Intelligent Service: Learn to Deliver the Value the Customer MOST Appreciates

My daughter and I were going to visit her grandparents in Singapore,

Intelligent service in this case needed a human because the computer system could not display the route online. If it had, I would have booked online and saved United the cost of the call and the time to service me. The representative was intelligent. The system wasn't.

Because it's rare, there's cause for celebrating intelligent service. With this single transaction, I gained a glimmer of hope that makes me consider traveling United more often. And yet, given the speed at which customer service is improving, I would still call this episode yesterday's intelligent service.

Figure 1. Yesterday's Intelligent Service

I've been a United Mileage Plus customer forever. But I do not fly United all the time. I fly Southwest. I like the crew's spontaneity and humor. Even going to Atlanta, where Southwest doesn't fly, I will try Travelocity or Expedia before I choose United. Even though I earn miles for flying on United Airlines, I value Southwest Airlines' budget friendly costs and on-time departures and arrivals. The physical experience of being dependably on time is more important to me than the awards I've earned through United.

Figure 2. Today's Intelligent Service

Intelligent service extends over the entire relationship between a business and a customer, over the lifetime of the relationship. The concept of "Total Cost of Ownership" arose because people needed to understand how much it cost to maintain, support and usefully deploy technology over its lifetime—in addition to the upfront costs of purchasing the software. In much the same way, we need to look at the Total Cost of the Service relationship for the customer and the Total Value received by the customer to appreciate whether you're delivering intelligent service.

In the future, intelligent service will have to take into account the multiple channels through which a customer interacts with a business. So another way to look at intelligent service is to examine over the lifetime of the customer relationship the net result of each customer interaction as it is valued and appreciated by the customer.

Figure 3. Tomorrow's Intelligent Service

We can begin to track the customers as they proceed through these stages:

1. Buying
2. Using
3. Receiving service
4. Learning to increase the value received

Learning
The key word in the final stage is learning. Having learned which activities provide more value, the business must work to lower the costs of those key activities.

MIT's Peter Senge wrote powerfully in several books about the rise of what he called the "learning organization" in response to competitive pressure to improve. While lip service has been paid to the idea of learning, in the CIE Institute, we have found in working with clients that the investment in people development and training has been one of the first budget items to be cut—generally because it's hard to prove tangible results from training. To address this problem, our CIE Institute clients globally are introducing competency development as a systematic approach to quantifying the benefits of learning and development investment.

Organizations must develop the ability to measure and track the value received by customers in each transaction, taking into consideration the physical and emotive value, as well as the rational and monetary value. When all of this information is integrated and operated by empowered human beings who enjoy being creative in responding to customer needs, wouldn't that be something?

Imagine this world of intelligent service:

United Airlines has a history of all the flights I have booked for myself and my family. I am a frequent business traveler, making two to four domestic and international trips a month—all to the same places. When I need to make a booking for an upcoming flight—I click on a United button on my monitor. After answering a question only I know the answer to, I get a screen that shows pictures of business travel and leisure travel options. I click on one. I'm asked, "Is this your round trip to Atlanta and Oklahoma City, leaving Sunday or Monday and returning Friday or Saturday? I select "yes." And the entire itinerary is shown with pricing options and possibilities of upgrades, depending on how many miles I have on my frequent flier card.

With one click, I've chosen the perfect combination, provided my payment information and completed the air transaction. Next, I'm shown hotels, available through Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz, with the best options based on my preferences. Price conscious, I choose the Priceline "Name Your Own Price" and get my hotel rooms in two cities. Finally, rental car availability and prices are displayed. One more click—and I'm done.

Finally, a question: "Is there anything we could do to improve your experience?" I click on it. A woman's face appears on my screen, and a voice says, "Mei Lin, we are so glad to have you back and eager to know what we can do to improve your experience. My name is Susan and I'm your United Concierge."

I say, "I have a wedding anniversary coming up and we want to do something special to celebrate, say a 2008 cruise in Europe."

Susan says, "Give me 24 hours, and we'll send you a menu of special packages that will offer you options that reflect your cruise preferences. You are one of our most frequent business travelers, Mei Lin, and we are here to make your life everything it should be."

I say, "Susan, you are a gem! I'm looking forward to hearing from you."

True intelligent service is still in the future. The path to delivering such service is being pioneered today by leading organizations through competency development and organizational learning—and the extraordinary leadership of individuals who care deeply about their employees and the lives of their customers.