Have you heard the term “going the extra mile”?

If you’re in business or have ever taken a customer service training, you most likely have heard the term.

What does “going the extra mile” have to do with implementing ideas?

Ideas are about more than new products or services or big things.

You have ideas about every-day things like an idea for a way to improve something you use or an idea for how something can be done more effectively.

That’s where this message comes in.

How many times do you encounter a business operation where you think of ideas that could help that business be more-effective for you as their customer?

How many experiences have you had where you wish a business would “wow” you instead of just meet the status quo?

Now turn those questions inward to your own business and think of how your own clients might answer about YOU.

Here’s a story of something that happened to me recently at my bank, for example.

I use my business bank’s drive-up window fairly often.

This particular day I had both a deposit to make, and I needed some cash back from the deposit. I forgot to fill out a deposit slip before driving over so I spoke into the remote microphone that I needed a deposit slip.

You know those air-pressure delivery systems where the container travels through a tube from the teller to the drive-up window? Well, the teller sent a blank deposit slip to me in one of those containers.

Guess what he didn’t include in the container? A pen!

So I asked for a pen and had to send the container back so he could send me a pen.

With the appropriate tools, I filled out the deposit slip and sent the checks I had to deposit.

After a few minutes, the teller sent my cash back in the container.

Guess how he sent it? Loose coins and dollar bills!

What would it have taken for him to put everything in one of those bank envelopes, instead?

Now, I realize this story may seem a bit like griping at nitty things. Yet think about it…I had a couple of ideas that I later told to the branch manager when I did a lobby transaction in-person. He thanked me and agreed to convey my ideas to his tellers so that future clients perceive that the bank “goes the extra mile” at the drive-up booth.

And the next time I made a drive-up transaction, the teller did, in fact, go the extra mile.

Ideas for better service are ideas to be implemented in your business.

They can mean as much for client loyalty to you like ideas for new products or services they can purchase.

Encourage those service ideas – as many as possible – and implement as many as are feasible for your business.

I can help you identify, and work through how to implement ideas for your business. When you transform those ideas to action you’ll show your clients and potential customers that YOU go the extra mile.