Foreword

by Martin Lindstrom

Some years ago, a Swedish research team set out to explore the impact of a simple smile. Teaming up with a local travel agent, they temporarily replaced the regular staff with actors tasked with an unusual job: to smile—or not to smile.

They offered exactly the same product and exactly the same service. The only difference? Some customers were welcomed with a warm smile, and others weren’t. The impact was remarkable. The customers met with a smile spent 17% more than those who found themselves dealing with a non-smiling agent.

There’s nothing complex about a smile, is there? It sounds so simple. And yet, as a former member of the Qantas board once said, “You have to be capable of smiling at 4 a.m. every morning.”

As our world has turned increasingly rational, companies have become increasingly dependent on technology to manage their dealings with customers. In the process, they’ve turned their backs on the need to provide any sort of personal service.

If you were to ask customers which they prefer—super-quick delivery or excellent service—most of them would say, “I’ll take the quick delivery.” And yet, I’ve learned over the years that what we say and what we feel are often remarkably different. If we’ve become so addicted to instant gratification, why has the number of Americans visiting farmers’ markets increased by 17%? Why did the number of people attending live concerts go up by double digits last year? Why did 10% more people in the United Kingdom go to the theatre last year, even though sound quality, proximity to the stage, the comfort of the seats, and even the quality of the refreshments don’t compare to those in your home entertainment set-up?

Many years ago, Alfred Hitchcock revealed one of the secrets to his great movie creations, the blue and the green script. The blue script is what he called “the theatre of the stage.” It’s the conventional, on-the-surface, visual and aural script: dialogue, action, sets, costumes, music, sound effects, camera angles. On the other hand, the green script, which he called “the theatre of the mind,” dealt with the audience’s emotions. He would map out how the audience should feel, minute by minute and even second by second, as they watched his movie. Here they should feel anxiety, turning on a dime into fear, followed a moment later by a sense of relief. As a perfectionist, he would create a detailed map of the emotional results of his storytelling.

Whenever retailers or brands approach me for advice, I always ask, “What are your blue script and your green script?” In actuality, of course, few brands have ever thought about their marketing in those terms.

In our never-ending search for operational efficiencies, we’ve squeezed the emotional dimension out of the equation. The end result? Retailers and brands are barely differentiated from each other. When you fly, you may never realize which airline you flew with. Check-in takes place at a self-serve terminal representing some 20 airlines. Multiple airlines share the lounge. The aircraft you’re boarding might be a co-share, owned and managed by another airline. Catering is practically non-existent, and so is the service. Forget about blue scripts and green scripts. These days, the only script is grey.

Why should I choose to visit a conventional book store rather than Amazon? Why should I visit Macy’s shoe department, rather than shoe-shopping online at Zappos? Overhead costs in brick-and-mortar stores practically guarantee a higher price, and limited shelf space means they can’t offer the nearly unlimited selection of an online retailer. So how can the brick-and-mortar retailer differentiate itself? The green script, of course. The shopping experience, the personal service, the human touch.

But here’s the problem. Service is an intangible. Our Swedish experiment was able to quantify the value of a smile; but for most retailers, it’s difficult to directly correlate great service with an increase in sales. There are just too many other factors disguising the benefit of great service.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that service isn’t part of most organizations’ DNA, and as a result it takes a remarkable effort to improve service. Some tough emails and town hall gatherings with the CEO might have an immediate, short-term impact. For a few days or weeks, everyone will force themselves to smile. Management will fool itself into believing the organization’s quality of service has improved permanently.

Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Genuine excellent service is a fragile, sensitive, very rare species, and it evaporates almost as fast as you can say the word. Service is directly linked with the organization’s internal culture, and the company’s default mindset is to revert to old ways of doing things.

Service cannot be an afterthought or one of ten points on a to-do list. It cannot be the responsibility of one department, nor an initiative unconnected to the employees’ KPI (key performance indicator). It has to be embedded into the core of the company—into the organization’s very DNA.

Improving service takes time; it must be a mandate to all the staff—from the bottom of the org-chart to the very top—and it requires ongoing training. The default mindset has been stitched into the muscle memory of the organization; to change that muscle memory requires long-term commitment. So long, in fact, that management may observe superficial improvements, pat itself on the back about its “success,” lose interest in the initiative, and move on to another shiny object.

As you read this book, ask yourself how committed you are to implementing the core of Lenn Millbower’s philosophy. If you’re truly committed, then believe this: you have a wonderful tool in your hands for changing your organization’s service culture. But this topic is a bit like feeding the birds on your balcony during the summertime; you need to know that you’ve assumed a certain degree of responsibility, and as winter arrives and things turn a little more difficult, the birds will have come to rely on your effort.

In Care Like a Mouse, Lenn provides some fascinating, unexpected insights into the Walt Disney Company’s service culture—a philosophy that still, many years after the passing of the company’s founder, is appreciated by children, adults with a child inside, and service-minded CEOs. As Lenn breaks down the magic into bite-sized advice, models, and methodologies, he helps you to understand why the Disney magic isn’t actually magical. Rather, it’s a result of hard work, solid method, and persistence. He spices all this knowledge and insight with intriguing insider stories that you’ll find useful as you convey the service message inside your own organization.

As you read the book, please do me a favor: pause, and then reflect on how you really intend to live what Lenn is preaching. Don’t latch onto Lenn’s insights as quick, easy solutions. Make a genuine effort to explore what it would take to truly change your own organization’s default mindset. How can you make divisions collaborate? How can you encourage change through tools of motivation? Most importantly, how can you ensure that your good intentions won’t end up in the corporate dustbin with this year’s customer-service initiative, but will embed itself into the very DNA of your organization?

I know it’s an enormous task, but as a British journalist once wrote, “The world has never changed this quickly—and it will never change this slowly again.”

There’s just one perfect time for this: right now! As almost every industry is being commoditized, as technology infuses itself into every corner of our lives, as what we say and what we really want are increasingly out of balance—the timing for change has never been better.