A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. -- James Dent
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. -- Russel Baker
Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you. -- Erma Bombeck
You can never appreciate the shade of a tree unless you sweat in the sun.-- Author Unknown
Palm trees, ocean breeze, Standing by the clear blue sea, Hot air, Sunkissed hair, Endless summer, Take me there" Author: unknown
"Thank you stars and fireflies, for the magic of summer skies." Author: Stan and Jan Berenstein
"May your life be filled with beautiful sunsets, great waves and sand between your toes." Author: Chere Nordstrand
Submit your summer quote and we'll add it here...
Great Customer Service Fits In Your Glove
We want to preface this article by saying this is writen by a good friend of ours. We value his wisdom and are pleased that he has allowed us to publish this article.
By F. Steve Fialho/IE AMA
I was playing golf with my 3-year-old granddaughter last week and she asked, “Why do you wear a glove?” I told her that the glove gives me a better grip on my golf clubs. She then asked, “Does it make you win?” and I said “No, it just helps me play better.”
This is the case with most gloves. They protect, help us catch baseballs, and can even help us grip a golf club. However in this example it will help you improve customer service.
I believe that great customer service starts with the "Rules of The Glove.” Follow these rules and you will be able to keep your customers in the palm of your hand for a very long time. However, if you violate any one of these rules, you risk losing your customers for life. Play at your own risk.
The word "Glove" is the acronym for the rules:
Give - Give your customers the service they would like to receive
Love - Before you can give great customer service, you first must love your employees; treat your employees the same way you want them to treat your customers.
Observe - Anticipate and expect change, and then adjust.
Value - Focus on delivering great value, not the lowest price.
Educate - You need to constantly educate yourself on every aspect of your business, customers, employees, competition, industry and economic conditions.
These rules are simple to understand and easy to follow. However, would they work in today’s cutthroat competition? A study by the Verde Group, the Jay Baker Retailing Initiative at the Wharton School of Business and the Retail Council of Canada explored the WOW shopping experience. This research found that 75 percent of shoppers who have enjoyed a great shopping experience with a specific retailer definitely intended to return to that retailer the next time they need a similar product or service. However, when a shopper encounters merely "standard" experience at a store, their likelihood to return drops by more than 65 percent.
Since people are humans first and customers and employees second, treating people with dignity and respect will go a long way in building a great customer service program. Remember, if your customer service programs are simple to understand, easy to follow, fun to do, and make good marketing sense, you will have a better chance of delivering a great customer experience.
F. Steve Fialho of the Good Sense Marketing Group is an adjunct marketing professor for the University of LaVerne and also is the programming chair of the American Marketing Association’s Inland Empire chapter. Contact him at 760-983-0973.
Did you wake up intending to change the world?
To admit that you begin the day planning to change the world certainly sounds grandiose, maybe even delusional. Yet I believe that you do change the world every day, whether you intend to or not. Often it only takes a small act to make a big difference.
You change the world of your spouse or your kids, depending on how you interact with them before you leave the house. A little extra time and attention or tender moment of affection changes their world that day. And it reminds you of what is important when the mad dash to the office irks you and makes you feel that the day is off to a rough start.
You also change the world of a coworker, a customer, a vendor, or a cafeteria worker with your smile or your frown.
No, these are dramatic changes. They won’t alter the course of world affairs or bring about a cure for AIDS. But who’s to say that these little changes don’t have a cumulative, profound effect in the lives of others and, ultimately, in your own life?
Three Difference-Making Strategies
Identify when you’ll make a difference. When can you make a difference? At every opportunity! You make a difference because, you want to and can.
Target the people to whom you’ll make a difference. Customers…go beyond the marketplace and into every area of human relationships, begin by serving. You’ll instantly earn their attention and soon, their unwavering devotion. Family…You can transform ordinary family interactions into extraordinary moments and experiences. Teammates…High-performance teams are made up of high-performance teammates. Somebody has to go first; why not you?
Be the difference. A little thought and reflection will quickly help you see the difference you can make in any activity. This means that we must make time in our schedules to determine how we can change our ordinary actions into extraordinary ones.
True difference making can’t be delegated. It’s up to us to take the action.
What kind of difference will you make today?
Except from The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn
Is it better to satisfy customers emotionally or ?
On a hot day in September, I decided to take my 3-year-old granddaughter out for some ice cream. As we drove to our regular ice cream place, she asked, "Pa Pa, could we go to a different ice cream store?" I asked her why she didn't want to go to our regular spot, and she said the people there were not very friendly.
Although I was the one who purchased the ice cream, she was the one who picked out the flavor and toppings. The whole process takes less than 10 minutes, but that was all it took for this 3-year-old to understand that the person behind the counter wasn't very nice. I don't remember what specifically happened to make her feel this way, but it obviously made an impression on her that made her want to go elsewhere.
In an article written in The Gallup Management Journal (that's Gallup as in the people who have studied human nature and behavior for more than 70 years), Peter Flade points out that "emotionally satisfied customers contribute far more to the bottom line then rationally satisfied customers do, even though they are equally satisfied." Moreover, Gallup research has shown that rationally satisfied customers often look and behave no differently than rationally dissatisfied customers.
To measure customer engagement, Gallup combines traditional metrics of customer loyalty with an assessment of customers' emotional commitment, which includes:
Confidence in the company and its ability to deliver on promises
Integrity in the way the company treats the individual
Pride, and whether the customer positively identifies with the company
Passion -- where a company is irreplaceable in that customer's life, which makes for a rare but priceless customer
Gallup's research suggests that for all kinds of companies, a fully engaged customer delivers a 23 percent premium over the average customer in terms of profitability, revenue, and relationship growth. Fully engaged customers scored in the upper 15-20 percent on Gallup's measure of emotional engagement.
For a business to be truly successful, it is important to have a positive emotional engagement. Remember that emotions make you memorable. Therefore, any interaction or touch point is a chance to build a lasting emotional connection. From a sales call to filling a little girl's ice cream order, it all counts with employee and customer engagement.
So, how do you create a friendly employee? Obviously, it starts by hiring friendly people, but this is only the beginning. You also have to create a friendly culture within the work environment. This starts with the senior leadership team, which needs to set the right tone and establish the culture for the organization. However, the local managers who are responsible for developing and encouraging this culture in their branches should be ultimately responsible for improving performance.
Remember: people love to join and work for great companies, but they leave because of poor managers.
I believe that it pays to be friendly, and being nice and friendly is the key to great customer service - and this creates value. If you don't believe me, just ask my granddaughter. Her perception of unfriendliness cost an ice cream store any and all future sales from us.
F. Steve Fialho is an Adjunct Marketing Professor for the University of LaVerne and president of Good Sense Marketing Group. Heis programming chair of the American Marketing Association - Inland Empire. Contact him at 760-983-0973.
Success is Built on One Relationship at a Time
You add value to people when you value them. - John C. Maxwell
Freds, don’t use people as a means to an end; they use relationships to build a foundation for success. (for those of you who don’t know Fred – he is the Postman of Mark Sanborn – the postman that provided him the inspiration to write The Fred Factor) They understand that all outcomes are created by and through interactions with others. So they become students of social psychology. They understand that strong relationships create loyalty and are the basis of partnerships and teamwork.
{side note – think of what is being said here in light of how you do your social networking – at the time this book was written Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter were not even a twitter on the horizon}
The best Freds build networks to develop distribution channels for their talents, and they strive to work well with others, whether one-on-one with a customer or in a team with colleagues.
Remember that the quality of a relationship is related directly to the amount of time invested in it. Make sure you give some of your best time to your relationships.
Let’s see a Fred build a relationship with a 3-year old… Dan, a physician’s assistant at my son’s pediatrician’s office, is a Fred. One day my wife, Darla, took our three-year-old son, Hunter, in for an examination. We wanted to be sure that a fall on the grandparents’ coffee table hadn’t broken his nose. Hunter was sitting on the floor when Dan came in. After a cheerful greeting, Dan plopped down on the floor next to him.
Hunter watched suspiciously while snacking on pretzels. “Hey, dude, can I have one?” asked Dan. Like most children, Hunter had become a bit leery of what he sometimes has to experience during examinations at the doctor’s office. So it wasn’t surprising when Hunter’s eyes got a little bigger at Dan brazenly reached out and took a pretzel from the bag.
Suddenly a big smile broke across my sons’ face. Dan proceeded to “interact” in medical terms – in normal language, he and Hunter played…After several minutes of frivolity, Dan was able to examine a totally stress-free little boy…Dan knew what to do. Not only did he perform his examination with a minimum of fuss, but he actually eliminated the fears of a three-year-old.
Now that’s Fred-like relationship building at its best! How can you build a Fred-like relationship?
Excerpt from The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn
The Art of Small Talk
“Claude was an engineer in our department who never acknowledged those of us on the administrative or support staff. He acted like we didn’t exist. Sure enough, one day, Claude had an emergency. He needed a specific hard-to-get part and when he went to the support staff, guess what? When he needed our help, we acted like he didn’t exist.”
When you arrive at work, greet others with “hello” or “good morning.” It’s amazing that I have to give this simple guideline, but it’s clear to me that I do. One of the complaints I hear the most often from employees about their managers and their co-workers is that many people don’t bother to day “hello” or otherwise offer a simple greeting. I hear: it’s like I don’t exist” or “she thinks she’s so important…"
“One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.” - Voltaire
Think of small talk as a gateway to new relationships and maintaining the old ones. Knowing how to start and keep a conversation going will allow you to meet others, get to know them, and build upon your network. “Small talk” does not mean “unimportant” or “silly."
Have interesting topics to discuss. Reading the daily newspaper, or news magazines, watching news shows on TV, reading your professional journals and even simply observing the world around you are all great sources for interesting topics you can discuss.
Take turns talking. You don’t want to monopolize the conversation. Remember that building a relationship often begins by expressing a genuine interest in others and you can often do this by letting the other person speak. A good conversation is one in which all parties can express themselves.
When the Little Things Count...and They always Count by Barbara Pachter with Susan Magee
