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Businesses love to brag about their customer service. As a consumer, think about a recent customer service experience you have had. Was it something you would brag about? According to Forbes, while 80% of companies believe they deliver “super experiences,” only 8% of customers agree. This outcome has cost businesses more than $75 billion per year! Providing great customer service should be the cornerstone of any company; and yet, studies have consistently shown that businesses are not delivering.

Great service requires both creativity and a willingness to change. Here are three stories that show what great service looks like and what it can do for your customers and your business.

1. Great Service Turns Customers into Raving Fans.

One day the ice maker in my mother’s refrigerator had a bad water leak. She called several appliance repair companies, but couldn’t get anyone to come out. Then she saw an ad that read “Same day service.” When she called, a friendly voice said, “We’d be happy to fix your refrigerator today, Mrs. Blanchard.” My mother was blown away. The polite repairman showed up later that day and fixed the leak at a reasonable cost. As he was leaving, he handed my happy mother a card and said, “Anytime you have a problem with this refrigerator, you give me a call.”

What do you think my mother was doing for the next three days? She was calling all her friends to tell them about the service she had received—and giving the man’s name and phone number to anyone who would listen. She had become a raving fan.

2. Great Service is a Choice.

My friend Harvey Mackay was waiting in line for a cab at the airport. When one pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that it was polished to a bright shine. The smartly dressed cab driver jumped out, opened the back passenger door for Harvey, and said, “Hi! I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags, please read my mission statement.” He handed Harvey a card that read:

Wally’s Mission Statement:
To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest,
and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment.

When Harvey sat down inside the cab, he noticed the inside was as spotlessly clean as the outside. “Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf,” said Wally as he slid into the driver’s seat. “If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Sports Illustrated.” He then asked Harvey if he would like to have the air conditioning turned on, and offered to either tell Harvey about the city landmarks as they passed or, if he preferred, let him ride in silence.

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a taxi cab! I’ve probably told that story to more than 50 cab drivers over the years—but there were only two who took the idea and ran with it. And whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call.

3. Great Service Begins with Anyone.

When I travel, I often ask for a wake-up call. At most hotels, the call comes and you pick up the phone and nobody is there. Sometimes you get a recording. If you actually get a human being on the other end, you hardly know what to say.

So imagine my surprise when I was at a Marriott in Orlando and picked up the phone one morning and heard, “Good morning, Dr. Blanchard, this is Teresa. It’s seven o’clock! It’s going to be 75 degrees and beautiful in Orlando today—but your ticket says you’re leaving. Where are you going?”

Taken aback, I stammered, “I’m going to New York City.”

Teresa paused and then said, “Oh no! The weather map says it’s going to be 40 degrees and raining in New York City today! Can’t you stay?”

Now where do you think I want to stay when I go to Orlando?

I’ve said for years that if you don’t take care of your customers, somebody else is waiting, ready, and willing to do it. The best competitive edge for a business isn’t their product or their price. It’s how they treat their customers.

Take action: Brainstorm new and creative ways to give your customers a service experience they will remember fondly.

Shop The Simple Truths of Service>>

What are the top qualities that come to your mind when asked about traits of a woman you admire? Do you think kind, caring, and compassionate? How about tough, brave, and courageous? What about overall badass? Women encompass all these qualities and more. As March marks the month to honor women in history, it is also a great time to reflect on the women in our life. Whether she be a sibling, relative, co-worker, friend, boss, or mentor, there are women around us who help pave the path to our personal and professional success.

While women haven’t always been celebrated, significant strides have been made in the struggle for equality. Historical figures have worked tirelessly in industries like science, aerospace, mathematics, healthcare, and more to push open an otherwise closed door for generations to follow. Celebrate historical icons like Marie Curie, who was the only woman to receive two Nobel Prizes in her lifetime for both physics and chemistry and Loretta Lynch, who was the first African-American woman to hold the position of U.S. Attorney General. They and many other women have helped shape our world.

Get inspired by leaders, revolutionary icons, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and activists whose lives are worth remembering. Read their words for a daily surge of motivation or share their inspirational power with a loved one.

Kavita Wright, Sourcebooks employee

Discover Great Quotes from Great Women>>

There is a lot we can learn from history when it comes to leadership, including the different types of leaders and the lessons both their successes and failures can teach. The Founders of the United States will go down in history as having changed the rules of leadership and redefined what it means to spark change in people. One of the most influential leaders of the American Revolution was Alexander Hamilton. Through his example, and the lessons learned from other Founders, we can understand the principals of revolutionary leadership. Here are three key insights:

1. Recognize Your Challenges

In a recent Interact/Harris Poll, 91% of employees said their leaders lack good communication skills. What weaknesses have you identified in yourself as a leader? What about your strengths? As Alexander Hamilton would have realized, the ancient Greek aphorism, “know thyself,” is an excellent place to start in the study of leadership.

There are many practical ways to assess your particular skills and challenges. Read about strong leaders and compare yourself to them. Take online personality tests and skills assessments. Consider part-time work in fields that are related to what you are interested in. Additionally, ask your boss, mentors, coworkers and friends what they think your challenges are—and don't take offense at their responses!

2. Set Personal Goals

Did you know that you are ten times more likely to succeed if you have a stated goal? To start, take some time to determine what your long-term goal is. From there, start setting short-term goals that will help you attain them. You can decide how short the short-term goals are, but a common duration is five years. After five-year goals are established, set up smaller and smaller goals that will help you reach your five-year goals. Remember that each goal should always support achievement of the higher goal.

3. Never Give Up

Failure is scary, but it is inevitable: 90% of all startups fail; 50%–60% of executives fail within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired; and 92% of people fail to meet their goals. However, that doesn’t mean you should give up. No one has ever succeeded by giving up after failure. So, even if everyone else abandons you, it is imperative that you never give up on yourself. So what if you miss that promotion or aren't appointed to that leadership position you thought was so important? There is always another promotion to pursue, another team you can join, or another company you can switch to.

Get more insights from The Leadership Secrets of Hamilton >>

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Decision-making, no matter how big or small, takes a toll on your brain – with each decision, it becomes harder for you to weigh the consequences. Once decision fatigue sets in, your brain looks for shortcuts and settles for the path of least resistance. So what can you do to combat decision fatigue? Simplify your decision-making process! Author Joe Calloway shares a story about an effective way you can do this:

Sir Peter Blake led Team New Zealand to successive victories in the America's Cup yacht competition in 1995 and 2000. The key to this success was that Blake focused the team on one question, which they asked about everything they did: "Will it make the boat go faster”?

Everything they did and every decision they made had to go through the filter of "Will it make the boat go faster”? This applied to equipment, training, nutrition, crew composition— and more.

We can all simplify and focus using our version of that question. Look at your daily choices and ask yourself your own version of "Will this make the boat go faster”?

• Will this get me where I want to go?
• Will this help me to create positive relationships?
• Will this assist me in reaching my goal?

We all have a "boat" we want to go faster. Be sure you are focused on doing things that will help you accomplish your goals. In the process, you will prevent decision fatigue by knowing exactly what you are aiming for.

From Joe Calloway

Learn more ways to Keep It Simple>>

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Accountability. Good employees are accountable. Good leaders hold their employees accountable. Good organizations have accountable cultures.In many ways accountability has become a holy grail to business success. But what does it really mean to be accountable? And what happens when someone isn’t accountable? How organizations deal with non-accountable behavior goes a long way to defining the organizational culture and the focus of the employees.

The generally accepted definition of being accountable is that “you do what you say you are going to do.” Yet everyone will inevitably fail on this accord. Does that mean they are not accountable?I think it is at that moment of not doing what they said they would do is when you find out if someone is going to act accountably or not. Non-accountable behavior is characterized by excuses, finger pointing, denial, deflecting or refusing to change. Accountable behavior, on the other hand, means taking responsibility for not delivering on the desired results and doing something different until the desired results are achieved.

Wouldn’t life be great if everyone exhibited accountable behavior 100% of the time? As great as that idea sounds it is not realistic and organizations must decide what to do when someone is not acting accountably. The responsibility usually falls on the leader to hold their employees accountable when they are not acting accountably. To effectively do this, leaders must engage in a series of steps starting with things like setting clear expectations, contracting, incentivizing, and putting feedback mechanisms in place. If that doesn’t do it then they must do things like coaching, reassessing, training or even setting consequences. Continued non-accountable behavior will often lead to disciplinary actions and even termination.

But who really has the accountability during this process? Who is the one doing something different until the desired results are achieved? The leader! The whole notion of holding someone accountable is really a myth. When a leader says they are holding someone accountable what they are really saying that they are taking the accountability away from the individual. They are now the ones that are doing something different until the desired results are achieved. And if they don’t achieve the desired results their leader is going to do the same thing to them. This is called leader led accountability and is the norm in most organizations.

There are two significant problems with this approach to managing accountability. One is that not everyone is good at taking the accountability from their employees (formerly known as holding them accountable). Some leaders are afraid of alienating their employees so they shy away from it or they convince themselves they can’t do until they are perfectly accountable themselves. The second problem is that it creates very upward looking organizations. Employees are constantly looking up to their boss as they are they ones whose expectations they have to meet and they are the ones who will take their accountability away if they don’t meet them.

But there is another way that accountability can be managed and that is when someone’s teammates take it. When team members start to do this to each other that is when the team becomes accountable and extraordinary team results can be achieved. In a lot of ways accountable teams are the ultimate holy grail. They are rare. Teams that are accountable are often considered an anomaly that happened as a result of unique circumstances, a special group of people or an extraordinary leader. While some or all of those do happen on accountable teams, they are part of much bigger array of factors that have to happen to make it possible. The good news is there is a definitive and predictable set of steps that will lead your team to becoming accountable.

Eric Coryell

Want to know what inspired Eric Coryell to write Revolutionize Teamwork? Find out with this author Q&A>>