Training can launch an ongoing strategy.  It can teach people service behaviors, empower them, reward their involvement, and initiate ongoing processes for building customer loyalty.  But company efforts must have legs.  The best interventions are ongoing and consistent, not disjointed special events.

- Dr. Paul R. Timm, Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty

How many moments have you had where you think, "I wish that I had learned this sooner"?  I have these moments all of the time, but I also appreciate the journey it takes to get there since these lessons can be invaluable.  In business and in life, we must constantly grow and get better, and it's completely imperative to challenge ourselves each day so that we can be our best person. This is one of the keys to ongoing success and happiness.  An article in StumbleUpon truly piqued my interest and absolutely covers lessons that we all can benefit from learning (or embracing). 

Because of the need to serve internal as well as external customers, customer service must be everybody's job within a hospitality organization.  The housekeeper cannot defer to the front desk.  The kitchen cannot think that customer service only occurs tableside.  Moreover, management cannot divorce themselves either.  They are part and parcel of the entire quality service chain of events.  In fact, how management manages customer service and how service providers deliver it are the defining factors in this entire chain of mutual influence.

- William B. Martin, Providing Quality Service: What Every Hospitality Service Provider Needs to Know

Too many companies use one-shot training.  They hire a flashy speaker to get employees jazzed up about customer service.  They hold rallies or give great locker-room speeches and hope for the best.  Without follow-up, things quickly get back to normal.

- Dr. Paul R. Timm, Seven Power Strategies for Building Customer Loyalty

Customers come in all shapes and sizes.  Each has its own unique characteristics (and demands), and how you care for each customer is important not only for their satisfaction, but also for the morale of your team.  You have seen it before- just one customer can disrupt your company's entire day by making an unrealistic demand, and your team can be sent into a tailspin trying to figure out how to satisfy this ridiculous request and to make this customer happy.  Or, how about the customer that calls and asks for a solution, but has no suggestions for how and what should be implemented?  All of these details are then left up to you and your team, which can lead to uncertainty and a bit of insecurity since all of you might think you understand what is best, but you have nothing to guide you on how close to the mark you wil be.  Neither of these scenarios are fun, so for the betterment of our business and employees, you and I need to learn how to navigate through each type of customer relationship and characteristic.  

Sensory inputs (something “real”) lead the brain to new connections—but so do thoughts (something “unreal”)!  Mentally practicing a task produces the same physical changes in the brain as physically practicing it.

- Schlomo Breznitz and Collins Hemingway, Maximum Brainpower