QUI QUOTE: Keep saying, “That’s not my job,” and soon, you’ll wish it was because you won’t have one.
Be the customer. When you hear “That’s not my job,” you’d retort, “Well, it looks like you work here. Why isn’t it your job and why don’t you find the right person?”
Be your employer. When you hear, “That’s not my job,” several times from the same person to another customer, you’d think, “We should replace that someone who feels it’s not their job with someone who feels it is.
Be you. To the customer, you’re not a representative of the company. You are the company. So own it. Be the CEO of the moment. Take it professionally. Take it personally. Take it responsibly. Just don’t take it at home.
The customer is not always right. But the customer is always YOUR customer. So do whatever it takes to make the customer FEEL right.
You’ve heard of The Golden Rule: Treat people as you want to be treated.
Dr. Tony Alessandra has shared with everyone about The Platinum Rule: Treat people as they want to be treated.
Today I offer The QUI Rule also known as the GREAT Rule: Treat customers a little better than they want to be treated.
You are happy because customers leave satisfied with your product or service. But that’s not good enough. Satisfied customers feel that their experience is good, not better, just average. Nobody raves about average. And satisfied customers will not return when they find something better or less expensive.
So don’t serve to satisfy customers. Don’t treat customers as you expect to be treated. And don’t treat them as they want to be treated. Instead, treat them a little better than they want to be treated. Serve to WOW them. Serve to CARE.
COMMUNICATE with every customer with a smile, eye contact, and polite interaction. Inform each customer transparently and interactively of the product’s or service’s function, liabilities, and advantages to them.
ACKNOWLEDGE each customer’s presence and value to you and your business.
RESPOND promptly and empathetically to each customer’s questions, concerns, and complaints.
ENRICH the experiences and, ultimately, the lives of every customer.
And Be Magnificently Boring to CARE! Consistently CARE for your customers so repetitively that you feel it is boring, but to every customer, at that moment, you are Magnificent! Customers have an emotional connection with you. The more emotional the connections, the more memorable the experiences, and the more loyal the customers are. Loyal customers will return repeatedly, spend more money, and rave about you to others on social media. Consistency builds trust. Trust builds relationships. Relationships build loyalty. Loyalty builds your business. CARE Magnificently!
The QUI RULE also known as The GREAT Rule: Treat customers a little better than they want to be treated. Serve to WOW them. Serve to CARE.
Don’t satisfy your customers and be just good. CARE for your customers and be GREAT out there!
What do you think? Whether you agree or agree to disagree, discuss or not, I’m sure that we can interact with each other without being disagreeable. So, I invite you to share your questions and comments.
A veteran of over 40 years in hospitality leadership, I was, until several years ago, a customer service/customer experience speaker. Unfortunately, I suffered a stroke in April 2021. So, I have slightly slurred speech and a dead right side. Since my stroke, I’ve gone from Mr. “Let’s be GREAT out there!” as GM/Managing Director to Mr. Invisible, sequestered alone with my wife in my San Diego apartment. Today, I want to tell you my real-life customer experience story.
On Friday, I was at the downtown CVS Pharmacy sitting in my wheelchair, waiting for my prescription. Meanwhile, a young lady looked at me and motioned if she could go ahead. When I answered yes, she asked the pharmacy clerk for her prescription. When asked by the clerk for her name and age, the young lady responded with her name and birthdate ending in 08. Since I could not easily calculate her age (because of my memory lapses due to my stroke or early onset dementia), I asked her how old she was. She quizzically looked at me, did not respond but looked at the pharmacy clerk. The clerk said that I was asking several people about their age (I did). The young lady didn’t say anything to her nor did she say anything or smile to me. She simply walked away with her prescription. With that, the pharmacy clerk looked at me and shrugged.
I envision that young lady, who I now recognize is only 16 years old, is now a part of the Gen N generation. You may think Gen N is the Now Generation who wants an experience that is quick, easy, and NOW. But, I perceive Gen N as Generation Nobody. Anyone older than Gen N is a Nobody to them. Listening with their earplugs and watching on their cellphones with their friends or young social media influencers, Gen N is oblivious to any older generation around them. In this case, I really did feel that I was a nobody to the young lady.
Now that I am older and wiser, especially given this incident, I advocate this:
QUI QUOTE: Whatever your title or position, be a servant leader who will CARE for people first.
COMMUNICATE with each person with a smile, eye contact, and polite interaction. Inform each person transparently and interactively.,
ACKNOWLEDGE each person’s presence and value to you as a human being with emotions and feelings.
RESPOND promptly and empathetically to each person’s statements, questions, concerns, and complaints.
ENRICH the experiences and, ultimately, the lives of every person.
Instead of asking your people, “What can you do for me and my business?”, through your words and actions, ask them two questions:
“How are you feeling?”
“How can I help?”
When you ask, listen intently, respond empathetically, and act promptly to take appropriate corrective action, your people will feel respected, appreciated, and valued. You will inspire and empower them to develop themselves and engage others. Soon, everyone’s experiences and, ultimately, their lives, will be enriched.
What do you think? Whether you agree or disagree, discuss or not, I’m sure that we, yes, you and me, can interact with each other without being disagreeable. And for that, I very much appreciate you. I look forward to seeing who you consider is a GREAT servant leader.
Welcome to CX 102 or Advanced CX. This course is a prerequisite for business professionals in the B2C or hospitality industry. It’s an elective for the B2B or the online/digital industry.
English writer Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” With that in mind, today’s lesson will be a future reminder for you. So let’s get started.
Customer loyalty is not one BIG WOW to a customer. It’s one little wow delivered consistently to every customer. And when you consistently deliver a little wow, you transform an average, satisfactory customer experience into a positively WOW Experience.
So, be Magnificently Boring! Consistently deliver a low-cost, no-cost “a little better than the average experience that customers expect” product or customer service so repetitively that you feel it is boring, but to the customer, at that moment, you are Magnificent! Your customers will return repeatedly, spend more money, and rave about you to others on social media. Consistency builds trust. Trust builds loyalty. Loyalty builds your business. Deliver consistency Magnificently!
Second, but as importantly, be Magnificently Boring to CARE for your customers. Remember this sentence from our first class:
Customers seek the best emotional value in their entire experience.
Now you know why customers don’t seek B2B or B2C businesses. They engage in businesses that are H2H. Human to Human. One to One. Heart to Heart. The value to your customers is in their personalized interactions, not your “cash or credit” business transactions. So, to earn customer loyalty, don’t get inside their heads. Get inside their hearts. Create an emotional connection. Be Magnificently Boring to CARE!
COMMUNICATE with every customer with a smile, eye contact, and polite interaction. Inform each customer transparently and interactively of the product’s or service’s function, liabilities, and advantages to them.
ACKNOWLEDGE each customer’s presence and value to you and your business.
RESPOND promptly and empathetically to each customer’s questions, concerns, and complaints.
ENRICH the experiences and, ultimately, the lives of every customer.
Consistently CARE for your customers so repetitively that you feel it is boring, but to every customer, at that moment, you are Magnificent! Your customers will feel respected, appreciated, and valued. They have an emotional connection with you. The more emotional the connections, the more memorable the experiences, and the more loyal the customers are. When it comes to customers and customer service, don’t just serve to satisfy your customers. Serve to WOW them. Serve to be Magnificently Boring to CARE for them. Don’t just be good. Be GREAT out there!
Does anyone have any questions? Whether you agree or agree to disagree, discuss or not, I’m sure that we can interact with each other without being disagreeable. So, I invite you to share your questions and comments.
From me to you, from one customer service advocate to another, Happy Valentine’s Day. For having read my blog, I very much appreciate you. On this special day, I wish each of you the very best, but I already know you’re one of the very best. So, I wish you GREAT happiness, kindness, enthusiasm, and success.
Today, let’s appreciate each other and show our love for all business professionals. When we express our appreciation to each other and our fellow business professionals and customers, let’s not be just good. Let’s be GREAT out there!
English writer Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed”. So, as you prepare yourself every morning to engage and WOW your colleagues and customers, I encourage you to look in the mirror and remind yourself, “Don’t be just good. Be GREAT out there!
Welcome to CX 101. Today’s course is a prerequisite for business professionals in the B2C or hospitality industry. It’s an elective for the B2B or the online/digital industry.
This is not a customer service training class. Training is finite, usually one to three days. And training is top-down, one-way “I know everything, you know nothing” instruction. Training is to develop THE BUSINESS. Training is for a job. And the job of employees is to serve to satisfy the customer.
Instead, our education classes are interactive. With suggestions, recommendations, and encouragement, we empower you and your colleagues to develop YOURSELVES. Ideally, all of you will be enthused and energized to engage customers, not just to satisfy, but to WOW them.
So let’s get started.
Customer service is what you do for your customers. Customer experience is how your customers feel before, during, and after what you do. Customer experience management is what you do before, during, and after you find out how customers feel about what you did. Customer loyalty is how your customers feel about what you did repeatedly.
Customers pay for their experience, not your product or service. And it’s THEIR experience, not yours. They buy with emotion and justify their decision with reason. Customers seek the best emotional value in their entire experience, not the minutiae of your best price, product, or service, virtual or physical locations, AI, online, chatGPT, or face-to-face customer support, NPS, CSAT or other CX metric, or the many other details of your business experience.
You are happy because your customers are satisfied with their experience. You met their expectations. But that’s not good enough. Satisfied customers feel that their experience is good, not better, just average. Nobody raves about average. And satisfied customers will not return as soon as they find a better experience or a less expensive price. So you have to do more than satisfy your customers. Don’t just serve to sell to customers. And don’t serve to satisfy customers. Serve to WOW them.
Next week’s class is postponed until Valentine’s Day.
So the next class two weeks from now: How to serve to WOW your customers.
Before next week’s class, are there any questions? Whether you agree or agree to disagree, discuss or not, I’m sure that we can interact with each other without being disagreeable. So, I invite you to share your questions and comments.
English writer Samuel Johnson said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” So as you prepare yourself every morning to engage to WOW your customers, I encourage you to remind yourself when you say, “Don’t be just good. Be GREAT out there!
In anticipation of celebrating the holidays with my family and friends, I will not be publishing my posts until after the New Year. So, for now, as you move onward and upward in the New Year, I wish all of you, your family, and your friends GREAT health, happiness, success, and prosperity. May your Holiday Celebration and New Year be GREAT out there!
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Today, for those of us in or from the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving. So I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation and gratitude for the many who helped me as I recover.
Some of you may know that I suffered a stroke in April 2021. When I retired, I was planning to be a customer CARE speaker and then everything went south. I have slurred speech and a dead right side. Aside from that, I am very healthy and hope to fully recover soon. Until then, I have been sequestered at home since being sidelined with a wheelchair.
Since my stroke, I’ve gone from Mr. “Let’s be GREAT out there!” as resort GM to Mr. Invisible. Whenever I fully recover, I hope to have some semblance of visibility to potential business leaders. So, I was hoping for my comeback.
To those who have read and emoji or verbally acknowledged my blog posts, thank you. I appreciate you all.
And I very much appreciate those of you who have reshared my posts. Thank you so much.
May your Thanksgiving celebration or your weekend be GREAT out there!
Many CX professionals have advocated CX as strategies such as AI, online, self-service, telephone, and face-to-face customer support, customer journey mapping, the Peak End Rule, NPS, CSAT, CES, or other CX metrics, and many innovative technologies to improvetheir customers’ experiences.
And they’ve done it so often for so long that “CX” has been the traditional term of many business professionals to explain customer experience management. But no more. NOW is our time for a CX Revolution!
To paraphrase John DiJulius’ battle cry, it’s time for a CX Revolution! Let’s be revolutionary to improve the customer experience. This revolution “is a radical overthrow of conventional business mentality, designed to transform what customers and employees experience.” John DiJulius.
For starters, customer experience or CX is about the customers’ emotional value of their experiences. Customer experience management or CXM is how businesses prioritize the best product, service, technology, or CX strategy of their business experience to deliver the best emotional value in their customers’ experiences.
Secondly, be Magnificently Boring to CARE! Consistently CARE (Communicate. Acknowledge. Respond. Enrich) for your customers so repetitively that you feel it is boring, but to every customer, at that moment, you are Magnificent! Consistency builds trust. Trust builds relationships. Relationships build loyalty. Loyalty builds your business. CARE Magnificently!
Saving the best for last, don’t just deliver to your people top-down, one-way, “one and done” customer service training. Instead, educate your people interactively, frequently, and continuously at Customer CARE University with you as mentors and coaches at your business. And, yes, educate everyone. Don’t just educate customer CARE representatives. Educate the people in the business who don’t need to CARE for their customers and develop them to let them CARE for the people who do. Soon, everyone, your people, your customers, and you and your business, will be enriched, emotionally and financially.
So, prepared with your three QUI Takeaways, proclaim to your people that
“NOW is the time for a CX Revolution! Let’s not just serve to sell to our customers. And let’s not serve to satisfy our customers. Let’s serve to WOW them. Let’s serve to CARE. Let’s be loud. Let’s be proud. Let’s be revolutionary! And let’s Be GREAT out there!”
Three weeks ago, I introduced the Rule of Three QUI TAKEAWAYS which will be revolutionary now, but once discussed many times over, will be viewed as traditional by many business professionals. In the last two weeks, I explained the first and second QUI TAKEAWAYS: CX versus CXM, and customer service versus customer CARE. In the next week, join me as we revolutionize the CX experience. This week, I will explain the third QUI TAKEAWAY: customer service training versus customer CARE education.
QUI TAKEAWAY: Don’t offer customer service training. Training is finite, usually one to three days. And training is top-down, one-way “I know everything, you know nothing” instruction. Training is to develop THE BUSINESS. Training is for a job. And the job of employees is to serve to satisfy the customer. In the end, training instructs people on how to TAKE CARE of the customer.
Instead, have business people enroll in Customer CARE University. We don’t have trainers or instructors. We have mentors and coaches. Our education classes are interactive. As mentors, educate your people with customer CARE actions to practice their interpersonal skills. They will learn and appreciate the value of telephone etiquette, service recovery, and customer CARE. After graduation, as coaches, remind them of your customer CARE excellence strategies. With suggestions, recommendations, and encouragement, empower your people to develop THEMSELVES and engage customers. Your people will create an emotional connection with their customers. The more emotional the connections, the more memorable the experiences, the more loyal the customers. Loyal customers will repeatedly return, spend more money, and rave about their WOW experience to others on social media.
In Customer CARE 101, your passion is to CARE for your people.
COMMUNICATE openly, transparently, interactively, and frequently any customer CARE information your people need or want to know. Listen empathetically to their suggestions, concerns, and complaints.
APPRECIATE their roles, responsibilities, actions, suggestions, and recommendations.
RECOGNIZE, honor, and offer accolades for their role-playing acts of customer CARE.
EMPOWER your people to act on their own to do what is right for them, their colleagues, their customers, and your business.
In Customer CARE 102, educate your people on how to CARE for their customers:
COMMUNICATE with each customer with a smile, eye contact, and polite interaction. Inform each customer transparently and interactively of the product’s or service’s function, liabilities, and advantages to the customer.
ACKNOWLEDGE each customer’s presence and value to the customer CARE person and your business.
RESPOND promptly and empathetically to each customer’s questions, concerns, and complaints.
ENRICH the experiences and, ultimately, the lives of every customer.
And, yes, educate everyone. Don’t just educate customer CARE representatives. Educate the people in the business who don’t need to CARE for their customers. When you create a GREAT experience for everyone as much as customer CARE representatives need to with their customers, you will earn the loyalty of both. Soon, without a focus on profits, profits will grow. Everyone, the people, their customers, the leaders and their businesses, and you and your business, will be enriched.
NEXT WEEK: Now is the time for a CX Revolution! Part Four.
"People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed."
Samuel Johnson
This blog, along with my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, offer practical tips, insight and inspiration to serve as reminders on how to improve your personal delivery of customer service.
BILL QUISENG | Deliver the World's Best Customer Experience 