Make Your Customer Number Two

(Note: Michael D. Brown is a speaker, management consultant, and the author of Fresh Customer Service. Clients have included small, mid-sized, and Fortune 500 companies, including Marriott, U.S. Army, Wendy’s, Omni Hotels, Houston Rockets, Capital One, Wells Fargo, Amoco Oil, ARCO Oil, Murphy Oil USA—The Wal-Mart Project, British Petroleum, and a number of colleges and universities. . He has been featured in such media outlets as Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Black Enterprise, and BusinessWeek.com.)

“Make the customer number one.” Customer service experts have been chanting variations of this mantra since one caveman paid another caveman three clamshells for the skin of a sabertooth tiger. Okay, as far as we know cavemen didn’t chant mantras, but you get my point. The vast majority of customer service strategies use the idea of making your customer your top priority as their cornerstone.