Under promise and over deliver. Isn’t it time that you reconsidered your customer service approach?

Business is about establishing relationships and managing them for the benefit of you and your customers. As a result, every company should be monitoring customer satisfaction as an on-going function. If your surveys show dissatisfaction or if you’re losing business to your competitors, then look first at the service you offer.

Categorising customers

Your current contact with customers will fall into one of three categories:

  • Up – where you are exceeding customer expectations

  • Neutral – where you are meeting expectations

  • Down – where you are failing to meet expectations

Most companies operate in down or neutral. By moving to the up position, you’ll boost sales and create a positive differentiator between you and the competition.

In developing such a strategy, it helps to understand how a customer buys. Our research shows that after their first successful purchase, there is a 70% chance of customers returning to buy more. This rises to 85% with the second purchase and 95% with the third and beyond. So you should be aiming for four satisfactory ‘touches’ with each customer, or four opportunities to develop an ongoing relationship.

Staying in control

Controlling that relationship requires understanding and managing customer expectations (standard service), then looking at ways to exceed that expectation (extra service). First, agree what you are prepared to offer as the standard service and then develop an ongoing programme of ‘extras’ to build loyalty and make your customers appreciate you. But most importantly, you have to ensure your customers know when you’re doing this.

Many businesses over-service clients, so that their expectation of standard service includes that added value. It is then perceived as part of your standard service. If, for example, you tell your customer that because of their loyalty you are giving them a three-day delivery time instead of five, then eventually the three-day service becomes standard rather than extra. Then you have to give them something else to maintain that loyalty-building effect and make them feel special. This obviously has implications for your costs.

Similarly, if for the past three years you have taken your key clients to an important rugby match, they will be expecting to go in year four, and it will not have the same impact as the first invitation.

Above and beyond

Therefore, to get your customers to recognise that you’re giving them something over and above your standard offering, and make sure they appreciate it, you need to create an element of excitement about the extra activity.

This means you have to be more creative in thinking about ways to make your customers feel special and ensure your customer service strategy accommodates the need to continually update your offering.

It also means you need to consider how to build the cost of developing new value-added offers into your budgets on an on-going basis.