An article appeared in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal titled, “Firms Keep Brakes on Hiring: Unsure About Strength of Upturn, Employers Produce More With Fewer Workers.” The article notes that while hiring always lags behind economic recoveries, this time the lag is likely to be worse. Doubts about the strength of the recovery and concerns about the potential costs of health care reform are two of the reasons the WSJ says companies may be slower to replenish their employment ranks.

It’s not always easy to keep a good attitude and a smiling face when we’re helping our customers.  We all have many stressors that can get in the way of staying positive and friendly. It’s especially hard when customers are rude, inconsiderate or just plain ornery.

Perhaps the hardest thing to do is to behave one way when we feel another. Acting upbeat when you’re feeling beat down is never easy. If I’m in  a bad mood it’s natural to let that show through my actions.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Know your purpose

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

I heard a segment on our local radio recently about more soldiers getting deployed overseas.  They interviewed parents and spouses and soldiers themselves. These situations are always hard but when they happen around the holidays they’re even more difficult.

One soldier captured the situation well.

“Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job…Life is for service.”

-Fred Rogers

“Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says: ‘Make me feel important’.”

-Mary Kay Ash

Author of The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

To improve customer service coach your peers

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One of the best things about coaching is that when we help others by coaching we learn as much, if not more, than they do. By focusing on helping and doing so by asking questions, we boost our learning and retention power many times.

This is true for customer service too. We can improve our own skills, motivation and performance by helping our co-workers improve theirs. But we need to do it by gentle coaching rather than by telling them what to do.

Too many managers think they can plan and script and train employees how to handle every customer situation. It’s even worse with offshore call centers. As a customer you can tell when these people are forced to use scripts. It can be a painful process to participate in.  And it’s a massively ineffective way to give customers the experience they want. It does not work.

What if you met a new friend and everything they said was

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Motivate yourself to deliver Amazing Customer Service

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Stephen Covey says there are three requirements for us to create a new habit. One is knowledge of what and why we should change. The second is the skill(s) we need. And the third is motivation.

Of the three I believe motivation is the most important. Most of us have access to all the knowledge and skills we need to do just about anything. But motivation has to come from within. And without it, we’d never even start down the road to change.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Put yourself in their shoes

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Think about when you’re the customer. How do you feel and what do you want from people you buy from? What are the top three things you want from them? Most people want similar things like courtesy, helpful information, solutions (rather than dead-ends), a friendly smile, fair value and quick service.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service…

Serve others because it feels good

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Recently I had lunch with a friend. He told me about his current volunteer projects, one of which included mentoring prisoners or those recently released from prison. When I asked him why he did all this he said:

“Kevin, this is easy. I get more out of it than they do.”

Not that helping others isn’t a good source of motivation. But he was being honest when he said his good deeds were for him. They made him feel good. If you’ve worked with non-profits, you’ve heard this before. It’s actually very common.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Create a daily reminder of amazing customer service.

And here are some additional thoughts on this topic…

Delivering amazing customer service is not complicated. It’s something we all know how to do. The real challenge is doing it every time with every customer. Things get in the way. We get busy. We feel distracted due to stress or deadlines. Often we’re just not feeling “up to it”.

Researchers have discovered that a simple daily reminder is often enough to motivate us to do better. One experiment found when people recite the Ten Commandments they were more likely to follow them. So a daily reminder of what amazing customer service is might help us develop the habit of delivering it.

Here is your Daily Dose of Amazing Service:

Keep your gas tank full

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When I was in college, a friend of mine had an annoying habit of picking up hitchhikers, which he did one afternoon while we were riding together. About a quarter mile later, my friend pulled over again. But this time it was because his car died. Or, more precisely, it ran out of gas. Our new hitchhiking pal suggested we were a couple of losers (for running out of gas).