Johnson & Johnson remains the beacon for apologizing well.

In a 72-hour period, starting September 29, 1982, seven people died in the Chicago land area after taking cyanide-laced capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol, the painkiller that was the drug maker’s best-selling product. Even though Johnson & Johnson was not responsible for the product tampering, they took full responsibility in acting decisively and swiftly. Their first order of business was to decide, “How do we protect the people?”

It took 20 minutes for Johnson & Johnson’s board to decide how they would react to this catastrophe. With the Golden Rule firmly strapped to their back, they set to work.

• A product recall amounting to an estimated 31 million bottles (worth over $100 million in sales) began immediately.
• Advertising was halted.
• With bullhorns blaring, Chicago health and law-enforcement officials swarmed Chicago-area streets, warning everyone not to take Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules and to bring in suspicious bottles for testing.
• Anticyanide kits were distributed to all paramedic units.

To prevent any more people from taking the tampered Tylenol capsules, Tylenol representatives worked with local authorities, schools, even Boy Scout troops. Children were sent home from school with notes, and transit system workers formed a continuous human megaphone, spreading the word. Church and civic groups sent folks door-to-door to reach those who might have missed the warnings.

Because Johnson & Johnson acted swiftly and decisively from their core values, an incident that could have put the company under ultimately raised them up. Many predicted that the Tylenol brand, which accounted for 17 percent of the company’s net income in 1981, would never recover from the sabotage. As expected, Tylenol’s marketplace share dropped to 7 percent in September 1982. Only two months later, Tylenol headed back to the market, with gelcaps and caplets and extensive safety precautions in packaging and labeling. By February 1983 market share grew to 28 percent. Since then, Tylenol gelcaps have recaptured 92 percent of the capsule segment sales lost after the cyanide incident.

• What’s your timeline for taking care of customers when the unthinkable happens?
• Would you pass the “Tylenol Test” in a crisis situation?
• Would your first reaction be to take care of customers? Or would you consider your options more carefully to determine what you had to do to mitigate harm and liability?
• Are there plans you can set in motion as soon as a crisis occurs?
• Do you have a plan to utilize social media and mobile devices in a customer crisis?
• Are you ready?

It’s an everyday charge up the hill to be there for customers in ways that are important to them. Beloved companies gladly do the hard work. They’re in the scrimmage every day to earn the right for their customers to return.

Beloved companies think and rethink how to conduct themselves, so they earn the right to their customers’ continued business. The “experience” they deliver is far more than the execution of an operating plan. They leave customers thinking, “Who else would have done this?” “Where else could I get this?” “I want to do this again.”

By creating reliability in the way you do business, and fusing that with moments of contact delivered from the customer’s point of view, you earn the right to grow.

Do You Decide to Be There for Customers?
Do You Know Your Customers?
Do Customers Look Forward to Seeing You?
Have You Planned for Heroic Acts of Kindness?
Do You Accept the Order and the Responsibility?
What’s Your Service Magnet?
Can You Blur the Line between Customer and Company?
When Your Service Providers Change . . . Do You Provide Continuity of Service?
Can You Jump a Fence to Serve a Customer?
Is You Experience Memorable?

The interactions customers have with a company prove how much forethought was put into these key touch points.  Reliability fuels customer stories about experiences with the companies they love. Having the ability to make decisions in this manner is within your reach.

At Edward Jones, experienced financial advisors give away a portion of their accounts to help their newest colleagues get started. Freshly minted advisors are paired with a successful veteran for at least a year, allowing them to share in the operation of the branch, receive invaluable mentoring from the veteran they are paired with, and assume responsibility for some of the veteran’s accounts. This assures that before a new advisor opens his or her own branch, that advisor has modeled the best behavior, and has built relationships with clients he or she will take over from the veteran.

In this single decision, Edward Jones’s core values of cooperation, caring, and volunteerism converge.

Created by successful financial advisor Jim Goodknight in 1996, this process helps young colleagues successfully launch their careers. Nearly half of all new financial advisors start through what is now referred to as the Goodknight Program, or through similar coaching processes. Veteran financial advisors find it not only good for incoming advisors, but also for clients, who receive “double coverage” by both the veteran and the new advisors during the mentorship period. Veterans are also motivated to see the firm grow, gain market share, and thrive, particularly because Edward Jones is a partnership business. They have a vested interest in doing what’s best for growth, even if it means channeling clients from the veteran’s book of business to incoming advisors.

Clients involved in a Goodknight Program are more likely to be advocates for Edward Jones. The firm retains more new advisors, who achieve greater success. Veterans focus more on fewer clients, deepening those relationships. Customers take notice of this behavior and reward it.

Corporate collaboration is a quality of the companies customers love.

• Would your veteran account reps be predisposed to this behavior?
• What would you have to do to get from where you are today to this state of collaboration?
• Do you make customers begin again?
• Does service continue when accountability changes hands?

Griffin Hospital wanted to have no secrets between themselves and their patient “customers,” so they decided to make medical records available to patients and their families.

This gesture showed that managing the journey to health was an equal partnership. They wanted to mend years of a perceived imbalanced relationship, so Griffin made the total transparency of patient medical records an olive branch. Anything the hospital knew, the patient and family could know. In doing so, Griffin Hospital patients could spend all the time they wanted with their records, have them explained, and consider them their “own.” They could even make comments on their own charts.

Worried doctors feared that patients armed with this information would fuel an increase in lawsuits. The total opposite occurred. This decision reduced malpractice claims. Patients and families fell into partnership with the medical staff. After Griffin Hospital granted patients and their families access to their medical records, malpractice claims against the hospital dropped by more than 43 percent—from 32 percent in 1996, before the policy was enacted, to 18 percent in 2005. It’s noteworthy to add that this reduction in claims dropped during a period of great growth for Griffin Hospital. Patient discharges rose 40 percent during that period, an increase that usually carries an increase in claims. This decision stopped that cycle.

Trusting patients with their own records grew patient belief in Griffin Hospital, and ultimately contributed to its growth. Griffin earned an 80 percent referral rate from customers who participated in this new decision. Surely there’s a simple gesture you can make to show customers you trust them, that you believe trust is reciprocated.

• What information are you holding close to your vest because it gives you the power?
• Is there anything you know that customers could prosper from knowing and understanding?
• Do you believe trust is reciprocated?

Umpqua Bank is committed to delivering an experience customized for each customer. Umpqua’s executive vice president of “cultural enhancement” had a goal that everybody in every store should be able to do every task. Umpqua wanted a teller who can take a mortgage application and a loan officer who is pleased to help with a safety deposit box.

Beyond the banking experience, Umpqua believes in customizing experiences by community. The company leaves it to the managers in each community bank to customize their offerings based on their customers’ interests—from yoga classes in one “store” location (they don’t use the word “branch”) to movie nights or a knitting club in another. Each has its own fund to enable it to customize the experience based on the lives of the customers in its community.

Umpqua’s mission is to become a destination for customers. By offering a warm environment customized by community interests and a banking experience personalized to every customer who walks through their doors, it wants customers to think of the Umpqua Bank in their community as a gathering place.

As Umpqua changed its approach from a traditional “banking”-style service to a customized experience, employees had to learn to juggle many duties. It meant more work initially, but now they can’t imagine being limited to the individual tasks their jobs were defined as previously.

As Umpqua has grown with staff increases, it has retained its focus on the customer and the values that built the bank. And the company has retained its employees. Umpqua’s voluntary employee turnover rate is just 8 percent, compared to the banking industry rate of about 40 percent. In 2012, as a testament that this change in focus was not only good for customers but also great for employees, the company made, for the sixth year in a row, Fortune magazine’s list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

• Are your operating decisions based on executing tasks or delivering an experience that complements your customer’s day?
• How good are the jugglers in your business?
• Does your environment embrace and welcome customers?
• How can you make a visit to your business a welcome oasis during your customer’s day?

“Let’s make sure we do the right thing,” CEO Harry Kraemer told Alan Heller, president of the Baxter International Inc. division responsible for dialysis equipment, when dialysis patient deaths began in August 2001 in Madrid, Spain, and Croatia. Rather than waiting to know if they were at fault, Baxter took accountability immediately, with a global recall of all of the filters and a hold on distribution of warehoused filters. It was finally determined that a fluid made by another company that was not flushed out of some of the filters during equipment testing had entered patients’ bloodstreams during dialysis, causing the deaths. Even though this error was not caused by Baxter, their equipment was involved. CEO Kraemer didn’t blame other parties and didn’t hide the facts. He apologized publicly with heartfelt empathy and humility. As a result, Baxter decided to shut down the plants that made the filters. They settled with all families involved.

“What we try to do is do the right thing,” Kraemer said when asked about this situation. “I think there’s a tendency to make things more complex than they are. If we live the values we profess, we’ll add shareholder value. I don’t see a conflict.”

Under his watch, Kraemer made sure that Baxter could live those values by opening up dialogue on translating values to decision making. The financial community applauded the straightforward talk and recovery. And Baxter’s employees got a lesson. The congruence between values and decisions even in a tragedy buoyed employees’ faith in Baxter and Kraemer. Henry Kraemer was flooded with e-mails and messages from proud employees. Kraemer said in an interview one year after the incident. “If the values are authentic, then so are the decisions and the actions.”

In a time of crisis, are these your proudest moments?

The decisions will be tough, but making the right ones will signal your values, what you believe in, and if your decisions are guided by them.

Picture a dad on a Saturday morning toting a bike with a broken chain and a disappointed kid. Dad’s already been to the hardware store, with no luck. Two stops later, exasperated and increasingly frustrated, both father and son find their way to Zane’s. Within minutes they find out what will fix the chain: a twenty-five cent master link. The salesman at Zane’s hands it over, with a firm “No charge.” Zane’s has decided to give these parts away. Anything that costs a buck or under, they give to any customer who needs it. Though small in price, these parts are usually attached to fixing a frustrating experience for the customer.

Zane’s wants to become the life line for their customer throughout his or her bike ownership. And that sometimes means throwing in a bike part (especially at frustrating moments). Says Chris Zane: “I could either charge the guy one buck or two bucks for the part or give it to him. So I give the part away, along with an extra one.”

Chris Zane is astute enough to know that in these moments an emotional bond to his store is created. And this will translate into a prosperous customer relationship. Zane’s works to deliver at least seven “wow” moments for each customer. They believe that seven powerful interactions prove to customers that Zane’s is consistently good to them, and the best (and only) place to go for anything regarding bicycles.

Why does Zane’s do this? Because it’s the right thing to do and they have a track record of success with these acts of kindness. Zane’s “pays it forward” consistently with their customers, and it grows their business.

The memories customers have of that point in time when they were stressed and Zane’s came through, with no strings attached, pulls them back. And once a customer walks back into Zane’s, he or she usually buys. Each Zane’s customer spends an average of $12,500 with the company. And Zane’s experiences unheard of 43% margins. So you do the math: wouldn’t you spend $1 to make an impression that will earn a customer worth $12,500?
Consider if those nickel, dime, and dollar charges are costing you more than you’re charging in lost goodwill and future customers.

• How many “wow” impressions do you encourage your people to deliver in the course of a day, a month, or a year to your customers?
• Is everyone ready to go the extra mile?
• Do they have permission?
• Do you celebrate their heroism every day?

Newegg.com is loved, from technical wizards to those who are just beginning to introduce technology into their lives. A big reason for this adoration is because it tells the truth about its inventory to customers. The minute the warehouse runs out of an item, Newegg.com marks that product as unavailable on the Web page or it is removed from their site.

Newegg.com breaks from the frequent practice of electronics and technology retailers who offer an extensive inventory, feigning depth and availability of product. Often those other retailers order the item from the supplier only after the customer places an order. As anyone who’s experienced this practice knows, the benefit is all on the side of the merchant, not the customer. They’ve got the customer’s money, and those other merchants have checked “fulfillment” of the order off their list. But the customer is left waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Newegg.com knows their customers start watching the clock as soon as they place the order with them. So Newegg.com commits to delivery reliability. If you can place an order for an item on their site, you are guaranteed that it is on its way to you.

Since the first order was placed in 2001, Newegg.com has grown to 11 million registered customers. And it’s not just because of their inventory; the Newegg experience is about reliability, commitment, and community. An average of 600,000 daily visitors go to the Web site to chat with the swarming masses of folks on their boards, but they also go there to place orders. Newegg.com ships over 40,000 orders a day. Customers can count on Newegg.com, so they stick with the company. Most important, customers show their love with sales. The second largest online-only retailer in the United States, in 2009 Newegg.com sold approximately $2.3 billion of products.

Read more:
Newegg.com Delivers a Closing Memory

The companies beloved by their customers work hard every day to resist the pull of “normal” business practices to create a powerful human connection with their customers. Beloved companies take the time to be clear about what their unique promise is for their customers’ lives. They use this clarity when they make decisions so they align to this purpose, to this promise. Clarity of purpose guides choices and unites the organization. It elevates people from executing tasks to delivering experiences customers will want to repeat and tell others about.

Do You Decide with Clarity of Purpose?
What Defines Your Experience?
Do You Hire People Who Fit the Soul of Your Company?
Does Your Experience Have an Expiration Date?
If You Shed Legacy Industry Practices – What Could You Become?
What are Your Customer Experience Bookends?
How Fresh Are You?
What’s Your Vibe?
What Pushes Your “Yes” Button?
Do You Deliver a Closing Memory?

With clarity of purpose, customers can easily tell the story of your company because your actions connect. Across the organization, people work toward delivering a higher purpose rather than a set of tasks.

What conditions must always be met before you say “yes”?
IKEA designs the price tag first. It keeps them on course.

Their purpose is to “create a better everyday life for many people.” IKEA wants to produce democratic design: products with flair at a price most people can afford. They know that even people on a limited budget want a beautiful home, a comfortable home, a place that feels like, well, home.

Beginning with the price tag first keeps IKEA aligned with their purpose. For example, the design process for a particular chair started with a target price of $139. Once the price was established, considerations for how customers would use the chair were factored into the design. Then material selection and form were defined, along with how the chair would be packaged. Packaging for IKEA is key, impacting both pricing and product design. The more chairs that can fit into a shipping container, the lower the price for the customer. In designing the chair, after multiple trials and many months, a final tweak in the angle of the chair’s arm decreased the packaging cost significantly and the target price was met.

Minimizing waste and creating functional yet desirable items to fill peoples’ homes continues beyond product development into the IKEA store experience. The self-service environment lowers cost, passing the savings on to the customer. IKEA punctuates the store experience by placing an oasis for nourishment (a “do-it-yourself” cafeteria) smack-dab in the center of the store, serving Swedish meatballs, inexpensive hotdogs, and cinnamon rolls.

By deciding to design the price tag first for their products, IKEA stays on course to what endears them to their customers. IKEA’s sensible Scandinavian approach to design and pricing draws their core customers: young, just-starting-out singles and families who have much more energy than cash.

• Do you have clarity like IKEA about your customers?
• What unique value you deliver to their lives?
• What do you always consider first in product and service development?
• What conditions must always be met before you say “yes”?