Has it ever occurred to you that most of the customer service interactions you experience are not necessarily laced with poor performance, rude behavior, or excessive inaccuracies? 

Consumer research suggests that the main culprit behind poor customer service is simply indifference on the part of the service provider.  It is a service encounter that many customers would describe as "bland and uneventful."  I refer to this uninspired attempt at servicing customers as ho-hum hospitality.  Dictionary.com defines the adjective ho-hum as "dull, boring, or routine; so-so: a ho-hum performance."  Sound familiar?

What is the difference, in your mind, between a ho-hum performance and one that is outstanding?  To clarify this, think beyond hospitality to other instances when you might characterize something as "ho-hum."  Do you think of a movie or a play?  How about an event you just attended or a speaker you recently heard?

With that example in mind, what would have elevated it from ho-hum to exceptional?  Perhaps if the performance contained a bit more energy, enthusiasm, or was unique, unexpected, or exciting—then it may have been elevated to exceptional and memorable.  This same thinking applies to the delivery of customer service.

A customer's memories of a business originate in the actions of its employees. Positive employee actions produce positive customer memories.  Negative employee actions produce negative customer memories.  Neutral employee actions produce limited customer memories—and with that, limited satisfaction and incentive to return.

We've already established that the main cause of poor customer service is perceived indifference toward customers.  So the challenge to businesses is to consistently provide service that customers would describe as different, unique, and refreshing—in other words, unexpected and memorable!

Here's where many organizations make the mistake of developing slogans, scripts, and acronyms to guide the service behaviors and performance of their employees. Slogans like "the customer is king" or "the customer is always right" do little to provide the structure or guidelines necessary for guest-contact employees to excel in providing memorable customer service. 

Scripts don't work either.  I'm astounded by the lifeless compulsory greetings I receive at many retail establishments that mandate employees greet every customer as he or she enters the store.  Seriously, many times the employee violates every basic element of hospitality—smile, make eye-contact, and have "life" in your voice—in his mandate to greet every customer, every time.  And don't get me started on acronyms that spell S.M.I.L.E…

You cannot script authenticity or mandate an employee's level of engagement or interest in serving customers.  This is why companies who are recognized as consistently providing the best customer service (e.g., Nordstrom, Disney, Ritz-Carlton, etc.) rely heavily on scientific methods of selecting job applicants together with behavioral interviewing techniques that improve the odds of selecting applicants who best match the customer service priorities and values of the organization.

But what next?  You have hired a staff of customer service representatives who are now fully on-boarded and trained in the technical and soft skills required to be successful.  Even so, the customer satisfaction metrics that your organization tracks continue to show that more needs to be done.  What then?  Should you now resort to developing those slogans, scripts, and acronyms mentioned earlier?

The long-term solutions to this dilemma do not reside in superficial, short-term fixes. In order to be unique, refreshing, and memorable, service providers need to be different—but that doesn't mean they need to be someone they're not.  By definition, each one of us is incredibly singular in terms of our own uniqueness, tendencies, preferences, and personalities. Why not leverage this uniqueness with customers to break the monotony of ho-hum hospitality that most customers have come to expect as the norm?

There are many ways to accomplish this.  Here are just a few observations I have made recently as a customer:

1.) A Starbucks employee recently complimented a customer by saying, "I love your necklace!"  The customer smiled, picked up her beverage and said, "Oh my gosh—thank you!" in the most delighted tone.  It was only 8:00am and yet I believe the employee had made her day!

2.) Last week, I ordered a chicken sandwich at a Chick-fil-A drive thru.  When I reached the payment window, the employee offered me a complimentary milkshake to accompany my sandwich.  I was pleasantly surprised—and readily accepted!

3.) I recently saw a promotional sign holder at the corner of a busy intersection who was dancing, spinning, jumping, and waving at motorists, many of whom honked and waved as they passed.  I wonder how much more traffic this person generated for his employer as a result of his enthusiasm?

4.) A United Airlines flight attendant, while delivering the standard safety message, interjected personality and humor by saying, "In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling.  Place the mask over your nose and mouth.  If you are sitting next to a child, or someone acting like a child, please put your mask on first before assisting them with their mask."

These simple examples illustrate a variety of ways that frontline employees can make service memorable for customers: 1.) Offer a specific and sincere compliment; 2.) Provide a pleasant surprise; 3.) Convey authentic enthusiasm; 4.) Use appropriate humor.  And there are several other ways that employees can differentiate their unique brand of hospitality from ho-hum hospitality. 

For instance, employees can express genuine interest in serving customers by consistently smiling, making eye contact, and having "life" in their voices. Or they can share unique knowledge that goes beyond the ordinary job knowledge that one would expect from an employee.  Employees can also make it memorable by going above and beyond the call of duty to rectify a problem or fulfill a need of the customer.  This might be referred to as delivering service heroics!

The beauty of these simple strategies is that they cost nothing (or very little) to execute and yet make a tremendous impact on the customer experience.  So many service providers offer only the bare minimum in customer service.  Companies who make it a point to hire the right people to serve their customers, hold supervisors and managers accountable to model the desired behaviors, and encourage employees to use their creativity and uniqueness to make customer service memorable, can enjoy a very real competitive advantage—and avoid the ho-hum hospitality that plagues the service industry.

Steve Curtin is a customer service, training, and public speaking enthusiast based in Denver, CO.  www.stevecurtin.com