How to Create an Amazing Customer Service Experience   1:14 Create an Amazing Customer Service Experience 4:30 Five Ways to Improve Your Customer Service 15:14 Customer Service That Disrupts the Competition with Shep Hyken 33:45 Encouragement: Use Your Experiences to Shape Your Customer Service If you have a success story you would like to share with the Business Boutique community, email me at podcast@businessboutique.com. New podcast episodes are available every other week. When I wrote my book Business Boutique—a book entirely about how to start your own business—I left out something that I believe is crucial to winning in business: great customer service. Do you know why I didn’t write about it? Because I believe, as women, we naturally excel in customer service. We’re relational. We’re great at connecting with people, serving others, nurturing, and thinking about how someone else feels. However, there’s always opportunity to grow, right? Well, several years ago, I had a pretty frustrating experience with a customer service representative. It was so frustrating that I now use it as an example when I teach on what not to do when working with customers. Here’s what happened: I got a notification in the mail that my dental insurance had been canceled. As you can imagine, I was really confused because there had been no other conversations about any problems with my dental insurance. And then one day, poof—it was canceled. So naturally, I called and spoke with a customer service representative, and she told me, “Well, you didn't pay your bill. You pay it every six months, and you didn't pay it the last time it was due.” I responded, “I'm so sorry. I pay my bills. I wasn’t aware that it was due. I don’t remember getting a bill in the mail or hearing anything about this.” And her response was, “Well, we decided to become a paperless company a few months ago, so we just send emails now.” It turns out, they had an old email that I hadn’t used in years. So, I kindly asked the “nice customer service person” if I could pay my bill right there over the phone and reinstate my insurance. Her response? She threw out three words that still makes me cringe to this day: “Our policy is . . .” Is there anything that makes a customer more upset than hearing, “I’m so sorry, but our policy is . . .”? Nobody cares about stinking policies! We don’t have to run our businesses that way! In fact, your business will be more successful and more fun when you provide incredible customer service and put your customers before your policies. 5 Ways to Improve Your Customer Service I want to give you five ways you can improve your customer service and help your business succeed: 1. Don't be late. Always, always, always be on time. Whether it’s a shipment going out, returning a phone call or an email, showing up to a meeting—whatever it is, do it on time. When in doubt, I always want you to underpromise and overdeliver. This one is convicting for me because I’m not great at it—I’m working on it. But this is the most basic way to keep your customers happy. Just be on time and do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. 2. Don’t be emotional. Listen, I’ve got a lot of feelings. I have so many feelings that even my feelings have feelings. But whether you’re having a good day or a bad day, your customer doesn't care. Every day, your brand and your business should be having a good day. Nothing will break trust with your customers like being Dr. Jekyll on one day and Mr. Hyde on another. You've got to be consistent in how you take care of people. Don't be emotional, and don't take your bad mood out on your customers. 3. Don’t forget to listen. I know this sounds really basic, but when we're having a conversation with someone, whether it's a normal conversation, a positive conversation, or even a really heated conversation, we’re always thinking of what we're going to say next. But instead of doing that, stop, listen, and ask follow-up