My husband is a school teacher and was telling me recently that one of the core values they try to instil in the students at his school is serving others. The logic behind this is they believe no matter what profession or circumstance the students find themselves later in life, they will be required to serve others.
In business we often talk about customer service. And I’ve written about it often enough in this column so that if you’re a regular reader you will most likely agree that great customer service is essential to business success! But I wonder if sometimes we segment ‘customer service’ into its own category and fail to see ‘service’ (or serving others) as something that infiltrates every aspect?
If every task we undertake and every interaction we have, is done with an attitude of serving, what would that look like? Perhaps rather than approaching a task that we need to do for a client as boring and mundane, we view it as serving that person: how differently would we complete that task? If all your employees viewed their job descriptions as an opportunity to serve both their employer and customers, you are likely to witness a great improvement in morale and performance.
The key to serving is to complete a task or action without expectation of something in return. Now of course, as business owners, our goals will include monetary benefits, otherwise we are running a charity. So there is an underlying requirement that what we do will conclude with payment of some sort! But our attitude towards the tasks we do and the way we conduct ourselves with clients, can either be focused on ‘what do I get out of it?’ or ‘how can I do this better for you?’
By focusing on ‘how can I do this better for you?’, your business will ultimately be much more attractive to prospective clients and will provide you with long term customers who want to stick around for more. As Martin Luther King Jr. said “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve”.
Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender
