The Only Day When Customer Service Matters!

There’s really only one day where customer service really matters. Today.

One of the first rules to providing great customer service is to abandon yesterday’s great work. Yesterday is over, it’s in the past. Good work done yesterday does little to progress your mission to offer great customer service.

Having provided great customer service yesterday doesn’t mean that the same is true today. Abandon yesterday, it provide little good to you be able to provide great customer service today.

The great management visionary, Peter Drucker discussed this abandonment concept on regards to great management:

If leaders are unable to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.

Your Customers Only Care About Today

I often remind customer service team members that each time the phone hangs up, the email is sent, the chat session ends, or the customer leaves, the slate is wiped clean. The scores is reset. You’re back to square one when it comes to great customer service. The next customer is a blank slate ready for you to work your customer service masterpiece. The next customer you meet has no idea what you have done with the last customer you worked with. Yesterday’s work can’t win the customer today. Great work has to be done today.

The customer doesn’t care what you did a minute ago, an hour ago, yesterday, or last year. Customers generally don’t care what great customer service work you may be able to do tomorrow. Customers care that you can help them, take care of them, solve their problems today. Today is the only day that matters to customers when it comes to awesome customer service.

Great Customer Service Can’t Be Achieved By Just Looking Back

How much time, effort, and attention is spent on looking back on what has been done? How many people are involved in the looking back and focusing on the good customer service done yesterday. What could be archived if this same time and attention were spent looking forward to what new things could be done in the future? What if the time were spent seeking for ways to innovate customer service?

Without abandoning yesterday, you become captivated by the past, you live in it. Successes then become measured by what was done instead of what is being done.