March 2011

 

TuneUp Times with Cath

March 2011

Greetings,

Welcome to the TuneUp Times – my ongoing effort  to lighten up our lives here on planet Earth;  extend useful information that helps you in the workplace; reflect a spirit of kindness to each other and ourselves through my art; and learn things that may help your interactions in the really real world.

Thank you for sharing the TuneUp Times with others. I am encouraged by the many positive emails. speaking requests and online orders for the Customer Service TuneUp Tool Kit.

Progress is in the doing.

 

Stay Tuned,
 Cath
  

PS: This month I'll be in the classroom teaching how to create a "customer focused workplace."  I'll share our discoveries in the April TuneUp Times. Is your business customer focused?

 

CUSTOMER SERVICE TUNEUP
          
                         THE PUBLIC!
                        No Choke Service

Auuuugggghhhh.  Some days……..
 The Public.  The customers. Here they come.

We're told they are always right…to get what they want…to be served at 100%.

 

Auuuugggghhhh.

But some days……..
But some customers…..
I admire anyone who serves the Public.

I admire you who manage to keep a helpful tone when
bombarded with customers one after another and each
needing something different.

I admire you who manage to serve the big-dollar-treat-me-special customers who have mastered being jerks. It requires a certain knack to successfully serve all kinds of humans.
Serving the Public can be the most spiritually fulfilling work you ever do. It can also be 'if that person treats me that way one more time, I am going to…" That's the range.

Customers can find your buttons and push all of them – at once. For my friend who was a tour guide, it was the passenger on the cruise ship who asked "What time is the midnight buffet?"

When I was a waitress working my way through college, it was the customer who came in two minutes to closing, sat down, and immediately went brain dead on decision making. I can remember fuming.

It can be a customer asking the same question for the third time. A customer who wants something you cannot give him. And on and on. Of course you would never actually choke your customer. Now now.

This Customer Service TuneUp is an excerpt from the book: It's Not Nice To Choke Your Customer on sale at the Human TuneUp Company Store.

   
 WORKPLACE TUNEUP
Shop Where It Helps
 Would this influence where you shop? 

Did you see the recent TV spot highlighting The Container Store?
It was a piece on how well they treat their employees?

This is just some of what they said:

1. People seem to enjoy working there.

2. The company matches their employees retirement contributions and

3. Employees earn livable pay.

If I heard it right, they are operating on this theory: Treat employees well, then they treat our customers well. Helloooooooooooooo.
What a nicely simple guiding philosophy.
I wish it were the norm.

PERSONAL TUNEUP
           Mankind/Humankind/We-Us Future

I think it is time, maybe past time, we start replacing the word mankind with the word humankind.
And while at it, I think the time has come for increased use of we and us.

Thanks to Susan Fowler and Drea Zigarmi for sending me Howard Winters' words for the Holidays.
They were my inspiration for this month's personal tune up art.