Why customer perceptions differ radically from our own
CustomerService BY JOHN DIJULIUS
Who ’ s Better , Who ’ s Right ?
Why customer perceptions differ radically from our own
Bain & Company asked leaders of 362 companies if they felt their companies delivered superior customer service . Eighty percent believed that the service they provided was indeed superior .
What these companies didn ’ t know was that , at the same time , Bain was surveying more than 3,000 customers , asking them if they felt they received superior customer service . Only 8 percent of customers surveyed described their experience as superior . How can 80 percent of the companies think they are providing superior service , but only 8 percent of their customers agree with them ?
You are in the customer perception business . So who ’ s right ? The customer ! Businesses need to know that they are in the customer perception business . Think about your own experiences as a customer , just in the past week . How often did you experience exceptional customer service , the kind of service where you want to share your experience with others and bring it back to work as an example of a superior approach ? Is it one out of every 10 experiences ? Or is it one out of every 20 ? The sad truth is that the majority of businesses rank their customer service significantly higher than their customers rank it .
The million-dollar question Why is there such a huge gap between what businesses think they provide in customer experience and what their customers think ? You can spend hours on this question alone with your management teams , and the discussions and takeaways around this would be incredibly valuable .
Don ’ t ask the customers what they want ; give them what they can ’ t live without . Learning from our customers is critical to building the experience we deliver . Many companies do a fairly good job measuring their customers ’ satisfaction through their own devices or have outside companies
collecting this data . I agree this needs to be done . However , on the flip side , you can ’ t ask the customers what they want — you have to give them what they can ’ t live without . Think about all the companies that have revolutionized their industries , broken the old paradigm , and turned everything on its head : Zappos , Amazon , Starbucks , Southwest Airlines , Uber , and Apple . They didn ’ t improve on what everyone else was doing — they completely transformed the way it was being done .
Let ’ s pretend it is the 1970s and we brought a small group of coffee drinkers together and asked them what they would like in a coffee-drinking experience . They would have looked at us as if we had two heads and said , “ A coffeedrinking what ? There are two ways to have your coffee : with or without cream , and with or without sugar , for 25 cents . What experience ?” And they would have been right . Not one would have raised their hand and said , “ I would like to be able to spend 10 to 20 times as much .”
You probably wouldn ’ t have heard , “ I would like to be able to order it over 80,000 different ways and get it .” ( You
really can have your Starbucks made over 80,000 ways ). Nor would someone have said , “ I would like to be able to hang out here for a couple of hours .” You wouldn ’ t have heard any of those ideas from customer focus groups , which means we probably would not have ended up with Starbucks — just the same way we wouldn ’ t have ended up with the iPhone or Amazon . Customers can only think in terms of what they have previously experienced , and that is typically not revolutionary .
The million-dollar answer Here is the real answer to why we ( the business / employees ) feel we deliver customer service so much better than our customers perceive : we are not in our customers ’ shoes . The vast majority of customer-facing employees cannot relate to their customers . Many times they may have little in common with their customers . They might be of a different generation , quality of life , or most of all , never been a customer of the product or service they are selling . We do not relate to their reality . We are not and have never been them . And if you can ’ t relate to someone else ’ s situation or circumstances , it is impossible to have any kind of empathy with them . Without empathy , you lack compassion and creativity .
Walk in the customer ’ s shoes World-class service organizations teach their employees to view things from the customers ’ perspective . Remember , many employees have never been their own customer , have never needed the services and products their company provides , and cannot comprehend what the customer ’ s mindset is . Therefore , they do not relate well and find it difficult to empathize , be compassionate , and anticipate customers ’ needs — all key to delivering the experience 80 percent of companies believe they provide .
John R . DiJulius III , author of The Customer Service Revolution , is president of The DiJulius Group , a customer service consulting firm that works with companies including Starbucks , Chickfil-A , Ritz-Carlton , Nestle , PwC , Lexus , and many more . Contact him at 216-839-1430 or info @ thedijuliusgroup . com .
78 MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE ISSUE III , 2017