Customer Service - two sides of the coin

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Some time back holidaying on the South Coast, I visited a restaurant with my wife and then 2 year old daughter. It was a Monday evening, still early and the restaurant was quiet. We were met warmly at the door, invited in and shown a table. Lots of chatter and friendliness. Six minutes later menues arrived. Ten minutes after that our order was cheerliy taken. Twenty five minutes later my wife's food arrived. Twenty minutes later my food arrived. Twenty two minutes later the food we'd ordered for our 2 year old arrived, by which time the child would have been screaming the house down with hunger had we not fed her from our plates. Will we ever visit this friendly place again? Not on your life.

This story illustrates a serious misconception that many establishments have about customer excellence. They feel that being friendly to customers constitutes great service. What about delivery (you may well asK)?

There are many different ways to profile people, but one way is to look at their levels of responsiveness during human interaction. For the most part, highly responsive people are wired to be friendly and outgoing. But what of low response or more serious people? Are they doomed to unfriendliness? Does this mean that they are always poor at delivering service? No not at all. These people see good service in terms of their ability to deliver results. It's not the friendliness that counts to them - it's the completion of the task that's important.

The restaurant had a "people centred" approach to service, but fell short on effective delivery. I am sure that you will have experienced it the other way around at some stage in your life - a service provider who delivered efficiently, but lacked the "feel good" element in their execution. We talk about a doctor with a good bedside manner. This refers to the way she communicates with patients, not her technical capability as a doctor.

In a market place where you have a secure monopoly, you can get away with being neither friendly nor efficient and your bottom line (profits) will remain unaffected. But as soon as there is competition, your market share will rapidly erode away.

Organisations who are friendly but inefficient are only likely to retain customers who are unfazed by inconsistent delivery. Those who are efficient but unskilled at interpersonal skills will do business mostly with similarly low response or "delivery wired" people.

Competition in markets ensures that those outfits who consistently combine friendliness with kept promises will enjoy the overwhelming share of the markets as buyers of goods and services become more choosy and discerning.

Have a good look at your natural approach to service - is it about friendliness or delivery? If one or the other, at best you may satisfy half of your customers. But if you have developed the skill of being being good in both areas, you will find that people will be drawn to you and your good reputation will be talked about and your establishment or services recommended.

This is a function of leadership. It begins by drawing the right people in to your organisation. The next step is to evaluate their natural customer service leaning (friendliness or delivery?). Then while supporting and encouraging their natural strength, develop the opportunity area (or weakness) to the required level with the use of training.

Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying: "There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." I would wager that in these times you would want your organisation to be the one people are talking about. If you are an employee, remember it is usually the invisible ones who end up being retrenched. Don't allow yourself to be invisible. Madonna, bless her, understood this well.

Paul du Toit, Certified Speaking Professional, Presentation Skills Coach and Author