Team leadership is a precious skill. However, teams in organizations are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They work and make progress. Then, boom, they materialize into a nightmare.

Everyone talks about the importance of “team” so it has become a worn out cliché. Together everyone achieves more (T.E.A.M.) is the spoken acronym, and nearly 2/3 of teams falter and fail. Most others fall far short of their intended objectives. You can change that for any team you are a part of or lead if you become a student of team-building.

25 Quotes About Team Leadership

The number 25 represents wisdom, with diplomacy and curiosity. Also, it suggests unity, cooperation and a unique ability to communicate well with others. Consequently, hopefully, this is true for you and any team you are involved in. Read on.

• “The strength of the team is each member. The strength of each member is the team.” Phil Jackson
• “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” -HE Luccock
• “Teamwork makes the dream work.” – Bang Gae
• “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napoleon Hill
• “A leader must inspire or his team will expire.” – Orrin Woodward
• “Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.” Max De Pree
• “The ratio of We’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team.” -Lewis B Ergen
• “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.” -Michael Jordan
• “Gettin’ good players is easy. Gettin’ ’em to play together is the hard part.” – Casey Stengel
• “Good teams incorporate teamwork into their culture, creating the building blocks for success.” -Ted Sundquist
• “A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of others.” – Norman Shidle
• “No individual can win a game by himself.” -Pele

 More Great Quotes About Team Leadership

• “Together, ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.” – Becka Schoettle
• “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” -Helen Keller
• “Team leadership is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results.” -Ifeanyi Onuoha
• “A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” – Rosalynn Carter
• “The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.” -Lee Iacocca
• “A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind.” Bill Bethel
• “Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” – John Rockefeller
• “None of us is as smart as all of us.” -Ken Blanchard
• Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team.” —Patric k Lencioni
• “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” -Henry Ford
• “Team-building is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.” —Brian Tracy
• “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” —Steve Jobs
• “Talent is extremely important. It’s like a sports team, the team that has the best individual player will often win, but then there’s a multiplier from how those players work together and the strategy they employ.” Elon Musk

Pulling It All Together

Maybe for the project on that one day it was true; you are better than the team. But in most cases effective team leadership produces better, more complete, and more positive results. A team that communicates and works together well offers:

•  More expertise and knowledge than even an exceptionally smart individual
  can.
• Perspective from different levels and disciplines of the organization.
• Richness of ideas and thinking styles.

Make no mistake about it; team-building does take more time. But the product of great team leadership far surpasses the contribution of a person working alone. Excellent teams also change the dynamics of the entire organization through the collaborations that develop and the quality of projects delivered. Team leaders that learn to facilitate this kind of effort are golden.

John Buchan, former Governor General of Canada said, “The task of team leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.”

For more tips and techniques on team leadership check out Rick’s complimentary and fascinating eBook: Creating a High Performance Team.

About the Author

Rick Conlow is CEO & Senior Partner of WCW Partners, a performance improvement company. Based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, WCW works with clients in a variety of industries worldwide to help them excel in sales, service and leadership, facilitating business growth and vitality. Rick is author of Excellence in Management, Excellence in Supervision and Returning to Learning.

Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1.
— Stew Leonard

Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.
— Jeffrey Gitomer

Do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it, in the way you said you were going to do it.
— Larry Winget

The purpose of business is to create and keep the customer.
— Peter F. Drucker

If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.
— Jan Carlzon

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody, by spending his money somewhere else.
– Sam Walton

The longer you wait, the harder it is to provide outstanding customer service.
— William H. Davidow

Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck, because they do.”
— Anon

The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.
— Sam Walton
The customer is king.
— Anon

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
— Walt Disney

Under promise and over deliver.
— Anon

If you don’t genuinely like your customers, chances are they won’t buy.
— Tom Watson

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
— Anon

If you don’t care, your customer never will.
— Marlene Blaszczyk

People expect good service but few are willing to give it.
— Robert Gately

When you serve the customer better, there’s always a return on your investment.
— Kara Parlin

People perform best and deliver the best customer service, when they like what they do.
— Anon
Treat others how you wish to be treated yourself.
— Anon

Here is a simple but powerful rule: Always give people more than what they expect to get.
Nelson Boswell

I don’t think companies will ever be really done with being as focused on their customers as they could be.
Adam Klaber

I won’t complain. I just won’t come back.
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Ad

If Franz Kafka were alive today he’d be writing about customer service.
Jonathan Alter

If the shopper feels like it was poor service, then it was poor service. We are in the customer perception business.
Mark Perrault, Rally Stores

If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will.
Unknown

If you don’t genuinely like your customers, chances are they won’t buy.
Tom Watson

If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled subordinates, then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
Dee Hock, CEO Emertus Visa Int’l

If you get everybody in the company involved in customer service, not only are they ‘feeling the customer’ but they’re also getting a feeling for what’s not working. That’s the key -listening to make sure that you understand the customers and that you make them feel that you understand. When a customer calls up with a complaint, we obviously can’t change the past. But we have to deal with the problem.
Penny Handscomb

If you want to be creative in your company, your career, your life, all it takes is one easy step… the extra one. When you encounter a familiar plan, you just ask one question: What ELSE could we do?
Dale Dauten

In business you get what you want by giving other people what they want.
Alice MacDougall

In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.
Doug Warner

It starts with respect. If you respect the customer as a human being, and truly honor their right to be treated fairly and honestly, everything else is much easier.
Doug Smith

Let me pass, I have to follow them, I am their leader.
Alexandra Ledru-Rollin

Maybe ‘Customer Service’ should be more than one department.
SAP Ad

Never underestimate the power of the irate customer.
Joel Ross

Organizations have more to fear from lack of quality internal customer service than from any level of external customer service.
Ron Tillotson

People don’t want to communicate with an organization or a computer. They want to talk to a real, live, responsive, responsible person who will listen and help them get satisfaction.
Theo Michelson, State Farm Insurance

People expect good service but few are willing to give it.
Robert Gately

People perform best and deliver the best customer service when they like what they do.
Unknown

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
Peter Drucker

Quality, is job one.
Ford Company

Service standards keep rising. As competitors render better and better service, customers become more demanding. Their expectations grow. When every company’s service is shoddy, doing a few things well can earn you a reputation as the customer’s saviour. But when a competitor emerges from the pack as a service leader, you have to do a lot of things right. Suddenly achieving service leadership costs more and takes longer. It may even be impossible if the competition has too much of a head start. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding service.
William H. Davidow

The customer’s perception is your reality.
Kate Zabriskie

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
Max DePree

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind.
William James, Psychologist

The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.
William H. Davidow

The purpose of a business is to create a mutually beneficial relationship between itself and those that it serves. When it does that well, it will be around tomorrow to do it some more.
John Woods

The quality of our work depends on the quality of our people.
Unknown

The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.
Peter Drucker

The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in doing so will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern rather than a desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price.
Eugene B. Habecker

The way to a customer’s heart and wallet lies in how well we initially serve our customers and recover from poor service.
Unknown

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
Roger Staubach

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

There’s a place in the world for any business that takes care of its customers–after the sale.
Harvey MacKay

To begin with, that use of automation on the phone lines is a bad move. Call centers are designed to get ’em on the line, get ’em off the line. But what companies forget is that customers know when they’re being treated badly. And when you’re not treated well, you’re going to go somewhere else or make the company pay. You’re going to call back, madder, and go for management -maybe with lawsuits.
Ann Humphries

To my customer. I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.
Unknown

Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck … because they do.
Unknown

Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction … you must improve.
Horst Schulz

Washrooms will always tell if your company cares about its customers.
Unknown

We make our money out of our friends. Our enemies will not do business with us.
Elbert Hubbard

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

What we are doing is satisfying the American public. That is our job. I always say we have to give most of the people what they want most of the time. That is what is expected of us.
William Paley

Whatever your business is, talk to your customers and provide them with what they want. It makes sense.
Robert Bowman, CEO Major League Baseball Advanced Media

When you start viewing your customers as interruptions, you’re going to have problems.
Kate Zabriskie

Without great employees you can never have great customer service.
Richard F. Gerson

You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work.
Laurie McIntosh

You cannot always control circumstances, but you can control your own thoughts.
Charles Popplestown

You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional. Professionalism has nothing to do with getting paid for your services.
Joe Paterno

You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
Jerry Fritz

Your best customers leave quite an impression. Do the same, and they won’t leave at all.
SAP Ad

Your customers expect your entire operation to revolve around them.
SAP Ad

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates

When the customer comes first, the customer will last Robert Half

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us – we are dependent on him.
Unknown

A sale is not something you pursue, it is something that happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer.
Unknown

As far as customers are concerned you are the company. This is not a burden, but the core of your job. You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back – perhaps even to make or break the company.
Unknown

Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish the customer.
Macy’s Motto

Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.
Tony Alessandra

Biggest question: Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service? And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?
Jeffrey Gitomer

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
Henry Ford

Common sense if of paramount importance in business and customer service.
Unknown

Customer complaints are the schoolbooks from which we learn.
Unknown

Customer service is awareness of needs, problems, fears and aspirations.
Unknown

Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.
Kate Zabriskie

Customer service is training people how to serve clients in an outstanding fashion.
Unknown

Customers are an investment. Maximize your return.
PeopleSoft Ad

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.
Donald Porter V.P., British Airways

Customers who don’t get support become someone else’s customers.
Brigade Ad

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
Walt Disney

Don’t try to tell the customer what he wants. If you want to be smart, be smart in the shower. Then get out, go to work and serve the customer!
Gene Buckley, Sikorsky Aircraft

Forget about the sales you hope to make and concentrate on the service you want to render.
Harry Bullis

Good leaders must first become good servants.
Robert Greenleaf

Good service is good business.
Siebel ad

This collection of customer service quotes courtesy of businesstrainingworks.com.

1. The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.
Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

2. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates

3. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin

4. It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
Henry Ford

5. Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

6. Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed how many companies don’t listen to their customers.
Ross Perot

7. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echos are truly endless.
Mother Teresa

8. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

9. In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organisation. She or he only focuses on the garment hanging on the rail in the store.
Giorgio Armani

10. The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.
Jerry Gregoire, CIO, Dell Computers

11. Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.
Jeffrey Gitomer

12. Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
Peter Drucker

13. To understand the man, you must first walk a mile in his moccasin.
North American Indian Proverb

14. Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.
Donald Porter, V.P. British Airways

15. Good service is good business.
Siebel Ad

16. There is a spiritual aspect to our lives – when we give we receive – when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!
Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry’s

17. The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.
John Russell, President, Harley Davidson

18. One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.
Lewis Carol

19. Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.
Tony Allesandra

20. You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
Jerry Fritz

21. Every great business is built on friendship.
JC Penney

22. If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
John Adams

23. Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1.
Stew Leonard, CEO Stew Leonard’s

24. If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is.
Jan Carlzon, ex-CEO SAP Group

25. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Booker T. Washington

26. In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.
Doug Warner

27. Know what your customers want most and what your company does best. Focus on where those two meet.
Kevin Stirtz

28. Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.
Chip Bell, Founder Chip Bell Group

29.Make a customer, not a sale.
Katherine Barchetti

30. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

31. Customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.
Anonymous

32. Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business. Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer.
Dale Carnegie

33. Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
Mark Cuban

34. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

35. The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.
Michael Dell

36. A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi

37. When people talk about successful retailers and those that are not so successful, the customer determines at the end of the day who is successful and for what reason.
Jerry Harvey

38. It’s a very, very tough market. So unless you do a really good job, you buy the right products from the manufacturers, you service the customer, they keep coming back, they bring their friends in, it’s all about numbers, numbers, numbers.
John Ilhan

39. A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Steve Jobs

40. If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.
Ray Krock

41. For us, our most important stakeholder is not our stockholders, it is our customers. We’re in business to serve the needs and desires of our core customer base.
John Mackey

42. If you love your customer to death, you can’t go wrong.
Graham Day

43. We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

44. You’ve got to look for a gap, where competitors in a market have grown lazy and lost contact with the readers or the viewers.
Rupert Murdoch

45. In our way of working, we attach a great deal of importance to humility and honesty; With respect for human values, we promise to serve our customers with integrity.
Azim Premji

46. Customers don’t always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren’t enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call “the third place”.. a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn’t know they had.
Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO Starbucks

47. Don’t try to tell the customer what he wants. If you want to be smart, be smart in the shower. Then get out, go to work and serve the customer!
Gene Buckley, President Sikorsky Aircraft

48. The most important adage and the only adage is, the customer comes first, whatever the business, the customer comes first.
Kerry Stokes

49. I won’t complain. I just won’t come back
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Ad

50. Customer service is just a day in, day out ongoing, never ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate, type of activity.
Leon Gorman, CEO L.L.Bean

51. Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.
Michael LeBoeuf, Author of: How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life

52. Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
Tom Peters

53. Friendly makes sales – and friendly generates repeat business.
Jeffrey Gitomer

54. Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It is a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do, if you are to bring it to your customer interactions.
Betsy Sanders

55. Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.
Kevin Stirtz

56. Here is a simple but powerful rule: always give people more than what they expect to get.
Nelson Boswell

57. Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and
companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive.
Brian Tracy

58. It helps a ton when you learn people’s names and don’t butcher them when trying to pronounce them.
Jerry Yang

59. Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
Zig Ziglar

60. I don’t do business with those who don’t make a profit because they can’t give the best service.
Richard Bach

61. If you don’t genuinely like your customers, chances are they won’t buy.
Thomas Watson, former CEO IBM

62. Merely satisfying customers will not be enough to earn their loyalty. Instead, they must experience exceptional service worthy of their repeat
business and referral. Understand the factors that drive this customer revolution.
Rick Tate

63. Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service gets great rewards.
Elbert Hubbard

64. Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can’t expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don’t exceed the employees’ expectations of management.
Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks Coffee

65. People expect good service but few are willing to give it.
Robert Gateley

66. Revolve your world around the customer and more customers will revolve around you.
Heather Williams

67. The customer’s perception is your reality.
Kate Zabriskie, Author of: Customer Service Excellence: How to Deliver Value to Today’s Busy Customer

68. Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
Walt Disney

69. He profits, most who serves best.
Arthur F. Sheldon

70. The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.
William H. Davidow

71. The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.
Peter Drucker

72. When the customer comes first, the customer will last.
Robert Half

73. Right or wrong, the customer is always right.
Marshall Field

74. Under promise and over deliver.
Toby Bloomberg

75. Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.
W. Edwards Deming

76. Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Damon Richards

77. Every client you keep, is one less that you need to find.
Nigel Sanders

78. If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends
Jeff Bezos

79. The purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers
Shiv Singh

80. It’s much harder to provide a great customer service than I would have ever realised. It’s much more art than science in some of these other areas and not just about the facts but about how you are conveying them.
David Yu, Chief Operating Officer, Betfair

81. Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

82. Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.
Albert Einstein

93. Good customer service costs less than bad customer service.
Sally Gronow, Welsh Water

84. Whether you are big or small, you cannot give good customer service if your employees don’t feel good about coming to work.
Martin Oliver, MD Kwik-Fit Financial Services

85. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.
Stephen Covey

86. Everyone in an organisation should be involved with customer service, not only are they feeling the customer but they are getting a feeling for what’s not working.
Penny Handscomb

87. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
Roger Staubach

88. Good leaders must first become good servants.
Robert Greenleaf

89. We don’t want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want.
Laura Ashley

90. A shoe without sex appeal is like a tree without leaves. Service without emotion is like a shoe without sex appeal.
Anonymous

91. A little experience often upsets a lot of theory.
S. Parkes Cadman

92. Whatever your business is, talk to your customers and provide them with what they want. It makes sense.
Robert Bowman, CEO Major League Baseball Advanced Media

93. You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work.
Laurie McIntosh

94. Your best customers leave quite an impression. Do the same, and they won’t leave at all.
SAP Ad

95. Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction…you must improve.
Horst Schulz

96. It starts with respect. If you respect the customer as a human being, and truly honor their right to be treated fairly and honestly, everything else is much easier.
Doug Smith

97. An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
Elbert Hubbard

98. Customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.
Anonymous

99. There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money
somewhere else.
Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

100. Worry about being better; bigger will take care of itself. Think one customer at a time and take care of each one the best way you can.
Gary Comer

101. Consumers are statistics. Customers are people.
Stanley Marcus

Here are a few humorous quotes to ponder and reflect on.

“Go forth and be a happy cabbage.” Unknown

Are you sending your customers off with good thoughts? Maybe you can brighten their day with a little smile.

Many times a small gesture from you to them makes all the difference in their day, and they’ll remember you for it. Nothing brings people back like friendliness.

What are you doing to stay on top of things? Are you touching your customers at least once during the day? Are you tracking inbound calls and responding in a timely manner? Keeping on top of your customers requests is the best way to demonstrate to them that you care.

“Very funny Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.” Scotty

Are you embarrassed about your performance? Are your customers leaving with the thought of never returning due to your lack of service? There are many things that we face in our professional lives and one of the worst is when you are caught unprepared or worse, uncaring. And the feeling is exactly like standing naked in front of the customer.

What are you doing to enhance the customer experience? Are you anticipating and implementing? Have you completed new training? What are you reading?

“Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?” Unknown

Are you asking your customers the right questions? Are you paying attention to the answers? Are you changing your policies, procedures and personnel to reflect changing customer tastes? It’s certainly good to ask the right question, however, it’s much better to respond with the right answer.

You can get feedback from online surveys, informal surveys, employee surveys, focus groups and the like. And asking the right questions is the key. How well do you know your customer? Could you call them by name if you met them on the street? Do you know their children’s names? If you are in a fast paced one time service environment, could you guess their behavioral style by asking them a few questions and noting their dress?

Be curious about your customer. People like it when you know a little about them and their habits. It helps foster friendly communication and builds relationships.

“55% of the population doesn’t pay attention to statistics.” Unknown

Are your customers paying attention to you? Have you become another plaintive voice, an urban cricket in a cacophony of “come hither and try me” swarm of crickets, each clamoring for the tiniest bit of attention from every passer by? Or are you reaching out and touching your customer, with communication that is designed to impact them in such a way they never forget your name and service, and tell all of their friends about you? Or are you fast becoming a statistic?

All of us have different obstacles and illusions throughout our day. It’s our ability to discern what is immediate and actionable and then responding to those obstacles that separates good service experiences from great service experiences.

About the Author

Leonard Buchholz leads seminars in Customer Service, Attitude and Skills and Management. He also provides coaching and consulting in Customer Service.