EFFECT[ive] Marketing…Connecting Real-Life Businesses with their Online Market

No one would quarrel with the common lament that today’s service industry suffers from a stunning lack of concern for customer service. But is it really the fault of a generation of apathetic front-line workers?

[Warning: We're going to reveal a couple of Big Secrets to Outstanding Service after the jump. Naw, really, they're not that big, and they're really not that secret—well, they shouldn't be, anyway.]

Peter Senge, Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management, once said in a magazine interview: “Most Americans have no idea what good customer service is, because they’ve never had it.” That was in 1991. It’s safe to say that eighteen years later, it’s no easier to find.

Sure, pretty much everyone who oversees a customer–service–based business (and isn’t that nearly all of them?) likes to boast in their ads about their “commitment to service.” But knowing it’s a good thing to brag about only means they know it’s important to their customers; it doesn’t mean they have even the slightest clue how to make it happen.

Now, only someone who’s never been to a fast–food drive–through, or stood in line at WalMart, or eaten at a Chilly Ruby Friday’s, or dialed just about any customer support line would argue with the contention that customer service in America is, well, nonexistent. But I don’t buy the traditional explanation for the problem: that “kids today” are to blame, that we’re raising a generation of young people who never learned what a work ethic is (this, by the way, has been a popular complaint in this country at least since the dawn of the Industrial Age). Here’s why:

First, there’s the not–all–that–uncommon exception that disproves the rule: if your eyes are open to it, it’s really not that hard to find individuals who are obviously very devoted to customer care. There are even entire operations (and not just furriers or Bentley dealerships) that are clearly dedicated to taking great care of their customers. Without a doubt, though, it’s fair to say there aren’t nearly enough of them.

Second, if you run a business, this rationale is irrelevant. It doesn’t make any difference how rare excellent customer service is — for your business to be a success, you have to find a way to make it happen anyway. The upside to this is that great service is so rare that if you can even come close to mastering it in your business, it will bring you raving fans aplenty.

We know the exceptions, the ones who get it right, are out there; we just need to figure out how they do it. What’s different about those operations, those people, that makes excellent customer service something they can pull off regularly while those around them can barely spell it?

I slyly hinted at one of the Big Secrets of Outstanding Service a couple of times three paragraphs ago, and it’s really pretty simple:

• It’s the word “care.” People who are good at taking care of their customers care about taking care of their customers.

It’s wired into them, or they learned it from their parents, or they saw it on TV, or they believe in the Golden Rule, or they got a stone tablet on a hill. Don’t know, don’t care. Wherever it comes from, they care. And that makes them a treasure for your business.

The second Big Secret of Outstanding Service is your responsibility as the owner or manager of your business; it’s a simple but reliable management strategy (but only if you can commit to it—truly commit to it for the long haul).

When a business owner or manager appreciates that providing consistently outstanding service is the most efficient marketing tool in their arsenal, they manage their staff in a particular way:

1. They recruit and hire carefully to seek out those customer–service gems, the candidates with that coveted service focus and outlook;
2. They train their staff thoroughly and give them clear expectations of what behaviors are expected and which are out of bounds—and they clearly explain why;
3. They consistently monitor their people’s interactions with customers, intervene when needed, consistently model the behaviors they want, and reinforce them enthusiastically when staff members exhibit them.
4. And when a staff member demonstrates, over time and after retraining, an inability or unwillingness to uphold the operation’s standards of customer service, those owners and managers remove them from the team so as to maintain control over those standards.

I’ve called this strategy “simple”; am I suggesting that it’s easy? Absolutely not. I’ve managed a number of staffs using this approach, and keeping it going over the long haul wore me out. But it was worth it. It yielded a consistently high level of service; it generated continual raves from customers (which is a great measure of loyalty); it even reduced staff turnover and boosted their loyalty and pride in their work—as long as everyone was on board with the approach, including assistant managers and line–level supervisors when I wasn’t in the building. If the game changes when you’re not there, you’re leaving people in charge you shouldn’t trust. And if you leave them there, you’re failing at the fourth point above, and you’ve surrendered control of your operation.

No, it’s not a magic bullet for success in a customer service business. But it’s a pretty simple strategy to implement. It takes time and work to get the people in place that you need, but if you devote yourself to it, you’ll create an operation that runs near its potential and that runs well even when you’re not there.

And you will have done your part to resuscitate customer service.