You can have everything you want in customer experience if you will just use customer service to help enough other people get what they want.
Zig Ziglar, motivational author and speaker, is well known for his inspirational titles Secret to Closing the Sale, Top Performance: How to Develop Excellence in Yourself and Others, Success for Dummies, and Born to Win: Finding Your Success Code among other development books.
A little known fact to Ziglar’s thoughts are the correlation between success, personal development, and developing an exceptional customer experience.
Ziglar passed away late November 2012, and though he is gone, his unique approach to creating harmony in our actions will remain as a legacy for all of engaged in the work for developing exceptional customer experiences by integrating effective customer service systems.
4 Quotes From Zig Ziglar to Inspire Better Customer Service
Four quotes from Ziglar stand out to me as fundamental in our customer experience processes and service delivery teams.
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”
Today, excuses for poor service deliveries are plentiful, but accountability for exceptional service is lacking. Why are some organizations able to excel in their customer service delivery while others consistently fall short?
It’s not that some a magically blessed with more time, greater energy, or even that they spend more than others. It’s their lack of focus and dedication to achieving the outcome that differentiates the customer experience do’s vs. the customer experience don’ts.
“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.“
We’re all filled with ambition. We all aspire to be the best, to deliver an exceptional customer experience each and every time. We all want to establish the level of service that creates massive customer loyalty and endless positive PR for our organizations.
Actually creating the type of programs and spending the time and effort to train our teams to deliver that type exceptional service is what separates the doers from the dreamers. Too often we expect to be great in order to do. But it’s by doing that we become great.
“Make today worth remembering.”
The attitude that today is the day that matters most is espoused by every organization succeeding in delivering exceptional experiences. It’s understood that past actions don’t count towards the relationship with future customers.
No matter what we’ve accomplished yesterday, if we don’t deliver today, we’ll fail to create customers tomorrow.
“Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.”
Customer experience is a mission. The beauty of exceptional customer experiences is that it’s not the end result or action that will determine your success, but what your customers think of the journey to get there. Think about the experience stories you hear from Zappos, the Ritz-Carlton, Nordstrom, Apple, and others? What’s the end action of the service experience?
- Shoes.
- Room service.
- Clothes.
- A phone.
There’s nothing fantastic about any of this. But the experience in getting it?
- Overnight shipping when I selected regular 3-5 day.
- A hot meal at 11PM when I’ve travelled all day and encountered delays along the way.
- A return beyond the normal return period of time.
- A simple but powerful device that organizes the chaos in life.
This is what Ziglar means about finding joy in the experience journey. It’s not enough to have tunnel vision as you plow your way towards your ultimate goal. You have to tend and nurture the touch points along the way. That’s the secret to that exceptional customer experience.
Ziglar, through his teaching of business leaders and others proves that you indeed catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar. It’s about more than flowery words, free samples, and smiles. It requires us to help others to imagine what they can be and using our tools to help them get there.
When you encourage others, you in the process are encouraged because you’re making a commitment and difference in that person’s life. Encouragement really does make a difference.
As Ziglar puts it, you can have everything you want in life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
Focus on what others need now, and what you need most will be come. Reach out, lift, inspire, connect, and customer experience will create the type of lasting relationships that create success.
