“A trip to a major museum exhibition these days can feel more like a Black Friday sale at Walmart than a rewarding adventure in esthetic uplift. So much so that a Gauguin retrospective at London’s Tate Modern, in 2010–11, elicited a slew of complaints on the museum’s Internet message board,” reports ArtNews.

So how do you consistently provide a rewarding, positive visitor experience? Where does the visitor journey begin? 

Conventional wisdom might have you believe that the “adventure in esthetic uplift” starts when the visitor crosses the gallery threshold and starts reading the text that accompanies the exhibit.

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Would you hire an accountant who didn’t know how to use a ledger? Would you put your trust in a contractor who’d never handled sheetrock? A taxi driver without a license to get behind the wheel?

You get the idea.

So why are you entrusting your company – your best customers, your reputation, your future earnings – to frontline customer service employees who lack empathy and empowerment? An empathetic customer experience from your frontline employees creates loyalty and return business.

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Here's the good news: Your hard work is paying off and business is booming! Customers are calling. Customers are buying. And it’s time to interview and onboard more staff to create the customer experience that will take you into long-term success. 

And then the rub: The hiring process is time-consuming; you are new to this and need some guidance; and making an offer to someone only to find out you’re not getting the performance you need is an expensive mistake.

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The news about Nike’s purpose-driven marketing and how successful it has been is everywhere. A recent feature the Newsday Long Island Business section goes into detail about Nike’s controversial ad with the former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Most brands steer clear of this kind of advertising for fear of customer alienation. What was the reaction to Nike? Their stock and sales are going up, up, up. 

Why is Nike so successful? 

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Sexual harassment awareness has been a hot topic in light of the #metoo movement, and now New York State has passed legislation requiring all companies with 15 or more employees to provide mandatory sexual harassment policies and training, even to interns. 

By January 1, 2019, every employer must have a written sexual harassment policy and provide sexual harassment awareness training.  

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A recent New York Times front-page article speaks about “Baring a Bit of Your Soul to Connect with Voters.” The premise is that a highly personal touch in story-telling “… can help to spread a candidate’s story in a way that…can inspire donations.” Unlike typical advertisements, candidates share not only their definitions of leadership, but also their beliefs, their experiences and their pain. These videos are so effective because candidates come across with authenticity and credibility.

In this world of exploding social media and competing priorities, how do YOU make a difference?

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Let’s answer some basic questions: Who is the customer? What is customer service? How do you create customer service excellence?

We define a customer as anyone that we serve. That means that there is no difference between our internal customers – serving our fellow employees and management – or our external customers that purchase our goods and services. The customer isn’t someone who exists only between 8am and 5pm. By encouraging and promoting this within your organization you reinforce the skills and attitudes of customer service excellence that are beneficial to your employees and to your paying customers.

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