The Power of Exceptional Customer Care

Have you ever had a customer service experience so poor it made you vow never to return? I share a personal story about a disappointing visit to a local soda shop that lost me as a customer due to mishandling a simple complaint. But it’s not all bad news—tune in to hear heartwarming examples of exceptional service from a cherished local cafe, a cruise line that anticipates my every need, and a family camp in New Mexico that went above and beyond. These stories highlight how making customers feel seen, heard, and understood creates lasting loyalty and positive impressions far beyond product quality and pricing.

Inspired by well-known organizations, I delve into the importance of purposeful customer service training. Learn why investing in training your team to show exceptional customer service can transform your business by harnessing the unique gifts of each employee to serve others effectively. This episode is packed with encouragement, inspiration, and practical tools to help your organization go from transactional to relational. Don’t forget to leave a review, subscribe, and join my email list for ongoing updates and opportunities to connect!

Chapters

• 0:01 Exceptional Customer Service in Action
• 14:19 Purposeful Customer Service Training Opportunities

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hi, friends, welcome to Holly's Highlights, a podcast designed to encourage, inspire and equip you to intentionally live your life full of purpose. I'm your host, holly Kirby, motivational speaker, leadership cultivator, marketing strategist and personal cheerleader. Let's check out today's highlights. Perhaps you are no stranger to financial challenges. Perhaps you are no stranger to financial challenges, relationship concerns, health issues, even experiencing the grief of losing a loved one. Enter my multi-award winning book Facelift embracing hope through your heartaches, featured on local affiliates such as CBS, abc and Fox, covered in magazines, newspapers and podcasts, and easily available through local bookstores and online retailers, including Amazon, target, walmart and Barnes Noble. Bulk purchases may be purchased directly through my publisher at coilerbookscom. A portion of all proceeds is donated to Huntsman Cancer Foundation in efforts to provide just a little more hope in the fight to find a cure.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Hello, my friends, today we are talking about customer service. Now, we have all been there on that receiving end of someone who just doesn't get it, such as a bit ago when my son and I visited a local popular drink shop. Now, we ordered our drinks and then proceeded to pull out of the drive-thru. When my son spit his drink out and said it tasted off. Well, I pulled back around, re-entered the drive-thru and I let him know that my son's drink was off. Perhaps the soda syrup bag needed to be changed or something along that line. Well, during that time I took a taste of my own drink and it had coconut in it. Now, I hate coconut, so I let them know that my drink actually had one of the flavors I tend to avoid or ask to be removed when choosing my drink, and I was surprised that their response was to recharge me for my drink. What Now? They did try to remake my son's for him and it still was bad. I even tasted it and something was just off. So we just basically ended up calling it a loss. But what could have been an easy fix of simply remaking my drink without charging me resulted in losing me as a customer. Now, I'm not being dramatic here either. This soda shop is literally the closest soda shop to me, only five minutes away, and yet whenever we decide to treat ourselves to these special sodas, we now drive to another city 15 to 20 minutes away to get our soda.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Oh, the power of customer service Now being on the opposite end of this. I know we've seen customers come in and try to manipulate or take advantage of the system. I hear you, I can understand your thoughts those who are just looking for something free, right, or those who bulldoze their way to get what they want. But whatever side of the scenario you're on, there are some commonalities People want to be seen, heard and understood. People don't want to be embarrassed or made to feel less than not important, or even belittled, and researchers will try to prove that. It's all about price, product quality that matters to the customers, and to a point I get it, that is. But overall, that commonality is that they just want to be seen, heard and understood.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Now a few places that I have visited that have just nailed. It is, first of all, my happy place, in which it's a little cafe at a local garden, and the hostess there her name is Jen and she is a lovely lady. She's very friendly and personable and she's picked up on which table is my favorite. She always greets me with a smile and she's learned my name. Now. Yes, their food is always consistently good and they have great choices, especially for someone with so many food allergies, and they're able to read the room, so to speak. So, depending on who I'm meeting with, they're able to know if they should check in once, twice, 10,000 times. But truly, what Jen herself nails is that when I visit this happy place, this cafe of mine, I feel seen A second place that I enjoy that it would be a happy place, of course of mine is cruising.

Speaker 1: 4:32

I love it. I've been on Royal Caribbean Cruise Line and Disney and Norwegian Celebrity Princess Carnival. I love cruising. Now, I went to travel school between getting my associates, my bachelors. I got certified by each of those cruise lines I mentioned in their various training programs. I even was a cruise specialist selling hundreds of cabins for a decade. I love cruising. If you just got the taste for learning more about cruising, check out my two episodes on cruising here on Holly's Highlights in season three, on episode five and episode six. I absolutely love cruising. In fact I'll put this out there. One of my bucket lists is to have a speaking engagement on a cruise ship. But anyhow, back to my point. Anyhow, back to my point All of these cruise lines.

Speaker 1: 5:24

When I have gone to my table for my dinner seating, I have mentioned what I'd like to drink, as well as if there is shrimp cocktail on the menu, I always order that. Well, on one of these cruise lines, royal Caribbean, in fact. Every night after that very first dining experience, I would come to the table and the server would have my favorite drink and my bowl of shrimp cocktail awaiting me. I felt heard. The third place is a special, meaningful place to me and it's a camp in New Mexico called Glorieta. I actually mentioned it in my book Facelift, and a couple of years ago I took my children back to Glorieta to experience a taste of what I had experienced growing up as a child, going there every summer. As we pulled up, people flooded around us to help us with our luggage and get us all settled in, and then they were super attentive to our food allergies and they even had learned in conversation that after that summer I was having a hip replacement, so they offered golf cart rides for me to get around long distances and they'd even helped me gauge if an activity might be safe or not for me to do based on my circumstances. In the midst of all of this, I felt understood.

Speaker 1: 6:32

So how can we provide this exceptional customer service to meet our customer's needs of being seen, heard and understood? Well, many organizations have been studying that, trying to implement various strategies and acronyms and even investing in positions or roles to meet these needs. I'm sure you can think of a few of those companies that excel at customer service. Three of them I'd like to point out, first one being Disney. No surprise there, right? Disney's customer service model is based on what they refer to as their four key basics safety, courtesy, show and efficiency and this helps them in all of their decision-making and provides a source of empowerment to each cast member. Now the second one Chick-fil-A. Of course, you should have expected that one. They use a number of methods, including the acronym HEARD, hear, empathize, apologize, resolve and delight, and what they refer to as the core four values make eye contact, smile, speak with a friendly tone and saying that all-encompassing word that we've all grown to love, my pleasure. These are said to help them create what they strive for of raving fans and attaining their goal of second-mile service.

Speaker 1: 7:54

Now Amazon actually makes my third one. That might have surprised you a little bit. They actually use six tenants, which are posted throughout their offices, which list things such as anticipate customer needs, trust customers, deliver personalized experiences and make it easy and relentlessly advocate for customers. Did you hear the universal language in each of those, though? Care, the first step in truly showing exceptional customer service is actually caring. Now, some may call this having a heart of serving others or a servant heart. Mentally, we can think of this as putting ourselves in the other person's shoes and empathetically reminding ourselves. As American novelist Brad Meltzer puts it, everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind always.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Now, these are just some of the basics. They are just touching that surface of customer service. If we were to really dive a little deeper, we'd find customer service tips such as listen to understand, not to respond. Now, think about that a moment. I had the pleasure of interviewing celebrity interviewer Tony Toscano earlier in season three, episode 12 here on Holly's Highlights, and he actually talks about this very thing and how to really press in to accomplishing listening to understand, not to respond. I'd recommend you listen to that episode next he is great. Another tip it may not be our fault, but it's still our problem. Don DeJulius, founder of John Robert Spas, the DeJulius Group and Believe in Dreams. Well, he passionately reminds us that whatever a customer is coming to us about may not be our fault no wrongdoing of our own but because that customer is before us, whether in person or by phone, or even by that letter, text, social media post, you name it. It still is our problem. We have the opportunity to turn things around.

Speaker 1: 10:00

The third tip clarity is key. We do not all think alike. Just look around anywhere these days and I think that's pretty obvious to all of us. We often assume that people will understand what we're saying or meaning within our message. And well, according to my high school English teacher at my private school, to assume makes an ass out of you and me. So, whether it be the differences of interpretation, such as if we tell someone I'll get back to you as soon as possible regarding this matter what does that mean? The guests may think you meant today, or in 30 minutes or an hour, or by the end of the day, whereas you were actually meaning next week. It may even be that there are cultural differences or learning gaps. You know, if you were to tell my grandfather to snap, screenshot a picture of the receipt and just send it over, he'd look at you dumbfoundedly and say do what. He was a well-educated man, a man of status even, but generationally speaking he had never used a cell phone back in his day. So take time to provide clarity.

Speaker 1: 11:08

The fourth tip lose the lingo. Now I sit in meetings all of the time where we use lingo such as OSAT, anc, doc, and thankfully I know what we're talking about. But that doesn't mean the customer understands a word that is coming out of your mouth and not to get off topic. But emerging leaders and new team members or employees might not either. Perhaps you can even relate chatting with a millennial or Gen Zer who sends you a message of BRB or EOD. Now my daughter and some of my younger co-workers have often had to translate for me. Oh, that's be right back and that one is end of day. How much time do these abbreviations really save us compared to the headache and confusion and even division that they can bring more often than not when talking with your guest, even what is being communicated over the phone system, in your emails and on your website. Make things clear and easy to understand. Lose the lingo.

Speaker 1: 12:12

And that fifth tip build trust. As simple as following through on what you say you're going to do or even shooting the guest straight with an answer to their question. I get the point of a positive language, of having that positive language. The whole never say no concept I do, but for crying out loud. Answer the question. If I ask if a service is available and you tell me all the others that are available, I'm going to be more irritated than when we started. I just wanted the no right, so instead, perhaps you start with. Unfortunately, we don't offer that service anymore. However, some other that may be useful to you are X, y and Z. Trust is easy to lose and it is nearly impossible to gain back. Build the customer's trust.

Speaker 1: 13:02

You know what's really cool about all of this, though, that we're talking about today. They can be implemented by all of us, anywhere, at any time. It's not just the salesperson to the customer. It could be the school secretary when encountering a parent of one of the students in the school. It could be a leader in the church helping a volunteer in the church. It could be a parent talking with their child. It could be a neighbor having a discussion with another neighbor. It could be an interaction between you and someone in the grocery store. See, as founder and owner of Think Lion's, mike Sims, profoundly states, great customer service is not just a transaction, it's an experience of kindness. So, as we end our time together today, what are some things you can very easily start implementing within the next hour to improve your customer service, regardless of what industry you're in.

Speaker 1: 13:55

Two things smile. Did you know that you can actually even hear a smile on the phone? And two be patient. Some people just need to be heard, seen, waved to, acknowledged in some way. You way, you never know that you may be the only one that person encounters in their day Today. Smile and be patient. Great starting points.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Now, if your business is interested in a more personal application for your team and customer service, connect with me for a training or to speak at your next meeting, conference or seminar. For a training or to speak at your next meeting, conference or seminar, connect with me through email at hello at hollykirbycom. Again, that's H-O-L-L-Y-C-U-R-B-Ycom. As the good old book says in 1 Peter 4.10, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in various forms. For after all, as Acts 20, 34-35 assures us, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Thank you for joining me on this journey of life. I hope that today's highlight has been encouraging, inspiring and equipping so you can go out and live your life full of purpose. I'd be honored if you'd take a moment to leave a review or, better yet, subscribe. We can also stay in touch by joining my email list at hollykirbycom. That's H-O-L-L-Y-C-U-R-B-Ycom. Until next time, make it a great day for a great day.