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10 Practices of Exceptional Service Part 1
by Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE
President
Sanborn & Associates
My research of and work with the very best service providers demonstrates that they all do a lot of things right. However, I’ve found that there are at least 10 practices that they have in common. They are the following:
1. Eliminate Irritants
Customer service is as much what you don’t do to customers as it is what you do for them. For example, in most hotels today, it is not uncommon for a local phone call or an 800-number call to cost from 75 cents to one dollar. As a frequent hotel guest, I find it irritating to pay $100 for a room and be charged for local and 800-number calls. When will hotels learn to quit alienating guests with such surcharges?
Obviously, they don’t want to lose the revenue these surcharges create. But it costs them in customer goodwill. It would be better if hotels determined the revenue amount generated by access surcharges, divided that amount by the average number of guest stays each year, added that figure to the basic room rate, and then told guests that local phone calls and access to 800 and credit card numbers are free!
The scary thing about customer irritants and aggravations is that they often make perfect sense to the service provider. For example, have you ever tried to get a small cup of coffee served in a large cup? This would seem like a reasonable request from someone who doesn’t want to be scalded when opening the spring-loaded lid on a cup filled to the top, yet the average fast-food establishment is dumbfounded by that simple request. Why? Because restaurants often track coffee sales on the basis of cup size. Give a customer a small, $1.00 cup of coffee in a large, $1.25 cup and — heaven forbid — you throw the system off by a whole quarter!
A solution to this problem is as simple as keeping a roll of quarters on hand. If a customer wants a small cup of coffee in a large cup, provide it. Then just toss a quarter into the cash drawer to make up the difference. The system is intact, but more importantly, the customer leaves happy.
What are you doing to — or not doing for — customers that makes perfect sense to you but irritates and alienates them? Conduct a search-and-destroy mission to eliminate customer irritants.
2. Perform As Promised
Consider your own experience. In the past two weeks, how many organizations or individuals have told you that they were going to do something, and then didn’t do it? And what have you told others you would do for them, but haven’t done?
Follow-through is abysmal today. Excellent service providers always deliver what they promise. When they commit, it happens.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you think you can have something for a customer by the end of the day, but you’re sure you can have by noon tomorrow, commit to noon tomorrow. Then if you are able to have it by the end of the day, your customer will be ecstatic that you performed even better than promised.
Most service complaints evolve from poorly managed expectations. Don’t waste your time trying to exceed customer expectations or provide added value to your product or service if you don’t have a foolproof system for the basics: delivering what you promise, when you promise it.
Make it an unforgivable sin in your organization to make promises that aren’t kept.
3. Manage the Customer’s Experience
The Palm Desert Marriott is a beautiful resort near Palm Springs, California. This past March, I was at the resort to speak to the American Hardware Manufacturing Association. The night before my breakfast presentation, I dined in one of the resort’s fine restaurants, the Tuscany. While the food and ambiance were very good, the standout of my dining experience was my wait person. She was prompt, attentive, and pleasant. But what I remember most happened at the end of the meal.
“Thank you for dining with us,” she said as she shook my hand. Each year, because of my business travel and love of fine food, I eat at least 300 meals outside my home. And yet, this was the first time anyone had thanked me and shaken my hand! While such a move on the part of a restaurant employee might strike most customers as odd, this wait person extended her hand in a manner that I found to be classy and natural.
Then she added, “And don’t miss the comet, Hale Bopp, tonight — the sky is especially clear. Also at 7 p.m., you’ll want to watch for the lunar eclipse.”
In those two closing gestures, a handshake and a suggestion to view the night sky, my wait person added immensely to my enjoyment of the evening. In fact, the real treat of my dining experience had nothing to do with northern Italian cuisine! It was about courtesy and astronomy. She managed my dining experience so that it was particularly enjoyable, personal, and memorable.
No matter what business you’re in, it is critical that you manage your customers’ experience. Customer experience is a broader canvas for the service artist to paint on. It’s those seemingly little touches and comments — that often have nothing to do with your specific business — that will make your customers remember doing business with you as personal and enjoyable.
Your competitors are managing product or service delivery. You can leapfrog them all by focusing on managing the customer’s total experience.
4. Make Customers Insiders
Flight 675 had been slowly taxiing, waiting its turn to take off, for nearly 30 minutes. It was Friday night, and travelers were anxious to get home or arrive at their destination for some weekend recreation. I was seated in 3B of the first-class cabin. The door was open to the cockpit, where the captain and first officer were pointing out to two flight attendants something outside, to the right of the plane. One of the flight attendants came back to the first row to share her find with some friends who were on board. She pointed out the window toward a hangar, and soon her friends joined her in fascinated attention. Then I overheard her laughingly say, “Everyone will wonder what we’re looking at!”
As a matter of fact, yes — the rest of us in the first-class cabin were at least mildly curious about what the crew and a few favored flyers were observing. And we felt like outsiders. Since we weren’t part of the “inner circle,” we had to just sit there and wonder what interesting thing there was to see.
More importantly, we wondered how long it would be before we took off. But there were no announcements forthcoming from the crew, who were obviously too preoccupied to worry about such customer concerns.
Airlines claim to be competing for customer loyalty. Most are losing the battle. They just don’t get it. Customers want to be treated like insiders, not outsiders. They want to feel that the flight crew is interested in letting them in on information that affects their travel plans, allays their anxieties, and enhances their enjoyment. Typically, however, silence from the cockpit and flight attendants, who often seem incapable of empathy, is the norm.
Today’s leading-edge companies make their customers insiders. FedEx, for example, has a Web site that receives 108,000 hits every day. That’s because their site allows customers to track their own packages. You can’t get much more “insider” than that!
What are you doing to make your customers feel like insiders?
5. Create Ownership
On January 15, 1997, Barnett Banks, the 22nd largest bank in the United States, made owners of all 22,000 of its employees by granting them stock options. The program is a terrific effort to create ownership in the hearts of minds of employees who work in this premier financial institution.
When I spoke at Barnett Banks’ CFO conference later in the year, each attendee was wearing a badge with his or her name printed on it. Underneath was the word “owner.” The enthusiasm of the attendees was palpable, and their commitment to helping Barnett reach the next level of success was apparent.
But employee ownership is not always such a rousing success. I recall one major airline’s ill-fated attempt to make, and then advertise, such a move. Their posters and television spots featured the friendly faces of employee owners. Ground crew, gate agents, pilots — all were identified as the airline’s “proud owners.” However, my experience, and apparently that of many other customers, was contrary to the image of the airline’s advertisements. While many employees of that airline are terrific — and they were terrific before they became “proud owners” — too many others don’t act like owners, proud or otherwise.
Naturally, customers expect more of a business’s owners than of its employees. After all, it is their business, and an employee can’t be expected to show the same commitment as an owner. While making your employees owners can improve performance (and by the way, this occurs only when systems and processes are in place that allow employee owners to effectively impact organizational direction), be aware that it raises customer expectations and increases their irritation when employee owners don’t act the part.
Be prudent when assigning and then advertising employee ownership. Ownership isn’t about what you call employees; it is about how employees act.
Create a sense of ownership for your employees. Give them tangible incentives to perform. Link some part of their compensation with performance. Maybe even make them literal owners — but think twice before you create an advertising campaign around employee ownership.
Next month: We will look into another 5 Practices to help make your business exceptional in your customers’ minds.