9: Service And Efficiency
The affluent customer has the financial capability to pay more for goods and services, but paying more is not an end in itself, but a means by which they seek to enjoy a higher level of quality. What constitutes quality is subjective, but for most customers, it is related to service and efficiency.
Ritz-Carlton is an example a firm that delivers the highest standard of service. RC has received all the major awards the hospitality industry can bestow and is the only service firm to have claimed the Baldrige Award twice. Federal Express is an example of efficiency - the go-to firm when a package must be delivered correctly and in a timely fashion. These two firms set the benchmark for the level of quality demanded by the affluent customer.
The author's research has led to seven key criteria for quality service, ranked here according to the percentage of affluent customers who identified those which had "considerable infliuence" in their buying decisions:
- (90.3%) The vendor resolved any problems quickly and to the customer's satisfaction
- (81.8%) The vendor provided good service after the purchase
- (69.5%) The vendor provided the information needed to make a satisfactory purchase decision
- (65.8%) The vendor's guarantees of satisfaction were clearly defined
- (63.0%) The vendor offered the customer's brand of preference
- (62.5%) The people who represented the vendor were friendly and helpful
- (44.3%) The vendor offered the lowest price available.
The author provides an anecdote about two people he knew who independently purchased the same item (a home entertainment system), and who were both dissatisfied with the purchase - not because of the price they paid or the specific features of the product, but because of customer service: the instructions were unclear, the installers "overlooked little things," and problems were not addressed promptly and effectively.
Also notice that the most important criteria pertain to things that occur after the product has been sold: fulfillment, problem resolution, and customer education. Ironically, these are the very areas in which many companies seek to cut corners to reduce expenses in order to compete on price (the lowest-ranked criterion).
Accept Personal Responsibility
The primary method of delivering quality service is to accept personal responsibility for service quality. To suggest that the customer is to blame, or to suggest that a vendor or partner is to blame, or that another department is to blame, is an attempt to escape blame for poor customer experience.
For the customer who hears such excuses, it increases dissatisfaction. For the firm that offers such excuses, it perpetuates the problem, as no effort will be made to rectify the immediate problem or prevent it from recurring if someone else can be blamed.
Some tips are offered in terms of taking responsibility:
- Learn your firm's policies and procedures so that you can set expectations appropriately and guide the customer through the "service maze"
- Recognize your company's service limitations. This also enables you to set customer expectations, but also to identify problem areas within the firm that need to be solved.
- Build a personal network within your form with key people who can provide assistance to customers and clients, so you are not dealing with anonymous departments.
- Schedule periodic follow-ups with each customer and client you serve and be proactive in discovering if there are any issues.
- Stay current on "things" such as special offers, rebates, discounts, and recalls and contact customers proactively.
- Give customers and clients a card: your name and your direct phone number, so they may contact you directly.
Ultimately, providing customer service is a commitment to ensuring each customer is satisfied. You either make this commitment, or you do not. But if you make it, you must keep it: regardless of which department made the error, and regardless of policies and procedures, you must be willing to work for the customer and against internal obstructions to quality service.
Do Your Homework
In researching your competitors, you must go beyond the basic details and discover the level of service quality. You can discover the level of quality they promise quite easily - their promotional literature and websites broadcast their promises. But to find out what level of service they actually provide, you will need to look to what their customers say about them.
The author provides another list of random tips:
- Create a separate file folder for each competitor
- Gather information about their promised level of service
- Use "secret shoppers" to gather information about them
- Create a script to ensure that the secret shopper gathers the details you desire.
- In addition to gathering details about what was done, have the secret shoppers provide qualitative assessments.
- Where possible, determine the "position" that a competitor holds, or seeks to hold, in the mind of the affluent market.
(EN: The author overlooks online reviews and ratings, which are fairly good sources of information. The one reservation is that they tend to be on the extremes of positive and negative, and that people who write such reviews are often bragging about their decision rather than providing an honest evaluation.)
The goal of this research is to discover ways to provide better quality: not merely to match what competitors do, but to exceed it in ways that are valuable to customers. The author conveys that in his own personal experience, he has been "shocked" by the fundamental ways in which firms fail to provide the service they promise - and their failure is a clear indication of where others can beat them.
Your Value Proposition
They author address the importance of a value statement and credo, as words that a firm seeks to live by, rather than marketing fluff. These statements indicate the value your customers get from doing business with you. Specifically, it is not what you hope to deliver, but what the customer can actually count on getting from you. Such statements should be succinct, direct, and free of ambiguity.
The value statement can be fairly elaborate if you attempt to make it all-inclusive. Instead, focus on the primary values you offer, such that you can communicate it in a single breath. From there, whittle it down further into a short sentence that can be printed beneath your logo: this is your credo.
One exercise the author suggests is to consider what you would say to describe your firm to others in a short sentence, without using any labels, buzzwords, or industrial categories. A few examples are given to illustrate this idea:
- "We design and install space-efficient home office environments." (Office furniture dealer)
- "We specialize in lifestyle photography that captures your special moments" (Photography studio)
- "We transform windows to enhance the beauty of your room." (Curtain manufacturer).
It may be difficult to determine what your credo should be - but the point of the exercise is to determine the one thing that's most important, and that you should seen to do better than anyone else, and that is the single most important thing your firm does.
The importance of such a credo goes beyond coming up with a clever or elegant phrase, but in living up to it. If your employee can't recite the credo, and do so with a straight face, then you're failing in a very significant way.
The author later suggests having the credo and value statement printed on cards, such that every employee can carry them around. (EN: My own take on it is that, if you have made it straightforward enough, there is no reason every employee should not have it committed to memory.)
Hiring The Right People
Hiring the right people to provide customer service is critical to success. It's not merely filling seats with warm bodies, nor is it solely about finding people with the skills to perform specific tasks - it's about finding people with the right mentality, a customer-service attitude.
Specific qualities to look for in candidates:
- Concern. The candidate must care about providing extraordinary service to the customer and be willing to do what is necessary to provide it.
- Friendliness. The candidate must be a "people person" whose has a positive attitude toward others.
- Attentive. The candidate must be observant and mentally alert, taking a proactive interest in the welfare of the customer.
- Energetic. The candidate must be the kind who will take initiative and stay the course. The author specifically states that some high-energy people never seem to focus.
- Confident. The candidate must be willing to initiate action - not just to know what should be done, but to have the confidence to do it. A specific caution is not to mistake arrogance for confidence.
- Driven. The candidate must seek constant improvement, rather than impassively accepting "good enough."
Many of these qualities can be observed during a hiring interview. A tip is to list them on a legal pad and take notes when a person responds in a way that demonstrates each of these qualities, or a lack of them.
The author suggests a narrative interviewing style - rather than asking questions that can be answered with a yes/no, ask them to give you an example of a specific instance in which they did something. That demonstrates the qualities you're looking for. In return, be narrative in giving them examples of the work they will be doing if they are hired He also mentions "how" questions about customer service, or how you think that the things you describe might be improved.
Keeping The Right People
Firms are slowly recognizing the fact that they need to be attentive to fostering a long-term relationship with customers beyond the sale, and even slower to consider their need to be attentive to fostering a long-term relationship with their employees. Working hard to find the right people is of little value if you're not willing to work hard to keep them once you've "sold" them on coming to work for you.
A smattering of random tips follows:
- Ensure that compensation and benefits are adequate to cover their personal and family financial obligations
- Ensure that C&B is sufficient to galvanize them against offers from competitors who will look to lure them away
- Ensure that they see a long-term relationship, with opportunity for promotion as well as the ability to move laterally
- Ensure that they are treated fairly, honestly, and consistently.
- Ensure they understand and commit to the organization's purpose and goals.
- Help them to see the way that their role, including mundane daily activities, contribute to the organization
- Ensure that they have the authority and resources to fill the responsibilities of their position.
- Protect them against unnecessary interference from policies, procedures, rules, practices, and tight supervision.
- Grant them the autonomy and authority to make decisions to accomplish their responsibilities
- Provide ongoing training to help develop their skills and improve their performance
- Encourage risk-taking and treat failure as a learning opportunity
(EN: to hire the right people is a facile suggestion that assumes that the right people are looking for work, and that they will stay "right" without any effort on the employer's part. As such, employee development is sorely lacking in most firms - if you can't develop a borderline person to a customer-service ace, and if you find the aces you are lucky enough to find go sour and/or burn out, the problem isn't the people. Few authors seem to consider this, and while I'm impressed this one does, it's far too superficial.)
Creating The Right Processes
Businesses are fond of process for the sake of efficiency: it helps to discover the specific tasks that must be done to achieve success, ensure that they are repeated, and improve them in a way that can be put into action across the entire firm.
The problem is that process becomes ritual, done "just because," and can often get in the way of success rather than facilitating it. When processes are developed or modified with an eye toward preventing failure rather than facilitating success, the firm is on the road to ruin.
When developing or improving a process, consider whether it accomplishes one of the following:
- Eliminate waste. Seek out places where work is being duplicated by multiple team members or departments, or done repetitively, to improve efficiency.
- Eliminate conflict. Seek out places where individuals or tasks are at odds with each other, each striving to accomplish a goal that is contrary to the other.
- Combine tasks. Look for opportunities where two different tasks are being done to accomplish a goal and consider whether it can be made into a single task.
- Simplify a task. Consider how each task is performed and find a way to reduce the time required to perform it without sacrificing quality.
- Eliminate a task. For each task, ask what the consequences would be if it simply were not done. If there aren't any, eliminate it.
- Reduce delays. Look for places in which work is in a "waiting" period between one task and another, and consider how to reduce or eliminate it.
- Improve accuracy. For any task in the process, determine where accuracy can be improved. Especially where one specific stem seems to be causing problems or errors, consider how to address them.
(EN: The author doesn't mention this, but a major cause of bad process is focus on tasks rather than outcomes - to make sure a certain thing is done in a certain way, and assuming the outcome will be good if the procedure is followed. This institutionalizes wrong action and demoralizes workers who know what ought to be done to achieve a goal, but are prevented by procedure from actually doing it.)