Service, service, service.  It's the nuts and bolts of our business and at least a key driver of your business.  The many articles and training materials we provide mostly focus on customer service because we are passionate about your ability to achieve success through strong service skills. You can't get too many tips, suggestions, or ideas for best practices on this super important topic, but if you ignore them, it may cost you and your business a lot of money.  For our picks this time, we are shaking it up a bit—you will not only get some fresh thoughts on mastering customer service and how to develop better customer relationships, but you will also learn how to navigate through your negative attitude when it shows it's ugly head.  Your negativity can be converted into a productive return, which most definitely impacts your customers' impressions.  So away we go...enjoy!

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.

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. 

Everyone has good days and not so good days, right? It's when the not so good days start to pile up that we need to remind ourselves that those days can become the greatest teacher with the greatest lesson, unless we get in the way of the lesson. How many times did you learn the lesson the hard way or miss the lesson completely? Yeah, me too. When I start having a slew of not so good days, it really helps me to check my attitude at the door. 

"A bad attitude is like a flat tire. If you don't change it, you'll never go anywhere." Unknown

I am competitive and hate to lose- personally, professionally, and athletically.  "Losing" doesn't necessarily mean that I lost; instead, it might mean that I defeated myself because I didn't try hard enough, dwelled too much on mistakes, and more.  When I don't "win," I learn from my mistakes, pick up the pieces, and create the game plan for how to do things different next time.  I have found that this is the only way to be successful.  I literally stumbled upon a terrific article that lists 33 characteristics that separate winners from losers, and understanding these differences is paramount as we all attempt to achieve success in life.  We all want to be WINNERS.  Where do you truly fall?