Rude employees are rude for a reason: you allow them to be.  It's not their fault—it's yours.  You hired wrong, you trained wrong, or you coached wrong.  Just as you must kill an aggressive cancer by nuking it with chemotherapy, you must eradicate rudeness by displaying a zero-tolerance attitude.  We don't care if an employee "makes his numbers" or excels at some other aspect of his job.  If he's rude, he has to go.  Fire him, and for good measure, encourage him to work for a competitor.

- Roy Barnes and Bob Kelleher, Customer Experience for Dummies

I would venture to guess that all of us have a story about someone that made a defining difference in their life. Perhaps it was a teacher, parent, grandparent, coach, or boss. Regardless of who he or she was, take a moment to sit and remember why you thought of them first—what did they do to earn this spot in your life?

Our "Picks" this time focus on these very important customer service topics:

1. Implementing cohesive customer service standards and policies that EVERY employee learns, practices, and adheres to.
2. Understanding that exceeding customers' expectations requires an approach that focuses on every single customer touchpoint and all factors that engages their senses.
3. Gaining customer loyalty requires not only exceptional care of your happy customers, but also effective efforts that reengage and impress your unhappy customers. (Teaser alert: below this article you can download our wildly popular eBook on problem resolution.)

Keep on reading to get advice on tackling all three of these customer service topics.

A top executive in a public relations firm has a favorite saying for clients who are at a loss about what to reveal: "When all else fails, try the truth."  In business, as in life, telling the truth—no matter the short-term consequences—is far more beneficial than getting caught in a deception.  People are generally forgiving, almost to a fault.  But deceive them and they will remember it for a long, long time.  "Try the truth" applies to everyone in the workplace: the boss, the manager, the new employee, the client, the contractor.

- Emily Post's The Etiquette Advantage in Business

Mistakes are to be expected in service situations, but knowing how to recover an angry or frustrated customer into a loyal customer is a learned art. A Customer-Focused Attitude is critical for successful service recovery.  Employees need to be trained to anticipate and identify potential problems, as well as have the experience to make decisions and to deliver skillful solutions to customer problems. The statistics below show just how important company reactions are to service loyalty. 

To get to a pot of gold with your business, you must take a path that focuses on exceptional customer service.  Service takes form in many different fashions—it's not just about how you treat the customer (although this is a HUGE part of it).  Customer service is also about:

• anticipating the customer's needs and acting upon them before the customer asks. 
• creating solutions that make things easier for the customer. 
• understanding what needs to be done to tailor an experience to the primary factors that influence your customer's takeaway. 

Hungry for more?  Take a quick read of these great articles so you can hit that pot of business gold by learning ways that you and your team can make positive changes to your customer service strategy.