Chick-fil-a A Customer Service Icon

I consistently stand amazed at the customer service offered by Chick-fil-a. Is it any wonder the company gets more revenue per restaurant than any other food chain in the U.S., and it's only open 6 days a week! Just this morning I stopped in for a quick breakfast. Aside from hearing "It's my pleasure" every single time I said "Thank You"; as I walked to empty my tray a young lady with a rather large smile came up to me and said, "Let me do that for you." She took my tray and emptied it for me! My reaction naturally was, "Thank you!" Her response, "It's my pleasure. Have a great day!"

Having been in the customer service business for a number of years (retail sales, pastoring, and pitching Jesus out there), it always fires me up when I receive the special treatment! The truth is however, at most any Chick-fil-a restaurant, everyone gets the special treatment! The result is the success of the organization.

It amazes me how some folks get this and some don't. Listen carefully to this: The essence of great customer service is...great service! Everyone loves to be effectively served, if only for a short time. Great service makes people feel special. When people feel special, they come back for more! This is such a very simple concept. If you're like me (and most are), you don't want to go back to a place where you're nothing more than another number; and you seem to ruin someone's day for coming in. Here's another way of putting it. Folks flock back to a great experience, even if they have to pay a bit more. And just as many avoid places where their experience has been mediocre to just plain bad.

Connie and I attend a great church, St. Simons Community Church. It is a rather large church, and it is quite obvious the church is reaching many folks and impacting their lives. The truth is however, the church impacts nearly as many folks outside the church as those who attend weekly services. How's that happening? Through the practice of offering effective Scriptural service to its members and the local community. God blesses this. At the end of my post I want to show you how ALL effective service is Scripturally based.

Many church leaders wonder why their church hardly grows over time and others grow rapidly. The answer is simple. Some understand what Chick-fil-a understands. It is serving people where the rubber meets the road...and impacting their lives. Again, God blesses this.

The greatest example of incredible service was that of Jesus. He IS the greatest servant of all. Jesus laid aside His kingly privileges, He emptied Himself, became a bond-servant first to God, and humbled Himself into humanity, even to the point of dying for you and me on the cross.

Many churches practice the insanity concept: Doing the same thing - over and over - expecting different results. We call it beating a dead horse! There is only one result - death! If you want to impact people, you must learn to meet folks where they are. This means serving and meeting practical needs as well as spiritual needs. Jesus understood this as He spent 3 1/2 years training His disciples how to strike a balance between the two.

I'm reminded of the incident in the Bible in which Jesus fed 5,000 men. There were actually many more as He also included the women and children in this miracle. Jesus was not only concerned with the their spiritual needs, he was equally concerned with their physical needs. This event developed because Jesus withdrew with His disciples after learning of John the Baptist's beheading. They were looking for a bit of seclusion. Such a great number of people followed them however, that a very large crowd formed. Out of compassion Jesus was concerned that the people would faint from not eating for a long period of time. The desire to meet a physical need resulted in an incredible miracle taking place. Approximately 20,000 people were fed from 5 loaves of bread and a couple of fish! There the drive to meet a practical need produced the supernatural intervention of God's hand!

As promised I want to close with a passage of Scripture that illustrates the Scriptural foundation of excellent serving of one another. Out of the natural the supernatural occurs, impacting lives eternally.

(Philippians 2:1-8), "Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, 2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."