I love their branding – the nerdy cars, the black and white uniforms with clip-on ties, their badges, the job titles (the founder is Chief Inspector, and technicians are Agents), and their cars. The “Nerd Herd” from the TV show Chuck was an awesome tribute to Geek Squad.

I recently came across the six-point pledge that employees of Best Buy’s technical support staff were expected to sign. Apparently, the pledge is in The Little Orange Book, Geek Squad’s guide to doing their work:

1. Never violate the trust of my clients or disrespect their property.
2. Never say, “I don’t know. Instead, say, “I’ll find out.”
3. Always understand that my clients’ time is more valuable than my own.
4. Assume every problem is my fault, unless proven otherwise.
5. Consider my job done only when my client is completely overwhelmed with joy. And instead of assuming they’re happy, I’ll ask them.
6. Keep every promise I make. Including this one.

I’m not sure if Geek Squad still uses this pledge, but I think it’s an excellent list for any organization setting up customer service expectations for their teams.

I found the list on Bill Taylor’s blog.

Anything you’d add?

Taking a Wayne Gretzky approach to customer service can give you a huge advantage over competitors. Good and even excellent customer service is about providing a great experience and reacting appropriately when things go wrong. Assuming you have those bases covered why not seek out opportunities to create an amazing customer service experience that goes even further?

If you’re a hotel, don’t just have clean rooms and a courteous staff. Find out that your guest is there for an anniversary and send up champagne.  A recent article in the WSJ talked about how some hotels are using the conversations hotel staff have with guests before check-in to fish for service opportunities. You have a cold? They’ll send up tea. In an online discussion one woman mentioned that when she checked into a resort in Palm Springs the clerk noted that she was from Seattle and they talked about Seattle’s reputation as a coffee city. The next morning, her breakfast was accompanied by a huge pot of coffee and a note that “they’d provided an extra bit of ‘Seattle’s Best’ for me to enjoy.”

I love the idea of tasking employees with seeking out customer service opportunities. This starts with empowering your employees. Tell them their mission and give them some guidelines as to what resources they can use. Next, train staff to ask questions. Restaurants could ask, “What brings you in tonight?” At our ad agency, we always looked for opportunities by getting to know our clients. One of our clients had a daughter who loved Mickey Mouse. When I went to Disney I brought her back a toy. It meant as much to the client as the great work we did all year long.

We may not be able to anticipate how to provide above and beyond service as well as Gretzky could anticipate the puck, but unlike him, our customers will actually tell us, if we ask them.

What do you think? Do you have any great customer service experiences or ideas to share?

If you’re into hockey, or just crazy people who wear hockey masks, you might be interested in checking out my article that has Life or Death Advice for Startups from Freddy Krueger and Jason.

There are many lessons from this including how not to resign from your job, how to avoid burning bridges (or leaving them in a complete fireball as Smith did) and the fact that Muppets is a derogatory term (who knew?). What I want to cover is the importance of how we refer to our Muppets. . . I mean customers.

Employees look to executives and managers for behavior cues. I’ve seen departments in the same company act differently, because employees are modeling the behavior of different managers.  Employees pay such close attention to managers, that I once had an employee ask me if everything was OK because I was eating lunch with my door closed. I didn’t even notice that I had shut my door, but my team certainly did.

One way to set the expectation that your team will respect customers is by carefully choosing how you refer to clients (especially during the times when the relationship may be rocky). There’s been a growing trend at companies including banks, retailers and even manufacturers to follow Disney’s pioneering lead by referring to their customers as guests.

We may have different views on how to treat customers, leads and prospects but we all should know how to treat guests. Guests are special. When you have a guest in your home, you feel responsible for a warm greeting, ensuring they’re comfortable and offering them a drink. You don’t wait for guests to ask for something; you try to predict their needs in advance. Growing up, we’d even do the “FHB” (Family Hold Back) to make sure there was enough “good” food for guests.

Almost everyone provides some sort of special treatment for guests. This isn’t how people naturally view customers, prospects and leads  — those terms don’t even sound friendly. Often we view a customer as the number they got at the counter, an order or a company.

Language by itself doesn’t create change, but perhaps calling our customers “guests” is a start. It’s one way to create a vision and set of expectations that most team members should understand.