Mission Statements Don’t Inspire Customer Service, Action Statements Do

Mission statements don’t inspire great customer service, actions statements are the motivator to get people doing great thing.

The problem with mission statements is that they aren’t real. Mission statement language often lacks the human touch. It’s usually corporate jargon-filled, wordy, and stale.

Traditional mission statements don’t translate into something with purpose, something that inspires action in your organization and those with the charge to deliver great customer service.

If you were to ask most of your employees to recite the company mission statement, what do you think would be the response?

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If you guessed silence, you’re probably right. The problem is that mission statements are often so vague that most employees don’t know what they’re really supposed to do. They don’t see how their purpose in a generic business aspiration.

Most employees ignore mission statements

One of the challenges to leading organizations in a customer focus approach is that generally you, at the top, will be the most inspired, most enthusiastic, most motivated individual with the passion for the customer.

Gobbledy-gook mission statements are often forgotten by, misremembered, or flatly ignored by frontline employees.

Rarely will you find a rank-and-file team member who is just as passionate about the cause. They are out there, but they are few and far between. That’s just the reality of doing business.

If your mission statement was evaluated by Google’s search algorithm, would it be penalized for keyword stuffing?

If mission statements today were evaluate by Google’s search algorithm, most companies would be penalized like a shady SEO company trying to stuff every possible keyword and term related to doing business.

Instead of trying to jam pack every possible aspiration into your paragraph (usually more) long corporate mission statement that no one will remember except you, focus instead on an action statement that can be the core of everything you do.

How to write a great mission statement

Forget the traditional sample mission statements. Free mission statements that you find online won’t cut it. The best mission statement is an action statement.

Action statements are lean.

Action statements are transparent.

Action statements are focused on human action.

Action statements don’t describe what you hope to be doing, but what you pledge to your customers to actually do.

Instead of having a mission to dramatically initiate performance based opportunities as well as to proactively leverage existing quality leadership skills to meet our customer’s needs, focus on something more simple, more real, more action oriented.

10 words of less

In order for your action statement to make an impact that leads to lasting change, it has to be focused enough that every person in the organization can recite it with ease.

The fewer words used, the greater the effect the action statement will have within your organization.

Think simple. Think action.

Make it: Verb or noun > target > outcome or result.

Help people live healthy lives.

SSL certificates done right.

Save money. Live better.

Every member of the organization has to remember it, understand it, and know how they can act on it. Then the action statement has to be the basis from which every decision or action is measured.

As you do this, you will see the real, positive effect that these statement can have in uniting and aligning people around the customer service mission that delivers impact that affects customer loyalty and the bottom line.