When our days get jammed packed full of to-dos, sometimes we forget to look up and realize we are dealing with people every day. People just like you and I and we all want the same things in the service we receive. Spend some time with your team brainstorming and create a plan on how your team can sincerely communicate with your clients during the sales process.

• Send hand written thank you cards
• Take note of birthdays, anniversaries, and child births and send a card/gift to congratulate
• If your client is having a tough day, surprise them movie tickets or a gift card for a cup of coffee
• Welcome them back after vacation
• Respond to them within 2 hours of receiving their email or phone call (even if it’s just to let them know you need a little more time)

We arrived inside and quickly realized the eco-tour bus we saw parked across the street had just unloaded its riders at Hopworks. Shoulder to shoulder we stood in the bar waiting for our turn to sit down when one of the servers (who we have gotten to know since we are always there), said, “Tracy/Ben – turn around. I reserved the small table in the back for you. This place is crazy.” One of the tables in her section had just opened, she saw us walk in, and put a reserved sign on the table for us. We are forever loyal. It doesn’t take much. Look for opportunities to take care of your customers and surprise them with extraordinary service. They will never leave you and will tell everyone about you.

We tried a new hotel called Inn of the White Salmon that we selected from Yelp reviews. As much as I love dogs, I don’t love yappy barking dogs outside my hotel room. There was a house next to the hotel with dogs that just ran around crazy all day barking at the wind. I asked the hotel if they had a different room on the other side of the hotel, but they were totally booked. Boo! I was bummed, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Ben and I headed out from breakfast and spent most of the day shifting through antique shops. When we returned to our room just before dinner, the hotel owner had left us a gift certificate in our room for two glasses of wine down the street, along with a short note apologizing for the noise. We were so surprised and very excited to enjoy the wine! It was clear the owner couldn’t do anything about the barking dog, but he was very empathetic. It meant the world to us at the time. The dogs still barked like crazy the next morning, but our tolerance had shifted. It doesn’t take much to make a huge impact on someone’s experience with your company even if you don’t have complete control over the situation at hand. You just have to be open to identifying the opportunities when they arise.

I was annoyed and convinced I wouldn’t come back since I couldn’t rely on them to be on time. A couple minutes later I was taken back to the dentist’s chair. The dental assistant was super sweet and never made me feel like she was completely rushing. We got done and finished on time. I was very pleased! I went to check out and again the receptionist apologized for being late and then she handed me a $25 gift card for my troubles. Wow, it made my day! I’ve told everyone about it.

This experience could have gone really sour and I could be telling you all the reasons why I would never go back there, but they recovered amazingly. We are human and aren’t robots. We are going to make mistakes and people expect that. The most important part is that we are empowered to identify when there is a moment to recover and take the steps to provide over-the-top service. I tell everyone about my $25 gift card… forget that they made me a bit antsy and annoyed. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

Best of Staffing is a competition for staffing firms to see who truly provides exceptional client service. This prestigious award distinguishes staffing firms who outperformed the industry’s benchmark. In 2011, staffing firms were required to attain a 55% Net Promoter Score® from their clients, 5 percentage points higher than the mark set by Inavero in 2010.

Four simple reasons why I love Rackspace so much:

1. Support – I can IM with them 24x7x365!  No more “on-call” pager numbers = no more guilt when I contact support at 1AM.
2. Killer Product – the Cloud Sites and Servers are so easy to use and scale exactly as promised.
3. Communication – I always know if something is being planned that could affect my sites and even get nice emails warning me of issues with my Cloud Server and how to resolve them.
4. Fanatical Client Service – At Inavero we specialize in measuring a firms attention to client service, so I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Rackspace is definitely a good egg.

I have one final example of why I love the client centeredness of Rackspace so much.  Rackspace recently experienced some failures in it’s technology systems that ended up affecting their clients.  The client recovery from these failures is the best I have ever experienced with a technology services company.  Below is a video that the CEO released within days of the outages that goes into great detail explaining what happened, sincerely apologizing for the downtime, and detailing what they will change to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  This is how exceptional companies recover from failure.  They take 100% of the blame and quickly move to make things right.  Way to go Rackspace!

American Airlines customer service manager says: “We can only take 50% of the blame for the problem. I mean…how do we know for sure that it was our fault that you don’t have reservations on the flight? You could have put a hold on the reservation and then let it expire. We just can’t know for sure.”

I reply: “Maybe because my 5 year old daughter is booked on the same flight, but now by herself? In what world is it ok to send your 5 year old on a plane ride to Disneyland by herself?”

After pondering this conversation and experience I wonder, should it matter? Why should any customer ever have to answer to an argument from a customer service manager about the % of blame they are willing to take in a problem like this? The real question is not who is to blame, but how can a solution be found?

American Airlines would serve it’s shareholders, employees, and customers much better if it took a play from the Southwest Airlines playbook and created a customer service culture that avoids laying blame and instead strives to find the solution. A solution that sends the customer off to promote the company’s great customer service and not off to write a blog post about how poor the customer service was. That is what leads to long-term profitability in tough economic and industry environments. It also generates Net Promoter Scores that crush the industry average.

Is the customer service culture within your company one that focuses on who’s fault it was? Or one that focuses on finding a solution that creates happy, loyal, and long-term customers?

How you would ever think to ask for it back after one of your own employees was responsible for the mistake is gutsy enough, but when that didn’t work, they sued her for the total cost of the jewelry, plus any legal expenses!  Now they have a legal and PR nightmare.  All for the grand sum (at wholesale) of less than $30k.

So, while rival high-end retailer Nordstroms has a book focused on their exceptional customer service Saks is suing their high end clientele.  We don’t do research for retailers, but I don’t need $100,000 worth of segmentation research to be able to tell the savvy Saks management this…..people who will purchase jewelry for $20k and up also hang around OTHER people who will purchase jewelry for $20k and up.  You’ve created a brand assassin, negative press, and a legal nightmare for what?

Well played, Saks….. well played.