A 1987 book by SAS President Jan Carlzon, “Moments of Truth,” (still available on Amazon) presents one of the best formulas for business success. He says that every contact a business has with its customer represents a moment of truth and can spell the future of the relationship. Customers’ loyalties are short and one mistake by the company and the customer will go elsewhere telling many friends his/her sad story. Jet Blue was considered to be one of the best in customer service until a meltdown a couple of weeks ago.
Any local business can learn a lot from this concept. First, have the management and the staff make a list of every possible “moment of truth” or contact between the customer and the company. There will be many – the first phone call, walking into the business, being greeted by someone, getting the service or product, paying, leaving, and follow-up.
Then, for each of the moments, brainstorm how the company can either greatly exceed the customer’s desires, satisfy the expectations, or disappoint the customer. Be creative with this phase of the process. Use examples where you have in the past either delighted, satisfied, or disappointed the customer. Also use examples of how and where you and your employees have personally been delighted, satisfied, and disappointed with various organizations.
The last part of the process is to take those moments and make plans of how you will try and delight the customer for each one. Where possible change procedures, policies, and operations so that the customer can be delighted.
By doing this exercise and changing procedures any company can sharply improve its customer service and therefore its income.
I wonder what would happen if governments, schools, and health care providers would try this idea? I must admit I hate going to health care providers and filling out the same forms over and over again when they have most of the information already in their computer!
Business owners, if you try this idea, please let me know how it worked with a comment or an e-mail.
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