My 10 Most Popular Customer Service Articles of 2016

In case you missed them, my 10 most popular eServices articles of 2016 were the following. I suggest printing them out, reading them, and sharing them with your management team.

10. Things You Don't Want To Shop to the Lowest Bidder

There are certain things in life that you don't want to price shop, look for discounts on, or take the lowest bid for - things like a heart surgeon or new brakes on your family vehicle. The value placed on these services is extremely high and there is potential for irreversible damage. In these circumstances you cannot afford to choose anything less than the best. How good a job are you doing at creating value on the expertise and experience of your services? Make your customers fear that if they choose anyone else, there will be irreversible damage. We need to educate our customers that they cannot afford to "go cheap."

9. Six Things That Make Yours the Brand Customers Cannot Live Without

We all have a company or two that we can't fathom life without. What are the few companies that would cause you to be extremely upset if I told you, "You can no longer do business with them, ever again?" When I ask my audiences this question, the same brands always get mentioned: Apple, Starbucks, Nordstrom, and Amazon as well as local mom-and-pop shops. Now the important part is this: think about what they have done and what they consistently do to make you so loyal, to make you feel that you cannot live without them. That is power. That is brand loyalty. The more people you can make feel that they cannot live without your brand, the closer you are to making price irrelevant.

8. What a 13-Year-Old Can Teach Us About Customer Service

I have had the good fortune to experience and witness many professionals who truly know how to serve. However, there is one person in particular who consistently blows me away on how he builds rapport instantly with strangers and learns so much about other people in only a few minutes of conversation. This person is my 13-year-old son, Bo DiJulius. I have been so intrigued by his ability to strike up a conversation with someone he has never met before and have that person share so many intimate details with a teenager. So I asked Bo if he could share how he does it.

7. urX: The Best Customer Quotes Anybody Ever Said

(urX = You are the experience). Customers crave recognition and a personalized experience. In short, technology cannot provide genuine hospitality. It cannot express empathy, make people feel good, take care of others, express emotions and vulnerability in a relatable way, or make people laugh. We have subconsciously sent the wrong message to all our employees that it is about the technology: our website, apps, social media, virtual tour, iPads, kiosks, self-checkout. So our employees have started using the technology as a crutch, thinking they have less importance, less of a role with the customer. They rely on the technology to provide the experience. We need to reverse that. Customer experience is 10% technology and you are 90%.

6. Put Your Own Mask on Before Helping Others

We have all heard the preflight safety announcement, "You must put on your own oxygen mask before helping those around you." What use will you be to anyone else if you do not take care of yourself first? Think of how that applies to life and what we need to do for ourselves before we are capable of affecting those around us.

5. Do You Suffer from RBF Syndrome?

RBF (resting bitch face) is something to be taken seriously in all of our businesses, with any of our customer-facing/interacting employees, whether it is face to face, ear to ear, or click to click. A smile is just as much a part of the uniform as anything else employees are required to wear: uniform, nametag, hat, smile. Everyone should have a smile, and it should be genuine. A genuine smile shows teeth. In my companies, we have sent team members home for being "out of uniform" for not smiling. I like to tell my employees, "If you are happy, tell your face."

4. 100% of Your Sales Come from One Place

Leaders love to talk about revenue streams by showing graphs and charts with the breakdown of sales categories. It is important to know the percentage of sales generated by products or services and to monitor trends, especially the growth or decline of your business revenue. However, one critical component every business has in common, and is never discussed is that 100% of your sales come from one place. Your customer! When you look at it this way, it sheds a stronger light on why companies must put more emphasis on building an incredible and consistent customer experience that becomes your number-one competitive advantage and helps make price irrelevant.

3. The Battle Over Your Advertising Dollars vs. Customer Service Dollars

The average global annual budget spent on marketing and advertising is $500 billion - compared with $9 billion spent on customer service. The shortsighted obsession of constantly bringing new customers/traffic to your business is significantly more expensive than building an incredible customer experience and having customers come back because they want to. Companies spend millions creating and advertising their brands, yet each customer's experience is what drives their perception and loyalty.

2. What Is the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience?

How do you know if you received an "experience" or just a "service"? How do you know if you have delivered an experience or just a service? Customer service is what you do; customer experience is how you do it. Turning what was once a mundane transaction into a unique and memorable moment means you have to re-evaluate everything you do, every way you interact with your customers - whether a one-hour face-to-face meeting, a conference call, a 10-second check-in, a call transfer, or an email reply.

1. I Collect the Best Thing Anyone Can Collect

My entire life I have been a collector of something very rare and priceless. People compliment me on my collection all the time. I believe it is the best gauge of a person's character. I constantly stress to my three sons and all my employees that they should collect the same thing I do. What I collect are rare people in my life. The key word is rare, for I am extremely choosy on whom I collect. I collect relationships with uncommon, loyal, unique, high moral, genuine, and most importantly positive people. If people judge me by who I surround myself with, I am a champion.

John R. DiJulius III, author of The Customer Service Revolution, is president of The DiJulius Group, a customer service consulting firm that works with companies including Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Ritz-Carlton, Nestle, PwC, Lexus, and many more. Call him at 216-839-1430 or email john@thedijuliusgroup.com.