Always Do Your Best in Customer Service

It’s been an exciting journey examining Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, The Four Agreements, and connecting the lessons to customer service.

This post covers the fourth agreement–one that will ultimately give power toward the other three agreements becoming real in our lives. Again, this isn’t easy stuff. It’s hard to try and do your best. There are some days where you just want to flat out give up. In fact, I even thought about  not writing these posts simply  because I wasn’t sure if they were even worth it. But, I continued on because this is an important journey and if it inspires at least one person, then it was absolutely worth it.

Over the past three weeks, I tied The Four Agreements to customer service and here are my posts:

1. The Power of Your Word in Customer Service

2. Customer Service Wisdom: Don’t Take It Personally

3. Three Tips for Gaining Clarity in Customer Service

And, now for the final agreement…drum roll please!

Always Do Your Best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. ~Don Miguel Ruiz

What this agreement doesn’t mean is always winning every competition. It doesn’t mean being perfect with every customer encounter. It doesn’t mean knowing everything there is to know. It doesn’t mean pushing others down in order to rise up. Get it?

It means to do your personal best, despite the circumstances, no matter what. Your best on a day when you’re feeling energized and refreshed from a full nights sleep may be different than a day when you got little sleep and are downing coffee to keep your eyes open.

It means to do your personal best which will inspire others to do the same. Lead the way by doing your best and others will follow in your footsteps.

Always doing your personal best means always trying.

Why?

Because you can.

Yes, you will fail. You may not be able to resolve the customer’s problem. You may not be able to answer every question. But, you tried to do all you could and that’s what is important.

So, I sat back and tried to really tune into what always doing your best means in customer service to me. While everyone is different, here are a few tips to get you on your way…and if they don’t help, hey, I tried my best!

Fail Forward

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” – Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash sums it up well, doesn’t he? When you do fail, fail forward. Take what you learned from the situation and use it enhance your knowledge for the future. Be aware of the fear that you have of failing–it’s strong and scary–but don’t let it hinder your attempts to push past it and move forward.

Appreciate the Imperfection

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” – Edgar Allen Poe

Leave it to Poe to sum up embracing imperfections with such grace. Always doing your best doesn’t mean being perfect–it means being imperfect. With each misstep we take, we learn more. With each angry customer, we learn more. With each bunch of negative feedback, we learn more. Don’t let the imperfections and missteps stop you from the beautiful process of learning more. For another dose of motivation, check out Jeremy’s post from last Monday, “Monday Motivation: Learn From Your Missteps“.

Give to Others

“Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

I really don’t think there is much more to say than this quote from Ruiz. What do you take from it?

So, on that note, if you  haven’t already, I encourage you to read The Four Agreements and challenge yourself toward being even more awesome than you already are.

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