One day in June 2007, as I was driving my car, I took a look at the fuel gauge and noticed that the needle read less than a quarter tank.
I tried to remember where the nearest gas station was. La Cristi - or Serviamigos, the formal name - should be more or less close to the place where it was passing at the time. La Cristi… A few weeks before, a couple of friends had told me that it was not a regular gas station, but one of the Highest Service, like this, with initial capital letters. Of Most High Service, and how is that? Well come on, take a little walk over there and see for yourself.
The nickname made me very curious, and for that reason alone I remembered it instantly. “It is not the spacious and recently remodeled one, which has about a dozen fuel pumps. You must go a little further and, almost certainly, you will find a row of vehicles in the access, "added my friends. "A row, a single row? But then it's tiny. " "That's right," they confirmed. "It is small in dimensions, but you who know customer service will realize almost immediately that they do know how to serve as God commands."
Very soon I had in sight the large service station, located in a corner on my right. At that time there were no more than five vehicles parked in front of the pumping machines. I moved a little in the same direction and there, about thirty meters away, was the famous row. I counted seven vehicles in front of mine and noticed that the row was shifting to the right and was missing. I parked, turned off the engine, and waited a bit.
When I retired from the gas station, I resolved that I should return once more with my camera. Indeed, this station had its own charm, a special touch or, what is even more important, a powerful and inspiring message. The people in that business demonstrated having a conviction, a high vision, a way of being and a lot to communicate for the benefit of their clients. It was, without a doubt, a business that could not go unnoticed, a business with spirit, with identity.
Here is a fundamental characteristic of any successful business, related to some of the most essential questions that, as people, we often ask ourselves:
- About us? What sets us apart? What makes us unique and different?
The Alpha and Omega of Service Excellence are considered by many companies to consist of administration based on management instruments and measurement of results, that is, in doing, in the task, in the follow-up of scripts, in the analysis and the concatenation of processes, in the acquisition of the latest and most sophisticated CRM model. Well they are wrong. Excellence in Service begins and ends in the exercise of values much closer to being than doing, more intangible than tangible. Said in one sentence: you are helpful or you are not. We could even hierarchize these two dimensions. First one is, and then, that way of being must be translated into actions, actions that, in turn, if they are coherent and constant, will demonstrate that one really is.
Companies and people who are truly helpful are by pleasure, by principle, by vocation, or they perform tasks by mandate, by instruction, because this is what the management wants, by fashion, by imitation, or because there is no other choice but to show off a standardization system that allows us to comfortably sell the concept that we really are competitive, that we really deserve to be taken into account by customers.
This dissociation from being helpful and doing tasks - sometimes mere drills - related to good service ends up, ultimately, becoming a counterproductive factor. We seem busy and concerned with improving the strategies and levels of attention and satisfaction of our customers, but the evidence, multiple and daily, is that the commitment of many businesses, their managers and employees, is nominal, not substantial. And the habit, as has been said for centuries, does not make the monk.
I recently came across a case that intrigued me. I would have liked to go deeper into that situation, but circumstances did not allow it. A representative of a certain educational institution in the city contacted me to ask for advice on the administration of certain management indicators by competencies for a group of teachers. This component was part of a recognized standardization program that the school had acquired years ago, a program that, incidentally, exhibited with great pride in its advertising and in all administrative stationery.
But oh surprise: the person in charge of administering the competency management package had not received adequate training to make full use of the tool and to train teachers, according to the version of the quality director, or perhaps He had received such training, I thought later, but his level of training was less than required and, perhaps also due to lack of effort, he ended up administering the tool in any way. Overall, a complete discrepancy between formal or instrumental excellence and real excellence.
If companies and their managers are afraid to approach concepts sometimes disparagingly described as “romantic”, “mystical” or “spiritual”, they will hardly manage to obtain from the organization as a whole a deep, meaningful, real and lasting commitment to practice high standards of service with your customers. To those who usually do their own thing, with love and dedication, it will not be necessary to constantly feed them with ideas, procedures and motivations to provide a high quality service. On the contrary, if we privilege the tools, the instructions, the command and other mechanisms to ensure quality, we will always have people who, over and over again, will fall short, people who will always do "what they touch", without passion, without pride, without ever knowing the pleasure of doing something well, of serving well, just for the pleasure of doing it.
Let us return to La Cristi and see, through a graphic sequence, what were the impressions that led us to conclude that there, in a small gasoline station in Medellín, Colombia, an authentic and powerful way of serving the client.
PHOTO 1
The row. Customers have no qualms about waiting a few minutes to be served. First bonuses: the gallon of extra and current costs a little less than in other stations, and fuel, according to testimonies from the same customers, "yields more."
PHOTO 2
A great little business. The photo shows 80% of the customer service area. What it does not have in amplitude, design and quality of furniture, it is more than compensated by the quality of the service.
PHOTO 3
Inspirational messages. The business owner loves to put up banners with biblical messages. It does so because it wants to testify before its clients that a High Service is provided there, associated with honesty, efficiency and "giving others everything good that we would like to receive."
PHOTO 4
Thus, the wait is always short. Another plus: customers receive coffee or water while they wait. In December they also receive a small plate of pork fried foods. The row, then, spans several blocks.
PHOTO 5
It is preached and it is fulfilled. There is complete coherence between the mission and the daily tasks of the station workers. What is written there is a living, operating and consistent word.
