This Valentine’s day, consider providing great customer service. Anyone who has ever worked in a job-job has the basic concepts of customer service down.

When we encounter a customer or a boss we apply these rules and techniques. We always try to exceed expectations, we deliver our best selves, we actively listen and carefully respond. That’s all up-line stuff, customers and bosses. But what about your down-line?

In the working world, we’ve all been through it. We all know about the 7 habits of highly effective people, we’ve been through team building and sensitivity training. But again, I ask, what about your down-line?

It came as a bit of a shock to me the other day that I wasn’t applying the basic principals of customer service to my down-line. While I am all joy and light to the boss, I am less than attentive and kind to some in my DL. In fact, if I consider them in my down-line I have already pigeon holed them into a subservient role.

Because I am the training guy, I was recently reviewing a bunch of materials on customer service. It reinforced what I had studied over the last many years and it put me in a customer service frame of mind. In this mind-set I encountered someone in my downline and gave them really great customer service. I listened, I acknowledged, I understood, I related. This made me reflect on my communication style. You can’t have one style going up and another going down. There is no down or up.

Why is this my Valentine’s message? Because that person in my DL wasn’t a co-worker. They were someone very close to me.

Happy Valentine’s Miss Chicapee.