Life Lesson

There’s the service that apologizes after an issue; the service that tries to mitigate a bad experience and keep you loyal. We know this as customer service.

The more we have to do customer service, the greater the signal is of a broken brand experience.

Rather than staffing more apologizers, it’s worth investing in more custom services.

These might be designers to get the product working better. It might be a point of contact that actually does customize a service for someone to ensure it meets their needs before they’re enrolled. It could even mean a better written instruction manual.

Custom servicers will never eliminate the need for customer servicers, but they are vital for ensuring longevity of a brand and to prevent customer service burn out.

Stay Positive & Put The Custom in “Customers”

Photo credit

Give and take gets a bad rap.

The take implies selflishness; that what you get is for you.

But if you give and learn, that opens a wide door for more generosity.

Giving is fairly easy, but ensuring you learn something from every interaction you can – that takes effort.

Effort well worth it.

Stay Positive & Give Every Day (But Remember To Learn, Too)

Photo credit

Giving a larger estimate on, say, what you will return on someone’s ad spend can be a great thing to do. It comes layered with a promise, accountability and pressure on making you smarter to ensure you get a little more return than anticipated.

Telling someone it’s going to take 40 minutes for a table to open up instead of the 30 you think it will is a win-win. It saves your butt if something happens that truly does cause a 10 minute backup and, if not, it provides a wonderful surprise and delight for the group that thought they were going to have to wait 40.

Overestimating works far better than underestimating.

Then again, overestimate too much and relationships crumble, trust is broken and any thought of igniting loyalty becomes a distant dream.

Risk lightly. But still risk.

Stay Positive & Slightly By Slightly

Photo credit

The beauty of leaping now is that now is the worst you can do.

After the first leap is made, whether it’s a total mess or not, you have information that you can act on (what worked, what didn’t) to leap again, but better.

Go ahead. Do your worst. Let’s go ahead and get it out of the way.

Stay Positive & Then Do Better

Photo credit

The best leaders either assume positive intention and understand that a person was acting with the best information they had or they give the team member a chance to explain the actions.

When you limit the chance to explain, you don’t just eliminate the space for a dialogue, you eliminate the chance to grow a greater understanding of how someone thinks.

And if you don’t know how someone thinks, then you’re certainly not going to effectively get them to think better, smarter, faster.

Stay Positive & Make The Time To Listen

Photo credit

The easier you’re categorized, the faster you’re slotted away in a customer’s brain.

But you don’t want to be tucked away with all the other noise and competitors and files in the cabinet, do you?

Stay Positive & Far Better To Transform Someone

Photo credit

Do you see a website refresh as a cost or investment?

Do you see personal customer service as a cost or investment?

Do you see packaging as a cost or investment?

Do you see an employee development fund as a cost or investment?

Now that you know where you sit. Answer the questions again for your competitors.

Do your competitors see a website refresh as a cost or investment?

Do your competitors see customer service as a cost or investment?

Do your competitors see packaging as a cost or investment?

Do your competitors see an employee development fund as a cost or investment?

Now that you know where your competitor sits, answer the following question.

Are you any different?

Stay Positive & All It Takes Is A Mindset To Differentiate

Photo credit