Strengthen Service With Purpose

by Robin Wheeler

"Customer Service" is one of the most worn-out
terms in business, yet it is more important than ever.
The problem is that it has become a bureaucratic concept.
The solution is that it needs to be lived.

Giving good service is not about smiling while you
frustrate customers with organisational procedures, neither is it
about trying to be polite as you tell them to go to great lengths to
get what they want. Good service is about identifying customer needs
and surpassing expectations. And it is about building business.
This distinction, between using customer service techniques
in a hopeless heap of red tape, and pursuing an ambitious
vision through every act and encounter, may seem semantic
but it is critical, to the bottom line and the
future of your organisation.

If you seek survival, consider these four recommendations:

Live your business
Forget being employed and doing your job.
You can only go so far with that mentality,
and it's not a happy place! Align your personal purpose
with your organisational vision and strive uncompromisingly
to realise both by being of service to the world through your customers.
The founders of your organisation built it by doing so, and the
survival of your organization depends on you doing so.
Anyone can see the advantage someone who lives
their business has over someone who just
does their job.

Love your products
Believe absolutely in what you sell.
See it as essential to the lives of your customers,
broader community and the planet as a whole. And grow
your enterprise by constantly improving and innovating what you sell.
Great entrepreneurs have unrealistic ambitions for their products
and their market, unbridled drive and resourcefulness,
and a resultant knack for going down in history.

Focus on being of service
Gear yourself towards substantial, far-reaching,
humanity-advancing service. Find personal meaning in listening
and responding to your market. Take personal responsibility for surpassing
the needs and expectations of your immediate and extended customers.
Having purpose involves endeavouring to fulfil your
potential through serving humanity.

Foster urgency
Bureaucracy, structure, routine and complacency
are all business killers. They arise naturally from the
evolution of organisations but contain the seeds of their demise.
Strive daily to keep the founding spirit of your business alive.
Formulate a grand vision and pursue it unremittingly,
as if your life depends on it.
It does!

Make purposeful, visionary product development and
customer service your life's work, and you
and your business will be living proof
of the benefits.