Service as if your business depended on it.

• Author: Cutting, Bill
• Position: Tips for improved customer relations, including advice from Connecticut grocer Stew Leonard; see related article on customer service and quality bibliography

Stories of how contemporary customer-service gurus were converted to their avocation are as numerous and varied as the gurus themselves. Here's an example: One evening, close to Christmas, Connecticut grocer Stew Leonard received a call from a woman customer who complained the eggnog she had just purchased was sour. "Bring it back," he instructed her, "and I'll replace it." A short time later the customer entered Leonard's store with the carton in hand. As a cashier totalled the refund, the grocer tasted the offending nog. "You know," he remarked good-naturedly, "I'm happy to refund your money, but I think this eggnog tastes fine." The customer said nothing. But as she left, she turned and coolly said to grocer, "I will never shop in this store again."

Leonard was understandably flabbergasted by the woman's reaction, especially in light of what he thought was a reasonable response to her complaint. Until he realized that his insensitive comment about the eggnog had effectively invalidated her experience. Right or wrong, Leonard reckoned, this customer felt she had a legitimate complain. The epiphany converted him from bystander to zealot in the cause of customer service. He even went so far as to sink a granite slab outside his store with the following inscription carved in its polished face: "Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: When the customer is wrong, re-read Rule #1."

Today Stew Leonard is not just an authority at keeping the customer satisfied, indeed, he is a wizard at keeping his customers ecstatic. The distinction is as important to understanding the customer service movement as is the customer himself...er, herself.

Today one can find slightly more than a zillion books written on the topic of customer service (a somewhat more modest bibliography follows). This includes a number of oeuvres by the acknowledged zen masters of the subject, such as Tom Peters, Stan Davis, Ron Zemke, Karl Albrecht, Robert Greenleaf and Joe Girard. And while all would agree that exceptional customer service ranks right up there on the altruism scale with the golden rule, its current vogue boils down to one truism: customer service provides the practitioner with a distinct edge over the competition. And if businesspeople - here in Utah and elsewhere - hope to survive in this age of global economies and cutthroat competition, they need to act like Mr. Goodwrenches a heck of a lot more than like Mr. Whipples. As Tom Peters writes, "Service-added is becoming the chief battleground for competitive advantage in every industry one can think of."

Let's face it. There would be no need for a customer-service industry in our society were there not a despicable lack of attention to the practice by those we regularly come in contact with. Ah, but there is. Who cannot recount horror stories of standing at a department store counter waiting for help even as two uninterested salespersons stood by chatting to each other? The list of encounters with bored waiters, rude mechanics, illmannered bank tellers, uninformed sales reps goes on.

More and more companies and organizations have discovered that courtesy, compassion, helpfulness, extraordinary service, and attention to detail not only work, but can actually put the competition on the run. In fact, this revolution of enhanced customer service is well underway among enlightened organizations.

Utah companies will excel by remembering five simple tenets.

1. The customer...