Guest Post | When Customer Service Wins!

We’re back this week with another guest post. Please give a warm welcome to Carrie Grace, a motivational speaker who travels the country speaking on kindness. She’s sharing one of her experiences where customer service went above and beyond and how you can do so in your business too. Exceptional customer service is what can set you apart from your competition and what will have your customers coming back for more. Read more below!

I travel the country speaking on kindness. I’ve learned a lot about people along the way as a result. We all have varying personalities and react differently to situations that come along our way. But more than anything, I’ve learned how we treat each other is what makes or breaks a company. You can be the most effective company, but if you treat your customers like crap, you’ll lose in the long run.

Kindness is often considered a fluffy topic because there are plenty of other leadership and development topics that precedence it. But if your staff, employees, or yourself don’t learn to master empathy and grace, those other skills will only be able to carry you so much.

In 2017, I had the wild idea of celebrating my birthday on an airplane. I fly a lot for a living and one of my flights happened to land the day before my birthday. Instead of having a lame birthday, I decided why the heck not ask Southwest if I can bring goodie bags for everyone on the plane. While they didn’t give me a resounding yes, they also didn’t tell me no. The thing I love most about the whole flight was how the flight attendants reacted. They turned the airplane into full-on party mode well beyond my wildest dreams. I was still picking my chin off the floor after I got off the flight. Here is the thing: it cost Southwest Airlines ZERO dollars. They just allowed me to live a bit outside of the box of their norm. Not only that, they reached out to me afterward and mailed me a birthday present! Talk about going above and beyond.

There are countless stories of customer service teams going above and beyond. One of my favorite quotes is, “go the extra mile, it’s never crowded.” As an individual, think about ways you can create an “extra wow”. I mail gifts to anyone who hires me to speak as a “thank you for letting me come speak to your audience”.  There are plenty of other ways you can offer up kindness such as:

• Checking in on a coworker going through a tough time.
• Asking how you can better serve someone.
• Being kind to people who are in customer service roles.
• Help a teammate tackle a larger project.
• Look for ways to offer a helping hand when you are running errands.

We get really caught up in this idea that if we can’t do big things for others, we aren’t having an impact. But little by little by little it adds up over time. If you were do something for 5 minutes every day for a year, you’d end up doing 1,825 minutes of whatever you picked to do. Start by finding small ways you can add more kindness, empathy, and grace into the world in 5-minute time slots, and see what a difference it can make in your company, your community, and your relationships.

About the author

Carrie Grace is a former teacher turned motivational speaker. She is on a mission to inspire others to spread joy and kindness, in hopes of people making the world better than they found it. She’s been known to love big; having thrown a party on an airplane, passed out free ice cream to strangers, and loves to encourage anyone who crosses her path. She also teaches people how to take big risks to bridge the gap between the life they have and the life they want. She currently travels the country inspiring others and has she’s been featured on major media including USA Today, Huffington Post, His Radio, and many more. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Categorised in: Guest Blogs, Thoughtful Thursdays