Shep Hyken tells brands ‘amazing’ customer experiences can be boiled down to a single objective
Shep Hyken was only 12 years old when he had his first introduction to customer experience management, and it was literally a magical moment.
The longtime consultant was a birthday party magician, entertaining a group of 20 six-year-old kids for what then felt like the whopping sum of $16. After it was over, his mother asked him what he would do. He said homework. She told him to write a thank-you note to the parents who hosted the party instead. His father, meanwhile, told him to call the parents and find out what tricks they liked best.
“Little did I know that was called ‘feedback’ — surveying the customer,” Hyken recalled during a session at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2020 conference this week. “He said that the parents wouldn’t talk about the tricks they didn’t like and those would be the ones to leave out next time. Little did I know that was called ‘improving the process.’”
Hyken has learned a lot about service, customer relationships and the what makes certain companies stand out since then, and he distilled them in his book, Be Amazing or Go Home: Seven Customer Service Habits That Create Confidence With Anyone.
If you haven’t read it, the full presentation is available to Knowledge 2020 registrants on demand, but you can also subscribe or log in to learn:
- The ‘F-bomb” he says too many companies are dropping
- A new way to think about customer “moments of truth”
- A simple way to under-promise and over-deliver
The real competitor most brands face
As with every keynote speaker lately, Hyken was giving his talk from his home, but he said if he’d been able to talk directly with the Knowledge 2020 crowd he would have asked them a key question: 
