For a business, customer service is a term often thrown around and considered to be “super” important to every company.  There are tons of books on it and we all agree, it’s definitely important.  Saying it’s important and living like it’s important are two entirely different things.  Companies all have “policies” and all to often write policy that punishes most customers because of a few unique situations.  So the first thing needed is to remove policies that have been written because something happened once or twice and somehow the “company” felt it necessary to write some over wordy policy to cover the situation that now makes it more difficult to help all the other customers.

The next step is to then empower your customer service staff (really the entire company should be part of any customer service training), to enthusiastically help exceed the needs of your customers.  You know, like we want to be treated when we’re the customer.  In our case, (RealTruck.com) we strive to live our guiding principles, especially our first one; “Deliver More”, and go way above & beyond what is expected.  We want to kill “status quo”.  We want our customers to know and feel they are both special and important.  We do this by making sure our interactions with them transmit a great & memorable experience.  The challenge for us has been continuing to find new ways to raise the bar and really empowering our staff to do whatever is necessary to wow our customers.   We have found a great book to further help this cause.

Oh you may be asking, what is the next step.  Well, that would be to read the book “Exceptional Customer Service”.  Here’s how it started for me.  Our customer service manager, Debi gave me a copy of the book “Exceptional Customer Service” written by Lisa Ford, David McNair & William Perry.  To be honest, it really didn’t think much of the book based on it’s title, as there is nothing ziggy about it.  However, because Debi insisted I read it and the fact that it is on Tony Hsieh’s (CEO of Zappos) book list, I forced myself to begin reading it.  The old saying “never judge a book by it’s cover” echoed in my head before I even finished the first chapter.   The book is packed with great examples of how to really take your customer service program to the next level and beyond.  You will learn powerful insights on personalizing your customer’s experience and ways to rise to the needs of challenging customers.  Along with a strong reminder on the importance of first and last impressions.  It is full of intriguing questions to answer with self-guided exercises and methods of implementation to examine.  This is certainly a must have book for anyone in the business world.  Whether you are a CEO, marketing guru or the worlds best front line customer service agent, it is well worth the read.  It is so impressive, that we are now in the process of incorporating the book into our “basics” training along with some of Lisa Ford’s training videos.   While the simply designed book cover my not impress you, the content certainly will.

Until next time,

Smile & Pass It On,

Scotty Bintz
www.twitter.com/realtruck

Ah yes, my Mom as done literally thousands of things to help me along the way from showing me how to work hard to being my biggest fan.  Thanks Mom.  I Love You!!

Often in my life I have had periods where being discouraged seemed to be at the top of my perspective.  There are always ups and downs.   When discouraged, one of the things that has seemed to help me over the years has been reading an Abraham Lincoln plaque on perseverance, that I received as a gift.  It seems to lift my spirits and reminds me that great success often comes after lots and lots of failure.   A great friend and coworker of mine, somehow managed to move this plaque into his office, which was fine by me.  After that, when feeling the need to get a good reminder on determinate and perseverance, I got to visit my great friend and re-read it at the same time.  Since my friend transferred to another office, I thought to post it up so I can re-read it from time to and and for others to enjoy.

PERSEVERANCE

He FAILED in businesss in ’31.
He was DEFEATED for state legislator in ’32.
He tried another business in ’33, it FAILED.
His Fiancee Died in ’35.
He had a nervous BREAKDOWN in ’36.
In ’43 he ran for Congress and was DEFEATED.
He tried again in ’48 and was DEFEATED again.
He tried running for the Senate in ’55, He LOST.
The next year he ran for Vice President and LOST.
In ’59 he ran for the Senate again and was DEFEATED.
In 1860, the main who signed his name A. Lincoln, was elected the 16th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

The difference between history’s boldest accomplishments,
and its most staggering failures is often, simply,
the diligent will to persevere.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abe Lincoln Perseverance Plague

This isn’t a sales pitch, but I believe this plaque came from the Successories store.  Here’s a link should you want your own copy.

Get A Hair Cut?

Sometimes fun just must be had at work.

We have a deal. I getta grow my hair out until we hit our sales goals. It started in March and by Oct, we hit it.  Once again, the RealTruck crew delivers. So it’s Buzz Cut Time! Shaving one’s head isn’t so bad when you are having fun along the way and making a difference.

Chase, Me & Joey

For those of you who follow my racing, we had one amazing year. Can’t hardly believe we won the 2011 Wissota Midwest Modifed North Dakota State Championship.  Much thanks goes out to Chase and Joey, all with my beautiful family. Here’s a video capturing a few highlights of the season. For more on racing, visit www.scottbintzracing.com

One always hears people talk in terms of success and failure.  But defining, what success is can be somewhat difficult.   Here is one of the better definitions I have found.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and love much;
to win the respect of intelligent persons
and the affections of children,
to earn the approbations of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to give oneself;
to leave the world a bit better whether
by a healthy child, a garden patch,
or a redeemed social condition;
to have played and laughed with enthusiasm;
and sung with exultation;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy President’s Day

Here are 5 Quotes from Presidents worth remembering.   Comment below if you have a few more worth passing on.

“If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.” -James Garfield

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.” -Thomas Jefferson

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. … Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.” -Barack Obama

“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”  -Franklin D. Roosevelt

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” -Harry S. Truman

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” -John F. Kennedy

Yes, I want to be a peaker.  With having trouble getting the energy to continue reading a different book for a week or so, and at the same time battling with the my principle that “one should finish what they started”, I finally decided to sacrifice my principle, (for a little while), and read another book instead.   That new book was Peak, How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow by Chip Conley.  Wow, what a great decision.  This is the absolute best business book I have personally read.  It is packed with extraordinary stories, principles and how to’s.  Yes, Yes, I want to be a peaker.

Most of us want to have a peak experience and better yet, keep and grow it.   Abraham Maslow called this self-actualization and Chip Conley refers to it as peak experience.  Lately, I have been pondering why people often have great personal values, but seem to be in fear of living by them in a workplace.  So they are saying, yes I have values, but I will ignore them at work, as living them might bring negative consequences.  Is getting paid more important than living by one’s personal values?  Most of us have a value of wanting to learn and grow, as a person.  My question is how much time do you spending practicing that value?  Most of us have a value of wanting to be honest.  Why is it that often people struggle with being transparent with a customer or fellow employee?  Why can’t a business practice the values of its’ people?  What is stopping us?  Perhaps it’s fear.  I believe we can be inspired to change it.  The book, Peak, is a great example of this.  What Chip has done with his company and is passing on to us is truly inspiring.  Our company, RealTruck.com has developed some core values that aims to help focus, guide us and inspire us to building a better (hopefuly great) company.  The information in this book, will definitely help us on our quest.

Like Maslow, Conley looks at success rather than failure.  Meaning, looking those individuals, or in Conley’s case, those companies that achieve self-actualization rather than those who don’t.  Conley uses Maslow’s ideas of self actualization and turns them into a design for company actualization.   The concept of Peak is when a person has a peak experience, in which he is using all of his capabilities at the absolute best and fullest levels.   Conley suggests since a company is a collection of people, that this concept can and has been applied to great business.   Self-actualized people are creative, flexible, courageous, willing to make mistakes, open, humble & are cooperative among colleagues.  This is another, what I like to refer to as a “we book”, a book designed to help us be great, rather than the individual.

The “Relationships Truth Pyramid”, developed by Conley, covers the guiding principles for relationships with employees, customers and investors.  This Pyramid includes 3 other Pyramids.  The “Employee Pyramid” shows how to create deeper and more meaningful workplace relationships.  The “Customer Pyramid” shows how brands create more self-actualized customers and deliver on their unrecognized needs.  The “Investor Pyramid” show how to apply the Hierarchy of Needs theory to a companies relationship to investors or to those the organization is accountable to.  The book is amazing and inspiring.  In addition, it is a how to guide offering ideas on how bring these truths together and put them into action. This is referred to as the “heart” that keeps the 3 pyramids of the RTP together.   Each area of each pyramid is written in a practical and easy to understand language of the heart.  This is a must read book for anyone wanting to transform their company.

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, we hear lots of buzz about SEO (search engine optimization).  Generally the goal is to increase your keyword ranking in google, yahoo and bing.   This is certainly important.  However, basic website optimization is the starting point.  It’s a must, if you have a website, whether personal or business.   The best thing you can do is make it search engine friendly.   Forget about buzz words, link building strategies and quick fix SEO and online marketing companies and first focus on the basics.  Not to say those things are not important, rather start with the basics and build from there.   I like to refer to it as basic website optimization.  Make it easy for the search engines to “read” and understand your website.  There numerous tips regarding moving up your rankings and building an online presence, both of which are other topics.

Here are 10 basic tips to optimize a website. Remember, a website is virtually worthless if a search engine can’t read it or has trouble indexing it.

1. Set up a Webmaster Tools Account: Set up a google webmaster tools (GWT) account and submit your site map.  Bing and Yahoo also have their own versions of this.  But for the basics, go to where the big fish is first, then to bing and yahoo as you move forward.
2. Make Sure Every Page has a Unique Meta Title:  Make sure every page has a very clear and correct meta title.  This is first thing shown in a search result by the search engine.  Capitalize the letter of each word, just like you would for a title of a page.  Don’t have any pages with the same title.  Google webmaster tools can help you find duplicate titles, should you have a large website.  Ideally no more than 65 characters.
3. Every Page Needs a Meta Description:  Each page should also have a unique description.  This is generally what is displayed under the title in a search engine result.  It should be about 150 characters and tell the reader what they will find on the page.  GWT can tell you if you have any duplicate meta descriptions.  Meta keywords are not very important, but I still add a couple very descriptive ones to each page.
4. Original Content is a Must:  This is critical.  Your content should be original and should be focused on what the page is about.  The more the better.  Keep in mind, your content should be organized, which will be covered in site structure.
5. Have A Clear Site Structure:  The hierarchy of your site should be clear cut.  Main pages and sub-pages.  It’s hard to have an exact rule here, but be consistent.  If it’s a product website, then product categories are on top and products that fit the category below the category.  If it’s a blog, you can use categories and/or tags.  But, don’t over do it.
6. Descriptive Image Names:  A search engine can’t see what the image is, they can only read the file and image names you provide.  A search engine is processing data, so name your images to be reflective of what the image is.  If the image is of a blue frog then the image file name should be  blue-frog.jpg.  The alternate text should be Blue Frog and the Caption should be Blue Frog.  Alt text is what a search engine reads, caption is seen when a user hovers over an image.   Search engines take all 3 into account.   It’s even better, if this image is also on a page that is about blue frogs.
7. Organized Breadcrumb Trail:   A breadcrumb trail (links on the top of the page below the header should be used if possible to help the user understand the site structure.   These text links should support the page(s) they are linking to.  For example; Home >> Shoes >> Outdoor or  Home >> Articles >> How-To.
8. New Content & Page Focus:  Each page should have a purpose and fit into the site structure.   Duplicate content is never a good thing.  Search engines love, new content.  Add it regularly.
9. Descriptive Internal Text Links:  Text links in your site are a huge thing.  Every page in your site should be linked to.  The text link should indicate what you will find on the page.  Click here doesn’t help a search engine know what it will find of the page.  If the page you are linking to is about blue frogs, the text link should be blue frogs.   Anytime you are linking to the blue frog page, the text link should be a version of blue frog, such as big blue frog, blue frogs etc.  You can add more descriptive text to the link if it is on multiple pages such as big blue frogs, but all text links in your site with blue frog in it, should always point to your blue frog page.  Don’t ever have the same text link, link to 2 different pages.    As that will dilute its’ value.
10. Set up a Site Map:  Set up a site map with links to all the important pages in your website.   These text links should support the page you are linking to.   You also need to set up an XML site map.  There are plug-ins you can get for this or have your developer do it.  (any good web developer can do this for you.).  The XML site map should automatically update when pages are added, updated or re-directed.  See http://www.sitemaps.org/ for more info on this.

Once you give the basic web site optimization in place and your xml site map is being regularly pinged to the search engines, then you will have much better success trying strategies to improve your search engine rankings.  Additional do’s and don’t can be found at google’s webmaster guidelines.

Author: Scott Bintz
CEO of RealTruck.com