In 1997 I heard Dr. Chip Bell speak on the topic of customer service.

My most vivid memory from his talk was a question he posed to 70 members of our management team:

“How many of you,” he asked, “have worked here for 90 days or more?”

Surveying the room as nearly everyone raised a hand, Dr. Bell said, “You’re blind.”

He went on to make the point that, after you have worked in the same environment for 90 days or more, it’s easy to become conditioned and overlook shortcomings that our customers notice as glaring deficiencies while forming their first impressions.

And first impressions matter.

I’ve read that, in forming their initial impressions, customers make 11 different decisions in the first seven seconds of contact.

Of course, no one is claiming they are making 11 accurate decisions in the first seven seconds. They’re really making inferences—forming opinions based on known facts or evidence. Perception really is everything.

Reader challenge: Look at the door handle at the top of this post. What type of business do you think operates on the other side of this door? Take the next seven seconds or so to study it.

When I shared this picture with others, I received a variety of responses:

• Junkyard
• Warehouse
• Storage unit
• Janitor’s closet
• Frank’s Auto Repair
• Garbage collection
• Bookie’s office
• Rural feed store
• Crack house
• Pawn shop
• Jail
• Morgue

Last weekend, my son attended a friend’s seventh birthday party at Jungle Quest in Littleton, CO.

For the uninitiated, Jungle Quest is a popular destination for themed birthday parties where young “explorers” can, according to its website, “zoom on ziplines, buzz over Burma bridges, swerve on swings, and ratchet up rock walls.”

Like most themed events, the goal is for participants to be swept into an altered environment—one that transports them from the routine and ordinary to the unique and extraordinary. And customers are willing to pay a premium for these experiences.

Everything communicates. From the moment a customer accesses a website, reaches a telephone rep, pulls into a business’s parking lot, or (dare I say) reaches to open its front door, decisions are being made and impressions are being formed.

Leave nothing to chance! Seize every conceivable opportunity to positively influence customer perception and fulfill the experience conveyed in your marketing message.

Or, better yet, pleasantly surprise your customers by providing the unexpected, such as a textured door handle resembling a jungle vine—as opposed to Jungle Quest’s actual front door handle pictured above!

Whatever you do, don’t get too comfortable and turn a blind eye to opportunities to improve the customer experience.

Parents, for instance, should be able to easily distinguish between the location of their child’s birthday party and, say, a crack house or pawn shop.

Over the past 15 months I’ve been on Twitter, I have contacted dozens of businesses for a variety of reasons.

In some cases I’ve had feedback on a product or service. In other cases I was interested in buying a product or service. A majority of the time, however, I was simply trying to engage.

The accounts I contacted varied from restaurant chains and coffee and wine retailers, to independent authors and consultants. When providing feedback on an experience I had with a product or service, whether positive or critical, I seldom received a response.

On one occasion, I ordered three pounds of coffee from a Washington-based retailer I met on Twitter. After the coffee was three days late in arriving, I sent an @reply to the account. The coffee arrived the next day but I never heard back regarding my comment. That was the last time I ordered coffee from that retailer.

Another time, my family and I had a negative experience at an area location of an Italian restaurant chain. After blogging about it, I forwarded the blog link to the chain’s Twitter account in an @reply. Instead of following up, they ignored the message. We haven’t returned to that restaurant chain.

And since posting this blog regarding obtaining signed books from two well-known Twitter personalities, I have had another request for ten signed books ignored by another Twitter celebrity. That’s okay, there’s no shortage of competing books for me to buy.

And before anyone attempts to rationalize this lack of engagement and poor customer service due to these organizations or people being busy, understand that we’re all busy.

If you and I are too busy to clean our homes, we hire a maid. If we don’t have time to cook, we eat out. And if we’re too busy to follow up on customer feedback and sales inquiries, we hire an assistant. No one is above responding to customers or making a sale.

Speaking of busy people, two who took the time to respond to me and to ensure that I received ten signed copies of their latest books were bestselling authors John Miller (@QBQGuy) and Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee).

These guys are not too busy to respond—or make a sale. They are busy professionals with a lot on their plates who not only preach about the importance of customer service, they deliver it.

In summary, here’s a list of Do’s and Don’ts:

Do:

• Engage
• Respond to others
• Capitalize on opportunities

Don’t:

• Be indifferent
• Ignore others
• Miss opportunities

Bottom line: If you don’t like to engage, you’ll like irrelevance even less.