Great customer service has to come from the inside out. You cannot mandate it. You can’t threaten, reward, or coerce people to care. You can only awaken the desire and then give them the permission and encouragement to make it come alive in their work.
Simply said, if people don’t have in their hearts the desire to serve and make a difference for others, they will not give great service. Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, often said that the secret of her success was hiring nice people and then allowing them to be as nice as they could be.
Johnny’s idea wasn’t nearly as innovative as it was loving. During my speech, I challenged him to go home and think of something he could do to make his customers feel special. He thought about that idea and framed it in a way he could understand. He didn’t bother reading management books or looking for the trend of the month; he searched inside himself for a solution. What he found – his thought of the day – was real. And it came from his heart and that’s the part you can’t pretend.
At the core of great customer service lies the heart of each employee. When I work with an organization, I often walk around and ask people, “What is your work?” What they almost always tell me is a job description or a job title. Yet we are all so much more than that. We can bring our hearts to work with us! When you think about the question – “What is your work?” – think about this:
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How is what you do every day making someone’s life better?
That is your very important work!
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Johnny brought his heart to his job. He focused on what he could do in his daily work to make his customers feel special and their lives a little better.
No matter what our job or position may be, we each possess a unique understanding of this world and have our own ideas and gifts to share. Our truest gift, like the one Johnny shared, can be found in our hearts if we look deeply enough and listen closely. When the heart is in the right place, the ego gets out of the way. That’s when great service comes shining through.
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P.S. If you have an interest in finding out more about Johnny, you can click on the image below; or, if you haven’t seen our three minute movie on The Simple Truths of Service, you can click here. e
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DVD Movie Included An unforgettable true story about a young man with Down's Syndrome who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect. Best-selling authors Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz have written a book that any company can use to reshape their culture around serving the customer. Designed by Michael McMillan (The Race and Paper Airplane), this book will become a customer-service classic. This story will grab
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The article above was excerpted from the book "The Simple Truths of Service" by Ken Blanchard and Barbara Glanz. It is reprinted here with permission. You may share this
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