Joseph Michelli

Culture, culture, culture! This presentation highlights tools that have created a rich and unorthodox service culture at Zappos. Against all odds this online business (known primarily for selling shoes in a playful and emotionally engaging ways) has revolutionized social media strategies, developed an environment which has earned it a consistent spot in the top ten of Fortune Magazine’s best places to work, created zealous fans, and attracted Amazon.com as a purchaser for more than 1.2 billion dollars. In this keynote or workshop, Dr. Michelli outlines the 5 principles leaders and frontline worker can use to “zappify” enduring success (Serve a Perfect Fit, Make it Effortlessly Swift, Step Into the Personal, S T R E T C H, and Play to Win). It’s time to integrate (not balance) work and fun. It’s time to benefit from the unique and effective customer employee and customer engagement techniques of Zappos!

Imagine running a business that requires the innovation of Apple, the commitment to safety of NASA, and the customer service of The Ritz-Carlton. Further, imagine your mandate demands you are a world-class educator, your work product holds life and death in the balance and you are responsible for discoveries that shape the future of medicine – that is the charter of UCLA Health System and as such UCLA offers a view into a diverse set of challenges faced by most businesses. Borrowing from transformational leadership at UCLA, Dr. Michelli outlines lessons on how to catapult your business to preeminence at an unusually rapid pace, transform the satisfaction and engagement of your customers through a service-centric approach, achieve enviable profitability during economic downturns and re-design, elevate, and humanize your customer experience. Through the context of business principles like Commit to Care, Make the Best Better, and Create the Future, Dr. Michelli offers insights to elevating service excellence by consistently executing against the highest service standards.

In this presentation, Dr. Michelli examines how to deliver legendary customer experiences such as those consistently offered by The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. The New Gold Standard presents cutting edge leadership strategies for selection, training, and retention of the “right” staff. It demonstrates how leaders and front line workers can drive staff engagement and ownership behavior that ultimately produces transformational customer experiences. Expounding on leadership principles such as “Define and Refine,” “Empower Through Trust,” and “It’s Not About You,” this presentation examines ways to keep your service relevant to changing customer needs and shifting economic times.

Let’s assume you have an engaged workforce and a consistent experience that drives staff and customer loyalty. How will you sustain and build on that success. For example, how does your business remain relevant with your existing customer base while continually developing products that attract diverse customer segments? In Leading the Starbucks Way, Dr. Michelli touches upon key drivers that led to Starbucks meteroric success but emphasizes actionable takeaways born from the wisdom of Starbucks leaders as they leverage technology, mobilize the interpersonal connection through social media, expand offerings into the consumer product goods space, and increase sustainability and global relevance.

Many businesses were not created on a customer experience or customer service foundation. They started from a founder’s passion for a given product or industry. These types of businesses might have innovative products, operational excellence, and even great marketing. What they often lack is consistent and emotionally engaging customer experience that live up to their product quality. In Driven to Delight, Dr. Michelli looks at how an iconic brand with the motto “best or nothing” set sights on being one of the world’s best customer experience providers. Moving from the middle of the pack among luxury automobile manufacturers on customer satisfaction surveys toward levels that rival a brand like The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, leaders at Mercedes-Benz USA created a compelling transformational vision while aligning and mobilizing people, processes, and technology. If you are on a cultural journey to be Driven to Delight, this message will inform and resonate!

By strategically focusing and executing on the details of the internal and external customer experience, Starbucks has become an employer and coffee provider of choice. In essence, Starbucks has become a name synonymous with coffee itself. While most people see Starbucks as a coffee company that serves people, its success is based on the inverse. It is a people company serving coffee. In this keynote or workshop, Dr. Michelli shows frontline workers and business leaders how to “stage” and perform on their brand’s promise. He analyzes the importance of identifying a desired emotional connection with the customer. Further, Dr. Michelli helps participants see the important distinction between “good” and “bad” profit ( for example, bad profit is that made at the expense of the customer need). Using principles like “Make it Your Own,” “Surprise and Delight,” and “Embrace Resistance,” Dr. Michelli shows how to create the ultimate customer experience. Lights, camera, action – your experience awaits.