1) The document discusses 4 ways for a company to go from good to awesome, including situational awesome, occupational awesome, and divisional awesome. 2) Situational awesome refers to awesome moments that occur in everyday interactions and attitudes, like a hotel employee sending photos of a child's lost toy enjoying activities to make the parents feel better. 3) Occupational awesome refers to leveraging employee roles and daily interactions with customers to positively impact branding, like a retail employee passionately introducing customers to products. 4) Divisional awesome occurs when awesome customer experiences are provided consistently across a company's divisions and touchpoints rather than just in isolated incidents.

1. 4 Ways to Take Your
Company from Good to
Awesome
By Scott Stratten
Author of The Book of Business Awesome

2. Introduction
We can’t all be Zappos.com or work somewhere super cool like Google. And I’m glad
that we can’t, because if we were all the same, we’d all be perfectly ordinary.
When we see awesome companies at work around us, a few things can happen.
As customers, we love them for it.
They make the day-to-day chore of being a consumer so much more fun. We’ve all
seen enough boring commercials. We actually spend time and money on ways to avoid
being sold to, so the last thing we’re looking for is another boring sales pitch. Let’s be
honest, we get excited as customers when we’re just not treated badly. We can’t help
but lose our minds when something great happens.
4 Ways to Take Your Company from Good
to Awesome - Scott Stratten
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3. As business owners, the effects are a little more complicated.
For me, seeing and reading about the great things people do in business makes me
feel like I can do great things, too. That’s why I love to share them. But sometimes,
these examples can be intimidating and even limiting. It’s very easy to see an
awesome company in action and think that you’ll never be able to do the things they
can do, because you’re just getting started, or don’t have their budget or resources or
because your industry isn’t cool enough, or you’re sure your customers wouldn’t like
it. Other people’s awesome can sometimes make us feel a little small.
Too often, feeling intimidated becomes our excuse not to be awesome.
I want to make sure that, as you read this paper, you put yourself in the picture. Don’t
be overwhelmed or think that you need to mimic the stories I’m going to share.
Instead, be inspired to find your own brand of awesome, that only you can bring to
the table.
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4. Using Situational Awesome to Build Relationships
Business is built on relationships — on the simple act of people interacting and
engaging with others — and that all starts with the individual, with you.
In every great business story there is an individual who started it all. Every great
marketing campaign started with someone deciding to take a chance and step outside
the norm. The outstanding customer service a company is known for was executed
one contact at a time and started with one voice deciding to care. They may not have
always executed it on their own, but at the start there was one.
I call this situational awesome, and we can all do it. We have access to it every day in
our attitudes and interactions. It starts with the passion we have for our work and/or
our product. It can be as simple as just giving a damn about our customers. Sometimes
it’s as simple as saying “I’m sorry this happened” to a customer on the service line. It
might sound simple, but this is the start of every great story I share in this paper.
Someone decided to care or to try. This can be a cashier, a janitor or a volunteer.
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5. If you are a parent reading this, then you know all about the panic that comes when
your child loses their favorite toy. You know the one, the tattered old bear they can’t
sleep without. For my son, it was his “Soosoo,” a pacifier, and he’d rock three of them
at a time. He’s something of a pacifier ninja. When pacifiers went missing, there was a
panic of epic proportions. How will this child ever go to sleep without his Soosoo?
If you don’t have children, just imaging leaving your iPhone somewhere. There you go.
We all know that feeling of panic and how we’d do everything and anything just to
hold our pacifier/iPhone in our mouth/hands again.
When Chris Hurn’s family enjoyed a vacation at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, they returned
home happy with their time away, only to find their son had left his beloved toy,
Joshie the giraffe, behind.
*Cue parental panic*
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6. They did what any good parent would do: They lied, explaining to their son that
Joshie wasn’t lost, but simply enjoying an extended vacation.
The Ritz-Carlton was in touch with them that night to let them know that Joshie had
been found and would be returned to them as soon as possible.
This is where a good story could end. The family was happy, Joshie was found and on
his way home. The Ritz-Carlton provided a level of service so much better than what
most businesses would do, it’s almost blog worthy in itself. But, it didn’t end there.
As parents, we’ll do just about anything to stop this, including lie.
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7. The cleaning staff that found the toy understood just how important the little guy
was and decided to take it upon themselves to go above and beyond ok, and be
awesome. They took pictures of Joshie, enjoying his extended vacation — on the
golf course, getting a massage, meeting up with friends, even working off his room
bill by helping the Loss Prevention Team.
They sent the photos, plus his Ritz-Carlton staff ID badge, home with Joshie.
Joshie enjoying the pool.
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8. Amazing.
The person who did this wasn’t a top-level CEO. This wasn’t part of any plan or
statement sent down to the cleaning staff. This is situational awesome —
employees, in this case a front-line worker, seeing an opportunity to be awesome
and taking it.
They earned more than the loyalty of the family. The story was written about and
shared online and the awesome spread. With over 5,000 likes on Facebook and
almost 600 tweets, the story reached a far greater audience than could have ever
been intended. In light of this story, when I think about the Ritz-Carlton now, I
don’t picture their fancy logo or crafted commercials; I think of the story of Joshie
— and I bet others do too. That is what branding is all about, and it’s happening
every day, dynamically changing based on the experience of our market. That is
situational awesome at its best.
Read more about Joshie’s stay at the Ritz-Carlton here.
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9. Finding Our Occupational Awesome
Next we have occupational awesome, which although similar to situational
awesome, comes with a little more definition.
Occupational awesome is about our roles and how they define windows of
awesome for us. While it might be easy to assume that more senior positions would
have an easier time finding opportunities for awesome, this isn’t always true. For
example, customer service agents — because of their daily interaction with
customers — have a special opportunity to make amazing things happen in their
companies every day. Front line workers are given the ability to make a huge impact
on brand perception, because their jobs give them so many opportunities to
engage with customers.
Other positions in a company come with their own opportunities. Every single job
in a company is important, and every single person is a part of your branding and
marketing.
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10. A while back I did a marketing experiment and went to my local mall on a Tuesday
afternoon — not exactly a booming time for retail. I walked from store to store and
paid attention to the staff and how I was met and treated at each stop. In all but
one store, I was ignored or, at best, tolerated. Business would be so much better
without these pesky customers, right? Questions were answered as quickly as
possible, and I was treated mostly as a nuisance. Until I came to Lush.
Lush sells soap, bath balms and salts — all 10 x 10 feet of it. I walked in and was
greeted excitedly, offered a tour and went on to learn more about soap than I had
ever intended.
I walked out 20 minutes later with $80 in unplanned soap purchases, all because
someone cared that I had chosen her store for a visit that day. She didn’t know I
would write about her or speak about her. She didn’t care whether I was a
returning customer or a new one. She simply cared about her job and showed a
passion for her product. And you know what happened when the next person
walked in? The exact same thing. Her job meant that she was responsible for
greeting customers and answering their questions, and she did so awesomely each
and every time.
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11. To foster occupational awesome at your company, you have to inspire your
employees about your products, service and offerings. Help them connect what
they do every day — no matter what it is — to the overall business. Businesses that
do this will enjoy better occupational awesome.
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12. Inspiring Divisional Awesome
Next up on our list of awesome business is divisional awesome. This section of
awesome business is about the amazing things that can happen when people work
together and the results of their collaboration are greater than the sum of their
parts.
It’s easier to understand divisional awesome, by understanding what it is not; you
don’t have divisional awesome when your great service doesn’t extend through the
resolution chain. To be divisionally awesome, you have to be awesome at every
touch point with your customers.
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13. As businesses, we run our companies through silos. There is marketing, customer
service, sales, human resources and more. We use these divisions to keep ourselves
organized and make sure we aren’t missing anything important, right? The problem
is that customers don’t see silos. If they see your company name on a social media
account and reach out to you, only to be told that the account isn’t the right place
to ask customer service questions, they will likely be upset to be in touch with a
company official who isn’t willing to help them. No matter where someone interacts
with your company or brand, you better offer them an outstanding experience; if
you don’t, you’re not awesome and you run the risk of losing customers.
Here’s an example of divisional awesome: I travel around the country speaking to
audiences about awesome and unawesome business stories, which means I spend a
lot of time in airports. A few months ago, I was waiting to go through security for a
Delta flight. It was a busy time at the airport, and so I had given myself lots of extra
time for the wait. As I finally made it to the front of the line, a group of flight
attendants pushed their way in front of me.
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14. Now I understand the first rule of flight club: the plane will leave without me, but
not without them. I know they need to get through security. But after the fifth
person pushed my bag out of the way without so much as an “excuse me” my
patience wore thin. And I said, “Come on now. Not even an ‘excuse me?’”
The attendant right in front of me took some offense to this and, in her snarkiest
tone, replied, “We said excuse me. Why don’t you open your ears?”
Seriously? I could not believe my very open ears. Did she not realize I was her
customer? She was a Delta employee, wearing a Delta uniform with a shiny Delta
pin, and, at that moment, she was Delta to me. And I was furious.
And so I did what we do these days. I tweeted.
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15. Within a few minutes, the Delta account replied to me with an apology.
And that was it. They didn’t offer me a jet or a free flight. No one delivered ice
cream to gate D9. They sent a simple acknowledgment and that was it.
The social media department used the opportunities for awesome available to
them and diffused an angry customer. They made the difference between me
speaking across the country about “why I never, never, never fly delta and you
shouldn’t either,” and made it a story about brand recovery instead. That is
divisional awesome.
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16. Within divisional awesome, there is opportunity for situational awesome and
occupational awesome. The difference is that divisional awesome extends to an
entire department. When you start to achieve divisional awesome, use that
department as a model for other departments that need to get awesome.
When one division of a company starts to shine, hopefully the others will be
inspired to stand out, too.
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17. Using Institutional Awesome to Be Totally Awesome
And last, but certainly not least, is institutional awesome. This is where you find
companies who through the work of individuals and groups have created brand-
wide amazingness; it’s the highest level of awesome, because it means situational
awesome has turned to occupational awesome to divisional awesome and onto
institutional awesome.
Institutionally awesome companies are the ones known for their outstanding
customer service, products, services and campaigns. This level has an especially
powerful role to play through hiring and human resources. Here, a company can
create opportunities for awesome at every level, from the individual up.
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18. As far as I’m concerned, HR is the most crucial component of a company. If you
don’t hire the right people, nothing that marketing or sales can do for you will
matter. The old “warm body” syndrome, where hiring would simply mean filling
in lower-paid positions in your company with anyone who came along, is really
asking for trouble today in the Internet era. It is these frontline workers, who are
usually the least paid and least appreciated, who actually have the most
influence day to day on your brand. And unlike pervious generations, customers
now have a loud and public platform to voice their grievances.
People are a funny species. We all think we’re unique in what makes us
successful in our industries when, in reality, we all thrive off the same basic
principles. We want to matter. We want to believe that we have a greater impact
with the work that we do. And the minute we think that we don’t, our
carelessness comes to the surface. If your employees know they make a
difference on a day-to-day basis, I can promise you that not only will they do
their jobs better, but they will remain with your company longer. And awesome
HR is the key to making all of that a reality.
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19. Unfortunately, most of the time HR is involved on the negative side — with what
employees are doing or can do wrong. Rather than focusing on the “what ifs” on the
bad side, we need HR to be a catalyst for what employees can do better. This is
especially true for social media and establishing guidelines to create opportunities for
success rather than trying to censor workers.
At the institutional level we also see what public relations can do for a brand and how
awesome PR will not only do damage control, it will make the company come out
looking even better than they did before the mistake.
A great example of the value of a prompt PR recovery that demonstrated institutional
awesome was FedEx’s response after a video of one of their employees went viral
back in December 2011. The video was a 10-second clip of one of their delivery
drivers chucking a computer monitor over a fence rather than ringing the bell at the
gate and taking it to the front door. The video could not have been shot more
brilliantly. The camera angle showed both the driver walking up and the FedEx truck,
complete with logo perfectly positioned into the background. One guy, obviously
dissatisfied with the service, shot and uploaded the video. Then the geekalanche
began. The un-awesome spread, and millions of views poured in.
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20. Faster than any brand I have ever seen, FedEx responded, and within a day or so,
there was a blog posted to their corporate page titled, “Absolutely, Positively
Unacceptable.” You can read the post here.
A bad delivery by a FedEx employee.
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21. The post was thorough, showed remorse and gave no excuses. Comments on the
page were left open for anyone who wanted to contribute. An overwhelming
percentage of these comments ended up being positive and supportive to the
brand. They included a video of their senior vice president of U.S. operations
apologizing for the customer’s experience and let everyone know publicly that
they have resolved the issue with the customer and were disciplining the driver
responsible. The apology was widely shared online. And although it did not catch
up to the spread of the original video, it did hit the majority of their customer
base.
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22. Coming Together in Awesomeness
Together, situational, occupational, divisional and institutional awesome come
together and become your brand voice, the message and the image people think
of when they think about your company. No matter whether your business is a
one-person show just getting started or a multi-national corporation, whether you
are a front-line worker or a top-level executive, you can create awesome. Don’t let
the awesome of others intimidate you or keep you from moving forward. Focus
on finding your own windows of awesome every day and remember the
individual is the start.
How can you be awesome today?
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to Awesome - Scott Stratten
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23. About Scott Stratten
Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing. He is an
expert in Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing which he
calls Un-Marketing. It’s all about positioning yourself as a
trusted expert in front of your target market, so when
they have the need, they choose you. He has over
135,000 people follow his daily rantings on Twitter and
was named one of the top 5 social media influencers in
the world on Forbes.com. His new book entitled “The
Book Of Business Awesome: How Engaging Your
Customers And Employees Can Make Your Business
Thrive” is a best-seller, breaking the rules of how
companies are truly marketed and grown through the
current online/offline world. www.unmarketing.com

24. About the sponsor
About LogMeIn, Inc.LogMeIn, Inc. (NASDAQ:LOGM) simplifies how people connect with
each other and the world around them to drive meaningful interactions, deepen
relationships, and create better outcomes for individuals and businesses. One of the
world’s top 10 public SaaS companies, and a market leader in communication &
conferencing, identity & access, and customer engagement & support solutions, LogMeIn
has millions of customers spanning virtually every country across the globe. LogMeIn is
headquartered in Boston with additional locations in North America, Europe, Asia and
Australia.