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

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

We learned pretty fast that hugging a customer doesn’t always result in great customer satisfaction. It really comes down to aligning your service with the specific expectations and aspirations of the people you serve.

-Rob Hibbard, VP with Enterprise Holdings [Enterprise Rent-a-Car]

In the service industry, awareness is a must. You have to be fully aware and fully present to give the level of service that makes people take notice and want more.  Walt Disney ~ "Do what you do SO WELL that they will want to see it again and BRING THEIR FRIENDS." Chances are your customers are doing business with some of the world's finest service organizations, and because of that, your company's service experiences will be compared. So you need to ask yourself, how do we measure up in comparison?

Customer service is measured by how you "show up," and how you present yourself in graphics impacts your service impression.  So what if you aren’t a Graphic Designer and have zero experience with editing image files and creating something that is visually attractive.  I have a simple solution for you that requires very little learning, and it does not depend upon the use of expensive software. Microsoft PowerPoint (yes, PowerPoint!) gives you just what you need to do some very basic design. What’s better? In less than 6 minutes, I can show you how to do some of the basics in 3 very quick videos.

As a mother, I often tell my girls to always consider each side of a story and to be cautious about thinking that everyone understands things as they do. This lesson could certainly be used in the service industry. In all of our businesses, internally we "talk" a language that only "we" understand. It may be acronyms, certain words that have double meanings, numbers, etc. Several of my team members can speak an entire sentence using acronyms, and I would understand, but of course, our customers would not. An acronym that we use everyday is SPT, which we call "Spit" and is a very important database/program. Telling our customers that we "will check the 'Spit' to confirm their project status" would no doubt cause confusion. 

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool” ― C.G. Jung