A few thoughts occurred to me while flying from Chicago to Philadelphia recently.

Some organizations (and size doesn’t matter here) do a great job with customer service but meeting their customers where they are and communicating with customers in the manner I which the customer chooses. A few examples of such organizations include: Habitat for Humanity; Enterasys Networks; American Airlines; KLove Radio, Starbucks, and Salesforce.com.

Of particular interest from that list, at least to me, is Salesforce.com and Enterasys Networks. Why, you might ask? Because both those organizations focus more on B2B interactions, where the final customer may not even realize that Salesforce.com or Enterasys is involved at all. They both provide a backbone for their customers, who I turn rely on the stability of that backbone (or platform, if you will,) to in turn, provide excellent service to their customers.

So why the focus on customer service? Because in some form or another, we all provide customer service. At my job, I am in a role where I support Sales Representatives and Management, but that doesn’t mean what I do on a daily basis has no impact on my company’s customers. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Without the work I do, our Sales Reps might not make the best decisions on how to conduct their business, which in turn affects how our company’s customers view our products. Without customers, wait, make that without satisfied customers, the company can not thrive and grow. I worked in the corporate accounting office for a major shoe retailer for a few years, and we had a saying, “If you did not sell a pair of shoes today, what did you do to help someone who did?”

That sums it up very nicely. Everyone in an organization, no matter what their role, does something that helps shape the final consumers view of the company and the products or services the company sells.

I think it was Sam Walton who once said, “There are two rules in business: Rule #1 – The customer is always right; and Rule #2 – When the customer happens to be wrong, see rule #1.”

We all know that in a perfect world, that works, and we also all know that our world is far from perfect. However, if we all strive for excellence and have as our goal to exceed our customers expectations, we will all be much better off.

Remember, everyone has a little awesome inside, you just need to let it show!