Customer service shouldn’t be about a department. It should be the entire company.

-Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, speaking at the Inc 500 Conference, October 2010

Tony Hsieh, who wrote the bestselling book Delivering Happiness, is on to something. Customer service has to be an organizational ethos. By making it part of the company DNA, customer service will be reflected in everything the company does. If the company thinks and breathes customer service, it will have first-class customer service, it will be acknowledging that customers make the company.

It seems that American Express agrees with Hsieh. AMEX offers ten tips to improve customer service in this blog post by Brendan B. Read on TMCnet.com.  The first tip is:

1.         Make service your business by putting the customer experience at the heart of everything you do

The rest of the tips are equally good. We’ve discussed some of these before here, but it is worthwhile to read each of them, so we post them here:

2.         Great service starts with the people who deliver it – motivate and enable your employees to go above and beyond for your customers

3.         Let your customers measure your performance. Let them tell you what a great experience is. Their feedback is the most important measure for an organization

4.         Look at service from the customers’ perspective and ensure they have the best service experience possible. Recognize that great service doesn’t come down to what a company thinks about its performance internally, but instead is all about what the customer thinks after every interaction

5.         Do not think about service as an expense, but as a business driver.

6.         Look at customer service as an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your customers, not as a transaction

7.         Reward customer service employees based directly on customer feedback and behavior. For example: is that customer ready to recommend your business to a friend or colleague?

8.         Hire the will and teach the skill – recruit employees who are passionate about great service and fundamentally understand the service mindset – then you can teach the skills

9.         Get feedback from your customer service employees – they are closest to your customers and understand the most about what customers want and need. Don’t miss out on this incredibly valuable insight

10.       Learn from the best. Don’t just look within your industry – look at direct competitors and across different industries for examples of best-in-class service delivery and innovation

Make customer service an organizational priority or better yet make your organization be entirely about customer service.