How to Make Your Customer a Hero

Everybody wants to be a hero! We all want to be the shining star that our family, friends, peers, industry, and customers look up to!

However, to be that hero, a business leader must take a counterintuitive step backwards and become a supporting character.

Our customers do not want to hire a hero, they want to be the hero!

The best thing we can do for our businesses and careers is to make the customer the hero. In doing so, we will accelerate our business and career and, in a round about way, become heroes ourselves!

What does this supporting character look like? Well, Luke Skywalker would never have succeeded without Yoda by his side to equip and guide him. James Bond would have died in his first movie if Q had not outfitted him with state of the art gear. This theme repeats over and over again in movies, comic books and in real life!

No great leader has ever risen to the top without being supported and guided along the way by a cast of supporting characters. We all have teachers, mentors, coaches, and advocates in our personal and professional journeys that have shaped us into who we are today. This applies to world leaders, business people, innovators, athletes and entrepreneurs. It applies to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, and to you, me and our customers!

So, how do you become the supporting character and make your customer the hero?

What Are The 5 Most Dangerous Words In Business?

That is not my problem.”

If anyone in your business responds to a coworker or to a customer with “that is not my problem…”, your business is in serious trouble! These five words signal a dangerous situation where that employee is totally disengaged from the business and does not care about it, their coworkers, the customer or their career with your company.

I have heard these words many times over the years and other variants like:

Do Your Employees Care About Your Customers?

What does customer service look like in your business? Do your employees care about your customers are they just “doing their job”?

It is critical for your business survival and growth that your employees truly care for your customers rather than treat them like just another generic transaction.  A customer service mindset must be purposefully built and nurtured in your organization rather than being left to chance.

I recently traveled to Houston for some business meetings. When I arrived at the airport and got my rental car it was pouring rain. By the time I got onto the Southwest freeway at 5:30 PM it resembled a large parking lot and not a freeway! After fighting the traffic for about an hour, I pulled off the freeway at Lakewood and had dinner at the Café Express.

After dinner, I jumped into my rental and drove to the hotel (Sugar Land Marriott) without incident. When I arrived and popped the trunk to get my luggage, there was nothing there! Someone had broken into my car at the restaurant and stolen my luggage! Fortunately, I had my computer with me in Café Express so it never got stolen but everything else did.

4 Critical Rules For Any Business

It doesn’t matter whether you are in product manufacturing, internet marketing, engineering, retail sales, wholesales, real estate, auto repair, equipment rental, construction, or any other business . . . if you do not focus on empowering your customers and providing value to them, your business will flounder at best and most likely fail.

This is a servant mindset – or what Jay Abraham calls a “super-servant.” He defines a super servant in his book Your Secret Wealth, as someone who sets their “goal in life, in business, in jobs . . . is to identify and understand how many more, and better, and continuous ways you can help serve, or fulfill, or clarify the non-verbalized needs and desires of your customer or your marketplace – and your marketplace, again, is whomever it is you’re trying to positively impact.”

How To Provide Customer Service That Wins Customers For Life

I was traveling recently on an extended business trip with stops in Los Angeles, Corpus Christi and Mexico City. I experienced some excellent customer service during this trip from National and from Marriott and some “not so good” customer service at another hotel brand.

During my stop in LA, I mistakenly left a fairly valuable piece of artwork sitting near the shuttle bus stop at National’s LAX car terminal. It was one of those absent minded moments. I was carrying a lot of “cargo” from Calgary to LA for my daughter who is going to college at the Art Institute and after I got the cargo off the shuttle onto the sidewalk, I loaded everything (except the artwork) onto a cart and headed to my rental car.