The most compelling selling message you can deliver in any medium is not that you have something wonderful to sell.  It is: "I understand what you need."  The selling message "I have" is about you.  The message "I understand" is about the only person involved in the sale who really matters: the buyer.

-Harry Beckwith, Selling the Invisible

In keeping with the hope that the holiday season provides the platform for lots of laughter, I decided to get some real perspective on Customer Service.

Anyone who has children in their life can attest to the joy that the innocence of a child can bring. Some of my favorite memories with my girls was when their words would simply ground me. In their little minds, whatever the situation, it wasn't the complicated mess I felt or created. Aw, simplification- just the best! 

So for your enjoyment this week, when we asked a group of Kindergarteners (5 and 6 year olds) questions on customer service, we received some great insightful answers. Their views on what good and bad customer service looks like comes from a very non-complicated place of understanding. For them, it's about feeling good, getting what you want, people being nice, and using friendly voices. What could be any easier than that? Perhaps there are real lessons here about simplifying the customer experience through these basic understandings. 

Samsung had a problem.  Its culture was static and inward-looking.  Then, in the early 1990s, Lee Kun-Hee, chairman of the South Korean electronics giant, made a decision that would reshape his organization and create a blueprint for globalization.  He sent a handful of the brightest young employees to far-away corners of the globe to immerse themselves in the culture, learn the language, and build networks so that someday Samsung would know how to supply those markets.  What an amazing investment in the future.

- Verne Harnish, The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time

While we are, at our heart, a customer service and training blog and we will always be giving you tips about thanking your customers or your team, there is a bigger message and meaning to Thanksgiving. It is the power of thanking someone who has truly made an impact on your life.

So this week of Thanksgiving, after you have thanked your customers and thanked your colleagues, watch this beautiful video by Barbara Glanz, and think about giving thanks to someone who has touched your life deeply.  

It's fitting to discuss "giving thanks" since we are in the midst of celebrating the many things we are thankful for during this month of Thanksgiving.  In business, the #1 thing we should be thankful for is our customers, which is rather obvious since they are the reason that we are staying in business, and they help us to afford putting a turkey feast on our tables (figuratively and literally).  It's a given that we are thankful for them, but do they feel appreciated?  Before I give you tips for taking your thankfulness beyond just saying "thank you," let me tell you about an experience that we are currently having with one of our vendors (crossing my fingers that they will read this and finally choose to be different)...

As soon as you start to see your business as a reaction-making machine, you begin to make decisions very differently.  Think of it this way: A chef isn't preparing an entrée: he is, in fact, preparing a guest reaction.  The entrée is the vehicle, not the product.  The product is the customer reaction.

- Jon Taffer, Raise the Bar