How Do You Wow Internally?

By Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick

After 20 years on the lecture circuit, we don’t think we’ve visited a company that doesn’t talk about its customers. There are signs proclaiming “customers first” or “don’t forget who keeps us in business!” 

But the simple fact that many leaders miss is this: The customer experience will never exceed the employee experience.

How can we expect our people to deliver great service to clients if we treat them like second-class citizens? How are we wowing our own people?

We were delivering a workshop a few weeks ago at a leadership retreat for the Boyd Auto Group. As they were wrapping up the week of meetings, senior leaders challenged all of their managers to create 10 Wow experiences every day with their teams. Now, understand that Boyd Auto Group is not exactly in what you would call a warm and fuzzy industry—they operate 300 auto collision repair centers. And yet in these rough and tough environments of welding, grinding, priming, and paint, they’ve realized the best way to create a culture of service is to start with the heart—their employees’ hearts.

A week after they left the meetings, each manager was given 10 Wow tokens. The concept was simple: Every day each manager was to start with 10 WOW chips in their left pocket. Every time they had a positive, reinforcing experience with a team member they were instructed to move one of the chips from their left pocket to their right. You get the idea. 

After a few weeks a few of the leaders got creative; they wanted this to be something that everyone got involved in, not just the location manager. After all, a culture is owned by everyone, not just leaders. 

Here is an email exchange we were copied on:

Dear Tim (Boyd’s COO) & Brock (Boyd’s President and CEO):

Just a little update on how much the Wow chips have helped our shop. After several days of using them I decided to pass them on to the shop, and it has turned out to be really fun. This is how it's working.  

1. The GM has the chips and each day assigns them to a different employee in the shop
2. No one is aware of who has the chips (only the GM and that individual know)
3. Individual gives 10 compliments
4. In the morning huddle the next day, the employee talks about at least two individuals that he complimented and why
5. Chips are passed on

This is really helping keep people engaged and making them aware of the great people around them. Once again thanks for the chips. It's a whole lotta fun. Thank you!

Johnny Domingeuz, Gerber Auto Collision and Glass, Chicago

When leaders start to look more for what is going right in their workplaces, and less for what’s going wrong, they start to reinforce a culture of wow that can’t help but translate to a positive experience for customers—an experience that can differentiate you from the competition. And when you get fellow employees involved in finding and recognizing greatness, then you start to really see all the good that’s happening around you.

The Boyd Auto Group calls it The Wow Experience. Call it whatever you like, but the bottom line is great organizations treat their employees better than poor or average companies, and in turn their people pass it along to clients. 

What will you do?

Chester Elton's latest book, written with co-author Adrian Gostick, is What Motivates Me, aimed at helping readers align the work they do every day, for the rest of their lives, with what truly motivates them.

Elton and Gostick are also the New York Times bestselling authors of The Carrot Principle and All In.