I don’t know if you ever had the same poor, shoddy and rude customer experiences as me, but it seems as though I encounter more than my share of bad customer service everyday – or maybe I am simply over sensitive to bad service because I am such a big believer in good service. The funny thing is that I don’t know of one organization, big or small, that believes in poor customer service in spite of it running rampant.

I don’t recall ever seeing a mission statement hanging on a wall or posted on a website that said – “ACME strives to put our customers second by putting the self-serving interests of the company first”, or “ACME’s mission is to provide excellence through lower than average customer service everyday”, or “ACME takes pride in pissing off our customers, while forcing them to look for product or service alternatives elsewhere, and generally aggravating the customers that actually ensure we will a paycheck every two weeks”.

But actions speak louder than words – the vast majority of customer service mission statements or customer service initiatives simply give lip service to the notion of really putting the customer first.

Bottom-line, any written or verbal commitment to excellence in customer service is mostly bogus for all organizations – both nonprofits and for-profits.

In fact, customer service satisfaction is at an all time low – I don’t have a fancy statistic to quote because I don’t need one – just take a look around at your daily experiences. Open up your senses and you will begin to witness the slow degradation of the way society views a spirit of service to others.  The more you peel back the onion the more you realize how numb, and tolerant, you have become to poor customer service.

I am not going to give you examples – I am relatively confident you have your own. What I would like to do is challenge you – wherever you are and regardless of the type of organization you are with – to make a commitment to excellence in customer service. Not by writing a mission statement but by actually making it happen.  Make it a top priority – it will help bring you success.

Perhaps at one point in your life you were told to write a short, hand-written note to someone you interviewed for a job with, or someone that gave you a gift, or for some other occasion.

• How many of you have heard this before – to always follow up a job interview with a handwritten note?
• How many of you actually have taken this advice?
• If you have personally interviewed job applicants with any great frequency, how many hand written notes have you actually received from those candidates?
• And finally, how many of the people you hired were the ones that sent that note?

The point here is that it’s one of those no-brainers that no one actually does (accept myself and hopefully some of you). Exceptional customer service like Nordstrom dishes out is a no brainer – it makes total sense to put the customer first. But since so few actually get around to doing this you can end-run them and make excellent customer service a defining market position for your nonprofit.

Successful companies have usually nailed this concept. If it is truly a no brainer why do so few accomplish this?

Because actions are always harder that words. Words are cheap. Be different and make your actions speak louder than words.