Life Lesson

Customer Service Is More Than Just Customer Service

Garth Beyer

I saw the story about a waiter getting a $5,000 dollar tip earlier today. It reminded me of a post I wrote a long while back related to a tip of 1% being given on a $133.54 bill and how I typically tip around 30% on waiters and waitresses. I referred to my tactic as Dressing Casual But Getting Looked At Like The Top 1%

Seeing this video however just confirms that if you want to be tipped big, then your customer service abilities must be out-freaking-standing. On my earlier post regarding the 1% tip, I mentioned that I typically tip a large amount but if the customer service is terrible, then I tip an “average” to “below-average” amount. However, what my average tipping amount, or anyones average tipping amount is has very little to do with how much of a big tip a waiter or waitress would get.

If the customer service provided is the most significant you have ever received, do you think the waiter or waitress will care if they get tipped $60 from a guy like me or $55 from a typical person? Both will make the waiter or waitress ecstatic. One waitress who I tipped $50 ended up friending me on Facebook and saying how appreciative she was. Regardless of the type of person that is being served, if you want a huge tip, the waiter or waitress (or you) have to work for it.

Great customer service doesn’t stop at just giving great customer service. The waiter that received the $5,000 dollar tip had much more than great customer service. It was noted in the video that the couple who had given him the huge tip were regulars. This means he wasn’t providing great service solely to them, he had it toward everyone. The couple had not only first hand experience with the waiter, they had seen how he treated everyone else while they were there. It wasn’t a one time deal. The waiter was consistent in his excellent customer service.

Above all, the reason why the waiter got the $5,000 tip, and the one quality that makes customer service essential, is that he connected with his customers. He was human, he talked to them, they knew about his smashed up car, he befriended them. He made a personal connection with a customer on top of delivering phenomenal customer service. Remember what I said about serving in the business 101 class

 

Stay Positive & Big Tips Happen Because You Care That They Care

Garth E. Beyer

Good News or Bad News First?

Garth Beyer

Once you realize that there is always a bad part to every good part and good part to every bad part, whether it affects you or not, the choice between hearing the good news or bad news first becomes easy to pick. In fact, you don’t even need to pick at all. All that matters is which side you listen to.

Stay Positive & Remember The Third Law Of Emotion

Garth E. Beyer

Garth’s Riff On FollowBack Courtesy

Garth Beyer

I had nearly 500 followers on Twitter four days ago. Something had changed and I lost almost 100 of them.

The reason behind it? Dunbar’s Law, or at least an attempt at it. I thought I would carry the 150 maximum of people in a group to the web. I would only follow 150 people who interacted, who had fun, who shared concrete content and who really connected. Four days ago, I spent an hour unfollowing nearly everyone who has never communicated with me or who I do not remember getting any links or information  worth reading from their tweets. I unfollowed roughly 900 people, half of which were people who were also following me. Keep that in mind.

After I cleared out those who I followed, my followers dropped increasingly. People who programmed their Twitter to only follow those who followed them, no longer followed me. What does this have to say about follow-back courtesy? A lot.

Taking my statistics, only 1/9th or 11% of your followers are only following you because you followed them. (A small percentage than what I would still assume to be true) This gives you an immediate sense that you are reaching people, that people care what you Tweet and have an inclination to interact with you. All false. For a person who has 4,000 followers that is nearly 500 of them that still have no clue who you are or care to know. Sure, that may not be a lot, but now let’s look at the number of people who I unfollowed.

Roughly 900 people I unfollowed because they had no interaction, no concrete content, and flatly, no care in the world that I exist. Which is fine – Remember, my purpose was to go after Dunbar’s law anyway, I am only wanting people of my Tribe. There’s no need to give a false sense of identity by following people who have nothing to do with my niche (other than for entertainment). This leads to the reason Twitter should get rid of the Follow-Back button.

Have you noticed that Twitter is getting less click-throughs, less interactions with multiple people, and overall less content. It’s all noise – no harmony. The reason why? Too many followers and too many people are just following back. I used to dedicate a couple of hours to reading content via twitter feed. After my second attempt, I realized how much passionate content was lacking. I merely had followed hundreds of people who had a similar interest thinking that they would want to interact over their tweets. Sorry though, I don’t think the lack of hot boys in the midwest has anything to do with public speaking. Nor does the other 899 people who we’re tweeting – roughly 45-50 people consistently tweet great information and interact continuously with people they connect best with. I am now only following around 50 people, far from Dunbar’s law.

Let’s look at Twitter from the should-be view.

Twitter should not be only about following people, it should be about interacting. Twitter should not have a follow-back button because you don’t want people to follow you because you follow them. Do you realize that if you have two people following each other, you get nowhere? Twitter should be about being a leader, connecting to other leaders, and teaching followers how to become a leader. To become a Twitter leader: create harmonic content, consistently interact with other leaders and passionate followers, and by all means, to become a Twitter leader, quit following people back.

 

Stay Positive & Follow Forward Instead

Garth E. Beyer

The Right Perspective On Mentorship

Garth Beyer

You’re looking for mentors to give to you, but you need to give to them.

When you get a mentor, as it benefits anyone who does, the obligation to fulfill expectations is only the base of what defines the relationship between mentor and pupil.

What makes it work is what you have to show and give the mentor. Not in the sense of doing as the mentor says, but doing more, proving them wrong, and surprising them. You may view them as a mentor, but they need to view themselves as observers, as pushers, as people who are about to get their minds blown.

The thing about this post-industrial society is that the teachers, mentors, evaluators and advisers… they need to be re-taught. They have grown up learning how to follow orders and eventually on how to give orders, how to maintain the status quo and the terrible curriculum of teaching set by tradition. It’s your job as the pupil of a mentor to be the teacher, to represent this post-industrial generation and to not only create something innovative and irreplaceable, but to change the way education is taught.

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Remind Them What It Means To Be A Mentor

Garth E. Beyer

Mentors Can Be Unnecessary

Garth Beyer

As long as you still have evaluators.

It’s your responsibility to jump the gap, exceed expectations and take risks.  You don’t need anybody telling you how or what to do – you make the process your art, not theirs.

However, you still need to be held accountable for current improvement and future success, so evaluators are necessary. Lucky for you, there are 7 billion of them.

 

Stay Positive & You Get A Perfect 10 For Trying

Garth E. Beyer

 

Pushing It & Laziness

Garth Beyer

There is an action in the middle of the word “pushing” and there is a lot to be taken from it.

Laziness needs to be calculated by the amount of work expected to be done. One can easily be lazy at home by just sitting on the couch with a bag of trail mix while watching a movie. On the other hand, no one calls it lazy when a person does exactly what they are told at their job. They don’t call it lazy because they don’t have high expectations of the person other than to do a mediocre job at what they are told to do. This is a false pretense. Believe it or not – and trust me, it’s a lot harder to believe it, but the benefits outweigh the ones of denying it – you are lazy if you only do what is told of you. Both because what you are told to do is factory work and that the economy has yet to figure out a way to replace you with a machine. But don’t worry, they will be able to soon.

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether a machine is invented to take your place or someone offers to do it at a cheaper price as long as you quit being lazy. To quit being lazy means that you have to start pushing it. Lazy people at work don’t go the extra mile, they don’t ship the product before the deadline (and sometimes not even by the deadline). Nor do they do more than is asked or even ask for more. No. That is what pushers do, productive people, successful people, people who are making the robots to do your job. The pushers are the ones who didn’t just take a stand against laziness, they pushed it away.

There’s a special quality about people who push things forward, push things through and push things up. It has to do with the action inside of the word “pushing”. The pushers became successful because they understood that while they push to be better, their actions tell others to “Sh”. They create different ways to accomplish tasks in such a brilliant way that it mesmerizes others into silence.

Remember those people who said you couldn’t? The truth about pushing it is that you do it to shut them up. You do it to prove yourself right. You do it because you can’t move forward unless you push what’s in front of you.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Tell Me To “Sh”, Make Me

Garth E. Beyer