Clever Geek Handbook
6 February 2026

The Benchmarking Book

Recommendation

Michael J. Spendolini forgoes the usual generalities of management theory in favor of a how-to practicality. The first edition of his book helped to establish the concept of benchmarking in the mainstream of organizational practice. For those of you who don’t know, benchmarking is a continuous-improvement strategy that seeks to improve products, services or operations by comparing them with the best practices of industry competitors and other companies nationally and worldwide. Spendolini offers a five-step model that can be applied by any company. He also provides a helpful, step-by-step guide to applying the process, though he does get a little repetitive as he describes the model and details each step. But BooksInShort nevertheless recommends this book to managers and executives as perhaps the best benchmarking primer on the shelf.

Take-Aways

  • Benchmarking is a continuous, systematic process for evaluating organizational best practices.
  • Benchmarking can improve products, services and work processes.
  • Benchmarking is used for strategic planning, forecasting, developing new ideas, product/process comparisons and goal setting.
  • The three major types of benchmarking are internal, competitive and functional/generic.
  • The main benchmarking categories are products and services, work processes, support functions, organizational performance and strategy.
  • The first step in benchmarking is determining what to benchmark.
  • The second step is forming a benchmarking team.
  • The third step is identifying your benchmark partners and information sources.
  • The fourth step is collecting and analyzing the information you collect.
  • The last step is taking action based on your benchmarking investigation.

Summary

Benchmarking Origins

In 1982, author Michael Spendolini attended a meeting of Xerox Corp.’s training and organizational-development specialists. They used the term competitive benchmarking in discussing big performance gaps between Xerox and its competitors. As he began to explore the concept, he found two major applications for it. Your company can use benchmarking to understand your competitors and any other organization by isolating and analyzing common functions - such as manufacturing, marketing and engineering - and comparing your practices with them. The other application deals with comparing the details of processes used in designing, manufacturing, marketing or service, as opposed to the finished result.

“Blindly substituting another organization’s business practices in place of one’s own is not the intent of benchmarking.”

As Xerox further developed the concept of competitive benchmarking, other companies began to use the term. The concept spread throughout the 1980s, spurred by the creation of the U.S. National Quality Award in 1987 and by the 1989 publication of Xerox veteran Robert Camp’s book, Benchmarking: The Search for Industry Best Practices that Lead to Superior Performance. Eventually, he drew upon the experiences of 24 companies to develop his generic model.

Types of Benchmarking

The three major types of benchmarking are:

  • Internal benchmarking - Look at internal business practices and compare them to identify the best practices inside your organization. This assumes that work processes will differ due to geography, local organizational history, the nature of managers and employees in different locations, and so on. You want to identify the most effective or efficient work processes in different parts of your organization and share them, so they become widely used throughout the organization. This internal understanding becomes a baseline when you examine other companies.
  • Competitive benchmarking - Examine the products, services, and work processes of your company’s direct competitors and compare them with your own. This helps you position your company’s products, services and processes relative to other companies in the market. Sometimes you can apply similar practices easily in your own organization, and sometimes you may find that other companies that have already done their own benchmarking are willing to trade information with you. Sometimes companies join forces to benchmark in non-proprietary areas. For instance, 14 American semiconductor manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel and IBM, formed SEMATECH to share information on total quality management practices.
  • Functional/generic benchmarking - Learn about high-quality products, services, or processes by identifying the best practices of an organization with a reputation for excellence in the area you are benchmarking. For instance, Xerox used L.L. Bean as an example of excellent warehousing and order-fulfillment. This type of benchmarking can contribute to "paradigm shifts," in which you radically change your company’s approach to certain issues or problems. Often, you need to look outside your own industry for such ideas, and you need to have an open mind.

Benchmarking: What and Why?

Some organizations use benchmarking as part of overall problem solving. Others use it to stay up with state-of-the-art business processes. Benchmarking can help you think outside the box. It will help involve your employees in the discovery process, so they can contribute new ideas. Your benchmarking will be more successful if you begin with a clear purpose or objective, and if you integrate the process into your entire organizational culture, so your employees understand it and feel that your company is behind their involvement. Companies benchmark to achieve these objectives:

  • Strategic planning - To gain a better understanding of the marketplace.
  • Forecasting - To help forecast market potentials and industry directions.
  • New ideas - To determine how to use new products, processes or ways of managing company resources.
  • Product/process comparisons - To understand what your competitors are doing.
  • Goal setting - To establish performance goals in relation to state-of-the art practices.
“Benchmarking is a process that can be used to understand not only one’s competitors but any organization - competitor or non-competitor, large or small, public or private, foreign or domestic.”

You can benchmark any function or characteristic that you can observe or measure. Typically, the main categories used in benchmarking are:

  • Products and services - Including finished goods and features that account for product differentiation.
  • Work processes - Including design processes, R&D practices, workplace design, production processes, methods, distribution arrangements and manufacturing equipment.
  • Support functions - Including the finance, human resources and marketing departments.
  • Organizational performance - Including a look at specific performance indicators, such as yields, asset turnover and depreciation rates.
  • Strategy - Including short- or long-term plans and the planning process.
“The key to benchmarking is to isolate common metrics in like functions (e.g., manufacturing, engineering, marketing, finance) and compare one’s own business practices with those of organizations that have established themselves as leaders or innovators in the specific business function.”

Benchmarking is a continuous process that provides information you can use or adapt to improve virtually any corporate activity. It takes considerable time, effort, discipline and labor. It is not a one-time, quick and easy activity that supplies simple answers. The idea is to learn, understand, assimilate and apply (not copy) what you have learned in a pragmatic way that suits your own company.

“Benchmarking is a process of investigating best practices. The information gained from this investigation needs to be incorporated with other information about one’s organization as value-added input to the decision-making process.”

Plan to create a benchmarking team that spends at least 10% of its time each week on benchmarking activities. Most companies have a team of four to six people who spend about four to six months on the process. Moreover, in the companies that do benchmarking successfully, such as Xerox, Motorola and IBM, management not only endorses the process, but managers practice it and incorporate it into their decision-making process.

The Five-Stage Benchmarking Process

To benchmark successfully, you need a process model that provides structure and a common language. Consider the model like a frame of a house; it provides a basic framework for action. But keep this structure flexible enough so people can modify it as needed for your organization. Then, too, having various steps or stages creates this common language that users can share, so, for example, when one person says the team is in Phase II of the process, others will understand what they are doing. This five-step model is based on processes used by 24 successful companies. The five basic steps are:

Stage One: Determine What to Benchmark

First identify the customers for the information you are benchmarking and what they want to know about. Define the specific subjects you are benchmarking and the resources you need - such as time, funds and people - to successfully conduct the benchmarking investigation. Based on your customers’ needs, determine the specific measures to use and the information to seek. Identify subjects to study based on need. Focus on exactly what you want to measure. For instance, instead of just examining newsletters, divide the category into particular, measurable areas such as budgets, distribution, production processes and staffing.

“The process of determining what to benchmark begins with a fundamental question: Who is the customer for the benchmarking information.”

Often your customer will be a good source of information about what to investigate, such as the specific companies or types of companies to investigate. The customer will often establish a time frame for completing the investigation and may provide you with needed funding and support. Find out exactly what your customer wants through a customer diagnosis, including the types of benchmarking to engage in, the types of information sought and how this information will be used. Clarify reporting expectations and the scope of your benchmarking activity, such as whether it is a one-time event, periodic or continuous.

Stage Two: Form a Benchmarking Team

Although an individual can conduct a benchmarking effort, most companies use teams and assign specific roles and responsibilities to team members. The project manager makes sure assignments are clear, coordinates the project and identifies milestones to be reached. When you form your benchmarking team, decide what type of team you want and who will be on the team. The three basic types of teams are intact work groups that already exist; cross-functional, interdepartmental and inter-organizational teams; and ad hoc teams composed of employees with a common interest in the specific benchmarking activity. Participants can include internal benchmarking specialists, external benchmarking specialists, such as consultants, and employees. In some organizations, many employees are trained in benchmarking and stay busy with it. Typically, the team will include a project manager, a benchmarking customer/sponsor, a facilitator and team members, including data collectors and analysts. Support the team with training, library services, clerical assistance, legal input and other forms of counsel.

Stage Three: Identify Benchmark Partners

Identify the information sources the benchmark team will use to collect information, such as employees, consultants, analysts, government sources, business and trade literature, industry reports and databases. Then, seek benchmark partners. Look for any people or organization that can provide you with information related to your investigation. You want to create your own benchmarking information network. This information can come from internal and external employees, experts, analysts, researchers or consultants, as well as from organizations like the government, universities, and trade and professional associations. When you gather information, search for the best practices in the area you have selected to investigate.

Stage Four: Collect and Analyze Benchmarking Information

At this stage, you select specific methods for collecting information, employing team members who know how to use these methods. Collect information from benchmark partners using an established protocol. Your team members gather and analyze the information using telephone interviews, personal meetings and site visits, surveys, publications and media research, and research in library archives. Analyze this information based on what your original customers want and then create recommendations for actions to implement your findings.

Stage Five: Take Action

Finally, you can take action. Base your next step on what your customer wants, considering the information you have collected and the results of your analysis. You might produce a benchmarking report or summary, present your team’s findings to benchmarking customers, communicate your findings or identify possible opportunities for product or process improvements. You might also look at ways you can improve the benchmarking process and identify new areas for additional benchmarking in the future.

“Most benchmarking projects use employees to help plan, conduct, analyze, and present benchmarking efforts.”

Think of these five steps as part of a circular process that looks something like a pie-chart with five segments and five arrows going around this circle. The circle configuration demonstrates that you are aiming for continuous improvement. Thus, any benchmarked information should be periodically reviewed, so you can further develop and improve.

About the Author

Michael J. Spendolini  is founder and principal of MJS Associates, an organizational development and training consulting firm. He held a number of managerial positions at Xerox Corp. and is a recognized expert on TQM and benchmarking.

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The Benchmarking Book

Book The Benchmarking Book

AMACOM,
First Edition:1992
 


6 February 2026

Think Better

Recommendation

Tim Hurson begins with a simple premise: Anyone can learn to “think better” – in other words, more creatively and productively. He says that by applying his methods, anyone can reliably come up with fresh ideas and solutions. If you’ve dipped into the fields of creativity, innovation or brainstorming before, you may find yourself nodding along, since his initial ideas are not surprising. Similarly, some of the techniques Hurson offers and the examples he shares to illustrate them will be familiar to anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the field. However, others of his techniques are new. Hurson supplies prompts, basic diagrams, questions and examples. He adores mnemonics, formulas and acronyms. The book is written clearly and simply enough to appeal to inexperienced readers. However, BooksInShort especially recommends it to managers and trainers with knowledge of the field; you’ll be more able to quickly see the distinctions between Hurson’s techniques and other brainstorming methods and appreciate the value he is offering.

Take-Aways

  • Thinking is not an innate talent. It is a skill you can develop.
  • Most people avoid thinking as much as they can.
  • Reproductive thinking repeats past patterns. Productive thinking generates brand-new ideas.
  • Productive thinking combines critical and creative thinking.
  • When people brainstorm, they often stop too soon. The best ideas come well into the process, when you get far enough from the familiar to form wild ideas.
  • To think productively, start by asking what’s wrong with the current situation.
  • Continue to ask questions until you get to the core questions.
  • Generate many ideas to answer these questions.
  • Sift, sort and evaluate them until you can imagine an ideal future.
  • Once you have your solution, commit to it through systematic planning.

Summary

Thinking About Thinking

Many people believe that thinking ability is innate – but that’s not true. Anyone can – and should – learn to think better than he or she does right now. The economy is shifting: No longer based on things, it’s now based on information. Thus, your company’s greatest asset is its ability to understand and manipulate information and ideas.

“Reproductive thinking is a way to refine what is known; it aims for efficiency. Productive thinking is a way to generate the new; it aims for insight.”

As the first step in improving your thinking, you must face the unpleasant reality that you don’t think as much as you assume you do. No one does. Instead, most people avoid thinking whenever possible; indeed, avoidance is so common that you can categorize the techniques for doing so.

These are the main types:

  1. “Monkey mind” – This is how Buddhists describe mental distraction. The mind wanders and jumps from thought to thought like an agitated monkey in a tree.
  2. “Gator brain” – This is the brain’s most primitive part – its reptilian core. Its main concern is survival. The alligator has only a small repertoire of responses to new stimuli: Eat them, have sex with them, fight them, run away from them or freeze and hope they will go away. When threatened, humans reflexively revert to these same responses. In a genuinely dangerous situation, when you don’t have time to think, that’s a good thing. However, in daily life, reptilian responses are often dysfunctional.
  3. “Elephant’s tether” – In India, trainers chain young elephants to a stake in the ground. When the elephants are still small, they aren’t strong enough to break the chain, so they learn that they can’t. As a result, they don’t try to break it when they’re bigger and more powerful. Your mind constructs similar patterns. In many cases, they help you make sense of the world. However, if you can’t break patterns when necessary, they trap you.

Reproductive and Productive Thinking

Reproductive thinking prevents you from wasting time reinventing the wheel. These are the three levels of reproductive thinking:

  1. Unconscious – When you’re doing something mindless, such as brushing your teeth, you don’t need to make decisions about it. Doing it the same old way is fine.
  2. Intentional – Professional disciplines from accounting to medicine have standardized procedures. Following a checklist prevents errors. And no one wants a pilot or surgeon to invent new methods each time. There is too much at stake to deviate from the tried and true.
  3. “Kaizen” – This Japanese word literally translates as “good change.” It means following well-designed processes mindfully, continually looking for ways to improve them.
“Reproductive thinking is essentially a matter of repeating the past: doing what you’ve done before and thinking what you’ve thunk before.”

Reproductive thinking doesn’t help you solve new problems, however. In that case, the old patterns no longer apply. Instead, you must use productive thinking to create new knowledge and understanding.

If reproductive thinking is kaizen, then productive thinking is “tenkaizen,” the Japanese word for “good revolution.” You’re no longer trying to make small changes in a basically sound process; rather, you’re transforming your worldview and creating new processes. Productive thinking has two parts: “creative thinking and critical thinking.” Separating these two approaches is essential. Otherwise, you immediately become bogged down in enumerating the flaws in your ideas and all the possible objections to them. Instead, when you’re thinking creatively, concentrate on generating a lot of ideas. Suspend judgment: The new ideas are too weak to withstand criticism. Creative thinking is “expansive”: Ideas spawn more ideas.

Critical Thinking

Once you have lots of ideas, call upon your inner critic to sort and evaluate them in these three stages:

  1. “Analyze” – Examine, look deeply, take things apart.
  2. “Judge” – Check to see if the new ideas actually work.
  3. “Select” – Look at the pile of ideas and reject some of them.
“Reproductive thinking can fashion the perfect buggy whip, but only productive thinking can imagine a car.”

Productive thinking is difficult. Especially when you’re in known territory, your reproductive thinking habits will provide immediate answers to problems and questions. But, they’ll look a lot like what you’re already doing. To become genuinely productive, “stay in the question.” Keep asking. This is uncomfortable but necessary, because your initial answers will be familiar ones. They’ll be the answers you already know.

“By trying simultaneously to think creatively to generate ideas and think critically to judge ideas, you end up sabotaging any chance of success.”

Often, people stop brainstorming too soon. Instead, press on. Brainstorming has three steps: First, generate safe ideas. Next, get an inkling of new, strange ideas. Finally, come up with really crazy ideas, some of which seem unacceptable or even illegal. To get to that productive final third of the process, try churning out lots of ideas as fast as you can.

“Productive thinking requires us not to rush to answers but to hang back, to keep asking new questions even when the answers to the old ones seem so clear, so obvious, so right.”

Most people try to solve a problem in three steps: They identify it. They “pick a solution.” They act. Unfortunately, this process short circuits productive thinking and generates only a few familiar solutions. Instead, follow a six-step process to generate rich, useful and original solutions.

Step 1: “What’s Going On?”

Describe the situation. Divide your investigation into steps to make sure you cover everything. Start by identifying “the itch”: What exactly is irritating about the current situation? Then, determine the impact of the problem and whom it affects.

“Our minds hate not interpreting, not closing in on answers. When we do close in on one answer or interpretation, we effectively block out any others.”

Evaluate what you do and don’t know about the problem. Try making a “KnoWonder” diagram: Write “Know” on the left side of a page and “Wonder” on the right. List the things you are sure about on the left and those you are curious about on the right.

Finally, imagine what the situation will look like when you’ve solved your problem. Try the “I3,” or “Influence, Importance and Imagination,” method. List the components of your ideal future; then categorize them according to whether you have influence over them, whether they are important and whether they will take some imagination to create and develop.

Step 2: “What’s Success?”

Generating new ideas is easy compared to persuading people to act on them. Both individuals and organizations tend to get stuck in their habits. The past exercises a gravitational pull. To get people moving, create an even more powerful “future pull”: Start by shutting your eyes and visualizing the future. Be specific. Imagine your work day, your feelings and your interactions with colleagues. Shape and reshape your image. Then, write a press release or a description for your company’s annual report about your success. Don’t worry about being logical; that will come later. Instead, focus on the vision and write it down.

“All of us have had the experience of coming up with a ‘solution’ to a problem that hasn’t done anything to solve the problem or that’s made the problem even worse.”

Once you’ve imagined the future, try the “DRIVE” exercise. Write the letters D-R-I-V-E across the top of a page. Under D, describe what your solution must do. Under R, note restrictions. Under I, list what you’ll need to invest in it. Under V, list the values that will guide your actions. Finally, under E, list the “Essential Outcomes,” or project requirements. Or, try the “AIM” exercise: List “Advantages, Impediments and Maybes.”

Step 3: “What’s the Question?”

People often fail to solve problems because they ask the wrong questions. Finding the correct core question is like finding the first piece of a puzzle. After you have that one, the rest fall into place. To find the core question, ask a lot of “Catalytic Questions.” Begin with “HMI” (“How might I...?”) or “HMW” (“How might we...?”) questions.

“One of the major barriers to productive thinking is the almost compulsive drive in most business organizations to be right.”

Once you have a long list of working questions, focus them by using “C5”: “Cull, Cluster, Combine, Clarify, Choose.” Cull the questions, deleting those that may bias your thinking. Cluster them into groups of related ideas. Combine them by finding interrelationships. Clarify the questions you have left by rewording or reorganizing them. Finally, choose your central question.

Step 4: “Generate Answers”

Now that you have some good questions, answer them. This stage is like traditional brainstorming. First, generate a lot of solutions. Don’t evaluate them. No ideas are bad. Once you have a long list, use the C5 method to sift through them. Ask “What’s UP?” about ideas that seem unworkable. “UP” stands for “underlying principle.” By seeking it, you can translate and reframe crazy-sounding ideas – they may be more useful than they initially seem.

Step 5: “Forge the Solution”

Use an “Evaluation Screen.” Write your “Success Criteria” across the top of a page. Phrase them simply and directly and use as many as you need – although if you have more than seven, your solution is probably too complicated. Along the side of the page, list all the ideas that have survived the C5 and What’s UP processes. Make a grid, and evaluate all your solutions one criterion at a time. (Don’t evaluate one idea at a time, because you want to compare them.) Use a simple rating system, such as plus, minus or neutral.

“Particularly in organizations, there is a strong tendency to go back to the tried and true, the safe, the questions that don’t rock the boat too much, the questions that aren’t disturbing.”

Review your final ideas using the “POWER” method:

  • “Positives” – Why will these ideas work?
  • “Objections” –What’s wrong with them? Why won’t they work?
  • “What else?” –What’s missing from your ideas?
  • “Enhancements” – How can you improve them?
  • “Remedies” – How can you fix what’s wrong with them?

Step 6: “Align Resources”

Finally, plan and prepare. All strategies must change as circumstances change; your goal at this stage is to project what you’ll need to do to make your vision a reality. Divide your plan into steps. Write all the tasks involved on sticky notes. For each task, list an “observable outcome” that will show the task has been completed. Assign each task to a specific individual. If you can’t assign some tasks, can you eliminate them, or come up with additional staff? Post each task, with its outcome and assignee, on a “Great Wall of Time”: a schedule that shows who will do what, when.

“A plan is a thing, an organized set of data marshaled around targets and timelines.”

As you plan, identify “Assistors and Resistors”: the people who will help or block you. Keep track of “EFFECT”: the “Energy” the task will take; the “Funds” you’ll need to invest; the “Free time” the task will consume; the “Expertise” it will require; the “Conditions” you’ll face and the “Things” you’ll need to do it. During the planning stage, you may need to loop back to earlier stages in your thinking to readjust your questions and answers. Once you’ve finished your Great Wall, assistors and resistors and EFFECT analyses, create an “Action Book,” with a page for each step. Record who is responsible for it, who else will be involved, when they will start and finish the task, the resources involved and other essential details. Standardize the pages as much as possible, to make following progress as easy as possible for everyone involved.

“All models are wrong. At best they are imperfect reflections of reality.”

Remember that productive thinking is just a model. It won’t always neatly fit reality. Don’t get addicted to it. You don’t need productive thinking for every circumstance: It’s unnecessary when the solution to a problem is clear, when you must take immediate action or when getting by is good enough. Use it when you need to generate original ideas because the old ones aren’t working. Apply I3: Use productive thinking when you have influence over the situation, when it is important and when you need imagination. However, to become a skilled productive thinker, you must practice. Incorporate it into organizational routines. Start small, by introducing one technique at a time.

About the Author

Tim Hurson is a founding director of Facilitators Without Borders and a founding partner of thinkx, a firm providing training in productive thinking and innovation.

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Think Better

Book Think Better

An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

McGraw-Hill,
 


6 February 2026

Super Service

Recommendation

Val and Jeff Gee bring their extensive experience in employee training to a simple, yet effective book version of the training sessions they designed for top corporations. They offer seven critical ideas - keys - to providing outstanding customer service. Each one builds upon the premise and actions of the previous one, making these lessons sensible, precise, and natural to put into practice. The book illustrates each key with anecdotes, case histories, boxed lists, cartoons, and exercises. This creates an interactive learning experience. Nicely written in an upbeat, conversational style, it does not talk down to the reader or take the tone of a cold, authoritarian "employee manual." Neither is it condescending by being overly simplified in thought or tone. BooksInShort.com recommends this book to anyone whose position involves serving customers, or supervising those who do.

Take-Aways

  • The benefits to delivering great customer service include good business and the service provider’s personal and professional improvement.
  • Sixty-eight percent of customers who quit patronizing a business are lost because of only one thing: bad service.
  • The first key to delivering super service is to have "the right attitude" and maintain a positive frame of mind.
  • The second key is "understand the customer’s needs," listen, verify, clarify, and know what you can offer.
  • The third key is to "communicate clearly," be simple, clear, honest, friendly, and knowledgeable.
  • The fourth key is to reach an agreement by creating a win-win solution.
  • The fifth key is to be sure you understand and to give customers the opportunity to confirm that the solution meets their needs.
  • The sixth key is to "take action" and be efficient, organized, honest, and reliable.
  • The seventh key is to "build on satisfaction" and use situations that previously resulted in customer satisfaction as a foundation for the future.
  • Building your skills in selling, telephone use, and interpersonal communication enhances customer service. You should avoid and relieve stress and burnout.

Summary

The Basics

Delivering great customer service has many benefits and can enhance the service provider personally and professionally. If you’re a service provider - or a manager of service providers - who has grown weary and disillusioned, now you can revitalize your outlook and increase your enjoyment. You can experience being at your best by using these guidelines:

  • Choose to give good service. You are in control of how you feel at work and in your personal life. You can choose to think positive thoughts or negative thoughts about providing service.
  • Have a positive approach to make your life easier, more fun and meaningful.
  • Customers and bosses will notice that you’re providing great service and you will become known as an asset to your employer.

You, The Server

A customer is "anyone who isn’t me." This includes everyone inside and outside your company. People either benefit or suffer from the service you provide. It is not demeaning to serve; in fact, one definition of the word "serve" is "to be of assistance, to help." With this attitude, customer service can feel good. You should feel good, also. Balance is important to your wellbeing. Service isn’t about giving until you’re burned out. Renew your energy by taking breaks and taking good care of yourself at work and at home.

“When you deliver Super Service, the person feeling the best is you.”

When you are honest with yourself about how you feel about your customers, your awareness can help you improve your experiences with customers. You can connect with a customer’s heart and soul and realize that you, too, are frequently a customer who wants to be treated well.

Sixty-eight percent of the customers lost by businesses are lost because of only one thing: bad service. Each dissatisfied customer tells between ten and twenty other people about it. Each customer interaction provides you with a "moment of truth," an opportunity to satisfy and keep a customer. "Serving takes great courage, power, leadership, and a strong spirit." This requires extra effort when you are not feeling your best. Techniques to relax and clear your worries can help you "serve up your best, even when feeling your worst." Great service requires taking responsibility for your commitments to customers, as well as for your mistakes. Treating customers well depends upon seeing them as people who always deserve your assistance. Think of each customer as:

  • Someone I can learn from.
  • Someone I can be objective about.
  • Someone I don’t fear.
  • Someone I can be open to helping.
  • Someone I can accept.
“Serving is about being a giver instead of a taker. If you think about it, we all serve other people.”

Seven Keys to Delivering Super Service

  1. Have the right attitude - This is the most important key to great service, and it relies on maintaining a positive frame of mind, being prepared, wanting to help, and being sincere.
  2. Understand the customer’s needs - Pretending you are the customer is the basis for understanding any customer’s needs. Prepare yourself by knowing how to solve typical problems, and knowing what your customers’ options are. Keep an open mind, listen, and learn how to recognize the difference between a need and a desire. Verify and clarify what your customers say, so that you will not have misunderstandings. Overcome your customers’ negative attitudes by staying focused on your goal, which is to help solve their problem. Be truthful.
  3. Communicate clearly - Keep your communication simple, clear, and honest. Admit to errors when you’ve made them. Give unwelcome information directly, kindly, and in positive terms. Offer appropriate added service to compensate for bad news. Encourage customers to take part in finding a solution to fit their needs. Acknowledge the customer’s feelings. Know when to call your manager for further assistance.
  4. Reach agreement - Look for a win-win solution, build upon the customer’s proposed solution, be creative, and don’t promise what you can’t deliver.
  5. Check understanding - Give customers the opportunity to confirm that your solution meets their needs. Tell your customers everything they need to know regarding the service or solution. Be aware of your customers as humans with legitimate needs and problems, not stereotypes of any kind.
  6. Take action - Don’t start something you can’t finish. Turn negatives into positives. Use positive words and phrases instead of negative ones. Think before speaking or taking action. Organize, return phone calls promptly, and give customers updates or progress reports and plenty of reassurance. Always thank the customer. Don’t criticize your company. Resolve the problem internally. Do follow-ups, verify satisfaction, and check for new problems or opportunities.
  7. Build on satisfaction - Don’t just focus on problems. Build on situations that have previously satisfied the customer. Offer new, helpful information and services.
“To serve others is to ultimately serve ourselves because when we open our hearts, our spirit grows and becomes stronger.”

Ten Keys to Handling Unhappy Customers

  1. Show that you empathize and understand.
  2. Encourage them to tell you what happened and to vent if they like.
  3. Remain objective and don’t take anything personally.
  4. Stay calm and believe that the problem can be solved.
  5. Listen and show that you are attentive.
  6. Take responsibility and show that the problem will be addressed quickly.
  7. Ask customers how they would like the problem handled.
  8. Offer ideas to resolve the situation.
  9. Propose a plan.
  10. Tell customers that you will inform management of the problem.

Selling Skills

Remember that "you are always selling yourself, your services, or your company." Offer better service and additional service. Ask questions so you can meet needs. Exude friendly, intelligent, upbeat energy and create a good rapport with each customer. When the telephone is a key part of your customer service, keep in mind the following pointers:

  • Return calls promptly.
  • Keep messages direct, short, and polite.
  • Ask for the response you need.
  • Be aware of the powerful effect of your voice: your volume, tone, diction, and the speed at which you speak.
  • Be understanding.
  • Allow people to speak.
  • Keep an open mind.

Avoid Stress and Burnout

You can foresee stress and burnout. You can avoid them or cope with them. When you go home from work, you often take the day’s stress with you. If you live alone, you might feel lonely because no one else is there. You may feel upset because you have no one to talk to about your day. You may feel depressed because you have nothing to do once you get home. If you have a big family, you might feel confined because you have a house full of people. Or, you might feel frustrated because all the people in your house want you to listen to their problems. Or, maybe you feel anxious because there’s too much to do and you have so many family responsibilities. Whichever scenario applies to you, you are not happy.

“May I open my heart to the needs of others.”

When you get up the next morning and go back to work, you take the unresolved stress with you. Day after day, the stress piles up, and ultimately this becomes a chronic stress situation. You may feel that the only solution is to leave your job and go to work somewhere else. But, if you do that, the same situation may repeat itself.

“When you are feeling down, that’s exactly the time you can make a difference.”

Use stress-reducing strategies at work and at home to help solve this problem and keep the cycle from repeating itself. Identify stressful situations and feelings; then actively plan useful solutions. Choose what will work for you.

If your customers are feeling stressed, let them vent. This will help them and it will keep you from feeling anxious. Realize that they are not really angry with you; they are frustrated and upset by their experience. Do not take things personally. Put your feelings aside and don’t absorb the customers’ frustration. Focus on the positive: serving the customers and turning their stress and frustration into a positive experience for them and for you.

Use Affirmations

Every day, you are in charge of deciding how you are going to live, which choices you are going to make, what your attitude will be, how you will react, and how you can make a difference at your company and with your customers.

“The energy you put into your voice reflects your attitude, enthusiasm, and willingness to serve.”

You can make a positive contribution by investing your time in making a customer happy and, in turn, making yourself feel good. When you feel good about your work, you can move toward achieving your further goals. These positive affirmations can serve as daily morale boosters:

  • Customers are people who deserve respect.
  • I can show my customers that I am a caring person who is on their side.
  • If I feel angry, I will take a deep breath, hold it for a count of three, then let go. My anger will leave me as I exhale.
  • Every morning I will wake up and say, "Today is going to be a great day."
  • I am eager to make a difference and happy to help.

Everybody Serves Somebody

Customer service occurs at all levels of every single profession, even in professions that you might not ordinarily think of as serving the public. Celebrities serve the public. They feel the glare of our attention and our demands to the point where they often feel their lives are "run by their customers," that is, their adoring fans or disgruntled critics. Bankers, presidents, CEOs, kings, queens, generals, doctors, lawyers - they, too, feel that their lives are run by their customers. They probably get as tired of their customers as you do. The fact is "We all serve and we all get tired of it." No one is happy to serve all the time. What is important is "how we serve most of the time." Doing this right will lead us to happy, productive professional and personal lives.

About the Authors

Val Gee is an instructional designer and a regular contributor to Training magazine. Jeff Gee is a motivational speaker and trainer with more than twenty years experience. The Gees founded and run McNeil and Johnson, a training company that has trained more than 50,000 people since 1986. Clients include Motorola, 3-COM, Siemens, and Hewitt Associates.

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