A couple of weeks ago she stayed in a hotel in Sydney.  A few days after checking out she received an email from the hotel asking her to complete a short survey to provide feedback about her stay.  The survey asked all the usual questions and asked her to rate various aspects of her experience.

She told me that she was happy with the stay at the hotel.  Nothing went wrong, nothing bad happened – it was just a ‘usual’ night at the hotel.  In the survey she rated all aspects of her stay highly except for one. 

She elected to have breakfast in the room and mentioned on the survey that the toast was a bit soggy and bent.  If you’ve ever ordered room service you’ll know this is a reasonably common experience, usually because of the time it takes from when your meal is prepared to when it is actually delivered.  Of course there can also be a further time lag from when it’s delivered to when it’s consumed.

The soggy toast wasn’t a big issue – she’s used to it happening and only mentioned it because they asked if there was anything they could improve on.

A few days later she received a letter from the hotel manager thanking her for the feedback, and apologising for the soggy toast.  It goes without saying that she was very impressed with the responsiveness of the hotel and the effort they took to respond to her feedback.

A few points we can learn from this story.

1. Always ask for feedback.  I’ve stayed at the same hotel and received the same survey.  It’s not something they do sometimes, it’s something that happens automatically, all of the time.
2. If you worked in the hotel and knew that every guest would have the opportunity to rate their experience, you’d make sure your customer service was as good as it could be.  What gets measured gets done!
3. When you receive feedback, show the customer that you’re listening.  They did this by sending my friend a personalised letter acknowledging her feedback.  She made it clear that the soggy toast wasn’t a big issue, but the hotel has shown that if it was important enough for her to comment on, then it’s important enough to apologise for.
4. Always ask customers about things you can improve on.  She likes staying in the hotel and was happy with her experience.  If she was upset about the toast she would have said something.  By asking the question in the survey the hotel is finding out about things that are less than ideal, but aren’t bad enough to make guests complain.
5. Poor experiences are a good opportunity to exceed client’s expectations.  I’ve said it before on this blog that if there’s a breakdown in service, it provides you with an excellent opportunity to exceed your client’s expectations by fixing things.

My friend is looking forward to staying at this hotel again.  She’ll make sure she orders room service and I’m sure she’ll check the toast!

What can we learn from this?

• Do you have a formal client survey program?
• Does it ask the right questions?
• What happens when you receive bad feedback?

Let me know what you think.

There’s a few around the city where I live, and I’m always fascinated about whether they’re accurate.  I couldn’t tell you if they displayed the correct temperature, as I can only guess what it is when I’m out driving, but I can tell if the time is correct or not.

You’d be surprised how many of these clocks display the incorrect time.  They may be a few minutes fast or slow, or sometimes they’ve forgotten to change the clock for daylight savings time so it’s either an hour fast or slow.

I don’t know how your mind works, but when I see that the time is wrong, then I immediately assume the temperature is wrong also.  I don’t know how the machines work – the two functions are probably totally separate and there’s no logic in my thought process, but it’s the way I think.

It also goes a bit deeper.

If your clock is wrong, what does it say about your business?  Do you lack attention to detail?  Do you not care about being accurate?  Do you not even notice that it’s wrong?

When it comes to selling services, I’ve mentioned before how there are a lot of intangible elements to what you sell and clients look for cues that give them confidence that you can provide value.  They look at how professional your premises look, how good your marketing material is, how you present yourself and whether you do the things you promise to do.

Of course, there are some things that clients can test and make judgement on – it’s the same thing as being able to check that the time is correct on the clock outside. 

• Are you on time for appointments?  If your clients (or prospects) are seeing other professionals they’ll compare you to them.
• Did you do the things you said you would?  Are you reliable?
• Were your staff polite?  In this case remember ‘polite’ is measured by the client’s standards, not yours.
• Do your written documents contain spelling errors?

Have a think about your profession and make a list of what the ‘clocks’ are in your business.  What are the little things that tell the clients a lot about your business?  How important is it to get them right?  How do you check that they remain right?

As always, I’m interested in your feedback.  Also, if you enjoyed this article, please tweet it!

I’ve blogged before about how service breakdowns will happen from time to time – they are to be expected when you rely on people to deliver your service.  The interesting thing is that service breakdowns are opportunities – they provide an opportunity to recover from the breakdown and exceed your customer expectations. 

I remember during my MBA reading an article that explained how if you just deliver the service you’ve promised, you’ll meet your client’s expectations.  Exceeding them requires more.  And sometimes when things go wrong, you have the opportunity to not only make things right, but exceed your client’s expectations of the service they were expecting.

The other interesting thing about this video is that it’s heartfelt.  It’s not great quality, there’s no script, but that’s what makes it great – it’s real!  I wonder how much more business the Domino’s store could get as a result of this video.

Anyway, have a look at it yourself and let me know what you think.

Example 1

I was doing some work for a client that required us to get some articles approved by an external compliance area.  They were simple articles that only provided a general overview of the subject matter.  For legal purposes I didn’t want the articles to provide too much detail.  The first set took 6 working days to get approved and came back with an email saying sorry for the delay, but pointing out that the service standards allowed for these approvals to take 5 working days so they were really only a day late.

Example 2

In the financial business we deal with a couple of insurance companies.  We lodge applications for life insurance with these insurers. 

Both companies have internal service standards with regards to the amount of time it takes them to process the application, have it looked at by an underwriter and then send us an email letting us know the status of the application.  Both companies tell us they regularly meet their internal benchmarks i.e. they’re achieving their service standards.

However, one company can process things inside 48 hours, the other takes over a week.  Remember, both are hitting their internal benchmarks.  The second company thinks it’s doing well based on its internal benchmark, however I don’t judge it based on it’s internal benchmarks, I judge it based on my experience with similar companies and the reality is that it is not competitive compared to its opposition.

Lessons We Can Learn

In the first example, it frustrates me that service standards are used to cover up inefficiencies in business processes.  When we send an email with content to be approved, someone at the other end needs to open that email, read the article and decide whether it needs to be referred to a technical or legal area for further checking and verification.  If it doesn’t need to go to those areas, why can’t that person spend another 10 minutes checking the article and approving it? 

What currently happens is that it gets opened, checked and then placed in a queue to be checked later.  To me that’s inefficient.  If you’ve got it open then action it.

The second example highlights the danger of not having your internal benchmarks aligned to external benchmarks.  Always make sure your benchmarks are relevant to the people they affect.  If they affect your clients, then find out what your clients expect and make sure you can meet their needs.

Do you have service standards in your business?  Are they relevant?  Do your clients know about them?  Leave a comment and let us know.

It stands to reason that if we want to provide great customer service, we need to understand what our clients think great customer service looks like.  Spending time understanding their expectations can lead to more effective results.

The authors summarise customer service expectations into five areas: reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.  We’ll cover these in more detail below, together with some examples.

Reliability

This aspect of service delivery is all about doing what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it.

Have you ever waited at home for a tradesman to arrive hours later than they’d promised?  Or been frustrated that the person on the phone who promised to call back with some important information regarding your insurance hasn’t called?

When you’re selling a service, customers use reliability as one of the important clues to make a decision about whether or not to use your services.  You see, when they can’t see your physical product, they look for other cues that demonstrate whether you’ll be able to deliver the promised product.  Do you do what you say you’ll do?  This means when you say you’ll call them tomorrow, you actually do.  Or when you promise to post some documents, they arrive on time and the clients don’t have to call your office to follow them up.

If you say you’re going to do these little things and you actually do, then people have faith that you’ll be able to deliver on the big service they’re buying from you.

As an absolute minimum, if you want to meet your clients expectations, do what you say you’re going to do.

If you want to exceed their expectations, read on and do the next four things well.

Tangibles

How do you make your service come alive?  It’s hard for me to show a client a mutual fund, but I can talk about the companies they deal with every day that the fund invests into. 

As a client interacts with your service experience, they use the tangible things they see to make decisions.  If your offices look messy and untidy, this affects their perception of your service. 

What about when you stay in a hotel and they put that paper sash across the toilet lid.  It’s there as evidence that the toilet has been cleaned.  You wouldn’t necessarily notice the clean toilet by itself, but the sash draws attention to it.  The implication is – if the toilet is clean, the rest of the room must also be clean.

I’ve been in waiting rooms that have magazines from 5 years ago in the magazine rack.  Maybe it’s just me, but my brain thinks that maybe that business is stuck in a mindset of five years ago, and maybe they’re not up with the latest ideas and strategies that I need to know about.

Have a good hard look about the physical elements to your service – your office, appearance, documentation you use etc.  Does it convey to your clients that you’re professional and capable?

Responsiveness

Are you interested in helping customers?  Being responsive means understanding that when a client calls with a query, they are responded to quickly.

We recently changed the provider for our home phone.  It was an interesting experience.  When we called the sales area, we spoke with a live person very quickly.  Once we were an existing customer and had queries about the service not working properly, we were on hold for over 20 minutes before we got to speak with someone.  This shows to me that the company really isn’t that interested in me.

How do you show that you’re responsive?  One thing we do is try and return all phone calls on the same day we received them so our clients understand they’re important to us. 

How willing are you to help clients?  How can you show this?

Assurance

When a client deals with your organisation, do they have the confidence that the employees are capable and able to do their jobs well? 

We recently took our dog to our regular vet to get them to look at a lump that had developed on her side.  We were seen by a younger vet (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) and, after a brief feel and a quick blood test, she made a diagnosis that involved surgery.  To be honest, we felt that she’d rushed things a bit and maybe hadn’t done a complete diagnosis.  Of course, the cost of following her advice would involve a significant financial outlay as well as the mental pressure of having a dog have surgery.  As a result, we took our dog to another vet for a second opinion.

You see, when I haven’t got faith in your ability to deliver, I’ll question the things you suggest.

In your service business you need to find ways to convey your credibility to clients.  One very effective way is through the use of client testimonials.  Potential clients can read about how you’ve helped someone similar to them, and this gives them confidence that you’ll be able to help them in a similar fashion.  If you don’t have any existing clients who will give your testimonials, use case studies instead that show how your advice could benefit a particular type of client. 

Empathy

This last point is all about showing the client that you care about them and their personal situation. 

In our business we have a phrase “It’s not about the money”.  As financial planners, in one sense it’s actually all about the money.  But it’s not.  It’s about wanting to understand what the money represents to our clients – what are the things they want to do with it.

At the moment we’re dealing with the extreme market volatility.  We have clients who have lost 20% or 30% over the past year.  In our conversations with those clients we’re taking a lot of time to just sit and listen, and find out how they really feel.  We understand the pain they’re going through. 

We’ll say things to them that other clients in a similar position have already said.  If they’re retired, a popular phrase is ‘I can’t go back to work to recoup my losses’.  I’ll say to clients ‘I understand that you can’t just go back to work to recoup your loss’.  Most clients will nod their head and agree – they’re seeing that we understand how they feel.

Most people just want to be valued as an individual – that’s what empathy is all about.

Putting it Together

If you want to meet your client’s expectations, the best thing you can do is be reliable – deliver the service you say you’re going to deliver.  In other words, give them the outcome they’re expecting.

But if you want to exceed their expectations, you need to have a service process in place to deliver the elements of tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.

Think about a time in your life where you’ve had an experience where your expectations were exceeded.  How did they do it?  Chances are it wasn’t from just doing what they’d promised, but it involved one of the other four elements we’ve discussed.

Have a thought about your business and think of innovative ways you can deliver these five elements of service so that you don’t just meet the expectations of your clients, but you exceed those expectations.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.