With that in mind, here is my Top Ten list of Valentine’s Day inspired quotes that can serve you well as reminders on how to “show your love” to your customers.

Love is doing what is best for a person regardless of the cost or response. R. Robert Flatt

The first duty of love is to listen.  Paul Tillich

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, it’s what you are expected to give — which is everything.  Anonymous

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Robert Heinlein

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. Socrates

We too often love things and use people, when we should be using things and loving people. Anonymous

Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart.  Anonymous

Love is like a tennis match; you’ll never win consistently until you learn to serve well. Dan P. Herod

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. Mother Teresa

That best little portion of a good man’s life – his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.  William Wordsworth

Whether you are following me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or via this blog, I see you as my customers. So on this day, as sincerely as these written words can express, I really do appreciate your continued support. Thank you very much and Happy “Show Your Love” Day.

Now what can you do today to “show your love” to those who surround you in your business and those loyal customers who made you successful?

Last night I was shopping in the local vitamin shop when I overheard a customer tell the cashier, “I think someone just left their credit card.” The cashier says, “It might be that woman’s,” and points to the lady outside just about to get into her car. It was very obvious the cashier wasn’t going to do anything else so the customer took the card and practically ran out to ask. It wasn’t hers. The customer brought it back, left it on the counter and went about shopping in the store. The card was still on the counter when he went back with his purchase. The customer picked it up and placed it behind the counter. The cashier just left it there. He didn’t stick in the register. He didn’t give it to the manager. Nothing.

That cashier didn’t get it. To that cashier, it was simply a piece of plastic. To him, no big deal. To us, as customers, credit cards are unbelievably valuable. If we ever misplace a credit card, let alone lose one, we panic. To us, it’s a BIG deal.

As a customer, you know that we don’t buy from companies; we still buy from people. And we buy from people we know, like and trust. In just reading about what happened, you see as I see, as a customer, that the cashier is the store. And that one act that he does not think was at all important to him is the snapshot we take of that business. To the customer who found it, to the customer who hopefully will claim her card and to me, we are all questioning the trust we can have for that store. And that mental snapshot stays with us until another snapshot of that business replaces it. In fact, for some customers, it may take a motion picture worth of positive impressions before that one snapshot is deleted. It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for one negative incident. And some customers who have a bad experience may never give a business a second chance, opting simply to walk away, intent on never coming back.

Now put on your customer service hat. When you serve customers remember, “To the customer, YOU are the company”. If you are a customer service manager, reinforce to your team that each interaction with a single customer represents all of you as a business. Every act of any one individual is a customer’s snapshot of your company’s likability and trust. And every act, no matter how small, is a big deal.

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” 

What do dead plants in the waiting room have to do with the skill of the doctor? Logically nothing, but to the customer, everything.

When we are sick, we go to the doctor because we do not know what is making us sick. The doctor is the expert. Even if he misdiagnoses the illness and prescribes the wrong medicine, we would still take his word for it since we have no experience in medical diagnosis. We assume that the doctor is the trusted authority. In fact, we assume it so much that we don’t ask the doctor to prove it. No one has ever walked into a doctor’s office to ask “Before you examine me, from what medical school did you graduate?” We take his expertise for granted because we have no benchmark.

But we can judge a doctor on what we do know. We know what clean and orderly looks like. We know what friendly looks and sounds like. We know what waiting too long feels like. And we certainly know what dead looks like. And with past experiences we can judge how our doctor visit stacks up to those experiences. And based on the entire experience we will decide whether to come back or not, and depending on the experience, will either refer our friends or tell the world to stay away with an on-line bad review. Is that logical? Of course not, but as management consultant Tom Peters says,

“Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is all there is!”

When there are dead plants in the waiting room, the customer is saying to himself, “If they can’t even take care of the plants, why do I want them taking care of me?”

While a general manager at a resort up north in Michigan, I served as an adjunct instructor for many years teaching customer service at the local community college. To their credit (pardon the pun), the college made my customer service class a prerequisite for the office administration and medical administration paths. They understood that it is not what you know; it is how you say it. At the end of the semester, a survey was given to the students on how I did. Was I on time for class? Did I cover the objectives defined in the syllabus? Was I available after hours? All the survey questions were focused on the instructor. As part of the class session discussing customer feedback, I surveyed the students on their school experience. My question was, “If there was anything you could improve in your education experience, what would that be? Very few answers were specific to what the administration thought was the college experience. Rather the improvements ranged from the parking lot to the restrooms. What does the parking lot have to do with higher education? Logically, nothing. But to the female student who is taking night classes, everything. She perceives a burned out light in the lamp post as an unsafe parking lot. What does the restroom have to do with the education offered? Nothing. But as a female student wrote in her survey, “During the winter, the restrooms are so cold, I can’t even think after going in there.”

Several weeks ago, I needed to see a dentist. When I asked a friend for a referral, she gave me the name of her dentist. I asked why she thought the dentist was so good. She said the waiting room had Wi-Fi, they offered free bottled water and juice and there was a large flat screen TV in the waiting room. And, as an afterthought, she said the dentist was nice, too. The most important aspects of her dental experience were the touchpoints that eliminated the waiting time and angst of the perception of visiting the dentist for the first time.

So don’t be too focused on just your expertise. Your customers have no way to judge you on what you know. But they can grade you on the other touchpoints that they have experienced before. Take the time to look at your entire customer experience. Identify all the potential dissatisfiers and remove them. Then replace them with something positive.

What potential “dead plant” dissatisfiers in your customer experience are you leaving unattended?

Since this is the week we celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States, I want to take this opportunity to wish those who celebrate this holiday a very Happy Thanksgiving.

I also want to express my thanks to all of you everywhere for following me on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or right here on WordPress. I certainly have enjoyed and appreciated connecting with hundreds of people throughout the world via these social media platforms, something that wasn’t even possible just a few years ago.  And while I enjoy blogging about my passion for great customer service, I certainly have enjoyed as much the dialog I have had with many of you. So thank you to all.

While the above quote about giving thanks is one of my favorites, here are several more about gratitude that I hope you enjoy as much as I do. And for leaders, while all of these quotes are common sense advice to build employee engagement and customer loyalty, we have to commit to making this common sense advice truly common practice in our day-to-day efforts.

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; To the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.  - E. S. Martin 

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. – John F. Kennedy

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.  Have you used one to say “thank you?”  - William Arthur Ward

Appreciation is like an insurance policy. It has to be renewed every now and then. – Dave McIntyre

Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless. – Mother Teresa

Ultimately customer satisfaction begins with employee satisfaction. Yet too often management overlooks the day-to-day contributions employees make to the business. One of the top reasons why employees leave a company is not because of the rate of pay. It is because they felt they did not get recognized for their efforts. At the same time, your employees will only deliver the level of service that they have experienced within your business. With that in mind, you must ensure that your employees understand their key role in the success of your business and are recognized for their efforts. In order to accomplish this, incorporate in your management style these two M’s – Motivation and Maintenance.

Motivation

Motivation begins with the hiring process and continues through training. During the interview, you should explain to the prospective employee the critical “key role” in maintaining the highest level of customer courtesy. Thereafter, insure that each new employee goes through an extensive training program that not only includes the tasks of their job, but also the vision and specific proven performance tips to deliver your expectation of customer service.

This orientation sets the tone of your company’s commitment to the customer and reinforces the “key role” concept you discussed in the hiring interview. Continue on-the-job instruction with a designated trainer. The key criterion for the selection of your trainer should be an outgoing, friendly character which captures what you want to project as your company’s personality. Be sure that the trainer is aware of your expectations of the delivery of the customer service performance standards.

Keep your employees informed. The #1 complaint employees have of their company is the lack of communication. They want to feel that they are “in the know”. Conduct regular meetings to inform the staff of the status of the business and its forecasted future. Be honest with them. To create a customer focused culture, distribute and post thank you letters or testimonials received from customers. Consider maintaining a Facebook page specifically for your employees that would periodically remind them of their focus on customer service. That page can serve as an advertisement of the company culture for prospective employees. Your employees will be more concerned about their job performance if they are more aware of their business.

Acknowledge your employees as members of your professional family. Recognize special dates or occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, family births, or illnesses. Birthdays are very important as your employees know that they are working on their birthday and expect their manager to know, as well. Announce these so everyone knows and send the appropriate cards or flowers. Organize pot luck luncheons or picnics, holiday dinners, or even baby showers. Remember that if you show special consideration for your employees, they, in turn, will take better care of your customers and your business.

Create recognition programs. Special appreciation such as Random Acts of Kindness Awards, given to employees who are named by your customers as offering stellar service instill in the recipients a sense of pride that their contributions have been recognized by you. A commendation letter delivered via mail to an employee’s home or a gift card for dinner with their family serve to have the employee’s family understand and appreciate the employee’s commitment to your business.

Utilize inexpensive motivational tools. Hang a mirror in the office with a sign above it that says; “Smile, You Are (Your Company’s Name.) This conveys that each employee’s appearance is a reflection of your business. Stamp paychecks with morale boosters. Put up posters that depict themes of success and teamwork. Successories and Baudville are two companies that offer such products to deliver great motivational messages.

Maintenance.

Maintenance, in this sense, is synonymous with consistency. The continuation of any of the programs you start is essential. Do not begin a special program only to drop it soon after your employees come to appreciate it and look forward to it. If you begin a newsletter bulletin board, posting the names of new employees, employee birthdays and anniversaries, promotions, customer appreciation letters, and in-house activities then you must maintain it monthly with current topics.

Visible management is essential. Practice the “Inspect What You Expect” and “Management by Walking About” credos. Follow up on your training programs. Retrain your employees with any updated techniques, as well as a refresher course on customer service. Conduct employee surveys or better yet, hold regular group discussions with a small number of your staff, to get maximum input and participation from each employee. Be visible and be available to your employees.

Ultimately, your employees drive customer satisfaction. Do not take for granted the immense impact a concerned, vital group of employees can do to enhance the image and success of your business. Whether it is through recognition programs or your visible management, your employees must sense and believe in your conviction that they are your competitive edge – the reason why customers will return to your business.

It does not matter to the audience that the actors are performing for the 100^th time. The audience has paid very good money to see the show and expect that the actors will deliver their performance with the same passion as on opening night. Your customers expect nothing less. As it is in Great Theater, you have to “act it like you mean it”. Do not confuse this with “fake it until you make it”. Your customers, like any audience, can see right through that kind of performance. Do you always feel like working every day, five days a week, 8-10 hours a day, on your birthday, the holidays or even on scheduled days off? Of course not. But do you think the customer really cares how you feel? Of course not! No customer walks into your establishment with an expectation of being dissatisfied. So you have to deliver Great Theater every day whether you feel like it or not.

When you perfect the delivery of the script, you perfect your performance. Break down your customer experience, act it like you mean it and deliver Great Theater. For example:

ACT ONE. Scene One.

 The Customer enters from offstage.

SERVICE PROVIDER: “Good afternoon, how may I help you?”

Motivation: Never say “May I help you?” If the customer is standing in front of you, he obviously needs help or he would have bypassed you completely.

CUSTOMER: “I believe I have a reservation. Last name is Smith.”

SERVICE PROVIDER: “Yes, Mr. Smith, we’ve been expecting you. Welcome to The Best.”

Direction: Maintain eye contact for at least seven seconds and smile as you say your lines.

Motivation:

• As Dale Carnegie says in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” So start with the customer’s name.
• What do you think is the very first question running through the mind of a customer when coming up to an airline counter, front desk, host stand, or reception desk? That question is, “I wonder if they have my reservation?” So to establish a great first impression, incorporate this statement into your welcome, “We’ve been expecting you.” It immediately removes that mental dissatisfier and puts the customer at ease.
• Follow that up with the name of your business.

Let it all flow together.

“Mr. Smith” (you’re very important to us). “We’ve been expecting you.” (No need to worry about your reservation. We have it.) “Welcome to . . .” (Where did Mr. Smith feel the most comfortable in interacting with a company? With you, of course. )

Define each scene in the customer experience and practice it often off stage. Never practice on the customer. Then perform your role so well that all your customers say to themselves and others that your service was the best that they have enjoyed in a long time. And when you deliver that kind of Great Theater performance consistently, you will build repeat business and customer loyalty.

Tom Peters

When your customers call or walk into your establishment, they already have a perceived expectation of what your customer experience should be. Your advertising, website and salespeople, which serve a promise to your customers, have already shaped that expectation. Deliver on that promise and your customers come to trust you. Fall short and you have broken that promise and trust. For example, a restaurant menu is a promise to your customers that what is printed on the menu is what you have to offer. If you have to tell a customer that he has an old menu, the new menus haven’t been delivered by the printer and the dry-aged steak is not on the new menu, then to the customer, you failed. He doesn’t care about the printer. All he cares about is his steak. And you failed to deliver it. And his perception is all there is.

Customers don’t care that it’s your first day on the job. They don’t care that you are understaffed because someone called in sick. Customers don’t care that the computers were down when they called.  They only care that they are your customers.  They are willing to give you their hard-earned money in exchange for an experience that they feel is more valuable to them than their money.  And when they come to you, they never have an expectation that they will be dissatisfied.

So how do you live up to your customers’ expectations? At the very least the customer experience you deliver should be with no surprises and no excuses. To your customers, any experience less than their expectation is perceived as a dissatisfying surprise. And any reason you offer to explain why you could not deliver is perceived as an excuse. And their perception is all there is.

So do everything you can to make sure there are no negative surprises. Get rid of any potential dissatisfiers.  For example, remove forbidden phrases such as “I’ll be back in a second,” Can you hold for just a minute?” and “I’ll be right with you.” Such phrases only frustrate a customer when more than 60 seconds go by.  Review all the customer touchpoints and take any negative issue and make it a neutral.  Minimize wait times. Clean dirty restrooms. Create “no hassle” return or exchange policies.  Then, as Larry Winget, the Pitbull of Personal Development puts it, “Do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it.”  That’s it. It’s that simple.  Just “do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it.” 

And if the customer is unpleasantly surprised because you could not deliver, then offer no excuses. Simply apologize. Even if the customer asks for a reason, just say, “It doesn’t matter. We failed. It should never have happened and I apologize.” Remove the surprise and offer some form of atonement.

To drive customer loyalty, deliver to each customer an experience that has “No Surprises. No Excuses.”

Now, really, do you think that is enough to sustain the love? Of course not. If you want to be recognized for your commitment to personal values like trust, honesty, or respect, you must practice, not simply preach. It is no different for your business values when you are leading others. Too often, the value of service excellence is communicated only at new employee orientation and the on-the-job training during the first week with no reinforcement thereafter. That is simply not enough to drive consistent customer care performance. And while I enjoy presenting my customer experience seminars to clients, I always let them know that learning about customer service cannot be seen as an event, but must be seen as a process. If your intent is to drive customer service excellence, you need to say it and your team needs to hear it more than just one time.

One of my favorite quotes is from Samuel Johnson, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” You must periodically remind your team that when it comes to customer service, being consistently good is better than being occasionally great. Here are a few ideas:

• Make sure customer service values and skills are included in the job description and reviewed at each performance evaluation.
• Check out Successories.com, Baudville.com or SimpleTruths.com for ideas on creating and reinforcing a sustained customer focused message.
• If your company has an intranet, use the screensaver feature to remind your team of your customer service values.
• Post thank you letters from customers in a prominent area where your team can read them.
• If you receive a compliment from a customer on your voice mail, broadcast it to the others on your team.
• Write a letter of commendation recognizing a specific customer service act that can be placed in the associate’s personnel file. Send the letter to the associate’s home. What is your ratio of written thank you notes or commendations versus written corrective action notices? In order to create a culture of customer care, the ratio should be 3 to 1, and better still 5 to 1.
• Recognize an individual’s act of kindness that was appreciated by a customer with a small token of acknowledgement. (movie tickets, free dry cleaning, a  day off with pay)
• Start every meeting with an opportunity for attendees to thank someone in the group for their actions in support of internal or external customer care.
• Periodically send out reminder messages via email, paycheck stuffer or company newsletter on the importance of the customer. If you are short of ideas, take a look at my Facebook page that offers customer service tips, quotes and insight from various sources.
• Always serve as a role model by interacting and responding to each individual on your team with the intent to live the credo first used by Jan Carlzon, president of SAS Airlines, “If you’re not taking care of the customer, you better be taking care of the person who is.”

Commit to periodically reminding your team of the value of customer service excellence. Otherwise their delivery of exceptional service will be inconsistent. It’s up to you to commit to their lifelong learning because once is never enough.

What ways do you remind or recognize your team about the importance of customer service excellence?

Think like a customer. You hear of a new restaurant in town. You decide to try it out. There is no hostess upon arrival. When she does return back to the stand five minutes later, she curtly asks “How many?” with no other greeting. During service the server wasn’t rude, but he certainly wasn’t exceptional. The meal took slightly longer to be served than you expected. The beverages were never refilled until you asked. Yet when the manager comes up to the table and asks, “So how is everything?”, what do you say? “Fine.” The manager is thinking, “Another satisfied customer,” but you’re thinking to yourself, “Never again.” Your customers are no different. If service is only adequate, there is no real desire to return.

Maybe that’s too harsh. What I’m saying is that if your customers perceive your service as merely satisfactory, it simply is not good enough for them to want to return. They’re perfectly satisfied for the moment, but they’ll switch to a competitor if something better comes along.

Loyalty among satisfied customers is fleeting. In fact, research conducted by Xerox and featured in a Harvard Business Review report by Thomas Jones and W. Earl Sasser, Jr. found out that on a 1-to-5 satisfaction scale, the very satisfied customers who ranked their experience a 4 were six times more likely to defect than the extremely satisfied customer who rated their experience a 5. Creating only satisfied customers will not build your business. In fact, if you are only creating satisfied customers, your business will suffer. Proof? How about KMart versus Wal-mart? Circuit Cityversus Best Buy? Borders versus Barnes and Noble?

Does your product have such an overwhelming quality or price advantage that your customers won’t consider your competitor? If not, then the key criteria to driving loyalty will be how your customers perceive their overall service experience.

If you want to retain your customers and grow your business, you need to deliver service that exceeds their expectations and fully satisfies them. So how do you do it? You must deliver a consistent experience without any dissatisfiers and full of positive Moments of Truth.

I’ve discussed dissatisfiers and Moments of Truth in previous posts. So what is the takeaway in this one? Continue to ask the question, “How was your experience?” And when a customer responds, “Fine,” immediately ask, “Is there any one thing we could have done to make it more enjoyable for you?” Then do whatever it takes to deliver it before he has a chance to walk out the door.

1. Think Like Your Customer.
2. Create Their Experience.
3. Make a Difference.

I addressed Principle One in a previous blog. On to Principle Two.

Principle Two of the WWWBLL Experience: Create Their Experience.

Customers walk into your establishment with expectations. Creating their experience means understanding those expectations. Too often, businesses are telling their customers, “Here’s what we offer that is different from our competitors?” Instead they should not focus on the “what” but on the “why” they offer it and make sure the “why” is important to the customer. When I was general manager for a business hotel, we offered free high-speed internet, a mouse pad, and upon request, at no charge, in room computer printers and basic office supplies. We thought the reason why guests chose us over our competitors was because we created an atmosphere where they could be more productive. We invited our frequent corporate guests and meeting planners for lunch to confirm that we were on the right track. To our surprise, we were not only on the wrong track; we were going in the opposite direction. They said, “We aren’t looking to be more productive when we get back to the hotel. In fact, we do that all day when we are out there pounding the pavement or making sure the meeting runs smoothly. When we get back into the room, all we want to do is decompress. Offer us things that allow us to do that.”

In our case, the reason “why” customers selected our hotel was not to be more productive, rather it was to relax. Once we knew that, we offered amenities and services suggested by our guests that allowed them to do just that. The list included Bose® IPod speakers, aromatherapy candles, memory foam pillows or foot massagers upon request, an extensive wines by the glass room service menu and in room massages. Of course, we continued to offer the other amenities but we had created loyalists and advocates of our hotel because we asked and answered the right question, “Why?” We had created their experience, not ours.

Once you have created their experience by understanding the “why” from your customer, then deliver that experience consistently. Make sure you remove all the potential dissatisfiers. Just ask this question, “Is there any one thing we could have done to make your experience more enjoyable?” Whatever your customer mentions is a dissatisfier. Do all you can to eliminate each dissatisfier from future experiences.

But meeting the expectations of your customer by addressing the reason why he wants to do business with you and removing all the dissatisfiers only gets you to be competitive. What do you need to do to stand out and become your customer’s “World’s Best” favorite?

PRINCIPLE THREE OF THE WWWBLL EXPERIENCE: Make a Difference.