cartoon by @gapingvoid
I am always looking for things to inspire me. Trust me – we all need that these days. But as a student of successful marketing, I love seeing people enjoying – and taking pride in – their job.
Nothing inspires me more than someone who is looking to do their very best. Even if they are working at Starbucks. In fact, my most favorite businessperson is a young lady who works at the Starbucks near my house. She is always on – happy, pleasant, chipper, and striving to make the perfect cup of coffee for me. You can actually see her taking pride in making that coffee. Meticulous, in every move she makes…
A member of my family just spent 10 days in a the hospital. As you can imagine, I saw the FULL spectrum of employee attitudes – the employee striving to be perfect in every way – to the employee there just for a paycheck. Some nurses cared about every little detail, some appeared to be actually looking at the clock when they were making rounds. Since the patient had no other options (she wasn’t going to get up, leave, and check in to another hospital), it felt as though some of those nurses didn’t even listen.
We all witness employee interaction. And you know good stuff when you see it. Don’t you feel charged when you personally experience a good interaction with an employee? Don’t you want your customers to feel that way after dealing with you and your company?
What I can tell you is this isn’t automatic. You have to work at it. You have to be committed. You have to be DISCIPLINED. I see it all the time, when a company charges out of the gate with renewed vigor to improve the customer experience, but then fail to maintain the discipline to keep the effort sustained over time…
You have to choose to be this way, choose to care about your customer this way. I wrote about this here. It isn’t easy to maintain this over the long haul. But it is necessary.
And it is a sustained effort over time – and sustained commitment to the very best customer experience – that yields a strong brand…
