Excellent customer service drives sales and profits. Good customer service starts with how you treat your associates. If you behave like an angry bear—do not bother reading further. You need help that is not in my scope of services. The starting questions are these: • Does my team feel like they have contributed to the company’s success when they head home after work?• Do they believe that the leadership recognizes their efforts?• Do they see the leadership team working to make their work easier?I could go on, but you get the picture. When Sam Walton was leading Walmart, he regularly coached the associates in the home office to “take care of the people in the stores and they will take care of the customers.” Make it easier for the store associates to do their tasks and praise them for work well done. A challenge for any company, particularly fast-growing ones, is to keep the processes and systems abreast of what is needed to service the customer well. What was working yesterday may not be working today. A question: How often does leadership have to intervene to solve what should be routine issues?For leadership to do this they need to work on their business and not in their business. This requires engaging customers and associates, and listening, thinking, anticipating, creating, and executing. A simple test: Are you reacting or proacting?Good customer experiences are a result of operational excellence — and so, too, are businesses' growth in revenue and profit margins. I help businesses re-envision, refocus, and realign to get back on track toward growth and success. Effective processes are important, and investments in technology are critical to helping businesses scale. But to be effective, your processes and technology must work in concert with the ultimate goals you have for your business. I help growing companies strike a balance between positive customer experiences and effective processes, controls, and technology.For more than 30 years I have worked with businesses that have from $1M to $1B+ in annual sales, including Amazon, Disney Stores, IBM, Lowes, and Walmart. My approach is always based on a single core tenet: first be effective, then be efficient. I listen and learn about their mission, approach, and customers, and then I help them develop effective and efficient processes and systems that support the overarching mission.