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Enhance your Front Door with Warm Smile Service
8/29/2008

For years now business, colleges, and communities have adopted the 'front door' philosophy. The goal is to beautify the entrance path taken by their customers and/or other valued – and valuable - visitors. Homeowners know it as 'curb appeal'.

I learned this philosophy decades ago, when fresh out of college. Ready to hop the train to career success, I eagerly anticipated my first professional assignment as a management trainee. A regional manager greeted me, then said, "Robert, take this broom and go clean up the parking lot.  Confused, I did as I was told. Afterwards, I asked why I was doing custodial work. "Because", he said, "the experience of our customer starts when they pull into the parking lot and continues until they leave it."  This remains one of the most important professional lessons I've learned, although it is at its best when it is enhanced.

Enhancement is required because a customer's experience extends beyond the physical to include the interpersonal. Certainly, a pleasing initial sensory experience helps shape positive expectations. Landscaping, pleasing aromas, nice amenities, and cleanliness suggest a rewarding experience will follow. They make a nice front door. However, the interactions with the people who answer the door cement the reality. A weathered door opened with a warm smile welcomes you. A fresh door opened with a frown weathers quickly.

Warm smile service can be effectively delivered by adhering to three foundations. Foundations that have guided appropriate professional behavior for over 5,000 years, when the first known 'business etiquette' guideline was written. They are eternal foundations that have served every era and survived every technological innovation.

The first foundation is to focus on a single agenda. Your actions, words, and behavior should be focused on the agenda connected to the person you are with. Nothing - not a call or a text message or a worksheet on your computer monitor - should distract your focus. People take precedence over technology. Eye-content, involvement, and attentive listening confirm focus and make customers feel significant and engaged. So, when you speak with someone, be it in person, on the phone, or via e-mail or text messaging, try to focus only on them and that dialogue.

This is simple enough to apply with one person, but what do you do when multiple people demand your attention, perhaps from multiple media? The answer is found in the second foundation, which is to respect the hierarchy. This is the ability to demonstrate that you are aware of, understand, and accept the hierarchy of the situation. 

In most organizations, much of the hierarchy is straightforward - just look at the organizational chart. The more powerful someone is, the greater the deference. If you are speaking with your boss and a peer e-mails you, you continue to speak with your boss. Most people understand this.

What causes confusion is the placement of the customer on the organizational chart. Few people realize that they sit at the top. A customer takes precedence over everyone else. One of the most common customer service faux pas is to continue speaking with a peer, superior, or subordinate – be it in person, on the phone, or via computer – when a customer arrives.

Certainly, there are exceptions, but they should remain exceptions, not the rule. For example, I recently had two appointments in business offices. Each receptionist conversed with their peers while I checked in, virtually ignoring me until my information was needed. This is not warm smile service. I felt insignificant and unimportant, which brings us to the third foundation, which is courtesy.

I define courtesy as "the act of considering the impact of your actions, words, and behaviors on the people you are with - and those in your proximity. Others define courtesy as "being willing and / or generous in providing something that is needed." 

Courtesy harmonizes the three foundations. When you respect the hierarchy and focus on the agenda at hand, you are being courteous. It's as simple as that. Adhering to these eternal foundations brings warm smile service to your customers.

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