Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Val and Jeff Gee are founders of the McNeil & Johnson Learning Company, a million-dollartraining firm with offices in the United States, Australia, Egypt, Guatemala, andthe United Kingdom. For more information, go to www.mjlearning.com.

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Super Service Completely Revised and Expanded

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

Connecting with a customer's heart and soul means experiencing your customers as fully rounded human beings with all the joy, family issues, money scares, and work problems that every one of us experiences from time to time.

Here is how two of our clients, who participated in our Super Service workshop, answered the following three questions:

Mary—McDonald's Corporation, Accounting

1. As a customer, what do you want?

"I want to get a sense of being valued. I place more value on service than I do on the price tag. Yes, I'm frugal so if I've decided to buy the product, I will, but it's the service that makes me a repeat customer."

2. As a customer, what do you feel stops you from getting what you want?

"People who just don't care or won't go the extra step. I will choose not to get the product if the person is not the right fit. I will get what I need somewhere else."

3. In your experience, what do customer service people do best?

"They respect and listen to the customer. They give undivided time and attention. They make you feel valued, so you do not feel like a statistic."

Frank—GE Commercial Finance, Inside Sales

1. As a customer, what do you want?

"I want to be listened to and shown empathy."

2. As a customer, what do you feel stops you from getting what you want?

"Employees that simply don't care. Make excuses, don't listen and try to get you off the phone or out of their way as fast as they possibly can!"

3. In your experience, what do customer service people do best?

"They listen, empathize, and take charge."

The IKTA Disease

Before you read any further, please be aware of the IKTA disease (I Know That Already). It is a disease that stops us from learning new things, because we truly believe we know everything already. Open up your mind, clear your head of what you think you know, and be prepared to learn something new.

Brain Talk

I give this talk in every Super Service class that I facilitate. It's the foundation of creating loyal customers, and more importantly, of having an amazing life; in which you are happy, full of joy, and have a sense of purpose about your life. So in a way, this section of the book is the most important because it talks about you. Everything you do, your reactions and behaviors, starts and stops in your brain. The human brain is amazing, and it consists of three sections. The first brain is the reptilian brain. On top of this is the limbic system, or the animal brain. And on top of the animal brain is the cerebral cortex, which is the human brain.

The reptilian brain sits in the base of your spine. It looks after your amazing body. It makes sure your heart is beating, your lungs are breathing, and your kidney is filtering out toxins. It makes sure that every function in your body is working so that you can live a full, rich, and purposeful life.

Without the reptilian brain, you would die. Let's face it, you would not last very long if you were in charge of your heart beating. It would go beat, beat, beat, beat, oh forget this, this is too much work. It's unfortunate that the only time you stop and think about how amazing your body is, is when something goes wrong. And, then it's sometimes too late to be thankful.

There are many things to be thankful for your body. Your body is an amazing machine and the reptilian brain looks after it all without you thinking about it. For instance, do you know your heart pumps three Olympic-size swimming pools of blood through you every year. There are six thousand miles of veins, arteries, and tubing making sure everything is traveling where it needs to go. Two million blood cells die every second to be replaced by two million new ones until the day you die. Within each blood cell there are four million molecules. Each of those molecules has an atom oscillating at ten thousand times a second. And all of this is happening so that you can go out there and do outstanding things.

You are so full of energy that the next time your city has a blackout you could run up to the electric company and say "plug me in"! Your body has so much potential that you could climb Mount Everest, if you wanted to. You could run a marathon at 80 years of age. Your body is capable of achieving many things and this entire system is all being looked after by your reptilian brain.

Do you remember being a child? You had so much energy you couldn't wait to get out of bed. You probably got up at five or six in the morning and immediately started doing things. You couldn't wait to play and learn new things. And you didn't want to go to bed because you had the most amazing experience "living the day." But all you heard from your parents and teachers were, "Sit still and be quiet." Now, you can't wait to get INTO bed. Now you want to take things easy and do as little as possible. And this is all because we are thinking different thoughts all the time, which brings me to the animal brain.

On top of the reptilian brain sits the limbic system, or the animal brain. It's into survival because that's what an animal does. It's a survival-only process called "flight or fight." An animal has two things it can do when faced with a problem—run away or fight. If it sees a smaller animal, it will kill it; if it sees a bigger one, it will escape. An animal is freaked out about everything. It doesn't have great thoughts. It doesn't fall in love. Have you ever seen a giraffe with a five-year plan? When was the last time you saw your dog volunteer? Animals don't like eye contact. Animals don't like to be seen. Animals keep a low profile and try to get through the day without being killed. That is your limbic system; it's there to help you survive.

But we are living in a day and age when you don't need the animal brain to kick in all the time. There's not a lot of things we have to run from or fight. We don't have to hunt out a cow in our grocery stores. Your boss isn't trying to eat you. We can actually enjoy our lives and operate from our human brain. In the animal brain, we literally come from fear. It is born in fear and it dies in fear.

When you are in your animal brain and you are fearful it plays out in different human emotions like anger, depression, frustration, envy, and greed. All of these negative emotions come out when you live in the limbic system or the animal brain. It hates successful people and it doesn't think too highly of you either. It tells you that you are ugly, stupid, and that you'll never make it. It doesn't care about your health. Cigarette packages warn you that smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes, yet your animal brain convinces you to smoke. "Other people may die because they smoke but not you, your lungs are huge." Alcohol? "Yes! You've had a hard day, plus it'll help you sleep." Exercise? "Who needs it?"

All you want to do when you are in your animal brain is survive the day. Everything is a problem. And what does your animal brain think of customers? "What do they want now?! I wish the phone would stop ringing. I can't wait to...