Customer service is how you operate your business.

Most of this week, I’ve been having conversations with people about customer service. Ok, this week it’s been more like debates about what service is and how to treat customers. You see, there seems to be a group of people who think that customer service is all about giving customers free stuff. That’s it, just giving them free stuff.

As if customers really walk out of a store and say, “Honey! You wouldn’t believe the service I just received! They gave me a 10% discount – that’s amazing service!” This isn’t service. It’s pricing. There is NO service going on here at all.

Giving amazing service is about listening to your customers, paying attention to how they behave and what they want, then enacting that as well as communicating it to them. My wife went into our local big box bookstore this week to complete an exchange. She didn’t have a receipt, just the unread book given to her as a gift. It costs the bookstore absolutely nothing for this transaction. Zero. Nevertheless, she needed to fill out forms and answer questions. Why? So that the store felt comfortable that they weren’t being ripped off. The unintended consequence is that store is actually saying they naturally distrust their customers. This is a bad process, clearly showing how tied service is to operations.

If you are in the business of dealing with people, how you interact with them and move them through their experiences with you needs to be viewed as service. This became crystal clear tonight when I took the kids to McDonald's.

Anyone who has been to a newly renovated McDonald's can appreciate the time invested in designing a restaurant that is attractive for both senior and junior clientele. New colours, patterns, and textures scream out, “This is not the fast food restaurant of the 1980’s.” For this they should be congratulated.

But which architectural genius forgot to include a proper queue system? You see, at these new McDonald's, people randomly gather en masse in front of the order counter without any indication of how to line up. Is it one line per cashier? One common line up? Really, it is just a mass of people constructing their own ‘line’ waiting for the next cashier to yell out, ‘I can help the next person in line!”

This is not nuclear physics. We are not splitting atoms.

Yet without an established structure that serves customers through the wait, the order, and the pickup, McDonald's has created disservice. That’s right. Customers stand around confused, bumping into each other, not knowing when to advance or how to pick up their food. The basic food service delivery system fails to acknowledge how customers behave and what they need. At a quick service restaurant, no one wants to feel stupid or awkward. Do the basic operations of your business help customers connect with you or create disharmony?

Service isn’t about the free-bees. It is about listening, paying attention, and doing things that help the customer. Period. If your operations are poorly organized or poorly executed, your service suffers and the relationship you have with your customers break down.

I have seen the ‘Best-Stop’ & it is good!

If you’ve been following my thoughts over the last few months, you know that I’m a huge fan of amazing customer service. Customers should be THE primary focus of your business. Service providers must listen and respond authentically; your business must truly give a crap about each and every person who you have the potential of interacting with.

I believe that the humanization of commerce is the next era in business development.

Of course, the humanization of business isn’t just about amazing face to face service. That would be far too simplistic for business success. Every part of our business needs to think ‘customer first’. Key parts of this include the physical structure, infrastructure and design. 

I’ve just returned from a decent size road trip with my family (two adults, two kids under six years old) of 3400+ km over four days, During that trip, I repeatedly encountered parts of the service equation that are most essential to road warriors. The rest stop.

Over the last four years, the province of Ontario has invested in the construction of new, modern and standardized service centres called “ONroute”. As the leased properties of older service centres along both Highways 401 & 400 have come up, the Ontario government has been replacing the old, eclectic, out-dated service centres with standardized modern facilities.

These are the services designed into each of the stations:

• Parking lots that are consistent and simple to navigate
• Gas pumps with hoses designed to reach both sides of your car (no more waiting in line for the pump on the correct side)
• Environmentally friendly buildings, utilizing water free urinals, low consumption toilets and the coolest touchless hand dryers I’ve seen in a long time!
• Designated rest and exercise areas of pets; no more trying to walk Fido around the old tiny grass perimeters
• A design that allows for natural lighting to be provided to 75% of all areas

You might wonder why I would be so excited about service centres. Here’s why. Millions of tourists travel the highways of Ontario every year. Millions of tourists require fuel, food and facilities during their trip. Service centres can be staffed with the nicest people under heaven, but if the bathroom is dirty and broken down, every stop becomes a disgusting experience, a punishment for participating in the necessary and predictable exchange of food and fluids.

Now, in Ontario, the infrastructure has become clean, fresh and modern. I actually looked forward to making a stop just so that I could marvel at all the thought put into these facilities. After travelling through three other provinces to return home, I think other provinces could learn a huge lesson here. Investment in facilities sends a clear message to your customers: we want your travel dollars, appreciate your needs on the road, and are willing to service you to the very best of our abilities.

The government of Ontario listened to their customers. Then they actually did something about it. Well done!

Birdies, bells and a biathlon

In Halifax, you have to be living under an industrial size rock not to have realized that in just 13 days, 4 hours and 20 minutes (according to the countdown clock), the 2011 Canada Games decend upon our fair city.

For sports enthusiasts, this means 16 days of Canada’s best athletes performing for national glory and personal pride. Which of these ranks more important would be in the eye of the opinion holder, although I for one think it would be the latter before the former.

For the school kids in Halifax, it is an extra week off of school; yup, two weeks when all of public classes are cancelled. The official reason for this break is so that our youth can enjoy the inspiring events and activities of our national athletes. The only problem is that most parents don’t get a week off in February, much less two, so for many it has become a planned exercise in extended family care.

However, I’m going to be watching the Games closely in order to gauge the level of tourism literacy in Halifax. What is tourism literacy? This is how well our population understands the value of tourism visitors and how well we treat them.

Tens of thousands of visitors will descend on our region for two plus weeks. For many, it will be their first visit to our fine city, our city with roadways designed around a peninsula, a basin, an inlet, a highway and a harbour. Getting lost in Halifax isn’t uncommon, and if you’re not lost then you might be confused by intersections with five and six street options to choose from. I live here – it’s just a regular thing. But for new visitors, it can be mind-boggling.

I mention the traffic as an example because the Games are spread across 13 different venues, 11 of which are in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Here is my question on the traffic. How will our local population react to the massive influx of tourists, driving around Halifax trying to find their venue? Will we honk in annoyance when someone needs to cut in front of us because they are in the wrong lane? Will we curse under our breath when the Rotary slows down as they tentatively try to exit the combat zone?

You see, visitors remember some of the events that they attend, but they will hold close the feelings they have of the place. How they were treated by the locals at dinner, over breakfast, in traffic and just walking down the street. The economic spin off of events such as the Canada Games can be measured immediately; however, this is myopic. The benefits come over the next 18-24 months, when future tourists decide to come back to our region and our province based on either firsthand experiences or the recommendations of their friends and family. Parents who travel here to watch their son or daughter compete and have a warm, welcoming experience will likely a) come back in the next two years for a more leisurely trip or 2) influence someone else to visit with the stories they tell.

I have great faith in Haligonians to step up our game during the Games. After all, this is the Maritimes – hospitality is what we do! But it will be the little things that make the different, the smiles on the street, the quick hellos, the appreciation of their effort to come here in the middle of some less-than-pleasant weather.

So if you find yourself on the roads in February and the driver in front of you seems obviously lost, give them space, a wave and a smile. This patience will help in multiple ways. The likelihood that they will return will go up. They will return with an increased knowledge of our city (thus as better drivers). And our tourism industry will benefit in both dollars and reputation.

Just my two cents…
WCM

It’s all about H2H – Part 2

In my last post, I suggested that the issue of real service interactions might be either misunderstood or underappreciated by some working in the services industry.

It’s time to discuss how authentic service interactions are misunderstood.

Recently, I had an wonderful dinner at a good restaurant here in Halifax. The food was great, the ambience quite nice. The server was pleasant enough and competent. Order taken, food served, bill presented. However, I couldn’t helped being underwhelmed. It took me a few minutes to realize what it was. The ‘patter’.

The server was using patter, her own version of a standardized script used at each table to welcome us, take an order and perform the functions that make up the interaction.

I expect this at quick service restaurants, have even trained it and performed it myself. But in the context of a fine dining restaurant, I was surprised. The problem was that I didn’t believe my server in the basic questions.

“Was everything ok with my meal?" Did she really want to know if I was enjoying it or just if it met expectations?

“Did we save enough room for dessert?” Who’s ‘we’ and why are you not interested in my desire over my space availability?

Granted, service professionals put up fronts, often referred to as emotional labour in service research. This type of acting helps to shield the person, allowing them to present emotions that they might not necessarily feel, emotions that are more appropriate to the context. For example, when a customer asks their service person “How are you today?”, the common response is “I’m great, thank you!”, whether or not this is truly the case. We script generic responses, the call & answer, to minimize the emotional stress required when we interact with so many customers.

Here is the point of my post. Too many service professionals misunderstand real interactions; they are overly conditioned to act or perform a certain way. Performance trumps authenticity.

It’s that small bit of connection when asked ‘How are you tonight?” that puts greater emphasis on ‘you’ and not ‘how’. Real human interaction requires an investment, a commitment and, yes, even a risk of getting more than you bargain for.

In a consumer world where the degrees of differentiation between products are so very slight, it will be those who can make real connections with other humans that will stand out. Gary Vaynerchuk is calling it the Thank You Economy. I’ll just refer to it as authentic H2H experiences.

Just my two cents… WCM