Freeing Your Inner Fred

The Fred Factor of Customer

Service
What you will learn today
• What is a Fred?
• Becoming a Fred
• Developing other Freds
• Bringing the Fred Principle to your office
What is a Fred?
• Fred the Postman
• Fred Factor Video

• What distinguished Fred from other Postmen?

Fred Principles
Principle #1 –
Everyone makes a difference
Everyone Makes a Difference
• Do I add to or take away from the experience of
students, faculty, staff, and my colleagues?
• Do I move my office closer to or further away from
its goals?
• Do I perform my work in an ordinary way, or do I
execute it superbly?
• Do I lighten someone’s burden or add to it?
• Do I lift someone up or put someone down?
 “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should
sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or
Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote
poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the
hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say ‘Here lived
a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do you wake up in the morning
intending to change the world?
• Your sphere of influence
• How do you change lives?

Everyone makes a difference every day

• What kind of difference are you making?
• Supporting/problem-solving vs criticizing/belittling
Three Difference-Making Strategies
• Strategy 1 – Identify when you will make a difference
• Strategy 2 – Target the people to whom you will make a
difference
• Customers, Family, Boss, Teammates, Friends and
Strangers
• Strategy 3 – Be the difference
• Plan ahead; reflect
What kind of difference will you make today?
Fred Principles

Principle #2 –
Success is built on relationships
Seven Bs of Relationship Building
1. Be real
2. Be interested – interested people attract appreciation
3. Be a good listener
4. Be empathetic
Everyone you meet is fighting a tough battle
5. Be honest
6. Be helpful
7. Be prompt
 Interactions
• Transactional - Interactions
focus on results
• Often at the cost of
relationships
• Go directly to the outcome
• Can make others feel
devalued or used
• Soup Nazi
• Relational - Interactions
emphasize how people
are treated in the
process of achieving
results
• Doesn’t ignore
outcomes, but
means are important
part of the end
Fred Principles

Principle #3 –
You must continually create value for
others and it doesn’t have to cost a penny
“There are two types of people who never achieve very
much in their lifetimes. One is the person who won’t do
what he or she is told to do, and the other is the person
who does only what he or she is told to do.”
Andrew Carnegie
 Adding Value
1. Tell the truth
2. Practice personality power
3. Attract through artistry
4. Meet needs in advance
5. Add “good stuff”
6. Subtract “bad stuff”
7. Simplify
8. Improve
9. Surprise others
10. Entertain others
Fred Principles

Principle #4 –
You can reinvent yourself regularly
Reinventing Yourself
• Grow yourself, Grow your value
• Be led by compelling reasons
• Capitalize your life experiences
• Increase your IQ (implementation quotient)
• Improve on the best
• Practice the one-a-day plan
• Compete with yourself
Developing other Freds
• Find
• Reward
• Educate
• Demonstrate
Find
• Let them find you
• Discover dormant Freds
• Hire Freds
• Build your Fred team
• We want a team of Freds led by a Fred
Reward
• We don’t get the behavior we hope for, beg for, or
demand. We get the behavior we reward!
Educate – Increase your Freducation
• Examples are everywhere
• Good and bad
• Dissect and debrief
• Identify the good idea
• Adapt the idea to the situation
• Look for ways to improve it
• Apply it
• Teach miracle working
• Pull, don’t push
Demonstrate
• Inspire, don’t intimidate
• Involve
• Initiate
• Improvise
Go Spread Fred
• Recognize the Freds in your life
• Acknowledge Freds for their contribution
• Pay Freds back
Thank you!