Awwww c'mon, give me a HUG!

I heard about Jack Mitchell several years ago when he wrote a book on customer service (Hug Your Customers, go get it!). This morning, he was a guest on the Today show and was talking about his latest project, "Hug Your People; The proven way to hire, inspire & recognize your employees and achieve remarkable results."

In this book, Jack gives us five steps to engage our employees, who will in turn engage our customers.

Nice - How you treat one another is the basis for how you will treat your customers. Make it a practice to know something about each of your employees, their likes or dislikes, so your interaction with them has a personal component.


Trust - Having faith in your employees is the most important component of building relationships. Again, first you practice it with your employees who will, in turn, carry it on to the customer.


Pride - Make your people an implicit part of your company mission statement and be sure
to give them the environment, the tools, and the education they need to do their jobs well.


Include - Reach out to your employees for input on business decisions or changes in areas
where they are particularly gifted or well-versed. Then take their suggestions into account when
making changes or starting new initiatives.


Recognize - Take the time to celebrate victories, big and small, by your staff and know
enough about them to know how they’d best like to be recognized -- whether called out at a staff
meeting, sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers or given tickets to a local show. Personalizing
rewards makes them really matter.

This is good stuff, gang. Read it, think about it, enact it. When your employees are proud to give 100%, you'll get even more than that back.