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First
of all it does not matter if it is a company in the whole or just a
single employee, the ten (10) step recipe for a delightful experience
is the same:
-
In advance, find out who your end customers are?
And find out what they want
and expect? In other words “Anticipate their needs!
-
Understand what you have to offer them that matches
their wants?
-
Provide the goods and/or services to the customers
in a manner that is enjoyable. Overcompensate your behavior.
-
Be sure that the customer perceives value from the
experience?
-
During the process, make sure that the customer
feels important and cared for? Don’t “hover over them” and don’t
ignore them as well.
-
Study their actions, facial expressions, tone of
voice, hand gestures and analyze what your interaction should be.
-
Ask them if they would like some more of this or
another product or service.
-
When completed, ask them how they enjoyed the
experience.
-
Analyze their answer and “brainstorm” how to
make it better the next time. Everything can be made better. Think hard!
-
Be ready for the next experience. Look sharp, clean
up, plan ahead, organize everyone, lead the activities (be visible) and
ask others opinions.
Note:
“Hovering”
is defined as the activity of one person (provider) watching or
interacting with another person (customer) to an extreme amount that
crates a feeling of uncomfortable ness on the part of the customer.
“End
customer” is defined as the person who actually enjoys the good,
product or service.
“Overcompensated
behavior “ is defined where you do more than you would normally do to
make it easy for the customer to understand or enjoy your service.
How
to get started ?
This
recipe is easy to say and for many it may be very hard to do. So how does one
actually get started in providing “Customer
Delight”
?
There
is a big difference between just providing customer service and
providing customer delight! It can be called “The guiding principle of
life”. It is something that you must learn and then just do naturally
each and every moment of your life. It is called the building of trust
through demonstrating integrity in your behavior.
So
what is “Integrity”?
When
you say you will do something, you first of all understand what is you
say you will do. Secondly, you agree that you will actually do what you
say you will do? This is then defined as a commitment.
You
need to clearly discuss with all related parties what you can do and
what you can not do. This is called clear and measurable communication.
It
is understood that there are times when external conditions change such
that you may find it difficult to complete what you thought you could
complete. This is “ok” as long as it was out of your control.
And
if for some reason is becomes difficult or impossible to do what you say
you were planning to do, then you will at the earliest possible time
provide notice at the situation has changed and you need to reexamine
your commitment.
Is
follow up important?
Absolutely,
one of the most important steps is when
you have completed what you said your were going to do, you need to ask
the persons that you were doing it for if it was done satisfactorily and
met their expectations.
Ok,
so what else?
Lastly,
you need to hear their response, analyze what they told you and make
changes in your behavior to be a better position in the future to
anticipate the expectations of the customer.
This
type of behavior is then something that each person does all the time.
Basically we may think of each interaction between two persons as a
customer and supplier relationship. Some wants something and we want to
provide something to them. This is just like a clerk in a store, hotel
or travel agency or a waiter or waitress in a café or restaurant. The
concept is the same for each interaction between two persons.
How
does one see the customer's point of view ?
In
the process you begin to see the situation or interaction from the
customers point of view, sometimes referred to as “walking in the
customers shoes”. You then begin to change your behavior to make sure
that it is easy for the customer to understand or enjoy what you do or
provide for them.
One common
example is with your handwriting. Handwriting styles vary widely from
country to country. Therefore for example, when writing a telephone
number or address for a customer, make sure that you print carefully the
letters and numbers using international methods that allows the customer
to clearly understand what you are writing.
Behavior
in this manner using the principle of Integrity then defines the
difference between “customer service” and “Customer
Delight”.
In
summary,
Delighted customers are those where you
anticipate their
needs, provide solutions to them before they ask and where you are observing to
see if new and/or additional expectations are about ready to be
required.
This
is all "easy
to say and difficult to do"; but, through commitment and practice
you will soon achieve
positive results.
Give it a try.
You may be surprised at the reaction.
Copyright
(c) 2002 - 2007 - - Michael Arthur Johnson, January 2002
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