Customer Service With a Laugh: Great Service is All About Attitude and Making a Connection
Exceptional customer service is often about building relationship, building trust, making a real human connection, and playing the role of the “Director of First Impressions.” Memorable customer experiences happen when your employees bring their passion, personality and yes, their sense of humor along for the ride with every customer service interaction. Watch the video below for a great example of a customer service hero at a hotel in action – someone who truly exemplified a fantastic customer service mindset and attitude.
Remarkable Customer Service With a Laugh
Remarkable customer service and remarkable customer service experiences starts by just being present with our customers.
It’s about building relationships, building trust. It’s about being genuine and authentic. It’s about our attitude that we bring to the job. It’s about having a sense of humor with our customers.
Years ago, I was on one of those two-week fitness kicks. (You’ve been there, right?)
So, I’m going down to the gym at the hotel I was staying at, and I encountered this housekeeper who looked like she was way past retirement age. She was quite a bit older than I was. And I asked this woman where the gym was. Now, she hit it out of the ballpark with her customer service by looking me up and down, giving me the most frightening flirtatious smile I’ve had in years, poking me in the stomach and saying, “You don’t need a fitness facility, honey.”
I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I’m in love with this woman.”
Then she insisted on walking me down to the gym. She said, “It’s a big hotel. It’s in a weird location. I have to go get supplies anyways, come with me.” So we go down to the gym together. She gives me this running commentary, asking me how my stay is, asking me how my family is. If I tried the sandwich number 14 of the deli across the street, she was delightful, charming, real. And she was hilarious!
So, we get to the gym and I turned to her and I said, “You just made my day. You’re just amazing. You are so cool.” And I told her what I did for a living and asked, “Is this a place that I should come and research?”
And she said, “Oh God no, it’s horrible.”
Which was not the answer I was expecting!
“Well, why are you like this?” I asked. “You’re just so wonderful. You’re so charming!”
And she smiled and she said, “Well, thank you! I finally figured out at this late stage in life, that when I’m like this, the days go by way faster than when I’m not like this. When I’m like this, I have way less stress and way less conflict in my life. When I’m like this, I get bigger tips – I mean it’s not rocket science,” she said, “And when I’m like this, guess what? My colleagues and my boss always say to me, “Yes.” When I ask them a favor, what do they always say to me? “Yes.””
It may seem ridiculously trivial, but so much of customer service is about simply this: Encouraging your frontline customer service employees to be true ambassadors in their job, to bring their authentic, real, genuine selves to the job.
So, what about you? What do you do to encourage your employees to bring their sense of humor, their enthusiasm, their positive, great attitude, along for the ride when they’re interacting with your customers? Please leave a comment in the comment box below.
Michael Kerr is a Hall of Fame business speaker and the author of 8 books, including, The Jerk-Free Workplace, The Humor Advantage, and Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire.
