How remarkable employees grew a business 1300%

Here is a tale of another retailer who took differentiation just a little further. I read of an interesting US retail growth story recently. Ice cream retailer Cold Stone Creamery has as its boss Doug Ducey. Now back in 1999, Doug made the decision to grow his ice cream business from its then 74 stores to 1000 within five years: an ambitious target. Although he already had differentiated his retail brand into a unique service offering in its product sector, he realised that he should not just be selling ice cream, but selling a memorable experience for his customers as well. The service offer at Cold Stone Creamery was that customers could create their own flavours by asking staff to create them on the spot by blending their stock flavours to order on a granite slab in front of the customer. Doug wanted to take this unique service proposition further. So he started hiring sales people who had outgoing personalities. People who could sing or dance, and engage his customers at the same time as serving them. Customers loved this extra helping of service to go with their ice cream. So much so, that they helped Doug achieve his ambitious growth target of 1000 stores within six years. Doug believes that hiring staff with the “X Factor”, allowed him to realise his business ambitions. Doug commented that: “you can have a great product and a great location but if your crew don’t leave an extraordinary impression on your customers, you’ll limit your business.”

via brightperspectives.co.uk a great post by Bill Brown

What makes your business sharable? What makes your business outstanding? What are the touchpoints in your business that people will talk about? What is YOUR purple cow?

Good service isn't good enough, in fact GREAT service isn't good enough either. Doug realized that the only way to grow was to have remarkable service. Remarkable service is exactly that. Customer interactions that people can make remarks about, service that will spread because customers talk about it.

What do people talk about after walking into your store?

Give them something to talk about.