Let’s do a word association. You know how these work: I’ll name a word and you, off the top of your head, identify a set of words that you associate with that word. Ready?

The first word is indifference. What words immediately come to mind?

The second word is enthusiasm. What words immediately come to mind?

When I perform this activity at my seminars, participants’ associations with “indifference” are words like: apathy, don’t care, unimportant, don’t matter, etc. and their associations with “enthusiasm” are words like: lively, energetic, smile, radiant, etc.

Consider this statistic: 68 percent of customers quit doing business with a company because of perceived indifference towards them as customers.

In other words, lots of customers feel as though employees are apathetic and don’t care, and that, as customers, they are unimportant and don’t matter to the company.

What could be leading customers to feel this way? Everyone’s experience is unique but definitely interpersonal communication effects this perception. When employees don’t smile, make eye contact, or add a bit of enthusiasm to their voices, customers notice.

But here’s the good news: When employees do smile, make eye contact, and add a bit of enthusiasm to their voices, customers recognize that too. And because it’s a change from the indifferent service that most customers have come to expect, it stands out as refreshing, unique, and memorable.

Recently, I was reading the book Love Your Patients by Scott Louis Diering, M.D. and came across the following passage:

“Everyone is important. Every person you meet is very, very important. Every patient’s problem, every concern, every appointment, every minute is very, very important. Everything is important to someone. All we need do is recognize that importance. Enthusiasm is the easiest way for our patients to know that they are important.

When we act with enthusiasm, our patients will know that we truly take them seriously. We must ‘get into it.’ Many of the techniques and suggestions (referenced above) show our enthusiasm: We nod our head, make eye contact, and listen intently. We do these things to show our patients that they are our biggest concern.

It does not matter how many other more urgent problems we have to deal with. It does not matter that our last patient and our next patient are dying. What matters is, while we are with this patient, we are not distracted, bored, uninterested or unconcerned…

The best ways to show our enthusiasm are to thank our patients, to ask some non-healthcare questions about them, and to let them know that we are glad to see them…

Someone may criticize this view. They may say small talk distracts us from real patient care. They are wrong. Our business is people. The more we know about our patients, the better we can serve them.”

Many job roles, regardless of industry, become process-focused and routine over time. Service providers systematically go about their tasks and may unwittingly convey indifference towards the customers they serve.

Always look for opportunities to convey authentic enthusiasm: smile, make eye contact, add enthusiasm to your voice, ask engaging, non-routine questions and let your customers know that you’re genuinely happy to serve them.

In doing so, you will be expressing your uniqueness by adding personality to an otherwise routine and indifferent transaction. Best of all, you will be seen by customers as memorable—which certainly beats the alternative.

Personal importance is often misunderstood at the frontline service provider level in the hospitality industry. I’ve had participants in customer service classes who challenge the notion that anyone should be treated any differently than anyone else. Some see acknowledging one’s personal importance or “Elite” status as favoritism. Others see it as an affront to their own social status, as though they are of a subservient class.

My response to these participants is that by personal importance, we are not suggesting a social hierarchy whereby customers are treated as more important people. Personal importance implies the acknowledgment of their importance as customers and the value they bring to the business through personal spending, loyalty, referrals, etc.

The best illustration of personal importance that I’ve come across lately comes from the book, The New Gold Standard by Joseph A. Michelli:

A guest of The Ritz-Carlton wrote a letter to the company president, Simon Cooper. In the letter the guest recalled:

“One of your employees and I got on an elevator in your building. I pushed the sixth-floor button and he pushed none. Instead of getting off with me on the sixth floor, your employee simply said, ‘Have a nice day.’ Upon exiting the elevator, I asked, ‘Where are you going? Aren’t you getting off here?’ Your employee replied, ‘No, I’m going back down to the fifth floor.”

The guest goes on to write, “I couldn’t believe it—how do you find people who are so invested in placing the needs of their guest above their own?”

The opposite of placing the needs of customers above your own is to place your needs above theirs. This happens all the time when companies cite “policy” as the rationale for not meeting the needs of their customers. Other times, customers may perceive that they’re being treated indifferently—like they don’t matter—and feel as though their business is being taken for granted.

One survey revealed that 68 percent of customers quit doing business with a company because of perceived indifference towards them as customers. That’s shameful!

So, ask yourself these questions: What might my staff and I be doing that may be, perhaps unwittingly, communicating indifference towards the customers we serve? And, what actions can we take immediately to acknowledge the personal importance of our customers?