The golden rule of customer service

I read an article recently on Forbes titled ‘the golden rule of customer service’.

The author boils down every theory on customer service to the most essential point: do unto your customers as you want to be treated when you’re a customer.

This is the bottom line. You have expectations when you are asking for service, so if you work in a service role then why would you give less than you expect from others?

But he makes another interesting point. In his present job as a journalist he doesn’t really have a great deal of customer service that needs to be done on a day-to-day basis – if at all. But when he was younger he cooked pizza in a restaurant – a job that involved regular customer contact and manning the cash register.

It is a strong reminder that some of those jobs we take on early in life, like flipping burgers, sitting at a checkout, or stacking shelves, have a much greater significance later on. These jobs are when you get exposed to the needs and wants of customers on a daily basis – if you move on later in your career to a job that never exposes you to customers then that early experience can be a reminder of how difficult it really is to get customer service right.

Photo by Katherine Merriam licensed under Creative Commons

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