Let's face it, every business strives to offer service
excellence. We live in a service based society. The customer experience is the
key success factor in surviving and thriving. The key to operational excellence
is through understanding what you will excel at, or not; as well as determining
the use of your resources to design and apply improvements with most effect.
For service excellence you need to mind the 4 Es. First E
is Expectation. Second E is Encounter. Third E is Experience. Fourth E is
Emotion. I will briefly get into explaining each but I will only be scratching
the surface.
The first E to manage is Expectation. This is your
customer's expectation of your service. What can they achieve by using your
service? Expectation determines the
level of anticipation the customer has for the quality of service. There are
always two sides to expectation: physical and emotional. The two are
combined to form the service experience.
Most of the time the emotional component is powerful enough to override the
physical need. For example if you are craving a certain kind of food and you
have found the restaurant that makes the best; if your emotional need for being
welcome in the restaurant is not met, you are likely to walk away.
Likewise, improper setting of a physical expectation can
also affect the customer's emotion.
The second E is Encounter. This is when the customer
comes into contact with any aspect of the service or service providing
organization. Every encounter has a definite beginning and ending. There are
always two views of the encounter: one is the customer view and the other the
service provider view. Typically the
providers view is less expansive. Encounter is considered the moment of truth
and the moment of need. This is also called a touch point. This is when the
customer gets the opportunity to form an impression about any aspect of the
service or the provider. There are always three components to encounter: greet,
use, and thank you. The three components determine when is the beginning and
the end. The service provider needs to pay close attention in establishing its
own start and end touch points or its own greet and thank you moments. What
fits between the two points are determining factors and indicators of customer satisfaction. When
the customer expresses a new need or a change of need, this is the future
service requirement and a key indicator of the providers service flexibility.
The third E, is Experience. Personal touches are the
differentiating factors between two service providers offering similar
services. Personal service brings about loyalty and reduces the time and effort
that is needed to sustain the relationship. We can evaluate this by asking few
simple questions: what does the organization look like from outside? How satisfied are the current customers with
the level of service and support? What is their experience? When they have a
problem or complaint, how do they contact you and how is this resolved? Where
should you place resources to improve the customer experience? Always remember
the old saying: people don't want to buy a quarter inch drill. The want a
quarter inch hole.
The fourth E is the Emotional factor. This is a major
element in customer satisfaction. Emotions seriously impact the overall
experience. Every interaction between the customer and service provider has
within it the potential of inflaming the emotional state of the customer and
distracting them from the true value they are receiving. Emotions that are
evoked for wrong reasons take a lot of effort before they are turned to
satisfied state. But isn't that the same in all our personal lives as well?
Hope you enjoyed reading this article. All the best. EL
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