I flew home to visit family last week and experienced some unusually pleasant customer service from the airline that is striving to “Keep Climbing.” An airline that I had once previously had a very negative experience with — they wrongly accused my 7 year old of stealing a toothbrush kit (no joke) and gave my grandma a hard time for bringing her medical supplies on the plane — turned my perception around after just a 4 hour flight and less than 5 minutes of total human interaction.

It got me thinking – Even just a little NICE goes a long way.

Unfortunately “NICE” sometimes gets a bad rap. I have heard it be associated with words like pushover and indecisive and sucker. There is the old saying, nice guys finish last and there are even books that encourage the opposite of nice because “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner office.”

That advice was for a different time.

If we had more nice in business, we would all be better off.

In fact, there is some recent research to support my claim…

A study by the Wharton School of Business reveals that companies like Whole Foods, Southwest, and Costco that receive raves reviews by there clients, employees, and suppliers perform 630% better than the S&P 500.

Not only do companies perform better when they take a more positive approach, but according to research by Gallup we get more done as individuals.

90% of people are more productive when they are surrounded by positive people.

I don’t know about you, but I love it when I uncover strategies for boosting my productivity…

Goodbye snarky, drive by comments that make people feel like crap, hellllllo NICE. 🙂

If you are at this point saying to yourself, “oh crap, I have to be nice? But I like to swear like a sailor… Now what?”

NICE doesn’t mean you sacrifice a get-it-done attitude or sass.

Keep the bits that make you, you. That set you apart. That is non-negotiable.

Take Ashley Ambridge over at The Middle Finger Project. Her business brand is all about giving people the bird, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t nice.

Evidence of Ash’s nice factor here:

And here:

Sure she swears more than my husband and a room full of his army buddies, but she know her stuff, she cares, she gives back, and she goes beyond.

What do you say? Ready to take it up a notch and get back to nice in your business?

Jamie DuBose, the founder and owner of Zenplicity, a premier virtual assistant agency is on board. She has a goal to deliver something her team calls the “WOW FACTOR” in everything they do.

Jamie and her team regularly talk about ways to up their game and WOW their clients. Jamie is building a strategy on how she can WOW her team members. And it isn’t just talk — She is going to measure WOW FACTOR success by checking the pulse of her clients every six months by simply asking them “Does Zenplicity WOW you?”

Even Sir Richard Branson agrees that it is the better way to go (and he has an amazing empire to prove it works).

Are you in?

How will you increase the NICE FACTOR in your business?

Tell us in the comments — I wanna know!

After you comment share this fun infogram I spent way too many hours working on. 🙂