A Culture Of Good Service

Already inconvenienced by a shipping error, I was willing to accept that "mistakes will happen" from time to time. Their web site did not provide any useful assistance so I called customer service. After navigating about six levels of "voice prompts", I was starting to feel pretty irritated, and hadn''t even spoken to a person yet. I am forced to listen to advertisements and admonished to get service via the web site.

Finally someone gets the call and the first thing they want to know is if they can call me by my first name.
No. A customer who is on the telephone has a problem. The polite form of address going into that situation is "Sir" or "Ma'm".

I understand that my calls are handled by a low paid worker in an English speaking country somewhere in Asia. But if they work for such low wages, why don't they pick up the phone instantly? Why must I wait on hold, as if I am waiting to talk to the very busy and highly paid CEO? It is because the culture of their organization extends across all national boundaries. Theirs is a culture of poor service.

Bad service drives customers away, first chance they get.
Good service doesn't drive customers away.

Everyone can tell a tale of bad service. Improving customer service is often a popular topic during management meetings. Particularly during economic downturns or, just as frequently, when battling with competitors. If we can improve our service, then we will keep more customers or attract some from our worthy opposition. I don't think so.

It is tempting proposition but often hard to achieve, and even then the results are difficult to measure. Netflix recently award a $1 million prize for and improved recommendation system and they reported to The New York Times that "customer retention rates have improved slightly". Think of the numbers that have to be involved for "improved slightly" to be worth $1 million dollars. "Good Service" is like "Mom and Apple Pie", hardly anyone is against good service.

Our natural tendency is to think in terms of cause and effect. If bad service leads to lost customers, good service therefore leads to retained and new customers. My observation has been that these effects are often not clearly linked. Often good service has no apparent benefit at all. It is like proving a negative proposition: we would have lost customers if our service wasn't good.

Your customers (whether you call them clients, passengers or patients) come to you because of what you offer, your unique combination of location, price, and product. If your offer is very unique and desirable, customers will put up with all manner of inconvenience and poor service because they have no choice. And their displeasure may never be reported to management. But bad service sets them in a position to depart as soon as there is a viable alternative. Bad service, in essence, makes customers ready to leave at the first opportunity, and possibly spread ill will.

Good service, however, does not do the opposite. All that good service does is not drive customers away. That one effect is absolutely essential to success. It means that you will, at the very least, be considered among alternative suppliers. You can see why it might be difficult to measure. You have to answer the question:  "How many people did not leave because of good service?"

The culture of service must, as many things, be built in to the culture of an organization, from the top down. It is simple, but often hard to do consistently. Everyone must be: Accessible, Prompt, Polite and Reliable. Be accessible and easy to contact, respond promptly, always polite, and reliably do what you say. Does one need to point out that the culture of good service should lead to doing it right the first time? Then the need for customer service of any kind should be quite minimal.

The reason to provide good service is the same one as that for saying "please" and "thank you".


It is simply the right thing to do.

Ask yourself if your staff would consider you to be Accessible, Prompt, Polite and Reliable in your dealings with everyone: customers, suppliers, staff and superiors.

Be honest, you are the role model.