Movement Tips

The Importance of Customer Service

Mouton Salon - Tuesday, April 19, 2011

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is wheat the client or customer gets out of it". Peter Drucker

"Quality is never an accident. It is the result of an intelligent decision." John Ruskin

"Hire character. Train skill". Peter Schulz

"A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large." Henry Ford

In any successful business or organization, the commitment to customer service always begins at the top, the company's leaders must buy into the fact that they not only need to meet their customer's expectations, they must strive to exceed them. They must develop a company culture that understands, embraces and executes this concept. In today's world, business competition is tougher than ever. If you can't provide goods or services when somebody wants or needs them, there are often four or five other companies immediately ready to fill this void. You only get one chance to make a good first impression. If the company's leaders do not accept this fact, or are not willing to provide the necessary resources to meet their customer's needs, they will soon find themselves scrambling for business.

Proper training is one way to develop a company culture that embraces excellent customer service. Every employee must understand implicitly what is expected of them when interacting with customers. Is there an established, uniform way to answer the phone? Are there set procedures in place for instances when a customer has a question or problem? Is there an established chain of command to make sure that issues are handled in a timely fashion? And most importantly is everyone trained to carry out these company procedures? How you handle the problem is far more important than the problem itself. A customer must always be made to feel as though their best interests are being given serious consideration, even when you can't give in to their demands. It is far better to say 'no' with a smile, than 'yes' with an attitude.

Source of this quote: businesstoolchest.com

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Gratitude boosts the immune system...

Mouton Salon - Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Imagine for a second that we counted our blessings ALL year long instead of just at Thanksgiving and Christmas. What would be the result? Better health and a stronger immune system, say researchers. Positive psychology, a recent health movement, has found that people who are more optimistic and grateful on a daily basis for their lives, take better care of themselves and manage stress a lot better. Optimistic people tend to have higher levels of blood cells that protect the immune system, too. In fact, adversity can boost feelings of gratitude. Studies held after 9/11 showed that overall feelings of well being and thankfulness surged in our country which helped many people cope with every day stress. For survivors of 9/11, the feelings of gratitude even helped them avoid Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What are some of the things you can do to live a more "mindful" life?

1. Maintain a gratitude journal on a weekly basis detailing feelings of thankfulness.

2. Create a list of benefits in your life and ask yourself, "To what extent do I take these things for granted?"

3. Talk to yourself in a positive, creative and optimistic manner.

4. Reframe a situation by looking at it in a different, more positive manner. What good things could possibly come from it?

What do you have to lose (except feeling negative and helpless?) A new year begs for a new mindset.