Worry Less and Do More About Customer Experience

Your own fear and worry is often one of the biggest obstacles keeping you from delivering an exceptional customer service experience for your customers.

We are our own worst enemies, right? We are our biggest critic. We are the worst bully. We tear ourselves down. We magnify EVERY imperfection. We stop ourselves from dreaming.

We stand in our own way of creating personal connections with customers because we fear and worry about how our service actions will be perceived. Are we going over the top with our customers? Is our service attitude too much? Will our customers be upset if we add this extra thing? Stop it.

You miss 100% of the shot you don’t take.

The sports adage says it best. Every time you don’t do it, you miss out on it.

Every customer service action you don’t perform is a service experience missed. Each opportunity you pass on, is a loyal customer you don’t get. Just do. Do it now. Do one new thing today. Your customer’s experience depends on you doing.

Stop worrying about customer service

How often are we missing opportunities to make a difference to a customer, make a new special connection, or make a loyal customer simply because we were afraid of the unknown. Our customers are much more willing to look past our “misses” than our “missings”. That is, having tried and come a little short is better than to never have tried at all.

Does that mean that we should never have concern for what is the right approach to our customer experience? Of course not. But the focus should be on being more conscious of experience, rather than concerned about it. It’s when we let the anxiety leave us paralyzed that we fail our customers the most.

Create an atmosphere for great customer service

The key action to overcome fear and customer experience action paralysis is creating an atmosphere of active customer action. Encourage doing, not just thinking. Customer experience is active, not passive. The process will be unique to each of us, but we can all overcome the obstacles that keep us from acting and do one new thing today.

Sometimes we’re not prepared. Sometimes we’ll fail. Sometimes it just won’t quite work out. But at least we did…something. We tried. We acted. We learned what doesn’t work.

Failure is just a side effect of all the awesome new things you’re experiencing rather than a crushing defeat.

Be realistic with customer service expectations

You can’t succeed 100% of the time, that’s just not realistic. Sometimes you will fail. Everyone does. But focusing on doing will get you in the mind frame of active customer experience. So instead of doing what you’ve always done, do one new thing today. Take the thought you’ve had for some time now and act on it today. Customer service will never be perfect. It’s human. It’s emotional. It’s real.

You can’t mechanize it. You can’t systemize it. Accept it. Embrace it. Love it. But that’s the beauty of working with people. It’s real, it’s personal. Live with an attitude that service matters, just make each customer experience instance important to you and you’ll be successful in your mission to deliver great customer service. Success isn’t just about getting your actions right.

Customer service success is connecting with your customers, changing hearts and minds.