What You See Through a Service Lens is What You Deliver


If you place a branded service lens in front of your organization, you make it easier for your staff to evaluate whether they are on-brand or off-brand. Contrast this with a generic service lens approach where the service staff look at customers through the lens of satisfaction. Then the service standard becomes, Did I offer good service or bad service? The lens through which your staff evaluate their service delivery drives their behavior.

The "customer satisfaction" lens produces behavior tending to gravitate to the ordinary, i.e., delivering the same generic service standard as competitors—and honestly believing that is good enough. Viewing service through a branded service lens amplifies branded service uniqueness. The questions staff ask become: Did I create a brand experience for my customers? Did I reinforce our brand? Did I deliver on our brand promise? Behind these questions lies the most powerful latent question: Am I creating brand loyalty among the customers we are targeting?

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off-brand

A subscriber to the Best of Active Learning (Singapore-based Ron Kaufman's e-letter that goes out to thirty-five thousand people) wrote about his experience with a cruise line that promotes itself on the basis of exclusivity and personalization that was not entirely on-brand in his estimation. Here's what the customer experienced:

  • The cruise company worked hard to personalize the vacation for each individual on board. Precruise telephone calls and letters identified each traveler's likes and dislikes, hopes, dreams (and concerns, if any) regarding the upcoming voyage.

    On the ship, the entire staff made a huge effort to memorize every passenger's name. Personal preferences were rigorously recorded and used to upgrade the intimacy of service each day. On the final morning, a questionnaire was slipped under the door of every cabin asking for feedback and suggestions for improvement. The first three questions on the form were:

    • Your name: ____________

    • Your cabin: ____________

    • Today's date: ___________

An entire cruise devoted to impeccable, personal service on a cruise line that is branded for personalized unique service. And one "standard form" at the end of the cruise reminds the guests they are merely anonymous respondents. [5]

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The above situation, like so many service experiences, is a subtle example of off-brand service. Asking people to write their names on an evaluation form is definitely not bad service. Some might even prefer it so their feedback can remain anonymous. However, it is definitely off-brand when it comes from a cruise line that stakes its reputation on extreme personalized service.

Some passengers probably would not even notice this disparity. Nonetheless, at one of its final customer touch points, which are the most vivid and memorable in service experiences, the cruise line lost a last opportunity to reinforce its brand. [6] This is an outstanding cruise line. It's the same cruise line whose staff notice when you leave cashews in your cocktail nut dish so the next time you are served nuts, you will receive not a single cashew. And, of course, one passenger clearly noted the disparity about the evaluation form and experienced enough brand erosion to write about it to a newsletter with an enormous circulation.

Based on considerable research, we know that satisfaction is not enough to drive customer loyalty, making it a poor lens through which to evaluate service. A recent consumer survey, for example, indicates that the most common descriptor consumers use to describe the service they receive is "satisfied." [7] Professor Michael Edwardson, with the University of New South Wales and one of the authors of that survey, suggests that "satisfaction" is meaningless because even dissatisfied people will say they are satisfied. When consumers say they are satisfied, Edwardson concludes, it means nothing significant happened. In fact, he states that we have "taught" consumers to say they are satisfied when they fill out survey forms. [8]

[5]Ron Kaufman Web site, http://www.RonKaufman.com/bestof.html.

[6]For a complete discussion of this topic, see Valerie S. Folkes and Vanessa M. Patrick, "The Positivity Effect in Perceptions of Services: Seen One, Seen Them All?" Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. 30 (June 2003).

[7]Michael Edwardson et al., Consumer Emotions Study, SOCAP (Sidney, Australia, 2003): 2. Available through secretariat@socap.org.au.

[8]Michael Edwardson's remarks to the annual SOCAP conference in Sydney, Australia, August 2003.




Branded Customer Service(c) The New Competitive Edge
Branded Customer Service: The New Competitive Edge
ISBN: 1576752984
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 134

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