Quote of the week: "You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once"
- Amarillo Slim, poker player
Recommended book of the week: Long Walk to Freedom
- Nelson Mandela, Back Bay Books.
This week's customer service "moment of truth".
Tea or coffee?
The standard question posed by many companies when you visit their place of business, is "would you like a cup of tea or coffee?"
Now let's first give credit where credit is due and say that being offered a cup of tea or coffee is streets ahead of not being offered one at all. However, winning the game of business in the new millennium is not about asking standard questions. Standard questions will only ever get you standard, mediocre, middle of the road, dull, colourless and boring answers. What's needed, are questions that create an awareness in customers that acknowledges you as being different.
What would it take for you to ask a visitor or customer, "would you like a cup of tea or coffee, or would you prefer a cool drink of juice or water?"
Customers could not help but be impressed because once again it shows that you care. It shows that you care for a number of reasons. Firstly there are many people who for health or religious reasons don't drink caffeinated drinks of any description, including colas. Secondly, on a hot day, a cool drink is obviously more desirable and appropriate than a hot drink anyway.
Another pet hate of mine is that when you do say yes to a cup of coffee, the coffee served up to you is the cheap instant variety. In the past, I have been most impressed with companies who have served me, and no doubt the rest of their customers, a cup of coffee with a single cup coffee plunger on a tray. In reality, it takes the same time to make a cup of plunger coffee as it does to make a cup of instant coffee. I was further impressed recently when I was offered coffee from a company's own 'cappuccino' machine. No it wasn't a café I was visiting.
Here also is another opportunity to examine the real attitude management have toward their staff. Does your company provide staff with good quality tea and coffee, or is it simply a case of sending the office junior down to the supermarket to get the cheapest brand or whatever happens to be on special that week?
Now you may say, 'it's only a cup of coffee'. But it's a lot more than that. It's your golden opportunity to demonstrate that you are different. An opportunity to stand out from the pack.
Until next week, stay true to yourself and to your customers. And remember great customer service relationships happen by design, in the moment, moment by moment.
