Customer Service Made Easy

There is a mystery around customer service. Most consumers think that customer service has gone downhill. Most businesspeople think that their customer service is good. How can this be possible?

If you can solve this puzzle then you are well on your way to delivering great customer service.

Here it is in a nutshell: great customer service exceeds expectations, good customer service meets expectations and poor customer service falls short of expectations. When customers complain you probably bend over backwards for them. In your mind you’ve gone the extra mile and delivered great service, but in their mind, chances are good the service was poor. Sometimes you recover nicely and the customers rate you well based on the second chance. Overall this explains the mystery around the opinion gap that exists in the world today.

Understanding this is important because it provides some insight into concrete improvements that you can work on to develop a competitive advantage. The most important piece is effectively setting expectations.

Imagine going into a nice restaurant and after a server passes you by a few times you stop them and ask for a cup of coffee. They tell you to go over and stand in the line, when you get to the front, tell the barista exactly what you want, pay for it, then stand over there and wait for it and if you are really lucky your seat will still be here when you get back. They finish by smiling and saying “Have a nice day”. You probably wouldn’t be happy because it’s not what you expected, but Starbucks has built a huge company delivering exactly that service. They charge more too!

Here is another example. A sign company owner that I spoke to recently said that they their customers that their sign will be ready a day after it should be completed. Then when they call a day before it’s expected and say that it’s finished, it is great service.

The reverse would also be true. If you tell them that it will be ready on Wednesday and it’s not done until Thursday then you’ve delivered poor service. If you told them Friday it’s great service. The only thing that changes is the expectation that you set. In both cases the sign is ready on Thursday.

If a customer really does need the sign on Wednesday and you have this policy in place then it should be fairly easy for you to adjust production and deliver for them.

Too many businesses put their backs to the wall by they way they set expectations.

There are many ways to exceed customer’s expectations and delivery great service that customers will talk about. Think about Sleep Country and its “booties”. I think that it is great that their delivery people put “booties” over their shoes when they deliver the mattresses to your house. They picked up on this up by reading their customer feedback forms and then started to advertise it.

I’m not sure that that was the smartest thing to do because now people expect it and it becomes only good service. I don’t know about you, but I won’t base my next mattress purchasing decision on the “booties”. I’m sure that other factors, like price and quality will be more important.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t know what your “booties” are. They are little things that don’t cost much; however, they really impress your customers.

An auto repair company noticed that their favorable compliments started falling off when they stopped wiping customer’s dashboards clean after servicing the vehicles. A clean dash is their “bootie”. Good “booties” are valuable.

I think that it would be counter productive to advertise that they clean dashboards. Customers really like to feel that they are getting a little bit extra and if you advertise it the extra becomes expected.

Good customer service is hard because it involves setting expectations accurately and delivering. Excellent customer service is easy when you know your “booties”.

Here is a good idea for excellent customer service: act like you are happy to see them. Lets be honest, how many times are people actually happy to see you? The world is not all that much different for your customers. If you are happy to see them you are already exceeding what they expect from the world.

If they are having problems act like you want to solve them. Give your staff the authority to do it as well. If the customers’ expectations are reasonable then you should take care of them. If they are unreasonable then you might not have made the expectations clear up front.

Another good idea is to regularly pull your team together and discuss what expectations you are prepared to meet, what their delivery challenges are and brainstorm for “booties”.



Customer Service Made Easy - To learn more about this author, visit John Cameron's Website.

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