Posted by Ron Jooss
Last night I was coming home from the grocery store and I stopped in at Cold Stone Creamery (or Stone Cold Creamedy, as my 5-year-old son calls it). I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but somehow I never feel all that guilty about it. The kid who was working the store was hanging a Happy Halloween banner. He jumped off the ladder as I opened the door and said, "Welcome to Cold Stone Creamery."
The Cold Stone Creamery waiter/waitress is kind of the 00s equivalent of the soda jerk. They plop your choice of ice cream onto a slab of frozen marble and mix in the ingredients you choose. It's not a very glamorous job.
I ordered the same thing I always get, a large sweet cream with double cherry pie filling. Cold Stone is cool because the ice cream is great (it's laden with fat) and you can add your own ingredients. But I'm not very imaginative when it comes to adding ingredients. That said, I'm very happy with cherry pie filling. Or at least I thought I was.
The kid started making my order, then he asked me, "Would you like some graham cracker crumbs mixed in with that?" I said, "Wow, that sounds really good, just like a cherry pie. Go ahead, add it in." He laughed and said, "Don't worry, sir, I got you hooked up." Just as he was finishing, he said, "How about a little caramel with that?" "Perfect," I said. This kid was a pro!
This, my friends, is customer relationship building. The Cold Stone kid wasn't trying to Super Size me, he was truly trying to make my ice cream taste better--and he did. That ice cream was just about the best I ever had, the best ingredients in the right amounts, just a little graham cracker and a touch of caramel.
If that kid worked in a credit union call center, you can bet every member who called in to see if a check had cleared would learn about debit cards, and if they overdrew their accounts, he’d work with them to apply for overdraft privileges. Are your member service reps doing this for every member? If they are, they are not only truly improving the member experience, they’re helping each member have a little better day.
Ron Jooss edits the General Management and Board sections of CUES' Credit Union Management.
