Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Elevate Your Customer Service With Random Acts of Kindness

For the past week I have put my business books on the shelf in favor of books about kindness: Random Acts of Kindness: How to Make it a Better World (by editors of Canari Press), Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness (by Houston Kraft), and Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community (co-authored by Lady Gaga).

By now you must be wondering if I’ve gone gaga myself or turned into what one political party calls members of the other party when they really want to insult them: “A do-gooder.” I’ve never quite understood how that was an insult but I like to consider myself a proud do-gooder.

That’s not the reason I am reading these books right now. It’s because our church’s stewardship campaign this year is based on random acts of kindness and, as head of the finance committee, it is my job to learn as much about kindness as I can.

I found these books to be full of acts of kindness as witnessed by real people. These acts run the gambit from paying for the next person’s coffee at the Dunkin’ drive-through to donating a kidney, mowing an old woman’s lawn, leaving a hundred-dollar tip for a cup of coffee, and even buying someone a house. It’s all pretty inspiring stuff and reading these books about how people are helping people sure does make one think.

But, as I always do with everything I read, I started applying some of these acts of kindness to business. I started thinking about what it would mean to businesses if more of us performed acts of kindness in our business life.

Then it came to me in a flash: Great customer service is caring about the customer enough to be kind to them and perform random acts of kindness. This entails finding ways to be kind.

If there is one thing these kindness books have shown me, it is that people who perform kindness are empathetic, creative, and most importantly, opportunistic. They look for ways to be kind, for creative ways to help people. They are “actors” in the true sense of the word because they don’t think about doing something for days before they do it; they act on the impulse to help people.

Now, what if we were all so inclined and practiced in the art of helping people? Think about the great service we could offer. Not just those folks in customer service, but for everyone in a company.

Consider this:

• What if your salespeople were always looking for ways to help their customers? Not just the basic service that every good salesperson performs to get business, but it went beyond business to caring for their customers to the point of looking for ways to help them.
• What if your engineers were always looking for extraordinary ways to build your customer’s products? What if through acts of kindness they found ways to make their product better and better?
• What if your quality team sought ways to help your customers with kindness? What if they spent time with the customers in an honest and heartfelt effort to give them quality that went far beyond the basic specifications?
• What if your management team found ways to not only manage their teams but also ways to help them do their jobs better? What if they took an honest, heartfelt interest in the well-being of their employees, making sure they are always taken care of? Making sure that they had everything they needed to do a great job.
• What if your entire company culture was based on random acts of kindness? What if everyone in the company was always looking for ways to not only help your customers but more importantly one another as well?

Being kind and having a mindset that is based on helping others is the ultimate form of great customer service. Having people who want to help others in any way they can is the quality we are all looking for in our vendors and suppliers.

Think about how good you feel as a customer when someone you are buying something from treats you with kindness. Think about how good you feel when you know that your supplier is looking out for you, that she cares about you and wants to give you the very best products and services she can. It feels great, doesn’t it?

It feels so good, and you are so grateful that it leads you to tell others about what a great supplier you have. Not only that, you want to buy from them over and over again, just to get that great feeling back.

In the end, acts of intentional kindness will lead to an exceptional customer experience, which will drive your company to market leadership.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.