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Today’s topic is The Good, the Bad and the Customers. By now you know the human brain is the evolving part of the brain and when you come from your human brain you can solve problems and be amazing with your customers.
When you connect with your customers (and we are defining customers, as anyone who is not you which means, your colleagues, co-workers, boss, customers, spouse, children, strangers you meet on the street) you will connect more easily if you are in your human brain.
Why? Because if you treat everyone as if they are important, as if they matter, then you will get exactly that same treatment back. It’s The Law of Attraction—that which is likened to itself is drawn! When you treat people as human beings who you respect and accept, then you are going to get the same treatment back—maybe not from the customers who are in their animal brain—but in your life in general when you treat other people as human beings, and you operate from your human brain, you are going to experience a lot more joy in your life—not only that—you will immediately start attracting other’s who are operating from their human brain.
From a customer perspective there are a lot of choices out there today. There are lots of providers of products and services from health to technology to the cars we drive—customers can go anywhere and choose anything. Of course, price is always a big deciding factor, but service is just as big of a deciding factor—sometimes even more than price.
I recently bought this small magnifying mirror that could be suctioned to my bathroom mirror so I can put my make up on. Well the suction cup didn’t work. I had bought it in Chicago, and was visiting a friend in the suburbs and took it back to a different store, plus I didn’t have a receipt—don’t ask! I was directed from one department to another until finally the manager was called. This guy walked up looking very busy and I thought, “Uh oh—he’s never going to exchange this mirror.” But amazingly he did! I was so chuffed. Anyhow I bought $60.00 worth of more stuff, and when I got to the checkout the cashier was dealing with another customer, and the manager saw me, and almost leapt to the next checkout counter and quickly got me through. I was thinking, “Good Lord this guy is great.” And so I said to him, “You are really great at customer service.” “How do you mean?” He asked. “Well you made the exchange go really smoothly, and you really want to take care of customers—it’s brilliant!” He almost did a little jig. “You’ve made my day!” He said.
It’s a small thing to say when someone has done a good job, and I believe it makes the world a better place. When we talk about customers, it is so often about how to deal with angry customers. We don’t usually talk about giving service providers a pat on the back, but can you imagine if we all did that every time we had great service. Instead of just walking away and saying nothing, we said, “Thank you so much.”
When you operate from your human brain and connect with other human beings you help them to switch to their human brains too. Instead of two human animals battling it out and operating from fear and survival modes, you have two human beings evolving into being so much more that we ever believed ourselves capable of.
In our book Super Service we talk at the very beginning of the book about someone called Marty. Here’s the story.
Marty worked on a very busy Illinois toll way. His job was to watch cars go through and what was different about Marty was that thousands of drivers deliberately drove over 10 lanes of traffic just to go through his tollbooth. Why? Because if you kept your hand out after throwing in the coins, he would give you a high-five as you drove away. And if you whizzed by without your hand out, he would bend down, look you in the eye and call out, “Make it a great one!” or “Have a great day!”
Jeff was so intrigued by him, that one day he parked the car on the shoulder and walked over to him. “Do you have a couple of minutes?” “Sure” he said. “How come you are always so cheerful in the mornings?” asked Jeff. “It’s my job.” He said. “But all the other operators just stand there. They don’t acknowledge any drivers.” Marty said, “It’s their option in life to do that they want to do. Mine is to be the best I can be. I’m here to serve these people.” “Why?” asked Jeff. “I have to.” Said Marty, “When I see all these drivers coming toward me looking so miserable and anxious, I feel it’s my job to help them have a great day.” “How long have you been doing this?” “Twenty years.” “Okay”, said Jeff, “trick question, are you like this at home?” And the answer was a resounding “Yep!”
That’s what operating from your human brain is all about. It’s not about the money, the fame, the ‘what will I get out of it’ or ‘what’s in it for me’ syndrome, it’s about being an amazing person and having a happy, joy-filled life—which in turn attracts other people into your life who are happy, and joy-filled.
Marty was really about that—he was an awakened human being who showed a desire to serve. And when you are being of service—not only do you have a great life—everyone around you benefits. So here’s how you do it. It’s on page 28 of Super Service: How to Show a Desire to Serve:
- Be in control of your attitude. If you wake up with a bad attitude or something triggers it during the day, become an actor for a while. Think of a person who has a positive attitude. See him or her in your mind. Imagine how the person sits, stands, walks and talks. Feel yourself become like that person.
- Let your anger go. Anger is poisonous and feeds on itself. If anger comes up simply take a deep breath. We breathe not just to bring in oxygen, but to release carbon dioxide. Let your anger go with your exhale.
- Maintain a positive attitude. “I’m positive my life sucks” is not a good one! If you want to feel satisfied in your job and experience energy and fulfillment at the end of your day, have a positive attitude. Think good thoughts. Do the right thing. Make the best choices.
- Affirm your day. When you wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, look at yourself in the mirror, say out loud, “today is going to be a great day. No matter what I am doing, I am going to do it with the desire to serve. I will be positive, upbeat and ready to be the best for my customer.
It doesn’t matter who it is or what job you are in, when you treat everyone as if they are your customer, when you operate from your human brain and connect with other people from a place of being of service, you will attract into your life wonderful people and amazing events.
Here’s an email we received from Bev Durkin who works for Mobilcomm of Cincinnati, Ohio. Bev asks, “How do you keep yourself positive and grateful when things become a real challenge?” Great question, because it’s easy to be positive and grateful when everything is working well. You’re going with the flow, life is wonderful, your relationships are excellent at home and at work, and then suddenly out of the blue—something comes along and hits you between the eyes. Or it could be that a series of small things happen, like a burst pipe brings the ceiling down or you get a health problem, like Jeff with his 100 day cough that wouldn’t go away. Or maybe you lose a sales contract, or a client goes with another customer. Well, here’s the good news. This is life and you are alive. It’s like a flat line—if life stops throwing you challenges then you are probably dead already!
Okay so that doesn’t help…like Bev said, “How do you keep positive and grateful in the middle of a real challenge?” Answer: You reach for a better feeling thought. And you keep on doing it—all the time—every day—day after day. You keep reaching for it even when life seems absolutely the most horrible it can be, you reach for that thought that makes you feel better. Years ago, when I got cancer—I just had to keep on reaching for that better feeling, because cancer can really fire up the animal brain and whiz you into fear and survival mode at a rapid rate. So I started off with small better feelings like, “I can breathe. I can smile. I can read a great book. I can dip my feet in the hot tub, I can talk to a good friend, I can….” and on and on. You see, a better feeling thought switches your brain from animal to human. And once you are in the human brain, you can operate from love instead of fear, cooperation instead of anger, joy instead of frustration.
In your human brain, you don’t take life so seriously. So what if you get some horrible disease—we’re all going to croak eventually anyway—might as well have a good time right now—today in this very moment. So what if your kid gets an F—they’re still alive, right?! It may give you an opportunity to help them with their homework. So what if the ceiling has fallen down, it may be a good time to re-paint.
When you choose to reach for a better feeling thought you are powerfully in control of your life. You are in charge of you instead of the events being in charge of you. You are in charge of you instead of other people being in charge of how you feel. You know that expression, “He or she pushes my buttons!” Well you don’t need to have those buttons anymore. You no longer have to walk around being at the effect of other people pushing your buttons because you exchanged them for a zip! That’s where the expression “zip it” comes from!
I got it the other day about my work. When I am writing I just love it. I love to write the daily blogs on our MJLearning web site. Go to MJLEARNING.COM if you want to view them each day. I love writing books for McGraw-Hill. I love the first book Jeff and I wrote, Super Service, and I remember the two words that were going through my head as I wrote it. They were WAKE UP! It was like I was on a crusade to wake people up to be of service. Here’s a little excerpt I want you to read—it’s at the top of page five of Super Service. “…waking up” means being conscious of the fact that we are all in the soup of life together. It means opening our eyes wide in the morning and saying, “Yippee, I’m still on the planet.”
Let’s look for a moment about being of service and being selfish, because for me, the two things go together. I know it sounds crazy—like they are the opposite of each other but I don’t think you can have one without the other. If you are not selfishly seeking out what you love to do, and taking action on your true joy, then it is really hard to be of service. That is why you experience terrible service with some people. They are unhappy in their lives, unhappy in their jobs and it is impossible for them to be of service—they are just doing their job and they are attracting customers who are unhappy, angry and dissatisfied.
I think we are all basically self-centered—selfish really. I don’t want you to beat me over the head, but Mother Teresa would not have done what she did if she didn’t want to. Mother Teresa glimpsed suffering and poverty just outside her convent school, and she wanted to do something about it. It filled her heart with passion and so she left to devote herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. She had no funds, and yet, with Divine Providence; she started an open-air school for children in need. She was soon joined by voluntary helpers—other people who felt their hearts opening and wanted to be of service.
If she hadn’t felt something inside her when she saw the suffering and poverty, she wouldn’t have put herself through all that—living in slums with no money. When you love what you do, you open your heart to being of service. When you open your heart to being of service—who is the one who ends up with an open, sharing caring heart? You do. The customer also receives the benefit—but you get the main benefit because you are the one who is powerfully creating it and you are attracting more positive energy into your life than you know what to do with.
Here’s what being of service will do for you:
- You will experience yourself being the best that you can be. When you deliver Super Service, the person who receives most service is you. You are bringing in great joy and energy when you are of service—and it has great benefits not just in how you feel—it affects your body too. It gives you a healthy outlook, both inside and out.
- You are not at the mercy of my customers. It doesn’t matter if your customers deserve Super Service or not; by choosing to give it to them anyway, you are in control of how you feel. You are the one making the choice and you can take that into other parts of your life, so that instead of reacting to things, you are choosing.
- Your life becomes easier, more fun and more meaningful. When you feed the positive energy within you, it grows in all other aspects of your life, and positive energy attracts positive energy. (Sadly, the same is true of negative energy) Like attracts like.
- People notice when you do a great job and you become an asset. If you are tired of your work and see your job as just a job, you really need to move on. The problem is that it’s hard to move on when you are stuck in mental fatigue. Think of your life as a flowing stream…everything you want is down stream. When you let go of your struggle, let go of paddling upstream, you immediately start to go with the flow. And how do you let go of the struggle? You have a happy thought. You do the thing that makes you feel better.
Every day and all day long you have two choices. Just two that’s all. Does this make me feel good or does this make me feel bad?
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