If you’re not in the habit of praising employees on a regular basis, you may want to start finding sincere compliments to pay forward. The power of our positive words to employees are often perceived as priceless. One compliment can put a beat in the step of an employee for a week, a month, or maybe longer. The same goes for our customers. Pass on a sincere compliment to a customer, and then watch their reaction. Recognizing an accomplishment with genuine praise is priceless, and great for inspiring both associates and customers.

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Whether we know it or not, our attitude often pours the perception foundation cement of our customers. If we are short, curt and rude, it will be very, very hard to get a potential customer to lean our way. Maybe today’s a great day to start checking your attitude at the door when you walk into the office each morning. Positive and upbeat attitudes usually translate to positive business outcomes. Negative attitudes, often morph into excess tension, issues and customer uneasiness. The keys to the bus are in your hands. How will you drive your daily interaction route?

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We all need great reasons to communicate with our customers. One of the easiest exercises is to sit down and examine what important, or significant business facts have you forgotten to tell customers about? Many times, these facts can directly affect customers. Imagine if you were to discover 10, 15 or 20 bits of customer-pleasing information you could share with customers? These fresh info bites would serve as great social media content and can assist in drawing customers to you company. If you’ve never gone about this exercise… Today is a great day to start.

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Imagine adopting the old restaurant management moniker of, “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” Without uttering a word. the way we keep the interior of our offices, the entranceway, the outside walkway, our administrative paper sorting, and the overall appearance of our offices tell customers a lot about our businesses. Imagine the impactful messaging you are communicating to customers when they consistently witness a neat, tidy and pleasant office environment? We are telling them we take care of what we are given. We are good stewards, and we will take care of customer time and money the same way we do our offices. Maybe it’s time to start cleaning when you want to start leaning.

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What would happen if your company tackled every issue as an opportunity to make an improvement. In other words, the issue is a megaphone screaming out to you to make a change. Imagine how healthy our businesses would be, and how happy our customers would be, if we just recognized issues as opportunities to make a positive change? Problems are clues. Clues require investigation. Open-minded investigations can lead to eye-opening revelations about what is making a customer mad. Usually these deep-dives reveal numerous examples of the problematic occurrence. Permanently fixing repetitive problems will necessarily improve the health of your company.

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I saw a commercial on television for the pain management center in my area. They were proud of their 10 years of service to the community, and they put a nice advertisement out to encourage people to use their services. It got me thinking; Do many companies attempt to mitigate, or eradicate customer pain points? Imagine what our businesses would look like if we just focused on the top three customer pain points, and then we actually eradicated them. It’s another way of promoting continuous improvement. If you’ve never engaged in anything like this, maybe it’s time to start doing it now?

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The “Experience Economy” is large and in charge in today’s business world. Often times if is the “HOW” we provide services that override the “WHAT” we provide. It sounds inverted, but it is reality in many cases. Customer perceptions are now heavily leaning into the “HOW” we do business . Good perceptions provide our sails with some needed wind at our backs, while negative perceptions leave our boats at a standstill. To compete in today’s business world, we must address that “HOW” factor with as much fervor as we do the “WHAT”. The good news is that unhealthy service reveals itself in patterns that are repeated with regularity. This makes unhealthy service easy to find if we are looking. Maybe it’s time to become a pattern detective within your own company?

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Customers place high value on vendors that display reliability and consistency. If so, then why do so many companies deliver service when, and how it is convenient for them. We address this in out book. Service When It Is Convenient For Us (SWIICFU) is far too common in today’s business world. It is a company-centric model versus what should be a customer-centric model. What say you? Is it time to shed your SWIICFU mindset in exchange for a model that better serves customers?

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