CHAPTER SEVEN

Create a Great
Customer
Experience

“The golden rule for every businessman is this: ‘Put
yourself in your customer’s place.’”

—ORISON SWETT MARDEN

The secret to success in business can be summarized in a single sentence: “Make your customers happy.” The key to your business future is the degree to which you create that experience for people—that you delight customers over and over again and make them happy that they decided to do business with you.

Nothing generates greater customer satisfaction, loyalty, and repeat business more than a companywide commitment to pleasing your customers. It is the key to triggering the response, “This is a great company!”

It is expensive to acquire a customer for the first time. Once you have a customer, you must do everything possible to “bind him to you with hoops of steel.” Develop an obsession with customer service. Take care of your customers better than your competitors and continually look for ways to improve.

Your aim should be to get your customers selling for you. You want your customers to “go viral” and infect the market with your message. You want them telling their colleagues and neighbors about your company. You want your customers to be sending e-mails and blogging about your products and services to each other.

Twelve Steps to the Ultimate Customer Experience

The starting point of developing an excellent customer service policy is to define how you intend to treat your customers. Start by defining the “ultimate customer experience.”

If the customer experience were perfect, what would happen? If your customers could say anything to other people about your services, what would you want them to say?

At the Stanford University Real-time Venture Design Lab, we studied why the vast majority of start-ups fail quickly. We assembled venture capitalists, experienced entrepreneurs, psychologists, sociologists, even narratologists—experts who study the impact of stories on the core beliefs and behaviors in many cultures.

We scoured piles of research on the topic and interrogated the founding members of new start-ups that had been operating for less than a year, as well as those firms that had been successful for decades. We watched customers and stakeholders use the products or services of these companies and talked about what mattered to them. We found twelve factors that give insight into the ultimate customer experience:

1. Reliability and Consistency: Be Predictable

How would you feel if every time you met your friends they were different? Imagine how difficult it would be for you to keep those relationships if every time you saw them they had changed their appearance, voice, and manner. (Although if you’ve ever lived in New York City or San Francisco, as Mark has for many years, you may find that happens more often than you’d like!)

That is precisely how jarring and unnerving it feels to customers when you change your product too often without a good reason. Schwab.com always wanted to improve its website every time the company got a new idea, but customers often hated the unfamiliar changes more than they appreciated the “improvements” that Schwab was so excited about. Many websites routinely change their navigation, for example, just as customers have learned to use and enjoy it—leaving them feeling lost again.

When Coke infamously came out with “New Coke,” its market share plummeted. A century of success was nearly destroyed by impatience and an intrinsic need for change for its own sake, not the customer’s sake. Today, the Coca-Cola Company experiments with and adds hundreds of flavors to meet changing local tastes, but it never changes the original Coca-Cola formula.

Reliability and consistency means customers can count on the brand to mean the same thing every time they experience the product or service—like McDonald’s, KFC, or Domino’s Pizza. You know exactly how they will taste every time you purchase their products. For most companies, that’s the definition of a brand.

2. Responsibility: Raise Your Hand When You Make a Mistake

Study after study shows that when most customers complain, they don’t really want their money back or to cancel the purchase. They just want the product to work. They want the company that sold the product to fulfill the promises made when it made the sale.

People don’t expect you to be perfect. What they expect is for you to take responsibility for the good and bad things that happen when the customer experiences your product. It is amazing how many companies (along with celebrities and politicians) are forgiven of something if they commit to action, quickly apologize, and take responsibility.

When you make a mistake of any kind, immediately apologize and move quickly to solve the problem. Refuse to make excuses or to blame someone or something else. Take action to take care of the customer.

There can be good news in bad news. Ironically, an error gives you an invitation to dig deeper and have a more meaningful conversation with your customer than ever before. Your most loyal customers may come as a result of your mistakes. When a customer complained about an allergic episode that she thought she had while staying at a Marriott hotel, the manager saw an opportunity to show off something that most customers don’t usually think about: the hotel’s scrupulously detailed cleaning process for every room. That is something that a customer would normally never hear about.

In this case, the customer was so impressed that she traded up to a Marriott timeshare, spending tens of thousands of dollars because she was now convinced that she could trust the hotel chain to do much more than its competitors.

Increasing loyalty. A customer who complains and receives a fast response will actually be more loyal to the company in terms of future sales and referrals than a customer who never complained at all.

On the other hand, a slow response to a customer complaint triggers fear and anger. The customer is afraid that he is going to be stuck with a product that doesn’t work and feels angry that he went ahead with the purchase in the first place.

The rule is to respond quickly to customer complaints; refuse to defend or make excuses and offer to make the customer happy immediately. Be open and honest in all your dealings with your customers. Assume that anything you do or say will become public knowledge quickly. Tell the truth and tell it as soon as you know it. Resolve to build and maintain trust in everything you do.

3. Responsiveness: Get in Front of the Story Fast

When your spouse or significant other asks, “Do you love me?,” it’s not just important to answer affirmatively. You had better answer fast! Speed matters.

Today, with instantaneous and global communication, consumers flash text messages about your product that make minutes count. The longer Toyota remained in denial about the acceleration problem in certain of its vehicles in 2010, the bigger the crisis became—and the longer it will take the company to repair its reputation.

United Airlines is finding it hard to live down the story about baggage handlers destroying a passenger’s prized musical instrument while the whole plane watched. Millions of dollars in PR damage could have been avoided by spending $3,500 to replace a customer’s cherished Taylor guitar. But the airline didn’t budge. Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, found sweet revenge in a music video called “United Breaks Guitars,” a parody of Carroll’s experience, which generated more than 8 million views with over 42,000 five-star ratings on YouTube. United was almost twittered to death with bad press, while the band’s career was catapulted to new heights.

Everyone should be clear that the customer is the person who determines your success or failure in your job—and your paycheck. Sam Walton once said, “We all have one boss, and that is the customer. And he can fire us at any time by simply choosing to buy somewhere else.”

You are the advocate for your customer. Think of yourself as the consumer protection agency for your best customers. Be sure to constantly reevaluate the rewards and recognition system to make sure you have the right incentives for your team. You need alignment with your customers to stay deeply committed to great customer service, and that means providing clear disincentives for poor performance.

To win in a competitive market, you must demonstrate deep empathy for the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of your customer. Every customer contact is a “moment of truth.” It has an impact on the customer and, by extension, an impact on the future of your business. You have heard the old saying, They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Your job is to remind customers continually that you appreciate them.

4. Specialized Service: Make It Feel Like a Custom Fit

Is your customer experience what the buyer really wants? Are you a specialist in the customer’s unique needs? How can you put your company in a position to provide a unique customer experience that competitors can’t match without great sacrifice to their other customers?

One company has been able to provide a specialized service so well that more customers are willing to recommend its brand and repurchase the product than any other, according to the BusinessWeek/J. D. Powers survey of Customer Service Champs in 2010. It’s USAA, the insurance company, and it did it by focusing on a niche with an unmet need. USAA’s market is U.S. military officers who couldn’t get auto insurance—due to the perception that they were high risk. Of the top ten automobile insurance competitors, USAA is the only provider that restricts service to members, and their families, of the United States military.

Just-in-time customer experiences. The University of Phoenix is another specialist that makes its user experience feel customized for more than 400,000 enrolled students—making it the biggest college in the world. The company’s parent, Apollo Group, saw revenues grow 27 percent in 2009—to $4 billion—while most educational institutions suffered in the economic downturn. Why?

“The university was among the first to come to the customer rather than the other way around,” said University of Phoenix’s George Lichter. “We didn’t focus on real estate—a pretentious campus setting or snob appeal.” Instead, they get right down to business with a practical college degree for working professionals that is available 24/7, exactly when and how their customers want it. Most traditional colleges, on the other hand, still refuse to think of their students as customers.

“Our campuses don’t have ivy or a quadrangle in the center, but our classes are online on your desktop, or conveniently within fifteen or twenty miles of 70 percent of Americans,” Lichter said.

Even more important, the University of Phoenix discovered it “had more in common with HBO—the cable company—than it did with Harvard,” Lichter added. Cable companies long ago realized they not only were distributing other people’s content, but they were a distribution platform, which meant they could produce their own TV shows. And since they knew the customer better than the networks or the studios, they could therefore customize programs for viewers.

The University of Phoenix, unlike traditional educational institutions, has similar advantages. It is able to create just that right coursework, in just the right way and at the right time, for its customers.

Some services always feel personal. When Mark bought the wrong electric mower at Home Depot online, he was able to return it stress free to any Home Depot store. Home Depot has done something many companies haven’t. It makes it easy for customers to move between its retail locations and the online site. That’s something that every customer wants. Home Depot’s policy gives buyers much more confidence about buying anything, anytime, from the store or the website. It builds trust and loyalty.

5. Selection: Be Sure to Have the Product Available

To elicit the response you want from your customers and to have them say, “This is a great product,” you have to have it in stock. When Mark discovered he bought the wrong mower—and found it so easy to return it to his local Home Depot store—he naturally wanted to buy the right electric mower from them. Unfortunately, the store didn’t have it in inventory in December. Granted, not a lot of folks mow lawns during the holidays. But lawns still grow in California in the winter and, believe it or not, it was a Christmas present. (His father-in-law really did want a cordless electric mower.) The helpful staff searched other stores in the area, which was another great service, but to no avail. They recommended HomeDepot.com, which strangely didn’t offer the item online in December, either.

In the end, Mark found the mower he was searching for and bought it (for even less) at Amazon.com. It was kind of a shame, don’t you think? Home Depot deserved that sale from a loyal customer. The company gave great service when the wrong product had to be returned. But ultimately it didn’t have the right product when the customer needed it.

It’s an expensive balancing act to have just the right inventory at the right time and not break your bank account, whether you’re a small or big business. Inventory costs money and creates risk if it’s not sold. But in terms of providing a great customer experience, you need to find a way to deliver when the customer wants to buy it.

6. Quality: It’s Defined by Your Customer

Quality is defined as the suitability of the product or service to the customer’s special and unique situation. Quality means that your product or service conforms (and hopefully exceeds) the customer’s standards and requirements.

There are different bands or strata of quality. In mass-market retailing, companies like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Best Buy continue to gain market share because they’ve matched product performance and service with their customer segments. They don’t always have the swankiest or highest end stuff, but they do provide what their specific customers expect for the price.

During World War II, thousands of men trained to be paratroopers, but on too many occasions the parachutes did not open during the trial jumps. Fortunately, the paratroopers wore double parachutes so the level of fatalities in training was very low. However, no matter how often the parachute packers were admonished or offered bonuses and rewards for packing the parachutes properly, the default level of parachutes that failed to open remained unacceptably high.

Finally, one of the officers came up with an idea. He announced to the parachute packers that the next morning they would all be taken up to an altitude of 5,000 feet and forced to jump with one of the parachutes they had personally packed. Not surprisingly, every single parachute opened perfectly during this trial jump.

The officer then gathered the parachute packers together and said that, from now on, on a random basis, the parachute packers would be taken up and forced to jump with a parachute chosen at random from the ones they had packed in the previous week. From that moment on, every parachute was packed perfectly and there was never again an incident of a parachute not opening in use.

7. Delivery: Exceed Expectations as Often as Possible

It’s no surprise that companies that offer fast, dependable, predictable delivery of their products attract business away from suppliers whose delivery is slow or inconsistent. Zappos.com, the online vendor of shoes, grew from an idea for fast and imaginative customer service to a billion-dollar company in nine years. According to the company’s CEO, the joke that customers tell is that “as soon as you submit your order online with Zappos.com, you have to get up and hurry to the front door because the shoes you just ordered will be delivered so fast.”

The day Mark met Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of Zappos, the company was celebrating an employee who was being recognized for achieving a company record for the longest phone conversation with a customer. It was about five hours. Wait a minute—if you are like us, you probably thought call centers were supposed to be measured by how fast employees can close the sale and get off the phone! That’s a very common measure in most companies, but not Zappos. The company determined that repeat sales were a better measure, and as a result, no other major shoe distribution company is growing faster.

8. Employee Experience: Make Your People Feel Happy About Working for You

Entrepreneurs like Zappos founder Tony Hsieh understand that if you make your people feel important, that is exactly how they will make your customers feel.

When you take a tour of the Zappos offices, you will see for yourself. It is well worth a lunch hour to do so if you are in Las Vegas. You’ll see wacky outfits and wild-looking cubicles decorated in themes that range from Animal House to Wizard of Oz. On the day of our visit, Hsieh himself was hanging out in a little cubicle with a jungle growing over his head, a stuffed monkey and peanut shells on the floor. You can almost walk by without noticing him.

Employees in each row of cubicles ring a bell, applaud, and celebrate as touring guests pass by. The company’s chief coach, Dr. Vic, has a throne for guests who visit his office. He offers you a paper crown, then photographs you as royalty, then gives you a Polaroid print. Some great companies put employees on a pedestal, but not literally. Dr. Vic is one of the few folks with a private office at Zappos, and his wallpaper is made of 1,500 of photos of his favorite people: the entire Zappos team.

You’ll find Hsieh’s favorite business books framed in the hallways, and he encourages everyone to read them, offering free copies in the lobby. (The wall hangings included, to our delight, Success Built to Last.) Realizing who Mark was, the Zappos team naturally asked him to compete with the tour guide in a hula-hoop contest. (Mark broke all records in his age category, but fell well short of the score of our twenty-year-old instructor.)

9. Commitment by Employees: Make Them Love It or Leave It

When you’ve completed your employee training at Zappos, you’re asked to leave. That’s right. They offer you a check for $2,000 to buzz off.

Only a tiny fraction of the people take the bait.

The key to an extraordinary customer experience is to make sure the people on your team who don’t want to be there go somewhere else. Sounds harsh, but it isn’t. They ought to leave at the earliest opportunity. They’re better off and so are you. They can then focus on doing something that they like, and you can focus on your customers.

What you want are people who say, every day, “This is a great place to work.”

10. Installation: Make Everything Work for Your Customer

Best Buy has revolutionized the retail electronics industry by sending out its Geek Squad in nerdy black-and-white Volkswagens to make house calls. Once on-site, these technicians integrate in-home consumer electronic products (e.g., computers, network routers, entertainment systems) so they actually work together as one neat package. What a concept! They make the installation of these various systems secure, worry-free, and time-saving for consumers, which is a departure from the way electronics manufacturers themselves work (they actually don’t want their equipment to work with their competitor’s products; they want you to buy only their products).

When Best Buy realized it wasn’t just a retail store, it became a trusted service provider—surmounting the installation conundrum for customers in a high-tech world where most consumer electronics are sold to primarily nontechnical people. Customers may not have known that they wanted an extra service of this kind, but once they discovered it, they wanted it by, well, yesterday! Customers today are more impatient than ever. Instant gratification is no longer fast enough. Any business that offers to serve its customers faster immediately becomes the preferred supplier, even at a higher price.

11. Context: Find Out How It Feels to Be a Customer

When crime was wildly out of control on the New York City subway system, the only way to get officials to take action was to have the Commissioner require the senior team to actually ride the subway for themselves. Horrified, they finally understood the customer experience.

Context is king. There’s nothing more powerful in business than context. When you see a product or service in action (and inaction), you will learn more than you would with a million phone surveys.

Mark worked for Schwab.com when it was growing into the world’s largest financial services website, and he would bring Schwab product managers into a dimly lit room with a one-way mirror as if they were going to pick out suspects in a criminal line-up. It’s called a usability lab. On the other side of the mirror was a lone customer sitting at a PC. The managers would watch customers try to navigate the website without help. You could see the screen of the computer and the pained expression on the client’s face.

The client’s suffering is not the customer’s fault, it’s yours.

12. Competition: Be the Customer

Most business leaders sit at their desks and say they are customer focused, but you usually can’t get a full flavor for the customer when you are sitting in the office. You have to get out and into the trenches with your customer.

There is a simple but powerful exercise that you can do within your company on a regular basis: Require everyone on your team to buy from your successful competitors. Visit their places of business, read their advertisements, and look at what they promise to their customers. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, you can get wonderful ideas to improve your customer service experience simply by being inspired or dismayed by your successful competitors, and then doing them one better.

Reward your team for insight. Recognize your team every time they bring a specific experience back from using the competitors’ services. In a surprising number of companies, managers aren’t allowed to use the other guy’s products. Or if they do, it’s only politically correct to report a complaint about the competitors’ shortcomings. This is self-delusion and often a missed opportunity to find a way to improve your own customer services.

That’s the problem with the customer experience. It rarely happens at your desk. It demands that you and your team leave the conference room and set aside the spreadsheets and strategy sessions and go out and experience exactly what the customer experiences—not with insiders or handlers who explain it or dress it up for you in staff meetings. You have to go out there alone and be a customer.

As star venture capitalist Mike Maples says, “You can make ungrounded assertions all night long about what you think is going on with customers, but the facts you’re looking for are never in the building with you.”

What Should You Be Doing More of?

Analyze the behaviors and activities your customers appreciate most and for which you receive the greatest number of compliments. Build on success. Whenever you get positive feedback from customers for any reason, take it seriously. Look around and see if you cannot repeat that behavior or action with other customers.

What Should You Be Doing Less of?

You should reduce, cut back, or eliminate activities or behaviors that customers either do not like or do not want. It is amazing how many companies offer services to customers that they don’t really care about, while diverting their resources away from services that customers really want. This is often the hardest thing to do unless your business is in a crisis.

Letting Go: Practice Creative Abandonment

At every stage of business development, a company must be prepared to start new things and stop old things. Peter Drucker calls this the process of “creative abandonment.”

Your time, money, and resources are limited. To start something new, you probably have to discontinue something that’s old and less effective. One of the very best ways to simplify and streamline operations in your business is to eliminate any and all activities that are not leading to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Practice zero-based thinking in everything you do. Continually ask, “Is there anything we are doing today that, knowing what we now know, we would not start up again today if we had to do it over?”

Would You Do It Again?

In every business, and in every career, there are answers to this question. In times of turbulence and rapid change, there will always be activities that you need to discontinue altogether, activities that are no longer valuable to today’s customers in today’s markets.

You should also ask, “Are there any products or services that we are offering today that, knowing what we now know, we would not bring to the market today if we had it to do over?” The vast majority of products and services developed and sold in competitive markets will eventually fail and will need to be discontinued or eliminated. If customers are not buying your product or service in sufficient quantities, at satisfactory prices, and you cannot improve them to make them competitive, they are excellent candidates for discontinuation.

Does It Work?

It takes tremendous courage to admit that something that seemed like a good idea at the time has turned out to be a poor idea. It’s even worse when you have invested in a process that doesn’t work for your customer. But the only question you should ask, over and over, is: Does it work?

The rule is to try, try again, and then try something else. Don’t fall in love with an idea, product, or service. Don’t pave the cow path! The market is a stern taskmaster, but you must let the market be the judge. Very often, a product or service that was ideal at one time becomes no longer attractive or competitive. The market changes, customer preferences change, and that’s when it is time to cut your losses and move on.

Customer Satisfaction Isn’t Enough

As a rule, you should treat every customer as though you were on the verge of losing that customer every single day. Continually seek ways to improve the quality of the customer experience in dealing with your company. Never be satisfied. Keep raising the bar.

“Customer satisfaction isn’t enough,” according to bestselling business author Jason Jennings. “Customers who say they’re only satisfied on surveys are the ones who leave at the first opportunity and go elsewhere. You have to exceed expectations if you want loyalty.”

Creating an Extraordinary Customer Experience

If you want to enjoy one of the ultimate retail customer service experiences, visit the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan. You won’t be surprised that it is also rated as one of the best culinary experiences in the world. The soaring spaces, exotic aromas, and sharp waiting staff instantly impress you. But what is really extraordinary is how hard they work at making each and every guest feel comfortable in a relaxed and professional way.

Alex von Bidder, the soft-spoken Swiss co-owner of the Four Seasons, approaches you in his elegant hand-tailored suit with his hand extended. He moves with such grace and warmth that he’s been called the Fred Astaire of the restaurant business. He enjoys choreographing his team and is intimately involved with making the customer experience better every week.

Elegant but Down-to-Earth

While von Bidder is accustomed to serving the rich and famous, there’s something downright earthy about him. There’s nothing fake, and you can feel an open-hearted earnestness in his voice. He knows that the first impression is critical, but it’s not enough.

“The best customer experience makes you feel welcome and special enough to come back,” von Bidder whispered as he walked us to the table. He seemed to bow as he pulled out a chair next to the lighted fountain in the center of the room. It’s obvious that this fellow loves this place and he’s genuinely delighted that you are visiting his home.

“If you want a spectacular customer experience, you have to find people who love that experience as much as you do. Once you’re sure a waiter can provide for your guests exquisitely, then you have to let them be who they are as individuals. No one wants a relationship with a machine or a snob. Excellent service always feels personal.”

Four Levels of Customer Satisfaction

There are four different levels of customer satisfaction that may be achieved by your business. If you don’t achieve these levels, your competitors will soon do it, and take away your customers.

1. Meeting customer expectations. This first level of customer satisfaction occurs when your customer receives exactly what he expected to receive when he bought your product or service.

2. Exceeding customer expectations. You move customers to the second level of satisfaction when you do something that is even more than the customer expected.

3. Delighting your customers. When you delight your customers, you do or say something that is completely unexpected and that makes the customer feel happy. Whereas meeting customer expectations will ensure that you stay in business, and exceeding customer expectations is essential to future growth and profitability, when you start delighting your customer you put yourself on the side of the angels. When you deliver customer satisfaction at this third level, that’s when customers start thinking that “This is a great business” and become more inclined to patronize you again in the future.

4. Amazing your customers. The fourth level of customer satisfaction is where you do or say something that is so positive and unusual that your customer is amazed. When your customers are so delighted and amazed with the way you treated them, they start telling other people about you and either send or bring you new customers so that they can have the same experience that the customer has enjoyed. Delighting and amazing your customers leads to perhaps the highest level of customer satisfaction, which is “customer advocacy.”

Measure Their Expectations, Not Just Yours

Be careful how you measure success so that you are really meeting your customers’ expectations, not yours. Following is an experience coauthor Mark had, which illustrates this point.

Mark: I drove through Jack in the Box on a busy day and got a big surprise. The staffer took our order, took our money, and then asked me to drive away.

“Excuse me?” I asked, a bit surprised.

“Sorry, we have to move you through quickly. We need you to get out of the way,” she continued as if I was somehow out of the loop on fast food protocol.

I was speechless. “Please pull forward and park over to the right,” she ordered. Then she was gone.

I sat for a moment. There wasn’t room to park on the right. It was a narrow drive-through lane with a curb on one side and then the traffic zooming past on the street. I squeezed the car forward and up onto the curb. Putting on my emergency flashers, I walked back to the window before the next car could pull up.

“We will be right with you,” she admonished me as I approached. I smiled and explained that I didn’t realize that drive-through meant I was to drop money and leave. I said I would stand there until the manager came to me with our “fast food.”

The franchise owner sighed and stepped forward. He explained that his understanding of the Jack in the Box system was that it was meant to measure who quickly customers are processed through. Well, it was efficient but hardly effective.

“That’s how all the stores do it—we compete with each other,” he claimed, exasperated. He was gaming the measurement system on how fast they could move the customer, not the food.

That clearly is not how Jack in the Box intended this measurement to be used. But the fact that it can get confused out in the field means that it’s a good habit for you to “mystery shop” your own stores on busy days to see what really happens. You have to be careful what you wish for: What kinds of behaviors are your measurement systems actually rewarding? Is it improving the customer experience? People tend to go after the incentives using the letter, not the spirit, of the law you put in place.

The irony is that one Dictionary.com definition of the word customer unintentionally captures that fast-food manager’s bad attitude:

cus·tom·er A person one has to deal with… .

Yes, you do have to deal with customers. It’s ironic how often we run across customer service organizations that resent customers and think providing service is an imposition. That is why great companies know that the key to great customer experiences is to hire people who love customers and love service. It’s essential to find service people who get an energy lift from making customers happy—people who are delighted to look for and discover the deep subconscious needs they can satisfy for your customers. The satisfaction of these needs are the building blocks of all relationships.

The Three A’s

1. Acceptance. Each person has a deep down need to be accepted unconditionally by other people. One of the greatest fears that people have is the fear of rejection, of being criticized or not respected by others. One of the greatest joys is to be completely accepted by another person or by everyone you meet.

The way that you and your customer service team should express acceptance is simple. Smile! (This may seem obvious, but it must not be since you don’t see enough of this behavior!) When you smile at people, you improve their self-image and raise their self-esteem. You make them feel more valuable, respected, and worthwhile. When you smile at another person, that person glows inside and feels happy to be in your presence. If you are on the phone, put a mirror there and smile into it so your customer can hear the smile in your voice.

Whenever you have a “moment of truth” or a contact with new or existing customers, you should act as if you are glad to see them. You should brighten up and smile and be welcoming, as if you were running into a long-lost friend after many years. You should make your customers feel glad that they met you and spoke to you.

Remember the halo effect. The first customer contact that a person has sets a tone that can either shine a light or cast a shadow over the rest of the customer relationship. In business, be sure that whoever answers the phone or speaks to the customer is a positive, courteous, friendly, cheerful, and pleasant person to talk to.

2. Appreciation. Every human being has a deep need to be recognized, to feel significant. Whenever you express appreciation to another person, that person feels more valuable and important. Appreciation has an emotional impact on people; their self-image improves and their self-esteem increases. Appreciation makes them feel better about themselves, and to like you by extension.

How do you express appreciation? It’s simple. Say “thank you.” Take every opportunity to thank your customers for calling you or buying from you. Thank them for coming in and thank them when they leave. Phone them and leave thank-you messages on their voicemail or answering machines. Send thank-you notes and cards after a purchase or transaction.

Continually think of additional ways, large and small, to say thank you to your customers for doing business with you. Because this kind of gesture is often unexpected, it will both delight and amaze your customers and cause them to come back to you over and over again, and bring their friends, too.

3. Attention. You demonstrate attention when you listen intently to your customers as they express their feelings or opinions to you. Listening has been called “white magic” because of the incredible power and influence it has over the person being listened to. When you listen intently to people when they are expressing their thoughts or feelings, their self-esteem goes up. They feel more valuable and important. They feel happy inside.

When you listen intently, the other person will consider you to be a more valuable and more worthwhile person as well. Paying close attention to your customers, listening to them without interrupting or attempting to interrupt, has a completely positive effect on your customers and their feelings about you and your offerings. Because of the halo effect, they unconsciously assume that your company is better managed, and that your customer service is superior, and that your products and services are superior to those of your competitors and worth more money.

Love Your Customers

One of the most powerful and important competitive advantages you can develop is the quality of the relationships with your customers. The most successful and profitable businesses, of all kinds, at all levels of business activity, are those companies that care about and take care of their customers better than anyone else.

What would you do differently in your business if you truly loved your customers? Imagine that your customers were personally responsible for paying your paycheck, assuring your lifestyle with your family, paying for your car, vacations, restaurant meals, clothes, and all the good things you enjoy in life. Imagine also that your customers provided you with all of these things completely spontaneously, without asking anything in return, other than that your products and services do what they say they will do, and continue to do it, after they buy them.

If you felt this powerful emotional bond with customers, how would you encourage your staff to treat them?

How would loving your customers change your product or service offerings, or your delivery, if your staff truly loved your customers?

By taking care of your customers exactly the way that you would like to be taken care of if you were a customer, you can continually trigger those wonderful words: “This is a great business!”

This Is Your Legacy

When you decide to build a great team of people to create an extraordinary customer experience, you are ready to develop all of the potential possibilities for your business. As they say in the army, “You can be all you can be.” You can fulfill your hopes, achieve your goals, and make a significant contribution to yourself, your family, your company, and your society.

“I’d rather be ashes than dust,” said author Jack London. Run, don’t walk, into your future. There is no better time than right now, today, to put all your energy into building your dreams and creating a better, bigger, more profitable business.

This is the greatest opportunity of your lifetime. Don’t let it slip past.

Now, go and build a great business!