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.

A while back I attended a seminar geared toward helping us manage change better in our organizations. One of the many things worth remembering from that day is a phrase from Larry Wilson:

The natural state of communication is misunderstanding.

At first I didn’t understand what Larry meant. Lucky for me he continued to explain. What he said was we typically misunderstand more of what we hear than we actually understand. We might think we know what the other person meant but often we don’t.

I’m working on a project right now. It’s a big project. I’m excited about it. And I think it has great potential.

But you wouldn’t know about it. I haven’t mentioned it. That’s the lesson of this post:  if I don’t tell you I’m working on something, you have no idea what I’m doing.

Last night I had a fun (and lengthy) text conversation with one of my nieces. She’s in college and 5 hours away so we don’t see her as much as we’d like. And being a busy college kid, phone conversations with her are not very common.

In fact, our “kids” (12 nieces and nephews) are the primary reason my wife and I both upgraded our cell phones and plans to make it easier (and affordable) to do a lot of texting. Other than live visits, text message conversations are the most common way we can stay in touch with them.

You wake up in the morning to a bright sunny day. Everything is going well . . . until it’s not.  One crisis after another starts popping up before you have a chance to finish your first cup of coffee. How do you handle a day like that? Since you’re good at what you do, you roll up your sleeves and gear yourself up to put out the fires and get things back on track.

Communication is the surest path to delivering Amazing service to our customers. But it’s often harder than we realize to be on the same page with our customers.

Here’s a funny (and true) example of how something can seem so clear to an employee but not their customers. Thanks to the good people at NotAlwaysRight.com for this.

Me: “Hi, [pizza place].”

Customer: “Hi, it says you have a nine inch small pizza. How big is that?”

Recently I submitted a help ticket to a company about a problem with their product. It was not a critical issue but one that needed fixing. After reviewing the issue they marked it as “resolved”.

But they never told me it was resolved. And they didn’t tell me how to apply the fix.

So, from where I stood, the problem was not resolved. Not even close.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Be easy to talk to

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

As a customer it’s frustrating enough when we get bad service. Too often we get less than we expect or want. So when we have a customer experience that thrills us, we usually want to share it.  We have a psychological need to do so. The same is true when we have a lousy customer experience.

In either case, our customers

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Be aware of language differences

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

A friend of mine who grew up in New York City shared with me his first coffee experience in mild-mannered Minnesota. In a popular coffee shop near his home he asked for a “regular coffee”. When he took his first sip he almost spit it out.

“This is NOT a regular coffee” he

Yesterday evening my anti-virus software went crazy. It started finding viruses all over my netbook. After several hours of banging my head against our kitchen table, with no success in cleaning up the problem, I turned to my good friend Google for help. There I discovered (to my great relief) that there was no virus on my computer. Instead, my anti-virus software had a problem.

I learned this because millions of others were having the same experience. Because many of them were discussing it online I was able to conclude that it was a software malfunction that would soon be fixed by the software vendor.

What I find shockingly sad is

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Educate your customers

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

If you offer quality products and services you probably have a well-run business. And to your customers, you make things look easy. This is good and necessary to be successful. But there’s also a downside.

Take cars for example. They have become

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Don’t assume anything

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

As we help our customers it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming we know what they want. It’s even easier, if we have a good relationship with them. But when we assume, we’re not always right. And this can inconvenience our customers more than it helps them.

Recently I had my car in to the dealer for some routine maintenance. The people there are very helpful. And they’re serious about cars (which I like). While they serviced my car, they