to the vision writing meeting.

Additional Resources

Here are a few additional resources to help you write your customer service vision statement.

Contact Me: Get stuck? Have a question? Please contact me. I'm happy to offer some advice and suggestions at no obligation.

The Service Culture Handbook: This book outlines a step-by-step process for building a customer-focused culture. Chapter three is devoted to writing a customer service vision statement.

Vision Writing Process: This vision writing process will guide you step-by-step through creating your vision. It's the same process I've used with my own clients for many years.

LinkedIn Learning Video: This video on LinkedIn Learning can guide you through the vision writing process. You'll need a LinkedIn Learning subscription to view the entire course.

How to Write Your Vision in a Virtual Meeting

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.

A new client is headquartered in Seattle, but they have employees all over the west coast and as far east as Denver.

The client recently gathered a team in Seattle to write the company's customer experience vision statement. They used the step-by-step instructions from The Service Culture Handbook to guide them.

It was expensive and time-consuming to fly people to headquarters, but my client felt it was worthwhile. Participants were motivated by the process and felt the result was truly reflective of the company culture.

Many companies don't have the option to bring employees together right now. Travel budgets are being slashed and in-person gatherings are limited. Employees might be located all over the globe where there are extensive restrictions on international travel.

I'm going to show you how to adapt my vision writing process to a virtual meeting. To keep this post shorter, I'll focus on the changes you need to make to the original process.

A group of coworkers participate in a video conference.

What is a customer experience vision?

It is a shared definition of outstanding customer experience that gets everyone on the same page.

Having a customer experience, or CX, vision allows you to align your people, process, and product in the same direction. You can use it to avoid internal conflicts and get everyone focused on delivering a consistently good experience.

Here's an example from Convo, an app-based video relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people:

Our mission is to connect humans through universal communication solutions shaped by visual and cultural experiences.

This statement was created using the process in The Service Culture Handbook. In the book, I called this statement a customer service vision. Over time, I've realized the importance of focusing on the broader customer experience. 

Fortunately, the process for writing a customer experience vision is exactly the same.


Prepare your virtual meeting

The in-person meeting lasts two hours, but I’ve found the virtual meeting should be scheduled for 2.5 hours. It takes a bit more time to get everyone to collaborate virtually.

Aside from adding 30 minutes to the meeting, there are a number of steps you should take beforehand to ensure the meeting is a success.

Some of those steps remain the same, whether you're facilitating virtually or in-person. You can read the full process in this guide, but here's a summary:

  1. Get buy-in from senior leaders.

  2. Identify existing cultural artifacts.

  3. Invite a cross-functional group of 7 to 10 people to participate. (Closer to 7 works better for virtual.)

  4. Send out your one-question survey.

  5. Identify your primary customer.

The one-question survey is sent to all employees who will be covered by the customer experience vision. Participants are invited to provide a free text response to this question:

What would you like customers to think of when they think about their experience?

Virtual meetings require some extra preparation in addition to the steps above:

  1. Video conferencing platform

  2. Shareable documents

  3. Downloadable handout

Video Conferencing Platform

A video conferencing platform is essential so people can see and hear each other, and see the various draft vision documents you create.

There are three basic criteria for selecting a platform:

  1. Compatibility. All participants must be able to access the platform.

  2. Audio/Video: Every participant should join with audio and video.

  3. Sharing: You’ll need the ability to share websites and presentations.

I've facilitated virtual CX vision writing sessions with both Zoom and MS Teams. Both platforms work well and are easy for participants to use.

The biggest difference between the two is Zoom allows you to create breakout rooms. The breakout room feature allows the meeting to run much closer to the original process, where two teams create their own separate draft visions before joining their ideas together in one statement. 

You'll need to make an adjustment to the process if you aren't able to put people in breakout rooms. I'll go over those adjustments in just a moment.

Shareable Documents

It's easy to use white boards or flip chart paper when facilitating an in-person meeting. While many video conferencing platforms have a whiteboard feature, I prefer to use a shareable online document, such as a Google Doc.

Here are some of the advantages:

  • Multiple people can edit the document at once

  • The documents automatically save changes

  • You can easily access and share the documents outside of the meeting

These are the steps to creating your shareable documents:

1. Create all documents ahead of time, so you have them handy while facilitating the virtual session. All of the documents should be blank.

2. Make sure each document is fully shareable so you can share them with participants and access them yourself during the meeting.

3. You'll need just three documents if you'll be using breakout rooms, labeled as follows:

  • Team A

  • Team B

  • Group

Adjustment for no breakout rooms: Create a shareable document for each participant and one for the entire team. I found it easiest to name the documents after each participant while naming the group document "Group." For example:

  • Melanie

  • Elijah

  • Dennis

  • Christina

  • Chloe

  • Freddy

  • Luka

  • Group

Downloadable Handout

Each participant should receive a downloadable handout prior to the meeting. The handout contains important information that participants should have access to throughout the session. 

I ask participants to do one of two things so they can easily see it without leaving the virtual meeting:

  1. Print out the document, or

  2. Display it on a second screen

I've created a Google Doc template that you can use. Here's an overview of the four sections it should contain:

Feedback and artifacts. Include a word cloud image of the one-question survey results. (Refer to this guide for more information.) This section should also contain any existing cultural artifacts, such as the company's mission statement, vision statement, values, brand slogan, or service standards.

Customer profile. Identify your primary customer along with additional examples of customer groups. The CX vision should focus on your primary customer.

Check questions. List the three questions used to quality check a vision statement.

  1. Is it simple and easily understood?

  2. Is it focused on our customers?

  3. Does it reflect both who we are now and who we aspire to be in the future?

Document links. Provide links to all the shareable documents you'll be using in the vision writing session.

Bonus: Participant bios. In larger organizations, the participants in the vision writing meeting might not already know each other. If that's the case, it could be helpful to include very short biographies of each person in the handout. Name and role is good at a minimum. Keep in mind that there is no time built-in to the meeting agenda for introductions.

Preparation Summary

Make sure you complete all of these steps before your vision facilitation meeting:

  1. Get buy-in from senior leaders.

  2. Identify existing cultural artifacts.

  3. Invite a cross-functional group of 7 to 10 people to participate. (Closer to 7 works better for virtual.)

  4. Send out your one-question survey.

  5. Identify your primary customer.

  6. Select a video conferencing platform.

  7. Create shareable documents.

  8. Make the downloadable handout.

  9. Share the video conference login information and downloadable handout with all participants.

Facilitate the vision writing meeting

The meeting to write your customer experience vision should take 2.5 hours. The process for facilitating a virtual meeting is largely the same as the original, with three small changes:

  • Jump In

  • Virtual Facilitation

  • Breakouts vs. No Breakouts

Jump In

Start the meeting right on time and get to business. You will feel time pressure throughout the meeting, and you do not want to add to it. The time pressure is by design, since a little pressure makes it easier to get participants' gut reactions.

Here are a few tips:

  • Start the video conference a few minutes early to welcome people.

  • Begin the meeting promptly, even if people are late.

  • Skip introductions. I’ve found them to be unnecessary and time-consuming.

As a facilitator, part of your role is to keep things moving!

Virtual Facilitation

Running a virtual meeting of any kind takes a little more energy than running that same meeting in person. We lack the visual cues of seeing each other's body language. You can't just grab a marker and draw an illustration on the whiteboard.

Here are a few general tips for effective virtual facilitation:

  • Make sure all participants are visible on their web cameras.

  • Call on people from time-to-time to ensure everyone participates.

  • Keep the meeting moving, but be patient as people work with the technology.

Breakouts vs. No Breakouts

The original process breaks the group into two groups and gives each group 15 minutes to write a draft vision. This can be followed if your video conferencing platform allows you to create breakout rooms, but you'll need to make a few adjustments if this feature is not available.

Breakout Rooms

This works nearly identical to the in-person process. One small change is you should have created three shareable documents prior to the meeting, labeled Team A, Team B, and Group.

Here's what to do when it comes time to divide people into groups to draft vision statements:

  1. Form two teams (A & B) of roughly equal numbers.

  2. Ask each person to open the shareable document for their team (A or B).

  3. Put participants in their breakout rooms and give them 15 minutes to write a draft vision statement.

  4. Participants should type their draft directly onto the shareable document.

  5. Pop into each breakout room from time-to-time to check on progress, answer questions, and remind people of how much time they have remaining.

At the end of the 15 minutes:

  1. Go into each team's shareable document.

  2. Copy their draft vision statement.

  3. Paste the draft vision statement into the Group document.

You can then share the Group document with everyone and resume the normal meeting agenda.

No Breakout Rooms

You'll need to make a few more modifications to the process when the video conferencing platform you're using does not have breakout rooms. I took a remote facilitation idea from leadership expert, Grace Judson, and slightly modified it.

You should have created a shareable document for each participant plus a "Group" document prior to the meeting.

  1. Ask each person to access their own shareable document.

  2. Give participants five minutes to write a draft vision statement.

  3. At the end of the five minutes, copy and paste each person's draft statement into the Group document (keeping the author anonymous).

You can then share the Group document with everyone. Here's where we make one more modification to the facilitation process:

  1. Have participants quickly read all the statements.

  2. Ask people to identify common themes.

  3. Discuss what elements, words, or phrases people particularly like, and why.

The remaining process remains the same.

Need Extra Help?

There's a lot here. The process can seem intimidating at first. But don't worry, I'm here to help!

There's one last danger I want to point out. 

Each step in the process has been carefully chosen and tested. While you might be tempted to make some modifications, experience suggests that's a bad idea.

Should you share your customer service vision with customers?

I frequently get this question.

Leaders want to get their employees obsessed with customer service. The first step on that journey is creating a customer service vision statement.

Many leaders ask me if they should share the statement with customers. Typically, this means incorporating the vision into advertising, branding, or other marketing messages.

The answer is it depends!

Every organization is unique, so there's no one right answer. Here are some things to consider to help you decide what's right for your situation.

Leader facilitating a meeting to discuss the customer service vision.

The short answer

Pressed for time? I've created this short video explanation. Keep reading below for a more in-depth answer.

The customer service vision is for employees

A customer service (or customer experience) vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. You can learn more and see examples here.

Keep in mind the vision is first and foremost for employees. It should clearly guide everyone's actions, regardless of whether you share it with customers.

What's important is that you don't change your vision's wording or meaning just to make it more presentable to an external audience. For this reason, I don't recommend involving customers in the vision writing process.


Marketing the customer service vision

The decision to share the vision as part of your marketing should be based on whether it helps your customers understand the value you provide.

There are three general approaches:

  • Share the vision

  • Share a different version

  • Don't share the vision

Some organizations share the vision directly.

The customer service vision at Navy Federal Credit Union is "Our members are the mission." This statement is also an advertising slogan for the credit union, and is frequently shared with customers.

Here's an example from a commercial where the vision is clearly shared.

Other organizations share an alternative version of the vision with customers.

The customer service vision at JetBlue is "Inspire humanity." The company often incorporates alternative versions of this vision in its advertising that make more sense to customers.

Watch this commercial to see an example. Notice the tagline near the end, "Air on the side of humanity," which is a direct nod to the vision statement.

Still other organizations keep the vision for employees and design separate marketing messages that are more appropriate for customers.

The customer service vision at The Ritz-Carlton chain of luxury hotels is "We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." The vision isn't exactly a secret, but marketing messages focus on the guest experience.

Guests, not hotel associates, are the star of this commercial that seeks to inspire you to seek adventure and make memories while traveling.

There are some risks involved with this third option.

Marketing messages should still align with the vision statement. It can create confusion for customers and employees alike if they send completely different messages.

For instance, The Ritz-Carlton is marketing luxury travel. This is closely aligned with the vision of “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”

However, a commercial full of irreverent, sophomoric humor would be completely off base with the vision and wouldn’t make sense for this particular brand.

Customer service vision resources

I've assembled some resources to help you tackle this and other questions surrounding customer service visions.

Start with my step-by-step guide to writing a customer service vision.

Find more guidance on getting your employees obsessed with customer service from The Service Culture Handbook.

Prefer video? This LinkedIn Learning course will walk you through the process of building, growing, and maintaining a customer-focused culture.

Lessons From The Overlook: Be Flexible

Note: Lessons from The Overlook is a monthly update on lessons learned from owning a vacation rental property in the Southern California mountain town of Idyllwild. It's a hands-on opportunity to apply some of the techniques I advise my clients to use. You can find past updates here.

It's been awhile since I've shared an update about The Overlook.

A lot has happened since we put the cabin up for sale at the end of May. The summer is typically our slow season, yet we had our busiest July and August ever. Then there was a small fire that closed us down for all of September. 

The one thing that did not happen was a sale. We still own the cabin and now we think we have an even better plan (more on that in a moment).

The biggest lesson from the summer is you have to be flexible.

The Overlook vacation rental cabin

Beware of solution jumping

Solution jumping occurs when you instinctively identify a solution without fully understanding the problem. The danger is you could miss better opportunities or fail to solve the problem at all because your solution did not address the root cause. 

We initially jumped to a solution when we decided to sell The Overlook.

The problem we thought we were trying to solve was the cabin was too big:

  • It has four bedrooms, which is too much for us personally.

  • Damage increases and utility costs go up when we have more than six guests (our maximum is eight).

  • Larger cabins typically rent less often than smaller cabins.

Our plan was to sell The Overlook at a profit, buy a smaller cabin, and pocket the difference. We ran the numbers and found that a smaller cabin with a lower nightly rate would likely bring in more revenue per month.

It looked like a good plan on paper, but several factors made it hard to execute:

  • The market softened shortly after we put the cabin up for sale.

  • A high number of rentals made it hard for our agent to show the cabin to buyers.

  • We didn't find any smaller cabins that we really liked.

And then there was the fire over Labor Day weekend. 

A guest was using the grill and had it positioned against the side of the house. Some grease caught fire inside the grill and ignited the wood siding. The fire spread into the eaves before it was extinguished.

Photo credit: Idyllwild Vacation Cabins

Photo credit: Idyllwild Vacation Cabins

It could have been a lot worse, but there was enough damage that we had to take The Overlook off the rental market for the month of September. 

This is where flexibility comes in.

We could have made a bad decision if we locked in on selling the place. We might have slashed the asking price to sell The Overlook quickly and then found ourselves losing a lot of money trying to upgrade the next cabin to our standards.


How flexibility can create new opportunities

You can often discover unexpected solutions if you maintain your flexibility and resist the urge to jump to a solution. It is important to understand the problem first.

We initially thought our problem was The Overlook was too big. We now realize our maximum capacity of eight guests was the issue. 

  • There are just six seats at the dining table.

  • The living area is comfortable for four to six, but not eight.

  • Damage and utility costs go up when we have eight guests.

Advertising The Overlook as a four bedroom cabin for eight guests also limited our market.

Almost all of our renters are groups: large families, groups of friends, or several couples traveling together. These groups travel almost exclusively on weekends. Smaller cabins get more rentals during the week because a smaller party requires fewer people to make plans together.

The Overlook still had a number of advantages that other cabins we saw for sale did not have. The biggest one we could not replace was the view:

Sunset view from The Overlook

This thinking opened up another possibility. What if we reduced the capacity at The Overlook from eight to six? 

Our property manager has another cabin that has two bedrooms and a large game room downstairs. It rents extremely well. We know we can do something similar at The Overlook.

So that’s our plan.

We'll reduce our capacity to six by turning the large master bedroom into a game room and entertainment space. This should allow us to create an even better guest experience while reducing damage and utility costs. 

The changes should also increase our revenue as we expect to pick up more rentals during the week and throughout the summer.

The changes will take several months to implement. 

We're heading into our busy season, and there are already a number of rentals on the book for guests who expect four bedrooms. The good news is we have a clear path forward towards a better solution than we originally imagined.

Take Action

You can use flexible thinking to make similar strides in your own business.

The next time you face a challenging problem, resist the urge to jump to a solution. Take time to truly understand the problem you are trying to solve. Come up with alternative approaches, even if they don't seem feasible at first. 

And above all else, stick to your vision.

Our vision at The Overlook is welcome to your mountain retreat. We think these changes will bring us even closer to fulfilling that vision for our guests.

Why Customers Should Not Help Write Your Vision

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

A question I'm often asked is what role customers should play in helping a company write its customer service vision.

A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page. Creating one is the most important step you can take toward building a customer-focused culture.

My answer surprises people. I don't think customers should be involved at all when you write your customer service vision.

Group of professionals gathered to write a customer service vision statement.

What is the danger of asking customers what they want?

There's an old episode of The Simpsons where Homer discovers he has a half-brother named Herb Powell. 

Herb is the CEO of a car company called Powell Motors, and he's frustrated by his design team's uninspiring new car concepts. So he enlists Homer to help design his company's next car, believing that Homer personifies the wants and needs of the average American consumer.

The result is a disaster. The car, dubbed The Homer, is so overloaded with unnecessary features that it can't be sold at a profit. 

There's a real-life lesson here. Customers have diverse tastes and interests. And a customer merely wanting something doesn't automatically mean a company can make money providing it.

I’m a huge fan of the online pet store, Chewy. It offers convenient online ordering, a huge selection of products, incredible prices, and has a fun and helpful service culture. Chewy’s sales have grown rapidly over the past several years, but the retailer has yet to turn a profit.

At The Overlook, a vacation rental cabin my wife and I own, we've gotten all sorts of requests. A few have asked for air conditioning, which would be cost-prohibitive to install given the short warm period of the year is also a slow time. Others suggested we list The Overlook on Airbnb, but the listing fees would add expense without bringing in much additional revenue. (Airbnb would also make The Overlook more expensive for our guests.)

Sometimes different groups of customers have conflicting needs. For example, all the rooms at The Overlook have either a king or a queen bed. This is perfect for our target market, but others would prefer bunk beds, sleeper sofas, and air mattresses to accommodate as many people as possible in one house.

When I researched customer-focused organizations while writing The Service Culture Handbook, I consistently found these companies resisted the urge to be all things to all people. That’s why you won’t find a chicken salad on the menu at In-N-Out Burger, but you will find a line of loyal customers waiting to get their hands on a delicious cheeseburger at 10pm on a Wednesday evening.

Who should help write your vision?

The vision should be rooted in reality. It should describe how you’d like to serve customers in the future based on how you serve customers today when everything is going well. For this reason, all employees should be given a chance to provide input on your customer service vision.

This step-by-step guide describes how to do that.

When it comes to drafting the vision statement, there should only be 7-10 people in the room, plus an outside facilitator if you decide to use one. More than that, and the group becomes unwieldy. Fewer than that, and not enough perspectives are included.

The group should be comprised of a representative sample of employees:

  • At least one frontline employee. They keep it real.

  • At least one senior leader. They provide authority.

  • At least one mid-level manager or supervisor. They're the link between execs and the front lines.

Many organizations try to have the executive team create the customer service vision at a retreat. My research reveals that's a big mistake.

Should you ever ask customers about your vision?

Absolutely!

The time to ask customers for their input is after you write the vision and start using it to guide your operations. This is when customer feedback can be invaluable. Keep in mind you're not asking customers what they want, you're asking them how well you are executing your vision.

At The Overlook, our vision is welcome to your mountain retreat. We constantly use guest feedback from surveys, comments, and even our own observations, to refine our approach. For example, we added extra guest towels after learning that many guests like to shower after returning from a sweaty hike, but don’t want to use the same towel later that evening when they use the hot tub.

How can I write a vision statement?

Here are some resources that can help you write an effective customer service vision: