Elnian Gilbert

The article below was originally published in Lawn & Garden Retailer in 2017, as a collaboration between former ZingTrain Community Builder, Gauri Thergaonkar, and myself.  I vividly remember sitting at a table in our lobby area, discussing all of the fine points of the 10-4 Rule - what would be the most useful to our audience and hotly debating what to include (and ultimately leave out, though it was a hard call to keep anything back!)  We had a lot of fun writing it, and I’m proud of what we created together. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve shared this article with folks in training, and now we’re sharing it with you!

Over the years that I’ve been a Trainer and Speaker with ZingTrain, sharing how Zingerman’s builds a culture of great service, I’m sure you can imagine how my awareness of the way that different companies deliver customer service has only increased.  Of course, there’s a wide range out there - I personally try to patronize businesses that prioritize service and give constructive feedback when my expectations aren’t met.  And thankfully, the clients we get to work with at ZingTrain are typically high performers when it comes to customer service and don’t fall into these customer service traps.

Before I get too far into this blog post about how to write a vision, it feels appropriate to share a vision of what success looks like for this blog post.  Here goes:

In the Servant Leadership workshops we teach, we often lead in to the content we’ve adapted from Robert Greenleaf by asking the group:

"You can say ‘no’ to customers!”  feels like an outrageous thing to advocate, especially when your organization is known for delivering great customer service...

One of the most common questions we get asked as trainers is: