In your small business, your goal needs to be to consistently deliver a remarkable Customer experience. A vital key to success is consistency – to deliver the same experience every time.
The idea and practice of consistency is best understood by looking at both sides of the delivery system: from the company's (your) point of view and from your Customer's experience.
The Company's View of Consistency
As you see, consistency in the delivery of your Customer experience is a manageable part of your firm's strategy. But there's another side to the story. We have considered so far your firm's point of view. Now let's look at it from your Customer's perspective.
To you, the small business owner, consistency means repeatability, doing the same thing the same way time after time. It means eliminating variation and variability in the process and in the outcome. It means standardization. It means, to some degree, automation – even with your "people" processes.
Consistency means uniformity in all dimensions of the Customer experience:
- Sight: Your appearance and image must be the same every time regardless of the location or who's doing the work. That means a uniform appearance for staff, a designed and managed color and decorating scheme, a professional logo, and consistent use of colors. Keep the look – the image of your business intact both in the store and on line.
- Sound: How you answer the phone and greet Customers (including your voice mail message) needs to support your intended Customer experience. So do your background music, paging and announcement messages, and even the background noise in your store or office.
- Smell: Smell is our most powerful and visceral sense. It can evoke strong emotional memories and feelings. Pay attention to how your business environment smells. Imagine, for example, walking into a swimming pool supply store – what smell would you expect? Chlorine, of course, and that "plastic" smell of pool toys and supplies. The smell clearly identifies the environment and helps put you in the emotional mood to purchase items related to your swimming pool experiences. What about walking into a florist? A restaurant? A mortgage broker? A bank? Ambient fragrance and smell is not an accident – it is a manageable, controllable dimension of your designed total Customer experience.
- Touch: How do things "feel" in your managed Customer experience? Rough? Smooth? Soft and sensuous? It matters! For example, why do car salesmen want you to take a "demonstration" ride? First, to let you experience that "new car smell" but equally importantly, to have you touch and feel the fresh new seats and to have you feel with your finger tips your hands on the steering wheel – the little groves that cup your fingers just so... How the steering wheel feels in your hands as you turn the wheel... Since your finger tips are among the most sensitive parts of your body, that feeling goes directly into the sensory part of your brain where it is logged in as, "Ooh, this feels good!" (By the way, do you know how pet shops sell puppies? Once the salesperson sees you make eye contact with a specific puppy, they immediately bring it out to you and place it in your hands – in a specific way: with your hand carefully wrapped around its little chest (for support, of course...) so that your fingers are in direct contact with its little beating heart! Once you feel that puppy's warm little heart beating in your fingers, nothing on this earth can stop the flood of emotions which lead directly to the opening of your wallet.)
- Taste: Not every business can directly take advantage of this sense, but perhaps you can find a way. It's obvious that restaurants, bakeries and donut shops, food courts, etc. use the sense of taste explicitly. So do "samplers" in big-box store, grocery stores and food courts across the country. Why do these insidious, kind-looking "sampler" people want you to put one of their products into your mouth? To quote the old advertisement, "Bet you can't eat just one!" How might you use this powerful sense to enhance your remarkable Customer experience? One small residential contractor bakes cookies several times a day at their reception counter, then puts the hot new cookies out on the Welcome counter for their Customers and prospective Customers to enjoy. The contractor gets a double "bang" because while the cookies are baking, there's a powerful, delightful smell that fills the store (this is the same logic as baking bread while you're holding an "open house" in Real Estate), then the taste and handling of the fresh, warm, just-out-of-the-oven cookies continue and magnify the experience — Customers love them! This simple practice sends a subtle message of comfort and confidence in the environment, which helps relax Customers and breeds trust in the contractor.
Consistency helps you simplify and deliver experiences your preferred Customers want. As you begin to standardize and map out your delivery system, you'll discover that you have some decisions to make. You cannot effectively or efficiently deliver all things to all people — you have to decide who you want to be your preferred Customer, and who does not fit that profile. You must prioritize.
When you take that step, you help yourself by designing streamlined processes and systems which deliver exactly what your preferred (generally your most profitable) Customer wants and eliminates the rest. This as the added benefit of communicating to low-priority (usually less profitable) Customers that you're not the best fit for them — perhaps they should look for a different provider. This laser-like focus allows you to differentiate your Customer experience and get even better at serving your best target Customers.
Your Customer's View of Consistency
Consistency on your part is viewed by Customers as reliability, predictability, stability and certainty, which build confidence and trust. When you're consistent, Customers are confident in what they will receive from you – every time. You're reliable — I can count on you. Customers know exactly what to expect — you're predictable. Customers know that when they want what you offer, you will deliver — every time. They also know that if they refer a friend or colleague to you for what you offer, you will come through exactly as promised — every time. I believe in you — I trust you.
Consistency helps your Customers feel in control. They choose the experience they want — and they get it — every time. They choose their experience, and they receive it — every time.
Consistency helps your Customers feel good about themselves. When people feel "in control", they feel better about themselves. Consider the example of two college co-eds who were about to graduate. The first one, Sue, announced to her roommate that she had become engaged. The roommate was excited to learn who Sue had decided to marry. She knew that Sue had been dating two boys, Steve and Larry. Which had Sue chosen?
Steve was a very attractive man, tall and dark. He came from a wealthy, connected family. He was about to graduate from Law School with high grades; he had a bright, secure future. Larry was average in appearance — no fashion model, but still handsome. His family was middle class; he had no family wealth or influential contacts. He, too, was about to graduate from Law School with good grades. He had a promising future.
"So who did you choose?" asked the roommate.
"Well," replied Sue, "When I'm with Steve, he's attentive and respectful. We always get the best seats and great service. He always makes me feel good about being with him."
"But I have chosen Larry to be my husband and to spend the rest of my life with."
"You chose Larry?!? asked the roommate, obviously very surprised. "Why?"
"As you know, Steve makes me feel good about him. But when I'm with Larry, he makes me feel good about me."
That's the feeling you want your Customers to have — you want them to feel good about themselves for choosing to do business with you. Remember that your business is not about you! It is totally, absolutely and completely all about your Customers!
Consistency overcomes product and service quality. Even a wonderful product or service can be destroyed by inconsistent, unreliable delivery. In his breakthrough book, The E-Myth Revisited, Author Michael Gerber tells two compelling stories to anchor this profound point.
The first story is about his experience with a new barber. The first time was wonderful. An assistant offered coffee and shampooed his hair. The barber used scissors only, and delivered an excellent haircut. Delighted by this first experience, he returned for his second haircut. But the experience was vastly different: just one cup of coffee, no pre-cut shampoo, and the barber used mostly electronic shears... but still delivered an excellent haircut. Now confused, Mr. Gerber visited the shop for the third time. This time he was offered no coffee, a "pre-trim" before the shampoo, and a mix of electronic shears and scissors. Again he got an excellent haircut — and he never went back. His Customer experience had been unreliable, unpredictable and simply confusing. Confused Customers don't buy, and they don't return. And they certainly don't refer others!
Gerber's second story tells about discovering a hotel which delivered a remarkable Customer experience the first time — then repeated that exceptional service each and every time he came back. The secret is that the hotel had defined processes and systems which ensure consistency. They had taken the time to learn what Customers want, then created systems that deliver each Customer's preferences — every time.
(For additional reading on the design and execution of Customer-centric systems and processes, see Secret Service by John. R. Dijulius III and The New Gold Standard by Joseph Al. Michelli.)
The heart of delivering a remarkable Customer experience is consistency. Delivering the experience the same way, at the same level — every time.
It's important for you because the pursuit of consistency helps you discover and eliminate the costs of variability and the challenges of having to invent how to deliver your product or service over and over again, with uncertain results. Your operation will run more smoothly and at lower cost.
But the real importance is what your consistency does for your Customers. It gives them confidence in you, and perhaps even more important, it gives them a sense of control in today's uncertain world, and makes them feel good about themselves by choosing to do business with you.
If you want to grow your business in today's competitive environment, you will grow your "share of wallet" (the amount of purchases each Customer makes with you), and you will enlarge your Customer base (add new Customers) through referrals and "word of mouth" comments when you deliver a consistently remarkable Customer experience.
Richard Randolph
Florida Customer Service Institute
www.FloridaCSI.com
