I know what you’re thinking. Do we really need another customer service book? Before you respond, consider your last customer service experience at a supermarket, restaurant, post office, car dealership, or airport. How did it go?

If research by the ACSI, J.D. Power and Associates, Bain & Company, and Echo Research is any indication, U.S. consumers are unimpressed with the quality of customer service they typically receive. I too am tired of tolerating mediocre customer service as if exceptional customer service is somehow unattainable or simply limited to an exclusive set of companies like Nordstrom, Disney, and Zappos.

After working in the hospitality industry for more than 20 years, I spent much of 2012 writing Delight Your Customers. Certainly there are many books available on the subject, so it’s fair to question what makes this book different from any other book on customer service that you’ve read (or ignored) lately. Unlike many books in the genre that contain the obligatory story about the surly flight attendant or the inattentive waiter followed by a 5-step process that conveniently spells S.M.I.L.E. (or similar), Delight Your Customers opens with an important distinction that will forever change the way employees (both hourly-paid and management) view their job roles.

By demystifying its root cause, Part One of the book reveals the source of lackluster (or worse) customer service quality and identifies three truths common to exceptional customer service. Part Two presents seven behaviors (not steps) that, when demonstrated by employees, distinguish extraordinary customer service from the ordinary, transactional variety to which you and I (and, evidently, most consumer research respondents) have grown accustomed. (Sorry, there are no contrived acronyms.) Part Three provides guidance on ways leadership can shape a work environment that fosters superior customer service by design rather than by chance.

Illustrated with real-world stories and more than 200 examples from a variety of industries, Delight Your Customers is a resource that will help readers take their customer service from ordinary to extraordinary!

Don’t settle for ordinary. Choose extraordinary. (It’s always a choice.) Take a minute now to reserve your copy: Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary (AMACOM Books, June 11, 2013). Thank you!

While directing the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, Cecil B. DeMille challenged a large group of extras portraying the Israelites to energize their performance, shouting, “Alright now. Give me everything you’ve got people! Don’t be extras. Be a nation!”

DeMille’s exhortation of the extras reminds me of the ongoing challenge facing service industry managers to motivate employees, many of whom regularly display their indifference by leaning, standing around, or simply going through the motions at work, treating each customer like the last customer. Their “performances” lack energy, passion, and commitment.

If this describes some portion of your staff, take action! While DeMille used a commanding presence and a megaphone to inspire his actors, service industry managers can motivate employees in other ways:

Model the behavioral standards that are expected of your frontline staff. Great service starts with great leadership. If you are in a leadership role, your credibility will match your consistency. What employees see is what you’ll get.

Treat employees fairly in relation to the basic conditions of employment. I watched an episode of Undercover Boss where a rogue supervisor docked employees two minutes for every minute they clocked in late returning from their lunch breaks. In one cafeteria scene, an employee abruptly ended her conversation and ran full speed in the direction of the time clock to avoid being penalized. This practice epitomizes unfair treatment and fosters unhealthy employee relations at work.

Recognize employees for contributions made to the business. One Gallup survey revealed that 65 percent of employees report receiving no recognition for their work in the previous year. If you are surprised by this finding, understand that saying an occasional, “Good job” doesn’t cut it. Employees deserve sincere and specific feedback from their immediate supervisors.

Encourage participation. Involve employees by actively seeking their input and ideas. Ask questions of employees and then listen to their responses. Stephen Covey termed the need to be listened to, to be understood, as “psychological air.” According to Covey, the highest level of listening is to listen with the intent to understand the other person. Most of us tend to do the opposite, seeking instead to be understood ourselves.

Create and manage an inclusive work environment based on respect and mutual trust where differences are valued, even celebrated. If left to chance, work groups tend to devolve into cliques whereby dysfunctional pecking orders are established by title, uniform, shift, department, and other factors.

While megaphones serve a purpose on a movie set, it’s insufficient to exhort staff without first providing a work environment that fosters engagement. By reinforcing the above principles, managers will create the conditions necessary for employees to shift from simply portraying dispassionate “extras” to becoming “a nation” of enthusiastic service providers!

As a manager, how do you inspire top performance? Or, as a non-management employee, how are you best motivated to perform?

Most of us acknowledge the importance of supervisors modeling the behaviors expected from frontline hourly-paid employees. Intuitively, this just makes sense and is reinforced with platitudes such as “Actions speak louder than words” and “Walk the talk!”

Even so, this leadership principle and management expectation is often neglected. Consider this comment from a blog reader:

“Last night I checked into a full-service hotel. The clerk was young/newer yet was truly committed to ensure that she gave me her all. She was earnest and genuine in wanting me to have a great check-in experience. She had trouble finding a room for me and wanted to meet my in-the-moment realization that a high floor and view was more important than a King-size bed (which I had requested in my reservation). Where it fell apart was when she asked for help from her manager because he came over to help in his very ‘I have role power’ kind of way and didn’t look at me/speak to me and it derailed the spirit of service that she created.”

Unbeknownst to many supervisors, they work among a secret society of boss watchers. These are the frontline employees who are always watching supervisors for cues on how they should act. And they don’t miss much. As Bob Farrell, author of Give ‘Em The Pickle, is fond of saying, “What they see, is what you’ll get.”

If employees see their supervisors neglecting to smile, make eye contact, and add enthusiasm to their voices during interactions with customers, then they too may view these behaviors as optional. Perhaps the customer service training they attended last week was just another initiative mandated by corporate headquarters?

If employees observe supervisors ignoring ringing phones, then they too may neglect ringing phones. Maybe the customer covenant outlined in the company mission statement is not as important as it seemed during new-hire orientation?

And if employees witness their supervisors rolling their eyes after a disagreement with a customer, then they too may feel justified in treating customers disrespectfully. Clearly, the banner in the employee cafeteria proclaiming, “The Customer is King!” is just a slogan.

Great service starts with great leadership. If you are in a leadership role, it is absolutely necessary that you model the standards and expectations that are communicated to your frontline staff. Whether you do or don’t, they are watching.

Illustration: Aaron McKissen

I used to work for a general manager who was critical of our hotel’s food and beverage director because he had a reputation for rolling-up his sleeves and pitching in when the restaurant was slammed. Sometimes, he would seat guests. Other times, he would bus tables.

My GM believed that the reason he had to seat guests and bus tables was because he inadequately staffed the restaurant to service the forecasted volume of guests. That may be true but, as any operations manager can attest, there is a finite number of payroll hours to work with each period in order to stay within budget.

For this reason, many operations managers roll-up their sleeves and pitch in. (Believe me, this is a lot easier than increasing your department’s payroll budget.) Often, their motivation has less to do with being seen as team players and more to do with not exceeding their budgeted payroll hours.

Maybe my former GM was right and the F&B director scheduled inadequately? Or perhaps the F&B director did what he had to do to staff a restaurant with an inadequate payroll budget? I can only judge by what I can see: a line of guests waiting to be seated and a cluttered table that needs to be bussed.

Recently, my son and I were at Cold Stone Creamery. As a line formed nine customers deep, a single employee scrambled to accept, fulfill and ring-up orders. Meanwhile, a second employee was “working” in back in full view of customers waiting in line.

As the harried employee rang up our order, I motioned toward the employee in back and asked, “Is she available to help you out?”

He responded, “She’s a manager, so she has other things to do.”

Unfortunately, her “other things” didn’t have to do with supporting her staff or serving customers. Perhaps she feels as though she’s done her time working on the front line? Maybe she’s above it now that she’s a manager and, as such, should focus on more urgent managerial-type tasks like scheduling, procurement and budgets?

Or, possibly, none of those applies and she just missed an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and exceptional customer service by supporting her staff while reducing the wait time for her customers?

Most managers are classified as exempt employees who, because of their positional duties and authority, are exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. While managers may be exempt from overtime, they are not exempt from serving.

If you’re a manager, understand this: You will rarely have enough budgeted payroll hours to staff your operation the way you’d like to. Scheduling to service forecasted volume is fraught with trade-offs. And there will always be urgent tasks that require your attention.

The most important element to any operation is people: employees and customers. So, when you have the opportunity to serve either of them, do it. Right away.

Illustration: Aaron McKissen

Last Friday after soccer practice, my 7-year-old daughter’s team went to a frozen yogurt shop for some treats.

The first girl to receive her yogurt, Anna, sat by herself at one of the tables while the other girls waited on their yogurt orders. Anna is new to the team while the rest of the girls have played soccer together for two full seasons.

As the other girls began receiving their yogurts, one-by-one they sat together at a table across from Anna’s. One of the girls, after receiving her order, chose to sit with Anna. However, before she could sit down, one of her teammates pulled her chair over to the crowded table and said, “Here, Kennedy, sit with us!”

Instead, Kennedy slid the chair back to Anna’s table and said, “I’m going to sit with Anna.”

And with that, one-by-one, every girl who was seated at the crowded table moved her chair over to Anna’s table. And then they were a team.

I reflected on this story yesterday during lunch with a friend, Mike Nowland, who was in town attending the ASTD conference. Mike told me that one of the conference presenters used Velcro to symbolize the relationship between inclusion and engagement. The lesson being that you can’t have engagement without inclusion.

What a great metaphor. And it’s true whether you’re talking about a 7-year-old girls soccer team or a workforce. In the workplace, there are many subtle barriers to inclusion: uniforms, separate employee entrances, job titles, cliques, executive washrooms, reserved parking spaces, etc. And these barriers to inclusion can have a negative effect on employee engagement.

Most company managers talk about the importance of an engaged workforce but relatively few do the real work of fostering an inclusive work environment—which, as Kennedy demonstrated in the yogurt shop, requires authenticity, thoughtfulness, judgment, effort, and purposeful action. In a word: leadership.

If a 7-year-old can do it, there’s hope for the rest of us.

When I received my first management position with Marriott in 1992, I worked for a general manager named Mark Conklin. Although Mark (as he preferred to be called) oversaw more than two hundred employees, each employee received a hand-written card from him in the mail to honor the anniversary of their birth.

And he didn’t merely scrawl his signature beneath a pre-printed generic “Happy Birthday!” message. He took the time to write a full paragraph that highlighted a recent contribution the employee had made to the hotel, thanked them for their commitment to excellence, and wished them a Happy Birthday!

It would have been easier for Mark to distribute the cards through interoffice mail so that employees received their cards at work but he chose to mail the cards to employees’ homes. He reasoned that the cards would be opened in front of family members and that employees could take pride in sharing the positive comments about their valuable contributions at work.

Although this was 20 years ago, I still have the handwritten notes I received from Mark on my birthday. I keep them with the memorabilia I collected during my 20 years with the company. That’s how much they meant to me.

On December 13, 2011, J.W. Marriott, Jr. announced that he was stepping down as chief executive officer of Marriott International. Arne Sorenson, chief operating officer, has long been viewed as Mr. Marriott’s successor and will assume the CEO role in March. He will be only the third CEO in the company’s 85-year history and the first from outside the Marriott family.

The stability of having Mr. Marriott in the CEO role for nearly 40 years has provided Wall Street analysts with a level of confidence—even during some tumultuous economic cycles. His presence has also assured the company’s quarter million employees that they would be treated fairly and with respect. Customers even took comfort in knowing that there was a real “Mr. Marriott” standing behind the Marriott brand.

All this will change in March when Mr. Sorenson assumes the CEO role. There will likely be a bit more scrutiny by Wall Street. Employees may become more skeptical of corporate initiatives, and customers may begin to question the company’s longstanding commitment to maintaining the high standards of product and service quality championed by the founder’s son.

Last month, when the announcement was made, I was in the process of sending holiday cards and decided to send Mr. Sorenson a card with a brief note congratulating him on his promotion. Let me be clear: I don’t know Arne Sorenson personally. In fact, I’ve never even met him. My only connection to him is that I used to work for Marriott. And I certainly never expected to hear back from him.

To my surprise, the soon-to-be CEO of a $25 billion company took the time to send me the handwritten note below thanking me for my card:

After reading Mr. Sorenson’s note, I was reminded of the birthday cards I received from Mark Conklin 20 years ago—and was reassured that Marriott is in very good hands.

What are some other actions performed by leaders that have made a lasting positive impression on you?

I recently received a review copy of The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. It was a quick read consisting of 34 short chapters—some of which were only two pages long.

The book relates a fictional story about George, a mid-level manager whose work and family life was in disarray before meeting a wise bus driver named Joy who, with the help of a busload of loyal passengers on Bus #11, shares 10 Rules For The Ride of Your Life.

There are many business books out there that read like textbooks—filled with jargon, research, references, charts and graphs. These are the books that are often started but seldom finished. Gordon’s book is different.  He uses plain language and characters that are regular folks to impart simple lessons that other authors take 300 pages to explain.

And unlike some books that have used a similar storytelling format, Gordon’s book addresses some difficult real-life work situations head-on. For instance, how to deal with employees who are negative, insubordinate, or choose not to support the organization’s standards or mission.

The final chapter provides a recap of the 10 Rules followed by a summarized action plan and web-based resources at www.theenergybus.com to further reinforce the lessons.

The Energy Bus also supports several points about exceptional customer service that I often make during my own presentations:

• It’s an employee’s highest priority.
• It’s voluntary and requires a deliberate choice by the service provider.
• Conveying authentic enthusiasm enhances the customer’s experience.
• Customers do not remember their interactions with us. Rather they recall moments during those interactions.

Whether you are looking to improve your performance in the area of leadership, communication, accountability, personal energy, or customer service, this book can help. Get on the bus! Check out Gordon’s book and refuel your life, work, and team with positive energy!

The New Year is upon us. Bus #11 is pulling up now. Are you ready to board?

Last December, because my blog is listed on Guy Kawasaki’s media website, Alltop, I received an exclusive email offer to preview an advance copy of his upcoming book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (Released on March 8^th).

Enchantment delves into the art and science of influencing others to pursue a particular course of action. This may sound manipulative but it’s not. Guy is very clear that if your motives are not pure (or if your product or service sucks), then the ideas in his book won’t help you.

After reading Guy’s book, I contacted him and posed several questions. My background is in hotels and a number of my readers work in that industry. For that reason, a couple of the questions are specific to hotels.

Steve: In a traditional, customer-facing role, what do you see as the greatest single obstacle to delivering “enchanting” customer service?

Guy: The single greatest obstacle is the CEO who doesn’t appreciate the value and joy of providing great customer service. As the saying goes, “When a fish gets rotten, the head stinks first.”

Steve: Readers learned the story behind your preferred airline, Virgin America. What is your preferred hotel chain and why?

Guy: How about if I describe the perfect hotel room? Sure, I’d like a suite so that there’s a place to work and a place to sleep, but the little things are just as important. First, for crying out loud, a desk with more than two electrical plugs—both currently used by the lamp and router. I’m carrying a MacBook, iPhone, iPad, and Sprint MiFi device. I need lots of outlets. Second, an Internet connection faster than AOL dialup five years ago. I need at least 5 megabits speed. Third, powerful shower pressure. There’s nothing worse than wimpy water pressure. Fourth, flexible late checkout. If the checkout time is at noon, it’s not like the maids are rolling in at 12:01. Sure, if everyone requested late checkout, the hotel would be in trouble but most people won’t check out late.

Steve: If you managed a hotel, what is the first action you would take in order to enchant more hotel guests?

Guy: Free Wifi. I cannot understand why hotels that cost $100/day provide free Wifi and hotels that cost $500/day charge you for it. When you couple this with the fact that the Wifi I’m paying for is slow, it makes me crazy.

Steve: If you managed a new group of people tomorrow, what is the first action you would take in order to enchant them?

Guy: I would communicate that I will not ask them to do anything that I wouldn’t do. In other words, I will suck it up and do what it takes to succeed—and I expect them to do that too.

Steve: If you wrote a customer service blog and had a chance to interview yourself about Enchantment, what question would you ask that I did not? And how would you respond to that question?

Guy: I’d ask, “How do I enchant my boss so that I can have the freedom to do what I want to do for our customers?” And my answer would be that the key to enchant your boss is to drop everything else and do what your boss asks for. This might not sound like it’s optimal for you or the organization, but that’s what it takes. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do in order to do what you should do.

Steve: One could argue that this “yes” manager you are endorsing, from a productivity standpoint, would be less effective than his counterpart who would ask the boss, “Which of my current priorities would you prefer that I set aside in order to devote the time needed to accomplish this (most recent) request?”

Guy: I understand the intellectual basis for this response, but in the real world, you’re increasing the workload of your boss. Now he or she has to analyze the tasks in front of you to decide on your priorities. In other words, when your boss asks you to do something, the enchanting response is not to effectively say, “I will do that if you tell me what not to do instead.” That’s creating more work for your boss. Suck it up. Do everything. I never said enchanting people is easy.

If your interest in Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment has been piqued, I encourage you to pick it up today. Here is the link to purchase the book directly from Amazon.

Disclosure: I do not receive any sort of compensation for recommending books. Heck, because of Colorado state tax laws, I cannot even take part in Amazon’s Affiliate Program.

What can I say? I’m just enchanted by Guy’s new book. And when you’re enchanted by something, you can’t keep quiet. You’re compelled to tell others about it! Enjoy!

Though business has its own set of complexities, customer service isn’t one of them. Exceptional customer service is simply a choice.

Employees develop their own definitions of customer service and decide for themselves how they view customers: as honored guests who contribute to the success of the enterprise or as fickle adversaries who are just looking for the best deal.

And, as the lyrics from Rush’s Freewill advise, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

This describes most customer service employees. They have not made a conscious choice to provide exceptional customer service. As a result, they are indifferent toward customer service and customers.

Why haven’t they made a conscious choice? No one’s asked them to. In most cases, no one’s even brought it up.

As a result, employees go about their shifts tending to the mandatory job functions (i.e., the duties associated with an employee’s job role) for which they are accountable (you can bet these conversations have occurred) but give little or no thought to the essence of their jobs, their highest priority—to create delighted customers.

Ignorance may be bliss but it’s bad for business.

68 percent of customers surveyed quit doing business with a company because of perceived indifference toward them as customers.

Oftentimes, employees don’t even recognize when they treat customers indifferently. If you were to poll them, most would rate the quality of their personal customer service as excellent.

Why the discrepancy? There are many factors. Here are three:

1.  leadership apathy

2.  managerial myopia

3.  systems/processes that undermine service quality

If company leaders don’t emphasize the jugular importance of customer service to their employees, where else do they expect them to get the message? The framed mission statement hanging in the reception area? The employee handbook? Please…

Managers are largely tasked with running a profitable operation within a given budget. In order to accomplish this, managers oversee the execution of a set of defined job functions associated with one or more job roles. This is not the problem.

The problem is when managers focus solely on job functions and neglect job essence—an employee’s highest priority—which is always to create delighted customers. (Unless, of course, you work for the US Postal Service or some other entity that can lose $8.5B a year and continue to exist. Then, I suppose you can focus exclusively on job function and get away with it.)

Many organizations create systems or processes that undermine service quality. Perhaps the most common are call centers where employees are evaluated based on the quantity of phone calls processed and how quickly they can end those calls. In these environments, employees are conditioned to treat calls as timed transactions rather than opportunities to serve customers.

In the end, it requires a choice. Employees choose whether or not to express genuine interest, convey authentic enthusiasm, provide pleasant surprises or, in some other way, delight their customers.

Company leaders can influence this choice when they communicate their passion for serving customers in words and deeds. Managers can guide this choice by emphasizing the importance of both job function and job essence. And systems will reinforce this choice when they are designed to serve customers rather than frustrate them.

I welcome all comments, questions, bouquets, and brickbats.

My family and I recently dined out at a quick service Mexican grill. While I was providing my order to the prep person behind the counter, I observed the sales transaction of the customer who was ahead of me. At no point during the transaction did the cashier smile or even make eye contact with the customer. In fact, the irony was that the customer said “thank you” as he accepted his receipt. Even so, she still did not acknowledge him.

We have all experienced this level of apathy from “service providers” at restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, etc. In fact, we may have just become accustomed to it. Our expectations, in some cases, may have been dulled by the frequency of mediocre service that we encounter as we dine, travel, and shop.

This was a reminder to me that it would have cost nothing more for the cashier to make eye contact with her customer, to smile, and (with “life” in her voice) say, “We appreciate your business. Thank you for coming in.” Or, a bit more daring, “Thank you for coming in. If those burritos don’t fill you up, come on back. We’ll make more!”

You see, that would have been interesting. That would have been unique. That would have brought a smile to the customer’s face and the experience would have been memorable. But, instead, the cashier just went through the motions, touched each transactional base (e.g., input order, process payment, provide receipt), and robotically, dispassionately moved on to the next functional sequence to satisfactorily process the next transaction.

It brings to mind what I would expect on an assembly line. Imagine an assembly line worker producing a children’s doll. Let’s say the final step in the process is to attach the doll’s head. The worker lifts a doll’s head from a large box, pops the head on the doll’s torso, and twists it firmly until it locks into place. One by one, the assembler “lifts, pops, and twists” the dolls’ heads until his quota is met or his shift ends. Tomorrow he will return and repeat the process over and over again (i.e., “Lift, pop, twist…Lift, pop, twist…) until the end of another workday.

The restaurant cashier may not have been working on a doll assembly line but the behavior was the same (i.e., Order, payment, receipt…Order, payment, receipt, etc.). Expressionless, robotic behavior devoid of any personality may be permissible in a factory environment or warehouse where there are no signs of real, live customers—as long as certain production quotas and delivery schedules are met.

In a customer-facing position, however, the behavior must be different.

In the current economy, while costs are increasing, pricing pressure is forcing businesses to reexamine their pricing strategies. In the case of restaurants, that may mean reducing portions, prices, or both. In the case of hotels, it may mean lowering their rates to increase market share, reducing amenities, trimming labor hours, and other “profit protection” strategies.

These are tough decisions that are indicative of difficult economic times.

Most operators seem to accept that the answers to navigating a recession are found in budgets, productivity reports, and P&L statements. While fiscal responsibility is necessary regardless of the economic landscape, the real key to sustained rapid improvement is to focus your people on focusing on customers. It costs nothing but a little proactive thinking and your time—which, especially in this economy, is time well spent.

Here are some examples:

Create awareness at pre-shift meetings:

“Who would like to describe for the group, in your own words, the difference between the role of an assembly line worker and your role as customer service providers?”

Reinforce standards through positive feedback:

“Emily, I noticed the way that customer responded to you after you thanked him personally by name. That’s just the sort of reaction we’re hoping to get with every customer. Great job!”

Reinforce standards through corrective feedback:

“Oscar, your eye contact and smile are great and your use of guests’ names is coming along. How can I help you to get better?”

Model desired behavior at all times:

As managers and supervisors, your decisions and behaviors (verbal and non-verbal) are constantly being scrutinized by others. As author Bob Farrell says in his training video, Leadership Pickles, “What they see is what you’ll get.” If employees detect management’s skepticism about a corporate initiative, then they too will be skeptical. If management acts with indifference toward customers, then employees will feel justified in doing so as well. What they see is what you’ll get.

Superior service doesn’t cost anymore to provide than mediocre service. Oh sure, it may require a few minutes of dialogue here and there as well as a concerted effort on the part of managers and supervisors to model the behaviors that are expected from their employees, but that’s no more than is already expected from a competent leader. I recall reading a Gallup statistic that revealed 65% of US employees surveyed claimed to have received no praise or recognition for their job performance in the previous year. Consistent, informal feedback from a credible source (i.e., one who practices what he or she preaches) will address this.

By applying these informal suggestions frequently, a service-based business will create more goodwill with its customers that will translate into enhanced loyalty, referrals, and repeat business. And here’s the best part: there are no buttons or banners or expensive, large-scale rollouts required. The only requirement is for managers to consistently apply the basic principles of communication, feedback, and recognition that embody leadership.