Devoted to customer service and the principles of exceptional customer services

As I take this day off to celebrate my birthday, you'll be reading a couple a guest posts today!  This first article is by Donna Cutting of The Celebrity Experience. I've blogged about Donna before and I'm grateful that she is contributing some of her wisdom here...

Fall In Love With Your Job Again!

High Point University in High Point, North Carolina: While extraordinary education is their primary focus, HPU differentiates itself with the service they give their students. From personalized parking spaces for prospective students and guests, to valet parking, free car washes on Fridays, and complimentary hot cocoa in the winter and ice cream in the summer, HPU offers a level of service that can't be beat! In fact, I was there last week for a preview fair for prospective students. Many of the young guests and their parents exclaimed to me, "We've only been here 10 minutes, and already we've been blown away by our experience." It's no surprise that freshman enrollment has gone up 150% in three years time, they have 600 more deposits for their freshman class in 2008 than they had in 2006, and student retention is higher than ever. Roger Clodfelter, Director of WOW!, whose job description includes hand-delivering birthday cards to students daily, told me, "what I love about my job is that it's an experiment. The only challenge? How do we top ourselves?"

The Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center: Their team was falling all over themselves telling me about how much they love working for the Gaylord! When Colin Reed became CEO of Gaylord Entertainment and Arthur Keith took over as General Manager of the Gaylord Opryland, they noticed that something was amiss. In Keith's words, "We had been putting our product first, our customer service second, and our people somewhere after that." Reed and Keith flipped that around and started putting their people first. As a result, customer service scores have soared and their hotel is at least 80% full at all times - a feat almost unheard of in the hotel business.

Buy Donna Cutting's book: The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service