Bliss - Would You Do That to Your Mother?: the New Standard for How to Treat Your Customers

Our childhood. Moms lessons. And our business life.

They share freely. They have our back. They are there, in good times and bad. They always have our best interest in mind. They are brave.

This describes our moms.

It also describes companies that follow her lead in how they grow their businesses.

The lessons we learned as kids stick with us. And often they have our moms face all over them. Her guidance, her rules, and her sayings are still in our heads. You probably grew up that way too, with a simple, clear understanding of what to do and what not to do.

We were taught to share, trust each other, play nice in the sandbox, and treat others like wed want to be treated. Those lessons remain some of the best advice weve ever been given.

They also remain some of our most sound advice for how to behave in business.

Companies that Make Mom Proud grow by living those lessons. They remove practices that might curb the extension of care, or limit employees to act in good conscience. They work to remove boundaries and pressures that prohibit customer-driven decision making. Their actions honor the human at the end of their decisions, establish a balanced relationship with customers and partners, and put employees in positions to act at work like theyd act at home. Like they were raised.

I grew up Italian, the third of seven kids. We lived a loud and crazy life. But we had a set of behaviors that guided us, which we learned by watching our parents. Their actions, more than words, showed us the path to follow. And their character was on display in how they acted.

The women in my life were particularly animated. My mom, Lydia, would sew until all hours of the night, fashioning custom-made Halloween costumes for each of us, and teeny tiny Barbie doll dresses for my sisters and me. My dads mom, Ermalinda, rarely sat down for a meal she had prepared. Hovering around the perimeter of the table, she would carry large plates of food, spooning it onto our plates whether we wanted it or not, exclaiming Mangia! Mangia! (Eat! Eat!).

And my moms mom, Virginia, would roll out dough every Christmas to make homemade ravioli. Never satisfied unless they were perfect for us, she would throw out mounds of dough she had rolled out but deemed imperfect, even when it meant putting in hours to begin again. Neither grandma let us leave their homes without handing each of us a bag of groceries, scooping whatever food they had in their pantry for us to take home. They were selfless. They were nourishing. They were perfectionists. They thought of us first.

These are the behaviors that have become the standard for me, and for most of us, for how to act in our lives. We strive to apply the lessons we learned as kids to the way we behave at work. As both employees and customers, we gravitate to companies that create environments to encourage and celebrate these behaviors. These are the make-mom-proud companies we celebrate and learn from in this little book.

As we learn about their paths, its important to note that each of the make-mom-proud companies did not achieve this state overnight. It took one action, then another, and then another to give people permission and examples to model. Thats why, in this book, we offer a simple way to help prompt these actions: a lens to guide your company decisions, by thinking of one person in particular at the end of each of themyour mom.

Imagine Mom as your customer.

Within this book, Im ever so gently delivering a bit of tough love wrapped in velvet to ask you to think about what you do and how you do itfrom the perspective of your mother.

I encourage you to ask yourself when you act, speak, respond, or decide, What would Mom have to say about this? Would we do this thing we are contemplating, to her?

So take a minute. Picture your mom. Whats she doing? Picture her picking up the phone to call an 800 number. Then picture her waiting. Picture the frustration of the wait and then her joy as someone connects. And then picture her face as shes asked to repeat all the numbers and facts that she punched in before waiting on hold. Picture her life at the auto dealership. Or walking into a retail store. Picture her nervously waiting for a doctors appointment. Picture her trying to figure out how to program her phone.

Of course, its not that simple. Its not the asking of the question Would we do that to our mother? that elevates behavior and companies. Conditions must be right for the asking. Leaders must encourage and establish a safe environment where asking that question is celebrated and rewarded. People must be encouraged and enabled to actby imagining someone they love at the end of decisions.

When asking this question is genuinely enabled, it can benefit every part of your organization. For individuals on the front line, this Mom lens can help recalibrate personal responses with customers. Inside the organization and with teams, it prompts collaboration to improve experiences. For leaders, it can be a litmus test to determine actions that the company will, or will not, take to grow.