April 16, 2007 Monday

Commentary: Search for Excellence

Ted Streuli

At the Journey to Excellence event last week in Tulsa, a few hundred people attended who wanted to learn exactly how the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain manages to be so darn good at customer service - and why the company feels it's so important.

It was a good week for excellence. We ran a story last week about Oklahoma Heart Hospital, which has been in the top 1 percent in patient satisfaction since it opened in 2002. With 10-percent annual growth, they're expanding the original facility and building a second one. And they attribute that financial success not to managing expenses or a great advertising campaign or achieving a particular gross margin. No, they attribute their success to having extremely well-satisfied customers.

We have a newsroom policy that says we don't use our pages to try to tell bankers how to be bankers. We're journalists - what do we know from banking? We don't. But I know when I've been treated well.

The ever-so-aptly-named Sunny stopped me in the hall the other day. In her typically cheerful way, she complimented my tie (showing her extraordinarily good taste in men's fashion) and the small flower arrangement I keep in my office.

I buy the flowers down the street, which I started doing because we were having an open house and I wanted my office to look nice. I continued doing it because an employee did a whole bunch of things right: She learned my name - and remembered it. She figured out quickly that it would be more convenient for me to have my payment information on file so I could just drop off the vase on my way to lunch every Monday and pick it up on my way back. When I forget to pick it up, someone brings it to my office.

My little vase is only worth about $500 per year to the florist. But I used to order gift arrangements online; now I order them from her. And when I get the chance, I don't hesitate to refer people there.

Do they have the best flowers, the best arrangements or the best prices? I don't know. I know they walked up to my wife's office in a veritable blizzard to deliver two dozen roses on Valentine's Day. I know when I'm treated well.

I caught myself boring Sunny to death - though she never lets on - when I tried to explain why I buy the flowers every week. I told her that it has to do with going to the great San Francisco department store, the City of Paris, with my father when I was a little boy. The woman at the hosiery counter greeted my father by name, and already knew my mother's name, size and color preference. My father wouldn't shop at most of the other department stores because, I suppose, he knew when he was treated well.

In the mid-1960s, the City of Paris managers had never gone in search of excellence. I doubt my florist ever has, either. But they know what it is.