Main Idea:
Have you seen great customer service lately? Is your team capable of giving great customer service? Have they been doing so lately? What has been missing?
Expansion of the Idea:
Do you remember where you were 19 years ago today? Chances are you remember that day vividly. Our nation absorbed a punch to the gut and we floundered for a few weeks. Even after that, most businesses were disrupted for quite some time. The stock market was dropping and no one really had good answers. The real problem was that there was a sense of isolation. When bad things happen, we tend to get into our own shells and we don’t want to come out.
How did we get out of that?
The key to our recovery from 9/11 was between our ears. We made very good choices for a while. We came together as a nation. We decided that we were not going to let 9/11 define us. A lot of very good things happened in the couple of years after 9/11. Obviously, we never want that to happen again, but we became less concerned about ourselves and more concerned about others.
We have some of the same problems now with the pandemic. It has isolated us and created a lot of hardship for a lot of the world. We don’t have the same social networks that we used to have. For our small businesses, our employees are not able to interact with each other and with customers like they are used to. Something is lost.
Just like after 9/11, we can fix a lot of our problems ourselves. For small business owners, this starts with you. Small business owners are facing unprecedented levels of financial issues, employee issues, supply chain problems and technology issues. It is very easy to retreat and get into a “me versus them” mentality. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we can reach out to people who lift us up. We can look for help to figure out our business issues. We were made to be social and to interact with others. When we do this, we can fix ourselves. Then we can help support our team and then ultimately our customers. Our job during this period in time is to connect people even more so than normal. When we do that, attitudes will improve and that will have a tremendous impact on customer service.
Here are some questions to consider:
Am I connected with my team and customers?
Does my team feel isolated?
Do my customers feel connected to our businesses?
When was the last time I called a customer or team member for no apparent reason?
What can I do to help team morale?
On this day of remembrance, be thankful that we live in the United States and have the freedoms that we do. Thank a first responder for their service which is the ultimate in customer service.