When it comes to getting your car washed these days there are more choices than you can shake a sponge or water hose at. I can remember as a kid growing up in a small town that if you wanted your car washed you had to do it yourself.

I have always taken great pride in how I washed my car and great satisfaction admiring the final result. However, having a family and career now, there are plenty of other things to keep me busy. As a result, I can’t find the time to do it myself so I have to rely on others.

I have been to a number of car washes throughout the city, and for the most part they do a fine job. But there’s a chain car wash in town called Eager Beaver that takes it to the next level. Though it’s a chain car wash, the management and employees treat it as their own.

 I have wanted to get pavers installed around the pool area of our home pretty much since the day my husband and I moved in some 15 years ago, but I was somewhat hesitant about it after speaking with several people who had pavers installed that weren’t happy about either the process or the result.

Still, the time had come for us to replace what we had around the pool and we decided to look into pavers. We were very careful about who we selected to do the job for us. After researching several companies, we narrowed the list down to two firms.

You may be familiar with the famous quote from the classic film, Old School: “Pretty nice little Saturday. We’re going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed Bath & Beyond. I don’t know, I don’t know if we’ll have enough time.”

My wife loves Saturdays filled with walking around Bed Bath & Beyond. She is always looking for that one thing we are supposedly missing. Most of the time she doesn’t buy anything, but when she does, we walk out with half the store… with the help of a great customer experience.

Naked service providers and consultants will give away their best ideas and start consulting to the prospective client during a sales call. In fact, they’ll do no real selling at all, forgoing that activity in order to find a way to help a client even if they never actually become one.

–Patrick Lencioni, “Getting Naked”

It seems in recent years whenever you read an anecdote about business, examples are given in terms of sports, e.g., Vince Lombardi’s thoughts on the“Will to Win,” The Red Sox inspiring comeback in 2004, or how an athlete overcame extreme obstacles and hardship to become extraordinary.

This blog post is not about any of that.  This is a true story about a couple of personal trainers who care about healthy lifestyles and introducing everyone to the world of triathlons one person at a time. In the process, they create so much value, they do not need to ask for the sale.

One-and-a-half years ago in an effort to get our company healthy, LexJet hired two personal trainers (Eric Kahl and Jackie Miller of etricoach) to start a two-month Boot Camp (one of those one-hour, early morning workout sessions where they take you to the edge of exhaustion twice a week). The plan was to run the Boot Camp for two months, and the company would pick up the cost for anyone who signed up and completed the course.  If you did not complete the course you would be charged $150.  A year-and-a-half later many members of the LexJet team have completed the course seven times over.

Customer service is more than just a clever slogan or a marketing campaign. It’s the personal interaction between a company and a customer. The key to fantastic customer service is going above and beyond for every customer. As all parents like to do from time to time, we are going to live vicariously through my eight year old daughter for this week’s outstanding customer experience.

The situation…

My 8 year old daughter learned during her last trip to the dentist that it was necessary to visit an orthodontist.  The fear sets in and the questions begin.  Will it hurt?  How will I eat?  What will I eat?  How long will it take?  Why did daddy wear braces and his teeth are still not perfect?

The first visit to the orthodontist…

The initial entrance to the office gave us and our daughters a positive feeling.  A TV with kids shows, a game room, complimentary bottled water and floor to ceiling windows with views to the perfectly designed garden, bird feeders and local wildlife wandering the grounds.  Reflecting on my first visit to the orthodontist, this is far from what I had expected.