Back Mantras for service experience
Radhika Chadha
It got me thinking about the service experiences where I have been touched by some sense of excellence and what the specific characteristics were that contributed to this. And this is what I came up with — if a service experience is to achieve that elusive prize of loyalty, it needs to scores high on integrity, empathy, flexibility and trust.
Integrity: Are you out for a sale, or do you have the customer's best interest at heart?
Recently, I was horrified to discover some soft woodwork in my kitchen. Remembering a friend who had her cabinets gobbled up by some hungry termites, I invited competing bids from two pest control experts in the city. I showed both the trouble spot, but neither paid much attention to it. The first produced a blanket estimate; the second started on a detailed measurement of the carpet area for the final estimate. The process of emptying out all the cupboards in the house was daunting, so I wondered out loud if I should postpone the job. The visibly disappointed salesmen then proceeded to give me a hard sell. "Did I know that termites could ruin the entire woodwork?" he began, with evangelistic zeal. I gently pointed out that he didn't have to sell the concept to me — after all, I had asked for the estimate on my own.
I then remembered my earlier experience with a small contractor: well-read and friendly, we had used his services many years before. His company had grown hugely during the last decade, and it was his daughter who came by. She zoomed in on my trouble spot, tapped at the wood, listened carefully, poked and prodded. She then proclaimed there were no termites, I had no immediate problem, so I shouldn't bother doing any treatment. Fix the plumbing and ignore it, she said. She enquired into the earlier treatment and assured me it would hold good. She also gave me a quick tutorial on the creepy-crawlies, how to be vigilant for them, and that if I detected any of the warning signs, they could fix it. I smiled. This was exactly like her father's attitude. He too, in the past, has dissuaded me from taking on unnecessary treatment.
Now, neither of the earlier agencies even thought of questioning the project from first principles. Did I need the treatment? This, to them, was irrelevant. Their attitude: You want an estimate, we'll give it to you. If you then don't want the treatment, we will sell it to you. In contrast, my young friend was more concerned with my real needs. It didn't matter to her that as a result of her advice, she lost a sale. She respected the fact that I was trusting her professional expertise and she lived up to it. What also struck me, from a service culture viewpoint, was that her father had managed to embed his integrity into the DNA of the growing organisation. You can be sure that I will not be flirting with the other agencies in the future: this small team won my loyalty for a lifetime.
Empathy: Do you know what it is like to go through your own service? If you truly put yourself in your customer's shoes, what would you change?
Fear of dentists' torture treatments probably ranks high on all nightmares. Yet, I am quite relaxed with my dentist's jaw-block. It's a gradual process, beginning with an anaesthetising gel, which makes it easy to give the first shot, which in turn allows a monster needle to effectively numb your entire jaw. The amazing thing is: it is quite pain-free. Once, when I had my mouth to myself, I mentioned this to her. She said that every trainee dentist who works for her is given the jaw-block in the old-fashioned - and painful — manner as part of the training. "They have to feel what the patient goes through if they are not careful." You can be sure that after that experience, each rookie dentist is sensitive to customer pain!
Flexibility: How do you manage different consumer experiences? Are your processes set in stone?
Last year I approached a corporate paint service. As usual, I spent aeons trying to make up my mind on the exact shade of "mera wala cream." Experience has taught me that those itty-bitty sample shade cards look nothing like the real thing, so I asked them to paint large swathes of the chosen few shades so I could get a proper feel of the colours. Unfortunately, their policies dictated that they could only do two shades. After that, I had to take my chance, like a lottery. I suggested paying for the extra swathes — but their ISO 9000 system had no space to accommodate deviations from the norm. The individual contractor, on the other hand, had no such problem if I paid for the extra tins. Service experiences like this, which are subject to individual idiosyncrasies, demand that the field operator is empowered with discretionary power to alter processes to clinch the deal.
Trust: Do you trust your customer? Or do you view all critical feedback as a conspiracy to cheat you?
After a professional hair colour treatment, a friend was dismayed to find big chunks of her head left uncovered. She had to make an urgent trip, so the complaint to the parlour (owned by a large multinational set-up) was possible only after a few days. "As per our policies, if you don't show us the problem within 24 hours, we can't rectify it," was the stony reaction, coupled with insinuations that she must have "done something" to spoil the effect. Cut to another friend: same treatment, different parlour. An identical problem, a completely different reaction. The owner of the small parlour was troubled at the bad experience. Not only did she assure her a fresh treatment, she advised my friend do this after 10 days, so as not to damage the hair with a chemical overdose (shows empathy too).
There are probably more attributes that also count in a service experience. But these four — integrity, flexibility, empathy and trust — are crucial in the search for loyalty. Come to think of it, they are a pretty good mantra for life itself!
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