“We practice NEAT here”, said the manager.

“What’s NEAT?” said the temp.

“It’s an acronym. It stands for – say the customer’s Name, make Eye contact, Ask Questions and say Thank you. We really want the customer to experience how special she is.  At our business we hold each other accountable for always providing a great experience to every customer.”

“Really? You mean you tell your co-workers when they aren’t treating the customers well enough?”

“Yes, we know we’re all in this together to make the customer and everything about that customer’s experience super welcoming, caring, special, and respectful. We want him to feel listened to, unique and that he really matters. Why wouldn’t we help each other create that total feeling consistently? We give each other customer service tips and sometimes even silly signals to playfully hold each other to achieving our common goal. It’s our culture.“

Here is the financial impact of a poor customer service culture:

• A typical employee witnesses 19 poor customer-service incidents per year.
• Together, those incidents result in a 17 percent drop in revenue annually per customer.
• Poor service negatively affects the business a customer does with a company by 50 percent or more! This is the case for 75 percent of business-to-consumer (B2C) customers and 42 percent of business-to-business (B2B) customers. Specialists at Professional Communications Network believe that your clients should receive the service they expect when acting as the voice of your company.

The key to creating extraordinary customer service is to create a culture where anyone can speak up to anyone about serving customers and creating customer experiences..