Service excellence – First Impressions By Kayode Olufemi-Ayoola

Service excellence – First Impressions

By Kayode Olufemi-Ayoola

Published: Daily Independent Newspapers in 2004

Circulated to staff of Equity Bank Plc.

" The deepest principle in human nature, is the craving to be appreciated"- William James.

Service excellence is in the eye of the beholder - your customer. With him, you will never have a second chance to make a good first impression. This first impression could be a bright smile or look, your facial expression or appearance, your body language, the tone of your voice, or it could even be negative facts like : a lack of courtesy or attention, unprofessional behaviour or an attitude of indifference to his needs or demands.

Unfortunately, the Suppliers' market, is so crowded with home-grown and global competitors, that it is getting harder and harder to attract and retain customer attention long enough to develop emotional engagement. In other words, more and more service companies are competing for the same customers, thereby creating an overcrowded market place of suppliers .

As someone observed, "we have now entered an age of customer scarcity!". Therefore, we no longer have an effective sellers' market, but a buyers' market, where the customer holds sway, through the power of his choice.

I once read somewhere that," customers tend to stay with organisations that enable them to experience positive, meaningful and personally important feelings". Several surveys conducted, also reveal that , "most people shift from one service provider to another because of dissatisfaction with service, not price or product offering".The onus therefore lies on the service provider to manage the emotions in customer service exchanges, as the battle for the emotions of each customer is also the battle for repeat and future survival of the business.

To be a successful service representative, you must make a personal connection with your customers, letting them know that you are there to meet their needs. You must earn their loyalty, one customer at a time - seeking to increase your profit per customer, thereby experiencing repeat business. One service business discovered that, " a 2% increase in repeat business , had the same impact on profit as a 10% cost reduction".

Results from several surveys show that while most people will tell ten other people about great service they have received, the same set of people will tell up to twenty other persons should they experience poor service... This is definitely the power of advertisement in reverse!

Depending on the industry, it costs between two to twenty times more, to gain a new customer, than it does to satisfy and retain an existing one. In fact one survey result categorically states that, " 95% of customers whose problems are fixed quickly, continue to do business with the company involved".

All these, show that the key to service excellence lies in being able to tap into a consumer's latent motives and invoke an emotional response, thereby getting the customer hooked... (To be continued).

Service Excellence – First Impressions Cont’d.

“Unless companies redefine how they are going to engage customers and employees in-order to somehow override price, their traditional competitive advantages are gone”

                                                            Gabriel Gonzalez – Molina.

Whether you call it permission marketing or customer relationship marketing – your objective /goal as a business is to achieve customer loyalty, to enjoy repeat business and more importantly, to increase business from present customers

The only challenge is that customer loyalty/engagement is earned one customer at a time. The key to repeat business lies in knowing what’s going on inside your customer’s minds; this is the only way to   emotionally connect with your customers.

Daniel Goleman’s marvelous book on emotional intelligence tells us that, “the human mind can be thought of in 2 parts: one that thinks and one that feels. In most situations, both parts operate in harmony to help people navigate through life; however, when passions surge, the emotional side holds the rational side captive, dominating the overall decision - making process. This happens because emotions are hard-wired directly to the body through a fast –track neural network, whereas rational thinking is indirectly connected with the body’s functioning.”

In many situations, emotions move a person to act well before the rational mind has had a chance to catch up.

An article I recently read on the power of emotions, equally confirmed this observation, as it noted that, “emotions actually stimulate the mind 3,000 times faster than regular thought”, small wonder that people have been found to act/react before thinking out the consequences!

 All what this means, is that your ability as a service representative to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotions in thought, understand and reason with emotion and regulate emotion in yourself and others, is your key to repeat business – herein lies your challenge!

 The more open you are to your emotions, the more skilled you will be in reading the feelings/ non-verbal signals of your customers. For example, the facial appearance, the telling tone of your customer’s voice or shift in posture – these emotions are rarely put into words; they are usually transmitted through non-verbal channels.

Research shows that 90% of an emotional message is non-verbal. Communication experts tell us that as much as 55% of the messages customers send may be communicated non-verbally through body language. Another 38% of the message is communicated through tone of voice. That leaves only 7% communicated through the spoken word. The customer’s tone and body language convey up to 93% of his feelings and thoughts. As a service representative, it is never what you say, but how you say it that really counts. For example, if a customer calls/comes with a complaint, do not say – “It’s not my fault”, instead of dodging the issue or blaming someone else, apologize for the customer’s inconvenience and immediately begin to take action to solve the problem”

According to a service survey, 95% of the customers whose problems are fixed quickly continue to do business with the company. You as a service personnel must remember to always treat customers respectfully and courteously at all times because, you will only have one chance to make a good first impression, use it wisely!