Earlier,  I wrote about a hotel where the staff routinely lied to their customers.  They misled them by booking their reservations for a building that was not available. They let their customers believe they were getting a certain “product” even though they knew that product was not available. I consider that a lie.

In cases like these it would be easy to blame the employees for the bad behavior. But I don’t. At least not entirely. They were just acting on orders from management. And, who knows, their jobs might be at risk if they chose to not follow those orders.

On the other hand, no matter who and where we are, no matter what our jobs are, we always have a choice in what we do and how we do it. Misleading your customers is a lousy thing to do. It’s dishonest. If as an employee, I’m asked to do something I think is wrong, I always have a choice to not do it. I also have to face the consequences of my actions.

Okay, we all know about the recession. I have decided not to focus on the problems but the opportunities (old P&G training kicking in!). So what are the opportunities that we can leverage?

For starters, focus on motivating and inspiring your teams. Here are a few things that you can do tomorrow, for little or no money, which will have a positive impact on your business results.

What can you learn from a mouse? When that mouse has been delighting and entertaining hundreds of millions of people for decades – it turns out there’s plenty to learn. I had the opportunity to “work for then mouse” at Walt Disney World for twenty years and during that time I learned invaluable lessons about service excellence and the creation of “walk through fire” customer loyalty. Now, as a customer service speaker and consultant, I’ve learned that these same principles can be practiced by any organization or individual.

In these challenging economic times, most organizations are looking for strategies that will differentiate them from the competition. This article describes three low cost (or no cost) “lessons from the mouse” that can be immediately implemented.

On March 5,  I will be participating in  a panel discussion on Blog Talk Radio.

It’s called: Acquisition vs. Optimization: Managing Marketing Dollars in a Downturn and it’s hosted by Blake Landau of Customer Management IQ. The panel is part of a weekly podcast hosted by Blake called (appropriately enough) Customer Creation with Blake Landau.

We will be discussing customer acquisition vs. retention…which makes more sense in this economy?

Recently my wife and I stayed at a hotel in Duluth. We had fun but one experience remains in my memory more than any other.

The staff at this hotel lied to their customers.

And it wasn’t just once or twice. It was a routine, regular thing. Here’s what happened.

This hotel has two separate buildings. The buildings have different amenities, different names, different web sites. They are branded and marketed differently. But they are part of the same complex and staffed by the same employees.

A foundation of Amazing Service is making a promise to your customers.  I call this your Unified Message but people call it many different things. Recently I saw a video produced by Jiffy Lube in which their president discusses the three promises they make to their customers.

This is a step in the right direction. They are telling the world what they will do for their customers and how they will treat them. And they’ve made it simple. Their promises are:

Despite all the bad news we hear in the media, there are good things happening in our economy. You just have to look past the popular headlines.

Before I go any further, I’ll say this. I am NOT a financial or economic expert. Not even close. So, please don’t take what I’m saying as gospel. It’s not. It’s just my opinion and the opinions of a few others who happen to believe the economic sky is not falling.

That said however, I believe there are many bright spots in the economy today. And they’re getting brighter. They give us something else to focus on besides the doom and gloom everyone else is talking about.

There is plenty of room for improvement in how many organizations serve their customers. And there are substantial benefits for those that do. The good news is you don’t need to spend a lot of money to start making improvements in your customer service.

Here are some specific suggestions to get you started.

1. Improve People Skills

To deliver Amazing Service, people skills count. So a fast and high return way to improve customer service is to find ways to improve your team’s people skills.

This might include bringing in a speaker or trainer. It could mean focusing on people skills topics at staff meetings. It could involved providing useful training content to employees in a variety of formats like audio CDs, online material, videos, books, blogs, articles and even newsletters and ezines that cover people skills topics.

In my seminars and workshops a big topic is how to go the extra mile for our customers. Actually, it’s the first requirement of Amazing Service: “Give your customers what they want plus a little more.” And it can make a huge positive impact on your customer loyalty. When you go the extra mile, you give your customers a positive and memorable experience. So they remember, they tell others and they want to come back and repeat it ) or see what else you’ll do for them.

Recently we bought a new Mazda. I’ve always liked the Mazda brand because they understand their customers. I get the feeling Mazda is a company full of people who love cars that are fun to drive. And they easily share that passion with their customers. They seem to put all their energies into creating a great car-owning experience for their customers.

The auto dealer we bought our new Mazda from also seemed to “get it”. The sales guy was friendly and seemed genuine and sincere. We never once felt like he (or anyone there) was trying to manipulate us. They appeared to be focused on helping us get what we wanted.

Overall, they did a good job in creating a pleasant car buying experience. It was clear they have developed a system that works and they have trained people to it.

Stop doing what does not work

This is no ordinary recession we’re in. Our media loves to talk about how bad it is. But in many ways it’s really no worse and no better than any other economic downturn. It is different though. It’s different because it signals a time of massive changes in our economy. That’s why it’s so scary. Because in times of change we’re less certain of what tomorrow will bring. Fear and uncertainty can cause us to go into survival mode where we focus on just getting by. And we usually do that by sticking with what we know works and resisting new things.

It’s ironic that in times of great change, when the need to change is greatest, that is when most of us are least likely to change.

Now is the time we need to look ahead to find new and better ways to do things. As the world around us changes, we’ll find things don’t necessarily work the way they used to. We’ll find some things are no longer as effective. They need to be replaced with better, smart solutions.