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Customer Service Is Your Most Important Product

Think about what your most important product is. If you own a restaurant, perhaps it’s your bestselling dessert; if you run a retail store, it might be a popular item with a big gross margin; if you operate a computer repair service, it’s surely the skills of your technicians. While…
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Commandment No. 9 – Thou Shalt Lighten the Lines

The penultimate entry on Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, is “Thou Shalt Lighten the Lines.” Hyken begins by observing that no one likes waiting in line. He goes on to explain “the word ‘line’ is a metaphor for making the customer wait unnecessarily for…
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Commandment No. 6 – Thou Shalt Anticipate

“Thou Shalt Anticipate” is commandment number six found in Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service. Anticipation requires some measure of assumption, which is a risky proposition according to the old saying, “when you assume, you make an…”—well, you know the rest. But being prepared is…
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Commandment No. 5 – Thou Shalt Be Willing to Apologize Quickly

The next commandment laid out in Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, “Thou Shalt Be Willing to Apologize Quickly”. We all hate being wrong, especially when it means we’re not just incorrect but that we’ve actually aggrieved someone else. In the context of business, this…
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Commandment No. 4 – Thou Shalt Say Thank You and Please – A LOT

Let’s take a look at the next commandment described in Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, “Thou Shalt Say Thank You and Please – A LOT”. As Hyken explains, this commandment harkens back to the good manners “our parents should have taught us.” He further…
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Commandment No. 2 – Thou Shalt Go the Extra Mile

Continuing with Shep Hyken’s Forbes article, The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service, Hyken next spotlights Dr. Willie Jolley’s second commandment, “Thou Shalt Go the Extra Mile”. Hyken first posts “going the ‘extra mile’” often doesn’t require that much additional effort. As he further explains, going the extra mile might just…
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Commandment No. 1 – Thou Shalt Serve with a Smile

Shep Hyken, contributing for Forbes, has a great article titled The Ten Commandments of Superior Customer Service. Hyken cites Dr. Willie Jolley as the developer of these commandments, which he summarizes in this piece. Let’s do a deeper dive on the first one: “Thou Shalt Serve with a Smile”. As Hyken…
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Everybody’s A Critic

A scant few years ago, the only reviews a local business would get were from friends who had been there, or perhaps a newspaper if you were lucky. Nowadays, however, all your customers are critics, and they have tools like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Google Reviews to put their opinions…
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How Your Restaurant Can Escape Bad Word-of-Mouth

Earlier this month, Nancy Friedman wrote a wonderful piece for RunningRestaurants.com titled “Excellent Restaurant Customer Service Drives Loyalty”, which describes the importance of fixing bad experiences. As she explains, customers will tell many more people about a bad experience than they will about a good one: “Word-of-mouth and social media postings, good and…
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