Don't Be Unique Be Better

According to conventional wisdom, businesses must offer something unique in order to compete successfully, the rub is that this task is becoming more difficult as products and services become more similar. The only solutions, this line of thinking continues, are to differentiate your offerings through branding and the communication of emotional values or to completely change your industry's rules.
While there is some truth in each of those assertions, I belive they have been overstated and over generalized and have distracted firms from listening to their customers and consistently delivering on the basics. What customers want is not more differentiation but products and services that are simply better at providing generic "category benefits"-those routine benefits customers expect to get when they make a purchase. Failure at this, is one of the prime contributiors to today's continuing high levels of customers dissatisfaction. The good news is that this dilemma presents a low-risk, high-return opportunity for most businesses-provided top executives buck their conventional wisdom and rethink what people really want from a product or service.

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10 Tips for Respect

Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want at work. They will likely top their list with the desire to be treated with dignity and respect. Popular songs tout the need for respect.

From Aretha Franklin:

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T

con referencia a:

"Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want at work. They will likely top their list with the desire to be treated with dignity and respect. Popular songs tout the need for respect. From Aretha Franklin: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T"
- Service Excellence: 10 Tips for Respect (ver en Google Sidewiki)

10 Tips for Respect

Ask anyone in your workplace what treatment they most want at work. They will likely top their list with the desire to be treated with dignity and respect. Popular songs tout the need for respect.

From Aretha Franklin:

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me."

"Everybody needs a little respect

Everybody needs a little time

Everybody needs a little respect. You know when you have respect. You know when you don’t. But what is respect really? And, how is respect demonstrated at work?

You can demonstrate respect with simple, yet powerful actions. These ideas will help you avoid needless, insensitive, unmeant disrespect, too.

1. Treat people with courtesy, politeness, and kindness.

2. Encourage coworkers to express opinions and ideas.

3. Listen to what others have to say before expressing your viewpoint.

4. Never speak over, butt in, or cut off another person.

5. Use people’s ideas to change or improve work. Let employees know you used their idea, or, better yet, encourage the person with the idea to implement the idea.

6. Never insult people, name call, disparage or put down people or their ideas.

7. Do not nit-pick, constantly criticize over little things, belittle, judge, demean or patronize. A series of seemingly trivial actions, added up over time, constitutes bullying.

8. Treat people the same no matter their race, religion, gender, size, age, or country of origin. Implement policies and procedures consistently so people feel that they are treated fairly and equally. Treating people differently can constitute harassment or a hostile work environment.

9. Include all coworkers in meetings, discussions, training, and events. While not every person can participate in every activity, do not marginalize, exclude or leave any one person out. Provide an equal opportunity for employees to participate in committees, task forces, or continuous improvement teams. Solicit volunteers and try to involve every volunteer.

10. Praise much more frequently than you criticize. Encourage praise and recognition from employee to employee as well as from the supervisor.

There are many other ways to demonstrate respect at work. These ten constitute a solid foundation. Implemented consistently at work, these respectful actions help ensure a respectful, considerate, professional work place which brings huge guest satisfactions and along great revenue.

Customer Service Principle

Throughout business history, companies have introduced grand strategies designed to raise their levels of customer service. They soon discovered, however, that the strategies were the easy part. Getting employees to buy into the strategy and make it work proved more difficult. Not surprisingly, results were usually doomed to failure from the start.

con referencia a:

"Throughout business history, companies have introduced grand strategies designed to raise their levels of customer service. They soon discovered, however, that the strategies were the easy part. Getting employees to buy into the strategy and make it work proved more difficult. Not surprisingly, results were usually doomed to failure from the start."
- Service Excellence: Customer Service Principle (ver en Google Sidewiki)

Customer Service Principle

Throughout business history, companies have introduced grand strategies designed to raise their levels of customer service. They soon discovered, however, that the strategies were the easy part. Getting employees to buy into the strategy and make it work proved more difficult. Not surprisingly, results were usually doomed to failure from the start.

This inability to "close the deal" has been a perennial cause of puzzlement and frustration to company executives. They assumes that once strategies are unveiled, employees will implement the program in such a way that customers notice an increased level of customer service.

Wrong. Not only do sales and service not rise; morale goes down with them! The reason? The assumption that customer service can improve without employee commitment.

All too often, management forgets that strategies and programs start and end with their people. This assumption is a throwback to the thinking of the American Industrial Age when employees were reduced to a component of production, not unlike a piece of equipment.

Industrial age thinking was based on the concept that employees did not want to work and were definitely not concerned enough to do quality work. Employees were given orders, and except for breakdowns (injury or illness), tasks were grudgingly completed.

Of course time has proven again and again that employees DO want to work, they DO enjoy their work, and they want to care about the quality of their work. Research has shown that work plays a huge part in a person's self esteem, self worth and personal happiness.

To turn your strategy into reality, you must create an environment that builds employee pride and quality. It is absolutely vital that customer service be a long-term, everyday commitment that employees believe in. Otherwise, employees will think it just another passing management fad that will fade away after a brief flurry of activity like so many other programs. They've seen it all before and if they don't believe it, it won't succeed.

To illustrate the difference in employee attitudes consider this parable. An observer passed by two job sites and asked one employee from each what they were doing.

Employee one: I'm working like hell for too little money.

Employee two: I'm building a cathedral.

Notice any difference in attitude? One was sold on the project and therefore became part of it, while the other was merely a part of the machine. Which employee would you want representing your establishment?

Customer Service Principles:

• Commit to excellent customer service. Live it, breathe it, believe it, and reward it.
• Sell the employees on the whole, not just their part.
• Ensure that any Marketing initiatives emphasize your employees, not just your products. When morale and pride go up, you can bet services and sales will go up. Make your employees feel they are part of an elite group.
• Ensure all customer contact employees have autonomy to accommodate their customers, even if it means bending company rules. Then take a hard look at those bent rules, and see if they need to be discarded entirely.
• Be better than your competitor by knowing your competitor. Take your key people out to a competitor's operation, and talk about what works there and what doesn't (after you've left, of course.)
• Finally, keep the focus on your people: They ARE your business!

Giving Great service with Passion "The Bottom Line"

The whole concept of remembering that great service is ultimately given one customer at the time-of being willing and able to break the rules when we need to give great service to a guest; of identifying and making moments of truth into positive outcome-is inspiring, because it demonstrates how each of us as individuals really can make a difference every day for our customers and for our organizations. It's also a little intimidating if I really stop to think about it long. Because opportunities missed are..opportunities missed...and much needed sales and very real customers are lost.

con referencia a: Service Excellence: Giving Great service with Pasion "The Bottom Line" (ver en Google Sidewiki)

Giving Great service with Pasion "The Bottom Line"

The whole concept of remembering that great service is ultimately given one customer at the time-of being willing and able to break the rules when we need to give great service to a guest; of identifying and making moments of truth into positive outcome-is inspiring, because it demonstrates how each of us as individuals really can make a difference every day for our customers and for our organizations. It's also a little intimidating if I really stop to think about it long. Because opportunities missed are..opportunities missed...and much needed sales and very real customers are lost.

Happily, by staying vigilant about your service and teaching these concepts throughout your organization, you may have a chance to really contribute to significant success in years to come. If this resonates at all with you, then quickly, before you get caught up in the rest of the day's distractions, go find a customer or pick up the phone and do something special for them.