by Executive Pastor Mark Waltz
Excellent guest service—whether in a local church, community non-profit, retail business or service industry—is really the compilation of lived-out best practices. Those benchmark behaviors may be simple and common sense, but they are set as standards of practice by everyone in the organization.
Best practices can be produced in a board room.
- Respond to questions within 48 hours.
- Answer the phone before the fourth ring.
- Do what you do with excellence.
It can happen—best practices can come from the board room. But not most of them.
Most best practices come about in the moment. A one-time occurrence implemented by one team member that gets discovered and, because of its impact on communicating value, is repeated as a norm throughout the entire team. That’s what happened with our guest services four-point report.
A couple years ago our volunteer usher leaders began to email each other following each weekend of services. By Monday afternoon an email was circulating, celebrating highlights and asking questions about how to solve a challenge that had popped up. The email created conversation that birthed an ongoing best-practice-making machine. The Four-Point Email was born. It’s this simple:
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