The Million Dollar Greeting

Today’s Best Practices for Profit, Customer Retention, and a Happy Workplace

Dan Sachs, Janet Scott

• Publisher: Apollo Publishers
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781948062145
• eBook ISBN: 9781948062152
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

Interviews with innovative business leaders and compelling case studies reveal today's best practices for customer and employee loyalty, high profits and sustainability, and a fulfilling work culture in businesses of all sizes. 

Dan Sachs guides established and emerging businesses as they strengthen employee morale, customer retention, and profits. In The Million Dollar Greeting, he interviews cutting-edge leaders from large and small companies that are consistently profitable with their success directly tied to exceptional customer satisfaction and employees who rank their company among the top places to work. 

The original words of the business owners, including their practices, are shared and analyzed by Sachs and instructional takeaways are written for the business world as it exists today and with consideration for expected changes over the coming years. Topics covered include answering the question of what modern-day customer service is and why it matters in the digital age; what interpersonal practices lead to brand loyalty, high financial rewards, and the retention of top employees; how to create a dynamic work culture and the best ways to support employees of different age groups; and what practices will grow increasingly critical for businesses to implement over the coming years. 

Among the business leaders interviewed in the book and companies given as case examples are:

• Rob Siefker of Zappos
• Mark Hoplamazian of Hyatt Hotels
• Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s Delicatessen
• Steve Hindy of Brooklyn Brewery
• Mike McDerment of FreshBooks
• Richard Coraine of Union Square Hospitality Group
• Paul Speigelman of BerylHealth
• Jerrod Melman of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises
• Nick Sarillo of Nick’s Pizza & Pub 

For all entrepreneurs, managers, and employees eager to see their company thrive, this insightful volume reveals how to make your business stand out from competitive companies, how to be effective in your position, and how to make sure fulfillment and success define your business in today’s competitive climate and for years to come. 

 

Section 1

The Evangelists

Ari Weinzweig

(Zingerman’s Delicatessen)

Nick Sarillo

(Nick’s Pizza & Pub)

Paul Spiegelman

(BerylHealth)

Passionate about their vision and values and methodical about how they implement them, these three leaders practice what they preach. They strive to make work meaningful and society better, and they are certain that treating employees and customers well leads to financial success.

While they approach their roles as leaders with the same level of commitment and attention to detail, each has taken his own path in molding the infrastructure of his organization. Additionally, they actively send their message out into the wider community through well-designed training programs (Ari and Nick) and purposeful podcasting (Paul).

Chapter 1

Zingerman’s:Laser-Focused on Customer Service

“I think that if people don’t believe that customer service is a critical thing, then they’re going to do as little as possible, and then it’s going to be only done as a tactical tool, which is sort of like the person who eats a half dessert instead of a whole dessert, and that’s their tactical tool to get in shape. So it’s not bad, but it’s not going to create a meaningful life.” —Ari Weinzweig

I’ll Take a Side of Customer Service, Please

If you like good food and you live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, you already know all about Zingerman’s Delicatessen, which is as much of an institution as its neighbor, the University of Michigan. You’ve probably started at least one day with their roasted coffee along with a freshly baked cinnamon roll. Or maybe you’ve stopped by the deli for a #48, Binny’s Brooklyn Reuben, a side of Alterna Slaw, and a Magic Brownie. At night, you may have eaten at Zingerman’s Roadhouse restaurant, which offers the company’s unique spin on comfort food, or stopped by Zingerman’s Creamery to bring home a pint of gelato, fresh mozzarella, and Detroit Street Brick Cheese.

It all started back in the early ’80s, when Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig became friends. The two met at a restaurant after Ari graduated from the University of Michigan; Saginaw was the manager and Ari was the dishwasher. As their friendship evolved, they decided to band together and open a deli in an old brick building in a part of Ann Arbor called Kerrytown. In 1982, Zingerman’s was born.

Since then, Zingerman’s has come to comprise a diverse community of businesses that includes everything from the deli itself to a candy manufacturer and Korean restaurant. Much has already been written about Zingerman’s. Bo Burlingham dubbed it “The Coolest Small Company in America” in a 2003 article in Inc. magazine, and Micheline Maynard of the New York Times wrote an article titled “The Corner Deli that Dared to Break Out of the Neighborhood” in 2007, Zingerman’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

Ari is an author in his own right, and has written multiple books and pamphlets explaining Zingerman’s business philosophy. Available through Zingerman’s Press, the titles are diverse and range from the fifty-two-page pamphlet Bottom Line Change: Zingerman’s Recipe for Effective Organizational Change to full books such as Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading Part 4: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to the Power of Beliefs in Business (there are also parts 1 to 3) and my favorite, Zingerman’s Guide to Giving Great Service.

In addition to its mission and guiding principles, another feature that defines Zingerman’s is its decision to develop new, independent businesses rather than franchise successful ones. Firmly rooted in Ann Arbor, each new business is operated by one or more managing partners who not only run the business but also share ownership. Annual revenue companywide is now about $62 million—a far cry from the early days at the deli.

However, not all of the businesses under the Zingerman’s umbrella revolve around retail. ZingTrain, their customer service and leadership training company, hosts seminars in Ann Arbor and on-site around the country. It’s run by Maggie Bayless, who worked in the deli while getting her MBA at Michigan in the late 1980s. Asked why she got involved with ZingTrain, she says she admired its focus on customer service.

“After graduation, I stayed in touch with Ari and Paul and watched how they worked to build an organizational culture that focused on service not only to paying customers but also to staff and each other,” she says. “I didn’t find that approach to service, or to leadership, in any of the companies where I worked post-MBA. So in 1994 I saw an opportunity to bring my passion for training back to Zingerman’s—to both improve the quality of internal training and also to offer outside organizations an inside look at how Zingerman’s does business. From the beginning, customer service training was the number one topic that ZingTrain clients have been looking for.”

Guiding Principles

At some companies, the mission statement and guiding principles (if they exist) may be in the employee handbook, but they are definitely not ingrained in the company’s culture. Not so at Zingerman’s, where the guiding principles inspire day-to-day decisions as well as future ones. They are the foundation of how employees relate to one another, their customers, suppliers, and the greater Ann Arbor community.

As a cofounder of Zingerman’s, Ari has played a huge role in establishing, nurturing, and growing its customer service philosophy. A self-described “lapsed anarchist,” he is deeply passionate when he speaks about customer service, which is as essential to Zingerman’s identity as a pastrami sandwich from the deli. This isn’t just lip service.

Unlike most companies, which only consider a financial bottom line, Zingerman’s has three bottom lines: Great Food, Great Service, and Great Finance.

Customers don’t accidentally have a good experience at Zingerman’s. Customer service is woven into the fabric of the company, as the text from bottom line number 2, below, shows.

“Our business exists only because of customers who spend their money on our products. The customer is the only reason we are here. Consequently, the customer is never an interruption. Without those customers, there would be no Zingerman’s and no jobs. Consequently, the customer always comes first.”

One morning, during a busy breakfast at the Roadhouse, Ari and I spoke about all this. The room was filled with people of all ages and occupations, from millennials with babies and people in suits to older couples enjoying a cup of coffee. Over the chatter from patrons and servers, Ari explained Zingerman’s customer service philosophy.

“Customer service has been a bottom line, a literally, overtly stated bottom line for us, for twenty-seven years. We said in the mid-’90s that we have three bottom lines. And one of the reasons that we did that was because we decided that for us customer service was an end in and of itself. It wasn’t just a tactical step.”

He took a sip of tea and continued.

“For us it’s a core piece of everything. And I think really that’s why we did it, but I think it extends to people’s lives everywhere because it’s a mindset around your existence in the world.”

Before we discuss exactly how Zingerman’s delivers on the promise of meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations, it’s essen...

Table of contents

• Foreword By Alwyn Scott
• Introduction
• Section 1: The Evangelists
• Section 2: The Transformers
• Section 3: The Pragmatists
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments