George Carlin, Customer Service Expert

“New Rule for 2006: I'm not the cashier! By the time I look up from sliding my card, entering my PIN number, pressing "Enter," verifying the amount, deciding, no, I don't want cash back, and pressing "Enter" again, the kid who is supposed to be ringing me up is standing there eating my Almond Joy.” – George Carlin

You know, Mr. Carlin has a good point. I find two things unappealing about the typical checkout process these days. First, I don’t work for the store, so I shouldn’t be expected to process my own credit card. I’ll hand over my card and sign the sales slip, thank you very much. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect the cashier to do the rest.

Secondly (and this is the real kicker) I don’t want to be scammed into using my card for debit when I prefer utilizing the credit option.

At every self-swipe terminal I’ve seen – and that’s a lot, unfortunately for my savings – when you swipe your card, you are automatically asked to enter your PIN, thus activating the debit function of your card. If you want to use credit, you usually have to hit cancel (although this varies depending on the processing machine, the uncertainty of which only adds to the inconvenience.)

This isn’t a mistake. Merchants prefer you to pay by debit, because then they are not required to pay a fee, as they are when processing a credit card – usually 1-3%, but up to 8% if it’s American Express (a big reason most vendors don’t accept Amex, and I agree with them wholeheartedly on this point). The thing is, if the customer uses her debit card at the checkout, then it is she who is often gouged by her bank for going out of network.

It’s all a matter of who’s going to pay: the merchant (credit) or the customer (debit).

Do I see why the merchant would sign on to make it harder for its customers to choose credit? From a purely pennywise viewpoint, yes, I do. In fact, so long as every merchant pulls this same trick, then why not? Right?

Wrong. George Carlin has such a huge following precisely because he bases his humor on common experiences: We all feel inconvenienced by the payment process at countless stores and fast food joints. When a comedian like Carlin points out how ridiculous it is that we are made to suffer this abuse, we all chuckle and forward the jokes-email to our friends, who also identify with Carlin’s gripes. Everybody minds this treatment.

It’s pound foolish to inconvenience your customers. It’s pound foolish to abuse your customers with the manipulative debit-over-credit trick merchants put us through. As customers, we remember when we’re inconvenienced and abused. We resent it. And when we find a friendlier choice, we drop the old merchants and embrace the new. We tell all our friends, coworkers, family, and neighbors.

…Let me show you just how pound wise it is for a store to provide a more convenient checkout experience: pound wise, because the company in question is getting free advertising on a customer service web log. Oh, and it’s pennywise, too, because this service costs the owners not one cent to provide.

Sunshine Ace Hardware on Route 41 in Naples, just a few blocks from our home, is a company I think you’ll be hearing a lot more about in this blog and our future publications. They get what Five-Star service is all about – and yes, they’re “just” a hardware store. They compete with Home Depot and Lowes on the price of their hammers. I’ve checked. Yet still they’re Five-Star.

One of the many, many things that impress us about Sunshine Ace is how the checkout clerks process your payment cards for you. The machine is exactly the same as in any other store, but they do it all for you: swipe your card, then press the “cancel,” “enter,” and “OK” buttons for you, so you don’t have to.

Is it nothing? Well, it’s certainly a little thing. But it’s a little thing that makes a big impression, because nobody else does it.

And you know the best part? You’re free to eat your Almond Joy while the clerk does all the work.

Leadership, Culture, & Customer Delight

What came first: the customer-obsessed leader, the customer-centric corporate culture, or the best practices in Customer Delight?

My colleagues and I may be the experts in the field of Customer Delight – we like to think so, anyway, and that’s what our clients tell us – but we can’t answer this question. It’s the chicken and the egg all over again.

Companies exist to make money. When they do, they thrive; when they don’t, they close up shop. It sounds so obvious that it’s not worth stating, but somehow most business people don’t get that: look at the dot com boom and bust; look at Detroit.

While our favorite example of this profit-or die maxim are the fates of the grocer Albertsons (Fortune #46 in 2006, now defunct) and its comparison company, Wegmans ($3.8 billion and growing), they’re far from alone. Profit or die. To paraphrase my friends at Bright Horizons, profits are the lifeblood of any company.

Profits are based on sales and margins.

Superb customer service brings repeat sales, and it inspires referral business.

Good customer service drives sales.

Great customer service brings more sales.

Superlative customer service is a revenue-generating machine.

At Coiné, we’ve got our work cut out for us, because most leaders don’t get this yet.

But best practices in Customer Delight don’t just happen because middle management hires on consultants to teach a smile-training course. Best practices in Spoiling your customers Rotten are the natural results of a companywide Customer Service Ethic. Putting the customer first, last, and all in between has to emanate from the company’s culture like heat from a fire.

And without total dedication to that culture from the very head of the company, it’s just not going to happen.

At Coiné, we turn down business all the time; the bigger we grow, the more we do it. That may sound weird to you, but there is a very solid reason behind this decision. Since 2001, when Jane and I founded the first company with our name on it, we knew without thinking that past and present results would drive future sales. They would also bring us personal pride.

So, the first thing we do when we are approached by a prospective client is to evaluate the company’s leadership: is it committed to the customer service initiative it is asking for? Will leadership push for the culture change necessary to turn their company into a Five-Star Customer Service provider? Or will they stand in our way?

When we feel that leadership doesn’t get it, we generally pass. Because failure, or even mediocre success, just isn’t in our own company’s genes. It runs counter to our own company culture.

That’s why I personally work with top leadership – owners and C-level executives – over eighty percent of the time. If they want my help, they have to listen to my advice; they can’t defer it to subordinates.

We’ve learned this lesson the hard way, and we’re still learning with each client we take on. But it’s fun, and… well, as long as you don’t make the same mistake twice, it’s worth the experience.

Can you give world-class customer service without a culture that supports it? We doubt it. Can your company uphold such a culture when the guys at the top don’t get it? Probably not.

It’s good to be able to pick-and-choose your clients. Personally, I like helping people who deserve it, and passing on those who don’t. (Ask me about the car dealer some time – I’ve mentioned him in this blog before. Yikes!) But you don’t get this luxury until you can prove your past successes – and you can’t do that if you choose the wrong clients.

Another chicken and egg dilemma, I suppose.

Survey says…?

What do your customers think of you? It’s a vitally important question for any business, one we’re willing to spend lavishly to have answered. Yet few companies go about it right. …And getting this wrong can seriously damage your relationship with your customer.

There’s a great story in “Branded Customer Service,” by Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart, about a cruise line that really delivered personalized service throughout a cruise, only to ruin the entire feeling of intimacy they had created with the customer by slipping a survey under each door that asked for the customer’s name, cabin number, and the date.

There goes the special relationship they had successfully built all week long.

We recently moved, and decided we’d try out Comcast’s bundled Internet/phone/cable TV services. Everything’s fine, and the local operation here in Naples is surprisingly pleasant to deal with – it’s a world apart from the experience I wrote about in “Five-Star Customer Service.” However, I am disappointed with the follow-up phone survey I received about a week after installation. It was conducted by an outside firm, and was just about their new phone service. I had a comment to make about installation of our cable TV lines, but too bad: this wasn’t about cable TV.

To me, Comcast was calling, and I had a Comcast issue to report. But Comcast didn’t see itself the way its customer does, as one entity. From their perspective, the Phone Division was calling.

I love my convertible Saab. I’ve test driven other convertible sports cars, including Lexus, Jaguar, and two models of Porche, and none has outperformed the car I currently drive. It’s my second Saab, but it will be my last (I’m leaning toward Porche right now). Why am I turning my back on this car that I love so much? The dealer that I bought it from, the only one near our house, gave horrendous service in its “service” department: really, really terrible. GM, owners of Saab, sent me a survey, and I told them my feelings in no uncertain terms. That was almost two years ago, and I’m still waiting for a reply.

If you ask your customer a question and he’s kind enough to answer, you are obligated to address any questions or concerns he shares with you. This isn’t optional.

This last point – not responding to surveys – is a form of customer abuse that even good companies routinely get wrong. How many times have you received a personalized reply, addressing your specific comments, from a company that asks your opinion? How loyal has that made you feel?

Coine Training works with two companies that get surveying right. In both cases, the surveys are online, the results instantaneous, the information easily manipulated so that managers can focus on one particular item out of eight, say, or they can track answers according to demographics – they’re both amazing tools. Our favorite part? Managers can also reply to these emailed surveys instantly – how’s that for personalized attention?

Instant feedback. Now that’s Spoiling your customers Rotten!

If you’re interested, you can reach me through my email, and we can discuss which company is best for your needs.

Want Top Talent?

Here is a question I am often asked as I present around the country: “How can my company attract customer service all-stars when the pickings are so slim in the job market? We’re lucky just to find someone with a pulse!”

The success to any endeavor is to follow our H.I.T. model: Hire for attitude, Inspire through pride (in company, job, and self), and Train for skills. Training is the easy part when you’ve got H. and I. down.

Hiring the right people is essential if you ever plan to create an Inspirational company. As Jim Collins so aptly puts it, “Get the right people on the bus.” Only then should you worry about where the bus is going – about what your company is all about.

Who’s on your bus? And where do you find the people you want to join you?

The last time I heard the plaintive, “Where do I find quality people?” question was right here in Naples, Florida (our new home) just last week. Over 120 members of the Chamber of Commerce were collected to discuss customer service, and this query received a large number of nods from the audience. My answer? Go to Chick Filet, right here in town.

Chick Filet. I’d never been to one, but Jane took the girls there and told me how refreshingly wonderful it was. Of course she was right: they surprised and delighted me with smiles, attentive help, and an internal ethic of going the extra mile as if that mile were not extra at all, but standard. They nailed five-star service on the head, right in the very town where all of these employers were bemoaning the dearth of customer service talent.

Here’s my question for employers: How come Chick Filet can get Five-Star Service right using high school kids, immigrants, working moms, and retirees, all at or near minimum wage?

Employers, you’ve got two tasks: One, find the answer to that question. (I’ve got that answer, by the way, so give me a call and we can set up a consulting session).

Two, go out there and steal ’em! Recruit these folks away from their current employers. Why not? If you can swing it – if you can offer some of Chick Filet’s staff something that induces them to join your firm, then by all means, get in your car and do it!

If you’re not in Naples? Find someone else to pilfer from. Chicago’s Miracle Mile has a great operation in Chipotle, a burrito spot that blew me away when I was there. Louisville has a whole host of folks working at the Marriott Downtown. Boston has five-star heroes working at Jordan’s furniture, as well as a few other spots around town. Wachovia is a great source of talent, and they’re located in numerous cities.

Every area has at least a few great service spots. It’s time to spread the word that you’re serious about hiring, and you’re looking for the best.

That’s what Nordstrom does when they enter a new market. The managers fan out across the city and secretly “shop” talent anywhere they can find it. (That’s in new areas. Because Nordstrom is such a phenomenal company, once they’re established in an area, they attract more than enough talent.)

If you’ve got something special to offer these potential recruits, you’ll win some of them away from their current employers. If not, you won’t. And if that’s the case, then again, it’s time to give us a call. You’re going to need some help before your company is sufficiently Inspirational to get that job done.

Happy hunting.

A Sure-Fire Test

Want to run your own customer service test? The next time you’re at the supermarket, ask them for Knorr Spanish Rice Mix.

I did this recently at the store down the street, and boy, what a great litmus test I unwittingly discovered! Here’s how it went:

The first person I asked told me to try aisle five. Strike one: In any form of retail, always take your customer to the item they ask for.

The second person I asked had no clue on earth, but he very cheerfully guided me from aisle to aisle in the store as he explored for me. Strike two: if you don’t know, admit it – and then find someone who does know, fast!

The third person was a manager. She took me right to where it should have been, but it was missing – they were out. That’s strike three: don’t run out of stuff. This store was out of dozens of items, I noticed as I wandered the aisles. I can’t imagine how much money that must cost them.

Here’s the thing: fixing these problems is a cinch. So why doesn’t everybody do it? I have a couple of answers to that question. Here goes.

1. The people at the top don’t have any idea. Odd as this may sound, even well-paid executives often have no clue that a higher standard of service exists. “So nobody took you to the item,” they might say. “Big deal?”

2. Even when top dogs are familiar with great customer service, they often think it is the province of luxury hotels and ultra-retail stores. It isn’t for the masses who shop at their stores. “At our prices, what do you expect?” they might ask.

3. The company has a terrific training department with wonderful standards of service. It’s just that there aren’t enough trainers, and also managers aren’t given incentive to support training. So the winning practices that are on the books never really happen.

4. “Nobody’s perfect,” the bosses might say. “We do a pretty good job, over all.” Um… Well, as your customer, I’d beg to differ. If one company can do it right time after time, then any company can.

Excellence is a matter of will. If you want it bad enough, you will make it happen. If you’re content with mediocrity, you will just as assuredly make that happen.

“Only” 600 Complaints a Year. Ouch.

While still writing Five-Star Customer Service, I attended a presentation given by one of the Boston area’s bank presidents on Best Practices. We in the audience sat there for an hour as she explained all of the terrific customer service initiatives that her bank had undertaken in the previous year, and the wonderful results they had seen thus far. Indeed, things had gotten better for this bank: now a full 88% of their customers were “satisfied or very satisfied” with this institution.

Not long ago, I met with a (self-proclaimed) billionaire car dealer who told me that they “only” receive about 600 complaints per year.

Just last week, the owner of a small IT firm accepted my book, which I was signing before my presentation, and said, “Great! I can’t wait to give it to my customer service guy. He could really use it.”

“I’ll see you at my talk, then,” I said with a smile.

He looked at me quizzically and said, “Do you think I’ll benefit from your seminar? After all, I’ve got someone to do customer service.”

What do these three business leaders, in three completely different fields, have in common? None of them gets it. None even comes close to getting it.

The Bank: Twelve percent of that large bank’s customers aren’t even “satisfied,” not to mention happy or Delighted. Having customers who are merely “satisfied” is nothing to brag about. After most meals, you’re “satisfied” – you’re full; you’re not hungry any more. But did you like the meal? Are you likely to go back? Would you recommend the restaurant to a friend?

“Satisfied” doesn’t mean Yes to any of these. The most that it means is, “Maybe.” But implicit in every Maybe is its evil twin, Maybe not.

When the question is customer service, you do not want to run a business on Maybes. Maybes will kill you. Merely “Satisfied” customers will spell the end of your firm, just as soon as an outstanding competitor enters the market to steal them from you.

The Car Dealer: “Only” 600 complaints a year? For accuracy’s sake, you’d have to multiply that number by about twenty. In other words, six hundred customers were kind enough to tell this car dealer what nearly twelve thousand did not: that they’re unhappy, frustrated, and not even “Satisfied.” This billionaire may win back some of the first six hundred, but he’s never even going to have a chance with the others, because they haven’t identified themselves.

As for his customers who aren’t unhappy, but who are only “Satisfied?” Will they buy from him again? Maybe. Or Maybe not.

The IT Firm: An owner or CEO cannot relegate customer service to an underling and consider it done. Why not? There are several considerations.

1. Customer service is not one department’s responsibility. Companies must have a culture of Delighting the customer, an internal ethic that stretches across all parts of the firm, from the board to engineering to accounts payable to tech support to sales to the mail room… Get the idea? Companies such as Lexus, Nordstrom, Wegman’s, Philips Lifeline, Ritz-Carlton, LL Bean, Saratoga Technologies, Wachovia, Zoots, Lands End, and all other Five-Star Customer Service providers have Customer Delight in their blood. People who work for these firms are intensely proud of their companies. That pride stems from quality, and that quality is derived from a single-minded focus on Spoiling the Customer Rotten.

2. Customer service leaders and their departments get no respect in most firms. Their function is seen as touchy-feely fluff by the rest of the company. Their job is to fix what the other departments break. Their entire function is an afterthought. This budget is the first to get slashed in lean times, the first to get outsourced and offshored. If Customer Delight isn’t the obsession of the CEO, it will never – never – reach that elusive Five-Star level. Indeed, it’ll almost certainly miss four-star status as well.

3. Even when the CEO is excited by the idea of superlative customer service, he can’t farm it out to someone below the C-level. He also must understand what Customer Delight really means: how it is defined, and how his company can make it happen. If he isn’t himself the master of this discipline, then he will not be able to adequately champion his company’s Customer Delight efforts. He may inadvertently get in their way.

What’s the upside to this cautionary tale? Nobody gets it. Business leaders have no clue about customer service: big banks don’t know that when 12% of its customers are dissatisfied, that’s 11.998% too many – and that there is something they can do about it. Car dealers don’t get that 600 complaints represents about 12,000 unhappy customers – and those 12,000 are going to make the competition rich. Even small business leaders, who should know best where their bread is buttered, don’t see the benefit of a tireless commitment to Customer Delight.

…So, if you get it, your fortune is virtually assured. And that’s some really good news for you.

There is a new low in customer service.

What I am about to share is, to me, the clearest sign I have ever seen that customer service is in decline from its already abysmal state.

Last week I was at an IT conference when a member of my audience tipped me off to the following abomination. I have since called the perpetrator to get confirmation, as well as more detail. Here is what I learned:

When you order a product from Dell, you have three options for service on that product. The Economy plan allows you to ship it back to them for repair for one year. This level of service is included in the price (so it’s kind of “free.” Kind of.)

The Mobility plan gives you all sorts of extra protection, which they call “Complete Care.” (I guess that implies that Economy service is for cheapos who will take incomplete care to save a buck.) With Mobility, if you drop your laptop out of the helicopter over Lake Michigan, for instance, they’ll fix it for you – assuming you find it, I suppose. This one costs $103 for one year, at least for the laptop I was calling about.

So far, so good. That’s not to say that I’m crazy about paying for any type of a product warrantee, but such is business these days: we pay extra to insure the stuff we buy, in case it was made poorly. Weird if you think about it, but I can’t go tilting at every windmill that comes along. I have to choose my windmills.

Dell has a third level of service. This one is $265 for two years (there is no one-year option, I gather). They call this Standard service, which seems like a compliance enticement: this is “regular;” it’s a minimum. “Come on, everybody else is doing it… It isn’t fancy or frivolous; it’s standard!” they seem to be saying.

With Standard service, you get Complete Care plus Gold tech support. This is what my phone-pal at Dell told me you are buying with this Gold level of support:

1. A North American techie.
2. Techies have two years of experience or more.
3. Techies have advanced training.
4. Reduced wait time.
5. Techies aren’t compelled to lead you through the standard line of questioning at the start of every call (for instance, “Is your computer on? Please turn it off, then turn it back on.”)
6. While remote log in (Dell Connect) is now standard, you get additional bells and whistles at the Gold level.

Let me tell you what you can infer from this list of Gold features.

1. If you don’t pay $265, the techie you reach will be in India, and you won’t be able to understand him. When you ask him to repeat himself for the fifth time, he will shout, “Don’t you understand English!?!”
2. If you fail to shell out an additional $265 for the laptop you buy, the techie you reach will not have the experience he needs to help you.
3. He will also lack sufficient training.
4. Most Dell customers are forced to wait a long time for help. Therefore, it behooves you to pay $265 to get out of “on hold” limbo.
5. Dell is keenly aware that its customers are frustrated when forced to go through a whole series of tests each time they call. However, even if the customer knows what the problem is, Dell still forces them to go through these hoops. That way, customers will choose to pay $265 to get around this. Dell has created a disincentive for itself to improve its basic level of service. To Dell, basic (“free”) customer service doesn’t pay.
6. I don’t know what this means. My pal didn’t clarify what “extra stuff” means. I just know that, if you pay an additional $265 for your computer, then Dell trouble-shoots extra-well. If you don’t, then their remote help may fail, I assume through lack of effort on their part.

Shouldn’t minimum standards for tech support include techies who speak English and who have the know-how to help you? And do we really deserve to pay extra to have a shorter wait time, or to avoid the same old diagnostics that didn’t help the last time? Shouldn’t you be able to opt out of that sort of thing?

Dell knows its customers are frustrated with its service, so it decided to charge to stop frustrating them. Wow.

“At least Dell offers an opportunity to buy acceptable customer service,” you might argue. “Most companies don’t even give you that option.” Okay. But I’ve never heard of a company so cynical that it offers zero- or one-star customer service, then charges for something better. This is a new low, as I said earlier, and it shocks me. If it doesn’t shock you, too, then that’s saying something powerfully dismal right there, I’d argue right back.

My lawyer wants to make sure I stress that this is my opinion on what you can infer about Dell. I’m not saying it’s all true; only that I’m pretty sure it is. 99.8% sure.

I have inferred something else about Dell. Michael Dell has figured out how to build an empire, and save people a whole ton of money while doing it. For that I commend him. However, his name is also on the company that makes its customers pay extra – lots extra – for what is, to me, a basic level of customer service. I’d be ashamed to put my name to that.


(Note: my phone pal, the sales guy at Dell, was terrific. He couldn’t have been more helpful, knowledgeable, or polite. I can infer from that that Dell recognizes the value of great customer service in the sales process; it’s once we’re locked in that they abuse us.)

What is your differentiator?

Recently, I asked that question of a small business owner, and it stopped her dead in her tracks. Her jaw practically dropped open. She blinked at me. Finally, she composed herself and blurted out, “We suck less than the other guys.”

We shared a good laugh over that, but she was joking about the truth, and we both knew it. Her entire marketing strategy was predicated on, “You’ve tried the rest; now give us a try. You probably won’t be sorry.”

Yikes. That certainly doesn’t inspire me to buy from them. I’m not so sure her employees could find much to be inspired about, either – and it showed, through high turnover and difficulty finding quality applicants at hiring time.

Needless to say, this entrepreneur wasn’t that crazy about her business. She and her partner were dying to sell, in fact. The problem was, the way things were going, they’d be lucky if they could recoup their investment with that sale. In other words, things weren’t going that well for her company.

But my differentiator question (which I ask often) got her thinking. “That’s a good question,” she said – and I could tell her mind was already at work on how she could answer, if she changed things a bit. Seeing as it was a customer service expert who asked her that question, she was already headed in the direction I had intended: how could she make her company stand out through the customer service it provided?

That’s my question for you, too. What is your company’s differentiator? Or are you pretty much the same as all the others?

If your industry is still in its infancy, or if you have a rock-solid patent on a brand-new, life-altering technology, then your answer very well may be that Product is what differentiates you from the pack. If so, enjoy. And start planning for that day, not far in the future, when your product has turned from something unique to a commodity.

Or maybe Price is what sets you apart. That seems to work for Walmart. If you’re not Walmart, I’d say that any time you compete on price, you’re in a race to the bottom – and in that kind of a competition, everyone loses.

My advice? Forget about price. When you Spoil ‘em Rotten, your clients will gladly pay more just for the pleasure of doing business with you. They’ll travel out of their way for you. They’ll bring you their friends. You’ll wonder why everyone doesn’t do it the Five-Star way!

Or you can compete on price and service, and you’ll sow up the market. Each of the ten companies we feature in Make Your Company a H.I.T. wins this way: be it IT solutions, banking, groceries, or home health care (to name just a few), we chose only Five-Star firms that were priced in line with the other guys.

…And rather than “sucking less,” all of these companies stands for something – the same exact thing – that sets them above the crowd and, in so doing, makes them extraordinarily prosperous.

What thing is that? It’s an absolute obsession with Delighting the Customer. This Customer Service Ethic isn’t just first and foremost; it’s first, last, and all in between, too.

What is your differentiator? Product? Price? Or is it Customer Delight?

Take this quick survey:

1. Across industries, is customer service better or worse than it was 20 years ago?
2. What is the level of customer service in your industry?
3. …How about in your company?
4. How good is your own delivery of customer service?

J.D. Power & Associates conducted a similar survey of thousands of people from all walks of life, and this is what they found. See how it compares with your answers:

1. Over half of respondents said that the quality of customer service they receive is on the decline.

However, it seems we find that this decline is someone else’s fault. Here are the rest of the results:

2. Two-thirds said their own industry gives good customer service.
3. More than three in four say that their own company gets it right.
4. Just about 100% of those surveyed report that they personally treat their customers well.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Who are these lousy customer disservice providers, and why don’t they answer surveys?

Hmn… I suppose it’s possible that J.D. Power & Assoc. simply couldn’t find them. But I’m not so sure. What I take from this instead is that we are all too easy on ourselves when it comes to judging the service that we provide. It’s understandable: we’re only human, after all. Most of us don’t mean to let our customers down – our personal pride wouldn’t allow it!

But what about unreasonable customers? Some people – and thus some customers – are just jerks, aren’t they? In the workshops Jane and I run, we’ve heard attendees report that customer service providers would like to “fire” up to a quarter of their customers! But could you imagine making twenty-five percent less money this year? Even five percent seems a bit much, I’d say. We advise against such drastic measures as firing customers – and we give our clients the tools to turn those “unruly” customers into advocates, which leaves everyone happier.

Please, don’t write off a single customer until you’ve spoken to us.

Then there’s the attitude of, “Well, there’s nothing more we could do,” when dealing with an unsatisfied customer. While it may be true that there is nothing more that you could do, that doesn’t mean another person couldn’t help this customer and win her over as a new fan of your business.

I suggest you and your staff repeat this loudly and often, in place of “There’s nothing more we could do:”

“Our customers are always delighted. Every last one. I’m not about to let this one down. My reputation depends on it.”

…Because it does. Your reputation – either individually, as a five-star customer service professional, or collectively, as a five-star company – rides on every single customer experience all day, all week, all month, and all year long.

Don’t lose a single customer through bad customer service, ever!

The preceding mantra isn’t a pipe dream, or a pie in the sky motivational speaker’s spiel. It’s reality, at least for that minute fraction of all companies that really understand what customer delight at that elusive five-star level is all about. Companies such as Philips Lifeline, Jordan’s Furniture, Roche Bros. and Wegman’s Supermarkets, Zoots Dry Cleaners, Middlesex Savings Bank, Saratoga Technologies, and Loving Care Home Health Care, and very few others.

What do these companies get that most do not? For one, they follow the rules written in stone outside Stew Leonard’s Dairy Stores: Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread Rule #1!

For another, they “Mind the store, not the score:” they spoil their customers rotten through mind-blowing customer service, and they count their pennies later. By focusing on what behavior brings in profits, rather than on the profits themselves, these companies all – every last one I listed – beat their competitors in profitability.

Five-Star Customer Service is more profitable than any other kind, by far. I hate to sound bombastic, but if a leader refuses to buy into that fact, she’s fooling herself – and harming her company.

So, back to that survey: what lesson do I take from it? I think we’re all a bit too easy on ourselves when judging our own level of customer service. So here’s my advice:

1. I suggest that my readers sleep on it. Let the information percolate a while.
2. Then, give yourself and your company a star, from one (insulting) to five (superlative).
3. Finally, adjust your score downward by one star. Because that, I’d have to say from experience, is a closer match to what your customers probably think of the service you provide.

How many stars do you deserve? Let me know – I reply to all of my email personally, and I always enjoy hearing from a reader – even when he thinks I’m full of it!