There is only ONE customer, the one I attend to at this precise moment, the moment of truth.
1. Answer:
Maybe yes, maybe not. For a long time, part of the empirical assessment of the good behavior of individuals and organizations in relation to the quality of service revolved around this supreme truth.
It was enough to say yes, yes, yes to the customer -with a not entirely frank and consistent complacency- to safeguard the integrity and goodwill of the business managers.
But if we examine the profound implications of this old formula, we will realize that it comes from a presumption of conflict, doubt, or unrest. If the client believes he is right and manifests himself in this sense, it is because he perceives that something is not right, or that something must improve. This means that the organization has not been sufficiently prepared to give full satisfaction to the client, that it has not anticipated possible objections and complaints, that the communication and advisory channels have been deficient, that it has not studied and worked thoroughly in the weaknesses of your offer.
Admitting that all customers are right and not capitalizing, not making the most of that pro-business interaction not only shows that there is a limited vision, short management. Ultimately, it becomes irrefutable proof that business owners and managers don't feel the need, the compelling desire to put on their clients' shoes, to put themselves in their shoes.
A good indicator of our quality standards is, undoubtedly, the weekly or monthly number of clients who come to the offices using some more or less valid “reason”. Of course, these customers will always be right, if we want to keep them, but what should really matter to companies and individuals who receive these "reasons" should be:
to. Find and implement the necessary instruments to measure and classify the relevance and importance of the arguments expressed by your clients.
b. Go beyond verbal explanations with a time limit (no "yes, thank you for your comment, we will take that into account. Next…). The good administration of the client's reasons is far from the simple pat on the shoulder or the hateful contentions. It is necessary to convey to the client the feeling that he has been well heard, that his reason will have a methodical and judicious process and that concrete decisions will be made to attend to or resolve the situation.
c. More than improvising a polite (or feigned response, in many cases), what any client expects fits in two words: actions and results. A proper protocol will demonstrate to customers that companies and individuals are trained to deal with and process the best response to all kinds of reasons.
In my Service Excellence seminars I usually take a novel twist, a change of focus to the old formula. Of course, the client will always be right, that is a common sense and convenience maneuver, but… beyond whether or not it is, will you get the satisfaction you expect? Will some companies continue to offer hasty, ready-made, momentary, and superficial satisfactions? The formula to take into account, the most definitive of all, what really matters is neither more nor less than this:
The client has the checkbook… and the last words: I am staying / leaving.
2. Question:
How many clients does our business have?
Reply:
One, only one and nothing more than one. The one I'm attending to at this very moment, the moment of truth.
Having a broad, creative and different perspective on the quantification and qualification of our clients is the cornerstone that supports the concept of personalization of the service. A small business can have ten or twenty poorly served clients, while a large business can have thousands and thousands of clients and treat them, manage them in such a way that each one feels that they are a unique, special and privileged client. Building this difference seems easy, but it is not. A multiple strategy of selection, training, application of systems and evaluation of behaviors is required to achieve excellence in personalizing the service.
At a recent seminar on service excellence, an assistant, in charge of the customer service department of a large company, told us step by step how they had turned a complex and difficult situation into an opportunity to show off with the person affected. “Impeccable - finally said the client - impeccable the way you proceeded and, above all, your attitude. Do you know one thing? They made me feel that they had all the time in the world to solve my case, that I was not bothering them or that I was part of a list of complainers or discontents to attend to. I felt like I was the only customer for your company. You don't see that every day, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. ”
“If you get to their hearts, you stay in the minds of customers. That is our strategy ”, comments the co-founder of one of the most successful companies in Colombia in the last decade. Part of the know-how of this exemplary restaurant chain consists in feeling and living that principle, in vibrating with that supreme truth:
There is only ONE customer, the one I attend to at this precise moment, the moment of truth.
Let's continue with the essential question form that every company should ask itself periodically in its quest for excellence in customer service and satisfaction. In the first article we examine the validity of the discussion on the validity of the reason or reasons raised by customers and how to capitalize them in favor of the business. We conclude that there are companies that, when responding with defense mechanisms or delaying tactics, are located at the lowest level of the excellence scale, and that others, on the contrary, have set themselves the task of measuring and perfecting the quality of the answers they offer their clients in potentially conflicting circumstances.
Then we asked ourselves how many clients does our business have: twenty, one hundred, one thousand one hundred, twenty thousand? Of course, in the first instance, the answer tends to be statistical, quantitative, but, seen from another perspective - much more specialized, the one that covers the concepts of segmentation and personalization of the service, among others - the answer can only be this: all companies have ONE client, only one, the one that advisers and executives serve at every moment of contact, the moment of truth.
3. Question:
When does the customer know that we are their best option?
Reply:
There are many strategic components at the critical moment of the relationship, but some play a definitive role in the assent of the client that we want to conquer. These are:
to. Image and Positioning:
The first approach to a business is sensory-intuitive and, secondly, rational. Good advertisers never underestimate the supreme truth that they must do their utmost to paint their messages in such a way as to induce the customer to want to take a second and a third look at them, to want to do something about it.
The "yes I want" of the clients is firmly linked to a seductive, dazzling, innovative image, full of promise, satisfaction, advantages and benefits. Advertising may be the first contact, but not the only one. In fact, as the gurus of the service have been repeating it for a long time, the advertising contact can be, to a greater or lesser extent, almost unreal -sometimes surreal-, a theatrical piece with sticky musical backgrounds and excesses of kindness. Along with him, without or after him comes tangible and direct contact with the company, much more definitive, of course.
We are going to recreate an initial contact situation with SMEs, for example, with small businesses. These businesses generally lack juicy advertising budgets and other marketing strategies to attract their customers. Its management usually consists of a medium-sized advertisement in the yellow pages, a database acquired from the city's chamber of commerce and the work of a small number of vendors.
Suppose, one day, you and I walk down a major avenue. Days ago we have been discussing the need to find a new transporter of merchandise, one that operates very close to us, since the frequency of dispatches is high and the proximity to the dispatcher would give us a great advantage to comply with the factor just in time. and to save costs. We crossed to the other side of the street and suddenly we found this image (see photo 1).
Hmm, yes, we stop for a moment, we take a look around and we see that it is indeed a small local merchandise receipt. It is located just two blocks from the warehouse of our business. It has a great competitive advantage, but… but… Does it seduce, captivate, call, spur curiosity, enter through the eyes? Will it be difficult to deduce what was the first impression it made on us? Any on-site business speaks for itself. The use or abuse of spaces sends the newcomer (we could hardly call it a client) more than a thousand words of how that business is managed.
"Well, this, the merchandise, load and unload, you understand… It is not a restaurant in the pink zone, nor is it a hotel lobby, my friends!", The administrator could argue. "What if my boxes arrive punctured, deformed, or spilled with coffee? It's just boxes, right? It is that observing the state of the wall, the empty bottle of soda, you understand… ”. We could replicate ourselves.
Let's enter the premises and take a closer look… (See photo 2).
… Impressed? Well no, pleasantly impressed, not yet. (See photo 3).
Are these really the customer support modules or are they two sophisticated flight simulation units? We would say that the person in charge, barely visible, is operating the controls of the air (?) And land routes with the latest equipment. What's more, it took the girl about fifteen seconds to detect our presence. She is probably engrossed in tracking the multiple GPS of the dashboard in view…
How are we doing with the approuch, with the sensory-intuitive impressions and expectations that we are forming about this small merchandise dispatch business? It is very close to an important need of ours, but… Better we said goodbye politely to the employee, we turn around and think twice. We will see what other solution we can find…
Here is a simple exercise, a case that shows what the consequences of justifying and maintaining a low level of image and positioning could be. In the following article we will illustrate the opposite.
When does the customer know that we are their best option? In Article II we formulate this third essential question that every company should periodically ask itself in its quest for excellence in customer service and satisfaction. We saw that the critical moment of linking a new client is preceded by the image and positioning of the business, either through marketing-advertising campaigns or by direct contact that the potential client has with the tangibles and intangibles of the same.
Hence the importance of asking ourselves more and more questions around that matrix question, of descending to more and more specific questions to improve the quality of measurements and evaluations: How have we constructed that image? How are we building that image? How do we maintain it? How do we refresh it? How do we diversify it? How do we make it credible, reliable, proof of unpleasant surprises, contradictions and disappointments?
We immediately analyze that image and positioning must be consolidated at the same time that customers - current and new - set foot in our business. If we manage to attract potential customers with a dazzling and seductive campaign, full of promise and benefits, we have certainly fulfilled the sinequanon of "first impression is what counts." However, keep in mind that, in many cases, the second impression - the one that occurs when we make the first calls, when we receive the answer to our first email or when we first visit the facilities, branches, tangibles of the business - is the definitive one.
And it is hardly logical, because the client is increasingly perceptive, more educated, more informed, more selective, more demanding. For him, there should be total coherence between the sugary charm of contact strategies and the real benefit he derives from the product or the product-service.
In fact, if we talk about excellence in customer service and satisfaction - in my opinion, two distinguishable terms, as I have argued in previous articles - first-class organizations must be highly committed to the third, to the eighth and with the eleventh good impression that their clients form from them. We could say that a high goal of competitive companies worldwide is to create and maintain good impressions, at all times, anywhere, at all costs and by each and every employee… It could even become in a beautiful slogan: "In… we strive to keep you very impressed, today, tomorrow and all week." You could even designa whole management around the maintenance and enrichment of the good impressions of the clients.
In Article II we recreate the case of an SME for the transport of goods. From the added photographic sequence, we were illustrating, hypothetically, the happy discovery of a possible supplier, the benefits that at first sight offered us, the set of perceptions - which, in the end, led us to question the quality of the service- and the administrator's courtesy to find satisfactory or mitigating answers -and proposals- for the negative impact that certain tangibles produced in his merchandise reception location.
We have four moments there, four critical phases of what could happen when we first access a business, four moments that will play, sometimes in a matter of minutes, for or against us. Of course, it would be very useful to practice a similar exercise with larger businesses and from various productive and service sectors, but the aforementioned case allowed us to obtain in an expeditious way a clear concept of what it means to grant advantages to the competition and why they hesitate or visitors - not clients - disappear from the first contact.
The tricks of tricks
Now we will study a successful case of image and positioning, also on a small scale. It is one hundred percent real, and with proper names. Adriana Posada and Juan Diego Acevedo are the owners of the miscellany, which was not such a few years ago, but only a vinyl-acrylic paint shop for all kinds of furniture. Artimañas is the name of the place, and Adriana's tricks to attract her buyers are simple, but praiseworthy and powerfully suggestive. Tricks stands out for two characteristics, two super values, sadly disaggregated in many small or large businesses: it is delightfully cozy and has a lot of personality.
As in the case of Article II, the least fortunate, let's simulate an approach to the premises. We do not know him and have never heard of him. An executive from the EquisZeta company and I walked along the platform of the commercial avenue in a high-income neighborhood of the city. Suddenly she takes a look at a shop window - in Colombia we use the term "showcase" - she laughs, takes me by the arm and asks me to observe what she says there…
(See photo 1).
Yes, there it says: "Do not be bossed around by anyone, what you like, you like period." How are you? Well, it worked. There the executive and I were standing, cut short, laughing at the colloquial invitation. The handwriting is perfectly legible, and otherwise beautiful. Was it made with adhesive material? We'll find out later.
We head towards the entrance and notice the message on this board, placed on the lintel. Sure, we continue to enjoy the discovery. My co-worker and I want to browse a little more… (See photo 2).
Perfectly readable, right? A dialogue has already been established, a close approach, an icebreaker, an original and uncomplicated communication with the client without my partner and I having seen the face of the person or people who attend the business. We cross the threshold and stop to observe… (See photo 3).
It looks good, and it even smells good. Alexandra smiles, stands up and welcomes us. Sensory-intuitive perceptions continue to rise. We are pleased, happy to meet you there. Let's go to the bottom and take another look… (Photo 4)
Doña Adriana weaves those scarves in her spare time. She sits there, look, on the couch, picks up the needles and tangles and sometimes talks to customers, ”says Alexandra.
Heat, color and flavor. No doubt. The place has all the angel of its owners. We go to the opposite corner and look at what we find… (See photo 5).
We smile again. The talking mirror of fairy tales. At this point, the interrogation of Juan Diego Acevedo, Adriana's partner, begins. Unfortunately, she was not at the time. She was on vacation in the United States. Adriana is a decorator? Mmm, yes, but no -answers Juan Diego. She is not a professional decorator or window dresser, as I think the specialized magazines in Spain say, but she could be, as you may well realize… What about the characters on the display case, those on the mirror? They are manuscripts. That is its letter - Juan Diego answers. Beautiful! Exclaimed my partner and me. And I add: Purito innovative-creative talent, pure right brain hemisphere in action. Oh, and let me show you something… Juan Diego retires for a few moments and returns with a leather pulp agenda. Here you have it, he says.In this agenda he has about sixty short texts, copies like those of the mirror and the showcase. My partner and I leafed through it and began to read aloud… (See photo 6).
The same thing that you are doing is being done by some clients, especially men. They stand in front of the display case and start reading aloud… Well, what about the pictures? (See photo 7).
Ah, I paint those on acrylic-vinyl. As you can see, they are small in format. Even the clients themselves suggest certain themes, such as those cartoon pictures of animals that are there. They are for the boys' rooms, and they sell very well. We started in 2000 with an ad that said, “Don't throw away your old furniture. Here we paint them as you like and give them new life ”. That's how we were for four years, and now you see, we listen to customers and try to give them pleasure when we can, "concludes Juan Diego.
My companion bought one of the hand-knitted scarves and I took the precious kitten for Estefanía, my three-year-old niece.
A few days later, this time alone, I passed the Artimañas miscellany again, and look what I found… Total, five stars in image and positioning for this talented and friendly couple of artist-decorators.
The client knows that we are his best option when we work with creativity, high commitment and high standards within the image-positioning component, as seen in articles II and III.
Now let's go to another essential component, based on the history and contributions of Carlos Mesa, owner of La Granja, a charcoal chicken restaurant.
b. Service begins with Being:
Carlos is married, 42 years old and expecting his first baby. He was an outstanding student at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, "in one of the most expensive careers of that time, architecture". To cover their expenses, they teamed up with a colleague from the faculty and together they created a mini-company of clothing. They started with a production of a hundred jeans. They sold them in a couple of days. They doubled production, and after five days they had not a single one left…
They could not believe it. Immediate success. The architecture students got excited and created the Cemento10 brand for their jeans and shirts. While the business was flourishing, Carlos received his diploma and began receiving calls from some construction firms to develop designs. He had entered the professional world on the right foot.
Some time later, he became independent from his partner and opened the doors of a premises in an exclusive commercial sector. There he continued to sell garments with his brand and, at the same time, he continued to practice his profession, “but already in the second phase, much more interesting: I dedicated myself to associative projects, to designing housing complexes for people from my social circle and others who were looking for me on recommendation. I decided to close the clothing store and fully devoted myself to construction projects. ”
It was just at this stage that he learned an important lesson related to service quality, customer satisfaction:
"Traditionally, the relationship between architect and client is one of criteria imposed by the former. They tell clients, sometimes discreetly, sometimes not, that they know perfectly well how to design an environment, a space, and that space occupants must learn to accommodate these patterns. I never agreed with that. "
“While developing the associative projects, I was busy and worried about getting to know the future owners of those spaces better. He spoke with contributors over and over to interpret, to better understand their needs. After all, I thought, it is usual for a person or a family group to acquire a real estate five or six times in their life, at most. Therefore, offering the best support and the best advice before delivering the goods was the best option, and believe me, the contributors were very grateful for my procedure. ”
In 1999, while Carlos was managing four projects at the same time, the worst financial crisis Colombia had experienced in over a decade broke out with all its force. The economy began to register negative indexes in an accelerated way and numerous companies failed. The distressing situation forced the architect to change his activity in a matter of months. It was then that he made the decision to open the La Granja restaurant, on a commercial avenue surrounded by middle and upper-middle-class residential neighborhoods:
“My passion was and still is architecture, but you know, nobody imagines what awaits him. And here comes the second lesson, vital, for owners and employees of any business, in whatever category they are: to convince yourself that things have to be done well, with dedication, with dedication, even if that is not what we had planned to do when we advanced our studies. Everyone wants to make money on what they like, but if any of these budgets fails, for this or that reason, many become demoralized and do things with disdain, reluctantly. Few people I have met who say to themselves' perfect, I have to do this because there is no other alternative, so let's do it well and see if this leads me, in one way or another, to earn good money, to do what I like.That is a fundamental part of what I would call THE ARCHITECTURE OF GOOD SERVICE, doing the best, facing the client, for the pleasure of doing it, not because it coincides or not with our film of well-being and success' ”.
Many people fail to embrace, to merge with that way of feeling and living, Carlos says. And he maintains that this attitude does not appear overnight: it is of structure, of formation, of a home school. He also maintains that service is being, being above all, before doing. His business, like many others, has a high turnover, and it shouldn't be like this, “but the shortcomings of these people go beyond their financial limitations, that's the truth. I work shoulder to shoulder with the employees, I give them support and confidence, but notice how things are, I enter into conversations with them and I ask them: let's see, tell me what your dreams are, your aspirations, what makes you vibrate with the Happiness… Tell me how you see yourselves in three or five years, geez, and no, some don't even know what to answer.They live day by day and nothing else ”.
In ten years, the restaurant has been a good income alternative for Carlos. He still aspires to have his own architectural design consulting firm, but he doesn't regret having turned to the restaurant business. Of every ten customers he currently has, five visit his business at least once a week, and two of those five have been in attendance since it opened.
“Sure, year after year I was learning how to offer a top quality charcoal chicken. Food businesses are not easy to manage. They require constant monitoring and it is not easy to delegate tasks to something that does not depend on simple inventory management. It is not just about keeping accounts, that is, yesterday I bought fifty chickens and at the end of the day I had ten.
Carlos marinates the chickens before putting them on the grill and always tries to provide an optimal service. “Here clients come from all over, even from very distant neighborhoods. I strive to show off with clients because that makes me feel valuable, important. ”
And before leaving the restaurant, he leaves us with a third lesson on the quality of service, one in which it is worth emphasizing the training and the processes of care and satisfaction. It is the one that alludes to the perception of the supplier with respect to the client: “I have seen how employees get up when a family member comes to visit them. They change the expression of the face and they work so that the visit is completely comfortable with the attention and with the food. When that happens, I tell them that dealing with the client, with any client, should be like this, the same. I tell them to imagine that this person who has just arrived is their brother, their cousin or their mother, that they do not fall short, that they pretend that this is our house and that a very pleasant visit is coming to keep us company. ”
“I also tell them to focus on the details. For example, if the potatoes come out small, I tell them not to give the customer four little ones, but two big ones and two little ones. And if the chicken is small, then the same, that they take a bigger chicken, unpress it and mix large and small prey ”.
Carlos is not very concerned about the current world recession. What must be asked often, he says, is if we are in crisis or if we are crisis. The second is the most delicate, because we will get out of trouble if we know what we are made of, if we have the mental, moral and mental STRUCTURE to face those challenges.
And I close this article with a graphic testimony of this architect with a commendable and exemplary service structure.
