Customer Service Series : MLK and the invisible

Sometimes I think I have adult A.D.D. I can’t sit still very long & boring people about drive me to suicide. Long trips. Rush hour. Emotionless sermons. I can’t stand anything that makes me sit still longer than a few seconds unless it entertains me.

About five years ago, I went to a sales conference that could be categorized as an Alcatraz for ADDers. A middle-aged, well-dressed lady was the prison warden offering the normal torture tactics: false modesty, a monotone voice, overused cliché’s & a bevy of painfully boring stories. I remember drinking massive amounts of water just so I had an excuse to go to the bathroom.

As I drooled on my bottom lip & doodled on a hotel notepad, the ice-pick-my-the-eye boring speaker rambled through a series of irrelevant & over used metaphors about life. I think her goal was to irritate us into being better sales people.With my eyes flickering & attention almost gone, a life-changing quote splashed across the poorly assembled power point presentation.

In a real sense all life is inter-related. All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny: Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, & you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.

When I first read Martin Luther King’s words, I thought I understood what he was saying about community. He was telling us to comprehend the connection of people around us. Those you see when you walk in a crowd, men of different opinions, races & religions. All the people of the world related together in a single garment of humanity.

I thought I understood, but my initial thought was superficial. It took me five more years to appreciate the expanded meaning of MLK’s discourse and properly apply it to my world. Why is this important to Customer Service? Stay tuned and find out.

To be continued...

Customer Service Series : Defined

In our recent national tour we defined World Class Customer Service as the following:

The art of consistently exceeding internal and external customer expectations by being a problem solver who can see the invisible needs and act with service standards beyond belief.

Customer Service Series : Becoming World Class

As an organization, we have grown dramatically in the last few years. This has required us to recalibrate our efforts in providing service to our internal and external customers. As an organization our leadership teams committed to a nationwide tour to restate our vision, values and mission to "get back to the basics customer service. Visiting every market and speaking to over 90% of our employees we challenged them to take raise their standards and asked for them to join our leadership teams to also working together to reach our lofty "World Class" goals.

We believe this mutual commitment represents the words of Bill Thomas many years ago, when he said to our customers that he wanted us ....

“...to be like a department of your company. Working in concert with your designers to see your job through to completion. Together we will attain your goal.”

Called World Class Customer Service," our national tour was designed to help us all “work in concert” with each other, as well as our great customers. We will follow-up this first session with future specialized learning programs in the areas such as front counter, sales, delivery, and leadership.

The Art of Reprographics

Over the last few years, art has become an important part of my life. It's helped me see the world in much different ways— exploring my surroundings physically, spiritually and intellectually. I've come to realize that without a healthy appreciation of art and the power of creativity our personal growth is severely hindered— in all areas of life. Leadership. Service. Marketing.

In the business world art is called “innovation.” I’m fascinated by the marketplace's artistic explosion. Businessmen, poets, scientists, marketers, researchers, artists, architects, and other disciplines mixing experience and perspective to create dynamic innovation.

There have been hundreds of books published in the last decade trying to get people of their boxes.

I believe the “think outside the box” cliche is an attempt to get people to realize that we sometimes get stuck in our own worlds. There must be a lot of people in boxes because there are people from business, philosophy, psychology, sports, and religion talking about boxes.

Carlos Santana was thinking outside his box when he decided to get a bunch of young hip-hop and rock musicians and make “Supernatural.“ Who would have thought someone who played at Woodstock would have the biggest album of his career thirty years later playing with people that could be his grandkids. Genius.

Part of the musical revolution of the last few years has involved the mixing of cultures, genres, and styles. Linkin Park, Bon Jovi, Justin Timberlake, DC Talk, Eminem, and P.O.D. are some good examples. They combine rock, hip-hop, rap and/or country to create musical combinations once segregated to one section of the record store.

Maybe we could learn a few lessons in creativity from an old rock star.