I just got off the phone with the production engineer of Winn Cassette Sales, a Texas-based company that has produced my cassettes for years and is now producing my CDs. Their engineer, Mike, reminded me though his actions today of why I do business with them. While discussing CD label options, he mentioned off-handedly how he made some minor cosmetic adjustments to the label I had sent them. He said “I hope you don’t mind, but I tweaked it a little bit to make it look better.”

My reply: “Believe me I don’t mind at all, that’s why I appreciate you so much. You think about doing that ‘value added thing’.”

It reminded me of how years ago he called me up to suggest I use a different type of tape, because I didn’t need the extra fidelity ones I had asked for, since I was only doing a recording of the spoken word, not music. I remembered being so pleasantly surprised that a vendor actually cared enough to offer me what I needed, rather than just giving me what I wanted.

Do your people do that or do they have an attitude that’s more in line with “Hey, that’s what they asked for…”? Do they show an interest in going beyond doing just the minimum effort? Do they demonstrate curiosity and initiative when responding to customer’s problems and requests?

If you would like your people to show more of that value-added mindset, here are some questions to ponder:

1.Do you HIRE people who truly care about helping others? (I’ll be writing about the “service gene” soon)

2.Do you teach and coach your CSRs about how important it is to think and act like they’re the business owner or an independent consultant, and to think “How can I be helpful?” “How can I provide more value?”

3.Do you give them specific examples and pay attention to opportunities to teach them from real life experiences that just happened?

4.Do you model a “how can I help you?” mindset in your treatment of your employees?

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