If I told you that you were one of my best customers, and as such, I was going to reward you, you’d be happy, right? Then what if I told you that your reward was that I was going to treat you one level above crap. That’s right. To thank you for being a good customer, I was going to treat you one level above crap – or, one level better than how I treat the rest of my customers.

You’d be a little surprised, to say the least, no?

But that’s what happens almost every day in the “real world” of customer service. See, we expect to be treated like crap. We expect the worst customer service in every interaction we have. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it, it’s simply what we’ve become as a society. Flight delay? Expected. Milk instead of the half and half you asked for? Expected. No cheese on your specifically requested cheeseburger? Expected.

See, customer service in this world has become so bad, that we expect to be treated like crap. So, when we’re treated one level above crap (doesn’t even have to be good!) we’re amazed!

Imagine your flight is canceled for no reason, and before you can even react, you get an email notifying you that you’ve been rebooked on a flight leaving one hour later. You’d be thrilled! You wouldn’t even care that you were originally treated like crap (flight you paid for canceled for no reason) because they then treated you one level above crap, and didn’t make you wait in line for three hours to rebook and sleep on a cold airport floor. Instead, the airline was proactive. All of a sudden, you getting home an hour later than you’d planned is the greatest thing in the world, because you expected to get home the next day.

Bet you’d post on Facebook how happy you were that the airline rebooked you, huh?

There’s the irony – You’re happy that the airline took care of you after doing something wrong against you in the first place.

That’s what customer service has become in today’s world: The customer getting excited because the screw-up “wasn’t that terrible.”

What happened to the customer getting excited because the company went out of its way to make their experience magical?

Well – That’s ten levels above crap. That’s where we come in. Call us, and we’ll teach you how to do that. And the best part? Being ten levels above crap (or, as we call it, “awesome",) doesn’t cost you a fortune, and can actually increase your bottom line by 20, 30, even 40 percent.

Welcome to the blog of Shankman|Honig. Stick around. It’s going to be a fun ride, and we’re glad you’re here.

Peter and Rachel