Have you ever seen the upset faces of your customers when they start using your service or product?
Believe me, it is not a nice sight. In most cases, people try to show that they are happy and excited, but they are not feeling good. They may not say anything, but they will carry this feeling for a while and it is likely that they will no longer use your service or product. Even worse, they will start sharing their bad experience with others.
When we run a business, we must add value to our clients through our services or products, which will help them to overcome their challenges or take new opportunities. This is the first and most important rule.
Although most people cannot remember the finer details of your service or product and they have normally forgotten the majority of information that you shared with them during the time that they worked with you, they will never ever forget one thing: the feeling that you gave them.
This issue is more likely to occur in relation to service businesses. I have seen many businesses that have not paid enough attention to the way that they provide their services.
They think they are doing their job correctly and providing the outcome that their customers expect (i.e. value), but they do not see how some mistakes, whether directly or indirectly, have a negative influence on their customer’s experience.
Let me share a real example that happened to me a week ago. I was out with my family to do some errands and we decided to eat out, so we went to an Italian restaurant for lunch. It was a nice restaurant in a quiet location. We selected a table and sat down, waiting for a waiter/waitress to come.
After a waitress came and gave us the menu, we selected our food and drinks. My son asked for apple juice. It took a couple of minutes and she came back with our drinks. She put our drinks in front of each one of us, however, she put a big glass of apple juice in front of my son (he is 5 years old).
It was an adult-size glass full of cold and delicious apple juice. From the second that she put the glass in front of my son, the challenge had begun!
My son looked at the glass because he did not know how he could drink from such a big glass, and my wife and I were worried that he would spill the apple juice on the table. So for the majority of the time that we were there, we were watching my son non-stop to ensure that he would not drop the glass or spill the apple juice.
I am sure you can imagine how we felt. I have seen similar scenarios happen to others. Yes, the food was good, the environment was nice, the staff members were polite …
BUT – we could not fully enjoy our time there!
Let’s see why this type of bad experience happens in service-based businesses. There are two main reasons for this problem:
1) Lack of quality in the business processes.
2) Lack of proper staff training.
When we analyze each of these reasons, there are other challenges behind them.
One of these challenges that caused the scenario that I shared above about the restaurant is related to a lack of identifying the customers’ expectations. This is a common challenge that has a massive impact on creating satisfactory experiences for customers.
In my two articles in the past, I have explained the definition of people’s requirements and expectations and their relationship with people’s experiences.
I have observed this type of challenge in different business domains in the past, in which businesses have tried to focus on helping their customers meet their requirements, but they missed identifying and understanding these customer expectations based on the type of customers they want to serve.
Yes, in my story, we all wanted to have a glass for our drinks, but we had different customer expectations. My son expected to have a glass that he could easily hold in his hand.
On the other hand, my wife and I were worried about our son spilling the juice or dropping the glass. Therefore, we could not focus on our food and enjoy our time together.
In the restaurant business, the food may be outstanding, the table settings exquisite and the ambience delightful, but if the service makes people feel bad, it does not fulfill their reasonable customer expectations.
So, let me make it simple. The way you handle your customers along every step of their experience with your business has an impact on whether you’ll retain that customer.
The story that I shared with you in this article is one of many scenarios that we observe and/or experience in relation to different businesses every day.
The learning point here is that identifying your type of customers (segmentation) and knowing their requirements and expectations for each segment are important if you want to have happy customers who want to return again and again or refer you to others.
As part of my work with service-based businesses, I help my clients find these types of performance gaps and fix them, so they are able to increase their customers’ satisfaction and grow their business value in the marketplace.
