Simplifying Spectacular Customer Service

The Reverend Harold T. Mooney taught me to love God and golf. He was able to simplify both for me.

When we’d talk about golf at the driving range or in the big emerald yard behind the church, he’d say, “Tim – so many people want to confuse the issue with movements and swing thoughts and where the left wrist should be at impact.

“It gets your brain so full, it’s impossible to perform.

“Simplify the game down to what matters,” he said. “Two things – study two things, think about two things, practice two things, and you’ll learn to master the game.

“Golf,” Fr. Mooney said, “comes down to direction and distance. Nothing more or less.”

ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease – took one of my heroes much too quickly, but I remember the lesson, Father.

After researching hundreds of stories, reading a half-dozen books and interviewing a few world-class company leaders, I’ve realized – as I’m sure you have as well – that recognizing delightful and spectacular customer service isn’t really all that hard.

In fact, the same fourteen characteristics that seem to define magnificent and remarkable customer service pop up time and again in story after story.

But so did something else. Another pattern emerged after a couple hundred hours of research these past couple months – something even simpler.

While there are fourteen manifestations, fourteen defining characteristics, fourteen ways to deliver delight, those fourteen fall evenly into two halves.

I’ll give you the fourteen somethings (still looking for a clever word for the presentation/ebook/etc) of customer service this week, plus a lesson in how to implement them, but before we go there, I want to simplify customer service down to what matters.

Study these two things.

Think about these two things.

Practice these two things, and you’ll learn to master the game.

Each has seven links that shoot off to deliver these characteristics to the customer, but if you wish to boil it down to the basic building blocks of all shareworthy customer service stories, it’s those two, bub: Professionalism and Kindness.

I told you it was simple. Just like golf, it’s simple to read about or watch – the greats make it looks so effortless, don’t they? The Apples and the Disneys and the Zapposeseses.

Heck, it’s even relatively easy to start to play the game yourself, isn’t it?.

But mastery … going pro? Well … it’s, frankly, just as simple.

It’s just not easy.