“3 Reasons Why I call Exceptional Service the Necessary Evil”

I call exceptional service the necessary evil for a few different reasons.  First, it’s necessary, we have to do it, if we don’t, our competition will.  But there are three problems with exceptional service that makes it evil.

It can be duplicated.

Let me paint a picture for you.  If I own an auto repair station, and you own an auto repair shop, and you’re my competition, and you hear part of what I give my customers after doing business with me is a free car wash. Can you start washing the cars of your customers?  Sure you can.  If I hear you’re filling the gas tanks of your customers before you give the car back, can I start filling gas tanks?  Of course I can.  That’s a big problem with exceptional service; it can be duplicated.  

“The Role of Leadership in Creating a Service Culture”

Gain more referrals * Keep more customers * Grow revenues

Even though leadership recognize the importance of creating a service culture to drive positive financial results, most companies are still not very good at it. This is because becoming service-driven is not an easy goal to accomplish.  It’s more than just demonstrating empathy for your customers and you can’t buy a technological fix.

Companies with executives who possess a service first mindset benefit because–

• They become better places to work.
• They become well known among prospective employees.
• Referral rates and ideas for improving the business from existing employees are often high.
• Screening process for new hires—mostly referrals–is simplified.
• The pool of prospective employees grows.
  The cost of selecting among many applicants is offset by the cost savings above.

The problem is that leaders see the stats that prove a service-culture ‘can’ reach these benefits, but they don’t know ‘how’ to get to them.

“Go Ahead and Steal the Post-it Notes. 3 Myths for Not Owning Your Time”

There are three myths for not owning your time. I have to call them myths because calling them bullshit lies may offend some people. These are the rational—lies we tell ourselves. They’re rational, they sound good, they make sense but, they’re lies. I don’t know why we tend to fall on these rational-lies. Maybe it’s a form of procrastination, maybe it’s an excuse to not push against office status quo.

We can all own our time. To say you can’t effectively manage your time is saying that you don’t own your time.  But you do own it, it’s yours to protect and nurture. We protect our time by not allowing people interruptions, not letting meetings run wild and by being in charge of the phone and emails.