YT24 | World’s no.1 customer experience guru shares how being a good customer can improve service – Ron Kaufman

In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ron Kaufman, world’s no.1 customer experience guru six times in a row. We delved into Ron’s rich insights on service, leadership, and the art of creating value. From his experiences in Singapore to global observations, Ron emphasized the pivotal role of both service providers and customers in elevating the overall service experience. Join us for a conversation that sheds light on service leadership, the dynamics of creating value, and the profound impact it has on individuals and communities. Discover firsthand perspectives on shaping the future of service and customer experience.

Discussion Topics: World’s no.1 customer experience guru shares how being a good customer can improve service

• Introducing Ron Kaufman: World’s no.1 customer experience guru
• Ron’s Background and Early Years: Growing up in Connecticut to studying in Europe
• Moving to Singapore and Lessons Learned: Focus on being valuable to survive and thrive
• Service Leadership and Leading Indicators: Leaders need to ensure service improvement
• Being a Better Customer to Get Better Service
• How did Ron get into the Service Industry: A story from grandma’s kindergarten
• The Difference Between Okay Service and Great Service: Going that extra mile 
• Bringing Service Leadership into Parenting
• Future of Service and Building a Community for Diverse Gatherings
• Closing Remarks

Transcript: World’s no.1 customer experience guru shares how being a good customer can improve service

Yana Fry: Welcome to YanaTV. Today, our guest is Ron Kaufman, who has been ranked world’s number one customer experience guru consistently for six years. Ron is also a New York Times bestselling author for his book, Uplifting Service, where he helps people how to delight the customers, energise the team and transform your organisation. Ron, thank you so much for joining us in the studio today.

Ron Kaufman: Pleasure to be here with you.

Yana Fry: Let’s begin from the very, very beginning. I know we are in Singapore right now and we are in Asia. However, where have you been born?

Ron Kaufman: I was born in Connecticut in the United States, near Massachusetts and New York on the East Coast. Went to a university nearby at Brown University and during my university years, I spent time in Europe. Studying, travelling, doing other things. And that really, very quickly, opened me up to the world.

Yana Fry: I can’t imagine. I actually used to live in Connecticut, before I moved to Singapore, So I know the town. When did you come to Asia?

Ron Kaufman:  before I moved in the late 1980s, but I moved to Singapore in July of 1990. And it’s been 33 years now.

Yana Fry: And you’re a Singaporean from what I know, right? So what probably you could say is the biggest lesson that you have experienced in those 33 years living in Singapore?

Ron Kaufman: It’s interesting, the lessons of 33 years are one thing, and then the lessons of living in Singapore. Oh! What made Singapore so appealing for me was the incredible diversity and the necessity of living together in harmony. Singapore has multicultural, multi ethnic, multi religious, and we know we have to get along. So then there’s a very high level of respect and mutual appreciation for one another that works. And I found that tremendously appealing.

Yana Fry: And was that one of the main reasons why you stayed?

Ron Kaufman: That and the food. no, Singapore is a very small place and it’s surrounded by a very big neighbourhood and it’s the kind of location that has to perform better in order to survive, but especially if it wants to thrive, it doesn’t have agriculture. It doesn’t have an oil reserve. It doesn’t have a large hinterland. It’s one little city.

And so how do you perform well and become what the world knows Singapore to be today? You’ve got to constantly be focusing on how you can be more valuable, not only to yourselves but to other people in the world. And my definition of service is taking action to create value. So it’s a very good match to come here as an educator with an entire population that wants to learn and apply to actually perform better.

Yana Fry: As the world’s number one. Customer experience guru and a person who knows so much about customer service and service in general. What is your experience of Singapore when it comes to Singapore service? 

Ron Kaufman: So Singapore, the culture of Singapore is multi ethnic, and it’s majority Chinese, and the history of that culture traditionally has been one of trading. So there’s a very strong ethic of, being productive, getting things done, having it work, gentleness, the politeness, the kind patience, not so much native in the culture, but the other thing I noticed that most tend to leave out when they’re critiquing Singapore service

Yana Fry: That’s why I’m asking.

Ron Kaufman: service has two parts. There’s the service provider, and that’s the person who should take action to create value, but the other half is the customer and the customer can also take action to make things easier, smoother, and better. For the service provider Singaporeans as customers are also not native, always the most polite or patient or encouraging. And so one of the ways that my wife and I get tremendous service in Singapore is we’re good customers. We literally start out by saying thank you for helping me. I really appreciate what’s your name and then just take that one moment to connect and all of a sudden that service provider knows that this customer is an easy customer to serve.

This customer is one to take that extra step. So if Singaporeans want to experience better service, be a better customer.

Yana Fry: I love it. We announced on our program, among our community, earlier that you will be coming as a guest. And so some of the questions that came actually came from local people who feel that they really want to be world class in everything that they do. They told me, Jana, when Ron comes on the show, please make sure you ask him, how can we do better? We are people who are providing service in Singapore.

Ron Kaufman: you have to understand that service is taking action to create value for someone else. The action is only purposeful if it creates value. But value is only received by the person that you serve. So actually, the definition begins with the someone else that you’re serving. Are you curious about them? Are you aware of what they’re really concerned about? Can you understand their aspirations, their ambitions, what they want to achieve, what they’re anxious about, what they want to avoid?

Like how much are you locating yourself as the service provider in the world of the person that you’re serving and being genuinely authentically concerned and interested in that? Then you would be able to understand what that person would value and then you can figure out what action to take. And the challenge is too many people come to work and say, I’m here to do my job,

And then if you’re just procedurally here to follow the script and do your job. a majority of the time you may not match with what it is that the customer would actually Appreciate

Yana Fry: Do you think it is up to the each individual or we have some expectations, bosses to step in, company owner. So if we talk about especially F&B industry, that has been a lot of conversation. So anything around food, restaurants,

Ron Kaufman: when people hear the word service very quickly, they think of a waiter in a restaurant.

Yana Fry: Exactly. Actually.

Ron Kaufman: Okay.

There is a category of creating value in service, which has to do with the attitude that shows the smile, the friendliness, the patients, the flexibility, all of that. We can call that service mindset. And that’s a very important area, especially in B to C.

But it’s not the only category of value. Remember, service is taking action to create value. So what are the other categories?

For example, if we use a restaurant, is the food really good? It’s very different from how the service attitude was. And so whose job is it to make sure that the product is actually very good? You need the chef.

You need the people who are actually purchasing the food, you need all of the equipment to be able to do the and the refrigeration. So what’s the role of the leader in that?

Making sure that the people have everything they need to have a great product. That’s another. Then you get the category called the delivery system.

So is this a self service buffet? Or do I walk up to the counter and place my order? Or do I sit down and you bring me a menu? Or do I use my app and you deliver the food to my door? Same food. Same opportunity, different opportunity to show good attitude, but the delivery system is completely different. So when you say good service, it’s not just the attitude. It’s the quality of the product. It’s the flexibility and convenience and ease of the delivery system. It’s the friendliness and the attitude.

And then there’s one more category of ongoing relationship. Do you remember me? Do you thank me for coming back? Do you appreciate what it is that you my point? So now when we talk about services taking action to create value, it’s not just the waiter in the restaurant, It’s the whole restaurant.

So then what’s the leader’s role in that is having every single person involved in this case, having a restaurant. Having it run successfully, recognize that their job is to take action that will create value for somebody else. And somebody else may be their colleague. It may not be the end customer the leader has to take the lead

Yana Fry: I’m just wondering, let’s say for a leader, whether it would be an owner of a smaller business, medium business, large business who is right now listening to our conversation. what do you think a leader needs to do or change perhaps in the mindset or change in the way how they take actions to this wheel, that the company actually goes in the direction of service?

Ron Kaufman: There are basically seven rules of service leadership, fundamental behaviours. So for example, you’ve got to talk and, of course, walk the talk. And there are others, but the one that a lot of people who are leaders don’t recognize. It’s called measure what really matters. And right away you go, what really matters is top line revenue, or bottom line profit, or safety, or retention of staff, or something like that.

Those are all legitimate measures, but they’re all lagging indicators. They come long after the service that was provided. In other words, you provide all this service, and then how did it work out?

What leaders should understand is that they’re also leading indicators. of creating an experience that will give you the lagging results that you need. So what are those leading indicators? And when we teach service performance improvement or strengthening of a service culture, then what you want and you need is your people to generate new ideas.

And then not every idea is a good idea. So once they’ve generated new ideas, what if we tried this? Why don’t we do that? You get enough new ideas, then your team can evaluate the ideas. Some ideas are obviously not good ideas.

Other ideas need to be improved. Let’s think about it. We can do this quickly. This one won’t even cost anything. We can do one ourselves. Those are called quick wins. Go do them.

See what happens. And then there will be other new ideas that might need other people to help. Might need more time. Might need a budget. So those ideas need to be percolated up and leaders need to be asking for this, listening to this, encouraging this, and providing support to this. You can’t expect front-line people to do that on their own without the leaders measuring what matters, which is the leading indicators that ultimately produce the improvements that do work, that give you the lagging indicators. Where so many leaders are spending their time right away talking about, you get my point.

Yana Fry: So when I hear people quite a few actually, that’s why we are having this conversation saying that they would love to see service to be improved, in Singapore. So we should not actually blame people who are necessary in the front line dealing with the customer entirely. So it’s not only the server or woman at the counter or a man, right? So it’s actually a lot about leadership. And so the conversation we’re having here, it starts from the top. And that’s where people need to realise how important it is. To have the service mindset.

Ron Kaufman: I think it starts from the top and it starts from the customer, So you can’t just go to the frontline service provider and expect to get great service. The wear and tear of being a frontline service provider, of encountering customers, some of whom are not in a very good mood, is persistent all day long. Now here you come as the customer. What kind of a customer are you?

Yana Fry: I think it would really encourage everyone now to reflect in the moment. I’m doing that. Especially since you said Singapore has so many cultures. Do you see the difference when it comes? To service and maybe deal with people of different cultures and maybe some people are more adjusted and more equipped to do it more naturally and others might be struggling a little.

Ron Kaufman: And this is a good place to struggle because there’s so much learning going on here. By so many people all the time that somebody who’s not getting it or somebody who needs to make a few mistakes before they figure it out.

This is a place where people want to do better and nobody’s perfect all the time. The other day, this is a confession, right? Please! I’m in an ice cream parlour and they serve scoops and you can get two scoops for 10. But there were three flavours I wanted to try and I said, I don’t want more ice cream, but I just want to try three. No, we can’t. do that.

And I’m looking at the lady like, here’s my 10. Give me less than two full scoops. I want to try that. No, we can’t do that. Please, how old are you? 20. You’re a 20 year old person. You can’t make the decision to let me know. I can give you a taste of the third one. I’m one of those little tiny spoons, but you can’t have three different flavours in that cup.

And so I literally said, could you please go ask your manager? And the poor girl, she goes in the back. She goes back out, manager says, no, you can’t. And I was not playful.

Yana Fry: I can imagine.

Ron Kaufman: I not polite, and I was like, oh my goodness. And you know what? When I went back, I had to eat humble pie. I called the place afterwards and I said, I need to speak to the manager. I said, I’m that guy who just, yeah, would you, I’m apologising to you. I need to apologise. Would you let people make mistakes? That’s how we learn. right?

Yana Fry: How did you get into the service industry? That’s probably the most important question. So they haven’t asked yet.

Ron Kaufman: My father’s mother taught kindergarten for 40 years. So I was one of her grandkids, and I used to be able to go to the kindergarten, sometimes his grandma’s, Teacher’s pet and watch.

And as a very young kid, I remember there was a day two kids were fighting. And she’s the kindergarten teacher. So she went over and separated them, but then very quickly she got both of them in a good mood and got them back to playing together again. And I remember when their parents came to pick them up.

She told both sets of parents that these were the most fantastic kids, they’d been wonderful all day long, they were just gems in the classroom. And I watched this and I realised very young what she was doing was taking action to make sure that everybody was feeling valued.

I was five and okay. I called that service. She called it love. And then I went into Frisbee. I’m in the ultimate Frisbee Hall of Fame. In other words, I took the sport out to the world and the first rule of the game is called the spirit of the game. The spirit of the game says that the people on the field are responsible for the spirit and the quality of play.

Rule number one, I love that. Okay, that’s before, how many people are on the field, how you score a point, and the spirit of the game. So then when I came to Singapore, and they said they wanted to create a service training centre to uplift the quality of service in the whole nation, I said, how do you want to do that? They said we’re going to build a boot camp. I said what’s going to happen? And they said we’re not sure yet. Have you got any ideas? Oh boy, did I have ideas? I have a lot. It’s been 30 years, all over the world.

Yana Fry: If you can remember, I’m Sure. you had many, but I’m just curious about a really interesting customer story.

Ron Kaufman: Where there have been

Yana Fry: That’s what I mean. So let’s choose one.

Ron Kaufman: But let me give and give an example. There was a time before covid when I had many years in a row with more than a hundred flights a year. That’s how much travelling for keynote speaking and workshops and seminars and COVID-19 blessedly settled me down, right?

So now I’m balancing a bit better. But I remember there was one time I was on a long haul flight and I needed sleep. So I went into the galley and I said, please don’t wake me up for the meals. I’m just going to sleep. And if I wake up and I’m hungry, I’ll come see you. They said, Mr. Kaufman, have a nice sleep.

And I went and I lay down and when I woke up hours later, there was a sticker on my seat that was like this. And it said, you know, first meal, second meal, and there were no checks. So it was an instructional piece of communication to the crew. Don’t wake this guy up and don’t feed him. Okay? No problem with that.

Then I landed in an airport changed airlines and went off on a different airline on another long haul flight. It was going around the world. And I wanted more sleep. So I went into the galley and I said, Please don’t wake me up, etc. And I went to sleep. And when I woke up, there was this lovely card sitting on the table next to me.

And it said, We hope you had a good sleep. While you were resting, we didn’t want to awaken you. But should you awaken and be hungry, feel free to come to the galley. And I looked at that, and I realised, any crew walking by who saw that also knew not to wake me up.

But the difference is that one airline was doing process and procedure, and the other was doing passenger perception, while at the same time communicating to the crew. Get the difference? absolutely. And both of these are outstanding, award winning airlines. That kind of subtle difference is what we’re talking about makes the whole difference.

I did a lot of work in hospitals during COVID, and I saw, for example, these hand sanitizers. They’re all over the place, and there was a sign there that said, kill it.

I never once saw anybody go and use it. Like, why would you? why didn’t it say use it? Or why didn’t it say save lives?

People would have been going over and pumping like…

So then the way we’re thinking about the perception of the person, the human being that’s going to be the customer of How many times do we still see the word user?

A lot. Nobody thinks of themselves as a user. Very impersonal.

Where did that come from?

And we know it came from history and, you had dumb terminals with users on the end, long ago, but it’s time to upgrade our thinking and our understanding and our interest in the whole experience of the person this is actually for.

Yana Fry: Thank you for sharing beautiful stories. I learned a lot just listening to that.

And I also had experience interacting with your family. Also, even with your wife. I remember when I was in quarantine and called it and I felt like she just barely knew me and it was so touching.

The action that she actually took to make me feel comfortable and loved, so that was very beautiful. But I’m just wondering, you know, here. Do you have children?

Okay, how many?

Ron Kaufman: My daughter, she’s 27 now. She’s in her final year of law school and I’m just wondering, given that you are doing what you have been doing for so many years, how does that translate, you feel, or has been translating into your parenting style?

Whew, Difficult. Difficult, because with that number of days on the road, that number of weeks and months and accumulated years not there for her, then every moment that I could be with her, Precious. And I think both of us feel and there’s just a level of adoration, I think, on both sides. In our case, I’m a very literary character. I read a book a week, I write, I speak for a living, etc. So certainly you can imagine, she grew up. With a very sharp level of articulation. And like many kids, especially only kids, especially, I guess in this case, my wonderful kid, there’s that need to, who are you going to fight with? I can see that. Oh my goodness. So did she develop skills? And now she’s becoming a lawyer.

Yana Fry: speaking about Children, which you could say for us represents the next generation of human beings on this. So now let’s say if we look into the future and I’m just curious, how do we combine everything that we talked about today? So we talked about service and the culture and the mindset and different cultures, right? And being curious and also leaders for having a certain perspective and view on how you deal with people? as a person who has been in this industry for so many years, when you look into the future, what do you see?

Ron Kaufman: So the answer to that question that I’ll share has to do with what my wife and I are doing right now. So I met my wife. I was scuba diving in Australia and she was actually running the scuba diving shop and the quality of customer service was spectacular.

So we’re in the process right now of designing a home. where it’s a three year design to be followed by a two year build. And we found a place in the area on the east coast of Singapore that’s in a neighbourhood where whatever happens on that particular corner, it’s going to influence the neighbourhood just of the way the road goes and the streets are, et cetera.

And so we’re literally building this house, not to put a wall around it, but there’s actually a front part that’s like a little neighbourhood park.

So you know that, Sunday morning we can all meet for coffee or Friday I will afternoon. for beer. And you don’t even live in the neighbourhood. Now imagine if you live in the neighbourhood, right?

And then inside the house, rather than having a house and a lawn, we’re putting the house around a big central courtyard. Big enough to have some very interesting gatherings in the year to come. Do you think they’ll be diverse? Do you think they’ll be multicultural?

Do you think they’ll be on a whole variety of different themes? And you know me, we’re going to have presentation technology so people can come talk about whatever.

And you know my wife, she loves to cook, so we can have nice feasts that go on. Let’s put the musicians up on the second floor. And, you’ve created something where, as we age, there’ll be less vigorous travel. What if the vigour doesn’t want to go away? How do you keep that vitality and have it be something that continues to contribute? With other people, to other people, but therefore also to us. And so we’re literally building a physical environment now. We call it the home reef, because we’re scuba divers and you never know what’s going to wash up on the reef, from day to night or night to night.

And so it’s a pretty open space in our hearts and our minds, and eventually in Singapore, for people to come and visit.

So much for being so heartwarming today and generous with your sharing. If I can say on behalf of everyone, I’m sure that we all learned a lot, and I would encourage people to actually re-watch the interview again, because you just shared so many things that sometimes it’s not registered, from the first time when people hear that you see that.

Yana Fry: And Ron and I would love to hear from you guys when you let us know in the comments, what is your experience of service in Singapore? How do you feel? Because if you are in the service industry, how would you like customers to be actually when they show up? So if you were a leader, Then what have you noticed in your company and what would you like to change?

The conversations are where the change starts. And thank you so much for joining us today. I’m very grateful to Muse studio for hosting Yana TV and please remember to subscribe to the channel and share this video with my friend. Then we’re going to go even deeper into the conversation and I’m going to see you next time.