The following is an excerpt from Michael’s latest book, The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank

Stop Providing Good Customer Service!

Great organizations understand that there’s a difference between long term customers and loyal, raving fans that will serve as ambassadors for your business.

Zappos has a fantastic mantra that every business should adopt:  “We are in the service business, we just happen to sell shows.”

What a great way for everyone, regardless of what business they are in or what they do for that business, to view their work:

“I am in the service business, I just happen to_______________________.”

This is the attitude that needs to be adopted from every person, from the CEO to the front line.  It needs to embraced as a passionate calling; championed as your call to action.  You need to take a culture wide perspective. And you need to broaden out the definition of customer service, first by relentlessly reminding everyone that if everyone remembers that everything they do, even when they don’t have a front line  contact with your customer, still impacts the service you are able to provide that customer.

More than that, great cultures are built when people remember that everyone they interact with at work is one of their customers.  If you’re a leader, your customers are your employees, and you need to treat them with the same dedicated passion you’d want your front line employees treating your customers with.  If you’re an employee, you boss is one of your customers.  And so are all of your colleagues. In fact one simple but effective definition of teamwork is offering great customer service to the rest of one’s teammates. Imagine how work might change if everyone wholeheartedly embraced that concept?

Then you need to broaden out the definition of service and remind everyone that service isn’t just about those moments of contact with your customers. It’s about how easy your website and voice mail system is to navigate, about how clean and welcoming your facilities are, your directional signs,  about being open five minutes before you’re supposed to be and about how you listen and communication with your customers. It’s about responsiveness, but more importantly, it’s about anticipating the needs of your customers.

And you need to, above all else, stop offering good customer service.

Let me restate it, and in caps, so you think that I’m yelling at you, which I sort of am, but in a friendly way:  STOP OFFERING GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Why? Because your customers already expect good customer service. They expect your facilities will be open when they’re supposed to be, that the place will be clean and that employees will be friendly and responsive.

So all you’re doing by providing good customer service is meeting expectations. You’re merely staying out of customer service opinion jail. You’re staying out of the customer service dog house.

You  don’t turn customers into loyal fans by meeting expectations.  No one ever says, “Wow, we need to go there again because everything was, um, well, adequate and I got exactly what I expected I would!”

There are two things you need to do then, I believe, to truly make an impression, two things you need to do that can be helped along immensely with a bit of humor and fun:

1. Exceed people’s expectations of good service.
2. Be different than everyone else. Stand out from the herd to be heard.  Think of ways that you can shatter the stereotypes surrounding your industry.

That’s it. It’s not fancy, it’s not rocket science. But it is the key to success. And for this approach to take root in your organization your need to embrace a culture wide approach. You need to hire, train, coach and mentor with a service first attitude in mind. Leaders need to relentlessly model what they expect to see in others and relentlessly communicate the importance of a service first approach, starting by ensuring everyone understands why it matters.

Here are five reasons why service matters now, more than ever:

#1. It’s what you do. The only reason you exist is to provide a service to your customers, and every employee needs to embrace that every time they don the mantle of Director of First Impressions. And in a business environment where you can’t control the cost of your raw materials or what your competition is going to do next or what’s going to happen to the currency rate or the weather or you name it, the one thing you can control is how well you deliver service. As with creating an inspiring workplace culture, offering phenomenal service can also be your number one competitive advantage.

#2. Focusing on providing exceptional service as your overriding umbrella value can lead to other workplace improvements: a safer work environment, cost efficiencies, improved communication, enhanced teamwork, reduced silos and more innovation. When everyone understands clearly what their primary purpose is, then an entire culture can be transformed. As yet one more time, there’s a chicken and egg relationship: When everyone provides phenomenal service, your culture can’t help but improve. Improve your culture, and the desire to offer great service becomes a natural by-product.

#3. If you don’t provide great service, people will talk. And not like they did in the olden days of say, the 1990s, where they might have gone home and shared their story with a dozen or so friends and family members. Nowadays they’ll spread the word before they’ve even left the premises. They’ll Tweet their disgust while in the line-up or sitting on the tarmac or lounging in the lobby of your hotel.  And those Tweets will get re-tweeted to another 47,326 people. Or they’ll post it on their Facebook page and create a feeding frenzy of similar tales of woe that their friends are dying to get off their chests. Or they’ll blog about it.  Or they’ll upload a photo to Instagram. Or they’ll get their 11 year-old to create a www.WeHate______.com website. They’ll vent a spleen on Trip Advisor or yell for help on Yelp.  Or, they’ll vent in a YouTube video in such a hilarious, outrageous way that the video will go viral. That’s right. They’ll use the humor advantage against you.  Remember Dave Carroll’s “United Breaks Guitars” story from Chapter five. His story touched over 100 million people worldwide. He could have been singing about you.  Every one of your employees needs recall the old TV classic, Smile! You’re On Candid  Camera, because these days, your entire business is on candid camera.

#4. Provide great, and especially outrageously unique customer service, and people will talk. But not like in the olden days, of say, the 1990s, when they might have shared their story with a dozen or so friends and family members. No, now they’ll take a photo of your hilarious sign or slogan and upload it to Facebook or Twitter before they’ve left the premise. They’ll take a “selfie” in front of your business sign so they can rave about the exceptional service. They’ll sing your praises on Linked-In, Trip Advisor, Yelp and a dozen other social media sites.

And here’s my belief, supported by informal surveys on my own social media sites and with my own social media postings: people are far more likely to talk about you in social media if you do something outrageous or demonstrate a bit of a sense of humor. Yes, people will comment when they’ve received great service as well, but not to the degree they will when they’ve experience something different. And the message is far, far more likely to be shared and re-shared and then re-shared again when it’s something different, outrageous, clever or funny.

Consider how readily people upload videos of their hilarious flight attendant’s safety announcement, and how much these videos get viewed and shared. One video of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant who generated uproarious laughter and receives a rousing round of applause for her hilarious outrageously funny safety announcement went immediately viral, attracting more than 11 million views in one week!

#5. Last, but surely not least, especially in this book: It’s fun to provide exceptional service. As much as businesses need to take to heart that happy employees create happy customers, the reverse is also true. Happy customers makes more happy employees. Happy customers make employees feel good about their jobs and naturally there’s less strife and conflict. Doing something great for a customers is powerfully rewarding.  Recall Pike’s Place fish market’s desired customer service goal of “making someone’s day” and how a simple shift in thinking can create a more positive experience for everyone concerned.  Allowing employees the freedom to make someone’s day also frees them up to think for themselves, to be more creative and to bring their personality along for the ride.

A study undertaken by Sears, Roebuck and Co. found that if their employee’s attitudes improved by 5% (as measure by 10 different factors, including how their bosses treated them), then customer satisfaction rose by 1.3% and profits by 0.5%.  Those might not sound like huge numbers, but in large corporation they add up. And consider what the impact might be of improving employees attitudes by 50%!  Ideally,  you want to create a positive feedback loop, where happy employees create happier customers, who in turn create even happier employees.

When I asked employees at Zappos if they ever experienced stress, one front line employees responded,  “Yes, but it’s a positive kind of stress. It’s fun stress. In my former customer service jobs I got stressed out having to explain why we couldn’t do something, or why something was against our policy. Here, I am empowered to always find a way to say yes, instead of say no. And that’s fun!”

We tend to focus on the impact that a phenomenal customer service gesture has on our customers, but we forget that it also has a long-lasting, positive impact on employees as well.  If you want to add more fun to your workplace and create an inspiring culture, adding more fun and humor to your customers’ lives is one of the best places to start.

Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame Speaker, highly in-demand international keynote speaker, and the creator of the Culture Leadership Online Academy. Michael is also the author of 8 books, including:  The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank;  Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire; and The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace.  www.MikeKerr.com