Excellence: The Challenge is Consistency Not Repetition #CX #Leadership

The challenge of excellence is consistency. One of the biggest One of the biggest risks to excellence is habit and repetition.



Excellence: Image is Good Better Best Excellence

The challenge of excellence is consistency not repetition.

Image licensed from Istockphoto.com.


What is Excellence?

Excellence is not a repetitious reproduction of what you did last time.  To be consistently great — to create excellence each time – you must start with a fresh attitude and adapt to customers each time.  As a result you have the chance to deliver a better result each time.

Excellence unleashes energy, innovation, and commitment. Repetition in customer service creates assumptions, bad listening, boredom, and a contrived result that fails.  The key lesson is to never confuse repetition for consistency.  In the workplace the implications are far and wide.

Leadership Implications.

What message are you sending to your organization? What attitude are you projecting? Ask your teams, “How do we produce excellent results?” If the answers focus primarily on executing a fixed plan, they may believe that excellence is achieved through repetition. The goal is to be consistently great not repetitiously stuck in one approach.

Sales Implications.

Great sales professionals know from experience that a rote repetitious script rarely seals the deal. Assumptions — even with a customer you know well — can lose you the deal as well as the customer relationship. Use the current knowledge about the customer and sharp listening to create appropriate questions, ongoing learning, customized solutions, and an excellent sale each time.

Customer Service Experience Implications

As with sales, customer service and customer care take a fatal turn for the worst when delivered with bad listening and robotic actions. Customers want and respond well to care that seems truly focused on their needs. Consistently great service requires customer service reps to initiate listening and caring on each interaction from the moment they start work until they go home. A fresh new positive attitude with each chat consistently delivers excellent service.

Daily Inspiration for Excellence

For inspiration, think of live performers like musicians, dancers, and athletes. Consider stage actors. They must deliver the same lines every night. If they reproduce those lines the same way each night, they will fall short of an excellent performance. It will seem contrived. Instead, they must create a new excellent performance each night.

Here are several ways. Add your ideas to this list!!

  1. Before each meeting or interaction, think “Another opening, another show”.

  2. Ask “What has changed and how can we still deliver excellence?”

  3. Use knowledge, data, listening, and communication to take informed risks.

  4. Learn with each fresh new start. (The safety of repetition is an illusion.)



Listen to Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, as she delivers real life examples!






From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

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4 Responses to “Excellence: The Challenge is Consistency Not Repetition #CX #Leadership”

  1. Ellen Weber says:

    Great post Kate, I am especially struck with your #4 – “Learn with each fresh new start. The safety of repetition is an illusion.”

    Research show the brainpower emitted through novelty, and ruts or rigidity can shrink the human brain. Right on! Thanks for modeling the excellence you appeal to here, Kate! We need more of this!

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Hi Ellen,
      Thanks for adding the info about the research. It strengthens the case for stepping outside of your current perspective and using a fresh start. I welcome the comments especially when they deepen the discussion.

      Your blog posts always stretch my awareness and I am so happy you have shared your thoughts here as well.

      Warmest wishes,
      Kate

  2. Alli Polin says:

    I’m with you, Kate. There’s so much written about habits but that’s not the same as repetition. When I worked in an organization, repetition usually led to boredom. Once boredom hits, people check out. Even for my front line teams, we tried to mix things up to help them grow their skills and keep things fresh. Big, huge, right on!! from me.

    Thanks, Kate!

    Alli

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Love your phrase “grow their skills” Alli. The employees and the customers and the org. benefit when the relationships and interactions are dynamic, fresh, and excellent!

      Many thanks,
      Kate

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