You know it's good customer service when you find yourself telling others about it. Here goes with 2 stories from last week that pushed my thinking in terms of extending and expanding customer service:
- As our team sat down to a welcome lunch at Fulton's on the River for a Manila manager starting an assignment in Chicago, the waitress came to the table with a neatly folded pile of black napkins. She explained that she offered black napkins to her customers who were wearing dark pants as an alternative to the white napkins set out on the table. What a great idea! With her experience in food service, she -- or the restaurant -- offered a simple solution to a problem I don’t typically think of until returning to the office and seeing all those white specks on my dark dress pants. By offering that and being prepared to deliver it right away, she quickly established the restaurant as a high-touch, value add service. And it costs the restaurant very little to offer that to its customers.
- Half-way through a meeting the next day with a Senior Executive who was my customer a few years back, he asked me point blank, "How can I help you?" The direct simplicity of the question along with the genuine intention behind it really hit me. He saw this meeting as an opportunity for each of us to help or serve the other. That question reminded me to think of everyone as a potential customer/someone I can serve and to directly ask "How can I help you?" instead of just thinking and assuming they must know I would help them.
So I challenge you -- and me -- to look for and be ready to meet opportunities to add value in incremental, quick ways helping your customers in areas they might not have cycles to think about and to expand your definition of who the customer is.
