Creating Customer Magic with Darren Ross

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Be honest. How much of your time do you spend making your customers feel amazing through exceptional customer service? I'll answer that for you. Probably not enough. I know that I don't. I'm working as hard as I can to create the product, to sell the product, and then go find more people to build and sell stuff for. It's a 24/7 job just to create and deliver. But what about making every interaction just a little bit more special, just a little bit more impactful, really upping your customer service game? Is it worth it? And even if you wanted to, where would you begin? That's what today's show is all about. We're sitting down with customer service expert Darren Ross. I mean, he owns a company called Service Freak. And on this show, we're gonna talk about why it's so darn important and what do we have to do to make an impact. Spoiler alert, it's not deep discounts and free stuff. We need to create moments with our customers. How do we do it? Where do we begin? And if we're super overwhelmed with the concept, is it something I can even take on right now? Yes. It is. Do better by your customers. Get the action plan that you need in this episode. Darren is standing by. We'll be back with him after this. Darren Ross, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Darren Ross: 01:41

I am doing very well. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Pat Miller: 01:44

Man, I'm excited to talk to you. I first learned about you in Jesse Cole's book, and you're even using the coffee mug of the hotel. People have to know all about you.

Darren Ross: 01:53

Oh, did I? Was I using the Magic Castle Hotel coffee mug? I didn't even realize. We have our famous Popsicle Hotline on the other side.

Pat Miller: 02:02

Everyone needs to know about the Magic Castle Hotel. Tell us, I just need you to share the story. Tell us about that quickly, then we're gonna get into all the customer service stuff, but it's one of the coolest stories I've ever heard.

Darren Ross: 02:14

Yeah. So 21 years ago, I started with the Magic Castle Hotel, and it was this just really unassuming older building, converted apartment building, no elevator, no frills. And I started there, and we knew that, you know, if this was going to live up to its potential, we needed to really revamp the service. And by revamp, I mean start some service. There wasn't a lot going on. And so, we built it over the years. We added services, added services, added services, and we've become this leader in customer service. And we're all about creating these amazing moments for our guests that, you know, other hotels around Los Angeles, whom 5-star hotels, aren't doing. So we're all about doing a lot with a little and we do it every single day. Our staff is trained on it. We don't just talk about it. We walk the walk. And every day I go to work, and I hear our guests saying things like, “We've never had service like this. Our kids don't want to leave.” You know, we hear these things every single day, and it's incredibly gratifying. So yeah. And we're in Jesse Cole's book. We're in a couple of other books. I get to talk to you. I get to talk to companies around the country, around the world, a little bit about what we do.

Pat Miller: 03:42

And that experience led to the company Service Freak and hearing these stories. Is that how you really got so excited about customer service and helping people out with these magical experiences?

Darren Ross: 03:54

Well, yeah. And I mean, my passion for customer service goes way back when I was a teenager. I remember I was 15 years old. It was my first summer job at Baskin Robbins scooping ice cream, and I learned then that I my attitude, my approach to customers, affected their, either their few moments in front of me at the ice cream counter, or it affected their whole day or whole week, depending on all the interaction. And what I learned was that it wasn't just the feeling I was giving them, but it was the feeling that gave me. And it was very gratifying having such an effect on someone's day just working at an ice cream place. And this was way back when, before every, you know, every business in the world had tip jars out. I would get tips. I remember my coworkers looking at me, like, “What is he doing for these tips? Is he giving him double the ice cream? Like, what's he doing?” And it wasn't that at all. I mean, unless she was cute, you know, then she got maybe a little extra, of course. I was 15. But really what it was, was creating a connection for people and giving them just a little break in their day, with a pleasant interaction and making them feel heard. And that's really, that kind of got me hooked at 15 years old at Baskin Robbins. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life, you know? I did, I love it.

Pat Miller: 05:28

That's really unusual. Respectfully, that's really unusual for a 15-year-old person with a part-time job to make that connection. Do you think you were just wired in that way, or it was pattern recognition that when I behaved this way, something good happened? Or do you see what I mean? That seems a little bit odd because usually people in that situation, it's what do I have to do now, and when can I leave and go be with my friends? But to make that kind of connection at that age, do you think that was just divine intervention or you're wired that way? How do you think you got that?

Darren Ross: 05:59

Well, I think it had to do with my with my growing up. I had a very unusual childhood. My dad had an unusual job. He was the President of Famous Amos Cookies. And we were friends with Wally Amos, the creator who just passed away. And he's such a great guy. But at a young age, I got to see the impact of someone who is passionate about what they do, and sharing that with other people. And literally, like, you know, Wally would walk around a shopping mall or a grocery store with tins of freshly baked Famous Amos cookies. He'd go on airplanes with them, and he shared it. And I got to see people's reaction to Wally and I got to see how passionate he was about it, how much he cared about it. And he put a piece of himself in those in every single cookie, you know, his personality. And I remember that. I remember that growing up. That was always really impactful to me. And so I went back to Baskin Robbins, like, I knew then I wasn't curing cancer, but I had an impact on someone's day, and that was very, very gratifying to me. So I guess I kinda grew up with some service in my blood.

Pat Miller: 07:15

That's really cool. You mentioned and described customer service in a unique way. You said it was a kind of a break in their day. Is that especially critical right now in the environment that we're in that great customer service can surprise and delight someone?

Darren Ross: 07:31

Oh, this is the best time to retool a company's customer service because pretty much no one else is doing it. So it is a critical time indeed. All you have to do is look at the direction things are going in terms of service. And in my view, it's less and less and less service. And it's more automation, fast, self-checkout, driverless taxis. That's literally happening right now. You know, you buy your movie theater tickets online, concert tickets, of course, online, you know, grocery delivery, food delivery. The person delivering it doesn't work at the restaurant. You know, they're a third party. And what used to be these touch points in customer service are going away, and I feel very strongly that just us as human beings are hungry for these touch points, for these moments, to have some human interaction when you're buying your groceries, you know, enough for the self-checkout. You know, I'm guilty of using them too sometimes, but send us that protest and wait in line because I want a little bit of human interaction. And it's really, really important. You ever go to a bank or go to the grocery store, and you see how it used to be. You see all the check stands that are there, but they're all closed. And you're like, it's supposed to be like that. You know? You go to the bank, there's, you know, a row of 14 teller stations, and 1 or 2 are open. And that's all you have to know. Like, that's the direction customer service is headed, and that provides a really great opportunity, especially for small business to differentiate themselves by actually, you know, creating these touch points in their business. Your customers are hungry for it. I promise. I promise.

Pat Miller: 09:28

Small businesses, including photography studios, get to make the choice to become customer-focused. I've heard you say it that way. This is a choice. What do you mean by that? A choice to become customer-focused.

Darren Ross: 09:37

Yeah, it is a choice. I feel like, you know, companies, especially small business might feel bogged down, defeated, you know, maybe cynical about, you know, whether or not they could even create a better customer service environment. And I feel like it is a choice. Funny, when it, back to my early adult life, my second job was at a messenger company. And it would, they always gave great customer service. And a lot of our clients were these 5-star hotels. And we started to model ourselves after some of these 5-star hotels. And one of the first things we did was simply decide to become a customer service company that was functioning as a messenger company. And I took that approach to the Magic Castle Hotel. So we are a customer service company that functions as a hotel, and it's within that mindset that a lot of, that it kind of guides our responses to our guests and the decisions we make, our business, the people we hire, how we train. So being a customer service company first will really help guide any company, but especially small business. It's a great shortcut.

Pat Miller: 10:55

It is a shortcut, and it's a clever way to put it. But you're saying it's deeper than that because it sounds like something someone would just say and then not live up to. But you started to tick off all the places where this mindset and this shift in organizational priority is showing up, hiring, how we do things every single day, what the actual guest experience is like. That just seems like it's more than just a phrase.

Darren Ross: 11:19

It's more than just a phrase, and we're kind of the rubber meets the road is when there's a problem. You know? So, no guests complain about things once in a while. We're pretty lucky. We're not inundated with it, but it absolutely happens. So an example, you know, might be that a guest requested, you know, let's just say extra towels in the room, and for one reason or another, that didn't happen. We dropped the ball. Well, we're a customer service company. We're not just a hotel where we check people in, we stay, and they leave. We're a customer service company. So when we make a mistake like that, we wanna really lean into that mistake as opposed to running away from that mistake. And what that does, what that mistake does is provides us with a real concrete opportunity to showcase to that guest who we are and show them that we are the customer service company first. So one, of course, the first thing we do is apologize and take complete accountability for the mistake, and hopefully pick up those towels to them very quickly. And then we send them something. We do something above and beyond just apologizing, getting those towels to them. And so we'll, you know, maybe we'll send up a bottle of champagne 10 minutes later with a handwritten note saying, you know, we're so sorry, we didn't send those towels. And it's a small thing. You know, it's a small thing. But many 5-star hotels are doing that. You know, they'll apologize. They'll be super nice on the phone. Within, that's it. That's it. So we we wanna take every opportunity to showcase who we are as a company. And so being a customer service company first, that helps guide us into the resolution of a problem, small or large. And just one more thing on that, the smaller the problem, the bigger the impact when we make up for it. You know, we make a customer service gesture, we send out champagne, the bigger impact that has. Another quick example is our check-in time is at 3 o'clock. And let's just say at 3:10, someone wants to check-in, and the room isn't quite ready. And maybe we tell them, oh, it just has to be inspected. It should be about another 5 minutes. We're so sorry. Usually, the guest will say, “No problem at all. You know, it's 5 minutes. That's fine.” So the guest gets to the room, and then about 5 or 10 minutes later, there's a knock on the door with a gift from us. It might be the bottle of champagne, it might be something else. But in this card just acknowledging and apologizing that the room wasn't ready, that we didn't keep our promise. Sending that to them has a much bigger impact, us being 15 minutes late on the room than that would have been had we been an hour late. So the smaller the issue, the bigger impact that gesture has. That's a really fun little tool that a small business could use, but they make a little mistake. Make a big deal about it. You could write a handwritten apology, pop it in the mail, an actual handwritten note somebody will get, and they're gonna read that and they're gonna say, “Wow. You know, the mistake was tiny, but for them to actually acknowledge it and send me a note is incredible.” I just heard a story yesterday. This is the Lancaster Hotel in London, an amazing hotel. I've stayed there many, many times. And a friend of mine was staying there, and she got a wake-up call at 6 o'clock that she did not request. So that wake-up call woke her up. The person on the other end was very, very apologetic. It was really nice. She gets back to the room later that day. There were some chocolates and a note apologizing for the mistake, and then she gets a phone call from the front office manager explaining what happened with another apology. Now that tells a lot about that organization. They are a customer service company first functioning as a hotel. There are many hotels that would never do anything like that. They would just say, I'm so sorry. And that’ll be it. But they kind of pounced on that opportunity to show the guest who they are and demonstrate how important the customer is. And so she actually told me that story. And now I'm telling you that story. And now the listeners are hearing that story. And that's how it works.

Pat Miller: 15:30

There's a photographer watching this right now that sees the value of what you're talking about. I'd love to be a customer service organization that happens to take pictures. But my head is going to explode because I'm holding on with both hands just to deliver the pictures and create value and do the marketing and raise the kids and keep the place clean, and all the other stuff that's overwhelming us. But I've heard you say that you don't have to be the Magic Castle on day 1. You can start taking baby steps. So how would we go about installing baby steps towards becoming a customer service organization?

Darren Ross: 16:06

It's a great question, and it is something that I just, I hear all the time from companies, especially small business. And I'm a small business, and I get it. You know? I get it. I promise. It is hard. Maybe you might have, you might be a one-man show, or a one-woman show, and that's and that's fine, but it can feel overwhelming as you suggest. And the trick is just that: don't feel like you have to make a 180 overnight. You don't. Just make small corrections, small little corrections like a ship, and don't be afraid to just take one customer at a time, one gesture. It is a very manual process. Okay? There isn't a magic bullet. There's just not. It's one customer at a time. It's one idea at a time. And don't be afraid to do something big for one client. It's fear that you won't be able to do it for all your clients. It's okay. It's okay. Take the opportunity and do that. Do that bold, what did that bold idea, follow through with that bold idea for that one client. If you think it's gonna have a huge impact on that client, and it's going to compel them to remember it, to tell people about it, to write a great review about your company without you asking them to do it. So the gesture should be so impactful that they feel like, “Oh, I gotta tell something about this.” At the very least, they're gonna remember you and come back to you, and you're building client loyalty. But to compel a customer by following through with some grand gesture is worth it. It’s gonna create this kind of soldier for you who's gonna go out there and tell the world and do your marketing for you. And that's what we do at the hotel. We do that every single day with many of our guests, and that's what, that's exactly what we're doing. We're creating these soldiers out there, one guest at a time. Now at the hotel, we have some systems in place that help that customer service experience. We have a lot of fun services, a lot of fun amenities that help us stand out. But at the end of the day, it's how we're listening to our guests and responding. And our motto is listen carefully, respond creatively. And that's what we try to do with every single guest, and that's what true customer service is. It's listening to your guest and responding in a way that makes them feel heard. And it's also, we were talking earlier about how customer service, these touchpoints are going away. Everything is all so very fast now. Everything is instant, you know? Kind of like the self-checkout. Let’s get it done. Let’s get it done faster. Everything's fast, fast, fast, fast. And customers are feeling it. I know I am as a customer, and we're all customers every single day. I feel like everything is meant to be a shortcut, and that's what break service is. And I would just challenge you to regain that a little bit and start thinking about going the other way and creating a contrast and slowing down, just slowing down a little bit. So, and your customers are so accustomed to things being sped up that when you slow things down a little bit, they will notice and they will feel it. They will feel it. And people like to be slowed down for. And, you know, let's call it, we take a moment for our hotel guest. We take a moment. And quite literally, when they check in, we give them champagne. And once they have the glasses in their hands, we say, “I just wanna take a moment to tell you what a pleasure it is to have you with us.” And we literally take a moment. I hear some new front desk agents, I hear them do that welcome speech, and they say, “I just want to take a moment to tell you what a pleasure it is to have you with us.” Well, they missed the point. They missed the point. The whole point is to hit the reset button from the stress of their flight and getting their luggage and their kids in a rental car or their taxi in Los Angeles traffic. So, the goal there is just hit the reset button, and just let them breathe for a minute, and let them know that we are here for them, and we make eye contact with them, and we say, “I just want to take a moment to tell you what a pleasure it is to have you with us.” In that moment, and this sounds crazy, but it often brings tears to people's eyes because, and it happens all the time, all the time, because we don't know people's stories. We don't know. What we know is that they're at a hotel, and they're checking in. We don't know how long it took them to save up for this trip. Sometimes it's multi-generational families coming, and there's a lot of emotion behind that for them to now have a glass of champagne in their hands, and they're about to say cheers after we just say that it's a pleasure to have them with us. It evokes emotion, and it's very powerful. It's a very powerful, you know, it's not always so sad. You know, oftentimes, it's families. You know, the families coming in, maybe we're their first stop on their holiday, and the kids get glasses of sparkling apple juice. And now it creates this fun moment, a celebratory moment, when we say we just want to take a moment to tell you what a pleasure it is to have you with us. And then the family cheers. They ask us to take pictures of it. So they're saying cheers. They're toasting in our lobby, and it's the start to something exciting. And what it also does, it gives them a glimpse of what they're in for in terms of level of service at our business, at our hotel, and that's something that other small businesses can do. And I hear some people say that it feels awkward to slow down or give them that kind of welcome speech, and it just feels a little awkward. And I always say it might. It might feel awkward at first, but you get used to it. But what I promise is that it doesn't feel awkward to receive it. So it might feel awkward to say it, but it doesn't feel awkward to receive it. It feels actually pretty good to receive that. And that's what being a customer service company is, is doing things a bit differently for your customers, and it is a way to stand out. It's also free. You know? To give that welcome speech is free. You don't have to have champagne, although that's very low cost. But we could do a lot with just words and tone. Just words and tone, you could do it half a lot with. And they have an impact because other companies aren’t doing it. You know? I challenge you. Go, you know, next time you're at a restaurant, next time, pick some, any restaurant, it could be high end, mid-range, low-end, you know, just watch. Just watch and see. Watch your disappointment. I’m disappointed all the time. You know, all the time. Like, I expect more. Like, it would be so easy if you just said this. You ever go to a restaurant and walk out, and they don't say anything to you? Really? Really? The words and tone are so important, and you could do so much with them. You could completely set yourself apart just by using words and the tone in which they're said.

Pat Miller: 23:20

If I walked up on the street to a small business owner and said, how can you make your customer ridiculously happy? I would bet the majority of them would say discounts, free stuff, give them a free room. But very clearly through all of this, you've talked about gesture, time, emotion, interaction, connection, language. You're not talking about free stuff. And I wanna, like, shine a really bright light on that. Do they value those emotional interactions more than 10% off their room?

Darren Ross: 23:51

I mean, 100%. Absolutely. That's what they remember. You know? Our customers remember how they were made, sorry, how they how we make them feel. That's what they remember, how we make them feel. They don't remember the facility. They don't remember the rooms that, you know, and our rooms are perfect. You know, some rooms need to be renovated or, as I mentioned, we're an older building. We're not fancy. So we can't rest on our facility. But they don't remember that, and they don't care about it. And sometimes we get people who normally will stay at 5-star hotels, and they tell us. We’d hear us all the time that, “Wow, we don't get this at that hotel or that hotel.” So we always, I always say, we'll compete with any hotel anywhere in terms of how we make our customers feel by the time they leave our building. It's true. We can't compete on facility. But we can compete on how we make them feel. And that's my message to small businesses: don't worry about the big guys. Worry about the customers, in front of your face, you know, and compete on that level using words and tone, making them feel heard, listening carefully, and responding creatively, and making it real. Making a real connection. And, you know, I would say, if I, you know, I have opportunities to travel a lot. I'm in the hotel business. Sometimes I get, you know, I get to stay in great hotels, amazing brands, or I get to go to a, you know, high-end restaurant sometimes. And I'm so often, like, as I mentioned, I'm so often disappointed. And I always say, like, if I'm going to a high-end restaurant, the service should be better than Chili's. You know? It should be better than Chili's. That's not a knock on Chili's. Like, that's actually a compliment to Chili's. Like, Chili's does. They're a corporate chain, and they have great training. Yeah. They do a good job. It's consistent. You know? When you go to a really high-end restaurant, your expectations, of course, are higher. And maybe the food is amazing. Okay? Maybe the food is amazing, but the service isn't memorable. It's not memorable. And I always feel like if you're going to a restaurant like that or a high-end hotel, what should be memorable isn't the steak or the room. It should be how you felt when you left, and that comes with that human interaction, how you were spoken to, how you were made to feel. So I feel there's a lot of missed opportunities out there. And it's a huge opportunity for small business, a huge opportunity to stand out. Likely your biggest competitors aren’t doing these things, and that's where your opportunity lies.

Pat Miller: 26:28

In a moment, we're gonna talk about your talk at Imaging USA. We can't wait to spend time with you and learn more about this subject and really get up to speed and have actionable strategies. But I wanna paint a picture. You get the chance to now go out and help other organizations with what you've innovated and what you teach. Can you think of a time that you helped a customer organization double down on their service and what kind of results it generated?

Darren Ross: 26:53

Yeah, I like that question. Because the companies that I speak in front of are really always companies who already understand the importance of customer service, The ones who don't get it and don't care and just want more sales, they don't hire me. They don't invite me to come speak. So that's fine. Well, yeah, so what I try to do is help companies who already understand the importance of it, are already giving, you know, above-average customer service. And I help them kinda just get to the next level, tweak things. I remember speaking to a hospital recently in Montana who had a lot of budgetary issues, staffing issues, but who understand the importance of patient experience. And we talked a lot about new ideas on things that they could do to just kinda tweak things, make them a little better here and there. And it kinda got them thinking differently about it. Creating these stories among the staffs. And at the hotel, we create stories. You know, a story is basically the manifestation of us listening carefully and responding creatively. And I always want our staff to create these stories. So these companies, like this hospital, are now creating, these stories that's not part of their operation. Different departments are creating stories, for their patients, basically. So a good example, so at the hotel, we do stories every single day, by the way, and they're emailed to me right at the hotel. One of the recent ones was, a child lost her favorite stuffed animal. She was really, really upset. We looked everywhere at the hotel, and then our front desk agent found the same animal online, bought it. It was there the next day. We didn't trick the kid or anything. They knew it was the new one, but the child was, like, 5 years old. They were super, super happy. You know, the recent one was, this family was staying with us, and their daughter was turning 7, and they were taking her to mermaid school for the day. So they spent the whole day learning how to be a mermaid. And then when she got back, our front desk agent, you know, then we heard that, and we wanted to respond creatively. Our front desk agent heard that, made a picture of a unicorn and a certificate from a mermaid school congratulating her, and put some candies in the room, I picked some rainbow glitter. It was just really, really fun. You know? It was really fun. And so that's what we help companies achieve is you say double down on service. We try to get them to that next level, listen carefully, respond creatively. And when they walk out of the talk, you know, our goal is have them thinking just a bit differently about service and motivated to make some slight changes.

Pat Miller: 29:53

And that's what's so great. This Listen Carefully and Respond Creatively is the title of your talk, and we get a chance to hang out with you in Dallas at Imaging USA. I'm sure that this podcast and your talk are gonna generate a lot of questions. You talked about, earlier some of the common feedback that you hear from people. Are there other things that come up that to you, you didn't even think that someone would respond with that question, but it comes up again and again as far as, wait a minute, are you saying X, Y, Z? Can you think of any common pieces of feedback you get after your talk?

Darren Ross: 30:27

One common thing, people come up to me, and there's, we do an exercise in the talk. I want people to write down brands or companies that they would go back to just based on how they feel going to that company. And not based on the product itself, but just how, you know, how they feel. And people have a real tough time coming up with a lot of these companies. There's a few companies that appear over and over when I do this exercise, but it's rare that people are able to just write down a lot of companies. And so something that I hear often, it's kind of a common thread after all my talks is how challenging it is and how frustrating people are, how frustrated they are with the notion that they can't come up with a lot of companies that they're passionate about, and to make them feel like they're heard as a customer. So that is, that's surprising. It’s surprising to me, and it isn't because I can't think of very many for myself. And so we kinda highlight that opportunity for small business to become the company that people will remember for how their customers feel.

Pat Miller: 31:40

We definitely wanna be on that list. And after we see you at Imaging USA and after this conversation, we are well on our way. Darren Ross, thanks for joining us on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

Darren Ross: 31:50

It's been my pleasure, Pat. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see everybody in Dallas.

Pat Miller: 31:55

Well, I have a to-do list. How about you? Did you enjoy this week's episode with Darren? I did, and I'm already thinking about how I might be able to implement it inside the business. So thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast. We're building future episodes, and we wanna know what else we should be talking about. So here's a favor, a tiny little favor if you can do it for us. Like and subscribe to the show. The algorithms love it. But then also comment on this episode. What did Darren say that made you go, “I never thought of it that way,” or “Wow, that's a killer idea.” When we see that stuff, we know that this episode helped you out. So like, subscribe, comment, give us the feedback. That way we know we're on the right track. Also, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you're missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, Founder of the Small Business Owners Community. Thanks for joining us on this journey. We appreciate your support, and we'll be back soon with more tools to help you build your business with The Professional Photographer Podcast. See you next time.