I was in a meeting with one of my clients recently where we were reviewing a document that dealt with how to get the voice of the customer more embedded into their project methodology. Following a battle with Microsoft Word’s spell-checker the document referred to a project mythology. Laughs all round but this got me thinking: methodologies are all well and good but it’s an organisation’s mythology that can make all the difference between successful innovation and unsuccessful stagnation.
Why so? Well, let’s look at myths and what they mean.
The New Year is typically the time when we resolve to give something up (looking at the date of the last post I wondered if I had temporarily given up blogging!) but for some businesses it’s time to think about making customers form a habit – with you.
Most organisations suffer from a wariness of creativity stemming from the myths that I outlined last week. As a consequence, organisations typically don’t set out in an intentional and systematic way to build and maintain their creativity – and this is a wasted opportunity.
Smiling can offer instant benefits – as a recent bout of martial arts demonstrated. And although front line service staff generally don’t need to be black belts, an ability to smile is a great asset.
The UK launch of the 
Superior customer service is largely about knowing what the basic elements of good service are – and delivering them consistently and well. A couple of examples from last week’s family holiday in Yorkshire illustrate how making people feel welcome sets the right tone for a good customer experience.
Making a positive choice to deliver a Wow! service is a different strategy from avoiding an “Oww!” service. Unfortunately many organisations implicitly choose the latter by failing to positively choose the former.
When I was setting up this site my intention was to provide a source of stories about superior service from my own and others’ perspective. So I was particularly pleased to find a book that contains just that. The only problem is that I didn’t write it.
I can’t hear the expression ‘the gift of feedback’ without hearing a slightly sarcastic tone of voice probably because I have heard it used in that fashion to refer to feedback that’s un-diplomatic, too blunt or just plain rude. However, for any organisation committed to superior customer service, encouraging and dealing effectively with feedback is one of the most powerful things to drive improvement. I’m continuing to provide feedback to organisations that I deal with and will share the best examples on this blog. Here’s one that illustrates some good practice.
Following my earlier