In today’s competitive marketplace extending excellent customer service is essential to the survival of any business. I hope by now most of us understand the importance of taking care of the customer and exceeding their expectations.  If some of you are like me, you spent your leisure time reading books like “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, or “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters. I read these books and took them as gospel because they offer sound principles for creating a vision of what excellent customer service should look like.  I truly believe that these books and a selection of others really help us to delve into the principles for taking care of the people and maintain our customer’s loyalty.

          We have great examples of companies that live by the customer loyalty principle by constantly trying to be on the cutting edge of services and products. Such companies that come to mind are Starbucks, Nordstrom, Pike Place Fish Market, The Four Seasons, and Apple. These are companies who set the mark for creative and enlightened organizations that are always finding ways to make the customer say “wow”.  Consumer brag to others about the services they receive at these customer centered organizations and therefore create a word of mouth buzz that creates exponential growth and success.

          As managers you have probably tried to instill certain campaigns or slogans at your company. You made sure your employees understood and practiced the following procedures:

·         Greeting the guest with a smile and a salutation.

·         Looking for the “moment of truth”, the opportunity to make an impression on your customer with each interaction.

·         Soliciting feedback from the guest or customer.

·         Employee empowerment.

·         Taking care of the “internal customer” (teamwork)

The list goes on, but in our organizations I am sure we have all dealt with the above initiatives at one time or another.  If your organization is a progressive one, then many of the above initiatives are common practice and part of the expected norm.  By the way, have you ever walked into one of the national video store franchises?  You walk through the familiar doors in search of the newest “Rambo” movie on the way you plan to drop off your last rental – “P.S. – I love You” (My wife’s idea). As you walk in the door, you are hit with “hello” from two or three employees.  Rather than be impressed by their great service you are actually annoyed by their forced salutation. They are not sincere and it shows. Some executive at that company decided long ago that all of the video store employees will greet the guest as they walk in the door.  Forget about greeting me from across the room as I walk in the door. Instead, try not to ignore me the rest of the time I am in the store. Say “Hello” to me when we are face to face or passing in the aisles. Give me an opinion about a movie that I should see or ask me if I found everything ok. The point is that when something seems scripted or forced then it is not going to work on the customer, instead it will cheapen the customer experience. “Do you want to supersize that?”

              Ok! We all know the importance of customer loyalty because it costs less to get a customer to come back then to create a new one. We all know that the customer is king because they pay our bills and paychecks. We all know that our employees have to be friendly and have good attitudes or the customers won’t come back. We all know that an unsatisfied customer will tell far more people than a happy customer.  So how do we make our employees follow these initiatives and constantly work toward improving their services? It is easy. You be good leaders and managers. Huh?  “No, it’s the employees fault.” “It’s hard to find good people now.”  I say B.S. (Bogus Sandwich).

To the people that truly know; the philosophy of customer loyalty and constant improvement were studied, researched and taught by an American statistician. Dr. Edwards Deming is the man who helped industry leaders in post-World War II Japan rebuild and become the dominant force for quality and innovation in the world. That’s right! The father of the modern Japanese industry is an American. His teachings have been carried out by such companies as Sony, Fuji, Toyota, Honda and a multitude of others. In fact every year Japan still honors the most innovative or successful company with the Deming Award. Deming’s teachings were so simple yet they are still some of the most powerful management philosophies today which Deming referred to as “profound knowledge”. Some of the points from his 14 point list from his book “Out of the Crisis” are:

·         Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs. (1)

·         Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs (5)

·         Institute training on the job (6)

·         Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers (7)

·         Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (8)

·         Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service. (9)

·         Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force. (10)

·         Remove barriers that rob the hourly paid worker of his right to pride in workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. (12)

·         Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement  (13)

·         Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.  (14)

As you can see, the father of quality and improvement says that quality begins in the boardroom with the leaders and managers. This especially counts for service companies as well.  Leaders, owners, and manager make the rules and the procedures. They can create the empowerment in the employee or tie their hands and have them afraid to make a decision. They are the ones that decide how much should be spent on training and what objectives are important. The owners are the ones that decide if they are going to share part of the profits with the employee and make them feel like part of the company. The leaders and owners are the ones that decide how they are going to treat the employees on their interactions. Are they going to set goals and work toward helping the employee to achieve the goal or are they going to leave them alone and just dump all over them when the employee does something wrong.  The leaders decide if an employees or customer’s idea will be implemented or not. So you can keep blaming the line employee for the bad customer service or you can take a deep look at the root cause of it all, leadership and owners.

We want our people to treat our customers with warmth and respect. How do we treat our people? We want our people to constantly improve their work standards and output. Do we provide the on-going training and listen to their feedback?  We want our people to be able to serve the customer to the fullest without making them wait and go through hoops. Are they afraid to try anything without your approval because they know if they screw up you will be all over them? Look at yourself and see.

Your store, restaurant, factory or office is like an engine. Then you the leader are the ignition switch. Your people are the spark plugs, pistons and other moving parts of the engine. If the spark (behavior) you provide is weak or surges then the engine will sputter. If you don’t provide oil (training, goals, feedback, and support), then the engine will quickly burn and the engine will seize up. The parts of the engine all have their function but without the spark the engine will never run. Now go take a look at yourself, your other managers and the system itself. Can you improve something to ignite maximum performance from your employees? Always.

It’s Monday morning and you hate your job.  Your weekend was average. You tried to disconnect from your “prison” as much as you could, but the thoughts of your job still crept into your brain at every turn.  Saturday night you realized Sunday was near. Sunday night you zoned out in front of your television watching the Daily Ten on the E channel where you caught up on who is fat, who is on drugs, who is “hooking up”, and who is breaking up; by the last commercial you realize you have to work tomorrow. Tomorrow is now. Monday morning your alarm goes off for the fourth time of hitting the snooze button and you roll out of bed.  How does your face and body look at this time?  Come on, I know you’ve felt like this at least once in your life. Is your face tense and frowning? Are your shoulders slumped? Do you move slowly and languidly as you approach the shower? I even bet your breathing is shallow and soft.  (By the way if that is the way you feel at your job, get out!)

Erase that feeling of depression for now and think about another scenario. It’s Monday morning and your house phone rings. “That’s weird” you say.  “I never get phone calls at this time of the morning.” The person on the other line says, “This is KWXZ radio and we are calling to inform you that you have won an all expense paid trip to Hawaii!”  You scream, you jump up and down, your smiling uncontrollably, and your face loosens up.  You look like one of those crazy contestants that you use to make fun of on the Price is Right game show after they beat out the other screaming contestants for the Grand Prize.  Above are clear examples of your physiology.

Physiology is the movement of your body.  The movement of your body affects your moods and the moods of others. Physiology is the expressions of your face, the movement of your body, the position of your eyes, posture and breathing. What most of us don’t realize is that we can change our emotions and energy by the way we move.  What if in the morning after waking up, you actually stood up straight, take in a few deep breaths and smiled. Do something crazy.  Pound your chest, and shout a chant; “It’s a great day!” “It’s a great day!” You are setting yourself up to have a great day. You are forcing your body and brain to move into the position of being happy before you even start the day.  That is why some form of exercise or meditation is a great way to start any day because you are moving and breathing in a positive way and your emotions get a jolting charge.

How does this relate to customer service? Your positive or negative emotions affect everyone around you.  That is why in the customer service industry we are told to smile, even when we answer the phone. The smiling actually sparks a positive emotion to the customer in front of you. It is important while speaking to the guest to maintain an upright posture. If you are slouching or bent over the counter, you are showing the customer that you don’t even have enough energy to stand up straight and they will subconsciously feel their energy levels drain. 

When I observed the customer service training at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, I witnessed how important the pre-shift meeting was for their employees.  Bernie Vasquez, the Director of Customer Excellence of the MGM described the pre-shift meeting as a way to set the tone for the day.  It’s the opportunity to set the contagious mood of positive energy.

Eye contact is the key to any customer service engagement. Looking someone in the eyes while you are talking is a not only a sign of respect but it shows you are paying attention and willing to help them. This means that you are not shuffling papers, browsing your web pages or checking out the good looking patrons that are walking in behind your customers. Eye contact is difficult for some people. There are subconscious self esteem issues that causes some people to not be able to look someone in the eyes for a fixed period of time.  One of the most challenging exercises I did in a Landmark Forum seminar was to stand in front of another stranger and stare into their eyes without saying a word.  You find yourself laughing, looking at a fixed object, fidgeting and even sweating. A few participants even cried, because you can’t shield yourself from someone’s staring eyes.  This exercise really gives you a glimpse into your non-verbal communication and your self esteem issues that you were not aware of. Looking your customer in the eyes shows that you are in control and actively listening.

The tone and speed of your speaking sets the tone of your interaction as well. Did you ever have a teacher that spoke in a monotone voice? You spend part of the class making fun of the voice and the other part of the class drifting off into another world. You do everything but pay attention.  A captivating speaker speaks louder than normal but not too loud, also they use inflection and emphasis.  A good speaker uses good pronunciation for clear understanding. You emphasize certain emotion based words like wonderful view, beautiful weather, or exquisite cuisine.  A good customer service speaker nods “yes” while speaking and eventually the customer will nod and get in the “yes” mode themselves.

There is one final important key to your physiology and how it affects the emotions of your customers.  This final key is what author and speaker, Tony Robbins refers to as “mirror and matching”.  Did you know that if you mirror the movements and speech patterns of another person, they will like you and not know why? That does not mean that you are a mimic. You look for subtleties in the way that they speak. Do they speak fast or slow?  How are they holding their body? How do they move?  I remember observing a timeshare salesperson onetime who would take on the accents of the people in front of her, which I think is taking it too far.  If someone catches on that you are mirroring them, then they will be annoyed of course. The key is that you follow “some” of their patterns and that is how you build rapport with them.  Rapport building is the key to all good relationships because you are discovering a common bond between you.

You can move yourself into a good mood. You can talk yourself into a good mood and your good mood will send an electrical charge to the customers in front of you. You can set the tone and control interaction by keeping yourself charged. It’s not always easy because one negative encounter can zap your power. You must shake it off and say “next”, and pump your emotions up again by moving into it.   My challenge to you is that you try it for a few days. When you feel that you are slouching, jolt your body upright. When your face feels tight, loosen up and put a big smile on your face. Use your positive movements with everyone you come into contact with and see if you inadvertently change the emotions of the room or the customer you serve. Don’t get discouraged when it doesn’t always work. Be committed to conducting yourself in this way at all times and the people will be attracted to your energy.  Now try it!