Teaching and Coaching Mālama

In this month’s MWA Jumpstart, the 5 Steps I suggested you break your study of the Chapter on Mālama into, mostly had to do with your employees. However Mālama is for everyone; you want to care for, honor, protect and serve all who are important to you, and you want them to perceive your Mālama for them. This perception of exceptional care is what serving someone is all about.

The subject of my posting for both Talking Story and Lifehack.org today is something I call The Six Basic Needs of Customers. This list was something I had come to identify and create as a training tool while working with the retail team at the Hualalai Resort during my tenure there. This is how it came to be; a simple story of how you teach and coach when you are a manager, using the opportunities which present themselves.

My retail buyer started the ball rolling by bringing an article to our attention about how a store chain went about surveying their customers to discover what their basic expectations were in regard to the store’s products. We discussed it at ShopTalk (read more about ShopTalk on page 139 of MWA) and came to the conclusion that we didn’t need to conduct a survey to achieve the same thing: We knew what our customers wanted from us. We felt the key question was if we were truly delivering on their expectations. More than delivering on expectations, were we fulfilling their basic needs? Were we extending both our Aloha and Mālama for them?

The next time we got together for ShopTalk, my plan was simply to do a brainstorming exercise where the answers came from my staff, and it started like this:

“Remember that customer expectation survey we talked about last time? We were all pretty confident that we knew what our customers want from us, weren’t we. We jumped ahead to talking about how important it was we met those expectations consistently, and with our “Aloha.

“However are we sure that we are instinctively covering all of their needs? Let’s do a brainstorm: If we were to come up with a simple list of needs versus expectations, what would be on it?”

From that staff brainstorm, the write-up on Talking Story was born. It was later reduced to a simple list which was turned into storeroom posters and laminated pocket cards:

The Six Basic Needs of our Customers
How we can express our Mālama for them.

1. Friendliness: Greet and treat with aloha. It’s about who we are.
2. Understanding and empathy: Identify our guest needs and fulfill them.
3. Fairness and beyond: Give them our best, always.
4. Control: We’ll say “yes” way more than we say “no.” Policies and rules don’t “care” we do.
5. Options and alternatives: We’ll offer all we CAN do, and before they have to ask.
6. Information: We’ll offer all we know, all we have, and more than they thought they needed!

We are Mea Ho‘okipa.

Essentially, we created a tool which was in complete alignment with our own values, versus just duplicating another’s “best practice.” Their survey, the original idea, was not for us. Then we made our own deduction part of our company culture.

In retail we did it by making it part of a recurring campaign: We’d return to the longer write-up (the one on Talking Story) and turn it into a week’s worth of pre-shift meeting reminders. This is what the Retail Manager’s cheat sheet looked like: 7 days worth of 5-minute pre-shift line-up type talk stories, distributed for all store managers to review in a sound bite per day, simultaneously creating consistency and synergy (Lōkahi) for us through-out the operation:

Our pre-shift Focus on the Customer:
For this week: How do we Mālama our customer by fulfilling their Six Basic Needs? Review one per day, then review all 6 on Day 7.

Monday – Our customers have six basic needs. One is Friendliness.
Friendliness is the most basic of all customers needs, and it’s usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.  Revisit the extending of personal aloha.  Basic stuff – crucial with each and every guest encounter.  Key to understand that friendliness is embodied in people, not in the things we might deliver.

Tuesday – Our customers have six basic needs. Two is Understanding and Empathy.
Customers need to feel that we understand and appreciate their circumstances and feelings without criticism or judgment.  Our role, as mea ho’okipa transcends that of “service person,” for genuine sincerity is highly sought after, and when you find it, it’s something you cherish – it touches you. Review caring versus empathy in Mālama.

Wednesday – Our customers have six basic needs. Three is Fairness.
The need to be treated fairly is high up on most customers’ lists of needs.  In your Pre-Shift, talk openly and honestly about the challenges we face between Residents, Hotel Guests, and other customers – they ARE different: how do we make those differences invisible between them, while we care for all of them?

Thursday – Our customers have six basic needs. Four is Control.
Control represents the customers’ need to feel as if they have an impact on the way things turn out.  Our ability to meet this need for them comes from our own willingness to say “yes” much more than we say “no.”  Reality check:  in your Pre-Shift, ask your staff in which circumstances do they feel themselves saying “no” more often, and ask for their ideas on how to turn that “no” into a “yes.”

Friday – Our customers have six basic needs. Five is Options and Alternatives.
Guest do realize that they don’t have all the answers, and they depend on us to be “in the know”, and provide them with the “inside scoop.”  They get pretty upset when they feel they have spun their wheels getting something done and we knew all along a better way – but never made the suggestion. Review what we all CAN do.

Saturday – Our customers have six basic needs. Six is Information.
There’s a lot to be enjoyed here at Hualalai, and our guests have paid a pretty penny for the opportunity to discover it.  Yet they don’t want to waste precious time doing homework – they look to us for the answers. What do we deliver besides the obvious retail product?

Sunday – Our customers have six basic needs: Review all Six.
Distribute our new edition of the pocket cards.

Did you notice the language of “we” and how the brainstorm has been so completely owned? With this tool, new employees were schooled and mentored in The Six Basic Needs of Customers on the job in a week’s time. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been part of the original series of ShopTalk meetings and brainstorms, for this was a part of our culture now.

--------------------Tracking MWA Jumpstart:

NEXT JUMP: Your last day for Mālama?

BACK TO THE LAST JUMP: To Mālama, Address the Basics. About the Six Basic Needs of Customers.