Dear Team Member,

Dear Team Member,

Today we got a letter from a customer complaining about us.  It was a little about what we did for them, and a lot about lack of communication and how we handled it.

I am always disappointed when we get these kinds of letters because I know we are better than that.  I don’t want to talk about the specifics of this customer, I want to talk about us.  

What kind of people are we?  What kind of company do we want to have?

At some companies, employees are there to have easy days, take less responsibility and initiative than they should, and pass things off to the next department or next employee or next day or week.  This kind of thinking causes our customers to have bad experiences, and that is not good for our future – for both you and I – and everyone else here.  

Here’s what we need.  We need each of us to be 100% responsible for customer happiness.  We need to be extra helpful, extra polite, patient, listen, and follow through and follow up.  If the customer needs to be helped by another department, we do a warm handoff to that other department, making sure our fellow team members know about the customer, their issue, and ensuring they are taken care of.

If a customer is starting to get annoyed with something, or if they are picky or hard to please – we do not resist and make excuses.  Instead we double down on the attentiveness and responsiveness to make them happy. 

And making them happy today is far better then making them happy tomorrow.  Making them happy on THIS phone call, is far better than calling back later to make them happy.  Speed is important.  We don’t want the dinner conversation in their home to be “I called them but they said they’d call back tomorrow.”  We want them to tell their spouse, “I called them, and they took care of it”.  That is very different.  We need to respond well now so they do not go to the internet and make a complaint about us.  

We need team members who LOVE to serve customers.  We have to get our jollies by making people smile.  We have to do what it takes to create happiness and harmony and to impress people with how much we care.  If we can do that, and if YOU can do that, we will have more fun, can take pride in what we do, we will get compliments, and we will win.

So let’s be the good guys.  Every day, one customer phone call or interaction at a time.  Let’s be human – friendly, helpful, capable humans to our customers.