“Proud” is Heather Small’s signature song with which she achieved international success and it was a thrill to meet somebody whose voice makes my spine tingle at this month’s UK Customer Experience and Customer Service training Awards www.uk-ce-awards.co.uk/.

The holiday season is a great time to take time to relax with family and enjoy new experiences.  From a work perspective it is a valuable time to recharge the batteries and refresh thinking to return to with a renewed sense of purpose and energy….but, personally, it is also a time to be tuned in to organisations and their SERVICEBRAND.

Although corporate offices and hotels are both built environments providing a very similar range of services to customers, there are some fundamental differences in the way in which the provision of this service is organised.

Cast your mind back to the summer and a holiday or trip you may have enjoyed.  Consider what stays with you in the way of a memory and you will probably realise that, rather than the sights or facilities, some of the strongest memories are of interactions with people.

Here is an article featuring a family weekend away to explore this area further.

“What gets measured gets managed” is an often quoted maxim in business. But it is a potentially dangerous approach in situations of complexity, subjectivity and perception. SERVICEBRANDs are a case in point where the people element and emotional engagement are such fundamental parts of the customer experience. The aspects that are easier to manage (eg did the employee say “Welcome to XYZ Hotel”) are less important than the elements that are more of a challenge to measure (eg did the employee make you feel welcomed and valued?). However, the easier to measure aspects are what some organisations focus their attention on…..almost of the mindset that the other elements will simply not exist because they are not being measured!

Last night at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Heather Small was singing one of her best known songs and the chorus is as follows:

“You’ve got to search for the hero inside yourself
Search for the secrets you hide
Search for the hero inside yourself
Until you find the key to your life”

This question Can we measure behaviour? asked by Aga Yamin received over 1000 responses which prompted a collaborative effort with Pat Keith to produce a summary of the comments.

We did this to help make the topic more accessible for everybody and inspire further discussion. What a wonderful connected world we live in.

This article “Building a Culture: You Need to Harness the Value of Core Values” was in the top 50 most popular articles on TLNT.com in the whole of 2014.

In summary, there is an explanation of what values are and why they are important, increasingly so in our super-connected world. The article goes on to explore some of the benefits of a values-based approach but also refers to the challenge of embedding this approach – with such a dependence on personal accountability from everybody representing the organization. There is some compelling commercial evidence and the article finishes with a music metaphor exercise for you to try.

Over the Easter holidays I was reminded of the interdependence of brands (products and SERVICEBRANDs):

Last October I bought a pair of Brooks running shoes from the shop at my local David Lloyd Leisure Centre.

There is a lot written about the way to be successful and achieve – the importance of goal setting and targets, planning, monitoring progress and measuring performance. But is there another less well understood route to achievement and success through constantly striving to excel, investing in relationships, being curious and encouraging this in others?…because when these things are in place sometimes, for no apparent reason, wonderful things happen….seemingly by chance……Here is a story which reminds us of how little we are in control of the way events turn out but also how we can do a lot to give the best chance of a good outcome, even without knowing what this might be!!