Customer Service? How are we doing?

We were recently in Las Vegas at a trade show. PPAI, Promotional Products, Clothing and more.

We had the opportunity to hear Scott Deming during a luncheon.

To say we were impressed would be to diminish the experience. Scott is an exceptional speaker, and has many stories to tell that illustrate his points.

We have always worked to improve our service level, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. Always striving to do better and figure out ways to make the experience better. We attended this luncheon hoping to find some new ideas.

Scott had some great examples: His story about Sears is a classic. How Sears failed to provide Scott the help he needed. Scott then proceeded to cut up his credit cards and then tell everyone he knows about it. He has also written 3 books including this experience in each one, and spoken about it to groups ever since. Sears even contacted him once to try and repair the relationship. Then once again they failed to follow up in the end and here he is still telling the same story.

I like these types of stories, because they illustrate how important it is for everyone in a company to always do their best in each customer encounter. That person you just blew off may be a CEO or a janitor, you never know who they know either way.

There is also another relationship changing concept he brought up. I do not think I will explain it as well as he did, but I will offer a synopsis and you should buy his new book to get all of this and more in his style.

I'll start with an example. A father comes home from work, bad day and tired. He wants to have some quiet time alone. As he walks in the door his kids greet him and have something to tell him that they think is important. The inclination is to brush them off and tell them we will talk later.  This is hugely disappointing to the kids. However, if the father for a moment considers things from the children's perspective, he would know that this is important and would take the time to listen.

If in each encounter, I think to myself, "What does this person want from me right now?  What would this person want me to do right now? or, What would they like for me to say?"  I believe that this kind of perspective can be relationship and life-changing if I do this with each encounter.

Overall it was a great experience and as you can tell I am doing just what he wants. I am telling others about the positive experience. This is what we all want our customers and those we come in contact with to do. Be our evangelists, tell everyone about us and why they should call us or use us for whatever service we provide.

I'd like to know what examples of great customer service you have experienced.

Thanks for listening

Bryan

P.S. Best sushi I have ever had. RM Seafood at Mandalay Bay, Vegas. Get the Angry Lobster roll if it is available.