You Are What You Say You Are

Main Street at Magic Kingdom

When you are a child you are always saying that you are a singer, movie star, or princess. Why do we lose this as adults and start focusing on the negative?

A lot has been written about this and I often wonder how many people pay attention and see how it really does effect their life.  What am I speaking of?  The story you tell yourself.

When you say you are something you tend to become it.  Those that say they are poor tend to be without money.  Why?  Because you head in the direction in which you focus.  If you focus on being poor you will stay poor.  Focus on having money and taking care of your money I know you will have it.  It may not be today or three months from now but try getting up every morning and instead of being broke to the point of being broken change your story.  Tell yourself that you are rich and say out loud the things that you have that make you rich.  Do you have a partner?  Children? A job? A home?

Why is it that as humans we have a hard time telling a good story when we as individuals are the subject?    Instead of “I failed” why not “I learned what not to do”?  When someone asks how you are doing why not respond with “Grateful for another day.”

Zig Ziglar says “A failure is an event not a person.”  Even the great motivator has spoken about it for decades.  The story you tell yourself is a major force in directing your life.  Saying “I am a failure” points you in the direction of failing.  When someone says “How are you?” and you respond with “Worn out”  it makes you fell more tired than before you said it (I am guilty of this).

A lot of people have talked about this but one of the more recent is Pastor Joel Osteen.  I have included his “The Power of ‘I Am'” sermon below.  Take the time and watch through it and take notes:

Overcomplicated

overcomplicatedOne of the worst things you can do for your customers is to make things overcomplicated for them.  Take a look at the picture to the right of the school sign in Michigan (source).  Do you think this is good “customer service” to the tax payers?

I recently had a problem with my cell carrier.  My wife’s phone had a battery problem.  Granted, the phone was four years old but all I wanted to do was pay them for a phone and sign a new contract extending my time with them.  The problem being we were not eligible for an upgrade on that line for 14 days!  When I called customer service they told me they could upgrade me to another phone but not the one she wanted to get.  That one would have to wait.  So I call one of their stores and am told we can upgrade as long as it is in the same month – GREAT!  The upgrade as coming in on the 29th, oh, wait, because it is a leap year they moved us to March 1 meaning we were not in the current month.  Hmmmm…

So, I went to Twitter and within ten minutes got a response from someone who was customer friendly and helped us upgrade the phone, pay them for the phone, pay the upgrade fee, and sign a contract.  It took three different customer service reps and five phone calls to get approved to upgrade a phone two weeks early.  I was literally asking them to allow me to hand them money and it took this many steps to get someone who could take care of it.

This is a simple issue of over complicating an issue in an organization.  The first person I spoke with sh0uld have had the authority to make a two week decision.  Do your customer service people have the tools and power to take care of your customers?  If not, why not?  If you can’t trust them then you have the wrong people in that position.

Of course their should be limits and boundaries.  I have been involved with customer service for over a decade and some of the requests from customers can be quite outlandish.  You must put barriers up somewhere but you have to give enough freedom for your reps to make decisions and exceptions when needed.

Bottom Line:  Allow those that have direct contact with your customers be able to serve your customers.  You will be rewarded many times over with happier employees and much happier and loyal customers.