Legendary service is one of the criteria that sets one company apart from its competitors. It's the mark of a truly authentic company - you just can't fake caring!
The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.
When dozens of company results are flooding newspaper offices everyday, an occasional fraudster slips in what looks like an authentic press release, with fake company results/information aimed at manipulating share prices.
I did something rather innovative that my competitors didn't like: I took out a full-page advertisement in the Yellow Pages that listed an office on the east side of Cincinnati, and another office on the west side, while every other heating/air-conditioning company had only one location and one phone number. I was the citywide company. In fact, our 'westside office' was just an answering service taking telephone message. From the start we appeared to be a big company.
When you have a programmer-founded company it often gets really techy, if you have a producer or a business-person, it all really sets the flavor of the company, just the priorities and the way you deal with everything.
As a company, whatever the business outlook is, you want to make sure you have new skill sets coming into the company.
We got bigger, much scarier competitors. We ended up with Microsoft, a company with all the money in the world, the way I look at those guys. And IBM, another company that, historically, dwarfed us.
Beats is inherently different: the company is a consumer electronics company but also a media company; a packaged goods company but also an entertainment company.
Once a company develops out of its consumer base, you will often see a well-funded multinational company come in and take over that space. The black-owned company either stays a niche company or just disappears. This is something we don't want to happen.
Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding. Their expectations grow. When every company's service is shoddy, doing a few things well can earn you a reputation as the customer's savior. But when a competitor emerges from the pack as a service leader, you have to do a lot of things right. Suddenly achieving service leadership costs more and takes longer. It may even be impossible if the competition has too much of a head start. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding service.
Although most executives pay lip service to the idea of hiring for cultural fit, few have the courage or discipline to make it the primary criteria for bringing someone into the company.
Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it's a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.
You know, I'm behind my company. My company has been a big part of my life. And it's not that I been buying a company or that my father bought a company and tried to do something out of it. You know, it's not the same thing. It's my name, it's my company, it's my signature.
If the only common thread you have as an industrial company is the fact that you think you're well managed, you can still be a pretty good company, but you're not going to be a dominant company, a competitive company over time.
A company's ethical behavior is ultimately triggered by some sense of caring. And care is a sense of closeness to someone or something. A company must bring value to whom or what it is close to.
When a company owns one precise thought in the consumer's mind, it sets the context for everything and there should be no distinction between brand, product, service and experience.
I am confident that partnering my Dollywood Company with a great company like Gaylord will create something truly special.