I recently heard a story about a Paradise Bakery & Café general manager who earned the nickname “Cowbell Sandy” from her adoring staff.

It seems that a couple of years ago she started an incentive program to increase add-on sales of bottled water, cookies, and other high margin items. She worked with vendors to sponsor the prizes, ranging from iTunes gift cards to iPods.

To be successful, in any business, we need to give our customers what they want, in a way that works for our business. We should focus on doing what our customers want AND what we can do well.

Then we need to do it well. In fact we should do it better than anyone else in our market. And we need to do it that way with every customer every time no exceptions and no excuses.

Do the employees at your company view customer service as a department or a company culture? Do the employees that have the least amount of contact with customers get miffed by all the attention your customer service department gets?

In speaking with many companies, I am frequently told “Oh, we have customer service under control. We put our staff through training when they are hired. We even have training programs that we occasionally have for our staff. They really enjoy those events.”

Holding Customer Service Training Programs for your staff is an excellent idea and the best way to reinforce the customer service mindset for your organization. But don’t lose sight of a crucial truth…… Establishing Superior Customer Service is a PROCESS, not an Event.

Recently we had a new water softener and heater installed.  And though I enjoy the good feeling I get from improving our home, I loathe the process.

I feel this way because too many retailers and contractors have made it a horrible experience for customers.  From “bait and switch” advertisements to aggressive up-selling to the cliched service scheduler who proudly announces their installers will be there between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm. Ugh!

A friend shared the following email that she sent to the individual responsible for Customer Service at Danier Leather in Toronto.

I am taking a few moments to email you about the poor customer service I received today at approximately 12.30 pm in your Eaton Centre store.

Conducting team-building workshops with thousands of people over the past ten years, I’ve learned something very powerful:

The quiet voices almost always have the best ideas. And they have them faster than the rest of us.
Nearly every team-building activity I’ve ever witnessed has a moment when the “quiet” person says, “What if we (insert any brilliant idea here)?” Sadly, that brilliant idea is rarely listened to. Some reasons why include:

When making hiring decisions within your organization, be sure to consider the “friendliness factor.”

Customers make their purchasing decisions based on how they feel.  When they are developing relationships with their service and product supplies, a person who smiles, is inviting, and is easy to talk to ranks high in the preferred qualities that customers list.  Be aware that the “Friendliness Factor” is not always something you can train for.  It really is based on the personality of the associates we hire.

I made a call to an office today and was greeted with the most droll sounding phone receptionist – “XYZ’s Office.  This’s Elaine. Mayep you?”

No, those were not typos, that was exactly how she sounded.  Besides the fact that I couldn’t really understand her words, she had the enthusiasm of someone who had just been told that she needed a root canal.  Which, actually, is funny because it was the dentist’s office that I was calling.

I’ve got a confession to make before I begin this article: I almost failed my one and only required science class in college.

I tell you that because in a second I’m going to sound like a complete science nerd and I feel the need to represent myself accurately.

” The music is not in the guitar.”

This line is part of the extraordinary book called Life is Good by Jake and Rocket (aka, Bert and John Jacobs).  It holds a special message for remarkable service.  Examine how much energy and resources organizations typically expend on CRM software, ironclad return policies, service processes and procedures, and call center metric mania.  In the end, service is not about stuff–it is about people creating positively memorable experiences for customers.  Even erudite and super sterile business to business connections are far less B2B than P2P–people to people.

During a recent radio show interview, the host, Aldonna Ambler made a passing comment that struck a chord for me. She said something like this: Sometimes the biggest asset you bring to your company can become your most limiting factor. Since I do a great deal of work helping people discover and release limitations, her comment rang true.