The ACES Model of Exceptional Customer Service
The ACES Model of Exceptional Customer Service is a simple diagnostic and pneumonic tool that will help you assess your company’s ability to provide customer service. Once you have your diagnosis, you will know where to apply corrective measures if necessary.
ACES helps employees focus on all three components of customer service. This model complements my 4 (and 7) laws of exceptional customer service.
The ACES model is a simple formula
Attitude + Competence + Empowerment = Service (exceptional)
The first component, Attitude, contains the attitudes and beliefs required to provide excellent customer service. These include the basic imperative to serve others (as opposed to oneself), to improve the client’s condition, that problems are opportunities for self-improvement, that positive energy and good humor are essential, etc. The attitude factor can be assessed at macro and micro levels, including: the corporate culture, the workforce in general, the general trend of a given person, or specific communications during an interaction.
The second component is Competition. A positive attitude is just a consolation prize when skill is low. Many decades ago, he was a new waiter at an upscale restaurant. A customer asked me if there was mayonnaise in the Caesar salad dressing. I checked with the chef and was told there was no mayonnaise in the dressing. He ordered it and proceeded to have a tremendous allergic reaction. He had a great attitude, but he wasn’t entirely competent. The dressing room was made from scratch. No mayonnaise added but made with the same ingredients, eggs and oil! A competent food server would have known better. In fact, the chef should have known better too.
Employee competence derives to a large extent from thorough knowledge of all aspects of the product and/or services being offered. I live in Pennsylvania where you can only buy wine at state liquor stores. While it has improved somewhat in recent years, most salespeople in these stores couldn’t tell the difference between a Chardonnay and a Ripple. Therefore, I do most of my wine shopping in another state.
In certain jobs, job competence also requires the ability to manage people. I was on a USAirways flight that was fully booked. A man a few rows back was angrily trying to stuff his suitcase into the overhead compartment. He was so aggressive that it looked like he was going to smash the door. The other passengers watching him began to look a bit nervous. The flight attendant arrived, and in the most perfect tone of voice (which combined humor and boundary setting), she said, “Are you trying to crash my plane?” The man immediately stopped and allowed her to take her suitcase. Not wanting to miss out on a friendly joust with such an obviously talented person, I said, “Excuse me, but are your planes that easy to break?” She smiled and replied, “Don’t worry honey. They give us a lot of tape. You can use tape for everything.” (brief pause) They even use it in the Miss America pageant.” Now THAT is people management competition.
On a more macro level, it’s important that a company’s systems and procedures are competently designed to deliver exceptional service. Netflix is an example of an incredibly competent system for renting DVDs. You don’t have to leave your house. They come by mail and are returned by mail. If there is any problem, just contact Netflix online and it will be fixed (by them). The system is designed so that the incentive to get the most for your money actually supports efficient return of DVDs.
The final component of ACES is Empowerment. Generally it is a structural problem within the company. Employees need to be empowered in terms of proper training as well as real power to solve problems. The main question to be answered here is, how are employees able to solve problems in the moment so that the customer feels that their needs come first (Dr. Bob’s second law of exceptional customer service). Any Ritz Carlton employee is entitled to spend up to $2,500 to resolve a guest’s problem. The result is that a guest feels like she is a queen.
As shown in the diagram to the right, there are three possible situations in which a person or company has only one quality. There are three possible intersections of two qualities, and a point where the three qualities intersect. The unique quality points are self-explanatory. Therefore, I will not describe them here. At intersection 1 we have a good attitude plus competence, but not empowerment. Here an employee knows how to do something and has a great attitude, but is somehow not empowered to do it. This situation can occur when there is a bad manager in charge of competent and motivated people. It is often depicted in the movies of the hero who wants to do it, he can do it, but the system prevents him. In real life, this is the situation we’ve all faced when a service person says, “You’re absolutely right, this isn’t fair, but the computer system won’t let me fix the problem for you.” If it’s a chronic problem, people in position 1 usually get demoralized. Another scenario is more personal. An employee may not be assertive (self-empowered) enough or willing to take appropriate risk, even if he actually has the competence and authority to do so.
Position 2 is a situation where an employee has a great attitude and is really empowered by the system, but the employee is not competent enough. My recent tech support call to Dell is a good example. The technician had a wonderfully personable demeanor and was empowered with a wealth of technical resources at his fingertips. But he was unable to fix my issue in a timely manner. In the end, it took 2 hours to solve a problem that a more competent person could have solved in 20 minutes. I’ve been a loyal Dell customer in large part because of their tech support, but their competition is deteriorating and I’m starting to reevaluate this position.
If the employee is new, it may just be a matter of training. If training has been provided and the employee is not becoming more competent, the chances are they are not a good fit for the job.
Position 3 is common with people who are often labeled as having low emotional intelligence. In fiction, this is often the curmudgeonly engineer who can fix anything, just keep him away from other people. A person who is typically in this position may not be the best fit for customer service. This type of person can benefit from personal training to help him change his attitude about the importance of Attitude. When someone is stressed and having a “bad day”, they are often in position 3 for a short period of time.
On a macro level, position 3 describes a company that values competition and empowers its people to succeed, but does not value customer service enough for people to experience Exceptional Customer Service. Now many companies talk about the importance of customer service, but do not go beyond the topics. A colleague of mine worked at a major metropolitan hospital. There were many signs around the building promoting the importance of the patient and how the hospital was committed to providing the highest quality service. Unfortunately, this was often an empty promise. For example, in the oncology unit, the doctors were rarely candid with the patients. Nurses had to go around the backs of doctors to communicate more openly with patients and family. There was little teamwork etc. Hardly state of the art in care.
Finally, only at position 4 did we really achieve high-quality customer service. On a personal level, each individual must empower themselves to cultivate a positive attitude of service and competence. Empowerment also means being willing to take some judicious risks. The flight attendant I mentioned earlier demonstrated a personal use of all three dimensions.
At the macro level, position 4 describes an organization with a true cultural attitude of service to others. Significant corporate courage is often required to move to this level. It requires facing the truth about how the organization is not implementing important values. IT requires spending money in the short term for longer term goals. The organization ensures that its people and systems have the competence to act on the attitude, and that people are truly empowered to use their competence. Furthermore, the interaction effect of the convergence of these factors is highly self-reinforcing. Working in such an environment cultivates an even more positive attitude. Employees are motivated from within. Company morale is high. Companies that instill and empower their employees often raise the bar of competition to higher and higher levels. Companies that would be examples of this are Disney World theme parks, Costco and Enterprise Rental Car (see my article on comparing and contrasting recent experiences with Enterprise and Sears)
If customer service levels are not at desired targets, ACES analysis provides a quick way to zero in on the problem. You may ask yourself, “Where am I on this graph most of the time?” Do I need to update my competition on something? Have I become so focused on making the sale to make money that I no longer focus on the customer relationship? Do I feel powerless to provide great service? The manager or leader may ask, “Where is my sales force most of the time?” What has changed in the ACES model that explains the drop in customer service in department XYZ? Is there a change in the market so that people are no longer competent? Is there a new manager who is disempowering the people? Did we have a great turnover of people so that now 34% of the department have not had the training of the company? We talk about an attitude of taking excellent care of our customers, but we fail to take excellent care of our employees, so the business attitude of excellence in customer service is not manifested in their work practices? Customer service is not rocket science. But, it’s not necessarily easy to execute at high levels. It takes courage and honesty to look at where you are. And, once you know where the problem is, you’re halfway to a solution.