Recognition for delivery of high quality customer service provides a lasting benefit to employees and customers. This continues the theme of our last post on moments of truth in customer service.
Most of us expect our dry cleaners to be efficient and careful with our belongings, and to offer reasonable prices. When these experiences are about the same, we tend to go to the most convenient locations. Last week my experience at the dry cleaner led me to send an email to the president of their company.
The core event. Standing behind the counter, Melissa, greeted me with a smile and eye contact, something no other employee had done before. Apparently I had become used to a very transactional relationship with the string of previous employees in the past few years. Not only did she say hello, she noticed that my wife’s name was on the customer ticket in their system and asked my name. When I stopped by a few days later, she greeted me by my name. I have to say I was impressed, especially compared to my past experience. As we chatted about this, she told me that this really mattered to her and the company.
This dry cleaner is part of a chain with more than a score of them located around town. I looked up the website, found the name of a senior executive and sent off a short email, noting my positive experience, suggesting they pass that message on.
First benefit: Within a few hours I received a reply from the President, who thanked me for the message, and let me know that this employee did model the type of person they want representing their business to customers. As a customer, it’s nice to know that senior leaders in a business are responsive to customer voice.
Second benefit: As I went to drop off my dry cleaning today, Melissa greeted me with a big smile. Her General Manager came in to thank her personally, and she learned that the President had received the message. This was one happy employee!
How hard was it? Not one of these individual events took more than a few minutes, but we can only imagine the extended impact. And if the President or General Manager are looking to make service an additional differentiator in the retention of customers, these types of stories help them to execute on that intention.
Our choices make a difference. Anyone of us – Melissa, myself, the President, the General Manager – could have just let it go because, after all, we are each busy in our own way.
It’s our choice to recognize quality customer service that becomes a gift that keeps giving.
If this sounds like just another “soft” customer service story to you, then you MUST read the post “Building Customer Relationships — are your products right for relationship marketing?”
See for yourself how a little customer service translates into financial profits that you take to the bank!
BestCustomerConnection, by Marc Sokol
