I went to our local Chevy’s Restaurant for lunch the other day and was pleased to see that a gentleman named Dave Tinker was back running the place. Dave is one of the owners of the restaurant and had previously run the day-to-day operations as well. A few years ago, Dave started spending all his time at his other store and left “my” Chevy’s to be run by a manager.
It was pretty noticeable when Dave was gone. The food was still pretty good, and the place was still pretty clean, and the staff was still pretty nice. I left there every time feeling pretty satisfied. But without even noticing, I stopped going in as much. I could feel pretty satisfied at any number of area restaurants.
So when I saw Dave back I was excited, but surprised. This location is really struggling, Dave told me. His other store was doing great, but business was way off at this location. When I asked him why, he answered without missing a beat.
“Service,” he said. “It’s always service.”
Whenever this topic comes up, business people are generally in agreement. Customer service is a difference maker. Every single business claims it as a priority. Every business owner believes providing better service can make them more money. Every business believes they do it well, or at least pretty well.
In contrast, consumers view service as an anachronism. Customer service has gone the way of the buffalo and the Commodore 64. Customers don’t believe they are ever served well (anymore) so they have stopped looking for service at all. Service stations have been replaced by convenience stores, express checkout by self checkout, service desks by answer terminals.
Why the disparity? How can a business owner turn this seeming problem into an opportunity? How can business leverage customer disappointment into customer joy?
The simple answer is this: You do it by doing it.
People like Dave Tinker are going to make their customer service better by making the demand for it front and center. He is going to do it by doing it.
Dave is going to leverage people’s low expectations into extremely high delivery of service in a simple, straightforward manner. When you eat at a Chevy’s restaurant, you are entitled to free chips and salsa. At every restaurant, eventually they bring you free chips and salsa. Dave is going to make sure that your free chips and salsa are there quickly when you sit down and that they stay full throughout the course of the meal. A small thing to be sure, but it makes all the difference.
Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer generally considered the gold standard for modern customer service, focuses on two main priorities for delivering their WOW service: They have a lot of shoes (more than anybody else) and they will deliver your shoes quickly (faster than anybody else).
By focusing extensively on those two simple priorities, Zappos can deliver on their service promise every time, and can often truly impress a customer by doing anything above those two priorities. They started by raising customer expectations (by the way- did anybody ever think that the shoes they ordered took too long to show up? I didn’t, but now I think about it and I am actually disappointed with every other shoe retailer who doesn’t deliver my shoes really, really fast), then they consistently met those higher expectations, and then they started exceeding those expectations on a regular basis and ended up WOWing so many of their customers that they sold over $800 million in shoes and accessories in 2007.
So the question is this- what can you do to wow your customers? What can you do to make your customers write you a letter and tell you how much they enjoyed buying your product? Pay attention to that last statement- It is not about how much they enjoyed using your product, it is about how much they enjoyed buying your product. They gave you money and loved doing it.
If you can wow your customers regardless of the product, you can get them to buy more and more from you- even when the economy is frightening.
1 Comment
December 20, 2008 at 3:27 am
[...] Vote It’s always service [...]