Every Day, Every Customer: Five Ways To Redefine Service Standards
Dania Beach, Fla. (January 8, 2024)
CEO David Diestel featured in Forbes Magazine
David Diestel is the CEO of FirstService Residential, one of North America’s largest property management groups that takes care of and manages homes and condominiums in more than 9,000 residential communities. FirstService employs more than 18,000 associates who are making their residents’ (customers’) lives better.- The First Call: Diestel realized that keeping so many people aligned with the company’s vision and values would require consistent reminders. So, in 2012, FirstService started the First Call program, where at the beginning of every day, managers meet with their teams for 15 minutes to discuss mission and values and celebrate the culture. In addition, they discuss what’s working and not working, anything special happening at the properties they’re managing, and more. And every day, they have a theme. For example, on Tuesdays, they share a customer story. These meetings don’t happen once a month or even once a week. This is every day.
- Measure Your Success: FirstService Residential takes measuring customer satisfaction very seriously. Diestel is proud that they not only use NPS (Net Promotor Score) as a primary measurement of success, but also that they have Fred Reichheld, the inventor of NPS, on their board. In addition, they have an employee version of NPS. FirstService Residential wants to make sure its customers are happy, as well as its employees. In short, track your success, both outside and inside your company.
- Don’t Just Measure, Take Action: The NPS score is just the first step in the customer and employee satisfaction initiative. You must also take action. Diestel said getting feedback is essential, but what you do with the feedback is more so. That’s been the secret to the company’s retention and growth. It does three things for FirstService Residential. First, it helps provide an understanding of the organization’s health at the client level. Second, it helps them understand how their teams are performing in the eyes of the client. Third, it allows leadership and management to spot trends, both good and bad, throughout the organization, which gives them an opportunity to fix what isn’t working and scale the approaches that are working across the company.
Diestel says, “If I think back to what our single greatest success was, it was creating that as a starting point.” When the CEO of a major company shares his “single greatest success,” you have to pay attention!