Have you ever experienced bad or mediocre service? Have you ever given service to a client that was less than what you (or they) desired? Here’s the thing. Most people don’t want to give bad service, but often good people with good ideas just isn’t enough. Frances Frei did a great talk at Google on her book ‘Uncommon Service’ where she said ‘you have to be bad to be good’. I like her already! Frances comments, ‘The number one obstacle to service excellence is the unwillingness to be bad at anything.’When we try to be good at everything, the limits of resources, time or money inevitably mean that someone is going to be disappointed. Most businesses don’t think much about who gets disappointed. The service cracks are random and unplanned.
If you want to be really really good, you need to choose what you are going to be ‘bad’ at, and then you need to educate your customers – so that their expectations can be met or managed. Organisations that are notorious for their (lack of) customer service are generally bad at everything (just consider any Australian telco and you’ll know what I mean). And organisations that are mediocre are generally trying to be good at everything.
If you want to be great, you have to make some strategic choices! How do you know what to be bad at? You look at what your customers define as ‘excellence’ in relation to your business. And once you know how you get paid for that, you make sure you deliver on it – every time, no matter what. And then you look at everything else and you look at what you can minimise or stop doing that will make the least impact on customer delight.
In effect, you stop the busy work, even if on the surface this is the work that every other business in your industry values. What if you could be the anomaly in your industry? What could show up if you stop assuming that your clients want what everyone else is offering? What if there is something else that would delight them? Finding the delight buttons can be a great adventure in knowing your customers better. What questions can you ask?
- What is it about what we offer that you value most?
- What is it about what we don’t offer that annoys you the most?
- What is it that we offer that makes no difference to you?
- What could we offer that would totally delight you?
- Have you ever experienced a service ‘failure’ with us? What happened and what would you have liked to have happened instead?
Think back to the last time you received really wonderful customer service.
How did it make you feel? Did it make your day? (Mostly because it is so rare!!) What if you could give your customers that much love? Would it change your business dynamically? Time to get really bad at a few things that truly don’t matter… go play! (Oh, and one more thing, you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time… make sure you choose WHO you are making happy too!)
