I once attended a presentation that Eli Goldratt gave for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

The diner scene from the 1970 movie Five Easy Pieces appeared in many customer service training classes. Do you recall Bobby Dupea (played by Jack Nicholson) trying to order a plain omelet with a side order of wheat toast?

I find that most CEOs and top management believe their organization delivers awesome customer service. But if you asked all 330 million people in the U.S. to identify five customer service leaders, most would not be able to come up with them.

When you think of good customer service—particularly the barriers to it—two factors generally come to mind: timing and wording.

I hate the use of the word just in front of anyone’s title, as in, “He’s just an analyst,” or, “She’s just a cafeteria worker,” or, “I’m just an administrative assistant.”

Are your employees empowered to make decisions on the spot in favor of the customer? Your single goal should be to have overly happy customers. Too many things go wrong each day. You want your employees to understand they are in customer service, and their No.

Reading the news (or even your email) can be distressing to the point of despondency. It can also be fun.

In food processing, bulk-bag discharge systems are used to transfer food ingredients such as flour, sugar, and spices from bulk bags to mixing and blending equipment.

The WAB-GROUP is where innovation and tradition come together to provide customers with world-class solutions in the areas of wet grinding technology, three-dimensional-shaking mixing technology, and flow chemistry.

‘T ake out the papers and the trash.” That was the opening line of the song “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters. It spent weeks as the No. 1 hit in 1958. Teenagers everywhere wore out their shoes dancing to the hot song.